As much as I love my friend, she wasn't really able to persuade me with some of her views. For instance, she defended Jackson Pollack & Mark Rothko, who Dan has dismissed in a few of different places. I'm not an expert on either, although I've seen a few images that I don't think are particularly earthshattering. Here's a Rothko image, which Camille Paglia included on her Top Ten favourite paintings:
Ok, so my friend argued that this has to be seen in person to be experienced. While I know that seeing a painting in a book or online is not the same thing as seeing the original, I think you can still get the basic essence of the artwork. Watching a dvd or a vhs version of a film, you don't get all of the visual information that is present on the 35 mm print, but generally speaking the essence of the artwork is unaltered. So I don't really think this painting has anything that compelling about it. Maybe in the gallery the colours are astounding, but even if I was dazzled simply by the colour, could it go beyond that?
Then with Jackson Pollack, she argued that his dripping paintings were about making the viewer conscious of the fact that they were looking at a painting, as opposed to the viewer being sucked in to the 'reality' that the artwork presents. Also, that it drew attention to the process of painting, in that it makes you think of how Pollack actually moved in order to create that effect. I argue that there is nothing in those dripping paintings to make me think about any of that. There are many works out there that do draw attention to the fact that you are reading a book, or watching a film, etc., although doing so doesn't necessarily mean that the artwork is good. But it has to actually be there. I just see lots of paint splattering.
Not that I don't think it is a nice effect sometimes. But when seeing the same thing repeated several times, I don't know how much I can really get out of it in terms of ideas. It reminds me of this one time I saw a piece of sidewalk that was stained by berries that had fallen from a tree, and I thought the random splotches looked kind of pretty. I remember thinking, "I'm surprised someone hasn't mounted this on a museum wall somewhere."
Then when it came to talking about some of the ideas that are on Cosmoetica or that I've been considering, my friend thought it was a 'narrative' approach to art. I argued that this wasn't true, particularly since one of Dan's main points regarding poetry being the highest art is that it does not have to be tied to a narrative. In short, I don't think the issue in Cosmoetica criticism is narrative vs. non-narrative--it's obviously good vs. bad. I don't think that Rothko painting is snoozeville because it doesn't have a narrative; I just think there's no real idea inherent in the work. There are lots floating around the painting and that some project onto it, but they aren't actually in the painting.
Anyhow, my friend and I had very little in common when it came to our ideas on art, and it really surprised me. We were even divided on the idea of some art being objectively better than other art. She argued that what is seen as being 'good art' is relative to the values of that time period. I argued that a great artwork created today will be the exactly the same hundreds of years from now, and that the only thing preventing us from recognizing its greatness now is the refusal or inability to be more objective. And also that future generations can be a bit more objective because by then they aren't concerned with who Jorie Graham was friends with, or they won't be concerned with the fact that she won some little award called the Pulitzer. They just will want a good read, and won't find it with her.
26 comments:
Note how all your pals ideas are cribbed and unoriginal.
http://mvdg.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/book-review/
I said similar things in this review, and MVDG agreed.
I only think that narrative has import in film, that is overlooked. After all, it is 'motion pictures' not pictured motion.'
The Rothko presents nothing. Could it be a dusk scened? Perhaps? The Pollacks are no more artificial than a Rembrandt, because we all know that human visages are three dimensional and motive, not made of oils and still. These are all over-rationalizations made by bad critics like Clement Greenberg.
Imagine trying to defend Contempt or Persona as great films simply because they open with the artifices of making the viewer aware they are films.
It's the way they do so, and what the artifices contain, that determine their quality, not the intent. Persona is a better film than Contempt for myriad reasons, none of which have to do with breaking the fourth wall.
This is simply a dialectic tool to deflect real analysis.
If I get Paglia for my DSI, I'll have to grill her over Rothko and Wanda Coleman- eegh!
"she argued that his dripping paintings were about making the viewer conscious of the fact that they were looking at a painting, as opposed to the viewer being sucked in to the 'reality' that the artwork presents. Also, that it drew attention to the process of painting, in that it makes you think of how Pollack actually moved in order to create that effect."
This is an example of justifying a mediocre artist via the use of his intent. I remember going to an art show and them talking about this painter and how he liked to piss and crap in his paint so he could "test the purity of painting". Give me a break.
People used to call JP basically wallpaper and I agree. I don't think much of that painting, and I don't think "being there in person" to experience something can make a layer of colors more astounding. When I saw those landscape painters in person and saw how huge they were, that they covered an entire wall, it was pretty astounding. But their paintings are astounding just looking at them on a blog.
I used to be surprised, but not any more, how very few when they think about their ideas on art can agree. Just like with the email I sent to you about KB--people with some similar interests can very often have nothing in common and I find I'm better off hanging out with an insurance salesman.
Your image of the berries on the ground might have made a nice photo, and perhaps someone could have painted it and made it great art, but panting is a lot like poetry in that it's all about the detail (the shadows, the positions of people's bodies, etc) to create a whole effect. Sort of like when people imitate Plath for her melodrama and missing the fact that she was a great craftsman (or woman) with words and line breaks. Edward Hopper isn't just about lonely people sitting around, but the layering that goes into the entire work. Paintings are like poems that way--they're not about narrative but a moment. Someone witnessing can imbue a narrative but that has nothing to do with whether the work succeeds or not.
Your friend's more right than you gave her credit for. For one thing, she's actually looked at the actual paintings you dismiss without ever having actually looked at—and you admit as much.
Paintings reproduced in small size in books and online really DO lack a great deal of deatil, not to mention light and awareness. Reproductions of paintings are like xerox copies: they reproduce an image of the thing without capturing the experience of seeing the original. All you're left that you can look at is the obvious content; you entirely miss the brushstrokes, the layered detail, and the aspects of relfectivity that change as you look at the painting from different angles.
I've stood in front of several Rothkos in my lifetime, for example, all of which were larger than 8 feet tall by 4 feet wide, and there is a luminosity that comes from them that reproductions totally miss. There is also the sheer sense of scale that a painting that large has, that a 4-inch reproduction on your blog is never going to capture. Your argument that films, when reproduced on TV screens, don't actually miss much content, makes the mistake of confusing content with experience.
Actually, Dan's argument is wrong for the same reason: you're expecting a certain kind of content (namely, depiction or representation of physical reality) where there is none, and where none was intended. it's a category error: it's like looking at the wall of a house and expecting it to reveal a sunset. Your expectations of what the actual artwork is—or what you presume it should be—get in the way of your seeing what's actually there.
So you don't "get" Rothko—so what? But until you've stood in front of one for awhile, rather than merely looked at reproductions of one (always at tiny size relative to the original, one might add), don't assume you've actually seen (experienced) the painting. You haven't.
Art: I get Rothko and Pollack- and it's not much.
Sorry, but I've seen Christo-like huge art that is just colors, inside and out, and they are nice, in the way fashion is nice.
Here is a perfect example, that utterly subverts the claims for POllack's being a great artist. Look at the famous painting, Christina's World, by Andrew Wyeth.
Now, look at its lower left quadrant. It's the grass on the hill, but if sectioned off it bears a remarkable similarity to a full Pollack painting.
In other words, the idea, metaphor- political, personal, of the crippled or injured child, subsumes the randomness that exists below her. Pollack's 'paintings' do not.
They are open to infinite interpretations, depending on the vagaries and ignorance of the viewer: they have been claimed as representing moods, atomic clouds, atomic shells, etc. But, where is the evidence for that? It's just a whim, a hook- like in advertising, to 'sell' the product.'
Art: 'I've stood in front of several Rothkos in my lifetime, for example, all of which were larger than 8 feet tall by 4 feet wide, and there is a luminosity that comes from them that reproductions totally miss. There is also the sheer sense of scale that a painting that large has, that a 4-inch reproduction on your blog is never going to capture. Your argument that films, when reproduced on TV screens, don't actually miss much content, makes the mistake of confusing content with experience.'
