Strategic Drawing
Neal Weiss
STRATEGIC DRAWING
Variety
Within the general and large skill set composed of drawing, there are
myriad's of models of that constitute what drawing is, and likewise,
myriad's of opportunities for it's implementation . Mastering one
manifestation of drawing does not necessarily lead to mastering the other:
in certain cases it may even be prohibitive. When one examines the human
physiology that implements drawing, w will find that some types of drawing
will utilize fingers more than wrist, or wrist more than elbow, or elbow
more than shoulder, or shoulder more than torso, or torso more than legs,
or legs more than full body, or full body more than mechanically
implemented body, mechanically implemented body more than pure machine.
Even pure machine has it's place, as we see in Tinguley's drawing
machines, constructed to draw, some with and some without human
intervention.
We turn our gaze to the material implements of drawing: is the stylus
.003mm, .5mm. ,1mm, 1 inch or 2 inches wide? How soft is it? Is it made of
graphite, silver, blow pipe and powdered pigments, mechanical pencil, pen
and ink, spray paint can, oil base crayon, a computer mouse, meat, car
tire, airplane, tractor. Does it pin point the paper, stroke (side to
side, up and down, down and up, ) does it follow a clear template, or does
it use chance?, is the support prepared, is it an 8.5" x 11" format
notebook paper, toothed paper, smooth as glass cold rolled, is it etched
into metal plate, architectural blueprint, subway car, cave wall, frescoed
wall in church , gallery wall drawing, road, cut into a field of wheat,
carved with smoke in the sky? Has the subject been beaten to death? Is it
being breached for the first time? Is it process or product oriented,
cubist drawing by Picasso or group surrealist automatic drawing session at
Robert Desnos' home, for example. Obviously drawing is many things, for
many reasons.
I would suggest that the manual skill to draw is merely a single manual
technic, in the larger organism of Art. A manual craft. Not unlike
threading a plumber's pipe skillfully, a Veterinarian shoeing a horse, a
cabinetmaker cutting or sanding a piece of wood.
Condescend History
Hundreds of years ago, a linear perspective based drawing was virtually
the only game in town (as well decorative ornamentation). This was not
true in pre renaissance art, where there are very talented draughtsman,
they worked less from direct rendering and the work done from observation
was filtered through a different cultural set of visual conventions than
that of the single point perspective, they possessed different set of
determined schema. The mathematical grid that became perspective, was
previously a hierarchy of physical scale based upon power (ex., large
Christ, small devotee). The folds of a garment in gothic art as opposed to
high renaissance art are two different manifestations; which was more
achieved or better is a matter of personal taste, as different conventions
are work. What was certain was that art that was the most highly regarded
in a culture at a specific time, was that art which embodied the current
concerns and issues in that culture. There was a symbiosis between
cultural demands and artistic supply. The patron determined much. Duccio
was receiving grand commissions, as was Giotto following him, and later
Michelangelo. These artists were expressive of their times and rewarded
likewise.
Within the period referred to as the renaissance, the main artistic
pictorial game in town was developed within the framework of the
conventions of Albertian linear perspective and it's derivatives. The
newly rediscovered interests in the classics of the ancient world were
leading humanist scholars towards new cultural paradigms, theories,
philosophies, and discoveries both visual and literary. Man was now in
the center of the picture ("man is the measure of all things"). The
portrait comes into larger play, for example. The fact that artists could
and did draw in a figurative way, based upon linear perspective, was due
to the fact that this was the only game in town. And most pictorial
artist practiced it, more or less successfully. It was nothing special to
draw figures well from life once the schematic rules of Albetian linear
perspective were studied and incorporated into the art. History of the
following centuries as well are littered with an endless plethora of
figure drawings of more or less accomplished manual abilities(dig through
old auction catalogues etc., and see the nearly infinitesimal ocean of
figurative works over the centuries, made within the conventions of linear
perspective). This goes to show that this manual skill set was not
something special, on the contrary, it was rather ordinary and common: a
requisite. But, it was only a manual skill, a technic. It was not this
manual skill that made DaVinci or Michelangelo great. As I previously
stated, figure drawing and painting was the only game in town and nearly
everyone did it , but what set DaVinci's and Michelangelo's products apart
for example, or Carravagio stand out was something above and beyond their
figure rendering skills. If mastering a technic or manual skill were all
it took to be a DaVinci or a Michelangelo, then there would have been
thousands of them. Their pictorial figuration would have been
indistinguishable from many others, reduced to a mere illustrative
virtuosity.
Many of the less distinguished figurative pictorial artists are dismissed
out of hand and even relegated to the category of illustrative surface
decorators, by lovers of figurative art, when set against a Rembrant, a
Carravaggio, a Raphael. Indeed many of these lesser artists remained less
accomplished because they didn't innovate beyond the manual technics of
illustration. They lacked the visual/conceptual comprehension of what made
great pictorial art, therefor became crippled to incorporate those great
achievements from the past and innovate upon them. The skills sets of the
great artist necessarily had to extend far beyond a single manual
illustrative technic and reach towards innovations made in other areas.
Pictorial innovation, imagination, narrative conception, formal issues of
color, light and space, gesture, composition, rhythm, ect., to name a few,
were skill sets incorporated and innovated upon by the great artist; the
lack of achievement in these areas is often over-compensated by investment
in illustrative superficiality alone, indeed often to a needling and
obsessive degree. And all of these skill sets had to embrace the wider
cultural needs around it (for example, an interpretation classicism a
religious narratology, are examples).
All of these artist working in the figurative based pictorial arts,
succeeded or failed at the challenges posed to one degree or another; the
cultures they lived in that supported them and the later histories that
judged them, apparently never reserved a set of laurels for the artist
succeeding only in mastering a single manual skill set, a mere
illustrative decorator. These latter didn't receive the apotheosis that
is reserved for the greatest of art, but found respectable jobs as third
rate artists or decorators with minor commissions, some of the cleverer
ones with ambition attained major commissions, others became minor artists
working in styles that shadowed their Master, still others became
artisans, and in more recent times found their niche as illustrators.
Those that have been remembered by History, are relegated to the footnotes
and fine print in histories dealing with pictorial figuration.
To some, this single manual skill is the be all and end all. The final
word on art. That is also why art as so defined never really moves beyond
being a mere skill, impressive, to a higher or lesser degree, dependent
upon the abilities, knowledge, and visual experience of the viewer
contemplating it, and dependent on how narrow the viewer's criteria for
art are couched. If the criteria for art is reduced to a technical, manual
skill based schema, we end up with art that doesn't go beyond the 'how-to'
techniques stage: indeed an entire sub-culture, from magazines to
collectors proliferate within the criteria of a 'technical skill only'
visual work. Being a faster and more accurate typist, is not going to
make you a better writer. It will only make you a technically more
accomplished typist. It's what's upstairs that counts. Conventions not
only not innovated upon, they are little understood. We enter the realm of
the technician. I have the feeling that were DaVinci alive and making art
today, with his mind and his manual skills, he would hold the staid
portrait drawers in the park in contempt, if he even bothered slowing down
to look. Would the combative, competitive, and culturally hungry
Michelangelo and a Caravaggio consider these portrait drawers as brothers,
as peers?
This also is why illustration is historically seem outside the pictorial
tradition of art, because pictorial innovation was absent. The formula
could be in effect stated that Illustration was Art minus pictorial and
formal innovation. Indeed it seemed that illustration always reverted back
to a previous formal and pictorial innovation, rather than developing
those innovations. Traditionally being a field that applied rather than
innovated, pictorial and visual structures. Most illustration was made to
be mass reproduced, mass distributed, and needed to be accessible to an
audience of wide visual and pictorial experience, adapting itself to the
L.C.D. (lowest common denominator). Fine Art which followed in a pictorial
tradition on the other hand addressed itself to a limited audience, with a
broader development of pictorial discernment. These areas have become
recently more complex, as artist make work with an illustration-like
disregard for pictorialism and formal development, but add a skill set of
visual and artworld semiotics to manipulate and locate the artwork as a
cultural sign within the field of cultural discourses.
In the 19th century when the conventions of single point perspective
(among numerous others) were seen for what they were, mere conventions
(example: works that used single point perspective, which for several
hundred years were considered "natural," "realistic," "true to life,"
etc., were discovered to be nothing of the sort. Humans have binocular
vision: that is how they experience the world. Single point perspective
(and most photography) , were based on conventions that were monocular: a
fixed, immovable eye, frozen in time...very different to a human's visual
perception. Later in art's future, binocular vision would be integrated
into pictorial expression and power. So the conventions of perspective, to
name but one, were seen as arbitrary and disposable, and replaced by
others. Natural sciences discovered new information of vision amongst
other discoveries. Part of the history of modernism is the development of
art within the paradigms that better met the state of the cultures that
they were made in. Of course there were those that were shocked that the
authority of single point perspective and the art that issued from it was
toppled. In time, Salon standards came to be denigrated in a not to
dissimilar fashion that Michelangelo must have felt the necessity of
dismissing the conventions of the medieval arts, in favor of the
contemporaneous conventions available to him.
In the future, artists that still felt it essential to learn to draw
according to the older conventions , did: and many discarded the older
conventions of drawing for contemporary ones, without feeling smothered by
the outmoded authority of the past. Still others that didn't feel the
importance of drawing as a skill set at all, freely disregarded it, and
developed other skill sets, manual and otherwise, to meet the needs of the
productions that they endeavored to undertake.
Artist that lived in an era that demanded drawing from them, and within
prescribed conventions either did it either good or somewhat less so, but
the great art in these eras was produced by a series of other skill sets
than the mechanical ability to copy a schematic mathematical grid over
nature. One need only look at Durer's drawings and prints relating to the
get ups and contraptions that he used to literally impose the orthogonal
grids over his vision, so he could go through the mechanical process of
transcribing onto his paper. I believe certain prominent painting studios
also employed perspective specialists (whether in house or contracted I am
uncertain) whose function was to advise and develop the perspective grids
and schema that formed part of the underlying chassis of the paintings.
That DaVinci, Michelangelo , Raphael, and Caravaggio made more of their
enslavement to a set of mechanical conventions of drawing, happened
despite the conventions rather than because of them. They amassed skill
sets from various other sources and innovated where there were none.
DaVinci with his fast, broad, and deep mind, his use of chance, his rich
imagination, his technical innovation, his advanced pictorial innovations
all thrust his art forward despite the labored restraints of the
conventions of a mechanized single point perspective paradigm. It was his
mind that drove his art and expanded it's options.
Present and Future
In an age where so many skills have replaced the hand and indeed where
conventions are transformed by technologies that bypass the hand entirely
if one were to revert to an argument of manual skill sets and their
relevance to an era and art, in our times we would have to abandon the
notion of the hand entirely. The art of the renaissance was in a large
part dependent on the technologies available to the artists. The
renaissance artist had tools and theories that the medieval artist lacked
(theories of Albertian linear perspective, etc.), Those devices later
developed as the cultures developed: witness perceptive studies and
Durer's linear perspective devices transforming into camera obscura and
lenses into photography, later into moving form with film. In our age, our
visual schema is more clearly a product of and influenced by film than the
obscurant and obsolete hand drawn academic figure. According to an
argument of cultural power and relevance, the artist should learn how to
handle a movie or video camera and forget the pen or pencil which in fact
many have. Where the 21st century will lead us in an age of information
and digital technologies we cannot yet say. Already things from visual
images to the DNA genetic make up of the body have been digitized. New
paradigms are unfolding, and the manifestations of drawing within those
paradigms has yet to be seen.
One thing is for sure: holidays are no longer called and festivals enacted
that shut down cities so that a new painting can be paraded through the
streets to be placed into the church. On the other hand, traffic is often
detoured that a movie in the making have a right of way. The mirror in
which the culture sees itself changes from marks on a sheet of paper to
flickers of projected light on a big screen.
In my opinion, there is absolutely no reason to learn to draw from life or
from the human form, unless that is what the student or artist desires to
do. It will not make him or her a better artist., indeed, it could only be
a grand waste of time, unless it is something one chooses to do.
-N
Neal Weiss©1996
-----------------------------------------
Neal Weiss
Founder: L' Ecole De Fromage.
Originator of a Greater Shoe of Mud.
Finder of the Country Blue Squeak-Out.
Charles Eicher
In article <nweiss-3012...@nweiss.tiac.net>, nwe...@tiac.com (Neal
Weiss) wrote:
> STRATEGIC DRAWING
[snip]
> We turn our gaze to the material implements of drawing: is the stylus
> .003mm, .5mm. ,1mm, 1 inch or 2 inches wide?
I think you'll find that 25mm implements are insufficient for strategic
drawing, and are more suited to tactical implentations. Wielding a small
bore stylus is unlikely to have much strategic effect. Perhaps a larger
88mm cannon would be more suited to strategic applications. For tactical
works, smaller .22, .38, and .45 gauge would be sufficient, as long as
these are fully-automatic weapons, and are available in sufficient
quantity.
| Charles Eicher |
| -=- |
| cei...@inav.net |
Neal Weiss
In article <ceicher-ya0230800...@news.inav.net>,
cei...@inav.net (Charles Eicher) wrote:
> In article <nweiss-3012...@nweiss.tiac.net>, nwe...@tiac.com (Neal
> Weiss) wrote:
>
> > STRATEGIC DRAWING
> [snip]
> > We turn our gaze to the material implements of drawing: is the stylus
> > .003mm, .5mm. ,1mm, 1 inch or 2 inches wide?
>
> I think you'll find that 25mm implements are insufficient for strategic
> drawing, and are more suited to tactical implentations. Wielding a small
> bore stylus is unlikely to have much strategic effect. Perhaps a larger
> 88mm cannon would be more suited to strategic applications. For tactical
> works, smaller .22, .38, and .45 gauge would be sufficient, as long as
> these are fully-automatic weapons, and are available in sufficient
> quantity.
Also that warfare as a drawing process is underated. Hitler perhaps got
his artistic kicks in the reshaping of territories using his modern
drawing implements. One is left to wonder how much of Hitlers failure in
WWII was a result of Hitler's battlefield aesthetics versus sound military
strategy.
-N
Mdeli
nwe...@tiac.com (Neal Weiss) wrote:
>Many of the less distinguished figurative pictorial artists are dismissed
>out of hand and even relegated to the category of illustrative surface
>decorators, by lovers of figurative art, when set against a Rembrant, a
>Carravaggio, a Raphael. Indeed many of these lesser artists remained less
>accomplished because they didn't innovate beyond the manual technics of
>illustration.
Why are the artist you mention not illustrators? They
all painted storytelling subject matter. When Norman
Rockwell paints a portrait is he an illustrator or an
artist or both? What is the difference between
illustration and art?
>To some, this single manual skill is the be all and end all. The final
>word on art.
Like Who?
>That is also why art as so defined never really moves beyond
>being a mere skill.
Art is not "so defined."
>I have the feeling that were DaVinci alive and making art
>today, with his mind and his manual skills, he would hold the staid
>portrait drawers in the park in contempt, if he even bothered slowing down
>to look.
Weiss seems to have park-portrait paranoia.
But how would he feel about Rothko and Kline? Rockwell?
>Most illustration was made to
>be mass reproduced, mass distributed, and needed to be accessible to an
>audience of wide visual and pictorial experience, adapting itself to the
>L.C.D. (lowest common denominator).
Speaking as an elete member of the highest uncommon
denominator tell us what you find wrong with this.
>Fine Art which followed in a pictorial
>tradition on the other hand addressed itself to a limited audience, with a
>broader development of pictorial discernment.
Is that the ability to distinguish the merits of one
schmier over another?
>These areas have become
>recently more complex, as artist make work with an illustration-like
>disregard for pictorialism and formal development, but add a skill set of
>visual and artworld semiotics to manipulate and locate the artwork as a
>cultural sign within the field of cultural discourses.
Nice Artspeak.
>Single point perspective
>(and most photography) , were based on conventions that were monocular: a
>fixed, immovable eye, frozen in time...very different to a human's visual
>perception.
Perspective has as many vanishing points as there are
sets of parallel lines. I doubt that you know anything
about perspective. Perspective is a science.
Complaining about it is as stupid as complaining about
Maxwell’s equations.
> Later in art's future, binocular vision would be integrated
>into pictorial expression and power.
Like Picasso, Matisse, Rothko and Pollock? Twombly?
Duchamp? Gee, I was taught it was the fourth dimension.
And don’t tell your collegues, (they might become
antiquated quite suddenly) but binocular vision
conforms to the laws of perspective.
> So the conventions of perspective, to
>name but one, were seen as arbitrary and disposable, and replaced by
>others
Namely Artspeak..
> Of course there were those that were shocked that the
>authority of single point perspective and the art that issued from it was
>toppled.
This happened in the Renaissance.
>In the future, artists that still felt it essential to learn to draw
>according to the older conventions , did: and many discarded the older
>conventions of drawing for contemporary ones, without feeling smothered by
>the outmoded authority of the past. Still others that didn't feel the
>importance of drawing as a skill set at all, freely disregarded it, and
>developed other skill sets, manual and otherwise, to meet the needs of the
>productions that they endeavored to undertake.
>The mirror in
>which the culture sees itself changes from marks on a sheet of paper to
>flickers of projected light on a big screen.
Yes, the only thing today’s artist can’t avoid is being
modern. So what?
Mani DeLi
…no skill no art
R/L Davis
Mdeli wrote:
> Why are the artist you mention not illustrators? They
> all painted storytelling subject matter. When Norman
> Rockwell paints a portrait is he an illustrator or an
> artist or both? What is the difference between
> illustration and art?.
Mdeli,
Norman Rockwell would tell you that he was in fact an illustrator. He had no
illusions about being a fine artist. I happened to be in "Rockwell Country" this
past summer so I stopped in at the gallery. They gave a talk there in Rockwells
old studio and pointed out that the old man never sold a painting through a
commercial gallery in his life! I found that quite interesting. Apparently he
even gave many of his paintings to his sitters! He simply didn't see his work as
fine art. It was quite interesting seeing the actual paintings of many of those
Saturday Evening Post and Boys Life covers we loved so much way back when. As
paintings they are not really very good. I'm sorry, it's true. I am a realist
painter myself so I think I can say it. I'm affraid Norm was right. As fine art
goes Twombley has it all over Rockwell, hands down.
Richard
Al B. Tross
In article <5akolr$2...@news.istar.ca>, dav...@tallships.istar.ca says...
> It was quite interesting seeing the actual paintings of many of those
>Saturday Evening Post and Boys Life covers we loved so much way back when. As
>paintings they are not really very good. I'm sorry, it's true.
One must keep in mind when looking at paintings done with the
intention of reproducing them for publication that the artist has
to be aware of the processes that are in play that make the work
look good on a magazine cover but not necessarily good as a
painting. Remember that people like Remington and Rockwell,
to name two widely popular "artists" in USA, were working at
a time when publishing relied on processes that were still quite
primitive by today's standards. Color photography was still
going through evolutionary stages, and was unavailable to
Remington altogether. So it is absolutely wrong to judge the
paintings of Rockwell out of their publication context and against
those of artists who painted the painting as the end product.
AbT.
kajoj...@aol.com
In article <5als02$h...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>, don't...@email.com (Al B.
Tross) writes:
> Remember that people like Remington and Rockwell,
>to name two widely popular "artists" in USA, were working at
>a time when publishing relied on processes that were still quite
>primitive by today's standards. Color photography was still
>going through evolutionary stages, and was unavailable to
>Remington altogether. So it is absolutely wrong to judge the
>paintings of Rockwell out of their publication context and against
>those of artists who painted the painting as the end product.
>
>
In my one experience with having a painting printed as a poster, I was
told during the proofing that most artists who use photo-lith prints as a
commercial vehicle, paint for the print... i.e. use colors and values
based on what would look best in print, even though it left the original
"flat". I found that interesting.
.............Karen Jacobs.................................
http://members.aol.com/kajojacobs/index.htm
R/L Davis
Al B. Tross wrote:
> One must keep in mind when looking at paintings done with the
> intention of reproducing them for publication that the artist has
> to be aware of the processes that are in play that make the work
> look good on a magazine cover but not necessarily good as a
> going through evolutionary stages... So it is absolutely wrong to judge the
> paintings of Rockwell out of their publication context and against
Al,
I agree. Is this then the reason, or one of the reasons, Rockwell was (only) an
illustrator and not a fine artist? My contention would be that the difference
between fine art and illustration is largely the INTENT of the maker.
Richard
Dan Fox
On 4 Jan 1997 05:09:15 GMT, R/L Davis <dav...@tallships.istar.ca>
wrote:
>Mdeli wrote:
>
>> Why are the artist you mention not illustrators? They
>> all painted storytelling subject matter. When Norman
>> Rockwell paints a portrait is he an illustrator or an
>> artist or both? What is the difference between
>> illustration and art?.
[snip]
>
As fine art
>goes Twombley has it all over Rockwell, hands down.
>Richard
Richard, for a realist painter to appreciate what painters like
Twombly are doing gives me heart - there really are people out there
who understand the essence of art - and that realism, abstraction,
etc., have nothing to do with quality and staying power. (Skill and
hard work, combined with creative spirit and imagination are, in my
view, the essential elements.)
Another aspect of illustration versus fine art: The best fine
artists, Velasquez, Ingres, Picasso, and Twombly (two name a few) all
have one thing in common: each of their works is a self-referential
universe that has the effect of timelessness. We experience that
timelessness when we view the work and are entranced, whether we've
seen the work once or a thousand times. Rockwell, by contrast, takes a
moment in time and stuffs it like a taxidermist: the little boy about
to get his shot, the sailor getting a tattoo, for example. The viewing
experience thus has no depth; our pleasure in seeing it is momentary.
I have the greatest respect for Rockwell, since he claimed to be an
illustrator and had considerable skill in his craft.
