Postmodernism and the Matrix
Obelix
hints that the creators had a postmodernist interpretation in mind when
they made it. A few questions to start things off:
1. Do you think this film is *about* postmodernism? If so, why?
2. What would a postmodernist critic see in this film?
3. How does religion play a part in this film?
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ROBBIE
It's like some bleedin' tedious graphic novel made into a movie. It's not
worth discussing.
Obelix <obelix3...@hotmail.com.invalid> wrote in message
news:11f733ec...@usw-ex0102-011.remarq.com...
andr...@i-manila.com.ph
first question (I mean, give reasons for why I say yes).
As for the second question, a question I usually ask myself is how a
particular film poses its unique challenges to film criticism. In the
case of _The Matrix_, one of the questions I kept in my mind while I
was writing about it was to try and see how the film justified its
heavy use of intertextuality. What happens when the traditional
(Romantic?) view of an artwork as original is no longer a top
priority? (Of course, many other films may be read in this way as
well.) I may not have answered this question directly in my review,
but it was nevertheless a guide at the back of my mind the whole time
I was writing it.
About the third, I didn't focus too much on this, but I'd be willing
to throw my 0.2 in as soon as I've gathered some thought on the
matter.
Andrew
p.s. It was a surprise to see this post, as I've only recently begun
checking out alt.postmodern. I actually thought that this topic was
already over and done with. :-)
Ben Wolfson
AJ Irons
The movie wasn't even that good.
In many ways, it just struck me as a propoganda piece for the Church of
$$!cientology.
Rick
Obelix
I'd like to apologize to anyone who's annoyed with me bringing up the
subject of _The Matrix_ after all the initial discussions have already
died out. I'm doing a project on it for my popular culture class, and
since I'm relatively new to postmodernism (i've only really been
studying it for a few months), I wanted to get some outside opinions on
the matter, perhaps some perspectives that I would otherwise miss.
I choose _The Matrix_ because of its obvious ties to postmodernism. The
shot of _Simulacra and Simulation_ was a giveaway, but the original
screenplay even went so far as to specifically talk about Baudrillard
in the dialogue, which seems to indicate that the Wachowski brothers
(the creators of the film) specifically had postmodernism in mind when
they wrote it.
Ob.
Ned Ludd
<obelix3...@hotmail.com.invalid> writes:
>
>I'd like to apologize to anyone who's annoyed with me bringing up the
>subject of _The Matrix_ after all the initial discussions have already
>died out. I'm doing a project on it for my popular culture class, and
>since I'm relatively new to postmodernism (i've only really been
>studying it for a few months), I wanted to get some outside opinions
>on the matter, perhaps some perspectives that I would otherwise miss.
>
OK, how did this movie demonstrate an "incredulity toward
metanarratives"?
Ned
Obelix
illusion, created by the technological entity known as AI
Or, the (metanarratives) we know are just an illusion, created by the
technological entity known as (modernism).
Not much is said about AI, except that people created it, and then it
took over the world. I suspect that it is a metaphor for progress,
change, the idealization of technology -- i.e., modernism.
The "Matrix" (the artificial world designed to keep people passive)
then, would represent the metanarratives that came out of modernism. It
is the happy world in which most people live, not realizing that
anything is wrong. From the screenplay:
MORPHEUS
It's that feeling you have had all
your life. That feeling that
something was wrong with the
world. You don't know what it is
but it's there, like a splinter in
your mind, driving you mad,
driving you to me. But what is
it? The Matrix is everywhere, it's all
around us, here even in this room.
You can see it out your window, or
on your television. You feel it
when you go to work, or go to
church or pay your taxes. It is
the world that has been pulled
over your eyes to blind you from
the truth.
Sounds almost like the reality that postmodernism is trying to see
through, doesn't it?
The "heroes" of the story are a group of hackers that are trying to
fight back against the Matrix and free people from it. This isn't just
to capitalize on the trendiness of cyberpunk; They are hackers for a
reason.
A hacker is someone who specializes in understanding and transcending
computers. If AI represents modernism, then "hacking" represents the
fight against it.
I don't know if I'm making any sense. Feel free to tear me apart if I'm
not. These are just some ideas that I've had....
Clark Goble
> OK, how did this movie demonstrate an "incredulity toward
> metanarratives"?
The Oracle's words didn't mean what they meant?
Clark Goble
think the directors do address postmodernism, they tend to do so on the
level of symbolism and visuals rather than on the level of content and
meaning. For a movie that addresses more interesting questions I'd suggest
_Dark City_. It is, in many ways, even more flawed than _The Matrix_ but
asks the interesting question of what makes us human. If you strip away all
our memories and contexts, what is left? It's kind of interesting in light
of Heidegger, Derrida, and others.
Anyways, back to _The Matrix_. The overall religious symbolism comes from
gnosticism, Catholicism, and Buddhism. Neo is the Christ/Buddha figure.
Trinity is the Sophia/Holy Ghost figure. Morpheus is the Father/Buddha
figure. It makes abundant use of the platonic/gnostic symbolism. Trinity
awakes Neo to the realization that his world is the world of illusion. The
apparent world is really a false world created by a demiurge (the AI).
Awoken by the woman (wisdom) Neo enters the real world. It is a world more
poor in many ways, but still real. The end of the film (and presumably in
it's sequels) salvation is awakening and returning to the real world. The
mystic symbolism is found in both Buddhism but also the gnosticism. There
is also the greek overtones of knowing oneself, but a knowing that is more
gnostic than socratic. The agents are like the archons that guard the way
to paradise (the real world) and who must be overcome. (Neo's battle at the
end). A rebirth takes place (common in all systems of thought, but
especially gnosticism and Christianity) The rebirth comes from the kiss of
Trinity which is when Neo realizes that the constructed world really is an
illusion. The knowledge isn't just intellectual anymore but becomes real.
He truly understands.
There are other more minor religious symbols. For instance Neo's alter ego
is the name Neo (meaning One - One as messiah but also probably with
neoPlatonic/mystic overtones as well) He 'real' nameis Thomas Anderson, and
he starts out as a doubting Thomas. The name of the ship Morpheus uses is
the Nebuchadnezzar, referring to the Biblical story of Daniel and his
vision. The connection to _The Metamorphoses_ by Ovid is clear as well. (I
don't know if you consider that religious or philosophical)
Throughout the movie there are many times when it isn't clear whether Neo is
dreaming or not. i.e. is the sequence in which he follows the white rabbit
to the dance club all a dream or did it really happen? There are clues that
Neo never actually woke up from his initial introduction but that he first
awakes when his alarm goes off.
The postmodern elements come mainly via Nietzsche and Baudrillard, as you
mention. When Neo opens the book, _Simulacra and Simulation_ by
Baudrillard, it is to the chapter "On Nihlism." That chapter is about
Nietzsche and Niezsche's views on nihlism. That takes us once again to the
notion of Platonism. In _The Matrix_ we have an inverted platonism, ala
Nietzsche. The world that is most real is the material world. The world of
ideas/illusions that we awake from is the false world. This is opposite to
Plato's cave. The world in which Neo becomes a God isn't real at all. In
the real world he is weak, flawed, and mortal.
There are numerous quotes from Baudrillard as well, including "welcome to
the desert of the real." The issue is what is real? When is a simulation
not the real thing? Unfortunately the movie itself doesn't probe this issue
much. For a film that does, consider the afore mentioned _Dark City_. In
the Matrix it's only the 'real world' that isn't real. It is a simulation.
The significance of this never matters in the film. Yea they have the
chicken dialog (how would we know what something really tastes like?). That
isn't worth much though. It is possible that the future films will be more
challenging, but I doubt it. Basically, unless they explain away a lot in
the sequel, _The Matrix_ is a visually stunning action film that never gets
much beyond that. I loved it, but it isn't the philosophical treatise
people make it out to be.
There are plays on the notion of the dream as it appears in Baudrillard,
Nietzsche, Christianity, Buddhism, and Alice in Wonderland. However while
these determine the structure of the movie, they really don't say anything
significant about dreams or their relationship to us. The role of both
religion and philosophy in _The Matrix_ is really about the same as the role
of _Alice in Wonderland_ and _Through the Looking Glass_. It forms a nice
structure but the content is left unexamined.
Today, abstraction is no longer the map, the double, the mirror,
or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a
referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by
models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The
territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it.
It is nevertheless, the map that precedes the territory --
preccession of simulacra -- that engenders the territory, and
if one must return to the fable, today it is the territory whose
shreds slowly rot across the extent of the map. It is the real
and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the
deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The
desert of the real. (Baudillard, _Simulacra and Simulation_)
/// Clark Goble //// Cl...@mail.kingsleymc.com
// //// http://www.kingsleymc.com/Clark/main.html
Jens Weisse
>Has anyone here seen the film _The Matrix_? There are some obvious
>hints that the creators had a postmodernist interpretation in mind when
>they made it. A few questions to start things off:
>
>1. Do you think this film is *about* postmodernism? If so, why?
>
>2. What would a postmodernist critic see in this film?
>
I didn't find The Matrix to be very *postmodern*. In the movie there is an
authentic existential reality hidden behind a sign-based and simulated
pseudo-reality. Jean Baudrillard's conception is quite different: in his
opinion, there is no such thing as reality: It is impossible to escape the
realm of simulations. The movie's implicit quotation of Baudrillard is
therefore misleading.
In my opinion, a characteristic trait of postmodernism is that its
theories rest on a critique of signification. The Matrix in my opinion does
not touch this topic.
Clark Goble
Anderson, and he starts out as a doubting Thomas. Cypher is the Judas
character. The name of the ship Morpheus uses is the Nebuchadnezzar,
referring to the Biblical story of Daniel and his vision. The
connection to _The Metamorphoses_ by Ovid is clear as well. (I don't
know if you consider that religious or philosophical) I could go on,
but that should be enough to get started.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Obelix
movie, but it seems to me that the movie is not really *about*
religion. These themes are simply used as a convenient vehicle to
symbolize "overthrowing" modernism.
Many have criticized the Matrix for it's lack of an in-depth
intellectual analysis of postmodernism, but let's keep in mind that
this is a Hollywood sci-fi flick starring Keanu Reeves, for crying out
loud. This is about the lowest of the low culture. I think that given
the constraints they had, the Wachowskis did a rather good job of
bringing postmodern concepts to the masses... I don't understand why
everyone sees that as a *bad* thing.
Or perhaps postmodernists want to be as elite as everyone else....
Clark Goble
___ Ob ___
| I'm well aware of the Gnostic/Catholic/Buddhist interpretations
| of the movie, but it seems to me that the movie is not really
| *about* religion.
Well I agree it's not about religion any more than it is about Alice in
Wonderland. I just don't see it being about postmodernism any more than it
is about religion. It's simply a cyberpunk film using lots of imagery from
Hong Kong action films (especially _Once Upon a Time in China), Japanese
animation and comics, American graphic novels, and so forth.
___ Ob ___
| These themes are simply used as a convenient vehicle to
| symbolize "overthrowing" modernism.
___
If that's what they are doing they did a poor job of it. <grin> BTW - I
don't think postmodernism "overthrows" modernism. Postmodernism isn't
"post" in the normal use of the term. Rather postmodern philosopher work
from within modernism looking at the limits of modernism - limits that
modernist philosophers were in denial about.
___ Ob ___
| I think that given the constraints they had, the Wachowskis
| did a rather good job of bringing postmodern concepts to the
| masses...
___
Once again look at _Dark City_ for a much better job of this. Most of the
interesting features of postmodernism aren't really broached in _The
Matrix_. (i.e. the hermeneutic turn in philosophy, deconstructionism, the
idea that there aren't simple intents, etc.) Merely quoting Baudillard
doesn't make a film postmodern.
Now a film like _2001: A Space Odyssey_ could well be argued to be
postmodern, or at least existentialist. I'd even accept films like _Fight
Club_ which has a huge distrust of narratives. Heck, I'd even be up for a
debate about _Blade Runner_. But _The Matrix_ is rather a desert for
discussion here. Beyond the fact the quotes are there and there is a
virtual reality, what is postmodern?
Clark Goble
| I didn't find The Matrix to be very *postmodern*. In the movie
| there is an authentic existential reality hidden behind a
| sign-based and simulated pseudo-reality. Jean Baudrillard's
| conception is quite different: in his opinion, there is no such
| thing as reality: It is impossible to escape the realm of
| simulations. The movie's implicit quotation of Baudrillard is
| therefore misleading.
Yea, I agree completely. On the other hand there are hints that
the "reality" is itself not real. For one thing we have the
blurring of the virtual and the real with Morpheus' story about
history to Neo. Now that may have just been bad scripting but
perhaps they intended Morpheus to give this ludicrous reason for
why the machines keep humans alive. (Humans are batteries)
Likewise when Cypher is about to kill Neo and Neo lives it
suggests that Neo is a messiah not just in the Matrix but in the
"real" world - but how can that be unless the role he plays in
the Matrix exists outside the Matrix as well? This is further
hinted at when the Oracle and Morpheus discuss Neo possibly being
the reincarnation of the original founder of the resistance.
Still, if it is supposed to be an examination of this it does a
poor job. The film focuses more on the straightforward adventure
narrative.
There is some play about when Neo is actually dreaming (he has
a dream within a dream and so forth). But this isn't played up
as much as other films. An other film that tries to do this
but ends up focusing instead on the action is that Swartzenegger
film based on Dick's _We Can Remember It For You Wholesale_.
Like _The Matrix_ it has some interesting themes but _Total
Recall_ casts them aside for the action and cheap B-movie
adventure.
___ Jens ___
| In my opinion, a characteristic trait of postmodernism is that
| its theories rest on a critique of signification. The Matrix in
| my opinion does not touch this topic.
___
Yea - although signification pops up in odd places.
Clark Goble
___ Ob ___
| I'm well aware of the Gnostic/Catholic/Buddhist interpretations
| of the movie, but it seems to me that the movie is not really
| *about* religion.
___
Well I agree it's not about religion any more than it is about
Alice in Wonderland. I just don't see it being about postmodernism
any more than it is about religion. It's about a cyberpunk film
using lots of imagery from Hong Kong action films (especially _Once
Upon a Time in China), Japanese animation and comics, American
graphic novels, and so forth. T
___ Ob ___
| These themes are simply used as a convenient vehicle to
| symbolize "overthrowing" modernism.
___
If that's what they are doing they did a poor job of it. <grin>
BTW - I don't think postmodernism "overthrows" modernism.
Postmodernism isn't "post" in the normal use of the term.
Rather postmodern philosopher work from within modernism looking
at the limits of modernism - limits that modernist philosophers
were in denial about.
___ Ob ___
| I think that given the constraints they had, the Wachowskis
| did a rather good job of bringing postmodern concepts to the
| masses...
___
Once again look at _Dark City_ for a much better job of this.
Most of the interesting features of postmodernism aren't really
broached in _The Matrix_. (i.e. the hermeneutic turn in
philosophy, deconstructionism, the idea that there aren't
simple intents, etc.) Merely quoting Baudillard doesn't make
a film postmodern.
Now a film like _2001: A Space Oddyssy_
>
> Many have criticized the Matrix for it's lack of an in-depth
> intellectual analysis of postmodernism, but let's keep in mind that
> this is a Hollywood sci-fi flick starring Keanu Reeves, for crying out
> loud. This is about the lowest of the low culture.
I don't understand why
Alan Marshall
conviction that there was an underlying real reality. If it was 'true' pomo
both the computer generated reality and the 'real' reality would have both
been dissolved/deconstructed in non-existence.
As well as this the modernism of The Matrix shines through via the fact that
there was s'pose to be a savior figure--a guy that knew where reality in
actual fact liay, and how to get there thru struggle, much like the
Modernism of revolutionary Leninism.
Obelix wrote in message <11f733ec...@usw-ex0102-011.remarq.com>...
>Has anyone here seen the film _The Matrix_? There are some obvious
>hints that the creators had a postmodernist interpretation in mind when
>they made it. A few questions to start things off:
>
>1. Do you think this film is *about* postmodernism? If so, why?
>
>2. What would a postmodernist critic see in this film?
>
>3. How does religion play a part in this film?
>
>
>
>
>
Obelix
I disagree that Beaudrillard believes that there is no reality left. It
was my understanding that like the map in Borges' story, shreds of
which might still be found in the deserts, there are traces of the real
still out there, somewhere.
This is the reason for Zion, the only remaining human city. It is a
shred of reality, the only thing left after the hyperreal (the Matrix)
has taken over. This is why Morpheus refers to it as "the desert of the
real."
Yes? No? Maybe so?
Ob.
Ned Ludd
<obelix3...@hotmail.com.invalid> writes:
>
> I disagree that Beaudrillard believes that there is no reality left.
> It was my understanding that like the map in Borges' story, shreds
> of which might still be found in the deserts, there are traces of
> the real still out there, somewhere.
> This is the reason for Zion, the only remaining human city. It is
> a shred of reality, the only thing left after the hyperreal (the
> Matrix) has taken over. This is why Morpheus refers to it as
> "the desert of the real."
> Yes? No? Maybe so?
>
Why is Zion more real than the Matrix?
Ned
Obelix
Zion represents the small, dilapidated shreds of reality that are left
over from the chaos created by modernism -- and it is in danger of
being assimilated too. This seems to agree with Baudrillard's
comparison of "the real" to the map in Borges' story. Zion isn't real,
it's a fictional place invented for the story; My point is that it
represents, within the metaphor, Baudrillard's desert of the real.
I don't know if this is correct or not, it's just an idea I'm trying
out.
Obelix
> All right. Why is Zion ADVANTAGEOUS over the Matrix?
Ahhh!! now THAT is an interesting question!
This gets right to the heart of an issue about which I have yet to get
a clear answer from a postmodernist: What is wrong with the simulacra
and simulations that comprise our everyday lives? They keep us vaguely
happy and distracted long enough that we can die without really
questioning anything.
The supposition that the real is better than the hyperreal is based
upon the metanarrative of Truth (with a captial 'T'). Modernism
drilled into most of us the fundamental belief that Truth is better
than the alternative. We have an instinctive need to *know* what we can
consider True and what we can consider Not True.
What if I was to decide that my religion wasn't working out for me, and
overnight decided to believe in something completely different? What if
I got bored with my personality and decided to be someone else instead?
What if I decided that The Onion was the only valid source for world
news?
To someone wrapped up in a modernist perspective, these would sound
like ridiculous, terrible things. "They're just not true!"
But if it works for me, does it really matter? If Cypher wanted to stay
in the Matrix, why should he be considered such a villain?
I'm not as well-read in the founding fathers of postmodern thought as I
should be (though I am working hard on it). What ideas do they have on
the matter?
Ned Ludd
<obelix3...@hotmail.com.invalid> writes:
>
> My general point is that the matrix is a metaphor for postmodernism.
> Zion represents the small, dilapidated shreds of reality that are
> left over from the chaos created by modernism -- and it is in danger
> of being assimilated too. This seems to agree with Baudrillard's
> comparison of "the real" to the map in Borges' story. Zion isn't
> real, it's a fictional place invented for the story; My point is
> that it represents, within the metaphor, Baudrillard's desert of
> the real.
> I don't know if this is correct or not, it's just an idea I'm trying
> out.
>
All right. Why is Zion ADVANTAGEOUS over the Matrix?
Ned
Puss in Boots
[...]
re the value of truth:
> I'm not as well-read in the founding fathers of postmodern thought as I
> should be (though I am working hard on it). What ideas do they have on
> the matter?
See the first aphorism in _Beyond Good and Evil_. Long as
I'm giving advice, it's "modernity" -- not "modernism."
Modernism is a different critter, more like post-modernism than
anything else. Hell, given the way you use "post-modern,"
they're practically synonymous. But anyway, Nietzsche. Have a
look at BGE -- just what you need.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
Puss in Boots <mog...@mindspring.com> writes
>Modernism is a different critter, more like post-modernism than
>anything else.
--
James Whitehead
Obelix
pick it up.
So far we've mostly been talking about _The Matrix_ as a work about the
postmodern condition. I'm wondering now, how would one go about
critiqueing it as a postmodern work itself? Is the film itself a
postmodern work? My initial reaction is to say no, because it seems to
buy into the typical hollywood metanarratives...i wonder if anyone has
any comments on this idea....
Puss in Boots
>> Long as
>> I'm giving advice, it's "modernity" -- not "modernism."
>> Modernism is a different critter, more like post-modernism than
>> anything else.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
> could you explain this?
Sure. Modernity is an historical period. Its exact
boundaries are subject to dispute, but it extends from sometime
after the Middle Ages through the 19th or the 20th century.
It's characterized by the advent of capitalism, the rise of the
bourgeoisie, the emergence of humanism, the development of
science and industry...you get the picture. "Modernism" refers
to a set of cultural movements usually associated with a
period from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. Think Kafka,
Picasso, Pound, Eliot, Woolf, Rilke, Schoenberg, et al.
-- Moggin
Jim Elson
in Boots) wrote:
>James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>
>> could you explain this?
>
> Sure. Modernity is an historical period. Its exact
>boundaries are subject to dispute, but it extends from sometime
>after the Middle Ages through the 19th or the 20th century.
>It's characterized by the advent of capitalism, the rise of the
>bourgeoisie, the emergence of humanism, the development of
>science and industry...you get the picture. "Modernism" refers
>to a set of cultural movements usually associated with a
>period from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. Think Kafka,
>Picasso, Pound, Eliot, Woolf, Rilke, Schoenberg, et al.
Fair enough, but modernism can also be described, as Vattimo
does, as a movement revolving around the notion of the "new"
as a step in the inevitable "progress" of man towards an ever
increasing grasp of "The Truth" with all the metaphysical
entanglements that entails.
Puss in Boots
Long as
>>> I'm giving advice, it's "modernity" -- not "modernism."
>>> Modernism is a different critter, more like post-modernism than
>>> anything else.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>>> could you explain this?
Moggin:
>> Sure. Modernity is an historical period. Its exact
>> boundaries are subject to dispute, but it extends from sometime
>> after the Middle Ages through the 19th or the 20th century.
>> It's characterized by the advent of capitalism, the rise of the
>> bourgeoisie, the emergence of humanism, the development of
>> science and industry...you get the picture. "Modernism" refers
>> to a set of cultural movements usually associated with a
>> period from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. Think Kafka,
>> Picasso, Pound, Eliot, Woolf, Rilke, Schoenberg, et al.
jel...@yossman.net (Jim Elson):
> Fair enough, but modernism can also be described, as Vattimo
> does, as a movement revolving around the notion of the "new"
> as a step in the inevitable "progress" of man towards an ever
> increasing grasp of "The Truth" with all the metaphysical
> entanglements that entails.
It can? He does? Sounds doubtful to me, but then I
haven't read Vattimo -- maybe he's making perfect sense in some
way I don't see. (Probably not, but I don't want to say so
without knowing the context.) Welcome back, Jim. Haven't seen
you around here in a long time.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
>>> I'm giving advice, it's "modernity" -- not "modernism."
>>> Modernism is a different critter, more like post-modernism than
>>> anything else.
>
>James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>
>> could you explain this?
>
>boundaries are subject to dispute, but it extends from sometime
>after the Middle Ages through the 19th or the 20th century.
>It's characterized by the advent of capitalism, the rise of the
>bourgeoisie, the emergence of humanism, the development of
>science and industry...you get the picture. "Modernism" refers
>to a set of cultural movements usually associated with a
>period from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. Think Kafka,
>Picasso, Pound, Eliot, Woolf, Rilke, Schoenberg, et al.
>
its this i would welcome explanation...
>Modernism is a different critter, more like post-modernism than
>>> anything else.
>Modernism is a different critter
- from modernity
from what you say above it seems modernism is essentially capitalism -
bourgeoisie - enlightenment thought... humanism - but now pure - purged
of any medievalist trappings?
--
James Whitehead
Puss in Boots
>>>> Long as
>>>> I'm giving advice, it's "modernity" -- not "modernism."
>>>> Modernism is a different critter, more like post-modernism than
>>>> anything else.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>>> could you explain this?
Moggin:
>> Sure. Modernity is an historical period. Its exact
>> boundaries are subject to dispute, but it extends from sometime
>> after the Middle Ages through the 19th or the 20th century.
>> It's characterized by the advent of capitalism, the rise of the
>> bourgeoisie, the emergence of humanism, the development of
>> science and industry...you get the picture. "Modernism" refers
>> to a set of cultural movements usually associated with a
>> period from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. Think Kafka,
>> Picasso, Pound, Eliot, Woolf, Rilke, Schoenberg, et al.
James:
> its this i would welcome explanation...
>> Modernism is a different critter, more like post-modernism than
>> anything else.
> but would also like to know how
>> Modernism is a different critter from modernity
Yeah, I know; I gathered as much when you said, "Could you
explain this?" So I explained it, at least in outline. The
explanation is above -- there's plenty more to say, but I'm not
sure what you want me to add. I should mention that I'm not
talking about architecture. The whole story is different there.
> from what you say above it seems modernism is essentially capitalism -
> bourgeoisie - enlightenment thought... humanism - but now pure - purged
> of any medievalist trappings?
No, no, no. "Modernity" refers to the historical era
characterized by all the above. "Modernity." _Not_ "modernism."
"Modernism" is a catch-all term for certain fairly recent
movements in arts and culture. (Examples above.) In many ways
modernism rebels _against_ modernity. That isn't always so
(Futurism is a glaring exception), but it's certainly a central
theme.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
>characterized by all the above. "Modernity." _Not_ "modernism."
>"Modernism" is a catch-all term for certain fairly recent
>movements in arts and culture. (Examples above.) In many ways
>modernism rebels _against_ modernity.
as part of a tradition. Picasso(yes), Pound(?), Eliot(yes), Woolf(yes),
Rilke(?), Schoenberg(yes). All these artists seem to explicitly position
their work within this framework. The triumph of modernism - is its very
success in completing the project of modernity. The rebellion you
mention is just one (perhaps central) method employed throughout
modernity in order to achieve and maintain 'progress'. Is it not the
case that political, artistic and scientific rebellion has been the
hallmark of modernity - from the 14thC onwards through its original
conflict with medievalism and thence towards any ossification of a given
orthodoxy.
--
James Whitehead
Puss in Boots
>>> from what you say above it seems modernism is essentially capitalism -
>>> bourgeoisie - enlightenment thought... humanism - but now pure - purged
>>> of any medievalist trappings?
Puss in Boots <mog...@mindspring.com> writes
>> No, no, no. "Modernity" refers to the historical era
>> characterized by all the above. "Modernity." _Not_ "modernism."
>> "Modernism" is a catch-all term for certain fairly recent
>> movements in arts and culture. (Examples above.) In many ways
>> modernism rebels _against_ modernity.
James:
> In some of the cases above - the artists would certainly see themselves
> as part of a tradition. Picasso(yes), Pound(?), Eliot(yes), Woolf(yes),
> Rilke(?), Schoenberg(yes). All these artists seem to explicitly position
> their work within this framework. The triumph of modernism - is its very
> success in completing the project of modernity.
Are you seriously claiming that all the above position
themselves within the same framework or tradition? And are you
really going to argue that in every case the tradition is
modernity? That would be stupid-ass thing to do. Maybe you'll
think better of it. I hope so, since it's hardly worth
rebutting. I'll willingly agree that the relationships between
modernism and modernity are terribly complicated. But
rebellion is certainly one element, and it helps make the point
I was driving at, namely that "modernism" and "modernity"
aren't synonymous. Those terms have _very_ different referents.
> The rebellion you
> mention is just one (perhaps central) method employed throughout
> modernity in order to achieve and maintain 'progress'.
No, it isn't -- in fact, it's directed in part against the
concept of "progress" as enshrined by modernity. Maybe you
mean that the critique of progress carries within itself a hope
of surmounting such foolish notions; of progressing beyond
them, as it were. There's some truth to that -- but it doesn't
erase the distinction I'm drawing.
> Is it not the
> case that political, artistic and scientific rebellion has been the
> hallmark of modernity - from the 14thC onwards through its original
> conflict with medievalism and thence towards any ossification of a given
> orthodoxy.
Nope -- as you've already hinted by talking about
ossification and orthodoxy: not exactly hallmarks of rebellion.
Besides, not all rebellions are identical. _Of course_
modernity was a revolutionary thing. And you'd be right to say
it re-enacts its founding gesture. But that's no reason to
assume every subsequent rebellion is the same one or a farcical
repetition.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
>
>> In some of the cases above - the artists would certainly see themselves
>> as part of a tradition. Picasso(yes), Pound(?), Eliot(yes), Woolf(yes),
>> Rilke(?), Schoenberg(yes). All these artists seem to explicitly position
>> their work within this framework. The triumph of modernism - is its very
>> success in completing the project of modernity.
>
> Are you seriously claiming that all the above position
>themselves within the same framework or tradition? And are you
>really going to argue that in every case the tradition is
>modernity? That would be stupid-ass thing to do. Maybe you'll
>think better of it. I hope so, since it's hardly worth
>rebutting. I'll willingly agree that the relationships between
>modernism and modernity are terribly complicated. But
>rebellion is certainly one element, and it helps make the point
>I was driving at, namely that "modernism" and "modernity"
>aren't synonymous. Those terms have _very_ different referents.
From a modernist standpoint I would not have to argue - I would simply
let the artists speak for themselves. So I am making no claims whatever
for my own opinion of the matter, I'm saying *they* made this claim.
Maybe they are being "stupid-ass" maybe modernism was a "stupid-ass"
phenomenon, maybe modernity was stupid-ass? Is that what you are
saying- that any modernist art-history/art-theory is "stupid-ass"- i
suppose from a po-mo standpoint it has to be- is that what you are
doing- establishing some new perspective- like the guy on TV the other
night arguing that the renaissance was no new big deal- sort of doing a
Baudrillard on art history - like Picasso didn't paint in the tradition
of Goya or Matisse was not influenced by delacroix. I suppose its a
worthy attempt to deal with the end of history- deny the fact so you can
make up something new.
>
>> The rebellion you
>> mention is just one (perhaps central) method employed throughout
>> modernity in order to achieve and maintain 'progress'.
>
> No, it isn't -- in fact, it's directed in part against the
>concept of "progress" as enshrined by modernity.
All the above used *new* forms...
> Maybe you
>mean that the critique of progress carries within itself a hope
>of surmounting such foolish notions; of progressing beyond
>them, as it were. There's some truth to that -- but it doesn't
>erase the distinction I'm drawing.
The very concept 'artist' is a modernist concept.
>
>> Is it not the
>> case that political, artistic and scientific rebellion has been the
>> hallmark of modernity - from the 14thC onwards through its original
>> conflict with medievalism and thence towards any ossification of a given
>> orthodoxy.
>
> Nope -- as you've already hinted by talking about
>ossification and orthodoxy: not exactly hallmarks of rebellion.
