Evaluating paintings.

[Iian Neill]

> If you are implying that subject matter is not the be all and end all of art, then you
> will certainly find me agreeing with you. There are works of art with admirable
> subjects, but attrociously realized. At the same time, there are also works that
> display consummate technique, but choose the most repugnant subjects as their theme.
> My aim here is not exclude either approach, but to emphasize the importance of
> considering both together. To ignore one in favour of the other would be in many cases
> to misinterpret works of art where the theme was clearly important. What I object to
> are claims that the subject is not important to a work - to me this indicates an
> approach to art which could eventually degenerate into nihilism. At the same time, I
> am by no means asking anyone to praise kitsch because it treats of some laudable
> theme.
>   Theme and technique must go hand in hand for the work to reach its pinnacle of
> intellectual and aesthetic potential.

I understand that this is a goal in your work. I don't think we get very
far in this forum if we insist that everyone agree with our own goals. I'm
not insisting that you forget subject matter and learn about form - I'm
simply saying that, for some of us, there is no worry about degenerating
into nihilism due to a lack of focus on morality in our paintings.

I think I see here a point for potential misunderstanding - you seem to believe (and from vagueness of some of my prior statements it is not difficult to see how you came to this conclusion) that I am hell-bent on art-work conforming to to morality. Well, I do value morality, and value it very highly - but I am not about to have all the wigs, perfumes and Botticellian Venuses burnt in a bonfire of the vanities. The fact is that I appreciate sensual beauty as much as the next person, within the limits of discretion. I have no problems with a tastefully rendered nude by the likes of Ingres or Bouguereau - such a painting says something different about sexuality compared to - say - pornography, photographic or painterly. The work of Ingres and Bouguereau - to begin with - attempts to elevate natural beauty to classic status by idealizing certain aspects of it, refining out the imperfections, and so on. This point may not seem as arbitrary as you may think - the philosophy of a man who paints epic nudes is quite different from the man who shows a miserably naked person. Perhaps the difference stems from the use of the words "nude" and "naked". In any case, I will refer you to Kenneth Clarke if you wish to look into this particular question further.
  To return to your original point: - I do not allow my veneration for my own moral code interfere with my aesthetic appreciation of works that may be contrary to it. It doesn't mean that I praise such works for their content or ideals, but it means that I can admit that they are well-painted, soundly-constructed, perhaps even original and sincere. I may be wrong, but it seems that you have misunderstood me on one particular point, which is an important one: -- I do not just praise good subject matter in art - I also hold that subject matter of some form is essential for a work to be elevated above decoration. It concerns me not how intricate or beautiful a pattern may be - if there is nothing in it that can be intellectually masticated then there seems to be little logic in saying that the work is conceptually sophisticated.
  What, then, qualifies as the barest minimum of subject matter? For a start, one needs a subject. And what is a subject? A subject does not necessarily have to be a story - it may just be a basket of fruit sitting on a table. I will admit that the subject matter is not particularly sophisticated, but I think that we can both agree that the painting is indeed about something - and not only is it about something, that something can be rationally identified and proven to others. You can point to the work and say, "It contains a basket of fruit, sitting on a table." Whatever else symbolical or metaphorical that can be said about the work, we can at least agree that it does depict something recognizable. And so the depiction is the subject of this work.
 To say that subject matter is "limiting" or even "harmful" to art is to attack clarity and rationality in painting. To say that art should not have a subject is to say that art should not strive to be intellectual or conceptual at all. How are concepts, after all, expressed if not through a medium that can be understood by others? For philosophy and art-criticism we use the medium of language, of words, sentences, paragraphs. And it is through this that we make our thoughts known to others. In the visual arts we employ realism to convey feelings and ideas - to splatter a canvas with blue paint, to drip watercolours down a strip of cardboard, or to dump formless lumps of clay in a gallery is not to communicate anything on the intellectual plane. How can it? We live in the real world - as human beings we comprehend phenomena through our senses, and we analyse these sense perceptions in our minds - but imagine that we were suddenly exiled to a land of fog, of splatters, of nightmarish shrieks, of cacophany - what possibly could be communicated in this? - Nothing is being communicated in any real sense - only anguish and horror is being perpetuated, and that is not the same thing as communication. For me to communicate to you presupposes an objective reality, a reality that we both share - otherwise the whole point of communication is undermined. Whenever we talk to another we make assumptions that they will understand the words we use in the way we intend them - on the occasions they do not, we correct their misunderstanding - but always there is the rational assumption that there is an objective reality, that words can be understood, that they have meaning. Now, the situation is similar in the visual arts. If we wish to communicate something more than sense-impressions we will need to choose a medium that is suitable - we will, in other words, need to represent and re-create an objective reality in our visual art works. Sometimes an artist merely wishes to share his aesthetic feelings of seeing a mountain, a forest or a nude - and in that case he puts the form ahead of his subject. He conceives the composition around the aesthetic sensations and then shapes it enough so that the final product bears resemblance to some story in history or mythology. So we see many paintings of nude women that are classified as "Venus"s - but there are also many other cases when a subject is in the artist's mind before the composition. Numberless are the occasions when artists and poets have sat down to compose with a legend or personal experience in mind - they then shape their composition so that it meets the requirements of the subject. This is pretty much the case for all religious and historical painting - a subject is conceived, and then a composition is invented to give it form. Now, these two types I have mentioned (the sensation first, and the subject first) both use subject matter - in the first case the painter of the nude has taken the nude itself as his subject.
  Why does it qualify as a having a subject and not - say - Pollock's "Blue Poles"? - it is because the former has elements that are intelligible to any human being with eyes. We can all agree that a naked body is being depicted. But what of the Pollock? What can we say, objectively, about it? We are not concerned with the artist's explanation of it - the work itself needs to stand to scrutiny. Any explanation is from outside the art-work and can only be considered as "supporting evidence" and not "primary material". The "primary material" is the work of art itself. So, what can we say about the Pollock? We can say that we see splatters and drips of paint that bear resemblance to nothing - and they can therefore have no ability to communicate intellectual concepts. For what is there to be interpreted? Perhaps an individual cries out, "I know what it is saying! It is about this and that" - but how can we trust them when their statements cannot be proven. The paintings of Pollock, of all Abstract Expressionists cannot be admitted to the realm of high art because they convey nothing more sophisticated than fleeting sense-impressions. In that sense they are nothing more than ugly decoration.
  Now, perhaps you will see why I am insistent on subject matter. It is not merely that I wish all paintings to be about certain things - things that please me - but it is that a painting can hardly claim to be intellectualy sophisticated when it is, indeed, about nothing at all.

