Throwing in the Towell finally! (why Abstract art has failed to bring about any revolution)
br...@wralaw.com
Behind the the false smiles of hypocracy, a revolution that never
happened.
What is abstract art? Art which expresses alternative culture?
The liberal Ideals of nonconsumerism, sexual liberation,
psychedelic drug use - or absolutely nothing? Not that art
has to be liberal, after all Rockwell was a Democrat but
other famous acedemic artists were as thick as thieves with
heavy contributers to conservative politics- Patrons. So did
abstraction mean liberal politics that was never discussed or
conservative politics.
Flat design art has existed for longer than human history yet it
was supposedly invented in New York in the 1950's -probably by
Jackson Pollack or Mondrian. This revolution effectively
censored thousands of second generation surrealist artists and
the psychedelic artists of the 1960's.(and H.r.Geiger today)
On the whole flat art is rarely offensive, it contains no
genitles and is rarely titled after them, it expresses no political
Ideas or Agenda's outrage or meaning. About the only thing one
could consider outrageous about it is its labour prices.
When one looks at a large flat work of art what comes to mind?
Does the work of art call the viewer to action? Will abstract
art be a key tool in ending the drug war, or world pollution,
or sexual assalt? Or is it just a neet design - an oh so cool
color scheme backed up by a 1000-page theory? And what do these
theories ultimately say? Are any of them a call to action for
any social cause whatsoever! Is postmodernism just a tool to
remove social responsibility from the artists mind through
intellectual ambiguity?
What is attractive about modern acedemic art is that anybody
can do it. This means that the ruling class(Patrons) can
select "anybody" as a heroine for MAA. They no longer have
to put up with antiestabolishmentarians like Carravaggio and
Da Vinci(perhaps pantheists and homosexuals both), or
psychonaut anarchists like Dali, Paschke, and Flack, yet
alone a popular and open supporter of liberalism like
Rockwell.
Pollack the CIA snitch? check out the link below...
http://www.disinfo.com/disinfo?p=folder&title=Jackson+Pollock%
3A+CIA+Stooge%3F
A humorous paranoid anthology. But entirely possible considering
the state of mind of the government in the 1960's.
A defense of Neo-classic-Realism(not my point at all asshole!)
http://gandynet.com/art/Ross/Rise_and_Fall.htm
Also follow mdeli's page
http://www.interlog.com/~hugod/
Bryn
Jello For President!
http://www.angelfire.com/punk/jello2000/
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
James Whitehead
>
>
>Behind the the false smiles of hypocracy, a revolution that never
>happened.
the Millennium Dome -
>What is abstract art? Art which expresses alternative culture?
>psychedelic drug use - or absolutely nothing?
>Not that art
>has to be liberal, after all Rockwell was a Democrat but
>other famous acedemic artists were as thick as thieves with
>heavy contributers to conservative politics- Patrons.
politically - affirming the status quo -
Art affirms nothing other than art.
>abstraction mean liberal politics that was never discussed or
>conservative politics.
conservatives want women as sex objects - blacks as slaves - reds as
dead - people as consumers - books as stories -art as pictures -....
>Flat design art has existed for longer than human history yet it
>was supposedly invented in New York in the 1950's -probably by
>Jackson Pollack or Mondrian.
>censored thousands of second generation surrealist artists and
>the psychedelic artists of the 1960's.(and H.r.Geiger today)
sleeves -
>On the whole flat art is rarely offensive, it contains no
>genitles and is rarely titled after them, it expresses no political
>Ideas or Agenda's outrage or meaning.
who now dictate what is culture ... Sachi ... Blair ... Murdock(sp?))
> About the only thing one
>could consider outrageous about it is its labour prices.
In terms of buying it its much cheaper (by the sq yard) than most other
art. And covers more wall for your buck. - if economics is your bag.
>
>When one looks at a large flat work of art what comes to mind?
A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of
Art..A large flat work of Art...A large flat work of Art..A large flat
work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art...A
large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of
Art..A large flat work of Art...A large flat work of Art..A large flat
work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art...A
large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of
Art..A large flat work of Art...A large flat work of Art..A large flat
work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art...A
large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of
Art..A large flat work of Art...A large flat work of Art..A large flat
work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art...A
large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of
Art..A large flat work of Art...A large flat work of Art..A large flat
work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art...A
large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of
Art..A large flat work of Art...A large flat work of Art..A large flat
work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art...A
large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of
Art..A large flat work of Art...A large flat work of Art..A large flat
work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art...A
large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of
Art..A large flat work of Art...A large flat work of Art..A large flat
work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art...A
large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of
Art..A large flat work of Art...A large flat work of Art..A large flat
work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art...A
large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of
Art..A large flat work of Art...A large flat work of Art..A large flat
work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art...A
large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of
Art..A large flat work of Art...A large flat work of Art..A large flat
work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art...A
large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of
Art..A large flat work of Art...A large flat work of Art..A large flat
work of Art..A large flat work of Art..A large flat work of Art...
>Does the work of art call the viewer to action?
no
> Will abstract
>art be a key tool in ending the drug war
no
(the drug war is run for the benefit of the authorities - if crime
stopped who would be out of a job??)
>, or world pollution,
myth
>or sexual assalt?
no
> Or is it just a neet design
no
> - an oh so cool
>color scheme backed up by a 1000-page theory?
no
> And what do these
>theories ultimately say? Are any of them a call to action for
>any social cause whatsoever!
some might-
"if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao - aint gonna make it with
anyone any how..."
> Is postmodernism just a tool to
>remove social responsibility from the artists mind through
>intellectual ambiguity?
Post modernism is a contradiction
>
>What is attractive about modern acedemic art is that anybody
>can do it.
The phrase your looking for is "A child of 5 could do it"
You only need to look at the tons of realist pictures produced by
Victorian ladies to see that painting "representationaly" is one hell of
allot easier than thinking about what your doing... perspective you can
teach - art is more difficult.
> This means that the ruling class(Patrons) can
>select "anybody" as a heroine for MAA.
The internal group selected its own - De Kooning hated Pollock - because
he was ahead in the race...
> They no longer have
>to put up with antiestabolishmentarians like Carravaggio and
>Da Vinci(perhaps pantheists and homosexuals both),
I thought these guys were funded by the Medici and Borges -
> or
>psychonaut anarchists like Dali
anti establishment - Franco's buddy - Catholic ....
>, Paschke, and Flack, yet
>alone a popular and open supporter of liberalism like
>Rockwell.
>
>Pollack the CIA snitch? check out the link below...
>http://www.disinfo.com/disinfo?p=folder&title=Jackson+Pollock%
>3A+CIA+Stooge%3F
>A humorous paranoid anthology. But entirely possible considering
>the state of mind of the government in the 1960's.
>
>A defense of Neo-classic-Realism(not my point at all asshole!)
>http://gandynet.com/art/Ross/Rise_and_Fall.htm
>
>Also follow mdeli's page
>http://www.interlog.com/~hugod/
>
>
>Bryn
>
>Jello For President!
>http://www.angelfire.com/punk/jello2000/
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Before you buy.
That the modernists were anti - facets was perhaps a consequence of
their honesty - which of course is now so scorned in the current
decadence of po-mo - which is understandable.
(haven't had such fun in ages - thanks)
--
James Whitehead
sd...@sprynet.com
br...@wralaw.com wrote:
>
>
> Behind the the false smiles of hypocracy, a revolution that never
> happened.
>
> has to be liberal, after all Rockwell was a Democrat but
> other famous acedemic artists were as thick as thieves with
> abstraction mean liberal politics that was never discussed or
> conservative politics.
>
> was supposedly invented in New York in the 1950's -probably by
> censored thousands of second generation surrealist artists and
> the psychedelic artists of the 1960's.(and H.r.Geiger today)
>
> genitles and is rarely titled after them, it expresses no political
> could consider outrageous about it is its labour prices.
>
> art be a key tool in ending the drug war, or world pollution,
> color scheme backed up by a 1000-page theory? And what do these
> theories ultimately say? Are any of them a call to action for
> remove social responsibility from the artists mind through
> intellectual ambiguity?
>
> select "anybody" as a heroine for MAA. They no longer have
> to put up with antiestabolishmentarians like Carravaggio and
> alone a popular and open supporter of liberalism like
> Rockwell.
>
> Pollack the CIA snitch? check out the link below...
> http://www.disinfo.com/disinfo?p=folder&title=Jackson+Pollock%
> 3A+CIA+Stooge%3F
> A humorous paranoid anthology. But entirely possible considering
> the state of mind of the government in the 1960's.
>
> A defense of Neo-classic-Realism(not my point at all asshole!)
> http://gandynet.com/art/Ross/Rise_and_Fall.htm
>
> Also follow mdeli's page
> http://www.interlog.com/~hugod/
>
> Bryn
>
> Jello For President!
> http://www.angelfire.com/punk/jello2000/
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
>
images have associative meanings for everybody who views them, but this
seems to be only one aspect of looking at art, the ocular one.
Intensity, love, agitation, feelings of despair or elation, etc. can
all be conveyed through artist's materials without having to illustrate
them in a conventional visual vocabulary.
Even if abstraction cares not to be so specific regarding the
expression of typical feelings, it still is can confront us with
ourselves and leave us enjoyably puzzled.
The evidence of craft does not guaranty quality. The example of
Norman Rockwell bears this out in my mind. His work, beautifully
painted, seems trite and boring. Intention can be as much the process
as execution. Jackson Pollack, trying to achieve some sort of core of
experience, is more interesting.
"Man! What's this do for people who can draw?" Well, some people can
sing when others can't. One person runs faster then others. I don't
feel congenital abilities make art. Technology has forever severed the
once necessary connection between art and the ability to construct
three dimensional objects in perspective space.
For myself, I like to draw and paint in a somewhat conventional
fashion, but the world does not have to be, "My way or the highway."
http://plains.homepage.com/landscapes/
Steve D.
god...@my-deja.com
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <86u4nj$hvp$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, br...@wralaw.com writes
> >genitles and is rarely titled after them, it expresses no political
> >Ideas or Agenda's outrage or meaning.
> This is why it so upset (the likes of) Hitler and Stalin (the likes of
> who now dictate what is culture ... Sachi ... Blair ... Murdock(sp?))
Can you quote any document where Hitler or Stalin said that they
were upset by flat art? Did they burn their towells? (Maybe
replace the swastica with a painting by Bougereau?)
> >, or world pollution,
> myth
So pollution doesn't exist -kind of like the Hallocaust or daterape?
> The phrase your looking for is "A child of 5 could do it"
No a child of five wouldn't bother. Any adult, any cook or
housepainter can make a verified work of Modern Abstract
Expressionist art. Any of them! and with some assistance
of getting the paint and the canvas -Yes a five year old could
in fact produce a worthy work of Abstract Expressionist art.
But my main point is that abstract art says nothing, revolutionary,
philosophically or otherwise. 1000-page essays are made so that
no one reads them unless forced to in artschool -I have.
> You only need to look at the tons of realist pictures produced by
> Victorian ladies to see that painting "representationaly" is one hell
> of allot easier than thinking about what your doing...
-And sexist to boot!
> perspective you can
> teach - art is more difficult.
Even a cartoon of Ideas is more... I am talking more about the
art of the imagination rather than the art of 'rerepresentation'.
> > This means that the ruling class(Patrons) can
> >select "anybody" as a heroine for MAA.
> The internal group selected its own - De Kooning hated Pollock -
because
> he was ahead in the race...
> > They no longer have
> >to put up with antiestabolishmentarians like Carravaggio and
> >Da Vinci(perhaps pantheists and homosexuals both),
> I thought these guys were funded by the Medici and Borges -
> > or
> >psychonaut anarchists like Dali
> anti establishment - Franco's buddy - Catholic ....
Shows how much you +really+ know about Dali...
> That the modernists were anti - facets was perhaps a consequence of
> their honesty - which of course is now so scorned in the current
> decadence of po-mo - which is understandable.
Pomo isn't decadent its simply ingnorant. They aren't a bunch
of Junkies and prostitutes, but latent intellectuals; -Absolutely
confused by 'theories' and ignorant of their source(hashashin).
> James Whitehead
Bryn
br...@wralaw.com
> I am not sure why abstract art angers people so much? Recognizable
> images have associative meanings for everybody who views them, but
I think that since I posted that abstract art is wholly innoffensive
that this statement simply begs the question.
While AA(Abstract Art) can insite the average man to say 'My eight
year old could do that' or 'it means nothing?', people who have
witnessed representational art by Witkins have been known to
Vomit! H.R. Geiger a Swiss surrealists work was involved in the
first criminal prosecution of a Rock Bands due to an insert
of his work in the Frankenchrist Album by the Dead Kennedies.
The heaviest criticisms of the NEA were leveled by the religious
conservatives because of the works of Mapplethorp and Serrano
(especially the piss christ). My point isn't that art should be
wholly offensive but that Abstraction has none of this power.
By the way did you follow the link. <a
href="http://www.disinfo.com/disinfo?p=folder&title=Jackson+Pollock:+CIA
+Stooge?"> Jackson Pollack the CIA Stooge?</a>
at worst case Abstract Art may have been used as a propaganda
tool... I don't like thinking of things in terms of conspiracies
but under the FOIA(Freedom of Information Act) these sort of
things have been comming out.
> The evidence of craft does not guaranty quality. The example of
> Norman Rockwell bears this out in my mind.
Well Normal Rockwells work clearly isn't a revolutionary tool...
Because there is no obscure text surrounding his work we can
take it at face Value. We could of course invent some elusive
text claiming that it is a complex analogy to homosexuality to
tantilize the underbelly of blind but read critics of the
postmodern antique.-(which is what I think of most artwork
hanging in Museums is at face value -nothing)
> His work, beautifully
> painted,
So you like his painting just not his Ideas?
> seems trite and boring.
This is what I think of Most Abstract Art. Mainly
Sub Normal Rockwell compositions. Replace the boys and
coke bottles with squares and splashes... dull ++
> Intention can be as much the process
> as execution.
Intention is just a made up excuse. -I intended to do this
but did something else- an excuse.
At face value Abstract Art are designs. 90% less forthought
than a Normal Rockwell 50% less meaning -Even if you pretend
that you were on drugs when you saw it.
> "Man! What's this do for people who can draw?" Well, some people can
> sing when others can't. One person runs faster then others. I don't
> feel congenital abilities make art.
> http://plains.homepage.com/landscapes/
> Steve D.
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
Bryn Ayers
br...@wralaw.com
> >to put up with antiestabolishmentarians like Carravaggio and
> >Da Vinci(perhaps pantheists and homosexuals both),
> I thought these guys were funded by the Medici and Borges -
> > or
> >psychonaut anarchists like Dali
> anti establishment - Franco's buddy - Catholic ....
> >, Paschke, and Flack, yet
> >alone a popular and open supporter of liberalism like
> >Rockwell.
> >Pollack the CIA snitch? check out the link below...
> >http://www.disinfo.com/disinfo?p=folder&title=Jackson+Pollock%
> >3A+CIA+Stooge%3F
> >A humorous paranoid anthology. But entirely possible considering
> >the state of mind of the government in the 1960's.
> James Whitehead
I also want to point out that I don't mean that art has to
have a liberal political base or any + but for the most part
Abstraction has been presumed innocent of establishmentarianism,
while failing to deliver the death-blow, when its day came...
By your quote I take you knew of DK and Jello Biafra?
Bryn
Alison A Raimes
>While AA(Abstract Art) can insite the average man to say 'My eight
>year old could do that' or 'it means nothing?', people who have
>witnessed representational art by Witkins have been known to
>Vomit!
The most asked question in front of my work is *how on earth do you do
that*. I would consider the statement *it means nothing* to be the
highest compliment. There is as much bad Abstract Art as there is good
Abstract Art - one has to be capable of making judgements and that
entails having knowledge of the subject before you can reject it.
Ps. what is a *towell* and what sort of revolution did you expect ?
--
Alison A Raimes
ali...@raimes.demon.co.uk
http://www.raimes.demon.co.uk
Alison A Raimes
>happened.
>
>What is abstract art? Art which expresses alternative culture?
>The liberal Ideals of nonconsumerism, sexual liberation,
>psychedelic drug use - or absolutely nothing? Not that art
>has to be liberal, after all Rockwell was a Democrat but
>other famous acedemic artists were as thick as thieves with
>heavy contributers to conservative politics- Patrons. So did
>abstraction mean liberal politics that was never discussed or
>conservative politics.
>
of contemplating. Although there is no definition of what *Abstract* is,
there are definitions of what it is not. There is certainly a difference
between abstraction and Abstract Art. The first makes references and
then seeks to discard them - the latter makes no references and presents
itself only as an idea. They are very different in concept and before we
can start to appreciate what Abstract Art can bring to us today we must
first be able to define the two.
As Donald Kuspit says:
*There is a difference between art that is a rebellion against and even
destructive attack on the social contract -- which is what shock-schlock
art at its most interesting seems to be -- and art that offers an
experiential, qualitative alternative to it, in effect sidestepping it.
When Christ said "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what
is God's," he was reminding us that there is another, more important and
profounder world than the world of social power*
http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/kuspit/kuspit1-17-00.asp
James Whitehead
to me that you don't like abstract art - well fine - but others do - you
have your reasons - I and others have ours. I fact your position is very
strong as I think that abstract art is no longer viable - certainly
abstract painting - but illustration can continue. Maybe po-mo art
illustrates the texts of po-mo theory - but as I see it po-mo theory
only imitates theory.... to continue
In article <870ihs$5js$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, god...@my-deja.com writes
>In article <TEITXAAa...@jliat.demon.co.uk>,
> James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> In article <86u4nj$hvp$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, br...@wralaw.com writes
>> >On the whole flat art is rarely offensive, it contains no
>> >genitles and is rarely titled after them, it expresses no political
>> >Ideas or Agenda's outrage or meaning.
>> This is why it so upset (the likes of) Hitler and Stalin (the likes of
>> who now dictate what is culture ... Sachi ... Blair ... Murdock(sp?))
>
>Can you quote any document where Hitler or Stalin said that they
>were upset by flat art? Did they burn their towells? (Maybe
>replace the swastica with a painting by Bougereau?)
Both Stalin and Hitler suppressed abstract art - closed the Bahaus,
suppressed the revolutionary work of the VKhUTEMAS as well as banning
certain music - Jazz was forbidden in the Reich - its all very well
documented. I will not quote a document - this is not a court of law.
Not only are there documents there are instances of killings and such -
the removal of intellectuals which speak louder than a document. Not
only did they burn towels - they burnt books, pictures, and people.
Stalin and Hitler as well as Mao adopted a Realism of heroic workers -
reminiscent of Rockwell at times. This is not art as its manufactured
propaganda -if you now wish to treat this as art its up to you. You
obviously have a taste for such work - fine - but why do you wish to
deride abstract work - is it a threat to your tastes?
You make the assertion that flat art is rarely offensive - this is just
not so - but we can do the yes/no/yes/no thing. Simply do some history
- in the UK Jack the Dripper made headlines - as for art with genitalia
being shocking - again this is not so - look at any book of art history
- visit any of the major galleries and you will see loads of it -
>
>> >, or world pollution,
>> myth
>
>So pollution doesn't exist -kind of like the Hallocaust or daterape?
I threw this in as a whimsy - but one mans pollution is a bacteria's
free lunch.
>
>> The phrase your looking for is "A child of 5 could do it"
>
>No a child of five wouldn't bother.
Beautiful - a child of 5 analyses the history of painting - produces
impressionistic then symbolist work takes on the ideas of aerial
perspective of the impressionists, the redefinition of the picture plain
of cubism - the psychological impact of surrealism - experiments with
all over painting - then says - nah - I wont bother...
> Any adult, any cook or
>housepainter can make a verified work of Modern Abstract
>Expressionist art. Any of them! and with some assistance
>of getting the paint and the canvas -Yes a five year old could
>in fact produce a worthy work of Abstract Expressionist art.
Look so you don't like abstract art - fine but the above assertion ...
any... is wrong - that is no cook or housepainter did produce a
verified work of Modern Abstract Expressionist Art, any cook... could
produce now produce a copy - like they could produce an impressionist
copy - now - a Dali now... A Rockwell now...
>
>But my main point is that abstract art says nothing, revolutionary,
>philosophically or otherwise. 1000-page essays are made so that
>no one reads them unless forced to in artschool -I have.
you had a bad teacher - you should spend more time looking than
reading... have you ever done any painting?
