The Real Meaning of "Avant Garde"
Bruce Attah
A tradition of art has developed over the past century or so that has been
called the "avant garde", the term suggesting that the artists in this
tradition are marching ahead of the main army, like intrepid scouts
revealing the way forward. The impressionists, working in France from the
1860s are often cited as the initiators of this tradition. They handed
the torch (or whatever it was they carried) to a motley crew collectively
described as the post-impressionists. According to the avant garde's
tradition's lore, the post-impressionists picked up where the
impressionists left off, in the forward march to the artistic unpromised
land of hyper-modernity. Each generation, like runners in a relay race,
passed the baton (or whatever it was) to the next. And each generation
had a name: impressionist, post-impressionist, cubist, dadaist,
surrealist, abstract-expressionist, neo-dadaist, conceptualist,
neo-conceptualist...
It seems that the tradition carries with it an expectation that it will
continue forever, that the avant garde will continue advancing, marching
ever forward, facing new challenges, breaking down new barriers...and
whenever one generation drops the gauntlet (or whatever it is they are
carrying), the next will surely pick it up and take it further forward
into the, into the, into the what? the sunset? Not the promised land,
because no land has been promised, and the territories that been claimed
by each generation have generally been rejected by the next. The truth
is, the avant garde is not going forward into anything, but backward away
from something else. Certainly, it is not going forward in a particular
direction; lists, like the one provided above, of successive movements
within what is called the avant-garde disguise it's fragmentary and
self-contradictory nature. Post-impressionism sounds as if it names a
coherent step on from impressionism, but in fact, while the impressionists
took the French realist tradition as their starting point, the succeeding
generation were predominantly children of the romantic tradition. The
only thing the impressionists had in common with the post-impressionists
was the relative crudity of their drawing and painting, compared to the
refined manner of Salon painting; and the only thing the
post-impressionists had in common with one another is that they came (in
fame, though not necessarily in actual age) after the impressionists.
The abrupt disjuncture between impressionism and post-impressionism is of
a kind that recurs throughout the history of avangardism in fine art.
There was nothing in cubism that suggested surrealism, nor anything in
abstract-expressionism that hinted at neo-dada and pop. Yet each
generation proclaimed its manifesto as if it had discovered the route to
artistic Nirvana, as if its formula was the one that would work --
_for_all_time_, and each generation lives long enough to see its manifesto
fail, its every tenet overturned, even while the work produced according
to the manifesto is enshrined in museums and showered with _tender_
blessings in the auction houses. The avantgarde flip flops again and
again, in a manner suggesting not the purposeful marching of an elite
corps, but the fickle reversals of fashion.
If no destination looms on the avant garde horizon, and there is no common
goal pursued by all avantgardists, is it right to say that there is an
avant garde? Perhaps the tradition is a fiction, perhaps there is nothing
to this notion of an avant garde, or perhaps there is something else that
unifies the avant garde and makes it real, besides any nonexistent shared
goal. I think there is. I think that what the avantgardists all have in
common is what they avoid. Every avantgardists does his or her darndest
to avoid looking _old_hat_. They all follow the precept "if it ain't
broke, break it", because keeping something that ain't broke is to owe a
debt to the past, and to imply that what is new is not _necessarily_
infinitely better.
Avantgardism is simplistic. It is not new, because people have been
avoiding that old hat look since the very first hat got old. It is not
clever, because clever people use the past to get the best out of the
present. Nor is avantgardism the future. Avantgardism is not going
anywhere, so there is no need to watch it in order to discern tomorrow.
If you tried to tell the future by watching the avant garde, you would
fail, because the avant garde can be relied upon to abruptly change
direction, possibly by 180 degrees, as soon as you have made your
predictions.
The avant garde can be ignored.
There is something better.
Tab Lloyd
Bruce Attah wrote:
>
> A tradition of art has developed over the past century or so that has been
> called the "avant garde",
Why is it so difficult for you to understand that art is constantly
changing, and always has? There is no ultimate 'true art goal'. Each
generation creates 'new art' in its own image. And important 'new art'
is always very closely tied to important 'art of the past'.
You really need to do your homework. Art is not out to get you. Why are
you so hung up on the term 'avant-garde'? You write about it like it is
a club that has denied you membership.
Tab
-
dwi...@nas.com
In article <321151...@pox.com>, tab...@pox.com wrote:
> Bruce Attah wrote:
> >
> > A tradition of art has developed over the past century or so that has been
> > called the "avant garde",
>
> Why is it so difficult for you to understand that art is constantly
> changing, and always has?
Each culture possesses a paradigm or model of its art. This model is based
on commonly accepted views that are supported by historic example. An
original work is one that is not immediately identified as belonging to
the cultural paradigm in which it is produced. The term avante guard is
often applied to works of this nature. Works that fit the cultural model
can be original expressions but they are original only in the sense that
they are uncommon presentations of familiar language forms. They are not
Avante Guard.
Andrew Werby
Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
>
>
>A tradition of art has developed over the past century or so that has been
>called the "avant garde", the term suggesting that the artists in this
>tradition are marching ahead of the main army, like intrepid scouts
>revealing the way forward.
>is, the avant garde is not going forward into anything, but backward away
>from something else. Certainly, it is not going forward in a particular
>within what is called the avant-garde disguise its fragmentary and
>self-contradictory nature... The avantgarde flip flops again and
>again, in a manner suggesting not the purposeful marching of an elite
>corps, but the fickle reversals of fashion.
>
>If no destination looms on the avant garde horizon, and there is no common
>goal pursued by all avantgardists, is it right to say that there is an
>avant garde? Perhaps the tradition is a fiction, perhaps there is nothing
>to this notion of an avant garde, or perhaps there is something else that
>unifies the avant garde and makes it real, besides any nonexistent shared
>goal. I think there is. I think that what the avantgardists all have in
>to avoid looking _old_hat_...
>
>Avantgardism is simplistic... Avantgardism is not going
>anywhere, so there is no need to watch it in order to discern tomorrow.
>If you tried to tell the future by watching the avant garde, you would
>fail, because the avant garde can be relied upon to abruptly change
>direction, possibly by 180 degrees, as soon as you have made your
>predictions.
>
>The avant garde can be ignored.
>
>There is something better.
[While Bruce doesn't tell us what this better thing might be, my guess is that he has a
lingering fondness for that "old hat" that has served so well, and still seems capable
of further use despite its unfashionableness. While there is much to be said for the
tried and true, this is no reason to disparage the new.
Bruce (and many an art historian) has portrayed the successive waves of avant garde
art movements as a linear progression- forward and backward. I don't think it is quite
that simple. A more useful image might be the dispersion of a gas, or the radiation of
a species into an open biological niche. In the modern era we have seen artists leaving
the old ways of making art behind, striking off in every conceivable direction. Only
in hindsight does this appear to be forward or backward- to the artist, the only
relevant direction is "onward".
Of course, most of these ventures come to nothing, just as most biological mutations
are unsucessful. Occasionally by leaving the old forms behind and trying something
different, a result that is new, beautiful, and unsuspected is achieved, and some of
the art movements that Bruce mentions are examples of this. The connections between
them, and the degree to which one "succeeds" each other are matters which art
historians can, and probably will, debate forever. But whenever somebody carries out a
new approach to the age-old process of making art, one should give them some points
for novelty- whether or not the results are beautiful is another question. You can't
call them "avant garde", however, until somebody else follows up their lead.
Andrew Werby - United Artworks
Bruce Attah
> Bruce Attah wrote:
> >
> > A tradition of art has developed over the past century or so that has been
> > called the "avant garde",
>
> Why is it so difficult for you to understand that art is constantly
> changing, and always has?
I have no difficulty in understanding this, but there is a difference
between the change that occurs in art as a natural consequence of the
change that goes on in the world around artists, and that change which
results from a push from within the artist who is anxious to be novel and
original and to _cause_ change. This anxious desire to be new is the
cause of the rapid turnover of styles in art this century; the novelty
that occurs is specious, as artists are running down creative blind-alleys
in their terrible fear of conventionality.
> There is no ultimate 'true art goal'.
I don't know about that. Certainly, I am tempted to say that there is
one, or a set of goals, which all artists share. I think all artists (in
whatever medium) aim to create experiences for their audiences which can
be describes as 'aesthetically satisfying'. Such experiences are
memorable and desirable and have the curious effect of making people want
to share them (if you hear some music that you think particularly fine,
you will probably want to persuade your friends to hear the same music).
I think there are other goals that artists have in common, too, but
explaining these would get me into complications I don't want to concern
myself with in this particular post.
Avantgardism discards the common goals of art. To be an avantgardist, one
does not need to be committed to the goals that real artists have in
common. All one needs, instead, is a committment to novelty.
> Each
> generation creates 'new art' in its own image.
If that is true, the past three or four generations have managed to cut
very poor images: narrow, introverted, frightened-of-the-world, ignorant,
technically inept, confused, prone alternately to bouts of mysticism and
materialistic cynicism, neurotic, morbid. These are the traits commonly
portrayed by the 'new art' of the past fifty years or more.
> And important 'new art'
> is always very closely tied to important 'art of the past'.
Good new art is always closely tied to good art of the past, but
'important' art need not be good, and the art that has dominated the
markets and the art journals for several decades now is certainly
important in certain senses, but that does not mean it is good. As for
its connectedness to the past, it is not, on the whole, closely connected
to the past, except insofar as it represents a conscious break from the
past.
> Why are you so hung up on the term 'avant-garde'?
I wouldn't say I was 'hung up' about the term, but I reject the idea of
the avant-garde because I believe it to be no more than a glossy euphemism
for desparate voguishness. I also believe such voguishness to be bad for
art.
> You write about it like it is
> a club that has denied you membership.
I do not think of the avant garde as an exclusive club. Rather, I believe
it to be a very inclusive one. It is trivially easy to become an
avantgardist; all you have to do is think yourself one, and commit
yourself to following the latest fashions. Rejecting avantgardism as a
mistake, however, is more of a challenge.
R. Alzofon
> Bruce Attah wrote:
> >
> > A tradition of art has developed over the past century or so that has been
> > called the "avant garde",
>
> Why is it so difficult for you to understand that art is constantly
> changing, and always has?...
--
Reading your post, I had to recheck Bruce's post. Something's amiss. It
seems that Bruce was, in fact, stating that art IS always changing: Bruce
wrote, among other things,
"It is not new, because people have been
avoiding that old hat look since the very first hat got old."
--
...
> Why are
> you so hung up on the term 'avant-garde'? You write about it like it is
> a club that has denied you membership.
>
> Tab
> -
--
As for the term avant-garde, it does name the phenomenon of the pursuit of
the new. I think avant-garde has been a generic well used term for the
last century. Have there been any new and improved words or phrases we can
use? I hope you are not suggesting that we shouldn't use proper words to
summon specific impressions.
Denied membership? Maybe hyperbole there. Exclusion is possible, though,
with so few dollars available to artists. Certain disciplines are not
supported.
--
R. Alzofon
http://art.net/~rebecca
Bruce Attah
In article <4ut8jr$m...@lanshark.lanminds.com>, Andrew Werby
<dre...@lanminds.com> wrote:
> [While Bruce doesn't tell us what this better thing might be, my guess
is that he has a
> lingering fondness for that "old hat" that has served so well, and still
seems capable
> of further use despite its unfashionableness.
I do indeed have a fondness for that old hat stuff! I love the art of the
Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras! I love the art of the nineteenth
century! That said, I do not think that "lingering" is the word to
describe my fondness for this art. The word suggests a recollection of
something that is past, a nostalgia for something that is gone -- but the
art that I love is *not* past, it is *not* gone. I experience it quite
contemporaneously with the art, such as that of the Abstract
Expressionists, that I do not love. Neither is newer or older, in my
personal experience, than the other. If I wish to see a Rubens this
weekend, I can do so just as easily as I can see a Pollock. What then is
_lingering_ about my affection?
> While there is much to be said for the
> tried and true, this is no reason to disparage the new.
I agree that there is no reason for disparaging the new _as_such_. I do
not think that the old is necessarily better than the new any more than I
believe that the new is necessarily better than the old. However, the
avant-garde, succinctly described by Rebecca Alzofon in this thread as
"the pursuit of the new" invites disparagement because it places _newness_
too high on its scale of values, discarding other, more important virtues.
There are really two sorts of newness: objective and subjective.
Objective newness is the condition of having recently come into being.
This sort of newness, by itself, is morally and aesthetically neutral. To
say that something is new in this objective sense is to do nothing more
than to locate it in time, just as to say that something is at the bottom
of the street is to locate it in space. Subjective newness, however, is a
different matter. This is the newness of a thing to the observer. A
thing can be thousands of years old, but if I have not come across it
before, I may legitimately say that it is new to me. Such subjective
newness is certainly not aesthetically neutral. The pleasure or pain that
a person gets from a particular experience can differ radically according
to whether the experience is familiar to that person. A joke that brought
on tears of laughter when it was new (in the subjective sense) may elicit
only groans once it has been heard too often. Conversely, a catch-phrase
may seem to grow funnier with each repetition, a cliche more cosy, and a
truism more true.
Objective newness, I have said, is a neutral fact. Yet it can generate
excitement. When this happens, the reason for the excitement is never the
newness itself, but some possibility that this fact entails. A new
thriller offers the thrill of unknown outcomes; a new gadget promises
improvement on previous models; a new haircut might draw favourable
attention from a certain colleague at work. But what about a new style of
art? What does that promise?
> Bruce (and many an art historian) has portrayed the successive waves of
avant garde
> art movements as a linear progression- forward and backward. I don't
think it is quite
> that simple.
Nor do I, though perhaps my use of the word 'backward' gave a misleading
impression. The avant-garde is not moving in any particular direction,
not now, and not over the duration of its existence. The image I had in
mind when I said
"the avant garde is not going forward into anything, but backward away
from something else" was of many individuals retreating from a common
point (backward, still facing that point), each in his or her
_own_direction_. My article represented the avant garde as essentially
directionless and fragmentary, and concluded that the avant-garde was "not
going anywhere". The view of avantgardism as some sort of heroic progress
was reported by me as being part of the tradition's own "lore" (as I
termed it, with deliberate distancing emphasis), not as a view I
personally adhere to.
> A more useful image might be the dispersion of a gas, or the radiation of
> a species into an open biological niche. In the modern era we have seen
artists leaving
> the old ways of making art behind, striking off in every conceivable
direction.
These images are interesting and provocative.
Gas tends to spread out evenly across whatever space it occupies, filling
every interstice with an equal density of particles. Is this what
avant-garde art is doing, filling, as by a force of nature, every
available niche? There are two sorts of movement in a gas: at the level
of the particle, there is random, Brownian, motion, while as a body, the
gas moves in _winds_, which (quite literally) change like the weather,
according to changes in pressure and temperature that affect it. Is the
avant-garde a series of chaotic gusts of wind?
The idea of artists slotting into their individual niches like animals
evolving to fit a gamut of ecological roles carries interesting questions:
which are the predators, which the grazers? Who are the parasites? Are
all varieties of artist essential to a stable ecology in the art world?
Are upheavals and great extinctions nothing more than accidents, to be
regarded as neither a vindication of the survivors nor a condemnation of
the extinct? Can we liken the old masters to the dinosaurs? The
dinosaurs may fascinate us; their power, their grandeur, their 150 million
years of dominance may earn from us an unstinting respect, but we wouldn't
want T. Rex in our back garden. Is this true of the old masters, too?
> Of course, most of these ventures come to nothing, just as most
biological mutations
> are unsucessful.
Are "most" mutations of the avant garde unsuccessful? I don't think that
is true. Almost every novelty has gained acceptance. What tends to fall
by the wayside is work that does not seem new -- mutated -- enough. In
evolution, it is tiny mutations that are the motor of change, while big
mutations almost invariably lead to death. In the avant-garde, the
success of a mutation correlates directly with its apparent size.
> But whenever somebody carries out a
> new approach to the age-old process of making art, one should give them
some points
> for novelty- whether or not the results are beautiful is another question.
I don't think that is true. Novelty is extremely easy. Also, almost all
possible novelty is worthless. You mentioned biological mutations --
these carry the lesson that the overwhelming bulk of changes that can be
made to a complex and finely balanced system will destroy that system, and
only a tiny few will offer advantages. Perhaps I can persuade you by
asking you to imagine a Rembrandt who came up with the idea of finishing
all his portraits by painting a red circle over all the faces. This would
certainly be novel, but would it deserve kudos? A
Rembrandt-in-pursuit-of-novelty could easily think up a thousand similar
schemes for adding a "new approach" to his work, but if they were all
similar in impact to the red-circles trick, none of them would make him a
better artist than he would be if he stuck to his old-hat style.
> You can't
> call them "avant garde", however, until somebody else follows up their lead.
The idea of the avant-garde is that _everybody_ (or, at any rate, nearly
everybody, as there are bound to be slackers) will follow their lead. In
actual fact, it has been rare, and is getting rarer, that a single
artist's innovations will be copied by more than a small fraction of
artists for longer than a brief while. My strong suspicion is that the
avant-garde as an _advance_guard_ does not really exist, though it may
have briefly existed at the beginning of this century.
Bruce Attah
<<...developing a point I forgot to follow up earlier...>>
Objective newness, I have said, is a neutral fact. Yet it can generate
excitement. When this happens, the reason for the excitement is never the
newness itself, but some possibility that this fact entails. A new
thriller offers the thrill of unknown outcomes; a new gadget promises
improvement on previous models; a new haircut might draw favourable
attention from a certain colleague at work. But what about a new style of
art? What does that promise?
I don't think that there is any particular promise in an utterance like
"So-and-so has invented a whole new style of art. You must come and see
it!" other than the promise of novelty. There is no promise that the art
will be more beautiful or more interesting or impressive than art in
previous styles, no promise, even, that the work will be more pertinent to
one's present condition than previous art (though one can hope). To me,
the remark carries nothing more than the promise of newness itself.
Newer may mean closer to God to some people, but to me it means nothing of
the sort. New and old, I am convinced, are equally capable of being good.
Kajojacobs
In article <max_crittenden-...@128.18.42.2>,
max_cri...@qm.sri.com (R. Alzofon) writes:
>Have there been any new and improved words or phrases we can
>use? I hope you are not suggesting that we shouldn't use proper words to
>summon specific impressions.
Doesn't "cutting edge" have the same connotation as "avant garde?" The
confusion seems to be that many artists who have long since departed the
scene were considered AG in their time and are still refered to as such,
which lends a touch of antiquity when applied to today's artists who are
working "on the edge."
~Karen Jacobs~
Yolanda Liberte
In article <4v1t0r$r...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, kajoj...@aol.com says...
>which lends a touch of antiquity when applied to today's artists who are
>working "on the edge."
"On the edge" is passe too. It's "over the edge," or not at all nowadays.
--
<>:<>:<>:<>:<>:<>:<>:<>:<>
Yolanda Liberte
<>:<>:<>:<>:<>:<:>:<>:<>:<>
JKearman
In article
<Bruce.Attah-14...@support-saturn.isltd.insignia.com>,
Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) writes:
>I do not think of the avant garde as an exclusive club. Rather, I
believe
>it to be a very inclusive one. It is trivially easy to become an
>avantgardist; all you have to do is think yourself one, and commit
>yourself to following the latest fashions.
Somebody has to try new techniques and styles once in a while, or else
we'd still be drawing with berry juice on cave walls. (Okay, I draw with
charcoal, so sue me.)
There's nothing wrong with having a group of artists who try new ways of
making art. Nobody is forcing anyone to like the stuff. If nobody bought
it and no critics acclaimed it, it would go away. I don't blame would-be
artists for cashing in on the ignorant collectors' who greedily buy up
frankly ugly work. "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of
the American public," said P. T. Barnum. A hot meal now and then is a good
thing.
Let's not confuse charlatans and visionaries. For every true visionary
there are thousands of people trying to cash in, and this phenomenon isn't
limited to the arts. People don't want to study and learn anymore, they
want to hire "consultants" to tell them what to do. No consultant who
doesn't know good art from junk is going to make any money by being
honest. So, they send in the clowns, and Barnum & Clowns make a bundle of
money. It's the American way; again, not limited to the arts.
There is a real problem with the criticism of abstract art that was less
of a problem with representative art. At least with the latter you could
identify the symbols and identify them based on common usage. With
abstract art, the symbolic language changes so quickly, no one (including
the artist, probably) can keep up. Art, being (ideally) the direct line
from the viewer's eye to the artist's subconscious, does not lend itself
to verbalization under the best of circumstances.
Still, all these critics and curators are getting paid to do just that. So
they write something. If they're conscientious, they try to "get" the art,
but who can tell if they did or even if they tried?
Gorky worked for years on some of his paintings, painstakingly working out
his own symbolic language. Someone else might have painted a similar
canvas as a lark. I recently read a book whose author attempted to decode
Gorky's language (Gorky: The Implication of Symbols. Email me for author's
name.). This book was written some 40 years after Gorky's death. The same
criticisms leveled against academic painters might have been aimed at
Gorky while he was alive. If Gorky's symbols were unreadable to any but
him, does that mean he was less of an artist for inventing them?