I paint because I enjoy color and shape-making. I believe I see that same
enjoyment in all of the big guns that I refer to in this forum. I don't
believe I've ever encountered any evidence that Titian or Watteau or Corot
felt a morality needed to be expressed in order to achieve the pinnacle.

The enjoyment you experience in "color and shape-making" was obviously shared by all art-lovers and the masters to whom you refer. But they all placed intelligebility above chaotic splashes of colour - all of those artists were rational enough to agree that for any message to be communicated there must first be (at least an assumption of) objective reality - otherwise communication is not possible. Understanding this implicitly - that the world was real and that life had meaning - these artists created work that was intelligible to others, that was conceptually sophisticated as well as beautiful, rhythmic, vital, etc.

> > > Might we also argue that subject matter is irrelevant to literature, drama or
> > > poetry?
> >
> > Now you're getting it! It's *how* one tells the story. Any story will do,
> > and has done. There is really plenty of marvelous art "about" very little,
> > and loads of awful art about great big important things.
> 
> Do you really think that the theme is as unimportant as that, Mark?

Me? It doesn't matter what I think - really! Look at Caravaggio's
still life (in the Ambrosiano Gallery in Milan), Chardin's still lifes as
well. What moral theme is present in the landscapes of Ruisdael? Claude?
Constable's cloud studies?

