Why One Person Prefers Abstract Art
Flying_Naked_People
realist painting sitting next to it. His explanation was that the realist
painting was not painted exactly the way nature showed it (the painting was a
mountain scene). He went further to say that hardly any realist works are
accurate, so he prefers to shun the whole style and look at abstract art
instead.
I wonder if artists paint abstracts for this same (base, prime, root ) reason.
DNALJM
>painting was not painted exactly the way nature showed it (the painting was a
>mountain scene). He went further to say that hardly any realist works are
>accurate, so he prefers to shun the whole style and look at abstract art
>instead.
>
>I wonder if artists paint abstracts for this same (base, prime, root )
>reason.
Things aren't any absolute way, they are all subjective when viewed. For
example, a bee may see things in the ultraviolet in which case the sun wouldn't
be yellow to the bee. All artwork is an interpretation. A camera flattens out
shadows and makes what the human eye can see in gradations into one uniform
dark mass.
A figurative painting isn't an exact mimic of the natural world, but editing
choices are made in service to composition and emotional impact. They are
(hopefully) made intentionally and not with the end goal of duplicating what a
camera could do or even human vision, but to make something unique.
Personally I like to see a human figure on the canvas to get some psychology
going between the viewer, sitter, and the artist. If I want to enjoy an
abstraction I would look at rust stains below a storm drain or clouds blowing
around but that's just me.
; )
Jane This seems like a good newsgroup with a lot of bright people BTW
Noumenon
> He went further to say that hardly any realist works are
> accurate, so he prefers to shun the whole style and look at abstract art
> instead.
Hell.
That guy is simply an idiot.
He (and his motivations) are hardly worth any discussion.
As for most of artists who paint abstract:
- every so often it happens because of their incompetence
(unless they are psychologically/emotionally driven to paint
specifically that way).
Bad poets usually become philosophers,
lousy writers turn into critics,
bad painters transform into abstract painters...
Weaving the Conundrum
-=| NOUMENON |=-
judith
Flying_Naked_People wrote in message ...
It's possible he finds realism leaves little to the imagination and prefers
to engage (intellectually or emotionally) with abstract art. Or he just may
not have been prepared
to enter into a serious discussion about art so shooed you away with a silly
statement.
Next time point to the abstract work and ask "What do you see in that one?"
Amazing answers come forth!
Marc Sabatella
I don't do many abstracts, but I do enjoy them, and this sort of touches
on what I think of as my reasons, but doesn't really do them justice.
It's not that the inaccuracies of realistic works bothers me per se.
It's that if I want a realistic picture - and sometimes I do - I can
look at a photograph. If I want to moved by someone's personal vision,
I want deviation in some way from that photograph. The more deviation,
the more personal vision I am seeing, although just because it is
personal vision doesn't necessarily make it worth my attention. There
is something about the process of expressing a personal vision versus
while working within a predefined structure that pleases me - and it is
why I am primarily an improvisor in music, for example creating new
melodies over existing harmonic and/or rhythmic structures. In both
cases - art and music - it is how one establishes the balance between
these elements that especially fascinates me, which is why I tend to
prefer both art and music that are somewhere between the extremes. This
is equally true whether I am actively participating in the creative
process or whether I am an observer/listener. But there is also
something appealing about the struggle to create order out of chaos that
can make a completely abstract (or freely improvised) piece exciting to
me, if the structure thus created is sufficiently satisfying.
--------------
Marc Sabatella
ma...@outsideshore.com
The Outside Shore
Music, art, & educational materials:
http://www.outsideshore.com/
Seagull Manager
"Marc Sabatella" <ma...@outsideshore.com> wrote in message
news:xNWXa.2223$jq....@fe01.atl2.webusenet.com...
> If I want to moved by someone's personal vision,
> I want deviation in some way from that photograph.
An apparently photorealistic image can express a highly personal vision, as
some of the Surrealists, among others, clearly show.
> The more deviation,
> the more personal vision I am seeing
Not necessarily. You may simply be seeing affectation or incompetence.
>, although just because it is
> personal vision doesn't necessarily make it worth my attention.
That's true, at least.
> But there is also
> something appealing about the struggle to create order out of chaos that
> can make a completely abstract (or freely improvised) piece exciting to
> me, if the structure thus created is sufficiently satisfying.
If what you enjoy is the "struggle to create order out of chaos", then the
following painting ought to be more interesting to you than most (or perhaps
any) modernist abstract painting:
Marc Sabatella
<seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>:
> > If I want to moved by someone's personal vision,
> > I want deviation in some way from that photograph.
>
> An apparently photorealistic image can express a highly personal
vision, as
> some of the Surrealists, among others, clearly show.
If a photograph actually does show the same image, the painting is not
surrealistic but realistic. But it is true that some apparently
photorealistic images involve personal vision. Like I said, though,
just because it is personal vision does not mean I am going to enjoy
it - it is a necessary but not sufficient condition. As it happens, I
do not tend to enjoy enjoy surrealism, although I acknowledge that this
does represent deviation from reality that does indicate the employment
of personal vision.
> > The more deviation,
> > the more personal vision I am seeing
>
> Not necessarily. You may simply be seeing affectation or incompetence.
Affectation still counts as personal vision. Even what you consider
incompetence has a basis in a personal response to somethin g- different
people make different mistakes. But again, as above, just because it
represents personal vision doesn't mean I am going to enjoy it.
> > But there is also
> > something appealing about the struggle to create order out of chaos
that
> > can make a completely abstract (or freely improvised) piece exciting
to
> > me, if the structure thus created is sufficiently satisfying.
>
> If what you enjoy is the "struggle to create order out of chaos", then
the
> following painting ought to be more interesting to you than most (or
perhaps
> any) modernist abstract painting:
>
> http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/art/f/floris/frans/rebellio.jpg
Quite the contrary. It strikes me as a typical realistic portrayal of a
historical/fantasy type of scene - probably my least favorite trype of
subject, treated in my my least favorite way.
The chaos I refer to is not chaos that comes from by complexity of the
source material - it is the chaos caused by the lack of source material.
And even if I considered a complex scene as chaotic in this sense, then
creating order out of it would consist of *altering* it in a way that
made it less chaotic, introducing order of the artists' own device, not
merely accurately representing that chaos. As it is, the representation
scene is still chaotic, and ugly to me besides.
Edward G. Nilges
Interesting point, for viewing Yosemite back country in a photograph
is completely different from hiking through it while being dive-bombed
by no see ums.
Edward G. Nilges
> Flying_Naked_People wrote:
>
> > He went further to say that hardly any realist works are
> > accurate, so he prefers to shun the whole style and look at abstract art
> > instead.
>
>
> Hell.
> That guy is simply an idiot.
> He (and his motivations) are hardly worth any discussion.
The Fascist rages for "representation" while at the same time being
unable to see that a "representation" is really the agreed-upon set of
community preconditions. He wishes to forget the original conventions
and indeed make them a form of second or replacement nature,
considered better than actual nature.
>
>
> As for most of artists who paint abstract:
> - every so often it happens because of their incompetence
> (unless they are psychologically/emotionally driven to paint
> specifically that way).
>
>
> Bad poets usually become philosophers,
> lousy writers turn into critics,
> bad painters transform into abstract painters...
>
In actuality, great writers like Edmund Wilson were great critics. Of
course, criticism represents the danger of a deflated set of
illusions.
What is demanded without shame in the post is Kitsch. We must have our
paintings of Elvis on black velvet, mustn't we.
Seagull Manager
>
> If a photograph actually does show the same image, the painting is not
> surrealistic but realistic.
Paintings that are copies of actual photographs are not very common, except
for low-priced portraits, and amateur exercises. Naturalistic paintings
*normally* are of scenes that could not be photographed, and *usually*
contain elements that are invented by the artist. Even, in the relatively
rare case where there is nothing invented in the picture, the selectivity of
the artist has played a part, and that, too, represents the personal vision
of the artist. I only mentioned Surrealist painting because it is extremely
obvious that the painting represents the personal vision of an artist; other
naturalistic art does also, though it may be less obvious.
> But it is true that some apparently
> photorealistic images involve personal vision.
Most do, and so do most paintings that many would call "realistic", but
which are not photorealistic, such as those of Rembrandt.
> Like I said, though,
> just because it is personal vision does not mean I am going to enjoy
> it - it is a necessary but not sufficient condition.
Obviously.
> As it happens, I do not tend to enjoy enjoy surrealism
I did not expect that you would. From what you've written so far in this
forum, it seems to me your tastes are very narrow and easy to sum up: you
like semi-abstracts that are fairly simple, and either show clumsy drawing,
or fail to show good drawing, and show no sign of imagination or invention,
other than slight flourishes of brushwork, and do not create deep scenic
space or tell stories, or convey human sentiments. You like non-narrative,
non-political, not-too-novel art that is technically and formally and
emotionally flat. You do not like too much detail, because it makes your
head hurt to consider it, and you don't want to give as much time to the
contemplation of a picture as such detail would seem to require. Fine
drawing is a closed book to you, as you can barely distinguish it from crude
drawing, and you are insensitive to its rhythms and nuances. You feel
immediately weary when confronted with a complex composition - a few
straight lines are more than enough. The same goes for subtle colour: two
similar colours whose name you don't know set against one another would tend
to leave you cold, and if they were disguised as representation, you'd
probably not even realize an effect was intended. Only obvious and basic
contrasts - a blotch of purple against a blotch of orange, say - are able to
pierce through the fog of your somnolent visual sensibilities. Am I close?
>
> > > The more deviation,
> > > the more personal vision I am seeing
> >
> > Not necessarily. You may simply be seeing affectation or incompetence.
>
> Affectation still counts as personal vision.
Yes, but only in a trivial way, especially when the affectation amounts to
copying whatever distortions are currently fashionable (consider the
hundreds - or perhaps thousands - of artists of the 1930s, 40s and 50s whose
drawings looked almost exactly as if they had come from Picasso's hands).
Very often, a personal trait is being displayed through affectation
(especially what is called "expressionism"): laziness or hastiness, and to
many (perhaps not to you), such traits are not particularly attractive to
contemplate.
> Even what you consider
> incompetence has a basis in a personal response to somethin g- different
> people make different mistakes.
Incompetent painters mostly make quite similar mistakes, and these mistakes
can be categorized, and - what's more - they usually say nothing about the
maker's personal values, tastes, emotions or interests. At most, they
usually betray how the maker was trained, and what level they have reached.
So, yes, they can be called "personal responses", but only in a trivial or
pathological sense. When the same mistakes are persistently made by an
artist, this sometimes does bespeak something of the artists' character,
namely, an arrogant blindness to his or her own faults or limitations.
Perhaps this is attractive to you.
Apart from the above, the ability to make genuine personal responses, as
opposed to mistakes, tends to increase with increasing technical competence.
Clumsiness and stiltedness in any art, be it literature, music, painting, or
any other, interfere with communication.
> But again, as above, just because it
> represents personal vision doesn't mean I am going to enjoy it.
Obviously.
> > http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/art/f/floris/frans/rebellio.jpg
>
> Quite the contrary. It strikes me as a typical realistic portrayal of a
> historical/fantasy type of scene - probably my least favorite trype of
> subject, treated in my my least favorite way.
The sad fact is that the picture is just too complex for you. If you looked
a little closer, you would notice the things the artists has done with
details in the heads, and in the anatomy of each figure, which are as clever
as anything you will ever find in any abstract painting as long as you live.