I believe art takes place at the moment of conception. If the artist is
honestly expressing something other than "I need more money," the work is
true. Similarly, the critic/viewer must be honest. Unfortunately, becoming
a successful critic or dealer probably has more to do with picking winners
(artists whose work appreciates greatly and quickly) than with
understanding art as art.
Rather than single out artists that we each like or hate, I'd like to see
a discussion of the genesis and education of art critics. Perhaps when the
fall semester starts up, we'll have some more academics on here to comment
(and absorb flames).
Meanwhile, I'm putting some willow twigs out here on the newsgroup. I need
more charcoal.
Jim Kearman
----
jkea...@aol.com
Mdeli
>> Bruce Attah wrote:
>> > A tradition of art has developed over the past century or so that has been
>> > called the "avant garde",
>>
>> Why is it so difficult for you to understand that art is constantly
>> changing, and always has?
wil...@nas.com wrote:
>Each culture possesses a paradigm or model of its art.
It isn’t that complicated why not just say style.
There are trends in style and anyone can name and
describe them. There is also constant change. In other
words some things change and some remain similar.
>This model is based
>on commonly accepted views that are supported by historic example. An
>original work is one that is not immediately identified as belonging to
>the cultural paradigm in which it is produced.
>The term avant guard is
>often applied to works of this nature. Works that fit the cultural model
>can be original expressions but they are original only in the sense that
>they are uncommon presentations of familiar language forms. They are not
>Avante Guard.
"The cultural model"?
I think the avant garde is a fashionable label for the
stuff of this century that has made it into our museums
and caught the eyes of the critics, The term is a
put-on just like most of the art it pretends to
describe. It is a claim to utter newness. (if you say
avant garde you can then clarify this by simply saying
it is new.)
The term avant garde is used to excuse something, no
matter how stupid, whose only supposed redeeming
quality lies in the claim that it is an example of a
first. Is covering the Reichstag with toilet paper new?
Yes, but so what. Well there are thousands of blow-bags
out there who will tell you what. Ask yourself whether
what they say amounts to anything clear.
The result is Picasso, Mondrian, conceptual art,
Christo, Hockney, and paint enemas(when new ideas
become scarce). It should really be called the
antiquated avant garde because all this stuff in the so
called paradigm sense was already done by about 1917.
That was about 80 years ago. Critics however, will
explain why this is really all new if you care to read
it.
Clearly There are trends in art. Technical and
subject-matter wise. Oil paint and usage of acrylic
paint and computer art have a technique in common. I
won’t list subject matter trends as this is obvious.
Most talk about art is convoluted and inflated because
there simply isn’t that much to say. Critics, like
people in many other fields, tend to pompousify their
writing lest the larger audience think the critic
shallow and doubt his profundity. There is a human
craving for the cryptic. Critics also are expected to
fill up lots of space. Read Ruskin or Hughes.
The ego also enters into the picture when the viewer
says he UNDERSTANDS, implying that of course you don’t.
The test for this supposed understanding is to simply
to ask exactly what is understood. If you try this test
you will usually get puzzled silence, cryptic babble or
a referral to some author or trend which you can claim
speaks for you; like avant garde, post modernism or
dada. Rarely do those who claim understanding have
anything rational to say or quote and when they do it
can usually be reduced to a few short phrases.
The one thing no living artist can avoid being is
modern. "Modern" has nothing to do with merit.
Mani DeLi
...If it needs a long sermon to proclaim it art its
probably bullshit.
Regiment's Hobby Shop
jkea...@aol.com (JKearman) wrote:
>Gorky worked for years on some of his paintings, painstakingly working out
>his own symbolic language. Someone else might have painted a similar
>canvas as a lark. I recently read a book whose author attempted to decode
>Gorky's language (Gorky: The Implication of Symbols. Email me for author's
>name.). This book was written some 40 years after Gorky's death. The same
>criticisms leveled against academic painters might have been aimed at
>Gorky while he was alive. If Gorky's symbols were unreadable to any but
>him, does that mean he was less of an artist for inventing them?
>
I still believe that the essence of art is communication, which on
whatever level, exsists between the artist and the viewer. So, if
Gorky's symbolism is unfathomable, then, yes, he is less of an artist.
The paint on my house communicates nothing, the color symbolizes nothing,
and so it becomes strictly utilitarian. It is not art. If Gorky's art
is unreadable, what is the difference between his canvases and my house?
AT
(who's house is painted white)
JKearman
In article
<Bruce.Attah-15...@support-saturn.isltd.insignia.com>,
Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) writes:
>I don't think that there is any particular promise in an utterance like
>"So-and-so has invented a whole new style of art. You must come and see
>it!" other than the promise of novelty. There is no promise that the art
>will be more beautiful or more interesting or impressive than art in
>previous styles, no promise, even, that the work will be more pertinent
to
>one's present condition than previous art (though one can hope).
Since we're kicking Mondrian around anyway, I read somewhere that his
obsession with solid colors and rectangles had to do with a need to impose
order on a world he thought was out of control (I gather he was
discommoded by both world wars). It seems he had some political and
economic theories to go along with this.
Perhaps Mondrian had some sort of mental collapse, which rendered him
incapable of painting anything else, because he might have quit painting
geometric shapes and gone on otherwise. This fact does not automatically
lead one to conclude that no one else who tries a different style of art
will not succeed, even if that person is a little "over the edge" (thanks,
Yolande).
At the recent "major" show at the Guggenheim concerning
non-representational art, Richter's work (he smears pigment with a
straightedge, revealing underlayers) really caused a positive emotional
response in me. I thought they were quite beautiful. The same technique by
another artist, or two roomsful of such paintings, or even a movement of
such paintings, probably would cause me to have a different emotional
response.
Another thought: In the case of Mondrian and others who painted pretty
much the same painting over and over, we're only aware of the sameness
when we see numerous examples of the work in a museum. If you had one
Mondrian in your home, you might like it, although you wouldn't want one
in every room. Piet was just trying at home what Henry Ford was doing in
_his_ studio! (I'd rather have a yard full of Model As than a room full of
Mondrians.)
Jim Kearman
Tab Lloyd
JAY ELLESS is YOLANDA LIBERTE
Jay Elless is Yolanda Liberte (a.k.a. Barbie Kew, Helen Bakk, Rose
Madder).
Jay Elless is not a woman but a man in his mid-fifties . . . and he is
not an artist like he pretends to be, he is a bicycle salesman in Autin,
Texas.
His posts, supposedly based on years of experience making art, are
bogus. Jay Elless is a resident Virtual Drag Queen.
Tab
-
Tugi
Regiment's Hobby Shop wrote:
>
> jkea...@aol.com (JKearman) wrote:
> >Gorky worked for years on some of his paintings, painstakingly working out
> >his own symbolic language. Someone else might have painted a similar
> >
> >Gorky while he was alive. If Gorky's symbols were unreadable to any but
> >him, does that mean he was less of an artist for inventing them?
> >
> >----
> I still believe that the essence of art is communication, which on
> whatever level, exsists between the artist and the viewer. So, if
> Gorky's symbolism is unfathomable, then, yes, he is less of an artist.
>
> The paint on my house communicates nothing, the color symbolizes nothing,
> and so it becomes strictly utilitarian. It is not art. If Gorky's art
> is unreadable, what is the difference between his canvases and my house?
>
> AT
> (who's house is painted white)
If art is communication between artist and viewer in that sense
that viewer has to translate meaning of a work of art, as it could be
assumed from your discussion, than what is a point to spend energy
and codify preexistent ideas-words into works of art? It is, certainly,
easier to express them with words if they already exist on artist's
mind. Why do so many people want to find "real meanings" behind art
works? Is it because they believe that spoken or written truth is more
truth than depicted truth? Using the word "symbol" you obviously
understand monosemous rather than polisemous "sign".
I think that art works do not need correlatives to be enjoyed.
They do not have to be signs at all. They do not need simple "original
meanings" if we are creative viewers and if we still have confidence
in our visual cognition. The point is that we have to spend energy and
not to wait for simple, linguistically articulated solution offered by
prophets, 'masters of differance' (Derrida)... There are no 'correct
interpretations', only unlimited solutions and unlimited number of
experiences. Until there exist a challenge in front of the painting
we will be able to enjoy aesthetic experience and see - not the
painting itself - but: see "more with the painting" (M. M. Ponty).
--
TUGI__________________________________________________
t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au
Vyvyan Hope-Scott
In article <4v4ihd$i...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
kajoj...@aol.com "Kajojacobs" writes:
> Doesn't a work lose importance when taken out of context? If (fill in the
> famous artist's name) had done only one painting of each series, would the
> impact be the same?
>
>
> ~Karen Jacobs~
To speak from my own experience (semi-pro abstract painter, untrained, not
famous yet) you have to do several attempts at getting almost _any_ idea
to work.
Sometimes the first canvas turns out to have been the best, but you still
don't know until you've tried repeating the experience. I notice photos
of some of the big abstract artists in their studios and they seem to have
numerous works in the background, all broadly similar.
I went to an exhibition of Picasso drawings a couple of years ago and there
were ten or twenty pieces done on the same _day_, each developing the same
initial concept.
I suppose some artists might suppress all the 'dummy runs' and only
sell the best example of each idea, but it would make painting an even
more expensive activity than it already is.
--
Vyvyan Hope-Scott
R Blanchard
Bruce Attah wrote:
> If I wish to see a Rubens this
> weekend, I can do so just as easily as I can see a Pollock. What then is
> _lingering_ about my affection?
You keep going back to see the Reubens.
> avant-garde, succinctly described by Rebecca Alzofon in this thread as
> "the pursuit of the new" invites disparagement because it places _newness_
> too high on its scale of values, discarding other, more important virtues.
Described by who? That is the cause of all these long posts? Did you get
a second opinion before you started off?
>But what about a new style of art? What does that promise?
Progress and hope.
> Is the avant-garde a series of chaotic gusts of wind?
That's it! You've got it! Put it in a bottle, and hope it doesn't smell
real bad.
>we wouldn't want T. Rex in our back garden. Is this true of the old masters, too?
If they ate that much, _I_ wouldn't want them as houseguests!
> I don't think that is true. Novelty is extremely easy.
Novel and successful is hard. Got a new mouse trap?
> asking you to imagine a Rembrandt who came up with the idea of finishing
> all his portraits by painting a red circle over all the faces.
Never thought of that one. Boy is that avant-garde!
> My strong suspicion is that the
> avant-garde as an _advance_guard_ does not really exist...
Finally you get it. Kudo to you kiddo.
--
Rick
Kajojacobs
In article <4v2m9b$l...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, jkea...@aol.com (JKearman)
writes:
> The same technique by
>another artist, or two roomsful of such paintings, or even a movement of
>such paintings, probably would cause me to have a different emotional
>response.
>
>Another thought: In the case of Mondrian and others who painted pretty
>much the same painting over and over, we're only aware of the sameness
>when we see numerous examples of the work in a museum. If you had one
>Mondrian in your home, you might like it, although you wouldn't want one
>in every room.
Isn't it possible that in the process of developing the artist's concept,
it is necessary for the artist to follow the *thread* from painting to
painting without the pressure of demanding dealers wanting more? Isn't it
preferable to know a body of work by an artist that follows a similar
thought in order to better appreciate one painting from that series?
Darren Reynolds
In article <Bruce.Attah-14...@support-saturn.isltd.insignia.com,
Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
>I do not think of the avant garde as an exclusive club. Rather, I believe
>it to be a very inclusive one. It is trivially easy to become an
>avantgardist; all you have to do is think yourself one, and commit
>yourself to following the latest fashions. Rejecting avantgardism as a
>mistake, however, is more of a challenge.
Ah, right, so that is your motive? To be unique in your rejection of the
avant garde. Interesting conversion.
Darren
dwi...@nas.com
>I think the avant garde is a fashionable label for the
>stuff of this century that has made it into our museums
>and caught the eyes of the critics, The term is a
>put-on just like most of the art it pretends to
>describe. It is a claim to utter newness. (if you say
>avant garde you can then clarify this by simply saying
>it is new.)
The stuff of this century is the result of the stuff done during
centuries that preceded it. Its complexity has evolved as our knowledge
and beliefs have evolved. No responsible critic, curator or even artist
would label work as Avant Guard without good reason or without an
explanation as to why such a work or artist should be labeled so. Those
who have put the time and effort into understanding the history (Critics
and Culturati) are best equipped to evaluate new works of art. They do so
on the basis of their understanding the history and their view of the
current model.
>The term avant garde is used to excuse something, no
>matter how stupid, whose only supposed redeeming
>quality lies in the claim that it is an example of a
Avant Garde is usually not the excuse, The term "Bad Art" is the excuse.
>The one thing no living artist can avoid being is
>modern.
Unfortunately being "Modern" would be an unfortunate label for most
artists living today, especially among the "Avant Garde".
"Modern" has nothing to do with merit."
Neither does "Avant Garde".
Regiment's Hobby Shop
Tugi <t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> If art is communication between artist and viewer in that sense
> that viewer has to translate meaning of a work of art, as it could be
> assumed from your discussion, than what is a point to spend energy
>and codify preexistent ideas-words into works of art? It is, certainly,
>easier to express them with words if they already exist on artist's
>mind. Why do so many people want to find "real meanings" behind art
>works? Is it because they believe that spoken or written truth is more
>truth than depicted truth? Using the word "symbol" you obviously
>understand monosemous rather than polisemous "sign".
I think that the art of words and the art of paint are two different
things and that what I express in paint is not always translatable to
words. If I thought the written word took precedence over visual
expression, I'd be a writer not a painter. However to say that the image
is not also a symbol that conveys meaning to the viewer is to deny an
important dimension of art. The great joy of art is to be able to enjoy
it on different levels. Before Whistler most art had a *message*
component as well as the mission to be enjoyed simply as a visual
expression. In modern times the message has been downplayed or
eliminated entirely, art is for art's sake. However I see in today's art
more and more artists going back to creating a multi-level or
*3-dimensional* painting, creating a revival of representational styles
of artwork.
AT
--------------
> I think that art works do not need correlatives to be enjoyed.
>They do not have to be signs at all. They do not need simple "original
>meanings" if we are creative viewers and if we still have confidence
>in our visual cognition. The point is that we have to spend energy and
>not to wait for simple, linguistically articulated solution offered by
>prophets, 'masters of differance' (Derrida)... There are no 'correct
>interpretations', only unlimited solutions and unlimited number of
>experiences. Until there exist a challenge in front of the painting
>we will be able to enjoy aesthetic experience and see - not the
>painting itself - but: see "more with the painting" (M. M. Ponty).
>
>--
>TUGI__________________________________________________
>t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au
When I was at the Norton Art Museum in Florida this summer I saw a
painting (I forget the artist) that was a huge field of orange with an
uneven band of sky blue around the perimeter. Usually I don't like
abstract expressionism because the after the initial visual impact (if
there is one) there is nothing to see, but I liked this. The artist had
choosen the exact color orange, with some subtle shadings in the main
color that created a beautiful richness and depth, that would vibrate
with the blue. The painting vibrated and moved in such a way that it
reminded me of a volcano's cauldron. So, like you say, the artist had no
secondary meaning, and I, the viewer created one. The artist certainly
wasn't saying *volcano*, or *sacrificing virgins to the sun god*. I- the
viewer- had to articulate the emotion, the visual impact, that the
painting had for me. That's communication, whether it's intended or not,
when you stand before a painting it's going to happen.
AT
------------
PS thanks for the interesting, and courteous, post...Made me think, and I
have to look up the word "monosemous".
Mdeli
Jim Kearman
>There is a real problem with the criticism of abstract art that was less
>of a problem with representative art. At least with the latter you could
>identify the symbols and identify them based on common usage.
Why waste time identifying symbols. I think Tee shirts
are more interesting in this respect.
>With
>abstract art, the symbolic language changes so quickly, no one (including
>the artist, probably) can keep up.
If no one can keep up with it than it doesn’t mean
anything does it?
Art, being (ideally) the direct line
>from the viewer's eye to the artist's subconscious, does not lend itself
>to verbalization under the best of circumstances.
There is no symbolic language. Some paintings have a
message and many don't.
>Gorky worked for years on some of his paintings, painstakingly working out
>his own symbolic language.
If this were so, someone could clearly explain it.
Language can be reasonably translated. Gorky's
paintings don't mean a damned thing. It is because of
this that a bunch of long winded pseudo-intellectual
buffoons write long tomes about the deep content of
meaningless paintings. How can anyone rationally
contradict them and who in his right mind would take
the time to try?
>If Gorky's symbols were unreadable to any but
>him, does that mean he was less of an artist for inventing them?
It doesn’t.
>I believe art takes place at the moment of conception.
Artists produce art-work. Whethter something is art is
for viewers not artists to decide. An artist attempts
to persuade people to like his work by means of his
skills. Great art is the result of a long term vote by
a consensus.
> If the artist is
>honestly expressing something other than "I need more money," the work is
>true.
Modern Academic Art mythology. Beware of money lest
you become dishonest. What’s a TRUE work as opposed to
an untrue one.?
>Similarly, the critic/viewer must be honest.
I doubt that even the most idiotic critic would steal a
dime.
>Unfortunately, becoming
>a successful critic or dealer probably has more to do with picking winners
>(artists whose work appreciates greatly and quickly) than with
>understanding art as art.
Art as art…again. How about art as mashed potatoes.
>Rather than single out artists that we each like or hate, I'd like to see
>a discussion of the genesis and education of art critics. Perhaps when the
>fall semester starts up, we'll have some more academics on here to comment
>(and absorb flames).
Profound.
>Meanwhile, I'm putting some willow twigs out here on the newsgroup. I need
>more charcoal.
Clarity would be preferable.
Mani DeLi
...…no skill no art
Mdeli
Tugi <t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> If art is communication between artist and viewer in that sense
> that viewer has to translate meaning of a work of art, as it could be
> assumed from your discussion, than what is a point to spend energy
>and codify preexistent ideas-words into works of art? It is, certainly,
>easier to express them with words if they already exist on artist's
>mind. Why do so many people want to find "real meanings" behind art
>works? Is it because they believe that spoken or written truth is more
>truth than depicted truth? Using the word "symbol" you obviously
>understand monosemous rather than polisemous "sign".
Clearly.
> I think that art works do not need correlatives to be enjoyed.
Absolutly. Whatever that means Lots or Few?
>They do not have to be signs at all. They do not need simple "original
>meanings" if we are creative viewers and if we still have confidence
>in our visual cognition. The point is that we have to spend energy and
>not to wait for simple, linguistically articulated solution offered by
>prophets, 'masters of differance' (Derrida)... There are no 'correct
>interpretations', only unlimited solutions and unlimited number of
>experiences. Until there exist a challenge in front of the painting
>we will be able to enjoy aesthetic experience and see - not the
>painting itself - but: see "more with the painting" (M. M. Ponty).
>--
>TUGI__________________________________________________
>t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au
This is an example of academic style Artspeak.
It won't make the mags; too boring. But its great for
seminars where most everybody puts each other to sleep
while making believe they agree with each other.
Read this academic's other message here. Its a real
nutcracker.
Mani Deli
...no skill no art
dwi...@nas.com
In article <3215AA...@sab.unimelb.edu.au>, Tugi
<t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> I still believe that the essence of art is communication, which on
> whatever level, exsists between the artist and the viewer.
Although I do agree that art can communicate I have to question the
assumption that it does in all cases. When we assume that art communicates
we must assume it does so in a language that is understood by the viewer
and that this language is universal in its nature. This may not be true in
every case and does not mean that the art is not art or that the artist is
not an artist.
If Gorky's art
> is unreadable, what is the difference between his canvases and my house?
Readability implies function. Function implies utility. Readability may
not be a necessary condition in all cases for a work of art's viability.
> If art is communication between artist and viewer in that sense
> that viewer has to translate meaning of a work of art, than what is a
point to spend >energy and codify preexistent ideas-words into works of
art?
codify: Arrange or systamenatize or reduce to a code. If art is
communication the form that communication takes is by its nature already
systematized. One implies the other. To communicate is to transmit or
convey or to connect with. This is a process requiring both art and
viewer. The viewer brings as much to the work as the work brings to the
viewer. In order to communicate each must share the same language. Pre
existing codification of ideas or words enable the artist to communicate
effectively through the work; making communication possible and more
likely.
> Why do so many people want to find "real meanings" behind art
>works? Is it because they believe that spoken or written truth is more
>truth than depicted truth?
People tend not to trust their perceptions, for obvious reasons. Depicted
truth you'll have to agree is sometimes untrustworthy.
> I think that art works do not need correlatives to be enjoyed.
Are you saying that artworks can be autonomous objects with no relation to
anything beyond themselves? Simply naming them art works establishes
correlatives.
>They do not have to be signs at all.
If they are not signs or symbols or icons, what are they?
> They do not need simple "original
>meanings" if we are creative viewers and if we still have confidence
>in our visual cognition.
The implication that viewers create and that visual cognition is not in
question interests me. How does memory affect visual cognition and the
viewers creation of a pre-existing object? When I say "painting",
something comes to mind. Be a creative viewer and tell me what it is.
The object is a word.
JKearman
In article <4v2fdg$e...@ns3.n-link.com>, Regiment's Hobby Shop
<game...@n-link.com> writes:
>The paint on my house communicates nothing, the color symbolizes nothing,
>and so it becomes strictly utilitarian. It is not art. If Gorky's art
>is unreadable, what is the difference between his canvases and my house?
