cubism and bathwater
mark webber
longer posts don't show up on my server.
Anyway, N, we thought you bailed on us!
(from me, regarding those meetins' and manifestos)
>>... And I'm sure there is plenty of documentation, too. From my point of
>> view, the documentation, the meetings, the manifestoes are all
>> secondary. The work itself is more important - to me.
> I always have trouble believing in or even simply identifying in 'the
> work in itself."
Ok. Well, that's a tough one to reply to. Just the opposite for me. The
work itself can be experienced first hand without editorial, agenda,
error and misconception - and misconception is exactly how I would explain
the "simultaneous viewpoint" interpretation of Cubism.
I understand that isn't how you see it, but I've never seen a good cubist
painting about multi-perspectives.
And theory aside, works can fail. They can fail in a variety of ways, and
it happens more often than not - in modern and pre-modern art (however we
wish to define those terms....)
So my only point in this thread is, if the work itself fails, I have no
use for the rhetoric.
>> ... The others, (Delauney, Gleizes, etc.) were mostly - in my opinion
>> - poseurs because the rap was more important than the work. For them it
>> had to be, because the work was weak in comparison to Braque's and
>> Picasso's.
>Again, I cannot comment here because of the limits of my viewing. P & B
>have tons of weak work as well(based on what I imagine your formal
>criteria to be)
I hope you don't mind if we look carefully at these remarks. If you
haven't seen that much of the other guys, how would you make a comparative
statement like that?
Also, in the periods of analytical and synthetic cubism,(roughly late
1909 to the mid 1920s) which is pretty much the period I think we're
discussing, Braque simply doesn't disappoint, and Picasso makes fewer bad
paintings than any other time in his life - I think.
In fact, even the years of "proto cubism", around 1906 to 1909, still
look very vital and exciting to me, in both painters. The worst pictures
they made then are still much more dynamic and felt - to my mind - than
anything G. or M. or F. made.
And while I'll say more about my formal criteria later, let me preface by
saying it is not much theory and a lot of gut response to color and shape.
It is just looking.
> ...do G and M have any works which you think worthy (mind
>you , forgeting the idea that they were somehow 'followers', as the whole
>leader/founder & follower thing has no bearing on the artwork whatsoever
>from your ideological position....you are advancing a notion of the 'work
>in itself', am I correct?
I agree completely that this is the trickiest area for me - but if the
notion of sensibility rings true to you (and I think, from other things
you've written, that it does) then it isn't hard to see that if one
artist is working through another artist's sensibility, and that is
apparant, clear, unmistakable, it may be so *because* that artist is
affecting someone else's voice.
The answer to your question is no, and not just because M. and G. affect
the sensibility of P. and B., but because they fail at it.
>What about Duchamp's Cubist based works?
I enjoy the thinking of Duchamp as much as the next guy, and "The Large
Glass" delights me. The fact that when it cracked he was happy delights
me. But Duchamp couldn't paint his way out of a paper bag. He was
illustrating. So were his brothers. The work doesn't look good and it
looks false.
>...Or works of the Futurists? Do you find any of these works engaging to
>you?
Spaghetti Cubists. Completely without resonance.
>... is your criteria for quality extrinsic to the 'work itself', and
>laden with with theory of it's own?
This is an excellent question, and here I have the most difficulty putting
into words something that I feel strongly. I'm sure that approaching
pintings as something to look at can sound like approaching paintings as
something to think about, and they can certainly be both, but don't have
to.
Plenty of painters surprise me - I don't go to museums or churches knowing
in advance everything I will like. Signorelli, who I didn't pay much
attention to prior to this past summer, wound up blowing me away. No
theory as to why. Just really sublime drawing and contrast.
I'm not convinced I've answered you well - but to be honest that is the
reason I write here: to try to get a little better at it. And no one
better than you to take me to task.
>> For me, a poseur is someone who uses theory, background and milieu as
>> > a *substitute* for the visual experience. Just for me.
>You are skirting mighty close to it when elements of your arguement in
>support of P & B's works includes a weighing-in and evaluation of their
>influence, background, theory, and milieu, ...
*Substitute* - I'm not denying anyone the right to discuss theory. I just
don't want it to be a substitute for visual experience. For me. When I
look at P. and B.'s influence a big part of it, for me, is the visual
impact of their sensibility.