(And we've not yet said anything about the composition.)
As for disliking "historical/fantastical" scenes, that's a blanket rejection
of a whole art, or several arts even, akin to disliking all fictional or
historical narrative in prose and poetry, and equivalent in boorishness. The
vagueness and generality of your categorization tells us exactly where
you're coming from. You're in the same position with regard to visual art as
someone who avers that classical music sends them to sleep is in with regard
to music. They see all that vast panoply of musical variety as one
indistinguishable mass, and its complexity and unfamiliarity fills them with
a weary sense of exhaustion. There are people who don't read books for
similar reasons. There's a word for them: uncouth.
> The chaos I refer to is not chaos that comes from by complexity of the
> source material - it is the chaos caused by the lack of source material.
That's not chaos. That's empty canvas (or board, or paper). If chaos appears
in the finished painting, the painter put it there. When there is no subject
and no formal constraints, there is no challenge in creating either chaos or
order. Both are easy to achieve.
> And even if I considered a complex scene as chaotic in this sense, then
> creating order out of it would consist of *altering* it in a way that
> made it less chaotic, introducing order of the artists' own device, not
> merely accurately representing that chaos.
The painter is not altering the scene, because the scene doesn't exist (and
part of the achievement is to vividly imagine it) -- though if it did exist,
it would have a chaotic look, and it would not stay still for long enough to
study. The artist wants to create the impression of chaos in a scene that is
actually, subtly, quite orderly, thereby stimulating the viewer with
complexity, while at the same time creating the sense of satisfaction that
comes from order. He also wants to convey a sense of intense activity in an
image that is physically static. There are many paintings treating similar
themes from medieval and Renaissance times, and, while the medieval ones are
too simple, static and orderly, some of the Renaissance ones are too
chaotic. Part of Floris' achievement is that he stands on this tightrope and
doesn't fall off.
> As it is, the representation scene is still chaotic, and ugly to me
besides.
The representation is one of the great pictorial masterpieces of the
Northern Renaissance. It *seems* chaotic to you, because you lack the
ability to appreciate the patterns that the painter has set up, or the
compositional challenges he has met. They're just too subtle for your eye,
unaccustomed as it is to anything but the crudest pictorial art.
As for your finding it ugly, this comes as no surprise from an individual
who finds Cezanne beautiful. No doubt, there are hip-hop fans who think Art
Tatum's music chaotic and ugly. "To each his own", I could say, but more apt
would be, "your loss".
Seagull Manager
"Edward G. Nilges" <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com...
>
> What is demanded without shame in the post is Kitsch. We must have our
> paintings of Elvis on black velvet, mustn't we.
Decorative abstract expressionism, a.k.a. "hotel abstraction", is the
absolute kitsch, it is kitsch par excellence. Nothing, not even Elvis on
velvet, comes close.
Seagull Manager
"Seagull Manager" <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>
wrote in message news:bgrp8i$5uj$1$8302...@news.demon.co.uk...
Here, I take kitsch to mean extremely easy, corny, unoriginal, impersonal,
shallow, mindless "art". Other meanings of the word exist.
Seagull Manager
"Edward G. Nilges" <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com...
>
>
Elvis on black velvet is Fascist propaganda?
keith o'connor
principles.
snip from Marc: "...for example creating new melodies over existing harmonic
and/or rhythmic structures. In both cases - art and music - it is how one
establishes the balance between these elements that especially fascinates
Marc's comment surprises me as I did not think anyone in this group thought
at this high a level.
You have demonstrated that this universal level of aesthetic theory is
completely beyond your understanding and as a result your contribution to
the aesthetic consciousness of this group will always be in the negative.
--
take care: Keith
The eye should not be lead where there is nothing to see.
Robert Henri - The Art Spirit
"Seagull Manager" <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>
wrote in message news:bgrouf$nus$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk...
Flying_Naked_People
spino...@yahoo.com says...
> The Fascist rages for "representation" while at the same time being
> unable to see that a "representation" is really the agreed-upon set of
> community preconditions. He wishes to forget the original conventions
> and indeed make them a form of second or replacement nature,
> considered better than actual nature.
>
Edward, my boo.
:-P
:-)
Erik A. Mattila
> "Seagull Manager"
> <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>:
>
>
>>>If I want to moved by someone's personal vision,
>>>I want deviation in some way from that photograph.
>>
>>An apparently photorealistic image can express a highly personal
>
> vision, as
>
>>some of the Surrealists, among others, clearly show.
>
>
> If a photograph actually does show the same image, the painting is not
> surrealistic but realistic. But it is true that some apparently
> photorealistic images involve personal vision. Like I said, though,
> just because it is personal vision does not mean I am going to enjoy
> it - it is a necessary but not sufficient condition. As it happens, I
> do not tend to enjoy enjoy surrealism, although I acknowledge that this
> does represent deviation from reality that does indicate the employment
> of personal vision.
Isn't "Photorealism's" aim to mimic the photograph itself? I mean it's
one step removed from the portrayal of objective reality or descriptive
drawing and rendering (except the descriptive drawing and rendering of a
photograph, of course). It is a reproduction of a reproduction, more or
less. Just a thought, and it may not be particularly relevant to this
thread.
Erik
keith o'connor
snip from below: " Isn't "Photorealism's" aim to mimic the photograph
itself? "
It's just amazing how they keep forgetting that.
--
take care: Keith
The eye should not be lead where there is nothing to see.
Robert Henri - The Art Spirit
"Erik A. Mattila" <emat...@oco.net> wrote in message
news:3F3190C0...@oco.net...
Erik A. Mattila
> Hi Erik:
> snip from below: " Isn't "Photorealism's" aim to mimic the photograph
> itself? "
>
> It's just amazing how they keep forgetting that.
Hi Keith,
Well, I wasn't sure. It was just a strange nudging going on somewhere
in my head. I remember looking at some some years back, in the flesh,
and playing around with looking up close and far away. I was impressed.
Up close (no pun on Chuck - I don't think it was his work anyway) they
disassembled pretty well, just paint on a carrier, but backing up they
magically turned into those old photos I have somewhere in a shoe box.
I remember thinking "I would like to know how to do that." Even more so
now with computer graphics - it would be nice to make fake photographs
without using a photograph as a source (scanned image).
Erik
Seagull Manager
Sometimes. For most photorealists, judging from what they say or write about
their work, at least, working from photographs is just a means to the end of
creating a vivid hyperreality in the painting. I suspect that some of those
who claim to be only interested in the photo, not the subject, are saying so
only in order to deflect possible attacks from fans of conceptualism and
opponents of representational art.
Peter H.M. Brooks
> The Fascist rages for "representation" while at the same time being
> unable to see that a "representation" is really the agreed-upon set of
> community preconditions. He wishes to forget the original conventions
> and indeed make them a form of second or replacement nature,
> considered better than actual nature.
>
Has somebody not remembered to take his Risperdal?
--
The happiest people on earth are those few fortunates who seem to be in a
state of mild, stable hypomania. - David Horrobin 'The Madness of Adam and
Eve' (How schizophrenia shaped humanity)
Peter H.M. Brooks
"Seagull Manager" <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>
wrote in message news:bgrqa5$pp2$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk...
have taken a long time to do'. It may be mass produced, but the original
took an amazingly long time to produce, even if the 'artist' may claim
otherwise.
--
'It's a trifle if twenty millions or so die.' - Lenin on the 1921 Soviet
famine, reported in is Obituary in The Times
Peter H.M. Brooks
"Seagull Manager" <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>
wrote in message news:bgrqca$pqj$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk...
Facist propaganda.
You don't have to try to reason with the elves, just water them from time to
time and they are quite content.
Peter H.M. Brooks
There is something to be said for keeping a pet.
--
"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple." - Oscar Wilde
Peter H.M. Brooks
"Seagull Manager" <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>
wrote in message news:bgs8u0$nh0$1$830f...@news.demon.co.uk...
Nice to know that there are some thoughts going on under all that.
Edward G. Nilges
Elvis AS USED was made-over-into Fascist propaganda and kitsch in its
technical sense of inauthentic authenticity. Original boy had him some
talent but Robert Johnson had more.
Indeed, it is ironic that Bill Clinton was coded as Elvis for Bill
only looked progressive and made a promise he did not deliver as did
the King.
Elvis allowed himself to be drafted. At once, this was progressive and
conformist in context.
I was whistling La Marseillaise during my Sunday run as a masochistic
form of breath control when I realized that an entire generation, when
it hears the opening bars of Rouget de Lisle's hymn, "allons, enfants
de la patrie", segues in its collective, and media-saturated mind,
into "Love, Love, Love, all you need is Love, Love, Love."
This was a message which has a certain truth, but in many ways the
Beatles, like Elvis a few years before, achieved commercial success
(aided as it is by institutions with their own, usually conservative
or else Stalinist, agenda) almost precisely to the extent they tamed
rebellion, and made it safe. In many ways, the Beatles imposed
structures of thinking (such as a strict Jargon of Authenticity) upon
an entire, now decrepit generation.
Corporations in the 1980s and 1990s used, not paleoconservative
discourse, but discourse derived from the Beatles and the
counterculture to impose a conformism that was much more strict than
that imposed in the era of the Grey Flannel Suit: for in that earlier
era, mere criticism was attended-to in a discourse ethic which did
not, as did the Beatles, code critical thought as behind the curve and
somehow not au fait to a generalized message of peace, love and
accomodation.
Corporations used vague messages ultimately derived from the
broad-beamed middle of the counter-culture to demonstrate that
critical thought was at best trouble-making and the result was, we now
know, that greedheads got rich, while the aging kids who followed the
Beatles were gulled into deflated 401Ks.
This was aided by a systematic anti-intellectualism found in the
Beatles music and in the earlier Elvis phenomenon which was used to
describe any political analysis (such as this one) as bo-ring at best.
Or, as my 1971 girl-friend told my sister after dropping me for some
long-haired hippie (boo hoo), "your brother is cute, but bo-ring."
Some of the Beatle's tunes are just nasty, such as "Nowhere Man", and
the White Album is a Fascist album.
This digression on the Beatles shows, I think, that popular culture,
including paintings of Elvis on black velvet, can be twisted to serve
the Fascist goal, which is to ensure that the lower middle class keeps
in line.
Edward G. Nilges
No, it's not, because it is unable to project false feelings. A
painting of a tropic sunset in the middle class parlor is kitsch
because it asserts that "although I live in Chicago, I would rather be
in Bora Bora", and it fails to answer the obvious question as to why
you haven't moved to the tropics.
Whereas at worst an abstraction asserts "we're a pretty hip
corporation or government bureau, and we realize we have to reach out
to you crazy kids, chukka chukka, but at the same time we don't want
to send any unintended messages neither such as does kitschy Socialist
Realism."
This might be lame but it isn't kitsch.
Edward G. Nilges
The key concept is structuralist and it is a lack of fit between form
and content. For example, the movies made by Ed Wood like Plan Nine
from Outer Space were, we now know, deadly serious and sincere.
Therefore they are not kitsch. Purity of heart destroys kitsch.
Whereas Gigli is a lie which tells us that despite all evidence to the
contrary we really all want to be like Ben and J-Lo when in fact mass
consciousness would really rather be more like Pee Wee Herman, but
cannot admit it on the job. Gigli, like a film made in Hitler's
Germany, commands us to be a certain way in hopes that enough saps
will actually fool themselves into being Affleck clones and thus
persuade even more fools to get in line.
