Popular Canvas Sizes: WHY?
John Rune
When Mr. Nilges mentioned calculating a table of canvas sizes based on
the golden section, I smiled quietly to myself. I've also pursued
some mathematical questions regarding aesthetics but it seemed too
geeky to mention. Until now. <g>
It's easy to overlook something commonplace. Specifically, how were
popular canvas sizes arrived at? Is there a bit of history to it or
is it a contemporary phenomenon?
Anyway, while having coffee this morning, it occurred to me to do a
scatter plot (on simple euclidean graph paper) of popular canvas sizes
versus two proportions: the square and the golden section. Grabbing
the 2002 Dick Blick catalog, I made the following list from pp. 116-9:
Y X
4 x5
5 x7
6 x8
8x10
9x12
10x10
10x14
10x20
11x14
12x16
14x18
16x20
18x24
20x24
20x30
22x28
24x30
24x36
30x36
30x40
36x48
Funny thing is, the plot of these smaller canvas sizes, from 4"x5" to
36"x48", falls quite nicely near the midline of the "funnel" formed by
the line describing square canvases ( X = Y ) and the line describing
canvases made in proportion to the golden ratio ( X = 1.618 Y ). The
only points outside of the funnel are 10"x20" and 15"x30", which is
obvious since they both fall on the line X = Y/2.
Even the few odd sizes of watercolor paper and art board
15x19
16x24
19x26
24x32
26x34
continue to fall quite nicely near the midline of the funnel. Anyone
care to offer a theory why most popular sizes of canvas, paper, and
art board follow this general rule? Obviously, X and Y values are
reflected around Y = X, but that doesn't begin to explain the peculiar
fact that popular sizes lie very near the midline of the funnel (or
section, if you want to call it that.) It would seem that the popular
aesthetic lies halfway between the undeniable solidity of the square
(1:1) and the inevitability of the golden section (1:1.618...). Go
figure.
C'ya,
Rune
Edward G. Nilges
> When Mr. Nilges mentioned calculating a table of canvas sizes based on
> the golden section, I smiled quietly to myself. I've also pursued
> some mathematical questions regarding aesthetics but it seemed too
> geeky to mention. Until now. <g>
At this distant date (the early 1970s) I did a series of paintings,
now lost, called American Men of Science and featuring old guys
communicating in computer rooms filled with 1940s vintage equipment.
The series was curiously prophetic for in 1992, as a software
developer at Princeton University I assisted the real-life protagonist
of the movie A Beautiful Mind.
The paintings were square because I wanted to use the golden section
and because I preferred to stretch and prime the canvases myself.
I think that the numbers are in the funnel for the practical reason
that too long or tall an aspect ratio makes the subject of the
painting the aspect ratio.
I liked the square because it allowed me to focus completely on the
composition independent of the painting. I used golden section
calculations, computed using a Fortran compiler that I debugged myself
in object form (cf IEEE Transactions in the History of Software,
Spring Summer 1999).
To my astonishment in 1996, my son used the golden section in some
calculations for his software...completely independent of me since he
grew up with my ex.
My series of paintings were abandoned by me of necessity in a storage
area in an apartment building in Seattle in 1987.
John Ng
I quite conciously avoid standard sizing when I conceive a painting
but when I finally get the canvas made up, it would however end up
nearly standard I don't know about mathematical but I believe it is
something to do with our eye's view size. Some landscape paintings
are in a long format (thus avoiding large section of sky) but our eyes
don't see the real thing that way.
John Ng
John Rune
Nilges) wrote:
....
=>At this distant date (the early 1970s) I did a series of paintings,
=>now lost, called American Men of Science and featuring old guys
=>communicating in computer rooms filled with 1940s vintage equipment.
=>The series was curiously prophetic for in 1992, as a software
=>developer at Princeton University I assisted the real-life
protagonist
=>of the movie A Beautiful Mind.
Too bad they're lost, I would have liked to have seen them. At an
also distant point on the time-line, I grabbed the stack-weight that
rides the deck as the last IBM card reader was hauled off campus.
Makes a nice paperweight.
=>The paintings were square because I wanted to use the golden section
=>and because I preferred to stretch and prime the canvases myself.
I do like to "roll my own" canvases. The calm before the storm. <g>
=>I think that the numbers are in the funnel for the practical reason
=>that too long or tall an aspect ratio makes the subject of the
=>painting the aspect ratio.
