This illustration by Jon Whitcomb contrasts a creamy, flawless figure with a violent, abstract background.
Similarly, this illustration by Piotr Leśniak frames a meticulous drawing with a chaotic background:
Vivian Dehning's recent "photo illustration" in the New York Times covers a photograph of a woman with a wild crayon scribble.
Normally the elements of a picture are expected to work together, rather than clash in contumacious oppugnancy.
There are limitless ways for artists to combine opposites so that they work together to add useful contrast:
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| Norman Rockwell |
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| Austin Briggs |
Hard black line contrasted with soft watercolor can often be a productive combination of extremes.
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| Note how the color is flat but the line contributes volume |
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| Sempé uses black line sparingly in fields of pastel color |
However, sometimes the two extremes just sit side by side, yelling at each other. They aren't glued together by form, content or any of art's other epoxies. The artist just seems to enjoy the collision.
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One of my cranky friends derides this kind of contrast as "empty" because he finds it devoid of purpose. Without a discernible expressive intent, he finds the contrast to be neither significant nor interesting.
The purpose of the random scribble in Vivian Dehning's "photo illustration," above, might be construed as a comment on the mistreatment of women in the photograph. This purpose, however, is hardly enough to save such a ridiculous image.
I don't claim to be ecstatic about either the Leśniak or the Whitcomb examples. Still I think it's worth considering the notion of "collision" as an aesthetic concept in and of itself. Abstract expressionism proved that not all collisions require an "intent" to be interesting.
Placing realism and abstraction side by side may make an unruly mess, but there is often "intent" to be found, even in purely abstract forms. Could placing freedom and control next to each other be viewed as a way of challenging the reason of each for being? Could their juxtaposition be a reminder that the realistic, controlled three dimensional portion is still, after all, just an illusion, a two dimensional fake no more trustworthy than the adjacent random mess? Or could the collision of the two extremes be a way of dissing the hard labor of the skillful extreme? A postmodernist attack on obsolete talents? An attempt to blow up conventional taste? It's worth looking for potential for artistic value, even in collisions.
62 comments:
The Whitcomb doesn't need an intent because "beauty is its own excuse for being." The rest of these are shit.
"Placing realism and abstraction side by side may make an unruly mess, but there is often "intent" to be found, even in purely abstract forms."
- I'm not sure about 'intent' or what your own use of it here was, but I certainly don't see anything wrong with mark-making / patterning that is only vaguely or not at all figurative, it can be looked at as a subset or analogous to the patterns in nature at the very small or large (usually what is outside of normal human experience) scales, and even a kind of subset of it.
But
" Could placing freedom and control next to each other be viewed as a way of challenging the reason of each for being?
Could their juxtaposition be a reminder that the realistic, controlled three dimensional portion is still, after all, just an illusion, a two dimensional fake no more trustworthy than the adjacent random mess? "
brings in two wholly different modes - the (i) figurative and the (ii) 'idea', or rather the worst sort of thing, the 'concept' soldered on to a visual in a way that doesn't arise from any natural relation.
And then, worse again, making a further level of chimera of this by attaching it to figurative elements (which have an internal meaning-image relation that makes an indivisible, organic whole).
I think the 'mix' works, or can work, if the 'abstract/expressionist' marks are patterns at the aesthetic level, then it's little different to a figure in a setting which is so indefinite or oblique as to be pure pattern.
Otherwise, well, Rockwell nailed it.
Or it's a gimmick to hide an imaginative impasse the artist can't get over, or make it into an element of the picture.
Bill
There's a variety of different things going on in these examples, however the most irritating to me is the Lesniak. When arbitrary graphic marks sit on the surface of the image (rather than contributing to the 3D illusion) they are essentially just 'decorative' for the sake of it. You could remove that red scribbly border and replace it with any number of different versions, as it's basically throwaway jazzy-decorative nonsense.
p.s.
notice in the Whitcomb that as well as the marks going behind her, she's also casting a slight shadow on the surface of the Pollock-style 'painting' as if she's emerging through a piece of painted fabric. So it's not a completely flat graphic layer. There was a trend in the 40s and 50s for fashion shoots featuring parts of models emerging through torn paper etc so it could well be that Whitcomb was influenced by that.
The Briggs is very smart and concise as visual storytelling. There's something deep to be learned about the elegiac effect of the duality. It reminds me of The Nabis' (Vouillard et al) contention that every emotion had an abstract visual analog. By merging the top half of the boy with the background, he creates an origin spot of unity from which the rest of the picture spreads.
The decorative use of "modern art abstractions" - as with the Whitcomb (decorative background) and Lesniak (decorative frame) - cleanly demonstrates the inherent decorative character of "High" Modern Art.
When Piet Mondrian and his pals were formulating their design style, they were looking at Frank Lloyd Wright's stained glass window designs. Wright never had any qualms about functional decorative work, he didn't denigrate decorative art by trying to play it up as "Fine Art" with its perceived higher gallery status. Everything had its place before the status-seeking wordcel neurotics took over the art world. But everything finds its proper level anyway, entropy takes its course against false constructs. Now, Modern Art Museums make great tote bags and t-shirts with their graphic art stock. One of the great uses of Mondrian's work was the Rubik's Cube.
Just when I thought that The New Yorker was leading the Cultural-Intellectuals-as-Kindergarteners regression race, we get Dehning's playpen scribbles for the NYT. (Notably, the photos scribbled-over look "found" - which is sophist for pinched. If you're lazy, childish, and distracted, postmodernism is your apologetics!)
Rockwell's classic complex commentary on Modern Art, Confusion and Pretension has a second level of depth which is even more pointed. Which is that, starting from zero, it took him all of two weeks to figure out the involved techniques and design ideas. And produce and execute his modern art Action Painting design. Flawlessly integrated into his narrative idea/figuration for THE high-pressure national stage for illustration The Saturday Evening Post. On deadline.
I'm the Lesńiak work, the background is spilling from the shirt. Decorative patterns in textiles have a long tradition. I see this as the modern and stylized version of a portrait with a tapestry as backdrop.
Doh, that's me.
"I'm the Lesńiak..." is "In the Lesńiak...". Phone autocorrect be damned.