Marc Sabatella
<seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>:
> > If a photograph actually does show the same image, the painting is
not
> > surrealistic but realistic.
>
> Paintings that are copies of actual photographs are not very common,
except
> for low-priced portraits, and amateur exercises. Naturalistic
paintings
> *normally* are of scenes that could not be photographed, and *usually*
> contain elements that are invented by the artist.
Whatever. Like I keep saying, just because it involves some amount of
invention doesn't mean I am going to appreciate it. And I prefer the
type of imagination that causes the *appearance* of the painting to
deviate from reality. I couldn't care less if the artist added a tree
here or deleted a lampost there; if it *looks* like a photograph, I am
not as interested as I am with a use of imagination that is not so
realistic. That's just the way it is, and I don't know why you have
such a problem with this.
> Even, in the relatively
> rare case where there is nothing invented in the picture, the
selectivity of
> the artist has played a part, and that, too, represents the personal
vision
> of the artist.
True, but then, this also takes place on a much greater scale in less
realistic representation art.
> I did not expect that you would. From what you've written so far in
this
> forum, it seems to me your tastes are very narrow and easy to sum up
Only because your summation is entirely inaccurate. Although I would
agree you did not have to spend much effort coming up with such rubbish.
> Am I close?
No, but you've painted a pretty good picture of your own tastes, by
describing what it is you *don't* like in art.
> Incompetent painters mostly make quite similar mistakes
Not in my experience, although I can undersatand how the subtle
differences might escape you.
> and - what's more - they usually say nothing about the
> maker's personal values, tastes, emotions or interests.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
> Apart from the above, the ability to make genuine personal responses,
as
> opposed to mistakes, tends to increase with increasing technical
competence.
Of course. But ithe same goes for competence in other area, such as the
ability to choose colors or designs that that please me - not just the
ability to accurately depict something, which is a skill that doesn't
impress me much.
> The sad fact is that the picture is just too complex for you. If you
looked
> a little closer, you would notice the things the artists has done with
> details in the heads, and in the anatomy of each figure, which are as
clever
> as anything you will ever find in any abstract painting as long as you
live.
Like I keep saying, just because skill or imagination was used in some
way doesn't mean I am going to like it. In my opinion, this artist
wasted his obviously considerable effort.
> As for disliking "historical/fantastical" scenes, that's a blanket
rejection
> of a whole art, or several arts even, akin to disliking all fictional
or
> historical narrative in prose and poetry, and equivalent in
boorishness.
I said it was my least favorite type of subject, and I stand by that.
That doesn't mean I hate every painting with this subject matter, but
all things equal, I am going to prefer a picture of a bowl of fruit, a
landscape, a portrait, a figure, or an abstract. So sue me.
> You're in the same position with regard to visual art as
> someone who avers that classical music sends them to sleep is in with
regard
> to music. They see all that vast panoply of musical variety as one
> indistinguishable mass, and its complexity and unfamiliarity fills
them with
> a weary sense of exhaustion.
This is indeed always the case with people who have little interest in
or experience with a genre - they fail to make fine distinctions. I am
no different that you or anyone else in this. Except, perhaps, that I
don't make the mistake of saying that all this stuff that doesn't
interest me is "bad" - I say it doesn't interest me and leave it at
that. You make the inexcusable mistake of passing value judgement on
that which you don't understand.
> > The chaos I refer to is not chaos that comes from by complexity of
the
> > source material - it is the chaos caused by the lack of source
material.
>
> That's not chaos. That's empty canvas (or board, or paper).
OK, fine. Potential for chaos. Or whatever word you prefer. The idea
that there is no predefined structure.
> When there is no subject
> and no formal constraints, there is no challenge in creating either
chaos or
> order. Both are easy to achieve.
Yes, which is why I said the interest comes in the balance one creates
between the two.
> The painter is not altering the scene, because the scene doesn't exist
(and
> part of the achievement is to vividly imagine it) -- though if it did
exist,
> it would have a chaotic look, and it would not stay still for long
enough to
> study.
Right. That kind of chaos bores me. I'm glad you like it. Stop
pestering me for liking different things than you.
> The artist wants to create the impression of chaos in a scene that is
> actually, subtly, quite orderly, thereby stimulating the viewer with
> complexity, while at the same time creating the sense of satisfaction
that
> comes from order. He also wants to convey a sense of intense activity
in an
> image that is physically static.
Look, I'm not denying the guy did these things. I am saying it doesn't
make me like the painting. If you can't see the difference between how
the people *I* admire do these things and how this guy does them, that's
too bad - it seems pretty obvious to me. If you do see the difference,
then again, stop pestering me for liking different things than you do.
> The representation is one of the great pictorial masterpieces of the
> Northern Renaissance. It *seems* chaotic to you, because you lack the
> ability to appreciate the patterns that the painter has set up, or the
> compositional challenges he has met. They're just too subtle for your
eye,
> unaccustomed as it is to anything but the crudest pictorial art.
I see them; I don't like them. I don't understand why you find
difference in taste so hard to accept.
Andrew D
>news:xNWXa.2223$jq....@fe01.atl2.webusenet.com...
>> But there is also
>> something appealing about the struggle to create order out of chaos that
>> can make a completely abstract (or freely improvised) piece exciting to
>> me, if the structure thus created is sufficiently satisfying.
But abstract/expressionist painting more often creates chaos out of order.
Paint thrown, spilled, dribbled and smeared across a giant canvas is
nowehere near as "ordered" as paint carefully placed in an effort to
accurately depict the essence of a scene.
Andy D.
"I'm a great speller - but a hopless tpyist!"
Andrew D
<seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk> wrote:
[snip]
>I did not expect that you would. From what you've written so far in this
>forum, it seems to me your tastes are very narrow and easy to sum up: you
>like semi-abstracts that are fairly simple, and either show clumsy drawing,
>or fail to show good drawing, and show no sign of imagination or invention,
>other than slight flourishes of brushwork, and do not create deep scenic
>space or tell stories, or convey human sentiments. You like non-narrative,
>non-political, not-too-novel art that is technically and formally and
>emotionally flat. You do not like too much detail, because it makes your
>head hurt to consider it, and you don't want to give as much time to the
>contemplation of a picture as such detail would seem to require. Fine
>drawing is a closed book to you, as you can barely distinguish it from crude
>drawing, and you are insensitive to its rhythms and nuances. You feel
>immediately weary when confronted with a complex composition - a few
>straight lines are more than enough. The same goes for subtle colour: two
>similar colours whose name you don't know set against one another would tend
>to leave you cold, and if they were disguised as representation, you'd
>probably not even realize an effect was intended. Only obvious and basic
>contrasts - a blotch of purple against a blotch of orange, say - are able to
>pierce through the fog of your somnolent visual sensibilities. Am I close?
I doubt Mark will share your opinion but I'd like to save that paragraph
for future reference!
[snip]
>That's not chaos. That's empty canvas (or board, or paper).
And the empty canvas is far more ordered than it will be when the abstract
artist has finished with it. I'm certain Mark wrote his original sentence
back to front. He surely meant that he likes to see chaos created out of
order.
Andrew D
spino...@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
[snip]
>What is demanded without shame in the post is Kitsch. We must have our
>paintings of Elvis on black velvet, mustn't we.
I remember when we used to place a piece of card in a washing machine then
pour paint onto it as the dryer spun. The vibrant abstract patterns were
spectacular. We made dozens of them, as did every other kid. They even
used to have a dryer at local fairs so kids could make more of them
without screwing up the washing machine at home!
The hundreds of thousands paintings (probably tens of millions) that must
have been created this way by kids around the world had all the freedoms
of expression found in modern abstract expressionist paintings of the
Pollock kind and I've no doubt suburban fridges were littered with these
things for years.
So how much more kitsch can you get than paint flung onto a support?
Andrew D
buggered up the logical flow of this thread and wrote:
>You don't understand the aesthetic level at which all becomes a variation on
>principles.
>snip from Marc: "...for example creating new melodies over existing harmonic
>and/or rhythmic structures.
They call it "sampling" don't they? Simply Red have just done something
similar with an old Hall & Oates number.
> In both cases - art and music - it is how one
>establishes the balance between these elements that especially fascinates
>me, ..."
It still doesn't explain why clumsily painted tables, curtains, hands,
feet, heads, hats, rocks, water, skies......etc are a better way of
depicting this balance than to produce similar imagery in a more skillful
way.
>You have demonstrated that this universal level of aesthetic theory is
>completely beyond your understanding and as a result your contribution to
>the aesthetic consciousness of this group will always be in the negative.
And yet, oddly perhaps, I find Seagull's contributions here to be among
the most refereshing, informed, insightful and erudite input this group
has benefited from in years... and he does it without being pompous,
overbearing or unecessarily verbose.
Andrew D
spino...@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
[snip the long-winded boring bit]
My dog has three legs.
It amazes me that you seem to blame everything on the fascists when anyone
who follows reality knows that it's all the fault of the feminist-left.
Andrew D
spino...@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
>"Seagull Manager" <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>
wrote in message news:<bgrp8i$5uj$1$8302...@news.demon.co.uk>...
>> "Edward G. Nilges" <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>> news:f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com...
>> >
>> > What is demanded without shame in the post is Kitsch. We must have our
>> > paintings of Elvis on black velvet, mustn't we.
>>
>> Decorative abstract expressionism, a.k.a. "hotel abstraction", is the
>> absolute kitsch, it is kitsch par excellence. Nothing, not even Elvis on
>> velvet, comes close.
>
>No, it's not, because it is unable to project false feelings. A
>painting of a tropic sunset in the middle class parlor is kitsch
>because it asserts that "although I live in Chicago, I would rather be
>in Bora Bora", and it fails to answer the obvious question as to why
>you haven't moved to the tropics.
Does it? I assume the picture says "gee, don't tropical sunsets just give
you the best, most warmest, fuzziest feeling ever!" or even "aren't
tropical sunsets a spectacular sight!"
As for why the suburbanite hasn't moved to the tropics - it's hot and
sweaty and filled with disease-ridden mosquitoes. Why put up with all that
if it is just the sight of a tropical sunset that stirs the soul?
Now, why don't the owners of abstract paintings live at the local rubbish dump?
Seagull Manager
"Edward G. Nilges" <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com...
> >
impersonal,
> > shallow, mindless "art". Other meanings of the word exist.
>
> The key concept is structuralist and it is a lack of fit between form
> and content.
Structuralists did not invent the word; they merely hijacked it and set it
to their own purposes.
Seagull Manager
"Edward G. Nilges" <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com...
>
> and content.
Also, most criticisms of the kind "this work is not emotionally honest,
therefore it is kitsch" are themselves dishonest.
Seagull Manager
"Peter H.M. Brooks" <pe...@new.co.za> wrote in message
news:bgsk1r$nir$1...@ctb-nnrp2.saix.net...
>
> No. Kitsch is very seldom easy. People look at it and say 'my, that must
> have taken a long time to do'.
Sometimes that is true, but even the stuff labelled as kitsch that is
time-consuming to make is relatively easy in most senses (doesn't require a
lot of thought, etc.). Anyway, I did say there are other senses of kitsch.
