Art & Perception

Things are pretty quiet around here culture-wise, given the lack of college students (and perhaps the long-awaited onset of winter weather). So perhaps I can be forgiven for my lack of posting. But I have been thinking about art-criticism in the abstract, raising some questions that ought to be of practical relevance to my own activity as a semi-serious art-critic and blogger. So I’d like to initiate a series of posts on the subject.

A while back, I had a brief exchange with Franklin of Artblog.net, who announced that he was quitting art-criticism, in large part because of its perceived incompatibility with being an artist. As he wrote, “They’re contradictory exercises, professionally and temperamentally.” In response to my request for clarification, he responded:

Petty hatreds and unjustifiable loves that are unbecoming in a critic are a necessary part of an artist’s inclinations. I’ll continue to criticize to the extent that it helps me think about art, but I am stepping out of the role of capital-C Critic, and the title’s implications of fair-mindedness and responsibility. I relinquish efforts to make my writing strive for either. As a critic, that wouldn’t be right. As an artist, it’s fine.

This seems like a reasonable position and it appears to be widespread conventional wisdom. Yet I had some reservations, and so I responded:

I think they’re unbecoming if you put them up front and in the center. Indeed, a Critic should strive to be open-minded and go beyond idiosyncratic likes and dislikes. But it also seems disingenuous to me to pretend that criticism is a wholly neutral, disinterested affair. The critic is a judge, but also somebody who takes genuine pleasure (or displeasure) in artworks, just like anybody else. So it seems like there should be a middle ground, a way of letting two voices speak.

I have little to add to this impromptu “theory” at the moment, but I would like to illustrate what I take to be the difference between an enthusiastic review and a cool-headed, dispassionate one. For the former category, I’ll submit for your attention this piece I wrote about Boston painter (and former teacher of mine) Gerry Bergstein. For the latter, here is a piece I wrote about recently deceased Ithaca painter John Hartell. Both are nominally “positive” reviews, with regards to most of the work, if not to certain curatorial decisions. Both contain level-headed analysis and interpretation. But I think something of my differing enthusiasms comes through in the writing.

As one of only a handful of local individuals writing criticism of the visual arts, I believe that it is my ethical responsibility to cover as wide a variety of subjects as I am competent to cover. (In my newspaper writing, not so much in my blogging.) And I believe that it is important to be fair and balanced in doing so. But to try and repress my “petty hatreds and unjustifiable loves” entirely suggests to me an alienated approach to arts, one foreign not just to most artists, but to most amateur enthusiasts. Actually, I am willing to repress the hatreds; the loves however should be allowed to bubble to the surface once in a while. At least that’s the idea.

From my latest review:

Taking a look around “Garden: Delights and Detritus” – a show of artist’s books, drawings and mixed-media prints by Ithaca College professor Susan Weisand – one is immediately struck by their visual eclecticism. Weisand’s work uses a wide spectrum of techniques and materials, typically combining several to create a single image. Similarly, she arranges, layers and re-uses different motifs and styles in a collage-like manner, giving her seemingly timeless natural subjects a distinctly contemporary feel.

More here.

I would appreciate any feedback on my artwriting.

Recently, I attended a local lecture by the New York City painter Alexis Rockman. Although his lecture touched on a number of subjects, one he kept returning to was that of the artist’s emotional commitment to her work. He started the lecture by giving a somewhat rote presentation of the historical development of his own paintings. This development was fed by myriad cultural influences, resulting in what appear to be richly allusive and iconographicaly dense landscapes. (I’ll admit to being only superficially familiar with the actual work, which isn’t my main subject here). Artistic influences that Rockman cited include Thomas Cole’s well-known Course of Empire series, the dinosaur artist Charles R. Knight, Goya’s war etchings, Diego Rivera’s murals, and The Planet of the Apes. In addition, the artist has been interested in the natural sciences, in particular evolutionary biology, geology and climatology. The intersection of nature with both science and art has been a central concern. As you can imagine, taking on all of this withing the landscape painting genre has required both erudition and considerable forethought in terms of draftsmanship and painterly execution.

In an exhibition last April however, Rockman showed–along with his usual oils on wood panels–a series of five oil on paper paintings. While treating analogous themes of disaster and apocalypse, they appear to be much rougher and more painterly in their execution. (I didn’t see the show, so I’m relying on the gallery website, as well as the artist’s own descriptions.) Significantly, they show destruction directly, while the panel pieces depict its aftermath. The importance of this new direction dominated the second half or so of the lecture. He stressed that this greater physical involvement with his working material went along with, and was intended to signal a more spontaneous, playful and emotional approach, one less detached and intellectual. He also described this as a return to his long-buried roots in Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.

