Replies: 24 Comments
on Monday, January 22nd, jose said
Interesting to get an insight into your path so far, Vick. Keep it up. I agree, the shooting-star phenomenon must be much harder to deal with than the constant up-hill struggle without knowing when we reach the top... and I would also prefer to keep on struggling than find myself running back down that hill so fast, so soon, with the added pressure of people expecting to see me at the top again. Still don't know if the top is near but I'm enjoying the climb... with a few stops to rest and take in the view, and life, along the way.
on Sunday, January 21st, Vick said
Hey Mark-- thanks for the support. I guess I sounded droopier than intended--I wouldn't stop painting. I feel lucky in a way that I have always lived under my means so I tend to pick up jobs and drop them as needed to support my art. I really believe that authentic work will find its audience. It the work is authentic, it will resonate with someone. In a much earlier blog comment I talked about encountering a deKooning hung up with a Schable and an Eric Fischl (2 80's art stars) in Amsterdam, and the deKooning blew them out of the water for the frauds they were. It was a huge validation for me. It really does all come out in the wash. Today's art stars are for the most part enjoying a limited shelf life. Curators and galleries can hype someone all they want, but the proof is 20 years down the road. I think it must be harder for them to have risen to the top and then sink than it is for someone like me to have always been at the obscure level. The pressure!
I am a nerd at openings, but I have had a few deep conversations with a few people who said something or I said something about a piece that touched on something more innately primative than the confines of the gallery walls. For me that is worth it, that dialogue with someone who resonates with my work or my work resonates with them. The rest of it is pretty much meaningless frosting but it helps to know how to play the game, eh? Oy.
on Sunday, January 21st, Mark said
Vick, just keep on going.I have been painting for over thirty years and have yet been able to support myself with it alone. My work is far from cutting edge, (but it is my work) like you I too would preffer to stand in a corner at a reception, I hate them. I'm not cool, not hip, never have been and do not expect or want to be. I am me and I can do no better then that. So I keep on producing paintings. By the way, did I mention that I have the largest Mark Brockman painting collection in the world? So as I am sure you know you just need to keep working and do what you love to do, if you ever stop loving it then do some thing else. Thats my two cents for what it is worth.
on Sunday, January 21st, Vick said
Thanks for the Village Voice link, Matt--interesting article! This is an interesting blog and an interesting cluster of topics in general, as I find myself dipping my big toe back into the marketing realm after a 4 year absence. I made a living as an artist in California, had finally navigated a successful path to generate enough steam to paint steadily and sell enough work that I wasn't tripping over it constantly. The cost of living drove me out and I landed in Florida where the cost of living was cheap (not so much anymore) and I had steadily sold to Floridians through my San Francisco gallery so it felt like I had a market in Florida.
It took a while to get my studio converted and in the meantime I had to take a "real" job to pay the bills, and now that I am actively producing work again and investigating the scene, I find many things that are both amusing and disturbing. First, I am not really "cool". I am not cool enough in my own persona to appeal to a gallery owner as a nice bon vivant at an opening. I'll be the one standing in the corner with my head facing the wall. I hate openings. My work is not "cool". My work is my work. It's not cutting edge and it's not retro chic. It is meandering through it's own authentic wilderness and the pieces are natural progressions of that authentic exploration. Do I want to sell it? Yes, not only for the income, but the simple fact that it starts to take up a lot of space and it is a tremendous leap of faith to continue making work while older work is stacking up like planes over O'Hare airport. I have been investigating galleries and shows and one show in particular, an important state juried show, had a webpage of previous successful entries. Not a single painting. Sure, there were paintings, but they weren't just paintings--they had stuff hanging off of them or were a backdrop to something else. What does that tell me about my chances of getting into that show?
Another investigation was the publication Open Studios Press, a book distributed throughout the US that juries by region once a year. Reading the statements by previous curators, they seem to go in with some stereotype of what the work of a certain region is going to look like. In California, my chances were warped by the stuff coming out of LA and the stereotype that "LA Art" creates in the mind of a curator. Now I am pigeon-holed by what springs to mind when a curator thinks of Miami art, the glitz, glamour, slick tanned sleek gold chain wearing Miami. Ugh. I live on the other side of the state, I toil away.
I graduated art school over 20 years ago so the words of the professors no longer echo in my ears, and I am in no-man's land now where I won't really be influenced by what will sell in the marketplace now.
