The Painted Word
Larry Rosenhein
Painted Word_. . . this time all in one evening, since this earlier book is
more subdued in style (for Wolfe; that still means hypercaffeinated for
normal people).
Because art is non-functional, debates about contemporary art are
less pressing than those concerning architecture, so the issues are more
academic than political. Wolfe quotes a well-known art critic as saying
that is has become impossible for him to see art without a theory, which
explains a lot to Wolfe about what has been going on with painting since
Picasso. In fact, he writes--with irony, _I_think_--that the theories of
art are more beautiful than the art itself.
Some of the points he makes are fairly self-evident to a casual
observer of the art scene such as myself; they would, paradoxically, be less
so to a more knowledgeable person, but such a person is likely to have more
invested in the critical dogma and may not be completely trustworthy.
Certainly, to someone prepared to go by just the evidence of the eyes, a lot
of modern art is a bad joke. (I find some of it occasionally interesting;
but unlike reading a "difficult" novel by Thomas Pynchon, say, in which I
have confidence that the creator does have a plan, and which is often
entertaining or inspiring at the most accessible level, much of the modern
art I've seen--such as a whole Guggenheim-ful of Rothko paintings I viewed
once--makes me feel like the monkey trying to write Shakespeare. For this,
according to the cognescenti, I am a philistine.) Hence the need for
theories, which have been amply supplied. Wolfe has a good time tracing the
theories through levels of abstractness as more and more traditional
elements of painting have been removed from the artist's toolkit. And he is
even funnier (he contributes some cartoons of his own) talking about the
world of artists/patrons/critics, from which "the public" is well-insulated.
When I say the points are self-evident, I mean that some of the work
is so blatantly content-free that there have to be _some_ guiding principles
that led the museums to collect them. It is the silliness of the theories
that Wolfe implicitly derides. (Explictly, he admires the theorists'
ability to justify. . . almost anything.)
Being a (physical) scientist, I could make the obvious and probably
unoriginal cheat shot that workers in the most unexpected places (the arts,
let's say) seem to have a need to build their field into something like a
science, whose most important feature would be theories with which to
evaluate past results and to guide future projects. Literature also has its
theorists (I hear) but I think the theories tend to come and go while the
great works endure. The paintings Wolfe writes about seem to depend on the
theories for their meaning and value.
--Larry Rosenhein
Bill Duke
become impossible for him to see art without a theory, which
explains a lot to Wolfe about what has been going on with
painting since Picasso."
represent? Theoretical underpinnings for art long predate
Picasso. Seurat and Manet, among others, were conversant with
the theories of optics current at the time, and took them into
consideration when refining their respective artistic styles.
Contemporary painters are often seen as theory-bound pranksters;
the Impressionists are considered 19th-century masters, though they
were widely ridiculed in their day.
"Certainly, to someone prepared to go by just the evidence of the
eyes, a lot of modern art is a bad joke."
Kind of like Matisse being dismissed as disorganized drivel.
("Donatello chez les fauves!" -- Donatello among the beasts!)
"Fauvism," like "Impressionism," was coined by a hostile critic
and was originally a term of derision. Your assessment could
easily have come from the mouth of someone over a century ago.
"...much of the modern art I've seen--such as a whole
Guggenheim-ful of Rothko paintings I viewed once--makes me feel
like the monkey trying to write Shakespeare."
Perhaps Rothko is not to your taste. I happen to find his
paintings fortifying in some mysterious way, but to each his
own. He's not the sort of painter whose work is best appreciated
by marathon viewings. (Baklava is delicious, but I wouldn't want
to eat it all afternoon.)
"...talking about the world of artists/patrons/critics, from which
'the public' is well-insulated."
The public has always been well-insulated from the world of
art, its patrons and its critics. Except for art commissioned by
the church and displayed in religious settings, only a tiny
fraction of people ever saw the work of a recognized master, until
the (relatively recent) rise of the public museum.
