As regular readers may know, I’ve been intrigued by resemblances noted between some of my photographs, particularly the recent waterfall series, and those of Clyfford Still, the eccentric Abstract Expressionist determined to go his own way, living most of his life in relative isolation from the art world. Over the last year or so, I have sensed some movement toward abstraction in my work and I would like to explore that. What is abstraction for me? How does it relate to representation? What and how does it mean? I’m not aiming for a more sophisticated Statement, I’m just trying to better understand what I do and what others have done and what I can learn from it.
This post is a traveller’s journal of meanderings in this art historical and aesthetic territory. I don’t really know my way around yet, but I’ve noticed several landmarks and seen them from different perspectives. Besides Still, I’ve come across the painter/sculptor/photographer Clifford Ross. And for aesthetic notions, besides abstraction, I’ve bumped up against the sublime. These stand out because, as I look and read, I keep finding new connections among them and with my own picture-making.
Friedrich: Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
A brief history of the sublime: The Greek Longinus, writing of rhetoric, first enunciated the idea of the sublime as that which is overpowering, in part because it cannot be grasped as a whole and rationally subsumed into one’s current understanding of the world. Later, Immanuel Kant, in “Critique of Judgment” (1790), took up the sublime and distinguished it from the beautiful: “the Beautiful in nature is connected with the form of the object, which consists in having boundaries, the Sublime is to be found in a formless object, so far as in it, or by occasion of it, boundlessness is represented.” British travellers in the Europe found the concept a perfect fit to describe their experiences before the vistas of the Alps, as represented, for example, in Caspar David Friedrich’s “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.” Another common example of the sublime in painting is J. M. W. Turner’s “Snow Storm: Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth.”
Turner: Snow Storm: Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth
Turner’s painting is sometimes also pointed to as a precursor of modern abstraction. In art criticism, the abstract and the sublime were truly brought together by curator and art historian Robert Rosenblum in a 1961 article (ARTnews 59, 10, 1961, pp.38-41) entitled “The Abstract Sublime.” Rosenblum coined the term to refer to painters like Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman, who used broad color fields on huge canvases to induce an overwhelming sense of infinity, analogous to that created by paintings like those of Friedrich or J. M. W. Turner. One of the earlier examples of the sublime in painting, and the one first used by Rosenblum, is Gordale Scar by James Ward, where we are awed by the dark and overpowering cliffs of this feature in the Yorkshire Dales (with a waterfall issuing from it!). This was executed on a very large canvas, 131″ x 166″, a practice which Still initiated among the Abstract Expressionists. Still may well have known of Ward’s painting; in any case, the jagged Scar seems to find echos in his work. It also strikes me as having something in common with the recent photograph of mine leading off this post.
Ward: Gordale Scar
To bring things full circle, it turns out that Still studied Longinus early in his career, while teaching at Washington State University (then College). Evidently the sublime remained with him as a driving idea; he later said that his greatest influence as a teacher in the San Francisco Bay area had been philosophical: “It was not a new ‘painting,’ but “a new way of thinking about the image as idea [expressing] the important and the sublime in man’s self.”
Searching on the web for discussion of abstraction and the sublime, I turned up Clifford Ross, whose project “Wave Music” I first saw in a book a year or two ago. Ross uses these terms in writing about his project, a section of which is photographs — printed very large — of hurricane driven waves. In the Introduction to the book, art critic Arthur Danto writes that the wave photographs don’t record a reality we can experience, because the quantity of chaotic detail in a wave could never be apprehended before it changed in its onrushing movement. Perhaps not surprisingly, his observation reminded me of waterfalls…
Ross: Hurricane I
Where am I going with all this? I’d say it’s still pretty much in ferment. I do feel I’m beginning to get the lay of the land, and maybe see ways to relate these ideas to my own work. How that might influence my photography, I don’t know. With reference to Karl’s recent post, I’m trying to develop ideas out of the photographs, not create photographs based on the ideas.
Do you go through a similar process of trying to figure out where your art fits into the larger scheme of things? Would it make any difference to know the answer?
Steve,
This is a wonderful journey you are on. The waterfalls seem to be getting better and better.
I’m fascinated by the question, is art something we make, or discover? That seems to be a question you are dealing with here. Is abstract art a creation, or are the artists you mention and you really exploring a pre-existing world? How could the world be preexisting? It may be that abstract art is a niche defined by the nature of human perception. The artist’s job is to find it. Alternatively, the niche could be created by the work of artists who went before, but have no claim to being innate to human existence.