For instance, Odd Nerdrum, following one understanding of what kitsch is,
which effectively includes and deplores all representational art except the
coldly unemotional stuff (e.g. some photorealist work), says that "kitsch"
is what is interesting, "art" is what is uninteresting and essentially
worthless, and he is not an artist, but a purveyor of kitsch, and he prefers
it that way.
Seagull Manager
"Edward G. Nilges" <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com...
>
false feelings.
Aside from the fact that you're only using a particular sense of the word
kitsch - one that has been imposed upon it by a particular set of critics
with a particular agenda, and ignoring the fact that kitsch is an everyday
word whose meanings range more widely than that...
Hotel abstraction does falsely claim the ability to project feelings, which
isn't far off.
> A painting of a tropic sunset in the middle class parlor is kitsch
> because it asserts that "although I live in Chicago, I would rather be
> in Bora Bora", and it fails to answer the obvious question as to why
> you haven't moved to the tropics.
There's nothing necessarily false about that. In its context, it tells the
truth: "I love that Bora Bora scene, but I have other priorities. It calms
me to think of Bora Bora from time to time, and perhaps imagine my next
holiday there, or my retirement to that place".
> Whereas at worst an abstraction asserts "we're a pretty hip
> corporation or government bureau...
There's a falsehood already.
>...and we realize we have to reach out to you crazy kids
There's another falsehood - flattering the "kids" that they are "crazy".
> chukka chukka, but at the same time we don't want
> to send any unintended messages neither such as does kitschy Socialist
> Realism."
And here we find another falsehood in the implied assumption that all
Socialist Realism (or even most of it) is kitsch.
~~~
The fear of kitsch is the greatest enemy of art. You can quote me on that,
if you like.
Seagull Manager
"Andrew D" <right@the_end.of.my_tether> wrote in message
news:right-07080...@i204-234.nv.iinet.net.au...
>
> As for why the suburbanite hasn't moved to the tropics - it's hot and
> sweaty and filled with disease-ridden mosquitoes. Why put up with all that
> if it is just the sight of a tropical sunset that stirs the soul?
>
> Now, why don't the owners of abstract paintings live at the local rubbish
dump?
Good line, I like it!
Seagull Manager
>
> Elvis AS USED was made-over-into Fascist propaganda...
An interesting idea. Who was using Elvis as propaganda? Would I be right in
saying it was American politicians who were holding him up as some kind of
an ideal young man? (Probably they were just jumping on a bandwagon that was
already rolling, but we'll set that aside for the moment.) Now, would it be
unfair of me to remind you that at the same time as this was going on, the
American government (as an agent of American politicians) was also spending
pots of money promoting Abstract Expressionism around the world, in order to
convey the impression of American cultural supremacy? Now, leaving aside the
question of whether America really is a fascist society or not, would it not
be reasonable to conclude that IF the same people who were using Elvis as
propaganda were also using Abstract Expressionism as propaganda, AND the
people using Elvis as propaganda were Fascists, THEN the people using
Abstract Expressionism as propaganda were Fascists also? THEREFORE, is it
not fair to say that, to the extent that Elvis is Fascist propaganda,
Abstract Expressionism is also Fascist propaganda?
Peter H.M. Brooks
"Seagull Manager" <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>
wrote in message news:bgte16$m2i$1$8302...@news.demon.co.uk...
choices, no matter how barmy.
Mani Deli
periodically refers to entirely different types objects. Many of
today's masterpieces may become tomorrow's kitsch. Any work which
expresses extreme sentiment in its subject matter or shows a degree of
skill offensive to those who lack it is at present is likely to
acquire the kitsch label. In the late 1930s, the term kitsch also
began to be used on any artwork produced under the influence of
totalitarian political movements, such as fascist official art.
Presently we excuse any admiration for former kitsch by changing this
descriptive term to words like funky, trivia, campy etc. in order to
safely admire it.
The word kitsch still serves the Modern Academic Art
community as a call to rate such objects as offensive and unworthy of
serious attention or discussion.
All that Greenberg (the father of MA verbal BS) disliked he cleverly
compressed into a verbal singularity in the label kitsch. The
derogatory implications of this term has the psychological impact that
the word heresy once enjoyed in the past. Greenberg more then any
other critic was responsible for expanding the coverage of the kitsch
label to include most illustration, academic art, the Art Nouveau and
Deco styles and commercial art.
Even today, when it has once again become acceptable to openly admire
some of these works, none of it is really considered to lie on a high
intellectual plane, or to put it another way on a level anywhere as
nearly as high as Modern Academic Art
Even by the early 1940's Modern Art was as yet far from being a
university stand-by taught by tenured professors. Before the advent of
MAA acceptability, kitsch was identified with the dying embers of
academic style with its excessive ornament and sentimentalism
expressed through polished technique.
...no skill no art!
Want to get away from the indecipherable imbecilities and absurd pretensions of the modern art establishment?
Check out my web page http://www3.sympatico.ca/manideli/
Edward G. Nilges
> In article <f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com>,
> spino...@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
>
> >"Seagull Manager" <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>
> wrote in message news:<bgrp8i$5uj$1$8302...@news.demon.co.uk>...
> >> "Edward G. Nilges" <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> >> news:f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com...
> >> >
> >> > What is demanded without shame in the post is Kitsch. We must have our
> >> > paintings of Elvis on black velvet, mustn't we.
> >>
> >> Decorative abstract expressionism, a.k.a. "hotel abstraction", is the
> >> absolute kitsch, it is kitsch par excellence. Nothing, not even Elvis on
> >> velvet, comes close.
> >
> >No, it's not, because it is unable to project false feelings. A
> >painting of a tropic sunset in the middle class parlor is kitsch
> >because it asserts that "although I live in Chicago, I would rather be
> >in Bora Bora", and it fails to answer the obvious question as to why
> >you haven't moved to the tropics.
>
> Does it? I assume the picture says "gee, don't tropical sunsets just give
> you the best, most warmest, fuzziest feeling ever!" or even "aren't
> tropical sunsets a spectacular sight!"
Both of the statements are themselves kitschy and the point of any
critique, indeed of using the mere name "kitsch" is to exit the
language of kitsch.
Both strings, both statements are as my kids would say (for children
start life as both embedded-in, and in critique of, the bourgeois
family system) lame.
To name kitsch and then exclude the non-kitsch as not economically
viable is a typical commercial gesture which then focuses resources on
kitsch. In this way, the critical attitude disappears and the result
is Gigli.
>
> As for why the suburbanite hasn't moved to the tropics - it's hot and
> sweaty and filled with disease-ridden mosquitoes. Why put up with all that
> if it is just the sight of a tropical sunset that stirs the soul?
>
A tropical sunset would not make sense without the possibility of
travel, and would be as foreign as were traveler's tales of "the
anthropophagi, whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders" in
Shakespeare's time.
It is the essence of kitsch to imagine that you love the tropics
merely because you have a painting on your wall. You only "love" the
tropics if (let us say) you are concerned with the disease-ridden
skeeters to the extent that you question US policy which uses
resources that could be used instead to drain swamps.
> Now, why don't the owners of abstract paintings live at the local rubbish dump?
>
In fact, many abstract painters of the 1940s worked at iron foundries
as a day job, and painters like Rothko drew direct inspiration from
structures so large that in detail they were "abstract",
things-in-themselves which had no reference to anything else.
Abstraction helps us to confront the in-itself in a world when in fact
our belief that (say) a building is "for us" and will always "make
sense" in a matrix needs to be confronted with the Absurd. One
difficulty people had on Sep 11 was the mere fact that they did not
know what to do to save themselves for the social "rules" of the
building had been changed from "go to work" to "clear out" so rapidly.
Like any other ordinary slob, I would like to be able to rely on
things like buildings but at the same time I have to adapt to rapid
change, whether "terrorism" or the authorized terrorism of Yuppies,
who using ill-understood phrases like Joseph Schumpeter's "creative
destruction", change economic law overnight. As such I have to retain
the Modernist realization that I can stand outside kitsch and I do not
have to say stupid things such as "gee, the tropics would be great
were it not for skeeters."
Marc Sabatella
> And the empty canvas is far more ordered than it will be when the
abstract
> artist has finished with it. I'm certain Mark wrote his original
sentence
> back to front. He surely meant that he likes to see chaos created out
of
> order.
I meant neither, actually. I'm not interested in quibbling over whether
a blank canvas constitutes order, chaos, or something else. I am
interested in creating a balance between order and chaos, and the chaos
I referred to is not the bnlank canvas, it is the lack of predefined
source material to use to organize the painting.
Marc Sabatella
> >You don't understand the aesthetic level at which all becomes a
variation on
> >principles.
> >snip from Marc: "...for example creating new melodies over existing
harmonic
> >and/or rhythmic structures.
>
> They call it "sampling" don't they? Simply Red have just done
something
> similar with an old Hall & Oates number.
Sampling is a very different process from improvisation, about as
related as painting and aviation.
> > In both cases - art and music - it is how one
> >establishes the balance between these elements that especially
fascinates
> >me, ..."
>
> It still doesn't explain why clumsily painted tables, curtains, hands,
> feet, heads, hats, rocks, water, skies......etc are a better way of
> depicting this balance than to produce similar imagery in a more
skillful
> way.
As long as you confuse deviation from accurate representation with lack
of skill, you will never understand how many others see art.
Marc Sabatella
> But abstract/expressionist painting more often creates chaos out of
order.
If you mean "more often" in the sense that only a relatively small
percentage of abstract paintings are successful in doing this, I would
agree - just as I would agree that only a relatively small percetnage of
representational paintings are successful in doing what they set out to
do.
Also, of course, perception of chaos and order is subjective, so it
wouldn't surprise me if you failed to see order in a painting I saw as
ordered, and vice versa. My guess is you'd be thrown too often by the
lack of representation in an abstract and fail to appreciate the
aesthetic order, where I'd be thrown by the complexity of the scene
being depicted in a representational painting and fail to appreciate the
order that was imposed, as in the example someone else posted.
> Paint thrown, spilled, dribbled and smeared across a giant canvas is
> nowehere near as "ordered" as paint carefully placed in an effort to
> accurately depict the essence of a scene.
I see no reason to assume this. The kind of order I am referring to has
nothng to do with whether or not it looks like something else. An
accurate depiction of an unordered scene is still unordered in the sense
I refer to. Whereas a completely abstract painting is capable of great
order - in many cases, too much order for my taste. For example,
minimalist art such as a painting of a red square against a yellow
background is abstract but too order to hold my attention for very long
(unless there is enough subtle variation within the square or the
background). It is possible to go way too far in either the direction
of chaos or of order to please me in abstract painting, which is what
makes the balance so fine and hence so challenging.
Neil Maxwell
<seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>"Edward G. Nilges" <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com...
>>
>>
>
>
This should get amusing, if long-winded.
Neil Maxwell - I don't speak for my employer
Neil Maxwell
D) wrote:
>As for why the suburbanite hasn't moved to the tropics - it's hot and
>sweaty and filled with disease-ridden mosquitoes. Why put up with all that
>if it is just the sight of a tropical sunset that stirs the soul?
What do you do for fun and variety? Living in Bora Bora would get
bora-ing for me. And what do you do to make a living while there?
Art? Right. Somebody's got to pay the rent and send the kids to
school. Don't forget the hurricanes, and stuff rusts like crazy, and
the humidity molds all your favorite books, and there's hardly any
radio stations...
The fact is, living in the tropics is neither practical nor desirable
for most people, regardless of how much they like tropical sunsets.
