Good painting and Good subject matter
-N.
> Let me comment on that one. Good painting which in fact had nothing to
> do with the subject matter the painting was about would be bad
> painting.
What does having "nothing to do with" mean? Maybe only deficit of imagination.
> There is no such thing as "good painting." taken out of the context of
> what the painting is about.
That context is infinite, and determined by the individual viewer, their
personal history, biography, tastes, ideology, era, etc., etc....
>Even that 18th century academic who wrote
> the first book about pictorial composition [can't get hs name today]
> in which he discussed the way the eye should move over the surface to
> describe space -
SHOULD? Is this clown making prescriptive limitations for art and artists?
I suppose he holds the formulas and the absolute golden key to quality.
ROTFL!
thids basic tool which, he said, had been a secret
> which painters learned in their shops but did n't bother to talk about
> until he did- even he, that far backj, said that different kinds of
> movement were appropriate to different kinds of painting.
Another self-proclaimed arbiter of taste.
And in the
> back of the book he hasseveral different kinds of painting with the
> arrows of movement drawn in to show what he means.
Sounds like a load of hogwash to me.
> In other words if you painted a love scene with the kinds of movements
> which go in a battle scene. You would have done something
> inappropriate, and bad.
I am excited by the prospect doing a peice of writing that takes the form
of writing a political polemic rewritten as a love poem.
Here the path of men fork: in my book, by doing the above, you would have
done something appropriate and good, or inappropriate and good. What is
inappropriate in art? Surely we are not so simple minded as to need Mr.
Presumptuous 18th Century Academic Buffoon to spoon feed the scope of,
declare the limits of, and police the execution of our own artistic
enterprises for us.
Good God!
Your public -the commissioning buyer -would
> not have gotten what he or she wanted and would not give you the rest
> of your price. You would have painted a bad painting.
Good heavens. You might even, god forbid, end up with a very exciting
peice of artwork, despite the opinions of a few self appointed
philistines.
> If you were a good anf cinscientious artist, your work would have
> fully acted in space and surface, but the action wpould have been
> inappropriate to the subject, and metaphroically devious.
Glad we had him around to police our pictorial imaginations, on behalf of
our own interests. He is certainly a national (or international) treasure.
> A bad work of art is not necessarily one which doesn't "work" it
> could be one in which the construction is at variance with the
> subject, Thus, out of control of the artist who made it.
A good work of art is not necessarily one which "works" it
could be one in which the construction is at variance with the
subject, Thus, out of control (or consciously so controlled) by the artist
who made it.
> Isn't that what I and many other artists find appalling in such
> nineteenth century works as Cabanel's Venus,
Can't say; consult Mr. Presumptuous 18th Century Academic Buffoon for your
answer.
Operating In Strict Accordance with International Aesthetic Laws and Licensing,
-N.
[Saving grace: at least muscicians were not evoked in this post. -Ed]
--
N
To reach me, remove _xxx from my address.
zi...@interport.net
I read an exchange today in which someone is telling Iian [if that is
the right spelling] tghat good painting has nothing to do withsubject
matter.
Let me comment on that one. Good painting which in fact had nothing to
do with the subject matter the painting was about would be bad
painting.
There is no such thing as "good painting." taken out of the context of
what thepainting is about. Even that 18th century academic who wrote
the first book about pictorial composition [can't get hs name today]
in which he discussed the way the eye should move over the surface to
describe space -thids basic tool which, he said, had been a secret
which painters learned in their shops but did n't bother to talk about
until he did- even he, that far backj, said that different kinds of
movement were appropriate to different kinds of painting. And in the
back of the book he hasseveral different kinds of painting with the
arrows of movement drawn in to show what he means.
In other words if you painted a love scene with the kinds of movements
which go in a battle scene. You would have done something
inappropriate, and bad. Your public -the commissioning buyer -would
not have gotten what he or she wanted and would not give you the rest
of your price. You would have painted a bad painting.