>Besides, not all rebellions are identical. _Of course_
>modernity was a revolutionary thing. And you'd be right to say
>it re-enacts its founding gesture. But that's no reason to
>assume every subsequent rebellion is the same one or a farcical
>repetition.
No of course the po-mo art which seeks to be rebellious is just silly.
All serious po-mo art is silly. Like Oasis are silly fake modernity-
isnt that the point?
I can clearly see a difference between po-mo and mo art- all art prior
to po-mo art that was considered by a modernist critic/artist as worthy
- always had something new- offered something to an existing set of
ideas- so was in a sense revolutionary (we may need to clarify what each
other means re- revolution / rebellion in this context) I see nothing
new in post-modernism - but thats ok isnt it, isnt that just it.
--
James Whitehead
Puss in Boots
>>>>> from what you say above it seems modernism is essentially capitalism -
>>>>> bourgeoisie - enlightenment thought... humanism - but now pure - purged
>>>>> of any medievalist trappings?
Puss in Boots <mog...@mindspring.com> writes
>>>> No, no, no. "Modernity" refers to the historical era
>>>> characterized by all the above. "Modernity." _Not_ "modernism."
>>>> "Modernism" is a catch-all term for certain fairly recent
>>>> movements in arts and culture. (Examples above.) In many ways
>>>> modernism rebels _against_ modernity.
James:
>>> In some of the cases above - the artists would certainly see themselves
>>> as part of a tradition. Picasso(yes), Pound(?), Eliot(yes), Woolf(yes),
>>> Rilke(?), Schoenberg(yes). All these artists seem to explicitly position
>>> their work within this framework. The triumph of modernism - is its very
>>> success in completing the project of modernity.
Moggin:
>> Are you seriously claiming that all the above position
>> themselves within the same framework or tradition? And are you
>> really going to argue that in every case the tradition is
>> modernity? That would be stupid-ass thing to do. Maybe you'll
>> think better of it. I hope so, since it's hardly worth
>> rebutting. I'll willingly agree that the relationships between
>> modernism and modernity are terribly complicated. But
>> rebellion is certainly one element, and it helps make the point
>> I was driving at, namely that "modernism" and "modernity"
>> aren't synonymous. Those terms have _very_ different referents.
James:
> From a modernist standpoint I would not have to argue - I would simply
> let the artists speak for themselves. So I am making no claims whatever
> for my own opinion of the matter, I'm saying *they* made this claim.
That _is_ your own opinion: in _your_ opinion, _they_ all
explicitly position themselves within one and the same
tradition; in other words, it's your belief that each and every
person on the list claims to be "completing the project of
modernity." That's what I was describing as a "stupid-ass idea."
> Maybe they are being "stupid-ass" maybe modernism was a "stupid-ass"
> phenomenon, maybe modernity was stupid-ass? Is that what you are
> saying- that any modernist art-history/art-theory is "stupid-ass"-
No, I'm not saying anything like that at all -- I'm saying
that you hold a stupid-ass opinion about modernism. But
that's just by the way -- my main point is still that modernism
and modernity aren't the same damn thing.
> i suppose from a po-mo standpoint it has to be- is that what you are
> doing- establishing some new perspective- like the guy on TV the other
> night arguing that the renaissance was no new big deal- sort of doing a
> Baudrillard on art history - like Picasso didn't paint in the tradition
> of Goya or Matisse was not influenced by delacroix. I suppose its a
> worthy attempt to deal with the end of history- deny the fact so you can
> make up something new.
Would you like to establish that history has ended? First
you might want to check it's begun.
James:
>>> The rebellion you
>>> mention is just one (perhaps central) method employed throughout
>>> modernity in order to achieve and maintain 'progress'.
Moggin:
>> No, it isn't -- in fact, it's directed in part against the
>> concept of "progress" as enshrined by modernity. Maybe you
>> mean that the critique of progress carries within itself a hope
>> of surmounting such foolish notions; of progressing beyond
>> them, as it were. There's some truth to that -- but it doesn't
>> erase the distinction I'm drawing.
James:
> > All the above used *new* forms...
That's right.
> The very concept 'artist' is a modernist concept.
That's wrong.
James:
> >> Is it not the
> >> case that political, artistic and scientific rebellion has been the
> >> hallmark of modernity - from the 14thC onwards through its original
> >> conflict with medievalism and thence towards any ossification of a given
> >> orthodoxy.
Moggin:
>> Nope -- as you've already hinted by talking about
>> ossification and orthodoxy: not exactly hallmarks of rebellion.
>> Besides, not all rebellions are identical. _Of course_
>> modernity was a revolutionary thing. And you'd be right to say
>> it re-enacts its founding gesture. But that's no reason to
>> assume every subsequent rebellion is the same one or a farcical
>> repetition.
James:
> No of course the po-mo art which seeks to be rebellious is just silly.
We haven't gotten to post-modernism -- we're still talking
about modernism and modernity.
> All serious po-mo art is silly. Like Oasis are silly fake modernity-
> isnt that the point?
No, Oasis are fake Beatles.
> I can clearly see a difference between po-mo and mo art- all art prior
> to po-mo art that was considered by a modernist critic/artist as worthy
> - always had something new- offered something to an existing set of
> ideas- so was in a sense revolutionary (we may need to clarify what each
> other means re- revolution / rebellion in this context) I see nothing
> new in post-modernism - but thats ok isnt it, isnt that just it.
It might be just something.
-- Moggin
william markey
Puss in Boots <mog...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:moggin-2211...@user-2ive8c8.dialup.mindspring.com...
> James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>
> >>> from what you say above it seems modernism is essentially capitalism -
> >>> bourgeoisie - enlightenment thought... humanism - but now pure -
purged
> >>> of any medievalist trappings?
>
> Puss in Boots <mog...@mindspring.com> writes
>
> >> No, no, no. "Modernity" refers to the historical era
> >> characterized by all the above. "Modernity." _Not_ "modernism."
> >> "Modernism" is a catch-all term for certain fairly recent
> >> movements in arts and culture. (Examples above.) In many ways
> >> modernism rebels _against_ modernity.
>
> James:
>
> > In some of the cases above - the artists would certainly see themselves
> > as part of a tradition. Picasso(yes), Pound(?), Eliot(yes), Woolf(yes),
> > Rilke(?), Schoenberg(yes). All these artists seem to explicitly position
> > their work within this framework. The triumph of modernism - is its very
> > success in completing the project of modernity.
>
> themselves within the same framework or tradition? And are you
> really going to argue that in every case the tradition is
> modernity? That would be stupid-ass thing to do. Maybe you'll
> think better of it. I hope so, since it's hardly worth
> rebutting. I'll willingly agree that the relationships between
> modernism and modernity are terribly complicated. But
> rebellion is certainly one element, and it helps make the point
> I was driving at, namely that "modernism" and "modernity"
> aren't synonymous. Those terms have _very_ different referents.
>
> > mention is just one (perhaps central) method employed throughout
> > modernity in order to achieve and maintain 'progress'.
>
> concept of "progress" as enshrined by modernity. Maybe you
> mean that the critique of progress carries within itself a hope
> of surmounting such foolish notions; of progressing beyond
> them, as it were. There's some truth to that -- but it doesn't
> erase the distinction I'm drawing.
>
> > case that political, artistic and scientific rebellion has been the
> > hallmark of modernity - from the 14thC onwards through its original
> > conflict with medievalism and thence towards any ossification of a given
> > orthodoxy.
>
> ossification and orthodoxy: not exactly hallmarks of rebellion.
> Besides, not all rebellions are identical. _Of course_
> modernity was a revolutionary thing. And you'd be right to say
> it re-enacts its founding gesture. But that's no reason to
> assume every subsequent rebellion is the same one or a farcical
> repetition.
>
Yes, all revolutions are neither the same nor merely replays of the initial
gesture; however the very notion of "rebellion" valorizes the concept of a
utopian "there" toward which the process is moving--on whatever level:
philosophical, political, economical etc..In graphic or visual terms, the
metaphor of the "modern" is the line, or better yet the line vector, which
points toward some longed-for perfection. A perfection which may be the
projection of a now forgotten "home" betrayed only by the longing which
bespeaks a nostalgia. The looking-forward is in fact a looking-back. And
what of the pre-modern, that which modernity reacts against ( forgive the
preposition! )? Its graphical paradigm would, of course, be the circle. A
figure which corresponds to a cyclical world view. A figure which denies
progress, but rather inscribes/describes death and renewal. If the modern is
linear and masculine, then the medieval is cyclical and feminine. If
modernity is, from one view, anti-medieval then that which would be
post-modern would not merely be anti-modern. It would neither rebel against
modernity--such a rebellion would position it within the purview of
modernity, not resurrect in any form the medieval--such a resurrection would
bespeak its circumscription within the birth/death, cyclical paradigm of the
medieval.
BillyBoy
James Whitehead
>
>> From a modernist standpoint I would not have to argue - I would simply
>> let the artists speak for themselves. So I am making no claims whatever
>> for my own opinion of the matter, I'm saying *they* made this claim.
>
> That _is_ your own opinion: in _your_ opinion, _they_ all
>explicitly position themselves within one and the same
>tradition; in other words, it's your belief that each and every
>person on the list claims to be "completing the project of
>modernity." That's what I was describing as a "stupid-ass idea."
Reinhardt was "stupid-ass" Think about it - 'oh i could write or paint
this or something better - now what should i do?'
Now ask the question - what was the project of modernity-which supplies
the criteria for 'better' - why its by using analytical method the
production of absolute truth & beauty. These are the rules they used for
their game- they are written on the god dam box. Go in the (modern)
museum (of art/science/whatever) it runs chronologically - history
starts and runs forward- evolving better and better... animals,
theories, philosophies, art ...
>
>> Maybe they are being "stupid-ass" maybe modernism was a "stupid-ass"
>> phenomenon, maybe modernity was stupid-ass? Is that what you are
>> saying- that any modernist art-history/art-theory is "stupid-ass"-
>
> No, I'm not saying anything like that at all -- I'm saying
>that you hold a stupid-ass opinion about modernism. But
>that's just by the way -- my main point is still that modernism
>and modernity aren't the same damn thing.
>
"And I cannot insist enough that Modernism has never meant anything like
a break with the past...."
(your perhaps suffering from what clemy calls)
"...The millennial complex from which many journalists suffer in our
day... that each new phase of Modernism should be hailed as... making a
decisive break with... the past...... without The past of Art ... such
a thing as Modernist Art would be impossible." Clement Greenberg
The stupid thing about this is that it brought about the end of
painting- (please again- from the modernist standpoint)
>> i suppose from a po-mo standpoint it has to be- is that what you are
>> doing- establishing some new perspective- like the guy on TV the other
>> night arguing that the renaissance was no new big deal- sort of doing a
>> Baudrillard on art history - like Picasso didn't paint in the tradition
>> of Goya or Matisse was not influenced by delacroix. I suppose its a
>> worthy attempt to deal with the end of history- deny the fact so you can
>> make up something new.
>
> Would you like to establish that history has ended? First
>you might want to check it's begun.
History stops when progress stops. Art has stopped - so Art History
has. Even biological evolution has ended- animals can't die out anymore-
we allow them to..the whole concept of Jurassic park/sperm banks and
bimbo egg donors implies a survival of the most interesting looking -
and not the fittest.
>> The very concept 'artist' is a modernist concept.
>
> That's wrong.
>
Its right-
There were no artists before they started signing their names, and
selling their work by use of their name- which began in the renaissance.
Someone in 1950 could fake a Picasso - you couldn't in the 13th C fake
a Gothic Cathedral. Now we can produce perfect fakes so we cant haven't
artists anymore.
snip here- where you seem to imply modern art was some kind of rebellion
against progress??
>
>James:
>
>> No of course the po-mo art which seeks to be rebellious is just silly.
>
> We haven't gotten to post-modernism -- we're still talking
>about modernism and modernity.
>
>> All serious po-mo art is silly. Like Oasis are silly fake modernity-
>> isnt that the point?
>
> No, Oasis are fake Beatles.
same thing- The Beatles were a Modern Pop Group -
the fake is interesting- we can now fake anything- thats why we dont
have reality either.
>
>> I can clearly see a difference between po-mo and mo art- all art prior
>> to po-mo art that was considered by a modernist critic/artist as worthy
>> - always had something new- offered something to an existing set of
>> ideas- so was in a sense revolutionary (we may need to clarify what each
>> other means re- revolution / rebellion in this context) I see nothing
>> new in post-modernism - but thats ok isnt it, isnt that just it.
>
> It might be just something.
>
>-- Moggin
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<whma...@email.msn.com> writes
>Yes, all revolutions are neither the same nor merely replays of the initial
>gesture; however the very notion of "rebellion" valorizes the concept of a
>utopian "there" toward which the process is moving--on whatever level:
>philosophical, political, economical etc..In graphic or visual terms, the
>metaphor of the "modern" is the line, or better yet the line vector, which
>points toward some longed-for perfection. A perfection which may be the
>projection of a now forgotten "home" betrayed only by the longing which
>bespeaks a nostalgia. The looking-forward is in fact a looking-back. And
>what of the pre-modern, that which modernity reacts against ( forgive the
>preposition! )? Its graphical paradigm would, of course, be the circle. A
>figure which corresponds to a cyclical world view. A figure which denies
>progress, but rather inscribes/describes death and renewal. If the modern is
>linear and masculine, then the medieval is cyclical and feminine. If
>modernity is, from one view, anti-medieval then that which would be
>post-modern would not merely be anti-modern. It would neither rebel against
>modernity--such a rebellion would position it within the purview of
>modernity, not resurrect in any form the medieval--such a resurrection would
>bespeak its circumscription within the birth/death, cyclical paradigm of the
>medieval.
>
>BillyBoy
What you say above is interesting - could you say more regarding what
you consider the post-modern condition is - if not (as i would agree)
neo-medievalism
--
James Whitehead
Puss in Boots
>>> From a modernist standpoint I would not have to argue - I would simply
>>> let the artists speak for themselves. So I am making no claims whatever
>>> for my own opinion of the matter, I'm saying *they* made this claim.
Puss in Boots <mog...@mindspring.com>:
>> That _is_ your own opinion: in _your_ opinion, _they_ all
>> explicitly position themselves within one and the same
>> tradition; in other words, it's your belief that each and every
>> person on the list claims to be "completing the project of
>> modernity." That's what I was describing as a "stupid-ass idea."
James:
> a modernist painter paints the last painting he can paint-so maybe Ad
> Reinhardt was "stupid-ass" Think about it - 'oh i could write or paint
> this or something better - now what should i do?' Now ask the question -
> what was the project of modernity-which supplies the criteria for
> 'better' - why its by using analytical method the production of absolute
> truth & beauty. These are the rules they used for their game- they are
> written on the god dam box. Go in the (modern) museum (of
> art/science/whatever) it runs chronologically - history starts and runs
> forward- evolving better and better... animals, theories, philosophies,
> art ...
That's strange. You just got done insisting _you_ weren't
making any claims at all -- you were merely describing the
view of Eliot, Woolf, Rilke, Picasso, and Schoenberg. Notice I
say "view," singular, because you claimed they all had the
same one -- that they were "completing the project of modernity."
More -- they "explicitly position their work" within the
framework of modernity. So what happens? Do you show me where
and how they do what you claim for them? No. Instead you
supply a dose of your own opinion: just what you said that you
_weren't_ doing. Enough.
James:
>>> Maybe they are being "stupid-ass" maybe modernism was a "stupid-ass"
>>> phenomenon, maybe modernity was stupid-ass? Is that what you are
>>> saying- that any modernist art-history/art-theory is "stupid-ass"-
Moggin:
>> No, I'm not saying anything like that at all -- I'm saying
>> that you hold a stupid-ass opinion about modernism. But
>> that's just by the way -- my main point is still that modernism
>> and modernity aren't the same damn thing.
James:
> Please-
You're welcome.
> "And I cannot insist enough that Modernism has never meant anything like
> a break with the past...." (your perhaps suffering from what clemy calls)
> "...The millennial complex from which many journalists suffer in our
> day... that each new phase of Modernism should be hailed as... making a
> decisive break with... the past...... without The past of Art ... such
> a thing as Modernist Art would be impossible." Clement Greenberg
Irrelevant. I already agreed that modernism and modernity
are related in a variety of complex ways. Doesn't make them
one and the same. You realize that things can be related w/out
being identical...don't you?
[...]
James:
> There were no artists before they started signing their names, and
> selling their work by use of their name- which began in the renaissance.
Sure there were. More to the point, the Renaissance dates
to about six hundred years before modernism, give or take a
century. See, you're getting "modernity" and "modernism" mixed
up again.
[...]
> snip here- where you seem to imply modern art was some kind of rebellion
> against progress??
I didn't imply a damn thing. I said in so many words that
"in many ways modernism rebels _against_ modernity," and I
added that it takes "progress" as enshrined by modernity as one
of its targets.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
>> Reinhardt was "stupid-ass" Think about it - 'oh i could write or paint
>> this or something better - now what should i do?' Now ask the question -
>> what was the project of modernity-which supplies the criteria for
>> 'better' - why its by using analytical method the production of absolute
>> truth & beauty. These are the rules they used for their game- they are
>> written on the god dam box. Go in the (modern) museum (of
>> art/science/whatever) it runs chronologically - history starts and runs
>> forward- evolving better and better... animals, theories, philosophies,
>> art ...
>
>making any claims at all -- you were merely describing the
>view of Eliot, Woolf, Rilke, Picasso, and Schoenberg. Notice I
>say "view," singular, because you claimed they all had the
>same one -- that they were "completing the project of modernity."
>More -- they "explicitly position their work" within the
>framework of modernity. So what happens? Do you show me where
>and how they do what you claim for them? No. Instead you
>supply a dose of your own opinion: just what you said that you
>_weren't_ doing. Enough.
I was claiming - i was claiming that from a modernist point of view -
specifically within visual art (but also in literature and music) there
has been in modernism a programme which quite clearly sees itself as a
completion of an idea of a progression and synthesis of art which began
in the renaissance. Ideally i would demonstrate this with a set of
illustrations- the break of the picture plain - Cezanne - The Cubists -
De Stijl - The expressionists - the abstract expressionists - minimalism
and finally conceptualism. A modernist could hang these together on an
evolutionary tree- which was often done in text books.
Of course its possible to see other patterns in modern art- but the
evolutionary paradigm was the one used by the group associated with the
term modernism. Its specifically used to discard other isms-
commercialism, (Dali, Disney) Communism (? Russian realists) (late
Derain). In modernism had the concept of making machines for living in -
corbusier et.al. - decoration being superfluous- form relates to
function.... The problem in the plastic arts with this programme is it
ends with blank canvases and empty galleries. It never criticised
progress - it was the avant garde.
Can i just say this is not a dose of my opinion- i have in the previous
post given quotes - which you just ignore-
The crisis is art today (since the 70s) is a result of this programme.
One reaction to this (modernism) is to deny it happened- (this is it
seems what you are doing) The other is to look at different threads in
the history - to ignore the evolutionary model. Which is fine.
What typifies po-mo art is that it always fails to deliver anything new.
This is important because newness and modernity go hand in hand.
The artists not only said so they did so. Picasso sets out to make Les
Demoiselles a symbolist work but whilst painting it becomes the pre-
cursor of cubism - a new style in art- modernity is full of this "
The reason it (po-mo) cant deliver anything new is because of
modernism's success. "If someone says its art its art" Don Judd - then
and i cant attribute this conceptual artist "this thought now and
everything in the past future and present" Again if you look at art from
1900 you can trace out this path of reductionism- (I know this is
optional) the forms become simpler- until you hit the 70s - then
representationalism re-appears all kinds of styles and objects re-
appear- but nothing new happens- unless you count this as new- but
modernity's new was the new of reductionism- of greater purity and
truth.
If you want a more clearly literal example I can extend this to
philosophy as well - "I therefore believe myself to have found, the
final solution of the problems..." L.W. Vienna 1918
So french (non) philosophers fill this void.
>
>> "And I cannot insist enough that Modernism has never meant anything like
>> a break with the past...." (your perhaps suffering from what clemy calls)
>> "...The millennial complex from which many journalists suffer in our
>> day... that each new phase of Modernism should be hailed as... making a
>> decisive break with... the past...... without The past of Art ... such
>> a thing as Modernist Art would be impossible." Clement Greenberg
>
> Irrelevant.
yes it has to be for you doesn't it- but in fact its not my stupid-ass
opinion - or my getting things mixed up- this reply makes me suspect you
are just playing word games - so ok - any proof of my asserting what the
modernist project was then its not worth me looking up the sources- you
can then say its all just my opinion. But my opinion is actually
irrelevant - what the modern artists/critics said and did is.
> I already agreed that modernism and modernity
>are related in a variety of complex ways.
agreed with who -
> Doesn't make them
>one and the same. You realize that things can be related w/out
>being identical...don't you?
>
>James:
>
>> There were no artists before they started signing their names, and
>> selling their work by use of their name- which began in the renaissance.
>
> Sure there were.
You can't name the architect of Chartres, but you can of St Peters- but
not the building that it replaced. Moreover it wasn't until the
Renaissance that works were commissioned to be done by specific
painters. Medieval commissions would specify subject matter - amounts of
Lapis Lazuli and gold - but not the artist- then suddenly we have
commissions which read "anything Michelangelo wants to do..."
>More to the point, the Renaissance dates
>to about six hundred years before modernism, give or take a
>century. See, you're getting "modernity" and "modernism" mixed
>up again.
no - i'm saying that a modernist painter sees themselves as part of that
tradition- whereas a po-mo painter cant - specifically e.g. Hirst says
the idea for his spin paintings came from Blue-Peter (a child's TV
program) and not a fellow artist - or jackson pollock. He certainly
couldn't say he is pushing the concept of what a painting is ..... he
would be laughed out of the gallery- he's got to keep the irony high to
hide the fact that artistically there not much - if anything is going
on.
>
>
> I didn't imply a damn thing. -- Moggin
exactly-
perhaps you excluded modern architecture because you live in a country
where even you would find the evidence hard to ignore :-)
--
James Whitehead
Obelix
matrix...any comments you guys might have are much appreciated! thanks!
ob.
p.s.: feel free to shred it apart and criticize it...
Ned Ludd
<obelix3...@hotmail.com.invalid> asks:
>
> I recently posted the final draft of my postmodernism project about
> the matrix...any comments you guys might have are much appreciated!
> thanks!
>
Nice work.
First, if you are interested, consider the following typos:
Line 36, replace "but" with "by":
2199, and that the human race was overthrown but *** 36
artificially intelligent machines, who then began using
Line 125, replace "train" with "training":
scenes. He was also responsible for personally train the *** 125
primary cast members, who spent four solid months studying
Line 392, add the word "been":
The movie opens with Trinity and Cypher talking over
the telephone about Neo, whom they have observing. *** 392
Your draft looks pretty much done. I'm not sure if you'd
like or need the following comments. (And all I know about
pomo is what I've picked up here.) But...
Pomo seems, unlike any of its major philosophical predecessors,
to have little interest in the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.
Pomo in books (and I guess movies) often has an extremely broken
or non-existent narrative line.
And lastly, the basis of much of history's philosophical inquiry
has been concerned with the nature of objective reality. (This
might be subsumed under the concept of "truth" mentioned above.)
But it seems as if pomo has little interest in this, or even, in
Gordon's words, treats it as a "logically superfluous concept".
This movie (which I might agree qualifies as postmodern) IS
concerned with Truth, does value the Beautiful, and exalts Good
and disparages Evil.
It also has a pretty firm, sequential narrative line.
And lastly, while the Matrix is contrived, there is a very
Objective Reality underneath it - a VERY ugly and evil reality.
When I came out of the movie, this was my primary question -
So now Neo has to go wake up all the pod people and show them
them the sh*thole that they are all really living in?
I can't wait for the sequel that you mentioned they are making.
Ned
deda...@my-deja.com
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <moggin-2711...@user-2ive8nj.dialup.mindspring.com>,
> Puss in Boots <mog...@mindspring.com> writes
Sorry to jump in here, but the temptation was too great. Me and my mouth.
[James]
>>> a modernist painter paints the last painting he can paint-so maybe Ad
>>> Reinhardt was "stupid-ass" Think about it - 'oh i could write or paint
>>> this or something better - now what should i do?' Now ask the question -
>>> what was the project of modernity-which supplies the criteria for
>>> 'better' - why its by using analytical method the production of absolute
>>> truth & beauty. These are the rules they used for their game- they are
>>> written on the god dam box. Go in the (modern) museum (of
>>> art/science/whatever) it runs chronologically - history starts and runs
>>> forward- evolving better and better... animals, theories, philosophies,
>>> art ...
[Moggin]
>> That's strange. You just got done insisting _you_ weren't
>> making any claims at all -- you were merely describing the
>> view of Eliot, Woolf, Rilke, Picasso, and Schoenberg. Notice I
>> say "view," singular, because you claimed they all had the
>> same one -- that they were "completing the project of modernity."
>> More -- they "explicitly position their work" within the
>> framework of modernity. So what happens? Do you show me where
>> and how they do what you claim for them? No. Instead you
>> supply a dose of your own opinion: just what you said that you
>> _weren't_ doing. Enough.
[James]
> I was careful not to say they all made these claims. Lets be clear what
> I was claiming - i was claiming that from a modernist point of view -
> specifically within visual art (but also in literature and music) there
> has been in modernism a programme which quite clearly sees itself as a
> completion of an idea of a progression and synthesis of art which began
> in the renaissance. Ideally i would demonstrate this with a set of
> illustrations- the break of the picture plain - Cezanne - The Cubists -
> De Stijl - The expressionists - the abstract expressionists - minimalism
> and finally conceptualism. A modernist could hang these together on an
> evolutionary tree- which was often done in text books.
Both there and in your museums. It was a critical and curatorial pastime,
from Barr's diagrams for MOMA in the 1930s, through Greenberg, to Fried
and beyond. The only problem is that it wasn't and isn't so simple. It
was and is the retrospective construction of a lineage. This doesn't mean
that there isn't some validity in it, but for you to claim it as both
bleeding obvious and a conscious assumption on the part of the
practitioners ('quite clearly sees itself as..') is at best a
misrepresentation. Still, it seems that you can't even get the critical
story straight. Greenberg (the authority you quote) most certainly did
not see minimalism and conceptualism as anything other than a mistake,
not evolutionary or progressive at all. Try Michael Fried's 'Art and
Objecthood' for an elaboration of this.
[James]
> Of course its possible to see other patterns in modern art- but the
> evolutionary paradigm was the one used by the group associated with the
> term modernism.
What 'group'? You have listed above seven names (of individuals and -
isms). Now these are all part of the same group? Did they know? Cezanne
would have been really annoyed to find out that he was in the same group
as Carl Andre, I suspect, but alas he is long dead and cannot be asked.
Moreover, you are just plain wrong here. Cezanne did not understand or
describe his work using an evolutionary metaphor, quite the reverse, he
associated it with the old masters. Many Conceptual producers of the
1970s saw themselves as involved in an explicit critique of the
'modernist project' as laid out by Greenberg. Even Mondrian considered
his paintings to be in some ways an endpoint - not a progression but a
finishing off of painting (indeed of art). De Stijl might be closer to
your evolutionary paradigm, but for them that meant the end of art as an
exclusive activity distinct from other areas of life. Besides, they use
Hegel as a model, not Darwin. The Expressionists, depending upon which
ones you mean, clad themselves in Nietszchian rhetoric and discarded any
idea of evolution (die Brucke). Cubism - at least Picasso and Braque -
saw themselves in a relation to Cezanne, but didn't, as far as I know,
claim that they were fulfilling Cezanne's project; they took something
from him, which is a different matter. I'll grant you some of the
abstract expressionists, but not all by any means. So, most of your
examples don't do what you say they do.
[James]
> Its specifically used to discard other isms-
> commercialism, (Dali, Disney) Communism (? Russian realists) (late
> Derain).
But Dali, as a Surrealist (at least temporarily), could be taken as
modernist; Surrealism was understood as modernist, even by Greenberg,
although he didn't like much of it. Many of those you mention were
communists (e.g. De Stijl or Bauhaus membership). Picasso was a member of
the French CP after WWII. If you want to go a little further, what of the
Russian Constructivists and Productivists, or the Surrealists? Greenberg
himself was a Trot in the 1930s and early 40s (later to become a
'premature anti-Stalinist' in the Macarthy period). Late Derain? He
proclaimed himself as a neo-classicist (how thoroughly evolutionary),
turned to the far right in politics and produced bloody awful paintings.
[James]
>In modernism had the concept of making machines for living in -
> corbusier et.al. - decoration being superfluous- form relates to
> function.... The problem in the plastic arts with this programme is it
> ends with blank canvases and empty galleries. It never criticised
> progress - it was the avant garde.
What is the programme? You haven't been able to bring yourself to say,
except that it has something to do with progress and evolution. You do
add a couple of things here about architecture/design, but how does 'form
relates to function' mean anything for painting? Le Corbusier did
describe dwellings as machines for living in, but De Stijl certainly
didn't, quite the reverse.
[James]
> Can i just say this is not a dose of my opinion- i have in the previous
> post given quotes - which you just ignore-
Except that the people you quoted, primarily Greenberg, don't support
your opinion, as I suggested above.
[James]
> The crisis is art today (since the 70s) is a result of this programme.
> One reaction to this (modernism) is to deny it happened- (this is it
> seems what you are doing) The other is to look at different threads in
> the history - to ignore the evolutionary model. Which is fine.
>
> What typifies po-mo art is that it always fails to deliver anything new.
> This is important because newness and modernity go hand in hand.
> The artists not only said so they did so. Picasso sets out to make Les
> Demoiselles a symbolist work but whilst painting it becomes the pre-
> cursor of cubism - a new style in art- modernity is full of this
Whilst painting? So Picasso painted the Demoiselles and then thought
'Blimey, this is the precursor of Cubism this is. I've had an
evolutionary leap. That's me sorted for the next twelve years'? Just as a
thought, might there not be other models than evolution or progress for
considering attempts at newness?
[snip]
[James]
>>> "And I cannot insist enough that Modernism has never meant anything like
>>> a break with the past...." (your perhaps suffering from what clemy calls)
>>> "...The millennial complex from which many journalists suffer in our
>>> day... that each new phase of Modernism should be hailed as... making a
>>> decisive break with... the past...... without The past of Art ... such
>>> a thing as Modernist Art would be impossible." Clement Greenberg
[Moggin]
>> Irrelevant.
[James]
> yes it has to be for you doesn't it- but in fact its not my stupid-ass
> opinion - or my getting things mixed up- this reply makes me suspect you
> are just playing word games - so ok - any proof of my asserting what the
> modernist project was then its not worth me looking up the sources- you
> can then say its all just my opinion. But my opinion is actually
> irrelevant - what the modern artists/critics said and did is.