>
>> You only need to look at the tons of realist pictures produced by
>> Victorian ladies to see that painting "representationaly" is one hell
>> of allot easier than thinking about what your doing...
>
>-And sexist to boot!
>
>> perspective you can
>> teach - art is more difficult.
>
>Even a cartoon of Ideas is more... I am talking more about the
>art of the imagination rather than the art of 'rerepresentation'.
Of course its more - the experience of abstract art was something done
by artists - not theorists.
>
>> > This means that the ruling class(Patrons) can
>> >select "anybody" as a heroine for MAA.
>> The internal group selected its own - De Kooning hated Pollock -
>because
>> he was ahead in the race...
>
>> > They no longer have
>> >to put up with antiestabolishmentarians like Carravaggio and
>> >Da Vinci(perhaps pantheists and homosexuals both),
>> I thought these guys were funded by the Medici and Borges -
>> > or
>> >psychonaut anarchists like Dali
>> anti establishment - Franco's buddy - Catholic ....
>
>Shows how much you +really+ know about Dali...
Dali - signing blank sheets of paper - he was very upset at Abstract art
- didn't he do something about rothko - Dali maybe wanted to explore
some idea - of his own ego - much of his work wasn't actually painted by
himself - working in the tradition of Rubens et al. He clearly isn't
about Art in the way that Abstract Expressionism was-
>
>> That the modernists were anti - facets was perhaps a consequence of
>> their honesty - which of course is now so scorned in the current
>> decadence of po-mo - which is understandable.
>
>Pomo isn't decadent its simply ingnorant. They aren't a bunch
>of Junkies and prostitutes, but latent intellectuals; -Absolutely
>confused by 'theories' and ignorant of their source(hashashin).
We have arrived at the insult phase early in this thread-
You also seem to be confusing/conflating po-mo with modernism.
Are you really just getting annoyed that some folk can see worth in
abstract art where you can't. Seems so. But if you begin to study
painting - by looking - you will discover that Dali is a very poor
painter- technically - and a poor draughtsman - his ideas are
superficial also - he is essentially about his own ego. If you want
showmanship he is on a par with the best.
I remember the first time I saw a Morris Louis in the tate gallery as a
young art student - who didn't understand abstract art, the shock of
this work hit me like an express train- my intellectual understanding
was incapable of taking in then what my emotional response to the work
was - as someone working with paint to express something, find
something, and then this - just paint run down the edges of raw canvas -
everything said this shouldn't be anything, but the beauty of seeing
this work - this statement of the obvious was wonderful - an epiphany.
--
James Whitehead
sd...@sprynet.com
> > I am not sure why abstract art angers people so much? Recognizable
> > images have associative meanings for everybody who views them, but
>
> I think that since I posted that abstract art is wholly innoffensive
> that this statement simply begs the question.
>
> While AA(Abstract Art) can insite the average man to say 'My eight
> year old could do that' or 'it means nothing?', people who have
> witnessed representational art by Witkins have been known to
> Vomit! H.R. Geiger a Swiss surrealists work was involved in the
> first criminal prosecution of a Rock Bands due to an insert
> of his work in the Frankenchrist Album by the Dead Kennedies.
> The heaviest criticisms of the NEA were leveled by the religious
> conservatives because of the works of Mapplethorp and Serrano
> (especially the piss christ). My point isn't that art should be
> wholly offensive but that Abstraction has none of this power.
>
Art and politically motivated agenda don't mix well. It doesn't take
much creativity to slam an ideal or person or group. As children we
learn how to get the other guy's goat early on. One might, for
example, express something to you in a poem or, on the other hand,
might scream in your face pointing a finger. Most people
will react strongly to the latter because of its forcefulness. The
mere fact that something is powerful doesn't make it superior.
> By the way did you follow the link. <a
>
href="http://www.disinfo.com/disinfo?p=folder&title=Jackson+Pollock:+CIA
> +Stooge?"> Jackson Pollack the CIA Stooge?</a>
> at worst case Abstract Art may have been used as a propaganda
> tool... I don't like thinking of things in terms of conspiracies
> but under the FOIA(Freedom of Information Act) these sort of
> things have been comming out.
>
Hmm!...Is their any proof to a rumor that Marcel Duchamp killed John
Kennedy and stuffed him in his little box of artifacts?
> > The evidence of craft does not guaranty quality. The example of
> > Norman Rockwell bears this out in my mind.
>
> Well Normal Rockwells work clearly isn't a revolutionary tool...
> Because there is no obscure text surrounding his work we can
> take it at face Value. We could of course invent some elusive
> text claiming that it is a complex analogy to homosexuality to
> tantilize the underbelly of blind but read critics of the
> postmodern antique.-(which is what I think of most artwork
> hanging in Museums is at face value -nothing)
>
> > His work, beautifully
> > painted,
>
> So you like his painting just not his Ideas?
I like his technique. His paintings are is ideas.
>
> > seems trite and boring.
>
> This is what I think of Most Abstract Art. Mainly
> Sub Normal Rockwell compositions. Replace the boys and
> coke bottles with squares and splashes... dull ++
>
Oh well. Instead of the Vietnam Memorial we could have crocheted
Rockwells depicting farm dressed girls placing 4-H club clovers on the
graves of deceased veterans.
> > Intention can be as much the process
> > as execution.
>
> Intention is just a made up excuse. -I intended to do this
> but did something else- an excuse.
>
> At face value Abstract Art are designs. 90% less forthought
> than a Normal Rockwell 50% less meaning -Even if you pretend
> that you were on drugs when you saw it.
>
> > "Man! What's this do for people who can draw?" Well, some people
can
> > sing when others can't. One person runs faster then others. I
don't
> > feel congenital abilities make art.
> > http://plains.homepage.com/landscapes/
very funny wise guy..(ha ha)...touche.
> > Steve D.
> > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> > Before you buy.
>
> Bryn Ayers
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
> Steve D.
http://plains.homepage.com/landscapes/
Tony Thomas
of the
world and its 'inescapable' presentation of phenomena. Once you understand
that any marks whatever can be made on that blank space, then it is not hard
to understand that the same principle applies to the mind. First the canvas
is free of
the given and then, much harder, the mind can become free also, to be empty
or to create.
VERDIGRIS
br...@wralaw.com wrote in message <86u4nj$hvp$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>...
>
>
>Behind the the false smiles of hypocracy, a revolution that never
>happened.
>
>What is abstract art? Art which expresses alternative culture?
>The liberal Ideals of nonconsumerism, sexual liberation,
>psychedelic drug use - or absolutely nothing? Not that art
>has to be liberal, after all Rockwell was a Democrat but
>other famous acedemic artists were as thick as thieves with
>heavy contributers to conservative politics- Patrons. So did
>abstraction mean liberal politics that was never discussed or
>conservative politics.
>
>Flat design art has existed for longer than human history yet it
>was supposedly invented in New York in the 1950's -probably by
>Jackson Pollack or Mondrian. This revolution effectively
>censored thousands of second generation surrealist artists and
>the psychedelic artists of the 1960's.(and H.r.Geiger today)
>
>On the whole flat art is rarely offensive, it contains no
>genitles and is rarely titled after them, it expresses no political
>Ideas or Agenda's outrage or meaning. About the only thing one
>could consider outrageous about it is its labour prices.
>
>When one looks at a large flat work of art what comes to mind?
>Does the work of art call the viewer to action? Will abstract
>art be a key tool in ending the drug war, or world pollution,
>or sexual assalt? Or is it just a neet design - an oh so cool
>color scheme backed up by a 1000-page theory? And what do these
>theories ultimately say? Are any of them a call to action for
>any social cause whatsoever! Is postmodernism just a tool to
>remove social responsibility from the artists mind through
>intellectual ambiguity?
>
>What is attractive about modern acedemic art is that anybody
>can do it. This means that the ruling class(Patrons) can
>select "anybody" as a heroine for MAA. They no longer have
>to put up with antiestabolishmentarians like Carravaggio and
>Da Vinci(perhaps pantheists and homosexuals both), or
>psychonaut anarchists like Dali, Paschke, and Flack, yet
>alone a popular and open supporter of liberalism like
>Rockwell.
>
>Pollack the CIA snitch? check out the link below...
>http://www.disinfo.com/disinfo?p=folder&title=Jackson+Pollock%
>3A+CIA+Stooge%3F
>A humorous paranoid anthology. But entirely possible considering
>the state of mind of the government in the 1960's.
>
>A defense of Neo-classic-Realism(not my point at all asshole!)
>http://gandynet.com/art/Ross/Rise_and_Fall.htm
>
>Also follow mdeli's page
>http://www.interlog.com/~hugod/
>
>
>Bryn
>
>Jello For President!
>http://www.angelfire.com/punk/jello2000/
>
>
Keith O'Connor
If that is true how can it lead any revolution.
______have fun --tinman_______
Alison A Raimes wrote:
>
> In article <86u4nj$hvp$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, br...@wralaw.com writes
> >
> >
> >Behind the the false smiles of hypocracy, a revolution that never
> >happened.
> >
> >What is abstract art? Art which expresses alternative culture?
> >The liberal Ideals of nonconsumerism, sexual liberation,
> >psychedelic drug use - or absolutely nothing? Not that art
> >has to be liberal, after all Rockwell was a Democrat but
> >other famous acedemic artists were as thick as thieves with
> >heavy contributers to conservative politics- Patrons. So did
> >abstraction mean liberal politics that was never discussed or
> >conservative politics.
> >
Lauri Levanto
Our eyes were not constructed to deal with any marks whatever.
Quite the opposite, the purpose of our senses is to extract meaning.
Dada litterature experimented with texts without meaning,
to make pictures without meaning is as hopeless.
Maybe you think that an abstract painting has a meaning.
It has, if and only if we have internalized the tyranny of modern art,
just like perspective makes sense only if we have internalized
the renessance idea of rectangular buildings and straight streets.
Creating with an empty mind is an excecise I have no interest to try.
The fact that "realistic" art is limited to a few centuries of western
culture, reveals how unnatural it is to see "realistically". It is a
lerned feat.
As difficult is to see "abstract". When the abstractionists say
" the onlooker can see whatever she/he wants" refers to me to
emperor's clothes
- lauri
Tony Thomas wrote:
>
> The essential point about abstract art is freedom. To be free of the tyranny
> of the
> world and its 'inescapable' presentation of phenomena. Once you understand
> that any marks whatever can be made on that blank space, then it is not hard
> to understand that the same principle applies to the mind. First the canvas
> is free of
> the given and then, much harder, the mind can become free also, to be empty
> or to create.
>
> VERDIGRIS
>
> br...@wralaw.com wrote in message <86u4nj$hvp$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>...
> >
> >
br...@wralaw.com
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Before we start - this will no doubt continue into insult - but it
seems
> to me that you don't like abstract art -
I both own and have made several pieces of non-representational
art... I am simply stating the opinion that this medium is
uniquely nonoffensive except to neurotics.
-snip-
> >Can you quote any document where Hitler or Stalin said that they
> >were upset by flat art? Did they burn their towells? (Maybe
> >replace the swastica with a painting by Bougereau?)
> Both Stalin and Hitler suppressed abstract art - closed the Bahaus,
No doubt this was political aimed at the jews and the socialists.
Abstract Art continued under both Hitler and Stalin. The Swastika
is BTW. abstract, as is the American and several Communist flags.
Hitler was most notably outraged at the surrealists, he was quoted
as saying 'any man who paints the sky green and the grass blue
should be castrated.' The Nazi regime went after several 'high
realists', surrealists, impressionist etc. abstract art was simply
the 'bath water' of Modern in this case.
> suppressed the revolutionary work of the VKhUTEMAS as well as banning
> certain music - Jazz was forbidden in the Reich - its all very well
> documented. I will not quote a document - this is not a court of law.
But works of Classical and Romantic Music were also banned if
they were produced by Jews, Catholics, or Communists, Jazz
being a Black-Art-Form was definitely out.
No doubt the Abstraction would believe that 'surrealists' were spared
by such Reichs. But politically motivated suppression was already
aimed at any classic produced by a Jew, Catholic, or suspected
homosexual. Traditional craft abstraction continued to be produced
and was even celebrated under the Nazi, and Communist regimes.
> Not only are there documents there are instances of killings and such
> the removal of intellectuals which speak louder than a document. Not
> only did they burn towels - they burnt books, pictures, and people.
> Stalin and Hitler as well as Mao adopted a Realism of heroic workers -
> reminiscent of Rockwell at times.
Two points:
1. These were the Revolutionaries of their time... Hence the success
of the Nazi's and Communists may well be due to their use of heroine
realism.
2. There are representational works of Chairman Mao defacing him
and his regime, and representational works of Hitler also with
anti-Nazi representation. Are we to believe that simply because
these works of "art" aren't Abstraction that they would be spared
from concentration camps? My thesis point is that these works
are more a thorn in the side of the regime than any abstract work.
> This is not art as its manufactured
> propaganda
> -if you now wish to treat this as art its up to you. You
> obviously have a taste for such work - fine - but why do you wish to
> deride abstract work - is it a threat to your tastes?
>You make the assertion that flat art is rarely offensive - this is just
> not so - but we can do the yes/no/yes/no thing.
Really there is a lot of writing saying that it was 'outrageous' or
'offensive' this is its post-hoc appeal. But I've seen none of it.
Some people are miffed, react blankely, or instantly find it dull
and simply assume they don't get it. There is none of the outrage
in reality that is written in the fantasy history of Abstraction.
No censorship trials, or massive protests(like we recently saw in
New York) etc. Yet from reading the annals of art history one
would assume just the opposite, that people simply accept all
representation and are completely shocked -beyond murder- by
abstraction.
> mply do some history
> - in the UK Jack the Dripper made headlines -
Tabloid sales tactic
> as for art with genitalia
> being shocking - again this is not so - look at any book of art
history
> - visit any of the major galleries and you will see loads of it -
How come there are no censorship trials involving abstract works of
art? Read the history books. Nudity even in Classical Representation
has been the main target of real censorship.
Who has tried to ban drip paintings ever? -Really? Remember while
reading this that owning a nude painting in Iran can get you the
death penalty.
> >> >, or world pollution,
> >> myth
> >So pollution doesn't exist -kind of like the Hallocaust or daterape?
> I threw this in as a whimsy - but one mans pollution is a bacteria's
> free lunch.
Idiotic!
> >> The phrase your looking for is "A child of 5 could do it"
> >No a child of five wouldn't bother.
> Beautiful - a child of 5 analyses the history of painting - produces
> impressionistic then symbolist work takes on the ideas of aerial
> perspective of the impressionists, the redefinition of the picture
plain
> of cubism - the psychological impact of surrealism - experiments with
> all over painting - then says - nah - I wont bother...
The child of 5 is your ananlogy not mine! If you want my .02 since
I have experience painting abstract, expressionistic, realist,
cartoon, and synthetic imagery, I would guess that any primate
or elephant given basic assistance could make a work of AE' to
the eye of the critic. -This proposition can be tested-
What is more important here is the time element. An 'AE' is
two hours max, which is where I threw in the labor/price
ratio.
Most AE was sold by the yard like wall-paper -where is the
"deeper" meaning in that?
> > Any adult, any cook or housepainter ...and with some assistance
> >of getting the paint and the canvas -Yes a five year old could
> >in fact produce a worthy work of Abstract Expressionist art.
> Look so you don't like abstract art - fine but the above assertion ...
> any... is wrong - that is no cook or housepainter did produce a
> verified work of Modern Abstract Expressionist Art, any cook... could
> produce now produce a copy - like they could produce an impressionist
> copy - now - a Dali now... A Rockwell now...
Wrong. I challenge you to make either.
> >But my main point is that abstract art says nothing, revolutionary,
> >philosophically or otherwise. 1000-page essays are made so that
> >no one reads them unless forced to in artschool -I have.
> you had a bad teacher - you should spend more time looking than
> reading... have you ever done any painting?
Yes,. I not only have done some Abstract Art(while doing other
things) I will continue to doit. (You are deconstructing too much!!)
My opinion is formed on looking and doing. Initially if I couldn't
doit I'd try to tear it down but now I respect it.
> >> You only need to look at the tons of realist pictures produced by
> >> Victorian ladies to see that painting "representationaly" is one
hell
> >> of allot easier than thinking about what your doing...
> >-And sexist to boot!
Well? So far you have made this sexist statement, and denied the
Environmental Hollacaust that is now happening globally.
> >> >psychonaut anarchists like Dali
> >> anti establishment - Franco's buddy - Catholic ....
> >Shows how much you +really+ know about Dali...
> Dali
Dali intentionally juxtaposed contradictory Ideas that were not
compatable from the standpoint of philosophy. Supprisingly only
a few +get him+ the rest are simply outraged.
> signing blank sheets of paper -
The first minimalists so what? Dali didn't stop painting!
Since the presses would uptake any ink already on an image this
never happened anyway.
Also a great deal of Dali's early work is average Modern, It
is his works that show great skill that have made him the
Lucifer of the Modern Religious Experience. It is his works
that show mediocrity that would have made him acceptable.
With regards to Dali's skill it isn't his mode but his
exceptional works that are the meter.(there are better
technicians)
I imagine most art-hacks started off liking Dali' but when they
realized that the meter had been placed to high - they soon
decided it was necessary to tear him down, in order to build up
works of art that suddenly become mediocre when Dali is allowed
into the picture.(I say this because with Dali out of the way
there is a clear trade off of skill for interest in Modern Art;
Dali single-handedly destroys this pradigm! The early Dali
doesn't, nor does Ernst, nor does Normal Rockwell do anything
other than support Modernisms false pradigm!)
I don't particularly favor Dali aesthetically over other modern
artists that I like. I just notice that he is the +only+ modern
artist who is +ever+ faulted into annihilation for simply being
human! And this can't be because he is human because Picasso,
Warhole, and Pollack were much more so!
> He was very upset at Abstract art
This is just propoganda to back up large, (potentially dull)
simple paintings. Dali even stated that he liked Mondrian,
he also said that when painting is bad it is often interresting.
Dali did several paintings using a synthesis of Modern Abstract
work and his own style.
Even today Abstractions main appeal is its supposed profanity!
while this is utter fiction.
> - didn't he do something about rothko - Dali maybe wanted to explore
> some idea - of his own ego - much of his work wasn't actually painted
by
> himself - working in the tradition of Rubens et al.
I wouldn't suprise you to find out that much art done by AE's was
also done in this matter. The difference being that Dali's assistance
weren't "anybody".
> clearly isn't
> about Art in the way that Abstract Expressionism was-
> >> That the modernists were anti - facets was perhaps a consequence of
> >> their honesty - which of course is now so scorned in the current
> >> decadence of po-mo - which is understandable.
> >Pomo isn't decadent its simply ingnorant. They aren't a bunch
> >of Junkies and prostitutes, but latent intellectuals; -Absolutely
> >confused by 'theories' and ignorant of their source(hashashin).
> We have arrived at the insult phase early in this thread-
Maybe but my opinion is that POMO's aren't Junkies or whores!
> You also seem to be confusing/conflating po-mo with modernism.
No doubt. I am too close to the origin of POMO. Realizing that
pomo is only a word, I think its easy to declare that contemporary
POMO are ignorant of "its" origin, -which is in German 'Rausch'.
Blake, Dali, Burroughs, Focault, Duchamp, Brenton, Walters, De Sade,
Andrew Weil, Morrison, etc.
> Are you really just getting annoyed that some folk can see worth in
> abstract art where you can't. Seems so.
This is the only way that anyone can pretend that AA'(abstract Art)
means anything. It isn't annoying or offensive. It is completely
banal.
> But if you begin to study
> painting - by looking - you will discover that Dali is a very poor
> painter- technically - and a poor draughtsman -
Relatively speaking he is in the top 1%.
> his ideas are
> superficial also - he is essentially about his own ego. If you want
> showmanship he is on a par with the best.
You see it is Dali who terrorizes the art establishment, annoys,
incapacitates. I would say your statement applies 80% to Picasso,
Warhole, and Pollack, but only 60% to Dali -after all he surrealized
his success-, invented the happening before they were called such,
and did drip paintings before AE ever happened. -The early Pollacks
and Motherwells were surrealist works, the first drip paintings
by these guys bear a striking resemblance to Dali's drip works.-
But on the whole Dali's ego was nearly as inflated as the rest
of MA, so your statement isn't false it is just historically unjust.
> I remember the first time I saw a Morris Louis in the tate gallery as
a
> young art student - who didn't understand abstract art, the shock of
> this work hit me like an express train- my intellectual understanding
> was incapable of taking in then what my emotional response to the work
> was - as someone working with paint to express something, find
> something, and then this - just paint run down the edges of raw
canvas -
> everything said this shouldn't be anything, but the beauty of seeing
> this work - this statement of the obvious was wonderful - an
epiphany.
