“…the task of nonrepresentation [is], typically, one which involves seeing a thing which is, for once, about the presentation of no thing…People are uncomfortable with such an activity because it destabilizes so much that is dear to them. Unlike Conceptual Art, which celebrates the triumph of the idea over the material—in the name of Materialism of course, like all realisms—nonrepresentational art does not offer the security of historicism, of the notion of historical relevance as the final arbiter—a nonaesthetic one, therefore—of the work of art….Unlike representation more generally considered—that is to say, aside from the representationalism that is Conceptualism—nonrepresentation does not give one pictures of things which one may then relate to the…subjectivity which produced them.”

There is a lot going on here, and many of the threads have also been disentangled and rewoven on this blog—for one the desire for freedom from both ideas and subjectivity.

Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, More 2010

I remember Sun Ra saying that with six billion people how could there be an energy shortage? Now there are seven. Or just step out side and look at the sky. The sun has lifted tons and tons of water up into the air, and the wind is moving them around. How much energy does that take? More than we could ever use. There is no lack of energy, it’s just a matter of whether it’s where we need it in a form we can use—purely a technical problem. But for Rubin, renewable energy is far off in the future. He may or may not be right, and his attitude may or may not be a good strategy. It’s good if it makes us more aware of how prices work, yet a real turn to solar and geothermal would allow infinite growth. Though I’m very critical of Silicon Valley type techno-optimism, that is a material fact.

Sun Ra

Most popular blogs are compilations, or offer some other kind of usability—I just put out my own ideas. In any case, there is a huge difference between blogging, which is basically journalism, and Facebooking, which is enthusiastic co-operation in a giant marketing system. In what way is what I am doing different from writing for Artforum? Of course “Robert Linsley,” the voice that you hear speaking out of these words, is an artifact of the technology, and a fiction, but that’s not new in any way. That it is a less enlightening, and much less entertaining voice than say…Felix Krull…is an aesthetic problem, not a world historical crisis of the disappearing subject. I think that the form rubs against the context in some small way—I don’t compromise my writing to meet the demands of so-called SEO. There is software that will alter one’s writing for maximum Google placement, I don’t use anything like that.

Maybe it is a little bit perverse to send out one’s ideas into nothingness, but no more perverse than writing a newspaper column. The real perversion here is that the labor is unpaid, like most work in the digital economy. Admitted, I take pleasure in doing it. But…it has to serve some purpose. I thought the posts could be notes for a book, but a blog has a centrifugal nature—its deep form is the tangent, or digression. The longer I write the less likely it will make one book—maybe two or three, but that’s impractical.

Frank Stella, Riallaro (Imaginary Places I) 1995

return to forms, but also wanted to keep the integrity of his earlier, more formal abstractions, this is an interesting way. This second example looks at first sight to be exactly what he was criticizing back in the day. But I think that implicitly at least, the criticism of the floating image unrelated to the edge is that it was in some sense involuntary or unconscious. For Stella now it’s just one more possibility.

Frank Stella, Spectralia (Imaginary Places I) 1995

The effect is the same as that achieved by Barré, discussed in the previous post, to make the edges of the image more visible—to work with them and with the space they produce.

Martin Barré, 62-5 1962

their edges more vivid—the panels punch holes in the wall though to an illusionist realm while standing out strongly as shapes in our space. This is very different from the more usual approach, seen in Stella for example, of building forward into the viewer’s space. The trick is to give the edges an illusionistic kick against the wall, then go back further into pictorial space, and the result is three levels of reality—as the post on Morellet pointed out. Robert Storr claims that this was accomplished by Elizabeth Murray, but whatever its strengths, I find her work less convincing on this point. I have an idea how to do it myself, to be realized soon.

Frank Stella, Polar Coordinates for Ronnie Peterson II 1980

One is good, so two are better. Again I realize that the work that moves me the deepest is hard to see at first. An instinctive dislike is a good indicator of emerging quality.

Frank Stella, Polar Coordinates for Ronnie Peterson I 1980

Frank Stella, Swan Engraving VII 1982

whether relief or intaglio, had to be wiped separately, and to a very particular degree. According to one account “Half a day of shop time was entailed in the inking of of a single Swan plate. After each impression was pulled, the plate was then cleared of ink and prepared once again.” They also required custom made paper, since ordinary paper would not be sensitive enough to pick up the ink. Here is another image, with better

Frank Stella, Swan Engraving II 1982

nuances of black. I’ve even come to like the color of these pieces.