But you are not talking about what the artists said or did. You are
apparently talking, albeit inaccurately, about what Greenberg thought
they did, and even he pointed out that it wasn't a conscious programme.
Incidentally, for a vision of Modernism as opposed to the forms and
tendencies of Modernity, you could try Greenberg's 'Avant-Garde and
Kitsch' 1939.
[snip]
Giles
> James Whitehead
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Puss in Boots
>>> a modernist painter paints the last painting he can paint-so maybe Ad
>>> Reinhardt was "stupid-ass" Think about it - 'oh i could write or paint
>>> this or something better - now what should i do?' Now ask the question -
>>> what was the project of modernity-which supplies the criteria for
>>> 'better' - why its by using analytical method the production of absolute
>>> truth & beauty. These are the rules they used for their game- they are
>>> written on the god dam box. Go in the (modern) museum (of
>>> art/science/whatever) it runs chronologically - history starts and runs
>>> forward- evolving better and better... animals, theories, philosophies,
>>> art ...
Puss in Boots <mog...@mindspring.com>:
>> That's strange. You just got done insisting _you_ weren't
>> making any claims at all -- you were merely describing the
>> view of Eliot, Woolf, Rilke, Picasso, and Schoenberg. Notice I
>> say "view," singular, because you claimed they all had the
>> same one -- that they were "completing the project of modernity."
>> More -- they "explicitly position their work" within the
>> framework of modernity. So what happens? Do you show me where
>> and how they do what you claim for them? No. Instead you
>> supply a dose of your own opinion: just what you said that you
>> _weren't_ doing. Enough.
James:
> I was careful not to say they all made these claims.
Just the opposite. You carefully said, "All these artists
seem to explicitly position their work within this
framework," meaning the framework of modernity. I didn't think
you could be saying something that stupid, so I asked if you
meant it: "Are you seriously claiming that all the above
position themselves within the same framework or tradition, and
are you really going to argue that in every case the
tradition is modernity?" You said that yes, you were: "...I'm
saying _they_ made this claim." Your emphasis.
> Lets be clear what I was claiming -
We did that. We established that you're claiming everyone
I listed shares the same view: they all see themselves as
"completing the project of modernity," and they all "explicitly
position their work within this framework." I guess you
realize that's crap, since you're denying that you ever said it.
> i was claiming that from a modernist point of view -
> specifically within visual art (but also in literature and music) there
> has been in modernism a programme which quite clearly sees itself as a
> completion of an idea of a progression and synthesis of art which began
> in the renaissance.
No, you weren't. You claimed the folks I gave as examples
-- that was Pound, Eliot, Woolf, Rilke, Picasso, and
Schoenberg -- "explicitly position their work" in the framework
of modernity and see themselves as completing its project.
> Ideally i would demonstrate this with a set of
> illustrations- the break of the picture plain - Cezanne - The Cubists -
> De Stijl - The expressionists - the abstract expressionists - minimalism
> and finally conceptualism.
[...]
So ideally you would change the subject: you would switch
to a different claim about a different set of artists and
works. And since I'm an idealist, I'll let you go ahead. Like
I said, your initial claim wasn't worth rebutting.
> Can i just say this is not a dose of my opinion- i have in the previous
> post given quotes - which you just ignore-
You quoted the critic Clement Greenberg: not a single one
of the artists you were supposedly talking about. And no, I
didn't ignore the Greenberg quote: I told you it was irrelevant
and I explained why.
[...]
> What typifies po-mo art is that it always fails to deliver anything new.
> This is important because newness and modernity go hand in hand.
> The artists not only said so they did so. Picasso sets out to make Les
> Demoiselles a symbolist work but whilst painting it becomes the pre-
> cursor of cubism - a new style in art- modernity is full of this "
Modernity stretches from the Renaissance all the way up to
the present day, or anyway to fairly recent times, so it's
full of almost anything you care to name. Again, you're mixing
up modernity -- a braod historical period -- with modernism
and "modern art" (e.g. Picasso). A simple distinction, and one
I think is worth maintaining.
[...]
> If you want a more clearly literal example I can extend this to
> philosophy as well - "I therefore believe myself to have found, the
> final solution of the problems..." L.W. Vienna 1918
> So french (non) philosophers fill this void.
What void? The Tractatus was followed by the rest of 20th
century philosophy and critical thought, including
Wittgenstein's subsequent work, as well as Heidegger's thinking,
existentialism, logical positivism, the Frankfurt School,
Cioran, analytic philosophy, etc., etc. Those French folks had
to wedge their way into a crowded marketplace.
>>> "And I cannot insist enough that Modernism has never meant anything like
>>> a break with the past...." (your perhaps suffering from what clemy calls)
>>> "...The millennial complex from which many journalists suffer in our
>>> day... that each new phase of Modernism should be hailed as... making a
>>> decisive break with... the past...... without The past of Art ... such
>>> a thing as Modernist Art would be impossible." Clement Greenberg
Moggin:
>> Irrelevant. I already agreed that modernism and modernity
>> are related in a variety of complex ways. Doesn't make them
>> one and the same. You realize that things can be related w/out
>> being identical...don't you?
James:
> yes it has to be [irrelevant] for you doesn't it-
No. It could be highly relevant in a different discussion.
Even in this one, if I was arguing that modernism had no
connection with modernity. But I'm not: I happily agreed that
they're linked in a variety of complex ways.
> but in fact its not my stupid-ass opinion -
That's right. In fact, it's not your opinion at all. You
offered the opinion that everyone I listed (Eliot, Pound,
Woolf, et al.) explicitly positions their work in the framework
of modernity and that they all see themselves as "completing
the project of modernity." _That's_ what I called a stupid-ass
idea. Greenberg is merely claiming "Modernism has never
meant anything like a break with the past." Of course the term
"modernism" _has_ carried that meaning, as Greenberg knows,
but I agree with him that modernism isn't unconnected with what
went before.
> or my getting things mixed up- this reply makes me suspect you
> are just playing word games - so ok - any proof of my asserting what the
> modernist project was then its not worth me looking up the sources- you
> can then say its all just my opinion. But my opinion is actually
> irrelevant - what the modern artists/critics said and did is.
Basically, yeah: you were focused on what they said about
what they did. Only you didn't offer a word of it -- you
merely gave your opinion that they all positioned themselves in
the same framework, namely modernity.
James:
>>> There were no artists before they started signing their names, and
>>> selling their work by use of their name- which began in the renaissance.
Moggin:
>> Sure there were.
James:
> You can't name the architect of Chartres, but you can of St Peters- but
> not the building that it replaced.
So assuming that you count architects as artists, Chartres
was designed by artists who didn't sign their names,
disproving your assertion that there were no artists until they
started attaching their signatures.
> Renaissance that works were commissioned to be done by specific
> painters. Medieval commissions would specify subject matter - amounts of
> Lapis Lazuli and gold - but not the artist- then suddenly we have
> commissions which read "anything Michelangelo wants to do..."
There's another good example. In the Middle Ages, you say,
commissions specified subject, not artist. That plainly
implies there were artists before the Renaissance: artists who
weren't specified in commissions.
James:
> > I didn't imply a damn thing. -- Moggin
> exactly-
Not exactly at all -- just an example of sleazy editing on
your part. Here's the exchange:
[James:]
>: you seem to imply modern art was some kind of rebellion
>: against progress??
[Moggin:]
: I didn't imply a damn thing. I said in so many words that
: "in many ways modernism rebels _against_ modernity," and I
: added that it takes "progress" as enshrined by modernity as one
: of its targets.
There you are. I was reminding you that I'd made my point
explicit, instead of leaving it implied.
James:
> perhaps you excluded modern architecture because you live in a country
> where even you would find the evidence hard to ignore :-)
? I explained that architecture had a different story, as
of course it does -- in other words, its recent history
doesn't run parallel to, say, modern lit. Why are distinctions
so difficult for you?
-- Moggin
Puss in Boots
> Sorry to jump in here, but the temptation was too great. Me and my mouth.
You're a welcome voice, as always, and I think James would
rather focus on visual arts, anyhow. Maybe I'll step to the
sidelines and let you the two of you carry on the dialogue from
here.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
>In article <hkhfPOAR...@jliat.demon.co.uk>,
> James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> In article <moggin-2711...@user-2ive8nj.dialup.mindspring.com>,
>> Puss in Boots <mog...@mindspring.com> writes
>
>Sorry to jump in here, but the temptation was too great. Me and my mouth.
moggin/james. I'll replay to moggins last reply separately.
>[James]
>> I was careful not to say they all made these claims. Lets be clear what
>> I was claiming - i was claiming that from a modernist point of view -
>> specifically within visual art (but also in literature and music) there
>> has been in modernism a programme which quite clearly sees itself as a
>> completion of an idea of a progression and synthesis of art which began
>> in the renaissance. Ideally i would demonstrate this with a set of
>> illustrations- the break of the picture plain - Cezanne - The Cubists -
>> De Stijl - The expressionists - the abstract expressionists - minimalism
>> and finally conceptualism. A modernist could hang these together on an
>> evolutionary tree- which was often done in text books.
>
>Both there and in your museums. It was a critical and curatorial pastime,
>from Barr's diagrams for MOMA in the 1930s, through Greenberg, to Fried
>and beyond. The only problem is that it wasn't and isn't so simple. It
>was and is the retrospective construction of a lineage. This doesn't mean
>that there isn't some validity in it, but for you to claim it as both
>bleeding obvious and a conscious assumption on the part of the
>practitioners ('quite clearly sees itself as..') is at best a
>misrepresentation. Still, it seems that you can't even get the critical
>story straight. Greenberg (the authority you quote) most certainly did
>not see minimalism and conceptualism as anything other than a mistake,
>not evolutionary or progressive at all. Try Michael Fried's 'Art and
>Objecthood' for an elaboration of this.
(I was trying to find my copy of Barr) Either you misunderstand or
misrepresent me above. What I'm arguing is in modernism the tendency to
see an evolutionary structure - and the above illustrates my point. Of
course at each stage of this dialectic a set of critics set out the new
orthodoxy- which is then subjected to an antithesis. That greenberg
quote again its set in the context of abstract-expressionism. Greenberg
was specifically rounded on by conceptualists- see Kosuth's Art after
Philosophy- and this is important because again the hierarchical-
evolution model (which typifies modernism) is used.
Actually did i say greenberg supported minimalism? Kosuth points out
that Greenberg is the "critic of taste" of course he cannot appreciate
an art which dispenses with aesthetics..- I've a video where greenberg
admits it (modernism) was all a horrible mistake and wishes painting
reverted to Fantin-Latour. Why so? Because of the direction art post
abstract expressionism took.... 'At this point (the challenging of the
picture frame) the Modernist painter could either revert to pictorial
illusion or switch to sculpture. A failure to make a clear choice would
lead to hybrid inter-media forms that were anathema to the formalists
critics because the contravened the 'purity of medium' dictum of
Modernist theory.... Judd...pushed the truth to materials' adage to a
new extreme of literalness and the belief that the identity of the art
object could be made to coincide with its constituents' J Walker
As for the lineage -if you were to look at the artists work this lineage
would be apparent- Modern (not po-mo) artists in the main began
learning to draw & paint (greek sculpture then real nudes) in art
schools. Hockney has said (rightly) that this is no longer the case-
students dont learn to paint and draw in art schools any more- as its
thought pointless. Their (modern artists) early work was normally
impressionist - which then would probably develop through expressionism
or surrealism into full blown abstractionism. I'm looking at a Rothko
catalogue - an early work 1938 Subway Scene - a postimpressionist
painting ...by 1940 a 'surrealist' water colour...1946 'primeval
landscape' ... 1947 'Untitled' - one of the first recognisably abstract
Rothkos.. And what is happening in the work is an analytical reduction
of what it needs to produce a painting. " After having explored Cezanne,
Abstract Expressionism, and neo-Dadist assemblages, Flavin made a clear
break with traditional art...."
>
>[James]
>> Of course its possible to see other patterns in modern art- but the
>> evolutionary paradigm was the one used by the group associated with the
>> term modernism.
>
>What 'group'?
modernists- artists considering themselves modern
>You have listed above seven names (of individuals and -
>isms). Now these are all part of the same group? Did they know?
I suspect they did
> Cezanne
>would have been really annoyed to find out that he was in the same group
>as Carl Andre, I suspect, but alas he is long dead and cannot be asked.
so - its likely that most minimalist's dabbled with post-impressionism
early on in their careers- i think there's an Andre - Brancusi - Rodin
line but also there is link between Brancusi and Picasso and then back
to Cezanne, who would i feel be quite pleased with his pivotal role in
modern art- he was a modernist. (The Wright brothers reaction to
concorde might be similar)
>Moreover, you are just plain wrong here.
> Cezanne did not understand or
>describe his work using an evolutionary metaphor, quite the reverse, he
>associated it with the old masters.
There was a crisis of content within impressionism sometime in the 1880s
'About 1885 a break occurred in my work. I had reached the end of
Impressionism ... in a word I was in a blind alley' (Renoir). Cozens
answer was 'to do Poussin over again after nature' - it created a way
forward - out of the blind alley (followed only by Monet into the
sublime water lilies) towards cubism. Specifically Cezanne did not adopt
Poussins technique or subject - he wanted the Artistic depth of
classical art applied to his art so avoiding shallowness (the blind
alley) of endless impressionist pictures of everyday events (chocolate
box painting). This was to push impressionism further- Cezanne gave his
work - the abstract planes and angles so laying the foundations for
cubism.
> Many Conceptual producers of the
>1970s saw themselves as involved in an explicit critique of the
>'modernist project' as laid out by Greenberg.
They rejected the aesthetics of greenbergs 'Formalist' Art (Kosuth) but
that was not their motivation- there motivation was to create new art.
In doing so they demolished greenberg's formalism- which again once
established created a blind alley- (see above) the way forward was to
move beyond painting- motivated by the need for a rigours analysis of
what art is.
>Even Mondrian considered
>his paintings to be in some ways an endpoint - not a progression but a
>finishing off of painting (indeed of art).
This is my point- so also did Reinhardt ... et. al. The modernist
painter wants 'to paint the last possible painting' - the whole premise
of modernity is a search for the truth. See the Wittgenstein quote-
> De Stijl might be closer to
>your evolutionary paradigm, but for them that meant the end of art as an
>exclusive activity distinct from other areas of life.
Yes... which is what happened - this is the post-modern condition.
>Besides, they use
>Hegel as a model, not Darwin. The Expressionists, depending upon which
>ones you mean, clad themselves in Nietszchian rhetoric and discarded any
>idea of evolution (die Brucke). Cubism - at least Picasso and Braque -
>saw themselves in a relation to Cezanne, but didn't, as far as I know,
>claim that they were fulfilling Cezanne's project; they took something
>from him, which is a different matter. I'll grant you some of the
>abstract expressionists, but not all by any means. So, most of your
>examples don't do what you say they do.
Artists are not illustrators of philosophy- i think this where you and
moggin have problems- its a separate activity which shares the same
programme. Western Art has both a theme and an aim in which the artists
worked. The problem for post-modern artists is the impossibility of
working within this completed 'Story of Art' Similar statements could be
made about philosophy, as well as literature, for myself i couldn't
argue the case for these disciplines that far as I'm not a philosopher
or a writer. But its clear that not only art, but philosophy and
literature have ended. One resposnse is to go back into the story and
deconstruct- like picking over the garbage after a party, another is to
deliberately create ambiguity as occurs in much french po-mo writing -
>[James]
>> Its specifically used to discard other isms-
>> commercialism, (Dali, Disney) Communism (? Russian realists) (late
>> Derain).
>
>But Dali, as a Surrealist (at least temporarily), could be taken as
>modernist;
never a surrealist - or a painter - or an artist -
>Surrealism was understood as modernist, even by Greenberg,
>although he didn't like much of it.
because it offered a newer better more honest view of reality....
> Many of those you mention were
>communists (e.g. De Stijl or Bauhaus membership). Picasso was a member of
>the French CP after WWII.
this of course is a big joke - picasso played games with intellectuals-
painting and sex -thats picasso.
> If you want to go a little further, what of the
>Russian Constructivists
yea Malevich did get there first..perhaps.
>and Productivists, or the Surrealists? Greenberg
>himself was a Trot in the 1930s and early 40s (later to become a
>'premature anti-Stalinist' in the Macarthy period). Late Derain? He
>proclaimed himself as a neo-classicist (how thoroughly evolutionary),
>turned to the far right in politics and produced bloody awful paintings.
>
exactly- as did picasso (go neo) until he realised his mistake- in the
Story of Art theres no prizes for going back - its avoiding the blind
alley, and not going back that pushes the story of art forward.
>[James]
>>In modernism had the concept of making machines for living in -
>> corbusier et.al. - decoration being superfluous- form relates to
>> function.... The problem in the plastic arts with this programme is it
>> ends with blank canvases and empty galleries. It never criticised
>> progress - it was the avant garde.
>
>What is the programme? You haven't been able to bring yourself to say,
>except that it has something to do with progress and evolution. You do
>add a couple of things here about architecture/design, but how does 'form
>relates to function' mean anything for painting?
means everything - to the modernist the function of the art work is to
be a work of art... to do Poussin over again after nature .. to make art
and nothing else....
>Le Corbusier did
>describe dwellings as machines for living in, but De Stijl certainly
>didn't, quite the reverse.
The programme of western art is the search for truth (was truth and
beauty but Kosuth threw this out). It begins with realism and
perspective- which in turn is seen as illusion.... and ends with
nothing. "Art is Art and everything else is everything else. Art as art
is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art"
>
>[James]
>> Can i just say this is not a dose of my opinion- i have in the previous
>> post given quotes - which you just ignore-
>
>Except that the people you quoted, primarily Greenberg, don't support
>your opinion, as I suggested above.
Greenbergs into flatness ... because he sees this as honest .. truth and
beauty...
>
>[James]
>> The crisis is art today (since the 70s) is a result of this programme.
>> One reaction to this (modernism) is to deny it happened- (this is it
>> seems what you are doing) The other is to look at different threads in
>> the history - to ignore the evolutionary model. Which is fine.
>>
>> What typifies po-mo art is that it always fails to deliver anything new.
>> This is important because newness and modernity go hand in hand.
>> The artists not only said so they did so. Picasso sets out to make Les
>> Demoiselles a symbolist work but whilst painting it becomes the pre-
>> cursor of cubism - a new style in art- modernity is full of this
>
>Whilst painting? So Picasso painted the Demoiselles and then thought
>'Blimey, this is the precursor of Cubism this is. I've had an
>evolutionary leap. That's me sorted for the next twelve years'? Just as a
>thought, might there not be other models than evolution or progress for
>considering attempts at newness?
Your above picasso quote is close- though i suspect he stole the idea
from Derain and Braque- It was intended as a brothel scene with sailors
and a still life with a skull- quite allegorical / symbolist - he had
the canvas lined - which was expensive- he was intending it to be a
great work. Unfortunately for him things were moving so he had to alter
it on the fly -the african masks for instance- by the end of 1907 he had
more or less abandoned it - it was never 'finished'- he hid the painting
for years, but a photograph from about 1910 shows part of it exposed -
and this is not as the painting now appears. So the crafty fox gets the
credit- for cubism 'If theres something to be stolen i'll steal it'
>[snip]
>
>But you are not talking about what the artists said or did. You are
>apparently talking, albeit inaccurately, about what Greenberg thought
>they did, and even he pointed out that it wasn't a conscious programme.
>Incidentally, for a vision of Modernism as opposed to the forms and
>tendencies of Modernity, you could try Greenberg's 'Avant-Garde and
>Kitsch' 1939.
You can't truly understand art by just reading books- you have to do it.
- I'm saying that now (1999) you can't you make a 'Modern' painting-
you can't make modern work of art. There is a reason for this- which
i've explained above - is that modernism has accomplished the programme
of modernity.
--
James Whitehead
Obelix
I agree with your comments. One of the tricky parts of this movie is
that it seems to have many strong connections with pomo, but under it
all has a very modern concern with Western metanarratives, and with
truth and reality in general.
Does anyone know how this idea fits into the movie? Is it perhaps an
aftereffect of pastiche (as I touched upon briefly in my paper), or a
sign that the movie isn't about pomo after all?
Ob.
deda...@my-deja.com
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> Sorry to jump in here, but the temptation was too great. Me and my mouth.
> Please jump in- the waters quite warm already. Can I snip most of the
> moggin/james. I'll replay to moggins last reply separately.
Be my guest, they were for context, although I might refer back to them
if needs must.
No, I don't think I did misunderstand you. This is exactly what I thought
you were saying. You are taking a few critical positions and turning them
into a model of what modernism meant for both practioners and critics. I
wanted to point out that this was not entirely the case. If you are going
to take any critique as part of an 'evolutionary model' then you risk
missing the point of the critique. Kosuth, or better 'Art and Language'
in general, would be a case in point. Can you explain how you see their
critique of Greenberg as an evolution? (And what of Mel Ramsden's recent
concern with aesthetics?)
> Actually did i say greenberg supported minimalism? Kosuth points out
> that Greenberg is the "critic of taste" of course he cannot appreciate
> an art which dispenses with aesthetics.
You didn't say that Greenberg supported minimalism, sorry. You did and do
want to cast minimalism etc. as an evolutionary step from painting,
though. How this is an evolution?
>- I've a video where greenberg
> admits it (modernism) was all a horrible mistake and wishes painting
> reverted to Fantin-Latour.
Is it the old OU interview with Greenberg and T.J. Clark? I'm not sure he
characterises it as a 'horrible mistake' exactly. Did you know Greenberg
actually did flower paintings himself?
>Why so? Because of the direction art post
> abstract expressionism took.... 'At this point (the challenging of the
> picture frame) the Modernist painter could either revert to pictorial
> illusion or switch to sculpture. A failure to make a clear choice would
> lead to hybrid inter-media forms that were anathema to the formalists
> critics because the contravened the 'purity of medium' dictum of
> Modernist theory.... Judd...pushed the truth to materials' adage to a
> new extreme of literalness and the belief that the identity of the art
> object could be made to coincide with its constituents' J Walker
Fried, on the other hand, saw it as a major change or even a retrograde
step, *back* into literalism, but we can play swap the critic for ever.
The point being that your version of modernism is far from being the sole
'obvious' one.
> As for the lineage -if you were to look at the artists work this lineage
> would be apparent- Modern (not po-mo) artists in the main began
> learning to draw & paint (greek sculpture then real nudes) in art
> schools. Hockney has said (rightly) that this is no longer the case-
> students dont learn to paint and draw in art schools any more- as its
> thought pointless. Their (modern artists) early work was normally
> impressionist - which then would probably develop through expressionism
> or surrealism into full blown abstractionism. I'm looking at a Rothko
> catalogue - an early work 1938 Subway Scene - a postimpressionist
> painting ...by 1940 a 'surrealist' water colour...1946 'primeval
> landscape' ... 1947 'Untitled' - one of the first recognisably abstract
> Rothkos.. And what is happening in the work is an analytical reduction
> of what it needs to produce a painting. " After having explored Cezanne,
> Abstract Expressionism, and neo-Dadist assemblages, Flavin made a clear
> break with traditional art...."
Who said this? First of all, you are talking about a few specific artists
from a specific post WWII moment. It is hard to see how, for instance,
such Modernists as Manet or the Impressionists could have followed such a
path. Nor does such a path necessarily constitute an evolutionary one.
After all, one would expect an exploration of current possibilities
before a break or rejection as well. Duchamp anyone?. BTW I recently saw
the Rothko show in Paris and what was remarkable was the utter break
between the sub Gorky 1940s work and the later work. How is a 'clear
break', as you cite for Flavin, evolutionary or progressive? A clear
break might also be a rejection, might it not? I'm not saying that it was
in Flavin's case, but you can't have it both ways. Either the artists are
situating themselves in a tradition as you have said before, or there are
'clear breaks' which are a rejection of tradition. (I recognise that
there might be an argument for a tradition of 'clear breaks', but this
you haven't made yet, I think. It doesn't necessarily fit a model of
'progress' in any simple way).
>> [James]
>>> Of course its possible to see other patterns in modern art- but the
>>> evolutionary paradigm was the one used by the group associated with the
>>> term modernism.
>>
>> What 'group'?
> modernists- artists considering themselves modern
This doesn't follow. Many artists considered themselves 'modern' without
being 'modernist'. Many artists considered themselves modernist without
believing in your version of modernism.
>> You have listed above seven names (of individuals and -
>> isms). Now these are all part of the same group? Did they know?
> I suspect they did
I'm sorry but this is daft. As I mentioned, Cezanne was dead before
Cubism, let alone the rest.
>> Cezanne
>> would have been really annoyed to find out that he was in the same group
>> as Carl Andre, I suspect, but alas he is long dead and cannot be asked.
> so - its likely that most minimalist's dabbled with post-impressionism
> early on in their careers- i think there's an Andre - Brancusi - Rodin
> line but also there is link between Brancusi and Picasso and then back
> to Cezanne, who would i feel be quite pleased with his pivotal role in
> modern art- he was a modernist. (The Wright brothers reaction to
> concorde might be similar)
A dodgy analogy for all sorts of reasons. But you being able to see
various links is beside the point - after all, I can see others as well -
and this still stays at the level of your opinion.
>> Moreover, you are just plain wrong here.
>> Cezanne did not understand or
>> describe his work using an evolutionary metaphor, quite the reverse, he
>> associated it with the old masters.
> There was a crisis of content within impressionism sometime in the 1880s
> 'About 1885 a break occurred in my work. I had reached the end of
> Impressionism ... in a word I was in a blind alley' (Renoir). Cozens
> answer was 'to do Poussin over again after nature' - it created a way
> forward - out of the blind alley (followed only by Monet into the
> sublime water lilies) towards cubism. Specifically Cezanne did not adopt
> Poussins technique or subject - he wanted the Artistic depth of
> classical art applied to his art so avoiding shallowness (the blind
> alley) of endless impressionist pictures of everyday events (chocolate
> box painting). This was to push impressionism further- Cezanne gave his
> work - the abstract planes and angles so laying the foundations for
> cubism.
No. Cezanne did not 'create a way forward towards Cubism'. You're at it
again, turning a retrospective organisation into an originary fact or
intention. Cubists might have found resources that they could use in
Cezanne, but this is not the same thing at all, as I pointed out before
(and which you passed over).
>> Many Conceptual producers of the
>> 1970s saw themselves as involved in an explicit critique of the
>> 'modernist project' as laid out by Greenberg.
> They rejected the aesthetics of greenbergs 'Formalist' Art (Kosuth) but
> that was not their motivation- there motivation was to create new art.
> In doing so they demolished greenberg's formalism- which again once
> established created a blind alley- (see above) the way forward was to
> move beyond painting- motivated by the need for a rigours analysis of
> what art is.
Please provide evidence that creating new art was 'their motivation' and
that they saw this as 'a way forward'. Otherwise we are back with your
opinion. In any case, why does 'newness' necessarily imply progress or
evolution?
>> Even Mondrian considered
>> his paintings to be in some ways an endpoint - not a progression but a
>> finishing off of painting (indeed of art).
> This is my point- so also did Reinhardt ... et. al. The modernist
> painter wants 'to paint the last possible painting' - the whole premise
> of modernity is a search for the truth. See the Wittgenstein quote-
I'm sorry but this is isn't right. Mondrian was not after the truth in
painting, rather a 'universal' truth. Modernism has contained many 'last
paintings', agreed. The first last paintings that I can think of were
Rodchenko's in 1920 (21?), but there have been endless last paintings
since then (Klein and Reinhardt included). But neither Mondrian nor
Rodchenko were interested in painting the 'last possible painting', they
wanted to get the business over and done with. Can you not see a possible
difference?
>> De Stijl might be closer to
>> your evolutionary paradigm, but for them that meant the end of art as an
>> exclusive activity distinct from other areas of life.
> Yes... which is what happened - this is the post-modern condition.
Perhaps, but if so only as a farcical return of their aims (and those of
many other modernists) which, surprise, rather involved the rejection and
transformation of modernity.
>> Besides, they use
>> Hegel as a model, not Darwin. The Expressionists, depending upon which
>> ones you mean, clad themselves in Nietszchian rhetoric and discarded any
>> idea of evolution (die Brucke). Cubism - at least Picasso and Braque -
>> saw themselves in a relation to Cezanne, but didn't, as far as I know,
>> claim that they were fulfilling Cezanne's project; they took something
>> from him, which is a different matter. I'll grant you some of the
>> abstract expressionists, but not all by any means. So, most of your
>> examples don't do what you say they do.
> Artists are not illustrators of philosophy- i think this where you and
> moggin have problems- its a separate activity which shares the same
> programme. Western Art has both a theme and an aim in which the artists
> worked. The problem for post-modern artists is the impossibility of
> working within this completed 'Story of Art' Similar statements could be
> made about philosophy, as well as literature, for myself i couldn't
> argue the case for these disciplines that far as I'm not a philosopher
> or a writer. But its clear that not only art, but philosophy and
> literature have ended. One resposnse is to go back into the story and
> deconstruct- like picking over the garbage after a party, another is to
> deliberately create ambiguity as occurs in much french po-mo writing -
Neither are artists just illustrations of your opinions. You say 'Western
art has a theme and an aim in which the artists worked' - so far you have
not offered any substantiation of this beyond the retrospective
formulations of some critics (Greenberg and now Walker) and your opinion.
Trouble is, even your critics might disagree with you, witness Greenberg.
I fail to see where I have made any artist's work an 'illustration of
philosophy', whereas you have, with all of them - 'The programme of
western art is the search for truth', you said. Hell, you even dragged in
Wittgenstein as a model.
>> [James]
>>> Its specifically used to discard other isms-
>>> commercialism, (Dali, Disney) Communism (? Russian realists) (late
>>> Derain).
>>
>> But Dali, as a Surrealist (at least temporarily), could be taken as
>> modernist;
> never a surrealist - or a painter - or an artist -
Your opinion, I take it? Tough. He was a member of the Surrealist group
for a few years. I can't stand him myself, though, at least after 1929.
>> Surrealism was understood as modernist, even by Greenberg,
>> although he didn't like much of it.
> because it offered a newer better more honest view of reality....
And this affects my point how?
>> Many of those you mention were
>> communists (e.g. De Stijl or Bauhaus membership). Picasso was a member of
>> the French CP after WWII.
> this of course is a big joke - picasso played games with intellectuals-
> painting and sex -thats picasso.
Silly me.
>> If you want to go a little further, what of the
>> Russian Constructivists
> yea Malevich did get there first..perhaps.
No, not Malevich. El Lissitsky, Rodchenko, Stepanova, etc.. Thorough
going revolutionaries, until done over in various ways by Stalin. Please
explain how modernism was a rejection of communism again.
>> and Productivists, or the Surrealists? Greenberg
>> himself was a Trot in the 1930s and early 40s (later to become a
>> 'premature anti-Stalinist' in the Macarthy period). Late Derain? He
>> proclaimed himself as a neo-classicist (how thoroughly evolutionary),
>> turned to the far right in politics and produced bloody awful paintings.