This change of direction and the personal and cultural conflicts it reveals and addresses are of interest to me, both as a (lapsed) artist and as a fan and critic of other people’s art. I come from an intellectual background, and while my relationship to formal schooling has been hit or miss, I do value “book-learning” as a way of understanding both visual art and the culture more broadly. I believe that its important to be aware of art’s history and philosophies and the ways in which these relate to other things. Most of the works of art that I value the most have more than strictly visual or expressive value, they connect to ideas and to history. Not everybody shares my values of course, but they do have wide currency in the contemporary artworld (in fashionable art galleries and magazines, for example). Alexis Rockman is as much a symptom of this as I am. For example, he stressed the need for the contemporary artist to “position” himself and his artistic approach, an injunction seemingly in contrast to his praise of emotional authenticity. The result of all of this is that work not sharing in these values often comes off as being naive, or provincial. No matter how well-done or beautiful, it can seem besides the point.

However, this kind of cultural and philosophical awareness can be dangerous, as anybody who has spent time browsing fashionable big city galleries hopefully recognizes. As I’ve been saying, an artist should be aware of his cultural environment and its history. Being a naif is usually a recipie for boring, cliched art (there are exceptions). But to merely reflect the culture in a passive, unreflective way tends to result in something distinct but similar. And to respond to it in an solely academic way usually results in “innovations” that are tedious and ultimately predictable. What Alexis was trying to get at, and what I’m trying to get at is that there needs to be a genuine personal commitment and that this needs to be evident somehow in the work. His solution has been to return to the materiality of paint; no doubt many other approaches exist.

In terms of radical formal and conceptual innovations, it appears that art has gone about as far as it can go, at least for the time being. The twentieth century was a period dominated by such innovations, done under the myth of moving art forward, of making progress. This effort (and its sustaining narrative) have largely collapsed, but some artists appear to be in denial. Tying your individuality or your ego to radicalism for radicalism’s sake doesn’t work any more, at least not for most young people. A lot of things don’t work anymore (or they never worked in the first place).

What does work, although of course not always, is a tricky balancing act. Irony, intellect, and detachment need to be somehow reconciled with sincerity, passion and love of life and art. On one hand, we have the image of the cool, calculating conceptual artist, a figure who doesn’t like to touch things (literally and/or metaphorically). On the other, we have that of the wild expressionist artist, driven solely by is instincts and feelings, largely oblivious to the world around him. These are crude stereotypes of course, but they help give shape to our picture of the field. There are also plenty of artists to which they are more or less applicable. Neither of these seems to work anymore. At any rate, they don’t work for me, and they don’t seem to be working for the majority of artists I respect most. (Which artists are these? Look around my blog and find out.)

Sorry for not posting earlier (I’m a very late riser), and thank you Lisa for your impromptu post. I know that some of you readers also follow my own blog, The Thinking Eye; for those who don’t, I’d like to briefly introduce myself. I’ll do so by following up belatedly on Karl’s Monday post, trying to get at some of my writerly goals and biases by way of my location. Since I also spend time on the Internet (a sort of place, perhaps), this makes a good companion piece to my recent off-site post on Art & Perception. From September of last year, my home has been Ithaca in Upstate New York.

Although I like to discuss Ithaca on my Eye and elsewhere, it often seems absurd of me to do so. A city of something like 50,000 people (the population varies with the coming and going of students), it is not, and has never been, an important art center on the order of Haarlem or New Amsterdam (although it was of some significance in the early film industry). Most likely, it will never be one in the future. Ambitious artists around here tend to gravitate towards NYC, which is about a six hour drive away. I like to travel there myself, as much as I can. Still, Ithaca is where I live, and it effects the way I think and experience art. (I live here by choice, so I try not to sound like I’m complaining too much.)

As a college town–home to Cornell University and Ithaca College–the place is hardly bereft of culture. In fact, it is something of a miniature melting pot, a mixture of different nationalities, religions (a major center of Tibetan Buhddism), and art-forms (music being much stronger than the visual arts). Unfortunately, most of the culture that I value most is not native-grown, but imported. Cornell’s Johnson Museum has a fine a fine permanent collection of art, with particular strengths in in Asian and American art. In addition, the museum and other branches of the school brings in a wide variety of exhibitions, artists and scholars. I try to take in as much of this as I can, digesting interesting bits through my writing. The problem is that most things of interest art-wise come from elsewhere, and are funneled from the top down. This presents problems for me both as a (lapsed) artist and as someone interested in writing seriously about art. I’m working on the latter, at least.
I moved here from Boston last year (mostly for personal reasons) after completing several years of undergraduate study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. My final year there was spent at Tufts University (which is associated with the SMFA), studying things other than studio art. Because of this time period, and because I felt (correctly or not) that I had used up a surge of ideas beginning in 2001, I have shifted my attention from making art to writing about it. While many artists seem to regard this as a waste of time, I believe that it is valuable. If nothing else, I am good at it.
Karl’s claims that “the action in the great living art centers of today is not all that impressive”, citing New York, Berlin, and London. I would like to politely disagree. I have never been to Berlin or London, but I have been to NYC, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C. and Paris, among other places. While I’ve seen plenty of bad art, I’ve also seen a great many things of interest (to me, Karl’s tastes are clearly very different). My main interest is not in the art of the past, the kind enshrined in museums. My main interest is in the living arts of today: not because I think we’re living in the greatest of eras, but simply because the culture is active. I enjoy being in the midst of this culture.

Eventually, I plan to move to New York; in the meantime, where I am is alright.