Good for you, but how do you assume that objectivity of an experience
that is assumed subjective? I challenge any second rate art-hack
to take a minor dose of Acid and not see deeper meaning in any
visual phenomena. The small-dose-acid quasi-religious experience
is at the core of the 'swindle.' There are those of us who know
it is possible to get something out of almost nothing, infact getting
something out of nearly -nothing is more than getting nothing out of
almost everything, but at the core of the real religious experience
of art, Abstract is nearly nothing and the Real is almost everything!
> James Whitehead
Bryn Ayers
lake
built of abstract principles, as anyone who looks closely at Breughel
or Goya can see. There is no inherent dichtomy between representation
and abstraction, they are poles of the same entity, which is painting.
The conflict begins when we start talking about meaning. Before
Cezanne, meaning was percieved only in that which was portrayed - after
Cezanne, people began to percieve meaning in the PROCESS of portrayal.
In what might be called the "laws of perception". This emphasis on
procedure as the basis of meaning divorced itself so rapidly and so
completely from
representation, that it created an an illusion of dichtomy, fooling
both painters and public.
Lake
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
Brian Shapiro
> of contemplating. Although there is no definition of what *Abstract* is,
> there are definitions of what it is not. There is certainly a difference
> between abstraction and Abstract Art. The first makes references and
> then seeks to discard them - the latter makes no references and presents
> itself only as an idea. They are very different in concept and before we
> can start to appreciate what Abstract Art can bring to us today we must
> first be able to define the two.
Really; then why are entire books written on the subject if it is something
unable to be contemplated? This reference to 'absense' that you say is
present in abstract art is merely an allusion to the mind's incapability to
fully understand a subject, and thus is really a reference to what is
unknown and filled in by inference and intuition. It the 'gap' that Derrida
calls the 'absense of a presence'. The word 'abstraction' as you seem to use
it--as a verb--suggests an active process of removing the known basis of a
subject and replacing it with a less strict interpretation. However,
'abstraction' could also refer to the process of the mind that occurs
unconsciously to do this, and then be more closely in sync with the notion
of 'abstract art'. In this case, however, one could say that no art can be
fully abstract and that all art is abstract to a degree.
What then, can be said to be 'abstract art'? One has to be conscious, once
again, of the meaning of the word 'art'. It is carried over from a Western
intellectual tradition and has only recently been used to apply to the
creative workings of other cultures with the same equity. The identity of
something as 'art' is dependent on our notions of art through this
tradition, and the identity of something as 'abstract art' is likewise; but
in this case referencing to the conscious break from representation. Thus, I
would say that what 'abstract art' is, at is base, is a conscious refutation
and disavowal of the idea that representation in itself has any specific
merit and rather pinpoints the basis for something being called 'art' in
some 'absense' (abstraction) that representation had in the past revealed
but didn't deal with directly. In this sense, 'abstract art' is dealing with
a sort of inquiry into 'meta-representation' which seeks to find a deeper
basis by which one could say representation represents itself.
Am I correct, Allyson? :)
--Brian Shapiro
Brian Shapiro
>
Nevermind that i spelt your name wrong...
Alison A Raimes
Shapiro <ba...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> writes
>
>Really; then why are entire books written on the subject if it is something
>unable to be contemplated?
Contemplate was indeed the wrong word - comprehend should have been the
one I used. Apologies. Why then would they write books on something that
people are able to understand easily ? And why is it one of the most
talked about philosophical subjects. One would think scholars and
academics would have better things to do. But you go on to expound on it
well in the next sentence.
>This reference to 'absense' that you say is
>present in abstract art is merely an allusion to the mind's incapability to
>fully understand a subject, and thus is really a reference to what is
>unknown and filled in by inference and intuition. It the 'gap' that Derrida
>calls the 'absense of a presence'. The word 'abstraction' as you seem to use
>it--as a verb--suggests an active process of removing the known basis of a
>subject and replacing it with a less strict interpretation. However,
>'abstraction' could also refer to the process of the mind that occurs
>unconsciously to do this, and then be more closely in sync with the notion
>of 'abstract art'. In this case, however, one could say that no art can be
>fully abstract and that all art is abstract to a degree.
>
I have to agree on this - which I think is one of the driving forces
behind Abstract Art and also one of the frustrations. Someone called the
Swastika *abstract* but it is clearly not because it is made up of
symbols that are identifiable with a particular meaning. How then can a
work of art be devoid of meaning and symbolic reference in the purest
Abstract terms ?
>What then, can be said to be 'abstract art'? One has to be conscious, once
>again, of the meaning of the word 'art'. It is carried over from a Western
>intellectual tradition and has only recently been used to apply to the
>creative workings of other cultures with the same equity. The identity of
>something as 'art' is dependent on our notions of art through this
>tradition, and the identity of something as 'abstract art' is likewise; but
>in this case referencing to the conscious break from representation. Thus, I
>would say that what 'abstract art' is, at is base, is a conscious refutation
>and disavowal of the idea that representation in itself has any specific
>merit and rather pinpoints the basis for something being called 'art' in
>some 'absense' (abstraction) that representation had in the past revealed
>but didn't deal with directly. In this sense, 'abstract art' is dealing with
>a sort of inquiry into 'meta-representation' which seeks to find a deeper
>basis by which one could say representation represents itself.
>
>Am I correct, Allyson? :)
Is there a right and wrong answer ? or is your aim to conquer ? or do
you just want me to say you are correct to boost your ego ?
I don't mind you misspelling my name but I object to you misspelling
*absence* under these circumstances. I always judge an artist's
observational skills on the ability to spell the person's name they are
responding to because they have the reference under their noses. If I
want to insult someone then I often spell their name incorrectly -
mostly I just tell them straight out they are an asshole - much more
precise and you have to admit, I am a master at it ;-)
James Whitehead
>In article <E9xGJCA7...@jliat.demon.co.uk>,
> James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> Before we start - this will no doubt continue into insult - but it
>seems
>> to me that you don't like abstract art -
>
>I both own and have made several pieces of non-representational
>art... I am simply stating the opinion that this medium is
>uniquely nonoffensive except to neurotics.
than this. To take a modernist viewpoint - no more would an Abstract
artist go back to representationalism than Boeing start making piston
engined bi-planes. Simply speaking its been impossible to paint abstract
paintings - as art - since the 1970s as its also been impossible to
paint impressionist pictures - as art - since 1900 (ok monet excepted -
!)
>
>-snip-
>
>> >Can you quote any document where Hitler or Stalin said that they
>> >were upset by flat art? Did they burn their towells? (Maybe
>> >replace the swastica with a painting by Bougereau?)
>
>> Both Stalin and Hitler suppressed abstract art - closed the Bahaus,
>
>No doubt this was political aimed at the jews and the socialists.
>Abstract Art continued under both Hitler and Stalin. The Swastika
>is BTW. abstract, as is the American and several Communist flags.
>Hitler was most notably outraged at the surrealists, he was quoted
>as saying 'any man who paints the sky green and the grass blue
>should be castrated.' The Nazi regime went after several 'high
>realists', surrealists, impressionist etc. abstract art was simply
>the 'bath water' of Modern in this case.
>
>> suppressed the revolutionary work of the VKhUTEMAS as well as banning
>> certain music - Jazz was forbidden in the Reich - its all very well
>> documented. I will not quote a document - this is not a court of law.
>
>But works of Classical and Romantic Music were also banned if
>they were produced by Jews, Catholics, or Communists, Jazz
>being a Black-Art-Form was definitely out.
was banned because of its structure - whites couldn't play it either. In
totalitarian regimes its free thought which is the real enemy.
>No doubt the Abstraction would believe that 'surrealists' were spared
>by such Reichs. But politically motivated suppression was already
>aimed at any classic produced by a Jew, Catholic, or suspected
>homosexual. Traditional craft abstraction continued to be produced
>and was even celebrated under the Nazi, and Communist regimes.
>
>> Not only are there documents there are instances of killings and such
>
>> the removal of intellectuals which speak louder than a document. Not
>> only did they burn towels - they burnt books, pictures, and people.
>> Stalin and Hitler as well as Mao adopted a Realism of heroic workers -
>> reminiscent of Rockwell at times.
>
>Two points:
>1. These were the Revolutionaries of their time... Hence the success
>of the Nazi's and Communists may well be due to their use of heroine
>realism.
suppressed under Stalin. Stalin was not a revolutionary, and neither was
Mao in the cultural revolution.
>
>2. There are representational works of Chairman Mao defacing him
>and his regime, and representational works of Hitler also with
>anti-Nazi representation. Are we to believe that simply because
>these works of "art" aren't Abstraction that they would be spared
>from concentration camps? My thesis point is that these works
>are more a thorn in the side of the regime than any abstract work.
English - who have an inbuilt distrust of the intellectual.
>> This is not art as its manufactured
>> propaganda
>> -if you now wish to treat this as art its up to you. You
>> obviously have a taste for such work - fine - but why do you wish to
>> deride abstract work - is it a threat to your tastes?
>
>>You make the assertion that flat art is rarely offensive - this is just
>> not so - but we can do the yes/no/yes/no thing.
>
>Really there is a lot of writing saying that it was 'outrageous' or
>'offensive' this is its post-hoc appeal. But I've seen none of it.
mistake of PO-MO art is that shocking = Art - which is a misconception
of Modernity.
>and simply assume they don't get it. There is none of the outrage
>in reality that is written in the fantasy history of Abstraction.
>No censorship trials, or massive protests(like we recently saw in
>New York) etc. Yet from reading the annals of art history one
>would assume just the opposite, that people simply accept all
>representation and are completely shocked -beyond murder- by
>abstraction.
>
>> mply do some history
>> - in the UK Jack the Dripper made headlines -
>
>Tabloid sales tactic
>> as for art with genitalia
>> being shocking - again this is not so - look at any book of art
>history
>> - visit any of the major galleries and you will see loads of it -
>
>How come there are no censorship trials involving abstract works of
>art? Read the history books. Nudity even in Classical Representation
>has been the main target of real censorship.
>Who has tried to ban drip paintings ever? -Really? Remember while
>reading this that owning a nude painting in Iran can get you the
>death penalty.
>
>> >> >, or world pollution,
>> >> myth
>
>> >So pollution doesn't exist -kind of like the Hallocaust or daterape?
>
>> I threw this in as a whimsy - but one mans pollution is a bacteria's
>> free lunch.
>
>Idiotic!
Ah - at last your making sense. (Mr Dali would be so upset - and this
Madcap laughs)
>
>> >> The phrase your looking for is "A child of 5 could do it"
>> >No a child of five wouldn't bother.
>> Beautiful - a child of 5 analyses the history of painting - produces
>> impressionistic then symbolist work takes on the ideas of aerial
>> perspective of the impressionists, the redefinition of the picture
>plain
>> of cubism - the psychological impact of surrealism - experiments with
>> all over painting - then says - nah - I wont bother...
>
>The child of 5 is your ananlogy not mine!
You said the house painter or plumber - the same applies-
> If you want my .02 since
>I have experience painting abstract, expressionistic, realist,
>cartoon, and synthetic imagery,
Guess you've done the world tour - but I would argue - if you have
*done* abstract art you couldn't simply then go on to do anything
else...
maybe you faked it -
>I would guess that any primate
>or elephant given basic assistance could make a work of AE' to
>the eye of the critic. -This proposition can be tested-
Not so - the work would have been created by the assistant. You could
say any brush with assistance can fool a critic.....
>
>What is more important here is the time element. An 'AE' is
>two hours max, which is where I threw in the labor/price
>ratio.
Read the Whistler Trial - it took Pollock a lifetime.
>
>Most AE was sold by the yard like wall-paper -where is the
>"deeper" meaning in that?
You have a thing about money - are you perhaps a merchant banker?
>
>> > Any adult, any cook or housepainter ...and with some assistance
>> >of getting the paint and the canvas -Yes a five year old could
>> >in fact produce a worthy work of Abstract Expressionist art.
>> Look so you don't like abstract art - fine but the above assertion ...
>> any... is wrong - that is no cook or housepainter did produce a
>> verified work of Modern Abstract Expressionist Art, any cook... could
>> produce now produce a copy - like they could produce an impressionist
>> copy - now - a Dali now... A Rockwell now...
>
>Wrong. I challenge you to make either.
I look back at my student work - but never Dali - I was never into
illustration.
>
>> >But my main point is that abstract art says nothing, revolutionary,
>> >philosophically or otherwise. 1000-page essays are made so that
>> >no one reads them unless forced to in artschool -I have.
>
>> you had a bad teacher - you should spend more time looking than
>> reading... have you ever done any painting?
>
>Yes,. I not only have done some Abstract Art(while doing other
>things) I will continue to doit. (You are deconstructing too much!!)
To continue to do it is sufficient reason for knowing your not doing it.
You can't do it. Like you cant discover America - get it?
>
>My opinion is formed on looking and doing. Initially if I couldn't
>doit I'd try to tear it down but now I respect it.
You respect Abstract Art - doesn't sound like it.
>
>> >> You only need to look at the tons of realist pictures produced by
>> >> Victorian ladies to see that painting "representationaly" is one
>hell
>> >> of allot easier than thinking about what your doing...
>
>> >-And sexist to boot!
>
>Well? So far you have made this sexist statement, and denied the
>Environmental Hollacaust that is now happening globally.
I have not denied a Holocaust - but pointed out that pollution is not in
itself Bad - Animal Life exists because of Plant Pollution... Oxygen
>
>> >> >psychonaut anarchists like Dali
>> >> anti establishment - Franco's buddy - Catholic ....
>
>> >Shows how much you +really+ know about Dali...
>
>> Dali
>
>Dali intentionally juxtaposed contradictory Ideas that were not
>compatable from the standpoint of philosophy. Supprisingly only
>a few +get him+ the rest are simply outraged.
Dali is no more outrageous than the average male teenager - He was the
*Great Masturbator* Masturbation is not shocking to most adults -
sorry.
>
>> signing blank sheets of paper -
>
>The first minimalists so what?
No they were subsequently printed and sold as Dali's - he thought it
great fun ...
> Dali didn't stop painting!
Pity.
>
>Since the presses would uptake any ink already on an image this
>never happened anyway.
?
>
>Also a great deal of Dali's early work is average Modern, It
>is his works that show great skill that have made him the
>Lucifer of the Modern Religious Experience.
:-)
> It is his works
>that show mediocrity that would have made him acceptable.
>With regards to Dali's skill it isn't his mode but his
>exceptional works that are the meter.(there are better
>technicians)
>
>I imagine most art-hacks started off liking Dali'
no - his thinness is obvious.
>but when they
>realized that the meter had been placed to high - they soon
>decided it was necessary to tear him down,
:-~
> in order to build up
>works of art that suddenly become mediocre when Dali is allowed
>into the picture.(I say this because with Dali out of the way
>there is a clear trade off of skill for interest in Modern Art;
>Dali single-handedly destroys this pradigm! The early Dali
>doesn't, nor does Ernst, nor does Normal Rockwell do anything
>other than support Modernisms false pradigm!)
So you like Dali - fine.
>
>I don't particularly favor Dali aesthetically over other modern
>artists that I like. I just notice that he is the +only+ modern
>artist who is +ever+ faulted into annihilation for simply being
>human! And this can't be because he is human because Picasso,
>Warhole, and Pollack were much more so!
He was simply silly. Burning Giraffes ! Ha Ha Ha..
>
>> He was very upset at Abstract art
>
>This is just propoganda to back up large, (potentially dull)
>simple paintings.
God I love large dull simple paintings,
> Dali even stated that he liked Mondrian,
He also said he was the great masturbator
>he also said that when painting is bad it is often interresting.
>
>Dali did several paintings using a synthesis of Modern Abstract
>work and his own style.
Please
>
>Even today Abstractions main appeal is its supposed profanity!
>while this is utter fiction.
to who?
>
>> - didn't he do something about rothko - Dali maybe wanted to explore
>> some idea - of his own ego - much of his work wasn't actually painted
>by
>> himself - working in the tradition of Rubens et al.
>
>I wouldn't suprise you to find out that much art done by AE's was
>also done in this matter. The difference being that Dali's assistance
>weren't "anybody".
>
>> clearly isn't
>> about Art in the way that Abstract Expressionism was-
>
>> >> That the modernists were anti - facets was perhaps a consequence of
>> >> their honesty - which of course is now so scorned in the current
>> >> decadence of po-mo - which is understandable.
>
>> >Pomo isn't decadent its simply ingnorant. They aren't a bunch
>> >of Junkies and prostitutes, but latent intellectuals; -Absolutely
>> >confused by 'theories' and ignorant of their source(hashashin).
>
>> We have arrived at the insult phase early in this thread-
>
>Maybe but my opinion is that POMO's aren't Junkies or whores!
see idiotic comment above
>
>> You also seem to be confusing/conflating po-mo with modernism.
>
>No doubt. I am too close to the origin of POMO. Realizing that
>pomo is only a word, I think its easy to declare that contemporary
>POMO are ignorant of "its" origin, -which is in German 'Rausch'.
Only a word - with no meaning or use - ummm?
>
>Blake, Dali, Burroughs, Focault, Duchamp, Brenton, Walters, De Sade,
>Andrew Weil, Morrison, etc.
You forgot Eric Clapton ... ?
>
>> Are you really just getting annoyed that some folk can see worth in
>> abstract art where you can't. Seems so.
>
>This is the only way that anyone can pretend that AA'(abstract Art)
>means anything. It isn't annoying or offensive. It is completely
>banal.
So you find it?
>
>> But if you begin to study
>> painting - by looking - you will discover that Dali is a very poor
>> painter- technically - and a poor draughtsman -
>
>Relatively speaking he is in the top 1%.
I cant prove this on a NG but my comments above remain - I'm no fan of
Hockney for example - but he can / could draw.
>
>> his ideas are
>> superficial also - he is essentially about his own ego. If you want
>> showmanship he is on a par with the best.
>
>You see it is Dali who terrorizes the art establishment, annoys,
>incapacitates.
wanted to - but just made himself look silly
> I would say your statement applies 80% to Picasso,
>Warhole, and Pollack, but only 60% to Dali -after all he surrealized
>his success-, invented the happening before they were called such,
>and did drip paintings before AE ever happened. -The early Pollacks
>and Motherwells were surrealist works, the first drip paintings
>by these guys bear a striking resemblance to Dali's drip works.-
>But on the whole Dali's ego was nearly as inflated as the rest
>of MA, so your statement isn't false it is just historically unjust.
>
>> I remember the first time I saw a Morris Louis in the tate gallery as
>a
>> young art student - who didn't understand abstract art, the shock of
>> this work hit me like an express train- my intellectual understanding
>> was incapable of taking in then what my emotional response to the work
>> was - as someone working with paint to express something, find
>> something, and then this - just paint run down the edges of raw
>canvas -
>> everything said this shouldn't be anything, but the beauty of seeing
>> this work - this statement of the obvious was wonderful - an
>epiphany.
>
>Good for you, but how do you assume that objectivity of an experience
>that is assumed subjective?
You don't get it do you?
> I challenge any second rate art-hack
>to take a minor dose of Acid and not see deeper meaning in any
>visual phenomena.
> The small-dose-acid quasi-religious experience
>is at the core of the 'swindle.'
Its not because the cause of the trip was the aesthetic experience -
which you haven't had.
> There are those of us who know
>it is possible to get something out of almost nothing, infact getting
>something out of nearly -nothing is more than getting nothing out of
>almost everything, but at the core of the real religious experience
>of art, Abstract is nearly nothing and the Real is almost everything!
I've lost the plot. What do you think of Holman Hunt?
>
>> James Whitehead
>
>Bryn Ayers
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Before you buy.
--
James Whitehead
Lauri Levanto
>
> We do see "abstractly" - even the most representational of painting is
> built of abstract principles, as anyone who looks closely at Breughel
> or Goya can see. There is no inherent dichtomy between representation
> and abstraction, they are poles of the same entity, which is painting.
Most of what we see is not painted at all. We in fact see nothing,
we perceive our environment. It is worth to *look at* abstractly also
at representational paintings.
> The conflict begins when we start talking about meaning. Before
> Cezanne, meaning was percieved only in that which was portrayed - after
> Cezanne, people began to percieve meaning in the PROCESS of portrayal.