One of the most fascinating displaying at the American Museum of Natural history in NYC is of a marsupial wolf. This creature, now extinct, descended from vegetarian animals that settled, I think, Tasmania. There the wolf species evolved independently of the regular wolf. This shows that the wolf “form” (and the thing looks Exactly like a wolf) is something that exists under certain conditions, and evolution can fill the niche.
Relating this to painting, it raises the question, did various important historical artists create their genres and styles, or discover them? Were Pollock splatter paintings inevitable, even if Pollock had never lived? What about the chocolate Jesus and the diamond skull? What other exciting, sublime, and profitable artworks are waiting on the edge of existence?
I enjoyed reading this, both the visuals and the words. I guess sublime and JMW Turner’s Snow Storm can be used interchangeably. Yes, you got it right.
How does my art fit into the larger scheme.. Hmm. In my case it is a little different – I have certain ideas that I would want to work on – like poverty, childhood, injustice etc – and with some of these ideas/prejudices in mind, I approach my subjects (either through physically taking a picture or by looking out for pictures from the media), once I think I land the ‘right’ picture, the rest is left to me working the resulting painting to create a feeling or an expression of the original idea that I wanted to convey. Sometimes it may not be clear to the viewer and sometimes it is.
Somehow the light striking off the cliff face in your photograph reminded me of Durand’s ‘Kindered Spirits’ (http://www.middlebury.edu/NR/rdonlyres/0113581E-6408-40ED-82A5-BFFC91AA1DCF/0/DurandPR.jpg ). Although one has nothing to do with the other…
The Wikipedia entry on Longinus is worth a look. Here is a sample that resonated for me:
This seems to suggest that great art should rise above the conceptual as well. Looks like I need to add a Sublime axis to my plot.
Karl,
Yes, outrunning the conceptual is more or less what I meant by my summary statement that the work of art cannot be rationally grasped as a whole. Conventional art history seems to imply that the “ecstasy” of the sublime requires big, impressive, or even “terrible” landscapes and dramatic situations of any human figures. But I think similar reactions can happen with much smaller and quieter paintings and subjects. One might call it epiphany or enlightenment, but it’s still a sense of sudden access to something greater than yourself. Ross describes something he considers the same as Kant’s “emotional delight” while viewing a Rembrandt portrait.
I’m trying to develop ideas out of the photographs, not create photographs based on the ideas.
I’ve found it most productive in my practice to go back and forth between the two. Chickens, then eggs, then more chickens…
David,
Like chickens, I’m sure that will happen naturally as I find ideas that are appealing and work for me and that I continue to think about. I don’t have anything against art based more or less directly on concepts, but for me it feels like the cycle is better described by:
1. make photographs that seem interesting
2. think about the photographs (and related things)
3. make more photographs based on new sense of what’s interesting
4. back to 2.
Steve,
Good news that you plan to think about your photographs. That promises that any snow storm that you will see is not induced by a diet consisting of mainly rum and milk…and a bottle of gin ..
Steve,
I finally got some time to read this and think about it. It is a wonderful, very thoughtful journey you are taking. The research you are doing seems to make sense. Do you look at the Hudson Bay painters too – Church, Cole, Friederich was one I think. Your photo reminds me a bit of them.
A few things strike me about your writing and what I know of you so far. First that I find it interesting that you are a very cerebral thinker, researcher, writer, but seem to separate that kind of thought from your artmaking process. Make first, think second. And I have been there in my artistic process as well. I think people who are both verbal and visual have that struggle. Those worlds have an awkward relationship with each other at times, and sometimes it is best to relegate them to their separate corners.
But now am more where David is – in dialogue with the idea and going back and forth with the making in a pretty comfortable way. I think formal art education forces that confrontation with concept (depending on the program – any program worth its salt will get you thinking on ideas – what you are trying to say or do with your art, how does it fit in the larger context of art history and contemporary thought, even if it means to reject all of that). For better or worse, in grad school, the pace of making work, critiquing, and then turning around and making more was so intense for me, that the idea had to come first at times. I made a lot of crappy art – some more on the conceptual end of the continuum, some more on the process end(or procedural as Karl names it). This flexibility between the two modes (and everywhere in between) has allowed me to explore a wide range of work (both in making and looking at others).