I’ve also been reading Gerhard Richter Writings: 1961-2007, which is mostly conversations with various sorts of journalists, and it has some very interesting things. There is mention of his incredible prices, and I think his modesty is genuine. He certainly believes that art prices are way out of proportion, his own included. About the print

Gerhard Richter, Kerze II 1989

illustrated (an offset lithograph) he says “I understand that someone paid $26000 at auction, and that’s definitely at least $25000 too much.” My friend mentioned above does a little dealing, and he recently sold an edition by Richter (not the one below). Between sealing the deal and collecting the money the market value of that particular piece

Gerhard Richter, Goldberg Variations (painted vinyl record) 1984

went up by $20,000. From an interview with Der Spiegel: “When you hear about these record sums, it’s flattering, of course, but at the same time it’s shocking…In fact, when I’m in a bad mood, I see this kind of success as a sign that something has gone askew in the world—that the buyers know nothing about art, and that somehow I conned them. And they do indeed tend to pay too much for art. There is a huge discrepancy between the true value and relevance of art and the insane prices people are paying for it…There are buyers who bid by telephone for a work of art they’ve never actually seen. That’s not art appreciation, it’s neglect. And it’s a factor that contributes to diminishing culture.” True, but the conclusion is wrong. Over the long term there may be a link between intrinsic value and price, but in today’s market there is no cultural or aesthetic significance to art prices. They are not symptoms of anything, but merely rise and fall as do other assets. There’s no doubt that art prices are a bubble, and there is a bubble in Gerhard Richter in particular. All bubbles deflate eventually—when no more new buyers enter the market, prices have to go down. That’s why the art world now depends heavily on new collectors from Brazil, Russia, China and India, the so-called BRIC economies, but that resource is also finite. And when a bubble goes down, it happens fast. Consider all the people who bought Apple at $700 a share only six months ago.

Of course when the market corrects is the time to buy, and if I was able I would buy Stella. Even today one can get a nice Stella print for $5000, or less, and in terms of real value over time, those are better investments than Richter paintings at several millions.

Frank Stella, Eusapia (Imaginary Places III) 1998

The comparison of print and painting is valid because the nature of painting has changed. The unique work has done itself in, not least because of Richter, one of the inventors of the edition of unique works, as mentioned before on this blog. In any case, at the end of one’s life there is either an accomplishment to show for all that time or not, and the beautiful, the genial, the inspiring Moby Dick series is a major achievement, and draws everything else that Stella has done up with it.

Frank Stella, Sinjerli Variation III 1977

conception of painting, probably still unacceptable to “painters.” And in later works of the Kleist series, printing methods and ideas, such as templates, repetition of images in different colors, inverted or reversed etc., were used in unique painted images.

“Ideas make us think; we think ideas. They are what are urgent in our minds—contrary to the mindset of colleges and universities which are proudest claiming that they teach how to do it, how to think, how to write, how to read and end up leaving the students cold, in debt, stupidified and hating what they’ve done in those years in classrooms, being prepared mostly for bad jobs—and unable even to follow the news  in something more than a tabloid.”

Couldn’t express better the emptiness of the claim so frequently made in education that the content of one’s thought or writing doesn’t matter, that there is only a skill to be taught. This is connected with the way that art in the university is emptied out by bureaucracy. All institutions are agnostic with respect to art—all languages, styles, positions, stances and manners have to be treated equally, which spreads the illusion that they actually are all equal, and hence equally pointless. The educative power of art itself, as described in an earlier post, is utterly negated in favor of bureaucratic forms. This has some relevance to abstraction, because there is a fine distinction to be made between the ideas that art has, and those that possess it.

Piet Mondrian, Composition C (no.III), with Red, Yellow and Blue 1935

The assumption that artificial intelligence is possible is based on one fallacy and one very sinister misconception. First of all is the fallacious assumption that every complex mental task—writing a symphony, judging whether someone is lying or not, scoring a goal in hockey, learning a language, playing the piano—can be broken down into a series of simpler ones. Many actions can, but not all. In some, such as playing a musical instrument, many lesser tasks are repeatedly practiced and built together into a new holistic accomplishment that can’t be retrospectively broken down. Secondly, and more importantly, the definition of intelligence used by AI researchers is completely functional. If one can’t tell if a given action was performed by a machine or a person, then the distinction is lost. This idea is the contribution of Alan Turing. The problem is that all measures of the adequacy of AI are based on finished accomplishments, on the past, and leaves the human capacity to find the new or the as yet unforeseeable out of consideration. This ability to recognize the new could be called learning, and AI researchers are very concerned to make a machine that can learn. Yet artificial intelligence will arrive one day and pass the Turing test, because our human capacity to learn, our adaptability, which far exceeds that of the computer, has allowed us to adapt to it. We are reducing our own capacities to meet the machine on its level—because learning is above all social, and our society, and economy, have adopted the computer. Jaron Lanier has made important observations about this, from the inside.

UNIVAC 1, 1951

“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 thing he teaches, that there is rottenness where he appears….Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our cultivated classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded and mowed and gibbered over government and property. That obscene bird is not there for nothing. He indicates great wrongs which must be revised.”