If you were a good anf cinscientious artist, your work would have
fully acted in space and surface, but the action wpould have been
inappropriate to the subject, and metaphroically devious.
A bad work of art is not necessarily one which doesn't "work" it
could be one in which the construction is at variance with the
subject, Thus, out of control of the artist who made it.
Isn't that what I and many other artists find appalling in such
nineteenth century works as Cabanel's Venus,
Gabriel
Frederic Goudal
> There is no such thing as "good painting." taken out of the context of
> what thepainting is about. Even that 18th century academic who wrote
> the first book about pictorial composition [can't get hs name today]
> in which he discussed the way the eye should move over the surface to
> describe space -thids basic tool which, he said, had been a secret
> which painters learned in their shops but did n't bother to talk about
> until he did- even he, that far backj, said that different kinds of
> movement were appropriate to different kinds of painting. And in the
> back of the book he hasseveral different kinds of painting with the
> arrows of movement drawn in to show what he means.
>
> In other words if you painted a love scene with the kinds of movements
> which go in a battle scene. You would have done something
> inappropriate, and bad.
Love is a battle :) But more seriously here again you put the damn statement :
There is A way to do something. And here again we come to stupid discussion...
Why the hell do you need to categorize like that ?
It is true that the movements are more or less appropriate, but there
is no such thing as a "battle scene movement". There is no such thig
as a "love scene movement".
I know that once you have removed this classification life is not so
sure, and that you have no safety belt. But if you want to be secure,
don't try to do art.
f.g.
--
FiLH photography. A taste of freedom in a conventional world.
New web site address http://www.i-france.com/filh
e-mail gou...@enserb.u-bordeaux.fr
FAQ frp : http://www.enserb.u-bordeaux.fr/~goudal/frp/faq.html
peter nelson
<36a3f600...@news.interport.net>...
>There is no such thing as "good painting." taken out of the context of
>what thepainting is about. Even that 18th century academic who wrote
>the first book about pictorial composition [can't get hs name today]
>in which he discussed the way the eye should move over the surface to
>describe space -thids basic tool which, he said, had been a secret
>which painters learned in their shops but did n't bother to talk about
>until he did- even he, that far backj, said that different kinds of
>movement were appropriate to different kinds of painting. And in the
>back of the book he hasseveral different kinds of painting with the
>arrows of movement drawn in to show what he means.
>
>In other words if you painted a love scene with the kinds of movements
>which go in a battle scene. You would have done something
>inappropriate, and bad.
. . . According to his formula.
Anyway the distinction between a love scene and a battle scene
is arbitrary. There is a famous painting by < Iferget - Turner maybe,
or Stanfield?) of the mortally-wounded Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar
with the sailors cradling him and reacting with horror and grief while the
battle raged all about. The love that the men felt for their dying
commander
was just as much an element of the work as the battle. Should this
have been painted according to the rules of a love scene or
a battle scene?
>If you were a good anf cinscientious artist, your work would have
>fully acted in space and surface, but the action wpould have been
>inappropriate to the subject, and metaphroically devious.
But this doesn't address the issue of good and bad subject matter,
only whether there are some treatments which are more appropriate
for some subjects than others.
---peter
Philip Ayers
>I read an exchange today in which someone is telling Iian [if that is
>the right spelling] tghat good painting has nothing to do withsubject
>matter.
>
>Let me comment on that one. Good painting which in fact had nothing to
>do with the subject matter the painting was about would be bad
>painting.
>In other words if you painted a love scene with the kinds of movements
>which go in a battle scene.
Gabriel-
Now.. I'm not sure but it might be an interesting approach to take with
this subject. Lovers as gladiators..actually it's been done many times.
But your basic point is well taken, that subject matter does matter. I
tend to think of painting as defining subject matter, but really once a
subject appears it can't be divorced from the painting anymore than a
facial expression can be torn from the face.
