Painting From Life vs. From Photos
The art world of today is not evil, it is simply inadequate.
If the art of today is lacking, it’s not only the dealer’s and collector’s fault…it’s everyone’s. –Edward Winkleman
If Painting A Day is the most important art movement of our time, then I think it’s safe to say there aren’t any important art movements at present. –David Palmer
Art is and has always been only one thing: the representation of what people find important. In the distant past, Western art portrayed religion. The artist was a craftsman employed for this purpose. Some artists did their job so well that the work became important in itself, quite apart from the subject of the work.
This progression of artwork gaining importance in its own right (separate from the subject of the work) eventually led to the point where art itself became a form of religion — and of course, a worthy subject of art.
As in any religion where there are not rules against it, artists attempted to portray their new god. But what does the art god look like? Art is of course an abstract concept, not a god created in the image of man.
The portrait of art as a god is most explicit in so-called “abstract art” — an attempt to represent art itself. That is why the question, “is it art?” is so important and far more literal than we normally realize. The question “is it art?” is important when, if the answer is “no”, the work has no claim to value — like a mediocre portrait that is not even a good likeness of the subject. If Jackson Pollock’s work is not art, it is nothing but rubbish, little different from a house painter’s drop cloth.
The art world, if one can apply the term retroactively to the past, was once a world of idealism and wonder. Today, the art world today is a world of anomie. Anomie is, at the social level, instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values. At the personal level, it is unrest, alienation, and uncertainty that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals.
Why should the art world be a world of anomie? The answer is simple: no one believes in the art world anymore, the religion of art has been discredited. Imagine Christian art made by people with no belief in Christianity. That is much like what our art world is today. Yes, there is money to pay the actors, there are the museums which are the temples, but the religion is dead.
The reaction of the different actors in the drama is of course different. The dealers and curators, priests of the dead religion, continue with their empty rituals and try to pretend that nothing is amiss. For the artist, the reaction is the retreat into private spirituality — the only escape from anomie. You can read the same statement again and again from artists: “I make my work for myself.” For whom else should the artist work?
As Ed says above, this is not the failure of one group of people. We can’t blame the dealers for our problems. We are facing a failure at a broad cultural level, a failure of the entire religion of art. I don’t mourn the loss — “art for the sake of art” was always an absurd notion. But until art is applied to another purpose than glorifying itself, artwork will be nothing more than the separate longings of isolated individuals.
…collectors have a breakdown of standards in that they don’t really care about the art, as long as they have the art with the correct name attached.
Karl, that’s been going on for as long as people have been buying art. There are some that care about the work itself, and some that are trying to elevate their social standing through their possessions.
It’s not that they have a breakdown in standards. It’s that art for them is a status symbol. When you’re buying status symbols, the name is everything.
PS, Karl, you’ve read Cennini. What did those old Renaissance-era patrons do when they wanted to show off? Hire a star, and include lots of gold and ultramarine blue.
Actually David,
The name seemed to be astonishingly unimportant . Here is a historical source to illustrate that point (“whomsoever you find–-I care not”). True, the materials were an important consideration, but so was quality of workmanship.
Karl,
Aha! I think I get what you are saying now.
“The idea of the standards and values being dictated by some external authority or convention is of course odious.”
Odious and yet pretty common, especially in certain art schools! Just as we on A and P debate about what art is and is not, what is good art, what purpose artists and collectors serve, so do academicians/
critics/galleries/collectors/curators, with the added power that they may have over artists. You could decide not to give those folks power over you as an artist, but that can be challenging, depending on your situation…
Is it really fair that I get to do the fun part all by myself?
I’ll take a turn with that drill…
Arthur, I’ll make sure the extra battery is charged.
True, the materials were an important consideration, but so was quality of workmanship.
Name recognition is the new quality of workmanship :)
Karl and Chantal,
Thanks for really ‘opening’ my eyes to the ‘art’ side of photojournalism. The sites that you sent have some of the most moving images and are thought provoking and are definitely ‘art’.
Yes, I am definitely a traditionalist when it comes to art but like Karl and Chantal said, (and I should remind myself) art can be realized through multiple means – be it through the photographers lens or image manipulations on the computer or painting or any other coherent forms that communicate a message.
Beckham has flair (and his moments) but has anyone seen the film, Zidane: A Portrait of the 21st Century? The quality of workmanship is Magnificent.
