Someone in this forum, and I can't remember who it was, shares my distaste for the empty spectacle of the post-modern art world. This is a great article by the chairman of the Art Renewal Center (actually the transcript of a speech he gave to the American Society of Portrait Artists at the Met):
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/P...hilosophy1.asp
I agree with most of what he has to say, and admire what they are trying to do. I especially share his sentiment that painters of the late 19th century (particularly those of the Salon, the followers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and the British Symbolists) have gotten a bum rap in the 20th century, and for no good reason. He's absolutely right about the influence of Bouguereau in his time and the skill of his work. Janson's Art Through The Ages (the standard text for survey classes in Art History) covers his career with one image (Nymphs and Satyr, in black and white) and a short paragraph that describes his work (inaccurately) as combining mythical subjects with such painterly realism that his contemporaries considered it pornographic. A disturbing bit of revisionist history if ever I saw one, and one easily refuted if you bother to consult a few primary sources.
Speaking of revisionist history, another book that I highly recommend:
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...846370-7488040
Not only a disturbing look at the inaccuracy of the facts presented in most high school history books, but also a plea to stop teaching history as a collection of irrefutable facts in the first place.
Wow. I didn't know someone could froth at the mouth when discussing art history. Haven't finished the article, but I'm hesitant to accept some of his assumptions. Burne-Jones, ignored? Waterhouse? Jean-Francois Millet? How have these guys been underrepresented? As far as I can tell, this guy wants to bury abstraction entirely.
He does, and while I personally wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater (some art produced in the 20th century isn't awful), I also can't say I disagree with his assessment of the value of the works of artists such as DeKooning and Pollock and even, to some extent, Picasso (who is certainly the most overrated artist of the 20th century). I also can't say that I agree with the post-modern dismissal of representational art as irrelevant to modern aesthetics. I'd wager to guess that a few hundred years from now the popular art movements of the 20th century will be considered highly interesting for the underlying cultural changes that spawned them, but much of the art itself will be considered a queer curiosity devoid of aesthetic value.
For what it's worth, however, he's pretty much correct about how the current art world treats the work of 19th century painters, which do indeed represent the culmination of all the knowledge and skill in post-Enlightenment art. Bouguereau is almost always depicted as sentimental, unpopular, and uninfluential, even in his time. The first is open to personal interpretation, but the latter two points are demonstrably untrue. Waterhouse and Burne-Jones are rarely even mentioned in most world art history textbooks, unless as a footnote connecting them to the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood (of which neither man was technically a member), which is almost universally dismissed as a laughable dinosaur in a world of art that was rapidly moving on into impressionism and expressionism and other "more important" movements. Are they unknown? Hardly. Their work is actually pretty popular among the general public. But as a fine arts major let me assure you, you probably won't learn about them in school. Today's academics would place them in the same category with Thomas Kinkade (painter of light!) and sofa-sized works of art sold at the local mall, and that's a damn shame.
From Waterhouse's obituary, circa 1917:
"One feels that his figures are there to make a picture rather than they are occupied with any business of their own. They do make it very skilfully, but neither they or the pictures seem quite alive. He was at his best, perhaps, in the ‘Martyrdom of St Eulalia,’ now in the Tate Gallery which escapes more than usual from the Burne-Jones lethargy, which though very natural and expressive in Burne-Jones himself, seems to be a mere artistic device in Waterhouse. But he was at any rate, quite free from that theatricality which is the common vice of academic and subject painters. He painted always like a scholar and a gentleman, though not like a great artist."
Theatricality a vice? Tell it to Botticelli. Tell it to Titian. Tell it to Leonardo da-fucking Vinci.
To be considered a "great artist" then, and today, one must completely abandon techniques and concepts that artists have spent the last several thousand years exploring. Try talking to a post-modern artist or (worse still) a post-modern critic about the value of mimesis, and see how quickly you get laughed out of the room. Much of the art world today is concerned with little more than getting artists to take a public dump on several millenia of aesthetic wisdom and then pat themselves on the back for their cleverness. Art as narrative or a coherent visual language are derided, and certainly the works of many 20th century artists (Pollock, for example) would be unidentifiable as art when deprived of their context. If nobody told you that the work of "art" that won this year's Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery was actually a work of art--if you came upon it by accident, outside a museum--would you even know that it was art?