For me it has boiled down to the simple thing of continuing my path, following the authentic voice of the work where ever it leads and maybe it finds a market now or not. I will keep investigating because it would just make life easier to keep it moving out of the studio, but that wish will not dictate what I paint. I'd rather have the "day job" because trying to cater to a mercurial marketplace or be the latest darling is really the road to hell artistically speaking.
I also wonder what art schools are churning out these days. I recently met a 2006 grad from a name-brand art school who graduated with a BFA in Painting. She owes $100,000 in student loans. That kid has no idea of the burden that debt is going to be on her yet. I cannot imagine trying to produce authentic work with that hanging over my head. If artists cave in and try and become a darling, maybe it's because of situations like that--owing over $1000 a month for God knows how long to pay for an education that is barely worth it.
on Sunday, January 21st, jose said
Gabriella, I hope this is a good thing, to look at the rock and be able to see different things. Friends is the right word. I think a bunch of us are enjoying this exchange and it is good to get the different perspectives and pulled out of mine once in a while… even if it is all ‘virtual’ talk.
Walt, in a way you are right to point out that Aristotle has the ‘copyright’ on that one. But I would say that it only extends to his introduction of a Universal, I would even dare say, Cosmic principle, to a certain People and Culture from whom we in the so-called West inherited it in our turn. Aristotle made it intelligible for his time. I contest the ownership of ideas, though. Ideas come to life through the intervention of certain individuals and they go back to sleep through the lack of skilful means of others. Of course, this just goes to prove how dull my philosophy teacher was back then. He wasn’t able to transmit the spark. And this is why I called on Fripp, because it was through his work and words that the intensity of this idea reached me. Most of Aristotle and Plato, and Kant and Hegel for that matter, remain for me at the level of intellectual acquisitions – stuff I learnt in High-School to pass exams and which will probably only come to life when I come into contact with somebody who actually embodies them. Heidegger was different, my philosophy teacher in Law School was passionate and skilful in transmitting him to me and so she is, I guess, ultimately responsible for my leaving the path of Law and embracing Art.
Now, when I mentioned Kundera I did not wish to imply that what was done before us is of no significance to us. We would not be where we are today without the bulk of our cultural inheritance. But we shouldn’t remain at the level of replication, we should constantly revisit and rework those past ideas to bring back to life the ones that may have fallen to sleep, and maybe, just maybe, in so doing, we’ll get a glimpse ‘between the lines’ and come up with the solution we need to bring it to life in our times. I see it like the ebbing and flowing of a tide. But like Michael says, it requires a lot of work and a thorough knowledge and mastery of what came before and has led us here. Whatever ‘label’ or ‘ism’ we’ll brand it with is really no business of ours, we should leave that to the theorists – the ones who soak up what we do and put it into words for people to struggle with in school. And like you say, Mark, painting a picture and being an artist are different things.
on Sunday, January 21st, Matt said
oops!
Don't know what went awry but you'll have to copy and paste the whole link to get to the article.
on Sunday, January 21st, Matt said
I think this article (Village Voice, January 18, 07) fits in with the last few blogs and especially with Michael Fornadley's comment (21 Jan.) The title: Seeing Dollar Signs
Is the art market making us stupid? Or are we making it stupid?
www.villagevoice.com/art/0704,saltz,75590,13.html
on Sunday, January 21st, Michael Fornadley said
The idea of artists having to toil, suffer and sweat to reach any kind of orginality does not cut it in Western culture today. It is the time of the instant gradification, everybody is "supersizing" themselves into overwelming debt. You are nothing unless you run with the right crowd, think the right thoughts and do what is expected of you. It is very hard for artists not to be influenced by this kind of mental sickness. What is does in the arts is to create artists that quit taking chances or are reduced to producing assembly line products that are marketable. Still remember reading a remark that Van Gogh wrote about standing in front of a Rembrandt painting, something like in order to paint like that Rembrandt must of died a hundred times. Are artists today willing to surrender years of bad works, no recognition or critical acclaim to pursue orginal works Most will take the easy way out and go with whatever style is on the front of Art America today. With abstract or non-objective works it is more damaging. The public preception is influenced by headlines about monkies and elephants creating masterpieces, or the overstated comment about my six year old kid can do better than that.