Around here, you could live in in Santa Cruz for beaches and beautiful
sunsets, while still having the benefits of an urban/suburban/redwood
forest environment, if that's what you want. Water's a bit chilly,
though.
Neil Maxwell
<pe...@new.co.za> wrote:
>
>"Flying_Naked_People" <http://www.rcip.com/nerdgerl> wrote in message
>news:vj338i2...@corp.supernews.com...
>> In article <f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com>,
>> spino...@yahoo.com says...
>>> ...
>>
>> Edward, my boo.
>>
>> :-P
>>
>> :-)
>>
>Mine tooo...
>
>There is something to be said for keeping a pet.
They do get a bit messy, though.
Peter H.M. Brooks
"Neil Maxwell" <neil.m...@nospam.intel.com> wrote in message
news:r8e5jvkmvmspfo6os...@4ax.com...
mess - Teddy Bears have the added advantage of making no mess at all, unless
all their stuffing comes out.
--
"We pride ourselves on our peace and stability" - Zimbabwean President
Robert Mugabe
Edward G. Nilges
This hilarious attempt to use naive set theory and Aristotelean logic
with a precision drained of content shows merely how limited such
tools can be in discussing art and politics, while irreplaceable in
their proper area of application.
The elite is not a dead "set" of monads. Instead, it is a group of
people who have, we know, different interests, and who form coalitions
in such an unpredictable way that content-free reasoning about their
policies is a waste of time.
Segments of the CIA may have promoted Abstract Expressionism as the
answer to Socialist Realism and as a way of persuading left-leaning
elites in France and Italy to prefer American art and American
culture. However, by 1960 this was a waste of time since Socialist
Realism as such was a joke even within artistic circles in the USSR.
Other segments of the elite may have observed the Elvis phenomenon and
joined the public relations effort around the time the King done got
drafted in order to re-present, re-code Elvis into a “patriotic
American boy”. They may have done so in response to the fact
that Frank Sinatra and the Zoot Suit movement of Hispanic LA consisted
in part of draft evaders and Mexican-Americans rejected from the
service by racist draft boards, and may have been anxious, during the
apex of the Cold War, to present teen heroes as patriotic.
However, we do know that in the case of “sets” of people
whose interests diverge (as seen most recently in the CIA’s
objections to the Iraq war) it is silly to reason as above, as a
dreary set of syllogisms that hypostatize entities that in the strict
sense do not exist.
Technically overeducated people, of whom a prototype is Margaret
Thatcher, systematically misapply scientific and mathematical
reasoning to social affairs when in fact only recently have anything
like scientific and mathematical tools been developed even barely
adequate to the phenomenon described, including Wolfram’s recent
work.
For example: the reason why it sounds intellectually irresponsible to
call a person a “Fascist” is actually internal to a
sufficiently “thick” definition of Fascism as a movement
which accentuates human difference as opposed to solidarity. Precisely
to the extent that Communism, for all its numerous faults, had a
theoretical vision of human solidarity (marred only by insufficient
understanding of the meaning of “class” in “class
war”), it could reasonably be thought of as a singular
conspiracy to mislead IF its founding theory was wrong.
But Fascism is plural all the way down. This means that while elements
of the American elite could be Fascist or have a clerical-Fascist
program such as John Ashcroft has, you cannot responsibly speak of the
elite being at any time Fascist simpliciter.
The irony is that Carnap’s attempt to reduced the hypostatized
and reified entities of social science, in Der Logische Aufbau der
Welt, and Nelson Goodman’s follow on in The Structure of
Appearance, both in their attempts at an einsatz level of precision
demonstrate the indispensibility of a dialectical level in human
affairs, in which the American elite is in conversation not only with
itself but also with Elvis and abstract expressionist painters.
Neoconservative sociology attempts to address this fact by a reduction
to actors having “conversations” understood in all cases
including absurd cases to be market-driven. This manages, however, to
drive the oversimplification, the hypostatization, the reification
down to the individual who is necessarily exhorted to reduce his
psyche to that of a self-seeking market actor. Opposed to “the
Woody Allen self-hating Jew” this form of micro Fascism is
itself a war both on nuance and altrusim that has only succeeded in
filling America’s jails, and, recently, sent the subordinate
part of the elite, its military, to their deaths in the name of a
national self-interest coded in a Fascist way as shared by us all.
Thanks for your time, flocka Seagulls.
“There's a passage I got memorized, seems appropriate for this
situation: Ezekiel 25:17. ‘The path of the righteous man is
beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of
evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will,
shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his
brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike
down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who
attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name
is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.’"
Edward G. Nilges
"Seagull Manager" <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:<bgtffv$5da$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk>...
This hilarious attempt to use naive set theory and Aristotelean logic
with a precision drained of content shows merely how limited such
tools can be in discussing art and politics, while irreplaceable in
their proper area of application.
The elite is not a dead "set" of monads. Instead, it is a group of
people who have, we know, different interests, and who form coalitions
in such an unpredictable way that content-free reasoning about their
policies is a waste of time.
Segments of the CIA may have promoted Abstract Expressionism as the
answer to Socialist Realism and as a way of persuading left-leaning
elites in France and Italy to prefer American art and American
culture. However, by 1960 this was a waste of time since Socialist
Realism as such was a joke even within artistic circles in the USSR.
Other segments of the elite may have observed the Elvis phenomenon and
joined the public relations effort around the time the King done got
drafted in order to re-present, re-code Elvis into a "patriotic
American boy". They may have done so in response to the fact that
Frank Sinatra and the Zoot Suit movement of Hispanic LA consisted in
part of draft evaders and Mexican-Americans rejected from the service
by racist draft boards, and may have been anxious, during the apex of
the Cold War, to present teen heroes as patriotic.
However, we do know that in the case of "sets" of people whose
interests diverge (as seen most recently in the CIA's objections to
the Iraq war) it is silly to reason as above, as a dreary set of
syllogisms that hypostatize entities that in the strict sense do not
exist.
Technically overeducated people, of whom a prototype is Margaret
Thatcher, systematically misapply scientific and mathematical
reasoning to social affairs when in fact only recently have anything
like scientific and mathematical tools been developed even barely
adequate to the phenomenon described, including Wolfram's recent work.
For example: the reason why it sounds intellectually irresponsible to
call a person a "Fascist" is actually internal to a sufficiently
"thick" definition of Fascism as a movement which accentuates human
difference as opposed to solidarity. Precisely to the extent that
Communism, for all its numerous faults, had a theoretical vision of
human solidarity (marred only by insufficient understanding of the
meaning of "class" in "class war"), it could reasonably be thought of
as a singular conspiracy to mislead IF its founding theory was wrong.
But Fascism is plural all the way down. This means that while elements
of the American elite could be Fascist or have a clerical-Fascist
program such as John Ashcroft has, you cannot responsibly speak of the
elite being at any time Fascist simpliciter.
The irony is that Carnap's attempt to reduced the hypostatized and
reified entities of social science, in Der Logische Aufbau der Welt,
and Nelson Goodman's follow on in The Structure of Appearance, both in
their attempts at an einsatz level of precision demonstrate the
indispensibility of a dialectical level in human affairs, in which the
American elite is in conversation not only with itself but also with
Elvis and abstract expressionist painters.
Neoconservative sociology attempts to address this fact by a reduction
to actors having "conversations" understood in all cases including
absurd cases to be market-driven. This manages, however, to drive the
oversimplification, the hypostatization, the reification down to the
individual who is necessarily exhorted to reduce his psyche to that of
a self-seeking market actor. Opposed to "the Woody Allen self-hating
Jew" this form of micro Fascism is itself a war both on nuance and
altrusim that has only succeeded in filling America's jails, and,
recently, sent the subordinate part of the elite, its military, to
their deaths in the name of a national self-interest coded in a
Fascist way as shared by us all.
Thanks for your time, flocka Seagulls.
"There's a passage I got memorized, seems appropriate for this
situation: Ezekiel 25:17. 'The path of the righteous man is beset on
all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil
men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will,
shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his
brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike
down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who
attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name
is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.'"
Edward G. Nilges
> "Seagull Manager" <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>
> wrote in message news:bgrqca$pqj$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk...
> > >
> > > The Fascist rages for "representation"
> > >
> > > We must have our paintings of Elvis on black velvet, mustn't we.
> >
> > Elvis on black velvet is Fascist propaganda?
> >
> Facist propaganda.
>
> You don't have to try to reason with the elves, just water them from time to
> time and they are quite content.
I had taken quite a sabbatical to teach and work in Fiji and write for
money, and I am gratified to see that some people still don't have a
life, and instead troll the net for sado-masochistic gratification of
a sort that is unavailable to them in mass society, one in which they
feel powerless over vast forces beyond comprehension and control, and
one in which sado-masochistic exchange represents a necessary relief.
I will have to again leave these venues as of tomorrow but I shall not
miss these offensive and ugly posts.
“There's a passage I got memorized, seems appropriate for this
situation: Ezekiel 25:17. ‘The path of the righteous man is
beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of
evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will,
shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his
brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike
down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who
attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name
is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.’"
Seagull Manager
> [some stuff]
First off, Edward G. Nilges, is it really true as you suggested in a
different post, that you write for a living? If so, I'm amazed, because your
prose style is terrible. I mean, I'm no Shakespeare but - god love you - you
could really do with some training in how to write a sentence that flows.
Second, yes, it's obvious the argument I presented rested on the assumption
that those who used Elvis as propaganda were the same people as those who
used Abstract Expressionism as propaganda, but do you know any different?
Where's your evidence, if so - or are we to take your assertions on faith?
Anyway, regardless of whether either was used as Fascist propaganda several
decades ago, how do you get from that to the claim that a "velvet Elvis"
painted today is also Fascist propaganda? And if you can show that it is
(which I rather doubt, as I'm sure you can imagine), can you show that it is
effective as such, or that it matters at all, even if it is effective?
Edward G. Nilges
This is false.
"Structuralism" actually dates to 1916 and deSaussures' Course of
General Linguistics and it MEANS that meaning does not exist "behind"
individual words but is instead found exclusively in structural
oppositions.
For example, at the hardware level of a digital computer, it is a
matter of indifference to the level of assembly language whether a 1
bit is represented as the presence or absence of current. What is
important instead is the mere difference between voltages or what ev
er. This is major geek flamebait, but I learned long ago in a graduate
level computer architecture class how, and in what way, the hardware
guys could care less as long as they present a STRUCTURE of reliable
differences.
Before de Saussure, and in English, "structure" meant mostly physical
and architectural structure. Samuel Johnson would have been unfamiliar
with anything like appreciating Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia as a
system of differences and instead understood his own creation as
consisting of words with fixed referents, such as noble princes of
Abyssinia to whom he'd not been properly introduced.
Today, bonehead English teachers may THINK that they know about the
"structure" of language without understanding de Saussure: but their
failure to comprehend will be evident, for their understanding of
"structure" is inappropriately normative.
An example is the Chicago manual of style which is what these
boneheads will be thinking of. In it the "structure" of a text
consists in its industrial replaceability by a precis or snappy
abstract, because of the centrality of a misunderstood normed
"simplicity" understood as a condign paucity of new ideas.
"Structure" is misunderstood as reducibility and that which done be
having good structure is that which is reducible to Chicken Soup for
the Soul, as American publishing regresses to the material conditions
of the 19th century, in which the important proposition becomes
issuing apparently new books without paying the author (nb: my OWN
publishers are of course exceptions to this general trend: and, in
computer writing, different laws apply.)