>particularly problematic when
>you privilige them as 'originals' or 'founders' or 'leaders'...
I may appear to be heavily indoctrinated, but usually the originator
precedes the copier. Cubism simply wasn't some platonic "ism" floating
around early 20th century Paris, waiting to be adopted by any and all. To
see it that way is to be indoctrinated, I think.
I have to run an errand, so I will post this first part and pick up where
we left off.
Mark
-N.
mark webber <webb...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU> wrote:
> > I always have trouble believing in or even simply identifying in 'the
> > work in itself."
>
> Ok. Well, that's a tough one to reply to.
I am conceiving it as an easier concept to grasp. It seems to me that if
one is resorting to theories (be they of modern art, pictorial and space
constructs, theories as o wha tmakes a painting successful or not, etc.)
then they are resorting to material (concepts) that reside beyond the of
viewer-and-painting. Indeed, the very notion of pictorial space, the
conventions and concepts for creating such a space,are themselves
conceptiul material. Consider the perceptual model you are refering to.
Vision and visuality themselves are an interface of optical input
processed by the mind with concepts. Lets talk for a moment about
peception, about what we 'see', and keep in mind your idea of something
'seen in itself'. Even simple everyday visual phenomena is dependent on
such conceptual material for us to process visual space and time: it s
just that after 3 or 10 or 30 or 60 years we have slowly been educated
culturally by standard conventions to allow us to process the world.
Optical material alone is very minimal...rods and cones and the retinal
nerves which register the imput(we do not see what is projected onto the
back of our eyeballs, only the small area of the fovea can perceive
sharply, the rest is a blur. We bring the object into focus by rapid eye
movements, exposing the fovea to different parts of the incoming image,
what we construct is a composite image built up over time. This composite
retinal image is then immediately transformed in terms of imformation.
Approximately 10,000,000 nerve cells in each retina, but the optic nerve
connecting the retina to the brain has only 250,000 fibers. Clearly,
complex data processing has already taken place before the electrical
impulses of sight ever reach the brain to be interpreted. Next, this
interpretation by the cortex is incredibly complicated. We tend to think
of it as natural ('we look and recognize'), but it is not,it requires
learning. People w/cogenital cataracts who are able to see, through
surgery, for the first time as adults cannot at first distinguish between
a circle and a square. Later, they can tell the difference, but can't say
what that difference is. Only when they are able to verbalize concepts
such as line, angle, and curve, are they able to articulate what they see.
Additionally, what we see, is related to what we have already seen.
Memory is a kind of stored perception, which helps us to interpret new
events in our world.
[Duchamp had an interesting note suggesting "to reach the Impossibility of
sufficient visual memory to transfer from one like object to another the
memory imprint". ]
The ability to verbalize and the ability to act are related to
perception. Injuries to portions of the brain produce disruptions in the
way we respond to the visual world: ex., a patient given a toothbrush may
be able to identify it but not be able to use it--or to use it but not
state it's name--or hear the word 'toothbrush', and describe the object,
but not recognize it when shown. Perception is not passive. What we see
is not a mirror projected onto our eyeballs...it is an active, inquisitive
search, and an active intellectual process of assigning meanings to the
information we gather. The fact that we are unaware of this process does
not make it any less real.
An enourmous amount of information of the world is availible to us through
our eyes, we take what is useful to us and we ignore the rest.The need for
continuity in interpreting our sensory world comes at the expense of
divergent or contradictory information that we ignore..which we fight hard
not to see. There is a tension of what we are cosnciously ignoring, which
at times is collasped , and in that surprise we are made aware of what was
previously ignored. Consider that saying, 'you only see what you already
know'. It is the same with science: researchers are looking based upon the
knowledge and paradigm thay already have...they can't find (a cure for
aids, for ex.) what they are not looking for.
Any ability to 'read' space in a painting is going to resort to concepts
beyond the work itself. I think the notion of work-in-itself is a myth
that is impossible to maintain. If you feel otherwise, I would be
interested in your giving an example and taking me through the motions,
explaining how it could be otherwise. Consider your OWN THEORY of
perception that has allowed you to come to your beliefs and review them.
> work itself can be experienced first hand without editorial, agenda,
> error and misconception - and misconception is exactly how I would explain
> the "simultaneous viewpoint" interpretation of Cubism.
