now, now, Bruce!
Dimitry S Herman
> In article <4gsh18$o...@park.uvsc.edu>, Ross Green <gre...@uvsc.edu> wrote:
>
> > Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
> >
> > [clip]
> >
> > > Cezanne not only lacked draughtmanship and good colour sense
> > > (he had, basically, two formulae: green and orange or blue all
> > > over),
> >
> > You never answered my earlier question about your color vision:
> > Have you ever had it checked out? Your insipid assessment of
> > Cezanne's genius for color makes me believe that you are either
> > completely or partially color-blind (-see also your similar statements
> > on other great colorists: Matisse, Rothko, Nolde, etc.)
> >
>
> Yes, I have perfect colour vision. And no, there is nothing insipid about
> calling Cezanne a bumbling incompetent, Matisse a charlatan and pasticheur
> or Rothko a misguided fool.
>
>
> > > So, my claim, in short, is that the difference between Leighton
> > > (good, but underrated because he stands as a token of the "old
> > > guard") and Cezanne (bad, but overrated because he stands for
> > > the "avant garde") is their difference in skill: the one adept in
> > > draughtmanship, colour and imagination, the other poor in all
> > > three of these.
> >
> > Well, Bruce, the basic difference between them is that Leighton was
> > a sentimental hack, whose historical relevance is nil...
>
> There were plenty of Victorian painters who were sentimental, but Leighton
> was not one. He rarely overplayed the emotion bit, and never got involved
> in painting those contemporary subjects so beloved of his peers that are
> apt to make moderns squirm. In his art, as in his life, emotion was
> carefully controlled, and tuned with great precision. Indeed, some of his
> most ambitious paintings are by an insufficiency of emotional
> expressiveness. Two noteworthy examples are the _Cimabue_, whose purchase
> by Queen Victoria marked the launch of his successful career, and the
> biblically inspired painting of the resurrection that he made late in his
> career for the Tate. The latter image reveals Leighton's temperamental
> ill-suitedness to the task of recreating the emotive grandeur of
> Michelangelo (which was part of his aim in creating the painting). The
> quality that stands out in almost all of Leighton's painting is that of
> quiet sensuality.
>
> As for historical relevance. It is not Leighton's fault that the art of
> painting was largely abandoned during the twentieth century.
>
>
> > whereas
> > Cezanne was one of the greatest artists of all time, precisely because
> > of his genius for color, composition, and drawing.
>
> colour: Cezanne had a simple formula and stuck to it throughout his
> career. Medium-pale blue for the sky, raw green and orange for everything
> else.
>
> composition: his still-lifes are not particularly well-composed at the
> best of times, and often amount to merely haphazard arangements of the
> standard kitchen fare. His figure compositions follow bog-standard
> academic formulae; where there is any deviation, it is invariably a result
> of cack-handedness, rather than the sort of cleverness one might find in
> Degas or other contemporaries.
>
> drawing: there is a well-known study of a youth by Cezanne which contains
> not only the worst-drawn left knee in the entire history of painting, but
> also the most clumsily corrected heel. Cezanne never quite came to grips
> with the human figure (which, apart from apples and trees was almost all
> he ever painted, so he was without excuse). He never got linear
> perspective right, either, which is one of the reasons why his landscapes
> frequently look flat (the other is his poor grasp of aerial perspective),
> even though he usually sought out scenes that included a vertiginous drop
> in the middle foreground so that the pictures would have some depth.
>
> On all three counts (colour, composition and drawing), Leighton is a
> thousand leagues ahead of Cezanne, not merely in effectiveness, but also
> in inventiveness and in the boldness of the risks he was prepared to take.
>
>
> Although it is often asserted that Cezanne is the "father of modern
> painting", he was nothing of the sort. The truth is that he was a slavish
> but incompetent follower of the French tradition. There is nothing new,
> nothing invented in his art whatsoever. Compare his still-lifes to
> Chardin, or to the contemporary Fantin-Latour; compare his landscapes to
> Corot; compare his classicism to Poussin, and his romanticism to Delacroix
> and realise what should be obvious from the start: Cezanne had nothing
> new to offer and was the beginning of nothing. He was merely an amateur
> hanger-on at the fag-end of Barbizon School realism.
>
>
You say that Cezanne's composition was haphazard. Are you aware of the
complexity of the Golden Section and Root Rectangle composition used in
everything that Cezanne produced.
The man worked every day for 15 hrs for 30-40 yrs in his
studio. We cannot expect everything that he produced to be a work of
genius because like the rest of us, he was human and capable of error and
failure. But do not mistake Cezanne's sketches and cartoons that were
only a means of notation for himself and no other as his inability as a
draughtsman or painter. Take a look at Ingres or Degas, who are
unquestionably some of the greatest draughtsmen to have evere lived;
many of their sketches and cartoons can also be deemed sloppy and
unimpressive.
So do not be so haste to judge.
Bruce Attah
<Pine.SUN.3.91.960301...@labdien.cc.columbia.edu>,
Dimitry S Herman <ds...@columbia.edu> wrote:
> You say that Cezanne's composition was haphazard. Are you aware of the
> complexity of the Golden Section and Root Rectangle composition used in
> everything that Cezanne produced.
No, quite frankly, I am not. There is nothing complex about the Golden
Section -- hit upon by the ancient Greeks, it is nothing more than a
geometrical and historical curiosity. As many of the less talented
academic painters found, applying the Golden Section in composing a
painting will not guarantee a good composition. By telling us that
Cezanne employed this very academic technique, you are merely adding force
to my assertion that Cezanne was a traditionalist rather than a
revolutionary.
BTW, are you aware of the interesting geometric properties of metric paper
sizes? In case you are not, the longer side is always the square root of
two times the shorter. This means that if you cut the sheet in half
across its length, you will create a sheet the size below, having the same
proportions. Size A0 is exactly one square metre in area, A1, half a
square metre, and so on. One result of this is that it is very easy to
calculate the weight of any given quantity of paper. For instance, 500
sheets of 80gsm (grams per square metre) A4 paper weigh 500x80/16 = 500x5
= 2500 grams, or 2.5 kilograms. Fascinating, eh? (Not.)
> The man worked every day for 15 hrs for 30-40 yrs in his
> studio.
So? He's not the first person to struggle hard at something for which he
had no talent.
> We cannot expect everything that he produced to be a work of
> genius because like the rest of us, he was human and capable of error and
> failure.
It's not so much that not _everything_ he produced is a masterpiece (if
that were the requirement, there would be _no_ great artists), but that
_nothing_ he produced was a masterpiece.
> But do not mistake Cezanne's sketches and cartoons that were
> only a means of notation for himself and no other as his inability as a
> draughtsman or painter. Take a look at Ingres or Degas, who are
> unquestionably some of the greatest draughtsmen to have evere lived;
> many of their sketches and cartoons can also be deemed sloppy and
> unimpressive.
I made no reference whatever to Cezanne's sketches and cartoons. If you
say these are crap, I'll take your word for it. I was talking about his
finished paintings.
> So do not be so haste to judge.
Ha, ha. I am not the hasty one.
