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06/14/2006: "Traditions" by Walter King

Having been around long enough to catch the tail end of the changes that followed the abstract movement of the 40’s and 50’s and the state of flux visual art has been in since I find it a very interesting time to be alive. If you hang around long enough you’ll see everything, and see it repeated, inside and out, backwards and forwards. I was born in 52. Matisse died about year later. One of the comments I remember reading by Matisse when I was in art school was something like (and I paraphrase because I can‘t find the quote at the moment) “younger artists will try to begin where I left off without understanding the preparatory research required to get where I am.” In short he said they would think it a simple thing to paint abstractly, expressively yet it is most complicated and took Matisse quite a lot of study from traditional painting to modern.



I’ve watched the studio arts programs in universities grow. I was born shortly after the BFA degree was instituted. Prior to the 50’s few universities offered a degree in studio arts. Painting, drawing, sculpture were considered vocational and therefore not taught at university. Mostly there were small independent art schools scattered across the country where one learned to work from the figure, practice sculpting and modeling, rendering and painting and maybe a little printmaking. The college where I currently teach was one of these Beaux Arts (Fine Arts) programs based on the famous French art school in Paris until the early 50‘s when it became a College of Art and Design whose model was the Bau Haus where fine art was married to applied or commercial art. Ben Shahn in a lecture given at Harvard in the late 50’s later published as “the Shape of Content” mentioned the relatively new educational idea of the university degreed artist. Neither the Beaux Arts model or the Bau Haus model was adopted by the new university programs. Rather almost from the start a large number of University programs began with modernism and abstraction primarily. There were of course a few exceptions like Boston University, University of Iowa, Temple and others. But Yale for instance with its two most famous faculty Joseph Albers (from the Bau Haus) and Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell all but leap frogged right over the more traditional figurative tradition that had been the main stay of most studio art schools prior to the BFA and MFA degree. So it isn’t hard to say that an artist who made a name for themselves prior to the 50’s had no degree. None of them did unless it was in some subject other than art.

So the University system of studio arts began at the beginning of the biggest iconographic controversy of modern times. Abstraction was in, figuration was out. But no sooner than they began when abstraction was being challenged by conceptualism. So before there was even much of a tradition the university tradition was already old and stodgy and out of date within a matter of 20 years. In comparison literature, theater and in some cases music (especially music theory) had been taught for more than a hundred years in universities in this country and longer in Europe. So those traditions were deep and wide and clearly established while the studio art tradition was being battered about every 10 to 15 years with new ‘isms that threatened the very basis of study in any of those forms. Slowly that same storm came to batter many of the more traditional studio art programs where the figurative tradition had had a bit more time to root.

To give you an example in painting we can go back a little ways and find the high Renaissance lasting from Giotto to Michelangelo bleeding over into Mannerism, Baroque, Rococo, Romanticism each lasting a generation or longer. Naturalism and Symbolism bled into Impressionism/Post Impressionism by the end of the 1800’s. But within the first 50 years of the 1900’s we had Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism, Suprematism, Surrealism, Dada, Precisionism, and finally Abstract Expressionism by the early 50’s. Within 10 years later we’d already gone through Op Art, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Agit Prop, Photo Realism, Performance Art and every variation in between. Feminist art was there between the rest and finally really bloomed 20 years later around the time all of these post 50’s forms were lumped together as Post-Modernism if only because it was so hard to keep track of all the ‘isms the names of which were quite frankly a little silly after a while. That’s when the Neo and Retro ‘isms began…Neo Expressionism being the most dominant.

So what am I getting at here? As I said I’ve been around long enough to see the changes. With University programs being among the least expensive since a majority of State schools offer them many young art students have gotten degrees in studio art, painting or sculpture programs where no one learned to draw observationally because drawing was not an issue, conceptualizing was the issue. It was assumed that one would figure out to do what ever one conceived so they left traditional skills like drawing, painting, modeling in three dimensions, in other words the plastic arts, up to students to figure out on their own if they needed it as these skills were not necessarily important to the process of thinking. Photography became the obvious solution to years of study from the model. It was easy, accessible, technically oriented enough that someone else could develop ones film if you didn’t want to spend time in the dark room, while the idea of blurring the boundaries between art forms became the most important of issues. Does anyone ever wonder why the boundaries are so little blurred in areas like theater, literature and music? Well some times the boundaries are blurred in music but not like in the visual arts. One is still taught to hit the correct notes in a piece of music for the most part. There have been some major experiments in film, theater and literature but by and far they have not caught on like in the visual arts. I’m not sure this is a good thing or a bad thing. In fact I’m not drawing many conclusions in this. Mostly stating the history as I remember it and pointing out the differences.