But isn't your assertion that a painting can be experienced 'first hand'
just another theory, as reliant on theory as any other approach?
> I understand that isn't how you see it, but I've never seen a good cubist
> painting about multi-perspectives.
How would you account for the codes in a cubist painting that render for
example, the top of a glass, then the profile, etc, all within the same
painting?
> And theory aside, works can fail. They can fail in a variety of ways, and
> it happens more often than not - in modern and pre-modern art (however we
> wish to define those terms....)
For works to succeed or fail, are they not resoting to theories of what
makes them fail or succeed (albeit interiorized and perhaps unconsciously
accessed)? To suggest a work succeeds, it would seem to me implies a
judgement and evaluation, which is of itself based upon the comparison
with OTHER works, as well as a system of aesthetic values, all independent
of the work-in-itself under scrutiny.
> So my only point in this thread is, if the work itself fails, I have no
> use for the rhetoric.
The personal criteria and judgement for failure or success of a work is
itself an expression of such rhetoric.
> >> ... The others, (Delauney, Gleizes, etc.) were mostly - in my opinion
> >> - poseurs because the rap was more important than the work. For them it
> >> had to be, because the work was weak in comparison to Braque's and
> >> Picasso's.
>
> >Again, I cannot comment here because of the limits of my viewing. P & B
> >have tons of weak work as well(based on what I imagine your formal
> >criteria to be)
>
> I hope you don't mind if we look carefully at these remarks. If you
> haven't seen that much of the other guys, how would you make a comparative
> statement like that?
Well, I have seen some. For example besides my past viewing of Delunay,
there was an exhibit at the Uptown Guggenheim museum of the work of
Delunay from his 'Eiffel Tower' period: a pret comphrehensive selection of
tower works and window views. I found the work very engaging and
inspirational. I have alway sliked his Eiffel Tower works, and in many way
s feel they define the era and culture he was working in much more so than
Picasso and Braques cafe tables and portraits. The world modern world was
more powerfully evoked in these than often is the case with Picasso, for
example, whose works tend to be graiselle works in browns, blacks and
whites. Even Roger De La Fresnaye's 'Conquest of the Air' at MOMA has
adapted color in more exciting ways than the P & B's of that period.
Delanay later went on to do interesting things with color, and I find his
works also exciting. I am looking at a repo of Albert Gleizes and aftre
viewing P & B it is surprisingly fresh.
> Also, in the periods of analytical and synthetic cubism,(roughly late
> 1909 to the mid 1920s) which is pretty much the period I think we're
> discussing, Braque simply doesn't disappoint, and Picasso makes fewer bad
> paintings than any other time in his life - I think.
Well, we'll just have to disagree here.
> In fact, even the years of "proto cubism", around 1906 to 1909, still
> look very vital and exciting to me, in both painters. The worst pictures
> they made then are still much more dynamic and felt - to my mind - than
> anything G. or M. or F. made.
Again, see above.
> And while I'll say more about my formal criteria later, let me preface by
> saying it is not much theory and a lot of gut response to color and shape.
> It is just looking.
Again, I challange your claim of 'just looking'. It would seem your
'formal criteria' is in itself the very sort of extra-pictorial concept
you are arguing against.
> > ...do G and M have any works which you think worthy (mind
> >you , forgeting the idea that they were somehow 'followers', as the whole
> >leader/founder & follower thing has no bearing on the artwork whatsoever
> >from your ideological position....you are advancing a notion of the 'work
> >in itself', am I correct?
>
> I agree completely that this is the trickiest area for me - but if the
> notion of sensibility rings true to you (and I think, from other things
> you've written, that it does) then it isn't hard to see that if one
> artist is working through another artist's sensibility, and that is
> apparant, clear, unmistakable, it may be so *because* that artist is
> affecting someone else's voice.
Looking over G & M's work, I am seeing it as being very different that P &
B's. If you wish to condemn an artist for slavishly coping another, you
would do better to accuse Picasso of copying Braque or Braque of copying
Picasso, as it is their works which are often nearly indistinguishable
from one another (I have an extensive viewing history here, and still it
is often difficult to tell which of the two did a particular painting if I
do not know beforehand). On the other hand G & M and Delanay and Roger De
La Fresnaye seem to have struck out on their own courses as painters.