Fritillari
<md...@frontier.canrem.com> writes:
>Yes., but look at the paintings. The draftsmanship here is also
abominable.
Have you actually ever looked at one of Cezanne's water color sketches?
His mastery shows here, in his ability to convey solid, 3-dimensional
objects & landscapes in a few loose brush strokes. Perhaps his method of
painting wasn't as accurate and realistic as of many artists you prefer,
but I would rather be lost in the colors and textures of a Cezanne
painting any day than admire the analytical, technical mastery of a great
many other artists.
Terran
http://www.kaiaghok.com
Bruce Attah
Scheckler) wrote:
> Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
> >In article <4gsh18$o...@park.uvsc.edu>, Ross Green
> <gre...@uvsc.edu> wrote:
> I'd rather read some of the wisdom and
> poesie that Cezanne, Matisse and Rothko left us,
> such as Cezanne's humble admonition:
> [Clip! Clip!! Clip!!!]
Why waste time reading what artists write, if their writing is not
particularly good? Why not instead look at their art? In the case of bad
artists, the question has extra force: what are such individuals going to
teach anyone about art? Their theories are bound to be nonsense and their
expressed intentions not to be borne out in their work. I look at
paintings because I like paintings, not because I like what is written
about them.
> [...] people like
> Attah fail to see that the idea of what it means to
> paint -- today -- has evolved and shifted and changed
> a great deal,
Good painting today is bound to be different in some ways from good
painting a century ago, because the world is different, and good painting
always reflects the world in which it is painted. By that, I do not mean
that it reflects solely the intellectual climate that produced it (all
painting, bad and good, does that), but that it directly engages with the
world of light, form and colour, and the lives of artists and their
contemporaries. The world has changed, but not as much as the
transformation in art practice would suggest. We do not now inhabit a
planet of black rectangles and drips and splodges. The world is still
visible and still visibly beautiful, and the underlying system of values
that makes for visual beauty has a weighty core to it that has not shifted
since the beginning of time. However, the dominant practice in
'contemporary art' has deviated completely from the path that leads to
good painting.
> due not only to the ideas and innovations
> of artists like Cezanne, Matisse and Rothko and thousands
> of others,
None of the artists you mention was an important innovator. Cezanne was
not an innovator at all, as I have said before. Matisse had a gimmick (in
his use of colour) but was otherwise mediocre and entirely conventional,
following the path laid by such artists as Pierre Puvis de Chavanne,
Eugene Delacroix and even such academics as Gerome---but with much less
skill. Rothko was a pathetically inept Social Realist for the first part
of his career, back in the days when that was a fashionable style. Then,
when the Surrealists came to America in flight from turmoil in Europe, and
Gorky and others began to imitate them, Rothko imitated the imitators in
his turn. For the space of about a decade, he produced rather weedy
Abstract Expressionist paintings (a more accurate term would have been
Abstract Surrealist, because they were in fact sub-sub-Matta, but calling
them that would have made them sound derivative). At the end of this
time, he started to paint with patches of colour. After a brief period of
experimentation, he hit pay dirt, and from that moment on, for the rest of
his life, he did not change his formula. His paintings were ideal for
corporate America, big, blank and a perfect complement to the office
colour scheme. They were also as instantly recognizable as a trademark.
Innovative? Surely, you jest.
> but also due to the friction those artist
> felt,
...mostly of a political and economic kind (for instance, after the
Rockefeller Centre fiasco, corporate America was no longer interested in
realist art---especially from politically committed artists), but also
coming from powerful critics such as Clement Greenberg, who effectively
threatened any artists with banishment to the outer wilderness who did not
conform with the modernist agenda.
> frictions caused by the contrapoints developed
> by artists like Leighton, etc.
This claim is nonsense. Leighton was pally with many of the more radical
artists of his day; he himself was quite willing to try new things, and
though some of the younger rebels, such as Whistler, chose to regard him
as a representative of the enemy, others such as Sickert stuck up for
him. The anti-academic tendency in art was often motivated more by
antiestablishmentarianism than by any real objection to the strictly
aesthetic merits of academic art.
> The development is a massive
> polylogue of voices from many many places -- a
> historical point which, when taken closely, hints at
> the sheer plurality of options available to artists today.
Most of the options are not being taken up. The majority of artists are
pandering to the new establishment, terrified of being seen as
old-fashioned, and terrified of competing with the great artists of the
past, lacking as they do the requisite training.
> Why then, should any of us bother to degrade the
> works of any artist? (to do so is simply to play
> little boys' power games and rule out many
> options under the false rubric of some predetermined
> "quality" or "game rule.")
We should despise bad art because bad art is a pain and an insult to the
audience and a great waste of resources. We should despise bad art
because if we fail to do so, the fund of new good art will dry up as
artists say to themselves "I can get away with foisting rubbish on the
public; why should I trouble to do anything better?"
Not only should we despise bad art, but we should be vehement and
uncompromising in our expression of contempt, because it is only the fear
of such attack that can bring artists back onto the right path. The
modernists and postmodernists who hate art have not held back in their
vituperation of what is good, nor have they shown any great reluctance to
engage in name-calling when others point out the ugliness of their system
of double standards, prejudice and snobbery.
> Instead, rule out as
> few options as possible, gain as much wisdom as
> possible from the astounding variety and
Most practising artists are fumbling idiots. That is not entirely their
fault. In part, it may be their genes, but a lot has to do with the
educational system, which leads people to believe that if they have spent
three or four years playing in a college art studio, they are equipped to
serve as founts of wisdom, and pronounce like prophets on everything from
the imminent destruction of the world (imminent for the past several
thousand years, as we all know), to the eternal verities of menstruation
and the gastro-intestinal tract.
Weariness, rather than wisdom, is the more likely consequence of taking in
the "astounding variety" of which you speak. What is actually needed is a
great deal of honing down and discarding of rubbish, so that the
relatively small number of gems can be seen for what they are, rather than
buried deep in a pile of festering crap.
> complexity of sources available to us
> art historically. Value every artist's
> contribution to the creation of that history, and
> without repeating those contributions, add
> to them.
It is not the job of artists to create art history; it is the job of
artists to create art. The habit into which so many artists have been
indoctrinated by their poor education of constantly looking over their
shoulder and saying to themselves "What is my place in *history*?" is
destructive of all worthwhile intentions in art. It has the consequence
of detaching practitioners from their practice and chaining them to theory
instead. It places artists at one remove from the world of life about
which they should concern themselves, and puts them in a bloodless
parallel world that consists of nothing visual or living, but only streams
of hollow, echoing words. From such a place, no good art can possibly
emerge.
The problem with Academic art in the nineteenth century, which the
realists sought to get away from, was that it encouraged precisely this
sort of over-the-shoulder painting. Many otherwise excellent artists were
let down by their excessive "historical consciousness", as we might term
it. Modernism, as construed by many modernist critics, is rooted in
nineteenth century Realism, so it is ironic that, having thrown away the
baby of fine technique with the bathwater of historical consciousness, the
heirs of modernism have now reclaimed the bathwater (dirtier, now, for
where it has been) and are guzzling it thirstily while the baby lies
freezing outside.
