Painting From Life vs. From Photos
Jeffrey Augustine Songco recently posted about different modes of art making. [UPDATE, Jeffrey kindly pointed out (comment 3) that some of the points I make about his work are oversimplifications]
He divides his art into two types, which I’ll call x and y. I use these neutral names because the names that Jeffrey used, although descriptive, are somewhat distracting for the point I want to make here.
Art type x “is thoroughly planned (at least as much as I can) and must specificaly state the meaning that I am ultimately trying to convey,” Jeffrey says. He almost never displays art type x in his studio on a normal day. It is what someone else would hang up and call art, but he prefers to look at type y.
With art type y, Jeffrey says “I find myself getting lost in during its creation. It is something that has no specific goal other than to explore my mind creativity.” This type of art is what Jeffrey would (and does) display for himself, and calls art.
Thus, art type x is “concept first” art. It is focused on an idea of what an artwork could be. Art type y is “process first” art. In terms of tangible product, the type y art seems to yield better results — as Jeffrey says, this is what he likes to look at.
Reading about art types x and y in the original post, I wondered, why make art type x at all? Why not simply do type y? I asked Jeffrey this and he replied:
I think with my [x] art, I get an amazing satisfaction during the conceptual process—the initial planning stages. Then, with my [y] art, I get an amazing satisfaction during the physical creation. So, perhaps they are two different kinds of importance—one where I can get lost thinking and one where I can get lost doing, both which I value equally.
Jeffrey’s description of two art types brings to mind the initial stages of scientific research. Before doing experiments, it is fun and exciting to make a hypothesis about what one will find. This sounds a bit like type x art.
The thing that lets science progress is to go beyond the concept stage and do some experiments to test the hypothesis. Experimentation is a process of doing. While the experiment needs to have a design, while carrying it out it helps to focus on the process itself, to avoid imposing the hypothesis on the data. This is a bit like type y art. What often happens in scientific research is that the hypothesis gets trashed because of findings that one makes while doing the experiments. Then it’s time to make a new hypothesis and then more experiments.
I bring up the science example for the sake of illustrating the concept-process cycle. Concept and process are linked productively. While the first hypothesis might get trashed by the data, the second or third hypothesis might be better. This cycle is the engine that lets science move forward. In Jeffrey’s x and y art, this connection, the productive cycle seems to be lacking. There is no indication that the x type art gets constrained and inspired by the y type art, or vice versa. The two art modes seem to be separate and don’t support one another.
This disconnect between concept and process art is, I think, a widespread condition of art today. The question is, how to meaningfully link x and y so that rather than having two modes of art, only one of which gives a satisfying finished product, the x and y modes can be joined together in a finished product that both the artist and the audience will want to hang on the wall?
Each artist may have several artists inside that work in different modes (“I encompass multitudes”), and I think it’s good to exercise as many of them as possible. Hopefully they are open to collaboration, because that may ultimately produce the most satisfying work. But that can take quite a while to work out or discover how to let that happen. Exhortations like “keep an open mind” are easy to utter, and maybe even useful as reminders, but they don’t really tell you how to do it.
Karl:
When we adopt Jeffrey’s dichotomy, whether in the terms he employed, or as an “x”,”y” proposition, we are perhaps oversimplifying.
I’m no scientist but it seems to me that good experiments are those that seek to clarify limited and sharply-defined propositions. I don’t know if anyone has ever counted the degrees of freedom – the number of x,y and z’s – inherent in the practice of art. Nor do I know if it is possible to define an artistic project in only a few terms without kidding oneself – the entire enterprise being so inherently complicated.
But to get back to your point. I wonder if we can’t bring the common practice of making maquettes and sketches into the discussion. You start with some notions and the paper begins to fly. After awhile, most of the basic decisions have been made, including what to leave open for for later resolution in the final manufacture. While doing that, one is likely to bring a lot of one’s own complex self to the party, with the decision-making being colored and nuanced in a hundred different ways. As you said, you want to keep that kind of thing out of science, or you’ll end up with cold fusion.
I’m notoriously variable in my art. Right now I’m trying to get the sharpest possible chain effect based upon a simple and defined premise, while elsewhere I have a foamula sheet that was once an agave plant, but is turning into a Durbinish waterfall in a mess of poured and pooling varnish. I cannot vouch for its prospects. That said, I am always aware that these dissimilar projects are somehow influencing each other. Puts me in mind of the old “what if” image of a marriage between Charles DeGaulle and Phyllis Diller.