Perhaps your valaution is attributable to both the overpowering influence
of the historic P & B mythology as well as your own 'theory' (again,
extra-pictorial material) of how the aforementioned artists are to be
conceived as nothing other than insignificant 'poseurs' or fumblers under
a P & B umbrella, rather than artists in their own right. In color alone,
they absorbed not only the materiality of the impressionaists (which P & B
also stole and adopted) but they also incorporated color and later did
interesting things, just in this one area alone.
> The answer to your question is no, and not just because M. and G. affect
> the sensibility of P. and B., but because they fail at it.
I do not view the former artists as trying to copy each other or Picasso
and Braque, not in the least...there is no logical progression from P & B
to the work of the above artists, indeed, P & B did nothing at all that
resembled these artists works. Conversly, only P & B were interested in
copying each other, and they did, openly, often slavishly. I think your
condemnation is misdirected at the wrong artists. Your view only mirrors a
popular historical assessment, and I think that historical assessment is
due to be reconsidered and revised...it makes no sense to me whatsoever.
It is part of the over-reaching agenda of Modernist 'originality
mythology' as well as 'genius mythology'. The artwork doesn't support such
a judgement. Perhaps such a judgement served a particular historical
agenda, but is now showing wear.
> >What about Duchamp's Cubist based works?
>
> I enjoy the thinking of Duchamp as much as the next guy, and "The Large
> Glass" delights me. The fact that when it cracked he was happy delights
> me. But Duchamp couldn't paint his way out of a paper bag. He was
> illustrating. So were his brothers. The work doesn't look good and it
> looks false.
I vehemently disagree. I think Duchamp made some very fine paintings. His
Munich drawings and paintings and his Nude Descending rival anything P & B
did in that era. They are mighty fine paintings. The former have an
organic quality of form that is rather unique to Duchamp. They are
succulent works.
> >...Or works of the Futurists? Do you find any of these works engaging to
> >you?
>
> Spaghetti Cubists. Completely without resonance.
I strongly disagree here as well. To each their own.
> >... is your criteria for quality extrinsic to the 'work itself', and
> >laden with with theory of it's own?
>
> This is an excellent question, and here I have the most difficulty putting
> into words something that I feel strongly. I'm sure that approaching
> pintings as something to look at can sound like approaching paintings as
> something to think about, and they can certainly be both, but don't have
> to.
From Jasper Johns: "The critic is keeping a certian order, which is why it
is like a police function".
Consider how you are policing artistic history and from where the general
parameters of the order you are striving to maintain are historically
embedded and invested.
This would be a good opportunity for you to try to articulate an answer,
as I feel this is at the crux of an issue that you assert but repeatedly
avoid. Give it a shot and see if you put your thoughts down to explain
your position...frankly, you have yet to even vaguely support your idea of
'work in itself'. See what you can come up with.
> Plenty of painters surprise me - I don't go to museums or churches knowing
> in advance everything I will like. Signorelli, who I didn't pay much
> attention to prior to this past summer, wound up blowing me away. No
> theory as to why. Just really sublime drawing and contrast.
There is an underlying aestheitc criteria (a conceptual world) that you
are responding to.
> I'm not convinced I've answered you well - but to be honest that is the
> reason I write here: to try to get a little better at it. And no one
> better than you to take me to task.
Well, let me urge you to strive forward into examining your ideas and
giving them body, substance.
> >> For me, a poseur is someone who uses theory, background and milieu as
> >> > a *substitute* for the visual experience. Just for me.
>
> >You are skirting mighty close to it when elements of your arguement in
> >support of P & B's works includes a weighing-in and evaluation of their
> >influence, background, theory, and milieu, ...
>
> *Substitute* - I'm not denying anyone the right to discuss theory. I just
> don't want it to be a substitute for visual experience. For me. When I
> look at P. and B.'s influence a big part of it, for me, is the visual
> impact of their sensibility.
I believe that the visual and the conceptual adhere in one another...they
are inseperable.Conceiving them as seperate, is simply another theoretical
hypothesis, by one who claims to not be burdened by a theory. A world of
concept and theory resides within you, that guides your looking and your
painting. You just are not aware of it.
> >particularly problematic when
> >you privilige them as 'originals' or 'founders' or 'leaders'...