Dan Fox
R/L Davis
Dan Fox wrote:
> Another aspect of illustration versus fine art: The best fine
> artists, Velasquez, Ingres, Picasso, and Twombly (two name a few) all
> have one thing in common: each of their works is a self-referential
> universe that has the effect of timelessness. We experience that
> timelessness when we view the work and are entranced, whether we've
> seen the work once or a thousand times. Rockwell, by contrast, takes a
> moment in time and stuffs it like a taxidermist: the little boy about
> to get his shot, the sailor getting a tattoo, for example. The viewing
> experience thus has no depth; our pleasure in seeing it is momentary.
> Dan,
Yes, I agree. Mdeli asked the question, what is the difference between
illustration and fine art, and I feel that your last few words- "our pleasure in
seeing it is momentary." is the nub of the difference, at least with this kind of
illustration. It is exactly like political cartoons. The best ones are able to
"picture" the essence of an idea and reveal it to us. We are delighted with the
discovery but we seldom can look at it again and get that same feeling of
delight.
Richard
G*rd*n
I think you all are quite wrong about Rockwell. You seem
to be greatly wrought up by the class nature of his subject
matter. Rockwell mostly illustrated the popular nostalgic
fantasies of his times, and he was very good at it. His
work is at once accurate and well-designed, from both a
dramatic and a graphic point of view. However, I think he
will have to recede for another decade or two before his
work is appreciated.
--
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ gcf @ panix.com }"{
R/L Davis
G*rd*n wrote:
>
> I think you all are quite wrong about Rockwell. .
Does that mean that Rockwell was wrong about Rockwell?
> You seem to be greatly wrought up by the class nature of his subject
> matter.
Who said anything about "class"?
> Rockwell mostly illustrated the popular nostalgic
> fantasies of his times, and he was very good at it.
I agree that he was very good at illustrating "popular nostalgia" but that is
not near enough for me if we art talking about fine art.
> His work is at once accurate and well-designed, from both a
> dramatic and a graphic point of view.
Accuracy and good design is not enough in itself either.
> However, I think he will have to recede for another decade or two before his
> work is appreciated.
One thing was also very clear during my visit to the Rockwell gallery in
Stockbridge, and that was that Norman Rockwell is very much appreciated by many
adoring and loyal fans.
Richard
Al B. Tross
In article <5amse1$6...@news.istar.ca>, dav...@tallships.istar.ca says...
>One thing was also very clear during my visit to the Rockwell gallery in
>Stockbridge, and that was that Norman Rockwell is very much appreciated by many
>adoring and loyal fans.
The pros and cons of Rockwell versus fine art has been batted
around on a regular basis ever since I began participating in
this group. One thing most people of this generation don't
realize is, that in my generation, if you took a poll of the average
man on the street, asking the question 'Who is the most outstanding
artist of our time?' AT LEAST nine out of ten people would
undoubtedly have answered, Norman Rockwell.
I wish someone would take a poll on a street corner somewhere
right now and ask this question of passerby: "Who do you think
is/was the best (or most popular) American artist?" and then post the
poll results here. AbT.
Mdeli
don't...@email.com (Al B. Tross) wrote:
>In article <5akolr$2...@news.istar.ca>, dav...@tallships.istar.ca says...
>> It was quite interesting seeing the actual paintings of many of those
>>Saturday Evening Post and Boys Life covers we loved so much way back when. As
>>paintings they are not really very good. I'm sorry, it's true.
..and I think the opposit.
>One must keep in mind when looking at paintings done with the
>intention of reproducing them for publication that the artist has
>to be aware of the processes that are in play that make the work
>look good on a magazine cover but not necessarily good as a
>painting.
etc.
> So it is absolutely wrong to judge the
>paintings of Rockwell out of their publication context and against
>those of artists who painted the painting as the end product.
What counts is what is on the wall.
The story, why it was done, the artists life etc. is
only of interest if the quality of the work creates
that interest.
The beauty, skill and technical finesse of Rockwell's
work is the devil to the Modern Academic because most
people instantly like. They also hate its sentiment.
However when Picasso paints a mother and child or some
hooker in a bar; well that's OK. Its not illustration
because they approve of the subject matter.
Almost all art is illustration.
As far as reproduction (publication context) is
concerned; the only reason most great art is known to
people is because of art reproduction.
Mani DeLi
...no skill no art
Mdeli
I wrote
>>> Why are the artist you mention not illustrators? They
>>> all painted storytelling subject matter. When Norman
>>> Rockwell paints a portrait is he an illustrator or an
>>> artist or both? What is the difference between
>>> illustration and art?.
Dan Fox answers.
>Another aspect of illustration versus fine art: The best fine
>artists, Velasquez, Ingres, Picasso, and Twombly (two name a few) all
>have one thing in common: each of their works is a self-referential
>universe that has the effect of timelessness. We experience that
>timelessness when we view the work and are entranced, whether we've
>seen the work once or a thousand times.
Nice Artspeak. What does it mean? You should teach a
Twomly course.
>Rockwell, by contrast, takes a
>moment in time and stuffs it like a taxidermist: the little boy about
>to get his shot, the sailor getting a tattoo, for example. The viewing
>experience thus has no depth; our pleasure in seeing it is momentary.
Try Picasso's "Paolo and the Donkey" for a depth
experiece.
>I have the greatest respect for Rockwell, since he claimed to be an
>illustrator and had considerable skill in his craft.
What if he clamed to be a postman?
R/L Davis
O.K. just to see if we can agree on anything, can I ask you if you see the work by
artists you admire on a scale of quality? Is the work of Rockwell on the same
level as, say, Andrew Wyeth or Winslow Homer? Are his paintings as interesting to
you as Corot, Corbet, or Degas? (or is his BEST work equal to the BEST work by
these artists?) Does he rise to the level of Raphael in your eyes? Or do you
approach art as being "black or white", simply good (art) or bad (not art)?
Mdeli wrote:
> The beauty, skill and technical finesse of Rockwell's
> work is the devil to the Modern Academic because most
> people instantly like (it). They also hate its sentiment.
> However when Picasso paints a mother and child or some
> hooker in a bar; well that's OK. Its not illustration
> because they approve of the subject matter.
Are you suggesting that we should use the taste of the average person as the
criteria for judging what is art and what is not? Work that "rises" to the
interests of the average person is good (art), but more difficult subjects are bad
(not art)?
Just wondering.
Richard
jkea...@aol.com
In article <5akolr$2...@news.istar.ca>, R/L Davis
<dav...@tallships.istar.ca> writes:
>Norman Rockwell would tell you that he was in fact an illustrator. He
had no
>
>illusions about being a fine artist. I happened to be in "Rockwell
Country"
>this
>past summer so I stopped in at the gallery.
I was at the Norman Rockwell Museum (Stockbridge, Massachussetts) last
week. They have a quote on the wall in which he claims to be an
"illustrator and something," meaning he felt he was more than just a good
illustrator. Perhaps he was too modest to claim status as an artist, or
just coy enough not to.
But that's beside the point. Plenty of hacks consider themselves to be
artists, so why can't we consider Rockwell as an artist? Using the number
of paintings sold as a criterion is fallacious. Many now-famous creative
individuals never sold a canvas, poem, book or whatever during their
lifetimes.
Rockwell's characters were often a little too cute and precious, but his
place as an artist is assured. And, as Mani pointed out, they're certainly
more palatable to a large audience than the subjects chosen by some
artists.
By the way, for anyone else rambling through Western Massachussetts this
month, the NR Museum is also showing an exhibit of drawings and
watercolors by Chihiro Iwasaki (1918-1974), which I highly recommend.
Cheers,
JK
Mdeli
R/L Davis
jkea...@aol.com wrote:
>
> I was at the Norman Rockwell Museum (Stockbridge, Massachussetts) last
> week. They have a quote on the wall in which he claims to be an
> "illustrator and something," meaning he felt he was more than just a good
> illustrator. Perhaps he was too modest to claim status as an artist, or
> just coy enough not to.
statement doesn't really say much.
>
> But that's beside the point. Plenty of hacks consider themselves to be
> artists, so why can't we consider Rockwell as an artist? Using the number
> of paintings sold as a criterion is fallacious.
galleries (and gave them to his sitters!) because he didn't consider himself a
fine artist, as they will tell you at the museum, then the facts speak for
themselves. You and I can debate weather or not he was a fine artist but
Rockwell himself apparently knew he was not.
>
> Rockwell's characters were often a little too cute and precious, but his
> place as an artist is assured. And, as Mani pointed out, they're certainly
> more palatable to a large audience than the subjects chosen by some
> artists.
art? Rockwells work was very "cute", "precious" and "palatable" (all your
words) but do you think his best work is on the same level as the best of Corot
or Degas or Homer? (Or Twombley! to get back to the original argument.)
Richard
Jeffery Measamer
Whats wrong with the average person? Even the average person likes a
nice Turner, Degas, etc. Apparantly some even like more modern art.
Jeff Measamer
As average as they come.
jkea...@aol.com
In article <5as2rt$3...@news.istar.ca>, R/L Davis
<dav...@tallships.istar.ca> writes:
> Rockwells work was very "cute", "precious" and "palatable" (all your
>words) but do you think his best work is on the same level as the best of
>Corot
>or Degas or Homer? (Or Twombley! to get back to the original argument.)
>Richard
Strike the word "very." I didn't use it. I also said his characters were
sometimes too cute and precious.
Homer started out as an illustrator too, eh? How much deeper are any of
his works than any of Rockwell's? You could make the argument that Homer
was merely a genre painter. I don't think he had the technical skill of
Rockwell, either.
Trying to compare the best works of artists as diverse as Corot, Degas,
Homer and Rockwell is pointless. They worked in different media and at
different times. I happen to like some or most of the work of all of them,
for different reasons. The work of each of them apparently inspired many
fine artists who came later, including Rockwell.
Your contention that what the docents say at the Norman Rockwell Museum is
a valid argument against calling Rockwell a fine artist is specious. I've
heard docents say things that were so absolutely, incredibly incorrect I
almost broke out laughing. What Rockwell said, perhaps modestly, is not
important, either. It is the work we are discussing. The Metropolitan
museum sags under the weight of thousands of years of works that were
considered commonplace in their times. For example, the classical
sculptures were intended as religious objects, and their makers were
common stone carvers. Why do we consider old portrait paintings to be fine
art, when they were not so considered at the time of execution? For the
same reasons, I believe history will support Rockwell as a fine artist.
Oh, you also mentioned the fact that he gave his paintings to his sitters,
rather than selling them. You'll recall the docents also told you that
Rockwell was quite well off and didn't need the money.
JK
Mdeli
Modern Academic Abstraction has one valid claim,
namely that it is something entirely different from the
art of the past. It conforms to no classical standards
(I use the term loosely here).
Stylistically Modern Academic Art, artwork considered
the great art of this century, encompasses not only
modern abstraction but also No Skill Realism (NSR).
This is work which though critically considered modern
art, contains instantly recognizable images.
The best place to sample lots of ordinary sub-furniture
store no skill realism is right here on the web. But
this realism, even when accompanied by a hard hitting
manifesto which hardly anyone reads, rarely has any
real Modern Academic Art power.
The Important NSR I am referring to here is praised as
great art and hangs in museums near our acclaimed
abstract masters because it presents them with no
challenge.
The main characteristics of NSR are abominable drawing
and a strong dose of schmier (preferably impasto). This
is termed by critics as anything from abstract
distortion all the way to the fourth dimension, in many
more words of course.
Great art status for NSR started in this century with
the works of classical Modern Academics from Matisse
(the most important of the lot) and Picasso and
advanced through the worst of Expressionism and on to
our presently fashionable big canvas realist potzers
like Hockney and Rivers etc.
This alone shows that we are not in a century of pure
abstraction. Even the claims of de Kooning experts
attest to this. No one could say that his Keane like
goo-goo eyes and occasional naughty part aren’t
recognizable.
Most people are not offended by pure abstraction in the
visual sense. Mondrian, Kandinski, Pollock, Rothko etc.
certainly have a graphic attraction equal to that of
nice towels. By comparison the master works of NSR
are no sight for sore eyes. They are visually
abominable.
After many years of flat Greenbergian asceticism, NSR
is again OK in critical eyes. This, as long as it
contains lots of drawing errors, remains mindlessly
simplistic, doesn’t tell any stories (lest it be
labeled illustration) and has an abstract section (a
few obvious flat schmiers). Oh yes it has to come in
Rubenesque sizes so that the pretense of importance
equals any nearby abstraction and the artists
incompetence is made instantly apparent
Mani DeLi
…If it doesn’t look like a put-on it won’t make it as
great modern art.
Mdeli
jkea...@aol.com wrote:
>> Rockwell's characters were often a little too cute and precious, but his
>> place as an artist is assured.
His best paintings often lack this characteristic.
> And, as Mani pointed out, they're certainly
>> more palatable to a large audience than the subjects chosen by some
>> artists.
Davis answers:
>> Again I will ask, should we use public taste as a standard for what we consider
>art?
In the long run public taste defines art. In the short
run it defines fashion.
> Rockwells work was very "cute", "precious" and "palatable" (all your
>words) but do you think his best work is on the same level as the best of Corot
>or Degas or Homer?
Better.
Corot is totally over-rated. Homer a fine artist.
Degas, a fashionable fine artist but inferior to the
best unmentionable artists of the salon. Note that
Degas like Rockwell used photos.
>(Or Twombley! to get back to the original argument.)
>Richard
Twombly is a fashionable artist of hype who won the MA
lottery. You can see the same degree of high powered
nothingness in the works of a thousand unrecognized
failures.
Although there are lots of better artists, Rockwell
holds his own next to any painter whose picture tells a
story.
R/L Davis
Jeffery Measamer wrote:
>
> R/L Davis wrote:
> >
> > Are you suggesting that we should use the taste of the average person as the
> > criteria for judging what is art and what is not? Work that "rises" to the
> > interests of the average person is good (art), but more difficult subjects are
> > bad (not art)?
> >
> > Just wondering.
> > Richard
>
> Whats wrong with the average person? Even the average person likes a
> nice Turner, Degas, etc. Apparantly some even like more modern art.
>
> Jeff Measamer
> As average as they come.
-
Well, yes. Hail to the common man. Power to the people. Long live the
revolution! (Did I go too far?)
Your comment brings to mind an interesting analogy that I saw on TV
just last evening. Coffee bars have become all the rage in my neck of the woods
and everyone seems to be drinking cappuccino coffee. So men and women of
commerce, always quick to rise to the occasion, have developed several instant
cappuccino machines. You can find them in gas stations, convenience stores,
etc..
A local TV station decided to do a news item on them, asking "the man on the
street" which they liked best, one of two samples from the instant machines, or
the real thing from a local coffee shop. The two instant cappuccino took about
an even number of votes; half the votes for one, half for the other. The real
cappuccino got no votes at all! What the instant machines make, however, is
actually a very sweet hot chocolate.
The point of my little analogy is that by your comment, I assume you think all of
us who have developed a taste for a fine cup of coffee should just give it up, go
with the flow, and drink sweet hot chocolate instead, because the average person
has deemed it better.
Whether choosing art or coffee, it seems the average person likes it rather sweet.
The "real thing" is a bit too bitter, a little hard on the pallet perhaps, and it
takes some effort to developing a taste for it. You drink the hot chocolate, I'll
have the cappuccino, and we will just disagree on which is better.
Richard
R/L Davis
jkea...@aol.com wrote:
>
> In article <5as2rt$3...@news.istar.ca>, R/L Davis
> <dav...@tallships.istar.ca> writes:
>
>
> Strike the word "very." I didn't use it. I also said his characters were
> sometimes too cute and precious.
O.K. I think they are very cute and precious, you think they are sometimes too
cute and precious.
>
> Homer started out as an illustrator too, eh? How much deeper are any of
> his works than any of Rockwell's? You could make the argument that Homer
> was merely a genre painter. I don't think he had the technical skill of
> Rockwell, either.
summer I was in New York and saw the major retrospective of Homer's work.
Before I saw that show I might have said the same thing you did, but after
seeing the show I could not disagree with you more, and I can only ask if you
saw the show, or if you have seen many of his works "in the flesh", not in
reproduction? Seeing the work of these two, within days of one another, made
it very clear to me that one was a great artist and one a fine illustrator.
Technically, contrary to your belief, Homer was a far better painter, at least he
made far better paintings. It is quite possible that Rockwell COULD have been
a better painter if he were interested in producing fine paintings, but be wasn't.
He was an illustrator, he made his paintings, as someone else has pointed out
in a recent post, for the express purpose of having them reproduced in four
colour, on/in magazines. This fact shows quite clearly in the quality of the
paint handling, in the exaggeration of form, value and colour, all done with an
eye to the reproduction.
I do not have examples of Homer's work among my books so it would be
difficult to speak about the expressive power of many of his paintings, but one
thing does remain clear in my mind from the show. Homer really "grew" as an
artist. His technique became more and more assured, his subject matter more
involving and powerful. He was a great artist.
>
> Trying to compare the best works of artists as diverse as Corot, Degas,
> Homer and Rockwell is pointless.
>No. I disagree completely (contrary to an earlier post of mine). That is what
we, as artists, do if we want to make art. In order to get to the heart of the
thing, and learn as much as we are able about what makes art work and what
doesn't, we do have to comparing art of different times and periods, and then,
Lord have mercy, compare it to our own work!
>
> They worked in different media and at different times...
>Corot, Degas and Homer were largely from the same period, and all four
painted in oil. If you are suggesting Rockwell shouldn't be compared with the
others because he was from a different period, I disagree. If he is a great
painter, then let's compare. If his work doesn't hold up and is found lacking,
then let's figure out why if we can and see if we can learn something.
> (snip)
>
> Your contention that what the docents say at the Norman Rockwell Museum
> is a valid argument against calling Rockwell a fine artist is specious. I've
> heard docents say things that were so absolutely, incredibly incorrect I
> almost broke out laughing. What Rockwell said, perhaps modestly, is not
> important, either. It is the work we are discussing.
>(snip)
> I base most of what I am saying on the work itself. They are fine illustrations.
What the docents said at the museum rang true to me because the work
illustrated the point. I don't think the docents were making things up because
it was a slow day, and I doubt they were inventing a new "urban myth" about
Rockwell. (It would seem a rather silly myth to be making up, don't you
agree?)
>
> Oh, you also mentioned the fact that he gave his paintings to his sitters,
> rather than selling them. You'll recall the docents also told you that
> Rockwell was quite well off and didn't need the money.
> No. Don't recall them saying that exactly. As I recall, Rockwell lived modestly
in a typical home with a rather modest studio (for a famous artist). I think he
could have used the money as much as anyone else. I believe that he gave
them away because they were illustrations, he was paid for the illustration, and he
didn't feel they had great value beyond that.
Richard
Mdeli
R/L Davis <dav...@tallships.istar.ca> wrote:
> My contention would be that the difference
>between fine art and illustration is largely the INTENT of the maker.
>Richard
I agree, an illustrator is someone who does a painting
for reproduction.
Is an illustrator an artist or not?
Can work intended for reproduction be considered fine
art? (that is the critical question)
The moment I get an order to do an illustration is the
work I create forever precluded from being art?
Are Picasso’s and Dali’s book illustrations art or not?
The paintings Dali did for Disney or Vogue?
When the MOMA had an exhibition of works by Maxfield
Parish was it an art exhibition?
When Durer or Warhol reproduced a print can it still be
art or is this just printed matter?
What about 19th century illustrators like Dore,’
Grandville, Boz etc. Artists or not?
The Modern Academic Art establishment has to denigrate
illustration. Imagine hanging Rockwell or Parrish among
a room full of giant schmiers. Even Dali won't do. An
art teacher who can’t draw, can’t help anyone who wants
learn the rote necessary to be an illustrator.
jkea...@aol.com
In article <5av96b$s...@news.istar.ca>, R/L Davis
<dav...@tallships.istar.ca> writes:
>Jeffery Measamer wrote:
>>
>> R/L Davis wrote:
>> >
>> > Are you suggesting that we should use the taste of the average person
as
>the
>> > criteria for judging what is art and what is not? Work that "rises"
to
>the
>> > interests of the average person is good (art), but more difficult
>subjects are
>> > bad (not art)?
>> >
>> > Just wondering.
>> > Richard
>>
>> Whats wrong with the average person? Even the average person likes a
>> nice Turner, Degas, etc. Apparantly some even like more modern art.
>>
<details of cappucino taste test deleted>
>The point of my little analogy is that by your comment, I assume you
think all of
>us who have developed a taste for a fine cup of coffee should just give
it up, go
>with the flow, and drink sweet hot chocolate instead, because the average
person
>has deemed it better.
I don't interpret Jeffrey's salute to the Average Person that way. What he
seems to be seeking is accommodation of a variety of tastes. No one is
forcing you to like or drink the product of a vending machine; no one
should force Joe Average to drink bitter "real" cappucino. Similarly, Joe
Average should not be isolated and ridiculed for his taste in art. For the
purposes of this discussion, let's assume a modern, non-representational
artist whom we, as art connoisseurs, agree is "good." We probably did not
come to this conclusion merely by walking up to the first
non-representational work we saw, anymore than a connoisseur appreciates a
representational artist we all agree is "good."
Joe Average appreciates a representational painting largely because it
resembles something he can identify: a still life with a peeled lemon and
wilting flowers, let's say. The connoisseur, of course, being aware of the
symbolic elements, sees more. When J. A. is placed before a
non-representational work, however, he sees nothing familiar from his
experience. While he might not have truly appreciated the still life, he's
completely at sea when it comes to the latter, and may even pronounce it
"junk."
Greater appreciation of art, representational or not, like the enjoyment
of cappucino (I usually dump in a few teaspoons of sugar myself), requires
a developed taste. We might better discuss ways of increasing the public's
awareness of aesthetics, seeking to include them, rather than merely
dismissing them because they have invested their time in other pursuits.