I work on the assumption that an artist--or a composer or author--knows what he's doing, and then try to work out what that might be. But it's only a starting presumption, not necessarily the truth. Rockwell I think clearly has a plan. The scribbled borders might be one, which I only so-so appreciate. The New York Times scribbling over photos looks like someone trying to follow a trend he doesn't understand. Never uncommon, but there used to be editors to prevent actually going to print that way.
Kev Ferrara-- Yes, I have to wonder what exactly the art director for the NYT does to earn his salary. In recent years, what should have been recognized as a shameful dereliction of duty-- adding random squiggles to a photograph to humanize it (see e.g.https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2024/05/illustrating-end-of-world.html ) has become the lazy artist's cliché. Dehning's illustration was done for an editorial about Jeffrey Epstein, and it does convey, as you suggest, a "kindergarten" level message that pedophilia is bad. But when you compare this level of sophistication with the dozens of conceptual illustrations that have wrestled, for example, with the subject of Lolita (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2024/11/lolitas-litmus-test.html ) you see how truly impoverished Dehning's solution is.
As for your other point about "the inherent decorative character of "High" Modern Art," we will have to continue to disagree. Your term "decorative" is the most neutered version of what I think are more appropriate terms, such as design, composition, construction, architecture, as well as the important aesthetic concepts that accompany them-- harmony, tension, balance, potency, etc.
MORAN-- I disagree that "the rest of these are shit" but I do think your point about beauty is important. I'd say that the Whitcomb piece is beautiful while the Leśniak and the Dehning pieces are not. This goes back to the importance of design that I was discussing with Kev Ferrara. Turn that Whitcomb upside down to obscure its content and its colors and composition still work.Turn the Leśniak and the Dehning pieces upside and they don't. They're really pretty unsuccesful.
Laurence John-- I agree with you about the Lesniak-- I find it irritating despite the fact that the technical skill behind the drawing of the face is pretty darn impressive. The face really stands out, which of course makes you wonder what the heck it's doing in that picture. It is, as Thoreau said, a trout in the milk.
That's an interesting observation about 1940s and 50s model shoots. I do think I give the Whitcomb more credit because it's such a snazzy example of that 1950s post-war style-- so sharp and crisp and stylish.
xopxe-- I think you're being pretty generous to the Lesńiak. A textile background would extend behind the head, rather than disintegrating into friable ingredients a safe distance from his head, and the strange interaction with his short collar would consistent with the interaction with his head.
Bill wrote, "I certainly don't see anything wrong with mark-making / patterning that is only vaguely or not at all figurative"
Thank you! I totally agree.
Bill also wrote, "...brings in two wholly different modes..."
Exactly my point! Even if these wild splashes and scribbles don't advance the narrative, it's still possible for them to earn their space in the picture if they contribute to the mood of the picture or they raise epistemological or ontological questions about the realism going on in the center of the canvas, or even if they just pull down the pants of the realism.
Of course, all of these different contrasts can be done well or done poorly. I'm sure that some artists add these wild elements just to keep an old fashioned artist from looking so old fashioned. If that's the game, I suggest we are better off without the artificial contrast added in.
Robert Piepenbrink-- Rockwell did indeed "have a plan." He thought long and hard about his plan, and about all of the ingredients he would need to coordinate in order to maximize his plan for his audience. It shows.
" [T]here used to be editors to prevent actually going to print that way." Amen, brother. I wonder if we could program AI editors to have higher standards when reviewing AI art?
Dehning's illustration was done for an editorial about Jeffrey Epstein, and it does convey, as you suggest, a "kindergarten" level message that pedophilia is bad.
I didn't see the article, and you didn't provide context. So the editorial subject is news to me.
I suppose, now understanding the context, the point is to suggest that some traumatized child is scribbling over pictures of his or her tormentor. In some inchoate wholly-symbolic act of lashing out in rejection or revenge.
It isn't a Kindergarten-level idea. But it also has no currency past the basic understanding of its point. It's more like an insert shot from a generic police procedural show, created by a hurried art department, than a work of illustration art. Once you get it, it's gotten. Cut. Next shot.
The art director is thinking like a tv director.
NYT’s audience is well versed in design and in abstract mark-making as an art form. They would recognize that Dehning’s marks are the strongest of these examples: most beautiful, most artfully designed, most alive, most fashionable. They may not know Art, but they are generally well educated in design.
The fact that she used a photograph directly, rather than translating it into another medium the way Whitcomb and Lesniak did, does not bother me either, I think I prefer it. If I am going to look at photos (or copies of photos), I would rather see them straight from the source. I am not sure there is any benefit to Lesniak’s conversion. Something is always lost when a photo is translated into a drawing, and almost nothing is ever gained.
I also think that in Dehning’s work, the synthesis of figurative and abstract elements is slightly more resolved when compared with mere background or border. At least the two are in conflict. To me, it is the strongest example of your point among the images here, other than the Briggs.
PS:
I do not think the Rockwell really counts, since it is fully figurative. The figuration depicts an abstract artwork on a wall, which is a real object, but the marks themselves are not abstract in any way relative to the logic of the represented world.
Kev Ferrara-- i didn't provide context for any of these pictures, in part because I didn't know it. But I suppose it's fair to say that, since the Dehning picture is the least comprehensible of all these offerings, it would've made sense to explain more of the background if we're going to discuss whether these kinds of contrast must reflect a purpose or intent to be artistically valid.
So to be more precise, the Dehning image is from an op-ed abot "America's continued assault on women," which discusses why the increasing number of women attending law school haven't been able to do enough to change the laws on marital rape and women's rights. (The author says, "Men, frankly we would welcome a moment of gratitude from you that we have not burned this whole damn human enterprise down just yet."). The author commends women like E. Jean Carroll who have had the courage to hold Trump to account for his behavior and she hopes that the current "Epstein moment" will give other women the courage to demand better treatment. So rather than "some traumatized child scribbling over pictures of his or her tormentor," this would seem to be American society mistreating (or scribbling on) female victims. It's clearly not scribbling on a "tormentor." Anyway, you can decide whether that expression of intent makes a difference in your evaluation of the image.
Richard wrote: "Something is always lost when a photo is translated into a drawing, and almost nothing is ever gained."