>>
> exactly- as did picasso (go neo) until he realised his mistake- in the
> Story of Art theres no prizes for going back - its avoiding the blind
> alley, and not going back that pushes the story of art forward.
Eh? So why did Picasso keep the 'Neo' style going? And you brought late
Derain up, apparently in the context of the rejection of communism.
(Which apparently wasn't rejected really). Still, I would quite possibly
agree on the imperative of 'newness' (which isn't always utterly new, as
Moggin has pointed out in the Moby Dick thread), but it remains for you
to make it clear why this always a part of a conscious 'evolutionary aim'
and, (therefore?), straightforwardly *of* modernity.
>> [James]
>>> In modernism had the concept of making machines for living in -
>>> corbusier et.al. - decoration being superfluous- form relates to
>>> function.... The problem in the plastic arts with this programme is it
>>> ends with blank canvases and empty galleries. It never criticised
>>> progress - it was the avant garde.
>>
>> What is the programme? You haven't been able to bring yourself to say,
>> except that it has something to do with progress and evolution. You do
>> add a couple of things here about architecture/design, but how does 'form
>> relates to function' mean anything for painting?
> means everything - to the modernist the function of the art work is to
> be a work of art... to do Poussin over again after nature .. to make art
> and nothing else....
I've tried a few times but I can't see how this follows. Art, in the kind
of modernism that you seem to be talking about, is to be functionless,
surely, (which rules out De Stijl, Constructivism etc.) and nothing but
itself (which rules out most of 1970s Conceptualism and, I suppose,
minimalism. It's a context thang). BTW, might functionlessness not be a
kind of rejection of modernity?
>> Le Corbusier did
>> describe dwellings as machines for living in, but De Stijl certainly
>> didn't, quite the reverse.
> The programme of western art is the search for truth (was truth and
> beauty but Kosuth threw this out). It begins with realism and
> perspective- which in turn is seen as illusion.... and ends with
> nothing. "Art is Art and everything else is everything else. Art as art
> is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art"
Source? Again, this is your opinion (and some other people's). This
doesn't invalidate it, of course, but just restating it doesn't make it
so. I might well come up with other versions and say: 'if you were to
look at the artists' work this lineage would be apparent'.
>> [James]
>>> Can i just say this is not a dose of my opinion- i have in the previous
>>> post given quotes - which you just ignore-
>>
>> Except that the people you quoted, primarily Greenberg, don't support
>> your opinion, as I suggested above.
> Greenbergs into flatness ... because he sees this as honest .. truth and
> beauty...
Honest? Adding the good to the true and the beautiful? You may well be
right. But he still doesn't argue that modernist artists consciously
situated themselves in relation to a tradition or an evolutionary
progression. Quite the reverse. They didn't, according to Greenberg,
place themselves in a tradition or an overall project of 'western art'.
Sorry.
BTW 'Western Art' since when? Lascaux? the Renaissance? 1863?
What point are you making here? I presume there must be something other
than the apparent one that Picasso retrospectively invented a lineage for
Cubism, because that would sound rather more like my point.
>> [snip]
>>
>> But you are not talking about what the artists said or did. You are
>> apparently talking, albeit inaccurately, about what Greenberg thought
>> they did, and even he pointed out that it wasn't a conscious programme.
>> Incidentally, for a vision of Modernism as opposed to the forms and
>> tendencies of Modernity, you could try Greenberg's 'Avant-Garde and
>> Kitsch' 1939.
>
> You can't truly understand art by just reading books- you have to do it.
Umm, you were the one who insisted on the authority of your quotations. I
was merely pointing out that the people you quoted didn't necessarily
support your opinion. In 'Avant-garde and Kitsch', Greenberg explicitly
sets modernist painting against the dominant trends, practices and forms
of modernity.
> - I'm saying that now (1999) you can't you make a 'Modern' painting-
> you can't make modern work of art. There is a reason for this- which
> i've explained above - is that modernism has accomplished the programme
> of modernity.
You haven't explained it at all. You just keep saying it.
Still, if modernism is 'accomplished', you could tell me which was the
last painting. Go on, do. I'd be interested.
Giles
> --
Ned Ludd
<obelix3...@hotmail.com.invalid> writes:
>
> Ned, thanks for pointing out those typos! :o)
> I agree with your comments. One of the tricky parts of this movie
> is that it seems to have many strong connections with pomo, but
> under it all has a very modern concern with Western metanarratives,
> and with truth and reality in general.
>
Or, how would a sequel reveal a more clearly "postmodern" bent
to the movie, or bury it?
Neo controls the Matrix now. What does this mean? Does he wake
everybody up and show them Hell. Ie. that Life is Suffering.
Is he Buddha? Or Christ? Or John Wayne?
Ned
P.S. Or David Copperfield?
Obelix
controlled by *it*. His power is in his understanding that the
metanarratives are illusions.
But the monkey wrench in the whole thing is that he's fighting to
reveal those metanarratives to everyone else, and to convince them that
they are indeed illusions. This sounds more modernist than anything
else.
Then again, isn't that just what Baudrillard did?
Ned Ludd
<obelix3...@hotmail.com.invalid> writes:
>
> It's not that Neo controls the Matrix, it's that *he* is no longer
> controlled by *it*. His power is in his understanding that the
> metanarratives are illusions.
>
No, he's found a 'true' metanarrative - that people are slave
energy sources for the computers that rule the earth. (And as
I remember the film, he does have control over what happens in
the Matrix - how he uses it is the unanswered question.)
Ned
Obelix
from not having to obey the rules that everyone else takes for granted
(such as laws of physics) -- this could be a metaphor for the power
that someone with a postmodern mindset has once they realize that all
the metanarratives that people so dearly adhere to are just illusions.
The metanarrative that Neo seeks to point out to people is that they
are a source of energy for the robots, which is to say, they are the
power that drives modernism/captialism. This fact could be considered
a metanarrative in itself, one that Neo is trying to impress upon the
general public, insofar as the idea of metanarratives in postmodern
criticism is itself a metanarrative. There's no escape :o)
James Whitehead
>No, I don't think I did misunderstand you. This is exactly what I thought
>you were saying. You are taking a few critical positions and turning them
>into a model of what modernism meant for both practioners and critics.
My part in this thread began in relation to moggins assertion that
modernism was different to modernity and that it was more like post-
modernism than anything else. I found this difficult to follow, based on
experience rather than a formal theory, modern art I thought was part of
a tradition that runs back to the renaissance. I couldn't particularly
see where in the late 18th century to place a schism. I could see a
development within art but it was no different in principal to other
developments. I can see a schism in the late twentieth century between
modernism and post-modernism.
But being pushed into making some sort of theory - lets have some fun
and sketch a formal theory-
The theory would state that Western Culture - from the renaissance
onwards adopted a programme based around a process of
logical/empirical analysis of reality. By western culture I'll include
all the arts, sciences- and mathematics. (No point in minimising the
fun) This I will call the programme of modernity. It will evolve by a
process of a given orthodoxy being replaced by a subsequent orthodoxy by
the application of the process of logical/analytical enquiry. By virtue
of its analytical nature it produces a reductionist tendency within
each field- as regards the scope of the field. (by eradication of
superfluous objects and/or the bifurcation of the field) The concerns
will narrow. It allows periodically a reaction against this programme -
neo-modernity, (counter reformation!) but the theory predicts a
progressive- evolutionary schema. (Anything external to the formal
discipline can be ignored as it fails to propagate throughout it.) There
may be some opposition to the establishment of a new orthodoxy and some
conflict between the old and the new. (The new orthodoxy is a child of
the old even if the parent denies it- without the previous orthodoxy the
new one cannot be created- the new orthodoxy may seek to deny its
lineage - but again it could only have occurred as a result of the
previous orthodoxy, if not then its not part of western culture) The
theory maintains that such a process cannot optimistically continue
forever. And as its programme is analytical it cannot remain static.
The last orthodoxy which this process presented is now termed
'modernism'. Modernism was a product of the same set of conditions &
processes that underlies all of modernity- the growth of enlightenment
thought, the development of science and mathematics…but significant in
that it was the last orthodoxy. There are many possible terminations-
some final conclusion is reached, (as in mathematics-) it closes in on
itself into endless internal and ever narrower analysis - (Art, physics)
it becomes redundant to the process(painting, sculpture, traditional
metaphysics, botany, zoology …) its returns no longer justify the given
expenditure (physics, astronomy) …. During the mid twentieth century
this process/programme reached an end point in most of the disciplines.
There are disciplines which are still in this process of terminating.
This theory is based on analytical observation of the history of western
culture. As part of this culture and by virtue of the fact of its
methodology the theory predicts its own failure. Its failing, like the
failing of the programme in general is a result of the method of
reductive analysis. It will probably (its predicted) fail because of
some internal inconsistencies, and not because of generally observed
facts. It is also considered as likely to fail because although being a
general description some specifics will be identified as being
inconsistent. The process of its failing and the general programmes
failing is significant as this marks of modernity from post-modernity-
this is part of the theory - it justifies post-modernity. Arguing that
in post modernity there is no such thing as art or philosophy
(argument) is a nice contradiction- this is expected. (It's a Russell
paradox that did for mathematics and logic.)
What I should now do is review the given history - but you can do this
yourselves - as well as plugging in all my previous other statements.
(if anyone is interested - then we could publish) Specifically you will
notice artists(within the tradition) begin by representational
painting/drawing/sculpting and progressively refine their work. They do
not react against the given orthodoxy - they learn from it the method,
until they reach a point where they can if they are to be considered as
part of the creation of the programme produce something new - Extending
the given orthodoxy may promote antipathy before the recognition of
genius. Some paradigms, Lord Rayliegh refused to acknowledge relativity,
whilst Einstein himself refused to acknowledge quantum mechanics. We've
rehearsed the recent development in modern art- but to be sure
Minimalism (in the main) grew out of post painterly abstraction- and was
never really sculpture. Conceptualism likewise developed from a
minimalist orthodoxy. Individuals within the program may reach a point
at which they see the likely outcome- or they may reach this point.
After this they will either stop (Duchamp, Rothko, Reinhardt, retrace
their steps (baroque/rococo tendencies - Picasso, Pollock,
>Mel Ramsden's recent
>concern with aesthetics
) or swap into another field (the minimalists - Penrose - physics to
biology / pseudo metaphysics - a baroque feature in post-modern
science)………
Now we could have some supporting quotes:
"The sixties had been the years of orthodoxy and competing
rigidities….By 1979 the idea of the avant-garde had gone…" R Hughes
The Shock of the New.
"I accept the fact that the most important paintings of the last 100
years were done in france. American painters have generally missed the
point of modern painting from beginning to end…. The two artists I
admire most Picasso and Miro"........
.............
> I
>wanted to point out that this was not entirely the case. If you are going
>to take any critique as part of an 'evolutionary model' then you risk
>missing the point of the critique. Kosuth, or better 'Art and Language'
>in general, would be a case in point. Can you explain how you see their
>critique of Greenberg as an evolution? (And what of Mel Ramsden's recent
>concern with aesthetics?)
>
>> Actually did i say greenberg supported minimalism? Kosuth points out
>> that Greenberg is the "critic of taste" of course he cannot appreciate
>> an art which dispenses with aesthetics.
>
>You didn't say that Greenberg supported minimalism, sorry. You did and do
>want to cast minimalism etc. as an evolutionary step from painting,
>though. How this is an evolution?
because the minimalists (in the main) came from the discipline of
painting- there is a quote somewhere but then you'd get into trading
quotes- Caro the nearest thing to an english minimalist was quite open
about this -
>
>>- I've a video where greenberg
>> admits it (modernism) was all a horrible mistake and wishes painting
>> reverted to Fantin-Latour.
>
>Is it the old OU interview with Greenberg and T.J. Clark? I'm not sure he
>characterises it as a 'horrible mistake' exactly. Did you know Greenberg
>actually did flower paintings himself?
no - strange - but he's a funny critic - maybe not - he's a critic and
as such has a different agenda.
>
snip
>
>Fried, on the other hand, saw it as a major change or even a retrograde
>step, *back* into literalism, but we can play swap the critic for ever.
>The point being that your version of modernism is far from being the sole
>'obvious' one.
not the sole one - but to me the most obvious.
>
>> As for the lineage -if you were to look at the artists work this lineage
>> would be apparent- Modern (not po-mo) artists in the main began
>> learning to draw & paint (greek sculpture then real nudes) in art
>> schools. Hockney has said (rightly) that this is no longer the case-
>> students dont learn to paint and draw in art schools any more- as its
>> thought pointless. Their (modern artists) early work was normally
>> impressionist - which then would probably develop through expressionism
>> or surrealism into full blown abstractionism. I'm looking at a Rothko
>> catalogue - an early work 1938 Subway Scene - a postimpressionist
>> painting ...by 1940 a 'surrealist' water colour...1946 'primeval
>> landscape' ... 1947 'Untitled' - one of the first recognisably abstract
>> Rothkos.. And what is happening in the work is an analytical reduction
>> of what it needs to produce a painting. " After having explored Cezanne,
>> Abstract Expressionism, and neo-Dadist assemblages, Flavin made a clear
>> break with traditional art...."
>
>Who said this?
Gregoire Muller
>First of all, you are talking about a few specific artists
>from a specific post WWII moment. It is hard to see how, for instance,
>such Modernists as Manet or the Impressionists could have followed such a
>path. Nor does such a path necessarily constitute an evolutionary one.
I'm talking about a few for time and space- The impressionists would
have studied at art school in the same way as all the artists did from
the 16 c up to about 1980? Haven't you heard Hockey saying they don't
teach drawing anymore.
>After all, one would expect an exploration of current possibilities
>before a break or rejection as well. Duchamp anyone?.
Certain was a cubist- be he painted impressionist picture before and
classical nudes- haven't got a source - but would put a fiver on it.
>BTW I recently saw
>the Rothko show in Paris and what was remarkable was the utter break
>between the sub Gorky 1940s work and the later work. How is a 'clear
>break', as you cite for Flavin, evolutionary or progressive?
Both - but i don't remember a break - the 1946/7 works certainly develop
into the latter works- its possible to progress by evolution - the
piston powered aircraft- then jump - the jet.
>A clear
>break might also be a rejection, might it not?
Its just not the way it works- Einstein didn't reject Newton. May you
could use Derain - but i would call his latter work significant art- you
could argue this - the nazis did this...
>I'm not saying that it was
>in Flavin's case, but you can't have it both ways. Either the artists are
>situating themselves in a tradition as you have said before, or there are
>'clear breaks' which are a rejection of tradition. (I recognise that
>there might be an argument for a tradition of 'clear breaks', but this
>you haven't made yet, I think. It doesn't necessarily fit a model of
>'progress' in any simple way).
>
Course it does- slow progress sudden leaps forward- each is based on
previous theory/ work. You cant arrive at cubism out of the blue - maybe
out of the blue period. :-)
>>>
>>> What 'group'?
>> modernists- artists considering themselves modern
>
>This doesn't follow. Many artists considered themselves 'modern' without
>being 'modernist'. Many artists considered themselves modernist without
>believing in your version of modernism.
maybe some artists didn't realise they were part of the programme but i
think not- i need a convincing list - when i give names they are not
enough - you've provided no candidates yet? I can even deal without
there specific motives- as the Apollo program is specifically not based
on the motives for the V2 - only its formal methods- You can see this
with any formalism- e.g. cubism.
>
>>> You have listed above seven names (of individuals and -
>>> isms). Now these are all part of the same group? Did they know?
>> I suspect they did
>
>I'm sorry but this is daft. As I mentioned, Cezanne was dead before
>Cubism, let alone the rest.
So Che was not a Marxist - Marx was dead.... its the formalism in which
they work that makes the group.
>
>>> Cezanne
>>> would have been really annoyed to find out that he was in the same group
>>> as Carl Andre, I suspect, but alas he is long dead and cannot be asked.
>> so - its likely that most minimalist's dabbled with post-impressionism
>> early on in their careers- i think there's an Andre - Brancusi - Rodin
>> line but also there is link between Brancusi and Picasso and then back
>> to Cezanne, who would i feel be quite pleased with his pivotal role in
>> modern art- he was a modernist. (The Wright brothers reaction to
>> concorde might be similar)
>
>A dodgy analogy for all sorts of reasons.
Your reasons like your artists are yet to appear...
>But you being able to see
>various links is beside the point - after all, I can see others as well -
>and this still stays at the level of your opinion.
My links significantly describe the events- you still need to provide
something- but my opinion, i cannot get around this one - if i use
critics and artist quotes you say - oh that's just a few, I think my
model is working well- but suspect its not original at all- not my
opinion- i cant be that perceptive.
>
>
>No. Cezanne did not 'create a way forward towards Cubism'. You're at it
>again, turning a retrospective organisation into an originary fact or
>intention. Cubists might have found resources that they could use in
>Cezanne, but this is not the same thing at all, as I pointed out before
>(and which you passed over).
It is... without Cezanne or paintings like this as a pre-cursor its
unlikely cubism could occur- every artist learns from previous artists
work. At least up to po-mo.
>
>>> Many Conceptual producers of the
>>> 1970s saw themselves as involved in an explicit critique of the
>>> 'modernist project' as laid out by Greenberg.
>> They rejected the aesthetics of greenbergs 'Formalist' Art (Kosuth) but
>> that was not their motivation- there motivation was to create new art.
>> In doing so they demolished greenberg's formalism- which again once
>> established created a blind alley- (see above) the way forward was to
>> move beyond painting- motivated by the need for a rigours analysis of
>> what art is.
>
>Please provide evidence that creating new art was 'their motivation' and
>that they saw this as 'a way forward'. Otherwise we are back with your
>opinion. In any case, why does 'newness' necessarily imply progress or
>evolution?
Because that's what it was - (i was going to look up sources but one or
two would not do for you ) just reasonably- there had not been an
artform of this nature prior to this, - it differs in specifics-
reductive and yet retains certain formal elements- now you could say
this was accidental but that's like saying creating a new theory in
physics a new form in literature could be accidental - unless this was
deliberate - john cage.
"Not pushing Logic to the Absurd but getting down to the essence of a
phenomenon- flavin
I wanted to do a work of art that was as two-dimensional as possible
Sol Le witt
To continue - Richard Serra
>
>>> Even Mondrian considered
>>> his paintings to be in some ways an endpoint - not a progression but a
>>> finishing off of painting (indeed of art).
>> This is my point- so also did Reinhardt ... et. al. The modernist
>> painter wants 'to paint the last possible painting' - the whole premise
>> of modernity is a search for the truth. See the Wittgenstein quote-
>
>I'm sorry but this is isn't right. Mondrian was not after the truth in
>painting, rather a 'universal' truth.
in painting - he painted - and got close to stopping
> Modernism has contained many 'last
>paintings', agreed. The first last paintings that I can think of were
>Rodchenko's in 1920 (21?), but there have been endless last paintings
>since then (Klein and Reinhardt included). But neither Mondrian nor
>Rodchenko were interested in painting the 'last possible painting', they
>wanted to get the business over and done with. Can you not see a possible
>difference?
>
<snip>
>Neither are artists just illustrations of your opinions.
Ok so now they illustrate a theory.
> You say 'Western
>art has a theme and an aim in which the artists worked' - so far you have
>not offered any substantiation of this beyond the retrospective
>formulations of some critics (Greenberg and now Walker) and your opinion.
>Trouble is, even your critics might disagree with you, witness Greenberg.
they would fall within what the theory would expect. Einstein rejected
Quantum Physics. Course you could agree that QM was a critique of
classical physics - but it wasn't
>
>I fail to see where I have made any artist's work an 'illustration of
>philosophy', whereas you have, with all of them - 'The programme of
>western art is the search for truth', you said. Hell, you even dragged in
>Wittgenstein as a model.
sorry - this was wrong of me to say - i would rather say within the
formalist programme they have no meaning - (see above) You were talking
about their beliefs - which with regards to outside of art are
irrelevant - to art
>
>> exactly- as did picasso (go neo) until he realised his mistake- in the
>> Story of Art theres no prizes for going back - its avoiding the blind
>> alley, and not going back that pushes the story of art forward.
>
>Eh? So why did Picasso keep the 'Neo' style going?
he didn't - the fox jumps on the surrealist band wagon.
>And you brought late
>Derain up, apparently in the context of the rejection of communism.
no - as showing an artist reacting against a new orthodoxy
>(Which apparently wasn't rejected really). Still, I would quite possibly
>agree on the imperative of 'newness' (which isn't always utterly new, as
>Moggin has pointed out in the Moby Dick thread), but it remains for you
>to make it clear why this always a part of a conscious 'evolutionary aim'
>and, (therefore?), straightforwardly *of* modernity.
>
Surely progress produces new objects?
>>> [James]
>>>> In modernism had the concept of making machines for living in -
>>>> corbusier et.al. - decoration being superfluous- form relates to
>>>> function.... The problem in the plastic arts with this programme is it
>>>> ends with blank canvases and empty galleries. It never criticised
>>>> progress - it was the avant garde.
>>>
>>> What is the programme? You haven't been able to bring yourself to say,
>>> except that it has something to do with progress and evolution. You do
>>> add a couple of things here about architecture/design, but how does 'form
>>> relates to function' mean anything for painting?
>> means everything - to the modernist the function of the art work is to
>> be a work of art... to do Poussin over again after nature .. to make art
>> and nothing else....
>
>I've tried a few times but I can't see how this follows. Art, in the kind
>of modernism that you seem to be talking about, is to be functionless,
>surely, (which rules out De Stijl, Constructivism etc.) and nothing but
>itself (which rules out most of 1970s Conceptualism and, I suppose,
>minimalism. It's a context thang). BTW, might functionlessness not be a
>kind of rejection of modernity?
No its the end of modernity....
>
>>> Le Corbusier did
>>> describe dwellings as machines for living in, but De Stijl certainly
>>> didn't, quite the reverse.
>> The programme of western art is the search for truth (was truth and
>> beauty but Kosuth threw this out). It begins with realism and
>> perspective- which in turn is seen as illusion.... and ends with
>> nothing. "Art is Art and everything else is everything else. Art as art
>> is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art"
>
Reinhardt
>Source? Again, this is your opinion (and some other people's). This
>doesn't invalidate it, of course, but just restating it doesn't make it
>so.
Nothing can make it so - i know this - so your saying I cant prove
anything- so neither can you -
sit looking glum at each other.
>I might well come up with other versions and say: 'if you were to
>look at the artists' work this lineage would be apparent'.
please do - i've use the above straight back at you :-?
>
>
>
>Honest? Adding the good to the true and the beautiful? You may well be
>right.
God i hope not!
>But he still doesn't argue that modernist artists consciously
>situated themselves in relation to a tradition or an evolutionary
>progression. Quite the reverse. They didn't, according to Greenberg,
>place themselves in a tradition or an overall project of 'western art'.
>Sorry.
So what Pollock bothering with talking about art and france etc.
>
>BTW 'Western Art' since when? Lascaux? the Renaissance? 1863?
Moggin put modernity beginning at the Renaissance - i would say and
certain classical traditions - but take this up with him. My definition
above rules out medievalism in the main because of its methodology.
>
I've snipped the picasso bit - but he's latching on to what modernism
is. As i said he's a fox who can paint. Like when he joined the
Communist party - do you think for one minute he was genuine. The only
thing he didn't fake was his art, unlike Dali.
>
>> - I'm saying that now (1999) you can't you make a 'Modern' painting-
>> you can't make modern work of art. There is a reason for this- which
>> i've explained above - is that modernism has accomplished the programme
>> of modernity.
>
>You haven't explained it at all. You just keep saying it.
hope I have now.
>
>Still, if modernism is 'accomplished', you could tell me which was the
>last painting. Go on, do. I'd be interested.
>
Seriously this is difficult - but hell you like throwing bricks at ideas
i pop up - i can see this one coming. Its like asking for the first
cubist- picasso barges to the front knocking over braque and kneeing
Derain in the groin- so ok let him have it.
As for the last painting i'd go for reinhardt- despite malevitch- i
think he would like that. God Bless Him. He certainly wouldn't argue
with that. BTW the full title is last modernist painting.
Ryman doesn't count he's a minimalist that paints .... ask anyone
--
James Whitehead
deda...@my-deja.com
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> No, I don't think I did misunderstand you. This is exactly what I thought
>> you were saying. You are taking a few critical positions and turning them
>> into a model of what modernism meant for both practioners and critics.
>
> My part in this thread began in relation to moggins assertion that
> modernism was different to modernity and that it was more like post-
> modernism than anything else. I found this difficult to follow, based on
> experience rather than a formal theory, modern art I thought was part of
> a tradition that runs back to the renaissance. I couldn't particularly
> see where in the late 18th century to place a schism. I could see a
> development within art but it was no different in principal to other
> developments. I can see a schism in the late twentieth century between
> modernism and post-modernism.
I read the beginning of your part as your assertion, in response to
Moggin, that modernism was a part of 'completing the project of
modernity' and that various artists (and writers and composers)
'explicitly positioned their work' within the framework of modernity.
Moggin, if I remember right, suggested that modernism as a variety of
aesthetic practices (my words, not Moggin's - who may well disagree), was
distinct from modernity as a social condition and as an ideology, e.g.
progress, (again, my terms, not Moggin's). Modernism was often a revolt
against modernity, Moggin suggested, whilst also agreeing that modernism
was connected to modernity in many complex ways. The point at which I
forced myself into the discussion was when you took up the visual arts as
a particular example of this identity of modernism and modernity. I did
so because, as will no doubt be clear, I rather agree with Moggin, and I
felt that you were making a claim on the part of various modernist
artists (that they explicitly positioned themselves as part of the
project of modernity) which struck me as not being the case.
> But being pushed into making some sort of theory - lets have some fun
> and sketch a formal theory-
I didn't push you into making a theory at all, I was asking you to back
up what you had already said. I thought I had a fairly clear idea of your
theory and mostly I did, as it turns out - although to be honest there
were one or two surprises in this. But if you are having fun, don't let
me stop you.
> The theory would state that Western Culture - from the renaissance
> onwards adopted a programme based around a process of
> logical/empirical analysis of reality. By western culture I'll include
> all the arts, sciences- and mathematics. (No point in minimising the
> fun) This I will call the programme of modernity. It will evolve by a
> process of a given orthodoxy being replaced by a subsequent orthodoxy by
> the application of the process of logical/analytical enquiry. By virtue
> of its analytical nature it produces a reductionist tendency within
> each field- as regards the scope of the field. (by eradication of
> superfluous objects and/or the bifurcation of the field)
As a definition of modernity, this seems fairly uncontentious - except
that you forgot to add the ethical/political - the good as well as the
true and the beautiful. But what of the separation of those fields as
constitutive of modernity? (And something which modernism might be seen
to react against?)
> The concerns
> will narrow. It allows periodically a reaction against this programme -
> neo-modernity, (counter reformation!) but the theory predicts a
> progressive- evolutionary schema. (Anything external to the formal
> discipline can be ignored as it fails to propagate throughout it.) There
> may be some opposition to the establishment of a new orthodoxy and some
> conflict between the old and the new. (The new orthodoxy is a child of
> the old even if the parent denies it- without the previous orthodoxy the
> new one cannot be created- the new orthodoxy may seek to deny its
> lineage - but again it could only have occurred as a result of the
> previous orthodoxy, if not then its not part of western culture) The
> theory maintains that such a process cannot optimistically continue
> forever. And as its programme is analytical it cannot remain static.
Well, let us be honest, in principle it can be finished. The goal would
be the rational understanding of each field. If you want to say that such
a goal cannot be achieved then you have taken a step outside modernity as
you have outlined it. (Moreover, in the conventional formulation, the
goal is the rational understanding and organisation of human life in the
'best possible' way, so that the three fields were eventually to be
reunited. Habermas springs to mind).
> The last orthodoxy which this process presented is now termed
> 'modernism'.
Surely not. The process of rational enquiry as you set it out apparently
proceeds in the sciences and mathematics at least. So modernism is not
the 'last orthodoxy'. If you mean it is the last orthodoxy in art then I
can see what you mean, but you've got a fight on your hands...
> Modernism was a product of the same set of conditions &
> processes that underlies all of modernity- the growth of enlightenment
> thought, the development of science and mathematics*but significant in
> that it was the last orthodoxy. There are many possible terminations-
> some final conclusion is reached, (as in mathematics-) it closes in on
> itself into endless internal and ever narrower analysis - (Art, physics)
> it becomes redundant to the process(painting, sculpture, traditional
> metaphysics, botany, zoology *) its returns no longer justify the given
> expenditure (physics, astronomy) *.
Wait a minute. 'No longer justify the given expenditure'? On what basis
is this decision made? Not those of logical/analytical inquiry surely.
But you said that 'anything external to the formal discipline can be
ignored as it fails to propagate throughout it'. How can it be ignored if
it terminates the inquiry for 'external' reasons?
>During the mid twentieth century
> this process/programme reached an end point in most of the disciplines.
> There are disciplines which are still in this process of terminating.
> This theory is based on analytical observation of the history of western
> culture.
I'd have to be rude and say not a very detailed one.
>As part of this culture and by virtue of the fact of its
> methodology the theory predicts its own failure.
No, it doesn't. It predicts its own eventual success. There is a small
difference. However, I would be happy if you do want to insist on
modernism containing a sense of its own failure, because then I think my
case is more or less made. Modernism would then be a prediction of the
failure of modernity, in your terms at least.
> Its failing, like the
> failing of the programme in general is a result of the method of
> reductive analysis. It will probably (its predicted) fail because of
> some internal inconsistencies, and not because of generally observed
> facts. It is also considered as likely to fail because although being a
> general description some specifics will be identified as being
> inconsistent.
Which is exactly what you have done with the history of modernism. You
ignore or discard the 'inconsistencies'.
> The process of its failing and the general programmes
> failing is significant as this marks of modernity from post-modernity-
> this is part of the theory - it justifies post-modernity. Arguing that
> in post modernity there is no such thing as art or philosophy
> (argument) is a nice contradiction- this is expected. (It's a Russell
> paradox that did for mathematics and logic.)
>
> What I should now do is review the given history - but you can do this
> yourselves - as well as plugging in all my previous other statements.
> (if anyone is interested - then we could publish) Specifically you will
> notice artists(within the tradition) begin by representational
> painting/drawing/sculpting and progressively refine their work. They do
> not react against the given orthodoxy - they learn from it the method,
> until they reach a point where they can if they are to be considered as
> part of the creation of the programme produce something new - Extending
> the given orthodoxy may promote antipathy before the recognition of
> genius. Some paradigms, Lord Rayliegh refused to acknowledge relativity,
> whilst Einstein himself refused to acknowledge quantum mechanics. We've
> rehearsed the recent development in modern art- but to be sure
> Minimalism (in the main) grew out of post painterly abstraction- and was
> never really sculpture.
