My ABTRACTION FROM A POST GOUDAL/MARILYN
zi...@interport.net
know which of them said what.
abstract basis as I concentrate a lot on the geometric aspect of the
picture.
>
> but.. but.. but...
>
> As I said earlier, I saw a study on a persian manuscript where you
> could find near all the level between precise figuration and abstraction..
>
> So..
>
> f.g.
>
> --In art - paintings which include figures
In language - not literal, metaphorical
both meanings could apply to works of Hopper, Fairfield Porter.
If I take this interchange correctly one of them is saying that both
Fairfield Porter and Edward Hopper were great at the geometric
composition of their paintings as well as being figurative.
I utterly deny that. Whatever Fairfield Porter has as a reputation
with all of the artists who do not identify themselves as within the
tradition of reputation, his reputation within my world is poor. I
knew the man, I know he liked my work. He was on juries which gave me
several awards. I have nothing against him personally. But there are
only a very few paintings by him which I can look at and say there,
that is beautiful. I saw a whole retorspective show -in Boston at the
MFA in which I did not see one satidfying painting. There is a reason
for this in his own ideology. I quote " I want nature to tell me what
to do." In reality what he wanted weas tosee an irregularity or
peculiarity which reminded him of the AE work he liked and then pain
it with a big brush and with joy. There is nothing wrong with that
except that his version of nature did not include himself as a part of
that nature which was feeling intensely and responding on the highest
level. So his paintings don;t add up. Leland Bell, by the way, hated
his work. Imight be able to find ten good ones. Leland none.
Hopper. Do you, Marilyn, remember my post of about a year ago when I
said that Hopper had domesticated Di Chirico in the American scene?
And I reccommended Parker Tyler's articel of about 19521 in the
Magazine of Art as a good source of understanding for Hopper?
Hopper was specifically not a knowledgable artist in constructional
terms. He did not paint pictures so that the eye could travel through
and unravel the space and volumes. What he did was make a dramatoic
set up in which because of juxtapositions, distances and rigid forms,
ther would be a sense of loneliness and of angst. Parker Tyler
contrasted one og his paintings with a Vermeer, who is a great
composer in traditional terms. A strange outgrowth by way of Karel
Fabritius, fromRembrandt back to Caravaggio, of the use of light and
shade to rationalize and make sense of a space. But Vermeer was
neverisolating his people so thatthey looked devoured by the space,
imprisoned by the space or unable to move. That is what Hopperwants to
do. I think he does it a few times. Maybe 20 times out of a hundred.
The remaining times the thing is hokey or a failur pictorially. During
his best period, Di Chirico turned out one amazing painting of that
sort after the other. Now, I sort of enjoy the idea which you have
that Hopper is an artist who understood the geometry of the picture
plane in some way relating to the way abstract artists have used it.
It is interesting to think of what could have been done. But none of
the abstract artists were about that. Mondrian's paintings, for
example were about bakances and tnesion threoughwhich you could freely
roam in all directions. And that goes for all of the cubists and the
noeplasticists. In other words you are calling abstraction anything
which has certain shapes in it whatever theior function.
No, geomatric abstraction and figuration do not go hand inhand in
those artists. They were bad picks because one was not particularly
competent at that skill -Porter and because the other was in fact a
kind of surrealist trying to use geometry for specific emotive effect
in total contrast to the effect abstract artists sought to achieve.
Sincerely,
Gabriel