>
> I may appear to be heavily indoctrinated, but usually the originator
> precedes the copier. Cubism simply wasn't some platonic "ism" floating
> around early 20th century Paris, waiting to be adopted by any and all. To
> see it that way is to be indoctrinated, I think.
Nothing is not indoctrination. The concept of 'original' is problematic.
Originality is a myth. An 'origin' (a begining) always implies something
that preceded IT. There is a tendency to want to look back behind any
claimed origin for IT'S origin, ad infinitum. So too artistic influences.
The only way to maintain 'originality' otherwise is to import another
myth: that of romantic 'genius', a lightening flash from nowhere,
unprecedented, a break in the continuum. The emergence of something
without origin (original) is made by the 'genius'. Privilige these
mythologies and you have a standard recipe for modernist criticism...which
is what you are practicing. In order for it to work, however, the critic
will have to repress any variety of borrowings, stealings, influences,
predescesors, etc...in order to create the mythic modernist notion of
genious and originality. A small inkling of 'non-original' material is
allowed in, and it is called 'tradition' and 'artistic influence'. The
rest , particularly that which deconstructs the original, is repressed.
You have done similiar with Picasso. Picasso has traditionally been the
prime model for such a mythology. Perhaps you should evict P & B from your
pantheon, as you slowy, inch by inch, unravel their borrowings, stealing,
lifting, following of footsteps....both from artists who came before them
and their contemporaries. Strip away some of the awe inspiring historical
idol worship, historical and market positioning and priviliging, and see
what you have. A different package altogether.
> I have to run an errand, so I will post this first part and pick up where
> we left off.
Sounds like a good idea to me, I'll do the same (sans errand).
Cheers,
-N.
--
N
To reach me, remove _xxx from my address.
mark webber
Again fetching from dejanews, so please excuse the cut and paste job:
(regarding my preference for viewing "the work itself" rather than
focusing on theory, biographical information, manifestoes, etc.)
>I am conceiving it as an easier concept to grasp. It seems to me that if
>one is resorting to theories (be they of modern art, pictorial and space
>constructs, theories as o wha tmakes a painting successful or not, etc.)
>then they are resorting to material (concepts) that reside beyond the of
>viewer-and-painting. Indeed, the very notion of pictorial space...
(snip lengthy description of optics, a summary of learned seeing, etc.)
There is nothing in the writing which I've snipped (and which was really
pretty nicely written, too, at times) that I would disagree with at all.
And specifically, I do understand that there is writing and theory about
any kind of looking - including looking at paintings and enjoying them for
their ability to create visual metaphor for ideas about, for example,
physical movement in the 20th century, the effects of poverty, emotional
states, the death of the Virgin, the death of the Author - as well as -
simply looking at the formal relationships within a painting.
I understand that there is writing and theory about looking at Form in
art, experiencing Form in art. But that doesn't mean we rely on the theory
for the experience. The experince isn't coming from the theory, it's
coming from the painting.
Let's remember that this thread evolved out of my question for you about
whether or not you found Metzinger and Gleizes any good at painting.
It doesn't matter to me what baggage or conditioning you bring to their
work, whether you judge their form or not. Do they have a "sheet of
ROCKIN' slides? There is a difference between speaking of the importance
of an artist based on "the work itself" and speaking of the theories they
put forth or traveled within. What was that terrific phrase you invented?
"Purple finger stinky something?" Doesn't matter, right? If the pictures
rock?
If that difference is clear to you in another thread, and not this one,
I'm not sure I want to accept your invitation to walk you through an
esthetic experience.
>But isn't your assertion that a painting can be experienced 'first hand'
>just another theory, as reliant on theory as any other approach?
As opposed to not experiencing a painting, but knowing about the rhetoric
around it? Our meta-analysis has begun to digest its tail.
>> I understand that isn't how you see it, but I've never seen a good
>> cubist painting about multi-perspectives.
>How would you account for the codes in a cubist painting that render for
>example, the top of a glass, then the profile, etc, all within the same
>painting?
Picasso called drawing "a sum of destructions" - a notion tied to the idea
that we move shapes around until they are in the right place. Dekooning
made some paintings ("Excavation", "Attic", "Mailbox") that explored this
same notion of searching to form Form. (Looking around the attic, moving
stuff around, moving the "ground", waiting...)