The Turner prize is one of the most prestigious art awards in the western world, given every year by London's Tate Gallery for a body of work whose creator has demonstrated outstanding ability and originality. The winner then chooses an item to put on display. The prize is worth £20,000. This year's award went to 33-year-old Martin Creed for an exhibit that consisted of an empty room with lights that flicker on and off every five seconds.
So yeah, while Ross gets pretty frothy about the whole state of affairs, I can't blame him. It stinks, and most of what he says is pretty much true, even if he says it a bit overenthusiastically. When people stand around talking about the artistic merit of an empty room with bad lighting and students of art are expected to nod their heads in agreement (or risk being labeled "too ignorant" to understand the value of the work), then the emperor truly has no clothes. If Bouguereau had been a contemporary of Raphael, he'd be considered one of the greatest painters of the Renaissance. The idea that the value of a work of art depends solely on the historical context in which it was painted is a wholeheartedly post modern ideal. In a day and age when Bouguereau is considered "pornographic" (Art Through the Ages, Janson) and a crucifix floating in a pool of urine is considered high art, something is seriously amiss.
I think this is the highfalutin' equivalent of my theory that Jack Kirby was highly overrated.
Well, yeah. Pretty much.
While I agree that modern art in general sucks, painting does have one excuse for its derision of realism: photography. Faithfully depicting real objects was the chief goal of the craftsmanship associated with painting for much of its existence but now photography has made this goal practically obsolete. As a result, painters focus on what's left of the art of painting: creating geometrical arrangements and making socio-politico-religious statements
Of course most people don't give a rat's ass about that because they want depictions of real objects -- at least as a visual anchor point, if not as the sole purpose for watching pictures -- and as a further result this has reduced modern painting to a small intellectual club with little audience and of no consequence outside of causing the occasional outrage.
This technical change has an analogy in modern "serious" music, by the way: it's no longer necessary to skilfully employ an orchestra or an opera troupe for impressive effects when you can have amplifiers blasting away pre-programmed synthesizer sequences, along with laser shows or video clips or feature films (soundtracks!) for visual stimulation.
And in both cases there's the big social change that enjoying (or pretending to enjoy) complex art is no longer a necessary part of a middle/upper-class lifestyle. We've moved from a bourgeois society (with its many holdovers from aristocratic society including a class system with strict rules for education and behaviour) to a society of proletarian hedonism where what you do for fun does not impact your social status, so people generally do whatever involves the least mental activity.
As the traditional audience for art that combined a pleasing surface with intricate refinement went away, artists specialised in one or the other; and as the artistic communities kept shrinking and forgetting about their old craftsmanship, the artists found they could shed intricacies just like they shed pleasantries, and get by just with peer approval based on propaganda pamphlets. That's the present situation, and I don't expect it to change since its underlying social and technical causes aren't about to go away.
I was under the impression that representational art was undergoing a revival in a certain segment of postmodernism. I'm not real fluent with contemporary artists, but what about Philip Pearlstein for instance? Is he relegated to the cynical anti-art camp just because he is popular with modern art collectors and doesn't precisely continue the academy line of classicism a'la Michaelangelo, Carravaggio, David, Burne-Jones, etc?
Clearly, for both scholars and collectors, the Impressionists and Expressionists overshadowed the Pre-Raphaelites (although I gather you might object to that categorization). As wonderful as many of Ross' example works are, I can't entirely blame people for latching on to something different -- fundamentally different -- than what they had been looking at for 500 years. Okay, so that may grossly oversimplify all those artists from the last 500 years. My point is, is art not a big enough concept to encompass something outside of the neoclassical aesthetic? Ross seems to think not.
As for your charge of cultural relativism, isn't it true that if you maintain Ross' ideals you have to throw out all the art done in Europe before Giotto? Maybe even throw out Giotto himself? Mimetic standards are fine, but they exclude a lot of art and only a small chunk of that is modern.
Snore, snore, zzzz...
Denny said
"I think this is the highfalutin' equivalent of my theory that Jack Kirby was highly overrated."
Wha!
Jack Kirby was what?
While I'll grant you that we wasn't a great artist (in a realistic or, sometimes, even "attractive" sense) just look at everything that came before him and then everything that came after. He pretty much brought a sense of dynamic movement that completely changed comics forever (and for the better). He is considered "great" for bringing imagination and life to his posing and fight scenes. Not for making faces that look attractive or keeping a sense of photorealism.