In general I don’t have much against the new. It isn’t the new that bothers me but the quality of the new or the old. And you’d be surprised if you really knew me to learn what I like and what I don’t like. I’m certainly not one of those calling for a return to the Pre-Raphaelites. I cross all sorts of boundaries in what I think is great art from ancient to the moment. It gets harder to justify the more contemporary work that I like but I do find some of it worthy. Though not all of it.

But lately I’ve been hearing a lot about the idea of representational drawing coming back again to the fore. Recently there was an article in the New York Times (that supposed Liberal of Liberal News Papers) in which some very hot young painters in New York talked about how cool it is to draw again in a representational fashion. Reminds me of the time when, during the early years of the Renaissance (around the time of Savanorola‘s fiery preaching), they began digging up ancient Greek statues. Noting the realism and the expression of these statues young artists like Michelangelo and Raphael went on to propel the Renaissance vision in a new direction, not backwards but forewards. Maybe I’ll live long enough to see the whole art world turned on its head yet one more time.

I’ve organized a thread of images-- mostly of Madonna and Child images from Giotto to Chris Ofili’s Madonna that caused such a stir at the Brooklyn Museum recently. What I like about this thread is its continuity of imagery. Instead of embedding these into the text as I usually do I’m simply going to string them together here at the end of my blog so you can see how little things have changed.

Giotto



Bronzino



Cassatt



Kollwitz



Kokoshka



Chagall



Lipshitz



De Chirico



Ofili

Replies: 43 Comments

on Sunday, June 25th, walt said

"If I were a writer my grammar and pucyuayion skills had better be up to date or my editors would scream at me." And obviously I am not with spelling like this...should be punctuation.

on Monday, June 19th, walt said

Jose,
you know i'm not trying to convince those of us who have already been through a certain serious process to retread that ground. We get to where get. I'm not gonna ask Leger or de Kooning to go back to figurative work to prove anything to me. Jose, your work is mature. Because I teach Illustration in which the human figure is the prime metaphor I have to stay in touch with both my figurative and observational abilities.

The point is that if I were a musician I'd have to periodically practice my scales maybe or certain change ups to stay in practice. I'd have to be able to hit the right notes in a composition. If I were a writer my grammar and pucyuayion skills had better be up to date or my editors would scream at me. Yet in the visual arts I have no basic, fundamental principles that are the basis of what I do?

Margaret, it is an interesting idea...that our focus might preclude seeing certain things peripheral to that focus. In sociology it is called the hawthorn effect...those studied soon understand they are being studied and change their behaviors so the study is disfunctional. the same thing happens in physics at a certain sub atomic level. I ofte talk about ourinability to know enough to be truly logical. It has to do with our temporal situation.

on Sunday, June 18th, jose said

I couldn't agree with you more Walt, and to be honest, if I haven't attempted the human figure since the early days it's out of lack of ideas and courage... I sometimes feel I go out of my way to look for alibis that keep me from having to tackle the issue. just before we left Brunei I was struck by the freshness of a good friend's portraits, her name was Shan Terry, very powerful stuff.

on Saturday, June 17th, Margaret Stone said

I think the virtual dog buried it out back with his virtual bone. He just sits there and smirks when I ask for it back. But, I’ll give another go at it. Perhaps this has only peripheral relevance to your blog Walt, but what you were talking about and so many of the comments, tweaked my curiousity after an article I read a couple days ago.

What do we as artists and the viewing public actually see? Or more specifically, not see. So we talked about vision, inner vision, perception, learning, cognition, history, and how that impacts us on our artistic journey now and into the future. Where we have come from, what we have learned, and what we adopt/use or carry forward with us. We all have heard about selective attention. I just read a very interesting article that talked about “Inattentional Blindness”. It defined inattentional blindness as our lack of ability to perceive certain aspects in a visual scene. And how this manifests if those aspects are not being deliberately attended to. What it said was “In other words, if you are not looking for it, you don’t see it.”

Studies regarding inattentional blindness were conducted at the University of Illinois and at Harvard University among other places. Subjects were shown a video with two groups of people wearing black or white shirts who were passing a large ball back and forth among themselves, a basketball. They were asked to count how many times the ball was passed between the people in the white shirts, or something to that effect.

Now, here is the fascinating part. A person in a gorilla suit entered the scene and mingled with the people passing the ball, well in view, faced the camera, pounded on his chest, and walked out of the scene. A majority of the subjects watching and counting the number of ball passes, at the end of the video, reported not seeing the gorilla at all. Now, that is amazing. I know of a number of other studies dealing with our cognitive abilities in this regard.