The fact that art exists which J. A. "likes" does not prove that this art
is bad. It may be bad, but it may not, for many other reasons. Similarly,
just because one artist's work hangs in MoMA and another's doesn't, in no
way proves the quality of one vs the other.
The idea that "good" art only includes that which is inaccessible to the
aesthetically challenged is elitist at best.
JK
R/L Davis
Mdeli wrote:
-
> Davis asked:
> > Rockwells work was very "cute", "precious" and "palatable" (all your
> >words) but do you think his best work is on the same level as the best of Corot
> >or Degas or Homer?
(Mdeli answered:)
> Better.
> Corot is totally over-rated. Homer a fine artist.
> Degas, a fashionable fine artist but inferior to the
> best unmentionable artists of the salon. Note that
> Degas like Rockwell used photos.
(Davis)
> >(Or Twombley! to get back to the original argument.)
> >Richard
(Mdeli)
> Twombly is a fashionable artist of hype who won the MA
> lottery. You can see the same degree of high powered
> nothingness in the works of a thousand unrecognized
> failures.
> Although there are lots of better artists, Rockwell
> holds his own next to any painter whose picture tells a
> story.
Mani,
Thanks for your answer, I appreciate it. Many people post new
questions, rather than answers, which makes it very difficult to
carry on a coherent discussion. We will just disagree on the
merits of these mentioned painters. I was able to see the major
Corot show in New York in November and was completely taken away
with his ability. Some of the nymphs were a bit too much for my
taste, but his handeling of paint, his ability to almost
effortlessly capture a figure or landscape, the light, the mood,
is, I believe, surpassed by none. You will perhaps be interested,
the next day I went to MOMA and saw the Johns show and was
completely boared. I had always felt that he was one of the better
of that school, that period, but this show changed my mind. I
don't entirely disagree with you about the reassment of much of
modern art. I was certainly left wondering where Johns will fit
in after time passes and the dust clears.
Richard
R/L Davis
Mdeli wrote:
>
> R/L Davis <dav...@tallships.istar.ca> wrote:
> > My contention would be that the difference
> >between fine art and illustration is largely the INTENT of the maker.
> >Richard
>
> I agree, an illustrator is someone who does a painting
> for reproduction.
That's not what I said.
> Is an illustrator an artist or not?
Illustration is often considered "commercial art" to distinguish it from
"fine art". Likewise illustrators are usually referred to as "commercial
artists". For the sake of argument we can call them all artists.
> Can work intended for reproduction be considered fine
> art? (that is the critical question)
I don't find that a critical question. Often, artists deliberately use a
print medium as a technique for making fine art, like Rembrandt's
etchings. And sometimes work done as a form of commercial
reproduction is of such high quality that it is seen by many as fine art.
Prints done by Currier and Ives are a good example.
> The moment I get an order to do an illustration is the
> work I create forever precluded from being art?
No. As with the case of Currier and Ives.
> Are Picasso’s and Dali’s book illustrations art or not?
> The paintings Dali did for Disney or Vogue?
I am not familiar with these works. Can't say. (But in any case it
would only be my opinion.)
> When the MOMA had an exhibition of works by Maxfield
> Parish was it an art exhibition?
I'm sure many thought it was an art exhibition. I did not see it myself
and I don't know what work was in the show, nor do I know enough of
Parrish's paintings to give you my view of his work. I have never seen
one of his paintings "face to face", only in reproduction, and as
someone has pointed out, many illustrations are done with the
reproduction in mind, so I could think more highly of them as works of
art than they merit by having only seen them in the form they were
intended. (I don't mean to be coy Mani, I am just being honest.)
> When Durer or Warhol reproduced a print can it still be
> art or is this just printed matter?
Various print forms have long been used as fine art techniques. (See
also the answer to the second question above.)
> What about 19th century illustrators like Dore,’
> Grandville, Boz etc. Artists or not?
Again, I am not familiar with these illustrators, but the answers to the
above question and question #2 would apply here also.
Did we get anywhere?
> The Modern Academic Art establishment has to denigrate
> illustration...
You pointed out that MOMA had a show of Parrish. Is that
denigration? Sounds like cordial respect to me.
Richard
R/L Davis
JK,
I am all for the accommodation of a variety of tastes, and Joe Average can drink
whatever he wants and appreciate whatever art he wants to appreciate. I am also all
for increasing the public's awareness of aesthetics and am not trying to be dismissive
of those who do not work to develop an aesthetic taste. I am also not trying to say
that if the average person likes a certain kind of art that it proves it's bad. If
you are assuming the above then we are moving way off the topic.
My original post (copied below) was in reference to one posted by Mani Deli that
seemed to suggest he felt Rockwell's work was on the same level of technical skill
and expressiveness as that of a Homer or Corot. He also seemed to imply that the
average person can appreciate great art better than many who study art. I don't
believe these things are true, so I asked the question:
(my original post)
> O.K. just to see if we can agree on anything, can I ask you if you see the work by
> artists you admire on a scale of quality? Is the work of Rockwell on the same
> level as, say, Andrew Wyeth or Winslow Homer? Are his paintings as interesting to
> you as Corot, Corbet, or Degas? (or is his BEST work equal to the BEST work by
> these artists?) Does he rise to the level of Raphael in your eyes? Or do you
> approach art as being "black or white", simply good (art) or bad (not art)?
>
> Are you (Mdeli) suggesting that we should use the taste of the average person as
> the criteria for judging what is art and what is not? Work that "rises" to the
> interests of the average person is good (art), but more difficult subjects are bad
> (not art)?
So, what do you think? Is Rockwell on the same level of any or all the other artists
mentioned? (Mani has replied and says, yes.) Do you think that the taste of Joe
Average SHOULD BE USED AS THE CRITERIA for judging what is art and what is
not? (Mani almost agrees, suggesting "In the long run public taste defines art.") Do
you agree with Mr. Deli?
Let me know your answers to the above if you will, then we can agree, or just decide
to disagree.
Richard
G*rd*n
G*rd*n wrote:
| > I think you all are quite wrong about Rockwell. .
R/L Davis <dav...@tallships.istar.ca>:
| Does that mean that Rockwell was wrong about Rockwell?
I didn't notice him among the participants.
| > You seem to be greatly wrought up by the class nature of his subject
| > matter.
| Who said anything about "class"?
It's all over the place.
| > Rockwell mostly illustrated the popular nostalgic
| > fantasies of his times, and he was very good at it.
| I agree that he was very good at illustrating "popular nostalgia" but that is
| not near enough for me if we art talking about fine art.
I was here responding to the complaints about his subject
matter as being unworthy of something or other.
| > His work is at once accurate and well-designed, from both a
| > dramatic and a graphic point of view.
| Accuracy and good design is not enough in itself either.
I'm pretty much a formalist. If it's not on the wall, it's
not there, as somebody said. If you're not talking about
the way the painting is physically designed, I really don't
know what's left but the pretensions of the artist and his
audience.
| > However, I think he will have to recede for another decade or two before his
| > work is appreciated.
|One thing was also very clear during my visit to the Rockwell gallery in
|Stockbridge, and that was that Norman Rockwell is very much appreciated by many
|adoring and loyal fans.
But they're the lower orders. I mean by the _haute_
_bourgeoisie_. As Bob Dylan said, for some people the most
difficult act of courage would be to allow themselves to
be seen reading a soap opera magazine.
jkea...@aol.com
In article <5ave15$1...@news.istar.ca>, R/L Davis
<dav...@tallships.istar.ca> writes:
>jkea...@aol.com wrote:
>>
>>
>> Homer started out as an illustrator too, eh? How much deeper are any of
>> his works than any of Rockwell's? You could make the argument that
Homer
>> was merely a genre painter. I don't think he had the technical skill of
>> Rockwell, either.
>>I'm glad you picked Homer. Before visiting the Rockwell museum this
past
>summer I was in New York and saw the major retrospective of Homer's work.
>Before I saw that show I might have said the same thing you did, but
after
>seeing the show I could not disagree with you more, and I can only ask if
you
>saw the show, or if you have seen many of his works "in the flesh", not
in
>reproduction?
I saw the show at the Boston MFA before it went to NYC. New England is
littered with the work of Homer. I like many of Homer's paintings, but I
don't think he was a better painter than Rockwell.
>> Trying to compare the best works of artists as diverse as Corot, Degas,
>> Homer and Rockwell is pointless.
>>No. I disagree completely (contrary to an earlier post of mine). That
is
>what
>we, as artists, do if we want to make art. In order to get to the heart
of
>the
>thing, and learn as much as we are able about what makes art work and
what
>doesn't, we do have to comparing art of different times and periods, and
>then,
>Lord have mercy, compare it to our own work!
>>
>> They worked in different media and at different times...
>>Corot, Degas and Homer were largely from the same period, and all four
>painted in oil. If you are suggesting Rockwell shouldn't be compared
with
>the
>others because he was from a different period, I disagree. If he is a
great
>painter, then let's compare. If his work doesn't hold up and is found
>lacking,
>then let's figure out why if we can and see if we can learn something.
>> (snip)
Mani covered this yesterday and I pretty much agree with him. In my
opinion, Corot found a style that worked and milked it (just like
Rockwell)(yes, I saw the Corot exhibit at the Met last week). As I like to
work in pastel and I like the dance, I enjoy looking at Degas's pastels of
dancers. Homer tried to be profound and often failed, but he did some nice
watercolors.
>>
>> Your contention that what the docents say at the Norman Rockwell Museum
>> is a valid argument against calling Rockwell a fine artist is specious.
>I've
>> heard docents say things that were so absolutely, incredibly incorrect
I
>> almost broke out laughing. What Rockwell said, perhaps modestly, is
not
>> important, either. It is the work we are discussing.
>>(snip)
>> I base most of what I am saying on the work itself. They are fine
>illustrations.
>What the docents said at the museum rang true to me because the work
>illustrated the point. I don't think the docents were making things up
>because
>it was a slow day, and I doubt they were inventing a new "urban myth"
about
>Rockwell. (It would seem a rather silly myth to be making up, don't you
>agree?)
>>
I don't think docents intentionally mislead, but I have never seen a
docent working from notes. Like the party trick where you tell the person
next to you a story, which is then passed one person at a time around the
room, what comes out at the other end rarely sounds like the original
story. Most docents seem to memorize a few facts about the works and the
artist and imagine the rest. When I've been forced to take guided tours,
I've heard contradictory information from different docents on different
days. I try to avoid them.
>> Oh, you also mentioned the fact that he gave his paintings to his
sitters,
>> rather than selling them. You'll recall the docents also told you that
>> Rockwell was quite well off and didn't need the money.
>> No. Don't recall them saying that exactly. As I recall, Rockwell
lived
>modestly
>in a typical home with a rather modest studio (for a famous artist). I
think
>he
>could have used the money as much as anyone else. I believe that he gave
>them away because they were illustrations, he was paid for the
illustration,
>and he
>didn't feel they had great value beyond that.
Having blasted the docents in the last paragraph, I will now say that I
distinctly remember a docent saying "Rockwell was well off" when I was up
there recently. The fact that he lived modestly kind of fits in with the
self-deprecating "I'm not a fine artist" statement. The Stockbridge area
being what it is, even living modestly there is like living the high life
elsewhere.
I guess we've beaten this one to death, Richard. See you at the Met
sometime.
JK
jkea...@aol.com
In article <5b1s21$6...@news.istar.ca>, R/L Davis
<dav...@tallships.istar.ca> writes:
>So, what do you think? Is Rockwell on the same level of any or all the
other
>artists
>mentioned? (Mani has replied and says, yes.)
Yes.
>Do you think that the taste of
>Joe
>Average SHOULD BE USED AS THE CRITERIA for judging what is art and what
is
>not? (Mani almost agrees, suggesting "In the long run public taste
defines
>art.") Do
>you agree with Mr. Deli?
I don't like other people to make judgements for me, so I don't believe
that anyone's opinion but mine should be a criterion for me. When you
start trying to sift out Joe Average from Clement Greenberg, say, you risk
elitism at best, fascism at worst (I am explicitly NOT accusing anyone of
either). If I say, 'No, Joe Average's tastes should not be used as the
criteria,' I risk implying (and you know I hate to imply, Deni) that
someone else's taste _should_ be used. Whose? Pick two critics and they'll
agree on some things, disagree on others.
"Public taste" is itself a slippery concept. My taste in art is different
from my father's, different from Mani's, and different from yours. Yet we
are all part of the "public." There is probably a substantial "public"
that thinks Duchamp is a great fine artist (sorry kj, couldn't resist) and
another that feels the same about Rockwell. Where these sets do not
overlap, even my inflated ego is not up to judging one "right" and one
"wrong." I have my opinion, your mileage may vary.
Frankly, I don't see the need to compare artists and say one is better
than another. Perhaps I'll say "I like A better than B" and you'll say the
opposite. You may hate A's work, think it's absolute rubbish. If you're
the Art Czar, A's work may disappear from sight. I wouldn't like to see
that happen. Every curator, gallery owner and art-book publisher follows
her taste. Art consumers would be well advised to do the same.
>
>Let me know your answers to the above if you will, then we can agree, or
just
>decide
>to disagree.
A man has to believe in something. I believe I'll post this and go get an
instant cappucino, extra sugar.
JK
jkea...@aol.com
In article <5av2nj$f...@news.interlog.com>, hu...@interlog.com (Mdeli)
writes:
<snip>
>
>Stylistically Modern Academic Art, artwork considered
>the great art of this century, encompasses not only
>modern abstraction but also No Skill Realism (NSR).
>This is work which though critically considered modern
>art, contains instantly recognizable images.
>
>The best place to sample lots of ordinary sub-furniture
>store no skill realism is right here on the web. But
>this realism, even when accompanied by a hard hitting
>manifesto which hardly anyone reads, rarely has any
>real Modern Academic Art power.
Give some sample URLs if you can. Most of what I find is pretty straight
realism.
>
>The Important NSR I am referring to here is praised as
>great art and hangs in museums near our acclaimed
>abstract masters because it presents them with no
>challenge.
>
>The main characteristics of NSR are abominable drawing
>and a strong dose of schmier (preferably impasto). This
>is termed by critics as anything from abstract
>distortion all the way to the fourth dimension, in many
>more words of course.
>
>Great art status for NSR started in this century with
>the works of classical Modern Academics from Matisse
>(the most important of the lot) and Picasso and
>advanced through the worst of Expressionism and on to
>our presently fashionable big canvas realist potzers
>like Hockney and Rivers etc.
The fact that no one is arguing must mean they all agree.
>
>This alone shows that we are not in a century of pure
>abstraction. Even the claims of de Kooning experts
>attest to this. No one could say that his Keane like
>goo-goo eyes and occasional naughty part aren’t
>recognizable.
>
I think the art of this century will be remembered for its abstraction,
but obviously we haven't completely forsaken realism. That may be the key
to appreciating de Kooning. In the social and political climate of the
late 40s/early 50s, crude realism seemed to de Kooning to express what he
felt needed to be said. That was not a pretty time to be creative and
intellectual in America. Expressionism in the arts seems to accompany
unsettled social and political conditions. Art history cannot be
adequately appreciated without a consideration of social and political
history.
Given the time and place, how might a more refined technique or a nicer
style been effective?
>Most people are not offended by pure abstraction in the
>visual sense. Mondrian, Kandinski, Pollock, Rothko etc.
>certainly have a graphic attraction equal to that of
>nice towels. By comparison the master works of NSR
>are no sight for sore eyes. They are visually
>abominable.
>
This last has to have been intentional.
>After many years of flat Greenbergian asceticism, NSR
>is again OK in critical eyes. This, as long as it
>contains lots of drawing errors, remains mindlessly
>simplistic, doesn’t tell any stories (lest it be
>labeled illustration) and has an abstract section (a
>few obvious flat schmiers). Oh yes it has to come in
>Rubenesque sizes so that the pretense of importance
>equals any nearby abstraction and the artists
>incompetence is made instantly apparent
>
>
This is 20th century art, art in a century that brought us
heavier-than-air flight and the ICBM, television and the V chip,
telecommunications and a drastic reduction in personal privacy. De Kooning
and the other Abstract Expressionists were affected by the time and place
in which they lived. Standing on the cusp of the Cold War, the Abstract
Expressionists and other creative people of the period painted what they
believed in. By rejecting traditional technique they were also rejecting
the received wisdom of the time.
There _are_ "no-skill artists," and there are critics who will participate
in the fostering of junk as art. The reasons for Abstract Expressionism
have gotten lost in the furor, the superficial qualities of the work have
become confused with the intentions. As a result, some fledgling artists
mistake schmiering as an acceptable end, when they have not the emotional
and experiential background that necessarily precedes expressionism.
I think it is possible to distinguish between the fakers and the serious
artists. I think even anti-technique has a technique. I think the decision
to forego technique and use intentional lack of beauty as an artistic
device takes a lot of courage.
JK
Takeitdown
rockwell seems the obvious victim here.. whats the real issue here? envy
of popular artists, the laughability of mainstream art, contempt for
americana, dismissal of illustration, or the self-serving modern idea of
fine art as an elite (and self-imploding) class of skilled 'creative'
individuals? I say go aahead, trade your expressive works among your
friends... while rockwell calanders are on every mothers refrigerator.
Mdeli
R/L Davis <dav...@tallships.istar.ca> wrote:
>So, what do you think? Is Rockwell on the same level of any or all the other artists
>mentioned? (Mani has replied and says, yes.) Do you think that the taste of Joe
>Average SHOULD BE USED AS THE CRITERIA for judging what is art and what is
>not? (Mani almost agrees, suggesting "In the long run public taste defines art.") Do
>you agree with Mr. Deli?
I made the statement "In the long run public taste
defines art." I said nothing about Joe Average. Let me
explain and see if you don’t agree.
I believe that what is art and great art is determined
by a consensus over time, a long time. This does not
mean that what is or isn't liked today will be
preserved as art.
As time passes works of art are collected and cared for
and what is considered great art makes up the finest
collections. I think that as we look further back in
time few would argue about what is considered a classic
masterpiece. They may disagree about ranking, like I
prefer Holbein to Rembrandt etc. but their rank as art
is well assured.
Now I don’t particularly like Corot and I think in the
long run Rockwell will be seen as a better artist than
Degas. But I consider them all artists. However I
don’t consider someone like Pollock, Twombly, Mondrian
or Rothko artists in the same sense.
Why? Because there skill doesn’t exceed that of an
average towel designer and I’ve seen better wallpaper.
But there is more to this opinion. I have classic art
in mind.
I can’t define what art is but one can determine some
of the Characteristics which are constant in all the
art of the past like:
-master draftsmanship and technique
-it conveys a feeling to the viewer that he is
seeing something unique.
- it attracts the viewers for long time.
The so called art which is considered great (Modern
Academic Art) which inhabits our museums today, for the
most part lacks all these characteristics except
perhaps for the last. But I believe that even where
this last characteristic is apparent while the others
are absent it does so because of fashion and when
fashion changes these works will even fail to attract
the viewer.
That is why I believe that Modern academic art will
eventually be reassessed and other work will in future
replace it on museum and collectors walls.
Mdeli
jkea...@aol.com wrote:
>I think the art of this century will be remembered for its abstraction,
>but obviously we haven't completely forsaken realism.
There is more valid abstraction in the curtain of
Vermeer’s "artist Studio" and perhaps on the floor,
than in ten latest shows at the MOMA. And lets never
forget all those well designed bedsheets. This century
like others will be remembered for its finest work.
> That may be the key
>to appreciating de Kooning. In the social and political climate of the
>late 40s/early 50s, crude realism seemed to de Kooning to express what he
>felt needed to be said. That was not a pretty time to be creative and
>intellectual in America. Expressionism in the arts seems to accompany
>unsettled social and political conditions. Art history cannot be
>adequately appreciated without a consideration of social and political
>history.
>Given the time and place, how might a more refined technique or a nicer
>style been effective?
All this is no excuse for incompetence. Grosz, Dali,
Bosch, Breughel, survived horrible times but weren’t
incompetent. Plenty of artists painted in the worst of
times and did fine work.
>>Most people are not offended by pure abstraction in the
>>visual sense. Mondrian, Kandinski, Pollock, Rothko etc.
>>certainly have a graphic attraction equal to that of
>>nice towels. By comparison the master works of NSR
>>are no sight for sore eyes. They are visually
>>abominable.
>>
>This last has to have been intentional.
Is it really? And if so, so what?
Did you ever look at a hundred charcoal student
newsprint figure schmiers. Was their intention really
incompetent ugliness? I think they were trying to do
their best. And suppose it was intentional, does that
make it better?
>This is 20th century art, art in a century that brought us
>heavier-than-air flight and the ICBM, television and the V chip,
>telecommunications and a drastic reduction in personal privacy. De Kooning
>and the other Abstract Expressionists were affected by the time and place
>in which they lived.
So was every other artist including all the competent
ones. The only thing one can’t avoid is being modern.
> Standing on the cusp of the Cold War, the Abstract
>Expressionists and other creative people of the period painted what they
>believed in. By rejecting traditional technique they were also rejecting
>the received wisdom of the time.
Its no excuse for incompetence. "Rejecting traditional
technique," is just fine, only you have to replace it
with something.
>There _are_ "no-skill artists," and there are critics who will participate
>in the fostering of junk as art. The reasons for Abstract Expressionism
>have gotten lost in the furor, the superficial qualities of the work have
>become confused with the intentions. As a result, some fledgling artists
>mistake schmiering as an acceptable end, when they have not the emotional
>and experiential background that necessarily precedes expressionism.
What is on the wall is what counts. Not when or why it
was done.
>I think it is possible to distinguish between the fakers and the serious
>artists. I think even anti-technique has a technique. I think the decision
>to forego technique and use intentional lack of beauty as an artistic
>device takes a lot of courage.
Technique is something which evolves.
