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Category Archives: Conceptualism and Painting
Backyard Hermit
This really blew my mind, the fact that me, an overfed, long-haired leaping gnome should be the star of a Hollywood movie Another provincial with cosmoplitan ideas. See Whim. The girls are in another panel.
Critical Experiment
Here’s an idea for an amusing artwork in the form of a sociological experiment. Take two groups of curators, and ensure that the members of each group have no opportunity to talk to members of the other group. Maybe this … Continue reading
Tacit Criticism
As pointed out on this blog, the role of criticism is to make the implicit explicit, to explain what doesn’t need to be explained, because the implicit—or call it the tacit—contains the social content that must be questioned. I don’t … Continue reading
Order inside and out
I keep thinking about a quote from Emerson that I’ve used elsewhere on the blog: “I would write on the lintels of the doorpost, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the … Continue reading
Perennially New
An article of 1989 by Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, called “The Current State of Nonrepresentation,” proves that certain ideas might seem fresh, but are hardly new: “…the task of nonrepresentation [is], typically, one which involves seeing a thing which is, for once, … Continue reading
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
Dokoupil
I always felt an affinity with J.G.Dokoupil, confirmed in spades by this interview, which I recommend to everyone. Dokoupil could be called a conceptual painter, and I’m a non-conceptual artist, so we should have a lot in common.
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
Those who make
As Harold Bloom has pointed out, Emerson is the ancestor of all American motivational speakers and aspirational gurus. Tony Robbins and his ilk are Emerson’s progeny, and if self-reliance has become an ideology then it has to be reinvented, or … Continue reading
Shakespeare in the Future
“Still, all balanced against all, the works to which I refer make demands of those who would appreciate them. The metaphors sometimes span two or three abstractions; the perorations are directed to unknown agencies, the language is archaic and ambiguous….In … Continue reading
Posted in Conceptualism and Painting, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged Jack Vance, literature, time
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Unknown
Recently I published a little squib on the British web site Abstract Critical, and Peter Stott, who has contributed to this blog, offered the following comment: “The one thing that can be said about abstract art is that it is … Continue reading
Posted in Conceptualism and Painting, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, backstory, knowledge, meaning, value
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Approximating Nature
Despite my not so high opinion of the memoirs of Tapies, I continue to find interesting bits. This is his description of an early experimental phase of his work: “I was searching for images without knowing whether they were amorphous … Continue reading
Alexis Harding
One of my favorite contemporaries is Alexis Harding, an old friend. I think he uses gravity in a very good way, with a lot of intervention on the way down. He pours a grid of commercial enamel over artist’s oils, … Continue reading
Posted in Conceptualism and Painting, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Alberto Burri, Alexis Harding, feeling, grids, labor, Lucio Fontana, nature, sex, subjectivity
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Pulses
Been reading Emerson. He confirms something mentioned more than once on this blog: “Nature hates calculators; her methods are saltatory and impulsive. Man lives by pulses; our organic movements are such; and the chemical and ethereal agents are undulatory and … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Conceptualism and Painting, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Emerson, feeling, Jackson Pollock, meaning, nature, series, sex, time, value
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Time Religious and Artistic
R.B.Kitaj has provoked me to look into a book by A.J.Heschel which happens to be on my library shelf. It’s about the sabbath as a day apart from the noise and strife. That’s how I’ve always thought about my studio—a … Continue reading
Posted in Conceptualism and Painting, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, AJHeschel, literature, meaning, RBKitaj, space, time, value
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Laura Owens
The recent Artforum interview with Laura Owens is very interesting. Her new paintings are good, and in fact resemble Stella’s work in concrete ways. She has an inclusive approach to technique, is involved with printmaking, uses illusionistic shadows and frames … Continue reading
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
Concise Manet
Manet: “Concision in art is a necessity as well as an elegance; a man who is concise makes you think, a verbose man bores you.” This is why I am bored by global conceptualism, not to be verbose about it.
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
Commentary
R.B.Kitaj’s Second Diasporist Manifesto gives a lot of pleasure. He describes himself as kind of Talmudic commentator—of his own painting. Proposition #236 reads: “As a Jew, I am FOR INTERPRETATION…As a post-20th century painter, the very idea of NO COMMMENTARY … Continue reading
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
Slightly Overwhelming
I’m pretty familiar with the illustrations in Robert Wallace’s book on the Moby Dick series, but when I see the actual pieces don’t usually recognize them. There’s something about the size and detail and rawness of the works that stuns … Continue reading
The Facts
This blog has given a fair amount of time to Frank Stella, and my attention was moving to other things—there are a few posts coming up on the topic of time. However, my interest in Stella has just been revived … Continue reading
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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