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Tag Archives: self-reflection
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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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
Order inside and out
I keep thinking about a quote from Emerson that I’ve used elsewhere on the blog: “I would write on the lintels of the doorpost, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the … Continue reading
Politics of Blogging
John Kelsey’s article in last September’s Artforum, with its criticisms of digital networking, combined with some comments from my friend Scott Lyall, provoked me to take a step back and ask what it is I’m doing here. This post is … Continue reading
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
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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Fear
Again Emerson provides a vivid perspective on contemporary America: “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 … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Emerson, feeling, self-reflection, society, time
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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
New again
Emerson has something to say about the appreciation of pictures: “So with pictures; each will bear an emphasis of attention once, which it cannot retain, though we fain would continue to be pleased in that manner. How strongly I have … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Emerson, emptiness, feeling, form, meaning, Morris Louis, self-reflection, time
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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
How to continue
I’ve found that my smaller works tend to have more parts, and more detail. They are more intensive, you might say. The beauty of the larger works is in their ease and simplicity, but just today I looked at some … Continue reading
Posted in Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, feeling, form, Linsley, method, self-reflection, series, technique
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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
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
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
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
Alighiero Boetti
A latecomer to Boetti’s work, I have no expertise in it. Right now I’m looking at this grid piece, “Niente da vedere niente da nascondere,” or “Nothing to see nothing to hide.” The title really adds something, and bears thought, … Continue reading
Experimental Practice
The other night I gave a talk about my work at the art school in Vancouver, thanks to Elizabeth McIntosh, a professor there. I kept stressing that everything I said was taught me by the work, that none of the … 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
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 Techno-business
A couple of recent posts have talked about digital technology. I think this does have something to do with art, and not just because the tech hype writers have tried to draw from art for marketing imagery, although that is … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, innovation, money, science, self-reflection, society, technology, value
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The Wall
I want to be clear that the inhuman does not mean geometry, which in fact is all too human. The concept is not idealist and has nothing to do with ideas of “purity,” such as pure abstraction or pure form, … Continue reading
Mary Heilman
When I first discovered Mary Heilman’s work sometime in the early nineties, I right away felt that she was a major figure. I responded immediately to her sensibility, and she struck me as an artist of very sophisticated and knowing … 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
Discursive objects
Listening still to Boris Groys, whose ideas should by rights be central to this blog. He says: “We see artworks as incarnating art. The famous distinction between art and non-art is generally understood as a distinction between objects inhabited and … Continue reading
Future Retrospect
Backstory as context stays in the here and now, and so keeps faith with modernism. Backstory as nervous anticipation of future criticism is a retrospective literary mode, and as such recalls Benjamin’s angel, who is always looking backward as he … Continue reading
A Constant Unknown
Start from the position that the backstory or critical pre-text, or in fact any of the textual elements of the discursive mode, are ways to make explicit what is unknown (unconscious?), implicit, suggested or unspoken in the work of art, … Continue reading
Words and Material Things
The recent comment by Ricki Oltean expresses well an important position, one that in the past I myself have unthinkingly held, namely that the materiality of a work—in another sense, its many details—should be the source of aesthetic experience, and … Continue reading
The Theater of Art
Both Scott Lyall and David Court have some skepticism about the concept of theatricality, probably because of the too heavy presence of Michael Fried in that discussion so far, so I thought it might be a good idea to take … Continue reading
The eyes
The eyes seemed to look. Were they looking? Perhaps. Other eyes were looking. A Mexican gave the displacement a long, imploring gaze. Even if you cannot look, others will look for you. Art brings sight to a halt, but that … 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