Bruce Attah
> Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
>
> > Yes, I have perfect colour vision.
>
> Have you ever seen any real Cezannes, or do you form your opinions
> entirely from looking at pictures in books? (like our friend Mani Deli)
Yes, I have seen more than enough real Cezannes, thank you very much. Had
I not done so, I would not have realized quite how bad his work is.
Reproduction tends to flatter it.
> > And no, there is nothing insipid about calling Cezanne a bumbling
> > incompetent, Matisse a charlatan and pasticheur or Rothko a
> > misguided fool.
>
> That's just name-calling, not criticism.
I applied these epithets in the context of substantial articles, which you
may well remember reading, and some of which were quite long. In those
articles I pointed out features of the work of the artists named and
discussed the historical context of the work. So, in the context,
criticism, not name-calling.
> > colour: Cezanne had a simple formula and stuck to it throughout
> > his career. Medium-pale blue for the sky, raw green and orange
> > for everything else. [clip]
>
> I'll bet you've never seen an actual painting by Paul Cezanne.
Yawn.
>
> > Although it is often asserted that Cezanne is the "father of modern
> > painting", he was nothing of the sort. The truth is that he was a
> > slavish but incompetent follower of the French tradition. There is
> > nothing new, nothing invented in his art whatsoever. [clip]
>
> Who said that, Phyllis Stein?
Now, *that's* name calling.
There is currently a major exhibition of Cezanne's paintings going on at
the Tate in London. When it moves to Philadelphia in the Summer, I
suggest you go and see it and test my allegations for yourself.
One critic who has recently reiterated the nonsense that Cezanne is the
father of modern painting is Waldemar Januszack. The claim has been
bandied about since God-knows-when. Matisse was one of Cezanne's early
apologists.
The contrary opinion (that Cezanne is a bad and inconsequential painter)
has also been around for a long time. Recall that though Cezanne
exhibited with the Impressionists, his works took much longer than theirs
to find a market. That is because contemporary "progressive" art
collectors, critics and dealers did not think much of his work.
Evelyn Waugh is reported to have called Cezanne a "village idiot given a
box of paints to keep him quiet," which is about right.
However, I am not expressing my opinion because others have done so. I am
expressing it because I feel it is the only possible honest reaction to
direct confrontation with his paintings.
>
> > Cezanne had nothing new to offer and was the beginning of
> > nothing. He was merely an amateur hanger-on at the fag-end of
> > Barbizon School realism.
>
> Now you're just blathering.
>
No, I am stating the truth.
>
> -Ross
Bruce Attah
Amarillo) wrote:
> In article <4hdem2$9...@park.uvsc.edu>, gre...@uvsc.edu says...
>
> Anyone who
> looks at works of the late nineteenth century in terms of reference to
> all that has gone AFTER is mis-guided. The only way one can look at
> the transitional and revolutionary artists is in context of THEIR times.
> In contrast to what had gone BEFORE THEM, and what was going on
> around them in the world of art in THEIR TIMEs.
In that case, the 'Cezanne is the father of modern painting' camp are the
misguided ones, and I am clearly in the right, because in all my recent
posts concerning Cezanne, I have concentrated on comparing him with his
contemporaries and his predecessors; I have asked readers to consider
Cezanne's work in the light of the work that he appeared to be emulating
(a list which includes Poussin, Courbet and Corot). On the other hand the
'father' school discuss Cezanne in terms of his supposed far-ranging
influence on the succeeding generation of painters. Their claims about
the importance of this influence are, in my opinion, dubious.
> For an artist in that
> age to do what the Impressionists did, or the post-impressionists, was
> really risky in terms of their artistic survival.
I happen to think that some of the Impressionists and post-Impressionists
were very good painters and produced some fine work. It just so happens
that Cezanne was not one of those.
> Whether someone today
> sees merit in their skills, draftsmanship, or whatever misses the point
> entirely.
No. It misses the point to think that these things are anything less than
central. The impressionists did not take risks with their careers (if
they did) so that they could be praised as great gamblers. They chose the
subject matter and technique that they did because they believed it would
lead to good paintings. No advocate of Impressionism claims that it was
good *merely* because it was different from salon painting, rather
attributes such as the contemporary subject matter, inventive
compositions, attractive and vibrant colour and 'spontaneiety' of handling
are given as the reasons why the impressionists were better than their
establishment rivals.
Consider this: To paint badly is risky, in career terms, but it is not a
way to become a good artist. Your claim implies that the way to be a good
artist is to produce art that no-one could possibly like.
sl...@cc.usu.edu
> In article <1996Mar1.2...@cc.usu.edu>, sl...@cc.usu.edu (Greg
> Scheckler) wrote:
>
>> Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
>> >In article <4gsh18$o...@park.uvsc.edu>, Ross Green
>> <gre...@uvsc.edu> wrote:
>> poesie that Cezanne, Matisse and Rothko left us,
>> such as Cezanne's humble admonition:
>
>> [Clip! Clip!! Clip!!!]
>
> Why waste time reading what artists write, if their writing is not
> particularly good?
speak for yourself. if you find their writings of no use, put the books
aside. do not deny the books to those who may find the meanings valuable.
> Why not instead look at their art? In the case of bad
> artists, the question has extra force: what are such individuals going to
> teach anyone about art? Their theories are bound to be nonsense and their
> expressed intentions not to be borne out in their work. I look at
> paintings because I like paintings, not because I like what is written
> about them.
speak for yourself. if today you require intrinsic analysis,
then use it, if some other day you find that's not enough, then
use some other form of analysis, some other critical strategy.
>
>> [...] people like
>> Attah fail to see that the idea of what it means to
>> paint -- today -- has evolved and shifted and changed
>> a great deal,
>
> Good painting today is bound to be different in some ways from good
> painting a century ago, because the world is different, and good painting
> always reflects the world in which it is painted. By that, I do not mean
> that it reflects solely the intellectual climate that produced it (all
> painting, bad and good, does that), but that it directly engages with the
> world of light, form and colour, and the lives of artists and their
> contemporaries.
i like the idea that no matter what, every painting deals with the
world it's in, because it reflects/refracts/absorbs the light of
that world. the statement's a sort of matter-of-fact truth.
> The world has changed, but not as much as the
> transformation in art practice would suggest.
artists may work ahead of their time as well as in response to it.
the world has changed dramatically, and will change more.
> We do not now inhabit a
> planet of black rectangles and drips and splodges. The world is still
> visible and still visibly beautiful, and the underlying system of values
> that makes for visual beauty has a weighty core to it that has not shifted
> since the beginning of time.
speak for yourself. perhaps some see different shapes than you.
Are the eyes the same if we've changed our minds about what
the world looks like? We don't have eyes on tentacles.
If we did we could all see all six sides of a
cube simultaneously. But we can't. We can think about it though, we
can figure out the abstract idea...there's more than the visual
to deal with. But maybe you don't need that right now, so don't
worry about it.
> However, the dominant practice in
> 'contemporary art' has deviated completely from the path that leads to
> good painting.
speak for yourself. if you find that the path you must take
is different then "contemporary art" as you see it, then take another
path. do not attempt to deny pathways to others.