> In what might be called the "laws of perception". This emphasis on
> procedure as the basis of meaning divorced itself so rapidly and so
> completely from
> representation, that it created an an illusion of dichtomy, fooling
> both painters and public.
Before Homo Erectus there were meanings. What was seen made sense.
Artworks very seldom has real meaning - some may be edible, other
physically threathening.
The *message* in art may be represented or as you like to say processed.
Sometimes it is too late to look at *process* in a museum.
- lauri
Gerry Quinn
>What then, can be said to be 'abstract art'? One has to be conscious, once
>again, of the meaning of the word 'art'. It is carried over from a Western
>intellectual tradition and has only recently been used to apply to the
>creative workings of other cultures with the same equity. The identity of
>something as 'art' is dependent on our notions of art through this
>tradition, and the identity of something as 'abstract art' is likewise; but
>in this case referencing to the conscious break from representation. Thus, I
>would say that what 'abstract art' is, at is base, is a conscious refutation
>and disavowal of the idea that representation in itself has any specific
>merit and rather pinpoints the basis for something being called 'art' in
>some 'absense' (abstraction) that representation had in the past revealed
>but didn't deal with directly. In this sense, 'abstract art' is dealing with
>a sort of inquiry into 'meta-representation' which seeks to find a deeper
>basis by which one could say representation represents itself.
>
Then it is no longer art (abstract, conceptual or whatever) but
criticism. A worthy activity in itself, no doubt, but mis-sold when
described as art. Why is the 'art' label more justified than the
'revolutionary' label? What would you have if you peeled off all the
labels - a nice wallpaper design, incorporating the scribbles of a
five-year old?
The 'artists' still line up to piss in Duchamp's urinal, and the
'aesthetes' still line up to drink from it. Conceptual or abstract,
it's all the same.
- Gerry Quinn
>Am I correct, Allyson? :)
>
>--Brian Shapiro
>
>
br...@wralaw.com
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <874k6c$tn1$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, br...@wralaw.com writes
more
> than this. To take a modernist viewpoint - no more would an Abstract
> artist go back to representationalism than Boeing start making piston
> engined bi-planes.
This reasoning doesn't apply because paintings don't fly. If they
had to Modern art as we know it never would have happened.
> >2. There are representational works of Chairman Mao defacing him
> >and his regime, and representational works of Hitler also with
> >anti-Nazi representation. Are we to believe that simply because
> >these works of "art" aren't Abstraction that they would be spared
> >from concentration camps? My thesis point is that these works
> >are more a thorn in the side of the regime than any abstract work.
> I don't think so - they were the identifiable - Hitler quite liked the
> English - who have an inbuilt distrust of the intellectual.
So a Neo-Nazi would want to display a defaced portraiture of Hitler
like(Hitler Masterbating FA) rather than the scary unrecognizable
abstract image known as a Swastika!!!
> >Really there is a lot of writing saying that it was 'outrageous' or
> >'offensive' this is its post-hoc appeal. But I've seen none of it.
> I've seen lots of it - depends if you are looking- as I said the whole
> mistake of PO-MO art is that shocking = Art - which is a misconception
> of Modernity.
No doubt that that is a mistake. I've been to Museums and don't see
it when it comes to especially abstract. Mostly people aren't inter-
ested in it, if they don't like it.
> > If you want my .02 since
> >I have experience painting abstract, expressionistic, realist,
> >cartoon, and synthetic imagery,
> Guess you've done the world tour - but I would argue - if you have
> *done* abstract art you couldn't simply then go on to do anything
> else...
And the logic here is?
> maybe you faked it -
That would explain a lot wouldn't it...
> >I would guess that any primate
> >or elephant given basic assistance could make a work of AE' to
> >the eye of the critic. -This proposition can be tested-
> Not so - the work would have been created by the assistant. You could
> say any brush with assistance can fool a critic.....
The assistance would open the paint cans, stretch the large
canvas, etc. Many professional artists like Dali, Close, or
Pollack had assistants who stretched their canvasas for them.
Pollack spent about 2 hours on many of his works, stretching
a room size canvas takes 3, and two+ people as well.
> >What is more important here is the time element. An 'AE' is
> >two hours max, which is where I threw in the labor/price
> >ratio.
> Read the Whistler Trial - it took Pollock a lifetime.
So deep but it evades the facts,.
> >Most AE was sold by the yard like wall-paper -where is the
> >"deeper" meaning in that?
> You have a thing about money - are you perhaps a merchant banker?
I think the Idea of selling art by the yard speaks volumes about
what that art means to the creator and viewer.
> >Wrong. I challenge you to make either.
> I look back at my student work - but never Dali - I was never into
> illustration.
Unlike the antiquated critic I know that that usually means that
you don't have the skill to even produce a modern Dali.
> >Yes,. I not only have done some Abstract Art(while doing other
> >things) I will continue to doit. (You are deconstructing too much!!)
> To continue to do it is sufficient reason for knowing your not doing
it.
> You can't do it. Like you cant discover America - get it?
OK, you are maybe deluding yourself here... There is nothing to
understand -mainly. But secondly all representation is formally
an abstraction of sorts. Really my opinion is that ultimately
representational art can extend beyond design elements and
metaphoric ones as well...
> >My opinion is formed on looking and doing. Initially if I couldn't
> >doit I'd try to tear it down but now I respect it.
> You respect Abstract Art - doesn't sound like it.
Well I do respect some Abstract Art, I thought I said that
Abstract arts impact subsends representational art.
What I eventually discovered is that some of the best abstract
artists arranged representational objects on the canvas. Representation
at its best can communicate both recognizable meaning and
subliminal.
> >Dali intentionally juxtaposed contradictory Ideas that were not
> >compatable from the standpoint of philosophy. Supprisingly only
> >a few +get him+ the rest are simply outraged.
> Dali is no more outrageous than the average male teenager - He was the
> *Great Masturbator* Masturbation is not shocking to most adults -
> sorry.
Drips are not even shocking to teenagers.
Besides the Great-M' is a painting by Dali that the Art Establishment
pretends exists unlike his other works.
> >> signing blank sheets of paper -
> >The first minimalists so what?
> No they were subsequently printed and sold as Dali's - he thought it
> great fun ...
Motherwell, Picasso, Miro, all did lithography, as did Dali. Many
permanent inks are oil soluble so you shouldn't sign them before
you do them. In the case of Motherwell, and Picasso there was
the printmaster Format where the artist simply lets the printer
do the work, -De Kooning has done this as well-
Not only is this not a crime -It is very common- It probably didn't
happen the way you said because of the technical problem of
printing on preinked paper.
> > Dali didn't stop painting!
> Pity.
Well wait a second Dali' would have ""made it"" if he had,
So really he did you a favor.
> >Since the presses would uptake any ink already on an image this
> >never happened anyway.
> ?
? -I guess I pre-empted you!
> >Also a great deal of Dali's early work is average Modern, It
> >is his works that show great skill that have made him the
> >Lucifer of the Modern Religious Experience.
> > It is his works
> >that show mediocrity that would have made him acceptable.
> >With regards to Dali's skill it isn't his mode but his
> >exceptional works that are the meter.(there are better
> >technicians)
> >but when they
> >realized that the meter had been placed to high - they soon
> >decided it was necessary to tear him down,
> :-~
> > in order to build up
> >works of art that suddenly become mediocre when Dali is allowed
> >into the picture.(I say this because with Dali out of the way
> >there is a clear trade off of skill for interest in Modern Art;
> >Dali single-handedly destroys this pradigm! The early Dali
> >doesn't, nor does Ernst, nor does Normal Rockwell do anything
> >other than support Modernisms false pradigm!)
> So you like Dali - fine.
What about the Paradigm?
No it isn't about liking Dali, Its about realizing that what makes
Dali different from Rockwell, or Pollack is that he doesn't support
the Modern Art Paradigm - which is essentially a trade-off!
Dali would otherwise fit neatly between Ernst and KLEE. Klee
doesn't contradict it -who is by the way one of the best
abstract and representational artists-IMHO -ES
> >I don't particularly favor Dali aesthetically over other modern
> >artists that I like. I just notice that he is the +only+ modern
> >artist who is +ever+ faulted into annihilation for simply being
> >human! And this can't be because he is human because Picasso,
> >Warhole, and Pollack were much more so!
> He was simply silly. Burning Giraffes ! Ha Ha Ha..
You are simply evading the question. Burning Girraffs, cow-Woman
Dali/Picasso, drip-insects Pollack,Dali... Dali is the only
artist who is entirely persecuted on any small, ambigous, or
subjective flaw because???
What do the burning Giraffes symbolize by the way in invention of
the Monsters?
> >> He was very upset at Abstract art
> >This is just propoganda to back up large, (potentially dull)
> >simple paintings.
> God I love large dull simple paintings,
> > Dali even stated that he liked Mondrian,
> He also said he was the great masturbator
Again what was that painting really about?
> >he also said that when painting is bad it is often interresting.
> >
> >Dali did several paintings using a synthesis of Modern Abstract
> >work and his own style.
> Please
Are you deeply aware of his history?
I can say that I know of Pollacks enamle drawings, color paintings,
r-surrealisms, Rothko's attempts at painting like Hopper, De Koonings
realistic drawings... And you know nothing of Dali's abstract
paintings, synthetic modern? etc.? There are splash works by Dali
predating Pollack and Motherwell in fact.
> >Even today Abstractions main appeal is its supposed profanity!
> >while this is utter fiction.
> to who?
To everybody who looks at them -yourself, taxi drivers, me.
> >> - didn't he do something about rothko - Dali maybe wanted to
explore
> >> some idea - of his own ego - much of his work wasn't actually
painted
> >by
> >> himself - working in the tradition of Rubens et al.
> >
> >I wouldn't suprise you to find out that much art done by AE's was
> >also done in this matter. The difference being that Dali's
assistance
> >weren't "anybody".
You see you are in fact demonstrating what I said about Dali. He
is the only artist who is criticized for being human.
>> >Pomo isn't decadent its simply ingnorant. They aren't a bunch
> >> >of Junkies and prostitutes, but latent intellectuals; -Absolutely
> >> >confused by 'theories' and ignorant of their source(hashashin).
> >> We have arrived at the insult phase early in this thread-
> >Maybe but my opinion is that POMO's aren't Junkies or whores!
> see idiotic comment above
Well the train of thought stopped at let people off.
> >> You also seem to be confusing/conflating po-mo with modernism.
> >No doubt. I am too close to the origin of POMO. Realizing that
> >pomo is only a word, I think its easy to declare that contemporary
> >POMO are ignorant of "its" origin, -which is in German 'Rausch'.
> Only a word - with no meaning or use - ummm?
> >Blake, Dali, Burroughs, Focault, Duchamp, Brenton, Walters, De Sade,
> >Andrew Weil, Morrison, etc.
> You forgot Eric Clapton ... ?
Theres a good chance I did
> >> Are you really just getting annoyed that some folk can see worth in
> >> abstract art where you can't. Seems so.
> >This is the only way that anyone can pretend that AA'(abstract Art)
> >means anything. It isn't annoying or offensive. It is completely
> >banal.
> So you find it?
A basis
> >> But if you begin to study
> >> painting - by looking - you will discover that Dali is a very poor
> >> painter- technically - and a poor draughtsman -
> >Relatively speaking he is in the top 1%.
> I cant prove this on a NG but my comments above remain - I'm no fan
of
> Hockney for example - but he can / could draw.
Hockney is these days easily in the top 10%
> >> his ideas are
> >> superficial also - he is essentially about his own ego. If you want
> >> showmanship he is on a par with the best.
> >
> >You see it is Dali who terrorizes the art establishment, annoys,
> >incapacitates.
> wanted to - but just made himself look silly
Art books on Modernism and Surreality often have +no+ mention of
Dali. This is while being the living artist who sold paintings
for the most money during the carreer of Picasso, and today selling
more prints -in the form of posters- than any other artist alive
or dead. I have two Modern art books that have 0 Dali sightings,
while both containe reference to Rockwell and Bougereau and
Sigmar Polke.
The terror that Dali inflicts has little to do with his art, but
it has everything to what his eventual art does to the Modern
Paradigm of "trade-offs". Since the paradigm is false Dali
isn't needed to destroy it. The terror is in fact self-inflicted
by antiquated critics of Modern and POMO, Dali has been turned
into the symbol by them!
For instance to believe what you suggested about abstraction I
have to believe that one must sacrifice realism! -A trade off...
the inherent belief in Modernism.
> >> this work - this statement of the obvious was wonderful - an
> >epiphany.
> >Good for you, but how do you assume that objectivity of an experience
> >that is assumed subjective?
> You don't get it do you?
Now you are playing the "it" game! The various "its" I get from
art neither come enitirely from Abstract, Real, Visual, Western,
or even "art", nor from entirely external experience itself.
I assume the "it" you mean is what they call the force in star-wars
or Karma in Buddism!
> > I challenge any second rate art-hack
> >to take a minor dose of Acid and not see deeper meaning in any
> >visual phenomena.
> > The small-dose-acid quasi-religious experience
> >is at the core of the 'swindle.'
> Its not because the cause of the trip was the aesthetic experience -
> which you haven't had.
But you knew what I meant thus you know I know what you are talking
about so perhaps you can pull the wool over even your own eyes but
not mine!
> > There are those of us who know
> >it is possible to get something out of almost nothing, infact getting
> >something out of nearly -nothing is more than getting nothing out of
> >almost everything, but at the core of the real religious experience
> >of art, Abstract is nearly nothing and the Real is almost
everything!
> I've lost the plot. What do you think of Holman Hunt?
Drop a URL" and I'll see.
Bryn
br...@wralaw.com
sd...@sprynet.com wrote:
> In article <870ml1$87b$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> > (especially the piss christ). My point isn't that art should be
> > wholly offensive but that Abstraction has none of this power.
> Art and politically motivated agenda don't mix well. It doesn't take
> much creativity to slam an ideal or person or group. As children we
> learn how to get the other guy's goat early on.
I don't suppose that I think that arts primary motive should be
to fight but I do think that there are eventually battles that
need to be one, and that (maybe propoganda not art) creativity
should be used in these cases.
The fight over abstraction is primarily verbal. By making references
to things that have names, representation interacts with verbal
communication much moreso than abstraction. If I could give
abstraction a coin it would have been for this, the sad Irony
being of course the more one learns about "Abstract" verbiage the
more it becomes representation of theory, and hence not nonspoken
art.
> One might, for
> example, express something to you in a poem or, on the other hand,
> might scream in your face pointing a finger. Most people
> will react strongly to the latter because of its forcefulness. The
> mere fact that something is powerful doesn't make it superior.
> > By the way did you follow the link. <a
href="http://www.disinfo.com/disinfo?p=folder&title=Jackson+Pollock:+CIA
> > +Stooge?"> Jackson Pollack the CIA Stooge?</a>
> Hmm!...Is their any proof to a rumor that Marcel Duchamp killed John
> Kennedy and stuffed him in his little box of artifacts?
Funny, I'm afraid the Pollack one may in fact be true though.
> > > His work, beautifully
> > > painted,
> > So you like his painting just not his Ideas?
> I like his technique. His paintings are is ideas.
So you like it?
> > > seems trite and boring.
> Oh well. Instead of the Vietnam Memorial we could have crocheted
> Rockwells depicting farm dressed girls placing 4-H club clovers on the
> graves of deceased veterans.
I would point out that on a sort of third tier sense the Memorial
is representation because of the names. And Yes I think to the
American public a Norman Rockwell painting would have been moving.
But I'm slightly redefing representation to be an object in an
artwork that refers to real-worl phenomena.
Bryn Ayers
br...@wralaw.com
See signature <floa...@address.in.sig> wrote:
> In article <86u4nj$hvp$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, br...@wralaw.com writes
incapable
> of contemplating.
Western Abstract art remains western. Western man has concieved
of the void, nothing, silence if you will. Eastern art
gives less cult to the individual artist (like the heroes of
western art like Dali, Picasso, and Warhol), In Buddist culture
-Idian, Tibetan, Japanese etc. representational art of 'Budda'
and Meditation abstract patterns(chakra esp.) exist as part of
the belief of Zen. The art of these religions often exist as
complex abstract Tapestries, or paintings of Budda' and
manifestations of 8 or 9 levels of conscienceness, as representations
of Budda' demons, demigods, and various regions of the Universe
according to their belief system. -At least this sums up a lot of
it... I BTW. didn't mention China because a B
> As Donald Kuspit says:
> *There is a difference between art that is a rebellion against and
even
> destructive attack on the social contract -- which is what shock-
schlock
> art at its most interesting seems to be -- and art that offers an
> experiential, qualitative alternative to it, in effect sidestepping
it.
> When Christ said "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God
what
> is God's," he was reminding us that there is another, more important
and
> profounder world than the world of social power*
Bryn
Erik A. Mattila
> In article <1hvl4.617$Ux3....@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net>, "Brian Shapiro" <ba...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
> >What then, can be said to be 'abstract art'? One has to be conscious, once
> >again, of the meaning of the word 'art'. It is carried over from a Western
> >intellectual tradition and has only recently been used to apply to the
> >creative workings of other cultures with the same equity. The identity of
> >something as 'art' is dependent on our notions of art through this
> >tradition, and the identity of something as 'abstract art' is likewise; but
> >in this case referencing to the conscious break from representation. Thus, I
> >would say that what 'abstract art' is, at is base, is a conscious refutation
> >and disavowal of the idea that representation in itself has any specific
> >merit and rather pinpoints the basis for something being called 'art' in
> >some 'absense' (abstraction) that representation had in the past revealed
> >but didn't deal with directly. In this sense, 'abstract art' is dealing with
> >a sort of inquiry into 'meta-representation' which seeks to find a deeper
> >basis by which one could say representation represents itself.
> >
>
> Then it is no longer art (abstract, conceptual or whatever) but
> criticism. A worthy activity in itself, no doubt, but mis-sold when
> described as art. Why is the 'art' label more justified than the
> 'revolutionary' label? What would you have if you peeled off all the
> labels - a nice wallpaper design, incorporating the scribbles of a
> five-year old?
I think you're on to something here, Jerry. Art as it's own critique.
It fits with what I know about it. But why
"mis-sold?" Roland Barthes reads like a novel, anyway. I'm not so sure
that I don't read such as such (as opposed to
reading Barthes purposefully as 'criticism.'
The story goes that Kandinsky 'invented' non-objective painting in the
course of his duties in cataloging Crimean folk
art (or was it Ukranian, or is Crimean Ukranian???). At any rate, these
people decorated the interior of their
houses-filling all the surfaces with designs (a horror-vacuui sort of
thing) and Kandinsky wrote that 'it was like being
'inside a painting.' Now the Ukranians may have attached some sort of
'meaning' to each mark painted, but old Wassily
wasn't cognizant of this, and to him they were just designs to be judged
by their intrinsic merits, as forms, independant
of any associated meaning. So the 'invention' itself seems to have
started with the idea that shapes and colors can be
pleasing in and of themselves.
An interesting proposition, considering that we, as human beings, engage
in a very knee-jerk, fundamental practice of
assigning meaning to the visual field. An interesting experience I once
had in this regard was in designing a college
catalog for a Native American school, the theme of which was to be
California Indian basket designs. During the process
of collecting an array of designs to use and digitizing them on a
computer, I was subjected to all sorts of 'secret
knowledge" when various Indian's looked at the work and said "Ah, yes,
that's our "Flicker Feathers, which to a
neighboring tribe may have been our "Mountains in winter" and another
"Tules waving in the breeze" etc. And the books
published were full of this sort of conjecture, or maybe more
accurately, 'claims of meaning or representation' and I
began to realize that 'meaning' was up for grabs in the first place. I
found one book, however, that was a collection of
designs with comments by the weaver's themselves, and it was remarkable.
For example, one design that one sage described
as 'deer guts' was described by the weaver as 'going over three times
and then up,' I eventually understood that the
weavers (artists) were describing the designs in purely formal terms, or
terms which would define the technique of
creating the design itself, in terms of the kind of calculating that was
associated with weaving bakets. Greenburg would
have been delighted - Art for Art's sake, yes?
It's interesting to note that once the term 'non-objective' was offered
to differentiate the image from 'abstraction,'
since 'abstraction' is a process and 'non-objective' is a thing. But
'abstraction' has prevailed, even thought it's a
bit misleading. In art history, there are several long periods to look
at which begin with very tight representations
and evolve into abstraction, as well as the other way around. If we
look at the long haul of Greek art, for example,
there is clear evidence of a trend from abstact representations to
ultra-realism. However, in the late Roman period (the
Triumverate?) there is evidence of a sliding back to abstraction from a
very 'true to life' realism. Why? There's
probably an economic argument, but it fails when we look at other
examples. There is a long sequence of rock art in Baja
California (800 years of cultural continuity) which began with very
marked realism and evolved into ideologized
representations. The same is true if we look at the transition period
between Olmec and Mayan art. Olmec art betrays
the 'observed subject' while early classic Mayan art betrays the
ideologized, stylized subject.