This is a rather startling assertion. Could you elaborate on that, taking into account Degas, Lautrec, Bonnard, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Eakins, Brangwyn, Gauguin, Mucha, Rockwell, Briggs and Fuchs? If you have answers for those, I'll dig out a dozen more.
Richard also wrote: "NYT’s audience is well versed in design and in abstract mark-making as an art form. They would recognize that Dehning’s marks are the strongest of these examples: most beautiful, most artfully designed, most alive, most fashionable. They may not know Art, but they are generally well educated in design."
Again, I could sure use a little back up here. You're talking about the highly financed engine for some of the silliest and most decadent "high" art and design in American history, artists such as Koons and Holzer and Prince and Schnabel and Rothenberg and Emin and a hundred more like them. I've offered opinions on design and art in the NYT over the years. If you want some specific examples of the reasons for my uncertainty about your claim, please check out:
https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2019/12/four-artists-and-computer.html
https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2019/01/why-are-these-illustrations-so-bad.html
https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2007/02/comics-at-new-york-times.html
https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2019/07/rip-mad-magazine-postscript.html
Finally, I'm most curious about your statement, "Dehning’s marks are the strongest of these examples: most beautiful, most artfully designed, most alive, most fashionable." Assuming this comment is not just the ipse dixit of the new Pythagoras, I would love to learn what makes these particular scribbles "the most beautiful, most artfully designed, most alive, most fashionable."
The intent of a contrast is interesting but why is it necessary? Do we know the intent of a Jackson Pollock painting?
JSL
David, I still think it was an (arguably unsuccessful and lazy looking) attempt to integrate the shirt to the background to isolate the face. But I have an even weirder association: the black figure on white field on red background. Sometimes one wants the pattern-matching machine to just take a rest.
Whatever credit I gave it, I retract.
Without contrast you get monotony, which is either boring or obnoxious. Either way, to be avoided.
David,
The issue is not whether photographic reference was used, but what happened in the artist’s mind with that reference.
There are basically three relationships an artist can have with photographic reference that I am aware of --
The first is straightforward: direct copying. If the painter simply translates the photograph’s ready-made 2D answers into paint with the highest fidelity possible, then the fundamental compositional work has already been performed by the camera. The camera has preempted the painter’s duty to decide what must be in the picture at all.
This is the realm of the “hyper-realists” and the goal is accuracy. The painter’s job is only to reproduce what is seen as accurately as possible in another medium. It is solely a matter of execution, not invention. Only nincompoops fall for this stuff.
The second mode is more subtle, and fools many more people. In this case, the artist still relies almost entirely on the photograph, but hides that dependence with visible signs of “artiness”: painterly brushwork, stylized edges, intentional distortions, scribbly mark making. The resulting picture looks more evidently hand-made. It carries the surface index of process: you feel like you can see the artist thinking through the strokes.
The problem is that no real feeling or thinking has taken place. The artist is still relying on all of the answers that the photograph provided. The structure of the scene is, like in the first mode, fully decided from the outset. To paint as if one were discovering these things in real time is, in effect, to pretend to be ignorant of answers one has already accepted.
What is simulated is uncertainty itself. The marks of exploratory drawing (searching lines, corrections, hesitations) have a particular expressive power when they arise from genuine problem-solving. But in this case gestures of exploration are reenacted after the fact, as a kind of theater.
The third mode is different in kind, and is the mode of all great painters who use reference. Here, the artist uses the photograph in a way that routes it entirely through the imagination. The photograph is not a map but rather material to be metabolized by the imagination. The artist studies the picture, lives with it, lets it blur and re-form in memory.
This is key: the artist has used the photo as the jumping off point to build a three-dimensional world inside their own mind. It is their vantage point into that 3D world that they are painting, not a translation of a 2D surface into a new medium. Which is to say, every region of the picture will have been reconstructed inside the artist’s mind, they know how it was built because they have reinvented the scene whole-cloth inside their imagination. If you take the reference away, they can still reconstruct the scene, because they know how it was made.
By the time the artist paints, they are no longer simply “referencing a photo.” They are expressing an internal experience that is inherently different from the camera’s capture, even if, to an outside observer, the final painting still resembles the original reference in many respects.
I would love to learn what makes these particular scribbles "the most beautiful, most artfully designed, most alive, most fashionable."
I don’t have a way to describe or explain what makes some scribbles beautiful. I also can’t say why Leśniak’s scribbles disgust me. I just look at them, and that’s how they make me feel.
You like Twombly’s scribbles, right? Without talking about the title of his pieces, just the marks on the canvas, are you able to describe why his particular scribbles are so universally loved? I cannot; it’s pure abstraction, words don’t apply.
One thing at a time. My first target for AI is bespoke fiction. I'm reasonably sure that with a little guidance, AI can tell second-rate stories of a specified genre and setting, and second-rate is better than most of what I'm paying for these days. But second-rate fiction is largely imitative. AI editing will involve more judgment on the computer's part.
Twombly holds down the graphically simple, gesturally free, and childishly playful buttons all at once. Put that in a 'sophisticated' setting (such as a large white wall art gallery) and the middle class intelligentsia can't resist it.
Richard and Laurence John-- The difference between Twombly and Dehning neatly poses the challenge of understanding and appreciating contemporary art. With traditional art, and a subject matter from nature we can all see and compare, it's easier to judge which picture is more accurate or insightful or skillful. Studying a bowl of fruit or a landscape, we have a common basis for judging which color palette is more successful, which stylistic and editorial statements are more interesting. But how do we compare two scribbles and pronounce one superior?
It's harder but not impossible. It requires a more open and searching mind to analyze what criteria are meaningful (or indeed, if they're meaningful at all). The objective of such an artist is not always apparent, and it is important to understand the objective if you want to evaluate how successful the artist has been in meeting their objective.
After I do the work to understand Twombly, I think his scribbles by themselves are intellectually interesting and mind expanding but as physical marks standing alone I wouldn't consider them particularly beautiful. I would not hang them on my wall. Twombly's work that I love and have raved about on this blog (such as his Orpheus--https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2023/01/learning-to-love-orpheus.html) builds upon the learning from his scribbles, but is different.