> [clip] Innovative, surely you jest
speak for yourself. if you find no innovation, and if you require
the image of innovation, then look elsewhere. let others find it
where they see it.
>>[clip] but also due to the friction those artist
>> felt,
>
> ...mostly of a political and economic kind (for instance, after the
> Rockefeller Centre fiasco, corporate America was no longer interested in
> realist art---especially from politically committed artists), but also
> coming from powerful critics such as Clement Greenberg, who effectively
> threatened any artists with banishment to the outer wilderness who did not
> conform with the modernist agenda.
You and your good ol' uncle Clement have a lot in common -- no tolerance
for oppositions, contradictions, things that don't fit the equation.
You're doing what he did... heavyhandedness... ruling out options
instead of opening up doorways. speak for yourself.
>> frictions caused by the contrapoints developed
>> by artists like Leighton, etc.
there's a simile. Watch it be misunderstood
(if I'd meant Leighton in particular I would have said '...developed
by the artist Leighton...'):
> This claim is nonsense. Leighton was pally with many of the more radical
> artists of his day; he himself was quite willing to try new things, and
> though some of the younger rebels, such as Whistler, chose to regard him
> as a representative of the enemy, others such as Sickert stuck up for
> him. The anti-academic tendency in art was often motivated more by
> antiestablishmentarianism than by any real objection to the strictly
> aesthetic merits of academic art.
speaking for myself, i was trying to talk about the larger scale...
how artists work together and not, how they fight, how they agree,
how they build the culture of art as a group:
>> The development [of trends in art] is a massive
>> polylogue of voices from many many places -- a
>> historical point which, when taken closely, hints at
>> the sheer plurality of options available to artists today.
>
> Most of the options are not being taken up. The majority of artists are
> pandering to the new establishment, terrified of being seen as
> old-fashioned, and terrified of competing with the great artists of the
> past, lacking as they do the requisite training.
speak for yourself. When you can name the over seven hundred students
I've had the pleasure of studying with in the last ten years, when you
can tell me what kind of art they make, when you can tell me which ones
have found potent market niches, when you can tell me which are
"traditionally skilled" and which are not, then I might let you get away
with the above statement. Meanwhile, stop judging all those people who
you don't know. You don't know them. Speak of what you know.
>> Why then, should any of us bother to degrade the
>> works of any artist? (to do so is simply to play
>> little boys' power games and rule out many
>> options under the false rubric of some predetermined
>> "quality" or "game rule.")
>
> We should despise bad art because bad art is a pain and an insult to the
> audience and a great waste of resources.
speak for yourself. some find that bad art educates sometimes, and
every artist makes bad art sooner or later, and hopefully the
honest ones get rid of the bad, paint it out, etc., and get on with
it. but it's not a waste of resources if it's an experience to
learn better, not always.
> We should despise bad art
> because if we fail to do so, the fund of new good art will dry up as
> artists say to themselves "I can get away with foisting rubbish on the
> public; why should I trouble to do anything better?"
speak for yourself. most artists I know are honest people.
> Not only should we despise bad art, but we should be vehement and
> uncompromising in our expression of contempt, because it is only the fear
> of such attack that can bring artists back onto the right path.
fear? you would try to scare those who you do not see fit to carry the
torch of what you think is quality? you are living the era
of imperialism, a fearmonger buffoon, Attah-the-Hun.
get over the ego trip. no one fears the attack. you
can't force artists to do anything. Forcefulness is
not real power.
> The modernists and postmodernists who hate art have not held back in their
> vituperation of what is good, nor have they shown any great reluctance to
> engage in name-calling when others point out the ugliness of their system
> of double standards, prejudice and snobbery.
there's a lot of them are bratty children. some are or were
modernists, or postmodernists, or others. which ones are not
bratty? which ones are careful, intelligent, and helpful?
>> Instead, rule out as
>> few options as possible, gain as much wisdom as
>> possible from the astounding variety and
>
> Most practising artists are fumbling idiots.
speak for yourself. are you trying to exert fear again?
or are you just destroying your career and the chance to
network with the incredibly large number of really good artists
on this planet?
> That is not entirely their fault. In part, it may be their genes
speak for yourself.
> but a lot has to do with the
> educational system, which leads people to believe that if they have spent
> three or four years playing in a college art studio, they are equipped to
> serve as founts of wisdom, and pronounce like prophets on everything from
> the imminent destruction of the world (imminent for the past several
> thousand years, as we all know), to the eternal verities of menstruation
> and the gastro-intestinal tract.
Speak for yourself. Students aren't victims. They choose to go to school.
They choose to study certain things. They choose how they will study those
things. Professors are experienced. Many struggle to teach and aid students.
Many have their own problems. Many are so sophisticated that they see
that brute force is a poor teacher, so they adopt far more flexible
methods.
> Weariness, rather than wisdom, is the more likely consequence of taking in
> the "astounding variety" of which you speak.
Speak for yourself. If the variety tires you, then rest, find sleep,
recuperate. I don't tire of the immense complexity of the world.
It fascinates me, I find myself energized, vitalized. But that's me.
> What is actually needed is a
> great deal of honing down and discarding of rubbish, so that the
> relatively small number of gems can be seen for what they are, rather than
> buried deep in a pile of festering crap.
speak for yourself. if you need to hone down, then do. others
do not require honing down of anything. yet others have entirely
different needs, some find the courage to reach through
piles of crap and pull out the gems. some aren't looking at
piles of anything, some seek the sky.
>> complexity of sources available to us
>> art historically. Value every artist's
>> contribution to the creation of that history, and
>> without repeating those contributions, add
>> to them.
>
> It is not the job of artists to create art history; it is the job of
> artists to create art.
speak for yourself. if you do not think it is your job as an artist
to create art history, then do not strive to create it. let those
who strive to create art history do as they must.
> The habit into which so many artists have been
> indoctrinated by their poor education of constantly looking over their
> shoulder and saying to themselves "What is my place in *history*?" is
> destructive of all worthwhile intentions in art.
speak for yourself. if that's what you've been taught, and if it
negatively affects your ability to make art, then shed it.
It is not what teachers revealed to me. My teachers showed me
how a keen knowledge of history could ground my endeavors, when
I need grounding (which is not very often).
> It has the consequence
> of detaching practitioners from their practice and chaining them to theory
> instead.
speak for yourself. if you feel chained to theory, then shed
yourself of theory. let theory be useful for those who require it.
> It places artists at one remove from the world of life about
> which they should concern themselves, and puts them in a bloodless
> parallel world that consists of nothing visual or living, but only streams
> of hollow, echoing words. From such a place, no good art can possibly
> emerge.
speak for yourself. if you feel that theory removes you from
engaging the world, then loosen the theory, and engage the world.
But how will you engage the world? Is the method a small theory?
What small theory can you use that will help you? When does theory
open new opportunities for you?
> The problem with Academic art in the nineteenth century, which the
> realists sought to get away from, was that it encouraged precisely this
> sort of over-the-shoulder painting.
speak for yourself. if you cannot paint "over-the-shoulder" then stop
turning around and start painting.