So Kandinsky 'invents' abstract painting in a hermeneutic crucible,
since he had no access to the conventional meanings
the Ukranians asssigned to their symbols and/or designs. I would hazard
to guess that the designs in these homes were
purposeful, to ward off the Woo-woos or whatever, but that was let
behind when the idea was detourned from the ethnic
Crimean to the European art world. In a sense, the 'abstract painting'
was a colonial artifact in someone's
Wunderkammern, and subsequently the whole discourse developed around an
object that was ripped out of its original
context and distorted. This practice seems to permeate modernism - the
same can be said of Picasso's African objects, or
Nolde's South Pacific Objects, or even Pollocks engagement with Native
American art as a source of abstraction (ie access
to the treasures of the unconscious mind). It is the work of the
'other' in the fullest sense. Personally, I don't see
how painting could avoid becoming criticism under these circumstances.
What's really delightful to me, however, is the
same knee-jerk reaction of the public, that is to continue assigning
'meaning' to the 'non-reperesentations' in abstract
painting, more than often to the chagrin of the artist.
Erik Mattila
br...@wralaw.com
Let me make a clarification here before we regurgitate over
the skill issue ad nasium. I don't believe that "skill"
per se is the highest expression in art, I do believe
however that there is a minimal skill level that has to
exist in order for something to be "art" and not someone
just fucking around with a 'Media.' -That skill level being
enough to controll the media such that an execution is
a representation of the 'artists' Ideas and not an
execution of the 'artists' conflict with the Media. I'll
add that someone can really execute some work with moderate
skill and go foward in life to just paint a conflict with
the Media(De Kooning is a shining example of this).
Dali goes beyond this so there is nothing more to say
about him other than wether his abstraction meant more
than his representation -to really be relevant? I'll
safely assume that are unaware of anything even remotely
abstract done by Dali(there isn't that much anyway) so
the point is mute unless you want really want to discuss it.
Now that that horse is dead()... Representational art
exists, and so does AA(Abstract Art). I began by making the
charge that AA is presumed innocent of establishmentarianism!
This has been diverted more than disproven in my view of the
thread so far...
But Clapton? Eric Clapton is a Guitarist So in some
transcendant technical sense he is an Abstrationist(of Music)
but he *chooses* to sing song lyrics(a representation of
real life) -Hence my belief but now my words are some how
backed up in this matter... I will rephrase(perhaps invent
post-hoc) 'In order for art to be complete it must involve
representation.' There is plenty of room for abstraction,
and error, but art won't transcend without completion and
that includes +representation...(as well as hopefully all
other facets of art simultaneously).
For .02 more cents
Bryn
James Whitehead
You shouldn't be so concerned - with Post-Modernity there is no longer a
particular ideology to worry about- Dali - Representational Art et. al
are all up for it.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
writes
>On Tue, 01 Feb 2000 19:06:53 GMT, br...@wralaw.com wrote:
>
>>In article <JjllODAo...@jliat.demon.co.uk>,
>> James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>> In article <874k6c$tn1$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, br...@wralaw.com writes
>>> I think you are saying more than this - and certainly demonstrating
>
>
>statements to a minimum here. He best summed up Modrian in his MINIMAL
>comment "Piet Niet."
>
>
> Few can deny that Mondrian can leave an uninitiated onlooker
>speechless. After all, what is there to really say here?
Quite a lot in fact
>Mondrian's
>paintings can not be accused of bad drawing, they contain no
>subject-matter, no color
no colour?
> and no story. They are all quite pristine and
>inoffensive. Mondrian has created a perfect vehicle for non-sensible
>criticism and has managed to entirely insulate himself from sensible
>criticism.
He engaged with a theory of art and metaphysics which he demonstrated in
his work - as opposed to illustrated by his paintings
> He is the envy of many of today's painters.
>
>
>Mani DeLi
>...no skill no art
>
>Tired of Modern Art? Check out my web page!
> http://www.interlog.com/~hugod/
Modern art has finished -
check out *any* web page.
"If someone calls it art its art"
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
>just fucking around with a 'Media.'
and as such in itself says nothing about any establishment
--
James Whitehead
G*rd*n
| ...
| same knee-jerk reaction of the public, that is to continue assigning
| 'meaning' to the 'non-reperesentations' in abstract
| painting, more than often to the chagrin of the artist.
In postmodernity, however, that _is_ meaning.
It doesn't occur only with abstract art -- look at what's
happened to Warhol's work, or pop art in general, or, for that
matter, much of popular culture, especially that of bygone
years -- the trivial and ephermeral become weighty. I don't
regard this acquisition of significance as false. If things
endure, a history accretes. It would be depressing if it
weren't for the concurrent lightening-up of the heavy, as,
for instance, the shadow play of people still shadow-boxing
with the shadows of Modernism.
--
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
{ http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 12/6/99 }
br...@wralaw.com
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <3898aaef...@news.psi.ca>, mdeli <hug...@interlog.com>
> > Few can deny that Mondrian can leave an uninitiated onlooker
> >speechless. After all, what is there to really say here?
> Quite a lot in fact
> >Mondrian's
> >paintings can not be accused of bad drawing, they contain no
> >subject-matter, no color
> no colour?
> > and no story. They are all quite pristine and
> >inoffensive. Mondrian has created a perfect vehicle for non-sensible
> >criticism and has managed to entirely insulate himself from sensible
> >criticism.
> He engaged with a theory of art and metaphysics which he demonstrated
in
> his work - as opposed to illustrated by his paintings
Many Artists including Dali, Flack, and Duchamp, engaged in artistic
theories and theory of art. This being said they are external to
the Canvas; if the Theory is necessary to enjoy the work then the
work itself is incomplete. Mondrains main contribution to MAA is
the prelude to most kitsch interior design of the 60's and 70's.
Dali's style never made it into interrior design because everyone
could immitate it and thus found it unecessary to prove it.
> > He is the envy of many of today's painters.
> >Mani DeLi
> >...no skill no art
> "If someone calls it art its art"
This is the definition of DADA, or maybe POMO!
br...@wralaw.com
This is the art of the Establishment. Institutionalized Rebellion
is pretentious conformity.(n'est ce que pas??? for the Canadians)
> James Whitehead
Bryn
Ned Ludd
G*rd*n <g...@panix.com> wrote in message news:879f0q$6s$1...@news.panix.com...
>| knee-jerk reaction of the public, that is to continue assigning
>| 'meaning' to the 'non-reperesentations' in abstract painting,
>| more than often to the chagrin of the artist.
>
> It doesn't occur only with abstract art -- look at what's
> happened to Warhol's work, or pop art in general, or, for that
> matter, much of popular culture, especially that of bygone
> years -- the trivial and ephermeral become weighty. I don't
> regard this acquisition of significance as false. If things
> endure, a history accretes. It would be depressing if it
> weren't for the concurrent lightening-up of the heavy, as,
> for instance, the shadow play of people still shadow-boxing
> with the shadows of Modernism.
>
Are postmodernists literalists? Is their dependence on
texts (and objects) so absolute that there is really
nothing besides the text (or object)?
Likewise would a postmodernist admit that postmodernism
is only stage that must be passed through in order to
get to the next stage?
Ned
mdeli
>In article <JjllODAo...@jliat.demon.co.uk>,
> James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> In article <874k6c$tn1$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, br...@wralaw.com writes
>> I think you are saying more than this - and certainly demonstrating
>> > Dali even stated that he liked Mondrian,
Dali whose goofs on our idiotic Modern Academic critics kept his
statements to a minimum here. He best summed up Modrian in his MINIMAL
comment "Piet Niet."
Few can deny that Mondrian can leave an uninitiated onlooker
speechless. After all, what is there to really say here? Mondrian's
paintings can not be accused of bad drawing, they contain no
subject-matter, no color and no story. They are all quite pristine and
inoffensive. Mondrian has created a perfect vehicle for non-sensible
criticism and has managed to entirely insulate himself from sensible
criticism. He is the envy of many of today's painters.
Mani DeLi
...no skill no art
Tired of Modern Art? Check out my web page!
http://www.interlog.com/~hugod/
mdeli
<lakeNO...@plateautel.net.invalid> wrote:
>We do see "abstractly" - even the most representational of painting is
>built of abstract principles, as anyone who looks closely at Breughel
>or Goya can see.
Name three of these supposed "abstract principes."
>There is no inherent dichtomy between representation
>and abstraction, they are poles of the same entity, which is painting.
>The conflict begins when we start talking about meaning. Before
>Cezanne, meaning was percieved only in that which was portrayed - after
>Cezanne, people began to percieve meaning in the PROCESS of portrayal.
Cezanne's subject matter is completely conventional.
"Percieve meaning in the PROCESS of portrayal," sounds like Artspeak.
>In what might be called the "laws of perception". This emphasis on
>procedure as the basis of meaning divorced itself so rapidly and so
>completely from
>representation, that it created an an illusion of dichtomy, fooling
>both painters and public.
Now here's a statment to remember for meaninglessness.
Gerry Quinn
>'other' in the fullest sense. Personally, I don't see
>how painting could avoid becoming criticism under these circumstances.
>What's really delightful to me, however, is the
>same knee-jerk reaction of the public, that is to continue assigning
>'meaning' to the 'non-reperesentations' in abstract
>painting, more than often to the chagrin of the artist.
>
>Erik Mattila
Maybe they are performing 'art' too by subverting the intentions of the
artist!
- Gerry Quinn
G*rd*n
| > | same knee-jerk reaction of the public, that is to continue assigning
| > | 'meaning' to the 'non-reperesentations' in abstract
| > | painting, more than often to the chagrin of the artist.
G*rd*n wrote:
| > In postmodernity, however, that _is_ meaning.
| >
| > It doesn't occur only with abstract art -- look at what's
| > happened to Warhol's work, or pop art in general, or, for that
| > matter, much of popular culture, especially that of bygone
| > years -- the trivial and ephermeral become weighty. I don't
| > regard this acquisition of significance as false. If things
| > endure, a history accretes. It would be depressing if it
| > weren't for the concurrent lightening-up of the heavy, as,
| > for instance, the shadow play of people still shadow-boxing
| > with the shadows of Modernism.
"Erik A. Mattila" <emat...@tomatoweb.com>:
| I don't know -- there may be a significant difference in a viewer seeing
| elephants in a Pollock and a viewer seeing <what?> in a Warhol soup can.
| I'll have to think that through.
|
| If Kandinsky 'detourned' Ukranian interiors to the art gallery, he was
| drawing from a more or less exotic source (heterogeneous). If Warhol
| 'detourned' supermarket soup cans to the art gallery, he was drawing from
| a more or less native source (homogeneous). While each object has been
| displaced from its original context, or transported over hermeneutic
| boundaries, the question still remains is the change in meaning is
| comparable, and if so, on what basis? What I'm toying with right now is
| the idea that the difference in the change of meaning in each of these
| two examples may in fact represent delineators between modernism and
| post-modernism. In the former, where exotic material us used as sort of
| a 'worry-stone' by which the viewer can project his/her fantasies (like
| seeing shapes in the clouds), the 'meaning' of the object in its original
| context is virtually meaningless -- the more enigmatic its past is, the
| more fucntional it will be as 'abstract art.' In the latter case, the
| object cannot excape it's local meaning (in the supermarket) and suffers
| inevitable self-reference.
|
| Obviously, DuChamp got the jump on Warhol by quite a few years.
| Definitely a proto-pomo (AKA Neo-BoHo).
|
| BTW, anyone who hasn't come across the term 'detournment' it is from Guy
| Debord, and speaks the the semantic warpage that occurs when an object
| such as a soup can is moved from the supermarket to the art gallery.
|
| I'm not particularly depressed about the lightening-up of the formerly
| heavy -- I've learnd from Tell Us Vision "Why ask why?" But at the same
| time it seems to me that it's "in the cards" of the post-modern tarot
| deck that we will have a 'modernist subculture' with us, just like the
| rest of the fragmented and dispered special interest groups disorganized
| under the plurality banner. I loved the way, for example, that the three
| or four entities in Jarmusch's "Mystery Train" didn't ever coalesce into
| a unity, even though they had all arrived at the same hotel.
My point about Warhol was that his works, when they were made,
were truly empty -- Warhol said so. He achieved one of the
things the Modernists had been talking about, but were unable
to do because they couldn't stop talking -- he produced an
absolutely non-narrative, non-literary art. There is really
nothing to say worth saying about a pile of shoes or a soup
can or a Brillo box, although they may afford some visual
pleasure. By constrast the non-representational work afforded
free entry for the imagination, so that, as you mention,
elephants were found in it. It is much harder to find
elephants in a painting of a Campbell's soup can because the
banal object depicted contests the interpretation while
offering almost nothing to replace it. It's a happy dog in
the manger.
Of course, Warhol's achievement couldn't last -- as one can
see, we're talking about the significance of his work. In
the Museum of Modern Art, some of his paintings reside in
heavy frames, and books are full of words about what they
_really_mean_. Respect and history pile up and make them
heavy. Even told "there's _nothing_ there", mankind finds
it difficult not to shuffle and revere.
As for Faith and Meaning, they're probably on the way back
with new tools and instruments, resolved to make the 20th
century look like a Sunday school picnic. Enjoy our afternoon
off while it lasts.
G*rd*n
| Still, the meaning of a painting does not come solely from the image of
| what is represented. It comes rather from the way it is represented,
| and the reason it is represented. Rembrandt was superior to his
| contemporaries though they painted exactly the same subjects. Rembrandt
| painted them in an entirely different way. His intention was different,
| and his method was different.
|
| Non-representational painting is simply painting which focuses
| exclusively on intention and method, attempting to by-pass subject
| matter altogether. I think this is a very worthwhile and interesting
| experiment. Don't you?
Obviously it failed. The audience caused the non-rep art to
represent things, both individually and collectively. This
is an odd thing, because non-rep art has been around forever.
Why did non-representation become such a bone of contention
after all these many millennia? Why was everything commanded
to produce Meaning?
Ned Ludd
Erik A. Mattila <emat...@tomatoweb.com> wrote in message
news:3899305D...@tomatoweb.com...
>
>> Are postmodernists literalists? Is their dependence on
>> texts (and objects) so absolute that there is really
>> nothing besides the text (or object)?
>
> Reading Barthes for example, the "Text" could be thought of to
> emcompass the act of anti-literalism, or the outright rejection
> of words in favor of the immediate apprehension of aesthetics.
> When viewed from the prespective of "The Text," as I understand
> the term, working against language is just another practice of
> culture and just another meaning production machine. But then,
> I don't feel I've understood the conccept of 'the text' that well.
> I tend to think that is is similar to Foucault's 'episteme' in
> some ways. In other ways it appears to be conceptually related
> to a computer interface.
>
How much of the text is outside the text? (in postmodernism)
I've seen scholarly types analyze an ancient work of philosophy
and extract voluminous quantities of "esoteric" truth from it,
by applying the culture that the text was created in to the text
itself. An argument might go like this: "Old Greek philosopher
X, writing in the 3rd century BC, would HAVE to have included
comments about the Gods in a text on this subject, and he didn't
make ANY reference to the Gods, therefore there is an esoteric
truth here that he really didn't believe in the Gods."
Does pomo ONLY deconstruct? And does it do this exclusively
through the nature of language rather than the nature of culture?
>> Likewise would a postmodernist admit that postmodernism
>> is only a stage that must be passed through in order to
>> get to the next stage?
>
> It is probably a meaningless proposition in post modern theory.
> I remember an essay - either Lyotard or Baudrillard, I can't
> remember -- speaking of 'discrete stages' that we pass through,
> as opposed to the concept of a hierarchy of stages. The 'social'
> plucks us from one and deposits us in another, dispensing of all
> 'rights of passage.'
> Anyway, I believe that "all the world's a stage" but I don't
> believe post modernism is a stage. (So I guess it must be
> 'out of this world, eh?)
>
We had a pretty egregious failure of the most recent end of
history and time. (ie. Y2K) Is it inherent in postmodernism,
as you indicate, that nothing can evolve from it?
Ned
G*rd*n
| > Mondrains main contribution to MAA is
| >the prelude to most kitsch interior design of the 60's and 70's.
hug...@interlog.com (mdeli):
| I don't believe Mondrian influenced much of anything in art or design.
| ...
A friend of mine has a schoolbook which compares Mondrian
paintings (the square ones) with post-'30s layout and
architectural detail. I suppose somebody had to do it.
James Whitehead
<lakeNO...@plateautel.net.invalid> writes
>Still, the meaning of a painting does not come solely from the image of
>what is represented. It comes rather from the way it is represented,
>and the reason it is represented. Rembrandt was superior to his
>contemporaries though they painted exactly the same subjects. Rembrandt
>painted them in an entirely different way. His intention was different,
>and his method was different.
>
>Non-representational painting is simply painting which focuses
>exclusively on intention and method, attempting to by-pass subject
>matter altogether. I think this is a very worthwhile and interesting
>experiment. Don't you?
>
>Lake
>
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
>The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
writes
>On Wed, 2 Feb 2000 10:36:20 +0000, James Whitehead
><jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>> Dali whose goofs on our idiotic Modern Academic critics kept his
>>>statements to a minimum here. He best summed up Modrian in his MINIMAL
>>>comment "Piet Niet."
>>>
>>>
>>> Few can deny that Mondrian can leave an uninitiated onlooker
>>>speechless. After all, what is there to really say here?
>
>practically nothing.
>
>>>Mondrian's
>>>paintings can not be accused of bad drawing, they contain no
>>>subject-matter, no color
>
>
>No color of any note.
As in red - yellow - blue
didn't you know these are the *primary* colours -
>>> and no story. They are all quite pristine and
>>>inoffensive. Mondrian has created a perfect vehicle for non-sensible
>>>criticism and has managed to entirely insulate himself from sensible
>>>criticism.
>
>>his work - as opposed to illustrated by his paintings
>
>
>repetitive crap I'm not really interested in anything one has to say
>about it. The public sees the painting and is rarely interested in
>what the artist has to say.
>
>>"If someone calls it art its art"
>
>>--
>>James Whitehead
>
>
>Mani DeLi
>...no skill no art
>
>Tired of Modern Art? Check out my web page!
as you say!
> http://www.interlog.com/~hugod/
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
>In article <uPVsFLAk...@jliat.demon.co.uk>,
> James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> In article <3898aaef...@news.psi.ca>, mdeli <hug...@interlog.com>
>> > Few can deny that Mondrian can leave an uninitiated onlooker
>> >speechless. After all, what is there to really say here?
>> Quite a lot in fact
>> >paintings can not be accused of bad drawing, they contain no
>> >subject-matter, no color
>> no colour?
>> >inoffensive. Mondrian has created a perfect vehicle for non-sensible
>> >criticism and has managed to entirely insulate himself from sensible
>> >criticism.
>> He engaged with a theory of art and metaphysics which he demonstrated
>in
>> his work - as opposed to illustrated by his paintings
>
>theories and theory of art. This being said they are external to
>the Canvas; if the Theory is necessary to enjoy the work then the
>work itself is incomplete.
representational picture - which is why folks from other cultures can't
immediately read a picture using perspective - western perspective - the
Chinese had a different set of rules. As we learn this way of seeing
when very young its probable that most people think that's how reality
looks to everyone. The fact that a canvas is square makes it a window on
the world - you need the concept of a window to follow this -
Your idea of a painting which needs no theory is like imagining a
natural language which can be understood without being learnt first.
Also certainly Duchamp - The Bride - In advance of a broken arm - The
Fresh Widow - or LHOQQ requires theory in order to follow the work - or
see the joke -
> Mondrains main contribution to MAA is
>the prelude to most kitsch interior design of the 60's and 70's.
>Dali's style never made it into interrior design because everyone
>could immitate it and thus found it unecessary to prove it.
I thought he made a sofa?
>
>
>> > He is the envy of many of today's painters.
>> >Mani DeLi
>> >...no skill no art
>
>> "If someone calls it art its art"
>
>This is the definition of DADA, or maybe POMO!