Cheers
Philip(never Phil)Ayers
http://www.mindspring.com/~p.ayers/
http://members.wbs.net/homepages/m/r/a/mrayers/Home.html
p.a...@mindspring.com.
mark webber
>
>
> I read an exchange today in which someone is telling Iian [if that is
> the right spelling] tghat good painting has nothing to do withsubject
> matter.
>
> Let me comment on that one. Good painting which in fact had nothing to
> do with the subject matter the painting was about would be bad
> painting.
Hi Gabriel, I don't know if it was my reply to Iian you refer to or not,
but I'd like to say that I don't disagree with you - I simply mean that
the *choice* of subject matter is less important than how it is handled.
regards,
zi...@interport.net
I don't have any problem wiht your words Mark. We all like things
which make us feel comfortable in life as well as in art. The "right"
style and the "right" subject matter and the "right" treatment. I do
it, maybe more than you do. But I have a but.
I was reading an article on Vuillard from the The London Times
Literary Supplement written bt Tim Hyman, which he gave me and I was
shocked to find out the Vuillard, Bonnard, Ker Xavier Rousell, Andre
Bernard and that whole kit and kboodle were painting flatly on purpose
so that their work would be morally righteous! And Tim likes
Vuiullards early work better than the others because his cloud of
brush strokes breaks up the forms even more-but not because it makes
them more spatial, it does not. He also like the late Vuillard, as I
do, too. Starting about 1912, Vuillard painted with three
dimensionality as his goal. But since the current establishment art
world does not believe in such things, his usual exhibition is
truncated at 1912, despite the fact that he lived into the mid 1940s,
at least.
But his interests in color and metaphor, and the use of showers of
strokes still turn up in one of his great late paintings, the portrait
of the Comtesse de'Noialles in bed at night reading. This has a kind
of spatial construction I am much more familiar withand enjoy as well
as the other things, which, without his early work, he wouldn't have.
His early work makes me itchy and nervous, even more Schiele and Klimt
and more of the "radical" art nouveau painters. But itn't it a trip to
realize that flatness was GOOD and Spatiality was BAD?
Gabriel
mdeli
>In other words if you painted a love scene with the kinds of movements
>inappropriate, and bad.
"Kinds of movements." indeed.
>If you were a good anf cinscientious artist, your work would have
>fully acted in space and surface, but the action wpould have been
>inappropriate to the subject, and metaphroically devious.
This statement is contorted baloney which means nothing. It is art
teaching hype.
>A bad work of art is not necessarily one which doesn't "work" it
>could be one in which the construction is at variance with the
>subject, Thus, out of control of the artist who made it.
>
>Isn't that what I and many other artists find appalling in such
>nineteenth century works as Cabanel's Venus,
>
Now here is an interesting admission.
In current art history courses and the stuff that Gabriel consumed,
there is always a mention of the evil Salon painter Cabanel. The
teacher usually flashes Cabanel's Birth of Venus (there really are
about six x versions) for two seconds and uses this as the case for
dismissing the whole of 19th century Academic painting . The average
art student couldn't name five academic painters and has probably seen
none.
In fact Cabanel's technique compared to his best academic
contemporaries is mediocre. but brilliant compared to Gabriel's
mediocraties.Whether Gabriel pooh poohs Cabanel is of little
importance.
Cabanel has to be appalling to Gabriel. His students could never
achieve anything like the technical mediocrity of Cabanel because
Gabriel is already a third generation proponent of no skill realism.
The best he and those who never learned the fundamentals of technique
can do is expend voluminous convoluted praise on those moderns who did
likewise in the hope that no one mentions any obvious incompetence.
Gabriel's lack of knowledge ranks with that of most present art
teachers. You can see its results if you look at the works of Webber,
a fifth generation disciple of no skill realism.
Well there is something positive in all this if we consider those
truly ahead of their time. It would take about two more generations of
no skill realists to finally catch up to incompetence of Matisse and
Cezanne.