> Many otherwise excellent artists were
> let down by their excessive "historical consciousness", as we might term
> it.
speak for yourself. if you find "historical consciousness" excessive,
then rid yourself of it. others find it helpful, they can use it, their
art might even demand it of them.
> Modernism, as construed by many modernist critics, is rooted in
> nineteenth century Realism, so it is ironic that, having thrown away the
> baby of fine technique with the bathwater of historical consciousness, the
> heirs of modernism have now reclaimed the bathwater (dirtier, now, for
> where it has been) and are guzzling it thirstily while the baby lies
> freezing outside.
speak for yourself. if you need to, warm the baby of technique close
to your heart and listen to its needs. some other day, if you need to,
rinse in the bathwater of history. some other day, if you're thirsty,
drink as need be. others have other ways, let them their ways.
Greg Scheckler
SL...@cc.usu.edu
Rosa Amarillo
Bruce...@insignia.co.uk says...
( MUCHO CLIPPO )
>Consider this: To paint badly is risky, in career terms, but it is not a
>way to become a good artist. Your claim implies that the way to be a good
>artist is to produce art that no-one could possibly like.
I make no claims for insight into what makes a "Good Artist." My tastes are
a suspect as yours or the next persons. BUT -- It's ludicrous to suggest that an
artist would produce work knowingly, believingly thinking people wouldn't
like it. I mean, after all, what artist can you name who deliberately set out
to offend his potential buying public? Nah -- never can happen !! Never
WILL happen. Not in the WORLD of ART. Only beauty for the eye of the
beholder -- that's all ten commandments ruling the WORLD of ART.
--
=================================================
May the Peace Dove's wingbeat gently waft
the sweet smell of spring flowers your way
and blanket your pathway in rose pedals.
~ Rosa Amarillo ~
=================================================
sl...@cc.usu.edu
> sl...@cc.usu.edu (Greg Scheckler) wrote:
>
> [thanks for the quotations / clipped]
yer welcome
>
>> The development is a massive polylogue of voices from many
>> many places -- a historical point which, when taken closely, hints
>> at the sheer plurality of options available to artists today. Why
>> then, should any of us bother to degrade the works of any artist?
>
> I also believe in the "massive polylogue" - but are we still allowed
> to make comparisons? When you put Leighton next to Cezanne, the
> former looks totally insipid - his work only serves to exemplify a
> dead end: how not to paint. (That isn't to say that Leighton's work
> is totally worthless, or that a contemporary artist couldn't find
> it inspirational - he was an excellent draftsman.)
I think i said something about 'friction' earlier... and on a large
scale i think the mind that compares and contrasts engages itself
with this friction... which is good... some memes melt away under
the heat (Leighton-meme has been melting for a while).
>> Instead, rule out as few options as possible, gain as much wisdom
>> as possible from the astounding variety and complexity of sources
>> available to us art historically. Value every artist's contribution to
>> the creation of that history, and without repeating those
>> contributions, add to them.
>
> But you have to set priorities... Even though minor, reactionary
> artists may be valuable to some, postmodernism doesn't mean that
> all artists are equal. (I know some postmodernists will disagree with
> that statement.)
priorities, they suck. all-artists-equal sucks too.
there are real differences between people, cultures, ancient ideas
and new ideas. what bridges them and gets us out of the
barriers set by postmodernism is the similarities (of course), and the
imagination. the imagination gets around all the rules, yields options.
Greg Scheckler
SL...@cc.usu.edu
sl...@cc.usu.edu
> In article <313D58...@worldlightproductions.com>, dray...@worldlightproductions.com says...
>
[big clip]
>> Whew! I guess this is an exercise in futility.
>>William DeRaymond/Artist
>
> AHA ! Join "Club Enlightened." I concluded long ago that it is futile
> attempting to "educate" the Manis and Bruces of the blander-is-better frame
> of mind.
i would consider that task an impossibility. i find their
changelessness to be a bizarre sounding board, against which
we may echo, echo.
> Now I just watch people provoke them -- like poking around
> in an ant hill -- to watch them squirm. Then I sit back and take
> delight in the amount of time they spend defending their rock-headed
> point of view. Sometimes the threads actually digress onto some
> new territory this old body hadn't traveled before, so their insistent
> howling isn't all clanging cymbals.
of course the new territory never comes from them, you see.
Greg Scheckler
SL...@cc.usu.edu
Rosa Amarillo
>> Now I just watch people provoke them -- like poking around
>> in an ant hill -- to watch them squirm. Then I sit back and take
>> delight in the amount of time they spend defending their rock-headed
>> point of view. Sometimes the threads actually digress onto some
>> new territory this old body hadn't traveled before, so their insistent
>> howling isn't all clanging cymbals.
>of course the new territory never comes from them, you see.
>Greg Scheckler
>SL...@cc.usu.edu
Yes, and then I got to thinking about my use of the ant hill metaphor.
It would probably be more appropriate to assign the stick end to
the hands of Mani and Bruce, who then use it to stir the R.A.F.
ant hill. Maybe if they found the Queen dead, and the anthill
deserted they would go away and find some other diversion.
--
=================================================
May the Peace Dove's wingbeat gently waft
the sweet smell of spring flowers your way
and blanket your pathway in rose pedals.
~ Rosa Amarillo ~
Visit with me at my place:
http://www.channels.nl/cantina.html
=================================================
Bruce Attah
Greg Scheckler wrote:
> >> frictions caused by the contrapoints developed
> >> by artists like Leighton, etc.
> there's a simile. Watch it be misunderstood
> (if I'd meant Leighton in particular I would have said '...developed
> by the artist Leighton...'):
>
> > This claim is nonsense. Leighton was pally with many of the more radical
> > artists of his day; he himself was quite willing to try new things, and
> > though some of the younger rebels, such as Whistler, chose to regard him
> > as a representative of the enemy, others such as Sickert stuck up for
> > him. The anti-academic tendency in art was often motivated more by
> > antiestablishmentarianism than by any real objection to the strictly
> > aesthetic merits of academic art.
If you are saying that 'artists like Leighton' contains an implied simile
because it means 'artists who resemble Leighton but are not Leighton', you
are using English in a strikingly unusual and irregular way, and are
*bound* to be misunderstood. Otherwise, I may reasonably take it that you
mean 'artists of a certain kind, of whom Leighton is a characteristic
example', in which case it can be shown that Leighton is not of the kind I
think you mean (one strictly opposed to innovation), and did not play the
sort of role in art history that you seem to be saying he did (one of
direct opposition to new tendencies in art practice).
>
> speaking for myself, i was trying to talk about the larger scale...
> how artists work together and not, how they fight, how they agree,
> how they build the culture of art as a group:
It did not sound like it.
> speak for yourself. [etc., ad nauseam]
Speaking for myself, I am not much impressed with your literary style.
Whenever you try for an effect, it falls flat.