Thus these clowns are prone to say of texts they fail to apprehend,
that these texts FAIL to contain "structure", again improperly
understood as a digestable absence of all but a few thrilling ideas
which seem novel against a background dimness.
But in the originary meaning of the term (which again is dated to
1916) all texts have a descriptive structure, and any misunderstood
Chicagoan virtue (consisting in a brutalized and mechanized absence of
ideas, worthy of Wrigley Field in August if we replace "ideas" by
"base hits") of "structure" is inapropos.
To the anti-French structuralist, "structure" done be spozed mean
"good structure" considered as being understandable. This rather begs
the question of how we are to bloody well master complexity, about
which Chicago boys have always been silent, in literature and
economics. They reach for the club instead.
Seagull Manager
> [stuff, again]
I think someone already accused you of producing word salad, so we won't get
into a discussion of what this might or might not say about anyone's mental
health. Instead, I'd just like to pick up on one thing in your post (snipped
for the good of all): you call Woody Allen a "self-hating Jew", but I'm
baffled as to why. From everything I can tell about the man, I really don't
get the sense that he hates *himself*. Honestly, I just don't think he's in
his own black books. I could be wrong, of course, but it doesn't look that
way to me. If you'd care to expand on the reasons for your opinion, I'd be
greatly amused to hear (though I won't necessarily respond - sorry!)
Andrew D
>right@the_end.of.my_tether (Andrew D) wrote in message
news:<right-07080...@i204-234.nv.iinet.net.au>...
[snip]
>> Now, why don't the owners of abstract paintings live at the local
>>rubbish dump?
>In fact, many abstract painters of the 1940s worked at iron foundries
>as a day job,
Many painters of tropical sunsets live in or visit tropical locations..
but you were talking about owners of paintings, not producers. So I ask
again, why don't the owners of abstract paintings live at the local
rubbish dump?
>Abstraction helps us to confront the in-itself in a world when in fact
>our belief that (say) a building is "for us" and will always "make
>sense" in a matrix needs to be confronted with the Absurd. One
>difficulty people had on Sep 11 was the mere fact that they did not
>know what to do to save themselves for the social "rules" of the
>building had been changed from "go to work" to "clear out" so rapidly.
I suspect those buildings were filled with all sorts of examples of
dripped, smeared and randomly thrown paint on canvas - yet people still
died. Or do you have some statistic which shows only those who had
representational art in their offices were too stupid to get out before
the planes hit?
>Like any other ordinary slob,
And I take it that by this you mean those who don't share your views on
abstract art, among other things....
> I would like to be able to rely on
>things like buildings but at the same time I have to adapt to rapid
>change, whether "terrorism" or the authorized terrorism of Yuppies,
>who using ill-understood phrases like Joseph Schumpeter's "creative
>destruction", change economic law overnight. As such I have to retain
>the Modernist realization that I can stand outside kitsch and I do not
>have to say stupid things such as "gee, the tropics would be great
>were it not for skeeters."
That's a perfectly logical statement and is far less "stup[id than a
presumption that that accepting and promoting dripped paint or a few
coloured squares as great art better prepares you for surviving a
terrorist attack. No wonder you enjoy Rothko - you're clearly insane.
Andrew D
<ma...@outsideshore.com> wrote:
>"Andrew D" <right@the_end.of.my_tether> wrote:
>
>> >You don't understand the aesthetic level at which all becomes a
>variation on
>> >principles.
>> >snip from Marc: "...for example creating new melodies over existing
>harmonic
>> >and/or rhythmic structures.
>>
>> They call it "sampling" don't they? Simply Red have just done
>> something similar with an old Hall & Oates number.
>Sampling is a very different process from improvisation, about as
>related as painting and aviation.
Keith didn't mention improvisation - he quoted you referring to the use of
existing structures in new works. Sounds like sampling to me.
Andrew D
<ma...@outsideshore.com> wrote:
>"Andrew D" <right@the_end.of.my_tether> wrote:
>
>> But abstract/expressionist painting more often creates chaos out of
>order.
>
>If you mean "more often" in the sense that only a relatively small
>percentage of abstract paintings are successful in doing this,
When I say "more" I don't usually mean "less". "More often" means "more
often" as in "mostly" or "most of the time".
Andrew D
spino...@yahoo.com (Edward G. Nilges) wrote:
[snip]
>I will have to again leave these venues as of tomorrow but I shall not
>miss these offensive and ugly posts.
I'm amazed you don't simply see such posts as great examples of abstract
thought - that's how the "offensive and ugly" in art is usually promoted.
Seagull Manager
"Edward G. Nilges" <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com...
> "Seagull Manager" <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>
wrote in message news:<bgtdl8$2vr$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk>...
> > "Edward G. Nilges" <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com...
> > > >
> > > > Here, I take kitsch to mean extremely easy, corny, unoriginal,
> > impersonal,
> > > > shallow, mindless "art". Other meanings of the word exist.
> > >
> > > The key concept is structuralist and it is a lack of fit between form
> > > and content.
> >
> > Structuralists did not invent the word; they merely hijacked it and set
it
> > to their own purposes.
>
> This is false.
>
> "Structuralism" actually dates to 1916 and deSaussures' Course of
> General Linguistics
...which proves that structualists did not invent the word "KITSCH", because
the word "KITSCH" has been recorded in use since the 1860s.
Flying _Naked_People
<right-08080...@i165-204.nv.iinet.net.au>...
> In article <2GxYa.422$u44...@fe01.atl2.webusenet.com>, "Marc Sabatella"
> <ma...@outsideshore.com> wrote:
>
> >"Andrew D" <right@the_end.of.my_tether> wrote:
> >
> >> But abstract/expressionist painting more often creates chaos out of
> >order.
> >
> >If you mean "more often" in the sense that only a relatively small
> >percentage of abstract paintings are successful in doing this,
>
> When I say "more" I don't usually mean "less". "More often" means "more
> often" as in "mostly" or "most of the time".
Marc Sabatella
> >> >snip from Marc: "...for example creating new melodies over
existing
> >harmonic
> >> >and/or rhythmic structures.
> >>
> >> They call it "sampling" don't they? Simply Red have just done
> >> something similar with an old Hall & Oates number.
>
> >Sampling is a very different process from improvisation, about as
> >related as painting and aviation.
>
> Keith didn't mention improvisation - he quoted you referring to the
use of
> existing structures in new works.
The word just before the "for example" in the above quote was
"improvisation". In any case, sampling is not creating new melodies
over existing harmonic and/or rhythmic structures. Sampling is the act
of cutting and pasting harmonic and/or rhythmic structures from one work
to another. To relate this back to art, creating new melodies over
existing harmonic and/or rhythmic structures is like the personal
liberties one might take while painting a loose representation of an
actual subject. Sampling is like cutting out a section of a photograph
and pasting it onto your painting.
Marc Sabatella
> >> But abstract/expressionist painting more often creates chaos out of
> >order.
> >
> >If you mean "more often" in the sense that only a relatively small
> >percentage of abstract paintings are successful in doing this,
>
> When I say "more" I don't usually mean "less". "More often" means
"more
> often" as in "mostly" or "most of the time".
My point wasn't to clarify what you meant by "more often", but rather,
what you meant by "abstract/expressionist painting", as you would have
seen had you thought about what I wrote rather than making a smarmy
knee-jerk response to it. That is, do you mean every single painting in
this style, or just the famous ones? If you mean every one ever painted
in this style, then of course most of them aren't going to be
successful. If you include work produced by total beginners, you will
find most abstract art is indeed terrible, just as most representation
art is terrible, most music is terrible, most prose is terrible, and so
forth. At this level, I agree with the statement as originally made -
but then, it is so obviously true one wonders why it was made. One
might as well have observed that 2 + 2 = 4 and asked us to ponder the
ramifications of that.
Matthew Parry
>
> The Fascist rages for "representation" [...]
Actually, the Fascists aligned themselves with Futurism which
in fine art was a sort of romantic cubism. They saw futurism as
the rebirth of italian art.
--
Matthew Parry, <me...@tpg.com.au> <URL:http://users.tpg.com.au/mettw/>
"Remember that early release of `rn' that prevented a posting
unless it contained more new lines than included lines? That
was actually a pretty good idea." - Peter van der Linden.
Seagull Manager
"Marc Sabatella" <ma...@outsideshore.com> wrote in message
news:IPHYa.1704$u44....@fe01.atl2.webusenet.com...
> "Andrew D" <right@the_end.of.my_tether> wrote:
>
> If you mean every one ever painted
> in this style, then of course most of them aren't going to be
> successful.
Assuming you know the artists' aims.
> If you include work produced by total beginners, you will
> find most abstract art is indeed terrible
Beginner's AbEx is often "terrible" as AbEx because they don't use enough
paint, or don't fill the whole space in a consistent way, or because -
horror of horrors! - it looks like something. It is not that the beginners
couldn't do the right thing if they understood the requirements - anyone
could. Rather that they've not bothered to find out the rules of AbEx. Most
of the rest of AbEx is "terrible" by virtue of being too pretty. The
painters either don't know, or don't agree with, the unwritten rule that
AbEx paintings should be drab, or have a touch of ugliness about them.
None of this is terrible, really; it is simply breaking the perfectly
arbitrary rules that Abstract Expressionism lays down. And it doesn't matter
one jot, because the very paintings declared "terrible" by one critic today
may be declared "breakthroughs" by another critic tomorrow - with exactly
the same formal properties of the works being cited in justification. A
great deal of current abstraction would have been called "terrible" by the
chief proponents of abstraction in the 1950s or 1960s.
There are no objective or universal or even nearly universal rules to
abstract painting - no formal principles by which a painting can ensure it
deserves acclaim or avoid failure - except the following: the painting
should look like "art" (what that means exactly changes a lot over time, and
even from city to city), and it shouldn't look too much like the work of an
older, more famous artist (how much is too much? A small, but easily pointed
out difference is enough to avoid breaking this rule). The rest is
networking and PR.
Andrew D
<http://www.rcip.com/nerdgerl/email.htm> wrote:
After reading his explanation of order versus chaos - no.
Marc Sabatella
<seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> It is not that the beginners
> couldn't do the right thing if they understood the requirements -
anyone
> could.
They could successfully create a piece that people would agree was in
that genre, but whether or not anyone would consider it good or not is
another matter entirely. And I was specifically talking about the
balance between chaos and order I find most pleasing. I can absolutely
assure you it is not easy to achieve this.
> None of this is terrible, really; it is simply breaking the perfectly
> arbitrary rules that Abstract Expressionism lays down.
You mean, the rules you just made up and are ascribing to painters and
paintings you don't understand the first thing about.
But in any case, I agree, there is no such thing as "terrible" in any
any objective sense - it should have been clear from the context that I
was referring to my personal subjective opinion according to my personal
preference for a particular type of balance between order and chaos.
> There are no objective or universal or even nearly universal rules to
> abstract painting
True, and equally true if you remove the word "abstract".
Neil Maxwell
<seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>you call Woody Allen a "self-hating Jew", but I'm
>baffled as to why.
Hee hee hee!
You might want to read through the archives for the last time EGN came
trundling through town. It's very illuminating, and rather
fascinating as well, but be prepared to spend considerable time at it.
I won't make any other comments, since he's promised to leave soon.