The most important technique today is via computer. A
good fractal is more visually interesting in color
composition surface texture etc. than any AE
masterpiece. And fractals aren’t even art they are a
natural occurrence, almost an accident. The computer is
the best critique of abstraction. It can outdo any
abstract painter.
. Most art is neither pure abstraction or realism. It
is a fusion of both. The most interesting images today
involve computers. The best computer artists understand
rote, They can draw and understand color , composition
and perspective and they will always outdo those who
lack this knowledge.
THE COMPUTER IS TO ABSTRACTION WHAT THE CAMARA WAS TO
ART IN THE 19TH CENTURY. Art is at a crossroads. From
now on, artificial intelligence vs. natural stupidity.
Mani DeLi
---no skill no art
R/L Davis
Mdeli wrote:
>
> I made the statement "In the long run public taste
> defines art." I said nothing about Joe Average. Let me
> explain and see if you don’t agree.
>
> I believe that what is art and great art is determined
> by a consensus over time, a long time. This does not
> mean that what is or isn't liked today will be
> preserved as art.
I agree.
> As time passes works of art are collected and cared for
> and what is considered great art makes up the finest
> collections. I think that as we look further back in
> time few would argue about what is considered a classic
> masterpiece. They may disagree about ranking, like I
> prefer Holbein to Rembrandt etc. but their rank as art
> is well assured.
I agree.
> Now I don’t particularly like Corot and I think in the
> long run Rockwell will be seen as a better artist than
> Degas. But I consider them all artists. However I
> don’t consider someone like Pollock, Twombly, Mondrian
> or Rothko artists in the same sense.
I like Twombly (as you know), I walk by the Rothko's, and
have mixed feelings about the Pollock's and Mondrian's.
I certainly agree about the bad technique of the last two.
The museums are going to have to spend a fortune on
these works if they want to keep them presentable.
(I will let Rockwell rest.)
> Why? Because there skill doesn’t exceed that of an
> average towel designer and I’ve seen better wallpaper.
I am very much an admirer of PAINT. I love it when a
master painter can execute a painterly passage of juicy
brush strokes of opaque and transparent colour, that
at the same time give the eye an illusion of a face or
object, etc. That is why I love the work of Corot.
But this love of paint, for me, can also be satisfied
when the work is abstract and the paint is simply line,
shape, colour, hue, form, etc. The expression then,
rather than being of a face or whatever, is of "sombre"
grays, or "joyful" pastels, or "energetic" line. I don't
think, as you do, that this process of abstracting is all
that easy, and when it is well done, it is quite unique.
> But there is more to this opinion. I have classic art
> in mind.
> I can’t define what art is but one can determine some
> of the Characteristics which are constant in all the
> art of the past like:
> -master draftsmanship and technique
> -it conveys a feeling to the viewer that he is
> seeing something unique.
> - it attracts the viewers for long time.
For me. an artist like Twombley fits these criteria.
> The so called art which is considered great (Modern
> Academic Art) which inhabits our museums today, for the
> most part lacks all these characteristics except
> perhaps for the last. But I believe that even where
> this last characteristic is apparent while the others
> are absent it does so because of fashion and when
> fashion changes these works will even fail to attract
> the viewer.
For the most part I agree.
> That is why I believe that Modern academic art will
> eventually be reassessed and other work will in future
> replace it on museum and collectors walls.
I agree. More agrees than not...
I'm not sure I will be able to live this down...
Richard
No skill no art. Oh my God!
G*rd*n
R/L Davis <dav...@tallships.istar.ca>:
| ... It is quite possible that Rockwell COULD have been
|a better painter if he were interested in producing fine paintings, but be wasn't.
|He was an illustrator, he made his paintings, as someone else has pointed out
|in a recent post, for the express purpose of having them reproduced in four
|colour, on/in magazines. This fact shows quite clearly in the quality of the
|paint handling, in the exaggeration of form, value and colour, all done with an
I don't see why that in itself disqualifies the art. One
might say that one should regard the magazine as the
finished product, rather than the original, but otherwise
the mechanics of construction are just that, mechanics.
Besides, lots of artists have exaggerated form, value, and
color just for the hell of it, like that guy that painted
that ceiling in Italy, whoever he was.
RSDC/White Crow
Mdeli wrote:
>
> Why are the artist you mention not illustrators? They
> all painted storytelling subject matter. When Norman
> Rockwell paints a portrait is he an illustrator or an
> artist or both? What is the difference between
> illustration and art?
At the risk of resorting to ArtSpeak, I think that (at least) two
concepts separate an illustrator from an artist: intent and content.
The intent of the illustrator is to entertain a passive viewer. The
intent of an artist is to engage an active viewer in an interaction
(both the terms dialogue and conversation are so inappropriate because
they describe verbal interaction). An illustration has little content
because it is akin to a sign, while art should have a content, akin to a
symbol.
<snip>
> >I have the feeling that were DaVinci alive and making art
> >today, with his mind and his manual skills, he would hold the staid
> >portrait drawers in the park in contempt, if he even bothered slowing down
> >to look.
>
> Weiss seems to have park-portrait paranoia.
> But how would he feel about Rothko and Kline? Rockwell?
I know you mean it as a rhetorical question, but I think that Leonardo
would be a Duchampian computer geek who was way past Rothko and Kline
and who would be amused at the nostalgic sentimentality of Rockwell.
<snip>
>
> >These areas have become
> >recently more complex, as artist make work with an illustration-like
> >disregard for pictorialism and formal development, but add a skill set of
> >visual and artworld semiotics to manipulate and locate the artwork as a
> >cultural sign within the field of cultural discourses.
>
> Nice Artspeak.
Yoy know, art, like all serious quests, does have its own jargon and
argot. You dismiss serious critical language while you insist on
adherence to what you claim as fundamental critical technique. You may
be able to walk the walk, but you constantly avoid the talk.
> >Single point perspective
> >(and most photography) , were based on conventions that were monocular: a
> >fixed, immovable eye, frozen in time...very different to a human's visual
> >perception.
>
> Perspective has as many vanishing points as there are
> sets of parallel lines. I doubt that you know anything
> about perspective. Perspective is a science.
> Complaining about it is as stupid as complaining about
> Maxwell’s equations.
1. An interesting comparison. I think a more apt one is that you seem
to be stuck in a Newtonian philosophy in a post-Einstein world.
2. Even if perspective as a *science*, it isn't the only one.
<snip>
>
> Mani DeLi
> …no skill no art
amos
RSDC/White Crow
Mdeli wrote:
>
> jkea...@aol.com wrote:
> >I think the art of this century will be remembered for its abstraction,
> >but obviously we haven't completely forsaken realism.
>
> There is more valid abstraction in the curtain of
> Vermeer’s "artist Studio" and perhaps on the floor,
> than in ten latest shows at the MOMA. And lets never
> forget all those well designed bedsheets. This century
> like others will be remembered for its finest work.
1. It strikes me that you are confusing the decorative arts with fine
art -- what we used to call the difference between design and art.
2. Valid abstraction is about a whole lot more than technique. It is
about using color and form, independent of exterior objects, to
communicate in a visual, non-verbal way.
3. I find Rembrandt a more compelling example than Vermeer. I think
Vermeer is a fine example of flashy technique covering up a paucity of
content.
....In the social and political climate of the
> >late 40s/early 50s, crude realism seemed to de Kooning to express what he
> >felt needed to be said. ....
>
> >Given the time and place, how might a more refined technique or a nicer
> >style been effective?
>
> All this is no excuse for incompetence. Grosz, Dali,
> Bosch, Breughel, survived horrible times but weren’t
> incompetent. Plenty of artists painted in the worst of
> times and did fine work.
1. I agree with this last statement.
2. I challenge you on de Kooning's talent. He had an early and long
European education in traditional arts and techniques. If you look at
his canvases closely, you will see evidence of a great deal of control;
a great deal of technique in the handling and manipulation of paint,
both as a medium and as a vehicle for color and form; a great deal of
consideration and plain hard work. Also, you won't see a whole lot of
schmeir. His colors tend to be vibrant, diverse, separate, well placed
and, again, controlled.
He seems to fit you criterion.
<snip>
> >This is 20th century art, art in a century that brought us
> >heavier-than-air flight and the ICBM, television and the V chip,
> >telecommunications and a drastic reduction in personal privacy. De Kooning
> >and the other Abstract Expressionists were affected by the time and place
> >in which they lived.
>
> So was every other artist including all the competent
> ones. The only thing one can’t avoid is being modern.
1. What point are you trying to make here? JK was trying to make a
point about the particular method of expression is consitent with the
turmoil of this century. You start by making a comment on the sructure
of his argument and thereby sidestepping the substance, and then you
make a cryptical comment about being modern.
2. I've asked before: who do you judge to be competent who has been
working since WWI? I'm pretty clear on who you think is incompetent!
>
<snip>
>
> Technique is something which evolves.
> The most important technique today is via computer. A
> good fractal is more visually interesting in color
> composition surface texture etc. than any AE
> masterpiece. And fractals aren’t even art they are a
> natural occurrence, almost an accident. The computer is
> the best critique of abstraction. It can outdo any
> abstract painter.
>
> . Most art is neither pure abstraction or realism. It
> is a fusion of both. The most interesting images today
> involve computers. The best computer artists understand
> rote, They can draw and understand color , composition
> and perspective and they will always outdo those who
> lack this knowledge.
>
> THE COMPUTER IS TO ABSTRACTION WHAT THE CAMARA WAS TO
> ART IN THE 19TH CENTURY. Art is at a crossroads. From
> now on, artificial intelligence vs. natural stupidity.
1. I'm not sure whether you are being straightforward with these
comments or you write them sarcastically.
2. I find it interesting that, in a related post, you claimed to be
writing about painting, but used the Fountain as your bete noir.
> Mani DeLi
> ---no skill no art
amos
Mdeli
I wrote
>> all painted storytelling subject matter. When Norman
>> Rockwell paints a portrait is he an illustrator or an
>> artist or both? What is the difference between
>> illustration and art?
White Crow answers:
>At the risk of resorting to ArtSpeak, I think that (at least) two
>concepts separate an illustrator from an artist: intent and content.
>The intent of the illustrator is to entertain a passive viewer.
That is among the intent of all artists.
>The intent of an artist is to engage an active viewer in an interaction
>(both the terms dialogue and conversation are so inappropriate because
>they describe verbal interaction).
The artists intent is to produce artwork that attracts
the viewer and to make a good living. Most try to do
better than their competitors alive or dead.
>An illustration has little content
>because it is akin to a sign, while art should have a content, akin to a
>symbol.
Rockwell has "little content," compared to say,
Matisse’s "Dance," which is bloated with content. So
that’s the difference? Mondrian has even more content.
Is River’s "Washington Crossing the Delaware" Art or an
illustration. J.Johns’ Target?
>> >These areas have become
>> >recently more complex, as artist make work with an illustration-like
>> >disregard for pictorialism and formal development, but add a skill set of
>> >visual and artworld semiotics to manipulate and locate the artwork as a
>> >cultural sign within the field of cultural discourses.
>>
>> Nice Artspeak.
>
>Yoy know, art, like all serious quests, does have its own jargon and
>argot.
I prefer counter-jargon
> You dismiss serious critical language while you insist on
>adherence to what you claim as fundamental critical technique. You may
>be able to walk the walk, but you constantly avoid the talk.
I presume that you are serious and I am not.
>> >Single point perspective
>> >(and most photography) , were based on conventions that were monocular: a
>> >fixed, immovable eye, frozen in time...very different to a human's visual
>> >perception.
>>
>> Perspective has as many vanishing points as there are
>> sets of parallel lines. I doubt that you know anything
>> about perspective. Perspective is a science.
>> Complaining about it is as stupid as complaining about
>> Maxwell’s equations.
>
>1. An interesting comparison. I think a more apt one is that you seem
>to be stuck in a Newtonian philosophy in a post-Einstein world.
Think harder or stick to post modern mysticism.
>2. Even if perspective as a *science*, it isn't the only one.
Brilliant deduction
Mdeli
RSDC/White Crow <satt...@us.net> wrote:
>2. Valid abstraction is about a whole lot more than technique. It is
>about using color and form, independent of exterior objects, to
>communicate in a visual, non-verbal way.
So?
>3. I find Rembrandt a more compelling example than Vermeer. I think
>Vermeer is a fine example of flashy technique covering up a paucity of
>content.
Good for you.
>....In the social and political climate of the
>> >late 40s/early 50s, crude realism seemed to de Kooning to express what he
>> >felt needed to be said. ....
Keane did a better job.
>>
>> >Given the time and place, how might a more refined technique or a nicer
>> >style been effective?
That is for you to answer if you are capible of any
sort of creativity.
>> All this is no excuse for incompetence. Grosz, Dali,
>> Bosch, Breughel, survived horrible times but weren’t
>> incompetent. Plenty of artists painted in the worst of
>> times and did fine work.
>2. I challenge you on de Kooning's talent. He had an early and long
>European education in traditional arts and techniques.
Of no interest.
> If you look at
>his canvases closely, you will see evidence of a great deal of control;
>a great deal of technique in the handling and manipulation of paint,
>both as a medium and as a vehicle for color and form; a great deal of
>consideration and plain hard work.
Are you speaking about the front or the back of the
painting?
> Also, you won't see a whole lot of
>schmeir. His colors tend to be vibrant, diverse, separate, well placed
>and, again, controlled.
I guess you mean the back.
>2. I've asked before: who do you judge to be competent who has been
>working since WWI? I'm pretty clear on who you think is incompetent!
Read some of my former messages.
>>
><snip>
>>
>> Technique is something which evolves.
>> The most important technique today is via computer. A
>> good fractal is more visually interesting in color
>> composition surface texture etc. than any AE
>> masterpiece. And fractals aren’t even art they are a
>> natural occurrence, almost an accident. The computer is
>> the best critique of abstraction. It can outdo any
>> abstract painter.
>>
>> . Most art is neither pure abstraction or realism. It
>> is a fusion of both. The most interesting images today
>> involve computers. The best computer artists understand
>> rote, They can draw and understand color , composition
>> and perspective and they will always outdo those who
>> lack this knowledge.
>>
>> THE COMPUTER IS TO ABSTRACTION WHAT THE CAMARA WAS TO
>> ART IN THE 19TH CENTURY. Art is at a crossroads. From
>> now on, artificial intelligence vs. natural stupidity.
>1. I'm not sure whether you are being straightforward with these
>comments or you write them sarcastically.
>2. I find it interesting that, in a related post, you claimed to be
>writing about painting, but used the Fountain as your bete noir.
Glad you found it interesting.
Bruce Attah
In article <32D811...@us.net>, satt...@us.net wrote:
> Mdeli wrote:
> >
> > There is more valid abstraction in the curtain of
> > Vermeer’s "artist Studio" and perhaps on the floor,
> > than in ten latest shows at the MOMA. And lets never
> > forget all those well designed bedsheets. This century
> > like others will be remembered for its finest work.
>
> 1. It strikes me that you are confusing the decorative arts with fine
> art -- what we used to call the difference between design and art.
>
> 2. Valid abstraction is about a whole lot more than technique. It is
> about using color and form, independent of exterior objects, to
> communicate in a visual, non-verbal way.
Allow me to opine that you are making an arbitrary and meaningless
distinction.
Abstract easel painting is a decorative art. Like the design of carpets
and tapestries, it is about "using color and form, independent of exterior
objects, to communicate in a visual, non-verbal way".
Come to think of it, the same is true of figurative painting, except that
figurative painting communicates a whole lot more.
Bruce Attah.
Bruce Attah
> At the risk of resorting to ArtSpeak, I think that (at least) two
> concepts separate an illustrator from an artist: intent and content.
> The intent of the illustrator is to entertain a passive viewer. The
> intent of an artist is to engage an active viewer in an interaction
> (both the terms dialogue and conversation are so inappropriate because
> they describe verbal interaction). An illustration has little content
> because it is akin to a sign, while art should have a content, akin to a
> symbol.
What do you mean by "active viewer" and "passive viewer"? To grasp
Rockwell's pictures, you have to read them. How is one any less active
when doing this than when reading, say, a painting Homer, whom you
mention?
How can you say that Rockwell's paintings have little content? That is
plainly absurd -- they are full of echoes and ramifications. Rockwell is
repeatedly derided for the "sentimentality" and "nostalgia" in his work.
These same traits are the basis of his popularity, and there is no doubt
that these are part of the _content_ of his pictures.
> ...I think that Leonardo
> would be a Duchampian computer geek who was way past Rothko and Kline
> and who would be amused at the nostalgic sentimentality of Rockwell.
This sort of speculation is meaningless, and furthers no arguments, except
insofar as it reveals your prejudices.
> > >These areas have become
> > >recently more complex, as artist make work with an illustration-like
> > >disregard for pictorialism and formal development, but add a skill set of
> > >visual and artworld semiotics to manipulate and locate the artwork as a
> > >cultural sign within the field of cultural discourses.
> >
> > Nice Artspeak.
>
> Yoy know, art, like all serious quests, does have its own jargon and
> argot. You dismiss serious critical language while you insist on
> adherence to what you claim as fundamental critical technique. You may
> be able to walk the walk, but you constantly avoid the talk.
"Jargon" can mean either of two things: a specialized technical language
that carries meaning, or cant developed to disguise the absence or
triviality of meaning.
I can read the technical languages of several disciplines, texts by modern
philosophers are part of my usual reading, and I read about semiotics in
college, yet I really do not know what the quoted paragraph means. If you
can persuade me that it says something significant that could not have
been said far more simply, I'll trust that it is serious critical
language, and not cant.
>
> > >Single point perspective
> > >(and most photography) , were based on conventions that were monocular: a
> > >fixed, immovable eye, frozen in time...very different to a human's visual
> > >perception.
> >
> > Perspective has as many vanishing points as there are
> > sets of parallel lines. I doubt that you know anything
> > about perspective. Perspective is a science.
> > Complaining about it is as stupid as complaining about
> > Maxwell’s equations.
>
> 1. An interesting comparison. I think a more apt one is that you seem
> to be stuck in a Newtonian philosophy in a post-Einstein world.
What is Newtonian philosophy, pray tell, and how is it inappropriate to a
"post-Einsteinian" world?
> 2. Even if perspective as a *science*, it isn't the only one.
That does not invalidate its findings.
jkea...@aol.com
In article <5be9uo$7...@news.interlog.com>, hu...@interlog.com (Mdeli)
writes:
>>>
>>> >Given the time and place, how might a more refined technique or a
nicer
>>> >style been effective?
>
>That is for you to answer if you are capible of any
>sort of creativity.
>
>
The original quote came from one of my postings. Your answer is fair
enough, though a more complete reply would have been enlightening. I
assumed you were working through that period and would have a personal
perspective
For the time and place, the Abstract Expressionists probably felt their
styles were appropriate. I accept your contention that history may find
they were wrong. It would be difficult for anyone to recreate the time and
place during which they worked, especially in light of our knowledge of
the art that came afterward.
JK
mdeli
Modern Academic Abstraction has one valid claim, namely that it is
something entirely different from the art of the past. It conforms to
no classical standards (I use the term loosely here).
Stylistically Modern Academic Art, artwork considered the great art of
this century, encompasses not only modern abstraction but also No
Skill Realism (NSR). This is work which though critically considered
modern art, contains instantly recognizable images.
The best place to sample lots of ordinary sub-furniture store no skill
realism is right here on the web. But this realism, even when
accompanied by a hard hitting manifesto which hardly anyone reads,
rarely has any real Modern Academic Art power.
The Important NSR I am referring to here is praised as great art and
hangs in museums near our acclaimed abstract masters because it
presents them with no challenge.
The main characteristics of NSR are abominable drawing and a strong
dose of schmier (preferably impasto). This is termed by critics as
anything from abstract distortion all the way to the fourth dimension,
in many more words of course.
Great art status for NSR started in this century with the works of
classical Modern Academics from Matisse (the most important of the
lot) and Picasso and advanced through the worst of Expressionism and
on to our presently fashionable big canvas realist potzers like
Hockney and Rivers etc.
This alone shows that we are not in a century of pure abstraction.
Even the claims of de Kooning experts attest to this. No one could say
that his Keane like goo-goo eyes and occasional naughty part aren’t
recognizable.
Most people are not offended by pure abstraction in the visual sense.
Mondrian, Kandinski, Pollock, Rothko etc. certainly have a graphic
attraction equal to that of nice towels. By comparison the master
works of NSR are no sight for sore eyes. They are visually abominable.
After many years of flat Greenbergian asceticism, NSR is again OK in
critical eyes. This, as long as it contains lots of drawing errors,
remains mindlessly simplistic, doesn’t tell any stories (lest it be
labeled illustration) and has an abstract section (a few obvious flat
schmiers). Oh yes it has to come in Rubenesque sizes so that the
pretense of importance equals any nearby abstraction and the artists
incompetence is made instantly apparent
Mani DeLi
mmw
mdeli wrote:
snipped Mani's hatred of Matisse and Picasso
> After many years of flat Greenbergian asceticism, NSR is again OK in
> critical eyes. This, as long as it contains lots of drawing errors,
> remains mindlessly simplistic, doesn=92t tell any stories (lest it be
> labeled illustration) and has an abstract section (a few obvious flat
> schmiers). Oh yes it has to come in Rubenesque sizes so that the
> pretense of importance equals any nearby abstraction and the artists
> incompetence is made instantly apparent
> =
> Mani DeLi
> =85If it doesn=92t look like a put-on it won=92t make it as great modern
> art.
Mani:
Were you inspired by looking at Larry's ego-page?
He has some non-skilled-fuzzy-realism-copied-from-photos
paintings of Sportsmen Portraits. Sportsmen being a euphanism
for hunters. The hunters are shown with their dead animals
and he calls it "wildlife art."
Wanax
>
> The best place to sample lots of ordinary sub-furniture store no skill
> realism is right here on the web. But this realism, even when
> accompanied by a hard hitting manifesto which hardly anyone reads,
> rarely has any real Modern Academic Art power.