Anyway, I love his work. Steve Ditko too.
A good example from a site filled with good examples:
http://www.twomorrows.com/kirby/articles/12cap101.html
It does seem a bit too reactionary. I have problems with both 19th century painting and 20th century.
Considering a realistic rendering in paint to be beautiful and the epitome of an artist is a fake preconception. Why do we want realism?
Creating a realistic 3d depiction in paint on canvas is an excellent example of craft, but it limits painting, for it tries to be something it isn't. While the depiction may be realistic, and even aesthetically pleasing (otherwise known as "fly"), it's still just imitating something else. Modern artists, for better or worse, tried to liberate painting, making it an art of its own--a painting is a painting, not an imitation of something else, and that's a very reasonable goal.
I love Mondrian and Pollock. I also love Gerome, who is quoted in that article. Is one better than the other? I dunno--Gerome makes some beautiful scenes. Not realistic, but beautiful. And if you can divorce your preconceptions that painting is supposed to imitate something else then you can accept that Mondrian and Pollock make beautiful paintings too.
On the other hand, a lot of it is just cleverness for the sake of being clever, or doing something different because it hasn't been done before. I gotta respect Picasso for exploring Cubism for 10 years, deciding that he had taken it as far it could go, and then moving on to explore other aspects of painting. But I still see artists trying out Cubism today and it doesn't make any sense.
Whatever. I do think art schools should concentrate on realism first, because it does teach great technique.
Andrew,
Oh, I won't deny that Kirby contributed very valuable innovation in the areas of layouts, poses, depiction of action, etc.
I just hated his heavily-inked/shaded style, and his bizarre costume/character designs, as a comic-reading kid. As an adult, I can appreciate Kirby for his originality, but I think the art got in the way of the story. When it comes to silver age stories, I'll take Neil Adams, Cary Bates, or Gil Kane any day.
It's similar to the Manga-inspired crap art in today's Superman books. It doesn't enhance the story because it screams for attention itself.
While it's true that this sentiment exists and probably, in some part, contributes to the rejection of classical aesthetics in the 20th century (along with the cultural disillusionment that came with World War I, the Depression, World War II, etc.), I don't agree with that conclusion. There is a difference between the concepts of Realism and Naturalism, in their traditional definitions, and the contemporary concept of photorealism. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find either a painter or a photographer that would agree that painting and photography are interchangeable. Painting, even (especially) Realist painting, can be and have been used to represent themes and subjects in ways that photographs can't, or at least in ways that photographs are not well suited to. The idea that a painting is analogous to a photo--a moment captured in time--is relatively new. Many of the painters of the Renaissance messed around with similar ideas--the painting as a "window," which largely grew out of their experiments with linear perspective (many of which literally involved looking through a peephole at a window, and then tracing the scene on the other side onto the window with a grease pencil). But even they used painting as a narrative vehicle--if you look at their work with a photographer's eye, they make for rather unlikely scenes.Originally Posted by Christoph Nahr
But photography, at its core, is about choosing how to record something that is already there, while painting is about creating it. It's a pretty significant difference, as much as the difference between drama and documentary. Of course you can blur the lines between the two media pretty easily. I can compose my photographic scenes, or even paint a picture and then capture it on film. Am I then a painter or a photographer? If I choose to make a documentary about fictional events (the Blair Witch Project, for example), is it still a documentary in anything other than name, or is it drama?
Even in strictly literal representation--realist landscapes, or portraiture, the painter chooses what to show and how to show it while the photographer must make those choices within the limitations of the physics of light and film. Ever notice how photos of sunsets never capture how it actually feels to see one in person? That has a lot to do with differences between the way our eyes see (and how out brain interprets) light and color and the way a camera sees it. Even the most stringent Realists compensate for this in their work--they exaggerate some elements and downplay others to control the way you perceive their work. They also add allegorical themes and symbols, and use "theatrical" tricks to impart information. Only the Superrealists of the 20th century valued a literal, photographic representation of their subject matter. I don't really consider any of these works, for intance, to be obsolete in the face of photography:
http://www.artmagick.com/images/DoNo...n/morgan40.jpg
http://www.artmagick.com/images/DoNo...terhouse27.jpg
http://www.artmagick.com/images/DoNo...ne/burne48.jpg
http://www.artmagick.com/images/DoNo...ouguereau1.jpg
...Because short of wildly unphotographic contrivances, a photograph would portray similar scenes very differently than did any of these paintings.