And Karl,
My (mis)interpretation is wrong because…? I am still curious about your decision to post this painting with the topic of Inadequacy and Isolation.
Karl,
I’m with D. — I don’t see the connections between the various ideas you are putting forth. Maybe that’s because I was never connected with the “cultural” world, for the reasons I’ve stated above. So I can scarcely feel isolated from it. And when I think of the classical painters, say Rembrandt, I don’t think the fact that he was painting in an era in which religion and values seemed to hold cultural sway made him any less isolated. And of course, 16 and 17th century Holland was in the midst of a breakdown of cultural values that must have felt just like we feel today — economic swings, wars, religious bigotry and fights, isolation because you hooked up with the losing side… well, you get the picture. And yet I can imagine some people feeling nostalgia for 17th century northern Europe.
No, I don’t think it’s the culture that’s caused your nostalgia. My friends here in Portland yearn for the NY City of the 1950’s, when lofts were cheap and New York was the bee’s knees of the art world. When I think of NYC in 1952, I think of a club of out-of-control males, running rampant, pissing in fireplaces. Nostalgia for that, I don’t have.
I fear that I keep thinking of the Doris Lessing phrase: “false lying nostalgia” — the nostalgia the harkens back to a golden era that only the nostalgee can remember and which never really existed except in your (present) mind. I guess I hold to the present, whatever it is, because even the good parts of my past were good only for me, not for some mythical protestant mid-American culture of 1955.
Maybe you should start a painting school of your peers to break the hold that the past seems to have on you.
I’m probably way out of line here, and you are welcome to tell me to go away. And you may just be trying to get a rise out of all of us. I can’t tell. But I also can’t resist saying, “Kaarrrrrrllllllll!!!!”
Leslie,
I think when we debate on this site about what art is, it is not to establish authority and conventions over others, but rather to attempt to get the issues into our own hands, perhaps struggling against external authority in the process. You write, “You could decide not to give those folks power over you as an artist, but that can be challenging, depending on your situation…” I agree with you. One approach is to choose isolation. Another approach is to engage with the art world, but in a self conscious way. The latter is what I think this website is all about.
Arthur,
Don’t forget to unplug the monitor first, or you might get quite a shock.
David,
I’ve been thinking a lot about that post on buying artwork in 1373 that we discussed above. It shows that the “art world” of the past (although the term is a bit absurd to apply to the past) was something entirely different from today. You wrote “Name recognition is the new quality of workmanship :)” and I think you are correct. In the 14th c. example, the important names were “Our Lord” and “Our Lady”. The name of the artist was irrelevant, as the document shows, only his ability matters. In our contemporary art world, the name of the artist is what matters. This makes sense, because now artists are the saints and demigods of the religion of art.
D.
This painting I made in 1999 in a period when I intentionally isolated myself from the contemporary art world as I knew it. That world said nothing to me and gave me no inspiration; it was to me inadequate. As I have been discussing with Leslie, I had previously found great inspiration in an artistic community as a teenager. Likewise, I find our little community here most inspiring. What should an artist choose? Isolation or community? Whatever the answer, it will drastically affect the work.
June,
I don’t feel nostalgia for the 17th century, except I think the landscape was probably much more beautiful then. I have no desire to go back to some golden era, not even the Dutch Golden Age. The type of work I do would land me in prison if I had done it then, and I don’t much like Rembrandt anyway. Nonetheless, it is hard to dispute that some past eras had greater creative energies, more productively used, than we have today. This discussion has been about what might have been some of the factors. If Rubens painted great artworks because of his strong Christian faith and the enthusiastic support of the Catholic Church and the elite, it does not mean we should attempt to recreate the same conditions and beliefs of that time. But it is still interesting to look at what motivated and encouraged artists of the past, and to imagine what would be relevant forms of motivation and encouragement for our time — and to imagine what we might be capable of doing if we had even more of the right kind of motivation and encouragement.
My goal in looking at the past is to appreciate it for its own sake, or to try to get a better understanding of the present. My goal is not to revel in nostalgia or a desire to return to the past. Nostalgia implies appreciating the past not for its own sake, but creating illusions of the past — an interesting pursuit, but not my artistic focus.
Karl,
Isolation or Community?
I choose both.
And as for looking to the Art World for inspiration: Why? To be part of a Movement? Such currents are too rapid.
I think Bob Martin’s post (following) speaks well for inspiration: LIFE. From my view, his success is not determined by the paint but by, as you concurred, the Touch.