Content defines experience. Open a can of sardines or a can of jumping snakes and your experience is difference. Yes, there is a slight difference in seeing Lawrence of Arabia in theaters or on DVD- but that's just scale- as if listening to Wagner at 2 or 10 on your volume dial. The work is utterly the same, though.
At 12 feet wide, or 4 inches wide, a monochrome Rothko is still a gimmick. Yes, pink can calm one down, which is why interrogation rooms are painted pink. So? That's an emotional response, and art is more than emotion. Even were one to concede that Rothko used color brighter and better than any other painter in history, his paintings- like Pollack's, are intellectually nihil.
Imagine claiming someone beautiful and only seeing their right profile. You never see the left, filled with pustules and wens, nor see the utter vacuity of their full mien. You would have a wholly distorted opinion of that person's beauty and sexual charms, plus you'd never even see if they were anorexic, 500 lbs, or had the body of the Elephant Man.
Your approach is that of the Seven Blind Men and the elephant. Art has to be felt in totality, not just patting the leg and thinking the art is like a tree trunk.
Art: 'Dan's argument is wrong for the same reason: you're expecting a certain kind of content (namely, depiction or representation of physical reality) where there is none, and where none was intended. it's a category error: it's like looking at the wall of a house and expecting it to reveal a sunset. Your expectations of what the actual artwork is—or what you presume it should be—get in the way of your seeing what's actually there.'
Actually not. I have no expectations of any art I've not seen before. It's the burden of the artist to engage, and if he does not, so be it. But after the fact rationalizations for art- the 'it's art because I say so,' gambit is folly.
Duchamp, in his own way, proved this a century ago.
Let's deal with what is presented, not what the artist, nor his acolytes and champions claim, otherwise the critic becomes a publicist, and there are too many whores in the world, art and real.
Thanks for all the comments.
The thing about the berries on the sidewalk was a bit of a joke. Something like that or throwing paint randomly on a canvas can look kind of neat sometimes, but there's little depth as an artwork. But I agree that the effect could be incorporated into something in a creative way.
Art: I don't agree that I have to be in front of the actual painting in order to get the basic message. I don't think Dan's film reviews would change if he went and watched most of those movies on 35 mm; the dvd won't capture the full effect of 35 mm, but the basic essence of the artwork remains intact. In the same way, I get the basic idea when I listen to an mp3 of a song that isn't the greatest quality. I'll also remind you that there are many people who have looked at reproductions of many classic artworks in books, and will never get to go to various places in Europe to see the originals, but that doesn't prevent them from appreciating what they've seen as art.
I don't know what you're talking about with regards to my expectations, because I don't have any. I'm saying that those artworks don't have any substance, especially not the ideas my friend argued were inherent in the works, and I'm saying that strictly by looking at what's there. The things she said about 'commenting on process' were things she heard someone say or read somewhere--it's not inherent in the work. The issue isn't representational vs. abstract.
There's nothing to "get" in that Rothko painting I referred to. The whole thing about 'not getting' things like that painting has been the standard line in art for years. I've seen it happen enough in the various arts to not be intimidated when its in a genre I'm less familiar with. I have some guy on my blog trying to tell me all about the sophistication in the work of Bukowski. I just look at what's actually there and see for myself that he's full of it.
Would you say that someone wouldn't have to actually read a poem in order to get the basic idea of the content? I can hear the howls of outrage if someone were to claim that about a poem.
Then why would you say the same thing about painting? (I.e. that you don't actually have to look at a painting.) So c'mon, get real. Play fair.
As for the narrative vs. non-narrative dispute, that's not on target. The real difference relative to the artwork under discussion is between representation and non-representation. In which case, "content" becomes a rather different thing. I still think you're projecting your ideas of what content is or should be all over something where it doesn't really apply. That's why comparing Pollack to Wyeth is also BS, because they occupy different artistic spaces, styles, and goals. Wyeth's paintings are always narrative, for one thing, as well as representational: they always tell a story. That his stories are often very existentional and disturbing is one reason he was a great modernist, despite being a representational painter—which is what my point about narrative and representation is about: they are entirely different axes of meaning (or non-meaning) and shouldn't be thought to be the same thing.
I can think of a few philosophers would argue that content has nothing to do with experience, much less defining it. Start with Fichte, for one. But to me that just underlines my point, that you're conflating content with representation, meaning, and narrative. Maybe I'm not getting your point, there, but it sure seems that way.
You know that I respect your guys' opinions in all the areas in which you have made yourselves experts, such as cinema or comic books (both inherently narrative forms). This is not one of those areas.
Here's the point: you're comparing apples and oranges, and it's not working. You're conflating content with forms of meaning that don't apply. And you're using exactly the same rhetorical tools of dismissal that you mock others for using. Again, play fair.
(I.e. that you don't actually have to look at a painting.)
Anthony wasn't saying that he doesn't have to look at a painting, but that he doesn't have to go there in person to see if a painting is "great" or not. I basically look at it like this, if the painting is something I could have painted, it's not any good. Why? Because I suck. Just spreading colors across a large canvas might make it pretty colors, but I still consider that lazy art.
Art:
To say that one has to see the actual painting vs. a poster or reproduction is akin to saying that one has not read Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening until you've seen the actual handwritten holograph. That's absurd.
And, as for the Ab Ex phonies- this is why I love Andy Warhol. I recall seeing an interview done with Warhol and an art critic. Was a 70s talk show- MIke Douglas or the like. Anyway, the critic went on and on about a particular painting of Warhol's, and the critic made an ass of himself, telling the host to 'Note Andy's brushstroke here,' etc. The critic got off on personalizing his connection, with the Andy, not Warhol personalisms. Anyway, after 3 or 4 min's of masturbatory ejaculation, the host turned to Warhol, and asked him if the critic was correct.
Warhol, in his perfectly wry and timid faux mannerism, said, 'My helper, X, did this piece, at the factory. He used a paint roller.'
The critic turned red.
So much for imbuement and BS about the brushstroke and technique in the painting. Again, compare the quadrant of Christina's World with any Pollack, and you'll see Pollack did NOTHING special. Wyeth was far superior.
'Wyeth's paintings are always narrative, for one thing, as well as representational: they always tell a story. That his stories are often very existentional and disturbing is one reason he was a great modernist, despite being a representational painter—which is what my point about narrative and representation is about: they are entirely different axes of meaning (or non-meaning) and shouldn't be thought to be the same thing.'
1) Read Pollack's critics, and they often imbue narratives into Pollack, and claim that as his greatness.
2) There have been utter amateurs that have done drip paintings that experts could not tell were not original Pollack's. It's much harder to try and reproduce, or mimic Rembrandt. Sorry, but if a child can replicate something w/o effort, that says all the claims for the Pollack are based upon what Pollack allegedly intended, not what he accomplished.
3) http://www.cosmoetica.com/B464-DES397.htm
Watch this Welles' film, F For Fake. It neatly punctures many of the claims you are supporting; as it's about a truly brilliant art forger.
'I can think of a few philosophers would argue that content has nothing to do with experience, much less defining it.'
Appeal to Authority Fallacy. Even if one could survive in a dark vacuum- utter vacuity, the very content, or the lack of light, gravity, etc. would NECESSARILY define your experience. It physically could NOT.
'Here's the point: you're comparing apples and oranges, and it's not working. You're conflating content with forms of meaning that don't apply. And you're using exactly the same rhetorical tools of dismissal that you mock others for using. Again, play fair.'
Art, you are the one making a definitional difference between the art and its reproduction. Question, is a reproduced reel of film any more genuine than the first completed reel.
Is my viewing of, say 2001, any diff if the computer cleaned up version removes dust and hair particles? Yes? But is it fundamentally diff? Again, is a holograph of Song of Myself gonna do anything to increase my appreciation of the poem? no. It may give me eyestrain in trying to decipher Whitman's chickenscratch, though.