I did not claim that a moral theme was necessary for an object to become art. I have merely stated that I value those works most highly that express the noblest themes with the greatest aesthetic achievements. I value other works that are not on that exalted plain, and feel no wish to denigrate those. I do object to claims that decoration is high art and that anything intelligible can be communicated in a work that supports a non-objective paradigm.

Ingres isn't exactly presenting a high moral theme when he takes us into
the harem, is he? And sometimes, his odalisques seem to just be an
arrangement of shapes, not much more.

But those arrangement of shapes bear resemblance to naked women - were he to have painted just vague, curvolinear blobs then his work would hardly be intelligible - it might still be pleasing aesthetically, but it would mean nothing. It would be about nothing but pleasing blobs.

I might suggest, if you don't mind, that before you make a life long
commitment to moral themes, you be sure that you really can't enjoy some
of the art that does not employ subject matter that interests you.

I do enjoy a lot of art that is without "noble" themes. I even enjoy a lot of decoration. I have no problem with appreciating even modern works that aesthetically pleasing. Does that mean that I rank these pleasures above the highest that can be achieved in art? Does the fact that I may enjoy a Lewis Carrol poem now and then mean that I should rank him above a Shakespeare or a Milton? Of course not. I can appreciate all of these people on their own terms - but when someone begins to claim that nonsense poetry is as good as - or better - than Shakespeare, or that meaningless, unintelligible splatters are actually just as worthy as the greatest productions of Caravaggio or Michelangelo, then I respectfully disagree.

> > I don't mean to be sarcastic, but I honestly think I'd be equally
> > nauseated by both books. Art about universal brotherhood sounds just as
> > boring as Nazis are repugnant. And this is part of my point. You are
> > speaking of subject matter oriented art. It is sounding a bit like
> > illustration to me.
> 
> I do apologize for the uninventiveness of the example; but I chose those two off-hand
> to contrast two works of art that are equally meritorious aesthetically, but morally
> opposed to each other.

Again, I understand. For me, the notion of "morally correct subject
matter" sounds like something that distracts and detracts from the
esthetic experience. A personal issue, I'm sure.

Not at all, Mark. I think that I share your feelings here in some regard. I have no time for the prudes who condemn an Ingres nude merely because it she is without clothes - they have failed to take into account its aesthetic merits. True enough, I don't particularly approve of people walking down the street naked, but a large part of that is due to my own cultural conditioning - I am sure there are places that have no such approach to nakedness.  But there is more to this than paintings of nudes.

> > You like Star Trek and the Macabre. I don't. That is personal taste and
> > has nothing to do with esthetics.
> 
> My predelicition for the Macabre has waned. A certain amount of it was based in an
> admiration for its fantastic nature, ie., in the poems of Edgar Allen Poe, in certain
> lyrical stories by Howard Philips Lovecraft.
> 
> As for "Star Trek" ... the show is often enjoyable enough, but it is not
> representative of my consuming passions in matters artistic.

Ok, there, you see? We mature. We develop. We may even return to Poe to
appreciate his form, someday. Hold onto my email address - I'm very sure
that someday I'll get a note from you saying something along the lines of
"you know, there is something in Cezanne, something about that color..."

Unless I betray my values, that will not happen.

> If you are warning against a simplistic interpretation of works based on
> subject-content alone, then I heed well your warning, for I am wary of those who jump
> the gun in such matters. I am more uncomfortable, though, with the idea that subject
> matter is irrelevant to the importance of a novel. To say so is to virtually declare
> that there are no values by which we may judge the relative worth of art.

Have you looked at the Titian?

Yes, I have. Not for some time, though. I remember being impressed by it. To begin with, the flaying of Marsayas is not a particularly repugnant theme to me - it does not, so far as I understand the matter (and admittedly I haven't gone into it), promote anything that I despise.

> I do not dispute the aesthetic merits of even dastardly painting (and I am not saying
> that any of the above artists composed such works).
> 
> > It's how well you say it. That is all that matters.
> 
> Is that what you believe?
> 

Absolutely. And among the artists you love, the good ones ... that is what
they believed too. That is why they are the good ones.