In reply to Richard's challenge about using words to analyze abstract marks on canvas, I suggested that Twombly's scrawl of the word "Orpheus" married the word, including the history and philosophy of the legend, with the physical marks which show the sensuousness of line through extreme simplification-- huge, unsteady charcoal or crayon marks of varying width and character, some smudged or scratched or painted over. I argued that Twombly had "located lush qualities and brute design in the atomistic levels of mark making."
But better than my words were the words of an art critic I quoted: "a giant O takes up the left part of the canvas. The remaining letters, smudged, and mostly erased, spread to the right and downward, like descending notes on a musical stave. There is a sense of resignation or fade-out in the script's formation, as if the word were not worth completing, the gods having long since departed. But the letters' placement also conjures Orpheus himself descending to the underworld to retrieve his beloved Eurydice."
Perhaps I'm missing something but I don't see that kind of depth and range and profundity in Dehning's marks. As far as I can tell, her purpose is to show that women are devalued today, which she does by scribbling on a not very interesting photo of a woman. The colors of her lines (red and blue) don't do anything for me, and her lines seem more jagged and angry than thoughtful and meditative. "Beautiful?" Well, perhaps it would be unfair of me to expect lines showing quick rage to simultaneously show a beautiful or interesting composition or sense of design.
Dehning seems to be criticizing America's dismissal of women, hastily marking them for the waste dump. OK, I understand that, But there's no zen in these scribbles for me.
Dehning's scribbles were actually done with abandon. They have naturalness which I don't think can be faked.
Twombly's scribbles are very labored, thus ugly. And whatever you were told to read into them is hardly profound. More like basic typography stuff. Unless you play stupid intellectual games. Like write Hitler without the letter 'r'. And then you can say it signifies that he never finished his dreams of a fourth Reich.
~ FV
This is very exciting news indeed! Statler and Waldorf have actually found something to like. It gladdens my heart.
I think I’ve got this right: Richard finds it difficult to articulate why Dehning’s scribbles are beautiful but Lesniak’s scribbles disgust him. FV says Dehning’s scribbles are good because they’re done “with abandon” but Twombly’s are “labored, thus ugly.”
I’m glad you’ve both seen something in Dehning’s illustration that has apparently eluded me.
Laurence John has chosen a different path: speaking up for the lumpenproletariat, criticizing scribbles because they are catnip for “middle class intelligentsia.”
I think this has the potential to turn into an interesting and candid discussion about non-representational art, but I’m about to get on a plane and so will be out of circulation for a while.
I never said Dehning's scribbles were "good." But they aren't labored.
~ FV
I just took a limo to see Hamilton, I went to Yale, and my boyfriend and I make well over a half a million dollars a year. And I can tell you that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Alexander Soros, Bill Gates, John Brennan, and I all think Cy Twombly is a great genius that only true sophisticates appreciate and understand. And his work is worth a lot of money. And if you don't like him, you're a low class provincial loser, a mouth-breathing deplorable climate denier who probably likes normal straight sex and voted for tRump. So I win the argument. Twombly's profound and great and anybody who disagrees probably makes very little money and doesn't know anybody famous.
Homo Superior
I’m glad you’ve both seen something in Dehning’s illustration that has apparently eluded me.
It sounds like Twombly has eluded you too if, “as physical marks standing alone,” you “wouldn't consider them particularly beautiful.”
If the only things about Twombly you like are his artist’s statements, I’m pretty sure that means you don’t like him at all.
I like Twombly’s pictures, the pictures themselves, without artist’s statements or titles or language. They’re beautiful to me, as purely visual phenomena. When I look at them, they fill me with a beautiful experience, like listening to a pretty sonata. I’ve loved them since the first time I walked into his permanent exhibit at the PMA as a child.
As far as I’m concerned, his silly artist’s statements are just the unfortunate cost of doing business in the art establishment. The reason he’s beloved is because of the beauty in his marks.
I thought we agreed on that matter. To learn that the only things you like about Twombly are these silly intellectual games, I’m rather shocked, to be honest. Are pictures all just instruments of intellectual language games for you?
Richard: "To learn that the only things you like about Twombly are these silly intellectual games, I’m rather shocked, to be honest. Are pictures all just instruments of intellectual language games for you?"
There's so little to Twombly's images that they're the perfect springboard for 'intellectual language games'.
(I just wish I had thought to include 'literary allusions' in my previous comment as one of the 'buttons' that Twombly pushes, but I was thinking purely visually about what he's doing)
The middle class intelligentsia just adore language games. If they can convert an image into an intellectual concept or literary conceit which describes the 'meaning' of it for them, they're so happy.
It works especially well if the artwork is so open-ended that you can graft almost any literary 'meaning' onto it you like. Extra points if it alludes to a classic which they studied on their English literature course.
" lines showing quick rage"
Without your context, I thought they were supposed to be kid's scribbles to be honest, thus a comment on something about motherhood and careers, the inner child, or schizophenia.
Bill
I’m not really sure which is the more “perfect springboard,” pure abstraction or representational pictures.
But I could just as easily see the opposite being true, that having representational content provides many more things to talk about and more ways to intellectualize the work.
To go on at any length about the meaning of an abstract art, one has to make a complete fool of themselves, while with representational work you can analyze the piece at any length without the same risk. Think about how much BS could be said about a history painting, “We can tell from the fact the painter has Lincoln dressed in a cotton shirt, he was trying to say […]”, “Look how he made the clouds here look like […], he’s clearly hinting at Napoleon’s relationship with his mother.”
Or recall the debate surrounding the Nabokov covers. I think you would be hard pressed to get that many people energetically philosophizing over abstract works unless the question is of the “Is it art?” variety.
A massive amount of ink was spilled over non-representational abstraction in the 20th century. Considering just the yammering surrounding Denman W. Ross's Theory of Pure Design, to Clive Bell's Significant Form, to Rosenberg and Greenberg on Action Painting, on through field painting, wall scribbles and so on, barely scratches the surface of the conversational scope and proliferation. Which veered toward not only "what does it mean?", but moreover "what does it all mean?"
The Projection Test aspect of vague and tantalizing creations is a very strong lure for the chattering status-obsessed classes to wax philosophical while waning epistemological. Naturalistic narrative was denigrated and dismissed, rather than analyzed.