The ability to take the easy way is also happening with figurative works, projection devices and the paint my numbers formula that comes with that can make anybody skip years of studying your craft. Are they just a modern tool to help the artist or an addictive fix for instant success? Again, the artist should know that you can fool the public but those lack of hardnosed drawing skills and beginner's color concept training yells "Fraud" to me.
on Saturday, January 20th, walt said
Mark, the world is turning at all times. Even when we stand still we are moving throught the cosmos. You can never step into the same river twice. Two steps forward, one step back. The sky above me is the sky above you...yeah.
on Saturday, January 20th, Mark said
Ah, without a difinitive answer doesn't that bring us back to certainties and uncertainties?
on Saturday, January 20th, Mark said
Walt, I agree with you in regards to words. My meaning there was simply that we feel a need to catagorize a work with words and I wish we didn't have too (but I also know the reality of the world). My own work falls into many schools (if you will) and which word I use to describe what I do to some one who has not seen my work will most likely have a different vision of what I do then what I actually do (I think this is true for us all). Yes words are necessary, even when the true meaning of the word changes. But then words change to meet the present cutures need, does it not, in order to connect to todays culture, so a word should not be restricted to a meaning of a singular time span (such as the meaning of the N word, which may have a different meaning today then it once did).
Which brings me to your statement about artists connectiong to todays culture. Again I agree and it is a shame that there are artists who try to paint what was (I hate paintings of women in long 1800s dresses that are painted today)and not what is (painting thier own experierencs, unless they are a historic painter).
Which brings me to another point of yours, about art and craft. Making "art" and being an artist are two different things. Anyone can paint a picture (be it good or bad) not everyone can make it art. One needs to learn the craft of art then dig deep inside themselves, be willing to expose themselves and then if they are lucky they will create art, not just a painting.
I find it wondeful and exciting that so often in these blogs that we all say things in so many different ways, yet have the same meaning and at times say things so similar yet what we mean is so different. I am glad that whatever the subject discussed there can never be a difinitive answer.
on Saturday, January 20th, walt said
Jose, you mentioned "Robert Fripp, a musician whose work and ideas I admire immensely emphasizes the importance of the head, the heart and the hand being at balance in any given project."
Just thought it worth noting that this is essentially a variation on Aristotle's breakdown of the human personae,i.e. intellect, emotion, volition...kind of the human trinity if you will.
Mark, I agree with you that words sometimes cage us. But in reality they are only words. To wholly reject any word is to loose possible meaning at a later date. Even words considered extremely negative such as the 'N' word which is so volitile today. It is of course a colloquial variation of 'Negro' which is to say 'black'. In the 60's that word began to go through a series of rejections not because the word itself was wrong but because of the connotations that were given it by a particular group of Southern whites. We were progressively encouraged to use Negro, Black then African American and more recently just plain American which is the most generally correct. So now we reject not so much the word but the sentiment attatched to it by that attitude. Use a word for its face meaning and then, if that meaning is in danger of being misunderstood or misapplied then make the effort to redefine it.
Jose, It is as Kundera suggested, like words, meanings change, the pace of time seems to change, the world changes...what was once amazing is now simply picturesque as in impressionism, what once changed the way we look at art like cubism is now passe and old fashioned. Even the term Modern doesn't really mean modern any longer. It now means a particular historical school of art. So now we are post-modern... while I know where the term comes from and what it was originally applied to I must admit that I have the hardest time applying it to many of the art forms claiming its protection. But what I really want to know is what comes after post-modern? Neo-post-modern?
When the pendulum swings back the other way will we call it neo-post-tradional? When in about 50 years that current generation grows tired of the art being made today under the current terms will they call it anti-post-modern? It's a fun dilemma, no? Anyway I'm sure we'll find some kind of verbage to describe and define what is being done in the name of art.
There are two things I feel are important as an artist and it has to do with Jose's ideas about self honesty for sure...
One is that just to make art is not enough...truly anyone can and many do for better or worse. But to dive so deeply into it that you have become the act, the process, the color, the line and shape and texture as well as any particular image or subject or object involved in the art. It is important to have skill but skill can be a trap too. One must always find ways to open new neural pathways, to find new emotional connections... and well practiced tricks of the hand must from time to time be fooled into doing something strange and new. This gets back to integrity...to integrate the heart, the mind and the hand. When this is accomplished the second point can occur.