Hey Karl!
I’ve definitely linked my conceptual and process art together here and there, and in fact, I think I’ve created some recent images that I just absolutely love. But to get to the bare bones about hanging my own artwork up—I personally don’t because my work is self-portraiture! It would just be plain creepy for me to have photographs of myself hanging all over my studio.
I’m never good with words, but I guess my post suggested that my X and Y art modes don’t support one another. Kick me in the butt! They totally support one another! I learn about composition and color from my random drawings and collages that I then bring over into my photographs. I slice up my photographs and turn them into wacky collages. Like I said earlier, I’ve recently discovered some amazing things within my work where the X and Y modes are definitely blending.
It’s a great question though, to wonder why I, or anyone, even bothers with X art. I’m trying to be a gallery artist. Required by the galleries and competitions that I specifically look at, there are a dozen things an artist needs—one being the Statement. If I just did Y art, my statement would have to keep changing and my body of work would be all over the place. Since I’ve chosen to go down this job route of Artist, I’ve got to treat it like a job. This is just my style, and in no way advice or anything like that. One day a gallery tells me I’m unfocused and another day a gallery tells me I’m too focused. By planning my X work, I take into consideration all of art history, the necessities of gallery requirements, and of course, my own conceptual vision. I was educated at a super duper conceptual art school, which just makes my art that much more pretentious. It’s a vicious cycle! My Y art helps me escape from that awful world—and then teaches me things, just like any other hobby. Art making, like painting, photography, shipbuilding in a bottle, or knitting, is totally a fun hobby that many people share to take their mind off of work. How awful is it that an Artist’s hobby ends up being his/her work? Thank G-d for blogging!
The analogy with science is an interesting one, Karl. I find, and I think others do too, that some of the hypotheses that resulted in dud experiments turn out to have exciting potential at other points in my art adventures. I was playing with Frankenthaler-like drips two years ago, and only this week remembered it for some landscape erosion in which it worked very well. I had long ago thrown out the original paintings. But the experiments, which felt like failures, reappear now in a context in which I think they work.
To follow what Jeffrey said –I’m reading Sean Scully’s writings and lectures and found myself harrumphing when he discusses his work. He paints very large stripes and checkerboard patterns ( 10 –12 feet long), sometimes placing a separate patterned piece over an earlier painted, totally different one.
http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/David_Winton_Bell_Gallery/scully.html
I like his work very much. But when he says, for example, that one of the pieces (Backs and Fronts, 1981) makes a reference to people, I was offended. Scully is very good when he’s discussing the art of others; when he discusses his own, I find him almost totally off the wall.
I like to read artist statements; I’m generally not upset when the artist and I have totally different notions about the art itself. But there are times when the conceptual stuff seems more like BS than actual thoughtful attention. I would say that Scully did good work and then had to conceptualize around it. Which he does. And gets published. Perhaps I’m just dense, but in this case, it feels to me like someone who had to do what Jeffrey speaks of, although he works from the conception to the art rather than other way around.
June-
I totally agree with you on the BS stuff. I do not intend on opening the flood gates to the ‘meaning of art’ nor the difference between ‘art and design’, but I’m so glad that A&P is here to talk about that BS. Art is truly a strange thing and individuals who take the time out to discuss its meaning as if its importance was something else like, I don’t know, terrorism or health care, are in a different position all together. If A&P was a food blog, we’d all be discussing the relevancy of using paprika over rosemary.
There are times when I wonder, what is this BS and why should I even bother? The other day, I really felt awful when I was standing in front of a Rothko, truly one of my favorite Abstract Expressionists, and I couldn’t feel the ‘violence’ of the painting that everyone speaks of! I thought to myself, am I terrible person for not seeing or feeling this struggle and tension between the color fields? Rothko’s paintings are totally inspirational to me and are one of my true definitions of Art, but–whether fortuantely or not–I don’t experience the same meanings that made those works Works of Art History. I can understand why the paintings have created the myth they currently have, whether from art critics or Rothko’s own words, but personally, I don’t commit to them.