? It wasn't the creation of freestanding forms which occupied space?
>Conceptualism likewise developed from a
> minimalist orthodoxy. Individuals within the program may reach a point
> at which they see the likely outcome- or they may reach this point.
> After this they will either stop (Duchamp, Rothko, Reinhardt, retrace
> their steps (baroque/rococo tendencies - Picasso, Pollock,
>> Mel Ramsden's recent
>> concern with aesthetics
The interesting thing about Ramsden's 'retreat' is that he found that it
was unavoidable, as he put it (paraphrase) various stages of a work which
involved the gradual obliteration of one colour by another on a canvas
'worked' whilst others didn't. In terms of your logical/analytic process,
this would be an entirely valid step.
> ) or swap into another field (the minimalists - Penrose - physics to
> biology / pseudo metaphysics - a baroque feature in post-modern
> science)***
I'm lost, but I don't think you need to explain.
>
> Now we could have some supporting quotes:
>
> "The sixties had been the years of orthodoxy and competing
> rigidities*.By 1979 the idea of the avant-garde had gone*" R Hughes
> The Shock of the New.
>
> "I accept the fact that the most important paintings of the last 100
> years were done in france. American painters have generally missed the
> point of modern painting from beginning to end*. The two artists I
> admire most Picasso and Miro"........
> .............
Jackson Pollock I presume?
You haven't quite got the problem here, I think. You would have to come
up with clear, uncontrovertible quotes from the artists, without
contradictions made elsewhere, for your claim that every modernist artist
'explicitly positioned their work' within the context of modernity (or
rather the project of modernity) to be upheld. You have repeatedly made
this claim in one form or another and now have elaborated on what you
mean by this. I don't have any problem with you believing this - and
there are even bits I would agree with - but I happen to think that you
are wrong overall and I have tried to point out that even those you have
enlisted (by name or by quote) as evidence don't actually support your
belief.
>> I
>> wanted to point out that this was not entirely the case. If you are going
>> to take any critique as part of an 'evolutionary model' then you risk
>> missing the point of the critique. Kosuth, or better 'Art and Language'
>> in general, would be a case in point. Can you explain how you see their
>> critique of Greenberg as an evolution? (And what of Mel Ramsden's recent
>> concern with aesthetics?)
Any response?
>>> Actually did i say greenberg supported minimalism? Kosuth points out
>>> that Greenberg is the "critic of taste" of course he cannot appreciate
>>> an art which dispenses with aesthetics.
>>
>> You didn't say that Greenberg supported minimalism, sorry. You did and do
>> want to cast minimalism etc. as an evolutionary step from painting,
>> though. How this is an evolution?
> because the minimalists (in the main) came from the discipline of
> painting- there is a quote somewhere but then you'd get into trading
> quotes- Caro the nearest thing to an english minimalist was quite open
> about this -
Caro a minimalist? But you miss the point of my question. Because
something happens in a particular context, why is it necessarily an
evolution from it?
[snip]
>> Fried, on the other hand, saw it as a major change or even a retrograde
>> step, *back* into literalism, but we can play swap the critic for ever.
>> The point being that your version of modernism is far from being the sole
>> 'obvious' one.
> not the sole one - but to me the most obvious.
To you, yes. I have no problem with that at all. But you made claims on
the part of the modernist artists. It was 'obvious', you said. If you
want to say this is your opinion, then fine.
>>> As for the lineage -if you were to look at the artists work this lineage
>>> would be apparent- Modern (not po-mo) artists in the main began
>>> learning to draw & paint (greek sculpture then real nudes) in art
>>> schools. Hockney has said (rightly) that this is no longer the case-
>>> students dont learn to paint and draw in art schools any more- as its
>>> thought pointless. Their (modern artists) early work was normally
>>> impressionist - which then would probably develop through expressionism
>>> or surrealism into full blown abstractionism. I'm looking at a Rothko
>>> catalogue - an early work 1938 Subway Scene - a postimpressionist
>>> painting ...by 1940 a 'surrealist' water colour...1946 'primeval
>>> landscape' ... 1947 'Untitled' - one of the first recognisably abstract
>>> Rothkos.. And what is happening in the work is an analytical reduction
>>> of what it needs to produce a painting. " After having explored Cezanne,
>>> Abstract Expressionism, and neo-Dadist assemblages, Flavin made a clear
>>> break with traditional art...."
>>
>> Who said this?
> Gregoire Muller
Ta.
>> First of all, you are talking about a few specific artists
>> from a specific post WWII moment. It is hard to see how, for instance,
>> such Modernists as Manet or the Impressionists could have followed such a
>> path. Nor does such a path necessarily constitute an evolutionary one.
> I'm talking about a few for time and space- The impressionists would
> have studied at art school in the same way as all the artists did from
> the 16 c up to about 1980? Haven't you heard Hockey saying they don't
> teach drawing anymore.
Not entirely the same way. In fact, not the same way at all. After 1850
or so, who learnt by being part of a master's studio? This was how Manet
and the Impressionists learnt (and some post impressionists). When did
'Art Schools' come into being (Royal Academies excepted), the late 19th
century? And even then mostly as Applied Art schools.
You are right that drawing isn't taught anymore, though, at least as far
as I know, and this is not a good thing.
>> After all, one would expect an exploration of current possibilities
>> before a break or rejection as well. Duchamp anyone?.
> Certain was a cubist- be he painted impressionist picture before and
> classical nudes- haven't got a source - but would put a fiver on it.
And you would win your fiver, although he was also taken by technical
drawing. But this is my point. Duchamp explicitly attacks art. Not
particular forms of it, but the very idea. Evolution? (And don't tell me
what he opened up. One could only follow Duchamp by not following him at
all).
>> BTW I recently saw
>> the Rothko show in Paris and what was remarkable was the utter break
>> between the sub Gorky 1940s work and the later work. How is a 'clear
>> break', as you cite for Flavin, evolutionary or progressive?
> Both - but i don't remember a break - the 1946/7 works certainly develop
> into the latter works- its possible to progress by evolution - the
> piston powered aircraft- then jump - the jet.
It might be possible to progress by evolution, although there is also no
reason to see evolution as progress. Change, yes, adaption, yes, but
progress implies a morality to evolution which, as far as I know, isn't
there (disclaimer - I am no expert). But your analogy implies a shift
towards greater performance or effectivity. In art, you have said
evolution leads to 'empty galleries'. In what way are these comparable?
>> A clear
>> break might also be a rejection, might it not?
> Its just not the way it works- Einstein didn't reject Newton. May you
> could use Derain - but i would call his latter work significant art- you
> could argue this - the nazis did this...
'Its just not the way it works'? Well, I'm floored by that. It might well
have been news to Tzara, Picabia, Duchamp, Rodchenko, Stepanova, El
Lissitsky, Van Doesburg, Heartfield, Haussmann, Hoch, etc., etc. (and I
would include Pollock here, despite your quote above).
>> I'm not saying that it was
>> in Flavin's case, but you can't have it both ways. Either the artists are
>> situating themselves in a tradition as you have said before, or there are
>> 'clear breaks' which are a rejection of tradition. (I recognise that
>> there might be an argument for a tradition of 'clear breaks', but this
>> you haven't made yet, I think. It doesn't necessarily fit a model of
>> 'progress' in any simple way).
>>
> Course it does- slow progress sudden leaps forward- each is based on
> previous theory/ work. You cant arrive at cubism out of the blue - maybe
> out of the blue period. :-)
This is indeed a simple way, and, surprise, it doesn't fit. What does a
'clear break' mean to you? How can cubism both have its way enabled by
Cezanne and be a 'clear break'? Again, you do not be able to see a change
other than in terms of 'progression'. You even gave progression in art a
goal (first beauty and truth, then just truth), but then, apparently, the
theory 'predicts its own failure', so you place modernism in the position
of consciously progressing towards its own untruth.
>>>> What 'group'?
>>> modernists- artists considering themselves modern
>>
>> This doesn't follow. Many artists considered themselves 'modern' without
>> being 'modernist'. Many artists considered themselves modernist without
>> believing in your version of modernism.
> maybe some artists didn't realise they were part of the programme but i
> think not- i need a convincing list - when i give names they are not
> enough - you've provided no candidates yet? I can even deal without
> there specific motives- as the Apollo program is specifically not based
> on the motives for the V2 - only its formal methods- You can see this
> with any formalism- e.g. cubism.
I have already pointed out that Cezanne, Cubists, Constructivists,
Mondrian, De Stijl, not to mention Art and Language, did not see
themselves as 'part of the programme' in your terms. Now, having claimed
that the artists did see themselves as part of the programme (they
'explicitly positioned their work' within the framework of modernity and
saw themselves as 'completing the project of modernity', you said), you
don't want to talk about their specific motives and instead use an
analogy based on a retrospective construction, which you have constantly
done, as I keep pointing out. You are, as I mentioned above, continuing
to discard or ignore the bits that don't suit you. Your V2 analogy, if
anything, shows the effort involved in doing so.
>>>> You have listed above seven names (of individuals and -
>>>> isms). Now these are all part of the same group? Did they know?
>>> I suspect they did
>>
>> I'm sorry but this is daft. As I mentioned, Cezanne was dead before
>> Cubism, let alone the rest.
> So Che was not a Marxist - Marx was dead.... its the formalism in which
> they work that makes the group.
I apologise for being rude, but this is bollocks. First and most fitting
to your comment, Marx did not know that Che was a Marxist - and might
well not even have seen him as such. Second, your formalism is a
retrospective projection again. Show me Cezanne identifiying himself as a
formalist.
>>>> Cezanne
>>>> would have been really annoyed to find out that he was in the same group
>>>> as Carl Andre, I suspect, but alas he is long dead and cannot be asked.
>>> so - its likely that most minimalist's dabbled with post-impressionism
>>> early on in their careers- i think there's an Andre - Brancusi - Rodin
>>> line but also there is link between Brancusi and Picasso and then back
>>> to Cezanne, who would i feel be quite pleased with his pivotal role in
>>> modern art- he was a modernist. (The Wright brothers reaction to
>>> concorde might be similar)
>>
>> A dodgy analogy for all sorts of reasons.
> Your reasons like your artists are yet to appear...
True my reasons were absent, but I have just had a go at your V2 analogy
and your prop to jet analogy above on the same basis. As for the artists,
I mostly restricted myself to yours and pointed out that they didn't do
what you said they did. The ones I did bring up, you ignored - see below.
>> But you being able to see
>> various links is beside the point - after all, I can see others as well -
>> and this still stays at the level of your opinion.
> My links significantly describe the events- you still need to provide
> something- but my opinion, i cannot get around this one - if i use
> critics and artist quotes you say - oh that's just a few, I think my
> model is working well- but suspect its not original at all- not my
> opinion- i cant be that perceptive.
This is honest (surprisingly honest for usenet?). Thank you for that -
no, really. Your links do provide an account of events, just not
necessarily, as far as I can see, a very accurate one. This is not to say
that there isn't some validity to them, as I said before. But yes, if you
use selected quotes, I would come back with others, probably from the
same people. That is my point. You want to see a particular version of
modernism, which for you is in a straightforward accord with modernity.
You claimed that this was how the practitioners understood themselves
('completing the project of modernity'). I have indicated a number of
different positions, from the very people you wanted to claim. I don't
think I need to provide an alternative theory - I haven't got much of a
one anyway - because you made the big claim in the first place and it
turns out that it isn't even wholly supported by those you cite as
evidence.
>> No. Cezanne did not 'create a way forward towards Cubism'. You're at it
>> again, turning a retrospective organisation into an originary fact or
>> intention. Cubists might have found resources that they could use in
>> Cezanne, but this is not the same thing at all, as I pointed out before
>> (and which you passed over).
> It is... without Cezanne or paintings like this as a pre-cursor its
> unlikely cubism could occur- every artist learns from previous artists
> work. At least up to po-mo.
It is probably true enough about Cezanne, but having a necessary precusor
does not, for me, mean that it is necessarily a 'progressive' or
evolutionary move, even if it can be cast as such.
>>>> Many Conceptual producers of the
>>>> 1970s saw themselves as involved in an explicit critique of the
>>>> 'modernist project' as laid out by Greenberg.
>>> They rejected the aesthetics of greenbergs 'Formalist' Art (Kosuth) but
>>> that was not their motivation- there motivation was to create new art.
>>> In doing so they demolished greenberg's formalism- which again once
>>> established created a blind alley- (see above) the way forward was to
>>> move beyond painting- motivated by the need for a rigours analysis of
>>> what art is.
>>
>> Please provide evidence that creating new art was 'their motivation' and
>> that they saw this as 'a way forward'. Otherwise we are back with your
>> opinion. In any case, why does 'newness' necessarily imply progress or
>> evolution?
> Because that's what it was - (i was going to look up sources but one or
> two would not do for you ) just reasonably- there had not been an
> artform of this nature prior to this, - it differs in specifics-
> reductive and yet retains certain formal elements-
Retains certain formal elements? You said that it was a rejection of the
aesthetic, and surely therefore the formal.
>now you could say
> this was accidental but that's like saying creating a new theory in
> physics a new form in literature could be accidental - unless this was
> deliberate - john cage.
> "Not pushing Logic to the Absurd but getting down to the essence of a
> phenomenon- flavin
> I wanted to do a work of art that was as two-dimensional as possible
> Sol Le witt
Apart from the question of where the primary determination (' was
deliberate') might come from, and the issue of Cage's 'modernism', I have
no particular problem with these quotes. Flavin appears to reject
'logic/analysis' in favour of the irreducibility of an experience (and so
is not modernist in your terms). The Le Witt would need contextualising -
what does he mean by 'two-dimensional'?
> To continue - Richard Serra
'I can't go on, I'll go on' - Beckett
>>>> Even Mondrian considered
>>>> his paintings to be in some ways an endpoint - not a progression but a
>>>> finishing off of painting (indeed of art).
>>> This is my point- so also did Reinhardt ... et. al. The modernist
>>> painter wants 'to paint the last possible painting' - the whole premise
>>> of modernity is a search for the truth. See the Wittgenstein quote-
[snip]
>> Modernism has contained many 'last
>> paintings', agreed. The first last paintings that I can think of were
>> Rodchenko's in 1920 (21?), but there have been endless last paintings
>> since then (Klein and Reinhardt included). But neither Mondrian nor
>> Rodchenko were interested in painting the 'last possible painting', they
>> wanted to get the business over and done with. Can you not see a possible
>> difference?
>>
> <snip>
>
>> Neither are artists just illustrations of your opinions.
> Ok so now they illustrate a theory.
>> You say 'Western
>> art has a theme and an aim in which the artists worked' - so far you have
>> not offered any substantiation of this beyond the retrospective
>> formulations of some critics (Greenberg and now Walker) and your opinion.
>> Trouble is, even your critics might disagree with you, witness Greenberg.
> they would fall within what the theory would expect. Einstein rejected
> Quantum Physics. Course you could agree that QM was a critique of
> classical physics - but it wasn't
What theory? Whose theory?
I doubt the analogy with physics. I'll put this very crudely and from a
position of ignorance. If the project of physics is the increasingly
accurate description of the universe in terms of the behaviour of forces
(I am no scientist), what is the project of art? It might have been the
analysis of beauty, but Greenberg et al consider this to be incapable of
reduction - following Kant. But, you claim, it became a search for truth
(with conceptualism). Truth of what? Conceptualism found that as a
logical category, art only existed as a social convention. Surprise. So,
either you are left with nothing - which you have put forward as the
result of modernism - or you are left with the irreducible, which goes
against modernity as you have cast it. Not that I would cling to either
option myself. Possibly both together though.
>> I fail to see where I have made any artist's work an 'illustration of
>> philosophy', whereas you have, with all of them - 'The programme of
>> western art is the search for truth', you said. Hell, you even dragged in
>> Wittgenstein as a model.
> sorry - this was wrong of me to say - i would rather say within the
> formalist programme they have no meaning - (see above) You were talking
> about their beliefs - which with regards to outside of art are
> irrelevant - to art
Of course they have a meaning within the formalist programme. It wouldn't
be a programme otherwise, as you have demonstrated. They are precursors
or successors, for instance.
I only talked about the artists' beliefs because you did. They considered
themselves as 'completing the project of modernity', you said.
>>> exactly- as did picasso (go neo) until he realised his mistake- in the
>>> Story of Art theres no prizes for going back - its avoiding the blind
>>> alley, and not going back that pushes the story of art forward.
>>
>> Eh? So why did Picasso keep the 'Neo' style going?
> he didn't - the fox jumps on the surrealist band wagon.
>> And you brought late
>> Derain up, apparently in the context of the rejection of communism.
> no - as showing an artist reacting against a new orthodoxy
In a thoroughly 'non evolutionary' way.
>> (Which apparently wasn't rejected really). Still, I would quite possibly
>> agree on the imperative of 'newness' (which isn't always utterly new, as
>> Moggin has pointed out in the Moby Dick thread), but it remains for you
>> to make it clear why this always a part of a conscious 'evolutionary aim'
>> and, (therefore?), straightforwardly *of* modernity.
>>
> Surely progress produces new objects?
Quite possibly, although not always. But why should 'newness' always be a
part of progress?
[snip]
>>>> What is the programme? You haven't been able to bring yourself to say,
>>>> except that it has something to do with progress and evolution. You do
>>>> add a couple of things here about architecture/design, but how does 'form
>>>> relates to function' mean anything for painting?
>>> means everything - to the modernist the function of the art work is to
>>> be a work of art... to do Poussin over again after nature .. to make art
>>> and nothing else....
>>
>> I've tried a few times but I can't see how this follows. Art, in the kind
>> of modernism that you seem to be talking about, is to be functionless,
>> surely, (which rules out De Stijl, Constructivism etc.) and nothing but
>> itself (which rules out most of 1970s Conceptualism and, I suppose,
>> minimalism. It's a context thang). BTW, might functionlessness not be a
>> kind of rejection of modernity?
> No its the end of modernity....
Well then it ended early, roughly in the middle of the nineteenth
century.
>>
>>>> Le Corbusier did
>>>> describe dwellings as machines for living in, but De Stijl certainly
>>>> didn't, quite the reverse.
>>> The programme of western art is the search for truth (was truth and
>>> beauty but Kosuth threw this out). It begins with realism and
>>> perspective- which in turn is seen as illusion.... and ends with
>>> nothing. "Art is Art and everything else is everything else. Art as art
>>> is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art"
>>
> Reinhardt
Ta again.
>> Source? Again, this is your opinion (and some other people's). This
>> doesn't invalidate it, of course, but just restating it doesn't make it
>> so.
> Nothing can make it so - i know this - so your saying I cant prove
> anything- so neither can you -
> sit looking glum at each other.
How true. But then, I think that my vision of modernism as a history of
intermittent failed negativity is rather more positive than your all-over
vision of a completed positivity. So my glumness is at least an on-going
rebellious gloom.
>> I might well come up with other versions and say: 'if you were to
>> look at the artists' work this lineage would be apparent'.
> please do - i've use the above straight back at you :-?
For now, I'll take the cop out and say that the mere fact that I (and
many others; for instance: Baudelaire, Benjamin, Adorno, Tafuri, Breton,
Debord, etc. etc.) could do so invalidates your argument that it was
'obvious' that the artists were 'completing the project of modernity'.
>> Honest? Adding the good to the true and the beautiful? You may well be
>> right.
> God i hope not!
I'm sure that you will recover from the shock.
>> But he still doesn't argue that modernist artists consciously
>> situated themselves in relation to a tradition or an evolutionary
>> progression. Quite the reverse. They didn't, according to Greenberg,
>> place themselves in a tradition or an overall project of 'western art'.
>> Sorry.
> So what Pollock bothering with talking about art and france etc.
They react to the previous generation, Greenberg says, not as part of a
selfconscious tradition. Immediate situation, not overall project.
>>
>> BTW 'Western Art' since when? Lascaux? the Renaissance? 1863?
> Moggin put modernity beginning at the Renaissance - i would say and
> certain classical traditions - but take this up with him. My definition
> above rules out medievalism in the main because of its methodology.
Which, as Moggin suggested, means that you have problems. Where is the
self criticality as 'project' in pre-19th century art? (And I'm with
Greenberg on this).
[snip]
>>> - I'm saying that now (1999) you can't you make a 'Modern' painting-
>>> you can't make modern work of art. There is a reason for this- which
>>> i've explained above - is that modernism has accomplished the programme
>>> of modernity.
>>
>> You haven't explained it at all. You just keep saying it.
> hope I have now.
Well, no. You have said it again in more detail.
>> Still, if modernism is 'accomplished', you could tell me which was the
>> last painting. Go on, do. I'd be interested.
>>
> Seriously this is difficult - but hell you like throwing bricks at ideas
> i pop up - i can see this one coming. Its like asking for the first
> cubist- picasso barges to the front knocking over braque and kneeing
> Derain in the groin- so ok let him have it.
> As for the last painting i'd go for reinhardt- despite malevitch- i
> think he would like that. God Bless Him. He certainly wouldn't argue
> with that. BTW the full title is last modernist painting.
Agreed on the title. Reinhardt is an interesting choice, from quite a
wide field. (Not Malevich though; despite the appearance of the black
square, he thought that he was opening up a whole new future for
painting, not ending it.)
For myself, if you (and indeed Moggin) will excuse the Romanticism, I
don't think that it is played out yet. I claim Gerhard Richter as my
evidence. Here is someone painting despite, in the face of, or perhaps
because of the impossibility of painting.
> Ryman doesn't count he's a minimalist that paints .... ask anyone
I did. Your score: Yes 5. No 7. Admittedly I only asked people who knew
Ryman's work and whom I could reach at short notice, so it is biased.
Giles
Obelix
has any critical comments, I'd *love* to hear them asap :o)
Thanks for all your help!
James Whitehead
>I read the beginning of your part as your assertion, in response to
>Moggin, that modernism was a part of 'completing the project of
>modernity' and that various artists (and writers and composers)
>'explicitly positioned their work' within the framework of modernity.
>Moggin, if I remember right, suggested that modernism as a variety of
>aesthetic practices (my words, not Moggin's - who may well disagree), was
>distinct from modernity as a social condition and as an ideology, e.g.
>progress, (again, my terms, not Moggin's). Modernism was often a revolt
>against modernity, Moggin suggested, whilst also agreeing that modernism
>was connected to modernity in many complex ways. The point at which I
>forced myself into the discussion was when you took up the visual arts as
>a particular example of this identity of modernism and modernity. I did
>so because, as will no doubt be clear, I rather agree with Moggin, and I
>felt that you were making a claim on the part of various modernist
>artists (that they explicitly positioned themselves as part of the
>project of modernity) which struck me as not being the case.
of modernity, and i would maintain another who worked with the kind of
framework - or a subset of it that i have previously outlined. If we
agree on this then all we need do is clear up which group gets to be
called modernism and which something else. I would call the critical
group post-modern - and say that they were not doing art but something
else- propaganda- illustration (of an idea- critique etc.) I think your
going along the lines of Jameson - I have problems with some of his
theory, I think he mistakes Van Goghs motivation- who in the main was
with my formalist tradition- the early social commentary stuff is
interesting but part of a general oeuvre which he soon abandoned in
favour of more formalist methods. You might have a point with Schoenberg
- who evidently may have adopted atonality more to the fact of his need
to express his emotional state- however probably more to do with his
wife leaving him than a critique of modernity- he actually was very keen
to see himself as part of the historical German domination of western
music. This does not invalidate the programme- as he has produced a
formal method which can be used by many composers- non German married
single and even happy in a homosexual partnership. Likewise I don't see
the work of Cezanne was a reaction to alienation- or Monet, Renoir-
perhaps Pissaro - he was fairly socialist and of course Seurat. His
ideas may have influence other artists, they are generally discredited
now, his formal methods were particularly formative to Bridget Riley.
(The great social commentator) I think you might put some dadaist in and
some pop artists- your welcome. You'd end up with a mixed bag - which
would resemble the po-mo lot today. But You could also extend back to
Daumier, Hogarth, Ghezzl.. there's nothing new in art (small a) with
such works. There's a wall drawing in 2nd C Rome of a crucified Christ
with a mules head. Piss-taking has always it seems been with us. Is the
rakes progress a work of modernism- no of course not. Modernism is
identified by its formal differences to what went before and out of what
it developed. In this art is no different to any of the other human
endeavours- why should it be? We have always had critics of society- and
its endeavours - cartoonists, commentators, satirists, even found in
medieval gospel illustrations and gothic carvings. However the problem
with such piss-takers now is they are rapidly running out of this to
take the piss-out of.
>As a definition of modernity, this seems fairly uncontentious - except
>that you forgot to add the ethical/political - the good as well as the
>true and the beautiful.
I don't need the ethical/political - Or beauty- i said logical
empirical analysis of reality.
>But what of the separation of those fields as
>constitutive of modernity? (And something which modernism might be seen
>to react against?)
see above - re Hogarth et al.
>
>Well, let us be honest, in principle it can be finished. The goal would
>be the rational understanding of each field. If you want to say that such
>a goal cannot be achieved then you have taken a step outside modernity as
>you have outlined it. (Moreover, in the conventional formulation, the
>goal is the rational understanding and organisation of human life in the
>'best possible' way, so that the three fields were eventually to be
>reunited. Habermas springs to mind).
Don't follow the three fields - but press on- *****************
>
>> The last orthodoxy which this process presented is now termed
>> 'modernism'.
>
>Surely not. The process of rational enquiry as you set it out apparently
>proceeds in the sciences and mathematics at least.
No not in math- perhaps in biology- physics - nope
but in another thread where some "scientists" were trying to maintain
some sort of optimism i mentioned several factors that closes off
science. There Godel, and Greg Chaitin- 'there is no way in which a
general string of symbols can be proved incompressible... thus you never
know whether your ultimate theory is the ultimate theory or not..' You
might get exited with this - as it obviously demolishes my theory, but
all others - as Horgan puts it science becomes deeply ironic... So yes
you can keep going on but its arbitrary- like philosophy after the
Tractatus is ironic, even LW when going back saw it as a disease to be
cured- not quite what went before.
>So modernism is not
>the 'last orthodoxy'. If you mean it is the last orthodoxy in art then I
>can see what you mean, but you've got a fight on your hands...
yes in art - but i can apply modernism to literature, maths, philosophy,
science, there's actually no fight- look at all the vested interests -
actually its a case of ignoring the fact. Who in the art world or any
other would admit to this truth? Once we finish this little ripple
(thread) the waters will settle again.
>Wait a minute. 'No longer justify the given expenditure'? On what basis
>is this decision made? Not those of logical/analytical inquiry surely.
No- but in science you now have theories like superstrings which would
require particle accelerators bigger that the galaxy to prove/disprove.
And other theories - the origin of the universe, other worlds.. which
are in principal unproveable. The only reason governments finance big
science is because of the bomb- they don't realise how ironic an
activity its become. I a recent government book in the UK DFEE 'All our
Futures' the authors identify a thing called high art- uh? where now -
the Turner Prize this year is by No-Brow artists! The Authors - a few
profs also include Lenny Henry - comic and Dawn French - comic and
Lenny's wife-
>But you said that 'anything external to the formal discipline can be
>ignored as it fails to propagate throughout it'. How can it be ignored if
>it terminates the inquiry for 'external' reasons?
Formally ignored because it doesn't influence subsequent artists. Like
suppose its true and the blue period was caused cuz P. was broke-
formally another artist learns the formal qualities of monochrome
painting- self bankrupting - arguing with the wife - play no part in the
formal progress. Cant you see the difference here - its getting
pedantic.
>
>>During the mid twentieth century
>> this process/programme reached an end point in most of the disciplines.
>> There are disciplines which are still in this process of terminating.
>> This theory is based on analytical observation of the history of western
>> culture.
>
>I'd have to be rude and say not a very detailed one.
Yes if your referring to my knowledge- very rude- but then maybe here
comes your exit strategy.
Like American diplomatic policy - agree or get bombed! subtle.
>
>>As part of this culture and by virtue of the fact of its
>> methodology the theory predicts its own failure.
>
>No, it doesn't.
It did - see Chaitin - look i've even given you the bullets...
>It predicts its own eventual success. There is a small
>difference. However, I would be happy if you do want to insist on
>modernism containing a sense of its own failure, because then I think my
>case is more or less made. Modernism would then be a prediction of the
>failure of modernity, in your terms at least.
At the end of the line you can feel success or failure- being the end is
the important thing. I try to keep happy because i prefer this state of
mind. The debate goes on as to Rothkos death - but looking at the last
paintings - well there's a real sadness and failure about them.
>
>
>Which is exactly what you have done with the history of modernism. You
>ignore or discard the 'inconsistencies'.
Yes- but as long as there's no big contradiction i'm happy- in fact if
it excludes late Derain and Dali et.al. its got allot going for it.
>but to be sure
>> Minimalism (in the main) grew out of post painterly abstraction- and was
>> never really sculpture.
>
>? It wasn't the creation of freestanding forms which occupied space?
So it was said repeatedly at the time...
'What andre has done is to systematically avoid all that justifies
sculpture' - the source is not mine - anything else is i think we agree
irrelevant - see below.
Most didn't 'stand', they leant, propped , piled... which was very
important at he time
Traditional sculpture sits on a plinth which says- here's a work of art
distinct from the real world... this barrier was challenged and broke
down, and again somewhere a quote that most arrived at minimalism
through painting.
>
>The interesting thing about Ramsden's 'retreat' is that he found that it
>was unavoidable, as he put it (paraphrase) various stages of a work which
>involved the gradual obliteration of one colour by another on a canvas
>'worked' whilst others didn't. In terms of your logical/analytic process,
>this would be an entirely valid step.
He's gone back to painting- a dead artform - sure he can keep painting
over colours - he can come and do our front door. He's doing painting
and not art- by virtue of the definition of art and language.
>
>> ) or swap into another field (the minimalists - Penrose - physics to
>> biology / pseudo metaphysics - a baroque feature in post-modern
>> science)***
>
>I'm lost, but I don't think you need to explain.
stay lost - you'll be happier.
>>
>
>You haven't quite got the problem here, I think. You would have to come
>up with clear, uncontrovertible quotes from the artists, without
>contradictions made elsewhere,
this is impossible-
as you know because artists critics say all kinds of things- it how they
fit in the scheme- 'I don't believe in mathematics' A Einstein.
>for your claim that every modernist artist
>'explicitly positioned their work' within the context of modernity (or
>rather the project of modernity) to be upheld.
Or it could be accidental- but thats just silly.
>You have repeatedly made
>this claim in one form or another and now have elaborated on what you
>mean by this. I don't have any problem with you believing this - and
>there are even bits I would agree with - but I happen to think that you
>are wrong overall and I have tried to point out that even those you have
>enlisted (by name or by quote) as evidence don't actually support your
>belief.