Greg Scheckler
<Bruce.Attah-11...@support-neptune.isltd.insignia.co
m>, Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
>Greg Scheckler wrote:
>
[clip, Leighton simile]
>
>If you are saying that 'artists like Leighton' contains an
>implied simile because it means 'artists who resemble Leighton
>but are not Leighton', you are using English in a strikingly
>unusual and irregular way, and are *bound* to be
>misunderstood.
well this is a problem that occurs on usenet news a lot,
because english language in one part of the world is
different than in another part of the world, and intonation,
etc., gets lost in all the screentyping (read: as different
than stereotyping). few individuals allow
for one word to have double and triple meanings in
the ways that most words naturally do.
most who read my posts and any post from from my
non-Greg net identities (sorry, none active lately)
would probably agree with you that i tend to use
language in unusual and irregular ways. you're
fortunate that my Greg identity is as
reasonably mundane as he is, b/c judging by how
literally you try to take language, you would,
I suspect, never quite digest more highly
metaphoric usages and spellings of words.
this is *not* to say you're stupid. it's
simply to say that the manner in which you
tend to interpret language is very different
than the manner in which I sometimes use
language. that's cool with me, because
language is multiplicitous, plural, open
to being interpreted in many ways.
but those who have read my poetry do wonder
why my posts are so boring and lackluster.
>> speaking for myself, i was trying to talk about the larger
>> scale... how artists work together and not, how they fight,
>> how they agree, how they build the culture of art as a
>> group:
>
>It did not sound like it.
to you. i got responses from people who caught the idea
and have since helped me find some sources regarding it.
so now (again) i have a list of about ten new books that
i've never heard of, that i can acquire and then read.
much thanks to those of you who have been helpful in
this regard.
>> speak for yourself. [etc., ad nauseam]
>
>Speaking for myself, I am not much impressed with your
>literary style. Whenever you try for an effect, it falls flat.
finally! he speaks for himself and stops glomming all
the world into one! he gets direct, he tries insult me.
I see that the effect worked well enough to become
sufficiently annoying, cause a followup post, some
clippage, etc.
but anyway, what you've been reading here is a casual usenet
news style. i wouldn't call it particularly literary.
maybe, a little literary, and literate, at times.
maybe not. if i wasted time editing and revising
usenet news posts and replies, i wouldn't have
as much time to post reactionary posts as i do.
Greg Scheckler
SL...@cc.usu.edu
Bruce Attah
Amarillo) wrote:
> In article <Bruce.Attah-05...@support-neptune.isltd.insignia.com>,
> Bruce...@insignia.co.uk says...
>
>
> I make no claims for insight into what makes a "Good Artist."
Well, you ought to make at least *some*, if you are going to tell people
you are an art lover.
> My tastes are
> a suspect as yours or the next persons.
Well, if you think Cezanne was a great painter, your tastes are *more*
suspect! (:->)
While none of us can say that our taste is infallible, we must go with
what we have and work as hard as we can to understand and refine our
tastes, always ready to make new discoveries in our confrontation with
art. That way we assist the process of art-making, whether in our own
practice or in the practice of others who are influenced by our views.
[I said:]
> >Consider this: To paint badly is risky, in career terms, but it is not a
> >way to become a good artist. Your claim implies that the way to be a good
> >artist is to produce art that no-one could possibly like.
> BUT -- It's ludicrous to suggest that an
> artist would produce work knowingly, believingly thinking people wouldn't
> like it. I mean, after all, what artist can you name who deliberately set out
> to offend his potential buying public?
It was you who managed to imply that the impressionists and
post-impressionists were good *because* they were unpopular.
> Nah -- never can happen !! Never
> WILL happen. Not in the WORLD of ART. Only beauty for the eye of the
> beholder -- that's all ten commandments ruling the WORLD of ART.
> --
> =================================================
> May the Peace Dove's wingbeat gently waft
> the sweet smell of spring flowers your way
> and blanket your pathway in rose pedals.
> ~ Rosa Amarillo ~
> =================================================
PKosmas
to Rosa- Jeff Koons should serve as an example, and many postmodernists
to Man-o-Mani-
>The most realistic paintings exhibit a hyperealism. This is due to
technical
>reasons which I won’t go into. I will only say that the artist
exaggerates
>certain visual factors. This is apparant in work from Leonardo to Vargas
and
>of finest illustrators. It is always realism in an unrealistic context.
You mean you won't divulge the big secrets of white highlights?!? oops!
Come on! HYPERealism?? (just what is "ealism" anyway :-)? Open your
eyes, and take in all the true realism around you every minute, is any
painting a "hyper" version of that reality?
to Mindless-
ok, cool, _and_ I like Rockwell, as well as many other American
iconographers like Warhol, and Rothko, and Church, and Remington, and
Wyeth, and Trudeau and the guy who does "Calvin and Hobbes"
to Bruce-
lighten up, rather than run rings of argument, enjoy a sunset and a glass
of wine, the joy of art and discussion is in the sharing, not in the
convincing, in my opinion
to Greg-
you seem smug. Is that good?
to all-
I have spent too much time looking at this 72 dpi image, rather than good
old analog greenberg geometrics, goodnight,
paul
ps if you are going to retort, please make it funny
Bruce Attah
> In article <Bruce.Attah-05...@support-neptune.isltd.insignia.com>,
> Bruce Attah <Bruce...@insignia.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >The world has changed, but not as much as the
> >transformation in art practice would suggest. We do not now inhabit a
> >planet of black rectangles and drips and splodges. The world is still
> >visible and still visibly beautiful, and the underlying system of values
> >that makes for visual beauty has a weighty core to it that has not shifted
> >since the beginning of time.
>
> So far it seems you argue for an enduring tradition which transcends the
> frivolous faults of rebellious fashion and innovation.
The tradition is not good because it is traditional, it is traditional
because it contains a lot that is good. I am not an adherent of tradition
for its own sake.
> But then you follow with:
> > [an attack on three 'innovative' artists...cut for brevity]
> And now I am confused. First you seem to villify art that fails to
> recognize traditional changeless "cores of value" and then you want to
> dethrone the innovators for being too derivative (traditional). Which is it?
> As I wander on through your prose I stumble across what seems to be the
> real source of your pique, you are another frustrated realist who
> identifies skill and technique as the entire issue of art.
The contradiction is apparent only. My personal objection to Matisse,
Cezanne and Rothko is that they were all bad painters. I dislike their
art, not because
they deviated from tradition, but because the particular form their
deviation took was worthless and added nothing, and because with or
without their 'innovations', their art was poor.
I am not against innovation in all its forms. That would, in my view, be
amount to being against art. But a lot of what counts for innovation at
the moment in art, is in fact the mere abandonment of earlier inventions
on spurious grounds of their outmodedness, without the substitution of
something better.
> >... after the Rockefeller Centre fiasco, corporate America was no longer
> >interested in realist art---especially from politically committed
> >artists), but also...
(I should point out that at here I am using 'realist' to mean figurative.)
> >powerful critics such as Clement Greenberg, who
> >effectively threatened any artists with banishment to the outer
> >wilderness who did not conform with the modernist agenda......
>
> >Modernism, as construed by many modernist critics, is rooted in
> >nineteenth century Realism, so it is ironic that, having thrown away the
> >baby of fine technique with the bathwater of historical consciousness, the
> >heirs of modernism have now reclaimed the bathwater (dirtier, now, for
> >where it has been) and are guzzling it thirstily while the baby lies
> >freezing outside.