And, yes, obviously a huge canvas of the Hudson School is diff than a reproduction in a coffee table book, but only by scale- just like Ride of The Valkyries is diff at 10 than 2. But, that didd is only scale or volume. The art remains, or as Led Zep said, The Song Remains The Same.
Since experience is subjective, it is utterly fruitless to compare yours to mine to Jess's to Anthony re: any phenomenon. Perhaps only in a study of reactions to stimuli is is helpful.
What can be objectively measured, is what is left on the page, the canvas, the ear, the eye, etc.
You may weep at a shot in Antonioni that may estrange Anthony. The director may have intended one, both, or neither reaction, but your tears and Anthony's disgust have no critical weight in evaluating that shot, scene, or film.
I love Godzilla films, but Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster is not a classic.
I'm trying to keep the approach all apples, whether the thing is apples, oranges, or blueberries.
Don't start out with grapes and end with avocadoes, with a detour thru plums, instead.
Art,
The real equivalent to talking about a poem that I hadn't actually read would be to talk about an image that I hadn't physically looked at--regardless of whether that image was the actual painting or a reproduction.
I'm not going to rely too much on what any given philosopher has said. They may not be correct, and the appeal to an authoritative figure doesn't mean that a good argument has been made. That critic I mentioned in my Native Son post referred to Aristotle, and clearly his idea that the author had to resemble his characters is silly.
I don't think rep vs non-rep is the issue. I've not made any blanket statements about paintings that are non-representational. It seems to be one of those things that can divide people, and there are many of those kinds of arguments in the arts, but I think it is beside the point. 'Representational' and 'non-representational' say nothing about good or bad.
'I'm trying to keep the approach all apples, whether the thing is apples, oranges, or blueberries.
Don't start out with grapes and end with avocadoes, with a detour thru plums, instead.'
I like strawberries.
Ed Harris repainted all of JP's paintings for the Pollack film, since they could not use the originals. Everyone was saying how no one could tell the diff--implying that Harris has talent as a painter. I don't know if that says that as much as it does to undermine JP's talent without even realizing they had.
I have to put my 2 cents in. The friend sounds very sensible - she offers a good sense of the critical consensus on Pollock and Rothko, which seems right for the question of why people think they are important. Art Durkee has said most of what I would add to that - his comments about conflating content with representation sound just about right. I'm not sure you're making any arguments against Rothko or Pollock that go beyond saying they aren't about anything. (Plus some boilerplate about a 5-year being able to do it, which I should ignore.) You say you don't judge good and bad based on whether the art is representational, but I don't see any evidence for that. Maybe a defense of Barnett Newman or Mondrian would help.
I do think that seeing the actual painting is important - but probably not enough to make you start loving something you hated. Still - you can't underestimate the effect. Even a painting that seems perfectly easy to appreciate in reproduction - a Vermeer, say, in a nice full color plate - is something entirely different when seen in person. You see more - you see the surface, you see the gradations of light and line, the texture of the paint. It is probably easier to imagine an actual Vermeer from a picture than it is to imagine an actual Rothko or Pollock (or a Monet or Van Gogh - especially a late Monet, where the picture starts to approach abstraction, and the size of the canvas itself takes on increasing importance) - but the thing itself is still a different world. If I were comparing it to reading poetry - I would say, seeing a picture of a painting is like reading a translation of a poem. And just as some poems are probably easier to grasp in translation than others, some paintings are easier to get as a picture than others - but you're never all the way there.
And I have to note: saying the difference between a large canvas and a reproduction is just as difference of scale is quite wrong: not least because scale is an integral part of the form of many paintings. As is the assumed position of the viewer - this is very clear with Monet (especially the late ones) - they clearly manipulate the position of the viewer, having a different affect from different angles and distances. Reproductions of those paintings are definitely different works than the real things...
And finally: Dan's Andy Warhol anecdote means almost the opposite of what he says it means. The story itself is making fun of someone reading Warhol's paintings as if they were by Jackson Pollock - at the same time as it emphasizes Warhol's methods. The reverse makes just as much sense - Pollock didn't have someone else paint his canvases with a roller. Also - Warhol constantly talked about his methods - probably for the same reason Pollock and his supporters publicized his methods - to teach people how to see the work. The point of the story is not that technique doesn't matter - the opposite: it is that technique does matter, and it varies from painter to painter and reading one painter through the style of another is silly. There's more - there's the fact that Warhol's techniques were meant to contrast his work with the abstract expressionists - to get away from all their heroism and angst and physicality. A fact he certainly hammered home, constantly playing up the copying, the mass production, the industrial" methods, the anonymity, and so on, involved in his work. Warhol's methods are important to his meaning; so was Pollock's. (So was Monet's for that matter, since I keep pulling him in here.)
Hey weepingsam,
Would you still think my friend was sensible if I told you that she doesn't like Monet? ;) That was one part of our discussion I didn't mention. Of course, that's her emotional reaction, which she's entitled to. It doesn't really say anything about Monet's actual work, though.
I'd agree that what my friend says is in line with the critical consensus on those paintings by Rothko & Pollack, but who says that consensus is correct? There's a critical consensus about the French New Wave in film as well, but I think Dan's writing so far on some of the key practitioners & the most famous examples (Breathless, The 400 Blows) does a good job of challenging those accepted ideas. I think there's going to be a lot of cleanup when it comes to critical reassessment of the arts in the 20th century.
The representational vs. non representational thing is an easy way to shut down anyone who critiques something like that Rothko painting. There's always the implication that the person making the critique is 'narrow-minded' or something. I say that there's no real depth to that image, or any great use of artistic skill (which certainly can be observed in a reproduction in an art book). A painting isn't more valuable (artistically) simply because it is representational. After all, we all know that there are a zillion dull paintings of bowls of fruit out there.
Also, I don't hate the Rothko painting, as hate is a rather strong word that implies emotion. I don't really have an emotional response to it. Perhaps if I saw the painting in person I would have an emotional response to that strong pink, but how is that different from my reacting emotionally to the colour of my bedroom wall?
Funny you would bring up translation, because Jessica and I were just talking about Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova, and I was saying that I can recall much what I've read of Tsvetaeva, despite the fact that I'm not even reading it in the original language. Aside from Elaine Feinstein's good translating, the poems have something in them that survive the jolt from Russian to English, and as Jessica was saying, make them better than Akhmatova's.
Weepy:
'Art Durkee has said most of what I would add to that - his comments about conflating content with representation sound just about right. I'm not sure you're making any arguments against Rothko or Pollock that go beyond saying they aren't about anything. (Plus some boilerplate about a 5-year being able to do it, which I should ignore.)'
No one conflated content w representation. The arguments against the Ab Exers are not only that their work is intellectually nihil, or dishonest, but that there is no immanent skill involved. Look at what Warhol, whom I paraphrase above. He existed precisely because he saw what BS the Ab Exers pushed, and went even further. However, as silly as his soup cans were, they were still a bit above the Ab Exers in that there wa sa thing to latch on to in a non-subjective way.
And it DOES say alot if something is championed not merely as good, but great or genius, and a novice like Harris, or a child- recall the girl who was the 'Pint-sized Picasso'?- can reproduce a painting, and fool a so-called expert.
No five year old could write Stopping By Woods, but if they can reproduce a Pollack or Rothko, that says oodles of the worth of the thing produced by the artist.
If you cannot see that, you'd better get thee to an art class.
'You say you don't judge good and bad based on whether the art is representational, but I don't see any evidence for that.'
Where did anyone claim that? There needs to be an exhibition of skill for something to be art. Simply turning over a urinal, like Duchamp, or penciling in a dot on a blank sheet of paper, or leaving an apple on a pedestal to rot, is not art. It's fraud.
'Found art' is a misnomer, for all art has to be contextualized- whether in a photo, a collage, or into a painting or sculpture.