Edward G. Nilges
> Edward G. Nilges <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > The Fascist rages for "representation" [...]
>
> Actually, the Fascists aligned themselves with Futurism which
> in fine art was a sort of romantic cubism. They saw futurism as
> the rebirth of italian art.
Actually, if you examine the work of Marinetti and the Futurists you
will see that their "cubism" was a static and unchanging knock-off of
only one type of analytic Cubism, and you will discover that they
prettied analytic Cubism up in order to appeal to conservative
collectors of the right wing.
Their style was part of a Modernist backlash in Europe and the United
States that happened AFTER the major Modernist events.
Even as dilettantes believe that Abstract Expressionism was a
phenomenon of the 1950s, when by 1950 the greatest abex paintings had
been completed, dilettantes and mopes believe that the first wave of
Modernism was a phenomenon of the 1920s.
This is because art media and its breathless, at times inaccurate
accounts of artistic change is confused with the reality of actual art
production and the low-level initial contacts of artists and dealers.
The Italian futurists were not part of the Cubism of Picasso and
Braque, a phenomenon of the period 1910..1920. Instead they learned of
Cubism in art media and both brutalized it and prettified it for
upper-class consumption, appealing to a large segment of the
international bourgeois that prefers sado-masochistic surface
elegance.
Futurism, unlike Cubism, has no development and this shows that it is
a knockoff.
Furthermore: in both Fascist and Communist societies (including
Mussolini’s Italy, which first sponsored some of the Futurists)
there is a distinct tendency to at first adopt some Modernit artists
and then expel them as insufficiently “politically
correct.”
The Italian Fascisti, later in Mussolini’s reign, followed
German leads in a more conservative and monumental art and never
allowed the Futurists much scope for artistic change or
experimentation, even as Stalin kept his artists and musicians on a
tight leash.
It is a common error to confuse, much after the fact, popularised and
kitschy versions of Modernism with “the real thing” and it
is made frequently in this ng. Reading art history is replaced by the
apparent precision and real laziness of a false “logic” in
which Marinetti and the Futurists are “the same as”
Picasso and Braque.
Mani Deli
<ma...@outsideshore.com> wrote:
>> There are no objective or universal or even nearly universal rules to
>> abstract painting
>
>True, and equally true if you remove the word "abstract".
>
The rules of perspective govern anything that appears solid on a two
dimensional surface.
...no skill no art!
Want to get away from the indecipherable imbecilities and absurd pretensions of the modern art establishment?
Check out my web page http://www3.sympatico.ca/manideli/
Seagull Manager
"Edward G. Nilges" <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com...
>
> Actually, if you examine the work of Marinetti and the Futurists you
> will see that their "cubism" was a static and unchanging knock-off of
> only one type of analytic Cubism
Static and unchanging compared to what? To analytic Cubism? You're having us
on, surely!
> and you will discover that they
> prettied analytic Cubism up in order to appeal to conservative
> collectors of the right wing.
Why do you suppose that the Futurists didn't pretty up cubism in order to
suit their *own* tastes? What give you reason to assume that where you see a
pretty blue in a Marinetti painting, his thought was: "I'll put that blue
there, because right-wing people like blue", rather than "I'll put that blue
there, because I think it will look good"?
Orphism and Purism also introduced their own kinds of prettiness into
cubism. Are you now going to tell us that the Delaunays, Kupka and Le
Corbusier were crypto-Fascists, trying to appeal to the right-wing?
Perhaps we should in future judge Picasso's Blue and Rose periods - notable
for their use of pretty colour - as representing a Fascist phase.
> Their style was part of a Modernist backlash in Europe and the United
> States that happened AFTER the major Modernist events.
Derain and Picasso turned to a form of classicism, as did Chirico, and that
could count as a partial backlash against their own former styles, but how
is Futurism a backlash, and against what?
>
> Even as dilettantes believe that Abstract Expressionism was a
> phenomenon of the 1950s, when by 1950 the greatest abex paintings had
> been completed
There were NO great AbEx paintings. What you mean is that the hippest,
coolest New York art-world insiders were getting bored with AbEx by the
early fifties. As a wider phenomenon, AbEx was bigger in the 50s than in the
40s.
> The Italian futurists were not part of the Cubism of Picasso and
> Braque, a phenomenon of the period 1910..1920. Instead they learned of
> Cubism in art media and both brutalized it and prettified it for
> upper-class consumption, appealing to a large segment of the
> international bourgeois that prefers sado-masochistic surface
> elegance.
And Picasso and Braque's work was for lower-class consumption?
Seagull Manager
"Andrew D" <right@the_end.of.my_tether> wrote in message
news:right-07080...@i204-234.nv.iinet.net.au...
>
> And yet, oddly perhaps, I find Seagull's contributions here to be among
> the most refereshing, informed, insightful and erudite input this group
> has benefited from in years... and he does it without being pompous,
> overbearing or unecessarily verbose.
Hey, thanks! Actually, I worry that I am rather verbose sometimes. You seem
able to keep your posts enviably pithy.
As for Keith, well. I don't bother with him much, because he never seems to
argue his case. Instead, he prefers to fling psychobabble at anyone who
disagrees with him, and claim esoteric wisdom for himself ("I know, you
don't. End of story.") Apparently, you can learn to be like him by holding a
stone in one hand and drawing with the other.
Edward G. Nilges
> "Edward G. Nilges" <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com...
> >
> > Actually, if you examine the work of Marinetti and the Futurists you
> > will see that their "cubism" was a static and unchanging knock-off of
> > only one type of analytic Cubism
>
> Static and unchanging compared to what? To analytic Cubism? You're having us
> on, surely!
No, I'm not.
It's clear you are unfamiliar with the history of Cubism and with
Picasso's Cubist development. It included two phases, "analytic", or
"high" Cubism (as in his portrait of Kahnweiler in the Art Institute
of Chicago) and "synthetic" Cubism in which Picasso used collage to
build new visual structures on the analytic base.
Your image, and your image only, of Cubism is "static and unchanging"
because it is an uninformed prejudice.
>
> > and you will discover that they
> > prettied analytic Cubism up in order to appeal to conservative
> > collectors of the right wing.
>
> Why do you suppose that the Futurists didn't pretty up cubism in order to
> suit their *own* tastes? What give you reason to assume that where you see a
> pretty blue in a Marinetti painting, his thought was: "I'll put that blue
> there, because right-wing people like blue", rather than "I'll put that blue
> there, because I think it will look good"?
>
The Fascist doesn't do anything because it looks or feels good, that's
why. He is opposed to the very idea that something like beauty can
exist in such a manner that it cannot be reduced to a biological,
hydraulic need.
Fascist men, for example, don't dance with chicks because they like to
dance. They dance with chicks in order to get them in the sack, in
effect to end the display of the chick's allure. They unconsciously,
in scenes of apparent pleasure such as bars and clubs, carry out a
police function...a variant of the Taliban's high-jinks.
Therefore it is not probable that a second-rate artist like Marinetti
did anything because it done looked good.
> Orphism and Purism also introduced their own kinds of prettiness into
> cubism. Are you now going to tell us that the Delaunays, Kupka and Le
> Corbusier were crypto-Fascists, trying to appeal to the right-wing?
>
No, but to the extent that they, and in music Prokofiev, prettied
things up, second-rate connsewers with money preferred their output to
the more challenging output of Webern. However, these connesewers were
at best only a marginal segment of interwar Eurotrash, and primarily
they were the younger sons and wives of men who preferred to attend
staff rides and military maneovres to the Opera.
"South Pacific, now there's a show. Singing! Dancing! War!"
- Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City
> Perhaps we should in future judge Picasso's Blue and Rose periods - notable
> for their use of pretty colour - as representing a Fascist phase.
Perhaps we should instead read art history in some depth before
posting this pseudologic to a public network.
>
> > Their style was part of a Modernist backlash in Europe and the United
> > States that happened AFTER the major Modernist events.
>
> Derain and Picasso turned to a form of classicism, as did Chirico, and that
> could count as a partial backlash against their own former styles, but how
> is Futurism a backlash, and against what?
During the 1920s, and during his marriage to a demanding White Russian
ballerina, Picasso became more conservative in the SAME way many
American artists sucked up to Nancy Reagan in the 1980s and the
dot.com thugs in the 1990s. Picasso was in no way a good man or a
committed revolutionary throughout his long lie.
Perhaps we should read John Berger's Success and Failure of Picasso
before posting this pseudo-logical garbage in public.
>
> >
> > Even as dilettantes believe that Abstract Expressionism was a
> > phenomenon of the 1950s, when by 1950 the greatest abex paintings had
> > been completed
>
> There were NO great AbEx paintings. What you mean is that the hippest,
> coolest New York art-world insiders were getting bored with AbEx by the
> early fifties. As a wider phenomenon, AbEx was bigger in the 50s than in the
> 40s.
>
Only if you count morons reading Life as part of the public for Art.
The reaction of a public both unappreciative of art and unable to
afford it is simply NOT a part of art history. This isn't elitism:
it's only common sense.
> > The Italian futurists were not part of the Cubism of Picasso and
> > Braque, a phenomenon of the period 1910..1920. Instead they learned of
> > Cubism in art media and both brutalized it and prettified it for
> > upper-class consumption, appealing to a large segment of the
> > international bourgeois that prefers sado-masochistic surface
> > elegance.
>
> And Picasso and Braque's work was for lower-class consumption?
What ev er.
I have to resume writing for money and hereby leave this silly
discussion, worthy at best of a cafeteria in a community college. And
note that since I've taught at DeVry, I get to make that parting shot.
Peter H.M. Brooks
"Edward G. Nilges" <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com...
> "Seagull Manager" <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>
wrote in message news:<bh2rbn$9cp$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk>...
>
> >
> why. He is opposed to the very idea that something like beauty can
> exist in such a manner that it cannot be reduced to a biological,
> hydraulic need.
>
its idiolect. 'Fascists' might appear to be a rationally applied label, but,
for Teddy, it is simply a term of opprobrium for those clever than himself.
Teddy is very much against reductionism - I won't offer any prizes as to
why!
--
Men don't pay you to sleep with them. They pay you to go home - Philip Roth
'The Human Stain' pg 236
Seagull Manager
"Edward G. Nilges" <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f5dda427.03080...@posting.google.com...
> "Seagull Manager" <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>
wrote in message news:<bh2rbn$9cp$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk>...
> >
having us
> > on, surely!
>
> No, I'm not.
>
> It's clear you are unfamiliar with the history of Cubism and with
> Picasso's Cubist development. It included two phases, "analytic", or
Your words above demonstrate two problems that I have already noticed
elsewhere in your posts. First, faulty reading comprehension, and second,
spectacular, overweening, aggressive arrogance.
My remark gives you no basis whatsoever for thinking I don't know the
variations that Cubism went through, and my comments on Orphism and Purism
should have given you a hint that I probably do.
> The Fascist doesn't do anything because it looks or feels good, that's
> why. He is opposed to the very idea that something like beauty can
> exist in such a manner that it cannot be reduced to a biological,
> hydraulic need.
I don't believe you. There have always been right-wing people who enjoyed
beauty without worrying about how or to what it might be reduced. Had there
not been, much art from the Renaissance on (and before) might not have been
made. I think you're just an idealogue who has to turn people into cartoon
characters in order to think about them.
> Therefore it is not probable that a second-rate artist like Marinetti
> did anything because it done looked good.