So, for example, in the big important art survey books that I grew up loathing, not only didn't the Golden Age of American Illustration happen, but any artist who would be liked by those who like such work also didn't exist. So Sorolla, Sargent, Mucha, Brangwyn, Fechin, Frank Tenney Johnson, Waugh, etc. All gone. Vanished from history. Total authoritarian control over who you were allowed to hear of and like. One still hears stories of classroom settings where you are told not to like an artist Bierstadt, forget N.C. Wyeth.
These are awful arrogant miserable creeps that took over the arts, and still hunch over it like vultures squatting on carrion.
Richard wrote: "To learn that the only things you like about Twombly are these silly intellectual games, I’m rather shocked, to be honest."
If you're that easily shocked, you may not be cut out for this line of work.
Obviously I never said they were the only things I liked and even more obviously, I don't consider them to be silly intellectual games. Twombly was infatuated with classical history, some of the biggest and most timeless and most important legends at the core of western history. But he was also interested in the new, exploring the boundaries of art by, for example, drawing those scribbles in a pitch dark room, trying to strip away the influence of his eyes and unlearn hardwired aspects of art that he felt may have run their course. When you experiment like that, there are bound to be some casualties. Twombly seems ready to accept that.
As I said earlier, I'm less impressed with the "beauty" of some of his individual scribbles, but they can be incorporated with other shapes and movements where the cumulative effect is quite lovely, like a field of butterflies taking off.
It's fine with me that you like Twombly "without artist’s statements or titles or language" because "they’re beautiful to [you] as purely visual phenomena." But if you genuinely respect the artist I think you're leaving a lot on the table. Twombly, like many artists, uses one accessible feature of his art to lure viewers into the work of less accessible features of his art, but at the same time he obscures features where he doesn't want the audience to get too close. I once saw three huge canvases by Twombly--lovely designs-- which turned out, upon investigation, to be tributes to his wife's vulva. You have to admire his enthusiasm. One critic called it "crudeness in erudition." But of course it was no more vulgar than the erotic art of ancient Egypt or Rome. I think there was a lot of bravery in what you call "silly intellectual games."
Kev Ferrara-- don't you think your gripe is more with the "arrogant miserable creeps" who wrote the art history books, rather than the artist? I've succumbed to this temptation in the past, but I try to fight against it. For example, I've cursed the gushing fans of Chris Ware for their staggering ignorance of art, but that shouldn't extend to Ware himself who works like a dog, continues to grow, and is a rather quiet and self-effacing fellow. I contrast that with a clown like Koons, who not only orchestrates the praise for the scented bilge he produces, but actually seems to believe his own press releases.
A picture is not responsible for the kind of people who like it.
None of these examples examplify a successful merger of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The contrasts are all controlled, some more obviously forced than others. As for the usual anti-intellectual americanisms: if you want contemporary examples of superior cradt in mimetic art, look to China (in this as well).
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
don't you think your gripe is more with the "arrogant miserable creeps" who wrote the art history books, rather than the artist?
Sorry, it was the milieu generally. Sniffy politicized modernists - with some exceptions - were all too happy to denigrate and shut out people who could draw and paint from "the fine arts" as it suited them in the 1930s and 1940s after they had established a beach head, institutionally, with collectors and galleries, and in media.
And then when they got into the art schools as teachers in the 1950s and 1960s, they were only too happy to kick out every artist-teacher who could draw and paint and was teaching the old information. And to, in their absence, teach the denigration of those very types of artists, their thoughts, their methods, history, poetics, aesthetics, etc, everything. Except insofar as they claimed many of the older ideas as their own inventions.
Koons is a tasteless industrialist. He's of a newer breed than the vandals and Visigoths who broke down the gates and looted. Koons stems from, in my view, Warhol's vacuous commercial-factory cynicism. Koons doesn't care enough about art to vandalize it. He's too busy stocking shelves.
I can see and appreciate Ware's intelligence in his work, while also being antipathetic toward his infantilism. A quality I find very concerning among our current crop of cultural "elites." The infantilism being just the flip side of nihilism, in my view.
Postmodern anonymouse-- Your point about mimetic art in China is an interesting important one. Not only are Chinese artists turning out impressive work, but Craig Mullins, one of the great founding fathers of digital painting, tells the story of being invited to China years ago to give a talk on his methods. When he arrived, it turned out he was addressing an entire football field full of young artists, each one already trained and seated at a computer station, eager to learn and adapt all of Mullins' secrets, and to use them in jobs which, in the west, would be for below-subsistence wages.
Postmodern Anonymouse-- PS: I never thought about the collision discussed in this post as an issue of the "merger of the Apollonian and the Dionysian," but that would certainly link the current debate to the age old struggle between the two planes of existence.
I guess the hang up is that the two planes aren't supposed to merge; the friction between them is the source of great creativity. It's not just the Apollonian vs. the Dionysian but the materialism of the Ionians vs. the mysticism of the Eleatics; Confucius vs. Zen; the world of the physical senses in Aristotle, Albert and Aquinas vs. Plato, Plotinus and Augustine who negated that world; sophia (factual knowledge of the physical world) vs. ousia (essential being); the east/west clash between logos and intuition; the great creative polarity goes on and on through the millennia, handing temporary domination back and forth. But to be fruitful there has to be engagement between the two planes of existence.
I don't blame them for not "merging" as your comment seems to expect, but my concern with some of the art in this post is that the two planes don't engage at all. Some of these are like a Large Hadron particle accelerator which crashes protons together at high speed to see what happens.
my concern with some of the art in this post is that the two planes don't engage at all.
Without the application of synthetic imagination the meeting of opposites becomes mere juxtaposition or abruption, regardless of what opposites we are speaking of; mindless creative collisions which (as the proverbial cranky friend smartly points out) are meaningless.
The very reason relations became a key idea in the arts was as the agency by which one may find ways -- all the many ways - of harmonizing differences into coherent units of visual thought. Which is why relations are a fundamental grammatical component in the language of art. It is how one marries the fields.
Giordano Bruno put the whole matter succinctly some 500 years ago when he wrote, "The peculiar and deepest secret of art is to develop from the point of union also its antithesis." (You will find this idea playing out in the Whitcomb, Briggs, and Rockwell.)
Dialectics aside, I think the objection to the lack of proactivity in what is considered postmodern art 'round these parts is valid.
