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Tag Archives: labor
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.
Nasreen Mohamedi
Just discovered a great but lesser known artist—Nasreen Mohamedi. The obvious precursor for a drawing like this one is Agnes Martin, but in feel it recalls Gego. Other drawings are a bit more severe and mechanical. A click will help … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Asian Abstraction, Latin American Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Agnes Martin, drawing, feeling, form, Gego, grids, illusion, labor, Nasreen Mohamedi
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Economics of Blogging
Jaron Lanier’s new book makes a strong case that the digital economy is a rip-off, particularly of creators. This is something I’ve long thought, though my experience of it has been limited—until now. The previous post has a link back … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, knowledge, labor, Linsley, money, science, self-reflection, society, technology, value
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Stones #2
…the earth…kept deepening beneath the spades, reckoning only with the diggers’ strength and endurance. Sometimes Voshchev would bend down and pick up a pebble, or other dust that had adhered together, and tuck it away inside his trousers for storage. … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Ethics of Abstraction, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, emptiness, labor, meaning, nature, the inhuman, time, value
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Details 2
Sometimes I’m amazed at the endless particulars of life, which seem to multiply daily, but then maybe I’m in a state of wonderment at the human capacity to identify the same. All the details. The details of nature are astonishing … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, details, feeling, labor, meaning, society, value
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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
Improvisation 2
Stella quotes driver Mario Andretti in words that apply well to improvisation in the arts: “If everything’s in control you’re not going fast enough.” Piling on the possibilities is a good technique for an artist who tends to reflect. Feeling … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, feeling, Frank Stella, labor, Linsley, nature, value
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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
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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
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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
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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Improvisation
Recently came across a 1991 interview with Stella. His comments on pieces made with poured metal confirm everything I said in an earlier post: “For the most part yes: they are improvised…They are worked over but the process of working … Continue reading
Preparation
Following Kitaj I’ve been dipping into Hasidism. Parallels between mysticism and art are too easy, and without much practical use, but insights can always help—if one is ready for them. Here is a hopeful observation from Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk: … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Ethics of Abstraction, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, AJHeschel, feeling, Frank Stella, labor, RBKitaj, society, time, value
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Taste
One may or may not like Clement Greenberg, but to my ears the following remark contains a lot of sense: “…most of the genuinely original painting of the last century and a half has struck standard good taste, on first … Continue reading
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
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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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
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Noise
Following from the previous post, as an example of visual noise I would like to present any abstract work by Gerhard Richter. Pictures like this are the high class, supremely tasteful equivalent of stadium rock, a sclerotic form if there … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, form, Gerhard Richter, grids, labor, meaning, music, series
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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
Modernist Method
An example of modernist practice in its purest form might be the paintings of Paul Klee. He starts with a formal idea, a method, a sense of how relationships should play out, and the work is generated from that. Whether … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, American Modernism, Conceptualism and Painting, Ethics of Abstraction, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Camille Pissarro, Cézanne, cubism, Dada, Frank Stella, labor, montage, Pablo Picasso, painted reliefs, Paul Klee, society, value
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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
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
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
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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