But gimmick art abounds- from folk who think dropping a crucifix into a glas of urine and photoing it, people who think a math problem is a poem, or people who 'paint' with excrement, or smear themselves in it as they stand naked on a stage.
You may like monochrome paintings and women smeared in shit, but that does not make it art.
'I do think that seeing the actual painting is important - but probably not enough to make you start loving something you hated.'
Drop the love/hate terminology and it will show you are serious about objective criticism. All you have written is emotional and biased.
For the record, I have seen Pollocks and Rothkos, and other gimmick art- from Warhol to Christo, up close, and frankly, the argument does not wash- that one needs to experience it up close. I've been to the Empire State Building, and the only thing diff than admiring it from a book detailing its archtecture, is that one can be 'high' upon it. But I can do that in an ugly old airplane. To claim that seeing a Rothko up close is fundamentally different than seeing a poster of it, in scale or not, is merely rationalization.
Yes, I've seen dried dollops of oil that look like ice cream cones, and it's interesting, but paintings are not sculptures, nor are they velvet works where the eyes of the clown will follow you if you move right to left.
Again, Wagner is still Wagner at 2 or 10 at yuor dial. The work does not change, only how you approach it, and that has nothing to do w the work. YOU are parallaxing IT. The work remains. If you cannot make that leap into understanding the diff, then you fundamentally do not get art.
'I would say, seeing a picture of a painting is like reading a translation of a poem.'
And this proves it. My holograph comparison is tight, because a translated poem is fundamentally diff- it aims for the gist, not the totality, but whether handwritten or typed, a poem is the same. Put a Russian Cyrillic alphabet work into English Roman, and you have a diff beast.
'saying the difference between a large canvas and a reproduction is just as difference of scale is quite wrong: not least because scale is an integral part of the form of many paintings. As is the assumed position of the viewer'
This is the beauty of visual art, compared to musical, etc. It scales. The eye is easily deceived into buying into scalar diffs. Ask an illusionist, or one who crafts visual trickery. If you were to put a camera lens (as eye substitute) at a certain position from a 5 foot painting, and its one foot reproduction or imitation, it would be almost impossible to tell which was the larger piece, because all referents would be gone. Sorry.
'The point of the story is not that technique doesn't matter - the opposite: it is that technique does matter, and it varies from painter to painter and reading one painter through the style of another is silly.'
You really are off-base. Warhol delighted in showing up the critics. And the anecdote emphasizes how little the appeal to authority means. Clearly, Warhol scorned critics and spent a career showing them up- even in film. Pop art was a direct reaction to the excesses of Ab Ex and phonies like Pollock.
'Warhol's methods are important to his meaning; so was Pollock's.'
Actually not, since Warhol consistently championed the end product- be it mass-made or the angsty work of a genius, something he most certainly never ascribed to Pollock and co.
Anthony: See how difficult it is. The simplest things get twisted all out of proportion when objectivity is lost.
And you're right about consensus. It means nothing. It's also one of the reasons that I embrace no SChneideriam school of thought. Aside from objectively approaching crit and trying new and old ways to achieve only quality in art, all else is open. But look at the blinders people put on.
Yet, no one should point to me in their own Appeal to Authority. Schneider said A, B, and C means nothing if it's ultimately wrong. The diff is I accept the challenges and do not engage in hagiography. Remove hagiography and thetre's little left to much art of the last few decades, in many fields. It's all become a cult of personality driven thing, with the craft of art way in the background.
Now, go back and actually read weeping's and Art's comments, and note the # of emotive words, and appeals to emotion they use. Then, look at my comments- here or on other posts or blogs.
My lack of emotional approach is not innately better because I say so, but damned if it doesn't keep me more focused on the subject matter. So which is, via Occam's Razor, the more likely approach to objectively critique art, life, or war?
There is a cat on my lap and I enjoy its presence while I look in an artbook at a representation of a Renoir painting of a sleeping woman in a chair... with a cat on her lap.
Anthony:
Would you still think my friend was sensible if I told you that she doesn't like Monet?
Oh, I'd probably say she was wrong... but yeah, we're all entitled to our likes and dislikes, even to what we thing is good and bad - but it's still wise to try to understand why other people take seriously things we don't.
The representational vs. non representational thing is an easy way to shut down anyone who critiques something like that Rothko painting.
Not so much. It is an observation about what you and Dan and Jessica have written: you consistently defend representational art above non-representational art - I'm not sure I've ever seen a defence of anything non-representational. Certainly not visual art.... I'm happy to be shown wrong on this. But I don't expect it. Look at Dan's response to me: he says straight out that Warhol is better than Pollock because he painted recognizable things. It's more complicated than that, I know - representation is part of it, not all. Look at Dan's arguments against my claims that the painting itself is fundamentally different from a reproduction of it. He treats paintings as if they were pictures, and just pictures - he dismisses everything I said about the object itself: the size, the material, the way a painting is meant to interact with the person looking at it. The fact that you can photograph a tiny Whistler to be the same size as a huge Monet is not proof that scale doesn't matter - it's proof that photographs strip out information.
In all this - I don't quite mean that valuing representational art is not a valid approach to art: but I am saying it is not appropriate for all art. It's possible to talk about paintings just as pictures and stories, insightfully even; it's possible to talk about film just as drama and works of fiction, insightfully even. But neither is going to do justice to all of art or all of fiction, even when it works. A Vermeer or a Sargent are just as much objects as a Rothko or Pollock, and ignoring their material and formal qualities is just as limiting.
Meanwhile: Dan -
Now, go back and actually read weeping's and Art's comments, and note the # of emotive words, and appeals to emotion they use.
That's a very good idea. Go back to my remarks about why you should see a painting in person and count up the appeals to emotion. After the first line, of course, where I said seeing it in person probably won't change your emotional response to it. Are "gradations of light and line... texture of the paint" emotional qualities? While you're up there, look for the emotional dimensions of claiming both Warhol and Pollock made a lot of their particular methods of art making. You're not going to have much luck prying me out of my formalist and historicist habits....
Weepy:
'it's still wise to try to understand why other people take seriously things we don't.'
To a degree. If someone clearly has an insane POV, or a bigoted POV, there really is nothing to say. Many peopel have wasted many research dollars into why serial killers kill or why Anti-Semites hate Jews, but these things are so infinitely complex that they are easy, they simply are, and to attempt to understand why a Klansman hates a black becomes an exercise in mental masturbation. And there are correlatives in art.
'you consistently defend representational art above non-representational art'
No, the defense is of quality. Igf the nonrepresentational, as often does, is foisted merely because it is non-representational, then that is a bias by the foister. Of course, in reality, in visual arts, there is no such thing as non-rep art. The Rothko's are definitely representational- there are usually two haves of color, which could be a horizon, or a number of other things. The POINT is that what it represents is simply not deep and it takes little skill to craft. It is these sidesteps of qualitative judgments that reveal the bankruptcy of the posit.
'I'm happy to be shown wrong on this'
Smile!
'Look at Dan's response to me: he says straight out that Warhol is better than Pollock because he painted recognizable things.'
No, I did not. Where did I say that? I actually typed, 'Clearly, Warhol scorned critics and spent a career showing them up- even in film. Pop art was a direct reaction to the excesses of Ab Ex and phonies like Pollock.' Warhol was superior top Pollock because he was aware of the fraudulence of pop art whereas Pollock was not, or did not admit it. Also, he showed clear skill in his work- rep or not. Look at the early Pollocks and he was at best a competent mimic of Picasso. Warhol was far more singular in his subject matter- death subjects that had not been shown in mass art, etc.
'Look at Dan's arguments against my claims that the painting itself is fundamentally different from a reproduction of it. He treats paintings as if they were pictures, and just pictures - he dismisses everything I said about the object itself: the size, the material, the way a painting is meant to interact with the person looking at it. The fact that you can photograph a tiny Whistler to be the same size as a huge Monet is not proof that scale doesn't matter - it's proof that photographs strip out information.'