The second thing I feel is most important once the first is begun to be realized is that what I do as an artist must somehow connect to the culture and the times in which I live. Without that I'm speaking to no one now living. Art can only happen when an internal vision meets the exterior world we all share in common. Otherwise there is no air in which it might resonate.
on Saturday, January 20th, Mark said
I agree Jose after looking at your work as well that we do seem to be on parallel roads, trying to reach the same destination.
As to messages, known and unknow, I would add, messages intentional and unitentional. In most of my work the messages are unitentional in that I allow whatever emotion or thought to flow through the brush to canvas with out to much concious thinking, I work fast and this helps me
to do this. In these works I want the viewer to walk away with their own thoughts. Yet, I do some work with a very intentional message, usualy social/political message. Either can lead to uncertainties or certainties, conforming or not conforming as in the previous blog. How confusing and exciting it all is. I think an artist should embrace the lack of certainty in creating art. I tell my students to take the uncertainty they feel with each new work and use it, allow it to flow and in time it will be gone, that it could just be what makes a piece great.
Your idea of beeing up to speed to do an idea justice is correct, there are times I wish to do something but know I am not ready, so I work and wait and in time the moment will be right. I believe in timing, there is a time to do something, and a time to just practice and try knowing it will not yet happen but will. An artists needs to learn to listen to their innerself thier gut, whatever you wish to call it, so that they will know when the time is right.
We have also discussed so much using the words abstraction, representanional, realism, it is a shame these are needed. I know people like titles, it helps them understand (so they think) but I wonder if these titles do not do more harm then good.
on Saturday, January 20th, Gabriella Morrison said
Jose, and the rest of you who have replied to this blog... I have followed your expression of ideas on this topic with great interest, and it has seemed as if a group of perceptive and articulate friends gathered around a rock, and discussed what they see, know and think about that rock based on their individual vantage point.
Your encapsulation of Kundera's idea that creating new work in the manner of preceeding masters and expecting to be lauded for this is a false goal is a caution to all of us to labour, with head, heart and hand and self-knowledge in order to find our best, possible, individual ways of making art, and also to recognize it and reinforce it in others.
on Saturday, January 20th, jose said
Here we go then. Let me gather up all your ideas so far [friday 6pm gmt]
Michael you talk of skill but you introduce a new and interesting point of view I had not considered and which you called the ‘intelligence level’ or mental approach. Vick you’ve put into words what I believe it is we are supposed to be achieving with our work – or at least aim to achieve: be it through figurative or non objective imagery, to allow the viewer to plumb their own depth. And you reach an important conclusion: the painting is merely the doorway… Mark, precisely! I have noticed from your work here on aa that we enjoy the same struggle and that we are concerned with ‘connections’ – finding them, and establishing them. Olivier, and Mark again – what is a message? Walt, you bring us back to music. Oh, and by the way, when you shut your eyes you sometimes see yourself dancing where no one else can see you, and you’re happy deep inside, isn’t that what matters? There, I challenged your dare! Lynda, indeed, I sometimes feel caught up in a discussion with fundamentalist something or others.
Da Vinci said it, «la pittura è cosa mentale», painting is a mental thing, and this is true whether we are trying to render a still life, picture-perfect, or thrashing away at the canvas to make it unrecognizable. Michael, I don’t see eye-to-eye with you that a good abstract has an intelligence level the figurative artist will not approach, but I do think that the question you raise is right on the mark in another way which implies the inverse of your reasoning – the good abstract requires a tremendous amount of skill (as you say yourself) to remain faithful to the idea, or the intelligence, that suggested it. Intelligence by itself is of no great value here. It has to have some practicality and the means of becoming viable. In other words, certain ideas are useless to an artist if he hasn’t yet brought himself up to speed to be capable of doing them justice. This is why I say we end up with so many ideas that are ‘up for grabs’. Many artists today are overtaken by the speed of things, live on this ‘intelligence high’ that is lauded by the critics, but forget that TIME is needed for certain ideas to ripen and skill is developed further to bring them to life as they deserve. There is a hunger and urgency to bring out the new that eventually leaves us all gagging.