But the world is not grad school (thank god)…
Having said all that, your process that you numbered so deliberately seems to give you lots of satisfaction, food for thought and beautiful work. Pushing toward the sublime may involve messing up that order of things, but it may not. The thing that catches me up with your separation of thought and sense is that your “sensing” process is still filled with this rationality.
I have the urge to advise you to “make a mess” with your work, stop being so careful and stop looking for what looks interesting, stop composing so carefully (this all feels like your rational mind sneaking in). I struggle for the words because I am not a photographer, but if there is an equivalent of making a huge mess on a canvas and seeing what happens, try it! Maybe that involves doing random things either in the taking of the photos or the developing of them.
This could be way off base, but thought I’d throw it out there. I see you as being on a precipice of something, and wanting something more from your work (the yearning for sublime or “a sense of sudden access to something greater than yourself”), and I wonder what it would take to jump off the edge. It may involve “tricking” yourself into the unknown.
Birgit,
Out here (like in Michigan), drinking in a snowstorm is risking death by exposure. On the other hand, maybe Turner’s diet would serve me well for the summertime waterfalls. I might find out what real abstraction is. I’m not sure if the milk will have enough protein for the hiking requirement, though…
Leslie,
Thanks for such a long and thoughtful comment! Sounds like you have me pegged pretty well. It’s interesting that your advice seems to go two different directions, which is not contradictory but just means there’s more than one thing to do.
In terms of using ideas more actively while making the art, like you and David, I think to some extent that’s implicit in “what’s interesting,” i.e. I can find something interesting not only for itself, so to speak, but also because I can apply ideas to the photographing of it. The rub is that I don’t always have or take the time to work that through on location, so I haven’t really milked the opportunity for all it’s worth. It would be good to do a better job of that.
The rather rational (not to say anal) list in comment 6 was, in part, a joke for David, who in the early days of this blog would often categorize and enumerate things. But I think there’s always something to be said for messing things up, so I’ll also try to follow your advice on that. I have, in fact, tried a totally different approach to the waterfalls, in which a great or small part of the scene is out of focus. I haven’t done this enough to have a good one yet, though, so I haven’t shown any.
As for being on a precipice with Clyfford and Clifford: I think I’m beginning to get vertigo. If I don’t jump, I’ll probably fall. Time to fasten the parachute!
…a joke for David, who in the early days of this blog would often categorize and enumerate things.
Believe it or not, that’s actually pretty close to the conceptual part of my process. Whether I start with idea or execution, at some point I find myself making lists in my journal. Of ideas, visual elements, variations to try, possible meanings of things, etc. Sometimes I’ll start with that, and other times I’ll do what you do and just begin by making something. Either way, it’s the back and forth that’s integral to my work.
Steve,
A very interesting set of ideas.
Would it be fair to say that the sublime is a sensation, a feeling that rises beyond expressible articulation?
Whereas abstraction is a style, a way to express an idea or sensation?
And so, that you are saying that you want to express the sensation of the sublime through photographs that work as abstract art.
I wonder if you don’t need to feel the sublime, to experience it, and then to work backward to the photograph that evokes that feeling for you. Your articulation of the ideas (vis-a-vis many authors) is eloquent, but the visceral (not visual) transference is lagging behind.
Perhaps I’m saying what everyone else has said — if so, forgive me.
Tonight, as I was showing someone my art from eastern Oregon, I realized that the further in time I got away from experiencing the particular landscape that I’ve been working, the more representational the art has become. It’s as if I lost the feeling and all that I have left is the image. Now sometimes the image has a power to it, but the greatest power, for me, is evoked in the early semi-abstract pieces I did, like Miocene and The Rising
http://www.juneunderwood.com/workinprogress.php
(scroll down to the last few images).
Of course, my pleine aire work was generally representational, but it was not meant to be seen nor felt as art but rather it worked as a warming up, honing my vision, sharpening my tools. The experience of sitting in front of those “sublime” formations is what I was working toward in the first few months after I returned to my studio after the residency.
I’m fairly incoherent tonight (summer has finally arrived in western Oregon and the heat has scrambled my brain), but it seems to me what everyone is circling with you is the question of the connection between the sublime and the abstracts you wish to make — how you can move from your feelings to the expression of them in an abstract style. I think you have to experience the sublime — and then keep knocking out photos until you arrive back at that experience. You can more or less postulate ways to get to the feeling and try them out, but somehow Leslie’s (near) advice to dive in and mess around, whatever its photographic equivalent, seems appropriate.