Actually, Ross doesn't say that, precisely. He appreciates the Impressionists, and other modern artists whose work has what he considers to be artistic value, and there are galleries for Impressionist artists on the ARC website.My point is, is art not a big enough concept to encompass something outside of the neoclassical aesthetic? Ross seems to think not.
In any event, there is art outside the neoclassical aesthetic (which actually many of the painters that Ross champions are not a part of anyway--the Romantics certainly weren't neoclassical painters, other than by way of the definition that all representational art is neoclassical), and there is art that is outside of ANY recognizeable aesthetic. Is a blank canvas or a canvas with a red square painted on it or a pile of elephant dung or a pile of bricks good art, or are they mere spectacle, a thin attempt at making a statement? I'd argue that it's the latter, and deprived of their context (in the form of art critics or the artist himself explaining to you what the hell these works are supposed to be saying to you), they aren't even very good statements. There is enough room in literature, for instance, to come up with "something different" without resorting to absurdities such as the elimination of language or the creation of a book with no words but in which every page is smeared with dried vomit. Why not in art?
And, as Ross points out, what's so special about "something different" anyway? When did we decide that the only work of value is the work that is utterly unlike anything that came before, and why do we not apply this same principle to other creative endeavors such as film or literature?
Simple: because it's a dumb principle.
I hated it as a kid too. Ditko even more. But now I think it's my favorite style, I can't stand the pin-up crap in today's comics. It's so vanilla and boring. Todd McFarlane can burn in hell for starting the whole thing. My favorite today is probably Mike Mignola... [size=2](and unlike most I liked Miller's work on DK2, but agree that it isn't his best.)[/size]
Because it gives us a context in which to understand the work.
Yeah, art imitates life. That's mimesis. Modern art has replaced it with art imitating nothing, which is merely nihilism. If nihilism is so great, then why don't we replace all our films with blank film reels, or write books in gibberish? Ah, but people don't have to sit and watch a painting for 90 minutes. If there is little there worth looking at, they can pause, move on, and comment on how moving it was for posterity. People would (and do) have far less patience for film or literature that eschews the common conventions of mimesis.Creating a realistic 3d depiction in paint on canvas is an excellent example of craft, but it limits painting, for it tries to be something it isn't. While the depiction may be realistic, and even aesthetically pleasing (otherwise known as "fly"), it's still just imitating something else. Modern artists, for better or worse, tried to liberate painting, making it an art of its own--a painting is a painting, not an imitation of something else, and that's a very reasonable goal.
And when did we come to have such a derogatory opinion of the concept of craft (which, by etymology, is synonymous with art)? Oh, yeah--when the art world was taken over by a bunch of artists devoid of it.
Why?I love Mondrian and Pollock.
My only preconception about painting is that I must like it, for its own sake, without the need of explanations for why I should like it. Most people must be taught to appreciate modern art. That's because there is little instrinsic to the art itself for them to appreciate. I create 50% of my own version of Piss Christ every morning when I wake up. Pollock's work is a bunch of random paint splatters. I have a nearly identical work of art in my office--it's the dropcloth that I use when I am painting. Is it art? If I tried to sell it in a gallery, would it fetch $40 million dollars, like Pollock's last auctioned painting did? Why not?And if you can divorce your preconceptions that painting is supposed to imitate something else then you can accept that Mondrian and Pollock make beautiful paintings too.
I'm on the fence with Kirby. At times I can really appreciate his work. At other times I find him bombastic and self-parodying. One thing that I'll never forgive is his ruining the otherwise cool design of Galactus by putting a huge "G" in the middle of his chest. And Kirby's work doesn't translate into black and white at all (Marvel Essentials). Get rid of the color, and a lot of the panels lose their bombastic effect entirely. The black and white format isn't nearly as harsh on Gil Kane, and it actually adds to Steve Ditko's appeal. Ditko in black and white is pretty impressive.
Yes, but how much "realism" is required for that purpose? The article linked by Ben elevates line and drawing so much that even the impressionists are dismissed in it. Note the not-so-backhanded slap at Van Gogh. Whether one likes the impressionists are not, their work has plenty of "context." I don't need anybody to explain The Starry Night or The Water Lillies to me. There's also enough "context" in cubism to understand the subject matter, even if one doesn't care for that particular form.Because it gives us a context in which to understand the work.