So, I leave you to ponder how that carries over into our art making and art viewing. How might that reflect the way we, with our limited cognitive abilities, bring art in all its forms from the past into the present and forward. A bit off the subject, perhaps, but upon pondering, it could bring up some interesting issues.

More info is a available, if interested, I'll email the link.

~Margaret

on Saturday, June 17th, Walt said

Markaret, maybe it will turn up in the dryer with that one missing sock.

Jose, yes and no. Yes, there is always something more to be mined. A tradition used to allow for that. It's partly what I meant by shelf life. But also no, that isn't quite what I meant. Shortly after the ism's began someone like Balthus shows up on the scene. Seemed to be going backwards yet somewhere along the way he catches everyones attention and refires figurative painting for yet another generation. Everyone thought it was all over for the figure by the time he caught fire. What do with do with our Balthus's in this moment when they show up. Or out Lucien Freuds? Or the next figurative painter who gets at something we didn't think could anylonger move us?

What I meant by the reference to the Italians during the renaissance when they rediscovered Greek sculpture was that even though the Greeks were long gone (at least that particular Greek culture) their bygone work inspired a new generation of painters and sculptors forward rather than backwards. I think that sort of thing still happens.

It's sort of like when science seems sure it knows a subject and then someone from another field discovers something, maybe even an old idea that applies to this next wave of research.

If we're really in an open period we should also be open to that sort of thing happening as well shouldn't we? this idea that we know what we're doing is folly, hubris, arrogance even. If we're going to say we are open to new ideas then why do we shut so many ideas off?

Now am I sayint to you Jose that you should return to the figure. Of course not. Your path is your path. But others are returning to the figure and we shouldn't shut them down.

Yes I know that the art market is wacky, too sure of itself and at this moment stuck in its ways...it is simply a new academia that is working out its disciplines, its rules and its politics...as every academic school of thought has. But also as every academic school of thought has changed, been overthrown or converted so will this one.

on Friday, June 16th, margaret stone said

I posted a comment---don't see it here--wonder where it ended up. Maybe it will turn up tomorrow.

on Friday, June 16th, nabil barbar said

past is past ,today is future .
we have to be logical that every thing changed in our lifes we used to be patient on our canvases work and rework on it ,but after the life became faster and humanity is running very quickly towards nothings ,things must change ,MACART will lead our ways and we can not stop it .
even i agree that artist must pass several traditional ways to reach the future .

on Friday, June 16th, jose said

i see your point. so what you mean would be to revist past 'isms' and see if they could yield even more?

on Friday, June 16th, walt said

I agree Jose. But the fact is that it isn't as open as we'd like to think. It seems to me that we ought to be able to accept both a fast version and a slow version. The first pushes on (sometimes at the expense of resolving left over issues) while the slow version lingers long (and of course we've been taught for a century now that this disallows sometimes the progress that is possible.)

I'm hoping that dialog like this one could begin to open the possibilities that still exist in older forms without nixing the potential of new forms. Not all of tradition has proven valueless and not all progress has proven its' value.

Anyway, having noted some new/old things coming back around like the issue of more traditional drawing skills gives me just as much hope as the openess of current affairs.

on Friday, June 16th, jose said

I think it's the pace of life nowadays that is quicker, Walt. I don't know if this means that the shelf life of an artist, as you put it, has shrunk or if there is just too much being put on the shelves for us to digest properly and revisit at the rhythm others before us were accustomed to. Those before us could easily differentiate the 'isms' as you called them and try to find a place within one or another, but on the other hand the odds of a new ‘ism’ opening up before you were rare and far apart – I would dare say there might have been times when we would have been lucky if one came around in our life time. Nowadays we are living in the opposite extreme I guess: too much is happening too fast, we haven’t got the time to fully digest everything and the chances that we get lost [in our work] are greater, but I wouldn’t exchange the openness and the possibilities that come with the package for anything in this world.

on Friday, June 16th, walt said

Jose, yes your sense of how drawing, whether it lead you or followed you into abstraction is exactly what Matisse was talking about. You have taken the time to understand that drawing is, if not the basis than one of the foundations of abstraction. And in your case as in Matisse, color is another fundamental.

And I think there are two aspects of moving forward contemporarily: One is the basic forward movement an artist makes in her own use of her skill/intuition (can I simply link these two so we don't get sidetracked?) The second aspect of moving forward is when an artist begins to move out in front of their contemporary milieu into...and here it gets hazy...shall we note several possibilities such as a questioning of current modes of thinking (which may lead to new forms and conclusions or not).