Perhaps an argument can be made (and has been made) around post-WWI avant-garde visual art being primarily art criticism in that it attempted to engage critically with artistic expression from the inside. If there is such a thing as meaningful visual language beyond (or before) verbal language, surely sincere attempts at communicating about this language in this language might make sense? Especially when facing the perceived insufficiencies of traditional art's ability to engage with the seemingly cosmic horrors of modernity? Yes, there must be singing in the dark times about the dark times. But that's easier said than done, isn't it. The old melody structures might not suffice. The Dionysian chorus might need reinvention.
One need not agree that such an endeavour would even be possible. And one certainly need not agree that American Abstract Expressionism was a successful attempt to thus engage with these perceived insufficiencies by means of artistic expression. And once this and similar tendencies of the day crystallized into the preferred institutional currency, any original intent of self-evaluation seems entirely to have evaporated in the process.
These movements were primarily reactive. They still are. Whatever simulated sense of the primal, the true random and the fierce art critics working within this field present as art, will fail. It is, in itself, neither abstract nor expressive. On the contrary, it must always be very much formalized and calculated. It is entirely Apollonian.
But the way forward is through. There is no going back. Whatever of value might be gathered from this reactive moment and movement, this critique of the old, must re-integrated to create the new.
It's like Thatcher (or was it Reagan?) said: "The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters!"
;)
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Postmodern Anonymouse.
surely sincere attempts at communicating about this language in this language might make sense?
Harvey Dunn, when speaking of poetic techniques told his students, “Think on (your poetic ideas) not about them.” By which he meant; be a poet, not a theoretician of poetry. Intellectualism impedes synthetic imagination because it is fundamentally analytical, thus disintegrative.
When F.R. Gruger was studying at the Pennsylvania Academy in its headiest days, he was put through the most grueling purely visual class in composition imaginable. A class which most students simply could not hack and usually left. Only when F.R. finally met the rigorous standards of his teacher-mentors was he graduated into the next class, wherein the meanings of what he had just mastered were finally revealed and explained.
Visual doing came first, last and always; visual intuition and visual poetics. Translations into academic chatter - impressive without regard for utility - not so much. The reason of the talent is to make art. It is the lost intellectual who becomes involuted and begins talking about talking, instead of making about making.
But because the world - at the outset of high modernism - came into a time of smart-sounding chatter as a kind of pop currency, something that can impress or enrapture at parties, coffee houses or in idle moments of ennui, could act as a calling card for entrée into upper crust circles, could sell reductive visual meals as fine cuisine, could fill column inches in periodicals and segments on television or classrooms with paying suckers of privilege, the lucky surfer hit the wave just right.
When Burton Silverman pointed out that most Modern Art was rudimentary demonstrations of basic design principles, he had darted the problem dead center. What we have been handed are diagrammatic demonstrations of design ideas. The fun of these graphics/cartoons is that it puts the expression on the surface, so everybody can play along. Easy peasy. Nobody gets scarily affected by art, and the self-anointed intellectuals get to feel smart and, more importantly, in control.
The old melody structures might not suffice.
Every melody is different, expresses a different narrative truth. No good melody is wrong. As history rhymes, so does every moment of our lives; every type of moment echoes and echoes in other lives, even in our own. At and within every given moment we can find recurrences a thousand years ago and a thousand years hence. If framed in melody, just as valid now as then as forever.
The problem is in considering art as a mass consumed thing, instead of as a privately consumed thing. The former gives us graphic loudness competitions - endless parades of novel mindless sensations which always swirl down into profane screaming and other pornographic tricks to steal attention without earning it. There has never been a great artist who wasn’t thoroughly steeped in at least some past art of quality, and who wasn’t also disgusted and horrified by cheap tricksters and their cheap tricks.
These movements were primarily reactive.
No, they were primarily opportunistic.
>>>>>>>surely sincere attempts at communicating about this language in this language might make sense?
You seem to be missing the point. If you want to be academic, use an academic language. This is not that. You'd no more use art for academic analyses than you would use the language of math to talk about your first love affair.
~ FV
At least partially intended as an apropos to the discussion about art as a language. How do you talk about art without using words?
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Postmodern Anonymouse
The best way to reveal and share knowledge about artistic communication is through visual demonstrations, including diagramming. Which words can assist.
As well, the best way to reveal one's ignorance of artistic communication - to oneself and others - is to fail to sufficiently demonstrate in practice a given assertion one had assumed and proposed as true.
I'm less impressed with the "beauty" of some of his individual scribbles, but they can be incorporated with other shapes and movements where the cumulative effect is quite lovely
Isn’t the beauty of any shape or mark found in its cumulative effect, its relationship to the complete visual field, where all forms “vibrate” with one another?
Yes, some shapes are more visually digestible: convex over concave, round over sharp, simple over complex, organic over mechanical. In other words, they are consonant. But that’s not the same as “beauty.” A concave, sharp, complex, mechanical mark can be more beautiful in the right circumstances not just in spite of its visual dissonance, but because of the tension it introduces, just like a tritone.
Kev Ferrara wrote: "When Burton Silverman pointed out that most Modern Art was rudimentary demonstrations of basic design principles, he had darted the problem dead center. What we have been handed are diagrammatic demonstrations of design ideas."
I remember Silverman saying that, and Robert Fawcett (another of my heroes, along with Silverman) made the same point. In the 1950s Fawcett ridiculed the notion that abstract design was something new, when it had always been at the core of representational art. I mostly agree with you, Silverman and Fawcett but that only brings us back around to the starting point of this discussion.
OK, so representational art achieves (at least) two things: it works out an abstract design/composition AND it selectively creates realistic images of physical objects. Fine. But we can't say that abstract expressionism is necessarily less than realistic painting merely because one thing is always less than two things.
Many of the pictures in this post attempt to separate the two categories and place them side by side, banging heads. That makes the design something different from what it was as a traditional partner with realism. And abstract expressionism takes the approach even further, attempting to purify the design by removing the restraints, burdens and challenges of realism's content altogether (which turns out to be more difficult than we thought). That purified form of design is something different too-- it frees the design from compromises with content and invites contemplation of a whole different category of ontological, psychological and metaphysical issues. l view that the losses from drilling down on abstraction often outweigh the gains, but not always
Isn’t the beauty of any shape or mark found in its cumulative effect, its relationship to the complete visual field, where all forms “vibrate” with one another?