HAH! I love it! This is good stuff, as nothing makes me laugh more than those peices
of art that require a little page of explanation. To me, having to explain what you're
looking at is like watching TV with no sound (just typed script on a page in front of
you). Good analogy Mani :)
This is termed by critics as
> anything from abstract distortion all the way to the fourth dimension,
> in many more words of course.
I call it child work. In fact, I have two great selections here in my office done by
the master Bzzzzt, my son of 5 years old.
We call it fingerist holeistic :)
No one could say
> that his Keane like goo-goo eyes and occasional naughty part aren’t
> recognizable.
Stop stop, I'm laughing so hard I can't breath :D
Pollock, etc. certainly have a graphic
> attraction equal to that of nice towels.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
By comparison the master
> works of NSR are no sight for sore eyes. They are visually abominable.
Just look at what is in the May issue of Art America. Yarn sculpture! I piece of sting
hanging from the ceiling and trailing along the floor. This is art? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
No wonder art is dead in the regular world. If we'd come off our high horses and paint
something, then perhaps regular people wouldn't keep buying all those Elvis on velvet
scabs.
Oh yes it has to come in Rubenesque sizes so that the
> pretense of importance equals any nearby abstraction and the artists
> incompetence is made instantly apparent
Our local gallery hangs only this sort of tripe. It is frustrating, as you know that it
is unpurchasable, and merely an expression of the artists lack of sex taken out on
medium that deserve better. If you look closely at some of that sh*t, you'll understand
why they can't get sex: demented brains :)
Here is my favorite example of a NSR here locally. She came out of here studio the
other day to attend a meeting of the local guild. The person next to me said "Hi" to
her, and she just looked at us both with a big fround. Then after an extremely long
pause said "I can't verbalize yet, I've been painting". What, I ask you, is this? She
was so intense into her work that she was totally out of mind? So I wandered over to
her studio after the meeting to ask her a question, and behold her work in progress was
nothing more than a 10' square painted red with a roller; in the center was a foot tall
scratch that represented a fetal posed humanoid with enormous legs and tiny arms. D**n,
I thought, no wonder she can't verbalize, she is dumbstruck by her own inability :)
Who actually buys this crap anyway?
> Mani DeLi
Wanax
David Falk
mdeli (hug...@interlog.com) wrote:
: Modern Academic Abstraction has one valid claim, namely that it is
: something entirely different from the art of the past. It conforms to
: no classical standards (I use the term loosely here).
: Stylistically Modern Academic Art, artwork considered the great art of
: this century, encompasses not only modern abstraction but also No
: Skill Realism (NSR). This is work which though critically considered
: modern art, contains instantly recognizable images.
: The best place to sample lots of ordinary sub-furniture store no skill
: realism is right here on the web. But this realism, even when
: accompanied by a hard hitting manifesto which hardly anyone reads,
: rarely has any real Modern Academic Art power.
While I recognize the need for skill in art, I do not share mdeli's
all consuming crusade on the subject. Yes, great art must have
an element of skill, or at least the serendipitous appearance of
skill, but pining for the return of "classical" standards isn't
going to happen. Mdeli appears to want a return to "the good
old days" that have passed him by two hundred years ago. Art
must change in order to grow. And every generation sees past
generations as being greater than what is being produced today.
Likewise, successive generation will see the best art of our era
(whether it is abstract or realist) as being better than what
will be produced in their time. It is the natural to do this,
but complaining for a return to those days will not see their
return, and for good reason. There's just no sense in pining for a
"better bygone age," simply because it isn't a fair representation
of the corpus of "classical" art, since this view is baised by the
selection of a handful of best artists extending over many hundreds
of years. Every era of art has its own particular formula. In the
classical style it was grey tones with glazes of color. And what
survived were the best examples of that formula. To put it bluntly,
the crap very rarely survives throughout the centuries; sooner or
later somebody throws it in the trash.
: The Important NSR I am referring to here is praised as great art and
: hangs in museums near our acclaimed abstract masters because it
: presents them with no challenge.
While its all good and well to say that this art is inferior, and
even I agree here, it isn't quite fair to infer a motive unless
they can be presented with work that provides them with a "challenge".
And, to be honest, I haven't seen a lot of that work being produced
that is particularly challenging of late. Classical art is
wonderful stuff, but I wouldn't call it challenging either. It's
easy to love good work. Good classical art has good, albeit
formula, technique and a wonderful aesthetic sense and expression,
but hardly a challenge.
: The main characteristics of NSR are abominable drawing and a strong
: dose of schmier (preferably impasto). This is termed by critics as
: anything from abstract distortion all the way to the fourth dimension,
: in many more words of course.
Actually, I like impasto. There is nothing I hate more than
seeing the weeve of the canvas beneath the paint. I like an
artist that takes the texture of the paint into consideration,
and uses it to create wonderful effects. Using impasto
effectively is a skill, a skill I highly value. It's a skill
as important as good color sense. Now I realize that you aren't
criticising impasto perse, but I want people to realize that
just because a painting has impasto doesn't necessarily imply
crap.
: Most people are not offended by pure abstraction in the visual sense.
: Mondrian, Kandinski, Pollock, Rothko etc. certainly have a graphic
: attraction equal to that of nice towels. By comparison the master
: works of NSR are no sight for sore eyes. They are visually abominable.
IMHO, a good abstraction is worth as much as a good "classical".
I would consider a "classical" work to be just as much formula
as any peice of good abstract art. However, NSR stuff is pretty
aweful.
: After many years of flat Greenbergian asceticism, NSR is again OK in
: critical eyes. This, as long as it contains lots of drawing errors,
: remains mindlessly simplistic, doesn’t tell any stories (lest it be
: labeled illustration) and has an abstract section (a few obvious flat
: schmiers). Oh yes it has to come in Rubenesque sizes so that the
: pretense of importance equals any nearby abstraction and the artists
: incompetence is made instantly apparent
The true test of NSR is not what either of us think about it.
While I think it safe to say that both of us hate it, the true
test is whether three hundred years from now is it hanging of
off some rich guy's wall or whether it is lining the bottom of a
landfill.
All art implements a kind of formula. This is the nature of
the beast. And skill is the atomic element of formula. What
make any art worthwhile is not the formula, but the aesthetic
application. Great skill without aesthetics would be so
terribly dull.
No aesthetics, no art.
Dave.
--
David Falk URL http://www.sparrowarts.com
(da...@sparrowarts.com) Sparrow Arts Gallery
Sparrow Arts has moved! Check out the new Sparrow Arts Web site.
Jeweler, Artist, Bladesmith, Philosopher, SysAdmin, Danzan Ryu - Rokyu
wsp
Wanax wrote:
>
> Just look at what is in the May issue of Art America. Yarn sculpture! I piece of sting
> hanging from the ceiling and trailing along the floor. This is art? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
What do you expect? That's a low caliber rag anyway. Same facile stuff
that's in Art News. Do you actually expect anything from those
simplistic "cult of the ego" art mags?
> No wonder art is dead in the regular world. If we'd come off our high horses and paint
> something, then perhaps regular people wouldn't keep buying all those Elvis on velvet
> scabs.
Now if your mother were very proud of her accomplishments on black
velvet would you be so mean to her? Aren't people allowed to do what
pleases them and try to sell it? How about nice bird houses? We found
one at a local craft show recently, I hope the birds like it. The person
making them enjoyed making it and it's rather nice.
> Our local gallery hangs only this sort of tripe.
What do you expect from a local gallery? They have to put up art that
looks like art ought to look like and they have to find someone to sell
it to. I think you are abit overstating calling it tripe. That would be
potentially very hurtful to someone who liked it wouldn't it? If that
person had any respect for you up to the point you called what they
bought "tripe" they would lose respect for you right then. Maybe you
should stay away?
> It is frustrating, as you know that it
> is unpurchasable, and merely an expression of the artists lack of sex taken out on
> medium that deserve better. If you look closely at some of that sh*t, you'll understand
> why they can't get sex: demented brains :)
What are you smoking? May I try it?
>
> Here is my favorite example of a NSR here locally. She came out of here studio the
> other day to attend a meeting of the local guild. The person next to me said "Hi" to
> her, and she just looked at us both with a big fround. Then after an extremely long
> pause said "I can't verbalize yet, I've been painting". What, I ask you, is this? She
> was so intense into her work that she was totally out of mind? So I wandered over to
> her studio after the meeting to ask her a question, and behold her work in progress was
> nothing more than a 10' square painted red with a roller; in the center was a foot tall
> scratch that represented a fetal posed humanoid with enormous legs and tiny arms. D**n,
> I thought, no wonder she can't verbalize, she is dumbstruck by her own inability :)
>
WOW, you've met her too? I just let it go. People are trying to find
themselves, locate themselves in the world, and they conduct their own
reseacrh in the privacy of their own studios. Why would something (art)
that came out of that make you upset?
> Who actually buys this crap anyway?
>
People who like it and have the money. They like to bring into their
living spaces objects that have significance for them. How does that
effect you?
"They may not know much about art but they know what they like." This is
a common problem and will never go away. You have to adjust how you
think. So,
respectfully,
wsp
Larry Seiler
mmw wrote:
>
> mdeli wrote:
>
> snipped Mani's hatred of Matisse and Picasso
>
> > critical eyes. This, as long as it contains lots of drawing errors,
> > remains mindlessly simplistic, doesn’t tell any stories (lest it be
> > labeled illustration) and has an abstract section (a few obvious flat
> > schmiers). Oh yes it has to come in Rubenesque sizes so that the
> > pretense of importance equals any nearby abstraction and the artists
> > incompetence is made instantly apparent
> >
> > …If it doesn’t look like a put-on it won’t make it as great modern
> > art.
>
> Mani:
>
> Were you inspired by looking at Larry's ego-page?
>
> He has some non-skilled-fuzzy-realism-copied-from-photos
> paintings of Sportsmen Portraits. Sportsmen being a euphanism
> for hunters. The hunters are shown with their dead animals
> and he calls it "wildlife art."
Mani....
Correction...they are "Sporting Portraits"...not wildlife art...and the
"dead animals" have a dignity ascribed by the purpose they have served.
I do not suggest these are fine art pieces...they are admittedly only
illustrations as a service to those willing to pay me to do so. My fine
art pieces are complete compositions built upon principles of design and
composition. Interesting to see the new definition for a marketing page
as "ego page"...guess Marilyn never intends to advertise or sell, I mean
not now...then she would be stooping so low as perhaps to use an "ego
page!" Get a life....a life...a life!!!
Larry
Larry Seiler
Wanax wrote:
>
> Here is my favorite example of a NSR here locally. She came out of here studio the
> other day to attend a meeting of the local guild. The person next to me said "Hi" to
> her, and she just looked at us both with a big fround. Then after an extremely long
> pause said "I can't verbalize yet, I've been painting". What, I ask you, is this? She
> was so intense into her work that she was totally out of mind? So I wandered over to
> her studio after the meeting to ask her a question, and behold her work in progress was
> nothing more than a 10' square painted red with a roller; in the center was a foot tall
> scratch that represented a fetal posed humanoid with enormous legs and tiny arms. D**n,
> I thought, no wonder she can't verbalize, she is dumbstruck by her own inability :)
>
>
>
> Wanax
I was at the Arts walk in St.Paul, Minnesota...which twice per years
consists of about 12 buildings and 12-60 studios in each building
whereby locals can walk through and see works and buy if interest. It
is really cool.
In the Rothmore building, the whole four floor building of 60 studios
was in a buzz...some woman had purchased a 5' canvas work that was a
blank gessoed canvas with one bold colored brushstroke across it for
$5,000.....
In retrospect, I now wonder why even all the other abstract artists were
so thrilled, amazed and suprised.
I think it was an investment in "status quo" insurance for the pseudo
affluent.
Larry
mdeli
don't...@email.com (Al B. Tross) wrote:
>In article <5akolr$2...@news.istar.ca>, dav...@tallships.istar.ca says...
>> It was quite interesting seeing the actual paintings of many of those
>>Saturday Evening Post and Boys Life covers we loved so much way back when. As
>>paintings they are not really very good. I'm sorry, it's true.
..and I think the opposit.
>One must keep in mind when looking at paintings done with the
>intention of reproducing them for publication that the artist has
>to be aware of the processes that are in play that make the work
>look good on a magazine cover but not necessarily good as a
>painting.
etc.
> So it is absolutely wrong to judge the
>paintings of Rockwell out of their publication context and against
>those of artists who painted the painting as the end product.
What counts is what is on the wall.
The story, why it was done, the artists life etc. is only of interest
if the quality of the work creates that interest.
The beauty, skill and technical finesse of Rockwell's work is the
devil to the Modern Academic because most people instantly like. They
also hate its sentiment.
However when Picasso paints a mother and child or some hooker in a
bar; well that's OK. Its not illustration because they approve of the
subject matter.
Almost all art is illustration.
As far as reproduction (publication context) is concerned; the only
reason most great art is known to people is because of art
reproduction.
mdeli
On 14 May 1997 21:55:01 GMT, da...@sparrowarts.com (David Falk) wrote:
>While I recognize the need for skill in art, I do not share mdeli's
>all consuming crusade on the subject. Yes, great art must have
>an element of skill, or at least the serendipitous appearance of
>skill, but pining for the return of "classical" standards isn't
>going to happen.
Skill has nothing to do with classical standards.
> Mdeli appears to want a return to "the good
>old days" that have passed him by two hundred years ago. Art
>must change in order to grow.
Mr. Falk imagines that anyone who has skill wants to return to the
past. This is the sort of nonsense those who have no skills like to
rationalize about. The one thing a contemporary artist can't avoid is
being modern.
Skill should be taken for granted. I'm not hung up on skill. But when
I look at the contemporary crap that hangs in museums under the guise
of great art the first thing I notice is a lack of skill.
> There's just no sense in pining for a
>"better bygone age," ...
right
> Every era of art has its own particular formula. In the
>classical style it was grey tones with glazes of color.
wrong.
>While its all good and well to say that this art is inferior, and
>even I agree here, it isn't quite fair to infer a motive unless
>they can be presented with work that provides them with a "challenge".
I don't look at painting for a "challenge."
>And, to be honest, I haven't seen a lot of that work being produced
>that is particularly challenging of late. Classical art is
>wonderful stuff, but I wouldn't call it challenging either. It's
>easy to love good work. Good classical art has good, albeit
>formula, technique and a wonderful aesthetic sense and expression,
>but hardly a challenge.
>
You are barking up the wrong tree, if you want a challenge try
bullfighting .
>No aesthetics, no art.
>Dave.
True Dave, but no skill no aesthetics.
Mani DeLi
GD
The exhibition of 'Degenerate Art' ('Entarte Kunst') was held in Munich in
the summer of 1937. Representative works of avant-garde art were presented
as evidence of corruption, madness and 'cultural bolshevism': the work, as
Hitler put it in 1935, of 'fools, liars, or criminals who belong in insane
asylums or prisons'.
The sentiment, sir, has no valour.
G*rd*n
lse...@eau.net:
| I was at the Arts walk in St.Paul, Minnesota...which twice per years
| consists of about 12 buildings and 12-60 studios in each building
| whereby locals can walk through and see works and buy if interest. It
| is really cool.
| In the Rothmore building, the whole four floor building of 60 studios
| was in a buzz...some woman had purchased a 5' canvas work that was a
| blank gessoed canvas with one bold colored brushstroke across it for
| $5,000.....
| In retrospect, I now wonder why even all the other abstract artists were
| so thrilled, amazed and suprised.
| I think it was an investment in "status quo" insurance for the pseudo
| affluent.
About a month ago, I was asked to do a painting by my
landlord. He described what he wanted as a canvas, four or
five feet square, white, with some straight stripes of
primary colors running across it diagonally. He said he
had seen something like it in a gallery, but he didn't like
the price (several thousand dollars) and wanted it bigger.
I don't do that sort of work, so I turned the job over to
someone who needed the money. I don't know what happened
after that.
What you need to understand here is that this landlord is
unsophisticated about art -- he _likes_ that kind of thing,
it's what he thinks goes over the couch. I'm sure he
doesn't give a rat about what people think of his taste;
he's a contractor on commercial construction sites when
he's not landlording, and a very successful one. I suggest
people not assume that all non-representational art is a
game of pretensions.
--
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
-----------------------------------------------
NOTE: if your ISP permits junkmailing, you will
probably not be able to reach me by email.
wsp
GD wrote:
>
> The exhibition of 'Degenerate Art' ('Entarte Kunst') was held in Munich in
> the summer of 1937. Representative works of avant-garde art were presented
> as evidence of corruption, madness and 'cultural bolshevism': the work, as
> Hitler put it in 1935, of 'fools, liars, or criminals who belong in insane
> asylums or prisons'.
>
HI GD,
A few months ago, I referred eloquently (IMHO) to the strong parallel
between the attitudes of some of the people in this nsgrp and the Nazi
pronouncements on art.
It was no use; nothing changed. The same old declarations are repeated
in cycles; newcomers repeat what's already been discussed by those who
moved on.
Some people love to hate, love to despise and denegrate for their own
egotistical needs to cover up feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy.
The "public" newsgroups are filled with them. The nsgroups provide the
very compelling opportunity to get others to agree with them.
It is like trying to fill up a bottomless pit, don't even try to change
attitudes and points of view here.
*Almost* everybody here is looking for justification to think the way
they do, not looking to learn new things.
mdeli
WS Parker writes:
>A few months ago, I referred eloquently (IMHO) to the strong parallel
>between the attitudes of some of the people in this nsgrp and the Nazi
>pronouncements on art.
>
>It was no use; nothing changed. The same old declarations are repeated
>in cycles; newcomers repeat what's already been discussed by those who
>moved on.
>
>Some people love to hate, love to despise and denegrate for their own
>egotistical needs to cover up feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy.
>The "public" newsgroups are filled with them. The nsgroups provide the
>very compelling opportunity to get others to agree with them.
written by Parker a while back:
>BTW, I think my reference to Hitler's thoughts on modern art in this
>context are completely appropriate. I'm pointing out an important
>correspondence; any reasonable person would see the serious parallel.
It is perfectly evident by Parker's reasoning, that all modern art is
great because Hitler didn't like it. Why say more.
>I want people to see that he uses the *same* words, and the *same*
>agruments that Hitler used to denigrate the art he despised. (though
>their motives may be different the intention is the same)
>
I don't use the same arguments. Read them.
>He's got a little accounting to do, wouldn't you say?
Perhaps Parker is so grumpy because he only eats meat. Hitler was
vegitarian.
I wonder if he ever used the Autabahn?
Gee, I just realized that Genghis Khan didn't like art at all. Parker
will you supply an enlightened comment?
The inference that those who agree with my outlook are fascists is as
stupid as calling someone who agrees with Parker a communist.
Mani DeLi
...an artist with no skill only expresses frustration
PS
After reading forty years of politically correct Artspeak I'm
delighted that my messages are so irritating to some of those so
religiously addicted to Modern Academic Art that they can't read
anything representing the other side.
mdeli
On 15 May 1997 04:01:54 GMT, "GD" <gde...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>
>The exhibition of 'Degenerate Art' ('Entarte Kunst') was held in Munich in
>the summer of 1937. Representative works of avant-garde art were presented
>as evidence of corruption, madness and 'cultural bolshevism': the work, as
>Hitler put it in 1935, of 'fools, liars, or criminals who belong in insane
>asylums or prisons'.
>
>The sentiment, sir, has no valour.
>
I repeat an argument with the Herr Professor
Byron Goldsweig, Ph. D. writes:
>Nazi Fascism and the "Degenerate Art" exhibitions started with exactly
>the SAME WORDS (almost LITERALLY) words that Mdeli wrote. I remember so clearly!
Nazism was against Bolshevism and Jews who it classed as degenerate
insane and preverted. To imply that I bear a similar opinion of
Modern Academic Art is just plain stupid.
>You can expect the same level of ignorance today from Jesse Helms and
>some members of the Republican Party and you can hear the same blind,
>ignorant, hatred in many of them -- and in Mdeli.
More stupidity.
My politics are liberal and are probably similar to yours. However
this is not what we are talking about.
Your problem is that you are not used to having people disagree with
you so that when someone criticizes something you happen to like very
much you see storm troopers and Jesse Helms. Perhaps you are one of
those academics whose student’s get bad grades for not agreeing with
the teacher. The internet isn’t an academic art school. All opinions
are expressed here mine and yours.
>I guess I should not have used poor old Emil as an example. I want to
>focus this thread on the Abstract Expressionists.
Hitler and Nazism and the Republican party have nothing to do with
Abstract Expressionism.
>Please, no generalizations. Who has imitated Ad Reinhardt
>successfully? Where can see the work? Please let me know soon.
Go to the nearest large art school and look in the student painting
racks. You will find imitations of all forms of Modern Academic Art
and little else. This is due to fifty years of incompetent art
teaching.
If you are refering to an exact copy of a Reinhardt or a Pollock. I
remind you that not even Pollock or Reinhardt could copy themselves
exactly and it would be pointless to do so. The Abstract
Expressionists have scores of imitators who paint no worse than they
do. They are only failures because they are losers in the Modern
Academic Art lottery. You can see these forgotten failures in any
average art magazine of the last forty years.
No artist could do an exact copy of a bunch of random splats or
schmiers. However I doubt that any academic modern art student has the
competence even do a lousy copy of a Norman Rockwell or an average
piece of commercial art.
Larry Seiler
You miss the point....the "pretensions" are unconsciously understood
enough that even a shriek of surprise and glee traveled number 6 on the
"Richter" scale amongst the other abstract resident artists.
People have a right to like what they like. We like to talk about skill
versus lack of it...
this has nothing to do with people having affluence and buying anything,
it is simply recognition and inquiry as to what goes on inside such
heads, social circles..etc;
It is interesting that when so many defend the rights of others..some
forget the right of a few to state their dislikes...!