If what the artist is saying is irrelevant, then why should he bother to say anything? Understand that I include any representation of reality as "subject matter" - because there is matter in the painting that can be rationally interpreted. So even a landscape, a still life, a generic nude, and so on, does qualify as having subject matter. Some will claim that  Rothko or Pollock production has subject matter, too - but this matter, if it does exist, is unintelligible - it cannot be rationally discussed or empirically proven to others. Criticism in praise of it becomes mere speculation and mystical assertion, or else it resorts to discussions of form, colour and so on. And while this tells us something about the appearance of the work, it tells us nothing about its meaning.

    Regards,

    Iian Neill

[-N.]

In article <36B08085...@microtech.com.au>, Iian Neill

<leon...@microtech.com.au> wrote:
> In the visual arts we employ realism to convey feelings and
> ideas -

Bzzzt. Wrong.
That is but one option in a sea of artistic possibilities.

to splatter a canvas with blue paint, to drip watercolours down
> a strip of cardboard, or to dump formless lumps of clay in a gallery is
> not to communicate anything on the intellectual plane. How can it?

Robert Smithson has communicated quite a bit by depositing rocks in a
gallery, along with bins to contain them: communicating a great deal of
intellectual content in the process, as much as any painting ever has.

(snip unbearably longwinded simpering appologia)

-N.

--
N
To reach me, remove _xxx from my address.

[zi...@interport.net]

Actually I don;t want to leave this argument as one between a pomo and
an anti pomo.

Jean Arp in much of his early work when he was part of the DADA
movement used accidents as a part of the process of construction.
Hewould drop shapes and potential lines [string, thread] on a page and
then glue down the shapes and draw in the lines. Somehoaw, in all of
this work, the forming was astonishingly fine. Because he had a
wonderful sensibility and he dropped things until that sensibility
said they were just right. His then wife [died in a car crash too
young] Sophie Tauber was quite geometric in her work. They
collaborated. She made a sensibility based geometric construction and
he dropped some accidental lines or bimorphic forms in just the right
places. Accident, dropping, but acknowledged masterpieces by several
generations of artists.

Since my late teens I have found Arp's "table anchor mountain navel "
expressive and full of emotion. It is in MUMOA.

The last few works of of Mondrian I have found marvelously expressive
starting with his last Paris painting[Place Concoird?], continuing
with his lines of color, Trafalgar Square and ending up with his
Victory Boogie Woogie and the unfinished last Boogie Woogie. They are
full of a hyper rhythmic sense of life and tension. Remember he wanted
to convey the balance between life and death. In the last paintings
the balance is tipped over towards a hyper jitterbugging life. By the
way he did like to dance. But I find a flaw in Mondrian. I was taught
to see that kind of painting by Hans Hoffmann and Burgoyne Diller,
while they wee critcising my paintings andother people . An ordinary
man in the street might not get it. I have populist problems with
Mondrian's content, but only those.
Gabriel

On Tue, 02 Feb 1999 23:51:27 -0500, redi...@earthlink.net_xxx (-N.)
wrote:

>In article <36B08085...@microtech.com.au>, Iian Neill
><leon...@microtech.com.au> wrote:

>> In the visual arts we employ realism to convey feelings and
>> ideas -
>

>Bzzzt. Wrong.
>That is but one option in a sea of artistic possibilities.
>

>to splatter a canvas with blue paint, to drip watercolours down
>> a strip of cardboard, or to dump formless lumps of clay in a gallery is
>> not to communicate anything on the intellectual plane. How can it?
>

[Iian Neill]

> In the visual arts we employ realism to convey feelings and
> ideas -

Bzzzt. Wrong.

That is but one option in a sea of artistic possibilities.

That is correct. Those are two options.

> to splatter a canvas with blue paint, to drip watercolours down
> a strip of cardboard, or to dump formless lumps of clay in a gallery is
> not to communicate anything on the intellectual plane. How can it?

Robert Smithson has communicated quite a bit by depositing rocks in a

gallery, along with bins to contain them: communicating a great deal of
intellectual content in the process, as much as any painting ever has.