>
> This is what amazes me. That anyone confuses aesthetic experience with
> technique is beyond belief. Who is this baby? this Christ? this abandoned
> prophetic offspring? It is Technique!
You would be right to be amazed if my conception of skill were as narrow
as you imagine. I assure you, it is not.
I make the accusation that technique, which is necessary, has been
abandoned. I do not, however, claim that technique is sufficient for the
creation of great art that is why the following...
> What transcendent world does this
> Christ announce? The world of competitive skill. In this world, the art
> prophet is the fastest, strongest athlete, the brain surgeon, the master
> craftsman. This person need not be aware of anything but the craft at
> hand. This is the artist prestidigitator, magician, slight of hand man,
> con artist.
...misses the point. Technique is necessary, but not sufficient. By
overemphasising 'expression' and cognate things, the point is missed that
one cannot make the best art without a substantial dose of refined
technique.
> So in the following dismay over good and bad art, the reader
> may rightly substitute for "good"-"realist", and for "bad"-"other stuff
> which bothers me"
To clear up the confusion, I should repeat what I have said earlier, but
seems to be ignored each time I say it. I am NOT, repeat NOT, advocating
realism as opposed to all other forms of art. I am advocating CONTENT.
Art should have INTRINSIC merit, as opposed to having meaning read into it
by overimaginative critics, or having meaning injected into it through its
intallation in some theatre of art such as a museum. Realism (as
figuration or depiction) is just one way of providing content in visual
art. It is a tool every artist should have in his or her repertoire, but
it does not follow that all good art is going to be realistic, or that all
realistic paintings are necessarily good paintings.
> By demonstrating a belief that art is essentially memesis you seem to
> dispense with ideas like inspiration and expression.
Well, I don't.
> If we accept your
> definition of good art it means that some entire cultures have no art
> whatsoever.
I doubt this.
> Some have used this idea to suggest that these cultures
> are inferior...others have even gone so far as to say that people of
> such societies are less than truely human.
Completely irrelevant to anything here.
> Perhaps these are the ideas that
> helped some feel no compunction over their efforts to enslave, rob,
> and kill others of different racial and cultural derivations.
I can see were you are going, and you are going off track...
> The realists were not entirely left out of the art elite in the 20th
> century. During the reign of Stalin and Hitler such art thrived as the
> officially sanctioned art of the day and the realists had their revenge
> on the decadent moderns. Perhaps another such conservative backlash will
> help to balance the perceived injustices of our own era's realists.
I have seen this crop up a number of times in this forum: the association
in some people's mind between realism and authoriatarian government. This
link is spurious. Realism has been put to many uses in the past, both in
the service of authoriatarianism and in opposition to it (such as in
France in the nineteenth century and in the US in the early twentieth).
There is no connection between realism as such and any particular sort of
politics.
> While I doubt you might go this far,
You can say that again!
> I wanted to show you the possible
> terrain lying out ahead of your declared direction.
Are you suggesting to me that I might be prone to incipient fascism? If
you are, I would like you to withdraw that, now.
Greg Scheckler
<Bruce.Attah-15...@support-neptune.isltd.insignia.com>,
Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
>In article <Dnt4q...@presby.edu>, mran...@presby.edu (Mark
Anderson) wrote:
>> So in the following dismay over good and bad art, the reader
>> may rightly substitute for "good"-"realist", and for "bad"-"other
>> stuff which bothers me"
i think that's a misunderstanding of Attah's position, which
he restates here:
>To clear up the confusion, I should repeat what I have said
>earlier, but seems to be ignored each time I say it. I am NOT,
>repeat NOT, advocating realism as opposed to all other forms of
>art. I am advocating CONTENT. Art should have INTRINSIC merit, as
>opposed to having meaning read into it by overimaginative critics,
>or having meaning injected into it through its intallation in some
>theatre of art such as a museum.
it's funny to me that the call for content and intrinsic merit
sounds like so much modernist argumentation, especially as
relates to abstract modes of painting. content from within
the artwork itself... so here i begin to wonder what are
the varying contexts and subtexts for the particular content
in a particular artwork? what links do the 'intrinsic merits' of
an artwork create with the world around it? Does an artwork ever
really have intrinsic merit?
my own position would probably be that no artwork has
intrinsic merit devoid of the relationship to its
environment -- which is not to say that merit is injected
into the artwork by the environment of the art, but rather,
that there seems a dual and highly interrelated set of
relationships between artwork and the environment of the
art. i would say about the same for content, and while
noting its value, also relate it to the cultural world
which sees it as 'content' or 'meaning.' i think one of
the really fantastic things about art is that it never
stands alone. Instead at some level it always echoes,
refracts, distills or changes the world(s) around it, in
constant dialogue with that (those) world(s). the world
around the art may be seen as the one viewer who stands
near the art, or [viewer]+[near environment], or
[viewer]+[viewer as cultural role]+[environment]+
[cultural construction of the environment], and so on,
becoming very complex.
>Realism (as figuration or
>depiction) is just one way of providing content in visual art. It
>is a tool every artist should have in his or her repertoire,
this is where i think the argument gets undermined... when
realism is seen as a "should" have, or worse, as a prescription
that Attah would have artists learn for h/her 'repetoire.'
i think this is an attitude that a lot of people object too and
sense early on, and perhaps this is part of the source of confusion
with some of attah's posts. realism/naturalism modes of
artmaking may be part of an artist's repetoire, but may also
not be part of an artist's repetoire. Since when do artists
require repetoires anyway? etc. etc.
Greg Scheckler
SL...@cc.usu.edu
Bruce Attah
Scheckler) wrote:
> In article
> <Bruce.Attah-15...@support-neptune.isltd.insignia.com>,
> Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
> >In article <Dnt4q...@presby.edu>, mran...@presby.edu (Mark
> Anderson) wrote:
>
> >> So in the following dismay over good and bad art, the reader
> >> may rightly substitute for "good"-"realist", and for "bad"-"other
> >> stuff which bothers me"
>
> i think that's a misunderstanding of Attah's position, which
> he restates here:
>
> >To clear up the confusion, I should repeat what I have said
> >earlier, but seems to be ignored each time I say it. I am NOT,
> >repeat NOT, advocating realism as opposed to all other forms of
> >art. I am advocating CONTENT. Art should have INTRINSIC merit, as
> >opposed to having meaning read into it by overimaginative critics,
> >or having meaning injected into it through its intallation in some
> >theatre of art such as a museum.
Thank you for helping me out here.
> it's funny to me that the call for content and intrinsic merit
> sounds like so much modernist argumentation, especially as
> relates to abstract modes of painting. content from within
> the artwork itself...
I don't see how this is peculiarly modernist. I think a lot of pre-modern
writers would make the same demands.
I wonder if you think I am talking of the kind of "intrinsic merit" that
some would claim can be found in works conforming to the rules of
post-painterly abstraction, which by refering to nothing save themselves
as objects somehow are supposed to deal with the "problems of painting"?
If so, I have not made myself quite clear, as I find no merit whatsoever
in such work, which is (in my view) completely misguided in its aims
(simply because there are no problems in painting until one sets out to
paint a particular something in a particular way).