I dismissed nothing. I wrote: 'This is the beauty of visual art, compared to musical, etc. It scales. The eye is easily deceived into buying into scalar diffs. Ask an illusionist, or one who crafts visual trickery. If you were to put a camera lens (as eye substitute) at a certain position from a 5 foot painting, and its one foot reproduction or imitation, it would be almost impossible to tell which was the larger piece, because all referents would be gone. Sorry.'
That is not dismissal, that is refutation- a difference.
It's not proof that photos strip out information, for they also can add information, depending upon the angle of the photo, and the lighting. What it is proof of is that art is scalar.
It is also proof that a dollop of oil that rises 3/100s of a millimeter higher than a similarly colored dollop three inches away has no actual relevance to the intellectual nor aesthetic content, or, at best, minuscule.
What folk like you try to do, in these arguments- and it's ironic, because the last few days I've been forwarding about these emails from a psychotic bad wannabe poet, who uses similarly failed dialectic tacks, is to point out the most mundane or irrelevant spects of an art, and define the whole art by that, rather than the things that are essential to the art, and determine its excellence or irrelevance. It's akin to arguing whether or not Halle Berry is a sex woman because on the inside of her right knee she has an unsightly mole with a hair in its middle, all the while forgetting the symmetrical perfection of her cheekbones, breasts,
eyes, etc.
'In all this - I don't quite mean that valuing representational art is not a valid approach to art: but I am saying it is not appropriate for all art. It's possible to talk about paintings just as pictures and stories, insightfully even; it's possible to talk about film just as drama and works of fiction, insightfully even. But neither is going to do justice to all of art or all of fiction, even when it works. A Vermeer or a Sargent are just as much objects as a Rothko or Pollock, and ignoring their material and formal qualities is just as limiting.'
No one has championed that. What we have claimed is that you are trying to elevate these lesser qualities- the Berry knee mole, above the more relevant and important matters.
'That's a very good idea. Go back to my remarks about why you should see a painting in person and count up the appeals to emotion.'
1) The friend sounds very sensible - she offers a good sense of the critical consensus on Pollock and Rothko, which seems right for the question of why people think they are important. (in referencing the emotive response of another, in defense)
2)but probably not enough to make you start loving something you hated.
3) but yeah, we're all entitled to our likes and dislikes (in defense of emotive components to criticism)
So, 3 emotive responses in 2 posts. Granted, less than Art or many other people, but still 3 more than
necessary.
The point is- aside from Weepy's unfortunate tendency to strawman- something that seems endemic to the blog format, the main flaw is that both he and Art- and many people, use the- and I think I'll use it as a Dialectic Law- call it the Halle Berry Knee Mole Gambit, to try to invalidate the cogent aspects of an art form, in favor of lesser aspects that merely are used to justify their emotive responses.
This is, of course, not unique to art, but it makes for bad criticism.
Anthony has a good BS detector, and I think my prior paragraph is superfluous to him. But let it remain for others.
'Look at Dan's response to me: he says straight out that Warhol is better than Pollock because he painted recognizable things.'
No, I did not. Where did I say that?
Up toward the top: "However, as silly as his soup cans were, they were still a bit above the Ab Exers in that there wa sa thing to latch on to in a non-subjective way."
That looks pretty straight forward to me.
But I have to note this little dig: ...aside from Weepy's unfortunate tendency to strawman...
You have no business accusing anyone else of attacking straw men. It gets old real fast and it gets real old when you can't seem to make a straight answer to anyone who disagrees with you. I mean - look at your 3 examples of my "emotive responses" - the first has nothing whatsoever to do with emotions ("sensible" is not an emotion); the other two specifically separate emotional responses from critical responses. (Not to mention the fact that only one comes from the piece of direct criticism I posted - and I copped to it up front.) So - one example you're just wrong about, the other two you're reversing what I said to make your point. Who's inventing straw men?
I don't expect you (all) to agree with me: what interests me about this blog is that you (all) care about things I care about, but have very different ideas about them. That's interesting - I'm curious about what you see that I don't see, and what I see that you don't see; what you value that I don't and so on. I don't expect to change your minds, or have you change mine - but I'm interested in what you think, and why, and how it compares to what I think.
But I wonder: are you (Dan) able to have a conversation with someone who disagrees with you? Do you care what I think? what I actually think, what I say and what I mean? (What anyone, other than yourself, thinks and means?) For that matter, can you make it through 2 posts without name calling? Or changing the subject, or substituting some cute analogy for the actual arguments you're supposedly debating, or just flat ignoring the question... We are, undoubtedly, going to end up disagreeing: but that's no reason why we can't try to disagree with what we both, actually, say and believe, and not some imaginary version thereof.
Weepy: 'Up toward the top: "However, as silly as his soup cans were, they were still a bit above the Ab Exers in that there wa sa thing to latch on to in a non-subjective way."
That looks pretty straight forward to me.'
***Only if you do not know the definitional difference between non-subjective and representational. This is why one needs to read the words chosen, not merely argue against what one believes an opponent states.
Weepy: 'You have no business accusing anyone else of attacking straw men.'
I stand by my 3 examples. But, a nice diversionary tactic, since you claimed none, I pointed out three, and we get now, 'It gets old real fast and it gets real old when you can't seem to make a straight answer to anyone who disagrees with you.'
Gee, seems like an emotional response to being denuded. So, that's 4 in 3 posts. Unless we exempt this post as somehow extra-dialectical, since it's a rant, not an argument.
Weepy: 'But I wonder: are you (Dan) able to have a conversation with someone who disagrees with you? Do you care what I think? what I actually think, what I say and what I mean? (What anyone, other than yourself, thinks and means?) For that matter, can you make it through 2 posts without name calling? Or changing the subject, or substituting some cute analogy for the actual arguments you're supposedly debating, or just flat ignoring the question... We are, undoubtedly, going to end up disagreeing: but that's no reason why we can't try to disagree with what we both, actually, say and believe, and not some imaginary version thereof.'
Q1: Yes, but I don't brink strawmanning, or BS arguments. Do not state that I have stated something, when clearly I have not. There's no need for it, and the deceptive practice is a de facto cession of the argument.
However, I like arguing, but only if maturely done and honestly. I realize the Internet allows for anonymous BS, and most take advantage of this to let their Monsters of the Id roam free. I don't hide my name or my views. I also do not cloud my critiques w emotions.
This is why I am a great critic.
Q2 and 3: No. Since you are an anonymous online person, it means little to me, unless you stoop to dishonest tactics, as mentioned. But, this is nothing against you. I don't really care what Anthony or other people think, if you mean am I concerned about their emotional well being. I'd prefer that people act like adults and argue maturely, but whether they agree with me or not is irrelevant. If I am in the right- and I never waste time playing Devil's Advocate, I will argue the point. Why? Because it is correct, and needs to be heard. But, if you take umbrage over my disagreement, so? At least I've been up front and not practiced dialectic dishonestly.
That's rare on blogs. But I'll not apologize for being right.
Q3: I have not name called. Pointing out dishonest tactics and wittily subverting them is not namecalling. But the accusation could be seen as a 5th emotional response in 3 posts. Or, is that unfair of me to point out?
'Or changing the subject, or substituting some cute analogy for the actual arguments you're supposedly debating, or just flat ignoring the question'
More strawmanning. Unlike most people, when I argue, I answer point for point, as I am doing here. That way I cannot be accused of what you have just done and accused me of.
My analogizing, however, was not cute, but very apt. The holograph example was far more cogent than your translation one, for the reasons explained above. That makes it 'accurate,' not cute.
I do tire, though, of people who start arguments, or join in, but then when they start losing, resorting to dishonesty and emotional defensiveness. But, that's YOUR problem, Weepy, not mine. Just don't whine that I am pointing it out, and my doing so is an 'attack.'
AS the PC say, 'Own your actions.'