>
>
Art began as a spiritual experience. Somewhere along the line it turned
into entertainment, but an artist works from within. Somewhere between the
obvious in life (the average tv sitcom) and the completely inscrutable,
lies Art.
If art is the graphic portrayal of something felt, it cannot be expressed
like a verbal language. In other words, it has to be ultimately unreadable
in the sense that you can _write down_ what it means. If it can be better
stated verbally, use a word processor, not a paint brush or chisel.
Gorky and the Abstract Impressionists, IMO, were trying to tap directly
into their feelings. I think you can get a "feeling" from Gorky's
paintings, even without understanding the symbols, just as you can
appreciate ancient Greek sculpture without knowing the mythology behind
it. What do you make of Bosch if you don't understand the Christian
anxiety behind his work? Assuming you know that creatures like his don't
inhabit the earth, you know something terrible is being represented. After
a few hundred years of representational painting, artists exploring
abstraction realized that the same feelings could be conveyed directly,
without representational go betweens.
When we find cave paintings we _think_ we know what they mean, just as
some critics/scholars _think_ they know what other artists mean. Very
often we are wrong. There have been many different explanations for the
function of Stonehenge over the years, for example. So, just because we
cannot explain the symbology of Gorky _now_ does not mean his work is not
art. I cannot define Art as meaning only works I can immediately
understand.
Unfortunately, a Pollock (whose drip paintings I believe were honest
attempts at expression--I think Lavender Mist is as much a masterpiece as
anything by Vermeer) is followed by a bunch of people who are unable to
let go and get in touch with what's inside themselves, so they simply copy
him. But it was ever thus. They are not part of the avant garde, however
much they'd like to think so, because they are not artists, only
crafts-people.
Jim Kearman
(The house I live in is yellow but the paint's peeling, exposing the raw
wood.)
--
jkea...@aol.com
JKearman
In article <4v8cfq$n...@news.interlog.com>, hu...@interlog.com (Mdeli)
writes:
>>With
>>abstract art, the symbolic language changes so quickly, no one
(including
>>the artist, probably) can keep up.
>
>If no one can keep up with it than it doesn’t mean
>anything does it?
No, it means attempting to evaluate it symbolically is the wrong approach.
You're just supposed to stand there and still your conscious mind, and let
the art work on you, not try to translate what's before you into a symbol
your conscious mind can interpret. In other words, reverse the process the
artist used to create it.
Since representational art doesn't necessarily represent what is shown on
the surface, why not just do away with representation altogether? Voila!
Abstract Expressionism, the pinnacle of Western art in the 20th century.
Jim Kearman
--
jkea...@aol.com
Bruce Attah
> You keep going back to see the Reubens.
(Reubenses, actually) because they're good.
>
> > avant-garde, succinctly described by Rebecca Alzofon in this thread as
> > "the pursuit of the new" invites disparagement because it places _newness_
> > too high on its scale of values, discarding other, more important virtues.
>
> Described by who? That is the cause of all these long posts? Did you get
> a second opinion before you started off?
Described by Rebecca Alzofon, who did not kick off this thread. I did.
Did I get a second opinion? What's that? Are opinions necessarily better
in large numbers? One opinion, well considered, is surely better than
five that are confused. That said, if you have a second opinion to offer,
please be my guest.
>
> >But what about a new style of art? What does that promise?
>
> Progress and hope.
You are not answering the question, but restating the problem. Progress
is not progress unless it has direction. I have already stated that I
believe that the avant garde does not have a direction, so you must
persuade me to the contrary if you are to persuade me that your "progress"
is anything more than a hollow promise. Similarly, there is no such thing
as a hope that is not the hope of something, so "hope" as such is
nothing. Therefore, I must ask, *what* hope do you claim I can find?
Worse than that, hope is nothing even if it is the hope of something,
unless it is realised. Unrealised hope is disappointment, unrealisable
hope, delusion.
If all that a new style of art can promise are "progress and hope", then a
new style of art promises nothing.
> > I don't think that is true. Novelty is extremely easy.
>
> Novel and successful is hard. Got a new mouse trap?
You are arguing on my side. Novel and successful is hard, indeed.
Successful novelty means things like a new mouse trap that is not merely
new, but that works better than old mousetraps. In art, successful
novelty is work that is not only new, but that offers richer aesthetic
rewards than those already available. My contention is that the novelty
offered by modernism is unsuccessful, because its aesthetic rewards have
become increasingly poor, relative to what was made previously.
> > My strong suspicion is that the
> > avant-garde as an _advance_guard_ does not really exist...
>
> Finally you get it. Kudo to you kiddo.
I got it a long time ago. But do you get it? The implication of what I
am saying is that the rush for novelty is a mistake, and harmful to art.
Your comments quoted above seem to suggest that you haven't noticed this.
Bruce Attah
> > jkea...@aol.com (JKearman) wrote:
> > >Gorky worked for years on some of his paintings, painstakingly working out
> > >...If Gorky's symbols were unreadable to any but
> > >him, does that mean he was less of an artist for inventing them?
To my way of seeing things, if Gorky intended to communicate to the
audience of his paintings through this alleged symbolic language (I've
read little about Gorky's work, so I'm not going to express an opinion
about whether he did or did not have such an intention), and yet failed,
this detracts from his work as art. However, if he did not intend that
his alleged language should communicate, and the (secret) language
remained uncommunicative, this *adds* to the value of his work. The
critical factor would be (in my view) the discernable success of Gorky's
intentions.
Not that *any* intentions would, if realized, add to the value of a work
-- only discernably successful and discernably admirable intentions.
> Regiment's Hobby Shop wrote:
> >
> > I still believe that the essence of art is communication, which on
> > whatever level, exsists between the artist and the viewer. So, if
> > Gorky's symbolism is unfathomable, then, yes, he is less of an artist.
I believe that the essence of art is _doing_what_you_like_, and making it
apparent that you are doing what you like. If a work suggests that it
looks the way it does because the artist wanted it to look that way, and
not because the artist was too lazy or inept or unimaginative to make it
look some other way, or because technical or other strictures compell it
to appear as it does, then the work has some merit. I think work should
only communicate if the artist intends that it should, and should be
uncommunicative if the artists intends that it should be that way (but it
should communicate its uncommunicativeness).
> > The paint on my house communicates nothing, the color symbolizes nothing,
> > and so it becomes strictly utilitarian. It is not art. If Gorky's art
> > is unreadable, what is the difference between his canvases and my house?
> >
> > AT
> > (who's house is painted white)
I don't think that the fact that your house is painted white is completely
uncommunicative. Why is it not painted in brightly coloured razor-blade
patterns, or in red and gold? Why is it not finished with red brick, or
with black-painted beams? If you can conceive a reason (other than the
*strictly* utilitarian) why your house is as it is, rather than as a South
African or Tibetan or English house, you can find a message in the
appearance of your house.
Things that are not art can be non-utilitarian. Things that are art can
have utility. Things that are art can be largely uncommunicative. Things
that are not art can be (and very often are) communicative. I think that
the crucial difference between works of art and other things is the degree
to which works of art represent the idea of doing things as one does
_because_one_wants_to_.
In article <3215AA...@sab.unimelb.edu.au>, Tugi
<t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> If art is communication between artist and viewer in that sense
> that viewer has to translate meaning of a work of art, as it could be
> assumed from your discussion, than what is a point to spend energy
> and codify preexistent ideas-words into works of art? It is, certainly,
> easier to express them with words if they already exist on artist's
> mind. Why do so many people want to find "real meanings" behind art
> works? Is it because they believe that spoken or written truth is more
> truth than depicted truth?
Tugi, why do you seem to imagine that the pre-existent ideas that an
artist sets out to communicate in a work must be easier to represent in
words than as, say, a painting, or as a piece of music? Have you never
worked in any other medium than the verbal? Have you never wondered why
mathematicians draw graphs and architects draw plans, or why musical and
choreographical notation are not based on written language?
Have you ever wondered what a verbal description of the contours of Mount
Everest would look like? How precise could such a thing be, how
comprehensible, and how memorable? Would you swap a map for such a
description, if you were a mountaineer?
The plain fact (overlooked by many philosophers over the ages) is that
many ideas are better communicated through images than through verbal
means, and some ideas that can be communicated pictorially simply *cannot*
be communicated verbally.
In any artistic medium, there are ideas that can be communicated
effectively *only* in that medium, because they are ideas of a very
particular nature that pertain specifically to the medium itself.
Aside from these, many ideas (and, I think, *all* the big ideas -- about
say, love, life, death etc.) can be communicated equally well either
verbally or pictorially, but some artists, possessed of greater verbal
skills than pictorial, will choose a verbal means to communicate, while
others whose aptitudes are stronger in the visual medium will choose
pictorial means.
So there are plenty of reasons why an artist might choose to communicate
ideas through painting (or some other artistic medium) rather than through
words.
> Using the word "symbol" you obviously
> understand monosemous rather than polisemous "sign".
What a strange thing to say. Does everyone who uses the word symbol know
the meaning of the words "monosemous" and "polysemous"? Perhaps we should
remind ourselves that the word "symbol" enjoyed several centuries of
respectable and intelligent use before the post-modernists hijacked it for
their system of jargon.
> I think that art works do not need correlatives to be enjoyed.
> They do not have to be signs at all. They do not need simple "original
> meanings" if we are creative viewers and if we still have confidence
> in our visual cognition.
Works of art, if they are any good, are, at the very least, signs of the
artist's (or artists') choice. Also, good works of art do not demand
creativity from viewers, but *attention*.
> The point is that we have to spend energy and
> not to wait for simple, linguistically articulated solution offered by
> prophets, 'masters of differance' (Derrida)...
Meanings do not need to be simple (indeed, too simple a meaning is not a
meaning at all), nor do they need to be linguistically articulated. Least
of all do they need to be offered by masters of difference/deference. Has
anyone ever smiled at you meaningfully? Was the meaning of that smile
simple? Was it verbally articulated? Did a master of
difference/deference explain it to you?
> There are no 'correct
> interpretations', only unlimited solutions and unlimited number of
> experiences.
If you had said there are no *unique* correct interpretations, I might
have gone along with it, but any work of art that is meaningful has a set
of possible interpretations that is correct (appropriate), and a set that
is incorrect (inappropriate), and neither set is empty.
> Until there exist a challenge in front of the painting
> we will be able to enjoy aesthetic experience and see - not the
> painting itself - but: see "more with the painting" (M. M. Ponty).
I would suggest "more with the painter" as a better way of putting things.
Bruce Attah
In article <840314...@vyvyanhs.demon.co.uk>,
Vyv...@vyvyanhs.demon.co.uk wrote:
> In article <4v4ihd$i...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
> kajoj...@aol.com "Kajojacobs" writes:
>
> ...you have to do several attempts at getting almost _any_ idea
> to work...
>
> ...Sometimes the first canvas turns out to have been the best, but you still
> don't know until you've tried repeating the experience...
> I went to an exhibition of Picasso drawings a couple of years ago and there
> were ten or twenty pieces done on the same _day_, each developing the same
> initial concept.
>
> I suppose some artists might suppress all the 'dummy runs' and only
> sell the best example of each idea, but it would make painting an even
> more expensive activity than it already is.
>
> Vyvyan Hope-Scott
Sketching is often a useful way of doing "dummy runs" without the big
expense of unsold canvases or the unsavoury compromise of selling poor
quality work.
Come to think of it, Mondrian sketched, so the foregoing is hardly an
explanation for Mondrian's evident repetitiveness.
Bruce Attah
In article <AE3D4DDB...@reinwood.demon.co.uk>,
dar...@reinwood.demon.co.uk (Darren Reynolds) wrote:
I reject avantgardism as a mistake. It would be much simpler to go along
with the herd, and thereby avoid the risk of being singled out as someone
who was wrong. However, I do not reject avantgardism as a mistake because
I like a challenge. I do so because I believe avantgardism is a mistake.
Bruce Attah
In article <4va3o3$r...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, jkea...@aol.com (JKearman)
wrote:
> Unfortunately, a Pollock (whose drip paintings I believe were honest
> attempts at expression--I think Lavender Mist is as much a masterpiece as
> anything by Vermeer)...
Honesty alone does not make a masterpiece.
> ...is followed by a bunch of people who are unable to
> let go and get in touch with what's inside themselves, so they simply copy
> him. But it was ever thus. They are not part of the avant garde, however
> much they'd like to think so, because they are not artists, only
> crafts-people.
The first bit is right -- a follower is not avant-garde, but the second
bit, that these followers are craftspeople, I do not accept. Mimicking
Ab. Ex. is not a craft.
Kajojacobs
>
>Art began as a spiritual experience. Somewhere along the line it turned
>into entertainment, but an artist works from within. Somewhere between
the
>obvious in life (the average tv sitcom) and the completely inscrutable,
>lies Art.
>
>If art is the graphic portrayal of something felt, it cannot be expressed
>like a verbal language. In other words, it has to be ultimately
unreadable
>in the sense that you can _write down_ what it means. If it can be better
>stated verbally, use a word processor, not a paint brush or chisel.
(The beginnings of art probably had more to do with communication than
spiritual experience.) If you use the language analogy to understand how
art has evolved through the ages you can see that from a base language
(Latin in one part of the world) it spread and changed from dialects to
separate languages, many still retaining traces of the original and
sharing similar words. Look at all the different art "ism's" as different
dialects and languages. There are those who look down on someone speaking
in a foreign tongue or struggling to learn a second language - isn't it
true that they actually know something you may not? Just because you
don't understand what they are saying doesn't make them or their message
inferior. That type of thinking is refered to as bigotry, I believe.
~Karen Jacobs~
Mdeli
(JKearman) wrote:
>>The paint on my house communicates nothing, the color symbolizes nothing,
>>and so it becomes strictly utilitarian. It is not art.
What a revelation!
>If art is the graphic portrayal of something felt,---
It rarely is.
>---Gorky and the Abstract Impressionists, IMO, were trying to tap directly
>into their feelings. I think you can get a "feeling" from Gorky's
>paintings, even without understanding the symbols, just as you can
>appreciate ancient Greek sculpture without knowing the mythology behind
>it.
The feeling I get from Gorky and most AE is drunken
failure.
> What do you make of Bosch if you don't understand the Christian
>anxiety behind his work?
Skill-ideas-imagination-detail-complexity, something to
look at for more than 15 seconds, a history of people
admiring his work for some centuries. Its beautiful in
spite of all the scholarly bullshit written about it.
>After a few hundred years of representational painting, artists exploring
>abstraction realized that the same feelings could be conveyed directly,
>without representational go between.
They do indeed convey a feeling namely, that they are
lazy phonies engaged in a put-ons. Its a popular
feeling. However, their representational go betweens
are a bunch of phony critics and salesmen.
Besides, abstraction is older than representational
painting
>So, just because we
>cannot explain the symbology of Gorky _now_ does not mean his work is not
>art. I cannot define Art as meaning only works I can immediately
>understand.
SO TELL US WHAT YOU DO UNDERSTAND ABOUT GORKY THAT I
DON’T? And don’t just tell us that you like him in a
1000 words.
>Unfortunately, a Pollock (whose drip paintings I believe were honest
>attempts at expression--I think Lavender Mist is as much a masterpiece as
>anything by Vermeer)
Gee, its so nice to know he was honest.
My latest piece of floor covering is also honest and
even better than Lavender Mist. I even understand it.
>---is followed by a bunch of people who are unable to
>let go and get in touch with what's inside themselves, so they simply copy
>him.
Let go of what? Which end of yourself do you get in
touch with. Did Gorky get into the same end?
> They are not part of the avant garde, however
>much they'd like to think so, because they are not artists, only
>crafts-people.
Crafts-people. Yuck. I’m applying for an avant garde
pedigree. Just tell us where we can find the
application office.
The Artspeak never stops.
Mani DeLi
-no skill no art
Mdeli
jkea...@aol.com (JKearman) wrote:
>>>With
>>>abstract art, the symbolic language changes so quickly, no one
>>>(including the artist, probably) can keep up.
>>If no one can keep up with it than it doesn’t mean
>>anything does it?
>No, it means attempting to evaluate it symbolically is the wrong approach.
>You're just supposed to stand there and still your conscious mind, and let
>the art work on you, not try to translate what's before you into a symbol
>your conscious mind can interpret. In other words, reverse the process the
>artist used to create it.
Can one get this set of instructions at the museum
entrance?
>Since representational art doesn't necessarily represent what is shown on
>the surface, why not just do away with representation altogether? Voila!
Should we burn all that representational classical
stuff?
>Abstract Expressionism, the pinnacle of Western art in the 20th century.
-For anyone who looks at nothing else.
Ruili Tian
> In article <3215AA...@sab.unimelb.edu.au>, Tugi
> <t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
> > If art is communication between artist and viewer in that sense
> > that viewer has to translate meaning of a work of art, as it could be
> > assumed from your discussion, than what is a point to spend energy
> > and codify preexistent ideas-words into works of art? It is, certainly,
> > easier to express them with words if they already exist on artist's
> > mind. Why do so many people want to find "real meanings" behind art
> > works? Is it because they believe that spoken or written truth is more
> > truth than depicted truth?
> Tugi, why do you seem to imagine that the pre-existent ideas that an
> artist sets out to communicate in a work must be easier to represent in
> words than as, say, a painting, or as a piece of music? Have you never
> worked in any other medium than the verbal? Have you never wondered why
> mathematicians draw graphs and architects draw plans, or why musical and
> choreographical notation are not based on written language?
Have you seen a mathematic book that only consists of pictures? Why do you think there
is always accompanying text? Illustrations facilitate the communication of an idea
expressible in words, but they are seldom expressive enough of such ideas on their own.
However, words are always sufficient alone to communicate ideas expressible in words.
As to musical or dancers' notations, they are already the end products. In a
linguistic sense, they can be called languages, but they have little to do with any
spoken tongue.
> Have you ever wondered what a verbal description of the contours of Mount
> Everest would look like? How precise could such a thing be, how
> comprehensible, and how memorable? Would you swap a map for such a
> description, if you were a mountaineer?
A map already has the spoken language enbedded in, which is called the legend. Besides,
maps are not works of art(only for convinience here, appologies to chartographers).
Words alone can have great precision. Have you ever tried to express laws of
thermodynamics with pictures alone, or draw a map to moral responsibility.
> The plain fact (overlooked by many philosophers over the ages) is that
> many ideas are better communicated through images than through verbal
> means, and some ideas that can be communicated pictorially simply *cannot*
> be communicated verbally.
Agreed, though I am not sure about the philosopher part for they have overlooked many
things. But were we talking about ideas already expressible in words?
> In any artistic medium, there are ideas that can be communicated
> effectively *only* in that medium, because they are ideas of a very
> particular nature that pertain specifically to the medium itself.
I am not sure there is a idea only suited for oil. If so, people were probably painting
another Jesus when they had to use tempera. The ideas are usually the same, the
expressions differ.
> Aside from these, many ideas (and, I think, *all* the big ideas -- about
> say, love, life, death etc.) can be communicated equally well either
> verbally or pictorially, but some artists, possessed of greater verbal
> skills than pictorial, will choose a verbal means to communicate, while
> others whose aptitudes are stronger in the visual medium will choose
> pictorial means.
I imagine that artists seldom think of skills in terms of quantity. They don't
really think that much before hand. They just use what ever at hand.
> So there are plenty of reasons why an artist might choose to communicate
> ideas through painting (or some other artistic medium) rather than through
> words.
Art is not really about communication or the ability to communicate. It is more about
desire - for money, fame... or for expressing the devine who sometimes speak monkey(or
Martian or AE) rather than human.
Charles Eicher
In article <Bruce.Attah-14...@support-saturn.isltd.insignia.com,
Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
>I do not think of the avant garde as an exclusive club. Rather, I believe
>it to be a very inclusive one. It is trivially easy to become an
>avantgardist; all you have to do is think yourself one, and commit
>yourself to following the latest fashions. Rejecting avantgardism as a
>mistake, however, is more of a challenge.
Ahem, 'Avant Garde' literally means 'before the trend' so your remarks
about following trends are illogical and ill-informed. The 'Avant Garde'
creates the new trends, and never follows them.
JKearman
In article <4vdadc$3...@news.interlog.com>, hu...@interlog.com (Mdeli)
writes:
>
>
>>No, it means attempting to evaluate it symbolically is the wrong
approach.
>
>>You're just supposed to stand there and still your conscious mind, and
let
>>the art work on you, not try to translate what's before you into a
symbol
>>your conscious mind can interpret. In other words, reverse the process
the
>>artist used to create it.
>
>Can one get this set of instructions at the museum
>entrance?
Meet me at MoMA sometime and I'll help you work this out. My contribution
to art appreciation.
>
>>Since representational art doesn't necessarily represent what is shown
on
>>the surface, why not just do away with representation altogether? Voila!
>
>Should we burn all that representational classical
>stuff?
>
Naw, some of those canvases are big enough to paint over with A.E. works.
>>Abstract Expressionism, the pinnacle of Western art in the 20th century.
>
>-For anyone who looks at nothing else.