I’m not really an abstract painter. I use abstraction as a means to portray what I see and how I feel about what I see. I guess very much like you Vick. This is something I could not have done twenty years ago. I wanted to but I didn’t allow myself to until I completely understood it and mastered it within the confines of my studio. This sounds confusing and could be misleading so let me try to be more precise. At the time when I decided to earn a living as an artist my skills allowed me to recreate my own world [in the realm of surrealism and magic-realism, much inspired by Magritte, Dali and the Yugoslave naïf painters such as Ivan Generalic] but I could feel the importance of abstraction. I was attracted to Rothko and Newman on the one hand, for instance, and mesmerized by Pollock. But I ‘wasn’t there’ yet. To cut a long story short, I’m still taking myself there… and it happens in the studio. Slowly. Experimentation and blunders make me move ahead in the studio until I reach a point where it suddenly goes ‘click’ and I see how a mistake or a crazy experimentation can be made useful for a certain idea I had been carrying around for years. I guess that ultimately you could argue that I’m a selfish artist, I try not to give too many unfinished ideas up for grabs.
Still regarding this, Robert Fripp, a musician whose work and ideas I admire immensely emphasizes the importance of the head, the heart and the hand being at balance in any given project. I think we can translate this to our own work as fine- artists. And I think also that it touches on a subject we have been talking about in previous blogs – honesty. Where does it come from, how does it ‘go through’ deep into what we bring forth as artists – when the head, the heart and the hand are working together things flow as they can and should flow for us and there is honesty.
Now the message, there’s a tricky one. I think it is linked with the question you first flourished of their being a connection, Mark. The surge of new ideas would probably lead to a new blog but I would say, for now, that there are messages beyond those known and intended by the artist and that when there is honesty much more flows out from the artist than he would gladly admit to. He empties himself. There will be pain in recognizing what he has unknowingly admitted and hence, perhaps, the reaction Olivier tells us Poliakoff had. But the important thing is that it generates a connection and that, as you say, Olivier, it plays with your moods and it stays on your walls. Something there is alive.
Walt, it is like you say, we are looking at things from different perspectives – on different screens – and each one of us attempting to reveal what we see. Thank God it is different, it makes for a world that is much richer than we individually believe to be, allows for us artists to have a good chat and the viewer has the chance to walk around and enjoy a ‘moving’ picture as he discovers different aspects of something he believed to be understood for good. Art moves things forward.
I’ll finish with music again. In his book ‘The Curtain’ Milan Kundera puts forward the following idea [in regard to music and literature] as a premise for his musings on our perception of them. In a nutshell he claims that If someone, nowadays, were to compose a sonata in the style of Beethoven and expect to be heralded as a genius and an innovator he would be ridiculed, however masterful the composition and inspired the rendition. He doesn’t mention the fine arts but I think that there too the statement is not off the mark. We have moved on since the days of Da Vinci, Monet or Duchamp – to replicate them nowadays, however pleasing and challenging the experience, simply will not do the trick.
Let us move on. Stay honest to ourselves in what we do within our capabilities but without limiting ourselves to fundamentalist beliefs and keeping an open mind and a healthy curiosity. After all we claim to be artists, right?
on Friday, January 19th, Lynda Lehmann said
Jose, these are such good questions that you ask, such good food for thought. Personally, I am often disturbed by my aversion to realism. Though I appreciate and truly like many realistic works, when it comes to doing my own, I prefer the freedom and musicality of abstraction to the confines of an academic approach.
Our being predisposed to argue over which movement holds more value or power is to me, a little like arguing over who has the truer religion or where the prettiest language is spoken, or who has the best weather on the planet. I think they all have their place! So do different viewpoints, perceptual modes, and forms and formats of painting. Just like elephants and crocodiles.
I see the endless harangue of one-upsmanship that we mortals play out ad infinitum, as a reflection of two things. One is our collective intellectual and spiritual immaturity. And the other is our tendency, mostly Western, to dissect and fragment our reality to look for dependable morsels of truth. Indeed, there are none, while yet, everything is true! No one form or version of truth is more real or more poignant than another. So we had each better be comfortable with our own version of it!
The commercial art market is just another edifice/institution/contrivance of human societies. We need to paint because it speaks to some deep need inside us, and cannot let externals govern how we express our creative drive. There will always be someone to approve and more than one to condemn our motivation as well as our product. So that makes being true, each of us, to our own particular form of passion, even more important.
Thanks for your thought-provoking blog. I have a sense that you might be willing to look more deeply into these issues than I am!
on Friday, January 19th, jose said
Guys, your comments raise interesting new questions on different topics i hadn't realised i'd touched. let me sleep over it and i'll get back to you first thing saturday am.
on Friday, January 19th, olivier said
Poliakoff kick out of an opening an important customer who claim to see a landscape in one of his painting. Unless you are on drug there is nothing but shape, color and texture in his work. No message either. But so far a painting of the mid 50's by this painter is probably one of the best of our collection. Even if my wife doesn't like it, it plays with our moods and stay on our walls(with short periods of storage I must admit). Combas does what you describe Mark, I loved one very much..it pass!
