Art & Perception

OK, this is a hoary topic vulnerable to nit-picking definitions and over-intellectualizing (not that those serve no purpose). But it was brought to mind today because of a comment from an artist (Molly Stevens) on an Ed Winkleman post: “Meaning is seen as romantic, outdated, idealist, basically corny.” This reminded me of Sunil’s and my own recent remarks of looking for meaning in abstraction, in counterbalance — not opposition — to June’s reveling while meaning is “beside the point.”

So my question is: what do you feel is the role of “meaning” in your own creative work? Do you have a goal or message or effect in mind while working that could be called meaningful? If so, is it perhaps a different kind of meaning from that which might be present in a more “traditional” work of art?

Are the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge queer?

In response to my “tribute” to the Empire State Building, Karl asked a simple question that caused me to do an extraordinary amount of thinking.  This post is the answer and it’s hardly a simple one.

I was gushing over my life-long fascination and love affair with the Empire State Building and its powerful iconic nature. Karl asked: “How much of your attraction to the building has to do with the architectural style itself? At first I couldn’t’ see how to separate the two but after a while it dawned on me that there was much more to the question than was immediately apparent.

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Red Fir and Clouds

I do better work when I flow with rather than resist my passions. You are probably the
same. This winter my great passion was skiing.

I needed the exercise, for one. When I get out of shape, I lose my vim. When I lose my vim, I lose everything else. But exercise all by itself is boring, so doing something that is both fun and physically demanding is just the thing. This post asks no important questions. Probably, I should put it on my blog and not here, but I do share some photos for the first time, and I do get to an important theme to all artists at the end.

And yeah, this is a long post. But I’ve been gone. There’s some catching up to do.

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Lee Krasner, The Sun Woman II, 1958, 70 x 114 inches

I thought I’d begin my first official post with a confession.

I love abstract expressionist work. There’s very little of it that doesn’t give me enormous satisfaction.

Why do I love it? more… »

Ansel Adams was known for his skill in capturing monumental landscapes in massive detail. But he was well aware that sharpness for its own sake is sterile: “There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.” What would he think of this fuzzy image of a fuzzy concept?

Though this photograph appears blurred, the camera was actually quite well focused on the subject. Which was my shadow cast by the rising sun on the off-white wall of the hallway outside my office. Not period.

Despite the blur, this image may beat any of my others in conceptual edge, at least according to some who shall remain nameless. At the same time, it seems to fit my recent protestation of edgelessness (see comment 52 of last week’s post). I swear that the image, the poem(??), and the Adams quote were entirely unacquainted with each other in my conscious mind before I started writing this post. Nor, until this very moment, had any of them met William Henry Fox Talbot’s (love the names!) description of his 1839 photographic invention as “the art of fixing a shadow.” Photography and writing are sometimes parallel paths of discovery.

Over the last few months, several posters have mentioned books that have been important to them. Karl considers Cennino Cennini to have written the best how-to book for painters. Doug gave us a report on a concise and readable book about photography by Steve Edwards. Lisa Hunter talked about her own book, “The Intrepid Art Collector,” in an interview. Rex cited in one post a motivational book for painters (the correct title is “How to Make a Living as a Painter,” by Kenneth Harris). David, in a comment, recommended “Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin.”

What is your favorite art book?

One of my mine, I just discovered, has popped up in comments a couple of times: Art and Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland (that’s Orland’s “One and a Half Domes, Yosemite” at left). As it happens, they are both photographers, but the book is not at all confined to photography or even visual art. As you might guess from the title, it’s a frank discussion of issues that are faced by artists that relate to making public creative work that can be very personal. Even if you’ve never been the slightest bit nervous about putting your work out there, I still think the book is helpful as an unusually readable treatment of what artists do and how they do it. It will help you think about your own process. Just read it.

Over to you: help me add to the list!

The German weekly Die Zeit published this photo of the brothers Thomas and Alexander Huber climbing El Capitan in an article discussing ‘voracity for fear’. The occasion for the climb was a documentary ‘Am Limit’ by Pepe Danquart’s that opened on March 22, 2007 in Germany. (photo by Heinz Zak, published in Die Zeit 22.03.2007, Nr. 13).

Being a junkie for perspective, this photo caught my eye. Do you have any photos or links for photos of interesting perspectives?