I presume you are refering to the same Robert Smithson who created Spiral Jetty (1970)? I have not seen the installation that you specifically refer to above, but Spiral Jetty would appear to be no more than over-sized geological decoration. What intellectual content is one meant to receive from such ornamentation? It is also seems quite incredible that rocks deposited in bins (in a gallery, one should note, hence their immediate investiture of authority) could communicate as much as, say, The Rape of the Sabines, The Adoration of the Magi (Leonardo's version), or the Sistine Chapel ceiling. These are three very disparate examples, but already one can see that garbage bins heaped with rocks certainly look rather uncommunicative.

   -- Iian Neill.
 

[-N.]

In article <36BAC9E7...@microtech.com.au>, Iian Neill
<leon...@microtech.com.au> wrote:

> I presume you are refering to the same Robert Smithson who created Spiral
> Jetty (1970)? I have not seen the installation that you specifically refer to
> above, but Spiral Jetty would appear to be no more than over-sized geological
> decoration.

Claim your OWN experience. If this is all you can muster, so be it.

> What intellectual content is one meant to receive from such
> ornamentation?

To much for me to post here. Study the artist, view his work, get out in
the world and become familiar with the works.

> It is also seems quite incredible that rocks deposited in bins
> (in a gallery, one should note, hence their immediate investiture of
> authority)

Some in galleries, some out in the field. One important element of
Smithson (note Spiral Jetty) is that the artist is not using the gallery
in traditional doctrinaire manners,he treats galleries as one possible
'site' for art (these works as a matter of fact are refered to as
"Site/Non-Site" works). You simply display your ignorance here and defeat
your arguements by your ignorance and your gross and ineffectual
characterizations of art/gallery.
I think I have exhausted my interest in discourcing with you. Put your
head in the sand if you wish...but don't expect I will waste my time
pulling it out,: I am finding your posts tediously undereducated and
under-experienced.

> could communicate as much as, say, The Rape of the Sabines, The
> Adoration of the Magi (Leonardo's version), or the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

EASILY as much.

> These are three very disparate examples, but already one can see that garbage
> bins heaped with rocks certainly look rather uncommunicative.

Garbage bins exist in your imagination, this is your brilliant
introduction of material to the topic. I think you only serve to compound
your disqulaifications to discourse on the subjects at hand.
Smithsons's work lies outside your experience and surely, beyond your
imagination. One reason why he would be useful to you.
I cannot imagine that the minds and artists of the rennaisance would have
tolerated you very long before dismissing you as a hopeless case. Ride on
the rennaisance's coatails if you must: persoanlly, I find your
contribution to rennaisance art as tedious a detriment to the
accomplishments of that era as your 'contributions' to Smithson and this
era.
Adios. And thanks for the...thanks for the...penetrating insights.
-N

[mil...@cove.com]

Some of the postings on rec.arts.fine are quite interesting. However,
when they descend to personal attacks and insults, they sully what can be a
stimulating and enjoyable exchange (see below):

In article <redirect-050...@1cust1.tnt10.nyc3.da.uu.net>,

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own

[Marilyn]

I don't agree with Milt. It was outrageous to dismiss the Spiral Jetty
the way Iian did. This was the first environmental earth art project,
(to my mind) and it is a monumental, spell-binding, awe-inspiring work.
My outrage made me unable to formulate an adequate response to the
insult to one of the 20th century's greatest earth/art works. But
N's response gave me great satisfaction.

Marilyn

[zi...@interport.net]

Dear poster,

I am not Iian and I do not agree with his viewpoints usually.

If you go back to the Art Forum in which there is an article by
Smithson about Spiral Jetty and the first pictures of it being made
public, you will find that I have one of my pieces in that issue. I
think it was my piece on the future of landscape painting.

My feeling is that you are calling for a very special kind of pleading
to keep Spiral Jetty as a major master work. You are asking to have it
looked at like nothing else. We are to have dividers in our mind so
that when we look at it and think about it we don;t fall into the
patterns of looking, seeing and thinking which are necessary when we
are involved with other art, as well as with life.