A good point. Which raises the issue of perception as to when the
aspect ratio overpowers the image. And I doubt a muralist would have
quite the same take on it as a portrait artist.
Time to refill mr. coffee. I definitely need a fix.
C'ya,
Rune
John Rune
=>I quite conciously avoid standard sizing when I conceive a painting
=>but when I finally get the canvas made up, it would however end up
=>nearly standard I don't know about mathematical but I believe it is
=>something to do with our eye's view size. Some landscape paintings
=>are in a long format (thus avoiding large section of sky) but our
eyes
=>don't see the real thing that way.
I believe current research shows that we "see" in a patchwork fashion,
the ability to perceive detail being limited to a _very_ small focal
area. But artists, by the nature of their efforts, are forced to
realize this even if only functionally. [There's a lot more to it of
course, so don't bust my balls. I don't wear a GD lab coat. <g>]
What I found interesting were the efforts of some impressionists
to paint as the eye sees, not as the mind sees. In other words, to
paint a focus of detail surrounded by ever more blurred shapes and
muddy colors.
Ever cover one eye and try to do a still life by staring at a point
off to one side? And I don't mean recreating what you know the image
_should_ look like, but what you actually see in your peripheral
vision? Isn't that also realism?
If you are painting what you "see" peripherally, isn't that, by
definition, realism? Aren't those blurred, fuzzy shapes and muddy
colors real?
In a sense, "realism" is a fake, an artificial construction. Our eyes
don't see the whole picture, we see the whole picture in our mind. Or
at least we think we do. Which is the point. <g>
Painting what you _assume_ is not the same as painting what you _see_.
Realism requires you to see as the mind sees, not the eye. Realism
requires you to see a large number of discrete images and tack them
together, which is precisely _how_ we see but not _what_ we see.
IMHO, the implication is that what we think of as realism in painting
is as artificial as any other scheme or "method of seeing". Perhaps
more so for its insistance that it is something that it is not.
"Maxwell House: good to the last drop" -- Dali <g>
C'ya,
Rune
Erik A. Mattila
> On 20 Nov 2002 21:53:20 -0800, pigsm...@hotmail.com (John Ng) wrote:
>
> =>I quite conciously avoid standard sizing when I conceive a painting
> =>but when I finally get the canvas made up, it would however end up
> =>nearly standard I don't know about mathematical but I believe it is
> =>something to do with our eye's view size. Some landscape paintings
> =>are in a long format (thus avoiding large section of sky) but our
> eyes
> =>don't see the real thing that way.
>
> I believe current research shows that we "see" in a patchwork fashion,
> the ability to perceive detail being limited to a _very_ small focal
> area. But artists, by the nature of their efforts, are forced to
> realize this even if only functionally. [There's a lot more to it of
> course, so don't bust my balls. I don't wear a GD lab coat. <g>]
It's not that complicated. The human eye has an extremely short depth
of field, compensated by a very fast focus mechanism. So fast, in fact,
that unless you are aware of what is happening to your irises (irii?)
you don't even notice it.
>
> What I found interesting were the efforts of some impressionists
> to paint as the eye sees, not as the mind sees. In other words, to
> paint a focus of detail surrounded by ever more blurred shapes and
> muddy colors.
It was the impact of the philosophy of French Naturalism, as articulated
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau nearly a century earlier. Just like Picasso
and Braque set out to "paint" the world according to Einstien's theory
of relativity, the Impressionists set out to paint naturalism. The way
the eye actually 'sees' was very important to this project. But more
important was the use of common subjects, which was an overt
anti-bourgeois strategy. The pre-impressionists are interesting in this
regard, the "Barbizon" painters who set out to nobilize French Peasants
and the working class. Hey, you gotta remember that Marx's "Das
Kapital" was published in 1867, just in time for the Impressionists.
> In a sense, "realism" is a fake, an artificial construction. Our eyes
> don't see the whole picture, we see the whole picture in our mind. Or
> at least we think we do. Which is the point. <g> Painting what you _assume_ is not the same as painting what you _see_.
> Realism requires you to see as the mind sees, not the eye. Realism
> requires you to see a large number of discrete images and tack them
> together, which is precisely _how_ we see but not _what_ we see.