I can understand why folks who don't see the history of art as a lineage
of pictorial fibbers would see something less shape oriented happening in
P. and B.'s stuff.
>> So my only point in this thread is, if the work itself fails, I have no
>> use for the rhetoric.
>>
>The personal criteria and judgement for failure or success of a work is
>itself an expression of such rhetoric.
I hope some of what I've written above clarifies how, for me, there is a
difference between the rhetoric attached to looking at the picture and the
rhetoric of manifestos, meetings and milieu.
(snip some warm disagreement about who's better than who in Cubism)
Ok, so we disagree, no harm in that is there? I'm certainly not ordering
you to see like me, or take my point of view. The short answer to my
original question is, I think, "Yes, M. and G. were rockin'"
>Consider how you are policing artistic history and from where the general
>parameters of the order you are striving to maintain are historically
>embedded and invested.
So? Unlike the critic in your Johns quote, I'm not running around telling
everyone they haven't figured everything out the way *I* want them to. I
dump paintings I don't think work - that's part of the process of learning
to see. Don't tell me you don't do the same thing. Remember those ROCKIN"
slides? What makes them rock, anyway?
>There is an underlying aestheitc criteria (a conceptual world) that you
>are responding to.
You are welcome to call the visual experience we have refered to
as an esthetic experience a conceptual one as well. But then how does
conceptual art differ from Signorelli. We have to let *some* of these
words retain meaning.
Again, I appreciate your invitation to "strive forward into examining [my]
ideas..." but I think no matter how I try to rephrase the above notion
that there is a difference between looking at work and reciting dogma,
you'l have awfully clever deconstructions waiting for me the next day.
And those, too, I'll read with pleasure!
with warmth,
Mark
-N.
mark webber <webb...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU> wrote:
(((Mark: I beleive this is part two of my response to you. Sorry for the
delay...my computer desktop has become a labyrinth, and this thread a bit
of a behemoth.)))
> I understand that there is writing and theory about looking at Form in
> art, experiencing Form in art. But that doesn't mean we rely on the theory
> for the experience. The experince isn't coming from the theory, it's
> coming from the painting.
I think Eric mentioned sometime earlier 'naturalized concepts', those that
we take for granted because they are so familiar and construct the
background landscape of our ideology, and which we take for granted as
'natural'. Something as SEEMINGLY as 'simple' as looking, at understanding
how space is prepresented in paintings, has nothing to do with nature,
simplicity, or mere looking...it appears as simple, natural,
uncomplicated, because it has become a naturalized discource. A world of
concepty and thought exist behind those conventions to make them function.
> Let's remember that this thread evolved out of my question for you about
> whether or not you found Metzinger and Gleizes any good at painting.
I maintain that it doesn't matter what artwork one is looking at, it is
still going to involve concepts. Perception is not merely a visual
process. There is a world of thought that exists behind it to make ANY
cultural viewing possible.
> It doesn't matter to me what baggage or conditioning you bring to their
> work, whether you judge their form or not.
OK. But let us bear in mind we are ALL bringing baggage to the works, non
of us are excluded...least of all those of us that because we believe to
be aware of this fact, we are somehow not subject to it.
> Do they have a "sheet of
> ROCKIN' slides? There is a difference between speaking of the importance
> of an artist based on "the work itself" and speaking of the theories they
> put forth or traveled within.
I can discern no difference...they inhere in one another. Again, the
'work-in-itself' is an impossiblity, it doesn't even remotely exist. I get
bewildered when you talk about it because I cannot imagine what such a
thing could possibly be...and I have yet to receive a cogent definition or
explication of the "work-in-itself"...it is some sort of modernist myth
that functioned for some at a point in time, as long as they were able to
repress the fact that it was an impossible to maintain fiction. I feel we
are just going in circles. Pin this thing down, this thing-in-itself. Lets
agree to do that before we take one step further.
What was that terrific phrase you invented?
> "Purple finger stinky something?" Doesn't matter, right? If the pictures
> rock?
Whether they rock or not will be a personal matter, for the artist, for
the gallerist, and for the viewer.
> If that difference is clear to you in another thread, and not this one,
> I'm not sure I want to accept your invitation to walk you through an
> esthetic experience.