I say, take the BS and put it in your pocket for a Trivial Pursuit day. If the work has a different conversation with you, take it and make it your own. Sometimes I wonder why Mom insists on keeping a Crayola crayon drawing I made in kindergarten hanging on the refrigerator for the past 20 years…
I agree the analogy to experimentation can provide insight, but one’s view of the scientific process should be broader than the high school caricature. A great deal of experimentation is done not to critically test some hypothesis, but to find out what actually happens when certain situations are set up. There may be a theoretical backdrop, but no clear way to predict a specific result. Along the way, different experimenters may get different results, which will each be accepted and interpreted according to some provisional understanding. The theory is developing along with experiment. Ultimately the findings have to be understood within prevailing general theoretical constructs, and some provisional theories turn out to have been BS. But it’s not always easy to judge when you’re in the middle of it.
Steve:
Some historians claim that the artist’s studio, especially that of the Renaissance, was an early model of science labs to come.
I agree that a lot of science stems from mere curiosity. There are the people who wanted to find out what happens at close to absolute zero C. or what happens when two flat surfaces are brought very close together. Exotic forms of matter were found in the first case and I may recall that theories around parallel universes and extra dimensions have arisen from the second. So you never know.
Enough of the pedantry. But if you look at the hind end of the beast you may find that art and science are after two very different things. Science deals with the observable as it seeks verifiable knowledge and art deals with the observable as it interacts with a sensibility. The neat thing is that both science and art relate to aesthetics to one degree or another. Certain experiments are celebrated for their elegance – almost as though the scientists involved had created music. Now aesthetics – therein lies the rub. What’s with this ineffable something?
Jay,
I’ve actually been thinking of tiptoing backwards into aesthetics tomorrow. It seems to boil down to attempting to explain how something can feel right, and that can apply to any human endeavor (I’m thinking amazing moments in sports, like Olga Korbut on beam), not just art or science.
Jay,
I’ve been thinking about the degrees of freedom in art. The number is of course huge. I think that in the past there were many constraints that simplified the problem. Part of the difficulty, as well of the pleasure of art today must come from the lack of constraints.
Steve,
This conceptual/non-conceptual dichotomy obviously brings of the issue of right-brain/left-brain art/artists. Trying to reconcile their intentions in a single coherent work is a challenge.
Jeffrey,
I didn’t think of the self-portrait angle, sorry.
As to why bother making X art, I think you answered that very well — the part where you say it is exciting to do.
June,
Working from the conception to the art, or from the art to the conception — which is the better approach. I prefer to work from the art — although I don’t think of this a purely procedural. Where I am now is trying to work out the conceptual of what I have already made. Your comment and Jays point to the fact that the conceptual versus procedural does not capture everything about art. What about the emotional, for example? I wonder how many dimensions that would encompass.
The theory is developing along with experiment. Ultimately the findings have to be understood within prevailing general theoretical constructs, and some provisional theories turn out to have been BS. But it’s not always easy to judge when you’re in the middle of it.
Steve,
Nicely put. The key is that the conceptual in science develops along with the experimental.
Jay,
I’m of course not trying to say that art should be like science. The point is more, what can we learn looking at the other discipline.
Synthesizing of pigments like vermilion and red lakes is part of the beginning of chemistry.
Scientists think in aesthetic dimensions, certainly. Results and theories are describe as beautiful if they are seen that way.
Karl,
In the development of your argument are you referring to X to mean ‘meticulously pre planned’ and Y to mean ‘gloriously free flowing’? I would like to understand this first. This will also help me interpret the graph that you just posted better (which is a good way of looking at this).
I can remember as a student the irking presence in the art department of science and engineering majors. These people would come in for a taste of humanity naive as all get out and leave having done the most impressive things. One fellow created a cast aluminum fountain in which the water flowed to the bottom in two intertwined paths. They didn’t know the artistic traditions, but they sure could plan and build.
Sunil,
X and Y have morphed in to “conceptual” and “procedural” in the next post. I don’t think pre-planned is essential for conceptual, so much as the expression of ideas that can be expressed in verbal form. Conceptual art, it seems to me, is supposed to get you thinking, as opposed to simply feeling.
Jeffrey: “…one being the Statement. If I just did Y art, my statement would have to keep changing and my body of work would be all over the place.”
It strikes me that your art is more about the journey and the spontaneity you find in it than the destination itself. Is it wrong to say in your Statement (something I despise, BTW, my art *is* my statement), that your art is an outgrowth of your person and that it grows and evolves as you travel life’s path?