'We are, undoubtedly, going to end up disagreeing: but that's no reason why we can't try to disagree with what we both, actually, say and believe, and not some imaginary version thereof.'
***I agree, but, as shown in these examples, it is you who are distorting. To quote someone I disagree with on about 90% of all things, William F. Buckley: 'Knock it off, Weepy!'
Dan:
I kinda figured the answer was No.
Anyway - back on topic: It occurs to me I've probably thrown some words around ("representational" - the "picture" vs. the "painting") without really explaining what I meant. So though you may all be tired of it, I am going to lay out my case in more detail.
What I mean is this: a painting has, very roughly speaking, three "signifying" elements. There is the painting as an object - paint on canvas, or whatever the materials are. Second, there are the "forms" - the lines, shapes, colors, the spaces, perspective, light, volume, composition, etc. And third, there is the picture - what is shown, what the painting is of. The three are all always present - even if the picture is of something extremely simple or self-reflexive: a Rothko might be a picture of some boxes and bands of color; a white canvas is pretty much a picture of a field of white. They are also never really separable - many formal elements (space, perspective, etc.) are often explicitly part of the picture; many times the forms (lines, shapes, etc.) are inseparable from the materials (chunks of paint, scrapes, patches of bare canvas).
Now: while all are always present in every painting, any given painting (or painter) can employ them differently. Sticking with Rothko - he obviously does not emphasize the picture; it is of nothing, or of something very simple, boxes, bands of color. (We can maybe take this as a metaphor or a sign of something - windows, doors, tombstones - but that’s moving into meaning, and I’m putting that aside now.) Instead, Rothko emphasizes the forms, and the materials. The quality of the paint on the canvas - the gradations of color within the shapes, the way the colors meet and interact. Other paintings go the other way: while the material of a painting is never completely irrelevant, it is often reduced to pure function - just there to show a picture. Or to pure convention - working within an established tradition that neutralizes the material, to allow the painter to concentrate on the form and picture.
Now: I say - to read a painting, we have to identify how that painting works - which signifying elements it emphasizes. A Rothko or a Pollock basically emphasize the forms and materials over the picture. A great many high renaissance paintings emphasize the forms and picture over the materials. There is almost certainly a historical dimension to this - the last 150 years or so, painters have increasingly emphasized the materials, and the relationship between material and forms, even when they remain completely representational. (Actually, it probably goes back before that - 17th century art already started to emphasize the hand of the artist: Rembrandt already starts leaving daubs of paint on the canvas, creating effects through obvious manipulation of paint.) But in any case: a painting can emphasize any of these elements - and to judge it properly, we have to accept its terms and evaluate it by what it does.
And to turn this around: I think what you are doing is only reading the picture in a painting. You seem to me to be downplaying the forms, and dismissing the materials. If you do that - you’re judgments follow pretty well - there’s not much to see in a Rothko, if you don't care about the paint. But when you do that, you are missing what is actually on the canvas: the shapes and lines, the use of space, the colors and gradations of colors - all of it operating through the interplay of the forms with the qualities of the paint on the canvas - plus the scale, the interaction with other paintings, with your position when looking at it, and so on. None of that may interest you or move you: that’s your business. But that is a matter of taste and preference - it is not a quality of the painting. The fact that it doesn’t do what you want it to do does not mean it does nothing.
'a Rothko might be a picture of some boxes and bands of color; a white canvas is pretty much a picture of a field of white. They are also never really separable - many formal elements (space, perspective, etc.) are often explicitly part of the picture; many times the forms (lines, shapes, etc.) are inseparable from the materials (chunks of paint, scrapes, patches of bare canvas).'
To a degree, if we are talking of the material thing alone, and not the 'thing' as is meant by 'the Rothko.' I.e., the 'idea' that the artwork represents.
As example, if I speak of an artist or the work, a Rothko, I mean something transcending the work, as well as containing it.
Thus, materially, I agree, but philosophically, the thing is the whole and its constituents.
'Instead, Rothko emphasizes the forms, and the materials. The quality of the paint on the canvas - the gradations of color within the shapes, the way the colors meet and interact. Other paintings go the other way: while the material of a painting is never completely irrelevant, it is often reduced to pure function - just there to show a picture. Or to pure convention - working within an established tradition that neutralizes the material, to allow the painter to concentrate on the form and picture.'
Yester, whilst fwding around some email from a so-called poet, whose idea of 'poetry' is putting non-sequitured words into math formulae, a person on my e-list wrote this: 'What is even funnier is that Grumman's "poetry" can be replicated in a spate of 5 minutes and conceptually in two!'
The same applies for Rothko's art. Get a roller and a canvas, and anyone can replicate it, and critics will be sold on it. It's happened more than once.
Look at the first quoted sentence- this is all extra-material, i.e.- you are dealing with nothing that the artwork- nor even its idea immanently presents, merely what yo uare regurging from some acolyte. This allows you to neutralize any comment on the material thing, because you can claim the critic is missing an intent you only claim.
Thus, we get painters who think it's more important that their material be mixed with their own piss or shit rather than how they use the paint, pissful or shitless.
'But in any case: a painting can emphasize any of these elements - and to judge it properly, we have to accept its terms and evaluate it by what it does.'
100% wrong. This allows the artist to arbitrarily dictate rules for allowing interpretation and exegesis of his own work. This makes every artist an island unto himself, and each career or suite of works inviolable.
By that rationale, I could devise my own secret code, and write 'the greatest poem or novel in history, even if only I could read it.
Art is communication, at its highest level. Art that fails to communicate, through triteness, lack of skillful construction, etc., fails.
Critics and aesthetes set the terms, as can artists, but the artist is just one factor in the larger equation. Once I have deemed a poem, painting, novel, song, ready for consumption, I have no greater right to it than anyone else does. This is one of the GREAT fallacies that bad artists, critics and their cronies spread. Not true, for the reason stated above: it allows artistic hermeticism and infinite interpretation.
Multiple meanings are generally good, infinite meanings means no meaning, and a lack of communication.
'I think what you are doing is only reading the picture in a painting. You seem to me to be downplaying the forms, and dismissing the materials. If you do that - you’re judgments follow pretty well - there’s not much to see in a Rothko, if you don't care about the paint. But when you do that, you are missing what is actually on the canvas: the shapes and lines, the use of space, the colors and gradations of colors'
Absolutely not. We are not talking abour a Matisse, who in 2 or 3 strokes can conjure emotion, motion, character, narrative. Look at the picture up top. It is ill wrought. I've seen Rothkos, and like Pollocks, the drips ooze all over. This is not like a Rembrandt, where precision was of value, nor even a Mondrian.
Rothko sucks precisely because he had no ideas, and no skills to even properly bring an idea into fruitful being.
Mondrian, although repetitive, at least showed skill and precision in his work.
'None of that may interest you or move you: that’s your business. But that is a matter of taste and preference - it is not a quality of the painting. The fact that it doesn’t do what you want it to do does not mean it does nothing.'
That is YOUR assumption, Weepy. I have clearly stated I take all aspects of an art into consideration. Rothko and Pollock simply fail.
And because you claim a painting means something, when what you claim is in no way materially nor visually presented, does not mean it is.
Occam's razor, however, suggests that the reason such claims are made are due to a person's emotive response to something. That's your own, but it is not objective, therefore it is taste, and that is something good criticism necessarily avoids.
Have I made my view clear enough?
Have I made my view clear enough?
Yes, thank you.
I'll try to answer a few things...
To a degree, if we are talking of the material thing alone, and not the 'thing' as is meant by 'the Rothko.' I.e., the 'idea' that the artwork represents.
I'll go along with that, more or less. Most of the disagreements that follow seem to be over how much of the "idea" in Rothko's art can be found in the form and materials, and whatever general conclusions can be drawn from that...