Jose and Rick, you both suggest that whether it is an older traditional form or a more contemporary form it can be deduced, decoded, copied and signed as if one has found it for herself. Is there a difference in me working in a style similar to Rembrandt or Rubens today 400+ years later or Chris Ofili working in what is more or less a cubist style only 100 years after Braque and Picasso or a young sculptor trying new variations after Donald Judd whose work is still considered contemporary by some?

How long does it take for an idea to work its way through the culture before it is extinct? This has to do with my discussion of how long a shelf life an artist's style or even just their ideas have today compared to the time of the early Renaissance. Well, okay, maybe the term 'shelf life' carries its own negatives in this discussion. Let us just call it life. Is there a roll that tradition plays that is not negative?

on Friday, June 16th, Rick Steinberger said

Coming in late… here’s two more cents…
To me drawing is the basic connector. Artist to viewer. The ability to move line into form so that it triggers emotions requires not only the technical skill of drawing, but also the willingness to understand and expose your own passion (otherwise the work is just an exercise). But, drawing is hard. It is a learned skill, and must be practiced. And, most hide, or are unaware of, their own passion. Possibly why they get frustrated and bored with drawing, so leave it behind. They focus only on the technical and never connect emotionally. Most contemporary art, POP forward especially, leaves me wondering and sad at how many artists are apparently so disconnected from themselves. Too willing to follow a pattern... try to emulate someone else’s passion… paint for dollars... snap and print. To me, if there is a common thread through contemporary art, it is a lack of passion. And, they don’t teach that at Art U.

on Friday, June 16th, jose freitas cruz said

The more I read the blog and reread the comments I get the feeling that the question we are all asking ourselves but aren’t formulating is this one: are we contemporary artists [contemporary in the sense that we are exploring beyond what has been done and pushing the vision forward], and can the fundamentals of drawing help us get there and continues, therefore, to be at the core of what we create?

When I started painting I was not being contemporary. I copied the surrealists mostly and depended greatly on good drawing skills. I yearned for abstraction but I didn’t know how to get there. You explain this well in one of your recent comments Walt. There is a time [and lots of work] to get there.

Now that I’m slowly getting myself there and feel things flowing I realise that the exercise of abstraction has helped release my hand and the flow of my drawing, but also that an important aspect of the abstract composition is a knowledgeable ‘hand’, one that has gone over the gesture thousands of times in the mind, yes, but one that has also made thousands of ‘takes’ before we say ‘cut’ – ‘la pittura [non è solo] cosa mentale’ – a whole lot of sweat gets poured into it too, and skilful drawing takes you just that extra bit further, even in abstraction.

on Thursday, June 15th, walt said

Thank you for your comments Zolita. And welcome to the discussion. I personally don't care where the education comes from so long as it hits on all cylinders...so long as all the basics are covered. One need not know how to draw like Raphael per se but it doesn't hurt so long as one is generally in control of their intentions both aestheticaly and poetically. When I've ap;lied to universities for teaching positions I often state my agenda clearly...to find a university that teaches both concept and skill at the same time. The reason I've stayed for 20+ years at this college is because here I can at least approach that idea.

And I can see that some students will lean towards the concept and others toward technique as a solution. But often there are some who manage to grasp both ideas.

And yes, when I was a student both at the art college where I now also teach and at the Two Universities where I studied painting we too were warned that to leap frog over the maturity... to go for fame over discovery was often a path to shallowness.

Olivier, I have a saying that I've bastardized...you can lead a horse to water but if you hold his head under he'll drown.

on Thursday, June 15th, Zolita Sverdlove said

Dear Walter,
You wrote a very perceptive article.
I think art should be tarught in an art school,not a university.Art has become academic in the 21st millenium.I have had experiences of talking with students at UCLA who never went uptown to the Metropolitan when they had a college stay in New York. Suceeding in Chelsea is the object for them:like a pop star.When I was in art school we were taught we were too young to produce significant work,we needed to ripen.Furthermore, our pursuits centered around finding our own personal voice,whatever that was:realistic,abstract and developing our personal style,not imitating a style that was fashionable at the moment.Yes, fundamentals are lacking in many university settings and it feeds on itself because only like faculty will be hired.In order to get tenure you have to play the game and therefore you won't develop a unique vision but one that is acceptable to the current arbitrators of taste.
Another factor is money.I have seen some terrific artists change their style after they got a name .It must be that they can sell more boring work.Are the designers and architects the tastemakers today? Expressionism,which I think is one of the more interesting movements of the last 100 years,is not in.So I have seen Hans Beckman paintings deaccessioned by museums to buy some modern junk.I have seen some very good young artists stop expressing themseves and do squares.
There are collectors who buy what they aesthetically like but not enough of them