This is what I mean by the pseudo-meaning of basic design principles. Repetitiousness attracts and fixates attention. Symmetry similarly.
Similitude over a distance is sensed as resonance. Moon rhymes with June, we feel that. And.. now what? There is a tone there, in the shared “ooo” vowel quality. But what beyond that? “Tune your June and Moon Crooning Soon you Loon!” What is the meaning of the vibration you feel between those sounds on that "ooo" vowel?
It's simply a mood, a.k.a. a tone. A drone, an undertone, or an overtone, echoes, iterations. Sometimes it's handwriting - same thing.
Such is the lowest bar for meaning. In its simple abstract vagueness it is utterly basic. And is easily generated. e.g. A bunch of red triangles of different sizes and shades will create a tone. A bunch of objects, textures and colors that one might find at the beach will create a tone. Put up Halloween decorations and it looks like Halloween in the house.
Resonance over a field is basic decor theory, not Art/Poetry. Any tone can be created as a field effect by the simple act of repeating. Nature does this automatically. And so will code on a loop. The fact of using a single typeface in a post like this even creates a tone; the similitude of the letter shapes resonating with one another over various distances in the gray text field.
Many of the pictures in this post attempt to separate the two categories and place them side by side, banging heads.
The bad pictures prominently contain disjoints between opposites; unrectified abruptions and garish juxtapositions, while the good ones harmonize the opposites, in part by sublating them.
And abstract expressionism takes the approach even further, attempting to purify the design by removing the restraints, burdens and challenges of realism's content altogether (which turns out to be more difficult than we thought).
You are confusing both of us with your word usages. What exactly was the complex sullied source material that ends up as spatter on a wall after it has been “purified”? How did you get there?
Great images are all purified to the utmost extent possible. The principle of concision in poetics is as defining as the principle of breadth; the two are perfectly inter-related.
The visual blather of design for its own sake - infinitely plastic of course - is quite able to be as “creative” as can be. Truly, one can say anything when saying nothing. Kindergarten is so very freeing. And, not coincidentally, the repose of perfect vacuity is actually a positive thing when creating decor for absent wealthy people. Particularly if they are investment objects.
One notices, however, that you never advocate for the same ethic of free blather in talk and writing. Because I suppose you’d be too embarrassed, and rightfully so, to advocate for endless variants of goo goo ga ga in high-minded prose circles. One dumb Joyce book was quite enough of that, we all secretly agree.
it frees the design from compromises with content
Imaginative synthesis - one of the rarest and most unique gifts of the very most talented members of our species - the ability to have profound intuitive insights connecting form and content - is now a “compromise” in your telling?
Isn’t it weird that all the “compromises” in your Modernist telling require more talent, more knowledge, and more hard work, while all the “purifications” require less?
The best way to share knowledge about artistic communication is through visual demonstrations, including diagramming. Which words can assist.
Can it be done without words?
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Postmodern Anonymouse
I guess the hang up is that the two planes aren't supposed to merge; the friction between them is the source of great creativity.
This is what Nietzsche wrote about in his early works, claiming that the lack of balance between the Apollonian and the Dionysian was a major cause of the cultural decline of the West.
He wouldn’t have liked these faux synthetics, though.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
"the two planes aren't supposed to merge; the friction between them is the source of great creativity"
How are these mythic terms applying the artworks in the original post? Is the Apollonian supposed to be the mimetic drawing aspect and Dionysian the non-referential abstractions?
Because the history of "Apollonian" art is one of extreme abstraction.
The real distinction, as I see it, is between controlled abstract idealization versus the uncontrolled sensual expression of more peculiar organic forms. The former (Apollonian) associated with geometry - mathematical proportioning, monumentality/architectonics, and the basic solids - the latter (Dionysian) with squashing and stretching and the malleable globularity of muscle, flesh, and dough; and the phantasmagoria of wild shapes, colors and gestures.
Neither are yoked to photorealism. Both sides of the spectrum are capable of suggesting the mystical or supernatural. Different ghosts for different realms.
It is certainly the case that the two poles can be merged into a single artwork. It has happened forever, and beautifully so in all the best work. The Sistine Chapel is full of phantasmagoric imagery and peculiar forms. Meanwhile so many highly geometrically-regulated ancient decorations and Hieroglyphs are full of mascara and boobs and wild mythical hybrid creatures.
How are these mythic terms applying the artworks in the original post? Is the Apollonian supposed to be the mimetic drawing aspect and Dionysian the non-referential abstractions?
They don’t. At least if one proceeds from the nietzchean distinction, which differs from yours.
But as far as I can gather, Apatoff seems to think so. (Correct me if I’m wrong).
The abstract elements in the pieces above are all staged. They are designed to appear otherwise, as wild and ecstatic (Dionysian) counterweights to the representational (Apollonian) content. But the calculation of the design is overwhelmingly obvious.
I think some of the abstractionists(?) referenced Nietzsche in their intellectual art manifestos, if I remember correctly. I suppose one could imagine they were attempting to do music on the canvas. This seems just as reasonable as the notion that they were attempting to critically engage with (mimetic) visual art - communicating about communication, if you like. But it could also be that they were just being …nihilistic?
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Postmodern Anonymouse
The abstract elements in the pieces above are all staged. They are designed to appear otherwise, as wild and ecstatic (Dionysian) counterweights to the representational (Apollonian) content.
I agree, except for the Dehning scribbles. Which FV rightly described as unlabored. The scribbles were probably done on white paper then scanned in and superimposed over the scans of the old photos in photoshop. Because the scribbles weren't actually being done in a hyper risky one-and-done fashion as "original art" on top of the original photos, they could be proliferated as scribble tests. And then - among the tests - a few are selected, edited and fitted to the photos later digitally... 'Hugging the shore' pretending to be skydiving; so even the most "Dionysian" of the bunch is a kind of hoax.
In the bygone age when sober, dedicated, and learned artists roamed the Earth, it was understood that any technical matter that called attention to itself was a disjoint - something that would break the magic spell of the poetic narrative. The Modernist mindset, particularly as it was adapted for illustration after mid-century, was all about calling attention to one's self for obvious technical anomalies. Always about getting attention, grabbing eyeballs, little about holding them.