…now artists are the saints and demigods of the religion of art.
I don’t think what you’re seeing is a religion of art. I think it is a religion of celebrity.
There are celebrity artists, celebrity actors, celebrity musicians and celebrity athletes. There are also celebrity chefs, celebrity CEOs, and celebrity criminals.
But the top tier of all is celebrity celebrities! They’re people who are famous, but we have no idea what, if anything, they’ve ever done.
Karl,
I do like your idea of [looking] “at what motivated and encouraged artists of the past, and [imagining] what would be relevant forms of motivation and encouragement for our time” What encourages me, I guess, is that I find enormous similarities in the common psyches. Angst and troubles and feelings of desolation and isolation are part of our human baggage, as are joy and delight and communal desires; human nature hasn’t changed all that much over the small time we’ve been like ourselves — 30,000 years or so is a blip in the greater scheme of things.
Have you a painting that comes from the opposite of your “art and isolation” one? How do they differ, aside from how you felt when you were doing them? Were some of the paintings that you’ve posted before done in a different zone?
I guess I don’t believe that the feeling of isolation that you express so well is really tied to the culture (there are many who would vociferously disagree, of course) but rather to the human condition. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from how people in our peculiar form of living managed their own angst and exhilarations. I’m thinking of Augustine and Gerard Manley Hopkins and Bronte and O’Keefe and Sappho and so on and on. I see their struggles and successes, through various devices that they improvise or work with.
David,
Your “celebrity celebrities” makes me chuckle. The reality that I exist in is me, here. I’m learning from Karl who also seems to be “here” in my presence. Luckily I don’t seem to hang around with celebrities, let along the celebrated of the celebrities. However, I could be mistaken — maybe someone on this list is really a celebrities celebrity and I’m too isolated to know.
Luckily I don’t seem to hang around with celebrities, let along the celebrated of the celebrities.
Me either, but if you go to the grocery store you can’t avoid them. Every time I go to pick up some bread or toothpaste I learn about their tragic love affairs, their new diets, and their cosmetic surgery (whether I want to know or not).
Which is it usually?
It’s always not :)
Have you a painting that comes from the opposite of your “art and isolation” one? How do they differ, aside from how you felt when you were doing them?
June,
The best example of a painting that is the opposite of the painting in this post is a large collaborative work I made with Hanneke which I will show one of these days.
Thanks for the question, it is thought-provoking and raises more interesting questions for me than I can answer at this moment.
There is isolation and there is isolation.
Isolation for the artist who retains the influences of art in his life is not an artist in isolation, but a failed artist, wondering why he’s failed.
Thinking about what other artists are doing, talking about art on the internet,looking at art in museums and galleries,reading about art in art magazines,looking at art history, looking at one’s own art and wondering how to improve it. And last and most important, complaning about the state of art, and trying to reach out to others who also feel isolated. These practices undermine what the artist in isolation is trying to do, and that is, tap into something revolutionary.
All art is about suffering and isolation. Read Leaves of Grass by Whitman, or the Divine Comedy by Dante, or watch Apocalypse Now, or listen to Misery is the River of the World by Tom Waits. And you’ll see.
Art was once about religion and now it’s about art for art’s sake?
Surely, art is now about consumerism, about fitting in with the consumerist market – and the really clever artists make work that is anti-capitalist, and yet somehow still make money from it.
There is no break down of standards, but people from another generation feeling out of place.
I have not read absolutely all above comments, but what I did read I found interesting enough. It is now late 2012, I am writing this from Mexico which is where I now make my art. 2 days from now the Maya calendar will end- so what. Being an artist is about “inner necessity” like Kandinsky said- pure and simple. And you must cope with the financial challenges of survival creatively will so you have the freedom to channel the art that destiny provides to you. Making art – at it’s best- is a most extremely differentiated human behavior and most folks don’t get it – much less sometimes the artists themselves! This is where one must cross the wastelands of irony and parodox and just set yourself up to do the work. The meaning- if any- will flow from there. Art is only valuable when it is mysterious and beyond understanding.
I began making art with Democratic Socialist themes, showing poor people and capitalist garbage, and perhaps due to the Socialist ethic, I began painting sort of photorealistically. This undermines the 1970s ideal of photorealism as a form of pop-art but mutating it with a goal of socialism rather than merely apolitical criticism of capitalist production.