I think you may have misunderstood my post about galleries and artists. In
no way was I refering to an idea of the work standing on its own as an
integral entity, self contained entity. I was merely stating that pedigree
doesn't go far in the arts. If a gallerist thinks your stuff rocks, they
wont care that your daddy was a plumber rather than an Ivy League Lawyer.
> >But isn't your assertion that a painting can be experienced 'first hand'
> >just another theory, as reliant on theory as any other approach?
>
> As opposed to not experiencing a painting, but knowing about the rhetoric
> around it? Our meta-analysis has begun to digest its tail.
The above comments make no sense to me, and have no application with
respect to what I have stated.
Let me make myself clear here...I label a work as visual art if it can be
seen, if with one's optics, something can be viewed...that something may
be a kalaidescope of festivity or something as seeemingly (but no less
optical) than a peice of paper, or a urinal. I do not know what you mean
by 'not experiencing'. I am impling that one needs to use one's eyes to
view the work...but my concept of visual perception involves more than
just rods and cones. Without the concepts, visual perception does not
exist.
> >> I understand that isn't how you see it, but I've never seen a good
> >> cubist painting about multi-perspectives.
>
> >How would you account for the codes in a cubist painting that render for
> >example, the top of a glass, then the profile, etc, all within the same
> >painting?
>
> Picasso called drawing "a sum of destructions" - a notion tied to the idea
> that we move shapes around until they are in the right place. Dekooning
> made some paintings ("Excavation", "Attic", "Mailbox") that explored this
> same notion of searching to form Form. (Looking around the attic, moving
> stuff around, moving the "ground", waiting...)
Why would you care at all what Picasso said? I thought your point was that
talk, theory , ideas were outside the artwork and were a hindrance. Why
would you go on the record stating something like that and then make an
exception of Picasso? You want to have it both ways: exclusion of theory,
ideas, concepts, and extra-pictorial material when it challanges your
beleifs, and inclusion of theory, ideas, concepts, and extra-pictorial
material when it supports or clarifies your beliefs. It is sounding as if
you are eating your tail...and confused about how you proceed...which, in
fact, I beleive, has little to do with the theories you entertain. There
does not appear to be a concord between your stated theory and your actual
practice. Time to either rethink your theories or tighten up your practice
to fit the theory...your model is out of alignment.
> I can understand why folks who don't see the history of art as a lineage
> of pictorial fibbers would see something less shape oriented happening in
> P. and B.'s stuff.
>
> >> So my only point in this thread is, if the work itself fails, I have no
> >> use for the rhetoric.
> >>
> >The personal criteria and judgement for failure or success of a work is
> >itself an expression of such rhetoric.
>
> I hope some of what I've written above clarifies how, for me, there is a
> difference between the rhetoric attached to looking at the picture and the
> rhetoric of manifestos, meetings and milieu.
>
> (snip some warm disagreement about who's better than who in Cubism)
>
> Ok, so we disagree, no harm in that is there? I'm certainly not ordering
> you to see like me, or take my point of view. The short answer to my
> original question is, I think, "Yes, M. and G. were rockin'"
>
> >Consider how you are policing artistic history and from where the general
> >parameters of the order you are striving to maintain are historically
> >embedded and invested.
>
> So? Unlike the critic in your Johns quote, I'm not running around telling
> everyone they haven't figured everything out the way *I* want them to.
Now you are adding to my words (and Johns'), that simply isn't there.
I
> dump paintings I don't think work
What do you mean by you: 'don't "think" work'?
- that's part of the process of learning
It needn't be. It could just as well be a process of categorical exclusion
and dismissal, without the humanist redeptive learning to justify it. It
could also be merely the perpetuation of biases, even ignorant biases,
even unsupportably illogical and erroneous biases.
> to see. Don't tell me you don't do the same thing. Remember those ROCKIN"
> slides? What makes them rock, anyway?
Taste. The gallerist's taste. In that example, the gallerist liking them
creating validation and valuation by a specialized viewer (one for whom
commerce is an element of evaluative criteria).
> >There is an underlying aestheitc criteria (a conceptual world) that you
> >are responding to.
>
> You are welcome to call the visual experience we have refered to
> as an esthetic experience a conceptual one as well. But then how does
> conceptual art differ from Signorelli. We have to let *some* of these
> words retain meaning.