"...some of the work is so blatantly content-free that there have
to be _some_ guiding principles that led the museums to collect
them."
Name me a work of art that is "content-free." I can't even guess
what this might mean, unless you're using the term in some
rarefied sense with which I'm unfamiliar. Even Malevich's "White
on White" or Jasper John's "Erased DeKooning" cannot be said to be
without content. Hell, even Jenny Holzer...wait, I don't want to
undermine my own point. I'll stop here.
"Literature also has its theorists (I hear) but I think the
theories tend to come and go while the great works endure. The
paintings Wolfe writes about seem to depend on the theories for
their meaning and value."
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Theorists are attracted
to important works of art (literature or painting) because they
want to better understand how they operate, and why they have the
effect they do. The theories (or at least the theorists) come and
go; the works under consideration abide. They don't rely on
theoretics for their justification. If they do, they don't last.
-- Bill Duke
Mark Taranto
> Perhaps Rothko is not to your taste. I happen to find his
> paintings fortifying in some mysterious way, but to each his
> own. He's not the sort of painter whose work is best appreciated
> by marathon viewings. (Baklava is delicious, but I wouldn't want
> to eat it all afternoon.)
Whenever I see one Rothko, I'm always surprised that I like it.
But my first exposure to Rothko was seeing five floors of the stuff at
The Walker in Minneapolis. I looked at the first one, and liked it.
I looked at the second and thought "Ah, he's doing things with colors"
and looked forward to seeing something else. After five floors of
seeing the same thing, I started to wonder if he committed suicide
because he couldn't come up with a second idea.
"Not for marathon viewing" -- that's for sure.
I did hear a story about a restaurant that commissioned a series of
paintings from him. When he didn't deliver in a timely fashion, they
told him that they would want their money back if he didn't deliver
soon. He painted a series of his paintings in intestinal red. The
restaurant finally had to remove the paintings. Their patrons
wouldn't eat with those paintings there.
Mark
ALANT24FPS
Taranto) writes:
(about Mark Rothko)
:I did hear a story about a restaurant that commissioned a series of
:paintings from him. When he didn't deliver in a timely fashion,
they
:told him that they would want their money back if he didn't deliver
:soon. He painted a series of his paintings in intestinal red. The
:restaurant finally had to remove the paintings. Their patrons
:wouldn't eat with those paintings there.
It was The Four Seasons, in NYC, I think.
_The Painted Word_ came out when I was a freshman in art school in
early l975. I gave a copy (of the excerpt from Harpers) to my art
history professor, Norris K. Smith. Smith had studied with Meyer
Shapiro and was very old guard. He pretended to be even more so:
talked a lot about the moral content of art, professed to see a
'coming dark age,' and generally said things which confused,
outraged, and shook up us students--which we needed.
Anyway, he said that the Wolfe piece was interesting and amusing, but
'not very wise.'
Wolfe hacked up the straw men he'd created but not much else. The
aspect of the art world that Wolfe seemed to deplore is driven by
dealers and collectors, not theorists. He could easily write a
similar book today skewering...who? Schnabel? Botero? Koons? Maybe
the 'graffitti' scene of some years back? Or the performance artists
of whom Karen Finley is the most obvious target...
For a far deeper look into art and some good ideas (not theories)
about how to try to look at it, try Robert Hughes.
Best wishes,
Alan
poking along the information superhighway in an oil-burning Nash
Metropolitan hoping AOL doesn't shut it down for repairs before I get
home.
Ted B Samsel
Terry Allen, an art professor/C&W musician out of Fresno State
(I think) wrote a song about the east coast "art" establishment
sending an 18-wheeler full of "art" to the west coast. On the
way, the semi jack-knifes and catches fire.
The song goes (and I paraphrase)
"Out on the highway, there's a truck
full of art,
Burning out of control,
And nobody knows what it means."