[Re. replicating Rothko's art:] Get a roller and a canvas, and anyone can replicate it, and critics will be sold on it. It's happened more than once
I do not believe this. It seems that many artists have tried to replicate something like Rothko's style, and haven't really managed it. I am probably in over my head trying to explain how they fail - I have to rely on the testimony of the critics, and the evidence of my eyes. I have seen Rothko's, and they are astonishing. I have seen a good deal of similar art which is merely interesting. I think, as I have been saying, the difference between Rothko's work and you or me with the roller is much clearer in the presence of the painting. I am aware, though, that this is a pretty weak answer.
Look at the first quoted sentence- this is all extra-material, i.e.- you are dealing with nothing that the artwork- nor even its idea immanently presents, merely what yo uare regurging from some acolyte. This allows you to neutralize any comment on the material thing, because you can claim the critic is missing an intent you only claim.
...But this is stronger: You are wrong, here. I didn't say anything about the intent, only about the object. "The quality of the paint on the canvas - the gradations of color within the shapes, the way the colors meet and interact." - those are all qualities of the painting. Forms and materials, colors and textures - those are the things that stand out on Rothko's paintings. That's what draws your eye - what meaning there is, lies there. Since Rothko signed it, we ascribe that emphasis to Rothko.... If I were talking about intent as such, I would look up one of Rothko’s comments on his art, which seem to emphasize the emotional responses it is supposed to generate.
'But in any case: a painting can emphasize any of these elements - and to judge it properly, we have to accept its terms and evaluate it by what it does.'
100% wrong. This allows the artist to arbitrarily dictate rules for allowing interpretation and exegesis of his own work. This makes every artist an island unto himself, and each career or suite of works inviolable.
I don't think it means that at all. First - artists do dictate how their works are read: or, which elements of the work are most significant. Second - by the time Rothko was painting, the question was fairly settled - 100 plus years of fairly consistent emphasis on materials and forms meant his work was well within the bounds of what could be understood. I'm not referring to a private code for the artist: I'm referring to form and material being used to communicate. And saying - Rothko's paintings communicate; and do so more through the paint and the form than through what they are pictures of. (With the pictures, when they were read, being read metaphorically, maybe: they look like a door or a window or whatever...) In short: any art work encompasses a number of possible means of communication - we have to read the devices the work emphasizes to make itself understood. For the likes of Rothko and Pollock, that tends to be form.
Multiple meanings are generally good, infinite meanings means no meaning, and a lack of communication.
True enough, but not really helpful here. Rothko thought he was communicating something - a good many critics thought was communicating something - I think he communicates something. And not infinite meanings, either, though perhaps not fixed meanings. But in any case, getting back to my formalist points: whatever communication occurs, occurs mainly through the form and material.
We are not talking abour a Matisse, who in 2 or 3 strokes can conjure emotion, motion, character, narrative. Look at the picture up top. It is ill wrought. I've seen Rothkos, and like Pollocks, the drips ooze all over. This is not like a Rembrandt, where precision was of value, nor even a Mondrian.
I'm not sure what to say to this. True true true, that's what they look like, that's what the paint is like - but how is it ill wrought? It's what it is: dense, weighty paint, colors layered and bleeding into one another, the edges blurry and uneven - that's what the painting is. If the lines and colors and shapes were precise and clean, it would be something else. And mean something else. You have to read the painting you see: those are significant elements of these paintings. Dripping paint? of course - that almost rises to the level of content: the materiality of the paint, the fact that it's liquid, that it has weight and is subject to gravity - I don't think you have to reach very far at all to read the meaning of things like that.
Anyway - back to where I started - thanks for the comments...
Weepy:
'I'll go along with that, more or less'
Good.
'I do not believe this. It seems that many artists have tried to replicate something like Rothko's style, and haven't really managed it. I am probably in over my head trying to explain how they fail - I have to rely on the testimony of the critics, and the evidence of my eyes.'
If you read up on art forgery, most forgers love 'non-representational' art, because it's far easier to produce and fool the critics. Even in F For Fake de Horry, the art forger, chuckles over how much time is saved in reproducing Ab Exers and the like.
As for relying on the critics, dozwens of de Horrys have passed muster w them, in all sorts of genres, so they are basically useless.
Remember, these critics serve not as explicators of the artistic value, but primarily as arbiters of the financial value for collectors. This is utterly antithetical to art.
'I have seen Rothko's, and they are astonishing.'
Well, whatever moves you. I generally yawn. Some people prefer gruel to a three course meal, but I can't argue with your taste. A chef, however, could argue with the nutritional value, effort to prepare, and skill needed, etc.
'I didn't say anything about the intent, only about the object.'
Well, while I concede the quality of the paint used is material, as it is tangible, when applied on a canvas, blue is blue, whether or not it is oil, gouache, watercolor, etc. That may interest the painter, in terms of determining which paint for which medium, but to the observer, the blue is blue. The gradation sand interactions of the colors, however, are not ideational- they depend upon the skill of the artist. A Rembrandt clearly had greater control than a Pollock- even pre-drip paintings.
'Forms and materials, colors and textures - those are the things that stand out on Rothko's paintings. That's what draws your eye - what meaning there is, lies there.'
Again you are veering off from the art. If one is looking at the Chrysler Building, from a historic aesthetic approach, the Art DEco aspects of its architecture, one does not concern oneself with what grade of steel the skeletal structure is made of. Yes, there needs to be a steel substructure, just as there literally needs to be a canvas or paper for the painting to exist, but this has nothing to do with an appreciation of the linear structure of the building, nor whether the gargoyles are apt.
As for colors and textures- again, these are your tastes, so I cannot argue them.
If you like a half blue half purple canvas, so be it. If your idea of building blocks as an intellectually challenging diversion is so, as opposed to chess, so be it, but the blocks are still a children's game, and Rothko was still a simplistic painter, in idea and execution.
Plus, historically, most artists who simply fail at the greater challenges of their arts, tend to fall back on simplistic art forms which they claim to master- be it a haiku vs. a sonnet, or gimmick painting vs. more complex forms. Again, since Rothko's earlier representational art was rather imitative and bad (ala Pollock), Occam suggests both took the easy way out to score with self-important critics who wanted work to shill for a $.
'First - artists do dictate how their works are read: or, which elements of the work are most significant.'
1) yes, you typed 'to judge it properly, we have to accept its terms and evaluate it by what it does' and that does mean 'This allows the artist to arbitrarily dictate rules for allowing interpretation and exegesis of his own work.'
2) I've not disagreed with the fact that an artist can try to dictate the terms of their art. I have added that he is only a minor part that consists of critics, audience, etc. The artist alone does not do it.
'Second - by the time Rothko was painting, the question was fairly settled - 100 plus years of fairly consistent emphasis on materials and forms meant his work was well within the bounds of what could be understood'
1) Artists often BS, and have acolytes to foster the BS. As for fairly settled, I don't think so. There is still a good deal of critical dismissal, and rightly so, of the shit and piss sort of painting I mentioned earlier.
2) None of this deals with whether Rothko succeeded. I contend he did not, because the very people who champion his 'materials and forms' have been so consistently gulled that there are, doubtless, literally 100s of faux Rothkos and Pollocks, and others, out there that will take decades to discover as fakes. This is a truism ever since art became a commodity.
The greater the art, the more diff it is to replicate. The fact that Ab EX has seen an explosion of fakery, highly suggests how little talent and skill it takes to practice in that genre.
Greatness, after all, is not merely a difference in scale, but a difference of kind.
'For the likes of Rothko and Pollock, that tends to be form.'
And I, like most people w good BS detectors, see that form as shoddy.
'Rothko thought he was communicating something - a good many critics thought was communicating something - I think he communicates something.'
What Rothko thought is irrelevant, since he's not around. Look at critical texts on much bad art- painting or not. When a two toned painting can evoke sociopolitical analyses of the fall of Communism, the psychosexual angst of an era, as well as the standard artistic cliches, something is amiss. If I write a poem about Suzy the French Poodle and you read into it the SS policies in Warsaw, either you're nuts, as the critic, or my work is so elastic as to have no real meaning nor content.