I cant in this thread even begin your task-
>You would have to come
>up with clear, uncontrovertible quotes from the artists, without
>contradictions made elsewhere,
there might always be an undiscovered quote- death bed 'I was kidding'
Einstein's dying words were in German so the American nurse didn't
understand him! :=)
>>> wanted to point out that this was not entirely the case. If you are going
>>> to take any critique as part of an 'evolutionary model' then you risk
>>> missing the point of the critique. Kosuth, or better 'Art and Language'
>>> in general, would be a case in point. Can you explain how you see their
>>> critique of Greenberg as an evolution? (And what of Mel Ramsden's recent
>>> concern with aesthetics?)
>
>Any response?
Yes- greenberg was talking about painting- they saw a rift between art
and painting. Greenberg had challenged the existing orthodoxy of
subject, they used the same method- a painting is essentially flat- ...
a painting is essentially a painting and therefore not art...... so they
stick/play with an air-conditioning plant in a gallery.... then talk
about that... then............................ blip.
>
your next question i've answered above.
> no you ....
>>> First of all, you are talking about a few specific artists
>>> from a specific post WWII moment. It is hard to see how, for instance,
>>> such Modernists as Manet or the Impressionists could have followed such a
>>> path. Nor does such a path necessarily constitute an evolutionary one.
>> I'm talking about a few for time and space- The impressionists would
>> have studied at art school in the same way as all the artists did from
>> the 16 c up to about 1980? Haven't you heard Hockey saying they don't
>> teach drawing anymore.
>
>Not entirely the same way. In fact, not the same way at all. After 1850
>or so, who learnt by being part of a master's studio? This was how Manet
>and the Impressionists learnt (and some post impressionists). When did
>'Art Schools' come into being (Royal Academies excepted), the late 19th
>century? And even then mostly as Applied Art schools.
The state appropriated musical composition, and science in the same way.
>You are right that drawing isn't taught anymore, though, at least as far
>as I know, and this is not a good thing.
why not - its pointless - might as well teach them embroidery.
>
>>> After all, one would expect an exploration of current possibilities
>>> before a break or rejection as well. Duchamp anyone?.
>> Certain was a cubist- be he painted impressionist picture before and
>> classical nudes- haven't got a source - but would put a fiver on it.
>
> And you would win your fiver, although he was also taken by technical
>drawing. But this is my point. Duchamp explicitly attacks art. Not
>particular forms of it, but the very idea. Evolution? (And don't tell me
>what he opened up. One could only follow Duchamp by not following him at
>all).
Kosuth rates him.. 'In fact it is Marcel Duchamp whom we can credit with
giving art its own identity.(One can certainly see a tendency toward
this self-identification of art beginning with Manet and Cezanne through
to Cubism..)'
>
>It might be possible to progress by evolution, although there is also no
>reason to see evolution as progress. Change, yes, adaption, yes, but
>progress implies a morality to evolution which, as far as I know, isn't
>there (disclaimer - I am no expert).
Progress implies an aim or goal- in the above you see it refuted because
either on the one hand its reached or its found unreachable. Without the
element of progress in western art it would resemble orthodox painting-
which can go on indefinitely. But look western art does change - up to
po mo- and for the better- neared to some aim- which i'm offering.
Otherwise its random? but it just doesnt look like that- now perhaps we
can create some computer program for doing this. I notice a growing
realism from the renaissance- an exploration first of the human- then
nature- then - light - then form then the form of the picture plain then
- form of art.
> But your analogy implies a shift
>towards greater performance or effectivity. In art, you have said
>evolution leads to 'empty galleries'. In what way are these comparable?
with what- cages silence - with 'What we cannot speak of we must pass
over in silence'... 'Yes, she thought laying down her brush in extreme
fatigue, I have had my vision. The End.'
>
>>> I'm not saying that it was
>>> in Flavin's case, but you can't have it both ways. Either the artists are
>>> situating themselves in a tradition as you have said before, or there are
>>> 'clear breaks' which are a rejection of tradition. (I recognise that
>>> there might be an argument for a tradition of 'clear breaks', but this
>>> you haven't made yet, I think. It doesn't necessarily fit a model of
>>> 'progress' in any simple way).
>>>
>> Course it does- slow progress sudden leaps forward- each is based on
>> previous theory/ work. You cant arrive at cubism out of the blue - maybe
>> out of the blue period. :-)
>
>This is indeed a simple way, and, surprise, it doesn't fit. What does a
>'clear break' mean to you? How can cubism both have its way enabled by
>Cezanne and be a 'clear break'?
Look at Picasso and Braques work prior to 1907 you see fauve influences
in braque - more symbolist in Picasso - both these forms were common and
obviously the artists were not happy with them because then changed, you
will notice some very cezanne like works just prior to 1907... ' through
exhibitions ... of Cezanne's work at the Salon in 1904 and 1907. Picasso
profited greatly by all he saw and modified his style of painting
accordingly.' Douglas Cooper On these three artists (Le Fauconnier,
Gleizes, Metzinger) ...the influence of Cezanne is manifest... to find
in the work of C a lesson and an encouragement.' Roger Allard 1911
In the case of picasso it was also the work of Matisse and Gauguin that
seem to be part of a syntheis which produced cubism - and though
visually something new the critics were quick to see this.
>Again, you do not be able to see a change
?
>other than in terms of 'progression'. You even gave progression in art a
>goal (first beauty and truth, then just truth), but then, apparently, the
>theory 'predicts its own failure', so you place modernism in the position
>of consciously progressing towards its own untruth.
In some ways yes- i think picasso amongst others was aware of this - he
never became purely abstract.
>
>
>I have already pointed out that Cezanne, Cubists, Constructivists,
>Mondrian, De Stijl, not to mention Art and Language, did not see
>themselves as 'part of the programme' in your terms. Now, having claimed
>that the artists did see themselves as part of the programme (
sorry - they didn't see themselves as part of western art - ???????
even Kosuth mention Manet and Cezzane in relation to what he is doing -
why?????
>I apologise for being rude, but this is bollocks. First and most fitting
>to your comment, Marx did not know that Che was a Marxist - and might
>well not even have seen him as such. Second, your formalism is a
>retrospective projection again. Show me Cezanne identifiying himself as a
>formalist.
don't suppose the art of poussin from nature would do?
>
>> It is... without Cezanne or paintings like this as a pre-cursor its
>> unlikely cubism could occur- every artist learns from previous artists
>> work. At least up to po-mo.
>
>It is probably true enough about Cezanne,
phew
>but having a necessary precusor
>does not, for me, mean that it is necessarily a 'progressive' or
>evolutionary move, even if it can be cast as such.
I'm getting tired now but 1 out of three is a start, you first need to
recognise that these artists changed there work, and then ask why and
how.
>
>> Because that's what it was - (i was going to look up sources but one or
>> two would not do for you ) just reasonably- there had not been an
>> artform of this nature prior to this, - it differs in specifics-
>> reductive and yet retains certain formal elements-
>
>Retains certain formal elements? You said that it was a rejection of the
>aesthetic, and surely therefore the formal.
words - they move into the conceptual nature - i call this formalism
which has lost its aesthetics.
>
>>now you could say
>> this was accidental but that's like saying creating a new theory in
>> physics a new form in literature could be accidental - unless this was
>> deliberate - john cage.
>> "Not pushing Logic to the Absurd but getting down to the essence of a
>> phenomenon- flavin
>> I wanted to do a work of art that was as two-dimensional as possible
>> Sol Le witt
>
>Apart from the question of where the primary determination (' was
>deliberate') might come from, and the issue of Cage's 'modernism', I have
>no particular problem with these quotes. Flavin appears to reject
>'logic/analysis' in favour of the irreducibility of an experience (and so
>is not modernist in your terms). The Le Witt would need contextualising -
>what does he mean by 'two-dimensional'?
No rejection of logic, realisation of an essence- here is the idea of
progress- of getting down to something truer... how you cant see this
beats me.
> You say 'Western
>>> art has a theme and an aim in which the artists worked' - so far you have
>>> not offered any substantiation of this beyond the retrospective
>>> formulations of some critics (Greenberg and now Walker) and your opinion.
>>> Trouble is, even your critics might disagree with you, witness Greenberg.
>> they would fall within what the theory would expect. Einstein rejected
>> Quantum Physics. Course you could agree that QM was a critique of
>> classical physics - but it wasn't
>
>What theory? Whose theory?
mine.
>
>I doubt the analogy with physics.
why - is art so different?
>I'll put this very crudely and from a
>position of ignorance. If the project of physics is the increasingly
>accurate description of the universe in terms of the behaviour of forces
>(I am no scientist), what is the project of art? It might have been the
>analysis of beauty, but Greenberg et al consider this to be incapable of
>reduction - following Kant. But, you claim, it became a search for truth
>(with conceptualism). Truth of what? Conceptualism found that as a
>logical category, art only existed as a social convention. Surprise. So,
>either you are left with nothing - which you have put forward as the
>result of modernism - or you are left with the irreducible, which goes
>against modernity as you have cast it. Not that I would cling to either
>option myself. Possibly both together though.
I agree with much of the above-
>
>>> I fail to see where I have made any artist's work an 'illustration of
>>> philosophy', whereas you have, with all of them - 'The programme of
>>> western art is the search for truth', you said. Hell, you even dragged in
>>> Wittgenstein as a model.
>> sorry - this was wrong of me to say - i would rather say within the
>> formalist programme they have no meaning - (see above) You were talking
>> about their beliefs - which with regards to outside of art are
>> irrelevant - to art
>
>Of course they have a meaning within the formalist programme. It wouldn't
>be a programme otherwise, as you have demonstrated. They are precursors
>or successors, for instance.
>
>>> (Which apparently wasn't rejected really). Still, I would quite possibly
>>> agree on the imperative of 'newness' (which isn't always utterly new, as
>>> Moggin has pointed out in the Moby Dick thread), but it remains for you
>>> to make it clear why this always a part of a conscious 'evolutionary aim'
>>> and, (therefore?), straightforwardly *of* modernity.
>>>
>> Surely progress produces new objects?
>
>Quite possibly, although not always. But why should 'newness' always be a
>part of progress?
can you progress and not have something new- don't think so-
We have made progress with the tower it was 400m high, now its 400m..
because we added nothing new to it.
>
> BTW, might functionlessness not be a
>>> kind of rejection of modernity?
>> No its the end of modernity....
>
>Well then it ended early, roughly in the middle of the nineteenth
>century.
Yes the begging of the end- modernism.
>> Nothing can make it so - i know this - so your saying I cant prove
>> anything- so neither can you -
>> sit looking glum at each other.
>
>How true. But then, I think that my vision of modernism as a history of
>intermittent failed negativity is rather more positive than your all-over
>vision of a completed positivity. So my glumness is at least an on-going
>rebellious gloom.
nice to see intermittent failed negativity as positive-
cant i replace failed negativity with 'positively' - same thing?
so your saying despite the artists best/worst wishes modernism is the
history of intermittent success. Sure i'll go along with this. Success
at what. This is crazy - Artist - 'lets produce a failure-' Dam!
Why not just not bother- that would succeed - at failing to produce...
Failure to do what? produce a work of art, its foolproof - if you call
it art its art, Artist- 'thats not art and i'm no artist' Public - fine
RIP art.
>
>>> I might well come up with other versions and say: 'if you were to
>>> look at the artists' work this lineage would be apparent'.
>> please do - i've use the above straight back at you :-?
>
>For now, I'll take the cop out and say that the mere fact that I (and
>many others; for instance: Baudelaire, Benjamin, Adorno, Tafuri, Breton,
>Debord, etc. etc.) could do so invalidates your argument that it was
>'obvious' that the artists were 'completing the project of modernity'.
etc. once said copping out is all you can do in post-modernity.
>
>> So what Pollock bothering with talking about art and france etc.
>
>They react to the previous generation, Greenberg says, not as part of a
>selfconscious tradition. Immediate situation, not overall project.
Why not react against the crap american art he mentions- he took
guidance from school of paris to help him develop his art- according to
your theory all he needed to do was react to the american stuff.
>Which, as Moggin suggested, means that you have problems. Where is the
>self criticality as 'project' in pre-19th century art? (And I'm with
>Greenberg on this).
please explain self-crticality with relation to say Picasso and cubism
without the idea of progress.
If your now say modernism is this- and not some po-mo social comment
fine. Ive got you on my side - but only as far as the mid 19th c. and
formalist painting- Give me a date how far back you would go and i'll
work on that.
Then we can tackle painting-
>
>> with that. BTW the full title is last modernist painting.
>
>Agreed on the title. Reinhardt is an interesting choice, from quite a
>wide field. (Not Malevich though; despite the appearance of the black
>square, he thought that he was opening up a whole new future for
>painting, not ending it.)
thought wrong- it didn't? or did i miss something? still makes him a
contender- actually he should have the cup - but as he would probably
give to reinhardt - i did him a favour.
>
>For myself, if you (and indeed Moggin) will excuse the Romanticism, I
>don't think that it is played out yet. I claim Gerhard Richter as my
>evidence. Here is someone painting despite, in the face of, or perhaps
>because of the impossibility of painting.
Yep Irony - pure irony - and kind of abstract expressionist irony at
that.
>
>> Ryman doesn't count he's a minimalist that paints .... ask anyone
>
>I did. Your score: Yes 5. No 7. Admittedly I only asked people who knew
>Ryman's work and whom I could reach at short notice, so it is biased.
Tell your friends that formalist painting is 2 dimensional - i.e. flat-
pigment on a support- rather like formalist sculpture was an object on a
plinth. Ryman paints on all sorts of things - which are significant
formally so he's not a painter in the formalist sense - or a sculptor -
he's a minimalist.
--
James Whitehead
Obelix
postmodern criticism :o) any chance you'd like to take a crack at my
paper?
deda...@my-deja.com
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I've snipped large chunks of this. I have cut something you really
wanted, I apologise.
> In article <81veou$jmo$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, deda...@my-deja.com writes
>> I read the beginning of your part as your assertion, in response to
>> Moggin, that modernism was a part of 'completing the project of
>> modernity' and that various artists (and writers and composers)
>> 'explicitly positioned their work' within the framework of modernity.
>> Moggin, if I remember right, suggested that modernism as a variety of
>> aesthetic practices (my words, not Moggin's - who may well disagree), was
>> distinct from modernity as a social condition and as an ideology, e.g.
>> progress, (again, my terms, not Moggin's). Modernism was often a revolt
>> against modernity, Moggin suggested, whilst also agreeing that modernism
>> was connected to modernity in many complex ways. The point at which I
>> forced myself into the discussion was when you took up the visual arts as
>> a particular example of this identity of modernism and modernity. I did
>> so because, as will no doubt be clear, I rather agree with Moggin, and I
>> felt that you were making a claim on the part of various modernist
>> artists (that they explicitly positioned themselves as part of the
>> project of modernity) which struck me as not being the case.
> There may well be a definable group of artists whose work is a critique
> of modernity, and i would maintain another who worked with the kind of
> framework - or a subset of it that i have previously outlined. If we
> agree on this then all we need do is clear up which group gets to be
> called modernism and which something else.
Well, this is where we keep running into problems. If you want to
restrict modernism to those artists who unarguably do what you say
modernism is, then fine, but I suspect you would end up with a small
group, smaller than you might want, and certainly smaller than 'the
history of western culture' would demand.
> I would call the critical
> group post-modern - and say that they were not doing art but something
> else- propaganda- illustration (of an idea- critique etc.) I think your
> going along the lines of Jameson - I have problems with some of his
> theory, I think he mistakes Van Goghs motivation- who in the main was
> with my formalist tradition- the early social commentary stuff is
> interesting but part of a general oeuvre which he soon abandoned in
> favour of more formalist methods.
Then you mistake where I am 'going', as you do below quite often.
[snip of various comments]
>
>> As a definition of modernity, this seems fairly uncontentious - except
>> that you forgot to add the ethical/political - the good as well as the
>> true and the beautiful.
> I don't need the ethical/political - Or beauty- i said logical
> empirical analysis of reality.
Let's see. You mentioned 'honesty' and 'beauty' first, in relation to the
'modernist project', so I can only presume that you saw them as involved.
Thus the good and the beautiful. The logical/emprical analysis of reality
aplies to art how? I know the routine about the investigation of the
materials, but, as a theory (Greenberg, Fried, etc.) this was also tied
to the possibility of making a work which (in Fried's terms) 'compelled
conviction'. So for them, roughly, the job of modernism was to rid art
(say painting) of everything which was not painting in order to enable
the irreducible - beauty. Your physics analogies don't work, as I tried
to suggest, because, at a logical/empirical level, art doesn't exist as
an object, unlike, say, the universe. If you want to claim this as a
discovery of modernism, then the whole project was merely a catching up
with late 18th century philosophy. Admittedly the same problem with the
lack of an object was encountered in the ethical/political field, but
again, this was discovered in relatively early stages of modernity (and
before).
>> But what of the separation of those fields as
>> constitutive of modernity? (And something which modernism might be seen
>> to react against?)
> see above - re Hogarth et al.
That doesn't really apply. You stick to the idea of the moral or
political as something which is extraneous, mere subject matter, whereas
the idea that, for instance, there might be some intrinsic link between
the good and the beautiful was something of a modernist mainstay (even if
sometimes couched in extreme negativity).
>> Well, let us be honest, in principle it can be finished. The goal would
>> be the rational understanding of each field. If you want to say that such
>> a goal cannot be achieved then you have taken a step outside modernity as
>> you have outlined it. (Moreover, in the conventional formulation, the
>> goal is the rational understanding and organisation of human life in the
>> 'best possible' way, so that the three fields were eventually to be
>> reunited. Habermas springs to mind).
> Don't follow the three fields - but press on- *****************
Simple enough - the good, the true and the beautiful.
>>> The last orthodoxy which this process presented is now termed
>>> 'modernism'.
>>
>> Surely not. The process of rational enquiry as you set it out apparently
>> proceeds in the sciences and mathematics at least.
> No not in math- perhaps in biology- physics - nope
I know so little of these fields that I couldn't comment. I know that
there are other in this NG who are better aquainted. Maybe they will
respond.
> but in another thread where some "scientists" were trying to maintain
> some sort of optimism i mentioned several factors that closes off
> science. There Godel, and Greg Chaitin- 'there is no way in which a
> general string of symbols can be proved incompressible... thus you never
> know whether your ultimate theory is the ultimate theory or not..' You
> might get exited with this - as it obviously demolishes my theory, but
> all others - as Horgan puts it science becomes deeply ironic... So yes
> you can keep going on but its arbitrary- like philosophy after the
> Tractatus is ironic, even LW when going back saw it as a disease to be
> cured- not quite what went before.
I couldn't comment on the accuracy of what you say, but I might suggest
that it sounds as if science has just become modernist - irony, ambiguity
and all.
[snip]
>> Wait a minute. 'No longer justify the given expenditure'? On what basis
>> is this decision made? Not those of logical/analytical inquiry surely.
> No- but in science you now have theories like superstrings which would
> require particle accelerators bigger that the galaxy to prove/disprove.
So it hasn't stopped theories being made and set against available
evidence? So it hasn't stopped? But this is nearly beside the point. You
said that these logical/analytic enquiries terminated because either they
were finished or, apparently, they collapsed under their own
impossibility. Now it turns out that they can be terminated by 'external'
forces.
[snip]
>> But you said that 'anything external to the formal discipline can be
>> ignored as it fails to propagate throughout it'. How can it be ignored if
>> it terminates the inquiry for 'external' reasons?
> Formally ignored because it doesn't influence subsequent artists.
This wasn't about artists, it was about physics. But even if it was about
artists, of course the 'external' reason does influence them. It stops
them. Big influence.
>>> During the mid twentieth century
>>> this process/programme reached an end point in most of the disciplines.
>>> There are disciplines which are still in this process of terminating.
>>> This theory is based on analytical observation of the history of western
>>> culture.
>>
>> I'd have to be rude and say not a very detailed one.
> Yes if your referring to my knowledge- very rude- but then maybe here
> comes your exit strategy.
> Like American diplomatic policy - agree or get bombed! subtle.
Not just American, NATO. We Brits must take some responsibility here. But
then, perverse though it might seem - particularly on usenet - I am not
after your agreement with me. I haven't actually put forward any large
proposals apart from a few general comments. I would, of course, like you
to reconsider some of the things you have put forward, (that modernism
was a part of 'completing the project of modernity' and that modernist
artists (and writers and composers) 'explicitly positioned their work'
within the framework of modernity). You do seem to be moving away from
that. More below.
>>> As part of this culture and by virtue of the fact of its
>>> methodology the theory predicts its own failure.
>>
>> No, it doesn't.
> It did - see Chaitin - look i've even given you the bullets...
I can't comment on that material, as I don't know it. But, from what you
have said, it sounds less like a prediction and more like an
acknowledgment after the fact.
>> It predicts its own eventual success. There is a small
>> difference. However, I would be happy if you do want to insist on
>> modernism containing a sense of its own failure, because then I think my
>> case is more or less made. Modernism would then be a prediction of the
>> failure of modernity, in your terms at least.
> At the end of the line you can feel success or failure- being the end is
> the important thing. I try to keep happy because i prefer this state of
> mind. The debate goes on as to Rothkos death - but looking at the last
> paintings - well there's a real sadness and failure about them.
Umm. A prediction of failure and 'being at the end' are not the same
thing. Modernism containing a prediction of failure would seem to mean
that there could be no 'end of the line'.
>> Which is exactly what you have done with the history of modernism. You
>> ignore or discard the 'inconsistencies'.
> Yes- but as long as there's no big contradiction i'm happy- in fact if
> it excludes late Derain and Dali et.al. its got allot going for it.
If you only want to include what fits you then there will be no
contradiction (and also no reason for the failure).
>> but to be sure
>>> Minimalism (in the main) grew out of post painterly abstraction- and was
>>> never really sculpture.
>>
>> ? It wasn't the creation of freestanding forms which occupied space?
> So it was said repeatedly at the time...
> 'What andre has done is to systematically avoid all that justifies
> sculpture' - the source is not mine - anything else is i think we agree
> irrelevant - see below.
> Most didn't 'stand', they leant, propped , piled... which was very
> important at he time
>
> Traditional sculpture sits on a plinth which says- here's a work of art
> distinct from the real world... this barrier was challenged and broke
> down, and again somewhere a quote that most arrived at minimalism
> through painting.
Fair comments, all, but it is still a major break from dealing with the
contradictions of painting as both view and object, to the occupation of
physical space - in relation to the spectator - as the main concern.
>> The interesting thing about Ramsden's 'retreat' is that he found that it
>> was unavoidable, as he put it (paraphrase) various stages of a work which
>> involved the gradual obliteration of one colour by another on a canvas
>> 'worked' whilst others didn't. In terms of your logical/analytic process,
>> this would be an entirely valid step.
> He's gone back to painting- a dead artform - sure he can keep painting
> over colours - he can come and do our front door. He's doing painting
> and not art- by virtue of the definition of art and language.
You avoided the issue by calling painting a dead art form. Ramsden's
'empirical' investigations led him to this position, so, in your terms,
it is an advance. You impose a kind of historical logic onto what you
want as 'logical/empricial' investigations, but having reached what you
call the 'painting is just painting' orthodoxy, you seem reluctant to
acknowledge that something calling itself a 'logical/empirical'
investigation might move away from that orthodoxy, even if that is
apparently 'back'. Although I am far from an expert, I can't see this
being a problem for science (well, a problem but not a 'going back to a
dead form' problem), which is the parallel that you want to draw.
[snip]
>> You haven't quite got the problem here, I think. You would have to come
>> up with clear, uncontrovertible quotes from the artists, without
>> contradictions made elsewhere,
> this is impossible-
> as you know because artists critics say all kinds of things- it how they
> fit in the scheme- 'I don't believe in mathematics' A Einstein.
Yes. I know it is impossible. But you made the claim in the first place.
Since you made it, it has turned out that it is just your opinion. That
doesn't mean that it is wrong (at least in part?), but you stated it as
fact. You have maintained it by excluding everything that doesn't fit it,
or ignoring the ways in which those you want to claim don't fit it (both
in what they said and in what they made). You maintained this at least up
till your last post and this one, where things seem to have changed a
bit.
[snip]
>>>> wanted to point out that this was not entirely the case. If you are going
>>>> to take any critique as part of an 'evolutionary model' then you risk
>>>> missing the point of the critique. Kosuth, or better 'Art and Language'
>>>> in general, would be a case in point. Can you explain how you see their
>>>> critique of Greenberg as an evolution? (And what of Mel Ramsden's recent
>>>> concern with aesthetics?)
>>
>> Any response?
> Yes- greenberg was talking about painting- they saw a rift between art
> and painting. Greenberg had challenged the existing orthodoxy of
> subject, they used the same method- a painting is essentially flat- ...
> a painting is essentially a painting and therefore not art...... so they
> stick/play with an air-conditioning plant in a gallery.... then talk
> about that... then............................ blip.
Unless I'm missing something, which is entirely possible, I still don't
see why this is an 'evolution'.
[snip]
>>>> After all, one would expect an exploration of current possibilities
>>>> before a break or rejection as well. Duchamp anyone?.
>>> Certain was a cubist- be he painted impressionist picture before and
>>> classical nudes- haven't got a source - but would put a fiver on it.
>>
>> And you would win your fiver, although he was also taken by technical
>> drawing. But this is my point. Duchamp explicitly attacks art. Not
>> particular forms of it, but the very idea. Evolution? (And don't tell me
>> what he opened up. One could only follow Duchamp by not following him at
>> all).
> Kosuth rates him.. 'In fact it is Marcel Duchamp whom we can credit with
> giving art its own identity.(One can certainly see a tendency toward
> this self-identification of art beginning with Manet and Cezanne through
> to Cubism..)'
And Kosuth - as with all those who claim Duchamp as a precursor in art -
is quite possibly wrong. But this is lineage constructing again. It says
a lot about Kosuth and nothing necessarily about Duchamp.
>> It might be possible to progress by evolution, although there is also no
>> reason to see evolution as progress. Change, yes, adaption, yes, but
>> progress implies a morality to evolution which, as far as I know, isn't
>> there (disclaimer - I am no expert).
> Progress implies an aim or goal-
Yes.
> in the above you see it refuted because
> either on the one hand its reached or its found unreachable. Without the
> element of progress in western art it would resemble orthodox painting-
> which can go on indefinitely. But look western art does change - up to
> po mo- and for the better- neared to some aim- which i'm offering.
> Otherwise its random?
It certainly does change - although change in western art is hardly
unique to modernity. The pace of change is certainly faster after 1800,
that much is 'obvious'. But you still haven't said why change needs to be
allied with 'progress'. You keep saying it is allied - although it is
hard to see how the change is for the better if the result is the
extinction of art with no gain - but each time I ask why change is
'progress', you just tell me that it is. On the other hand, an attempt to
somehow represent the unreachable -or maintain the unanalysable in the
face of analysis- sounds like modernism in revolt against modernity to
me.
[snip]
>> But your analogy implies a shift
>> towards greater performance or effectivity. In art, you have said
>> evolution leads to 'empty galleries'. In what way are these comparable?
> with what- cages silence - with 'What we cannot speak of we must pass
> over in silence'... 'Yes, she thought laying down her brush in extreme
> fatigue, I have had my vision. The End.'
And this is not a rebellion against a vision of endless progress
(modernity in your terms)? But I was asking how the move from prop to jet
was comparable to the move to the 'empty gallery' in art.
No, you brought up cubism as an example of an evolutionary 'clear break'.
None of this has anything to do with a clear break. (Art critics and
historians as a breed don't like clear breaks. They mess up their
lineages. This might include me, of course).
>> Again, you do not be able to see a change
> ?
>> other than in terms of 'progression'. You even gave progression in art a
>> goal (first beauty and truth, then just truth), but then, apparently, the
>> theory 'predicts its own failure', so you place modernism in the position
>> of consciously progressing towards its own untruth.
> In some ways yes- i think picasso amongst others was aware of this - he
> never became purely abstract.
For myself, I'm happy to go with modernism consciously moving (not
'progressing') in relation to its own untruth. It fits with the idea of
modernism (or at least many elements of it) as a rebellion against
modernity.
>> I have already pointed out that Cezanne, Cubists, Constructivists,
>> Mondrian, De Stijl, not to mention Art and Language, did not see
>> themselves as 'part of the programme' in your terms. Now, having claimed
>> that the artists did see themselves as part of the programme (
> sorry - they didn't see themselves as part of western art - ???????
> even Kosuth mention Manet and Cezzane in relation to what he is doing -
> why?????
That is not what I said. Not part of the 'programme' as you have set it
out,
[snip]
>>> now you could say
>>> this was accidental but that's like saying creating a new theory in
>>> physics a new form in literature could be accidental - unless this was
>>> deliberate - john cage.
>>> "Not pushing Logic to the Absurd but getting down to the essence of a
>>> phenomenon- flavin
>>> I wanted to do a work of art that was as two-dimensional as possible
>>> Sol Le witt
>>
>> Apart from the question of where the primary determination (' was
>> deliberate') might come from, and the issue of Cage's 'modernism', I have
>> no particular problem with these quotes. Flavin appears to reject
>> 'logic/analysis' in favour of the irreducibility of an experience (and so
>> is not modernist in your terms). The Le Witt would need contextualising -
>> what does he mean by 'two-dimensional'?
> No rejection of logic, realisation of an essence- here is the idea of
> progress- of getting down to something truer... how you cant see this
> beats me.
But you cast 'logic/analysis' as involving 'a reductionist tendency'.
When faced with the irreducibility of beauty - i.e. its failure to
succumb to logical division - you said that modernism just abandoned it
as inessential (with minimalism). But now you say Modernism was in search
of the irreducible. Why didn't it stop with beauty? Or, again, why
shouldn't Flavin, or someone, pursue the division of the 'essence of the
phenomenon' into its component parts? That would be modernist in your
terms. But he doesn't, and explicitly says that he is not interested in
'pushing Logic to the Absurd'. It certainly sounds like a rejection of
'logic/analysis' to me.
[snip]
>> I doubt the analogy with physics.
> why - is art so different?
>> I'll put this very crudely and from a
>> position of ignorance. If the project of physics is the increasingly
>> accurate description of the universe in terms of the behaviour of forces
>> (I am no scientist), what is the project of art? It might have been the
>> analysis of beauty, but Greenberg et al consider this to be incapable of
>> reduction - following Kant. But, you claim, it became a search for truth
>> (with conceptualism). Truth of what? Conceptualism found that as a
>> logical category, art only existed as a social convention. Surprise. So,
>> either you are left with nothing - which you have put forward as the
>> result of modernism - or you are left with the irreducible, which goes
>> against modernity as you have cast it. Not that I would cling to either
>> option myself. Possibly both together though.