It makes me recall that during the so-called "Enlightenment" in France,
Italian linear perspective was criticized as artificial on the basis
that we see the world with two eyes, and we are never stationary. So
it's an "unnatural" view (Rousseau again?). But notice how things get
twisted around. Today the "realist" camp is arguing for neo-classism
and ideological painting, which is about as "unreal" as you can get, and
against painting that consciously intended to go beyond idealism to get
to the nitty-gritty of nature.
I personally don't think the argument is about "realism" at all. It's
about recognition. Popular culture shows us that the simple act of
recognition causes pleasure in people. It's spectacle. And this is
what Marx was talking about in his discourse on the fethishization of
the commodity, and indeed historical materialism. But that's another
debate - except that what was in the minds of the artists at the time
was the idea that art should cater to a broader sense than the petty
bourgeoisie, and that it should mean something to people, as opposed to
being a mere spectacle, a shallow display of virtuosity, or a
declaration of economic and political achievement.
>
> IMHO, the implication is that what we think of as realism in painting
> is as artificial as any other scheme or "method of seeing". Perhaps
> more so for its insistance that it is something that it is not.
I would take it futher - that seeing the world itself is a human
artefact, and subject to interpretation. If our perceptors were allowed
to respond to the chaos of stimuli that is "out there" it would
overwhelm us. Thus we see selectively. Which is great for painters, of
course, who might be inclined to push that envelope to the edge of sanity.
Erik
Edward G. Nilges
> On 20 Nov 2002 15:44:37 -0800, spino...@yahoo.com (Edward G.
> Nilges) wrote:
>
> ....
> =>At this distant date (the early 1970s) I did a series of paintings,
> =>now lost, called American Men of Science and featuring old guys
> =>communicating in computer rooms filled with 1940s vintage equipment.
>
> =>The series was curiously prophetic for in 1992, as a software
> =>developer at Princeton University I assisted the real-life
> protagonist
> =>of the movie A Beautiful Mind.
>
> Too bad they're lost, I would have liked to have seen them. At an
> also distant point on the time-line, I grabbed the stack-weight that
> rides the deck as the last IBM card reader was hauled off campus.
> Makes a nice paperweight.
Raymond Loewy won an industrial design award in 1954, a time when the
1930s Art Deco movement had a lot of influence on design, for the IBM
026 keypunch. He abandoned the Victorian curved legs of the 1920s for
a clean, straightline design that he then relieved by adding
streamlining touches taken from his work on railroad passenger cars.
This keypunch was nearly indestructible. I used its semi-programmable
drum to make it play Rolling Stones hits and Vietnam veterans told me
that it worked fine in the tropical environments of Cam Ranh Bay and
the combat zone. Of course, it was tracking dubious "body counts" for
midlevel bird colonels, that were filtered up to McNamara and LBJ as
computerized truth that had nothing to do with the reality, which
shows us that David Gerlenter is wrong: there is no "Machine Beauty"
without a prior committment to ethics.
IBM replaced it with an only slightly more powerful 029 model in the
1960s which by contrast both seemed and actually was flimsier and had
sharp corners which seemed to take revenge for abuse including hacking
the drum. By the time the 029 came into general use, Nixon was
Vietnamizing the war but I think it did less well in the combat zone.
Perhaps IBM thought the typical user was female and would treat the
machine with respect, when in fact guys inside and outside the
military who could type, or hunt and peck at speed, or program the
drum to automate repetitive copying, beat on keypunches all the time.
Indeed, by the early 1970s, it was getting harder for companies to
hire women to willingly keypunch programmer code because of the poor
social skills of programmers, who would abuse the keypunch operators
for their bugs.
One dear sweet lady at a company I worked for in 1976 liked my neat
lettering which I learned in art school but complained about my
smoking my pipe all the time, which was a character flaw. She would
read inspirational Biblical stories by Hannah Hurnald on her break and
was always rapid and accurate.
But a coworker who'd worked in larger shops told me that women
keypunch operators were brutalized in most places he worked at. The
029 added new features for monitoring "productivity" that the 026
lacked, and a number of companies would measure "productivity" as
keystrokes per hour, while at the same time refusing to invest in the
corresponding IBM equipment for verifiying cards, even in financial
applications.
This put honest keypunch operators out of work in favor of bimbos who
would louse up bank statements and bills because they were being
measured exclusively in keystrokes per hour.