Larry
Larry Seiler
GD wrote:
>
> The exhibition of 'Degenerate Art' ('Entarte Kunst') was held in Munich in
> the summer of 1937. Representative works of avant-garde art were presented
> as evidence of corruption, madness and 'cultural bolshevism': the work, as
> Hitler put it in 1935, of 'fools, liars, or criminals who belong in insane
> asylums or prisons'.
>
> The sentiment, sir, has no valour.
Oh...thank you so much for allowing me to make a point. I am studying
the writings of Mr. Shire..author of the "Nightmare Years" 1930-40, and
"The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"... Hitler had his own personal
reason for getting rid of the art you spoke of. He had always had a
passion while younger to get into art school, and saw himself as an
artist. None of the schools would accept and admit him as a student for
his work demonstrated..."no skill!" The art schools saw no potential
for Hitler.
When he came into power, his vindictiveness of that fact drove him to
declare works accepted by the fine arts world as profane, as insulting
to the ideal German. Hitler took over the art museums and established
what would be considered Nazi approved works of art.
The fine arts had to go underground and had to be hidden from the
Nazi's...
Adolph's works would no doubt be perfectly acceptable in todays art
schools..and many of those works he later despised are likewise today
held in scorn for the Western European ideal of skill they demonstrated
by those artists..a skill that set others more worthy apart from Hitler!
Many works were of the impressionists, whom demonstrated great sense of
composition and design, brushwork, and knowledge of color theory and
application..etc;
Larry
David Falk
mdeli (hug...@interlog.com) wrote:
: On 14 May 1997 21:55:01 GMT, da...@sparrowarts.com (David Falk) wrote:
: >While I recognize the need for skill in art, I do not share mdeli's
: >all consuming crusade on the subject. Yes, great art must have
: >an element of skill, or at least the serendipitous appearance of
: >skill, but pining for the return of "classical" standards isn't
: >going to happen.
:
: Skill has nothing to do with classical standards.
Agreed.
: > Mdeli appears to want a return to "the good
: >old days" that have passed him by two hundred years ago. Art
: >must change in order to grow.
:
: Mr. Falk imagines that anyone who has skill wants to return to the
: past. This is the sort of nonsense those who have no skills like to
: rationalize about. The one thing a contemporary artist can't avoid is
: being modern.
Mani has on many occassions revealed his disdain for modern
art (excluding the surrealists which he appears to like).
I appreciate good skill as much as any man, but I'm not
obsessed by it either. However, the moment between ecstatic
vision and blind frenzy is all too breif. And, while you
seem to have an appreciation of art, you seem to like so
very little modern art. However, my perception could have
been wrong on this, so I'd like to invite you to share with
us which modern artists do you like?
: Skill should be taken for granted. I'm not hung up on skill. But when
: I look at the contemporary crap that hangs in museums under the guise
: of great art the first thing I notice is a lack of skill.
And yet, you seem to mention skill in practically every post.
I agree with you that the deficit of skill is major problem
in modern art; however, I think it's more symptomatic than
causative.
: > Every era of art has its own particular formula. In the
: >classical style it was grey tones with glazes of color.
:
: wrong.
Here I guess we must agree to disagree. From what I've seen
from most classical styled portraits (not still lifes) is
a layering of grey tones with color glazes. This forumla
is prevalent, though by no means universal, in the paintings
of the old masters.
: >While its all good and well to say that this art is inferior, and
: >even I agree here, it isn't quite fair to infer a motive unless
: >they can be presented with work that provides them with a "challenge".
:
: I don't look at painting for a "challenge."
I don't either. Then, why did you bring the subject up?
: >And, to be honest, I haven't seen a lot of that work being produced
: >that is particularly challenging of late. Classical art is
: >wonderful stuff, but I wouldn't call it challenging either. It's
: >easy to love good work. Good classical art has good, albeit
: >formula, technique and a wonderful aesthetic sense and expression,
: >but hardly a challenge.
: >
: You are barking up the wrong tree, if you want a challenge try
: bullfighting .
As I mentioned above, you mentioned that galleries hang crap
because it presents no challenge. This was your contention,
which I decided to address.
: >No aesthetics, no art.
:
: True Dave, but no skill no aesthetics.
Mani, I'm guessing that we probably agree on more of the individual
issues than we disagree. I would place less emphasis on skill
than you do, and would attribute a large set of skills. Perhaps,
it would be more fruitful to carry this debate into the question
of what constitutes skill?
Talk to you later...
William Barkin
mdeli wrote:
> ...an artist with no skill only expresses frustration
>
> PS
> After reading forty years of politically correct Artspeak I'm
> delighted that my messages are so irritating to some of those so
> religiously addicted to Modern Academic Art that they can't read
> anything representing the other side.
By all means, continue...
William Barkin
Wanax wrote:
> Just look at what is in the May issue of Art America. Yarn sculpture! I piece of sting
> hanging from the ceiling and trailing along the floor. This is art? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
> No wonder art is dead in the regular world. If we'd come off our high horses and paint
> something, then perhaps regular people wouldn't keep buying all those Elvis on velvet
> scabs.
Ok! Ok! I'll say it: Right on, Right on, Right On (you get the idea...)
> Here is my favorite example of a NSR here locally. She came out of here studio the
> other day to attend a meeting of the local guild. The person next to me said "Hi" to
> her, and she just looked at us both with a big fround. Then after an extremely long
> pause said "I can't verbalize yet, I've been painting". What, I ask you, is this? She
> was so intense into her work that she was totally out of mind? So I wandered over to
> her studio after the meeting to ask her a question, and behold her work in progress was
> nothing more than a 10' square painted red with a roller; in the center was a foot tall
> scratch that represented a fetal posed humanoid with enormous legs and tiny arms. D**n,
> I thought, no wonder she can't verbalize, she is dumbstruck by her own inability :)
This anecdote gets pasted on my wall for a week!
William Barkin
mdeli wrote:
> The beauty, skill and technical finesse of Rockwell's work is the
> devil to the Modern Academic because most people instantly like. They
> also hate its sentiment.
> However when Picasso paints a mother and child or some hooker in a
> bar; well that's OK. Its not illustration because they approve of the
> subject matter.
>
> Almost all art is illustration.
>
> As far as reproduction (publication context) is concerned; the only
> reason most great art is known to people is because of art
> reproduction.
Where the hell have I been? There's actually someone out there willing
to articulate the obvious. Mdeli, you are right on the money...man, I
took a lot heat over the years expressing the same sentiments...I love
to quote Oscar Wilde: "Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at
all."
-Bill
Wanax
wsp wrote:
>
> Wanax wrote:
>
> >
> > Just look at what is in the May issue of Art America. Yarn sculpture! I piece of sting
> > hanging from the ceiling and trailing along the floor. This is art? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
>
> that's in Art News. Do you actually expect anything from those
> simplistic "cult of the ego" art mags?
like it!" Here is the danger to art and artist. cheapen art locally, and you'll
cheapen it all over the world.
> > No wonder art is dead in the regular world. If we'd come off our high horses and paint
> > something, then perhaps regular people wouldn't keep buying all those Elvis on velvet
> > scabs.
>
> Now if your mother were very proud of her accomplishments on black
> velvet would you be so mean to her? Aren't people allowed to do what
> pleases them and try to sell it? How about nice bird houses? We found
> one at a local craft show recently, I hope the birds like it. The person
> making them enjoyed making it and it's rather nice.
Perhaps you are right and I'm too critical. I'll try and moderate myself.
> What do you expect from a local gallery? They have to put up art that
> looks like art ought to look like and they have to find someone to sell
> it to. I think you are abit overstating calling it tripe. That would be
> potentially very hurtful to someone who liked it wouldn't it? If that
> person had any respect for you up to the point you called what they
> bought "tripe" they would lose respect for you right then. Maybe you
> should stay away?
Well...you have a point, but people pay for my tripe. I usually don't charge over $1000
for a four color work the size of a volkswagon. Perhaps I jelous a little, that I can
recreate their work but not their money. I do take solice in the fact that while they
get big money for each painting, their paintings sell very infrequently...
the little emoticon was supposed to indicate that my commentary on artist's lack of sex
was a tounge in cheek chuckle :)
> WOW, you've met her too? I just let it go. People are trying to find
> themselves, locate themselves in the world, and they conduct their own
> reseacrh in the privacy of their own studios. Why would something (art)
> that came out of that make you upset?
I'm not upset, just stunned. I use her as an example of why art and artist get such a
bad rap in America. I wouldn't want to be near this person based on her own self
absorbed egotism, and her art merely reflects to me her lack of understanding of both
herself and the outside world as a collection of organisms; her attitude more closely
resembles that of a child who understands the he/she is the center of the universe, and
everything and everyone else are merely actors passing before the screne of his/her
eyes.
> People who like it and have the money. They like to bring into their
> living spaces objects that have significance for them. How does that
> effect you?
I would love to agree with you, but my experience is that this is not so in practise as
much as theory. Locally, the art buyers buy by route; if X has a work by artist A, then
Y will need one.
> "They may not know much about art but they know what they like." This is
> a common problem and will never go away. You have to adjust how you
> think. So,
I see my problem as being the opposite of this statement. My premis is that art buyers
don't need to know much about the technical aspects of art, but they do need to have a
better feel for quality. Before you think I'm pouting here, I sell to a totally
different type of client. The art clique likes and dislikes will not impact on my
success one way or another. That is, unless surealist nudes and seascapes return to hot
vogue :)
Wanax
>
> respectfully,
>
> wsp
Michael Riggi
On Thu, 15 May 1997, mdeli wrote:
> >> It was quite interesting seeing the actual paintings of many of those
> >>Saturday Evening Post and Boys Life covers we loved so much way back when. As
> >>paintings they are not really very good. I'm sorry, it's true.
>
> ..and I think the opposit.
>
> >One must keep in mind when looking at paintings done with the
> >intention of reproducing them for publication that the artist has
> >to be aware of the processes that are in play that make the work
> >look good on a magazine cover but not necessarily good as a
> >painting.
> etc.
> devil to the Modern Academic because most people instantly like. They
> also hate its sentiment.
> However when Picasso paints a mother and child or some hooker in a
> bar; well that's OK. Its not illustration because they approve of the
> subject matter.
>
> Almost all art is illustration.
>
> As far as reproduction (publication context) is concerned; the only
> reason most great art is known to people is because of art
> reproduction.
>
> ...no skill no art
>
beyond the coat of paint on the surface. His themes are trite and
naive. They are not great works because repeated exposures to them
reveal nothing more. A great work is inspirational and moves you on more
than one level. His work are illustrations done in a skilled representational
technique. They are pleasing but have no depth. If you read about Rockwell's
background and training you will see why this is true. He was not reaching
for any kind of deep meaning to express in his work. His painting would be a
simple folksong in music, or a simple tale written by a detective writer, not
a symphony nor a Chekhov short story. This does not make his work bad -- just
less satisfying if you were looking for something truly moving. In
addition, his work never changes. Look at Sheeler's work of the 30's or
William Glackens or Winslow Homer. After enough exposures you will learn
that their work developed over time -- becoming richer, with more to
say. At some point you will want to see more of the latter and less of
Rockwell.
mdeli
On 15 May 1997 18:17:53 GMT, da...@sparrowarts.com (David Falk) wrote:
>I appreciate good skill as much as any man, but I'm not
>obsessed by it either. However, the moment between ecstatic
>vision and blind frenzy is all too breif. And, while you
>seem to have an appreciation of art, you seem to like so
>very little modern art.
I like a lot of art done in this century but not the majority of crap
that hangs in our modern museums which our holy critics consider great
art. There was more fine work produced in this century then ever
before.
> However, my perception could have
>been wrong on this, so I'd like to invite you to share with
>us which modern artists do you like?
>
Dali, Blume, Escher, R. Crumb, Deco artists, illustrators, California
and Western artists, lots of illustrators, from Vargas to Rockwell and
onward science and medical artists, our great animators etc. etc.
>: Skill should be taken for granted. I'm not hung up on skill. But when
>: I look at the contemporary crap that hangs in museums under the guise
>: of great art the first thing I notice is a lack of skill.
>
>And yet, you seem to mention skill in practically every post.
>I agree with you that the deficit of skill is major problem
>in modern art; however, I think it's more symptomatic than
>causative.
>
If you go to a dentist who exhibits a lack of skill you would want
nothing further to do with him. Whether his problem is symptomatic or
causative or whatever is irrelevant.
>: >While its all good and well to say that this art is inferior, and
>: >even I agree here, it isn't quite fair to infer a motive unless
>: >they can be presented with work that provides them with a "challenge".
>:
>: I don't look at painting for a "challenge."
>
>I don't either. Then, why did you bring the subject up?
I didn't
>: >And, to be honest, I haven't seen a lot of that work being produced
>: >that is particularly challenging of late. Classical art is
>: >wonderful stuff, but I wouldn't call it challenging either. It's
>: >easy to love good work. Good classical art has good, albeit
>: >formula, technique and a wonderful aesthetic sense and expression,
>: >but hardly a challenge.
>: >
>: You are barking up the wrong tree, if you want a challenge try
>: bullfighting .
>
>As I mentioned above, you mentioned that galleries hang crap
>because it presents no challenge. This was your contention,
>which I decided to address.
I think you are referring to someone else's message
>
>: >No aesthetics, no art.
>:
>: True Dave, but no skill no aesthetics.
>
>Mani, I'm guessing that we probably agree on more of the individual
>issues than we disagree. I would place less emphasis on skill
>than you do, and would attribute a large set of skills. Perhaps,
>it would be more fruitful to carry this debate into the question
>of what constitutes skill?
>
Roughly speaking, skill in art is the ability to do something others
want to do but can't. The best artists can do things which are
relatively inimitable.
Mani DeLi
Larry Seiler
Michael Riggi wrote:
>
> On Thu, 15 May 1997, mdeli wrote:
> > >> It was quite interesting seeing the actual paintings of many of those
> > >>Saturday Evening Post and Boys Life covers we loved so much way back when. As
> > >>paintings they are not really very good. I'm sorry, it's true.
> >
> > ..and I think the opposit.
> >
> Normal Rockwells's work is too thin. His figures have no life in them
> beyond the coat of paint on the surface.
We laugh because they have too much life in them...they hit us at the
fundamental core of what our social human interactions are! The figures
are at times exaggerated..which add to the "punch line" of the
illustration.
His themes are trite and
> naive.
His themes were not intended to amuse us in a later fallen culture. They
were timely and insightful in his day!
They are not great works because repeated exposures to them
> reveal nothing more. A great work is inspirational and moves you on more
> than one level.
This only tells us that you are not moved...and maybe some of your
friends.
His work are illustrations done in a skilled representational
> technique.
Agreed...
They are pleasing but have no depth. If you read about Rockwell's
> background and training you will see why this is true. He was not reaching
> for any kind of deep meaning to express in his work.
How much deeper do we have to go than relating to the common nature of
things and helping us laugh at ourselves. True, he was kind of a stand
up comic of art with some of his work...but when we laugh at good comedy
we often laugh at the obvious..yet wonder after, how come I didn't think
of that?
His painting would be a
> simple folksong in music,
You know..music is similar. We are seeing a rise in coffeehouses,
acoustic cafes, festivals. People are tiring of more and more sound
processors, guitars used as rythm instruments cranked up louder with
distortion pedals and sustain that blends one note into another without
hardly a noticeable detection. This observation comes from a music with
a band background experience...I like hard heavy music. I am now in a
three person band, playing a mix of delta blues with a Doors and Santana
sound, but at lower tolerable indoor levels as people are beginning to
listen to lyrics again with their Java!!!
Folk music is rebounding and coming back big time...as well as acoustic
musics. Perhaps you alluding to simple folk music is good. In the same
way some are tiring of the noise of paint applied "splish-splash"
without rhyme or reason...and looking to more obvious disciplines..maybe
the same is happening in music.
or a simple tale written by a detective writer, not
> a symphony nor a Chekhov short story. This does not make his work bad -- just
> less satisfying if you were looking for something truly moving.
Again..your choice. Some contemporary works do move me...but I have to
sense that the artist has such COMMAND of art design elements and
principles such as balance, texture, values, line, negative and positive
space, color theory, perspective, brush application that he has a
certain "genius" and can give us insight and cleverness. A person
squirting paint into manure and throwing it at the canvas only moves me
if I happen to be in the way!!!
In
> addition, his work never changes. Look at Sheeler's work of the 30's or
> William Glackens or Winslow Homer.
Oh c'mon...
I once asked a prominent 70 some year old artist how one develops a
recognizable style. He said, "do 500 paintings and you'll have a
style." You can see a similarity in Homer's work..and all artists over
time. If Homer would have been set up for life and any number of other
artists..to make a decent living..chances are their works would have
reflected even more similarity. It almost seems to come down to our
disdain for an artist lies in if he is so well liked by the public and
renumerated for his skill that the fine arts world will then reject him!
After enough exposures you will learn
> that their work developed over time -- becoming richer, with more to
> say. At some point you will want to see more of the latter and less of
> Rockwell.
All I will say here is...when I was interested in learning about the
effects of light, I was hung up on Rembrandt and the late Renaissance
and Baroque period of time. Little else "moved" me. When I wanted to
capture human emotion, Frans Hals Dutch "en plein aire" one sitting
portraits "moved" me. Today I am moved by the mastery of artists such
as Richard Schmid and many Southwestern artists that have learned how to
create illusions of realism by application of the fewest brush strokes
laid in just the right place, just the right color. Look close, "BAM"
it is an abstract mess...back up three-four feet, and "oooh, you're
there baby, it's so real it grabs your heart out and stomps on it!"
No skill..close or far away does diddly-squat to me or most others.
Again.....you just are not capture by Rockwell, and at this point in my
life, neither am I. True he was an illustrator. I feel there is a
difference between my illustrations done for shirt screening companies
and the works I do for my gallery...yet skill and excellence at every
level remains constant. To generalize and say what Rockwell's work
does for you and then assuming that goes for everyone else...well, let's
just say you would be risking to sound ignorant. Your ability to
articulate reveals you are not ignorant...but I will simply have to
disagree with you here!
Larry
Ade Oshineye
> Go to the nearest large art school and look in the student painting
> racks. You will find imitations of all forms of Modern Academic Art
> and little else. This is due to fifty years of incompetent art
> teaching.
> You can see these forgotten failures in any
> average art magazine of the last forty years.
dominant mode of art? Is Duchamp to blame or do you agree with the
English critic, Brian Sewell, who dates the decline in the importance of
(obvious skill) from Picasso onwards?
I don't know what the situation is like in America but over here 'skill'
is still valued. I would say that mdeli is probably overstating the case
when he argues that No Skill Realism is all pervasive. However, has he
considered that those whom he would describe as Modern Academic Artists
are merely better self-publicists than their more traditional bretheren.
Throughout history the works of certain artists have become more highly
prized than others not simply because of an objective assessment of
quality but because they were in the right place at the right time,
doing the 'right' thing. Perhaps NSR is more _symptomatic_ of our
society (and more appealing to the public or rather to those who have
been appointed as arbiters of public taste) than that which mdeli
prefers. In which case the question is: how to reverse the situation?
--
Ade Oshineye
If at first you don't succeed,
destroy all evidence that you tried.
http://www.qmw.ac.uk/~websoc/ta5330/homepage.htm
GD
You can have a discussion with me without posting a lot of extraneous
argument from your other debates. The response you've given me is
unconvincing.
I'll give you these quotes from Adolf Hitler's inaugural speech given at
the opening of his 'true German art' exhibition at the Haus der Deutschen
Kunst held concurrently with the 'Degenerate Art' exhibition of 1937. You
can peruse them and then explain to me how, aside from the German
Nationalism, your AESTHETIC sentiments differ.
"Cubism, Dadaism, Futurism, Impressionism, etc., have nothing to do with
our German people. For these concepts are neither old nor modern, but are
only the artifactitious stammerings of men to whom God has denied the grace
of a truly artistic talent, and in its place has awarded them the gift of
jabbering or deception."
"'Works of art' which cannot be understood in themselves but, for the
justification of their existence, need those bombastic instructions for
their use, finally reaching that intimidated soul, who is patiently willing
to accept such stupid or impertinent nonsense -- these works of art from
now on will no longer find their way to the German people."
"All those catchwords: 'inner experience,' 'strong state of mind,'
'forceful will,' 'emotions pregnant with the future,' 'heroic attitude,'
'meaningful empathy,' 'experienced order of the times,' 'original
primitivism,' etc. -- all these dumb, mendacious excuses, this claptrap or
jabbering will no longer be accepted as excuses or even recommendations for
worthless, integrally unskilled products."
This sampling certainly suggests to me that there is a coincidence of
artistic opinion between you and the late dictator. A great degree of
polemical style as well, I might add. I'm sure you're not keen on the
association. I do, however, believe it's there and should be respectfully
addressed.
GD.
mdeli
>: >While its all good and well to say that this art is inferior, and
>: >even I agree here, it isn't quite fair to infer a motive unless
>: >they can be presented with work that provides them with a "challenge".
>:
>: I don't look at painting for a "challenge."
>
>I don't either. Then, why did you bring the subject up?
I didn't
>: >And, to be honest, I haven't seen a lot of that work being produced
>: >that is particularly challenging of late. Classical art is
>: >wonderful stuff, but I wouldn't call it challenging either. It's
>: >easy to love good work. Good classical art has good, albeit
>: >formula, technique and a wonderful aesthetic sense and expression,
>: >but hardly a challenge.
>: >
Erik Johnson
I personally find *quality* negative criticisms quite valuable, as
should any artist. This would be criticisms that describe specific
problems or failings, and possibly suggest ways the artist might
improve things like composition, balance and the like. Nothing is
more useless than 'that sucks' or 'that's crap'. One who cannot be
more eloquent and describe WHY they don't like something is usually
in no position to criticise. Though I must admit that I often see
'art' that I quickly dismiss as crap. I suppose the old saying might
apply... if you cannot say *anything* nice, don't say anything at all.
btw Mani you are good at describing WHY you think certain
works/artists are crap.