>
Oh, no, looking at only one or two styles/periods of art is Art Bigotry
(thanks, Karen Jacobs, for making the connection). This remark is as much
a cheap shot as referring to artists whose work you don't understand as
'phonies.' Fortunately, there are no art bigots on this newsgroup.
>Mani DeLi
>-no skill no art
Jim Kearman
no insight no life
JKearman
In article <4vdadg$3...@news.interlog.com>, hu...@interlog.com (Mdeli)
writes:
> (JKearman) wrote:
>>>The paint on my house communicates nothing, the color symbolizes
nothing,
>>>and so it becomes strictly utilitarian. It is not art.
>
Actually, I didn't write that, the Hobby Shop guy did. I don't agree with
it and I certainly don't wish to have it attributed to me, even if I did.
>
>They [Abstract Expressionists] do indeed convey a feeling namely, that
they are
>lazy phonies engaged in a put-ons. Its a popular
>feeling. However, their representational go betweens
>are a bunch of phony critics and salesmen.
This is an opinion of yours that you've been stating for some time. You
have yet to prove to us that any of them were indeed "lazy phonies engaged
in put-ons." As you started this whole discussion, I think the burden of
proof falls to you.
>
>
>SO TELL US WHAT YOU DO UNDERSTAND ABOUT GORKY THAT I
>DON’T? And don’t just tell us that you like him in a
>1000 words.
>
We've been trying to get you to tell us what art _you_ like/understand and
you say it would contribute nothing to the discussion to do so. If you
hate the stuff so much (and one can only wonder at the deeper reasons for
this disdain), no wonder you don't bother to study it. You've written it
off, closed the book and will not brook any discussion to the contrary.
No artist has better captured the agony of genocide and displacement
better than Gorky. His paintings are lush landscapes you can walk through,
if you're willing to spend more than 15 seconds looking at them. When I
mentioned having an emotional reaction to a painting, however, you said:
>Let go of what? Which end of yourself do you get in
>touch with. Did Gorky get into the same end?
>
Jim Kearman
No hate, no enemies
dwi...@nas.com
In article
<Bruce.Attah-19...@support-saturn.isltd.insignia.com>,
Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
Here Here!
Bruce Attah
In article <ceicher-2108...@dip91.inav.net>, cei...@inav.net
(Charles Eicher) wrote:
Ahem, 'Avant Garde' literally means 'before the trend', so my remarks
about following trends ought to be illogical and ill-informed, but the art
that is called 'Avant Garde' is not in fact 'before the trend' -- it is
very much *after* the trend. That is why my remarks are not illogical and
ill-informed.
The whole thrust of this discussion (note the title of the thread: The
*Real* Meaning of "Avant Garde") has been that the term, when used in
reference to art, does not mean what a glance at the dictionary would
suggest.
R Blanchard
Bruce Attah wrote:
> > > avant-garde, succinctly described by Rebecca Alzofon in this thread as
> > > "the pursuit of the new"
> Described by Rebecca Alzofon, who did not kick off this thread. I did.
She added her bit, but you were using avant garde to describe some
specific group of people that werw calling themselves 'the avant garde',
and she was referring to an activity.
> Did I get a second opinion? What's that? Are opinions necessarily better
> in large numbers? One opinion, well considered, is surely better than
> five that are confused. That said, if you have a second opinion to offer,
> please be my guest.
I considered your opinion and it didn't do well. I was expecting another
source for your pronouncement of what 'avant garde' was, and still have
not found one in all these posts. My opinion was stated in an earlier
post; that 'avant garde' was a sliding descriptor of what at the time
was being considered as 'pushing the envelope'.
>
> >
> > >But what about a new style of art? What does that promise?
> >
> > Progress and hope.
>
> You are not answering the question, but restating the problem. Progress
> is not progress unless it has direction. I have already stated that I
> believe that the avant garde does not have a direction, so you must
> persuade me to the contrary if you are to persuade me that your "progress"
> is anything more than a hollow promise.
As I said, I reject your premise that avant garde refers to any group or
thing, but is used as a descriptor, and as such, needs no separate
direction of its own.
> Similarly, there is no such thing
> as a hope that is not the hope of something, so "hope" as such is
> nothing. Therefore, I must ask, *what* hope do you claim I can find?
> Worse than that, hope is nothing even if it is the hope of something,
> unless it is realised. Unrealised hope is disappointment, unrealisable
> hope, delusion.
Hope does imply a hope for something, and hope used singly implies the
'for'. What I hope you can find in art is something that broadens your
perspective of life on this planet. Hope can only be realised or
unrealised in hindsight, and by then you may have changed your
expectations if unrealised or augmented them if realised.
> If all that a new style of art can promise are "progress and hope", then a
> new style of art promises nothing.
Your leaps of logic are amazing, if not painful to watch happen. Start
with any pronouncement you want, and then draw the conclusion you infer
from your own pronouncement. It is a rather weak way to defend a
position by running around in tight circles and shooting off arrows,
hoping one will hit something. At least you don't have to worry if they
are true or not.
> > Novel and successful is hard. Got a new mouse trap?
>
> You are arguing on my side.
And you argue with that too?
> Novel and successful is hard, indeed.
> Successful novelty means things like a new mouse trap that is not merely
> new, but that works better than old mousetraps. In art, successful
> novelty is work that is not only new, but that offers richer aesthetic
> rewards than those already available.
OK so far. I agree with you, and my position is that this
successful-novel approach is what can be described as avant garde.
> My contention is that the novelty
> offered by modernism is unsuccessful, because its aesthetic rewards have
> become increasingly poor, relative to what was made previously.
Based upon what? This is your take on things. I find current work to be
equally satisfying, and on another level than my aesthetic rewards
garnered from viewing past works. Both give me rewards, just in
different areas. A well drawn comic book gives me still different
rewards, but none of them invalidate the others.
>
> > > My strong suspicion is that the
> > > avant-garde as an _advance_guard_ does not really exist...
> >
> > Finally you get it. Kudo to you kiddo.
>
> I got it a long time ago. But do you get it? The implication of what I
> am saying is that the rush for novelty is a mistake, and harmful to art.
> Your comments quoted above seem to suggest that you haven't noticed this.
The implication I got from your writings was a diatribe against some
ananymous group who you identified as the 'avant garde'. As far as the
rush for novelty, this may be market driven more than derived from the
intentions of the artist. Some do follow that path (and some of them
make good money at it too), but there are other forces that drive the
desire to create, and these are more rewarding to me.
--
Rick Blanchard
Bruce Attah
In article <321C35...@sd.znet.com>, bde...@sd.znet.com wrote:
> ...'avant garde' was a sliding descriptor of what at the time
> was being considered as 'pushing the envelope'.
...So 'avant garde' refers to a thing...
> As I said, I reject your premise that avant garde refers to any group or
> thing, but is used as a descriptor, and as such, needs no separate
> direction of its own.
...So 'avant garde' does not refer to a thing.
Without pausing to ask of what the use might be of a noun phrase that does
not refer to a thing, I will say here that I agree with your statement
that 'avant garde' described 'what at the time was being considered as
"pushing the envelope"', taking 'at the time' to mean at the end of the
nineteenth century and the early part of this century. The term is still
used in this way, and quite properly. What I do not believe is that those
who have been _considered_ to be pushing the envelope necessarily were or
are.
I contend that there _was_ a moment in the late nineteenth century when a
real avant garde of art existed, but that a point came, some time early
this century, when it simply evaporated. What happened was that 'pushing
the envelope', as you put it, became standard practice. The moment that
it became necessary to be 'avant garde' in order to win critical approval,
avantgardism ceased to be real. The moment novelty became the convention,
it ceased to be novel.
I'm not sure I could put an exact date on it, but this happened in the
first or second decade of the twentieth century. Every artist wanted to
be known for inventing a style. Manifestos were as thick on the ground as
greeting cards. Orphism, Futurism, Vorticism and Suprematism were among
the countless schemes that were supposed to save the world, or at least
define the future of art. Did any of these programs achieve what they
promised? No, of course not, because the promises were quite absurd.
What was _really_ happening was that artists were not doing something
genuinely revolutionary, but merely conforming -- yes, _conforming_ -- to
the critical requirements of the time.
By the middle of the twenties, avantgardism was not merely deceased -- its
corpse was putrid. Dada signed the death certificate. Unfortunately, a
lot of people have been unwilling to acknowledge the fact, and critics
continue to require novelty above all else -- preferrably novelty
accompanied by a manifesto and a word that ends with 'ism'. And how new
can you get, honestly, when nothing is out of bounds? That is why we now
have a vast army of would-be avantgardists pushing a nonexistent envelope
to the hollow applause of uncritical critics, while art itself is
effectively almost banished and only happens _in_spite_ of the art
establishment, rather than under its aegis.
> What I hope you can find in art is something that broadens your
> perspective of life on this planet.
This is an interesting program for art. Yet I find it hard to imagine how
such a program would find much to praise in the choices that the artistic
avant garde have made during the course of this century. Does the
suffocating flatness of Abstract Expressionism broaden anything at all, or
does it merely close the world off? Should not natural history
illustration, travel photography and the paintings of Poynter and Gerome
not receive far greater acclaim from you than, say, a Cubist still-life by
Picasso or a soft sculpture by Oldenburg?
I'd be interested to hear if anyone can come up with a program for art --
other than novelty for its own sake, or simply being anti-something --
that will make what has during this century been called the avant garde
look like something more worth doing than that which has been dismissed by
its champions as belonging to the past.
> > If all that a new style of art can promise are "progress and hope", then a
> > new style of art promises nothing.
>
> Your leaps of logic are amazing, if not painful to watch happen. Start
> with any pronouncement you want, and then draw the conclusion you infer
> from your own pronouncement.
Oi! *YOU* made the pronouncement, not me. I asked what a new style of art
reliably promises, and you said 'progress and hope'. Then you failed to
define the direction of that progress or the object of that hope, despite
that my earlier comments clearly made such definitions necessary if
progress and hope were not to be seen as empty.
> The implication I got from your writings was a diatribe against some
> ananymous group who you identified as the 'avant garde'. As far as the
> rush for novelty, this may be market driven more than derived from the
> intentions of the artist. Some do follow that path (and some of them
> make good money at it too), but there are other forces that drive the
> desire to create, and these are more rewarding to me.
The group I identified as the avant garde is the group that has identified
itself as avant garde, and, though it may not be very cohesive (atomistic
would be a more apt description), it is hardly anonymous.
The pursuit of novelty you describe as possibly 'market driven more than
derived from the intentions of the artist'. You admit that this
phenomenon exists. That is a good first step, but are you fishing for
excuses? The artists don't intend to discard other artistic values in
favour of novelty, but they do so because the market insists. An
interesting theory, but there are some artists who would say you were
accusing them of being money-grabbing cynics. Others might say you were
accusing them of having no will of their own, of being utterly in thrall
to the market. Also, you need to explain _why_ the market insists on this
very narrow conception of what makes good art, if, indeed, it does. Might
there not be some sort of three-way interaction between artists, critics
and collectors that produces this absurd situation?
This last bit is somewhat off-topic, and will probably only be of interest
to Rick Blanchard:
> ...I considered your opinion and it didn't do well...
But you didn't tell me why you felt it didn't do well. That's what you
ought to have done, rather than ask me for someone else's opinion.
> I was expecting another source for your pronouncement of what 'avant garde'
> was, and still have not found one in all these posts.
Why do you need me to quote someone else who shares my views? If you
think I am wrong, why would evidence that someone else is similarly wrong
be of any interest to you? Do you judge a the strength of a position by
the number of those who adopt it? Or is it a matter of *who* holds that
position? Who would I have to quote for you to take the opinion
seriously? If I quoted, say, Baudrillard, would you take Baudrillard
seriously if he failed to quote someone else on the same subject? And
what if I quoted someone I thought of as a stronger thinker than
Baudrillard (Christopher Norris, say), and you did not find the name to
your liking? If no statement counts for anything unless bolstered by a
quotation, is there not infinite regress?
In any case, it is usually possible, on any matter that is in the
slightest bit contentious, to find 'authorities' with mutually
contradictory views. How could quoting one or another such view reveal
the truth? Once, some months ago, I did post a set of quotations from
philosophers and art critics, to show that I was not alone in my views.
What happened? Someone accused me of posting quotations in lieu of
reasoned argument! I prefer not to waste my time dropping names all over
the place as some do, because what really counts is not how many names you
can chuck in to back you up, but how strong your reasons are, and how
clearly you can put them forward. If I fail in my reasoning and my
clarity, then quotations will not help me or you -- they will merely give
the impression of one having picked up a few choice lines at the student
union bar. Relying on quotations also tempts one into the fallacious trap
of arguing from authority.
So, if you are in absolutely desperate need of 'second opinions', don't
come to me for help. Your local library, if not your own bookcase, will
gladly furnish you with all you need.
I hope that you will be prepared meanwhile to consider my arguments on
their own merits, rather than on the basis of who else subscribes to them,
and I eagerly await your comments on my further clarification of what I
consider to be the real meaning of 'avant garde' in art.
Bruce Attah.
Mdeli
(Charles Eicher) wrote:
>Ahem, 'Avant Garde' literally means 'before the trend' so your remarks
>about following trends are illogical and ill-informed. The 'Avant Garde'
>creates the new trends, and never follows them.
The exact literal meaning of AG is not all we are
discussing.
Avant garde has become a fashionable label for the
stuff of this century that has made it into our museums
and caught the eyes of the critics, The term is a
put-on just like most of the artwork it describes.
Avant garde just means new.
But just saying something is NEW is not nearly enough
for those wanting their enema of Artspeak. NEW just
doesn't sound cryptic enough. While if you say avant
garde it sounds more intellectual and gives one a
marker for a circuitous ramble.
As to the art it describes; the avant garde should
really be called the antiquated avant garde or the
avant gone because all the stuff it describes in the
paradigm sense, was already done by about 1917. That
was about 80 years ago. Critics however, will explain
why this is really all new if you care to read it.
Mani DeLi
...If it needs a long sermon to proclaim it art its
probably bullshit.
JKearman
In article <3219F9...@huh.huhhuh.huh>, Ruili Tian
<rt...@huh.huhhuh.huh> writes:
>Words alone can have great precision. Have you ever tried to express
laws of
>
>thermodynamics with pictures alone, or draw a map to moral
responsibility.
>
and
>Art is not really about communication or the ability to communicate. It
is
>more about
>desire - for money, fame... or for expressing the devine who sometimes
speak
>monkey(or
>Martian or AE) rather than human.
>
What are you doing on a fine arts newsgroup with an attitude like this? It
is impossible to accurately represent emotions verbally. That's why we
have dance, the fine arts, and children throwing temper tantrums. (Make
what you like of that simile.)
Most of the great ideas in physics (such as thermodynamics) were actually
conceived as in_sights_, mental pictures. Only later were words used to
explain what these insights had revealed. Words are a secondary medium.
Your cynicism about artists reveals the same bitterness that afflicts
several other recent posters to this group. Perhaps each of you feels he
(I haven't seen any such remarks from women) is the only "true" artist,
and all the rest are fakes. What arrogance!
Cynicism and the general denigration of others is a way to appear
intelligent and appear to elevate oneself by belittling your targets.
Fortunately, on closer examination it fails to convince.
Suggestion: Get some black paint and a canvas and go make a picture.
Jim Kearman
no hate no enemies
Ruili Tian
JKearman wrote:
> What are you doing on a fine arts newsgroup with an attitude like this? It
> is impossible to accurately represent emotions verbally. That's why we
> have dance, the fine arts, and children throwing temper tantrums. (Make
> what you like of that simile.)
I was arguing on the point that if one can put something into words at all, one probably
does not need to make an art piece out of such a thing. An attitude is however hard to
put into words. I must check again the correct one required for this group.
> Most of the great ideas in physics (such as thermodynamics) were actually
> conceived as in_sights_, mental pictures. Only later were words used to
> explain what these insights had revealed. Words are a secondary medium.
Though we are visual animals, not all our mental process involve pictures. The more
primitive senses such as touch and scent are more direct and memorable. For that
matter, painting comparing to music is much lesser an art form. All media by name is
secondary, the only primary is oneself.
By no means I am trying to talk down fine art or painting. My point has been that art,
even art of words such as peotry, is not about communication. There is no obligation
for artists to convey a message to the viewers. I, while not an artist, would more want
from my viewers pocket change than an understanding. But that's just my arrogance.
> Your cynicism about artists reveals the same bitterness that afflicts
> several other recent posters to this group. Perhaps each of you feels he
> (I haven't seen any such remarks from women) is the only "true" artist,
> and all the rest are fakes. What arrogance!
> Cynicism and the general denigration of others is a way to appear
> intelligent and appear to elevate oneself by belittling your targets.
> Fortunately, on closer examination it fails to convince.
Artists are nice people, I have never been bitter toward them. Women are even nicer.
What's this rage? Do I detect an attitude which of course is alway hard to put into
words? I invoked divinity yet was considered cynical. What has this world come to? The
truth is that I do believe in money, and please be convinced on that. What do you
believe in? Art?
> Suggestion: Get some black paint and a canvas and go make a picture.
Speaking of arrogance... Suggestion well taken. Classes in the fall.
The real meaning of avant garde is huh..huhhuh.huh.huhhuhhuh.huhhuh
> Jim Kearman
> no hate no enemies
Ruili Tian
no onion
dwi...@nas.com
> As far as the
> rush for novelty, this may be market driven more than derived from the
> intentions of the artist. Some do follow that path (and some of them
> make good money at it too), but there are other forces that drive the
> desire to create, and these are more rewarding to me.
>
> --
> Rick Blanchard
Would you please describe the "other forces" that drive the desire to
create? And what are the "rewards" derived from them?
Yolanda Liberte
In article <4vkkff$3...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, jkea...@aol.com says...
>(I haven't seen any such remarks from women)
How in the world would you know? TO help you make your argument,
you have no way of telling the person's sex by reading text-based
postings in newsgroups. Ever heard of "aliases?" Names don't mean
a thing, and since you can't see or hear the person, all you have to
go on is text. Even if you could see or hear them, they could easily
be Dennis Rodman in drag, or vice-versa.
--
<>:<>:<>:<>:<>:<>:<>:<>:<>
Yolanda Liberte
<>:<>:<>:<>:<>:<:>:<>:<>:<>
Jack Smith
Yolanda Liberte wrote:
>
> And this post was keeps repeating itself, put here by an obsessive-
> compulsive, AIDS infected faggot...
Yolanda Liberte is not a woman. Yolanda is a homophobic, misogynistic,
bigoted old man living in Austin, Texas; who pretends to be an art
professional, and pretends to be associated with the University of
Texas.
Here is a post Yolanda Liberte (Jay Elless <j...@tejas.com> A.K.A. Barbie
Kew, Helen Bakk, Rose Madder, etc.) made last January when he was
calling himself Ima Dillo:
Subject: re: What do YOU think.
From: Arm...@shell.com (Ima Dillo)
Date: 1996/01/10
Message-Id: <4d0o20$j...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>
Organization: Tex-I-Can, Inc.
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Because I don't want all the fairies in the world invading my
email box, you will have to reply here to this post query.
While cruising through southern New Mexico early one morning,
before sunrise, on an open highway without another vehicle in
sight, I was pulled over for speeding by a New Mexico State
Trooper. I accepted the ticket, put it in my bag, and didn't look
at it until later when I was unpacking from my trip. The ticket
is a carbon copy, and written across the face with a pen and
ink in original form are these words:
Hi My name is Charlie, and I'm gay.
The officer's signature on the carbon of the ticket is Charles D____.
Aside from being highly insulted by the inferrence of handing this
ticket to a lone male driver in the darkness of early morn, I am
astounded that a highway patrol officer would exercise such
un-professionalism.
My legal question is this. Was the ticket voided by his actions?
I intend to write to the New Mexico Dept. of Public Safety and
complain, and ask that this ticket be voided as an acceptable
apology to me.
Ima Dillo.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And here is another post Yolanda Liberte (Jay Elless <j...@tejas.com>)
made in June when he was calling himself Rose Madder:
Subject: Re: How do you know the county is . . .
From: Fugi...@large.com (Rose Madder)
Date: 1996/06/28
Message-Id: <4r1e58$d...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>
Distribution: austin
References: <4qmcpq$5...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>
<4qmjui$l...@boris.eden.com> <4qon9i$2...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>
<4qrrq7$b...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu> <31D2A124...@tab.com>
Organization: Colorful Characters, Inc.
Mime-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: austin.general
In article <31D2A124...@tab.com>, j...@tab.com says...
>Needles to say, if Rose Madder really is a true transsexual she'll
>figure it out some day.
Honey, I figured out long ago who and what I am. Visualize a
morphing of former Gov. Ann Richards with columnist Molly Ivins,
then age the morphed image a 1/4 century, and add the sound
of Phyllis Dillard's voice and laugh and you will be damned close to
figuring out why I choose to disguise myself and sport an alias.
--
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Colorful but fugitive.
~ Rose Madder ~
++++++++++++++++++++++++
R Blanchard
Ruili Tian wrote:
> The real meaning of avant garde is huh..huhhuh.huh.huhhuhhuh.huhhuh
That's by Lori Anderson, right?
--
Rick Blanchard
Trotsky
>> (Charles Eicher) wrote:
>> >Ahem, 'Avant Garde' literally means 'before the trend' so your remarks
>> >about following trends are illogical and ill-informed. The 'Avant Garde'
>> >creates the new trends, and never follows them.