The message is: we change. Paintings has to be able to adapt or they will end up in the atic
on Friday, January 19th, Mark said
The idea of Conforming or not has brought up another thought which I think is relevent to this blog, and that is whether or not a work of art should or should not have a message. I have read of artists who say their art has no message, that it is all about color or shape or such, but in truth even then, because of their mood of the time of creation the work is still more. I have students who ask if a painting should have a message. I tell them that it certanly can if they wish it, and it will, even if you don't intend it to, because it is imposable to seperate one's self from the work, we are not machines, plus the viewer might impose an emotion on your work regardless of your intention.
So how does this relate to conformity or nonconformity? To message or not to message, to conform or not conform, it all falls into the same grey area. It seems, and maybe I am wrong, that many do not want art to have a message that goes beyond "Ain't it pretty". I myself paint works that I hope will help people see that there are things in the world that are quite beautiful if we just look. I also want to paint things that say look and think and maybe if you agree, re-act. These works are not pretty and are not intended to be.
So, should we conform and create works of art that only make people feel good? Or should we not conform and create art that makes people think, maybe even feel bad and horrified, and even feel angry? Just as I feel I am both a conformist and nonconformist as I believe we all are, I will also do my best to help people see the beauty and the ugly of the world as I feel it is mine and all of our responsibility.
on Thursday, January 18th, walt said
Jose,
far from being the lunatic...or maybe in being the lunatic who is able to see beyond the screen most of us project on to our reality, you have beautifully described some of what abstraction is all about. I think of it as the energy driving any art form. And, in fact it is the working of the form itself. As Mark noticed even Wyeth, portrayed as the last realist at a time when non-objective abstraction was the overwhelming force...even Wyeth's work is essentially abstract with maybe only a head and the shape of a body to recognize the space one is looking at. All art is abstract as it is not the thing itself.
Jose, it is nice to see several works together like this.These works are like an illustration of the colors I see on the back of my eye lids when closed but I'm not sleepy. Like the after image after having starred intensly at some bright object for some time. A visual memory of something just disappeared. Doesn't that make you a realist? I believe that all art is abstract and all art is based on observation of the known world. Its just that some see it in other ways than I do. They have a different point of view, a different focal point, a different depth of field. I make images for different reasons than you. Although the spirit of the work is somehow familiar to us both. There is a sense of music in some of mine as with yours. It has to do with the color harmonies, the progressive layers of hinted depth, the staccato rhythm of the textural patterns, the long slow and short fast movements of stringed and stretched shapes and the crescendo's of contrast. In a sense you might say I write folk songs from my dreams while you compose symphanies of layered color behind closed eyes.
I am not fond of the saying "everybody is an artist." That's like saying everyone can dance. I can't dance or keep a tune. It doesn't stop me from doing either by the way. But don't you dare try to flatter me by saying I'm a dancer or a singer. You'll lose my respect. I have a disdain for dishonesty.
However everyone CAN dream before nature. I'll leave the long discussion of who is skilled and who is not to others at the moment. Right now we see the work of one who has skill.
on Thursday, January 18th, olivier said
Jose, I have to admit I did not read it all, as I want to keep some good time for latter. But I have to say I like you words and evolution of ideas very much. I have a profond feeling you are on the way to great achievement. What best than abstraction to support this exciting mixt of feeling? Where the changing light on the texture come to you own spirit.
on Thursday, January 18th, Mark said
Wow! Jose so much to think on. I have to admitt that I mostlty just scanned your blog and I will read it more carefully later, but still I have some thoughts. Imagine that!
In my youth I painted in the school of Andrew Wyeth, deep realism, and thought too that abstraction was something a child can do. I did not know then that even Wyeth used abstraction for the beggining of many of his paintings. As I grew older and wiser and learned more of art and artists, I began to appreciate abstraction, and learned that many abstract artists thought of themselves as realists. Who would have guessed? Abstraction is a very important part of my representational work now. I struggle (and enjoy the struggle) of balancing representationalism and abstract expressionism in my paintings.
