Interesting point about the Renaissance artists. Where they just spitting out the same old ideas about religion etc, or where they making new statements? If you think about the Sistine Chapel ceiling, I’d say you have some new ideas about the religion and the place of humanity and the body. At the Vatican they have to do some contortions in explaining why Michelangelo’s frescos go with the standard Catholic viewpoint.

Look at Bosch. Talk about conceptual!

Today we start from scratch with our concepts, but also with our techniques.

Now June, obviously an X-Y plot in which we can represent all art has got to be some kind of simplification. That is the point. The graph does not attempt to represent all dimensions, only to look at a couple of them. The simplification comes where we think that we can express “conceptual” as a single axis.

I’m wondering whether Renaissance art isn’t highly conceptual, the difference being that the artists didn’t have to explain the conceptions. All that mythology and religious symbolism were right at hand, as were the clients who asked for Daphne or Mary or busts of themselves.Artists were not expected to express their innermost selves nor to say something new, although of course they often did both. It’s as if the attention could be diverted to the conventional meaning while the artist slid ideas and processes into the mix on the side.

Today, we all have to start froms scratch, finding ourselves, our ideas, our style, our sublimity, our audience, and our customers.

So while I understand something of what you are saying, the simplification of it bothers me. As contemporary artists, we are enjoined to reinvent ourselves and our art, while at the same time partaking of all of art history that we can allude to, verbally or visually. It’s a tall order, and it isn’t surprising that extremes on all sides crop up and are rewarded or laughed at. it isn’t an era when the expected is lauded.

So I’m dismissing your x’s and y’s and replacing them with “yes, buts….”

Ha, no way! I don’t ever rate other artists. I’ll leave that to the critics.

I place myself at 1,1; but my ambition is to achieve ever higher values for x=y.

You’re getting into the delicate question of what the dimensions of the graph represent in terms of magnitude.

Okay, so moving along the procedure axis, we are saying that technique is getting better? That’s a bit different than I was thinking, but it seems fine to me. In that case, moving out on the x axis does not so much mean increasing complexity, but increasing sublimeness of execution.

Going up, the concept gets better, as you say.

Sounds good. Now we can start plotting individual artists. Go ahead, you first. I see a lot of controversy in that direction!

Steve,

yes, emotion, that sounds like another important dimension. Maybe next week’s graph!

On the other hand, I think your 2-d plot would be an excellent way for someone to express their opinion (totally subjective, of course) as to the quality of a work of art. Something at 0,0 would be pure shit, both technically and conceptually. As you move up in “y” you’re saying the concept is getting better, and movement to the right in “x” represents increasing quality of execution. You could probably leave your three labeled ovals right where they are.

Here is a story that may shed light on the issue:

Two people go into an empty building and three people come out. A physicist, a biologist, and a mathematician are asked to explain the observation.

The physicist says, “It must be experimental error.”

The biologist says, “They must have replicated.”

The mathematician says, “There is -1 person still in the building.”

The graph above, if you keep in mind that the axes also extend in the opposite directions, allows for the possibility of artwork that requires a negative amount of labor to create and has a negative amount of conceptual content. Go figure.