> I agree with much of the above-
My turn to be surprised. So, if you are prepared to see modernism as in
some ways shuttling between nothing and the irreducible, I can't quite
see why you are reluctant to see it as in some ways a revolt against
modernity.
[snip]
>>>> Still, I would quite possibly
>>>> agree on the imperative of 'newness' (which isn't always utterly new, as
>>>> Moggin has pointed out in the Moby Dick thread), but it remains for you
>>>> to make it clear why this always a part of a conscious 'evolutionary aim'
>>>> and, (therefore?), straightforwardly *of* modernity.
>>>>
>>> Surely progress produces new objects?
>>
>> Quite possibly, although not always. But why should 'newness' always be a
>> part of progress?
> can you progress and not have something new- don't think so-
> We have made progress with the tower it was 400m high, now its 400m..
> because we added nothing new to it.
That wasn't what I meant to ask, although now you mention it, I can think
of many things that are called a progression but that aren't new at all.
Fashion springs to mind instantly, but attacks on trade union rights or
the prospective scrapping of licensing hours might also fit the bill. How
about a third daily postal delivery in the London area? Or not feeding
the diseased brain stems of sheep to cattle?
Anyway, what I meant was why did you always see newness in terms of
progress?
[snip]
>>>> I might well come up with other versions and say: 'if you were to
>>>> look at the artists' work this lineage would be apparent'.
>>> please do - i've use the above straight back at you :-?
>>
>> For now, I'll take the cop out and say that the mere fact that I (and
>> many others; for instance: Baudelaire, Benjamin, Adorno, Tafuri, Breton,
>> Debord, etc. etc.) could do so invalidates your argument that it was
>> 'obvious' that the artists were 'completing the project of modernity'.
> etc. once said copping out is all you can do in post-modernity.
It wasn't necessary for me to come up with another version of my own,
because I did come up with other versions, at least six of them
(Baudelaire etc.).
>>> So what Pollock bothering with talking about art and france etc.
>>
>> They react to the previous generation, Greenberg says, not as part of a
>> selfconscious tradition. Immediate situation, not overall project.
> Why not react against the crap american art he mentions- he took
> guidance from school of paris to help him develop his art- according to
> your theory all he needed to do was react to the american stuff.
Not my theory - Greenberg's.
>> Which, as Moggin suggested, means that you have problems. Where is the
>> self criticality as 'project' in pre-19th century art? (And I'm with
>> Greenberg on this).
> please explain self-crticality with relation to say Picasso and cubism
> without the idea of progress.
Hang on. Let me reconstruct how we reached this point. You said that
modernism and modernity were coterminious, that the 'programme' of
'logic/analysis' begain in art with the Renaissance and that the artists
were consciously 'part of the programme'. I pointed out that a critic
whom you cited in support of your position, Greenberg, not only limited
modernism in art to the period after the mid 19th century, but explicitly
said that artists were not conscious of an overall project or aim. So, as
far as I can see, you need to either illustrate pre-19th century self-
criticality in painting or limit your account of modernism to the period
Greenberg suggests, which causes some problems for the modernism and
modernity model you wished to put forward.
> If your now say modernism is this- and not some po-mo social comment
> fine. Ive got you on my side - but only as far as the mid 19th c. and
> formalist painting- Give me a date how far back you would go and i'll
> work on that.
I'm not saying modernism is 'this', my question was about your terms. I
don't know where you found me espousing 'po-mo social comment', in fact
I'm not even sure what that is; so I can't be sure I haven't done by
accident. I certainly didn't intend to.
> Then we can tackle painting-
>>
>>> with that. BTW the full title is last modernist painting.
>>
>> Agreed on the title. Reinhardt is an interesting choice, from quite a
>> wide field. (Not Malevich though; despite the appearance of the black
>> square, he thought that he was opening up a whole new future for
>> painting, not ending it.)
> thought wrong- it didn't? or did i miss something? still makes him a
> contender- actually he should have the cup - but as he would probably
> give to reinhardt - i did him a favour.
Well, Malevich got another 14 years or so out of Suprematism and the
abstract figure on ground (or in void) approach did pretty well for an
after-life.
>> For myself, if you (and indeed Moggin) will excuse the Romanticism, I
>> don't think that it is played out yet. I claim Gerhard Richter as my
>> evidence. Here is someone painting despite, in the face of, or perhaps
>> because of the impossibility of painting.
> Yep Irony - pure irony - and kind of abstract expressionist irony at
> that.
I'm not so sure - pure irony wouldn't make the paintings so difficult. I
feel that maybe irony is his problem, not his solution, which is why I
take him seriously.
>>> Ryman doesn't count he's a minimalist that paints .... ask anyone
>>
>> I did. Your score: Yes 5. No 7. Admittedly I only asked people who knew
>> Ryman's work and whom I could reach at short notice, so it is biased.
> Tell your friends that formalist painting is 2 dimensional - i.e. flat-
> pigment on a support- rather like formalist sculpture was an object on a
> plinth. Ryman paints on all sorts of things - which are significant
> formally so he's not a painter in the formalist sense - or a sculptor -
> he's a minimalist.
Heh. Apart from the obvious retort that the support is formally
significant in large swathes of modernist painting and pigment is often
highly textured, or maybe making some comment about optical depth, I'm
tempted to agree. Could we compromise on him being a painter when he
paints on canvas, or wood, or metal, or perspex or... Oh. It seems that I
don't agree.
Giles
> --
James Whitehead
<obelix3...@hotmail.com.invalid> writes
but if you want to email a copy i'll have a look - i did read the
original but thats no longer on my machine-
--
James Whitehead
Obelix
anyway though!
I would nevertheless recommend seeing the movie. My general argument is
that the whole thing is a parable about postmodernism. I'd be
interested in your opinion on the matter....
Obelix
amcpheat
Woolf and TS Eliot epitomise the movement whci hgrapples to analyse the
effects of the first and second world wars on a culture unprepared for the
horrors it created. Postmodernism is much later. There are scholars who
believe that postmodernism began at a particular time and day, though the
natural assumptions made during the modernist era intrinsically led on to
the postmodernist era. Postmodernism deals with many compounded issues that
range from hyperreality, the postmodern condition, to the more enlightening
retro phases of ALL modern culture. Visit www.macksden.com which has a
section on literary criticism and add your comments to the month's debate.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:yZSLwCAT...@jliat.demon.co.uk...
> In article <moggin-1611...@user-2ive8sq.dialup.mindspring.com>,
> Puss in Boots <mog...@mindspring.com> writes
> >Modernism is a different critter, more like post-modernism than
> >anything else.
> could you explain this?
>
> --
> James Whitehead
James Whitehead
The criteria i was / am developing was aimed at a formalism of these
categories. (Its obviously an example of modernism.)
1.1: Post Modernist Theory
This is a self contradiction - as you say "represent the unreachable"
(Theories of ... are the hallmark of modernity.)
2: The modernist discovery or theory is based on a paradigm of "Truth to
materials" - which consequently produces the good and the true. Implicit
in this is the idea of rejecting anything found to be inconsequential
(Ockham's razor). This ideology is explicitly challenged by some
proponents of the post-modernist movement. Obvious in Architecture but
also in the plastic arts- return to- socio-political feminist issues -
since 1970 etc.
2.1: Re Science / Mathematics
Within science its heard that if 'a theory has beauty' its probably true
- whereas before it was the proven theories which were seen as
beautiful. As we might think we are carrying out this discussion using
some kind of logic(?) then wouldn't the failure of modernism to lay a
foundation for logic be significant.
So statements of the kind "maintain the unanlysable in the face of
analysis" which might have been considered non-sensical can be allowed
by virtue of such failures- of the modernist project. (Ramseden's
allowed to pursue his meaningless empirical investigations. Its an
empirical investigation that is marked by and inability to progress- to
arrive- it employs a method (of science) which was developed to reach
conclusions - to decided the case- but his use is not for this - its
ironic)
3: Termination - internal / external forces.
The significance of the termination of an activity from/by internal
formalist causes is that no matter what external forces contribute the
activity is ended. External forces only provisionally terminate- or
pause an activity. There are two internal endings (possible third). If
the goal is reached, or if its found the goal is unreachable. (Trying to
make a perpetual motion machine is optimistic, to continue to do so
after understanding the laws of thermodynamics is ironic.) Solving
something like Fermat's theorem once done- ends the task- successfully -
Mathematical formalisms have been proved to be inconsistent. Resourcing
either will have no effect. The third is the case where the activity is
in principle solvable but not practical. A good example of this is the
towers of Hanoi. (three spindles the first with 64 disks ranging from
large to small diameter - the task is to transfer the tower from spindle
1 to spindle three moving only one disk at a time and never putting a
larger disk on a smaller- this would take 10^44 billion years at 1 move
a second. Or 10^44 years at a billion moves a second- the universe being
about 10^11 years old) Maybe Po-Mo art is someone continuing a programme
in the light of either three of these. However if it was n.3 we would
see something like progress to a practically unattainable (but real)
goal.
4: Evolution change newness and progress.
Do you wish to argue that evolution doesn't imply progress - just
change. Without getting into an argument on this - i'm happy to allow
you to mean by evolution - a neutral change or alteration - "complicated
series of movements", I was using it the sense of evolution "progressive
series of changes" - and will continue to do so.
4.1: Change - we both seem ready to accept change as a phenomenon of
modernism, is the crux here whether the change is progressive. As I've
said i wish to maintain that the change in modernism was progressive -
which it inherits from modernity in general, and that this is longer
found - is no longer true in post-modernism.
4.2: I would argue that if an activity is changing in a formal way that
produces some kind of reductionist morphology then its reasonable to
imply the possibility of cause. This is that it is moving towards a
goal. If it was reacting to such a morphology (and not following it) it
would produce a divergent morphology. I think the model of reductionist
morphology is relevant to modernism. It is not relevant to post-
modernism. I think this explains the morphology of modernism and post-
modernism- i have offered examples which you are not prepared to accept.
I think that summarizes my position-
--
James Whitehead
Puss in Boots
> Modernism was a movement which has dubious roots.
What's a dubious root? I mean, what makes a root dubious?
> Generally writers like
> Woolf and TS Eliot epitomise the movement whci hgrapples to analyse the
> effects of the first and second world wars on a culture unprepared for the
> horrors it created.
[...]
"The Metamorphosis" -- 1912. _Peterburg_ -- 1912. Armory
Show -- 1913. _Les Demoiselles d'Avignon_ -- 1907. _Nude
Descending A Staircase_ -- 1912. Opus 11, No. 1 -- 1909. Need
I go on?
-- Moggin
deda...@my-deja.com
jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk wrote on 3/12/99 12:38 pm:
> 1: Size or group of Modernist / Modernism / Post - Modernist:
> The criteria i was / am developing was aimed at a formalism of these
> categories. (Its obviously an example of modernism.)
If I follow, it means that you can claim Modernism is 'x' because your
criterea mean that anything that doesn't fit them is not modernist. And
why not do so? It should result in a coherent, if circular, relation of
theory and evidence. But the trouble with doing this is that it presents
some difficulties for your claims that 'modernist artists were
consciously part of the same programme' and that this history covers
European/western culture since the Renaissance (and thus corresponds to
modernity).
If you wish to claim that you have identified a logic which can be called
modernism through a retrospective construction of a lineage, I would have
no disagreement with you (or rather I might, but not the same
disagreement that we have now). You would have some illustrious
predecessors in doing so. However, none of your predecessors that I can
think of (and I am certainly ready to be corrected) claimed that the
artists that they were concerned with consciously identified themselves
as part of this 'process'. As you said, this is 'impossible' to
demonstrate, (but you have also said that it was 'obvious'). One reason
that it is impossible to demonstrate is that it just isn't the case, as
even some of your own examples suggested.
If you wish to claim that this process has been going on since the
Renaissance, then you really do need some examples of the 'logical/
analytic' programme in art (and we can add in 'truth to materials' now,
thanks) from before the 19th century. So far these have not been
forthcoming, and when I have asked, you talked about cubism instead.
> 1.1: Post Modernist Theory
> This is a self contradiction - as you say "represent the unreachable"
> (Theories of ... are the hallmark of modernity.)
I have no idea what you are referring to here. I have reread what I have
previously written in this thread a couple of times but can find no
reference to 'Post Modernist Theory'.
> 2: The modernist discovery or theory is based on a paradigm of "Truth to
> materials" - which consequently produces the good and the true. Implicit
> in this is the idea of rejecting anything found to be inconsequential
> (Ockham's razor).
But inconsequential for what? What is the aim for which these things have
no consequence?
The modernist 'discovery or theory' that you claim here, as far as I
know, is only codified in terms of 'truth to materials' in the early
twentieth century, and even then only by a few. It could, just
conceivably, be taken back to the late 19th century if you wanted to do a
Pevsner and include William Morris as a modernist, but then Morris
doesn't have the 'logic/analysis' emphasis that you insist upon as
modernist. It has a moral emphasis instead, oddly enough in reaction
against the tendencies of capitalist production.
>This ideology is explicitly challenged by some
> proponents of the post-modernist movement. Obvious in Architecture but
> also in the plastic arts- return to- socio-political feminist issues -
> since 1970 etc.
>
> 2.1: Re Science / Mathematics
> Within science its heard that if 'a theory has beauty' its probably true
> - whereas before it was the proven theories which were seen as
> beautiful.
I thought that within science (not mathematics) no theory was true.
Moreover, I hugely doubt that the aesthetic qualities of a theory are
used to judge its adequacy. I don't follow the 'whereas before' bit.
>As we might think we are carrying out this discussion using
> some kind of logic(?)
We might think that, we might also be mistaken.
> then wouldn't the failure of modernism to lay a
> foundation for logic be significant.
Apart from failing to see any logical relation between the two parts of
your sentence, the 'failure' of modernism to 'lay a foundation for logic'
would only be significant if you thought that this was the aim of
modernism. This is not to dispute that much modernism has been concerned
with pointing to a lack of foundation of logic.
> So statements of the kind "maintain the unanlysable in the face of
> analysis" which might have been considered non-sensical can be allowed
> by virtue of such failures- of the modernist project.
Why nonsensical? It makes sense to me, and obviously to you as you
'allow' it. It has been said in various ways (presumably meaningfully)
since, well, about the emergence of modernism, and I suspect before.
>(Ramseden's
> allowed to pursue his meaningless empirical investigations. Its an
> empirical investigation that is marked by and inability to progress- to
> arrive- it employs a method (of science) which was developed to reach
> conclusions - to decided the case- but his use is not for this - its
> ironic)
Your rejection of Ramsden is another thing that I can't understand.
Ramsden's concern with aesthetics is most certainly not ironic, although
you now appear determined to see it that way. Rather it was arrived at
through exactly what you have called an 'empirical/logical analysis'. I
can only presume that you don't like his conclusions because they go
against your insistence on a certain historical trajectory or teleology.
What if what is involved is a recognition of a 'wrong turn', as sometimes
happens in - yer know - science? I am not saying that I side with Ramsden
or that I don't (I'm not sure to be honest), but in terms of your model,
you should be prepared to accept Ramsden and his conclusions as
modernist. He has 'progressed' in your terms, he has moved beyond a
current orthodoxy in a continuing logical/empirical analysis of his
'object'.
> 3: Termination - internal / external forces.
> The significance of the termination of an activity from/by internal
> formalist causes is that no matter what external forces contribute the
> activity is ended. External forces only provisionally terminate- or
> pause an activity.
But you cited external forces (inability to get funding) as a reason why
some things would remain 'unproveable' in physics - and thus part of the
termination of physics as a (non-ironic) project. You can't have it both
ways.
> There are two internal endings (possible third). If
> the goal is reached, or if its found the goal is unreachable. (Trying to
> make a perpetual motion machine is optimistic, to continue to do so
> after understanding the laws of thermodynamics is ironic.) Solving
> something like Fermat's theorem once done- ends the task- successfully -
Hell, what about the infinity of prime numbers.
> Mathematical formalisms have been proved to be inconsistent.
Either I don't follow, or you don't.
> Resourcing
> either will have no effect. The third is the case where the activity is
> in principle solvable but not practical. A good example of this is the
> towers of Hanoi. (three spindles the first with 64 disks ranging from
> large to small diameter - the task is to transfer the tower from spindle
> 1 to spindle three moving only one disk at a time and never putting a
> larger disk on a smaller- this would take 10^44 billion years at 1 move
> a second. Or 10^44 years at a billion moves a second- the universe being
> about 10^11 years old) Maybe Po-Mo art is someone continuing a programme
> in the light of either three of these. However if it was n.3 we would
> see something like progress to a practically unattainable (but real)
> goal.
And modernism's goal? You seem very clear about it having one (and the
artists being conscious of it) so what is/was it? You were also very
clear before that 'Po-Mo art' was goalless, because modernism had somehow
reached its goal.
> 4: Evolution change newness and progress.
>
> Do you wish to argue that evolution doesn't imply progress - just
> change. Without getting into an argument on this - i'm happy to allow
> you to mean by evolution - a neutral change or alteration - "complicated
> series of movements", I was using it the sense of evolution "progressive
> series of changes" - and will continue to do so.
Why continue to do so? Evolution, in any Darwin related sense, does not
mean 'progress' if you mean by that, as you appear to, a movement towards
a goal or an unfolding internal logic, at least as I recall it. I could
well be wrong here as you have been rather vague about what you mean by
'progress'. Evolution is, if I remember right, a question of random
mutation in relation to specific environmental circumstances. Evolution,
I think, has tended to show that there are a variety of possible
successful 'answers' to a given situation. So I can't see how you can use
it as a model for your concept of modernism at all.
> 4.1: Change - we both seem ready to accept change as a phenomenon of
> modernism, is the crux here whether the change is progressive. As I've
> said i wish to maintain that the change in modernism was progressive -
> which it inherits from modernity in general, and that this is longer
> found - is no longer true in post-modernism.
First, yes change is a phenomenon of modernism, but not only of modernism
- or even, as you equate the terms, of modernity. Second, I know that you
wish to maintain it - you keep on saying that - but apart from a few
retrospective constructions (ruling out what doesn't fit for you) you
haven't shown it. Perhaps it would help if you clarified what you mean by
'progress' and 'progressive'.
> 4.2: I would argue that if an activity is changing in a formal way that
> produces some kind of reductionist morphology then its reasonable to
> imply the possibility of cause.
I don't think that it is clear that there is only a 'reductionist
morphology', but I can see why you would say so. Still, even if I grant
you the morphology and with it the possibility of cause, there is
absolutely no reason why that necessarily means...
> This is that it is moving towards a
> goal.
One might, for instance, hypothesise that 'it' was in resistance to
something which continually recuperated its forms, or was trying to
maintain something which was continually being turned to other ends. In
these cases, there is no 'goal' to move towards - if anything the 'aim'
would be to be able to stop. These are just hypotheses, but would do just
as well to explain the morphology.
> If it was reacting to such a morphology (and not following it) it
> would produce a divergent morphology. I think the model of reductionist
> morphology is relevant to modernism. It is not relevant to post-
> modernism. I think this explains the morphology of modernism and post-
> modernism- i have offered examples which you are not prepared to accept.
Quite the reverse. I did a quick check and the only example I haven't
accepted was when I had asked about the pre 19th century and you asked me
something about cubism as a response, which was irrelevant. All the rest
I accepted, I just didn't agree that they actually supported your claims.
For instance, this exchange about Dan Flavin, to which you didn't finally
reply:
[James]
now you could say this was accidental but that's like saying creating a
new theory in physics a new form in literature could be accidental -
unless this was deliberate - john cage.
"Not pushing Logic to the Absurd but getting down to the essence of a
phenomenon- flavin
I wanted to do a work of art that was as two-dimensional as possible
Sol Le witt
[Giles]
Apart from the question of where the primary determination (' was
deliberate') might come from, and the issue of Cage's 'modernism', I have
no particular problem with these quotes. Flavin appears to reject
'logic/analysis' in favour of the irreducibility of an experience (and so
is not modernist in your terms). The Le Witt would need contextualising -
what does he mean by 'two-dimensional'?
[James]
No rejection of logic, realisation of an essence- here is the idea of
progress- of getting down to something truer... how you cant see this
beats me.
[Giles]
But you cast 'logic/analysis' as involving 'a reductionist tendency'.
When
faced with the irreducibility of beauty - i.e. its failure to succumb to
logical division - you said that modernism just abandoned it as
inessential
(with minimalism). But now you say Modernism was in search of the
irreducible. Why didn't it stop with beauty? Or, again, why shouldn't
Flavin, or someone, pursue the division of the 'essence of the
phenomenon' into its component parts? That would be modernist in your
terms. But he doesn't, and explicitly says that he is not interested in
'pushing Logic to the Absurd'. It certainly sounds like a rejection of
'logic/analysis' to me.
[end]
So I didn't not accept your example, I just disagreed about what it was
an example of.
>I think that summarizes my position-
Well, yes and thanks, I suppose. I would like to know what you mean by
'progress', but otherwise, I had more or less gathered that this was your
position. There is, however, nothing in this that would stop me
disagreeing with you, because there is not really anything that responds
to my objections. You just restate your position again.
James Whitehead
Without wishing to get to bogged down the pedantic logic of "she said
she said" - which is the way of all threads perhaps- I was initially
drawn into this line of thought by something said- that i thought -well
that's not how i saw it. The 'impossibility to demonstrate' relates
really to what you were saying about artist's quotes - and that i
couldn't supply sufficient - or some such when i supplied them in
support of my opinion - (or "just my opinion"). You ask for evidence -
but reject it when offered- not always though which is confusing. If we
were to progress i would have to have more confidence in what you saw
as evidence. Anyway I assumed you were offering a theory in which
modernism was lumped together with post-modernism- both being a critique
of modernity - logic or whatever.
(In terms of being corrected - offering an example of someone seeing
themselves as part of a programme... Ad Reinhardt should be sufficient
as one of the most significant painters of late modernism and admired by
the minimalists. The impossibility of demonstration lies in the audience
here.)
But i was thinking about actual issues raised by this thread - this
addressees the circular argument criticism you gave- i had the idea to
plot illustrations in a journal - studio international (RIP) or artforum
to see how painting did in fact stop circa 1970. Well not having the
resources i tried something similar with a couple of art history books.
Modern Painting - Herbert Read and a T&H History of Modern art. I used
three simple categories - representational, abstract-representational
(cubist or abstract where real forms are identifiable) and pure
abstract. I then built a spreadsheet based on these categories - of art
by year from 1880 - 1980. This provides some very interesting results.
Firstly the rise of pure abstraction from 1940 to 1970 (it totally
dominates) - then it dips down to an average. A small dip during the 60s
which I put down to pop art, and a greater one in the 30s - surrealism?
Interestingly by 1975 all three forms share an equal level. Obviously
this was a fairly crude study- but shows the abstract domination and
collapse. My first graph used just pure numbers and showed all three low
around 1935-45 which I put down to the depression/war. Interestingly
this highlights the 'external influence' - which is general- it
depresses all three types of work- whereas after 1945 the expansion into
pure abstraction is remarkable- an internal formalist influence. It
looks like after 1918 all three forms were about equal. It was an
interesting exercise- What it does also show that the pattern is
certainly not random. There would be a whole deal of further work from
this- which should be done- but an NG is not the place- certainly not in
what is becoming such a negative thread. I could go on to correlate the
graph with similar systems and i think get a progressive model - up to
1970 established. Pushing it back the various 'isms' and schools may
well have this same pattern - i suspect they would. The significance is
since 1970 these waves of development cease. Maybe 30 years isn't long
enough but i'm sufficiently confident in the model which confirms the
feeling of a collapse in the optimism of the 60s - in art - and describe
po-mo.
>
>> 1.1: Post Modernist Theory
>> This is a self contradiction - as you say "represent the unreachable"
>> (Theories of ... are the hallmark of modernity.)
>
>I have no idea what you are referring to here. I have reread what I have
>previously written in this thread a couple of times but can find no
>reference to 'Post Modernist Theory'.
"she said she said" stuff again - but your quote "represent the
unreachable" was about recent work - ? that makes it a theory?
Don't worry if you don't mean this - or didn't say this-
>
>> 2: The modernist discovery or theory is based on a paradigm of "Truth to
>> materials" - which consequently produces the good and the true. Implicit
>> in this is the idea of rejecting anything found to be inconsequential
>> (Ockham's razor).
>
>But inconsequential for what? What is the aim for which these things have
>no consequence?
For painting - for making art - but we are no longer interested in this
are we???
>
>The modernist 'discovery or theory' that you claim here, as far as I
>know, is only codified in terms of 'truth to materials' in the early
>twentieth century, and even then only by a few.
I reject this - few - when you see the general form - and if you tested
the general consensus this would be so- early 50s through to 1970s at
least. And yes it was very much the modernist thing. 144 pieces of lead,
galvanised sheets propped against a wall....
> It could, just
>conceivably, be taken back to the late 19th century if you wanted to do a
>Pevsner and include William Morris as a modernist, but then Morris
>doesn't have the 'logic/analysis' emphasis that you insist upon as
>modernist. It has a moral emphasis instead, oddly enough in reaction
>against the tendencies of capitalist production.
The interest in socialism was in fact an idea based on the concept of
both evolution and progress.
>I thought that within science (not mathematics) no theory was true.
where did you get this idea from? No theory is able to be proved to be
true - but that's not the same thing.
>Moreover, I hugely doubt that the aesthetic qualities of a theory are
>used to judge its adequacy.
But they are these days - whereas they were not at one time.
> I don't follow the 'whereas before' bit.
>
>>As we might think we are carrying out this discussion using
>> some kind of logic(?)
>
>We might think that, we might also be mistaken.
>
>> then wouldn't the failure of modernism to lay a
>> foundation for logic be significant.
>
>Apart from failing to see any logical relation between the two parts of
>your sentence, the 'failure' of modernism to 'lay a foundation for logic'
>would only be significant if you thought that this was the aim of
>modernism. This is not to dispute that much modernism has been concerned
>with pointing to a lack of foundation of logic.
Hold on - your now saying modernism was about this - this theory just
doesn't match the facts. If you maintain this then you should offer
evidence.
>> So statements of the kind "maintain the unanlysable in the face of
>> analysis" which might have been considered non-sensical can be allowed
>> by virtue of such failures- of the modernist project.
>
>Why nonsensical? It makes sense to me, and obviously to you as you
>'allow' it. It has been said in various ways (presumably meaningfully)
>since, well, about the emergence of modernism, and I suspect before.
I allow it - but it doesn't mean anything does it?
>>(Ramseden's
>> allowed to pursue his meaningless empirical investigations. Its an
>> empirical investigation that is marked by and inability to progress- to
>> arrive- it employs a method (of science) which was developed to reach
>> conclusions - to decided the case- but his use is not for this - its
>> ironic)
>
>Your rejection of Ramsden is another thing that I can't understand.
>Ramsden's concern with aesthetics is most certainly not ironic, although
>you now appear determined to see it that way.
As he was part of a movement which rejected aesthetics i do see it as
ironic, and the use of empirical investigation- that's science - is he
doing science?
>Rather it was arrived at
>through exactly what you have called an 'empirical/logical analysis'. I
>can only presume that you don't like his conclusions because they go
>against your insistence on a certain historical trajectory or teleology.
what conclusions?
>What if what is involved is a recognition of a 'wrong turn', as sometimes
>happens in - yer know - science? I am not saying that I side with Ramsden
>or that I don't (I'm not sure to be honest), but in terms of your model,
>you should be prepared to accept Ramsden and his conclusions as
>modernist.
You cant be modernist now- its like those guys who re-enact battles-
or dress up as cow boys.
>He has 'progressed' in your terms, he has moved beyond a
>current orthodoxy in a continuing logical/empirical analysis of his
>'object'.
He's regressed back to objects from concepts- although if He's doing
empirical investigations who knows-
>
>> 3: Termination - internal / external forces.
>> The significance of the termination of an activity from/by internal
>> formalist causes is that no matter what external forces contribute the
>> activity is ended. External forces only provisionally terminate- or
>> pause an activity.
>
>But you cited external forces (inability to get funding) as a reason why
>some things would remain 'unproveable' in physics - and thus part of the
>termination of physics as a (non-ironic) project. You can't have it both
>ways.
It so happens - both ways, but not in the same way - see above.
>
>> There are two internal endings (possible third). If
>> the goal is reached, or if its found the goal is unreachable. (Trying to
>> make a perpetual motion machine is optimistic, to continue to do so
>> after understanding the laws of thermodynamics is ironic.) Solving
>> something like Fermat's theorem once done- ends the task- successfully -
>
>Hell, what about the infinity of prime numbers.
what about them? The task that's ended was Fermat's - the highest prime
is another matter.
>
>> Mathematical formalisms have been proved to be inconsistent.
>
>Either I don't follow, or you don't.
I think i follow - in computing its called the Halting Problem. It
proves an uncertainty- it gives limits-
>
>> Resourcing
>> either will have no effect. The third is the case where the activity is
>> in principle solvable but not practical. A good example of this is the
>> towers of Hanoi. (three spindles the first with 64 disks ranging from
>> large to small diameter - the task is to transfer the tower from spindle
>> 1 to spindle three moving only one disk at a time and never putting a
>> larger disk on a smaller- this would take 10^44 billion years at 1 move
>> a second. Or 10^44 years at a billion moves a second- the universe being
>> about 10^11 years old) Maybe Po-Mo art is someone continuing a programme
>> in the light of either three of these. However if it was n.3 we would
>> see something like progress to a practically unattainable (but real)
>> goal.
>
>And modernism's goal? You seem very clear about it having one (and the
>artists being conscious of it) so what is/was it? You were also very
>clear before that 'Po-Mo art' was goalless, because modernism had somehow
>reached its goal.
Not quite- see termination's above, po-mo has loads of theories, and
none that are new. I'm starting to repeat myself here - but you keep
asking the same question- see all the reinhardt quotes for now.
>
>> 4: Evolution change newness and progress.
>>
>> Do you wish to argue that evolution doesn't imply progress - just
>> change. Without getting into an argument on this - i'm happy to allow
>> you to mean by evolution - a neutral change or alteration - "complicated
>> series of movements", I was using it the sense of evolution "progressive
>> series of changes" - and will continue to do so.
>
>Why continue to do so? Evolution, in any Darwin related sense, does not
>mean 'progress' if you mean by that, as you appear to, a movement towards
>a goal or an unfolding internal logic, at least as I recall it. I could
>well be wrong here as you have been rather vague about what you mean by
>'progress'. Evolution is, if I remember right, a question of random
>mutation in relation to specific environmental circumstances. Evolution,
>I think, has tended to show that there are a variety of possible
>successful 'answers' to a given situation. So I can't see how you can use
>it as a model for your concept of modernism at all.
Biological evolution is - or was ignorant - perhaps (certain ideas in
physics seem to imply something else - 'The Anthropomorphic' principal -
would certainly do for you!) but certainly has the idea of progress -
better adapted, the goal of a gene is to perpetuate its code. The
internal logic are the possible available structures...