>mdeli wrote:
>> ... The term is a
>> put-on just like most of the artwork it describes.
>> Avant garde just means new.
>>
>> But just saying something is NEW is not nearly enough
>> for those wanting their enema of Artspeak. NEW just
>> ...
>'Avant-garde' does not mean 'new' but 'progressive'.
>And this is a problem. The term assumes advancing. The
>question is: is art advancing or not? If it is
>advancing it implies that there exists the final aim of
>'development'; that there exists 'lower' and 'higher' art.
> ....
Well, if it is coming down to defining terms in this sort of process, let us
not go wayward. There is, afterall, a history for the term avant-garde, a
poorly misused term nowaday ....
New ... this, especially in the manner that it gets framed above, is pure
modernist. Especially when , as Tugi zeros in on, it is a question as to
whether *art* is advancing or not. It is also a habit that gets carried over
into 'post-modernist' art. Look, for example, at the work of Louise Lawlor
... can you imagine even the most 'post-modernist' of critics accepting work
by, say, me that copies her work exactly? In any case, if the question is
the avant-garde, then this newness for newness sake and the progress or
non-progress of art is rather moot when speaking of the avant-garde.
Okay, open oyur history books and turn to the pages on the Russian
Revolution. There should be a n inset box on the left half of the page that
speaks of the work of several artist groups at the ame time of the
revolution -- initially painting and collaging, making photographs, making
posters, putting on plays, designing sets, public monuments, et cetera et
cetera. Hard at work, these Russians were the artistic avant-garde ... much
like Lenin and Trotsky and other assorted revolutionaries were the political
avant-garde. These artists worked hard for the revolution, they were the
leading edge of culture, preparing it for the ideal communist situation.
They didn't really care about art so much as the revolution-in-progress. Art
was a means to an end and who knows, if Stalin had not decided to force
socialist realism onto the state sponsored artists, maybe the whole
experiment might not have fizzled and Pravda would still be publishing!
In any case, the avant-garde is a group who are working towards some sort of
political goal, and when their technical and formal skills are copied and
repeated by those tht follow (usually, in this century, modernists) then the
political goal fades away and the newness that is left over becomes the
newness for the sake of art et al.
--
Michael Maranda
mm0...@uhura.cc.rochester.edu
Andrew Werby
Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
[How is this current situation you disparage so different from the one you recognize
in the nineteenth century? Aren't those who spite the art establishment, spurn its
aegis, and try to come up with something that makes sense to themselves "pushing the
envelope"? Granted that the establishment is corrupt and the art it fosters feeble,
is historicism the only answer? Is there no hope that something useful might arise
from all the restless innovation which artists have pursued over the last century?
While the art of the past has a lot to teach the artists of the present, surely you
don't believe it will suffice for all time?]
>> What I hope you can find in art is something that broadens your
>> perspective of life on this planet.
>
>This is an interesting program for art. Yet I find it hard to imagine how
>such a program would find much to praise in the choices that the artistic
>avant garde have made during the course of this century. Does the
>suffocating flatness of Abstract Expressionism broaden anything at all, or
>does it merely close the world off? Should not natural history
>illustration, travel photography and the paintings of Poynter and Gerome
>not receive far greater acclaim from you than, say, a Cubist still-life by
>Picasso or a soft sculpture by Oldenburg?
[Perhaps a re-evaluation of natural-science illustration is due. Certainly the photos
in National Geographic (perhaps there are similar publications in the UK) have
broadened some perspectives of life on this planet. What is lacking is the
assimilation of our many scientific/perceptual breakthroughs into the language of
Art. I believe a lot of exciting work remains to be done, as modern artists,
rejecting the stale formulas of the past, find ever-fresh inspiration in the world of
Nature.]
>I'd be interested to hear if anyone can come up with a program for art --
>other than novelty for its own sake, or simply being anti-something --
>that will make what has during this century been called the avant garde
>look like something more worth doing than that which has been dismissed by
>its champions as belonging to the past.
>
[Certainly novelty for "shock value" has become difficult to achieve- stunts which
might have formerly caused riots now produce stifled yawns. But an avant-gardist of
today has no obligation to defend those of the past- it's quite the contrary. In fact
Bruce is espousing an attitude typical of today's avant garde, rejecting the status
quo in favor of ideas which are not generally accepted. The avant garde of yesterday
has become the academy of today, and holds its position with quite as much rigidity-
perhaps more. However those who proclaim that nothing new is possible remind me of
those at the end of the eighteenth century who proclaimed the death of music, because
all the possible combinations of notes had been used up.]
>The pursuit of novelty you describe as possibly 'market driven more than
>derived from the intentions of the artist'. You admit that this
>phenomenon exists. That is a good first step, but are you fishing for
>excuses? The artists don't intend to discard other artistic values in
>favour of novelty, but they do so because the market insists.
>
[Actually, the market is not geared to the promotion of novel ideas in art. Ask any
artist who has tried to interest galleries in art that does not fit into
pre-existing pigeonholes. Galleries want to be thought of when a particular type of
art comes to mind, and each cultivates its own "look" which they then find artists to
provide. And once an artist has produced an identifiable style; usually a tiny
variation of another's, he or she is discouraged from deviations for fear of losing
that identifiability.]
Andrew Werby - United Artworks
http://users.lanminds.com/~drewid
Check this page for art that- who knows- might "broaden your perspective of life on
this planet".
Mdeli
I won't ponder the point. But even progressive infers
new to a great degree. It also infers what you say,
namely progress.
>And this is a problem. The term assumes advancing. The
>question is: is art advancing or not?
To say it in concisly; art does NOT in the grand sense
make progress. I might add that technique makes
progress and when some artists's work becomes finer it
can be said to have made progress.
These facts are rarely recognized. I recall a painting
purchased for the National Gallery of Canada for some
million dollars. It had a red stripe running across a
white canvas. The public complaint was answered by some
idiot critic to the effect that it was the first of its
kind.
I guess first of its kind," crossed the mind of those
who were empowered to make the purchase. I presume that
they also must have thought about the term avant garde.
I'm sure the word quality never crossed their minds.
Mani DeLi
...no skill no art
Tugi
someone wrote:
>> I still believe that the essence of art is communication, which on
>> whatever level, exsists between the artist and the viewer.
dwilson wrote:
>Although I do agree that art can communicate I have to question the
>assumption that it does in all cases. When we assume that art communicates
>we must assume it does so in a language that is understood by the viewer
>and that this language is universal in its nature. This may not be true in
>every case and does not mean that the art is not art or that the artist is
>not an artist.
Saying it differently: art is not language since it does not provide the
possibility of answer. Argument against this would be that it is not necessary to use
the same language to realize closed communicational circle. I agree with you: there
is no universal language of art, moreover, I would say that art can be
communication but it is not 'differentia specifica' of art.
someone wrote:
>>If Gorky's art
>> is unreadable, what is the difference between his canvases and my house?
dwilson:
>Readability implies function. Function implies utility. Readability may
>not be a necessary condition in all cases for a work of art's viability.
I wrote:
>> If art is communication between artist and viewer in that sense
>> that viewer has to translate meaning of a work of art, than what is a
>>point to spend energy and codify preexistent ideas-words into works of
>>art?
dwilson:
>codify: Arrange or systamenatize or reduce to a code. If art is
>communication the form that communication takes is by its nature already
>systematized. One implies the other. To communicate is to transmit or
>convey or to connect with. This is a process requiring both art and
>viewer. The viewer brings as much to the work as the work brings to the
>viewer. In order to communicate each must share the same language. Pre
>existing codification of ideas or words enable the artist to communicate
>effectively through the work; making communication possible and more
>likely.
I agree: "in order to communicate each must share the same language".
If art work has a function to transfer pre-existing idea than it is in the
position of traffic signal. I do not think that traffic signals are art.
I wrote:
>> Why do so many people want to find "real meanings" behind art
>>works? Is it because they believe that spoken or written truth is more
>>truth than depicted truth?
dwilson wrote:
>People tend not to trust their perceptions, for obvious reasons. Depicted
>truth you'll have to agree is sometimes untrustworthy.
One opposite opinion:
"We are so visually biased that we call our wisest men visionaries, or seers!"
(Marshall McLuhan)
I (Tugi) wrote:
>> I think that art works do not need correlatives to be enjoyed.
dwilson:
>Are you saying that artworks can be autonomous objects with no relation to
>anything beyond themselves? Simply naming them art works establishes
>correlatives.
Your words and I agree:
"...When we assume that art communicates
we must assume it does so in a language that is understood by the viewer
and that this language is universal in its nature. This may not be true in
every case..."
I wrote:
>>They do not have to be signs at all.
dwilson:
>If they are not signs or symbols or icons, what are they?
If I know I probably would not participate in this debate. But, 'signs', 'symbols'
and 'icons' are nouns. Maybe we should try using verbs.
I wrote:
>> They do not need simple "original
>>meanings" if we are creative viewers and if we still have confidence
>>in our visual cognition.
>The implication that viewers create and that visual cognition is not in
>question interests me. How does memory affect visual cognition and the
>viewers creation of a pre-existing object? When I say "painting",
>something comes to mind. Be a creative viewer and tell me what it is.
>The object is a word.
" ...The mental life of man does, however, produce modes of existence other
than speech." (K. Fiedler)
"Seeing is thinking" (R. Arnheim)
"Information is opposite to automatism" (Lotman)
Not all knowledge ('memory') is discursive linguistic knowledge. And there
exist a difference between 'knowledge by description' and 'knowledge by
acquaintance' (B. Russell)
Therefore, not everything that comes to mind can be told. To say what comes
to my mind on word 'painting' would not make me 'creative viewer' but,
eventually, creative speaker (creative in a case I do not cite someone
else's definition of "painting" but if I try to articulate my own).
An anecdote says that an journalist asked Einstein to explain with simple
words (for their 'stupid' readers) 'Theory of Relativity'. He answered that he
could not do it 'with words' but that he may be able to play it on violin.
--
TUGI__________________________________________________
t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au
Tugi
>> Regiment's Hobby Shop wrote:
>> >
>> > I still believe that the essence of art is communication, which on
>> > Gorky's symbolism is unfathomable, then, yes, he is less of an artist.
Bruce.Attah wrote:
>I think work should
>only communicate if the artist intends that it should, and should be
>uncommunicative if the artists intends that it should be that way (but it
>should communicate its uncommunicativeness).
I (Tugi) wrote:
>> If art is communication between artist and viewer in that sense
>> that viewer has to translate meaning of a work of art, as it could be
>> assumed from your discussion, than what is a point to spend energy
>> and codify preexistent ideas-words into works of art? It is, certainly,
>> easier to express them with words if they already exist on artist's
>> mind. Why do so many people want to find "real meanings" behind art
>> works? Is it because they believe that spoken or written truth is more
>> truth than depicted truth?
Bruce.Attah wrote:
>Tugi, why do you seem to imagine that the pre-existent ideas that an
>artist sets out to communicate in a work must be easier to represent in
>words than as, say, a painting, or as a piece of music? Have you never
>worked in any other medium than the verbal? Have you never wondered why
>mathematicians draw graphs and architects draw plans, or why musical and
>choreographical notation are not based on written language?
Bruce, painting is itself a sort of 'idea' that develops through process. It is
not necessary to have an idea 'a priori'. All that is necessary is to paint an line
or spot and this can interrupt the unity of clean white canvas and move the
process of 'becoming idea'. When I paint I communicate with the surface and not with
any future viewer. And I am not abstract expressionist and I would say that
'no-skill-no-art's' probably like my paintings. If one already has an idea articulated
with words he can not paint *it* since words and pictures are not the same
medium. These 'ideas' are not intertranslatable. Since "medium is a message"
and form is, factually, never separated from content,
the idea within linguistic laws can not be translated into visual idea.
There are no translations - only eventual transformations.
Therefore, one with the idea can not avoid the same communication with the surface.
I just believe that this relation is more important than any
poetry at the beginning or at the end. Therefore I agree with you that:
"there are ideas that can be communicated effectively *only*
in that medium", moreover, I would say that the visual
art creation is the process
of creating the 'visual idea', and that the 'idea' does not exist as such prior to
its realization on surface. I think that we would agree, that we should let the
discursive idea be expressed with words and let visual ideas be articulated
pictorially.
On the other hand, I can not agree that the essential function of art work is
unidirectional communication artist - viewer (It certainly is the principal
function of highly articulated forms and so called 'applied arts'). It is,
simple saying, a kind of bi-directional communication 'artist - artwork' and
'art work - viewer'. I am not saying that art is not communicating different
contents; I am saying that this is not its 'specific difference'.
>Aside from these, many ideas (and, I think, *all* the big ideas -- about
>say, love, life, death etc.) can be communicated equally well either
>verbally or pictorially
There are no ideas without body; ideas are not free of their embodiment.
You are speaking about words...
Can you imagine, let's say, 'life'- painting? Or you think that painting
mediates the word 'life'? Or,
let's say, something more simple, not the big ideas-words, but, for example
the smell of coffee.
"Describe the aroma of coffee.- Why can't it be done? Do we lack words?
And for what are the words lacking? - But how do we get the idea that such
description must after all be possible?...
'Our vocabulary is inadequate.' Then why don't we introduce a new one?
What would have to be the case for us to be able to?" (Wittgenstein)
I (Tugi) wrote:
>> Using the word "symbol" you obviously
>> understand monosemous rather than polisemous "sign".
Bruce:
>What a strange thing to say. Does everyone who uses the word symbol know
>the meaning of the words "monosemous" and "polysemous"? Perhaps we should
>remind ourselves that the word "symbol" enjoyed several centuries of
>respectable and intelligent use before the post-modernists hijacked it for
>their system of jargon.
I apologize if it looks strange. I was just trying to avoid ambiguity.
The problem is that the word 'symbol' is so disseminated with the use in
different contexts and sometimes signifying apodictic contents ('signifieds')
that it itself became 'symbol' - meaning everything and nothing at the same time.
(we came to the aesthetic function of words). It is an beautiful word I would like to
use more often but I am afraid that this would, for most, make our
communication rhetorical (aesthetic)
and I still try to keep the difference between 'referential and aesthetic
function' - art and communication.
I (Tugi) wrote:
>> I think that art works do not need correlatives to be enjoyed.
>> They do not have to be signs at all. They do not need simple "original
>> meanings" if we are creative viewers and if we still have confidence
>> in our visual cognition.
Bruce wrote:
>Works of art, if they are any good, are, at the very least, signs of the
>artist's (or artists') choice. Also, good works of art do not demand
>creativity from viewers, but *attention*.
We are not receiving the meaning. We are re-creating it within our idiolect.
'Information is the opposite of automatism' (Lotman).
To have our own knowledge we have to see something as information. We have
to be able to see. Therefore attention does not mean opening of a mental funnel
and passively waiting for the knowledge to be poured in. If we do not change
our software than we can not have our own knowledge.
I am not saying that art is not communication but that unidirectional
transfer of meaning is not the principal condition for something to be called art.
I am not arguing against knowledge
and its communication. I am pointing to, often neglected, self-generating
characteristic of knowledge. If perceiving is signifying (gestalt psychology) and is a
cognitive process "without recourse to language" (Michael Stefan) than
art reception could be easily seen as the paradigmatic example of creative
perception.
I (Tugi) wrote:
>> The point is that we have to spend energy and
>> not to wait for simple, linguistically articulated solution offered by
>> prophets, 'masters of differance' (Derrida)...
Bruce answered:
>Meanings do not need to be simple (indeed, too simple a meaning is not a
>meaning at all), nor do they need to be linguistically articulated. Least
>of all do they need to be offered by masters of difference/deference. Has
>anyone ever smiled at you meaningfully? Was the meaning of that smile
>simple? Was it verbally articulated? Did a master of
>difference/deference explain it to you?
That is what I said. Not all experiences are explicable with correlatives.
Than why do you say that,
>*all* the big ideas -- about
>say, love, life, death etc.) can be communicated equally well either
>verbally or pictoriallyYou pronounced 'love, life, death,' saying that they can be communicated
pictorially. Do you not recognize that than the beginning and the end are
'big' words (l-o-v-e, l-i-f-e, d-e-a-t-h) and, consequently, you are the 'master of
differance' when saying that an painting means 'l-o-v-e, l-i-f-e, d-e-a-t-h'.
Is it all that an particular painting can mean? Words dispersed in abstract
clichés. Are you saying that art work should be a correlative of the alienated
big-idea-word? It appears, according to your
writing, that you see a meaningful smile more meaningful than a painting.
>> There are no 'correct
>> interpretations', only unlimited solutions and unlimited number of
>> experiences.
>If you had said there are no *unique* correct interpretations, I might
>have gone along with it, but any work of art that is meaningful has a set
>of possible interpretations that is correct (appropriate), and a set that
>is incorrect (inappropriate), and neither set is empty.
"there are no facts, only interpretations" (Nietzsche)
Who could say that his interpretation is correct one?
Only 'Magister Ludi'. Would you believe him?
>> Until there exist a challenge in front of the painting
>> we will be able to enjoy aesthetic experience and see - not the
>> painting itself - but: see "more with the painting" (M. M. Ponty).
>I would suggest "more with the painter" as a better way of putting things.
This is a difference between our opinions and, probably, our 'attentions'. You want to
know what a painter has to say ('original' interpretation) and I want to see
*with* a painting (not believing in 'original' correlatives).
Tugi
--
TUGI__________________________________________________
t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au
Tugi
> (Charles Eicher) wrote:
> >Ahem, 'Avant Garde' literally means 'before the trend' so your remarks
> >about following trends are illogical and ill-informed. The 'Avant Garde'
> >creates the new trends, and never follows them.
mdeli wrote:
> The exact literal meaning of AG is not all we are
> discussing.
>
> Avant garde has become a fashionable label for the
> stuff of this century that has made it into our museums
> and caught the eyes of the critics, The term is a
> put-on just like most of the artwork it describes.
> Avant garde just means new.
>
> But just saying something is NEW is not nearly enough
> for those wanting their enema of Artspeak. NEW just
> doesn't sound cryptic enough. While if you say avant
> garde it sounds more intellectual and gives one a
> marker for a circuitous ramble.
'Avant-garde' does not mean 'new' but 'progressive'.
And this is a problem. The term assumes advancing. The
question is: is art advancing or not? If it is
advancing it implies that there exists the final aim of
'development'; that there exists 'lower' and 'higher' art.
(as it was for a long time taken for granted that some
races, nations or languages are higher on the hierarchical scale
of universe). This makes the term itself critical in
postmodern understanding. Our time is recognizing the change
of forms but not advancing or decline. We can not say that
'classic' art is more valuable than 'primitive' art. They
are, simply, different classes and, therefore, the criteria for
evaluation should be defined within particular groups.
--
TUGI__________________________________________________
t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au
__________________________________________________________
Tugi
Someone wrote:
> > Most of the great ideas in physics (such as thermodynamics) were actually
> > conceived as in_sights_, mental pictures. Only later were words used to
> > explain what these insights had revealed. Words are a secondary medium.
Ruili Tian wrote:
> Though we are visual animals, not all our mental process involve pictures. The more
> primitive senses such as touch and scent are more direct and memorable. For that
> matter, painting comparing to music is much lesser an art form. All media by name is
> secondary, the only primary is oneself.
There are no 'primary' or 'secondary' media or
'primitive' and 'cultivated' senses and, also,
there are no higher or lower arts. All we have to do
is to acknowledge the difference.
Ruili Tian wrote:
> My point has been that art,
> even art of words such as peotry, is not about communication. There is no obligation
> for artists to convey a message to the viewers.
I agree.
--
TUGI__________________________________________________
t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au
__________________________________________________________
JKearman
In article <4vmvc2$n...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>, yo...@free.com (Yolanda
Liberte) writes:
>How in the world would you know? TO help you make your argument,
>you have no way of telling the person's sex by reading text-based
>postings in newsgroups. Ever heard of "aliases?" Names don't mean
>a thing, and since you can't see or hear the person, all you have to
>go on is text. Even if you could see or hear them, they could easily
>be Dennis Rodman in drag, or vice-versa.
>--
Jay:
Prove I'm wrong. If you want to cloak yourself in a series of ridiculous
aliases, be my guest. I stand on my original comment.
Jim Kearman
--
jkea...@aol.com
Bruce Attah
In article <321E6C...@huh.huhhuh.huh>, Ruili Tian
<rt...@huh.huhhuh.huh> wrote:
> I was arguing on the point that if one can put something into words at
all, one probably
> does not need to make an art piece out of such a thing.
Why not argue, on equally strong grounds, that if something can be
depicted at all, one probably does not need to make a poem out of such a
thing?
In fact, why not just say that one probably does not need to make art (of
any sort, in any medium) at all?
> An attitude is however hard to put into words.
But easy to put into pictures.
> Though we are visual animals, not all our mental process involve pictures.
True, but plenty do, and pretty important they are, too.
> The more primitive senses such as touch and scent are more direct
> and memorable.
Are you sure about that? Is there any experimental evidence that will
back you up on that? In the case of scent in particular, you are on very
shaky ground. Plenty of people have little or no sense of smell, and are
hardly handicapped by the fact.