Of course pure abstraction lacks "context." I think that's the idea. However, I don't understand how it follows that abstraction is "nihilstic."
I've noticed that his work suffers almost every time an inker is brought in. Look at the picture I linked (pure Kirby - in black & white btw) and look at the other Captain America stuff link there where inkers were involved. Not pretty. A lot of his work suffers from his being perpetually rushed too. That was the era though.
But you liked the fact that he was wearing shorts originally? ;-)
Link?
And shorts? I didn't catch that--you sure? But maybe I was too amazed by the fact that this billion-year-old space god had his celestial pajamas monogrammed.
B.
Depends. Ross exaggerates to make his point, which is that even Van Gogh and Monet had a solid grounding in fundamental principles and techniques in school, something that many artists today do not receive (and are often taught to scorn). Writers at times ignore proper grammar for one reason or another, but that's hardly proof that grammar is unimportant or unnecessary, or that it should be excised from literature. And as I said, the ARC gallery has plenty of works by artists that do not adhere to a neoclassical realism, such as Monet and Moreau, so obviously they don't hate them utterly.
Pillbod wrote that representational art is "merely" imitation, that it limits painting because it is an attept to make the painting something that it isn't: i.e. the content that it depicts. But because the painting can never really be the subject that it depicts, the solution (according to Pillbod and the conventions of modern art) is to make paintings that don't try to imitate anything at all, to reject representation altogether in order to "free" art from the limits of it's own definitions. Thus:Of course pure abstraction lacks "context." I think that's the idea. However, I don't understand how it follows that abstraction is "nihilstic."
ni·hil·ism Pronunciation Key (n-lzm, n-)
n.
Philosophy.
An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.
A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
Rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief.
The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.
It's practically a definition of post-modern art, which has come to embrace the idea that challenging definitions is a worthy goal in and of itself. Is it? Based on much of the art that passes for "good" today, I'd have to say "no."
In English, no less.
But painting can be about painting. It can be about composition, design, and color. Certainly that's not a repudiation of previous values and beliefs; it's a more pure form of painting.But because the painting can never really be the subject that it depicts, the solution (according to Pillbod and the conventions of modern art) is to make paintings that don't try to imitate anything at all, to reject representation altogether in order to "free" art from the limits of it's own definitions.
And I'm not arguing for modern art and against representational art, since I find both valid. But to disregard modern art because it's nonrepresentational is ridiculous. Why do you believe that a two dimensional surface needs to be defined by how well it simulate a three dimensional one? What should poetry be about?
Why do I find Mondrian and Pollock beautiful? Because they're beautifully composed and use color well. Does a painting need to be anything more than beautiful? Apparently some people want it to represent something else.
A sidenote: I never meant my reference to craft to be derogatory, and I think if you look again at my post you won't find insult. Painting a 3d representation is surely a craft or skill, and a difficult one to master. My point is that it is a skill, and one that can be gauged.
Jack Kirby uninked B&W linked earlier: http://www.twomorrows.com/kirby/articles/12cap101.html
Ok, maybe it was more like a kilt. But still, bare legs and knees originally. It looks odd with the full head-dress, but it functions as sort of a summery planet-devourer chic. Whatever, he makes it work.
And I'm shocked at you Kevin Perry. The 'G' in English is explained easily. Both of you are forgetting that Galactus appears as the race he is destroying. Humans see him as a large white guy, presumably Klingons see him with a fu-manchu and I don't think it's silly to take that one step further and presume that the 'G' monogram appears in whatever language is native. Thank you, good night!
(I might add that I'm really enjoying reading the serious art discussion mixed in with this little sideline)
Man, I think I remember that kilt effect now that you mention it. Ugh. Kirby always was going for this space age, hippie, neoclassical look with these sorts of characters. Remember the Celestials? And a lot of the Inhumans looked like gay elven Canned Heat roadies.
I think that deserves a no-prize.
But yeah, he built this big spaceship, and can give people powers by zapping them. I think he can make himself some clothes that can do that. Now, why he would care to do that is another story.
And I'm really enjoying reading the serious comic art discussion.(I might add that I'm really enjoying reading the serious art discussion mixed in with this little sideline)
I hate the Inhumans... There's something about that giant teleporting dog that just turns me off. His 3rd World costuming isn't much better, but Apokalips is pretty damn cool. His weird "cosmic" stuff is at least consistent. He created a look that somehow works, despite really bordering on corny. So far as Galactus and the kilt, I think he was going for some sort of Aztec meets Sumeria meets techno-futuristic. But yeah, the hippies ate it up!
