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Art and its Others (with Boris Groys)
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Tag Archives: subjectivity
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.
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
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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Perennially New
An article of 1989 by Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, called “The Current State of Nonrepresentation,” proves that certain ideas might seem fresh, but are hardly new: “…the task of nonrepresentation [is], typically, one which involves seeing a thing which is, for once, … Continue reading
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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The Machine
Another quote from the memoirs of Tapies strikes a chord. He talks about his first show in New York: “The shock I felt in that world was fabulous. Despite all I could have known or imagined about the American people … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Antoni Tapies, society, subjectivity, value
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Approximating Nature
Despite my not so high opinion of the memoirs of Tapies, I continue to find interesting bits. This is his description of an early experimental phase of his work: “I was searching for images without knowing whether they were amorphous … Continue reading
More Preparation
Been reading the memoirs of Antoni Tapies. I find them bland and a little disappointing for an artist of his stature, but here is one interesting observation: “A moment of lucidity will also free the artists from many hours of … Continue reading
Posted in Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Antoni Tapies, emptiness, feeling, form, improvisation, series, subjectivity
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The Visitor
Kitaj quotes the following, from a letter of Arthur Miller to Saul Bellow: “From time to time there will be a visitor who is very dear to me, but who is unfortunately recognized by approximately a hundred million people, give … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Ethics of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, literature, sex, subjectivity
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Willful Matisse
Kitaj quotes Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk: “Dare to use your own will!” There was no painter more willful than Matisse, a strange characterization of the artist of harmonious serenity, but accurate. The Bathers in Chicago, Decorative Figure On An Ornamental … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics of Abstraction, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, emptiness, feeling, Matisse, nature, subjectivity, will
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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
Frozen time
AJ Heschel again: “To the spiritual eye space is frozen time, and all things are petrified events.” A petrified event sounds like an artwork, but also like anything else made by human hands. Art can also aspire to be more … Continue reading
Posted in Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, AJHeschel, feeling, form, nature, RBKitaj, subjectivity, time
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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.
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
First and Only
Human history is so short that it is full of things that have happened for the first and only time, yet for the last couple of hundred years at least in the West, and for much longer in China, the … Continue reading
Questionable or Not
On the British web site abstract critical there is more debate about Frank Stella. I’m on his side but most aren’t. Much of the criticism seems to be based on a perception that the work does not hold together formally—the … 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
The Facts
This blog has given a fair amount of time to Frank Stella, and my attention was moving to other things—there are a few posts coming up on the topic of time. However, my interest in Stella has just been revived … Continue reading
Lack of Time
If time is so short, why does it feel so empty? Because time has to be shaped. What we call work. Content, or feeling in art, is a fugitive effect of the shape.
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Conceptualism and Painting
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Boris Groys, emptiness, feeling, space, subjectivity, time, value
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Figures coming through
Ruminating on the later work of Frank Stella has led me to a some new thoughts about what abstraction really is. Most important is to keep a sense of what Richard Shiff described in our recent conversation as the strangeness … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, demons, figuration, form, Frank Stella, illusion, meaning, subjectivity, the inhuman, titles
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Biomorphic
The previous comments on Hofmann and Stella started me thinking about this work. Most of the Moby Dick works combine the curvy forms of the wave/whale shapes with geometrical sections, but this one is completely biomorphic, maybe even expressionist. The … Continue reading
Ink-jet Paintings
In the September Artforum Wolfgang Tillmans waxes rhapsodical about ink-jet technology. He observes that many works shown as paintings today are ink-jets. There is no problem with this that I can see, in fact I was making them in 1997, … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, automatism, form, Linsley, nature, subjectivity, technology, the inhuman, time, value
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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
Up to Date
It’s always a good thing to be reminded of how little our world changes, contrary to the rhetoric of innovation. Anyone who has glanced at a self help book or success manual will find Benjamin’s observations familiar, though deeper than … 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
Stella and the Demons
From Working Space: I do not have a secret desire to put Donald Duck or naked women in my paintings, although I know they harbor a secret desire to be there.
Posted in American Modernism, Ethics of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, demons, Frank Stella, subjectivity
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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