significance narrative painting
isidoor
modernist painting is mostly about painting itself. it is just shaping,
it's only design.
i would like to discuss about this subject. please react.
rick.
emat...@tomatoweb.com
clarification on some of the terms.
Narrative? It can be an ambiguous term when applied to painting. In many
camps painting per se is considered 'anti-narrative' when compared to other
art-forms such as a novel, dramatic performance, or a comic strip. This is
because a painting by it's very nature lack the essential ingredient of a
narrative -- time (or more specifically, 'sequence' - the sequence in which
the story unfolds).
So that sub-species of painting that we call 'narrative' i.e. 'tells a story'
really only refers to a story that is told elsewhere in culture, like the
Story of Moses, The Story of George Washington at Valley Forge, The Story of
Socrates, and so on...
In that sense we can say that DuChamp's works are narrative, in that the
refer to a story told elsewhere in culture -- in this case the counter story
that Marcel and friends created as a referent to his actually art pieces, and
embedded is a large myriad of writings, memoirs, biographies and so on that
the students of DuChamp could discover for years to come.
Art about art also refers to a story--and that story is of course how it came
to be that art would become focused on itself -- another story that exists
not in the painting itself, but in the painting's cultural environment.
So I need to hear from you just what you mean by 'narrative' painting, or
else a discussion on this topic could go anywhere, and possibly in a
direction that would not be particularly meaningful to you. Also, you can
set down the terms for what you consider to be 'contemporary' art -- since
some would think it was the art that was produced in 1990 onward, others 1968
onwards, and still others 1900 onwards.
Erik Mattila
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zi...@interport.net
As a narrative painter, I disagree with you. I believe that any
artist who is mining an authentic vein and in not playing fashionable
games is capable of doing worthwhile art. An abstract painter, an
artist whose level of abstraction changes from painting to painting or
within a painting, a tight realist, a classicist or a narrative
painter. There is a wonderful fairly young still-life painter named
Susan Walp. There are wonderful landscape painters like Richard
LaPresti and Stanley Lewis. How can the subject matter of a painting
predict its quality?
Gabriel
On Sun, 21 Feb 1999 17:36:58 +0100, "isidoor" <isi...@worldonline.nl>
zi...@interport.net
Furthermore, your description of abstract painting is extremely
uninformed. No important modernist painters believed in "design"
except perhaps Laszlo Moholy-Nagy[some of the time]. If you want to
know what Mondrian is about, read his own writings. He comes out of
symbolsim. If you want to know whart synbolism is about read Redon,
the Nabis, Gauguin and Claude Bernard or the unfinished but published
book by Robert Goldwater. If you want to know what Paul Klee's
abstract paintings were about read hs Journals and the first volume of
the Thinking Eye.
None of the abstract expressionists believed in design. In fact Rothko
got canned at my old school Brooklyn College when he went up to Robert
J. Wolff, originally of the Chicago Bauhaus and said "Why don't you
get ridof all this design shit." Neitherhe nor Reinhardt nor Newman
nor Still nor deKooning nor Kline nor Hofmann nor Motherwell nor
Hayter nor Miro believed in design. Badly taught and ignorant teachers
of a formalist persuasion taught then as though they were about
design. But they were about and meant to be about ideas, power,
feeling. Mondrian meant to change the world through his art! He was
not interested in "good design" per se, but in forms which would make
people happier,, more rested and more fulfilled.
Instead of relying on the ignorance of art teachers and bad [as
opposed to good] art historians, why don't you read what the artists
themselves said. I cannot think of one painting I like which was
painted out of a love of good design, or could be called good design.
In fact using that term would be the worst pejorative remark anyone
could make about it. And and and---it makes me finally speechless.
Gabriel
emat...@tomatoweb.com
zi...@interport.net wrote:
>
Gabriel, I just want you to know how much I appreiate your posts to this
newsgoup. I don't always agree with you, but I want to concede to your age
and your experience in these matters, which is much greater than my own.
Sometimes you come off like a fanatic -- but what the hell, you're passionate
about the object of your address. I respect you deeply, and I want you to
take that into account.
Just a little diversion, which I think is appropriate. In my life I had the
great honer of being friends of the last bloodline chief of the Pit River
Indian Nation of Northeastern California, Charles Buckskin. Charlie was a
wonderful person, and around 1985 he realized that he hadn't passed on the
heritage of his people to the younger generation. The younger generation, as
it were, was more interested in partying, doping up, and general ribaldary,
than it was in making itself available to receiving cultural instructions.
But Charlie blamed himself for this, and he went to the grave without an
understanding that he had succeeded in passing the knowledge of his people
on. This was a terrible tragedy.
So I just wanted to frame my mesage here in such a way that will tell you
with confidence that your imput into this newsgroup is deeply apppreciated,
at least by me--just one individual. I read your words diligently, and I pay
deep attention to what you are saying -- and most of what you say has a very
deep meaning for me. I just want you to know that I am very appreciative of
your contribution to this news group, and encourage you to continue giving us
your very valuable views and opinion.