on Thursday, June 15th, olivier said

Do you think we influence our collectors mind with our art?
I beleive there are two sort of buyer: the speculator and the real art lover. First one never look at your piece, I put him appart. The other one, share we you a vision. By looking many time at the paintings I have here at home after the first decorative aspect I end to capture the painter personality. I just wonder if by sitting in my living room this personality influence , brain washing me?. By painting I mean "art" in general including litterature, poesie, visual ect..
Look how many art movement had a popular influence a generation later. I think a figurative painting will give you a argument, a precise idea. Looking at Andrew carving I feel in a Venetian palazzo of the 18th century with all the symbolism arround it, enriched with a modern sens of the 'party" already present in Venice. An abstract painting will give more like a concept. Looking at Walt drawing I will visualize all the mechanical aspect of our society. I beleive you are more like a critical eye of our culture. But is no directive in the interpretation of you painting it is all left to my own. Is the abstraction created our world of today?
I do not mention the tallent mentioned by Jose and all the reaction movement after the 50's to capture the sens of felling in figuartion.
To finish I wonder what are we creating today? What is the sens of our global message? Looking back, some period who did look empty at the time are filled with strong artist position. Hopefully we are not too old for that.

on Thursday, June 15th, Mark R Brockman said

Walt, I too went through a long period of finding my interior vision. For about ten years I focused on just seeing with the eye, though I didn't know I was doing that, I thought I was looking inward but I wasn't. Then I went through another ten or so years of exploration and discovered a world of artists. Artists that inspired me and challaged me. There was though a wall between me and my true inner creative self. It was like a paper wall in a Japenes tea house. I could almost see and feel a creative self, this wall lasted some time but it did vanish. I think it left when I began to live an artistic life and not just dream of one. What I mean by an artistic life is what I said befor in that my art began to influence how I looked at life. It was then I found my center and since then my life has been so rich. What a wonderful thing, being creative is, it is a shame so many people feel unable to be creative, when in fact it is in all our reach.

on Thursday, June 15th, Mark said

With such grand interior vision is your true calling an interior designer?

on Thursday, June 15th, walt said

Mark, in my own artistic journey I always knew there was that interior vision. Problem wasn't having it so much as expressing it. And yes, there was a gestation period of about 10 years where I moved, and I often felt I moved in super slow motion at the time, towards letting my outer objectivity and my inner subjectivity kiss and make up so to speak. I remember before I went to art school thinking I could already do that. But the truth was that I couldn't do what I really had it in me to do yet. It took that objective discipline and time to digest it to get there. And oh by the way, I read lot of poetry, literaterary fiction, listened to a lot of music and looked at a lot of artists of all types which helped quite a lot. They all pointed to something inside me and helped me identify it...me...my interior vision.

on Thursday, June 15th, Mark R Brockman said

Walt.......Yes.
We need to use the tools of vision, but not just the physical seeing but the emotional and inner vision that we all have, but most never even know they have it, or develope it. I believe that drawing, careful rendering and quick intuitive drawing, not only helps develope skill on a craft level but can allow our inner vision to thrive and grow. Hence the abstract and the real come together. Great blog Walt, so many interesting comments.

on Thursday, June 15th, josé freitas cruz said

Figurative, abstract, conceptual? Doesn’t make any difference, if you don’t know what goes where, and how, the chances are you’ll get it all wrong. A great blog Walt and interesting comments.

on Thursday, June 15th, Hyacinthe Baron said

Walt thanks for the indepth look at historical art trends and the brilliant comments that follow. It is coincidental that my blog next week is about Drawing Your Way Into the Deeper Self based on my 3 published books which describe drawing techniques I developed with a Board Certified Internist to free creativity by overcoming inhibitions.
The understanding of the nature of drawing and why it is such a basic art tool has been beautifully described by all of you.
The tests we conducted using the Creativity, Making Your Marktm drawing techniques validated the importance of our inherent need to visualize both inner and outer worlds through the act of drawing. The results exposed the walls that prevent free expression and the inner critic that needs to be overcome.Only then can abstraction be recognized as a visual necessity to elicit our deepest feelings and self expression.

on Thursday, June 15th, gabriella said

Walt; my husband always comments that i tend to over-simplify. Thanks for elaborating on my comments. Memory - experience- emotion - idea all have a huge hand in influencing the specifics of expression, and have to be considered. i do believe, however, that iconic themes are predetermined for us based on our hard-wiring as entities, and of how we experience and react to our experiences and of what ideas we distill from all these. The variety of possibilities is staggering, and what makes the arts so compelling and necessary for our lives.

on Thursday, June 15th, walt said

Gabriella, this could easily become a discussion of how we percieve whether visually, emotionally or intellectually. Yes, our brains read space in a binary like fashion...it is a compare and contrast process in which we get a quick sense how close an object is to us and then can look for another landmark and tell if it is closer or further. The figure/ground relationship is the simplest version of this... figure in front, wall behind.