-Erik Johnson
er...@phidias.colorado.edu
http://phidias.colorado.edu/vgallery.html
Larry Seiler
David Falk wrote:
>
> Larry Seiler (lse...@eau.net) wrote:
>
> : We laugh because they have too much life in them...they hit us at the
> : fundamental core of what our social human interactions are! The figures
> : are at times exaggerated..which add to the "punch line" of the
> : illustration.
>
> : friends.
>
> I think you've hit the heart of the issue right here.
> Those who like Rockwell were also moved by the paintings and could
> relate to them. I, myself, hate Rockwell. It has nothing
> to do with the calibre of the work itself. I find his works
> to be annoyingly trite, and his color choice compels me to
> vommit. I can't say anything nice about Rockwell, but then
> again I'm not moved by his paintings in any way. However,
> I know people do like his work. In the same way, I like
> Picasso's works because I find them to be aestheticly pleasing.
> And I don't deny anybody's right to like Rockwell, though I
> find his work to be worthless.
>
> : They are pleasing but have no depth. If you read about Rockwell's
> : > background and training you will see why this is true. He was not reaching
> : > for any kind of deep meaning to express in his work.
> :
> : How much deeper do we have to go than relating to the common nature of
> : things and helping us laugh at ourselves. True, he was kind of a stand
> : up comic of art with some of his work...but when we laugh at good comedy
> : we often laugh at the obvious..yet wonder after, how come I didn't think
> : of that?
> :
> : His painting would be a
> : > simple folksong in music,
>
> if it doesn't make you ill, it'll rot out your teeth.
>
> : Again.....you just are not capture by Rockwell, and at this point in my
> : life, neither am I. True he was an illustrator. I feel there is a
> : difference between my illustrations done for shirt screening companies
> : and the works I do for my gallery...yet skill and excellence at every
> : level remains constant. To generalize and say what Rockwell's work
> : does for you and then assuming that goes for everyone else...well, let's
> : just say you would be risking to sound ignorant. Your ability to
> : articulate reveals you are not ignorant...but I will simply have to
> : disagree with you here!
>
> This in no way makes them any less of an artist. I myself do
> both illustrations for the Science Fiction community and fine art
> type paintings. Sometimes doing that illustration type art is
> simply a lot of fun.
>
> Many people like Rockwell, I do not.
>
> Such is life...
>
> Dave.
> --
> David Falk URL http://www.sparrowarts.com
> (da...@sparrowarts.com) Sparrow Arts Gallery
> Sparrow Arts has moved! Check out the new Sparrow Arts Web site.
> Jeweler, Artist, Bladesmith, Philosopher, SysAdmin, Danzan Ryu - Rokyu
No problem here...like what moves you.
Larry
mdeli
On 16 May 1997 19:53:45 GMT, da...@sparrowarts.com (David Falk) wrote:
>I think you've hit the heart of the issue right here.
>Those who like Rockwell were also moved by the paintings and could
>relate to them. I, myself, hate Rockwell. It has nothing
>to do with the calibre of the work itself. I find his works
>to be annoyingly trite, and his color choice compels me to
>vommit.
>Rockwell is artistic cotton candy. You may like it at first, but
>if it doesn't make you ill, it'll rot out your teeth.
For me, when Picasso tries to paint conventional subject matter its
often like cotton candy. His "Mother and Child" (It looks like it was
painted using cotton candy.) and "Paulo and the donkey", to name just
a few, are classic over the couch favorites. I also think some of the
late schmiery Renior portraits and nudes fit the bill well.
I only mention this because of all the over- the-couch phobia here.
Perhaps one of our more sensitive gurus here might set us straight
about what is wrong with hanging a painting over the couch.
Rockwell's more serious paintings like the "Watch maker" and the black
girl guarded by state troops do not contain the sentiments which make
you so nauseous. You might check out the tomato splat on the wall for
your dispeptic problems.. Pure abstraction.
>
Mani Deli
Wanax
Interesting that you'd actually research this :)
Just one point to make here, and I'm not attempting to get yall more riled:
If Hitler liked redheads, and mani liked redheads, would that make both Nazis?
I agree that by your quotes, they share a common interpretive view, but this does not a
Nazi make. Many Nazis, including Goering (one of the originals) spared many jews, which
is a non-Nazi trait. I'd be careful in drawing political distinctions from taste;
either that or assume 90% of the world's population are Homer Simpson clones :)
Wanax
David Falk
Larry Seiler (lse...@eau.net) wrote:
: We laugh because they have too much life in them...they hit us at the
: fundamental core of what our social human interactions are! The figures
: are at times exaggerated..which add to the "punch line" of the
: illustration.
: This only tells us that you are not moved...and maybe some of your
: friends.
I think you've hit the heart of the issue right here.
Those who like Rockwell were also moved by the paintings and could
relate to them. I, myself, hate Rockwell. It has nothing
to do with the calibre of the work itself. I find his works
to be annoyingly trite, and his color choice compels me to
vommit. I can't say anything nice about Rockwell, but then
again I'm not moved by his paintings in any way. However,
I know people do like his work. In the same way, I like
Picasso's works because I find them to be aestheticly pleasing.
And I don't deny anybody's right to like Rockwell, though I
find his work to be worthless.
: They are pleasing but have no depth. If you read about Rockwell's
: > background and training you will see why this is true. He was not reaching
: > for any kind of deep meaning to express in his work.
:
: How much deeper do we have to go than relating to the common nature of
: things and helping us laugh at ourselves. True, he was kind of a stand
: up comic of art with some of his work...but when we laugh at good comedy
: we often laugh at the obvious..yet wonder after, how come I didn't think
: of that?
:
: His painting would be a
: > simple folksong in music,
Rockwell is artistic cotton candy. You may like it at first, but
if it doesn't make you ill, it'll rot out your teeth.
: Again.....you just are not capture by Rockwell, and at this point in my
: life, neither am I. True he was an illustrator. I feel there is a
: difference between my illustrations done for shirt screening companies
: and the works I do for my gallery...yet skill and excellence at every
: level remains constant. To generalize and say what Rockwell's work
: does for you and then assuming that goes for everyone else...well, let's
: just say you would be risking to sound ignorant. Your ability to
: articulate reveals you are not ignorant...but I will simply have to
: disagree with you here!
Some artists prefer to do nothing but commercial illustrations.
Larry Seiler
You are right.....but, I thing the hostility has a different twist. It
is not because poorer works have been so well marketed so effectively,
but that the buying public by in large still demonstrates that it
prefers obvious distinctions of the traditional..which brings out the
resentment so strong. It is very much like the media here. The media
is extremely left wing liberal and attempts to speak for all of America
with its liberalism...but greater surveys continue to show the citizens
are more conservative and have more traditional values. There is a
great gap between the reality of American thought and the media's
interpretation of it.
Because the colleges receive a great deal of money from grants, and
because professors maintain their employment in those institutions by
successfully writing up grant proposals..they push the whims of those
affluent elite...which has been the way out in left field bizaar
modernism. Art publications..art educators (for themost part)
perpetuate this idea that the fine arts are modern, unique and
creatively innovative...but still like the media are out of touch with
the public.
Thus...the traditionalists know the great tension that exists that
resents their success, and that their presence in elite institutions
will black-ball them. Unfortunately here, keyboards have no prior
bigotry and allow for ideas to be shared.
Modernists have a certain resentment because they work, live in cheap
studio/apartments doing their work...but the public's demand is not as
interested.
Is it obvious only to me that anytime monies are given out by state arts
groups or government committees that the traditional works never get the
grant monies??? Perhaps this is governments attempt to create balance
because the public will not support the strange and the bizaar arts..
but it would once again demonstrate that government is out of touch
with its citizens.
Larry
mdeli
During the many years I lived in New York among
honest people, one got a certain truth experience.
There one could say what one really thought as directly as
possible without mincing words.
While I attended art school there, I thought that the
work of most of the students was just plane lousy and
that their knowledge and intellect was inversely
proportional to their pretensions. I think this holds
for the few Modern Academic successes as well as its
ragged army of failures. In school there was an
unwritten code of politeness; a student will compliment
you if you compliment him and never say anything
negative. I found this ludicrous and destructive.
This code has carried itself into the world of Modern
Academic Art. If you criticize something you don't
like, directly, concisely and to the point, the modern
aesthete complains that he is offended and often lets
go an Artspeak blast. Don't dare be negative.
What expected by the MAA aesthete is polite, indecisive, preferably
circuitous criticism presented in low key tones.
I have now read about forty years continuous torrents of
unchallenged ecstatic praise for the most idiotic examples of
so-called-art, written in holier-than-thou style and
supported by a logic that shouldn't fool an average ten
year old,
The few scholarly anti Modern Academic Art articles I
have read are inflated, needlessly hair splitting, and
coached in a language which polite scholars consider
erudite. I consider these somewhat idiotic, tame and generally
missing the point. In fact hardly anyone ever reads
that stuff.
Up until now, those who find the state of accepted art
much as I do are generally too chicken to say much of
anything. I think they suffer from intellectual
insecurity and constipated politeness together with an
innate fear of criticizing what they see as mystical
religious tendencies.
When a work shows no sign of skill one doesn't need to
write massive apologetic tomes to point this out. The
word "crap" often says it all; even more concisely than the
words of the little girl in the "Emperor's New
Clothes."
Mani DeLi
RKiggins
bravo g.denton
wsp
mdeli wrote:
>
> During the many years I lived in New York among
> honest people, one got a certain truth experience.
> There one could say what one really thought as directly as
> possible without mincing words.
Sure say what you think as directly as possible *without* pissing people
off and finding yourself alone in a big unforgiving (honest? truthful?)
city.
>
> While I attended art school there, I thought that the
> work of most of the students was just plane lousy
Most student work is plain lousy. Though "lousy" isn't very
descriptive, does not discern much. Kinda just a buzz word; one for
generalized effect.
> and
> that their knowledge and intellect was inversely
> proportional to their pretensions.
If you mean that students are long on enthusiasm and short on experience
(substance) you might be right.
I surmise this because the difference between "knowledge" and
"intellect" isn't very clear.
> I think this holds
> for the few Modern Academic successes as well as its
> ragged army of failures.
Now you are getting into trouble. You are attacking a whole huge
generalized class of people, with no regard to individual differences,
or experiences or backgrounds. Your anger is overshadowing your
thinking?
> In school there was an
> unwritten code of politeness; a student will compliment
> you if you compliment him and never say anything
> negative. I found this ludicrous and destructive.
That's the school you are remembering.
Also there is much middle ground between compliments and negativity. So
we might surmise from how you phrased the above that at your school
there was no middle ground either. Everything people said was
complimentary. had no value to students greater than the quip "nice
shoes."
Since the middle ground is lacking you are saying you prefer students to
say negative stuff about eachother's work. Great, you *should* have gone
to a school were everybody is negative! It's a school of ONE.
>
> This code has carried itself into the world of Modern
> Academic Art.
Has carried into the whole wide world of (something) art? You feel
qualified to comment authoritatively here? How about saying it like
this, "I think, IOW, from my point of view I believe what I describe
happens everywhere."
> If you criticize something you don't
> like, directly, concisely and to the point, the modern
> aesthete complains that he is offended and often lets
> go an Artspeak blast. Don't dare be negative.
No, you missed the point.What you are doing is not criticism.
You can't go into a room full of people announce you hate everything
they are doing and then get down to business and "criticise" their work
in any way that is going to be constructive.
You can't teach nor can you learn when you are pissed off and pissing
people off.
>
> What expected by the MAA aesthete is polite, indecisive, preferably
> circuitous criticism presented in low key tones.
> I have now read about forty years continuous torrents of
> unchallenged ecstatic praise for the most idiotic examples of
> so-called-art, written in holier-than-thou style and
> supported by a logic that shouldn't fool an average ten
> year old,
There you go again, everything you said before (all of it quite
presumptuous and suspect) has set the stage for the above launch into a
rant.
>
> The few scholarly anti Modern Academic Art articles I
> have read are inflated, needlessly hair splitting, and
> coached in a language which polite scholars consider
> erudite.
The few articles you have read? Meaning you don't read very much? Now
that would make sense if it were true.
OR
The few scholarly articles you read (IOW the ones that are in fact
scholarly) are 'bullshit?" That doesn't make sense. What makes you think
they are scholarly then? Get what I'm saying yet?
If they were indeed scholarly do you think you are qualified to evaluate
them? Your only qualification here seems to be that you distrust people
that possess an authority in a subject.
> I consider these somewhat idiotic, tame and generally
> missing the point. In fact hardly anyone ever reads
> that stuff.
Hardly anyone reads it? Why should it bother you so? Then why would you
claim the "whole [art] world" is "infected" by it?
You don't understand it, you discredit it, and it the whole thing
bothers you so... now what does that have to do with the content of ANY
article? Your answer: it makes it "bullshit."
> I think they suffer from intellectual
> insecurity and constipated politeness together with an
> innate fear of criticizing what they see as mystical
> religious tendencies.
Okay, this is fair enough. That's what you think. "THEY:" a whole group
of people who are faceless and share the same undesireable
characteristics. Nice work, not.
You confuse your cynicism with skepticism. There's no
virtue *whatsoever* in cynicism.
Larry Seiler
GD wrote:
>
> You can have a discussion with me without posting a lot of extraneous
> argument from your other debates. The response you've given me is
> unconvincing.
>
> I'll give you these quotes from Adolf Hitler's inaugural speech given at
> the opening of his 'true German art' exhibition at the Haus der Deutschen
> Kunst held concurrently with the 'Degenerate Art' exhibition of 1937. You
> can peruse them and then explain to me how, aside from the German
> Nationalism,
But here...you have already set the ground rules and restricted my
parameters unjustly, for it was the propaganda...the nationalism that
propelled Hitler's methods, his ideology and cause and therefore the
basis for his comments.
your AESTHETIC sentiments differ.
>
> "Cubism, Dadaism, Futurism, Impressionism, etc., have nothing to do with
> our German people. For these concepts are neither old nor modern, but are
> only the artifactitious stammerings of men to whom God has denied the grace
> of a truly artistic talent,
Again remember..it was the awe of talent by the populace, and the
rejection of his own works by the academic elite that invoked such
hatred for that which had been recognized and acceptable...
To further his righteous cause in convincing the German people of the
need to attack Poland...he had propagandists reporting that Polish
Germans were being beaten and killed. He even went so far as to have
condemned prison inmates dressed as Polish soldiers killed so as to look
like border disputes and aggravation on the part of the Poles.
His hatred was kindled further when his observations of those art works
accepted were done by artists not directly of his ideal Aryan descent,
by Jewish influence, by facist....etc; The works were not worthy of the
German people...because the works admired by the world were either of
the academic thinking that rejected his admission to art school, or
because they were not directly German people that had done them. Your
attempt to liken traditionalists rejection of "bad art" by drawing a
metaphor to Hitler has to include and take into account all those
"insane" ideas to why Hitler attacked the arts the way he did.
Personally, it seems more obvious that as people produce bad art that is
not acceptable...a more proper metaphor would be used to demonstrate how
some would be like Hitler in attempting to "redefine" what good art
would be. In his case, it would have to be done by Germans and it would
have to be done by those that would have liked and made room for his
work as well. Like I said before, todays art institutions would have
welcomed his "artistic" passions with open arms, and perhaps have said
many kind words about his work. Once again, good art has been
"redefined"...and not by those talented. As such, art is no longer seen
as a worthy course to stand side by side with the "academic" subjects
and therefore lacks in argumentation to tenure such teachers and see
they likewise receive annual increases in pay. Anyone can teach teens
to paint like 3 year olds.....why pay more for someone to do that?
Sorry that is the logic that is out there, and it came about because how
to define good art was lost and destroyed. Some of us are trying to
recover the viability of the arts. Since redefining art did not work to
convince humanity...attempts are being made to redefine humanity!
Larry
Charles Blair
hug...@interlog.com (mdeli) writes:
> Go to the nearest large art school and look in the student painting
> racks. You will find imitations of all forms of Modern Academic Art
> and little else. This is due to fifty years of incompetent art
> teaching.
I find it useful to observe the distinction between "modern" and
"contemporary" art, but no matter.
> No artist could do an exact copy of a bunch of random splats or
> schmiers. However I doubt that any academic modern art student has
> the competence even do a lousy copy of a Norman Rockwell or an
> average piece of commercial art.
I recently attended an exhibition of student work at The Pennsylvania
Academy of Fine Arts that ran the gamut from incompetent realism to
realism that I would easily pay the asking price for if I had it (and
this despite the fact that I generally find most realistic work
boring--a matter of taste). I've seen this kind of work at other art
schools as well, so I dispute the assertion that no students today can
draw, paint or sculpt as "well" as students could in the past.
What did strike me, though, were the pieces that won the various
prizes, which were decided by the faculty: I didn't see an immediate
correlation between pieces and prizes in just about all
cases. However, it's not obvious that what is _rewarded_ today will
necessarily affect what is being done today, except perhaps to the
extent that more of what is rewarded will be done; otherwise I
shouldn't have expected to see as much variety of art there as I did.
I'll also add that I saw few pieces that resembled anything done from
the 1860s to the 1960s--modern art seemed pretty much dead, though the
conceptual side of contemporary art was very much alive.
GD
Hello Larry Seiler:
My question was posed to mdeli. However you do make some excellent points
to consider.
Thank you, first of all, for reminding us that Hitler's aesthetic opinions
and actions were motivated by the same hatred, fear, racism, and
intolerance's that motivated his other opinions and actions. And that
those opinions and actions are inseperable from their motivations.
I'll say here, to correct you, that I made an 'analogy' to Hitler's
writings, not a 'metaphor' as you called it. Your misuse of the term, as
well as a few other syntactical ambiguities, does hamper the legibility of
your ideas. You even called Hitler's cause "righteous" (being ironic or
choosing the wrong word) which I'm sure you didn't mean. Perhaps you meant
that Hitler believed his cause was righteous.
That aside, what you seem to be arguing is that the coincidence of
aesthetic opinion and rhetoric between Adolf Hitler, mdeli, (and
yourself?), while it is there, is superficial. The motivations are
different, and that's what counts. Hitler's motivations were sinister;
your motivations are philanthropic, just, upright and virtuous (in short,
righteous).
You write, "Some of us are trying to recover the viability of the arts.
Since redefining art did not work to convince humanity...attempts are being
made to redefine humanity!"
The grandiosity of the statement renders your ambition pathetic. But
still, in the context of this discussion, what frightening words!
Why should I, or anyone, trust your motivations?
respectfully,
GD
MrMalo
rockwell is most noted for his saturday evening post covers while it is
very good art it is commercial art not fine art it is designed to
make people feel good and by the magazine he did one style extremely
well that hometown feel good like when i was a kid thing i have seen
some of his other work but not much id like to see more
i feel like every image would require its own particular style depending
upon what the artist is trying to communicate all rockwell is noted for
commmunicating is home town feel good mush
MrMalo
>> > Go to the nearest large art school and look in the student painting
>> > racks. You will find imitations of all forms of Modern Academic Art
>> > and little else. This is due to fifty years of incompetent art
>> > teaching.
>>
>> prefers. In which case the question is: how to reverse the situation?
>> --
>>>
>
i think part of the problem here is that too many artists today produce
art to show off some techniquetheyve learned wihout putting an overall
effort into the image, feeling, and communication of the work art is
above all communication a means of expression and while a realistic
painting of a horse or a duck or a landscape may be very pretty or
realistic looking or colorful, it is not necessarily expressive if you
cant feel what the artist was feeling when he painted it it isnt really
good art even tho it may be excellent technique
in other words a pretty picture is just a pretty picture but fine art
SAYS something the artist must put himself into the painting every
piece must be a self portrait so to speak this is how i FEEL when i see
this
thats what makes the great ones
Larry Seiler
Charles Blair wrote:
>
>
> I recently attended an exhibition of student work at The Pennsylvania
> Academy of Fine Arts that ran the gamut from incompetent realism to
> realism that I would easily pay the asking price for if I had it
I would agree with you as I have said in earlier posts myself...there is
good and bad realism and there is good (skilled) and bad
contemporary/modern works. I believe there is probably more obviously
poor realism actually, because the disciplines, the techniques, the
sensitivities to synthesize the "ah-ha's" and not lose it amidst
concerns of all the art design/composition principles..takes paying
one's dues, perhaps most a life time. It is when marketing attempts to
bill such an amateur or intermediate as most collectable..God's greatest
gift to art patrons..blah blah blah..that I get repulsed. Realism, or
pulling off illusory truth is easily evaluative because we just happen
or most of us just happen to inhabit the same planet and have had a life
time to develop a critical eye.
Most in a we-want-it-now Mc Donald's drive-thru society believe they are
impassioned and wish to stretch themselves to learn and develop prowess,
but eventually lose patience. It becomes easier to relax and require
less of oneself when believing "good enough" is enough based upon lame
compliments by art fair goers that wouldn't know good art if it crashed
over their heads. I mean, if they are going to buy it anyway, or if I
do less and they'll buy it if I charge a little less..then perhaps that
is where I will define excellence.
Since the public is so ignorant and dead aesthetically, they are even
further removed from appreciating the contemporary modern arts. I see
the abstract as the playfield for the artist..and believe it is more of
an artist's art. But by defining it so..I need then to be impressed
even more. Show me something about color I've not known...something
about assymetrical balance I have not considered, convince me of genius
and cleverness that I might pay homage and likewise grow.
A truly great piece of art demands my attention. It grabs me and says,
"never considered this did you?" or the mere geniousness holds my
breath and I can learn from it. Unfortunately, I see very very little
abstract work that can teach me anything. I could do most of it with
very little effort..and therefore that bores me. If you could reproduce
a master's portrait or landscape with little effort, then I hold you in
homage and pay respect...your excellencies I would revere.