The only thing I am unclear of in this thread is your position. I haven't
yet got a clear articulation and expression of your position. From my
vantage point, your inability to define your idea, in addition to
indulging in and refering to a process that seems to support my position,
also undermines the credence of your proposition.
> Again, I appreciate your invitation to "strive forward into examining [my]
> ideas..." but I think no matter how I try to rephrase the above notion
> that there is a difference between looking at work and reciting dogma,
> you'l have awfully clever deconstructions waiting for me the next day.
I think you can't do it because, to put it simply, no one can...it can't
be done.
Your responses have exhibited now a pattern of becoming vague when you
approach the challange of exhibiting how a painting can be a 'thing in
itself'. In all sincerity, you have not moved one millimeter closer to
communicating a workable theory of an artwork as a 'thing in itself'. I am
left after our discourse exactly where I was at the beginning of it. You
refer to this vague thing, but you do not articulte it in any passable
form. I think it is entirely mysticism...and unsound thinking. Why
maintain your alligience to it? You w3ill lose nothing in your formal
appreciation of paintings by abandonning your unsound theory. You will not
lose the love of the paintings...but you may lose some of the mythical
beliefs (part of a cultural ideology) that are not at all part of your
stated belief in 'thingin itself'. That can be a hard blow at first, I
agree, but one that can be overcome in time. It CAN make you a stronger
artist. Why not explore a bit? You most certainly have the mental
equipment to do so.
> And those, too, I'll read with pleasure!
Mark, there is no reason why one cannot relinquish an unsupportable
position of artwork-in-itself, and still maintain the pleasure in viewing
the art. Nothing need be lost by a more functional understanding of
aesthetcs, the cultural object, and your love of painting...indeed, if
there was something in the art that was fragile and risked extinction
because of a threat by the thought process, you would have already killed
it long ago: you do a fair bit of thinking about art as it is.
Cheers,
-N.
Addendum: At a certain point in this thread, i wanted to familiarize
myself with M's and G's works. I looked at my old Janson. He has some
intersting things to sy about that era and thge Cubist artists. Whereas
you are always championing P and B as the innovators, and the rest as mere
followers, he has this to say, about Juan Gris, Gris' 'HEAD OF PICASSO' is
akin to Picasso's heads of 1909 in the arbitrary relations of head to
surrounding space, but it has a mathematical control that is unrelated to
anything that Picasso, Braque, or the other cubists had attempted. From
this monochromatic painting Gris moved to a coloristic formula that may
have anticipated the developed synthetic-cubist paintings of Braque and
Picasso. The 'LA PLACE RAVIGNAN' (STILL LIFE IN FRONT OF AN OPEN WINDOW),
is an accomplished combination of Renaissance and cubist space--an anomoly
that was to intrigue Picasso, Braque, and other cubists for many years to
come, almost as an intellectual excersise in perception'. A little further
he adds, "Thus the space of the picture shifts abruptly from the ambiguity
and multifaceted structure of cubism to the cool clarity of the detail of
external space seen through the traditional Renaissance window. Gris was
one of the first cubists to realize the possibilities of this double way
of seeing." Also, "Gris was largly instrumental for bringing light and
color back into cubism". Additionally, "He was capable of a kind of
mocking humor that could be directed at himself and his own
intellectualisation of cubism (THE MAN IN THE CAFE)".
Rethinking the artists of that era, despite your (and the culture's) heavy
biases may be useful. In fact, in a painting I am working on, I am finding
connections to M's and G's art, that is, I think I have unconsciously
synthesised some of the aspects of their work that I hinted at earlier. I
have found the quirks in their art that has percolated through my own
sensibility and have created a way to look through my own paiting back
into theirs and vis-a-versa. Just one more example of the 'creative
process', if we can call it that. It has opened these painters up to me in
a way that might not have occured without this thread. This seems to be
the way I work though, synthesising my environment into a complex
variegated tapestry of visual effects. To anyone but myself, the process
may not be apparent...but I am reinventing M and G, both mythically and
stylistically into my own concern. They are no longer a couple of
forgotten deadbeats at the begining of the century.
Picasso and Braque, eat your hearts out...for the moment, you are both
second fiddle.
I propose a toast in the name of art, theory, critical reassesment...and
the future as an open book ready to be written in the crucible of artistic
imagination!