The iconic content is actually a much more complex set of relationships that I've had a sense of my whole life but cannot explain so simply. It has to do with memory, experience and the emotions and ideas connected...4 complex variables that interact in a variety of ways to stand for many, many things given the person, the times etc. Hence the possibility of infinite and perpetual revelations. This is why I think we always return to figuration in some form because it communicates in such a rich and diverse way. Now remember I don't dislike abstraction. In fact I'm a big fan even if my own work is only somewhat about abstraction. Abstraction isn't new to this century. It's been around since the beginning. The islamic culture has always practised a decorative/archetectural form of abstraction. Early cave artists were quite abstract in their depictions of animals and humans and sometimes we can hardly figure out what we are looking at. So the idea that somehow abstraction is the end of it all is absurd since it was the beginning of it all. Really we go round in cycles somewhat like a cometwith a lopsided orbit. Every so often we get very near to complete abstraction but most times we only come just so close that it becomes obvious.

Mark, MIke and Andrew...yes, I agree with each of you. Mark, if figuration is prewired then figuring out that system of seeing, becoming skillfull and sensitized to it is the basic foundation as Gabriella also suggests.

Well, in fact, if you call what we do visual art then shouldn't it use the tools and traits of vision?

on Thursday, June 15th, gabriella said

The major lesson from art school drawing classes, that a few generations of art students missed on getting due to pedagogical fashions prevailing at the time of their education, is the primacy of "seeing" and of the integration and interrelation of forms with space, and how this affects perception of anything in the visible world. To me, any art from any period or culture is successful if it bears witness visually to the facts of this tight interweaving of form and space, and this includes both representational or non-representational works.
Of course, expressions of universal themes and ideas of an iconic nature also factor into whether work comes close to my mark.
It is interesting that Walt chose the Mother and Child theme to illustrate his blog - that is a universal theme - but he also could have taken Victory at War as his illustation, as there are plenty of historical examples, both painted and sculpted. Where am i going with this? I believe we are set up by our physical apparatus to take in information about the world in a very specific manner - primacy of figure/ground relationships - and further by our human nature to make visual expression of all of our concerns with experienced life. So because of these factors, "tradition" will continue to re-assert itself, over and over again, because it is part and parcel of our nature to behave and believe in certain pre-determined ways.

on Thursday, June 15th, Mark R Brockman said

This may not have a lot to do with this dicussion but then again maybe it does. Michael's statement about art being "a life long struggle" carged me to say this.Why is it that most artists (painters anyway) don't reach a high level of maturity till later in life? Is it the learning of the craft? Or is it the struggle of life? Is not the events of ones life just an abstract series of events set into a real world. As I developed as a painter and my own ideas of art evolved, I found my life following the some path as my art. In that my ideas of painting, how I except a failed or successful painting, the fact that it is the act of painting that is important and not the outcome; these are things that I now follow in my life as well as in my art. So as a good foundation in drawing is good for your art, regardless of what type you create, so is a good foundation in life.

on Thursday, June 15th, Michael Fornadley said

Just from experiences in exhibiting in my area, it seems that the figurative works started to take over in the late eighties and early ninties. Before them the majority of the works being shown were non objective or abstract, color field paintings. Artists who were not trained with the traditonal methods of drawing or compositional study were left behind because of lack of 101 drawing skills. We have two major colleges in my hometown, one is a private college were the major is for the most part illustration the other a large state university. For the most part you can actually tell were an artist was trained by the content of their works, one set of students left with traditional drawing skills and the other skipped that training. Believed it had to do with the beginning skill level of the student applicant, the motivation to require a job in the profession and the mindset of it's faculty. Any kind of education or training is a plus with advancing in any profession, expecially with the arts which is a life long struggle. It another tool or trick if you can draw adequately even when you are not employing the figurative element.

on Thursday, June 15th, andrew said

You can't make a good realist artwork without abstract composition. Walt, you were right on in talking about the negative space between forms that becomes an essential part of the composition. If one goes and looks at, say, Da Vinci's annunciation, the predominant essence of that painting is its abstract composition, even if the two figures, the garden, and the architecture are used as a tool to base it on. Imagine the same subjects in the same colors in different positions. You could destroy everything good about that piece, or change it into something completely different. Imagine the figures rotated slightly, and floating in the air. Contemporary! Get my point?