50 years prior, John Singer Sergeant would continually scrape the day's paint off a portrait, day after day, until he was satisfied with one particular day's go at it; wherein he had put down his heads and faces all in one sitting, accurately, expressively and with an air of effortless freshness. This continued attempt to achieve a looseness of technique was no imposture of Dionysian wildness - it wasn't some pretense of savage virility captured on canvas to thrill the circus gawker audience - but merely an attempt to capture the natural liveliness of the subject in a suggestive way. Avoiding the deadening effect of obsessive finishing.
Kev Ferrara wrote: "It is certainly the case that the two poles can be merged into a single artwork. It has happened forever, and beautifully so in all the best work. "
Perhaps I was unclear. I agree the two poles can and do coexist in a single artwork. I agree the tension between them does create much of the best work. I meant only that it rarely works to try to "merge" them in the sense of completely blending or homogenizing the poles so that they lose their distinctive characters. (Believe it or not, there are commenters around here who insist that there is only one highest form of picture making, which involves the merging of abstract elements with realistic forms to create a new poiesis, etc. Those commenters dismiss efforts to break out and isolate the extreme ends of the spectrum, or to break other rules such as integrating words or other unexpected elements into visual art. This is an old battle. Critics were upset with Beethoven for putting words in his 9th symphony because, well, you don't put words in a symphony, but eventually they got over it).
Postmodern Anonymouse wrote: "The abstract elements in the pieces above are all staged" while Kev Ferrara also wrote: "even the most "Dionysian" of the bunch is a kind of hoax."
I hope I'm not disillusioning anyone here when I say that art itself is staged, and kind of a hoax. There must have been 20 posts on this blog where the ramifications of this have been discussed over the years. For example, I've shown preliminary drafts by illustrators such as Robert Fawcett and Bernie Fuchs that start out savage and spasmodic and wild, and then in the words of Fuchs, they try to achieve "controlled looseness." From Kev's description of Sargent, he sounds like he shared that instinct.
I agree the Dehning "unlabored" scribbles are the least staged of the examples here, which may be why they look like the work of a lazy slob. We've discussed on this blog the old pros who sadly concluded, "You can't draw and drool." More than one artist has tried having sex in a puddle of paint on canvas spread out on the floor. They put Dionysian art to the true test. Unfortunately, the sex was fine but the art never works out.
Postmodern Anonymouse wrote: "Apatoff seems to think so. (Correct me if I’m wrong)."
Apatoff has been in Manhattan this weekend to see the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall (as well as the Arthur Szyk exhibition). He apologizes for his tardiness , but please don't infer anything from his silence.
The Nietzschean distinction between the Dionysian and the Apollonian is an exciting intellectual dichotomy, but it does not in my opinion subsume the many variations of the creative polarity noted by other (and sometimes better) philosophers and spiritual leaders over the millennia. (Note my contrasts above between Aristotle, Albert and Aquinas vs. Plato, Plotinus and Augustine, etc. etc.)
I think mimetic drawing vs. non-referential abstraction-- and in particular the examples included here-- fit neatly into this question. Freedom vs.control, reason vs. instinct. But I do agree there's a serious question to be wrestled with: how free can artistic freedom be without being at least partially staged? That impurity was recognized long ago; the Taoist Taijitu tries to separate yin and yang, but still acknowledges a tiny spot of yin in the yang symbol and a tiny spot of yang in the yin symbol. Just like with mimetic drawing vs. non-referential abstraction, it's hard to find absolutely pure, vacuum grade category of art.
I hope I'm not disillusioning anyone here when I say that art itself is staged, and kind of a hoax.
The relevant difference here being that mimetic art doesn’t pretend to be non-mimetic. «Expressive» non-mimetic art on the canvas - unless understood primarily as attempts to engage with the linguistic fundamentals of the supposed and particular non-verbal language of art - pretends towards the intangibility, fluidity and ecstasy of music. Mimetic art can succeed at mimesis, non-mimetic art never succed at being music.
Whether or not the Dionysian and Appollonian can successfully merge in visual art, is a definitional matter. Nietzsche probably didn’t think so, but he’s dead - and the world continues.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
Postmodern annymouse wrote: "The relevant difference here being that mimetic art doesn’t pretend to be non-mimetic."
But the definition of "mimetic" is "imitative" or "make believe." It pretends to be 3 dimensional but it's not. Trompe l'oeil certainly pretends to be non-mimetic, but even other forms of realism seek to simulate (or stimulate) the same reactions that the original in nature does-- a meadow of flowers on a sunny day, the smiling face of a loved one, the majesty of a mountain.
At the other extreme, I think you may be holding "expressive non-mimetic" art to a standard of intangibility and ecstasy that even music rarely attains. Beethoven's pastoral symphony doesn't. Smetana's Moldau doesn't. Rimsky Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee doesn't. Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite doesn't. Try as it might to achieve "intangibility, fluidity and ecstasy," it's very hard for music to purge itself totally of mimetic elements except in hypothetical discussions like this one. There's always a little yin in the yang.
Derrida would agree.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
As discussed previously...
Trompe L'oeil makes for bad art because the first thing it does, the main thing it does, is try to fool you. Once you've realized that you were momentarily tricked, what next? It has all the depth of a practical joke, which is what it is.
What great art does is show you that it is a fiction immediately. It reveals that it is artifice from the start; visions from a parallel aesthetic world. And this then allows one to trustingly fall into it, giving one's self over to the authoritative suggestions because the poetry and drama is so well and beautifully done.
Graphics also reveal themselves up front to be fictions, but they are not really creating a parallel world, not really weaving a setting and narrative out of poetic and aesthetic suggestions. So the moral issue of aesthetic belief doesn't come into play.
This is an old battle. Critics were upset with Beethoven for putting words in his 9th symphony because, well, you don't put words in a symphony, but eventually they got over it
The old battle is to try to ensure those participants in the discussion who would attempt to situate themselves as academics and referees of the discourse - beyond reproach and representing the good of the game - thereby attempting to win the argument without actually making it - remember and contend with the actual arguments made.
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