I'm happy to take it from you that Marinetti is second rate, since you are
clearly the expert, but if he'd never had an opinion about what might or
might not look good, it would be odd for him to have become an artist in the
first place.
> No, but to the extent that they, and in music Prokofiev, prettied
> things up, second-rate connsewers with money preferred their output to
> the more challenging output of Webern.
There's a big difference between "challenging" and "good". There are lots of
misguided fools producing "challenging" stuff that is of no worth
whatsoever. This is something that started with early modernism, and was the
redutio ad absurdum of the "challenging" attitude that the 19th Century
Realists introduced into art. Your attitude expressing contempt for people
who can afford art and contempt for those who can't is a symptom of your own
entrapment in that absurd "challenging" position: to you and your misguided
ilk, the whole world is horrible, and you're going to cure it by forcing it
to accept horrible art. You're tilting at windmills.
> However, these connesewers were
> at best only a marginal segment of interwar Eurotrash, and primarily
> they were the younger sons and wives of men who preferred to attend
> staff rides and military maneovres to the Opera.
Lovely put down, I'm sure. And the great connoisseurs who bought the real
modernist deal were what? Not wives and sons, but daughters and nephews? Or
were they the militarily maneouvring men themselves? You know perfectly well
that they were wide-eyed American heiresses of average education being
hoodwinked by charismatic French charlatans with slightly more education.
> Only if you count morons reading Life as part of the public for Art.
In other words, everyone who wasn't part of the small New York art world in
the 1940s, and learned about the stuff five years too late was a moron. Yup,
that's arrogance, okay. If you seriously believe that everyone who read of
Life magazine was a moron, then you are the biggest moron of the lot.
> The reaction of a public both unappreciative of art and unable to
> afford it is simply NOT a part of art history. This isn't elitism:
> it's only common sense.
Not all the public is unappreciative of art, not even all that part of the
public that cannot afford to buy art. As to their not being part of art
history, that is only because art history ignores the majority of art that
is bought and sold, and lives instead in its own little self-created cocoon
fantasy of a perpetual avant garde. And, no, what you said isn't elitism, it
is dumb snobbery.
> > And Picasso and Braque's work was for lower-class consumption?
>
> What ev er.
"What ev er", because you don't have an answer.
Flying _Naked_People
in article <bh4339$sa9$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk>...
> I think you're just an idealogue who has to turn people into cartoon
> characters in order to think about them.
I've done that. However, just recently, I've turned them into hairless monkeys
who like to "make" things.
Is that wrong?
Peter H.M. Brooks
"Flying _Naked_People" <http://www.rcip.com/nerdgerl/email.htm> wrote in
message news:vjbef5...@corp.supernews.com...
character stage then you'd have good cause to worry.
Flying _Naked_People
<bh4ou8$5if$1...@ctb-nnrp2.saix.net>...
>
> "Flying _Naked_People" <http://www.rcip.com/nerdgerl/email.htm> wrote in
> message news:vjbef5...@corp.supernews.com...
> > Seagull Manager <seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk>
> wrote
> > in article <bh4339$sa9$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk>...
> >
> > > I think you're just an idealogue who has to turn people into cartoon
> > > characters in order to think about them.
> >
> > I've done that. However, just recently, I've turned them into hairless
> monkeys
> > who like to "make" things.
> >
> > Is that wrong?
> >
> No, that's a great improvement - if you were still stuck at the cartoon
> character stage then you'd have good cause to worry.
Lol. Do you know what I'm talking about?
For the longest, I never "saw" people. Instead, I paid attention to their
facial expressions, conversations, emotions, and actions. Then when I was
about 20, I started paying attention to their bodies (boring). A decade later,
I began picturing people as Schultz's "Peanuts" characters standing in front
of the White House and pointing to their wide open pie-holes. That was the
only way I could objectively feel the impact of the "human group". Just a few
days ago, the human race appeared to me as hairless monkeys.
I'm afraid the terms, "human race" and "human being" have been used so much,
they've lost meaning in the way that "butterflies" do. When we think of
butterflies, we picture pretty flying bugs and wonder what they're up to. But
when we think of people, we (usually) think of taxes, traffic jams, arguments,
etc. etc.
I think I'm trying to say that it's hard (for me) to separate the human
species from Mr. Wilson's bad smoking habit. If I picture them as hairless
monkeys, I can observe them with an extraordinarily objective view... which is
giving me new revelations AND the creeps.
What is this kind of thinking called? Insanity?
If not, then if cartoon characterization precedes the hairless monkey view,
what comes after that?
(Gawd - I think I've lost it!)
Peter H.M. Brooks
> species from Mr. Wilson's bad smoking habit. If I picture them as hairless
> monkeys, I can observe them with an extraordinarily objective view...
which is
> giving me new revelations AND the creeps.
>
> What is this kind of thinking called? Insanity?
>
>
> If not, then if cartoon characterization precedes the hairless monkey
view,
> what comes after that?
>
Flying _Naked_People
> You might enjoy Desmond Morris' very popular 'The Naked Ape'.
Thanks for the reference. I did a lil' snooping and found out the artist is a
surrealist!
http://www.desmond-morris.com/dm_art/index.htm
Peter H.M. Brooks
--
"We pride ourselves on our peace and stability" - Zimbabwean President
Robert Mugabe
Erik A. Mattila
> "Flying _Naked_People" <http://www.rcip.com/nerdgerl/email.htm> wrote in
> message news:vjbulpo...@corp.supernews.com...
>
>>Peter H.M. Brooks <pe...@new.co.za> wrote in article
>><bh4sdo$76j$1...@ctb-nnrp2.saix.net>...
>>
>>
>>>You might enjoy Desmond Morris' very popular 'The Naked Ape'.
>>
>>Thanks for the reference. I did a lil' snooping and found out the artist
>
> is a
>
>>surrealist!
>>http://www.desmond-morris.com/dm_art/index.htm
>>
>
> That is another Desmond Morris!
Believe it or not, Pete, it's the same guy. I would have thought it was
another too, but I followed some links and came up with his bio. For
the life of me, I never thought Desmond Morris was a painter. Wonder of
wonders. (I really like his ptngs too.)
http://www.desmond-morris.com/biography.htm
"1967 Editor: 'Primate Ethology' (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London), a
collection of papers on recent advances in the study of monkeys and
apes. Later editions appear in The United States and France. Also
published: 'The Naked Ape' (Cape, London), a zoologist's study of the
human animal. This is the first of a number of books he produces on the
subject of human behaviour. Later editions of The Naked Ape include: The
United States, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Argentina, Portugal, Brazil,
Finland, France, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Israel, Japan, Poland, Iceland,
Slovak, Czech, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Sinhalese, and
Malayalam. In the spring of this year, he resigns his curatorship at
London Zoo and becomes the executive director of the Institute of
Contemporary Arts in London, with the initial task of seeing the ICA of
its old home and into its new, enlarged premises in The Mall."
Erik
Peter H.M. Brooks
"Erik A. Mattila" <emat...@oco.net> wrote in message
news:3F36039E...@oco.net...
> Peter H.M. Brooks wrote:
> > "Flying _Naked_People" <http://www.rcip.com/nerdgerl/email.htm> wrote in
> > message news:vjbulpo...@corp.supernews.com...
> >
> >>Peter H.M. Brooks <pe...@new.co.za> wrote in article
> >><bh4sdo$76j$1...@ctb-nnrp2.saix.net>...
> >>
> >>
> >>>You might enjoy Desmond Morris' very popular 'The Naked Ape'.
> >>
> >>Thanks for the reference. I did a lil' snooping and found out the artist
> >
> > is a
> >
> >>surrealist!
> >>http://www.desmond-morris.com/dm_art/index.htm
> >>
> >
> > That is another Desmond Morris!
>
> Believe it or not, Pete, it's the same guy. I would have thought it was
> another too, but I followed some links and came up with his bio. For
> the life of me, I never thought Desmond Morris was a painter. Wonder of
> wonders. (I really like his ptngs too.)
>
>
> http://www.desmond-morris.com/biography.htm
>
> "1967 Editor: 'Primate Ethology' (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London), a
> collection of papers on recent advances in the study of monkeys and
> apes. Later editions appear in The United States and France. Also
> published: 'The Naked Ape' (Cape, London), a zoologist's study of the
> human animal. This is the first of a number of books he produces on the
> subject of human behaviour. Later editions of The Naked Ape include: The
> United States, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Argentina, Portugal, Brazil,
> Finland, France, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Israel, Japan, Poland, Iceland,
> Slovak, Czech, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Sinhalese, and
> Malayalam. In the spring of this year, he resigns his curatorship at
> London Zoo and becomes the executive director of the Institute of
> Contemporary Arts in London, with the initial task of seeing the ICA of
> its old home and into its new, enlarged premises in The Mall."
>
--
'It's a trifle if twenty millions or so die.' - Lenin on the 1921 Soviet
famine, reported in is Obituary in The Times
Seagull Manager
> > "Flying _Naked_People" <http://www.rcip.com/nerdgerl/email.htm> wrote in
> > message news:vjbulpo...@corp.supernews.com...
> >
> >>Peter H.M. Brooks <pe...@new.co.za> wrote in article
> >><bh4sdo$76j$1...@ctb-nnrp2.saix.net>...
> >>
> >>
> >>>You might enjoy Desmond Morris' very popular 'The Naked Ape'.
> >>
> >>Thanks for the reference. I did a lil' snooping and found out the artist
> >
> > is a
> >
> >>surrealist!
> >>http://www.desmond-morris.com/dm_art/index.htm
> >>
> >
> > That is another Desmond Morris!
>
> Believe it or not, Pete, it's the same guy.
If I'd thought of it at the time, he would have provided a fine retort to
Tangoe's rant against amateur painters.
Andrew D
<seagull...@nospamthanksbecauseisayso.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>"Andrew D" <right@the_end.of.my_tether> wrote in message
>news:right-07080...@i204-234.nv.iinet.net.au...
>>
>> And yet, oddly perhaps, I find Seagull's contributions here to be among
>> the most refereshing, informed, insightful and erudite input this group
>> has benefited from in years... and he does it without being pompous,
>> overbearing or unecessarily verbose.
>
>Hey, thanks! Actually, I worry that I am rather verbose sometimes. You seem
>able to keep your posts enviably pithy.
Ahh, I save my verbosity for other forums :)
>As for Keith, well. I don't bother with him much, because he never seems to
>argue his case. Instead, he prefers to fling psychobabble at anyone who
>disagrees with him, and claim esoteric wisdom for himself ("I know, you
>don't. End of story.") Apparently, you can learn to be like him by holding a
>stone in one hand and drawing with the other.
Keith once stated that as we grow up and learn, we forget how to draw
(because we start colouring between the lines I believe). I repeatedly
asked whether he also thought children were better writers before they
learned how to spell or apply the "grown-up" rules of grammar and
punctuation - and whether kids should be given drivers licences before
they "forget" how to drive - but I never got a satsifactory response.
He did admit once, however, that he often writes stuff he doesn't agree with.
DNALJM
>> the life of me, I never thought Desmond Morris was a painter. Wonder of
>> wonders. (I really like his ptngs too.)
>>
>I am surprised - and rather pleased, actually!
>>
The severed migrating penises don't do very much for me. : o Looks like
he's aping Dali.
Jane
www.geocities.com/teslathemothgod
<--- Figurative art and exobiology links