on Thursday, June 15th, walt said

My sentiments exactly Mark. I don't believe we can make a work of art without considering both the abstract aspects needed to translate into another medium or dimension and I don't believe we can make a work of abstraction without considering what we know about the world we have lived in and seen. Whether it is the way two shapes overlap and make space, the way light defines color relationships or the way a line speeds up and slows down--it all comes from the reality we live through and observe. So, Olivier, not I don't see an argument here at all. In fact I don't think there really ever was one.

on Wednesday, June 14th, Mark R Brockman said

I used to think (when I was a realist in my younger days) that abstract art was worthless. But then I was young and dumb. Only, even though I am self taught, my early realist days taught me how to draw, and how to see. Then I learned how to interpret what I saw. Now with my many years of working on my craft, I can paint what I feel. I could not paint what I feel today if I did not learn to draw, to see and to interpret what I see.
My work moves between the representational and the abstract, often the two overlapping. I teach painting to adults, it is not a credit type course, but I always try to instill the love of drawing. For drawing just makes better paintings, regardless of what "ism" you choose.

on Wednesday, June 14th, olivier said

Kandinsky abstract painting was done in 1914, during the war. Or it was 1912, I have a doubt. Are we going to recall the war between abstract and figurative? Personaly I like to do both and more if I could.

on Wednesday, June 14th, olivier said

I did abstract photography...by mistake. Kandisnski did the first abtract painting...by mistake. It was unfinished and upsidedown

on Wednesday, June 14th, walt said

Oh, I don't know. There was a lot of abstraction going on during the Viet Nam war in the late 60's and early 70's as I recall. Diebenkorn had shifted from figurative to non-objective painting in the 60's, there was a lot of minilist stuff going round...In fact an awful lot of conceptual stuff was beginning to take off around that time as well as I recall. There was however a number of realists or quasi realists around too, George Segal's plaster body casts, Wayne Thiebauds chromatic realism...

But I suggest that there is always more representational work than abstract. Just that the critics don't care about the norm...only the unique. So you'll see write-ups about anything out of the ordinary even if it is representational. Duane Hanson's hyper realist sculpture for instance in the 70's caught their attention and Pearlstiens rather blase and dowdy models lit with flourescent lighting.

on Wednesday, June 14th, Thomas R. said

You can make a long story real short...

It's simple.

Realism is always the predominant movement during wartime!

End of story.

on Wednesday, June 14th, walt said

Andrew,

Yes, it is a historical fact that within less than a century artists began to move away from the kind of image that a camera could capture. And yet photographers continued for a time to copy traditional painting images with their cameras for some time after the invention of photography. I also find it very interesting that there is so much work out there that is quite representational. No, not realistic in the traditional sense of the word...but then there never really was an art form other than photo realsim that tried to be completely realistic in the usual sense. The very idea of realism is based on a flawed understanding of artmaking. That is that no art is the real thing if it tries to copy life. Only life is the reality. Hence all art is and always has been completely abstract whether you can tell what the image is or not no matter how realistic it pretends to be. I had an art history professor who used to say, refereing to any realist work, if you believe this is the real thing then you belong in an asylum. I think that artists are beginning to understand this idea and have begun to rethink the whole ball of wax all over again. It is after all so easy to get caught up in the words we use which are quite ambiguous in nearly all instances. The other thing that they are rethinking is the idea that anything goes out or dies. Today there are a ton of new realists out there (even though they are only realists in name and not in reality.)And I think if you include those artists who are making anykind of representational as opposed to non-objective works then the number of representational artists still dominates the landscape. In fact pure non-objective abstraction has only been a very small amount of the art scene in terms of recent history. Almost as soon as it began to catch on the Pop-artists came along with recognizable images almost immediately on their heels. In fact if you read much of the critical writing of the lst 50+ years you'll find that the majority of it has to do with the question of how an artist approaches reality in their art...which circles back to your statement about realism going out with photography. Yes it became the primary issue even if while questioning the very possibility.

on Wednesday, June 14th, andrew said

I find it interesting that figurative and representational work went out at just about the same time as photography became accessible to just about everyone. Almost as if the artists said, ' hey this is our doom, so we better come up with something that you can't do with photography. It isn't enough to record scenes or personalities any more.'

on Wednesday, June 14th, walt said

Ah yes, silly putty. As I recall some of my first printmaking experiences were with silly putty. Remember how you could press it onto the comics section of the newspaper and it would capture the ink?