I believe that the artist's intentionality, which Smithson did have,
is the first measure of the reality of his work. But it cannot be the
only measure. When I am done with looking at any work and studying it
and thinking about it, there comes a point when I believe that I know
what it is about and finally there is a judgment call. How do I feel
about what it truly is about? There is no reason why you should
expect everyone, even people who were in New York at the time and who
were in some way related to that milieu to come up with the same
opinion of Smithson's work that you have, or that is popular with a
small part of the world, the art establishment.

So while Iian may have made you angry, and may also have an attitude
towards Smihson's work which is outside the orbit of the
establishment, you should not be surprized or appalled at it. It is a
common response. Any one who has not been taught how to eat art
[consume] in the manner of the establishment will rrespond at the very
least with surprize at the seriousness with which that work is taken.

In the eighteenth century a new theorist appeared after Burke's work
on the sublime and the beautiful who believed that there was still
something left over in both nature and in art which was not taken care
of by Burke. His name was William Gilpin. He was a minister of the
Church of England and a very proficient amateur painter in
watercolors. After making his discovery about the extra kind of art
and presence in nature which theory had yet to make sense about he
made a series of tours through England, sketching along the way and
published them one after the other with his own watercolors etched and
hand tinted to illustrate them. Gilpin's theory which he called "the
Picturesque", he defined thus:"the picturesque is roughnes joined to
irregularity." He was very popular and his books sold into three four
and five edtions. A new style of landscape gardening came in to being
out of his example. Whole counties in England were denuded of their
original trees to be replaced by Chestnut which was rough and
irregular. Shallow and usless quarries were dug because they would
look well according to his theory. This irregular, "natural" looking
gardening took not only England, but took the continent by storm. The
"Jardin Anglais" turns up all over France, Germany, Austria, even
Russian and Poland, to this day. Wherever, that, war has not destroyed
it.
Gilpin went farther. He wrote a book for amateur print collectors and
said near the beginning of the 4th edition [still in the 18th century]
that "the artists first drawing is superior to the finished painting
which it[ out does] in roughness and irreularity." In other words he
has some responsibility for such things as the rough and irregular
look of art now adays, for example, as in Pollock.

Now what does this have to do with Smithson? My response to various
sculptors before Smithson who were essentially coming out of the AE
ideology and imagery was informed by my knowledge of the Picturesque.
The"Picturesque" was, of course, an idea about finding in nature
things which reminded you of specific kinds of paintings. Ultimately
it became a way of changing nature en bloc to conform to painting
sensibility and ideology. I cannot remember the name of the post AE
scupltor who made relatively large, white sharp edged forms which were
placed in the sea. An invisible series of weights underneath kept
them pointing way up into the air on a diagonal. They were, in fact
three dimensional realizations of "Kleinlike" paintings. They were
part of the picturesque in relation to AE. I am afraid that was what
I thought I saw in Smithson's work. The Picturesque out of AE.
Smithson had a lot of philosophical stuff in his cart about process,
Etc. But that merely reminded me of Klee's "landscape cart".

While Smithson and the other fellow have not had much influence on
succeeding artists, they have had a big one on architects. How could
Frank Gehry possibly produce his AE buildings without the models of
larger and larger AE sculpture, finally getting as large [or larger
than] a building. So the idea became a small transposition and we now
have the picturesque version of AE in architecture.

From your viewpoint I have reacted perversely and uninformedly to all
of this. But I have not just thought this up. It did not come in
response to what you have been arguing about. It was my response to
those artists when I first saw their work. I don't spend my time in
polemic, but it seems to be the main vocation here. I came to these
colnbclusions when they first did their work. There was nopoint in
publishing it. The art world establsihment was like a juggernaut
cruching all in its path. Reason and comparison are not wanted, only
belief. Mine is an informed response which is different from yours.
And thart is all. It does not invalidate your reponse, but it might
highlight it in some new way.

I have not assassinated your words nor you person. My point is merely
that there is more than one reasonable viewpoint about not only old
art but the art of today. I am not the only person who has an
informed reaction to establishment art which is at variance with the
establishment. I am just the only one writing this now.
Gabriel Laderman