By the 1970s, women had more choices in the job market and it was in
consequence hard for companies to assign full-time keypunch staffs to
keypunch source code. In my experience programmers themselves would
park themselves at keypunches and bash away. The IBM 026 seemed in my
experience to stand up better to this treatment and a common, and
disgusting habit of the era, which was to smoke in the keypunch area,
and leave smoldering butts on the edge of the keypunch tray.
This would only produce a brown gouge on the 026 but created toxic
fumes on the space age materials of the 029. My boss put a stop to
all smoking in the computer facility in 1973.
The 029 had no successor per se for in the 1970s a number of
minicomputer manufacturers (IBM included) were able to introduce minis
(such as the IBM System 3 and 34) in small configurations to which one
employee could be assigned to do all data entry to magnetic media.
Then, of course, the PC came along.
Princeton University had a few 029 keypunches in the late 1980s in
order to support long-term research at Princeton's Office of
Population Research and other departments that was based on files of
cards too secure to be placed on the mainframe.
My only recent siting of punched cards in daily use was at my public
library, for the Illinois department of revenue still requires
companies to make microfiche/card copies of their tax returns
available to the public in this fashion.
I still do penance in the wilderness for all the trees I destroyed
with my decks of cards.
>
> =>The paintings were square because I wanted to use the golden section
> =>and because I preferred to stretch and prime the canvases myself.
>
> I do like to "roll my own" canvases. The calm before the storm. <g>
I find that modern art "superstores" have a far wider selection of
sizes than they did in the late 1960s, including tondos (circular
canvases) and ovals.
About the only thing they don't have is a decent piece of wood, primed
according to the specifications of Cennino Cennini for egg tempera.
But perhaps part of the spiritual discipline of yegg tempera is
prepping the board.
>
> =>I think that the numbers are in the funnel for the practical reason
> =>that too long or tall an aspect ratio makes the subject of the
> =>painting the aspect ratio.
>
> A good point. Which raises the issue of perception as to when the
> aspect ratio overpowers the image. And I doubt a muralist would have
> quite the same take on it as a portrait artist.
Yeah, the muralist walks a fine line as seen in the recent film Frida
and the 1960s film The Agony and the Ecstasy. He has to fill a space
and not piss off a powerful patron, Pope Julius or Nelson Rockefeller.
Poussin did not want to direct teams of incompetent assistants to make
HUGE canvases for King Louie-Louie but he did do a few. They still
hang in the Louvre and don't look at all like "Poussins" at all
because they are totalitarian art, completely under control of what
Louie-Louie wanted.
<TongueInCheek>This is also shown by the fact that the original melody
of the song Louie-Louie was written by Jean-Baptiste Lully and revived
in 1964 by the Kingsmen, rather in the same way Jean Chandler used a
melody by Handel for Duke of Earl, and Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag
was inspired by Beethoven's Diabelli variations :-) </TongueInCheek>.
Dmitri Shostakovich had some interesting things to say, at the end of
the day, on totalitarians when they become art critics...how they make
artists less than men as in the case where Staling forced Shostakovich
to compete with inferior musicians to write the national anthem...the
fact that the final one was rather good was an accident.
"No skilz no art" movements are totalitarianismus in miniature, and I
fail to see why we can't just paint if we want to, or not, and be
damned.
Richard
On Fri, 22 Nov 2002 19:32:02 GMT, tact...@ptd.net (John Rune) wrote:
>What I found interesting were the efforts of some impressionists
>to paint as the eye sees, not as the mind sees. In other words, to
>paint a focus of detail surrounded by ever more blurred shapes and
>muddy colors.
So? That's nothing but a cheap little experiment. It's not
intellectually brilliant or anything like that. Would you want to buy
a home or anything else which only has a small section that is fully
constructed?
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=>
=>On Fri, 22 Nov 2002 19:32:02 GMT, tact...@ptd.net (John Rune)
wrote:
=>
=>>What I found interesting were the efforts of some impressionists
=>>to paint as the eye sees, not as the mind sees. In other words, to
=>>paint a focus of detail surrounded by ever more blurred shapes and
=>>muddy colors.
=>
=>So? That's nothing but a cheap little experiment. It's not
=>intellectually brilliant or anything like that. Would you want to
buy
=>a home or anything else which only has a small section that is fully
=>constructed?
