-
Recent Posts
Currently Most Read Posts
Recent Comments
- Sharon McCarthy on Edges Early and Late
- Gregg Simpson on Empty Formalism of Education
- Martin Mugar on Those who make
- Martin Mugar on Unknown
- Peter peri on The Planar Dimension
Categories
- Abstraction and Society (196)
- American Modernism (168)
- Conceptualism and Painting (137)
- Current Affairs (84)
- Ethics of Abstraction (138)
- Italian Art (26)
- Latin American Abstraction (9)
- Principles of Abstraction (305)
- Uncategorized (277)
Tags
abstract art abstraction aesthetics autonomy backstory Boris Groys cubism Cézanne drawing emptiness feeling form Frank Stella Gego Gerhard Richter Greenberg grids illusion Jackson Pollock knowledge labor Linsley literature meaning nature Pablo Picasso painted reliefs place R.H.Quaytman Robert Motherwell science self-reflection series sex shaped canvas Shep Steiner Smithson society space subjectivity the inhuman time titles value Willem De Kooning-
Bookstore
-
Art and its Others (with Boris Groys)
Abstraction and Possibility Space (with Andreas Neufert)
Doors:River (with Joseph Drapell and David Moos)
Around the Episcene (with Scott Lyall)
Matrix of Surds (Mike Murphy and Wojciech Oleinik)
Non-Identical Abstraction Engine (with Jan Tumlir)
A CLOUDE OF UNKNOWYNG (Lee Henderson on Sasha Pierce)
Pictures and Picture Proofs (Wojciech Olejnik and James Brown)
On Parts You Can’t See (Polly Apfelbaum and Kelly Jazvac)
Links
Meta
Tag Archives: knowledge
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
Leave a comment
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
Leave a comment
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
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
1 Comment
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.
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
Leave a comment
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
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
Leave a comment
Abstraction as Child of History
Any working definition of abstraction that I am likely to come up with will be a description of my own paintings—that can hardly be avoided. Recent intense looking at Frank Stella has provoked some ideas, but his work is not … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Italian Art, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, aesthetics, emergence, Frank Stella, illusion, knowledge, Linsley, nature, the inhuman, value
Leave a comment
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
Leave a comment
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
Leave a comment
Picasso’s Tricks
I’m always struck by the fact that the most skilled artists, Picasso and Cézanne for two examples, go out of their way to plan pictures that they could carry off straight out, without much preparation. Whereas the average artist has … Continue reading
Befuddlement
“The dull brain perplexes and retards” says Keats, in a quote that I once used in a video piece and return to often because it is unforgettable and true. Most of the time, even the most intelligent are simply muddled. … Continue reading
Individuals 2
Ignorance, superstition, delusion and error are always collective; in other words, whatever you own of those things is shared. Moments of insight, enlightenment and awakening, on the other hand, can only belong to individuals. The relevance of this to art … Continue reading
Journalism
To see how the concept of the demonic might be helpful to artists, one might contemplate certain categories that are current in art writing, such as “abstract expressionism” or “minimalism.” Close examination of the work involved is always enough to … Continue reading
The Wound
The critics I respect are the ones who hurt me the most, or let’s say that they stick their fingers in the wound that already exists, the one I received from the great artists of modernism. The notion that one … Continue reading
Tacit Knowledge
I’ve just been learning about Michael Polanyi, a chemist who became a philosopher of science. As is often with this kind of case, he pleased neither academic philosophers nor scientists, and is now hardly mentioned. But he was a strong … 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
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
Kitaj’s Diasporic Literariness
Been reading R.B.Kitaj’s Second Diasporist Manifesto. I read the first one many years ago and found it unsatisfying, but this one is so optimistic and cheerful, it’s a pleasure. The change is that he unreservedly proselytizes a Jewish art—previously he … Continue reading
The Context
Continuing with John Kelsey’s article in the September Artforum, as thoughtful and well written as it is, it does adopt the conventional tone of apocalyptic hyperbole: “How can we proceed from the feeling that our works already dispossess and excommunicate … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Conceptualism and Painting, Current Affairs
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, knowledge, labor, media, society, subjectivity
Leave a comment
Anxieties of the Influential
John Kelsey, in the September Artforum, has interesting things to say about the anxiety of artists in the hyper-connected, over-mediated world, things that one feels but rarely hears spoken: “…the joke we’re all in on has to do with how … Continue reading
Kittler
Following from the previous post, another feature in the latest Artforum is a discussion of the work of Friedrich Kittler. But more compelling for me was Diedrich Diederichsen’s mention of the same thinker. According to Diederichsen, he was a scornful … Continue reading
Turnaround
Diedrich Diederischsen‘s article in the September Artforum offers a welcome confirmation of my own ideas about non-participation: “Unfortunately, contemporary attempts at the creation of resistance, especially in the hysterical versions of activist political art that desires direct and unmediated action, … Continue reading
Pompiers and Firetenders
After pondering the problem for a while I think I understand what Benjamin Buchloh means when he describes Frank Stella’s work as “myth.” If an artist makes coloristic and formal choices, if they work with their materials through both their … Continue reading