>
>
--
Mani DeLi
...no skill no art
A Skeptical View of Modern Art was updated Jan.16,99
check out my new book, new work, new comments.
at: http://www.interlog.com/~hugod
Chris Pelletier
" There is no such
thing as "good painting." taken out of the context of what thepainting
is about. Even that 18th century academic who wrote the first book about
pictorial composition [can't get hs name today] in which he discussed
the way the eye should move over the surface to describe space -thids
basic tool which, he said, had been a secret which painters learned in
their shops but did n't bother to talk about until he did- even he, that
far backj, said that different kinds of movement were appropriate to
different kinds of painting. And in the back of the book he hasseveral
different kinds of painting with the arrows of movement drawn in to show
what he means. In other words if you painted a love scene with the
kinds of movements which go in a battle scene. You would have done
something inappropriate, and bad."
Are we to believe that his and only his concept of how a
painting "should" show movement is the endgame? If it is not adhered to
is it "bad" art??? What kind of characterization is this??? F. goudal
(sp?) said it best in an earlier post: "there is no battle scene
movement, there is no love scene movement". It sounds to me like you
dont look at much art, try it sometime...
later,
chris
zi...@interport.net
attacks. You disagree with something I said. So you rnext remark is
that I should look at some paintings,
There is no necessary connection between my statement and your attack.
What you said of substance, I am answering below. If you persist I
will not respond to your remarks.
Let us go back to what I said. I was looking for an example of someone
very different from either of us who also said that different kinds of
construction were necessary for different kinds of subjects. His
version is, of course, a very rococo idea, and very much in the
mechanistic 18th century. But the fact that such ideas can live
through a variety of periods and styles is one way of showing their
usefulness and potential truth. I was not using him as an authority,
nor was I using him as a substitute for looking at art.
In reading Wittgenstein I can remember several wonderful things in
Philosophical Investigations. One of them went something like this." I
am watching children playing outside my window. If I think of them as
mechanical creatures obeying absolute requirements I get a funny
feeling in my head." And another one:
"I am looking at a window made up of four panes, all the panes are
equal in size, theyare rectangles, somewhat taller than wide. If I
look at the window as a cross, only, some part of me feels strange."
I think I got the second one a little further away than the first, but
they are both there.
If I look at art and say to myself: There is one way to compose. All
forms should be... All paintings should have...space and...movement
and ...color .Then they would all be good and all would prosper in the
world.
Then I would feel really odd. If any of you like Northwest Coast
Indian Art, Chinese Art, Japanese Art, Cranach, Dosso Dossi, Durer,
Giotto, Guido da Siena, Thutmose's sculptor [I forgot his name],
Ancient Greek sculpture including Tanagra Figurines, African Art,
the great nineeenth century artists [choose your own] are you hanging
all of that on formalism? That would make a very strange coat rack.
Paul Klee did very well with loving lots of art of all kinds. Was he a
formalist? Did he hang them on formalist hangars?
Why is formalism some sort of security blanket? Is it dangerous out
there without it? Would too many things you don't do and don't like
maybe have to be good, then?
Otherwise I don't understand the rancor.
Gabriel
mark webber
Hi Gabriel,
This post was a very thought provoking one; I explain below:
On Sat, 23 Jan 1999 zi...@interport.net wrote:
(snip portion)
> If I look at art and say to myself: There is one way to compose. All
> forms should be... All paintings should have...space and...movement
> and ...color .Then they would all be good and all would prosper in the
> world.
>
> Then I would feel really odd. If any of you like Northwest Coast
> Indian Art, Chinese Art, Japanese Art, Cranach, Dosso Dossi, Durer,
> Giotto, Guido da Siena, Thutmose's sculptor [I forgot his name],
> Ancient Greek sculpture including Tanagra Figurines, African Art,
> the great nineeenth century artists [choose your own] are you hanging
> all of that on formalism? That would make a very strange coat rack.