Its Don Judd-
>
>
>Bryn
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Before you buy.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
>In article <nfDuhSA9...@jliat.demon.co.uk>,
> James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> In article <878qra$j9$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, br...@wralaw.com writes
>> >just fucking around with a 'Media.'
>> good definition of Abstract Art-
>
>> and as such in itself says nothing about any establishment
>
>This is the art of the Establishment. Institutionalized Rebellion
>is pretentious conformity.(n'est ce que pas??? for the Canadians)
>
>> James Whitehead
>
>
>Bryn
>
>
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
modernist could believe in the concept of *failure* or *end* its not
happening proves the validity of po-mo - which asserts this failure (of
modernist concept of progress) and end. In simple terms - like an old
record the grove has to end - but in fact doesn't - the end goes on
forever - only the song (re - message - civilization ....) is finite.
As this is also going out to rec.arts.fine - the whole idea of creating
requires time - which we have no longer got. So throws up the question
what is art without time? (here (in terms of art) i'm optimistic!)
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
>lake <lakeNO...@plateautel.net.invalid>:
>| Still, the meaning of a painting does not come solely from the image of
>| what is represented. It comes rather from the way it is represented,
>| and the reason it is represented. Rembrandt was superior to his
>| contemporaries though they painted exactly the same subjects. Rembrandt
>| painted them in an entirely different way. His intention was different,
>| and his method was different.
>|
>| Non-representational painting is simply painting which focuses
>| exclusively on intention and method, attempting to by-pass subject
>| matter altogether. I think this is a very worthwhile and interesting
>| experiment. Don't you?
>
>represent things, both individually and collectively.
> This
>is an odd thing, because non-rep art has been around forever.
>Why did non-representation become such a bone of contention
>after all these many millennia? Why was everything commanded
>to produce Meaning?
>
--
James Whitehead
G*rd*n
| >| Non-representational painting is simply painting which focuses
| >| exclusively on intention and method, attempting to by-pass subject
| >| matter altogether. I think this is a very worthwhile and interesting
| >| experiment. Don't you?
G*rd*n <g...@panix.com> writes
| >Obviously it failed. The audience caused the non-rep art to
| >represent things, both individually and collectively.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
| You assume it was done for an audience! bad move.
Oh, I think not. The art we know about is the art done for
an audience, because the artist shows it to us. And many of
the abexers were obviously and _intensely_ in show biz.
Ned Ludd
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:d$ggZOAxQ...@jliat.demon.co.uk...
>
>>>> Likewise would a postmodernist admit that postmodernism
>>>> is only a stage that must be passed through in order to
>>>> get to the next stage?
>>>
>>> It is probably a meaningless proposition in post modern theory.
>>> I remember an essay - either Lyotard or Baudrillard, I can't
>>> remember -- speaking of 'discrete stages' that we pass through,
>>> as opposed to the concept of a hierarchy of stages. The 'social'
>>> plucks us from one and deposits us in another, dispensing of all
>>> 'rights of passage.'
>>> Anyway, I believe that "all the world's a stage" but I don't
>>> believe post modernism is a stage. (So I guess it must be
>>> 'out of this world, eh?)
>>>
>> We had a pretty egregious failure of the most recent end of
>> history and time. (ie. Y2K) Is it inherent in postmodernism,
>> as you indicate, that nothing can evolve from it?
>
> modernist could believe in the concept of *failure* or *end* its not
> happening proves the validity of po-mo - which asserts this failure
> (of modernist concept of progress) and end. In simple terms - like
> an old record the grove has to end - but in fact doesn't - the end
> goes on forever - only the song (re - message - civilization ....)
> is finite. As this is also going out to rec.arts.fine - the whole
> idea of creating requires time - which we have no longer got. So
> throws up the question what is art without time? (here (in terms
> of art) i'm optimistic!)
>
Do you deny ends? Do you deny 'dark ages' of centuries duration?
Do you deny total annihilations? And what of the circular nature
of time? Do we create time as the most fundamental aspect of our
existence?
Isn't the most fundamental aspect of art that it transcends time?
I mean, that's how we know it's art, right? Ie. we know about it,
so it must have transcended time.
Did pomo destroy time?
Ned
br...@wralaw.com
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <879ub6$r3g$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, br...@wralaw.com writes
> >In article <uPVsFLAk...@jliat.demon.co.uk>,
> > James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >> In article <3898aaef...@news.psi.ca>, mdeli
<hug...@interlog.com>
> You have to *understand* the concept of perspective to *read* a
> representational picture -
I think that dogs and cats are aware of Depth perception.
Linear perspective is off according to the Human eye by a
small percentage, -Our vision is slightly fisheyed, the farther
an object is away/and or the smaller it is the more linear P
it is. A fish or a dear might find 2-D perspective odd...
Dogs and cats can still see out of one eye BTW.
> which is why folks from other cultures can't
> immediately read a picture using perspective - western perspective -
the
> Chinese had a different set of rules.
This is funny because I have no problem seeing what an Eastern
painting(like those done in india, tibet or China)
This can't be cross-cultural only one way unless our Western
way is more advanced and allows a reduction to Eastern(I doubt it
but it is a possibility I guess -but I really doubt it)
> As we learn this way of seeing
> when very young its probable that most people think that's how reality
> looks to everyone. The fact that a canvas is square makes it a window
on
> the world - you need the concept of a window to follow this -
> Your idea of a painting which needs no theory is like imagining a
> natural language which can be understood without being learnt first.
Hence DMT elves? I believe that there are no theories written to
explaine the work of Vermeer of Delft or Cecco del Carravaggio!
> Also certainly Duchamp - The Bride - In advance of a broken arm - The
> Fresh Widow - or LHOQQ requires theory in order to follow the work -
or
> see the joke -
LHOOQ needs only the french language (elle au chaud au cool(sp?) -
she is hot in the pants!))
Your point with regards to western or estern representation is a
profound ambiguity bordering on utter falsehood!
> > Mondrains main contribution to MAA is
> >the prelude to most kitsch interior design of the 60's and 70's.
> >Dali's style never made it into interrior design because everyone
> >could immitate it and thus found it unecessary to prove it.
> I thought he made a sofa?
Did you make that sofa TTP?
br...@wralaw.com
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> If you want to be a rebel - then get a gun not a brush.
No -that is thought conformity to a T. -Besides the brush
is even mightier than the pen!
A predictive mode of rebellion is conforming to cultural
expectation. My point with the "institutional rebellion
is pretitious conformity" was, and is, that the art
schools will never teach nonacedemic art ever! Now they
teach BS instead of Beaugereau's Style... In the worst
case senerio Historically people will look back and see a
switch from the loathsome insipid acedemic illustration to
the insipid academic design(on theoretical stilts) -when
the pretentious imagination poor of the ruling class finally
get tired of pretending they know what 'absolutely anything
modern' means -this work (and yes this too) shall pass.
James Whitehead
>lake <lakeNO...@plateautel.net.invalid>:
>| >| Non-representational painting is simply painting which focuses
>| >| exclusively on intention and method, attempting to by-pass subject
>| >| matter altogether. I think this is a very worthwhile and interesting
>| >| experiment. Don't you?
>
>G*rd*n <g...@panix.com> writes
>| >Obviously it failed. The audience caused the non-rep art to
>| >represent things, both individually and collectively.
>
>James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>| You assume it was done for an audience! bad move.
>
>Oh, I think not. The art we know about is the art done for
>an audience, because the artist shows it to us. And many of
>the abexers were obviously and _intensely_ in show biz.
>
produced when they do not.
Just because its later shown doesn't mean that its made for show - *art*
produced as such isn't art. (bold claim #1) I believe that many theories
are produced for an understanding of the world - you raise the whole
issue of why for instance the Buddha or Einstein didn't keep their
discoveries to themselves... that they didn't doesn't provide a
motivation for their search in the first place.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
>
interesting thought if we imagine being in an end - what would be see -
if we imagine history as a kind of film or story we have ourselves as a
separate absolute- we see the end - but to paraphrase Wittgenstein for
instance "death is not an event experienced in ones life - so death of
society might well look like po-mo.
all. As for dark ages - aren't these a critical tag - like the good -ole
days?
> Do you deny total annihilations?
> And what of the circular nature
> of time? Do we create time as the most fundamental aspect of our
> existence?
>
> Isn't the most fundamental aspect of art that it transcends time?
> I mean, that's how we know it's art, right? Ie. we know about it,
> so it must have transcended time.
to be involved.
>
> Did pomo destroy time?
This supposes that po-mo is something that acts - i think of it more of
a consequence of an action. It was modernity which did the destruction -
its self annihilation created po-mo. Whether you consider modernity as
being successful - or a failure it in effect 'says everything that can
be said' we can in po-mo criticise this - that's all we can do - but not
contribute to it. Philosophy, Art, History..... are modernist products -
all we can do is examine these - criticise history - rather than do it.
PO-MO art presents *old* artefacts po-mo philosophers discuss *old*
philosophies - they don't seem to be doing anything - as there is
nothing left to do. Like we are trying to work out if it was a good
party the morning after.
>
> Ned
>
>
>
>
>
--
James Whitehead
G*rd*n
|>|>| Non-representational painting is simply painting which focuses
|>|>| exclusively on intention and method, attempting to by-pass subject
|>|>| matter altogether. I think this is a very worthwhile and interesting
|>|>| experiment. Don't you?
G*rd*n <g...@panix.com> writes
| >| >Obviously it failed. The audience caused the non-rep art to
| >| >represent things, both individually and collectively.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
| >| You assume it was done for an audience! bad move.
G*rd*n <g...@panix.com> writes
| >Oh, I think not. The art we know about is the art done for
| >an audience, because the artist shows it to us. And many of
| >the abexers were obviously and _intensely_ in show biz.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
| When an artist works for the audience the work doesn't resemble the work
| produced when they do not.
How do you know, and how do you know that these two modes
are total and mutually exclusive?
| Just because its later shown doesn't mean that its made for show - *art*
| produced as such isn't art. (bold claim #1)
Bach, Homer, Shakespeare, Michelangelo weren't doing art?
| I believe that many theories
| are produced for an understanding of the world - you raise the whole
| issue of why for instance the Buddha or Einstein didn't keep their
| discoveries to themselves... that they didn't doesn't provide a
| motivation for their search in the first place.
Science and religion certainly have strong elements of show
biz in them. Science especially is a social enterprise
which requires one to get others interested in one's
results.
Ned Ludd
>
>> Do you deny ends?
>
> I suppose I have to in one way - never having seen one.
>
You don't count funerals?
> Its an interesting thought if we imagine being in an end - what would
> we see - if we imagine history as a kind of film or story we have
> ourselves as a separate absolute- we see the end - but to paraphrase
> Wittgenstein for instance "death is not an event experienced in ones
> life - so death of society might well look like po-mo.
Did he never have a loved-one die?
>> Do you deny 'dark ages' of centuries duration?
>
> History is a very interesting concept- which in reality doesn't exist
> at all. As for dark ages - aren't these a critical tag - like the
> good -ole days?
The end of an era. The loss of accumulated knowledge. A whole set
of social and religious rituals no longer performed (and probably
replaced by more crude and elementary forms of superstition).
>> Do you deny total annihilations?
>
> I suppose I could do.
Not too loudly, I hope.
>> And what of the circular nature of time? Do we create time as the
>> most fundamental aspect of our existence?
>
> I'm coming to not believe in time.
Goodness, you're starting to sound like just a dirty little nihilist.
>> Isn't the most fundamental aspect of art that it transcends time?
>> I mean, that's how we know it's art, right? Ie. we know about it,
>> so it must have transcended time.
>
> When I experience a work of art i experience it now - time doesn't seem
> to be involved.
With me, that only happens with jazz. By 'time' here, I was referring
to the vast amounts of beautiful literature, art, sculpture, music that
have been produced by individuals through the ages, kept by relatives
for, at most, a decade or so, and then thrown out in the trash, never
to be seen by more than a few (or no) other people. It's been asserted
that Bach fell into complete obscurity for a century and a half, and may
have stayed there forever were it not that his music was resurrected by
Mendelssohn. Imagine if there were no Bach?
>> Did pomo destroy time?
>
> This supposes that po-mo is something that acts - i think of it more of
> a consequence of an action. It was modernity which did the destruction -
> its self annihilation created po-mo. Whether you consider modernity as
> being successful - or a failure it in effect 'says everything that can
> be said' we can in po-mo criticise this - that's all we can do - but not
> contribute to it. Philosophy, Art, History..... are modernist products -
> all we can do is examine these - criticise history - rather than do it.
> PO-MO art presents *old* artefacts po-mo philosophers discuss *old*
> philosophies - they don't seem to be doing anything - as there is
> nothing left to do. Like we are trying to work out if it was a good
> party the morning after.
>
Does pomo get bored? Cycling endlessly through the artifacts of the past
sounds OK for a couple of centuries or so, but then what will pomo do?
Ned
John Haber
>The idea of *nothing* is something that Western man is largely incapable
>of contemplating.
Ever read the early Wallace Stevens poem, "The Snowman"? It's lovely.
Something like "one must have a mind of winter" to contemplate "the
nothing that is not there and the nothing that is."
John
god...@my-deja.com
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <87c53g$7n3$1...@nntp8.atl.mindspring.net>, Ned Ludd
> <ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
> > We had a pretty egregious failure of the most recent end of
> > history and time. (ie. Y2K) Is it inherent in postmodernism,
> > as you indicate, that nothing can evolve from it?
> The failure of the end (of time) is that perfect tautology - only a
> modernist could believe in the concept of *failure* or *end* its not
> happening proves the validity of po-mo -
I really dont see a proof here.
My experience with postmodernists is that there is almost no point
in asking for one, but if you care to feel free.
> which asserts this failure (of
> modernist concept of progress) and end.
Really modernism, and postmodernism, never truly existed the way
that communism never existed. Historically the Rennaissance didn't
happen in India, which is I think the point of some of this anyway.
> As this is also going out to rec.arts.fine - the whole idea of
creating
> requires time - which we have no longer got. So throws up the question
> what is art without time? (here (in terms of art) i'm optimistic!)
Art without time probably doesn't exist. What time is exactly hasn't
yet been established I think, but it seems to deal with energy flow
through space, causing space to change, the space of energy flow.
What we call foward time flow is a higher equalibrium, (lower entropy),
so in the future more things will fall then fly, and everything that
flies will fall unless it uses an abnormal amount of energy. -basically
Puss in Boots
>>>> Few can deny that Mondrian can leave an uninitiated onlooker
>>> >speechless. After all, what is there to really say here?
And later Mani also writes:
> >What counts is what's on the wall.
You say that regularly -- at least regularly enough for me
to notice in the posts which drift into alt.pomo. And
everytime you say it, you contradict yourself. Last time, as I
recall, you were on about imitation, claiming a painting
couldn't be "great art" if anyone could copy it -- an idea that
was drivel by your own definition, since it was just a story
about the painting -- not a judgment about what was on the wall.
Now you say again "What counts is what's on the wall," and
again you're contradicting yourself: above you imply you
judge the painting by its ability to generate stories -- not by
what you see in front of you -- and below you say:
> >It ain't art if nobody is interested in it.
That's a sociological criterion. Once again you choose to
ignore what's on the wall in favor of something else -- in
this case the interest which people do or don't have in a given
painting.
Even your .sig contradicts you. You sign off "...no skill
no art," which yet again sets aside what's on the wall and
focuses somewhere else entirely: this time on a story ("drivel"
is what you'd usually call it) about the way in which a
painting is created. So you measure a painting by what you can
say about it, by the interest it creates, and by the means
used to produce it: anything and everything _except_ what's in
front of you.
-- Moggin
Puss in Boots
> BTW, anyone who hasn't come across the term 'detournment' it is from Guy
> Debord, and speaks the the semantic warpage that occurs when an object
> such as a soup can is moved from the supermarket to the art gallery.
More accurately, it refers to the act by which one removes
an object -- image, text, what-have-you -- from one context
and puts it down somewhere different. (Cf. "appropriation" and
Brecht's _Umfunktionierung_.)
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
>lake <lakeNO...@plateautel.net.invalid>:
>|>|>| Non-representational painting is simply painting which focuses
>|>|>| exclusively on intention and method, attempting to by-pass subject
>|>|>| matter altogether. I think this is a very worthwhile and interesting
>|>|>| experiment. Don't you?
>
>G*rd*n <g...@panix.com> writes
>| >| >Obviously it failed. The audience caused the non-rep art to
>| >| >represent things, both individually and collectively.
>
>James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>| >| You assume it was done for an audience! bad move.
>
>G*rd*n <g...@panix.com> writes
>| >Oh, I think not. The art we know about is the art done for
>| >an audience, because the artist shows it to us. And many of
>| >the abexers were obviously and _intensely_ in show biz.
>
>James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>| When an artist works for the audience the work doesn't resemble the work
>| produced when they do not.
>
>How do you know, and how do you know that these two modes
>are total and mutually exclusive?
>
sense knowing the actual facts is probably impossible to prove. But say
in the visual arts if you here a painter talking they talk about (or did
talk about) their wish to explore form, or colour or paint. You can
contrast this to a graphic artist whose job is to communicate a message.
In the case of the older artists you mention - and say portrait painters
- then the two might be conflated- but what makes a Rembrandt art is not
the audience - or the subject. So i guess the same with Shakespeare. Its
not the plot of Romeo and Juliet that makes it good literature but the
method Shakespeare uses - its formalism. That is a definition i would
be happy with - an alternative would elevate a Big Mac and Coke as the
height of culinary art - but though i enjoy junk food - its still junk.
(I've tasted better - now is a *** chef concerned with the audience -
even here where you would think so - the chefs art lies in the formalism
of cooking the food - not with the ability to please an audience.)
Perhaps po-mo is replacing this formalism with other things - including
mass-appeal, may-be in po-mo Disney is as good - better than Shakespeare
- Robbie Williams? better than Bach. I find however when po-mo tries to
come up with some *alternative* criteria its either being deliberately
ironic - (untruthful) or aping modernist theory.
>| produced as such isn't art. (bold claim #1)
>
>Bach, Homer, Shakespeare, Michelangelo weren't doing art?
purging of these other things - or realisation they were no longer
required.
>| I believe that many theories
>| are produced for an understanding of the world - you raise the whole
>| issue of why for instance the Buddha or Einstein didn't keep their
>| discoveries to themselves... that they didn't doesn't provide a
>| motivation for their search in the first place.
>
>Science and religion certainly have strong elements of show
>biz in them. Science especially is a social enterprise
>which requires one to get others interested in one's
>results.
by the way of funding - if it does impinge on the practice it eventually
distorts and destroys its validity- for instance the so called science
of the Nazi's on race. Scientists in the past - notably Einstein did
their work without government funding- funding is not a factor in the
formalism - or if it becomes so - as i say above - destroys the
practice.
Its perhaps disingenuous to describe the Buddha as a show biz
phenomenon. A critique of the TV Evangelist is that they are being
somehow hypercritical - not *really* religious.
(Whether Religion is opium for the people or of the people -
makes a difference.) If science was show biz we could decide on the
*facts* of science like a TV talent show - in which case classical
determinism would see off QM no problem - with QM the audience just
wouldn't get the punch line. :-)
But maybe science - *now* - has become just this ...........
--
James Whitehead
Erik A. Mattila
I guess what I'm trying to express is at least my suspicion that Kandinsky's
'appropriation' of Ukranian decoration for the use of conceiving
non-objective painting is something different from Warhol's 'detournment' of
supermarket items - along the lines that modernist strategies are different
from postmodernist strategies.
Certainly several components of the 'act' itself are similar, but I'm
wondering if the 'whole potato' is different. Maybe we could say that
Kandinsky's was 'appropriation' and "Warhol's" was 'bricolage.'
I'm not familiar with "Umfunktionierung" at all. Care to comment?
Erik Mattila
Puss in Boots
>>> BTW, anyone who hasn't come across the term 'detournment' it is from Guy
>>> Debord, and speaks the the semantic warpage that occurs when an object
>>> such as a soup can is moved from the supermarket to the art gallery.
mog...@mindspring.com (Puss in Boots):
>> More accurately, it refers to the act by which one removes
>> an object -- image, text, what-have-you -- from one context
>> and puts it down somewhere different. (Cf. "appropriation" and
>> Brecht's _Umfunktionierung_.)
Erik:
> I guess what I'm trying to express is at least my suspicion that Kandinsky's
> 'appropriation' of Ukranian decoration for the use of conceiving
> non-objective painting is something different from Warhol's 'detournment' of
> supermarket items - along the lines that modernist strategies are different
> from postmodernist strategies.