June,
That is a very intriguing observation about your landscape depictions becoming more representational the more you are removed from the immediate experience of the subject. This fits very well with an idea I did not enunciate, but that I am considering — as Karl would say — as a working hypothesis. It has to do with the relation I see between abstract and sublime, the connection you so neatly point out as missing. I’m still collecting my thoughts about this, and am planning to go into it more in a subsequent post, this first one being just a sketch of the terrain with no attempt at resolution.
[bunch of stuff deleted]
Sorry, I just don’t want to put this down until it’s ready. Most will probably dismiss it as academic rot anyway, which doesn’t bother me, but I at least want it to make sense to me, and it doesn’t quite yet. Suffice it to say for now that I see something common to all the images in this post, and I’m trying to articulate that.
I see something common to all the images in this post, and I’m trying to articulate that.
Absence of straight lines? Jagged/fluid edges? Dramatic contrast of lights and darks?
David,
Yes to all of those, but it’s more about how those elements, abstract in themselves, work with the representational content of the image. If I really boil it down, what I’m trying to say probably amounts to saying that an image has to be strong both as representation and as an abstract design, and the two have to work together, and some kinds of abstract design may be correlated with “sublime.” But I’m most interested not in trying to make some general, conclusive statement — I’m skeptical about such — but in trying to capture how my personal style fits into that. I’m skeptical about that, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth attempting. :)
I’m most interested not in trying to make some general, conclusive statement — I’m skeptical about such — but in trying to capture how my personal style fits into that. I’m skeptical about that, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth attempting.
Actually I think it’s very worth doing. Especially if it makes you more aware of what those elements are that you are responding to in others’ work. It can only make your own work better.
Steve:
One of my usual stories. March of last year I was on a night flight to Austin, Tx. The sky out of the window was dark and we flew above gently glowing clouds. Many miles away was a small blinking light – another plane on a parallel course. It was just the two of us and I lost myself in the vastness. I felt a little fear and a sense of elation; and a strange kind of love and kinship for that distant point in space. I wonder if I had a sublime experience.
Jay,
Only you know. The more difficult question is whether you can find a visual way to convey that sensation to others.
June:
Aha! The sublime is then an internal matter and not inherent in anything external. I could have been watching The Price Is Right for all the difference, with my fear and elation, love and kinship directed at Bob Barker, or whoever.
Actually, most any distant point of light on a dark night will serve to some reduced extent. Billions of them overhead on a dark night – now that’s sublimity. Cloud cover, however, will make it subliminal.
Steve:
Did you mention a parachute? There are people who jump from high places like Yosemite with video cameras on their helmets. Head to Bridal Veil with a 4″ x 5″ mounted instead of the video camera and you might get some interesting results. Not so much goofing as wondering if being the trout that you so eloquently portrayed recently wouldn’t get you closer to your goal.
I was a bit taken by the first comment here, “is art something we make or discover?”
For me, I take photographs to reveal. I want to reveal other worlds and other truths that are usually overlooked. This is similar to discover I suppose, except that I know these things already exist and I want to bear witness to them.
I studied the ideas of pastoral, sublime and transcendent in American art but it wasn’t until my first trip to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee that I felt what these terms mean and truly understood them. When I got back home, my way of processing all of it was to write a short story; but some things aren’t meant to be captured in words.
Tree,
No doubt your photographs reveal the subjects you are bearing witness to, as you intend. But don’t you find, when you start photographing a subject, that you notice new things in it? That if you look at one of your photographs very closely, or for the first time in a while, that they also reveal aspects of things that you weren’t aware of at the time you made the photograph? Don’t other people sometimes “see” something in a photo that never occurred to you? These are what I would call discoveries, some in the course of the making and some that come later. (Though maybe, in the sense of installation art, we should consider the photo as merely the catalyst in an ongoing series of experiences with it, which together constitute the real art.)
Hi Folks,
I am on the same tack…..and through the connection with digital art in addition to your thoughts.
A film coming out EXOVEDATE… BEAUTY IN ELORA is attempting to present comments on the nature of beauty/sublime. Check it out.
I thoroughly enjoyed this article, very insightful and informative!
i am artist from india.james turner is my favrites landscape artist.