Professor Allen has a play he wrote the libretto for that may
be headed towards Broadway concerning hookers in the oil
patch boom towns of the 1920s called CHIPPIE.
But what can one expect from a guy from Lubbock? (;-)
###
--
Ted Samsel ....."driving a Hudson Hornet on the information
superhighway. Now all we need is a JC Whitney
catalog to order leopardskin terrycloth seat
covers."
Bill Duke
Kinda sneaks up on you. That's the reason I get impatient with
those who say you need to grasp the theoretical foundations for a
particular work before you can really "appreciate" it. (Also
because it's profoundly anti-democratic.) To paraphase T.S. Eliot
on poetry: A good painting reaches you before you understand it.
"...I started to wonder if he committed suicide because he
couldn't come up with a second idea."
He definitely wrung all he could out of that particular
approach. And he actually got _more_ restrictive as he went
along. One of his last commissions, a series for a chapel at Rice
University, are so monchromatic it's hard to tell one piece
from another. Then again, the man was severaly manic/depressive and
would take his own life not long afterward, so it's hard to know
how accurately the work reflected his state of mind. (And to hear
tell, the paintings have been allowed to deteriorate shamefully.
Poor Mark....)
"I did hear a story about a restaurant...."
Perhaps the "Four Seasons" in New York. Another example of his
growing instability. He gladly accepted the commission, but when he
'realised' wealthy financiers and assorted fat-cats would be
savoring their foie gras amid the sweat of his brow, he refused to
let the works be installed. I think they were eventually hung
somewhere else.
-- Bill
John McCarthy
understand works of art was Hilton Kramer. Wolfe refered to him as
"critic-in-chief" of the New York Times. Kramer now edits and maybe
publishes _The New Criterion_.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Sean Matthews
`problems' with sixties-and-on art appears in the current edition of Modern
Painters. A bit better than the selfconscious philistinism of Wolfe. It simply
points out, in reasonable terms, that there is a disagreement between the New
York/German ideas of what contemporary artists should be doing, and the
`conservatives', and suggests that time will sort things out.
The proper response to art that you don't like is to ignore it; it is not
to make sweeping remarks about the pretentiousness of the (currently) avantguarde
art world - doing that only brands you as a philistine.
Sean
P.S., another good thing to read is `The vogue for abstract art', in `Meditations
on a hobby horse', by Gombrich, which is gently critical, not of abstract
art, but the way that it has become so completely dominant. I think he wrote it
in the early sixties, but the remarks could, if you wanted them to, apply to
the current situation. A bit more intelligently reasoned than Tom Wolfe is
every likely to be.
--
Sean Matthews <se...@mpi-sb.mpg.de>
Work: Max-Planck-Institut fuer Informatik, phone: +49 681 302 5363
Im Stadtwald, D-66123 Saarbruecken, Germany fax: +49 681 302 5401
Home: Grossherzog-Friedrich Str. 70, Saarbruecken phone: +49 681 64015
Ann Griffith
>
>I did hear a story about a restaurant that commissioned a series of
>paintings from him. When he didn't deliver in a timely fashion, they
>told him that they would want their money back if he didn't deliver
>soon. He painted a series of his paintings in intestinal red. The
>restaurant finally had to remove the paintings. Their patrons
>wouldn't eat with those paintings there.
I heard a story, too: that Rothko was painting some of those
amazing red hues with his blood. Of course, that's ludicrous
and macabre.
Ann
Joann Zimmerman
> Mark Taranto writes:
As a counterpoint to all the rumor, hearsay and other unsubstantiables that
have been flapping round, let me just recommend the recent biography of
Rothko by James Breslin. Came out in the last couple of years. I've looked
through it, and it appears that Breslin has interviewed all the right
people and done a good job of untangling some rather knotty issues.
--
"Books speak even when they stand unopened on the shelf. If you would
know a man or woman, look at their books, not their software."
--E. Annie Proulx
Joann Zimmerman jz...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu