Replies: 30 Comments
on Tuesday, November 22nd, walt said
Margaret,
yes, you are an example of what mixed bag we are. My friend George is on the other extreme, someone who loves art, is not an artist as far as I know, but has found this site to be of interest I think. As well there are a few who may well have more education than I and whose scholarship is more profound. Just because I have the title 'professor' in front of my name doesn't mean I have a lock on it all by any means. In fact it is always good for a laugh when I go to buy my fishing license every year at the local hunting/fishing store. I guess they expect me to walk in wearing a cap and gown or something.
on Tuesday, November 22nd, art@att.net">Margaret Stone said
Walt, I always look forward to your blogs. I came to art with a bit of education past highschool, but always learn something from what you share with us, and thanks for that. In addition to being a fine artist, I consider you an excellent teacher. Speaking of forums, ours seems to have been inoperable for awhile now. Hope it comes back up. I miss it.
on Tuesday, November 22nd, walt said
Thanks Brad. You know I realize that many, if not a majority of us here at wwar.com/absolutearts.com have come to their current artistic life through means other than academia or with only a short experience with higher education after high school or maybe they are not artists at all and find these blogs and the forum an essential part of their education about a subject they have found, fallen in love with and wish to know a bit more from the inside. In some sense I understand that mine may be one of the only voices from the educational realm they hear on a regular basis as relates to the arts and the artists' experience. If I can affirm someone or challenge them to go further or inspire them to continue that would make it worthwhile in my mind.
on Tuesday, November 22nd, Brad Michael Moore said
A corrected conclusion...
For those using their own avenues, and backgrounds, to define how their depth of process may reach the scope of their own ideas - May they too find such careful footsteps leading them to their conclusions as well… Good luck to all of us who revere in the journey!
http://www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/b/bradmichaelmoore/additional-artwork/brad-michael-moore-150.html
on Tuesday, November 22nd, Brad Michael Moore said
Walt -
A well written blog, especially to those who have been studying art academically, and working to understand the processes that are ingrained in that milieu. For others, who found their art through other means - this is a good example for how a tried and true method, gleamed from the tutorage of art legacy, has brought you to your idea’s culmination… It uses all the tools of you arsenal, collected though the years of you study, teaching, and exploration. For those of us who know you, in some way, we are proud. For those of who use using their avenues, and backgrounds, to define how the depth of process may reach the scope their own ideas - May they too find such careful footsteps leading them to their conclusions as well… Good luck to all of us who revere in the journey!
on Sunday, November 20th, walt said
re-reading these responses and noticed that Dianne mentioned Frankenstein. Actually this blog originally started as another slightly different subject with Frankenstein as the focus and example. Not so much about the morals and ethics of the story's plot and circumstances but about Mary Shelley's amazing creative break through. I was casting about for what to write next and realized I've already written it. So stay tuned.
on Saturday, November 19th, walt said
I describe it to students like the way a squid swims...first it sucks in water then it squishes it out like a bottle rocket.
on Saturday, November 19th, Margaret said
Right on, Walt. I am reading what you just said and getting immersed in the first paragraph and saying well now, Walt, doesn't a formula begin with an idea? And you saved the day by saying "inherent in the formulation of the idea...uh oh...the idea comes first and the formulation takes the idea into new grounds to be specific here. Forumulaic meaning to give form to the idea."
And, having been a meditator for years, I noticed when I am involved in creating a piece of work I am in and out of that same meditative state during the process. Idea to act to idea to act. And when someone talks of just letting it flow, not working with ideas, like it or not there is always a point just outside that flow where they make a conscious choice. In and out. Its the way of it. An idea that is followed by an action. A dance of balances between states of mind.
on Saturday, November 19th, walt said
Yes, that is why I asked for more clarification from Carlo. Last night I had a discussion with a Design professor who explained that he'd just lectured on the difference between ideas which are preliminary incentives to action and concepts which are plans, formulas and strategies for a direction. I am speaking about having an idea that may lead to a concept or maybe just set motion to a direction. I don't see how we can make a move without an idea. However formulas are a different issue altogether. I don't have a problem with formulas which are only slightly more restrictive than setting parameters. One is a bit more like classical music and the other a bit more like jazz. But I know the word formula has become taboo to some artists. To formulate or not to formulate is not intrinsicly right or wrong as far as I'm concerned. I work both ways. Sometimes the end result of a series based on a formula is the beginning of something completely new that I may not have come to had I not explored the possiblities inherent in the formulation of the idea...uh oh...the idea comes first and the formulation takes the idea into new grounds to be specific here. Forumulaic meaning to give form to the idea.
You know we've gone through 50 + years of these word games when it comes to act of painting, the theories of painting and the politics of painting...I've lived through most of that history and sometimes forget that not everyone else has. There is a whole new generation that is inventing new ways to speak about the same things artists have spoken of for centuries. I heard a young painter last night turn fundamental skill level issues into a statement on how she discovered what I teach my freshmen every year to a crowd who lapped it all up as if it were a new discovery. She's a very good painter and I mean her no disrespect. Its the crowd I'm surprized by.
on Saturday, November 19th, Margaret Stone said
Perhaps needing a clear definition of idea because I would bet different people relate to the meaning of "idea" in different ways, for instance Carlo vs. Walt. I just looked it up in the dictionary. Rather a long explanation but it starts with "That which is conceived in the mind. A thought" Perhaps some relate to "idea" as a total plan for a painting. And then again, reaching for a certain size brush to lay a certain size stroke is an idea followed through with an action. Or perhaps even deciding to paint rather than take a walk is an idea of spending some time painting. If thought is indeed idea, we are submersed in ideas. We live in a sea of ideas. But----more likely just a matter of personal interpretation of the word "idea".
on Saturday, November 19th, walt said
Carlo,
You know this discussion of Pollack is very interesting. I haven't paid much attention to Pollack for some time so you got me to looking at various sites showing his work. I came across the work called "Blue Poles", one of my all time favorite Pollack works, which got me to thinking...
I can buy the stream of conscious argument that ideas simply don't exist in visual art at some levels and at various moments during the creative process. (I won't concede in music or dance because they are very mathematical which is full of ideas and equations or in prose or poetry because words are simply stand-ins for ideas) Especialy when looking at the pure drip paintings and their linear, stream like interwoven movements. But then I hit Pollacks famous painting called "Blue Poles" with those very decisive dividing blue marks that break the canvas and the space into what begins to suggest a series of tree trunks, or even telephone poles in a shallow and atmospheric landscape with both foreground and background. Well from my experience with truely freeform stream of consciousness experiments the only decision one makes is when to begin and when to stop. To decide anything else is to have an idea that this or that decision is more "important" and therefore "right" or "good". To decide to make those blue poles and then title the piece as such seems like a series of ideas to me. I don't know how else to explain their presence in the work. In fact they appear to me to be about 7 or so ideas not counting the idea to have blue poles at all rather than to simply continue the zen like skeins of pours and drips which is maybe idea number eight. And that doesn't include the ideas involved in each new color included in the work. Ultimately maybe we can catalog about a dozen or more ideas in that painting.
There has been a great attempt to include Pollack and other artists in a group who argued that chance was all they were using to produce their work. This group included John Cage the composer. And while there is some eye opening epiphanies involved in to their attempts and experiments at allowing pure chance to define their art there is a basic law that we've come to understand in both physics, sociology and psychology, even in environmental science...that is that anything in which a human participates, or even when a human observes something their participation, even their near proximity to what is happeneing changes the results of what will happen.
Pollack may have accidentally, by 'chance' made the first blue pole. But six or seven poles later he'd begun having 'ideas' about blue poles and that blue poles were the way to resolve his piece. One way or another I can't call the second and third (and so on) blue pole anything other than a series of ideas even if they were after the fact of beginning the work.
Carlo, maybe you are speaking about something less precise when you speak of ideas not being part of the artmaking process. Or maybe I've got the cart before the horse in some way, but you're going to have to be more clear for me to understand your statement.
on Friday, November 18th, Hyacinthe Baron said
A great deal of art occurs. The idea then would be for the artist to establish the parameters for art to happen. We speak of art in this sense as a transcendant experience in which the ego (and with the ego goes the idea) is no longer a conscious force which allows the pure aesthetic that produces new breakthroughs in art.
This is almost a standard procedure. If an artist does not experience a transcendant moment while making art then the art will not rise to a higher level.
However, there are moments that are pure accident. I can testify to that being the case with Jackson Pollack. So drunk one night at the White Horse Tavern in the Village, a group of us back to his studio where he had rolls of canvasses stretched out on the floor. He was disgusted with his work, his inability to come up with anything original. "Here's what I think of this art business," he shoute in a drunken stupor as he proceeded to relieve himself by making delicate swirls and tracings of lines with his own body fluid. The rest is history.
This is not a story I would tell anyone but other artists, who else would believe it? The truth is stranger than fiction, especially when it comes to art.
on Thursday, November 17th, walt said
Now I really don't mean to be combative about this. But Hans Hoffman dripped paint before Pollack did. I've done research on Pollack and Hoffman during my graduate studies. Clement Greenberg was a former student of Hoffmans. He was also one of two critics that shaped Pollacks thinking on process and flatness and helped make him famous. Pollack not only knew of Hoffman's work but several other painters that Greenberg had introduced him to who did what later became known as "all over" paintings. These "ideas" were already being bantered around the New York scene before Pollack did much with them. Previously Pollack was trying to break out of his more cubist approach. Many of the young abstract painters felt like Picasso and Braque had imprisoned them and were looking for some new...shall we call them ideas? or processes? or fields to explore? Either way I don't see how you disavow the 'idea' in painting or any art form. In Pollack's case it was someone elses idea but Pollack pursued it with a new intensity and committement. And yes he ran into a brick wall, largely because he was an alcohalic long before he'd become well known. His drinking had impaired his painting for some time. Lee Krasner is credited with getting him on the wagon for one of the longest and most prolific periods of his life. Near the end he began making paintings with suggestions of the face and figure in them. Greenberg pretty much dismissed him after that. I agree with you Kumiko. I don't think he was a genious. He was however willing to risk more than some others at the time were willing to risk. So maybe that puts him more in the category of a really great race car driver, or mountain climber or explorer. But even an explorer must have the idea to climb this mountain or that one.
on Thursday, November 17th, Kumiko said
I would like to add some more comments about the "idea" of Jackson Polack.
There was new movement in early 1900's, the "idea" of nonobjective abstract painting that was formed by the artists like Kandinsky, and many abstract painters followed this direction at the time (and even today). These nonobjective abstract artists created images using a similar style and it can be argued that many of them started looking alike. In this movement, Jackson Pollack's idea of dripping paints was something new to people and people started filming him and interviewing him. He was in magazines, on TV, everywhere...and he became a well known artist by dripping paints. However, Pollack could not develop a new "idea" afterward and there was a huge expectation of from his audience to create something new which caused a lot of pressure for him. I think the "lack of idea" and the expectation from people on his new work became a tremendous source of pain for him and led him to become an alcoholic and mentally ill. His death was mysterious whether it was really an accident or a suicide. Pollack is good example to discuss how important an "idea" is for an artist to create art, while the "lack of idea" could become a crucial weakness for creative artists. Pollack may was not such a genius--I believe a genius artist never suffers from a "lack of ideas".
Personally, I like Pollack's dripping paintings because of the rhythm, well balanced color and the composition in the images. They are so dynamic and at the same time one can feel his sensitivities in his work. My favorite is the painting called "Autumn Rhythm"; I like the combination and feeling of the dynamic technique with a peacefulness similar to a cool autumn day.
on Thursday, November 17th, jose freitas cruz said
I would add, Carlo, that Pollock' painting went on to become what you say it became because he seized the 'idea' and acted upon it , he didn't discard it or simply sat there while it was happening. work doesn't come out of the blue or simply out of mere action - something happens, if we're awake we'll grasp it, make the connections wherever they have to be made inside us and act upon them. it may all happen at the speed of light, but if you slow down a bit and analize the process you'll realize that there is a hint of an 'idea' - the spark that sets your action moving in the right direction.
on Thursday, November 17th, Kumiko said
Carlo,
Actually, Jackson Pollack discovered the “idea” of dripping painting accidentally when he dropped paint on the floor while he was painting.
on Wednesday, November 16th, Carlo Grassini said
Hello again Walter,
I can go on at length about why Art is not about ideas, but for the sake of not being too long winded, I would like to give just one example of the reason ideas do not enter great art and should not enter into the art making process.
Do you suppose Jackson Pollack woke up one morning and had a great brainstorm of an IDEA and said to himself, "I've got this great idea, I"ll start dripping paint out of a coffee can!" Well it did not happen that way. I am sure you are familiar with his history and his body of works. If you follow the progression of his drawing and painting from his earliest to latest works you will see the final destination of his mature painting. This, Walter, was not idea driven, it is painting at its highest level, thus arriving at his unique art form. All Art forms are about the exploration of the unknown. Ideas are about formulations about whatever is already known.
on Wednesday, November 16th, walt said
Carlo, of course art is about ideas. At the very least it is about visual ideas, shape ideas, line ideas, color ideas, ideas of movement, rythm and cadence,...but also ideas related to content and subject matter. You're gonna have to explain why you don't think the various art forms you mention are not laden, dripping with ideas.
on Wednesday, November 16th, walt said
Carlo, of course art is about ideas. At the very least it is about visual ideas, shape ideas, line ideas, color ideas, ideas of movement, rythm and cadence,...but also ideas related to content and subject matter. You're gonna have to explain why you don't think the various art forms you mention are not laden, dripping with ideas.
on Monday, November 14th, Carlo Grassini said
Hi Walter,
You refer to the "idea" in painting. If I may quote you, "Although I've made every attempt to present an original idea, a seed if you will, buried in the subject."