> Artists are nice people...
SOME artists are nice people.
> Women are even nicer.
SOME women are nice people. And those women who are artists are not nicer
than themselves.
Bruce Attah
In article <3219F9...@huh.huhhuh.huh>, Ruili Tian
<rt...@huh.huhhuh.huh> wrote:
> Illustrations facilitate the communication of an idea expressible
> in words, but they are seldom expressive enough of such ideas on their
> own.
and
> However, words are always sufficient alone to communicate ideas
> expressible in words.
and
> Words alone can have great precision. Have you ever tried to express
> laws of thermodynamics with pictures alone, or draw a map to moral
> responsibility.
and
> I am not sure there is a idea only suited for oil. If so, people were
> probably painting another Jesus when they had to use tempera. The ideas
> are usually the same, the expressions differ.
and
> ...artists...don't really think that much before hand. They just use
> what ever at hand.
and
> Art is not really about communication or the ability to communicate. It
> is more about desire - for money, fame... or for expressing the devine
> who sometimes speak monkey(or Martian or AE) rather than human.
All your remarks quoted above show such a deep lack of sympathy with the
visual that it is a wonder to me that you are at all interested in what
goes on in this newsgroup, while the last two seem to me like gratuitous
insults flung at visual artists in general.
As the argument in this post has veered completely off the original topic
of the nature of the avant garde, I will attempt to answer the points
raised under a a new subject heading: 'Visual Language'.
Bruce Attah
> Illustrations facilitate the communication of an idea expressible
> in words, but they are seldom expressive enough of such ideas on their
> own.
Anyone who has laughed at a captionless cartoon, perused a wordless comic
strip, read a map that was marked out with icons instead of placenames, or
indeed, wondered through a gallery of pre-twentieth century paintings will
know the above statement to be patently, even _blindly_, false.
> However, words are always sufficient alone to communicate ideas
> expressible in words.
That's a tautology. Images are always sufficient alone to communicate
ideas expressible in images. So what?
> Words alone can have great precision. Have you ever tried to express
> laws of thermodynamics with pictures alone, or draw a map to moral
> responsibility.
I have tried neither. But I do know that I've seen a lot of political
cartoons in newspapers that could, taken collectively, be described as a
"map to moral responsibility". I also know that I've seen diagrammatic
representations of complex ideas where words, if present at all, were only
there for convenience, NOT necessity.
What I think you have not realized, but ought to, is that the verbal tags
that appear on diagrams could usually ideograms. The reason this does not
always happen is that it is often more convenient to write down a word
than to think up an ideogram for which a convention might not exist.
> I am not sure there is a idea only suited for oil. If so, people were
> probably painting another Jesus when they had to use tempera. The ideas
> are usually the same, the expressions differ.
So speaks an individual who has never looked at a painting, let alone
tried to paint. Since you are such a completely verbal person, let me
give you a verbal example, so you will understand:
There was a young bard of Japan
Whose verses were difficult to scan
When told this was so,
He replied "Yes I know,
But I always try to fit as many words onto the last line as I possibly can."
There is an idea in the above verse that has meaning only as a consequence
of the existence of a traditional verse-form known as the limerick. The
idea is suited exclusively to the medium of verse because it is about the
medium, about the *how-to* of limerick-composing, and could be expressed
in no other medium. Similarly, there are ideas expressed in paintings
that are specifically about the how-to of painting. The appearance of
Ingres' and Van Gogh's most famous paintings contain contrasting ideas
about the how-to of oil painting. If these ideas could be expressed in
words at all, there would be no point whatsoever in doing so.
> ...artists...don't really think that much before hand.
How many artists do you know?
> Art is not really about communication or the ability to communicate. It
> is more about desire - for money, fame... or for expressing the devine
> who sometimes speak monkey(or Martian or AE) rather than human.
Few artists practice art primarily out of a desire for money or fame. Art
is hardly the easiest path to either. As for speaking monkey, that's what
you've been doing, but it is certainly not what a good artist does.
Bruce Attah
In article <322174...@sab.unimelb.edu.au>, Tugi
<t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Bruce.Attah wrote:
> >Tugi, why do you seem to imagine that the pre-existent ideas that an
> >artist sets out to communicate in a work must be easier to represent in
> >words than as, say, a painting, or as a piece of music? Have you never
> >worked in any other medium than the verbal? Have you never wondered why
> >mathematicians draw graphs and architects draw plans, or why musical and
> >choreographical notation are not based on written language?
>
> Bruce, painting is itself a sort of 'idea' that develops through
process. It is
> not necessary to have an idea 'a priori'.
Tugi, thank you for that pearl of wisdom. I happen already to believe
something very like it, but thanks all the same. That said, if a painter
_does_ happen to wish to communicate some sort of preexistent idea (NOT
idea-word, please note, but _idea_), through painting, there is no
necessity that that idea is more easily expressed in words than images, an
no requirement, even if it is, for the artist to choose words rather than
images in order to convey that idea.
> All that is necessary is to paint an line
> or spot and this can interrupt the unity of clean white canvas and move the
> process of 'becoming idea'.
The mere physical operation of making a painting is not sufficient to
bring ideational content into it. The making must be intelligent.
> When I paint I communicate with the surface and not with
> any future viewer.
I very much doubt that.
> If one already has an idea articulated
> with words he can not paint *it* since words and pictures are not the same
> medium. These 'ideas' are not intertranslatable.
If one already has an idea articulated (note, NOT articulated with words,
but _articulated_), one might just be able to paint it.
> Since "medium is a message"
> and form is, factually, never separated from content,
> the idea within linguistic laws can not be translated into visual idea.
A proposition can be expressed in a number of differing ways, the form of
expression being determined by the language. The proposition and the
expression are separate. Some ideas that can be written down in words can
be given equivalent expression in images (and vice-versa). For instance,
I can place above a door the word 'GENTLEMEN', or I can place above it a
stylized image of a man. The image and the word express quite the same
idea: that behind this door is where you can go if you are male and wish
to relieve your overburdened bladder.
Medium and message are sometimes inseparably linked, but they are not
_necessarily_ so.
> There are no translations - only eventual transformations.
That is a very strong claim, and one that I suspect to be a wild
caricature of reality. I believe that _some_ translations between _some_
pairs of languages are bound to fail, while others are sure to succeed.
> I just believe that this relation is more important than any
> poetry at the beginning or at the end. Therefore I agree with you that:
> "there are ideas that can be communicated effectively *only*
> in that medium", moreover, I would say that the visual
> art creation is the process
> of creating the 'visual idea', and that the 'idea' does not exist as
such prior to
> its realization on surface.
Where my disagreement with you comes in, I think, is that I do not see a
work of art as necessarily embodying a monolithic idea. Rather, a work of
art typically comprises many ideas integrated into a whole. Some of those
ideas may be inseparably linked with the medium of expression while others
are not. So, a preexistent idea does not imply a painting fully conceived
prior to its physical creation, and no work of art, in my view, consists
solely of preexistent ideas.
> I think that we would agree, that we should let the
> discursive idea be expressed with words and let visual ideas be articulated
> pictorially.
Actually, I don't agree with that. If a painter wants to tell a story or
explain a fact or press a case through pictures, I see no reason why he or
she should not. The medium of painting allows such, and to suppress an
aspect of the power of the medium is (in my view) to do a disservice to
the art of painting.
> On the other hand, I can not agree that the essential function of art work is
> unidirectional communication artist - viewer (It certainly is the principal
> function of highly articulated forms and so called 'applied arts'). It is,
> simple saying, a kind of bi-directional communication 'artist - artwork' and
> 'art work - viewer'. I am not saying that art is not communicating different
> contents; I am saying that this is not its 'specific difference'.
Artist -> viewer -> artist -> viewer ....
That's how I think it goes (and sometimes artist and viewer are the same
people or person.)
> >Aside from these, many ideas (and, I think, *all* the big ideas -- about
> >say, love, life, death etc.) can be communicated equally well either
> >verbally or pictorially
>
> There are no ideas without body; ideas are not free of their embodiment.
> You are speaking about words...
> Can you imagine, let's say, 'life'- painting? Or you think that painting
> mediates the word 'life'? Or,
> let's say, something more simple, not the big ideas-words, but, for example
> the smell of coffee.
'Life' is not an idea, it is a word.
"Life is full of shit/when you look at it." -- Monty Python.
THAT's an idea. (Indeed, it is a Big Idea.)
Paintings can convey the same sorts of ideas.
> "Describe the aroma of coffee.- Why can't it be done? Do we lack words?
> And for what are the words lacking? - But how do we get the idea that such
> description must after all be possible?...
> 'Our vocabulary is inadequate.' Then why don't we introduce a new one?
> What would have to be the case for us to be able to?" (Wittgenstein)
Connoisseurs of coffee, tea and wine can describe (using words) the tastes
of their preferred beverages to one another. If they chose, I have no
doubt, they could develop a system of diagrams to do the same thing.
Indeed, there exists a robot wine-taster that uses purely diagrammatic
means to communicate the results of its analyses to human users. (The
analyses are managed by an artificial neural network.)
What counts is experience. A wine connoisseur cannot describe the taste
of Burgundy to someone who has never drunk wine. A professional coffee
taster cannot communicate the aroma of coffee to someone who has no sense
of smell.
The communication of ideas, in whatever medium, requires a common basis of
experience. (Even a common language is not necessary, as one can be
devised ad hoc.)
[Tugi:]
>>> ...art works do not need...simple "original
>>> meanings" if we are creative viewers....
[aside: I don't require anything that might be called 'simple "original
meanings" from art, either]
> Bruce wrote:
> >...good works of art do not demand
> >creativity from viewers, but *attention*.
>
> We are not receiving the meaning. We are re-creating it within our idiolect.
> 'Information is the opposite of automatism' (Lotman).
> To have our own knowledge we have to see something as information. We have
> to be able to see. Therefore attention does not mean opening of a mental
funnel
> and passively waiting for the knowledge to be poured in. If we do not change
> our software than we can not have our own knowledge.
Re-creation is not the same as creation. Paying attention is,
nevertheless, not "opening a mental funnel and passively waiting".
Consider the computer attatched to a network. Mindless and utterly
uncreative it may be, but even it does not merely open a funnel and let
streams of bits in. The reception (and translation into a bitmap on your
screen) of a usenet article is a constructive process. So also, at a much
higher level of sophistication (I believe), is the reception of meaning by
a human being from a work of art. Nevertheless, such construction does
not amount to creativity.
So when I say that a viewer needs to be attentive rather than creative, I
am not saying that the viewer needs to be passive.
> ...art reception could be easily seen as the paradigmatic example of
> creative perception.
I don't like that use of the word 'creative', as it blurs the distinction
between the constructive process that is perception and the rather more
special process that is artistic creativity.
> Than why do you say that,
> >*all* the big ideas -- about
> >say, love, life, death etc.) can be communicated equally well either
> >verbally or pictorially.
Because I believe it is true.
> You pronounced 'love, life, death,' saying that they can be communicated
> pictorially.
Hmm. I can communicate 'love', 'life' and 'death' pictorially by writing
down those words. Writing is the diagrammatic representation of speech.
However, that was not what I said earlier, nor was it what I meant.
> ... 'l-o-v-e, l-i-f-e, d-e-a-t-h'...
> Is it all that an particular painting can mean? Words dispersed in abstract
> clichés. Are you saying that art work should be a correlative of the
alienated
> big-idea-word?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You've got me wrong. I said that painting
can be used to convey big ideas, such as ideas about love, life and
death. I did NOT say that painting either can or must be used to
represent the words 'love', 'life' and 'death'. Words are NOT ideas.
Perhaps I should say that several times, just so you know how definite I
am on this point:
Words are NOT ideas.
Words are NOT ideas.
Words are NOT ideas.
Words are NOT ideas.
Words are NOT ideas.
Words are NOT ideas.
Words are NOT ideas.
Words are NOT ideas.
> "there are no facts, only interpretations" (Nietzsche)
WRONG!!! There are facts, and there are interpretations.
>
> >> Until there exist a challenge in front of the painting
> >> we will be able to enjoy aesthetic experience and see - not the
> >> painting itself - but: see "more with the painting" (M. M. Ponty).
>
> >I would suggest "more with the painter" as a better way of putting things.
>
> This is a difference between our opinions and, probably, our
'attentions'. You want to
> know what a painter has to say ('original' interpretation) and I want to see
> *with* a painting (not believing in 'original' correlatives).
> Tugi
Sorry, I do not understand. I've never encountered a painting that I
thought could see, and if I did, I wouldn't know how to go about seeing
what it saw.
Bruce Attah
In article <1996Aug25.1...@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>, Trotsky wrote:
> In any case, the avant-garde is a group who are working towards some sort of
> political goal, and when their technical and formal skills are copied and
> repeated by those tht follow (usually, in this century, modernists) then the
> political goal fades away and the newness that is left over becomes the
> newness for the sake of art et al.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I would prefer to say "newness for the sake of newness", because newness
for the sake of art would be a newness that was subservient to some higher
thing (art), whereas in what has been widely called avant-garde art during
much of this century, newness has been paramount.
As for political goals, I would say that the prototypical avant-gardist
has a political goal (as did those idealists in Russia), but 'political'
can be so loosely defined as to be nearly meaningless.
Bruce Attah
In article <3221AB...@sab.unimelb.edu.au>, Tugi
<t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> 'Avant-garde' does not mean 'new' but 'progressive'.
> And this is a problem. The term assumes advancing. The
> question is: is art advancing or not?
Well, it hasn't being for the past century.
Bruce Attah
In article <321E6C...@huh.huhhuh.huh>, Ruili Tian
<rt...@huh.huhhuh.huh> wrote:
> painting comparing to music is much lesser an art form
You'd better back up this remarkable claim. WHY is painting a lesser art
form than music? Frankly, I personally cannot see a single reason why
this should be so.
Bruce Attah
In article <4vq8kb$q...@lanshark.lanminds.com>, Andrew Werby
<dre...@lanminds.com> wrote:
> >By the middle of the twenties, avantgardism was not merely deceased -- its
> >corpse was putrid. Dada signed the death certificate. Unfortunately, a
> >lot of people have been unwilling to acknowledge the fact, and critics
> >continue to require novelty above all else -- preferrably novelty
> >accompanied by a manifesto and a word that ends with 'ism'. And how new
> >can you get, honestly, when nothing is out of bounds? That is why we now
> >have a vast army of would-be avantgardists pushing a nonexistent envelope
> >to the hollow applause of uncritical critics, while art itself is
> >effectively almost banished and only happens _in_spite_ of the art
> >establishment, rather than under its aegis.
>
> [How is this current situation you disparage so different from the one you
> recognize in the nineteenth century?
Eighty or a hundred years ago, those who were called avant-gardists often
were. Now, those who are called the avant garde are usually not, but
represent the fag-end of a 'revolution' that began early this century.
The difference is not in the situation, but in the labelling of it -- so
the establishment is called the avant garde, and those who reject
establishment thinking are supposed reactionaries.
> Granted that the establishment is corrupt and the art it fosters feeble,
> is historicism the only answer?
Did I recommend historicism? I'm sure I don't remember doing so.
> Is there no hope that something useful might arise
> from all the restless innovation which artists have pursued over the
> last century?
Not much.
> While the art of the past has a lot to teach the artists of the present,
> surely you don't believe it will suffice for all time?]
No, I do not.
> ...What is lacking is the
> assimilation of our many scientific/perceptual breakthroughs into the
> language of
> Art. I believe a lot of exciting work remains to be done, as modern artists,
> rejecting the stale formulas of the past, find ever-fresh inspiration in
> the world of Nature.]
I vehemently agree.
> The avant garde of yesterday
> has become the academy of today, and holds its position with quite as
> much rigidity- perhaps more. However those who proclaim that nothing new
> is possible remind me of those at the end of the eighteenth century who
> proclaimed the death of music, because
> all the possible combinations of notes had been used up.]
Once again, we are in agreement.
> [Actually, the market is not geared to the promotion of novel ideas in art.
> ...Galleries want to be thought of when a particular type of
> art comes to mind, and each cultivates its own "look" which they then find
> artists to provide. And once an artist has produced an identifiable style;
> usually a tiny variation of another's, he or she is discouraged from
> deviations for fear of losing that identifiability.]
Again, we agree.
estes stephen
dwi...@nas.com wrote:
>
> In article <3215AA...@sab.unimelb.edu.au>, Tugi
> <t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
> > I still believe that the essence of art is communication, which on
> > whatever level, exsists between the artist and the viewer.
>
> assumption that it does in all cases. When we assume that art communicates
> we must assume it does so in a language that is understood by the viewer
> and that this language is universal in its nature. This may not be true in
> every case and does not mean that the art is not art or that the artist is
> not an artist.
I think the main purpose of a work of art is not to communicate but
rather generate meaning in the viewer. The artists intended meanings
cognitive or not cannot really be communicated exactly since the viewer
must reconstruct meaning in thier own mind . How can and artist
communicate what has not existed previously even in their own mind.
Communication depends upon communialy recognized structures,things
already known.Where is the creativity in communicating what is already
known? People who expect to witness themselves in a work of art are not
expecting often disapointed and confused.
William O. Barrett
Bruce Attah wrote:
> You'd better back up this remarkable claim. WHY is painting a lesser art
> form than music? Frankly, I personally cannot see a single reason why
> this should be so.
I too question the statement
"> > painting comparing to music is much lesser an art form."
It has always seemed to me that most visual art is truly an original
when it is created. It is an image, from scratch, truly created by the
artist. On the other hand, most "classical" music (in conservatories,
in symphony orchestras, etc.) is simply a replay of something that was
created by someone else many years ago. Yes, it does have some
interpretation and nuance, but the originator is not the person we go to
hear. I always hae marveled at why we hold classical musicians in such
awe. Contempory music is another story, of course, where the music is
original to the creator and is more like (and as difficult as) say
painting.
Darren Reynolds
In article <Bruce.Attah-27...@support-neptune.isltd.insignia.co,
Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
>In article <321E6C...@huh.huhhuh.huh>, Ruili Tian
><rt...@huh.huhhuh.huh> wrote:
>
>> painting comparing to music is much lesser an art form
>
>
>You'd better back up this remarkable claim. WHY is painting a lesser art
>form than music? Frankly, I personally cannot see a single reason why
>this should be so.
I can't understand this sort of rigid notion. It can never be the
artform/medium that is 'superior', only the use of it.
Darren
Ruili Tian
Bruce Attah wrote:
>
> In article <321E6C...@huh.huhhuh.huh>, Ruili Tian
> <rt...@huh.huhhuh.huh> wrote:
>
> > painting comparing to music is much lesser an art form
>
> You'd better back up this remarkable claim. WHY is painting a lesser art
> form than music? Frankly, I personally cannot see a single reason why
> this should be so.
Beethoven, a personal reason.
The impersonal ones are movement, range of variation in intensity, and
most important of all, reproduction without degradation of quality. The
last one allows music's greater relevancy.
Ruili Tian
I wrote:
> > Illustrations facilitate the communication of an idea expressible
> > in words, but they are seldom expressive enough of such ideas on their
> > own.
>
Bruce Attah wrote:
> Anyone who has laughed at a captionless cartoon, perused a wordless comic
> strip, read a map that was marked out with icons instead of placenames, or
> indeed, wondered through a gallery of pre-twentieth century paintings will
> know the above statement to be patently, even _blindly_, false.
Why do you think there are more cartoons with captions than ones
without? Is it a conspiracy of the academian cartoon world? And this
style of map you are
talking about: can we rely on it for an Everest expedition? On what
ground can you group every artwork before this century together? When I
walk through a collection of the realistic paintings of the last
century, they indeed say very little to me outside tedium and
dreariness. A wall apart, the impressionists speak of freshness,
moreover, with a sense of humor. Would you think me as truly blind if I
see medieval figurative art superior to that of Italian renaissance for
the very lack of humor of the latter.
Falsehood, of course, you only speak the not-so-patent kind.
> > However, words are always sufficient alone to communicate ideas
> > expressible in words.
> That's a tautology. Images are always sufficient alone to communicate
> ideas expressible in images. So what?
Glad you noticed.
The line before the tautology was:
Illustrations facilitate the communication of an idea expressible
in words, but they are seldom expressive enough of such ideas on their
own.
Now maybe you see the point of the tautology.
>
> > Words alone can have great precision. Have you ever tried to express
> > laws of thermodynamics with pictures alone, or draw a map to moral
> > responsibility.
>
> I have tried neither. But I do know that I've seen a lot of political
> cartoons in newspapers that could, taken collectively, be described as a
> "map to moral responsibility". I also know that I've seen diagrammatic
> representations of complex ideas where words, if present at all, were only
> there for convenience, NOT necessity.
>
> What I think you have not realized, but ought to, is that the verbal tags
> that appear on diagrams could usually ideograms. The reason this does not
> always happen is that it is often more convenient to write down a word
> than to think up an ideogram for which a convention might not exist.
You say it is often more convenient... because the idea behind that
"verbal tag" already has a convenient and sufficient representation in
the spoken language. The graphical meaning of ideograms are often
insignificant in contrast to the "convention" you spoke of. That
convention they are used is most likely agreed on through words. It is
said, and I believe to be correct, that people use the same region of
the brain to process sign languages as well as the spoken ones. Though
representational picture making might be the granddaddy of written
words, it unlikely preceded language itself(Check divine, the elder for
reference to experimental data).