Science tries to progress, as does technology, economics, medicine ....
are the arts to be singled out as the only field in which progress was
never a feature. Again the evidence suggests not. And if so - why is it
that the arts like the sciences resemble a common morphology. So the Po-
mo condition also is found in art - and politics, (new labour - old
tory.- irony see!)
>
>> 4.1: Change - we both seem ready to accept change as a phenomenon of
>> modernism, is the crux here whether the change is progressive. As I've
>> said i wish to maintain that the change in modernism was progressive -
>> which it inherits from modernity in general, and that this is longer
>> found - is no longer true in post-modernism.
>
>First, yes change is a phenomenon of modernism, but not only of modernism
>- or even, as you equate the terms, of modernity. Second, I know that you
>wish to maintain it - you keep on saying that - but apart from a few
>retrospective constructions (ruling out what doesn't fit for you) you
>haven't shown it.
That art doesn't change? OH
>Perhaps it would help if you clarified what you mean by
>'progress' and 'progressive'.
>
I'd love to but i'm thinking your just looking for something else to
pick holes in-
>> 4.2: I would argue that if an activity is changing in a formal way that
>> produces some kind of reductionist morphology then its reasonable to
>> imply the possibility of cause.
>
>I don't think that it is clear that there is only a 'reductionist
>morphology', but I can see why you would say so.
why - explain why you can see i would say so.
> Still, even if I grant
>you the morphology and with it the possibility of cause,
are you saying you agree with this - if so nuff said.
>there is
>absolutely no reason why that necessarily means...
>> This is that it is moving towards a
>> goal.
change - and reductionism leads to nothing.
Doesn't modernism resemble a striptease?
>
>One might, for instance, hypothesise that 'it' was in resistance to
>something which continually recuperated its forms, or was trying to
>maintain something which was continually being turned to other ends. In
>these cases, there is no 'goal' to move towards - if anything the 'aim'
>would be to be able to stop. These are just hypotheses, but would do just
>as well to explain the morphology.
They wouldn't because you just remove the explanation to this mysterious
'something'
>
>> If it was reacting to such a morphology (and not following it) it
>> would produce a divergent morphology. I think the model of reductionist
>> morphology is relevant to modernism. It is not relevant to post-
>> modernism. I think this explains the morphology of modernism and post-
>> modernism- i have offered examples which you are not prepared to accept.
>
>Quite the reverse.
You accept my examples of the proposed reductionist morphology -so you
accept my argument- ?
>I did a quick check and the only example I haven't
>accepted was when I had asked about the pre 19th century and you asked me
>something about cubism as a response, which was irrelevant. All the rest
>I accepted, I just didn't agree that they actually supported your claims.
>For instance, this exchange about Dan Flavin, to which you didn't finally
>reply:
>
>[James]
>now you could say this was accidental but that's like saying creating a
>new theory in physics a new form in literature could be accidental -
>unless this was deliberate - john cage.
> "Not pushing Logic to the Absurd but getting down to the essence of a
>phenomenon- flavin
>I wanted to do a work of art that was as two-dimensional as possible
>Sol Le witt
>
>[Giles]
>Apart from the question of where the primary determination (' was
>deliberate') might come from, and the issue of Cage's 'modernism', I have
>no particular problem with these quotes. Flavin appears to reject
>'logic/analysis' in favour of the irreducibility of an experience (and so
>is not modernist in your terms). The Le Witt would need contextualising -
>what does he mean by 'two-dimensional'?
on the wall - flat.
Your not going to get this i know - but
"The one thing I don't like about Dan Flavins work is the lights"
- Don Judd
>
>[James]
>No rejection of logic, realisation of an essence- here is the idea of
>progress- of getting down to something truer... how you cant see this
>beats me.
>
>[Giles]
>But you cast 'logic/analysis' as involving 'a reductionist tendency'.
>When
>faced with the irreducibility of beauty - i.e. its failure to succumb to
>logical division - you said that modernism just abandoned it as
>inessential
>(with minimalism). But now you say Modernism was in search of the
>irreducible. Why didn't it stop with beauty? Or, again, why shouldn't
>Flavin, or someone, pursue the division of the 'essence of the
>phenomenon' into its component parts? That would be modernist in your
>terms. But he doesn't,
but others did
>and explicitly says that he is not interested in
>'pushing Logic to the Absurd'. It certainly sounds like a rejection of
>'logic/analysis' to me.
what i saw flavin was about - was the lights - not about logic- he's not
rejecting it - he's saying this is what i'm doing. - a realisation of
the next step - see Judds (joke) above. He's not deliberately producing
a critique of logic- he's engaged with the materials- and therefore a
minimal - not conceptual artist- but you know all this.
>
>[end]
>
>So I didn't not accept your example, I just disagreed about what it was
>an example of.
>
>>I think that summarizes my position-
>
>Well, yes and thanks, I suppose. I would like to know what you mean by
>'progress', but otherwise, I had more or less gathered that this was your
>position. There is, however, nothing in this that would stop me
>disagreeing with you, because there is not really anything that responds
>to my objections. You just restate your position again.
>
>
>Giles
>
I don't think you would ever stop disagreeing with me - i've come to the
conclusion that's just what you want to do - even if at times you seem
to follow the argument. I'm happy to call this a day- i'm not going to
do any more work on this for the time- i found going back over the
history interesting - and the model surprising when applied to some
external data- in that i've ended up more convinced than i was.
--
James Whitehead
MAD MAL
On Sat, 4 Dec 1999, Puss in Boots wrote:
> "amcpheat" <amcp...@supanet.com>:
>
> > Modernism was a movement which has dubious roots.
>
> What's a dubious root? I mean, what makes a root dubious?
Dubious roots in the so called Enlightenment.....
deda...@my-deja.com
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I'm happy to draw this to a close as well. I only got into it because you
made some claims, in response to Moggin, that struck me as contentious,
so I thought that I would contend them. Those claims were that modernist
artists were consciously part of the same programme and that this
programme covers European/western culture since the Renaissance (and
corresponded to modernity). Whether elements of modernism were in
rebellion against modernity was another, if more secondary, issue.
[snip]
>
> Without wishing to get to bogged down the pedantic logic of "she said
> she said" - which is the way of all threads perhaps- I was initially
> drawn into this line of thought by something said- that i thought -well
> that's not how i saw it.
OK. But you couched it as a matter of certainity rather than
interpretation (it was 'obvious'), which was why I responded as I did.
> The 'impossibility to demonstrate' relates
> really to what you were saying about artist's quotes - and that i
> couldn't supply sufficient - or some such when i supplied them in
> support of my opinion - (or "just my opinion"). You ask for evidence -
> but reject it when offered- not always though which is confusing.
Sometimes I agreed with you, sometimes - probably mostly - I didn't. You
might be surprised about what we would agree about, but I didn't reject
evidence, I just argued about what it was evidence of.
> If we
> were to progress i would have to have more confidence in what you saw
> as evidence. Anyway I assumed you were offering a theory in which
> modernism was lumped together with post-modernism- both being a critique
> of modernity - logic or whatever.
What I was after was evidence that supported your assertion that all
modernists were consciously part of the same programme. Evidence for that
cannot be provided by pointing out formal lines of descent (or ascent?)
constructed retrospectively, it really requires the record of the artist
saying 'I am part of this programme which consists of such and such, and
has such as its aim' or words to that effect. This is pretty much
impossible - either because many artists didn't say, or leave a record of
saying, such a thing, or because they said something quite different
about their aims, meaning that it isn't the case that they saw themselves
as part of your programme.
Your assumption about what I was offering would be wrong, I'm afraid. In
any case, I don't think I said anything about postmodernism, I tried to
avoid it as not particularly relevant to our discussion about modernism.
> (In terms of being corrected - offering an example of someone seeing
> themselves as part of a programme... Ad Reinhardt should be sufficient
> as one of the most significant painters of late modernism and admired by
> the minimalists. The impossibility of demonstration lies in the audience
> here.)
As I just suggested, it really needs Reinhardt saying it, but even so,
I'd happily agree that some artists did see themselves as part of the
programme you describe, or something close to it.
> But i was thinking about actual issues raised by this thread - this
> addressees the circular argument criticism you gave- i had the idea to
> plot illustrations in a journal - studio international (RIP) or artforum
> to see how painting did in fact stop circa 1970. Well not having the
> resources i tried something similar with a couple of art history books.
> Modern Painting - Herbert Read and a T&H History of Modern art. I used
> three simple categories - representational, abstract-representational
> (cubist or abstract where real forms are identifiable) and pure
> abstract. I then built a spreadsheet based on these categories - of art
> by year from 1880 - 1980. This provides some very interesting results.
It doesn't quite get around the circular argument, as both Read and the
T&H book put forward what they see as a logic of modernism, with
'evidence' through their selection of works, at least as far as I recall.
BTW, what do you mean by 'abstract where real forms are identifiable'?
Would you mean Kandinsky or later Miro here, in which a certain pictorial
space with 'figures' exists? Or cubist related work, which isn't abstract
at all?
Why 1880 as a starting point? Why not 1860, or 1840? It isn't the
Renaissance, though, which you did claim as a starting point.
> Firstly the rise of pure abstraction from 1940 to 1970 (it totally
> dominates) - then it dips down to an average. A small dip during the 60s
> which I put down to pop art, and a greater one in the 30s - surrealism?
Or even the mid to late 1920s. Neo-classicism? Neue Sachlichkeit?
Socialist Realism?
> Interestingly by 1975 all three forms share an equal level. Obviously
> this was a fairly crude study- but shows the abstract domination and
> collapse. My first graph used just pure numbers and showed all three low
> around 1935-45 which I put down to the depression/war. Interestingly
> this highlights the 'external influence' - which is general- it
> depresses all three types of work- whereas after 1945 the expansion into
> pure abstraction is remarkable- an internal formalist influence.
It may be an 'internal formalist' influence, but it doesn't necessarily
follow that it is. BTW, out of curiosity, would it be fair to say from
your exercise that the 'expansion into pure abstraction' is primarily
American until the mid fifties?
> It
> looks like after 1918 all three forms were about equal.
I'm not sure what you mean here. 1918 to 1970?
> It was an
> interesting exercise- What it does also show that the pattern is
> certainly not random. There would be a whole deal of further work from
> this- which should be done- but an NG is not the place- certainly not in
> what is becoming such a negative thread.
I'm sorry if it has seemed negative for you. I thought I was being fairly
clear about what I was asking about and why. I didn't say that I thought
you were completely wrong in what you put forward, for instance, because,
for what it is worth, I don't think that you are.
> I could go on to correlate the
> graph with similar systems and i think get a progressive model - up to
> 1970 established. Pushing it back the various 'isms' and schools may
> well have this same pattern - i suspect they would. The significance is
> since 1970 these waves of development cease. Maybe 30 years isn't long
> enough but i'm sufficiently confident in the model which confirms the
> feeling of a collapse in the optimism of the 60s - in art - and describe
> po-mo.
I wouldn't, very broadly, disagree with your model, at least for after
1945. Nor would I necessarily disagree that your version of modernism has
*some* validity, at least for the period beginning with the second
generation of New York Abstraction, say 1950 or so. But I feel that you
will have problems pushing your model much further back than 1860, or, at
a very tight pinch, 1780. For one thing, you will run out of 'isms' as
you leave the 19th century and for another, the 'isms' from the first
half of the 19th century are (in descending order) Realism, Romanticism
and Neo-classicism.
I am curious as to why you describe the 60s as 'optimistic' when
elsewhere you have depicted the art of the 60s as a kind of endgame
facing up to the failure of its project (minimalism and conceptualism).
Nor do I see why the model 'confirms' the feeling of a collapse. This is
not to say that I wouldn't agree that there was a collapse of sorts.
>>> 1.1: Post Modernist Theory
>>> This is a self contradiction - as you say "represent the unreachable"
>>> (Theories of ... are the hallmark of modernity.)
>>
>> I have no idea what you are referring to here. I have reread what I have
>> previously written in this thread a couple of times but can find no
>> reference to 'Post Modernist Theory'.
> "she said she said" stuff again - but your quote "represent the
> unreachable" was about recent work - ? that makes it a theory?
> Don't worry if you don't mean this - or didn't say this-
I''m sorry, but if you accuse me of contradicting myself, then I would
like to know where and how (not that I don't contradict myself often
enough). As it turns out, I was specifically referring to modernism. Here
is what I said:
"On the other hand, an attempt to somehow represent the unreachable -or
maintain the unanalysable in the face of analysis- sounds like modernism
in revolt against modernity to me."
So, I was talking about modernism and not about 'Post Modernist Theory'.
>>> 2: The modernist discovery or theory is based on a paradigm of "Truth to
>>> materials" - which consequently produces the good and the true. Implicit
>>> in this is the idea of rejecting anything found to be inconsequential
>>> (Ockham's razor).
>>
>> But inconsequential for what? What is the aim for which these things have
>> no consequence?
> For painting - for making art - but we are no longer interested in this
> are we???
Speak for yourself. But this won't quite do, I feel. Minimalism and
conceptualism, 'logically' did away with painting as inconsequential for
making art, you argued, and conceptualism did away with the material
(your 'empty gallery'). You have also suggested that modernism's aim was
either (or both) the failure of art or the discovery of the essential
(quibbles below), but how can this coincide with truth to materials if
there is no material, only context?
>> The modernist 'discovery or theory' that you claim here, as far as I
>> know, is only codified in terms of 'truth to materials' in the early
>> twentieth century, and even then only by a few.
> I reject this - few - when you see the general form - and if you tested
> the general consensus this would be so- early 50s through to 1970s at
> least.
I wouldn't wholly disagree with early 50s through to, well, mid 60s, but
I have seen the 'general form' and it strikes me as far more complicated
than 'truth to materials'. I didn't say that 'truth to materials' didn't
have an existence after the early 20th century (explicitly 1920s or 1910s
if one loosely includes Loos), but that it was only codified as a
project, by a few, at that time.
> And yes it was very much the modernist thing. 144 pieces of lead,
> galvanised sheets propped against a wall....
or laid on the floor as 64 bricks whilst one is at it. But here we are
back to the 'thing' as opposed to the occupation of space in relation to
spectator argument.
>> It could, just
>> conceivably, be taken back to the late 19th century if you wanted to do a
>> Pevsner and include William Morris as a modernist, but then Morris
>> doesn't have the 'logic/analysis' emphasis that you insist upon as
>> modernist. It has a moral emphasis instead, oddly enough in reaction
>> against the tendencies of capitalist production.
> The interest in socialism was in fact an idea based on the concept of
> both evolution and progress.
So Morris envisioning the socialist utopia in the form of a medievalism,
and breaking with reformist (progressive/evolutionary) organisations to
become a revolutionary socialist just fits right in, then?
>> I thought that within science (not mathematics) no theory was true.
> where did you get this idea from? No theory is able to be proved to be
> true - but that's not the same thing.
I realised later that I should have added 'although it could be proved
false'.
>> Moreover, I hugely doubt that the aesthetic qualities of a theory are
>> used to judge its adequacy.
> But they are these days - whereas they were not at one time.
I am willing to confess that contemporary science is beyond my ken, but I
still remain very scepticial that aesthetics has any acknowledged part in
its value judgements.
[snipette]
>>> As we might think we are carrying out this discussion using
>>> some kind of logic(?)
>>
>> We might think that, we might also be mistaken.
>>
>>> then wouldn't the failure of modernism to lay a
>>> foundation for logic be significant.
>>
>> Apart from failing to see any logical relation between the two parts of
>> your sentence, the 'failure' of modernism to 'lay a foundation for logic'
>> would only be significant if you thought that this was the aim of
>> modernism. This is not to dispute that much modernism has been concerned
>> with pointing to a lack of foundation of logic.
> Hold on - your now saying modernism was about this - this theory just
> doesn't match the facts. If you maintain this then you should offer
> evidence.
Fair cop. I offer as a selection: Cezanne, De Stijl, Expressionism, Dada,
Surrealism, Pollock, Newman, Tachism, Brutism, Klein. All of these made
claims that the origin and purpose of their work had little to do with
rationality and, in most cases, explicitly opposed it to the processes
and possibilities of logic. If you are prepared to accept formalist
arguments, then I will add Manet. If you don't mind literature, then I'll
chuck in Proust, Kafka and Beckett as tasters. Music? Wagner, Mahler,
atonal Schoenberg and post serial Nono as samples.
>>> So statements of the kind "maintain the unanlysable in the face of
>>> analysis" which might have been considered non-sensical can be allowed
>>> by virtue of such failures- of the modernist project.
>>
>> Why nonsensical? It makes sense to me, and obviously to you as you
>> 'allow' it. It has been said in various ways (presumably meaningfully)
>> since, well, about the emergence of modernism, and I suspect before.
> I allow it - but it doesn't mean anything does it?
But you wanted the 'essential' as the goal of modernism - the essential
is surely that which cannot be divided into its components. So perhaps it
does mean something to you.
>>> (Ramseden's
>>> allowed to pursue his meaningless empirical investigations. Its an
>>> empirical investigation that is marked by and inability to progress- to
>>> arrive- it employs a method (of science) which was developed to reach
>>> conclusions - to decided the case- but his use is not for this - its
>>> ironic)
>>
>> Your rejection of Ramsden is another thing that I can't understand.
>> Ramsden's concern with aesthetics is most certainly not ironic, although
>> you now appear determined to see it that way.
> As he was part of a movement which rejected aesthetics i do see it as
> ironic, and the use of empirical investigation- that's science - is he
> doing science?
You can see it as ironic if you want, although this is against his
conscious conception of what he is doing, which you have seemed rather
keen on before. You were the one who insisted on the science-art parallel
('Are they so different?'), not I. As to his change of direction, what
could be more dramatic proof of your conception of modernism? It
certainly wasn't an easy transition for Ramsden.
>> Rather it was arrived at
>> through exactly what you have called an 'empirical/logical analysis'. I
>> can only presume that you don't like his conclusions because they go
>> against your insistence on a certain historical trajectory or teleology.
> what conclusions?
That there is something about the aesthetic which cannot be empirically/
analytically discarded for an artwork.
>> What if what is involved is a recognition of a 'wrong turn', as sometimes
>> happens in - yer know - science? I am not saying that I side with Ramsden
>> or that I don't (I'm not sure to be honest), but in terms of your model,
>> you should be prepared to accept Ramsden and his conclusions as
>> modernist.
> You cant be modernist now- its like those guys who re-enact battles-
> or dress up as cow boys.
Again, you proclaim a historical closure which has no grounds in the
'logic' that you see leading to this closure.
>> He has 'progressed' in your terms, he has moved beyond a
>> current orthodoxy in a continuing logical/empirical analysis of his
>> 'object'.
> He's regressed back to objects from concepts- although if He's doing
> empirical investigations who knows-
Exactly.
[snip]
>>> There are two internal endings (possible third). If
>>> the goal is reached, or if its found the goal is unreachable. (Trying to
>>> make a perpetual motion machine is optimistic, to continue to do so
>>> after understanding the laws of thermodynamics is ironic.) Solving
>>> something like Fermat's theorem once done- ends the task- successfully -
>>
>> Hell, what about the infinity of prime numbers.
> what about them? The task that's ended was Fermat's - the highest prime
> is another matter.
It just struck me as an 'internal' but infinite mathematical task, and as
you had mentioned before that the process of enquiry no longer proceeded
in mathematics, I just thought it apposite. Sorry.
>>> Mathematical formalisms have been proved to be inconsistent.
>>
>> Either I don't follow, or you don't.
> I think i follow - in computing its called the Halting Problem. It
> proves an uncertainty- it gives limits-
I know nothing, so couldn't comment.
>>> Resourcing
>>> either will have no effect. The third is the case where the activity is
>>> in principle solvable but not practical. A good example of this is the
>>> towers of Hanoi. (three spindles the first with 64 disks ranging from
>>> large to small diameter - the task is to transfer the tower from spindle
>>> 1 to spindle three moving only one disk at a time and never putting a
>>> larger disk on a smaller- this would take 10^44 billion years at 1 move
>>> a second. Or 10^44 years at a billion moves a second- the universe being
>>> about 10^11 years old) Maybe Po-Mo art is someone continuing a programme
>>> in the light of either three of these. However if it was n.3 we would
>>> see something like progress to a practically unattainable (but real)
>>> goal.
>>
>> And modernism's goal? You seem very clear about it having one (and the
>> artists being conscious of it) so what is/was it? You were also very
>> clear before that 'Po-Mo art' was goalless, because modernism had somehow
>> reached its goal.
> Not quite- see termination's above, po-mo has loads of theories, and
> none that are new. I'm starting to repeat myself here - but you keep
> asking the same question- see all the reinhardt quotes for now.
So pomo (at least in the visual arts) doesn't have a goal that hasn't
previously been fulfilled (or failed)? Oddly enough, we might perhaps
agree here, although probably for different reasons.
>>> 4: Evolution change newness and progress.
>>>
>>> Do you wish to argue that evolution doesn't imply progress - just
>>> change. Without getting into an argument on this - i'm happy to allow
>>> you to mean by evolution - a neutral change or alteration - "complicated
>>> series of movements", I was using it the sense of evolution "progressive
>>> series of changes" - and will continue to do so.
>>
>> Why continue to do so? Evolution, in any Darwin related sense, does not
>> mean 'progress' if you mean by that, as you appear to, a movement towards
>> a goal or an unfolding internal logic, at least as I recall it. I could
>> well be wrong here as you have been rather vague about what you mean by
>> 'progress'. Evolution is, if I remember right, a question of random
>> mutation in relation to specific environmental circumstances. Evolution,
>> I think, has tended to show that there are a variety of possible
>> successful 'answers' to a given situation. So I can't see how you can use
>> it as a model for your concept of modernism at all.
> Biological evolution is - or was ignorant - perhaps (certain ideas in
> physics seem to imply something else - 'The Anthropomorphic' principal -
> would certainly do for you!) but certainly has the idea of progress -
> better adapted, the goal of a gene is to perpetuate its code. The
> internal logic are the possible available structures...
This is not progress in any sense that I can understand. Survival
(perpetuation) as a goal? No problem. The goal then is stasis, it is just
that the damn environment and random mutation keeps getting in the way.
The 'available structures' as internal logic bit is surely not the case.
Isn't the point the appearance of a previously unavailable structure
which gives advantage in relation to a specific environment or situation.
There are often, it seems, a number of possible successful 'answers' in
any given case. If so, then there is no internal logic, no
'reductionism', and 'progress' or change only in response to a failure of
stasis. Your call.
> Science tries to progress, as does technology, economics, medicine ....
> are the arts to be singled out as the only field in which progress was
> never a feature. Again the evidence suggests not. And if so - why is it
> that the arts like the sciences resemble a common morphology. So the Po-
> mo condition also is found in art - and politics, (new labour - old
> tory.- irony see!)
That last is an irony I know only too well, but it is hardly new. Labour
governments have always acted against their purported values (immigration
acts, prevention of terrorism act, monetarism with Healy, anti union
legislation, refusal to give up nukes, and this goes right back to the
failure to nationalise banks in the '45 govt or Ramsay MacDonald in the
20s). As to the relation of art to technology, economics(??), medicine
etc., there are surely several differences. One prime one being what is
the utility of change in the arts (with the obvious exception of profit)?
One might draw a closer comparison with fashion - with art's problem then
being how to avoid becoming fashion (endless, repetitive novelty).
>>> 4.1: Change - we both seem ready to accept change as a phenomenon of
>>> modernism, is the crux here whether the change is progressive. As I've
>>> said i wish to maintain that the change in modernism was progressive -
>>> which it inherits from modernity in general, and that this is longer
>>> found - is no longer true in post-modernism.
>>
>> First, yes change is a phenomenon of modernism, but not only of modernism
>> - or even, as you equate the terms, of modernity. Second, I know that you
>> wish to maintain it - you keep on saying that - but apart from a few
>> retrospective constructions (ruling out what doesn't fit for you) you
>> haven't shown it.
> That art doesn't change? OH
No, that the change in modernism was progressive. I had hoped that was
clear, my apologies.
>> Perhaps it would help if you clarified what you mean by
>> 'progress' and 'progressive'.
>>
> I'd love to but i'm thinking your just looking for something else to
> pick holes in-
Possibly so, but it seems so central to your claims about modernism -
which is why I might well try pick holes. I am, after all, disagreing
with your conception of modernism at least partly because of your claim
that it is progressive.
>>> 4.2: I would argue that if an activity is changing in a formal way that
>>> produces some kind of reductionist morphology then its reasonable to
>>> imply the possibility of cause.
>>
>> I don't think that it is clear that there is only a 'reductionist
>> morphology', but I can see why you would say so.
> why - explain why you can see i would say so.
Because there is a significant amount of modernist work over the
twentieth century which could be read in such a way, in particular in the
post war period, as I said above. I'll even go so far as to say that a
'reductionist morphology' can easily be seen from this end of the 20th
century.
>> Still, even if I grant
>> you the morphology and with it the possibility of cause,
> are you saying you agree with this - if so nuff said.
No, I said even if I grant you - meaning 'even if, for the sake of
argument'. Still, I have just agreed that a certain morphology could well
be retrospectively constructed.
>> there is
>> absolutely no reason why that necessarily means...
>>> This is that it is moving towards a
>>> goal.
> change - and reductionism leads to nothing.
> Doesn't modernism resemble a striptease?
Still doesn't mean it was a goal.
>> One might, for instance, hypothesise that 'it' was in resistance to
>> something which continually recuperated its forms, or was trying to
>> maintain something which was continually being turned to other ends. In
>> these cases, there is no 'goal' to move towards - if anything the 'aim'
>> would be to be able to stop. These are just hypotheses, but would do just
>> as well to explain the morphology.
> They wouldn't because you just remove the explanation to this mysterious
> 'something'
True enough, and for suggestions on this something, you could try, for
instance: Greenberg, Lukacs, Adorno, Benjamin, even Heidegger, or from
the late 18th/early 19th century, in a somewhat different manner,
Schiller and the early Romantics. We might, for shorthand, call this
something 'modernity', although what modernity might mean could and does
take varied forms in those accounts. But that doesn't change the point,
which is that alternative explanations of a 'reductionist morphology'
exist. Therefore it does not necessarily follow that it was an internal
logic (or *purely* internal logic to be accurate) leading towards a goal.
You might want it to be so, and you might be sure you can see it, but it
doesn't have to follow that it is so.
>>> If it was reacting to such a morphology (and not following it) it
>>> would produce a divergent morphology. I think the model of reductionist
>>> morphology is relevant to modernism. It is not relevant to post-
>>> modernism. I think this explains the morphology of modernism and post-
>>> modernism- i have offered examples which you are not prepared to accept.
>>
>> Quite the reverse.
> You accept my examples of the proposed reductionist morphology -so you
> accept my argument- ?
Nope. Even if I did accept a reductionist morphology - and I might be
prepared to do so, retrospectively, at least - then that doesn't mean
that I accept your argument. See above.
I think I do get it, although it opens up a whole set of questions about
what Flavin's work would be without the lights as objects. The only
feasible answer would be the room - the 'object' would be the
spectator's experience of the space suffused with light.
It might sound like a daft question, but, if Judd meant 'flat', why
didn't he do it? The joke points to his rejection of the art work as
'object' to be sure, even as a painting, but his answer was to move to
the phenomenological - in which it was not the object but the spatial/
temporal experience of the spectator in relation to the thing/space that
was the art work. It was to be as unengaging as possible as a projective
or imaginative space. Possibly this is what Judd means by '2D', not
literally flat, which he didn't actually do.
>> [James]
>> No rejection of logic, realisation of an essence- here is the idea of
>> progress- of getting down to something truer... how you cant see this
>> beats me.
>>
>> [Giles]
>> But you cast 'logic/analysis' as involving 'a reductionist tendency'.
>> When
>> faced with the irreducibility of beauty - i.e. its failure to succumb to
>> logical division - you said that modernism just abandoned it as
>> inessential
>> (with minimalism). But now you say Modernism was in search of the
>> irreducible. Why didn't it stop with beauty? Or, again, why shouldn't
>> Flavin, or someone, pursue the division of the 'essence of the
>> phenomenon' into its component parts? That would be modernist in your
>> terms. But he doesn't,
> but others did
Not Flavin. He wants to stop somewhere, apparently.
>> and explicitly says that he is not interested in
>> 'pushing Logic to the Absurd'. It certainly sounds like a rejection of
>> 'logic/analysis' to me.
> what i saw flavin was about - was the lights - not about logic- he's not
> rejecting it - he's saying this is what i'm doing. - a realisation of
> the next step - see Judds (joke) above. He's not deliberately producing
> a critique of logic- he's engaged with the materials- and therefore a
> minimal - not conceptual artist- but you know all this.
I do know what you mean, but this *is* a critique of logic, if not a very
detailed one. He wants to find something which cannot be logically
reduced, to set against 'pushing Logic to the Absurd'.
[snip]
>>> I think that summarizes my position-
>>
>> Well, yes and thanks, I suppose. I would like to know what you mean by
>> 'progress', but otherwise, I had more or less gathered that this was your
>> position. There is, however, nothing in this that would stop me
>> disagreeing with you, because there is not really anything that responds
>> to my objections. You just restate your position again.
>>
>>
>> Giles
>>
> I don't think you would ever stop disagreeing with me - i've come to the
> conclusion that's just what you want to do - even if at times you seem
> to follow the argument.
I did ask for that, I suppose, patronise and ye shall be patronised. But
I really wasn't just out for an argument (well, not wholly). I disagreed
with you on some specific claims you made about modernism, not least
because you maintained them as absolutes. We might disagree, or even
agree, about much, but I tried to restrict myself to why I thought your
claims didn't match the facts, and why I thought some of your terms
didn't work as conceptual models. I think I have at least taken your
amplifications of your case seriously and responded to them.
> I'm happy to call this a day- i'm not going to
> do any more work on this for the time- i found going back over the
> history interesting - and the model surprising when applied to some
> external data- in that i've ended up more convinced than i was.
Damn, then I have failed in my mission, and the earth is doomed.
Alexander Nekvasil
> The source of his power isn't control, but the flexibility that arises
> from not having to obey the rules that everyone else takes for granted
> (such as laws of physics) -- this could be a metaphor for the power
> that someone with a postmodern mindset has once they realize that all
> the metanarratives that people so dearly adhere to are just illusions.
>
> The metanarrative that Neo seeks to point out to people is that they
> are a source of energy for the robots, which is to say, they are the
> power that drives modernism/captialism. This fact could be considered
> a metanarrative in itself, one that Neo is trying to impress upon the
> general public, insofar as the idea of metanarratives in postmodern
> criticism is itself a metanarrative. There's no escape :o)
I thought this is just very crude metaphor, based on the
equivalence of heat and (mechanical) labour, no?
(Zizek, of course, thinks otherwise)