Painting is not about ideas, music is not about ideas, dance is not about ideas, photography is not about ideas.....if you get were I am going with this.....ART is not about ideas!
Carlo
on Monday, November 14th, Brad Greek said
Hello Walter, I think that you have covered the spectrum of originality. But in the end, like you posted; "I can’t say that it is an important work-- someone else will be the judge of it‘s importance at a later time. I think it is relevant.", says it all. I feel that we can study, attempt, rearrange, forget it all, etc.. but in the end it will be up to someone else to say it is worthy. So I don't worry about all that other stuff when I'm creating, I'm just turning inward and I know noone has been there but me. Thanx Walt, great piece and blog!
on Monday, November 14th, walt said
We won't know for some time Jose. But I'll lay you odds that someone will address it artistically. I keep thinking of those in the U.S. who keep speaking of a color blind society. It is a high ideal and something to ascribe to but maybe we'd better learn a lesson. The French government prided itself on being colorblind and ethnicity blind--"anyone born in France is French" is the slogan I've recently heard. In reality, apparently, they simply didn't document what was going on in those minority populations...instead of the higher ideal of an entire society seeing beyond race and culture they simply were not paying attention to the situation that those minorities were being oppressed by. It is a different thing than a truely color blind society. sometimes you gotta look directly at the problem. Admit what is going on and do something about it. Pretending that it doesn't exist is what i think has lead to this circumstance. And maybe they've been here before in a much bigger way. The French revolution was also the result of an Aristocracy that chose not to see what was going on around them. In fact i think this is the problem that the 1st world has with the attitudes of the 3rd world. We just don't get it cause we refuse to really look at it. It isn't color blindness...just plain blindness.
on Monday, November 14th, jose freitas cruz said
I’ve come up with something else for my blog, Walt, not to worry.
My ramblings went in the direction of how everything advances very much through the process of appropriation as you very well point out. I philosophised somewhat about how acceptance and understanding of this process by the actors involved could lead to a better overall understanding by the spectators, those outside the process, and how this would help draw them in (and you mention this too). I start to stretch it perhaps when I go on to suggest that the events in France have something to do with Europe never having accepted that the process of its becoming has grown out of appropriation, arrogantly claiming to be the hub of all significant ideas, refusing to reward those outsiders who have contributed significantly from the dawn of history towards its richness: Sumerians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, the eastern ideas that reached Greece, the Goths that breathed new life into Rome, the Jews that were greatly responsible for the discovery of new worlds in the 14/15 hundreds by the Portuguese only to be expelled, the Africans who helped reinvent these new worlds and who are now knocking at Europe’s door dreaming of jobs nobody else wants to do but are being kept away out of a fear that has grown in us Europeans due to not understanding the process of our constant change. As you see, I digressed and moved away from art talk and so it probably is a good thing that I didn’t post the entirety of that blog. I wonder whether these riots will suggest as powerfull a painting as Goya’s Dos de mayo or Tres de Mayo, or Picasso’s Guernica did in their time.
on Sunday, November 13th, Margaret Stone said
Walt, great blog. What a share! I get very much into process when I work and thanks for letting us see examples of your process for this painting. I was particularly moved by the second image in your blog. I am a fan of mystery in artwork and, to me, that image was ripe with it.
on Sunday, November 13th, gabriella said
Great blog, Walt. I particularly appreciate how you have constructed your thoughts on the relationship between what is newly explored based on historical models. The idea of originality as having it's beginning in a pre-existing source, or being a derivation is the proper context of using that word.
Seeing the evolution of "jenga" painting here, and of its stages of how it came to be, is a really great illustration of process. As you say, at every stage there if a sense of completion, so the painting as you have brought it to completion is a layering of a set of complete constructions.
I think this is a powerfully communicative painting, one that provokes a great deal of feeling and allusive thoughts in me. As to it being too elliptical - well, at least there is room for a viewer to cast about trying on different thoughts. As to it being too didactic - we all have things to teach each other, and why should a painter not suggest veins of thinking along?
Thanks so much for this essay!
on Sunday, November 13th, walterking said
George, thanks. Maybe one day I will write a book. I thought a lot about it during the prime of my teaching years. But really nowjust I want to get back to making art full time as I begin to bring my teaching career to an end in the next few years. It was never my goal to teach forever-- unless it happens through my art.