Whatever you say, Professor.
Nerd Gerl
"realist" painters miss the boat by painting every object with the
same amount of texture and detail. And that, m'dear, ain't so real
a'tall.
Interesting that you would call this "natural" phenomenon a "cheap
little experiment."
=============
Naked Angel Art
http://www.rcip.com/nerdgerl
God's Gonna Get You
John Rune <tact...@ptd.net> wrote in article
<3de0407...@news.ptd.net>...
John Rune
=>x-no-archive: yes
=>Interesting to read, but I could not find a mention that the
=>viewer of the final piece of 'Realist' art also makes the
=>same compromises that he/she would do the the real world.
=>If the artist decides to paint his work with the equivalent of
=>what can be taken in the eye in one glance, then it has just
=>one focal point, and tends to be worth just that, a single glance.
=>Therefore, the artist must always have to judge what level of
=>realism is used, with the knowledge of your post that pure
=>realism is impossible.
=>Thur
But what is "pure realism"? Obviously, the most photo realistic
painting must be viewed from a distance simply because "realism"
breaks down as you approach the canvas. Is a painting that appears
"real" at a distance of no less than two feet twice as "real" as a
painting which appears "real" at a distance of no less than four? But
this sort of thing is a very old argument. And yet it remains a bone
of contention. Go figure. <g>
As far as the focal thing goes, most of the paintings I've seen that
use this idea in a nonclassical(?) fashion use it judiciously.
Sometimes it's simply a matter of sharp, clean edges contrasted
against slightly blended ones. But it still works to focus the
attention of the viewer, typically without even realizing _why_ their
attention is drawn to a certain area. And I am not referring to
realistic effects in, say, a landscape where detail naturally
diminishes and edges blur/blend as you approach the horizon.
Damn, I have a perfect example in mind but I canNOT remember the
artist. If I can find the ****ing book where I've seen the thing I'll
cite the painting and try to find a print of it online. ARGH.
=>"John Rune" <tact...@ptd.net> wrote in message
=>news:3ddfa86f...@news.ptd.net...
=>> On 20 Nov 2002 21:53:20 -0800, pigsm...@hotmail.com (John Ng)
wrote:
=>>
=>> =>I quite conciously avoid standard sizing when I conceive a
painting
=>> =>but when I finally get the canvas made up, it would however end
up
=>> =>nearly standard I don't know about mathematical but I believe
it is
=>> =>something to do with our eye's view size. Some landscape
paintings
=>> =>are in a long format (thus avoiding large section of sky) but
our
=>> eyes
=>> =>don't see the real thing that way.
=>>
=>> I believe current research shows that we "see" in a patchwork
fashion,
=>> the ability to perceive detail being limited to a _very_ small
focal
=>> area. But artists, by the nature of their efforts, are forced to
=>> realize this even if only functionally. [There's a lot more to it
of
=>> course, so don't bust my balls. I don't wear a GD lab coat. <g>]
=>>
=>> What I found interesting were the efforts of some impressionists
=>> to paint as the eye sees, not as the mind sees. In other words,
to
=>> paint a focus of detail surrounded by ever more blurred shapes and
=>> muddy colors.
=>>
=>> Ever cover one eye and try to do a still life by staring at a
point
=>> off to one side? And I don't mean recreating what you know the
image
=>> _should_ look like, but what you actually see in your peripheral
=>> vision? Isn't that also realism?
=>>
=>> If you are painting what you "see" peripherally, isn't that, by
=>> definition, realism? Aren't those blurred, fuzzy shapes and muddy
=>> colors real?
=>>
=>> In a sense, "realism" is a fake, an artificial construction. Our
eyes
=>> don't see the whole picture, we see the whole picture in our mind.
Or
=>> at least we think we do. Which is the point. <g>
=>>
=>> Painting what you _assume_ is not the same as painting what you
_see_.
=>> Realism requires you to see as the mind sees, not the eye.
Realism
=>> requires you to see a large number of discrete images and tack
them
=>> together, which is precisely _how_ we see but not _what_ we see.
=>>
=>> IMHO, the implication is that what we think of as realism in
painting
=>> is as artificial as any other scheme or "method of seeing".
Perhaps
=>> more so for its insistance that it is something that it is not.
