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Tag Archives: time
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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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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F. Schubert, Abstract Artist
Lately I’m a devoted listener of Schubert’s piano sonatas. A great model for abstraction. Intricate and intellectually formed throughout but non-conceptual, complex and multi-layered but accessible entirely through feeling, light and full of invented forms. If one could make paintings … Continue reading
Posted in Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, composition, music, Rodney Graham, time
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Shakespeare in the Future
“Still, all balanced against all, the works to which I refer make demands of those who would appreciate them. The metaphors sometimes span two or three abstractions; the perorations are directed to unknown agencies, the language is archaic and ambiguous….In … Continue reading
Posted in Conceptualism and Painting, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged Jack Vance, literature, time
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An abstract landscape
“Among the beds without flowers and the chipped cupids, the gnawing of actuality seemed for the moment silenced. In this place which had been left without meaning it seemed easier to feel meaning where there was perhaps none.” Anthony Powell
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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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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Pulses
Been reading Emerson. He confirms something mentioned more than once on this blog: “Nature hates calculators; her methods are saltatory and impulsive. Man lives by pulses; our organic movements are such; and the chemical and ethereal agents are undulatory and … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Conceptualism and Painting, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Emerson, feeling, Jackson Pollock, meaning, nature, series, sex, time, value
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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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Time Religious and Artistic
R.B.Kitaj has provoked me to look into a book by A.J.Heschel which happens to be on my library shelf. It’s about the sabbath as a day apart from the noise and strife. That’s how I’ve always thought about my studio—a … Continue reading
Posted in Conceptualism and Painting, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, AJHeschel, literature, meaning, RBKitaj, space, time, value
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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
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Layers of Time
The Long Now Foundation, which aims to encourage longer term thinking, publishes an image of time in parallel layers, very similar to something I laid out in an earlier post. Artists and art lovers know that art can stop the … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, nature, society, time
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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
Destruction of Culture
Read yesterday morning about the burning of thousand year old books in Timbuktu by fanatic Islamists. When I heard about the Mali rebellion I immediately thought about the libraries of Timbuktu, and remembered what the Taliban did to the giant … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, literature, society, time
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Unremarkable
I have a catalog from the Albright-Knox called American Painting of the Seventies. As it happens few of the included are what we would call 70s artists, they are mostly good artists who happened to be alive and working during … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, Frank Stella, painted reliefs, time, value
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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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Redefinition
In the previous post I managed to avoid making a definition of abstraction, although I feel the presence of one near. It’s that feeling that should guide us, the pull of the future. Hope to survive long enough to talk … Continue reading
Posted in Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, feeling, figuration, form, illusion, Linsley, meaning, time, titles
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And more
Back in my teaching days I was once challenged by a student who asked why I was always harping on about Jackson Pollock. Might have mentioned that artist three times in three different classes on contemporary art. The student just … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Frank Stella, Jackson Pollock, time
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The Contingent
Another important concept stressed by Stephen Jay Gould, one that is very much relevant to art, is contingency. He is talking about the possible pathways of evolution, but in art we could say that all works begin contingently and move … Continue reading
The Mortality of the Work
I have belatedly found out that three of my pictures were destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. When contemplating disaster, studio fires or things like that, I always thought I could handle it fine, because the important thing is the energy that … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, drawing, feeling, Jack Shadbolt, Linsley, time, titles
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Change, Evolution, Progress
Been reading Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life, finally, after long postponement. Well worth the time and effort. One point he makes, which can never bear too much repetition, is that evolution does not mean progress or development. We commonly use … 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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Vicissitudes of a work
This is a Jack Bush that hung for many years in the office of the director of an art college. It has picked up a few scratches, coffee stains, scuffs and nicks, pretty clearly visible in the photo. Is this … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, American Modernism, Ethics of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, feeling, Jack Bush, nature, society, the inhuman, time, value
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Abstraction and Time
Always downhill, but never downhearted. Hans Christian Anderson
Bringing the outside in
Another aspect of the way that Stella organizes individual works into groups by association, also well explicated by Wallace, is that in some cases he will cut a piece out of a wave-whale shape and then put the removed “negative” … Continue reading
Time and the Work
Following from the preceding post, the movement of the work, which usually means the movement from work to work in a series, should resemble in its effects the real movement of time—works eating each other up. For this to happen … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, form, Frank Stella, Pablo Picasso, painted reliefs, series, time
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Longue Durée
Another quote from the David Graeber interview in Artforum, in this case in response to a remark by Michelle Kuo about the need to “get a better picture of the longue durée:” “…I began by saying that when you’re in … Continue reading
Art and Action
David Graeber has emerged as an interesting figure. Was recently reading a review of his book, Debt: The First 5000 Years, and now I see that it has caught the attention of Artforum. From an interview in that magazine comes … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Current Affairs, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, David Graeber, feeling, knowledge, labor, Linsley, society, time
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Life and Play
“Droll thing life is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.” Art is a playful, semi-logical arrangement for an arbitrary purpose. As such it has something to say about the drollery of life. “The most you can hope … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, Conceptualism and Painting, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, literature, meaning, society, time, value
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Time and Place
“If the place is different, the time is different. If the place is the same, time has not changed.” This pithy two part aphorism by Julian Barbour, actually extracted by me from his book, seems at first surprisingly Heraclitan for … Continue reading