Kumiko, you have rightly noted that this blog had its beginnings in several of our forum discussions. On the forum I often intend to expand on or extend an idea that someone else brings up to encourage dialogue and depth rather than to counter or contradict. Only when there are facts or if I think the issue is more complex will I usually contradict. Yes I agree with you on most things that we have discussed. Maybe I have some other insights or balancing comments. Thank you very much for your comments here and maybe we can entice even more folks to join the forum discussions.
Diane, it is very possible that I was on that uptown train either on Friday the 4th or Saturday the 5th of Nov. Sorry. I wanted to get in touch with you but it was a really hectic weekend. I didn't even get to see the friend I was staying with while I was there. I promise my next time in NYC should be less hectic and I'll give you a call and we'll visit. As far as the jpg you mention...I didn't discuss it in the blog but because of the way abstraction and figuration are woven together in many respects my work is complete from the moment it is begun at nearly every stage of the process. But a complete composition and realization of the fullness of an idea are two different things in my mind.
Hope your project went well over the weekend.
Jose, aw shucks, ya shouldn't oughta made me blush. You are too humble. Do yours and lets start a dialogue. Thanks all the same for the compliments...
on Sunday, November 13th, jose freitas cruz said
Walt, you just left me without a blog for the 18th and only 3 days to come up with something new. Your examples of how appropriation happens and generates the new is much more interesting than my feeble attempt and so i won't add much and will let your voice speak. A great blog.
on Saturday, November 12th, dianne bowen said
hey walter,
nicely done. I found myself thinking of the classic horror tale, "frankinstein" fits the bill. Are we the creator and the monster in our strive to find and put forth original work as artists.
"Jenga" is an interesting piece to follow. I actually find the third jpeg interesting in it's own right as a final piece....
Were you on a train going uptown, F lrecently? I thought I saw you go right by me...
thanks, for your blog I've been waiting for it.
on Saturday, November 12th, Kumiko said
Walter, this is a wonderful blog that you wrote. I also appreciate how you summarized the background of historical art. We artists at “Visual Arts Café” have often discussed about “what makes art great” or the “criteria of art” as well as “originality in art” and I think you pulled them together well. Our various discussions have been clarified by your thoughts in your blog.
Somehow, I misunderstood that you did not agree with me about what I said when I commented about “Originality” on your blog about the criteria of art, which was titled “The harder work” (October 07, 2005). Do you remember my comments about “originality” using the example of music? I think you are saying something similar to what I said about “originality”. I am glad we have similar point of view on art. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and valuable knowledge.
Here is my comment that I previously posted in the discussion on originality:
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I would like to comment on the question of “originality”. I enjoy contemporary music as well as classical music. I appreciate classical music as “classic” and somehow never get tired of listening to it. However, when a piece of music gets popular, another artist may create something similar or copy it and so on and so on. Eventually, the music can start sounding the same until it is even difficult to identify the song or who made it. Over time, this causes us to lose interest in listening to the music, as we grow tired of the repetition and same patterns. This makes us look for something different. At some point, an artist may take an old song that was once popular, but has lost interest, and revive it by adding contemporary sounds or by playing it in a new way. The artist may rearrange it by retaining the older unique or special elements of the original song and combine them with contemporary styles or by using a new perspective. By doing so, it makes it unique and popular again. I think the same can hold for the visual arts. The tendency of humans is always to look for and develop new things. We easily get tired of works that we see too often or if there is too much of the same thing. In some cases, we may even reduce its value. I think “originality” is a very important factor in art whether it creating something completely new or by visualizing older elements in a new manner. In one way, the work of the past becomes part of the toolset for the future.”
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http://christo.wwar.com/artsforum/messages/325/53866.html?1130045391
on Saturday, November 12th, geomar_us@yahoo.com">George Birch said
You as an artist strive to produce oridginal thought provoking art and you do but as a teacher you have opened the art process to we non artist to a better understanding of art. I hope you find the time to author a book in the future. GRB
We speak of originality, the new, thinking out of the box, the progression of art or the Avant Garde quite a bit on these blogs and in the responses. But what is new? Da Vinci, at the peak of the Renaissance and the in early morning of scientific method, talked about how no man has seen anything not of this temporal reality and therefore cannot imagine anything not based in that reality... He was speaking about how to create a monster out of the parts of other animals...That is to say that one cannot imagine something that does not exist in whole or in pieces that he has not seen on this planet, under the light of this sun in this temporality. All he can do is reassemble what already exists in a way that hints at something that has not or cannot be seen. Any progress we make depends on how we see the world around us. We often speak of life as we know it. That pretty much sums it up. When someone does or discovers something that seems to shatter that reality for a moment it changes our world view. 