No question, although it's a blurry line, to say the least.
It wouldn't even have occured to me to talk about Kandinsky
that way, in part because I didn't know anything about Ukranian
decor (still don't, unless you'd count my grandmother's
apartment, which you shouldn't), and also because
"appropriation" and "detournement" both say more than borrowing
or even theft (good poets borrow, great poets...) One takes
an image or a phrase and force it to detour out of its original
context into one of your own choosing. You'll maybe reply
that's exactly what Kandinsky did. But was it the point of the
exercise?
> Certainly several components of the 'act' itself are similar, but I'm
> wondering if the 'whole potato' is different. Maybe we could say that
> Kandinsky's was 'appropriation' and "Warhol's" was 'bricolage.'
I don't see calling the soup can "bricolage" any more than
"collage." Kandinsky, I dunno. Literally -- I just don't
know the story. From what you said, he did sure enough
appropriate Ukranian decoration; but the result was an entirely
new and different thing, not just a commentary on interior
decorating Ukranian-style. Detournement is more than borrowing
cultural artifacts: it's a strategy one applies to them.
> I'm not familiar with "Umfunktionierung" at all. Care to comment?
Brecht and Benjamin both used the term, which is cousin to
the others we're talking about (although it's harder to spell
than the two of them combined). Basically means refashioning a
given item: appropriating the past to create the future,
which is to say the revolution. Not that it came, but that's a
different story.
-- Moggin
Erik A. Mattila
> No question, although it's a blurry line, to say the least.
> It wouldn't even have occured to me to talk about Kandinsky
> that way, in part because I didn't know anything about Ukranian
> decor (still don't, unless you'd count my grandmother's
> apartment, which you shouldn't), and also because
> "appropriation" and "detournement" both say more than borrowing
> or even theft (good poets borrow, great poets...) One takes
> an image or a phrase and force it to detour out of its original
> context into one of your own choosing. You'll maybe reply
> that's exactly what Kandinsky did. But was it the point of the
> exercise?
Well, Moggin, I'm really overstating the case to say, or suggest, Kandinsky
'appropriated.' At some point in this thread I realized I was inching
out on a
limb. But at any rate, so the story goes (and this is more or less how Kandinsky
explained his invention in his writings) like this.
After the Revolution Kandinsky left Germany (dumping his girlfriend, a really
remarkable artist, in my opinion -- Gabriele Munter) to return to Russia
and cash
in on the actual 'art jobs' that were created under the first Soviet arts
programs. He got a job cataloging Russian folk art, and was sent to the Crimea.
There he 'discovered' the people lavishly decorated their home interiors
- an old
tradition. Later, he claimed to have secured the inspiration for abstract
(non-objective) painting from this experience. He said being in one of those
homes was like 'being inside a painting.' So you can't say that Kandinsky
'appropriated' exotic art in the same sense that Picasso appropriated African
carvings.
But the actual painting of the first 'non-objective' painting is just
one thing
(and of course humans have been creating non-objective art since the
days of the
first chicken-scratces) but the next, important, step is to legitimize
it as a
work of art in culture. To tell you the truth, I missed that part in my own
studies -- I mean what happened when Kandinsky's abstract paintings hit the
streets and were reviewed etc. But I don't think it was terribly controversial,
and I would guess the previous 'isms' (cubism, fauvism, futurism etc.)
paved the
way to the degree that a complete non-objective painting wasn't that shocking.
Maybe someone on RAF or AP knows about this particular niche of art history.
> > Certainly several components of the 'act' itself are similar, but I'm
> > wondering if the 'whole potato' is different. Maybe we could say that
> > Kandinsky's was 'appropriation' and "Warhol's" was 'bricolage.'
>
> I don't see calling the soup can "bricolage" any more than
> "collage." Kandinsky, I dunno. Literally -- I just don't
> know the story. From what you said, he did sure enough
> appropriate Ukranian decoration; but the result was an entirely
> new and different thing, not just a commentary on interior
> decorating Ukranian-style. Detournement is more than borrowing
> cultural artifacts: it's a strategy one applies to them.
I think on the level of the 'seme' there is a great difference. Max
Earnst could
clip and paste from old commercial line engravings and build a patterned
composition that 'spoke' something that was never intended by the source
material. Take an image of St. Sebastian riddled with arrows and paste
into a
screen-shot of a John Wayne movie, "The Comancheros," and the 'semes' migrate
wildly. On the other hand, the image of the soup can is so
over-determined (as
in the advertising message) that it forever retains its 'soup-canicity' wherever
it ends up. It is the banality of the banal. So in a sense what you
say is
exactly correct, it is 'empty.' But the art industry is a machine that always
does something, grind out meaning incessantly. By placing the empthness
there it
can only grind out its own meaning - I mean it has to look at itself as a
wellspring of meaning. Warhol's significance then is simply raising the
issue of
what a work of art is in the first place. "Meaning" is no longer contained
within the constraints of the four corners of the face of the work, separated
from the world by its edges.
> > I'm not familiar with "Umfunktionierung" at all. Care to comment?
>
> Brecht and Benjamin both used the term, which is cousin to
> the others we're talking about (although it's harder to spell
> than the two of them combined). Basically means refashioning a
> given item: appropriating the past to create the future,
> which is to say the revolution. Not that it came, but that's a
> different story.
I see (I wonder how it translates - I've read some translations of Benjamin).
But Benjamin also toyed around with the idea of "Ur forms" in his Arcades
collection. Although I've not been able to grasp what "Ur forms" are, I
have a
sense of what he was driving at (via Buck-Morss' book). Sort of forms that
appear in an age that are not translatable, that more or less speak
their own
terms (the wrought-iron works of the Paris Arcades). I think the Pop
Art images
are of this class.
But hell, I remember seeing an image, Lichtenstein I think it was, of a
can of
Spam with a jet-trail flying through space, when Pop Art was happening.
I liked
Pop Art after that, because I thought the painting was really funny.
But I
remember thinking how strange that such an image could be hung in the
brand new
Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art. In spite of the humor, it seemed a
bit out of
place. The "Op Art" there simply made me dizzy and naseous, and I don't remember
seeing any of the miminalist pieces, as we would expect.
Erik
James Whitehead
>In article <d$ggZOAxQ...@jliat.demon.co.uk>,
> James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> In article <87c53g$7n3$1...@nntp8.atl.mindspring.net>, Ned Ludd
>> <ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
>
>> > We had a pretty egregious failure of the most recent end of
>> > history and time. (ie. Y2K) Is it inherent in postmodernism,
>> > as you indicate, that nothing can evolve from it?
>
>> The failure of the end (of time) is that perfect tautology - only a
>> modernist could believe in the concept of *failure* or *end* its not
>> happening proves the validity of po-mo -
>
>I really dont see a proof here.
speak)
>
>My experience with postmodernists is that there is almost no point
>in asking for one, but if you care to feel free.
that's true - but aren't we all postmodernists - I don't see it as a
choice -
>
>> which asserts this failure (of
>> modernist concept of progress) and end.
>
>Really modernism, and postmodernism, never truly existed the way
>that communism never existed. Historically the Rennaissance didn't
>happen in India, which is I think the point of some of this anyway.
The above is pure po-mo.
>
>> As this is also going out to rec.arts.fine - the whole idea of
>creating
>> requires time - which we have no longer got. So throws up the question
>> what is art without time? (here (in terms of art) i'm optimistic!)
>
>Art without time probably doesn't exist. What time is exactly hasn't
>yet been established I think, but it seems to deal with energy flow
>through space, causing space to change, the space of energy flow.
>What we call foward time flow is a higher equalibrium, (lower entropy),
>so in the future more things will fall then fly, and everything that
>flies will fall unless it uses an abnormal amount of energy. -basically
>
You seem to have an absolute idea of what time is - or could be - I
think time is more just a coincidence.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
>James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:Omf0vJAM...@jliat.demon.co.uk...
>>
>>> Do you deny ends?
>>
>> I suppose I have to in one way - never having seen one.
>>
>
> You don't count funerals?
>> Its an interesting thought if we imagine being in an end - what would
>> we see - if we imagine history as a kind of film or story we have
>> ourselves as a separate absolute- we see the end - but to paraphrase
>> Wittgenstein for instance "death is not an event experienced in ones
>> life - so death of society might well look like po-mo.
>
> Did he never have a loved-one die?
dying. The actual experience of a loved-ones death is anything but final
- I had arguments with my mother for years after her death - trying to
convince her that she actually had died of cancer. (It was a recurring
dream)
>>> Do you deny 'dark ages' of centuries duration?
>>
>> History is a very interesting concept- which in reality doesn't exist
>> at all. As for dark ages - aren't these a critical tag - like the
>> good -ole days?
>
> The end of an era. The loss of accumulated knowledge. A whole set
> of social and religious rituals no longer performed (and probably
> replaced by more crude and elementary forms of superstition).
Empty museums - libraries - blank newspapers - no history or science -
and begin the whole thing afresh - a missed opportunity I think.
>>> Do you deny total annihilations?
>>
>> I suppose I could do.
>
> Not too loudly, I hope.
>
>>> And what of the circular nature of time? Do we create time as the
>>> most fundamental aspect of our existence?
>>
>> I'm coming to not believe in time.
>
> Goodness, you're starting to sound like just a dirty little nihilist.
despite the fact I find them to short)
>
>>> Isn't the most fundamental aspect of art that it transcends time?
>>> I mean, that's how we know it's art, right? Ie. we know about it,
>>> so it must have transcended time.
>>
>> When I experience a work of art i experience it now - time doesn't seem
>> to be involved.
>
> With me, that only happens with jazz. By 'time' here, I was referring
> to the vast amounts of beautiful literature, art, sculpture, music that
> have been produced by individuals through the ages, kept by relatives
> for, at most, a decade or so, and then thrown out in the trash, never
> to be seen by more than a few (or no) other people. It's been asserted
> that Bach fell into complete obscurity for a century and a half, and may
> have stayed there forever were it not that his music was resurrected by
> Mendelssohn. Imagine if there were no Bach?
exhibition was always dressing in that you felt - 'dam the bastard!'
>>> Did pomo destroy time?
>>
>> This supposes that po-mo is something that acts - i think of it more of
>> a consequence of an action. It was modernity which did the destruction -
>> its self annihilation created po-mo. Whether you consider modernity as
>> being successful - or a failure it in effect 'says everything that can
>> be said' we can in po-mo criticise this - that's all we can do - but not
>> contribute to it. Philosophy, Art, History..... are modernist products -
>> all we can do is examine these - criticise history - rather than do it.
>> PO-MO art presents *old* artefacts po-mo philosophers discuss *old*
>> philosophies - they don't seem to be doing anything - as there is
>> nothing left to do. Like we are trying to work out if it was a good
>> party the morning after.
>>
>
> Does pomo get bored? Cycling endlessly through the artifacts of the past
> sounds OK for a couple of centuries or so, but then what will pomo do?
I think it does get bored to the point of insanity.
>
> Ned
>
>
>
>
--
James Whitehead
Gerry Quinn
> Imagine if there were no Bach?
>
It would be as if there were no Znork.
- Gerry Quinn
Dan Fox
Randomness in Abstract Painting,' by Meyer Shapiro. It
appears in 'Modern Art:19th and 20th Centuries (Selected Papers,
Vol. II)' (George Braziller,Inc. New York: 1982). This essay also appears
in a later book, 'Mondrian: On the Humanity of Abstract Painting', by the
same publisher, 1995. Both are probably available at bibliofind.com or
abe.com.
hug...@interlog.com (mdeli) wrote:
> On Wed, 02 Feb 2000 18:51:21 GMT, br...@wralaw.com wrote:
>
> > Mondrains main contribution to MAA is
> >the prelude to most kitsch interior design of the 60's and 70's.
>
> I don't believe Mondrian influenced much of anything in art or design.
> Mondrian's influenced the show biz aspect of art.
<snip>
--
Dan
'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.' - Blake
http://www.danfoxart.com
mdeli
Boots) wrote:
I made three separate statements.
What counts is what's on the wall.
It ain't art if no one is interested in it.
No skill no art.
I know its torture for POMOs to write clearly but if you expect
anyone, even a card carrying POMO to understand you, you'd better try.
Your convoluted POMO reasoning below is ridicules.
Mani DeLi
...no skill no art
Tired of Modern Art? Check out my web page!
http://www.interlog.com/~hugod/
br...@wralaw.com
danf...@yahoo.com(Dan Fox) wrote:
> For an excellent analysis of Mondrian's work, see 'Mondrian: Order and
> Randomness in Abstract Painting,'
I think to a certain extent Abstract Artists were hoping to bypass
word-related realities by removing nominal entities(representations)
all together. It is possible that reading such a text(considering
the dostoevskian length of it) would remove such boundaries entirely
and make Mondrians Abstraction more into a religion than a body
of Abstract Paintings... ? An illustration of post-hoc texts, -I
doubt it.
For a fresh look at abstract art try looking at bath towells,
oriental carpets, anything that isnt presumably(prejudicially)
profound(unless you are Persian).
> 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.' - Blake
Bryn
br...@wralaw.com
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <87fn5q$vno$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, god...@my-deja.com writes
> >> The failure of the end (of time) is that perfect tautology - only a
> >> modernist could believe in the concept of *failure* or *end* its
not
> >> happening proves the validity of po-mo -
> >I really dont see a proof here.
> If po-mo asserts something it becomes modernist. (I.e. the dead can't
> speak)
This is a casual statement() not an expansion of proof(a conclusion)
> >My experience with postmodernists is that there is almost no point
> >in asking for one, but if you care to feel free.
> that's true - but aren't we all postmodernists - I don't see it as a
> choice -
If the clocks are conspiring against us then whatever we do no
matter what we will never cease to be Modern(or postmodern or
postpostmodern or postpostpost-modern ... post^Nmodern n==infinity
++; while=1())... If time is our capture then we
really do have time to kill.
> >> which asserts this failure (of
> >> modernist concept of progress) and end.
> >Really modernism, and postmodernism, never truly existed the way
> >that communism never existed. Historically the Rennaissance didn't
> >happen in India, which is I think the point of some of this anyway.
> The above is pure po-mo.
Exactly my point! And so are melted Watches, if you believe in them.
But ironically po-mo is generally a tangental classification(an
overdramatization) of something else entirelly.
Time slows down when your having fun...
> >> As this is also going out to rec.arts.fine - the whole idea of
> >creating
> >> requires time - which we have no longer got. So throws up the
question
> >> what is art without time? (here (in terms of art) i'm optimistic!)
> >Art without time probably doesn't exist. What time is exactly hasn't
> >yet been established I think, but it seems to deal with energy flow
> >through space, causing space to change, the space of energy flow.
> >What we call foward time flow is a higher equalibrium, (lower
entropy),
> >so in the future more things will fall then fly, and everything that
> >flies will fall unless it uses an abnormal amount of energy. -
basically
> You seem to have an absolute idea of what time is - or could be - I
> think time is more just a coincidence.
I think that perception of time or the primal state of time itself
may be just a coincidence -in either the sense of Quantum Physics
or Evolution of Conscienceness Hypothesis. But I do think that
according to Einstein absolute time is volume, but according to
Hawkings its cold.
Have you ever witnessed time to slow down or go backwards?
I equate time as percieved memory and change. Easily universal
objective absolute and trancendant, without hyper-objective
time there is no pomo. I reject hyper-objective time in favor
or statically valid time probability, I especially deny(sub-
culture defined time as hyper-objective) but pomo 'exists'
were and when it is thought to however it is difficult to
say pomo and exists at the same time.
> James Whitehead
Erik A. Mattila
> Its perhaps disingenuous to describe the Buddha as a show biz
> phenomenon. A critique of the TV Evangelist is that they are being
> somehow hypercritical - not *really* religious.
> (Whether Religion is opium for the people or of the people -
> makes a difference.) If science was show biz we could decide on the
> *facts* of science like a TV talent show - in which case classical
> determinism would see off QM no problem - with QM the audience just
> wouldn't get the punch line. :-)
But wasn't this the critical point Monty Python was making in "Life of Brian?"
(Religion as show biz)
"What'd 'e say?"
"'e said 'the Greek will inherit the earth!"
Erik Mattila
James Whitehead
>In article <uwYcaMAQj$m4E...@jliat.demon.co.uk>,
> James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> In article <87fn5q$vno$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, god...@my-deja.com writes
>
>> >> The failure of the end (of time) is that perfect tautology - only a
>> >> modernist could believe in the concept of *failure* or *end* its
>not
>> >> happening proves the validity of po-mo -
>
>> >I really dont see a proof here.
>
>> If po-mo asserts something it becomes modernist. (I.e. the dead can't
>> speak)
>
>This is a casual statement() not an expansion of proof(a conclusion)
>
>
>> >My experience with postmodernists is that there is almost no point
>> >in asking for one, but if you care to feel free.
>
>> that's true - but aren't we all postmodernists - I don't see it as a
>> choice -
>
>If the clocks are conspiring against us then whatever we do no
>matter what we will never cease to be Modern(or postmodern or
>postpostmodern or postpostpost-modern ... post^Nmodern n==infinity
>++; while=1())... If time is our capture then we
>really do have time to kill.
matter - like your birth or country of birth - we are post-modern.
>
>> >> which asserts this failure (of
>> >> modernist concept of progress) and end.
>
>> >Really modernism, and postmodernism, never truly existed the way
>> >that communism never existed. Historically the Rennaissance didn't
>> >happen in India, which is I think the point of some of this anyway.
>
>> The above is pure po-mo.
>
>Exactly my point! And so are melted Watches,
melted watches are Dali tricks - and belong to the 1920s -
>if you believe in them.
>But ironically po-mo is generally a tangental classification(an
>overdramatization) of something else entirelly.
ummm - more a label which has become no object.
>
>Time slows down when your having fun...
I experience the reverse - when the dentist says this will just take two
minutes - it lasts forever. If time is just experienced events the more
one does the faster time goes.
>
>> >> As this is also going out to rec.arts.fine - the whole idea of
>> >creating
>> >> requires time - which we have no longer got. So throws up the
>question
>> >> what is art without time? (here (in terms of art) i'm optimistic!)
>
>> >Art without time probably doesn't exist. What time is exactly hasn't
>> >yet been established I think, but it seems to deal with energy flow
>> >through space, causing space to change, the space of energy flow.
>> >What we call foward time flow is a higher equalibrium, (lower
>entropy),
>> >so in the future more things will fall then fly, and everything that
>> >flies will fall unless it uses an abnormal amount of energy. -
>basically
>
>> You seem to have an absolute idea of what time is - or could be - I
>> think time is more just a coincidence.
>
>I think that perception of time or the primal state of time itself
>may be just a coincidence -in either the sense of Quantum Physics
>or Evolution of Conscienceness Hypothesis. But I do think that
>according to Einstein absolute time is volume, but according to
>Hawkings its cold.
>
>Have you ever witnessed time to slow down or go backwards?
I've never witnessed time - just events - and these occur at intervals
which are fairly random.
>
>I equate time as percieved memory and change. Easily universal
>objective absolute and trancendant, without hyper-objective
>time there is no pomo. I reject hyper-objective time in favor
>or statically valid time probability, I especially deny(sub-
>culture defined time as hyper-objective) but pomo 'exists'
>were and when it is thought to however it is difficult to
>say pomo and exists at the same time.
The only rub here is what or how you perceive change - as if now I can
have a perception of then- all states are only ever present in the now.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<emat...@tomatoweb.com> writes
church - with backing from George Harrison - maybe I'd be more impressed
with an Islamic version.
--
James Whitehead
lake
Lake
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br...@wralaw.com
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <87j32v$7ao$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, br...@wralaw.com writes
> >If the clocks are conspiring against us then whatever we do no
> >matter what we will never cease to be Modern(or postmodern or
> >postpostmodern or postpostpost-modern ... post^Nmodern n==infinity
> >++; while=1())... If time is our capture then we
> >really do have time to kill.
> I was really just saying that as The Victorians had no choice in the
> matter - like your birth or country of birth - we are post-modern.
postpostpostpostpostvictorian
> >> >Really modernism, and postmodernism, never truly existed the way
> >> >that communism never existed. Historically the Rennaissance
didn't
> >> >happen in India, which is I think the point of some of this
anyway.
> >> The above is pure po-mo.