> Does an artwork ever
> really have intrinsic merit?
I suspect that anyone who has ever marked an essay (or written one to be
marked) will have no difficulty in agreeing with me that some things have
intrinsic merit and some things do not.
> my own position would probably be that no artwork has
> intrinsic merit devoid of the relationship to its
> environment
That is not hard for me to agree with. That art exists at all is proof to
me that artists and their audiences are able to share values and
perceptions. This comes about because the artist the the audience member
are creatures of a similar sort, living in similar worlds (environments)
and evaluating them in similar ways.
> [...] i would say about the same for content, and while
> noting its value, also relate it to the cultural world
> which sees it as 'content' or 'meaning.'
Content is not _all_ culturally relative. All healthy human beings are
nearly identical to one another, however big the differences (which we
tend, naturally, to focus upon) may at times seem. Our minds and bodies
work in nearly identical ways. Where practices are different between
cultures, we are nevertheless able to appreciate another culture's alien
ways as making sense in terms of underlying shared purposes. So it is
that even the most exotic art is appreciable by us (though not perfectly),
and some of its content instantly recognizable.
> i think one of
> the really fantastic things about art is that it never
> stands alone.
But nothing stands alone, so that is not something fantastic about art in
particular, just something fantastic about the world, if it is fantastic
at all. I think though, that whether this fact is fantastic or not is
entirely a matter of the attitude you choose to adopt.
> >Realism (as figuration or
> >depiction) is just one way of providing content in visual art. It
> >is a tool every artist should have in his or her repertoire,
>
> this is where i think the argument gets undermined... when
> realism is seen as a "should" have, or worse, as a prescription
> that Attah would have artists learn for h/her 'repetoire.'
> i think this is an attitude that a lot of people object too and
> sense early on, and perhaps this is part of the source of confusion
> with some of attah's posts. realism/naturalism modes of
> artmaking may be part of an artist's repetoire, but may also
> not be part of an artist's repetoire. Since when do artists
> require repetoires anyway? etc. etc.
I could have said 'vocabulary', instead of 'repertoire', and I suspect I
would not have been queried as to why artists should have one. But
'vocabulary' smacks too much of verbal language, which is something I
would like to get away from. 'Repertoire' on the other hand, can indicate
something as broad as a repertoire of gestures, or of actions, or even
(broadest of all) of behaviours.
Here is something I believe about art that will help explain why I believe
artists should have a repertoire: The act of appreciating a work of art
involves a voluntary submission by the audience to the will of the artist,
which the artist exploits and rewards by guiding the audience's mind to
somewhere interesting and delightful. The artist is a mental tour-guide
who can lead an audience through the vast wilderness of the imagination to
spots of the most astonishing glory---if only the artist knows the way.
Enough of this metaphor for now (though I could take it much further),
save to say that having more skill in an artistic medium is like having a
better map.
An artist with an adequate repertoire of skills is less likely to fall
into those common traps: clumsiness, self-parody, the slavish imitation of
others, systematic plodding, aimless and unfruitful experimentation and so
on. Of course, skills offer their own traps: the artist may concentrate
too much on showing off, and not enough on rewarding the audience for its
generosity in paying attention; the artist, endlessly striving to perfect
a set of skills, may lose sight of what those skills are for; most
commonly, the artist will indulge in a facile but lazy repetition of
tricks. That said, as long as artists' attention is not led away from
aesthetic aims, no skill (in the chosen medium) is bad to have.
Now to the question of why realism is a skill "every artist should have":
Colours, shapes and textures may seem pretty or ugly, but they do not take
on their full power until they begin to connote things. This is because
things can kill you or make you fall in love, but colours can only stare
back at you, blankly. The audience imagination is populated by thousands
of things, with which colours may, or may not, be associated. Colours,
shapes and textures taken in isolation play only a minor role. The more
precisely an artist is in control of the object-connotations of the shapes
he or she makes, the greater control he or she has of the audience's
imagination---which is what they want.
There is another reason why I believe that visual artists should have
command of visual illusion. It is that this is a natural corollary of,
and a further aid to, having command of the abstract visual. The best
abstract art has been the grotesque and arabesque that has appeared both
in painting and in the decorative arts since ancient times. Geometrical
inventions (often playing with the ideas of flatness and depth much more
effectively than modernist devices have managed to do) are combined with
forms inspired by nature---sometimes idealised, sometimes caricatured,
sometimes geometricised, occasionally left untouched to produce elaborate
and entirely artificial adventures of form. This art, which saw a great
flowering (almost literally) in Europe during the age of Rococo and in the
Arab world, where depiction was often prohibited has now been expelled
from the citadel of Fine Art. This art, which is echoed around the world,
on Native American totem poles and on Australian Aborigine boomerangs, has
been evicted from the Western Palace of Culture. This art, which "took a
line for a walk" (as Klee wished to do), and which echoed music in its
play of repetition and variation (as Kandinsky wanted to achieve), which
was so hugely important to artists of the Quattrocento, has been banished
from the Kingdom of High Art. Why? Simple. Because it reminds the
modernist too much that a painting is always in part a decoration, and
that the visual artist is always in part an artisan. It will not do that
the artist, now dressed in new robes as philosopher-priest, should have
anything in common with labourers and craft workers, let alone stone age
cave-dwellers.
If abstract artists are going to produce great abstract work, they will
need to regain what has been lost in the banishment of grotesquerie. In
order to do so, precisely the kind of control of light and dark, colour,
texture and illusion that is employed in the service of depiction will be
required. With such skills at their command, abstractionists will be able
to give free rein to their imagination to create a genuinely involving and
fascinating abstract art.
We know the alternative: a vacuous sort of activity in which paintings are
made that are neither pictures nor decorations, but instead focus
narrowly, with a nerdiness bordering on autism, on the physical properties
of paint. How pointless it would be to return to that! Rembrandt and
Rubens handled paint more adeptly than any abstractionist has this
century, yet they put that skill to extra use.
Mark Anderson
Greg Scheckler <sl...@cc.usu.edu> wrote:
>In article
><Bruce.Attah-15...@support-neptune.isltd.insignia.com>,
>Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
>Anderson) wrote:
>
>>> So in the following dismay over good and bad art, the reader
>>> may rightly substitute for "good"-"realist", and for "bad"-"other
>>> stuff which bothers me"
conclusion that the real issue is not realism but a confusion between the
illustration of content and the expression of same. Each (expression and
illustration) has it unique value and merit, but they are not to be
judged by the same standard. Illustration requires a certain degree of
representational verity and calls upon those related skills as
appropriate. Expression, however, must be judged by the more relative
standard of effective context and innovative power. The appreciation of
expression demands that the context of that expression (the immediate art
historical mileau) be taken as the lingua franca and the resultant form
be considered as an integral aspect of its content. Expression may, but
need not, involve extra-refferential content. Illustration must, by its
very nature contain axtra-refferential content. Problems only arise when
attempting to judge one form (expression or illustration) by the
standards of another. One may legitimately prefer one form over the
other, but comparing them is comparing apples to oranges.>