There are works of art I dislike, not because they are realism or abstraction or some kind of experimental art, but because for whatever reason the work just does not connect to me. Just as some music makes my heart pound and bring a tear to my eye some music makes me yawn.
What I mean to say in all this is that I think people, artists and non-artists alike, need to look at a work not from the view point of what school it is from but does it sing to me, do I hear the artist's voice as I take it in, or does it leave me cold. That is not to say that just because it may leave me cold it is worthless junk and not art. It may very well be the greatest work of art known to man, by others account, and so be it if I miss that. I can only respond to that which tugs at me. I think we need to understand that and not to judge a work by its school but only by whether or not it speakes to us (me) and in doing so not condem the work but just understand that it is not my cup of tea. That all art, whether we like it or not, understand it or not, think it wonderful or crap has a place just as all people have a place in this world.
on Thursday, January 18th, Vick said
Interesting blog, Jose, and I am sure I will have to re-read it a few times to get it all since your writing is nutrient dense!
I came to abstraction from figure painting. I love the figure, but I found myself drawn to certain parts of the figure, the collar bone joining the neck, the hands. Those areas focal points for me and from that became concentrated examination which became abstraction which fell away into color. For me abstract painting is the hardest most challenging artistic discipline and that is why I like it. For many, though, I think they see the lack of form and think it is the easiest path. It isn't--like Michael F so aptly wrote, skill or lack of it is apparent in whatever kind of work it is. Good abstract work takes you to some other place, like sitting in front of a Rothko does, and Diebenkorn does in a different way, etc. Really good abstract work becomes "white noise" to the viewer, allows them to bypass their own conscious mind and plumb their own depth. It isn't the painting--the painting is giving them the release valve, the doorway, the mirror, whatever you want to call it. Any good art will do that, really, only with realistic work the viewer is more apt to think it is the subject matter of the work. Maybe even crappy work does that--why else is Thomas Kinkeade a millionaire? Those cheesy cottages no one has seen in real life appeal to some sort of nostalgia missing from daily life for some people or they wouldn't sell no matter how good the sales pitch.
on Thursday, January 18th, Michael Fornadley said
Jose,
This is an opinion from an artist who has never ventured into non-objective or abstract works. Would be fair to describe my works as realistic even though I draw and paint from my imagination. In some ways without using any reference material with my drawing and color selection maybe I should start thinking about being classified with the non-objective/abstract artists. Basically we are creating our own view of reality on our impulses and prejudices. I do have a view that all good abstract/non-objective works have a certain intelligence level that most of us figurative artists will not approach. Just from studying the great masters Cezanne and Matisse, who ventured into abstraction without ever leaving classical figurative elements. I consider both their mental approaches to the study of painting and composition so far ahead of their time and ours. Even as a die-hard figurative artist I can see the same quality in abstract works just as well as any figuratve works. One universal truth that I find in the arts is that skill level or lack of it in any discipline cannot be disquised no matter how much window dressing is applied.
But why, then, does the concept of abstraction spell war amongst us fine -artists? Why must form conform to the shapes we are familiar with as if how and what we see were absolutes? Why must the sky appear above and the hills or the sea appear below? Why must the figurative artist feel the need to accuse the abstract of possessing limited skills as a draftsman and the abstract perceive figuration as lacking in gumption? Surely there is no need for such limited views.
The first ‘because’ that came to me was: because we like to believe we have an informed opinion and we can’t keep it to ourselves, we feel compelled to share it with the world for some inexplicable reason [and this blogging business doesn’t help much in the way of humility – mea culpa!]. The second: because a negative opinion always comes that much more easily and feels that much more rewarding in the face of our present fears and insignificance.
Communication is based on something else – something quite beyond subjectivity: the desire, the willingness and the attempt to understand and incorporate [or not] into ones’ subjective view, what someone else has come to perceive to be different. But I’d like to go one step further. For there to actually be communication despite my decision not to incorporate a new and different perception of the world into my Being, there has to be a moment of pause, when I decide to ‘listen’.
What I am trying to get across, though, is that we cannot just simply reject abstraction and other contemporary experiments in the field of Art on the grounds that ‘subjectively’ we see things differently. Such a statement carries no weight and we cannot call upon it as a justification for our likes and dislikes or judging what is valid and what is not. Especially not if we are artists - our aspiration should be to go beyond boundaries, not stay within them [remember Paul Dorrell’s last blog?]