=>>
=>> "Maxwell House: good to the last drop" -- Dali <g>
=>>
=>>
=>> C'ya,
=>> Rune
=>
William Palmer
Well, he's a bit careless with his terms but
at least he is touching on something significant.
I cartainly agree (and I argued this quite a few
years back, in my "Symbolism: A Century of Neglect")
that one of the reasons Impressionism almost
totally eclipsed Symbolism for so long--and, were
I not focusing on Symbolism in that essay, I could
have added "realism"--was that Impressionist pictures
were easy to produce and further, generally dealt with
"sunny" subjects that would not be found too disturbing
for cozy, comfortable middle-class homes and offices.
Richard, however, merely deals with the matter
of Impressionist paintings striking some viewers
as not well crafted. That is true about some
Impressionist work, certainly, but I would not
put the major artists of the movement in that
category. In fact, contrary to someone who
posted on this thread, I find Monet far more
interesting than Manet, whose topics generally
bore me. On the other hand, there is nothing
more dreary and vacuous than a poor MONET
imitation, which to me is what Richard is
describing above. Conversely, hile I can
respect the fact that Manet says, in effect,
"This is what I see," the Symbolists prove far
more intesting to me because they recognize that
the vison of human beings is very limited, so
Symbolists ask questions about the nature of
what people DON'T see with ordinary vision.
a.g.b-p.
Mani Deli
>You missed the point Richard. John is saying that your so-called
>"realist" painters miss the boat by painting every object with the
>same amount of texture and detail. And that, m'dear, ain't so real
>a'tall.
Which goes to show that you never looked at the mentioned realist
painters.
...no skill no art!
Want to get away from the indecipherable imbecilities and absurd pretensions of the modern art establishment?
Check out my web page http://www3.sympatico.ca/manideli/
G*rd*n
| ...
| Italian linear perspective was criticized as artificial on the basis
| that we see the world with two eyes, and we are never stationary. So
| it's an "unnatural" view (Rousseau again?). But notice how things get
| twisted around. Today the "realist" camp is arguing for neo-classism
| and ideological painting, which is about as "unreal" as you can get, and
| against painting that consciously intended to go beyond idealism to get
| to the nitty-gritty of nature.
I believe that realism is akin to mindsets like Biblical
literalism, in that it represents, or at least represented,
a kind of contract between the artist and the viewer, in which
objects have to rendered faithfully in a recognizable,
conventional way so that they can be identified, grasped, and
possessed. This means making things look, not as they "really"
look -- there is no such thing -- but as they _ought_ to look
under certain circumstances.
As property began to pass out of communal or traditional
ownership like the church and the feudal hierarchy, and into
the hands of private traders and businessmen, protocapitalists,
they wanted pictures which were like windows out into a
world which they could seize and possess. Hence the enormous
interest in geometrically accurate perspective, which sets up
a precise relationship between the viewer and all that he
surveys. This sort of depiction can be compared with the
religious art of previous epochs, especially icons, which
rather than form windows into which the viewer hopefully looks
for control, embody spiritual beings or powers which affect
or take control of the viewer.
--
(<><>) /*/
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
{ http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 11/14/02 <-adv't
Erik A. Mattila
Indeed. My mom taped a copy of "Bill Moyers in Florence" a few years
back and sent it to me. As Moyers was commenting on the endless
entourage of art historians making their yearly pilgrimage to Florence,
making their pronouncments on the magic of renaissance painting, he
diverted to an interview with Eco. Umberto said "Nonsense! The only
thing invented in Italy during the renaissance was capitalism!"
Erik
G*rd*n
| > | ...
| > | It makes me recall that during the so-called "Enlightenment" in France,
| > | Italian linear perspective was criticized as artificial on the basis
| > | that we see the world with two eyes, and we are never stationary. So
| > | it's an "unnatural" view (Rousseau again?). But notice how things get
| > | twisted around. Today the "realist" camp is arguing for neo-classism
| > | and ideological painting, which is about as "unreal" as you can get, and
| > | against painting that consciously intended to go beyond idealism to get
| > | to the nitty-gritty of nature.
| > | ...