It should be about anything but nothing. And poetry typically IS about something. It's not just words thrown together because they sound nice, with no regard for meaning--it's an excercise in language.
Look, I'm not saying that all modern art, or even all nonrepresentational art, is bad art. But I am saying that much of it is bad art, and that we place a lot more value on the lot of it than it deserves.
That's a good question. It hearkens back to our "what is art" conversation. But I still believe that art and beauty, while often found together, are not synonymous. A sunset is not art. A flower is not art. Art is communication, a visual language even as poetry is a verbal one. Modernists exchanged the immense content of the world for a few geometric forms and splatters, believing that painting is about painting. Painting is about the world. Poetry is about the world, literature is about the world, and philosophy is about the world. Painting that is about painting becomes instantly irrelevant, and for the vast majority of people today, that is exactly what the contemporary art world has become.Why do I find Mondrian and Pollock beautiful? Because they're beautifully composed and use color well. Does a painting need to be anything more than beautiful?
Pollock, for what it's worth, did not do "composition." His gig was "action painting," random splatters and smudges of paint on canvas, the less planned and guided, the better. Composition is not a product of accident--it requires that one compose. Any composition that you see in his action paintings is a product of your imagination, not his--it's the artistic equivalent of a Rorschach ink blot or a form that you see in a cloud.
And that's the big problem with modern art--people have learned to read much more into it than is actually there, and have been told by the artistic elite for the past century that they should attribute this to greatness. But communication without meaning is just noise. What interesting composition, what meaningful use of color, do you attribute to the following famous paintings?:
Any one of these could have as easily been made by a five-year old child, with as much skill and purpose. Is this really the future of visual communication? Gibberish? What if I told you that one of these paintings recently sold at auction for $40 million, whereas this work by Bouguereau rarely fetch even 1% of that price?
Are our values just a little bit skewed, has the art world become driven by investors that care little about art but only about the gullibility of a group of people that have lost all sense of perspective (much like the dot-com investors of a few years ago, or the comic book investors of the early 90s), by critics that care more about the name attached to a painting than about the painting itself, and to the prestige associated with pretending to see meaning and purpose where the unwashed masses see only four hastily drawn lines, a bunch of random splatters of paint, and a couple of rough colored squares? What if I told you that either none, one, or all of the modern paintings above were created by me, just now, in Photoshop? Do you think I could sell my painting(s) for $40 million? Do you think that art critics would find them as worthwhile as one made by Pollock or Picasso or Rothko if they knew that the painting was made by me? Would find it as worthwhile if they didn't know? Is my composition and use of color as meaningful as that of the great modern artists? Is my message not equaly clear?
In 1917, Marcel DuChamp entered a urinal (an actual porceline urinal that he purchased at the store) in an art show under the pseudonym "R. Mutt." It was rejected. But today, knowing the real name attached to the work, it stands as the driving force behind much of post-modern art philosophy. One contemporary critic has this to say:
"Duchamp is asking his audience to think about fountains. The word may cause each person to think about a particular fountain, but when used to name a urinal, it creates a dialectic. What makes a fountain a fountain and a non-fountain a non-fountain? The result is an essentialization, or the recognition of an ideal fountain which bears the qualities of "Fountainness." This "perspective by incongruity" is gained by placing things in different, seemingly opposite, contexts (Hyman, 21). Once the concept of Fountain is arrived at, then the next step is to determine how Fountain is a fountain. To fulfill the Fountain’s Fountainness the viewer must first fill the fountain. (Who ever heard of a fountain with no water?) Fill the fountain with abstract notions of an idealized Fountain or fill it with urine, either way the viewer becomes the mechanism by which Fountain can function. Here scatology and eschatology overlap (Burke, A Rhetoric, 308)(4) Through the simple act of placing a urinal (agency) in a particular scene, Duchamp (agent) has created (purpose) a spiraling mass of artistic criticism that goes high and low, and ultimately asks the viewer to transcend previous notions of what art is."