But, again, even if we grant Rothko communicated something, 'Ooh, red is pretty!', it's not particularly a deep communication, on an objective level. You may love it, but that has no objective meaning to an impartial critic.
And that, after all, is the basis of this post- what defines criticism, good or bad.
'It's what it is: dense, weighty paint, colors layered and bleeding into one another, the edges blurry and uneven - that's what the painting is. If the lines and colors and shapes were precise and clean, it would be something else.'
So, if I type a poem of 100 lines, and someone proofreads it, and says, you have 17 typos, and I say, just leave'em because I want my bad typing and/or bad spelling skills to be known (after all, will a critic be able to tell if I simply do not know how to spell or type?), you'll buy that?
And people wonder why intellectuals are so scorned? To say that a painter wants a messy canvas 'to symbolize chaos' or the like is an old trick. To try to retroactively cover up failings by claiming them deliberate is just that, despite this form and material nonsense.
Yes, I the great artist, declare that my great art consists of no skill and no care. Fiat!
Bushwah. That's akin to the 'it's art because I say it is' gambit. Sorry, no sale.
'Dripping paint? of course - that almost rises to the level of content: the materiality of the paint, the fact that it's liquid, that it has weight and is subject to gravity - I don't think you have to reach very far at all to read the meaning of things like that.'
These are all rationalizations for the very things that constitute quality. Again, you can like them. You can like the taste of your toes as you suck them, but they are still not a good Porterhouse- in taste nor nutrition.
There is objectivity in art. W/o objectivity, there is no reason to argue. So, you believe in objectivity. Yet, by obviating all the markers of quality- skill, design, idea, and lesser ones, you effectively render quality meaningless, which is a marker, too often, of politics creeping into criticism. Rembrandt's good eye and hand coordination is not a political act, but an artistic one. Pollock's lack of same is likewise solely artistic.
As artists, Rembrandt is leagues above Pollock or Rothko, for demonstrable objective reasons. That has nothing to do w your like nor tastes, but, again, criticism has NOTHING to do w taste.
Well, whatever moves you. I generally yawn. Some people prefer gruel to a three course meal, but I can't argue with your taste. A chef, however, could argue with the nutritional value, effort to prepare, and skill needed, etc.
We seem to be running down a bit. I don't have much to add... Dan's been reduced to analogies - that's rhetoric, not argument, and it seems we've staked out positions and now are just looking for clever ways to restate them. The only way I could argue with this would be to say it's not gruel, it's gumbo.
Well, while I concede the quality of the paint used is material, as it is tangible, when applied on a canvas, blue is blue, whether or not it is oil, gouache, watercolor, etc. That may interest the painter, in terms of determining which paint for which medium, but to the observer, the blue is blue
The paint itself can be a contributing factor to the quality of the object (the painting) - different paints have different qualities.... but the qualities are probably more important. Thickness of the paint, it's texture, whether the surface is rough or smooth, the qualities of the brushwork, the style, the way the colors are applies, if they're blended or laid on in separate chunks, or layered (which I think it how the Rothko's are) - just some of the qualities I can think of, a complete amateur. Those things matter even in representational paintings (Rembrandts and Sargents and Monets and the like), and take on more significance in non-representational ones.
As artists, Rembrandt is leagues above Pollock or Rothko, for demonstrable objective reasons. That has nothing to do w your like nor tastes, but, again, criticism has NOTHING to do w taste.
Taste is inescapable in criticism. No one ever completely shakes their preferences and enthusiasms, and there's no reason they should. Probably some degree of enjoyment of the art you're talking about is necessary to keep you involved in it enough to figure out how it works - most critics are more convincing writing about what they like (though often more entertaining writing about what they don't like.) Objectivity may require the ability to put your tastes aside - it certainly requires the ability to recognize your tastes and account for them, and distinguish your taste for what is in the art. Description and analysis might be fairly objective; evaluation and interpretation are, at best, inter-subjective, and explicitly about the relationship of subjects and objects: the artist to the work; the viewer to the work. Once you start ranking artists, you're back to talking taste, though the more you'd gotten out of examining the work objectively, the better...
Weepingsam: I'd say taste is completely distinct from criticism. Tastes change, but the artwork doesn't.
Ranking artists is subjective if you do it just in terms of who you like. It also won't work if the critic can't identify those things in an artwork that are objectively good or bad. Have you had a look at Dan's essay on Stevens & Shakespeare?
http://www.cosmoetica.com/S3-DES3.htm
That one ranks the poets overall, as well as Shakey's sonnets & what Dan argues are Stevens' best. It's not based on liking Stevens any more than Shakespeare, but on the fact that Stevens hit greatness more with is poems, and pushed it farther.
'Dan's been reduced to analogies - that's rhetoric, not argument'
Because I've defeated your arguments empirically and logically, yet you keep on restating the same things.
'The paint itself can be a contributing factor to the quality of the object (the painting)'
Duh! Another point you are restating. The point I've made is that Rothko and Pollock were not masters of brushstroke. You want it both ways- you want to claim they had great skill, and when that does not work- for drips and monochromatic coloring take little skill, as I've stated that even critics are routinely fooled by faux Ab Ex paintings cranked out in a half hour by amateurs, you fall back on the paint or other material gambit. Sorry, 0 for 2.
'Taste is inescapable in criticism. No one ever completely shakes their preferences and enthusiasms, and there's no reason they should. Probably some degree of enjoyment of the art you're talking about is necessary to keep you involved in it enough to figure out how it works - most critics are more convincing writing about what they like (though often more entertaining writing about what they don't like.)'
Spoken like someone w no idea of what criticism entails. I get no enjoyment from most bad art, but there is some I do enjoy- Plan 9 from Outer Space, or Richard Brautigan poems, but simply because I enjoy them, like one does cotton candy. There are poems and other artqworj that annoy the hellout of me, for subjective reasons- their politics or philosophy, but I cannot deny their greatness. The confusion of the like/dislike axis with good/bad is a major problem in crit, but one which I scrupulously avoid.
What you have fallen into the the Fallacy of ascribing your limitations to others. 'I can't do A or B, so if someone else does, they are either lying, or cheating. Sorry, but I have enough limits of my own, don't impose yours my way.
'Objectivity may require the ability to put your tastes aside - it certainly requires the ability to recognize your tastes and account for them, and distinguish your taste for what is in the art.'
Duh deux, but taste is not a factor in good criticism. It's a factor in preferrncr. I might prefer to read a bad poem I like than a great one I don't, but that does not change the qualitative factor of either. It's really not that difficult, Weepy. Although it does take maturity to divest oneself of the emotionalism most bad critics wallow in.
'Description and analysis might be fairly objective; evaluation and interpretation are, at best, inter-subjective, and explicitly about the relationship of subjects and objects: the artist to the work; the viewer to the work. Once you start ranking artists, you're back to talking taste, though the more you'd gotten out of examining the work objectively, the better...'
Analysis and evaluation go hand in hand. As for ranking artists, it is not subjective. One can argue the merits of a claim, and reasonably disagree, but if Poet A wrote two great poems in a career, and Poet B wrote 20, B is clearly superior, even if A's two great poems are the best two of the 22 great poems.
Will their be some subjectivity at the edges? Of course- two similarly great artists- Picasso vs. Matisse, Stevens vs. Crane, Kubrick vs. Antonioni, will have good arguments, but when one argues Matisse vs. Pollock, Crane vs, Brautigan, or Antonioni vs. Spielberg, there simply is no argument, only justifications and bias.
Pretty much what you've put on display, however fortuitously.
Sorry I can't get involved in the debate here ... I would be here forever, turning myself inside out. I see both sides. What a chicken, eh? But I've popped in for something specific. Are you still interested in adopting a shameless writing circle lion? You're name is on the waiting list. Let me know and I'll let you know which lions are available, so you can choose. :-)
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