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Tag Archives: autonomy
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
Syntax of Forms
All of the recent thinking about literature and abstraction—Groys, Benjamin, Kitaj, Klee —has helped to clear up some lingering questions in the watercolors. Sometimes images appear, and sometimes that’s good, but I wasn’t sure how to distinguish when it is … Continue reading
Posted in Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, autonomy, demons, Linsley, literature, meaning
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Backstory Without End
Was just reading about the work of Paul Sietsema, and my thought was—this work has a lot of backstory. Of course there are different kinds of backstory. Sietsema seems to stick pretty close to painting, and to the history of … Continue reading
Shaped canvas 7
I’ve been looking at Tiepolo’s curved frames for a long time, and wanting to use something like that myself, only with an asymmetrical arrangement of curves. I hesitated because I felt that the strong shape would inhibit the Islands. But … Continue reading
Posted in Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged autonomy, form, Linsley, shaped canvas, space, Tiepolo, TJClark
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Objects are not literature
It may be true that objects are not literature, but what we do with them is. The way we shape them turns them into words, maybe something like ideographs. The way we group them makes a syntax or a grammar. … Continue reading
Without an object
The discursive mode is implicitly, and explicitly, critical of modernist art, especially if we think of modernist art as silent. Logically the opposite should also be the case, but it doesn’t work that way. It’s not just that the discursive … Continue reading
No Aura
A critic should be judged by the quotient of pain he or she can inflict. Here again is Boris Groys: “For those who devote themselves to the production of art documentation rather than artworks, art is identical to life, because … Continue reading
Titles long and exuberant
Through all the recent thoughts on this blog about backstory and titles, to my mind one approach really stands out as less problematic than any of the others, and that’s Terry Atkinson’s very long caption-titles. His titles contain in themselves … Continue reading
Back to Titles
Before responding any further to David Court or Scott Lyall, I want to assess the progress of the discussion so far. This section of the blog started off with some questions about titles, and titles expanded into captions, and then … Continue reading
Posted in Conceptualism and Painting, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, aesthetics, autonomy, knowledge, literature, meaning, titles
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Context as Backstory
As David Court pointed out in his recent comment, what used to be backstory has been turned inside out and become context, or analysis of context. At least that is the normative history of the turn from an emptied out … Continue reading
Nerves
I’d like to keep thinking about backstory. It is a literary concept, especially relevant in short forms where time is compressed, such as drama and film. A character, Hamlet for example, had a life before the story begins, and his … Continue reading
Names and titles
The whole topic of titling of abstract works is incredibly complex, untheorized and full of questions. In my opinion the worst approach is to free associate. There are practical reasons to identify a work, but the artist who just dreams … Continue reading
Titles historical
Terry’s way with titles is basically the same as Motherwell’s, although seems very different. The fundamental difference is that Atkinson is more of a modernist, since no matter how specific their references his titles are always reflections on the role … Continue reading
Titles abstract and verbose
Thinking about titles reminds me of Terry Atkinson. We used to be friendly but I haven’t seen him for years. His idea—one of those simple and obvious things that we never think of—is that every picture has a caption already … Continue reading
Empty subjects, empty worlds
The choice of Ai Weiwei to quote in the previous post may seem odd, because there are certainly other sources for the same ideas, perhaps more eloquent, or more purely involved in aesthetics. But I like to hear Ai say … Continue reading
The manager within
It’s undignified for a work to be a slave to an artist’s intentions. Under current labor conditions that must seem a radical thought. Crudely, there are two positions, the manager or owner and the poor devil who does the work; … Continue reading
As Ai Wei Wei sees it
Self-reflection is the process of modernism, although we usually give it the more portentous label of self-criticism. Self-reflection is also how the individual’s subjectivity or inwardness grows, how they find their own limits and possibilities. On the social scale self-reflection … Continue reading
Ethics of Abstraction Part 1
Autonomy is an ethical/political stance, not a description of the social role or position of a work
Posted in Ethics of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, autonomy, Dezeuze, ethics
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