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Tag Archives: backstory
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
Abstraction is so over
Bruce Hainley is a critic I have a lot of time for. Oddly, many of my friends don’t understand why. I get where he is coming from, and it’s the right place. If I was in a down mood his … Continue reading
Posted in Current Affairs, Ethics of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, aesthetics, backstory, meaning, nature, sex, society, subjectivity, value
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In Memoriam
The series Polar Coordinates for Ronnie Peterson was another tough one for me to learn to like, but now I love them. Somehow, the two layer structure, combined with the busyness of the “ground” layer, has some relevance to the … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, backstory, feeling, form, Frank Stella, prints, subjectivity, time, titles
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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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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
Secret meaning
Another theme of Kitaj’s Jewish commentarism is the esoteric. Behind the flat surface lies a depth of meaning—but meaning is not the right word. It’s easy to see how this can work in figurative art, but in abstraction less so. … Continue reading
Posted in Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, AJHeschel, backstory, form, Jeff Tutt, labor, literature, meaning, value
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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
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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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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An Explanation
Readers of the earlier post on captions and backstory might have had some difficulty in understanding the choice of illustration. Actually, it makes a lot of sense—what wouldn’t make sense is an explanation, even though this is not a story. … Continue reading
Captions and Backstories
Scott Lyall and I have been having some discussions about the concept of “backstory,” which appeared on this blog about nine months ago. Recently he brought up the topic of captions, which allows an important distinction to be made. A … Continue reading
Boredom
More from Benjamin’s “Storyteller” “If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. His nesting … Continue reading
The Storyteller
Been reading Walter Benjamin’s very great essay “The Storyteller.” When I read it years ago I found it too theoretical, or something like that—it didn’t speak to me. But what he is saying has become more vivid, more truthful in … Continue reading
Off the Coast 2
I was wondering what Conrad thought of Moby Dick, which he surely must have known. He had some tragic captains, but mostly focused on the ordinary problems of work and career, certainly relevant to any artist. In any case, the … Continue reading
Posted in Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, backstory, emptiness, Linsley, literature, meaning, nature, society, space, subjectivity, the inhuman
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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
Art and The World
Literature is a four dimensional network of perspectives, especially useful when art is not the topic. Lately I’ve been enjoying Joseph Conrad, and think the following excerpt should be worth a smile at least: “Why must the sea be used … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Ethics of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, backstory, literature, narrative, Rodney Graham, society
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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
A banal tale
It’s now a convention that history is a “narrative.” Less well accepted is that our entire sense of ourselves—our origins, purposes and meanings—is fiction. Of course material facts exist, and bodies are real and so are their processes, but what … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, backstory, meaning, society, value
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Mike Nelson
Recently spent an enjoyable morning with Mike Nelson, whose work I’ve admired for a long time. It’s superior in the genre of immersive narrative installation in the way that it’s made up of gripping fictions that capture one’s imagination and … Continue reading
Literature and the loss of art
Poetry and literature in general is a funny thing. The great examples have a lot of insights which can help to keep your spirits up during tough times, and if the insights are grim then inspiration is available. But I … Continue reading
Posted in Conceptualism and Painting, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, backstory, emptiness, knowledge, labor, literature
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History as backstory
I’m a little out of touch with art in Vancouver since I left, but I know that Mark Soo is one of the more visible younger artists to have emerged in the last few years. Just got a press release … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs, Ethics of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, backstory, history, knowledge, literature, meaning, society, time
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Backstory as documentation
The concept of backstory is an interesting one, but as the comments on some recent posts have shown, far more interesting to many people is the condition of art as a discursive practice. Perhaps one of the strongest exponents of … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Conceptualism and Painting, Uncategorized
Tagged aesthetics, backstory, Boris Groys, emptiness, knowledge, labor, meaning, society
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Expressiveness without backstory
Following from the previous post, Gego‘s work might be exemplary of an art which is just a sensitive handling of small particulars, when those small particulars don’t necessarily mean anything, or stand for anything, and don’t need a title or … 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
The Unknown Audience
Some of the things that Scott Lyall brought up two posts back are aspects of the current dialectic of theatricality, which Smithson knew a lot about (in fact more than Michael Fried, who has come to own the concept). This … Continue reading
The Abstract Viewer
Following on from the previous post, I got a very interesting note from Scott Lyall: “I affirm that there is nothing we can do, in our time, to control or try to streamline the audience for a work—nothing, except of … Continue reading
Don’t Know
Looking back over this recent group of posts around the concept of backstory, I sense a certain inadequacy; the range of topics is too broad, and so the concept becomes less compelling because less concrete. Yet all of the avenues … Continue reading
Lost Origin
In his very intelligent comment, David Court asks whether we should consider the artwork as more than the object, and the backstory as a kind of material, like a ground. Of course this is exactly what has happened, but I … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, backstory, knowledge, labor, literature, Non-site, Smithson, society, time
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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
Metaphysics of Origins
Adorno, in my favorite apothegm, observed that “there is no origin but ephemeral life.” The murder of Lorca during the Spanish civil war and Lorca’s elegy to the bullfighter Meijas make up the backstory of Motherwell’s Elegies series, but these … Continue reading