Once in a rare moment...usually a spiritual content, will an abstract
ever grab and demand such attention from me. When it does, I see a work
possessing prowess in design, intellect..a forceful manipulation of the
viewer's eye. It must contain some elements that I sense would cause me
to grow as an artist if I too could do it...and captures my wonder.
Noise....Carlos Santana could tune his strings to all be out of tune and
liewise step on a processor pedal..in 20 seconds of adjustments he could
make gross noise and imitate amateur endeavors. How many lacking in
skill could even know where to begin producing the sustaining mood
altering haunting notes over an organ and conga rythm and be even
remotely mistaken to possess some of his playing ability?
I'm going to borrow mdeli's closure here......
no skill..no art
Larry
Larry Seiler
GD wrote:
>
> Hello Larry Seiler:
>
> My question was posed to mdeli. However you do make some excellent points
> to consider.
>
> Thank you, first of all, for reminding us that Hitler's aesthetic opinions
> and actions were motivated by the same hatred, fear, racism, and
> intolerance's that motivated his other opinions and actions. And that
> those opinions and actions are inseperable from their motivations.
>
> I'll say here, to correct you, that I made an 'analogy' to Hitler's
> writings, not a 'metaphor' as you called it. Your misuse of the term, as
> well as a few other syntactical ambiguities, does hamper the legibility of
> your ideas. You even called Hitler's cause "righteous" (being ironic or
> choosing the wrong word) which I'm sure you didn't mean. Perhaps you meant
> that Hitler believed his cause was righteous.
Yes..in his mind, it was a righteous cause.....
>
> That aside, what you seem to be arguing is that the coincidence of
> aesthetic opinion and rhetoric between Adolf Hitler, mdeli, (and
> yourself?), while it is there, is superficial. The motivations are
> different, and that's what counts. Hitler's motivations were sinister;
It seems to be a common strategem of postmodernism in undermining any
attempt to use truth as absolute...to attack such foundations by drawing
attention to similarities of former systems or personages of tyranny.
One way that the Judaeo-Christian ethic has been hammered upon and
eroded in our times is to joust and make fun of those that held to
personal faith..yet looked the other way when blacks were forced to sit
in the rear of the bus. It is often an oversight to not credit those
that also held personal faith dear but risked public scorn by siding
with those whom were wrongfully target by racism and bigotry.
We are seeing this strategem..(and I do not for a moment suggest that it
is a conscious and intentional use of strategem but more an in-built
enculturation of postmodernism) to now compare those that would
construct what may be acceptable in art as to Hitler's forced
impositions.
There are other forms of oppression that can attack the arts that may
not be so obvious. There are reasons today that art has lost viability
and priority in tax base supported public school systems...there are
reasons more and more schools have maybe one fulltime art teacher in the
K-8 grades but a part time art teacher in the high schools. The social
mechanisms and deteriorations of the high arts are much to be credited
for bad taste of taxpayers looking to cut fiscal budgets even more.
There too exists the possibility that we can learn from the systematic
decline of civilizations....a train might complain of the restrictions
of the tracks...but jumping the track will only entrench it in the mud
go therefore nowhere. The tracks become the very means for which
inherently give the train its purpose.
> your motivations are philanthropic, just, upright and virtuous (in short,
> righteous).
>
> You write, "Some of us are trying to recover the viability of the arts.
> Since redefining art did not work to convince humanity...attempts are being
> made to redefine humanity!"
>
> The grandiosity of the statement renders your ambition pathetic. But
> still, in the context of this discussion, what frightening words!
>
Sorry I am so pathetic. I suppose when the churches of Germany could
have opposed Hitler....they did not because the "ambitions" would have
been too grandiose. It has been said by one pastor, that when the
Germans came for the Jews, I did nothing. When they came for the
Catholics, I did not nothing. When they came for the Presbyterians, I
did nothing...but, when they came for the Lutherans..there was no one
left to rescue me. Waiting for a cause to be clearly necessary is often
too late, which is why history regards the earlier visionairies of the
injustices so highly.
This response in the paragraph above is only a remark for your summation
of my ambitions as pathetic. I will attempt to live with integrity and
passion...this "stuff" called life, that usually most artists discover
is rich and full and meaningful...and any attempts to be anything more
than a "cog on the wheel" is at least in my convictions purpose enough
for existence!
It is my convictions that ever since the arts lost credibility in the
institution of education in its development of life-loving individuals
filled with awe of genious and talent....that the arts wishing to
maintain its place in the marketplace of ideas/viability as bound by the
law of supply and demand, have now subcumbed to become a propaganda tool
for multiculturalism, preparing students to be members of the global
village or new world order. Art has a new mission.
It is the hope that through the arts, children will learn to appreciate
the differences in others as unique and significant..and that they will
empathize and humanize into a one world peaceful co-existence.
Sounds good, except that art used to encourage "individualism" used to
welcome difference of opinion. Worldviews acceptable now are only those
that espouse toleration..but in actual practice on campus can be
witnessed to not tolerate those that do not submit to the campaign of
non-toleration. It is social engineering and enculturation at its
finest.
Anything that stinks of absolutes or universals is regarded as
threatening to multiculturalism...thus, there will be the convictions as
artists which produce meaningful art that will be entirely ignored
should they embrace particularly universals. Should you insist on the
parallels of Hitler's campaign against the arts, it should only be seen
that its potential can be seen through many colored lenses.
> Why should I, or anyone, trust your motivations?
I don't believe you should. I think we all need to be completely aware
of the four major worldviews inside and out to place issues into a
proper perspective..seeing the whole rather than the part. If you have
and are doing that..nothing more can be asked. You are no doubt
thinking and acting in accordance to a worldview...whether or not
conscious of it. From that end..I wouldn't encourage you to even trust
your own motivations, for I believe without seeing from the whole you,
I, and others could be responding to our own enculturation. That is the
plight and the burden of thinking persons.
Larry
Larry Seiler
wsp wrote:
>
>
> Here is Hitler on modern art in 1935.
>
> "Art can in no way be a fashion. As little as the character and blood of
> our people will change, so much will art have to lose its mortal
> character and replace it with worthy images expressing the life course
> of our people in the steadily unfolding growth of its creations. Cubism,
> Dadaism, Futurism, Impressionism, etc. have nothing to do with our
> German people. For these concepts are neither old nor modern, but are
> of a truly skilled artistic talent,
William Shire spoke at great length as a correspondent living in Berlin
and following the affairs leading up to the Nazi uprising, take over,
the war effort etc; his writings show that Hitler had pastors removed
from all churches that did not uphold the new trinity...not the Father
Son and Holy Spirit, but the Fatherland, Blood.....(and I'm sorry, don't
remember the third part of the Nazi trinity, but I will try and find it
in a book I'm reading presently). Salvation was not to be found through
a weak and suffering messiah...but through Germany, through Nazism. God
was redefined. Pastors whom resisted went to concentration camps. Some
pastors such as Dietrich Bonehoeffer attempted to create resistences. He
was hung by piano wire two weeks before allies freed the concentration
camp he was held in for two years.
If God denied an artist talent....it was the Nazi God...and was due to
not having the required ethnicity or devotion to the Nazi cause.
and in its place has awarded them
> the Ñgiftâ of jabbering or deception. I will therefore confess now, in
> this very hour, that I have come to the final unalterable decision to
> clean house, just as I have done in the domain of politics, and from now
> on rid the German art life of its phrase mongering.
>
> "Works of artÇ which cannot be understood in themselves but, for the
> justification of their existence, need those bombastic instructions for
> their appreciation finally reaching that intimidated soul, who is
> patiently willing to accept such stupid or impertinent nonsense - these
> works of art for now on will no longer find their way to the German
> people.
They could not be understood for his hatred of abstract art yes, but
also because nothing was to be understood outside the Nazi mission and
purpose officially.
>
> "All those catch words: "inner experience," "strong state of mind,"
> "forceful will," "emotions pregnant with the future," "heroic attitude,"
> "meaningful empathy," "experienced order of the times," "original
> primitivism," etc. - all these dumb, mendacious excuses, this clap trap
> or jabbering will no longer be accepted as excuses or even
> recommendations for worthless, integrally unskilled products."
>
> BTW, I think my reference to Hitler's thoughts on modern art in this
> context are completely appropriate. He's hitting below the belt. Trying
> to convince people that when they don't understand the art it is
> bullshit. When it involves terms that they don't understand they are
> being bullshitted. He wants to convince people to open their minds only
> to what is understandable
no..he wanted art that was only supportive of Nazi initiatives..only
such art would be understood. Many great realistic pieces were also
among those rejected. The threat of a great work of art being not
"understandable" by Nazi ideological terms sent many out to attempt to
save great paintings by covering them with gesso and painting over them
propagandized acceptable images.
Again, we can't forget that Hitler attempted at an earlier age to get
into art school. The schools did not recognize his talent, and he never
forgot that nor forgave them. No wonder he later would not recognize
artists approved by the art world as not "understandable". In a sense,
perhaps all those that lack talent should see Hitler as a symbol of
retribution....at least there was one individual whom lacked serious
ability that got even!
This really has nothing to do with the discussion here of whether or not
a work represents a sample of disciplined rare and unique talent. Often
we attempt to correct or avoid an ill by going to the oppositie extreme,
eroding the ability to determine good works by comparing all judgements
to Nazi extremism if successful would make art obsolete. Some might
applaud and celebrate the initial freedoms...but without regard to
excellence it would soon disinterest the public...and be seen as a trite
exercise.
C'mon...we know already that all children love to draw...but sometime in
their life encouragements and instruction wane to a conclusion that
growing up means putting your colors away. It has for most become
trite. Those not able to afford works of art prefer football and beer,
and why not...at least yet in sports we have not been challenged to have
as much regard for incompetence as we have for excellence. It provides
some heroes....
for me it is not so much an abstract/realism argument. It is
recognition that there is good and bad realism, there is good and bad
abstract. Talented people produce talented works regardless of genre
due to abilities, convictions and on-going integrity. I'm just under
the conviction that while one genre requires a lifetime to near
perfection....others...(if the person is talented) might realize the
title of artist within a relatively short time. One requires more dues,
as such requires more skills and talent. As such...one tends to get
more respect and honor and regard.
And..that is okay. Many people own a guitar, (for example),have one
sitting in their house. Some plunk on them once in awhile and attain
nothing really. I'm not advocating as a result we send out an order that
all guitars of such people are to not be taken away. Let them have
their simple pleasures.
However...let us not try and compare such "plunkings" as coming anywhere
close to demanding the respect of raw genious and talent such as the
likes of Carlos Santana..etc; Sit on a hill near a summer festival,
plunk on your guitar and see if the crowd comes to gather near. Yah,
you have the right....but, then there are those seriously more talented!
If we yearn for the recognition...there are some dues to pay.
Larry
Larry Seiler
You are really not saying anything that I would disagree with. As I've
said on other posts...there is good realism..and very poor realism;
there is good contemporary works and very poor. Excellence will best be
that conduit that will emit those stronge emotions and passions of the
artist. However..if students are not encouraged to in addition to
learning newer methods to believe in and follow their passions...their
works risk fulflling course requirments and satisfying their professors
but not their own convictions.
I have in my studio about 90% realism...but I have a number of works
I've done that are very abstract. The passion I put into my realistic
pieces and the passion I put into my abstract are similar in that I held
to an integrity and inner conviction. I utilized design, technique,
idea and concept. With my abstract works people have responded with the
type of reaction that I had hoped for, and did really well at shows I
submitted them to.
I would have to say however, that much less was required of me to do the
abstract works as an artist. I will not deny that they were enjoyable
to do, but there was this sense of freedom doing them that I would not
have to be concerned about quality..only that the idea I wanted to
portray was clear. They are works of art I believe.
When I was a child, a father as a policeman during the 60's...I knew
ten different ways to get home from school. Often I made it home
without getting beat up or picked on. The fears I had in those days was
intense and real. Years later, I was on a martial arts team in college,
even studied martial arts in the military. Now..no matter how much I
would like to go back and vindicate for all the little picked on kids in
the world...it would be of no challenge. Without the challenge, a
victory is only shallow at best.
How does this relate???
Well..perhaps when I was younger, and color was more of a mystery...
perhaps when principles of design and composition were things done by
artists to manipulate the eye and I could not have expressed why I did
or did not like a piece...perhaps then I could have been convinced that
the endeavors of abstract art was to be held in high regard and awe.
Now..some nearly thirty years later, being a professional...to go back
and do abstract is more like "child's play". The challenge is gone...I
am not impressed!
I see only one benefit for contemporary modernism in art, and that is to
reveal mysteries of great spiritual consequence in issues. Of course if
an artist's worldview is shallow...then for me, his work highly
predictable and lacking the ability to reveal anything. I say then, he
has a right to make, when I applaud...I applaud his "freedom".
Each year...I go to a festival in Bushnell, Illinois. There, I was
forced to deal with abstract art issues deeply...because for the first
time I had been presented with a body of work by artists whose worldview
was so intense and challenging that the work demanded self-examination
and conviction. I saw it really for the first time as viable.
However, at best...not as something itself to be a work of art in and of
itself...to be admonishing of the gift of art. Rather..as effective as
perhaps reading an intriguing argumentation of philosophy..a "statement"
if you will. If so highly moved...the art "being" effective would
warrant us calling it good art. However...it is not timeless lest the
future generations be more absorbed with history than our culture today,
for they will have to be aware of the issues...(not only that but
interested enough in them), to recognized the genious. Timeless art is
that which will in my opinion not have to call upon every sociologist
expert around to help us "learn" to appreciate the piece.
Larry
wsp
Wanax wrote:
>
> Just one point to make here, and I'm not attempting to get yall more riled:
>
> If Hitler liked redheads, and mani liked redheads, would that make both Nazis?
>
> I agree that by your quotes, they share a common interpretive view, but this does not a
> Nazi make. Many Nazis, including Goering (one of the originals) spared many jews, which
> is a non-Nazi trait.
> Wanax
I don't think there's a nazi among us, but some are using the same
tactics the nazis found quite useful. What does that connection imply?
It means the thoughful person would be wise to keep their distance from
any conclusions reached by those who use such underhanded tactics.
Denigrating art that is not immediately accessible to the average person
is a common strategy of people who are intolerant and close-minded.
Hitler says it best, his words below are a catalog of effective means
used to degrade modern art in the minds of people who don't want to sort
it out for themselves.
Here is Hitler on modern art in 1935.
"Art can in no way be a fashion. As little as the character and blood of
our people will change, so much will art have to lose its mortal
character and replace it with worthy images expressing the life course
of our people in the steadily unfolding growth of its creations. Cubism,
Dadaism, Futurism, Impressionism, etc. have nothing to do with our
German people. For these concepts are neither old nor modern, but are
only artifactitious stammerings of men to whom God has denied the grace
of a truly skilled artistic talent, and in its place has awarded them
the Ñgiftâ of jabbering or deception. I will therefore confess now, in
this very hour, that I have come to the final unalterable decision to
clean house, just as I have done in the domain of politics, and from now
on rid the German art life of its phrase mongering.
"Works of artÇ which cannot be understood in themselves but, for the
justification of their existence, need those bombastic instructions for
their appreciation finally reaching that intimidated soul, who is
patiently willing to accept such stupid or impertinent nonsense - these
works of art for now on will no longer find their way to the German
people.
"All those catch words: "inner experience," "strong state of mind,"
"forceful will," "emotions pregnant with the future," "heroic attitude,"
"meaningful empathy," "experienced order of the times," "original
primitivism," etc. - all these dumb, mendacious excuses, this clap trap
or jabbering will no longer be accepted as excuses or even
recommendations for worthless, integrally unskilled products."
BTW, I think my reference to Hitler's thoughts on modern art in this
context are completely appropriate. He's hitting below the belt. Trying
to convince people that when they don't understand the art it is
bullshit. When it involves terms that they don't understand they are
being bullshitted. He wants to convince people to open their minds only
to what is understandable; IOW, what is prescribed or *dictated* to
them.
People need to see that some in the nsgrp use the *same* words, and the
*same*
agruments that Hitler used to denigrate the art he despised.
Larry Seiler
Mr. Malo-
If I may interject...I agree, to our culture..in our times of broken
homes and changing values, Rockwell's work seems out of touch and much
too warm and fuzzy. Still, he was relevant in his day and should be
judged in two ways concerning that..fine art should be something that
will have a timeless appeal...and what connection did it have to its
day?
Yes..he was an illustrator....a working professional artist. I also
agree that his work was not "fine art" but only in the sense that he
used his talents to do the bidding of others. Still, the arrangement of
his compositions and design required all that he was as an artist.
I would like to see however, if half of the now acceptable contemporary
fine artists could even come close to mimicking his talents. It is one
thing for a young person that can only play two string power chords on a
guitar to verbally trash the talents of the 80's guitar player-(whom was
all over the fretboard) ....it would be another for me to hear a master
such as Clapton, Santana, or Hendrix give a negative opinion of the
same.
Larry
Larry Seiler
MrMalo wrote:
>
> rockwell is most noted for his saturday evening post covers while it is
> very good art it is commercial art not fine art it is designed to
> make people feel good and by the magazine he did one style extremely
> well that hometown feel good like when i was a kid thing i have seen
> some of his other work but not much id like to see more
>
> i feel like every image would require its own particular style depending
> upon what the artist is trying to communicate all rockwell is noted for
> commmunicating is home town feel good mush
Mr. Malo-
If I may interject...I agree, to our culture..in our times of broken
homes and changing values, Rockwell's work seems out of touch and much
too warm and fuzzy. Still, he was relevant in his day and should be
judged in two ways concerning that..fine art should be something that
will have a timeless appeal...and what connection did it have to its
day?
Yes..he was an illustrator....a working professional artist. I also
agree that his work was not "fine art" but only in the sense that he
used his talents to do the bidding of others...(if that is the criteria
you are using to determine a work is not fine art). However, then we
must discount the works of Rembrandt and many Renaissance and Baroque
painters that were commissioned to do portraits for the aristocracy, and
we must discount earlier Renaissance and Byzantine works for having been
commissioned by the church. Or is it only when the Saturday Evening
Post commissions an artist that he/she is no longer a "fine artist?"
Still, the arrangement of his compositions and design required all that
he was as an artist.
If it was because Rockwell used devices to assist his work, then we must
discount DaVinci for having done the same....and a hoard of others. If
we decide a work is fine art because it "moves you" then all work is
subject to cultural relativism and our discussion is meaningless.
Larry Seiler
GD wrote:
>
> At no point have I declared anyone a Nazi nor have I privately come to any
> such conclusion. mdeli has authored a statement that bears a striking
> resemblance to the statements made by Hiltler in reference to what he
> deemed 'degenerate art'. I've asked mdeli to make a distinction.
If your inference is "butt out" that is the purpose of private email
posts. If I touched a nerve....sorry, but guess that has its place
sometimes too!
Larry
Larry Seiler
sometimes too! Mdeli may have made the original comparisons, but is not
necessarily alone in his thinking...
For me personally, I see degenerate as that which debases a culture,
adds to its decline...or contributes to the erosion of excellence. This
is not the same as suggesting that artists do not have the liberty or
should lose the right, but that art is a capable barometer of the times
in which we live. Making observations and predictions is not the same as
taking away permission...though, one can remorse....
My feeling is that the public should be educated, understand the times,
and using intelligence and moral integrity demand more of its artists or
risk being forgotten. This is not the same as taking away our freedom
of expression, it just means some will have to get used to talking to
walls more!
Larry
GD
mdeli
>> I wrote Art Quote du Jour (Matisse)
>>
>> Matisse studied with Bouguereau at the Academie Julian.
>> Matisse in an interview relates that Bouguereau said to him,
>> "you'll never learn how to draw."
>> It is just about the only intelligent thing Matisse ever said,
>> even though it was only second hand.
>William DeRaymond writes
>As far as I am concerned, Matisse was an incredible draftsman, and Bouguereau
>a fool. Again, I think Matisse did his best work early on in his career
>before he went abstract.
Well our opinions certainly differ. Name a few drawings which exhibit
his “incredible” draftsmanship.
Look closely at Matisse’s rendering of hands and feet,. They are all
art school flippers when he fails to hide them. His masterpiece "The
Dance" is one of the most idiotic revered painting of the century.
“Music,” is even worse. If anything by the great Matisse were signed
R. Mutt nobody would give it a second look.
In proportion to the praise he received , of all the revered artists
of this century , Matisse is the worst. Besides his lack of drawing
abilities his subject matter and composition are mediocre. He never
had an idea in his life. His scratchy schmiery painting technique is
about three levels below Hockney.
Unlike Picasso who hardly ever completed anything, Matisse never
really started anything.
Mani DeLi
...no skill no art
mdeli
On 17 May 1997 14:45:25 GMT, MrMalo <male...@mail.sccoast.net> wrote:
>rockwell is most noted for his saturday evening post covers while it is
>very good art it is commercial art not fine art it is designed to
>make people feel good and by the magazine he did one style extremely
>well that hometown feel good like when i was a kid thing i have seen
>some of his other work but not much id like to see more
>
Artwork is artwork.
There is no difference between fine art and commercial art. All art is
commercial (done as a medium of exchange). The negative implication of
the term Commercial Art is a ploy by modern art critics to avoid
comparison between the crap which hangs in museums labeled modern art
and the stuff which is carefully kept off the premises.
>i feel like every image would require its own particular style depending
>upon what the artist is trying to communicate all rockwell is noted for
>commmunicating is home town feel good mush
>
In the same vein, when Hockney paints his swimming pool and Matisse
the view from his bedroom I would regard that as home town crap.
wsp
No problem, we know that. I'm not doing it either.
I AM saying that if you want to mobilize people against modern art
(whatever your ulterior motives) the best tactics to use are the "lack
of skill" and "if it's not immediately understandable it is bullshit."