>
> > I am not sure there is a idea only suited for oil. If so, people were
> > probably painting another Jesus when they had to use tempera. The ideas
> > are usually the same, the expressions differ.
>
> So speaks an individual who has never looked at a painting, let alone
> tried to paint. Since you are such a completely verbal person, let me
> give you a verbal example, so you will understand:
>
> There was a young bard of Japan
> Whose verses were difficult to scan
> When told this was so,
> He replied "Yes I know,
> But I always try to fit as many words onto the last line as I possibly can."
>
> There is an idea in the above verse that has meaning only as a consequence
> of the existence of a traditional verse-form known as the limerick. The
> idea is suited exclusively to the medium of verse because it is about the
> medium, about the *how-to* of limerick-composing, and could be expressed
> in no other medium. Similarly, there are ideas expressed in paintings
> that are specifically about the how-to of painting. The appearance of
> Ingres' and Van Gogh's most famous paintings contain contrasting ideas
> about the how-to of oil painting. If these ideas could be expressed in
> words at all, there would be no point whatsoever in doing so.
How insignificant to art are the "how to" ideas you have described.
When Ingres hid his brush strokes, what made you think that he was more
commenting on the medium itself than making the Emperor happy? When Van
Gogh showed his brush work, do you think he was only giving a painting
lesson? Van Gogh expressed more in one stroke than all the scribbles
of Ingres put together simply because he is Van Gogh. The only idea in
a Van Gogh is Van Gogh, or the divine.
I have seen my share of paintings though I have not painted my share of
it. I appear verbal to you because I am no Van Gogh. How about you?
You have accused me of having a resentment toward painting. I am so
drawn to painting, that I resent its general irrelevance in this world.
I insulted art as you said, but you sir, insulted me which is a little
bit smaller, wouldn't you say.
> > ...artists...don't really think that much before hand.
>
> How many artists do you know?
My appologies to the thinking artists.
> > Art is not really about communication or the ability to communicate. It
> > is more about desire - for money, fame... or for expressing the devine
> > who sometimes speak monkey(or Martian or AE) rather than human.
>
> Few artists practice art primarily out of a desire for money or fame. Art
> is hardly the easiest path to either. As for speaking monkey, that's what
> you've been doing, but it is certainly not what a good artist does.
Either you get it or you don't, thus spake Zarathustra. About money, of
course.
Erik Johnson
> Beethoven, a personal reason.
>
> The impersonal ones are movement, range of variation in intensity, and
> most important of all, reproduction without degradation of quality. The
> last one allows music's greater relevancy.
I would think many would argue that music cannot be *perfectly* reproduced.
Too many factors are involved. Compare hearing a live orcestra vs. listening
to a cd of the same thing. Big difference in quality and experience.
-Erik Johnson
er...@phidias.colorado.edu
http://phidias.colorado.edu/vgallery.html
Lee Evans
Painting (visual art) is more a creative form than music??? Well, following on
the statement that classical composors took from each other -- or other
elements -- consider that artists through the ages have followed each other
works closely. Have attempted to paint in the manner of so and so. How many
artists have had proteges? How many of these did Rodin utilize to create his
works? Did not these "proteges" go on to follow in their "masters" footsteps,
but primarily reworking the same artistic concepts as their mentors. There are
statues today "rediscovered" as the works of Claudette Camile that people had
assumed were origionally Rodins. And were not masters of art "inspired" by
those of others?
Putting that argument aside: music and painting are all creative, artistic
endeavors inspired by their origionators. When you go to a symphony, you go to
give tribute to two things: 1) The skill of those playing the composition.
2) The work of the origional composer.
Not to mention to listen to quality music. Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, though
obviously influenced by other composer of their time -- as all creative people
use other artistic work to inspire, and often measure their own standards --
nevertheless are masters and their works remain as great because they
origionated something that had not gone on before. They constructed a
combination of music and sound unlike others. This......then is artistic
creation.
As an artist when I sit down and paint what I do first is this: I put on a
piece of wonderful music (I have certain "start-up" pieces) and I put myself
into the mood of the music. The tone of that puts me where I want to be
creatively. Then when I organize my thoughts, understand exactly how to
execute what I wish to do next, I change to various other pieces of music that
"fit" often with the mood I want to sustain in the piece I am painting.
Does this mean that my paintings becomes less artistic, because of that??
I personally am driven by music, it helps to release all my creative energies.
And this is not just classical music; but many forms of rock music (try U2,
try Pink Floyd). I have often thought as a dedicated painter, I would probably
find a way to paint even if I became blind, or disabled. I just would. But I
if I went deaf than I would be in trouble....
There are many forms of art....you can't take one and say it is more creative
than another....They are all elements of one large, wonderful impulse called
ART that enables human beings to express themselves.
Tugi
> > Bruce, painting is itself a sort of 'idea' that develops through
> process. It is
> > not necessary to have an idea 'a priori'.
Bruce:
> Tugi, thank you for that pearl of wisdom. I happen already to believe
> something very like it, but thanks all the same. That said, if a painter
> _does_ happen to wish to communicate some sort of preexistent idea (NOT
> idea-word, please note, but _idea_), through painting, there is no
> necessity that that idea is more easily expressed in words than images, an
> no requirement, even if it is, for the artist to choose words rather than
> images in order to convey that idea.
> I (Tugi) wrote:
> > All that is necessary is to paint an line
> > or spot and this can interrupt the unity of clean white canvas and move the
> > process of 'becoming idea'.
>
> The mere physical operation of making a painting is not sufficient to
> bring ideational content into it. The making must be intelligent.
It certainly is intelligent, but it does not have to include preexisting linguistic
concepts to be inteligent.
It is the matter of 'becoming idea'. It is the process of learning. It is, primarily
communication with medium and within artist's ideolect and not
the communication with the aim in sending messages to future viewers.
I wrote:
> > When I paint I communicate with the surface and not with
> > any future viewer.
> Bruce wrote:
> I very much doubt that.
Communication with viewer is consequence but not my intention. It might be
the aim but in that case, believe me, I am not aware of it.
> > If one already has an idea articulated
> > with words he can not paint *it* since words and pictures are not the same
> > medium. These 'ideas' are not intertranslatable.
>
> If one already has an idea articulated (note, NOT articulated with words,
> but _articulated_), one might just be able to paint it.
Have you ever succeded to paint your idea? I tried. It goes so so with
illustration. It can transffer content. And it allways looks better than I
could possibly imagine. But painting...It always gets in
unother dirrection. He, he...
Its not a point to *have* ideas and to transfer tham, but to
clash ideas in relation to the surface.
I (Tugi) wrote:
> > Since "medium is a message"
> > and form is, factually, never separated from content,
> > the idea within linguistic laws can not be translated into visual idea.
>
> A proposition can be expressed in a number of differing ways, the form of
> expression being determined by the language. The proposition and the
> expression are separate. Some ideas that can be written down in words can
> be given equivalent expression in images (and vice-versa). For instance,
> I can place above a door the word 'GENTLEMEN', or I can place above it a
> stylized image of a man. The image and the word express quite the same
> idea: that behind this door is where you can go if you are male and wish
> to relieve your overburdened bladder.
>
> Medium and message are sometimes inseparably linked, but they are not
> _necessarily_ so.
Well, this is strange kind of 'art'...I think you are confusing refferential
and aesthetic function of sign.
Any way, I was wrong and you are right; I have to agree: some
ideas could be expressed in different ways. But, there is still linguistically
articulated idea and common premise: 'sign for toalet' that originated
different interpretations.
I just remembered of another anecdote about Einstein:
A journalist asked him wether it is possible, according to his Theory,
that two poets, on two different points on Earth, at the same time,
write a same poem. He answered that it is possible...
...if someone had written that poem before them.
> > There are no translations - only eventual transformations.
>
> That is a very strong claim, and one that I suspect to be a wild
> caricature of reality. I believe that _some_ translations between _some_
> pairs of languages are bound to fail, while others are sure to succeed.
Visual and linguistic signs could be transformed one in another but they
can not be translated one in another.
> > I just believe that this relation is more important than any
> > poetry at the beginning or at the end. Therefore I agree with you that:
> > "there are ideas that can be communicated effectively *only*
> > in that medium", moreover, I would say that the visual
> > art creation is the process
> > of creating the 'visual idea', and that the 'idea' does not exist as
> such prior to
> > its realization on surface.
>
> Where my disagreement with you comes in, I think, is that I do not see a
> work of art as necessarily embodying a monolithic idea. Rather, a work of
> art typically comprises many ideas integrated into a whole. Some of those
> ideas may be inseparably linked with the medium of expression while others
> are not. So, a preexistent idea does not imply a painting fully conceived
> prior to its physical creation, and no work of art, in my view, consists
> solely of preexistent ideas.
I would rather say: clash of different ideas. I am speaking about process
of becoming and not about transffering ideas in semiological sense.
Tugi wrote:
> > On the other hand, I can not agree that the essential function of art work is
> > unidirectional communication artist - viewer (It certainly is the principal
> > function of highly articulated forms and so called 'applied arts'). It is,
> > simple saying, a kind of bi-directional communication 'artist - artwork' and
> > 'art work - viewer'. I am not saying that art is not communicating different
> > contents; I am saying that this is not its 'specific difference'.
Bruce wrote:
> Artist -> viewer -> artist -> viewer ....
>
> That's how I think it goes (and sometimes artist and viewer are the same
> people or person.)
Tugi:
Artist <--> art work Art work <-->viewer
Bruce:
> > >Aside from these, many ideas (and, I think, *all* the big ideas -- about
> > >say, love, life, death etc.) can be communicated equally well either
> > >verbally or pictorially
Tugi:
> > There are no ideas without body; ideas are not free of their embodiment.
> > You are speaking about words...
Bruce:
> 'Life' is not an idea, it is a word.
>
> "Life is full of shit/when you look at it." -- Monty Python.
>
> THAT's an idea. (Indeed, it is a Big Idea.)
>
> Paintings can convey the same sorts of ideas.
Bruce, I wanted to answer to your last response
but, by mistake
I marked it 'read' and later I could not get it back from server.
Any way,
Please, tell me, how could one have idea or ideas '_articulated_'
without form?
I think that you argued (in that missing article and I am sorry I
can not quote it), and I agree, that 'form' can not be
separated from 'content'. Therefore, this 'articulated' idea should
have some sort of body in some medium. In which medium *is* the idea
or ideas that you are writing about? I mean: how are ideas articulated
'a priori' on artist's mind?
You offered a sentence. It is an idea but it is in the medium of
language. What about other ideas? Are they in language or
you think, in Plato's idealist sense, that ideas exist as
'archetypes' floating around us without forms (which are just 'enemies
of knowledge').
I do not think that the principal and distinctive function of visual
arts is the transformation of such ideas into 'visual language'. This would mean,
according to old normative Platonist (and still persistent), logic
that the work of art is a *copy* of the 'original' linguistic idea
(or ideas).
"When we say one thing resembles another, after all, we imply that
the latter is somehow ontologically superior to, more 'real' than
the former - the copy predicates its existence (qua copy) upon
whatever it submissively imitates." (J. Harkness)
My understanding is that art can transfer linguistically articulated
ideas, and it often does, but it is not its main purpose
(it is broadly recognized as the only purpose of art by
public celebrating linguistic ways of knowing)
Not to recognize that visual arts have their own mode
of cognitive existence means to neglect the principal characteristic
of art.
Since I recognize symptoms of story-telling-arts everywhere around me
I am mad because of contextualists. This might be the reason
why my arguments often sound as
formalist arguments.
Bruce:
> Connoisseurs of coffee, tea and wine can describe (using words) the tastes
> of their preferred beverages to one another. If they chose, I have no
> doubt, they could develop a system of diagrams to do the same thing.
> Indeed, there exists a robot wine-taster that uses purely diagrammatic
> means to communicate the results of its analyses to human users. (The
> analyses are managed by an artificial neural network.)
I am not arguing against the communication of descriptive knowledge. I think
that it is not the speciffic of art. Hence, I am
saying that descriptions can not articulate our direct *experience*. Having
our knowledge and passive accepting of someone elses knowledge is not a
same thing. I sincerely doubt that any description could substitute
direct experience. That is the reason why I insist on acquaintance in relation
'art work - viewer'.
> What counts is experience. A wine connoisseur cannot describe the taste
> of Burgundy to someone who has never drunk wine. A professional coffee
> taster cannot communicate the aroma of coffee to someone who has no sense
> of smell.
I agree. But viewer has to,somehow, gain that knowledge. As you said, it can not be
transffered by description. One has to have *experience*. And visual art
provides the possibility of *gaining* visual knowledge.
> The communication of ideas, in whatever medium, requires a common basis of
> experience. (Even a common language is not necessary, as one can be
> devised ad hoc.)
That's it. And I am speaking about art not in the sense of mediating (communicating)
artist's knowledge but in having the experiance; or, if you will, not as
describtion of the aroma of coffee but in smelling the coffee itself. To
learn we have to have a nose and to compare stored memory on other smells.
and also redefine our 'ideas' about smell. 'Conclussion' is irrelevant comparing
the role of direct experience.
> > Bruce wrote:
> > >...good works of art do not demand
> > >creativity from viewers, but *attention*.
> >
> > We are not receiving the meaning.
> > To have our own knowledge we have to see something as information. We have
> > to be able to see. Therefore attention does not mean opening of a mental
> funnel
> > and passively waiting for the knowledge to be poured in. If we do not change
> > our software than we can not have our own knowledge.
>
> Re-creation is not the same as creation. Paying attention is,
> nevertheless, not "opening a mental funnel and passively waiting".
> Consider the computer attatched to a network. Mindless and utterly
> uncreative it may be, but even it does not merely open a funnel and let
> streams of bits in. The reception (and translation into a bitmap on your
> screen) of a usenet article is a constructive process. So also, at a much
> higher level of sophistication (I believe), is the reception of meaning by
> a human being from a work of art. Nevertheless, such construction does
> not amount to creativity.
Unidirectional neurotransmission is not the characteristic of human
perception. We are not just accepting messages with our mental software.
It is the speciffic of our mind that we accept all informations as hypothetic.
And we are learning. And learning means changing our software - changeing our
complete ideolect. Art works are
computer viruses within self-regulatory software of the viewer.
> So when I say that a viewer needs to be attentive rather than creative, I
> am not saying that the viewer needs to be passive.
Then we agree. But, communication, as it is defined by semiology, is based
on simple formulas: 'signifier - signified' (form-content)
and 'sender-message-receiver'
And this is an unbearable problem for semiology: to fit 'aesthetic function'
('polisemous' messages) within the concept, and still perceive art as
communication.
I (Tugi) wrote:
> > ...art reception could be easily seen as the paradigmatic example of
> > creative perception.
>
> I don't like that use of the word 'creative', as it blurs the distinction
> between the constructive process that is perception and the rather more
> special process that is artistic creativity.
Than it is the issue of terminology. Any way, I think it is worth to try
to think about it from this angle.
Perception itself does not have to be creative but it certainly is constructive.
The perception of art works does not have to be and often is not creative.
It depends on viewer wether he will find 'conclusion' of painting or
leave the relation open...I am not denying that some meaning is perceived as
constitutional to object but I think that divergent inconclusive seeing-thinking
is the final aim. Good painting is forcing us to be creative in redefinition of
our cognitive system... Good painting is not just changing our mood but our way of seeing
things. Wee see things more clear with it.
> > ... 'l-o-v-e, l-i-f-e, d-e-a-t-h'...
> > big-idea-word?
>
> No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You've got me wrong. I said that painting
> can be used to convey big ideas, such as ideas about love, life and
> death. I did NOT say that painting either can or must be used to
> represent the words 'love', 'life' and 'death'. Words are NOT ideas.
Well, linguists would see ideas as words in clusters and discursive
gramatical order. Some are ready to acknowledge the negative
determination of terms. Sometimes it seems to me that there are not
many people believing in other modes of knowledge...
> > "there are no facts, only interpretations" (Nietzsche)
>
> WRONG!!! There are facts, and there are interpretations.
> It seems that we could discuss about it.
> > >> Until there exist a challenge in front of the painting
> > >> we will be able to enjoy aesthetic experience and see - not the
> > >> painting itself - but: see "more with the painting" (M. M. Ponty).
> >
> > >I would suggest "more with the painter" as a better way of putting things.
> >
> > You want to
> > know what a painter has to say ('original' interpretation) and I want to see
> > *with* a painting (not believing in 'original' correlatives).
> Sorry, I do not understand. I've never encountered a painting that I
> thought could see, and if I did, I wouldn't know how to go about seeing
> what it saw.
Bruce, Ponty's words are in the mode of metaphorical speech. I do not suspect
that you are creative viewer but to understand what
does it mean you have to be, in this particular occasion,
a bit more creative reader.
It is a pleasure
being able to exchange some ideas...
You forced me to rethink some issues.
Thanks.
Tugi
PS
We could move to "Visual Language" since this all does not
have much to do with 'avant guarde' any more.
--
TUGI__________________________________________________
t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au
__________________________________________________________
Mdeli
I wrote
>... purchased for the National Gallery of Canada for some
>million dollars. It had a red stripe running across a white canvas.
Gregory Klages
Promotion Coordinator,
Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph, Canada answers:
>> The work you refer to is Barnett Newman's 1966/7 work VOICE OF
>>FIRE. Purchase price was somewhere around $2 million (CAN).
>> It was a red stripe placed between two blue stripes on a canvas
>>approximately 30 feet high.
I guess I forgot the details. Now at least we know why
it was two million instead of one.
> The public complaint was answered by some
>idiot critic to the effect that it was the first of its kind.
> I guess first of its kind," crossed the mind of those
> who were empowered to make the purchase. I presume that
> they also must have thought about the term avant garde.
> I'm sure the word quality never crossed their minds.
>> If we take a critic's defense of why a gallery purchases a work
>>then we are giving the critics more power than they deserve. I
>>figured you, of all people, wouldn't attribute so much to their
>>`out-of-the-loop' justifications.
How did you figure that?
>>I studied the public response to this work versus the
>>gallery's defense of the purchase and I can counter with several
>>important considerations in the purchase:
>> 1) NATIONAL HISTORICAL: The work was created specifically for the
>> American Pavilion of the 1967 Expo in Montreal.
So what.
>> 2) CONTEXTUAL: The National Gallery has a good collection of
>>Am. Abstract Exp. works. This Newman helped to fill a gap in
>>their collection of his works.
There is still a large gap to be filled in, it is
between the curators ears.
>> 2b) COMPETITION: Newman is dead and VOICE OF FIRE was likely
>>one of the last of his major works to come on the market.
>> 3) FINANCIAL: This work was purchased at a time when art prices
>>were dropping from their inflated state in the mid '80's. As
>>well, the budget for this work did not infringe on other budgetary
>>areas, namely domestic purchases.
There is no excuse for buying incompetent unoriginal
crap whether or not its the last piece and the guy is
dead.
>>I counter Mani, that the role of public art galleries is not only
>>to be arbiters of taste, but also to be arbiters of history. Regardless
>>of the relative taste/skill/refinement of past generations of artists, it
>>is still within the public's interest to preserve and understand all
>>facets of the past, even within art history.
As to Arbiters of history, there are hundreds other
artists to choose from here. The first role of curators
is to be arbiters of quality. The quality of BN
amounts to zero. Even in the history of charlatanism BN
is a minor patzer. The only people who might be
remembered are those responsible for the purchase when
BN becomes garbage. Unfortunatly even they probably
won't make history.
I suggest the pretentious title of the work be changed
to Voice of Two Million Dollar Fire. That would at
least impress the public.
Mani DeLi
P.S.
If you didn’t read this previous message:
I’m reminded here of Robert Hughes’ criticism of the
Golden Oldies show reviewed in the April 15 issue of
TIME Magazine.
In his review of this show Hughes states:
"It gives too much prominence to Barnett Newman the
most overrated Abstract Expressionist though the
inclusion of Olga Razanova’s vertical green stripe on a
white ground painted some thirty years before Newman
came up with his vertical zip, is a neatly deflating
touch."
This criticism really refers to the prevalent Modern
Academic Art assumption that anything seen as the first
use novel idea NO MATTER HOW STUPID, is worthy of
lengthily discussion and artistic consideration if
critics believe it to be a true art historical first
and very personal expression of a particular
eccentricity (which it usually isn't).
Here we have the critic praising one work as
containing the real stripe painting as opposed to the
unimportant later strip inferring that it is really a
no good fake.
I think that any painting of a few stripes whatever
the size, its date of origin, color or its critical
appendage, attempting to pass itself off as fine art
is really a representative of "stupid Art." There
millions of stripe paintings around and none, the real
or the fake are worthy of being classified as anything
more.
The winners among the stripe painters, those that get
the critical raves and sell to rich nitwits for
astronomical prices, were really chosen by the
fortunate outcome of a series of random events rather
than for their abilities. These few chosen ones are the
winners in the Modern Academic Art lottery.
One should always remember that for every lottery
winner who attains fame and fortune for his particular
set of stripes there a thousands of disgruntled losers
who can’t understand why their "fake" set of stripes
doesn’t give the critics orgasms or get richy
collectors to part with their mountains of cash.