I think the difficulty here is partly semantic - to me, a formalist
approach would not exclude appreciation of Cranach, Dossi or Giotto at
all. And as I have little or no understanding of Native American Indian
and Asian cultures, my enjoyment of the work produced by these peoples
also relies on an esthetic experience based in the shapes, colors, rhythms
and contrasts.
Please know that I'm not debating your definition of formalism - I simply
mean that for me it is an appreciation of the non-content aspects of the
work. Quickly I add that certainly the content and form are tied to each
other. But I often find myself stunned by the beauty of a piece before i
have any idea what it is about.
This is not to say that better understanding of content doesn't yield
better appreciation either.
>
> Paul Klee did very well with loving lots of art of all kinds. Was he a
> formalist? Did he hang them on formalist hangars?
>
> Why is formalism some sort of security blanket? Is it dangerous out
> there without it? Would too many things you don't do and don't like
> maybe have to be good, then?
>
> Otherwise I don't understand the rancor.
There may be rancor in some quarters, but I'm only talking about that
aspect of painting that I respond to most. Naturally, none of us is
telling anyone they are making art incorrectly. We're all just making what
we want to make.
The same questions could be asked about subject matter. For example, you
recently noted that you find these student paintings of a model sitting in
a corner to be tiresome, and that the figure needs to be doing something.
I can certainly understand your wanting that in your own work - it is one
of the very intriguing things in your work. But not *all* of the work of
painters such as Corot and Balthus contains content of this level.
There are plenty of wonderful paintings of a figure reading or a figure
playing an instrument. Those paintings, to me, are just as wonderful as
the ones with more metaphor.
I'm not diputing your points - only trying to clarify mine, because I'm
thinking I may not have expressed it very well.
thanks,
Mark
Frederic Goudal
> One of the things wrong with this group is that it allows ad hominem
> attacks. You disagree with something I said. So you rnext remark is
> that I should look at some paintings,
The ad hominem attacks are somewhere difficult to avoid : When
somebody behaviour shows that this person has setup her own vision of
the world as the only possible vision, and considers that anything
that (s)he does not understand or like is shit. Any attack is in
theese condition is a personal attack.
> Let us go back to what I said. I was looking for an example of someone
> very different from either of us who also said that different kinds of
> construction were necessary for different kinds of subjects. His
> version is, of course, a very rococo idea, and very much in the
> mechanistic 18th century. But the fact that such ideas can live
> through a variety of periods and styles is one way of showing their
> usefulness and potential truth. I was not using him as an authority,
> nor was I using him as a substitute for looking at art.
What was true in his saying was that there was an appropriate
movememnt for each subject. What is false is to say that there is a
good choice. Au contraire, the art of the art is to explore all the
choices.
Frederic Goudal
zi...@interport.net
<webb...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU> wrote:
Dear Mark,
The remarks about rancor were not directed at you. I did not realize
that you considered yourself a formalist.
I am afraid that I will have to state an absolute opinion. If you do
not understand the metaphoric nature specific to Chinese painting,
there is no way that you can look at it properly using your Western
vocabulary of formal moves which you mention below.
There is a basic opposition conceptually between Sung painting, for
instance and the western concept of art. It starts at the very
beginning of the artist's process when we think when we put down the
first line we are beginning to create space and the Chinese artist
believes that when he puts down the first mark he is limiting an
otherwise endless space that was implicit in the paper before he
began.
It gets worse. If you read the very short essay by Kuo Hsi [one of the
great Sung painters] on Landscape Painting, you will find that he
establishes 6 categories of painting from the highest to the lowest.
The lowest category of painting is a painting which can be looked at.
That is, we do with it what we always do with most western paintings.
We stand outside the work and look at it. The highest level is a
painting in which we can dwell. And he really means that. You can get
into the painting and live there. The second highest painting is one
in which you can travel. And traveling in Chinese painting of the Sung
period has nothing to do with traveling in the usual Western painting.
