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Category Archives: Abstraction and Society
Energy Shortage?
Jeff Rubin, in a book discussed in the previous post, actually does make a good case for a zero growth or steady state economy. Not that it’s desirable, but that rising energy costs will make it inevitable. And that may … Continue reading
Pessimism About Growth
I’ve been reading a book by Jeff Rubin called The End of Growth. I’m not sure that artists should celebrate the emergence of a steady state economy, and also not sure that predictions about the same are accurate. The merit … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, history, knowledge, labor, society
2 Comments
Politics of Blogging
John Kelsey’s article in last September’s Artforum, with its criticisms of digital networking, combined with some comments from my friend Scott Lyall, provoked me to take a step back and ask what it is I’m doing here. This post is … Continue reading
Experience
This blog has quoted Emerson’s great essay, “Experience,” more than once. Here’s Benjamin on the same topic: “Most people have no wish to learn by experience. Moreover, their convictions prevent them from doing so.” How true. That is the truth … Continue reading
Empty Formalism of Education
In an earlier post I implied that university training has not improved contemporary art. Robert Hullot-Kentor reminds me of how profoundly hostile to art the university is: “Ideas make us think; we think ideas. They are what are urgent in … Continue reading
Learning down
This blog has occasionally commented on current affairs, particularly as to the role of technology in the economy. I think this is relevant to art, not least because the most overused word today (or one of them) is creativity. What … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, knowledge, labor, science, self-reflection, society, value
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Fear
Again Emerson provides a vivid perspective on contemporary America: “All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily punished. They are punished by fear…..Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald of all revolutions. One … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Emerson, feeling, self-reflection, society, time
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The Machine
Another quote from the memoirs of Tapies strikes a chord. He talks about his first show in New York: “The shock I felt in that world was fabulous. Despite all I could have known or imagined about the American people … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Antoni Tapies, society, subjectivity, value
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An abstract landscape
“Among the beds without flowers and the chipped cupids, the gnawing of actuality seemed for the moment silenced. In this place which had been left without meaning it seemed easier to feel meaning where there was perhaps none.” Anthony Powell
Integration
My children go to Waldorf school, and recently I attended a workshop on eurythmy. I’ve heard about it of course, but never paid any attention. Surprise—it really is quite marvelous. It made me vividly aware of how many of my … Continue reading
Conceptual Antagonist
The following remarks by Clement Greenberg, from 1971, give the most astute definition of conceptualism, or at least of the kind of conceptualism worth paying attention to: “…art, put to the strictest test of experience, proves to mean not skillful … Continue reading
Pragmatic Matisse
When artists talk about art they are usually more down to earth and concrete than theorists or critics. But even most artists get vague and wooly when they leave technique and try to express essences. Matisse was exemplary in his … Continue reading
A Finite Existence
As counterpoint to the concept of the Anthropocene, or rather to the way it is currently being used by artists and soft intellectuals, it is useful to consider John Leslie’s thoughts about human extinction. He has given a lot of … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, knowledge, nature, society, the inhuman, time, value
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Sublime Delusion
Scientists have recently proposed that the current geological era should be called the Anthropocene because of the enormous impact of human activity on the biosphere. This seems to be a reasonable idea, but when the art world gets hold of … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs, Ethics of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, nature, society, the inhuman, totality
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Layers of Time
The Long Now Foundation, which aims to encourage longer term thinking, publishes an image of time in parallel layers, very similar to something I laid out in an earlier post. Artists and art lovers know that art can stop the … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, nature, society, time
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First and Only
Human history is so short that it is full of things that have happened for the first and only time, yet for the last couple of hundred years at least in the West, and for much longer in China, the … Continue reading
Lightness
Lightness is an aspect of abstraction that I particularly value. It is allied to the comic, which has been an important strand in art since the Baroque, and became dominant in the west in the early 19th. century. In its … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, American Modernism, Ethics of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, feeling, form, humor, illusion
4 Comments
Art More Intelligent Than Me
I’m always saying that my pictures are smarter than me, that they teach me what to do. In an old interview in the Brooklyn Rail Robert Hullot-Kentor says it well: “If art—when art is art—understands us better than we can … Continue reading
Destruction of Culture
Read yesterday morning about the burning of thousand year old books in Timbuktu by fanatic Islamists. When I heard about the Mali rebellion I immediately thought about the libraries of Timbuktu, and remembered what the Taliban did to the giant … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, literature, society, time
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No Progress Made
I thought I’d better amplify something I said in the preceding post, about art as an agent of enlightenment—the latter meaning freedom from myth. When art definitively became a secular religion, just before the turn of the twentieth century, it … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Conceptualism and Painting, Current Affairs
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, backstory, Boris Groys, demons, meaning, society, value
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Missed Critique
In the very important article “On the Curatorship,” from his book Art Power, Boris Groys discusses the iconoclastic power of criticism, and he says: “Contemporary iconoclasm, of course, can and should be aimed primarily not at religious icons but at … Continue reading
Lack of Time
If time is so short, why does it feel so empty? Because time has to be shaped. What we call work. Content, or feeling in art, is a fugitive effect of the shape.
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Conceptualism and Painting
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Boris Groys, emptiness, feeling, space, subjectivity, time, value
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Infinity of Images
Reading Groys can also be encouraging. In my case it confirms the avant-gardist qualifications of my work—surprising to me as much as anyone. One of the strongest pieces in his book Art Power is the opener, “The Logic of Equal … Continue reading
Getting things done
It is not the clear-sighted who lead the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog… Conrad
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, backstory, knowledge, labor, literature, society
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Originality
Originality, as it happens, is the highest value in the art of our time. Many artists don’t like that—sadly nothing can be done about it. Even Sherrie Levine is original in her critique of the concept, as Howard Singerman, her … Continue reading
Noise
Following from the previous post, as an example of visual noise I would like to present any abstract work by Gerhard Richter. Pictures like this are the high class, supremely tasteful equivalent of stadium rock, a sclerotic form if there … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, form, Gerhard Richter, grids, labor, meaning, music, series
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Definition of Abstraction
I’ve never worried my mind about a definition of abstract art, or of what I do, but occasionally have stumbled upon possibles. Just now I came up with what I believe to be a simple and accurate one. Abstraction is … Continue reading
Artists and Scientists
Like many, I read the popular books written by scientists because I genuinely want to learn about the world. Lee Smolin, Leonard Susskind, Brian Greene are some of the physicists I’ve followed, a few of whom I’ve met. In the … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, knowledge, Linsley, meaning, science, value
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Chance and Possibility
According to Stephen Jay Gould, the usual mode of human enlightenment “…is…not by global creep forward, inch by subsequent inch, but rather in rushes or whooshes, usually following the removal of some impediment, or the discovery of some facilitating device, … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Conceptualism and Painting, Current Affairs
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, evolution, knowledge, nature, science, society
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Science and Aesthetics
From Walter Benjamin: The place occupied in Goethe’s writings by his scientific studies is the one which in lesser artists is commonly reserved for aesthetics. This aspect of Goethe’s work can be appreciated only when one realizes that, unlike almost … Continue reading