> >Exactly my point! And so are melted Watches,
> melted watches are Dali tricks - and belong to the 1920s -
The expectation of profundity is a modern 'Ideal' which proves
Dali's postmodernity even in the 1930's. However Dali lived
into the 1970's and 80's and painted more paintings in every
decade than the 20's-30's. Dali's works in the 40',50's,60's
70's and 80's are clearly examples of stylistic appropriation
one of the best examples being 'rome is burning' where an image
from a wall in St. Peters by Raphael(rome on fire) is copied
by Dali using the style of impressionism while large squares of
color(mondrian like) are blocking out large portions of the
scene... Nearly every other work by Dali in this era is both
stylistically and visually appropriation, many of his early
works are indicative of this.
> >if you believe in them.
> >But ironically po-mo is generally a tangental classification(an
> >overdramatization) of something else entirelly.
> ummm - more a label which has become no object.
Surrealism and Postmodernism come from the same coffee houses in
Paris, the same coffee, the same drugs. Dali was there, I've
only been there briefly, I imagine you haven't.
> >Time slows down when your having fun...
> I experience the reverse - when the dentist says this will just take
two
> minutes - it lasts forever. If time is just experienced events the
more
> one does the faster time goes.
Time slows down -look around-
> The only rub here is what or how you perceive change - as if now I can
> have a perception of then- all states are only ever present in the
now.
and nonobjective time therefore the end of history.
G*rd*n
| Art and its audience are like the horse and its cart.
You could say that. If the horse doesn't pull the cart, he
may not get fed. It's not an empty cart you've got there.
James Whitehead
>
>Surrealism and Postmodernism come from the same coffee houses in
>Paris, the same coffee, the same drugs. Dali was there, I've
>only been there briefly, I imagine you haven't.
>
--
James Whitehead
br...@wralaw.com
lake
meaning is not readily explicable, but its influence is profound. When
you speak of "edible" or "threatening" art, you are indulging in the
late-20th-century pastime of confusing boundaries, where painting
pretends to be theater, or cuisine, or whatever. People are getting
tired of this game.
lake
was far more complex than "representation". But they didn't have the
vocabulary to explain it. We still haven't established that vocabulary,
but we're working on it. "Abstract" art is the most important aspect of
this attempt, though it has been obscured by shoddy criticism.
lake
had remarkable effects, and it is on-going, it is a continuing
experiment. Maybe not in the eyes of the critics and the media, with
their "painting is dead" bullshit, but in the soul and studio of every
true painter, the flame of non-representational art burns as bright as
ever.
G*rd*n
| The experiment of non-representational art did not fail. It has already
| had remarkable effects, and it is on-going, it is a continuing
| experiment. Maybe not in the eyes of the critics and the media, with
| their "painting is dead" bullshit, but in the soul and studio of every
| true painter, the flame of non-representational art burns as bright as
| ever.
As I've pointed out often enough, it's also rather popular
in malls, thrift stores, and flea markets. Non-rep art
tends to do well as decor. If the colors are right it'll
go over the couch without making trouble. Another popular
area for its exploration, albeit in somewhat limited form,
has been body art -- fingernail painting and tattooing.
--
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
{ http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 2/4/00 }
Marilyn Welch
No, not dead, resurrected, and flourishing...
In the new "Flash" Magazine, there is a page describing the
epidemic of painting followed by a feature article on painting
today. No, not dead.
Marilyn
On Wed, 9 Feb 2000, lake wrote:
> The experiment of non-representational art did not fail. It has already
> had remarkable effects, and it is on-going, it is a continuing
> experiment. Maybe not in the eyes of the critics and the media, with
> their "painting is dead" bullshit, but in the soul and studio of every
> true painter, the flame of non-representational art burns as bright as
> ever.
James Whitehead
<lakeNO...@plateautel.net.invalid> writes
>The experiment of non-representational art did not fail. It has already
>had remarkable effects, and it is on-going, it is a continuing
>experiment. Maybe not in the eyes of the critics and the media, with
>their "painting is dead" bullshit, but in the soul and studio of every
>true painter, the flame of non-representational art burns as bright as
>ever.
still (just) alive. :-)
--
James Whitehead
John Haber
group can be. I can't resist quoting myself a good couple of years
ago now, from a review:
>Put me out of my misery!
>Postmodernism is starting to sound dangerously like modern medicine,
>only without hope of assisted suicide. Painting is dead; SoHo is dead;
>abstraction is dead; American art is dead. Or they will be, any minute
>now -- right?
>For decade after decade, the death announcements keep on coming.
>With Robert Hughes, they have even made it to prime-time TV. And
>still the painful case of modern art drags on. An underrated show of
>contemporary abstraction demonstrates why: in painting at its best,
>nothing is ever resolved.
Since then, I wouldn't go so far as to say there's been a
ressurection, in part because death wasn't the right word in the first
place, in part because without question art at present does not often
recognize traditional genres as isolated from one another.
Photography flourishes, but often as involved with performance or
appropriation. The bulk of the shows I've seen recently wallow in
chaotic installations.
But then doesn't that mean that the conservative worry about this evil
modern art (abstraction) is so remote from reality in any event that
I'm trying to think of why I'm replying, other than moodiness. :)
In addition, since that review, several of the most interesting and
well-publicized shows have been either by people known as painters
(Frank Stella, say) or wrapped up in painting. Jenny Saville's
wall-sized nudes got the best reviews of her career, deservedly so. I
can't help thinking the turds and 60s-looking curves in Chris Ofili's
work are part of a fascination with the loaded brush. I'm drawing a
dumb blank this second, late Friday afternoon, but who's the woman
with little cartoon figures in the midst of big abstractions who's got
criticized recently for going back to abstract expressionism?!
There are lots of "returns," if you will: It might be relevant in its
own way that Richard Serra's huge installation is the closest in his
career to traditional sculpture, by abolishing the Minimalist sense of
scale that allowed a person and work to interact as equals.
And if members of this forum still enjoy painting, I wouldn't give up
the work of certain of them for anything, let me tell you.
John
John Haber
the most interesting things related to an analysis of Modernism. It's
funny to think of it as retro criticism, when it's so often a part of
the postmodernist assault. Hal Foster has argued that the
appropriations art of the late 1980s/early 1990s (such as Sherrie
Levine) is superior to the first wave of it (Dada) because it has the
benefits of the first with a self-awareness of the limits of the
concept of an avant-garde. Besides, one tends to find that Modernism
was so self-conscious and so many artists involved with work that
stresses themselves, the here, and the now, that it's hard not to
admire the first wave for anticipating all our questions.
In the end, this idiotic conservatism that dominates this news group
outside of a handful of names I look forward to is just the arts side
of the reactionary political charge. You know, see, revolution was a
failure, so forget political change and political, economic, or
intellectual empowerment. We who ran the dark satanic mills knew
better all along. I'd say spare me, but if the tired art view is
losing, forcing the nut cases to come to news groups like this, apart
from the art world, in politics the case isn't so clear. I'm not
looking foward to the elections.
John
Kay
John Haber wrote:
(snip)
: In addition, since that review, several of the most interesting and
: well-publicized shows have been either by people known as painters
: (Frank Stella, say) or wrapped up in painting. Jenny Saville's
: wall-sized nudes got the best reviews of her career, deservedly so. I
: can't help thinking the turds and 60s-looking curves in Chris Ofili's
: work are part of a fascination with the loaded brush. I'm drawing a
: dumb blank this second, late Friday afternoon, but who's the woman
: with little cartoon figures in the midst of big abstractions who's got
: criticized recently for going back to abstract expressionism?!
Sue Williams? Just a guess. She used to do cartoony penises and now does
primarily abstraction.
Kay
: And if members of this forum still enjoy painting, I wouldn't give up
John Haber
Well, last part is not really abstract! I've run out of steam in time
for two artists in another vein, photography as performance. As if
conspiring, the two, one American and one British, are women with
hyphenated names on display in Chelsea. I don't think any shows have
got more attention in New York right now, and I think they've both
earned some careful scrutiny.
At Lombard-Fried, Deborah Mesa-Pelly uses close-ups to make her female
subjects seem trapped in tight spaces. They could be crawling through
tunnels of leaves or basement furnace rooms. As this suggests, the
scenes always feel even more confined from their placement far from
urban and suburban America. They and the jagged compositions could
have come out of the Blair Witch Project.
The heavy backlighting increases both the sensation of entrapment and
the aura of performance. For one thing, it emphasizes the contrast
between the drab background colors and the woman's bright clothing:
she does not fit in. The clothing, typically an orange hood, I
understand refers to road-safety colors but in practice confines the
subject further. The lighting also typically traces a think white
line around her, so artificial that I mistook it for a trace of photo
manipulation, as if she had been plopped into photos rather than
performed in them.
Critics have imagined the woman as in an act of escape. She could
equally well be trapped there for good. The scenes, self-consciously,
suggest narrative but exhibit none. Gender reference are all there:
the woman as the thing seen in a horror movie, the woman as artist
acting our her own future, the woman as a performance, a construction.
Does all this add up to more than a pile of references to contemporary
trends, like a resume? I am not certain, but I enjoyed the show and
would like to see more. She will be in an endless show of emerging
artists soon at P.S. 1, so I guess I'll get my chance.
Last, Sam Taylor-Wood gets the biggest show of all, at both Matthew
Marks's spaces. One puts maybe five-foot photos of single figures
over a second frame. The lower horizontal holds extra-wide-angle
panoramas, the kind with conflicting perspective lines leading in all
directions.
The top figure, quite as much as one of Mesa-Pelly's, is staged never
moves. He may be tossing in a dream or standing furtively in a
street. While most are indeed men, one dark-haired woman lies in
front of a small, tilted mirror, her pose, beautifully slim body, and
setting all taken from Ingres. The bottom scenes, like their
perspective, split wildly. A dozen standing figures could be engaging
in athletically challenging sex acts.
If the top figures are immobile or even asleep, t is tempting to think
of the bottom ones as their dreams. One could think of the top as the
ego, the bottom as the id. If so, I am sorely tempted to think of the
sheer size of these photos as identifying the artist herself with the
superego, sternly chiding us for our interest and belief in their
sincerity. I am not sure I enjoyed them.
The other gallery holds one video work, filling a dark room with a
loud party. The half-dozen screens, of irregular size and even more
irregular use of close-ups, force one to find the party more than a
little discomforting. One struggles to make out a single word above
the music. One struggles to turn away from the bottles of booze, a
long-haired woman's frenetic dance, the sad, stoic, half-sober stares
on two much older faces. As with the first gallery, I found the work
more than a little fascinating but disliked feeling chided for
interest I had not shown in the first place.
John
John Haber
getting some mammothly poor reviews but on the tip of my tongue Friday
afternoon, I meant Cecily Brown. Can I use that and the excuse of
wanting to communicate a little again with you all to write some? It
worked: it got me this morning to get 1300 free-form, unedited words
on paper. I'll break it in three parts
The reviews speak of her as retreating into Abstract Expressionism, as
if one could slip into THAT so easily (or be ashamed of discovering
time travel). I am not so sure she is abandoning the promise of
safely ironic distance as rejoicing in it, like pulling the pillows
around her to watch late-night TV.
As I made my way through SoHo one afternoon, a woman was lamenting to
another: "Why are the English always so academic?" Well, maybe they
are and maybe they aren't, though I suppose they do care a lot about
what school one attended, that gorgeous British irony reaching far
enough to allow artists to parody the old-boys network on the cheap.
I'm finding them quite good enough at the moment, but Brown was no
doubt asking for it.
The squarish paintings would fit in few rooms outside of Gagosian,
bigger than de Kooning had ever imagined, turning the AbEx notion of
"scale" into a trademark and showing off her place in the gallery
system. The colors are his, however, mostly reds and creamy whites,
and the size of the canvas emphasizes how relatively small, even, and
congested the strokes have become. It is again turning an idea,
all-over painting, into a sign. It also gives the casual impression
that the older painter's work has gone into a blender.
If one finds room to step back, one will notice that some, but not
all, have heads, probably men's faces, upside down in the middle. It
all sounds indeed so fashionable, doesn't it? Take painting, turn it
upside-down, and reverse the gender of both artist and subject. It
hardly hurts if upending refers to an artist who in his time ALREADY
earned the prefix "Neo," George Baselitz. Call all this Ex-AbEx?
As I plan to argue on my site soon, I promise, we are seeing a lot of
this NeoNeo. If the first use of appropriation, in Dada, is
revolutionary and the second, in Postmodernism, is fully self-aware
enough to suggest an unending series, then the third in a series will
automatically call attention to differences: it will call for an
examination of what has changed. It will enter the museum, much like
Duchamp's late self-recreations under glass.
The results can be penetrating, serious, self-conscious, or just
lightweight. I find Brown, as well as Ofili, for that matter, less
pretentious than the scale of one and materials of the other suggest.
They're perfectly good for their 60 seconds of fame.
tb continued.... John
John Haber
Chelsea. I shall be harsher on Jim Hyde because he disappointed me
more.
Hyde's past work inverts the Abstrract Expressionist's relationship
between surface and support. More self-effacing brushstrokes acquire
ever-thicker, slab-like materials beneath. One gallery announcement
went out on a little chunk of styrofoam, in a well-deserved mock
celebration.
Tired of Postmodernist elevation of superstructure over base? Hyde's
show right now, at Brent Sikemma, blows the base up further than ever
- in one work stuffed canvas resembling a 1970s' soft sofa. As with
Ofili's decorative swirls and tributes to jazz greats, one side of
this NeoNeo stuff is starting to feel like a bad party from about 25
years ago. The Robert Miller gallery is even trying to revive Harry
Bertoia, with deeply serious sound sculpture - chiming brass plates
and silvery rods that need only lava lamps to finish off the mood.
For Hyde, the problem is that the work looks less like thoughtful
painting than a discarded, paint-smeared pillow. I have seen better
awaiting garbage pick-up on the street.
Third, at Caelum, Christina McPhee, in fact has something in common
with Brown. In a few of her abstract paintings, one can make out a
head thrown back, just showing through. I suspect the somewhat
unfocused show is transitional. Other devices include fragments of
photos all chopped up, combining with horizontal formats that suggest
a landscape's horizon line. Still other works use pencil for line or
thick handmade gray paper as support.
I see a mix here, not all equally successful and not all clear on the
implied relationship between abstraction, the represented scene, and
the imagination. What they DO all have in common is a strong focus on
layering of surface, an integration of Brown's games with surface and
Hyde's with support. It's not a major show and it's at a pretty
schlocky gallery, but I was drawn into it totally.
tb continued
John
lake
excuse me. Sometimes I get it confused with Christianity too, or even
buddhism! Crazy huh?
- Lake
lake
not be erased, ever, even if it is only a few people who maintain it.
Idealists like you who play the odds just haven;t understood the nature
of the game. Objectivity is a thing of the past - it's time to put your
cards on the table. If the painting between Cezanne and Pollack, which
according to me is the entire humanist tradition, cannot stand up for
itself, logically, emotionally and politically - then it's time to step
aside and give the floor to the nearest wolf. Which in the case of this
newsgroup might be Mani DeLi, who wouldn't know a beautiful brushstroke
if it slapped him across the nose.
lake
pimps, & I aint as pretty as I used to be.
Puss in Boots
> I made three separate statements.
> What counts is what's on the wall.
> It ain't art if no one is interested in it.
> No skill no art.
> I know its torture for POMOs to write clearly but if you expect
> anyone, even a card carrying POMO to understand you, you'd better try.
I did write clearly. You may need to work on your reading
skills. But since you ask so nicely, I'll explain again.
It's simply, really. You claim to believe that "What counts is
what's on the wall." In your view, you say, "Any stories
about the work are strictly secondary." You even describe them
as "art historians' drivel."
My point is that you contradict yourself on a steady basis.
(At least steady enough for me to notice in the posts which
float to alt.postmodern.) Instead of focusing on what's on the
wall, you offer "stories about the work": i.e., drivel by
your own definition. I've already given you examples, but I'll
repeat them for your benefit.
> It ain't art if no one is interested in it.
Here you don't even glance at what's on the wall. Instead
your attention is riveted to the crowd. You're judging a
painting by the interest people do or don't have in it: not by
what you see in front of you.
> No skill no art.
In this case you concentrate entirely on the means used in
creating a given painting -- specifically the skill you
believe was needed to produce it. You don't judge the painting
-- you judge the way the paint got on the canvas.
> DOES SOMETHING MERIT THE LABEL "GREAT ART" IF ANYONE CAN IMITATE IT?
> That is the question you need to answer. My answer is NO. That Is
> why I consider Rothko and Co. minor patzers.
This one dates from last August. You ignore what's on the
wall and concern yourself with the possibility of someone
imititating it: again a direct contradiction of your principle
that "what counts is what's on the wall."
I hope that makes things plain. You _claim_ you judge the
painting on the wall, in distinction from telling "stories
about the work," which you call "art historians' drivel" -- but
in practice you judge by the crowds it generates, by the
skill you think was used in producing it, and by the difficulty
of making a copy. Drivel, as you say.
-- Moggin
Erik A. Mattila
Erik Mattila
Alison A Raimes
writes
>Composition is of course a favorite subject on which failures go on ad
>infinitum because so little that is rational can be said about it. It
>always helps to emphasize composition when excusing artwork which
>shows a total lack of drawing skill, light and shade, texture,
>complexity, technique, ideas, etc.
That would put Henri Cartier-Bresson right at the top of the failure
list then. Nice place to be sitting I would say, Kay.
Alison A Raimes
ali...@raimes.demon.co.uk
http://www.raimes.demon.co.uk
http://raimes.homestead.com (work in progress site)
Dan Fox
who buy and promote my work, not the students I used to teach. Will
somebody explain what a high-power phony student is? And where can I find
some (certainly they would have lots of money for private lessons!).
hug...@interlog.com (mdeli) wrote:
......
Whereas Fox made it to teaching high power phonies, .....
......
>
> Mani DeLi
--
Dan
'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.' - Blake
http://www.danfoxart.com
Marilyn Welch
How about a "high-power phoney student" with no money
would you still be willing to give them lessons? I know
a few from Emily Carr College who are working at the
vegetable market next door. Or maybe "high-power" is
always synonymous with having money .
Anyway if I were a "high-power phoney student" WITH money
I'd buy your paintings and study them at home. Saves time.
Marilyn
Kay
"mdeli" <hug...@interlog.com> wrote in message
news:38b32d04...@news.psi.ca...
: On Sun, 20 Feb 2000 10:48:23 +0000, Alison A Raimes
: <floa...@address.in.sig> wrote:
:
: >In article <38b0a21e...@news.psi.ca>, mdeli <hug...@interlog.com>
: >writes
: >
: >>Composition is of course a favorite subject on which failures go on ad
: >>infinitum because so little that is rational can be said about it. It
: >>always helps to emphasize composition when excusing artwork which
: >>shows a total lack of drawing skill, light and shade, texture,
: >>complexity, technique, ideas, etc.
: >
: >That would put Henri Cartier-Bresson right at the top of the failure
: >list then. Nice place to be sitting I would say, Kay.
: Your logic is brilliant.
: I suggest that Kay should mention this illuminating fact in her
: resume. I'm sure that Kay's failure has everything to do with
: Bresson's. I'm sure that when she achieves a level of technical
: excellence which he achieved in his field she will think lovingly of
: you.
:
: She should be forever gratefully for your helpful suggestion.
I wasn't aware that I had a specific "failure" Mani, but to each his own.
Are you and Chrissy aware of the difference between art and illustration?
Curious.
Kay
http://KayKane.homestead.com
:
: Mani DeLi
: ...no skill no art
:
: Tired of Modern Art? Check out my web page!
: http://www.interlog.com/~hugod/
Alison A Raimes
writes
>Your logic is brilliant.
Thank you !
--
Alison
ali...@raimes.demon.co.uk
http://www.raimes.demon.co.uk
http://raimes.homestead.com/index.html
mdeli
<floa...@address.in.sig> wrote:
>In article <38b0a21e...@news.psi.ca>, mdeli <hug...@interlog.com>
>writes
>
>>Composition is of course a favorite subject on which failures go on ad
>>infinitum because so little that is rational can be said about it. It
>>always helps to emphasize composition when excusing artwork which
>>shows a total lack of drawing skill, light and shade, texture,
>>complexity, technique, ideas, etc.
>
>That would put Henri Cartier-Bresson right at the top of the failure
>list then. Nice place to be sitting I would say, Kay.
Your logic is brilliant.
I suggest that Kay should mention this illuminating fact in her
resume. I'm sure that Kay's failure has everything to do with
Bresson's. I'm sure that when she achieves a level of technical
excellence which he achieved in his field she will think lovingly of
you.
She should be forever gratefully for your helpful suggestion.
Mani DeLi