Our traveling would seem to e Chinese of that period as if we were
flying like a bug or a bird. There is no way to understand their work
except in inappropriate and unintended ways without entering their
metaphoric world and trying to see their paintings the way they would.
I am afraid that you may be missing a lot looking at other kinds of
art you like, too.
I can remember the introduction to the first exhibition of African
sculpture as art in thre US, at the MOMA. James Johnson Sweeney, later
the first director of the revamped Gigenheim museum wrote the catalog.
In his introduction he said:" This is the great sculpture of the
nineteenth century, the less we know of its origina and function as
African sculpture the more we will be able to appreciate it."
In other words he appropriated art from other traditions, knew nothing
about the art and its function in its original cultures and wanted it
to be looked at through the formalist gaze he presumed the cubists and
later abstract artists used. How would you like an African, somewhere
to do that to your art, some day? It is cultural imperialism and of
the know nothing variety, too. That atrtitude is still rife in art
museums where none western art has been shown. My wife, who is an
anthropologist found it happening in the museum at Purchase when our
son was in school there. She protested and I believe they have changed
the displays some.
The way an object is made, what it is made for how it is thought of,
what kind of reality it inhabits. All these things should affect the
way it is looked at. Remember Gombrich's dicta that any artist can
only be understood interms of what came before him and what he knew
about going on at thesame time. No African artist can be defined by
Cubism. Defining African artists through cubism is perpetuating a
falseood.
So, if you want to enjoy much more art in its own terms, then you have
to learn more about the people who made it and what they wanted from
it. You can look at it from your own seat, but then you will be
missing most of what is going on out there. Wouldn't you really like
to be able to take a trip in a Chinese painting the way it was meant?
Well, in that case you will have to study it and what its artists
wrote about it. And you will have to get off your formalist horse, it
won't get you there.
By the way, I hope you do try to see this stuff better. I think you
will enjoy it. It makes the world a much fuller and richer place to
realize that more than one set of eyes and hands came up with truly
sophisticated and marvelous ways of thinking about the world and the
world of art.
Gabriel
mark webber
>
> Dear Mark,
>
> The remarks about rancor were not directed at you. I did not realize
> that you considered yourself a formalist.
I didn't take the rancor remarks personally - I've seen some hysteria in
other posts that I figured you were replying to. I'm not really sure I
would consider myself a formalist - certainly not a formalist of the sort
that you describe. I only mean that I respond to the relationships
between the parts of the work more than I do the content.
>
> I am afraid that I will have to state an absolute opinion. If you do
> not understand the metaphoric nature specific to Chinese painting,
> there is no way that you can look at it properly using your Western
> vocabulary of formal moves which you mention below.
Oh, I'm sure that is very true.
>
> There is a basic opposition conceptually between Sung painting, for
> instance and the western concept of art. It starts at the very
> beginning of the artist's process when we think when we put down the
> first line we are beginning to create space and the Chinese artist
> believes that when he puts down the first mark he is limiting an
> otherwise endless space that was implicit in the paper before he
> began.
>
> It gets worse. If you read the very short essay by Kuo Hsi [one of the
> great Sung painters] on Landscape Painting, you will find that he
> establishes 6 categories of painting from the highest to the lowest.
> The lowest category of painting is a painting which can be looked at.
> That is, we do with it what we always do with most western paintings.
> We stand outside the work and look at it. The highest level is a
> painting in which we can dwell. And he really means that. You can get
> into the painting and live there. The second highest painting is one
> in which you can travel. And traveling in Chinese painting of the Sung
> period has nothing to do with traveling in the usual Western painting.
>
> Our traveling would seem to e Chinese of that period as if we were
> flying like a bug or a bird. There is no way to understand their work
> except in inappropriate and unintended ways without entering their
> metaphoric world and trying to see their paintings the way they would.
Very interesting. Yes, I'm ignorant of this.
>
> I am afraid that you may be missing a lot looking at other kinds of
> art you like, too.
No doubt.