All of the professional writers in this forum (myself included) are smirking right now. If you can wade through the hip-deep mire of purposely obfuscating words and phrases such as "perspective by incongruity" and "essentialization" (which isn't even a word), you'll see the work of a man secure in the knowledge that he is much, much smarter than you. "Transcending previous notions of what art is" is highly valued in the shock-driven world of post-modern art, but I question the wisdom that says that by destroying a thing we make it better, that by eliminating definitions we elevate meaning. "Fountain" was just a urinal, a crude joke designed to test the art show panel's patience with absurdity.
Modern and post-modern art has become the joke, but the artists and critics are no longer laughing because they have forgotten the punchline.
I know that you didn't mean to, but you did. You said that craft limits painting, that a skillfully made realist painting is "just" imitation, while modern art is "liberated" from the shackles of association. And that pretty much jives with the post-modernist view of art.A sidenote: I never meant my reference to craft to be derogatory, and I think if you look again at my post you won't find insult.
"Craft" has come to be a four-letter word in the world of art, a derogatory term that implies technical skill without vision, an artificial barrier to expression. Shouldn't a true artist be able to express without the need for passing through the gauntlet of learning his or her craft? Isn't this a limiting requirement?
Well, in that it limits trained artists to technical quality, yeah, it is. I hardly consider that to be a bad thing, though. A writer with ideas but no skill is not considered a good writer, or a liberated one. The philosophy that painting exists for its own sake is a hollow and nihilistic one, and one that rarely appears in creative endeavors outside the visual arts.
Now there's a lesson a few writers I've edited over the years could stand to learn. :twisted:
I've already brought this conversation from Pollock and fine art down to Kirby and comic books, so I'll refrain from the Beavis-like comments that come to mind about the pictures Ben just posted.
I had a brief but terrible moment where I was Googling to find a picture of Galactus appearing as an alien but still having a G upon his chest. Luckily, I pulled back from the brink of that Shatnerian madness. But I did peer over it at a Galactus fansite, which includes links to fanfic like the following:
This is exactly what's wrong with the internet.GALACTUS: STAR WARS - by Mike O'Brian. What happens when the Devourer of Worlds makes Darth Vader his herald? How can this new partnership lead to an even greater union? Starring: All your favorite characters from Star Wars and Galactus himself.
If there is Galactus slash out there, I do not want to know.
Sorry Kevin, I think Ben just decimated our little side conversation here. Thanks for that info Ben, FWIW I agree with you, but it was nice to see someone put what I've been thinking when I look at that stuff with the black and white grid and the geometric shapes into words.
Much of the artworld is a case of nobody having the courage to go... "Hey that emperor over there is naked!" -or- sometimes a fountain is just a urinal... and sometimes a crucifix immersed in urine is just a really scary/weird thing to do with your little photography hobby.
I wrote a larger response to Ben's impressive argument last evening and then lost it to a stray mouse click. sigh. Anyway, I'll try to keep up with what's been said since and not digress.
I think you underestimate, Ben, the amount of composition that goes into a Pollock painting. I still think Pollock is overrated, but he's not the cynical anti-artist you want to portray him as. He makes crucial choices of color, layering, and placement. It's hard to prove, but I don't think just anyone can reproduce a Jackson Pollock painting.
The choices made in completely abstract art like Pollock or color field painting or even op-art are not trivial. In a sense, they are much simpler than those that your precious Bouguereau (sorry, just wanted to say that) had to make. In many cases, they are the choices that painters must always make, they're just stripped down to a single or a few choices. Then they're approached with far more attention and precision. Look at Joseph Albers' works. They are an exploration of color interactions. And that's about it. It's definitely a different philosophy that Bouguereau has, but I think it is productive, not destructive as you seem to insist.
I think there are fundamental reasons that we must, culturally, accept a great deal of modern art and that we can't just return to our Burne-Joneses and Waterhouses today the way Ross wants us to. First of all, Ross is obviously *very* focused on figural subjects. Yes, he has some landscapes in the site's collections, but look at how he decks out the main pages. There's a lot more to portray in art than human figures -- even figures AND landscape -- but the 19th century artist, despite seeing these things in life refused to recognize them. Specifically, I'm talking about technology. Ross' vision for a "renewed" aesthetic would, if his decor choices are any indication, shun any real exploration of the impact of technology on life. Instead, we'd be left floating in a world of classical allusion and religious imagery. That's all well and good -- really -- but how does that speak to life in the modern era?
In conclusion, I think Galactus' shorts are stupid, too.
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