Mani DeLi
...…no skill no art
Bruce Attah
In article <322511...@huh.huh>, huhhuh.huh wrote:
> Bruce Attah wrote:
> >
> > In article <321E6C...@huh.huhhuh.huh>, Ruili Tian
> > <rt...@huh.huhhuh.huh> wrote:
> >
> > > painting comparing to music is much lesser an art form
> >
> > You'd better back up this remarkable claim. WHY is painting a lesser art
> > form than music? Frankly, I personally cannot see a single reason why
> > this should be so.
>
> Beethoven, a personal reason.
Jan Gossaert...
Albrecht Altdorfer...
Agnolo Bronzino...
Philip Harris!!
Personal reasons.
>
> The impersonal ones are movement, range of variation in intensity, and
> most important of all, reproduction without degradation of quality. The
> last one allows music's greater relevancy.
impersonal reasons:
movement,
range of variation and intensity,
reproduction without (significant) degradation of quality.
Really, I don't think your reasons amount to anything at all. You love
the music of Beethoven. So do I, as a matter of fact, but I also love the
work of the artists I have mentioned above, among others. However, even
if no good paintings existed, that would not prove that painting was not a
great medium for art. It would simply mean that the medium had not been
exploited to the full. Consider: what if Beethoven had not existed?
Would music be any the less a medium for art than it is? Surely not,
because the possibility remains that a Beethoven might come in the
future. So with any art medium. Existing art objects do not define the
whole range of possibilities for the medium.
For movement in painting, take Rubens and Tintoretto. For "range of
variation and intensity", take Carravaggio and Rembrandt. For intensity,
movement, and vibrant colour all in one, take Michelangelo's frescos.
In the matter of reproduction, there is no technology that can reproduce
all music without any loss, just as there is no technology that can do the
same for painting, but both can be reproduced effectively, so that much of
the power of a performance or a picture can be brought to someone unable
to witness the original.
In conclusion, either you are kidding, or you haven't thought on this
matter in sufficient depth.
Bruce Attah
>>Gregory Klages
>>Promotion Coordinator,
>>Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph, Canada wrote:
>>I counter Mani, that the role of public art galleries is not only
>>to be arbiters of taste, but also to be arbiters of history.
^^^^^^^^
Poor choice of word. Are you planning to rewrite history, censor it, or
merely to stand in judgement on it before it is over?
Perhaps you meant that public art galleries want to be recorders or
preservers of history as well as arbiters of taste. That would make
sense, but it wouldn't justify using the public purse to buy trivial 'art'
(so-called) at vastly inflated prices. Did you consider the alternatives,
such as exhibiting a reproduction or copy of this work? Given the
difference in cost, would that not be a worthwile option?
Indeed, why not simply *describe* the work? That would surely be good
enough as a historical document given that (a) the work continues to
exist, and is available - somewhere, it matters not where - as a primary
source for anyone who is greatly concerned to see it and (b) it's a
helluva lot cheaper?
This claim that the work was bought for historical purposes is, to be
blunt, risible, because it fails to explain why that object rather than
some other, equally worthless, object was bought with the money. Why not
instead buy all the discarded soft-drink cartons that must have been left
behind at the 1967 Expo in Montreal? These would have served as a fine
testament to the magnitude of the Exposition, and have been in themselves
an awsome display. What's more, they'd still have been cheaper than
Barnett Newman's 'painting'.
The question arises, why do works such as those of Barnett Newman fetch
such high prices at auction as they do? The answer, it turns out is
simple, and you, Gregory Klages, provide it yourself: there is competition
among the large museums to fill in 'gaps' in their collections; gaps that
no-one is interested in except the museums themselves.
Teemu Lahteenmaki
Bruce Attah (Bruce...@insignia.co.uk) wrote:
: In article <322174...@sab.unimelb.edu.au>, Tugi
: > "there are no facts, only interpretations" (Nietzsche)
:
: WRONG!!! There are facts, and there are interpretations.
Well, at least Wittgenstein, in 1925, seems to disagree with you both:
1 The world is all that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the
facts.
1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also
whatever is not the case.
1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.
1.2 The world divides into facts.
But indeed, this thread is deviating from the original topic quite a bit..
--
Teemu Lahteenmaki
to...@tukki.jyu.fi, http://www.jyu.fi/~tola/ (also vrml)
Student of digital media, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
JKearman
In article <3225D0...@sab.unimelb.edu.au>, Tugi
<t.co...@sab.unimelb.edu.au> writes:
>Have you ever succeded to paint your idea? I tried. It goes so so with
>illustration. It can transffer content. And it allways looks better than
I
>could possibly imagine. But painting...It always gets in
>unother dirrection. He, he...
>Its not a point to *have* ideas and to transfer tham, but to
>clash ideas in relation to the surface.
Unless you are doing propaganda or advertising (not much difference), the
instant you "think" your idea, you are essentially verbalizing it, with
the results you describe.
I think the great visual artists can express graphically directly from
felt emotions, and may be incapable of verbalizing what they
paint/draw/sculpt, at least until after the work is finished and they can
analyze it based on what they remember feeling while they were making it.
So much of what we think of as arbitrary or accidental choice in art is
likely to be driven by emotions we're not consciously aware of. Ideally,
we're able to at least allow these emotions to guide our hand. We let our
conscious minds handle the technique while the unconscious/subconscious
works its "magic."
Because these unconscious drives are pre-verbal, it is pointless to try to
verbalize them. Any attempt to do so violently forces them into conscious,
verbal modes, which takes them in the wrong direction, as you point out.
Working this way poses problems for the artist and viewer. For some
artists, it's difficult or impossible to let go of conscious control of
the work. This phenomenon is noted by many athletes as well. For example,
tennis players, skiiers and archers. When you let go of attempts to
consciously control your racquet, skis or bow, you often do quite well,
better than when you tried to be in control. The trouble is, you can't
verbally describe how you did it. Some people just can't handle that (they
don't feel they are really "doing" it!) and revert to "in control" status,
with decidedly poorer results. (See "Zen In The Art of Archery" by
Herrigel, or "Inner Tennis" and "Inner Skiing" (can't remember author) for
details).
For the viewer, the resulting painting may be so direct that the expected
(conscious) visual cues are absent, making it difficult to decide if the
piece is a real work of art or a sloppy fraud. That's where this
discussion got started, I believe.
Without belaboring an already well-beaten point, I think it's up to the
viewer to try to "get" the work by replicating the mental work of the
artist: Calm your conscious mind and just let the image work on your
subconscious mind. In other words, meditate on the work of art. Again,
this requires you to "let go," which is difficult without practice.
Whatever feeling you get (at the subconscious level) from the work will be
difficult to express verbally, like that of any spiritual experience.
Another old warhorse I've found helpful in understanding the process of
art is Jung's "Man And His Symbols."
Jim Kearman
no anima(us) no art
--
jkea...@aol.com
Bruce Attah
In article <50e244$i...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, jkea...@aol.com (JKearman)
wrote:
> Unless you are doing propaganda or advertising (not much difference),
> the instant you "think" your idea, you are essentially verbalizing it
Why is this supposed to be true only if you are not doing propaganda or
advertising?
For my own part, I don't think it is true at all, unless those double
quotes are an indication that you are using the word 'think' in a special
way. Not only is it perfectly possible to think without turning thoughts
into words, but it is also the case that the words that follow thought are
often meaningless drivel. Roland Penrose notes this fact when he
describes the inner monologue that generally accompanies his mathematical
thought processes. Imagine yourself doing a jigsaw puzzle: you are
thinking, but what words accompany your thoughts? "That goes there, hmm.
That must go there...oh no, it doesn't fit. What about there? wrong
colour. Aha!" This sort of monologue clearly is no adequate description
of your actual thought, but it is precisely the sort of gibberish that
people produced when asked to think aloud. Sometimes psychologists find
it very difficult to get people to articulate usefully what they are
thinking. The reason is, they are not thinking in words, and turning
their thoughts into coherent language is a distraction that interferes
with performance.
> I think the great visual artists can express graphically directly from
> felt emotions,
This sounds to me like mystification.
> and may be incapable of verbalizing what they
> paint/draw/sculpt, at least until after the work is finished and they can
> analyze it based on what they remember feeling while they were making it.
That's because they're busy. Try asking anyone who is doing something
that demands their concentration to give you a running commentary.
> So much of what we think of as arbitrary or accidental choice in art is
> likely to be driven by emotions we're not consciously aware of.
'Arbitrary' does not entail unconscious or unintentional. I'm not sure,
either, that the idea of "emotions we're not consciously aware of" makes
any sense at all. What is an emotion if it is not experienced? What is
an experience if it is not conscious?
> Ideally,
> we're able to at least allow these emotions to guide our hand. We let our
> conscious minds handle the technique while the unconscious/subconscious
> works its "magic."
This suggestion is interesting, because it proposes something quite the
opposite of what I'd expect given current ideas in psychology about the
nature of expertise. On the basis of such ideas, I would imagine that the
technique would be controlled almost unconsciously, while consciousness
was focussed on the subject-matter -- or, at any rate, on the intended
result.
> Because these unconscious drives are pre-verbal, it is pointless to try to
> verbalize them.
I am having a little difficulty in imagining any 'drive' that might be
post-verbal, other than the drive to understand and respond to utterances.
I also find it odd that you say that it is pointless to try to verbalize
something that is 'pre-verbal'. It seems to me that all experience,
except the experience of language itself, is pre-verbal. (One is
conscious of seeing a colour, for instance, before one is conscious of the
colour's name.) Yet this does not imply that it is pointless to describe
experience using words. To say that it is pointless to try to verbalize
that which is pre-verbal is tantamount (I think) to saying that is is
pointless to speak at all.
Any attempt to do so violently forces them into conscious,
> verbal modes, which takes them in the wrong direction, as you point out.
'Conscious' does not equal 'verbal'. Try reading some music or performing
some geometry exercises. Try doing a high jump or improving your breast
stroke. Try learning a new dance. Try playing a game of chess. Try
communicating with someone who does not know any language you know.
There are people who, for one reason or another, have no language. Are
you *sure* these people are not conscious?
> For some
> artists, it's difficult or impossible to let go of conscious control of
> the work. This phenomenon is noted by many athletes as well...
When you are a novice, you need to be concious of what you are doing.
When you become an expert, many details of your actions become
unconscious. That way, you can concentrate on what is new in your
experience, because coping with novelty requires consciousness, and
consciousness has a limited capacity. Part of becoming an expert, then,
is allowing the repetitive aspects of what you are learning to become
automatic, so that you can concentrate on the things that are constantly
changing. That's a simplified summary of recent(ish) thinking in
psychology on the nature of expertise.
> For the viewer, the resulting painting may be so direct that the expected
> (conscious) visual cues are absent, making it difficult to decide if the
> piece is a real work of art or a sloppy fraud. That's where this
> discussion got started, I believe.
This discussion started when I posted an article explaining my reasons for
believing that the term 'avant garde' applied to certain prominent artists
of this century is a misnomer.
> Without belaboring an already well-beaten point, I think it's up to the
> viewer to try to "get" the work by replicating the mental work of the
> artist: Calm your conscious mind and just let the image work on your
> subconscious mind. In other words, meditate on the work of art. Again,
> this requires you to "let go," which is difficult without practice.
The problem with this proposal is that it leaves us into a quandary as to
why we should 'let go' in front of a work of art rather than in front of
anything else. Is there not just as much to be gained from 'letting go'
in front of a dozing tramp, say, as there is in front of some masterpiece
of involuntary behaviour? Fans of meditation often advocate candles and
pebbles as things to meditate on, while others advocate closing one's eyes
and concentrating on one's breathing. If these sorts of meditation are
successful, do the benefits of meditating on a work of art come from the
art or the meditation? If the latter, is there any point whatsoever in
making art?
> Whatever feeling you get (at the subconscious level) from the work will be
> difficult to express verbally, like that of any spiritual experience.
>
> Another old warhorse I've found helpful in understanding the process of
> art is Jung's "Man And His Symbols."
Aha! This explains the mystification noted earlier.
> Jim Kearman
> no anima(us) no art
> --
> jkea...@aol.com
Bruce Attah.
no animals, no art.
JKearman
In article <322511...@huh.huh>, Ruili Tian <h...@huh.huh> writes:
>> You'd better back up this remarkable claim. WHY is painting a lesser
art
>> form than music? Frankly, I personally cannot see a single reason why
>> this should be so.
>
>Beethoven, a personal reason.
>
>The impersonal ones are movement, range of variation in intensity, and
>most important of all, reproduction without degradation of quality. The
>last one allows music's greater relevancy.
>
>
You can't make the statement that music allows reproduction without
degradation of quality unless you _are_ Beethoven. How do _you_ know how
he (nb) _envisioned_ the Violin Concerto? (Certainly not the way Pamela
Frank performed it at Tanglewood a few weeks ago, I'd wager--if LvB were
still around to tell us!)
Having experienced probably as much live classical music (and dance and
theatre) in the past two months as anyone on this newsgroup, I am well
familiar with the spiritual/emotional qualities of music (and the other
performing arts). I am also well familiar with these qualities in the fine
arts. The effects are similar but not identical. We each have our
preferences--I once played classical music, now I am an artist and writer.
In the performance arena, I happen to _like_ modern dance best of all,
closely followed by 'classical' music. I think, however, that it demeans
all the arts to _rank_ them in terms of quality. Every artist, whether
musician, painter, choreographer or dancer, etc, is expressing her or his
humaness or "self" in the manner most appropriate to that individual. I
would encourage you to stand before art and let _your_ Self go, as you
probably do when you listen to Beethoven. If you haven't noticed "movement
and range of variation in intensity" in art, you are not really seeing
when you look.
Jim Kearman
--
jkea...@aol.com
Mdeli
(JKearman) wrote:
> I think, however, that it demeans
>all the arts to _rank_ them in terms of quality.
Is there such a thing as lousy artwork? Should we
uncritically admire everything.? How does it "demean
art" if I rank Mondrian an idiot and Vermeer a great
artist? Do tell us.
> Every artist, whether
>musician, painter, choreographer or dancer, etc., is expressing her or his
>humaness or "self" in the manner most appropriate to that individual.
I suspect that a plumber does this when he fixes your
toilet. So what .
> I
>would encourage you to stand before art and let _your_ Self go, as you
>probably do when you listen to Beethoven. If you haven't noticed "movement
>and range of variation in intensity" in art, you are not really seeing
>when you look.
Before you let yourself go tell us how you were
restrained?
These are the sorts of platitudes I expect to hear in a
sermon at the First Church of Art. Think about this
statement. It doesn't mean anything. Its Artspeak.
Mani DeLi
Bob Cantor
Mdeli wrote:
> How does it "demean
> art" if I rank Mondrian an idiot and Vermeer a great
> artist? Do tell us.
>
It doesn't demean art. It demeans you.
Bob C.
"Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth." -Pablo Picasso
"Art is art. Everything else is everything else." -Ad Reinhardt
JKearman
In article <50i2p4$i...@news.interlog.com>, hu...@interlog.com (Mdeli)
writes:
> (JKearman) wrote:
>> I think, however, that it demeans
>>all the arts to _rank_ them in terms of quality.
>
>Is there such a thing as lousy artwork? Should we
>uncritically admire everything.? How does it "demean
>art" if I rank Mondrian an idiot and Vermeer a great
>artist? Do tell us.
If you want to exalt an overrated hack genre painter like Vermeer over
Mondrian, one of the greatest and most influential artists of all time,
that is your prerogative. If you want to debate on the Internet, however,
you are obligated to read carefully that which you are arguing against. To
wit: You have lost the thread. The original posting compared art
unfavorably to music. Read what I said, again. I said "arts," not artists.
I don't think dance is superior to music or that painting is superior to
sculpture.
>
>> Every artist, whether
>>musician, painter, choreographer or dancer, etc., is expressing her or
his
>>humaness or "self" in the manner most appropriate to that individual.
>
>I suspect that a plumber does this when he fixes your
>toilet. So what .
>
My plumber will appreciate being called an artist. By the way, some day,
tell us about your fixation on toilets and the nether regions of the human
anatomy. Such references appear frequently in your postings.
>> I
>>would encourage you to stand before art and let _your_ Self go, as you
>>probably do when you listen to Beethoven. If you haven't noticed
"movement
>>and range of variation in intensity" in art, you are not really seeing
>>when you look.
>
>Before you let yourself go tell us how you were
>restrained?
>
>These are the sorts of platitudes I expect to hear in a
>sermon at the First Church of Art. Think about this
>statement. It doesn't mean anything. Its Artspeak.
>
>Mani DeLi
On the contrary. I refer you to, in alphabetical order, the words of
Buddha, Christ and Lao Tzu. If you're willing to listen, they can instruct
you far better than I can.
To those who refuse to listen, nothing means anything.
These dialogues have been a lot of fun, but I don't think we're tilling
any new ground. Over and out.
Jim Kearman
--
jkea...@aol.com
Bruce Attah
> (JKearman) wrote:
> > I think, however, that it demeans
> >all the arts to _rank_ them in terms of quality.
>
> Is there such a thing as lousy artwork? Should we
> uncritically admire everything.? How does it "demean
> art" if I rank Mondrian an idiot and Vermeer a great
> artist? Do tell us.
Mani, I think you've misread Jim Kearman's post on this point. I don't
think he was saying that all works of art in a given medium are of equal
merit, but merely that different media should not be ranked (i.e., music
should not be ranked as a better or worse art than painting). The first
idea is quite deserving of the scorn you pour upon it, but the second is
far more reasonable, and if I read Jim's post correctly, it was the second
idea that he was expressing.
If I'm wrong, I'm quite sure Jim'll alert me to the fact.
Bruce Attah.
PS, I'm considering using adopting quote, from a French survivor of
Verdun, as my new signature:
"We had to jump from corpse to corpse, because if we stepped in the mud,
we'd get stuck -- but we had to use only the corpses that were lying face
down, because if we stepped on a stomach, we'd sink in."
Any comments?
Mdeli
jkea...@aol.com (JKearman) wrote:
>>If you want to exalt an overrated hack genre painter like Vermeer over
>Mondrian, one of the greatest and most influential artists of all time,
>that is your prerogative. If you want to debate on the Internet, however,
>you are obligated to read carefully that which you are arguing against. To
>wit: You have lost the thread. The original posting compared art
>unfavorably to music. Read what I said, again. I said "arts," not artists.
Sorry, you are correct; I missed the point.
>I don't think dance is superior to music or that painting is superior to
>sculpture.
>>
>>> Every artist, whether
>>>musician, painter, choreographer or dancer, etc., is expressing her or
>his
>>>humaness or "self" in the manner most appropriate to that individual.
>>
>>I suspect that a plumber does this when he fixes your
>>toilet. So what .
>>
>My plumber will appreciate being called an artist. By the way, some day,
>tell us about your fixation on toilets and the nether regions of the human
>anatomy. Such references appear frequently in your postings.
I'm no more fixated than Duchamp.
>>> I
>>>would encourage you to stand before art and let _your_ Self go, as you
>>>probably do when you listen to Beethoven. If you haven't noticed
>"movement
>>>and range of variation in intensity" in art, you are not really seeing
>>>when you look.
>>
>>Before you let yourself go tell us how you were
>>restrained?
>>
>>These are the sorts of platitudes I expect to hear in a
>>sermon at the First Church of Art. Think about this
>>statement. It doesn't mean anything. Its Artspeak.
>>
>>Mani DeLi
>On the contrary. I refer you to, in alphabetical order, the words of
>Buddha, Christ and Lao Tzu. If you're willing to listen, they can instruct
>you far better than I can.
Each to his own taste. I find you and the lot you
mention uninspiring.
>To those who refuse to listen, nothing means anything.
Life is too short to listen to everything. We must
discriminate. Nothing can be gleaned from those who
write nonsense.
Mani DeLi
Kajojacobs
<Bruce.Attah-04...@support-neptune.isltd.insignia.com>,
Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) writes:
>Bruce Attah.
>
>
>PS, I'm considering using adopting quote, from a French survivor of
>Verdun, as my new signature:
>
>"We had to jump from corpse to corpse, because if we stepped in the mud,
>we'd get stuck -- but we had to use only the corpses that were lying face
>down, because if we stepped on a stomach, we'd sink in."
>
>Any comments?
Invisioning the scene suggests a bit of a smell . . . is that your
intention?
~Karen Jacobs~
Bruce Attah
In article <50p8c3$j...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, kajoj...@aol.com
(Kajojacobs) wrote:
> >Bruce Attah.
> >
> >
> >PS, I'm considering using adopting quote, from a French survivor of
> >Verdun, as my new signature:
> >
> >"We had to jump from corpse to corpse, because if we stepped in the mud,
> >we'd get stuck -- but we had to use only the corpses that were lying face
> >down, because if we stepped on a stomach, we'd sink in."
> >
> >Any comments?
>
> Invisioning the scene suggests a bit of a smell . . . is that your
> intention?
> ~Karen Jacobs~
That's war for you.
peter james kashur
Mani Delis
A single, distinct voice of reason in the primordial ooze of
hyberbolic claptrap that characterizes the post war
modernists. They art, therefore they am. Bravo Mani.
P Kashur