on Wednesday, June 14th, gabriella said

Walt; I googled Inka Essenhigh, and you are right, they are amazing works she does. Was trying to picture them on the scale they are supposed to be, versus what they looked like on my computer. I love the sheer inventiveness of her forms, much like Gorki, Miro, Bacon, Japanese horror comics and anime in feel, but terribly bumptious and in love with the crafting of a peculiar visual vocabulary. There is something extremely compelling in work that is so biomorphic and juxtaposed of unexpected possibilities of combination, sort of like mad tinkering by a free-associating mind. I feel like going off to pull at and make constructions of some Silly Putty, a material that was commonly available to IE and other youngsters of my son's age(Who is the same vintage as IE):)

on Wednesday, June 14th, walt said

By the way Olivier, that de Chirico is from a slide I shot in Florence. I can't remember where it was located though. It's been too long.

on Wednesday, June 14th, walt said

Olivier,

I wanted to keep this blog short and sweet and leave aspects open for introduction and discussion. You're right about the church and the guilds. It was a very different world at that time. Not a big fan of Canaletto but I love Duccio, Giotto's St. Francis frescos in Asssisi (even if someone else painted them)as I find those early renaissance painters quite abstract.

I'm slowly loosing interest in Pollock though. De Kooning is my Ab Ex favorite all the way through the late paintings that so many seem to think are thin and empty. I find them taught and lucid, especially the color.

on Wednesday, June 14th, walt said

Gabriella,

I actually used Ofili's Madonna to account for the entire cubist movement. It really is a cubist image, elephant dung and all. I find it very interesting that a cubist can still gain so much notice. In fact a number of old 'isms hae resurfaced. One of my old color students, Inka essenhigh is dong something very akin to futurism these days. You can do a google search and find her personal site. It's strong work and she's become an insider having recently been painted by Chuck Close.

on Wednesday, June 14th, gabriella said

My education as an artist was based on the Beaux Arts model incorporating Bauhaus principles and this was in the mid-sixties. Many of the instructors were hard-edge painters, with a few exceptions having a firm foothold in figuration and ealy forms of abstraction. Minimalism was in full swing by the time of my second year in art school, and encroachemnts into experimental multi-media, environments and happenings were being carried out by the Avant Guarde artists in BC. By the 70's university art degrees and MFA programs were in place at UBC, and with it came the ecperimentation with Conceptualism and there was a whole generation of Conceptualists who burst on the art scene in Canada. In the last twenty years or so there is indication of much turmoil in art production here, painting has taken a back seat to a great extent and photo-conceptualism is big here, with the likes of Jeff Wall, Stan Douglas and Rodney Graham leading the pack and having made international reputations, and photography is big here in the post-secondary art training places. But, in the last 5-6 years there is steady reverting back to more traditional image-making, lots of drawing happening recently, often wildly varying in scale.
I am 60 this year and have found it most amazing to see the changes happening during the past 45 years of my aware involvement in the arts, here in this neck of the woods. The whole process has cycled back on itself, and it will be most interesting to see what main thrust emerges out of this weird soup of doings in the next twenty years. Tradition still informs much of art practice, but of course, we have to add traditions dating back in the latter half of the Twentieth Cenctury as part of the mix.
Great Blog, Walt; I like the way you added Chris
Ofili into your chronology on tradition.

on Wednesday, June 14th, olivier said

Fantastic De Chirico, I never saw this one. To catch up with your historical art history, you should not forget all the reaction against the movement you mentioned. As well as the repercussion from Italia on divers other European countries, witches are other styles by themselves. At this times until recently the power/ money was in the hand of governments/ church. The only way for an artist was to become "official" painter or "protégé". It was not a matter to do what you like; you had to develop skills and recognition unless you just died. You had to paint for your customers/ to be commercial. No one could say like Pablo: "Why should I paint a portrait of your wife (big figure at the time)? I will never do a painting if I have no pleasure to do so". Perhaps he lost a customer but that remark stay in history. Because today the money is in the big corporations, so we have more option/taste.
I use to say to my customer when I was selling both old masters and modern paintings: “When you look at a Canaletto, its jump on you, the technique the quality made it easy to love the piece immediately. But with the time all the superb antiques pieces I hang in my living room, did not keep the attraction of the beginning. After X many views I did not look at them anymore. With abstraction, with a Polliakoff, the first look is more like an aggression, it's nice but.. With the time, different moon, different lighting is always been more attractive for me. I still have one but many other abstract painters I sold I have regret every days, specially the large good one.
Now I agree modern painters should be trained in a traditional way first. I did nudes sketches for 3 years at the Ecole Des Beaux Arts in France, will never do it again but I am very happy to have gone thru it. Unless you ambition is just to scratch advertising, it is useful.