>
> I can remember the introduction to the first exhibition of African
> sculpture as art in thre US, at the MOMA. James Johnson Sweeney, later
> the first director of the revamped Gigenheim museum wrote the catalog.
> In his introduction he said:" This is the great sculpture of the
> nineteenth century, the less we know of its origina and function as
> African sculpture the more we will be able to appreciate it."
(snip)
> The way an object is made, what it is made for how it is thought of,
> what kind of reality it inhabits. All these things should affect the
> way it is looked at. Remember Gombrich's dicta that any artist can
> only be understood interms of what came before him and what he knew
> about going on at thesame time. No African artist can be defined by
> Cubism. Defining African artists through cubism is perpetuating a
> falseood.
Certainly true.
>
> So, if you want to enjoy much more art in its own terms, then you have
> to learn more about the people who made it and what they wanted from
> it. You can look at it from your own seat, but then you will be
> missing most of what is going on out there. Wouldn't you really like
> to be able to take a trip in a Chinese painting the way it was meant?
Yes, I'd love to. I hope I can have the opportunity to learn more about
it. These days, however, I'm feeling pretty lucky to have a teaching
position and time to paint and restore my house.
>
> Well, in that case you will have to study it and what its artists
> wrote about it. And you will have to get off your formalist horse, it
> won't get you there.
I see your point, and I'm sure you'll understand if I say that, while I'd
love to understand many other cultures, getting my own work done is a bit
in front of those priorities. I'm still exploring Italy. The frescos mean
a lot to me. I don't really want to shift my focus just yet.
And as I said in an earlier post, I definitly don't see form at the
expense of content or metaphor. I'm just still pretty seduced by color and
shape.
>
> By the way, I hope you do try to see this stuff better. I think you
> will enjoy it. It makes the world a much fuller and richer place to
> realize that more than one set of eyes and hands came up with truly
> sophisticated and marvelous ways of thinking about the world and the
> world of art.
>
> Gabriel
>
I'm really sure this is absolutely true. I'll do my best.
Thanks again,
Mark
lauri....@nmp.nokia.com
zi...@interport.net wrote:
> I am afraid that I will have to state an absolute opinion. If you do
> not understand the metaphoric nature specific to Chinese painting,
> there is no way that you can look at it properly using your Western
> vocabulary of formal moves which you mention below.
>
> It gets worse. If you read the very short essay by Kuo Hsi [one of the
> great Sung painters] on Landscape Painting....
Gabriel, can uou or someone else, give a more exact reference
where to find this text. I have to ask for it in local rural library,
that passes the request to unversity libraries. So I need an ISBN number
or other good identification
- lauri
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zi...@interport.net
I don;t believe that saying that you don;t understand yet is ad
hominem. After all, I could have been unclear, and probably was.
What I am getting at -and I don;t really disagree with your final
remark- is that the choice as to what happens or doesn't happen in a
painting is metaphoric. In other words it has specific meaning both
to the person doing it and as much as that person is possible to
his/her viewers.
I was not saying that there are a limited number of paradigms, but the
meaning is the means of deciding what and which and how. And not some
overarching "good painting is done like that." If I had meant that,
you would be right in saying that my point was ill taken. But, I
don't think that the range of possibilities is limitless. Our culture
gives us artistic and technical limitations. And the expectations of
our audience does the same.
But making a morally right painting because certain kinds of painting
and certain kinds of subjects are correct is antithetical to making
metaphoric paintings.
Gabriel
On 25 Jan 1999 16:03:41 +0100, Frederic Goudal
zi...@interport.net
One more thing. There is one circumstance when thinking that what you
are doing is the morally right thing makes sense to me. It is the
vision of a very young and determined artist. Or of a group, like the
Nabis. That kind of certitude sometimes gets people off the pot and
into action. But if it becomes a dogma handed down over the
generations, then it is something to throw away. Walking unaided, even
limping is better than using crutches.
Gabriel