G*rd*n:
| > I believe that realism is akin to mindsets like Biblical
| > literalism, in that it represents, or at least represented,
| > a kind of contract between the artist and the viewer, in which
| > objects have to rendered faithfully in a recognizable,
| > conventional way so that they can be identified, grasped, and
| > possessed. This means making things look, not as they "really"
| > look -- there is no such thing -- but as they _ought_ to look
| > under certain circumstances.
| >
| > As property began to pass out of communal or traditional
| > ownership like the church and the feudal hierarchy, and into
| > the hands of private traders and businessmen, protocapitalists,
| > they wanted pictures which were like windows out into a
| > world which they could seize and possess. Hence the enormous
| > interest in geometrically accurate perspective, which sets up
| > a precise relationship between the viewer and all that he
| > surveys. This sort of depiction can be compared with the
| > religious art of previous epochs, especially icons, which
| > rather than form windows into which the viewer hopefully looks
| > for control, embody spiritual beings or powers which affect
| > or take control of the viewer.
| Indeed. My mom taped a copy of "Bill Moyers in Florence" a few years
| back and sent it to me. As Moyers was commenting on the endless
| entourage of art historians making their yearly pilgrimage to Florence,
| making their pronouncments on the magic of renaissance painting, he
| diverted to an interview with Eco. Umberto said "Nonsense! The only
| thing invented in Italy during the renaissance was capitalism!"
In more recent times, then, the lower-middle and working
classes, at least in the more deracinated and mobile
countries, like the United States, would adopt this sort of
realism in the same way as they adopted other cultural
habits from the upper classes -- the one-family suburban
dwelling on its lawn being obviously a tiny miniaturization
of the estate of an English lord and requiring pictures,
not of the ancestors, who would be unsuitably common and
represented in photographs anyway, but pleasant rural and
coastal scenes, table settings, or fictive nostalgias.
But then the question arises as to why the upper classes,
intellectuals, and the artist-bohemian world suddenly became
bored with this window, almost _en_masse_, and began to create
and support Impressionism and Modernism, which refuse to offer
objects and generally insist on their status as artifices,
rather than tools with which some supposed objective reality
is grasped (a role partly assumed by photography). As a child
I was told that Abstract Expressionism depicted "pure thought",
so I suppose this was the sort of thing that was going around.
Given a history, going back many centuries, of the depiction
of naked, young, desirable women to be grasped mentally if
not physically, "Nude Descending A Staircase" and the public
interest shown in it is truly shocking.
Erik A. Mattila
That's a terrific concept. Miniature estates. I wonder if this is good
lead on the history of the Barbie Doll too.
> But then the question arises as to why the upper classes,
> intellectuals, and the artist-bohemian world suddenly became
> bored with this window, almost _en_masse_, and began to create
> and support Impressionism and Modernism, which refuse to offer
> objects and generally insist on their status as artifices,
> rather than tools with which some supposed objective reality
> is grasped (a role partly assumed by photography). As a child
> I was told that Abstract Expressionism depicted "pure thought",
> so I suppose this was the sort of thing that was going around.
> Given a history, going back many centuries, of the depiction
> of naked, young, desirable women to be grasped mentally if
> not physically, "Nude Descending A Staircase" and the public
> interest shown in it is truly shocking.
It could be a market phenomena. There's no doubt about it - Salon
Pieces take a long time to paint. My old teacher David Hollowell told
me he had a big problem in this regard - it took him so long to make one
of his paintings that it cut-out many selling opportunities and drove
the asking price up. Painting in an impressionist style, or derivitive
styles is much faster. What we now know as art galleries were just in
their infancy in 1870, and as the galleries grew, the demand for
merchandise grew.
And that's not to say enormous skill is not required. In some ways the
demands of 'quick' painting are higher.
Erik
G*rd*n
| That's a terrific concept. Miniature estates. I wonder if this is good
| lead on the history of the Barbie Doll too.
I think dolls representing adults for use as children's toys
go back a long way. Remember the Little Tin Soldier and his
beloved, the ballet dancer.
Speaking of Barbie, I saw an exhibition of paintings a few
years ago which consisted mostly of straight paintings (that
is, paintings in a variety of respectable, serious styles)
whose subjects were dolls -- not dolls as dolls, but dolls as
subjects in the place of human beings. And some photographs,
too. Portraits, groups, heroic and sentimental poses. As
you can imagine it was rather spooky. I don't know if it was
a one-off or it made the rounds as a _thing_, perhaps the
leading edge of another mysterious subgenre. I wonder what
the burning faithful of realism would make of such work.