Posted by Sunil Gangadharan on July 19th, 2007
Reading Karl’s latest post about Ultra Minimal Non-Conceptual art got me thinking a bit about where we are headed as far as art movements go. Here is my view.
Please bear in mind that this post was purely based on my ideas and observations and at most the product of an effort to understand the art world better. Hopefully I have managed to convey some sense, but if not, my sincere apologies.
Since a picture is worth a 1000…, I created a little graph to clarify the thinking a bit further and here goes… more… »
Posted by Karl Zipser on July 16th, 2007
Painting
From Life vs.
From Photos
On Saturday I posted about Ultra Minimal Non-Conceptualism, which I claim is to be the Big New Thing. Yesterday a venture-capitalist art collector (let’s call him S.) contacted me. S. wanted to buy the first exemplar of an Ultra Minimal Non-Conceptual artwork.
We started our discussion of the commission with the most important question: what would the first Ultra Minimal Non-Conceptual piece cost? more… »
Posted by Karl Zipser on July 14th, 2007
Painting
From Life vs.
From Photos
Art without a “conceptual edge” can nowadays seem “out of it”, un-hip, old-fashioned. Art that is little more than the ultra-minimalist depiction of a concept can sell for millions. Why is the conceptual trendy, and how to cash in? more… »
Posted by Sunil Gangadharan on July 12th, 2007
Van Gogh did self portraits because he had no money to pay models. Rembrandt used it as a vehicle to improve his artistic skills as well as to study the minute emotional states inflicted by muscular inflections on his face. Women artists of the 1800’s did it because they were not allowed access to live models and social restrictions made it difficult for them to paint publicly. Others like Frida Kahlo examined the different psychological underpinnings behind the ‘self’ using the self portrait as a tool, a vehicle. Gentileschi used the portrait as a mask that tended to hide the viewer from the self that the artist wanted to conceal. There are so many different reasons for creating a self portrait.
It is also instructive (and fun) to read the opinions of Art and Perception contributors to this art form. more… »
Posted by Karl Zipser on July 7th, 2007
Painting
From Life vs.
From Photos
Conceptual art represents concepts.
That seems obvious.
The simple statement has some interesting implications, however. Let’s explore by looking first at another art-form: still life.
What does still life art represent? The still life, obviously. Each still life painting shows a given set of objects. Is the still life art the same as the still life itself? Of course not. It’s a representation: the appearance of a still life on a canvas is an illusion.
Does the artist create the objects in the still life? Perhaps he or she might throw the vases and cut the flowers, but this is not essential.
Must the objects be valuable or beautiful? Of course not. The value of the still life art depends on the quality of the representation, not on the quality of the things represented.
Now, back to conceptual art. more… »
Posted by June Underwood on July 6th, 2007
In an interview for a quilting magazine recently, I was asked why I liked oil paints. I found myself speaking lovingly about the names of paints — burnt sienna, cadmium yellow, quinacridone magenta, perylene black, French ultramarine.
My response surprised (even) me. I hadn’t actually thought of the names of colors as a reason to like a specific medium. Thinking it over, however, I came to understand why I fell into praising the precisely designated oil paints. And watercolor paints. And even acrylics.
It isn’t the names, charming as I find them, so much as it is that the names signify a specific color that holds fairly true across media and brands.
To understand the hold that standardized pigments have for me, you have to know that I began my color education with textile dyes rather than pigment paints. Once you have struggled with making art with dyes, you find that using pigmented paints seems ridiculously easy.
Here are reasons why dyes are inherently difficult to control.
more… »
Posted by Sunil Gangadharan on July 5th, 2007
Under the catchwords of accessibility and inclusiveness, a lot of artifacts in the art world are losing its original meaning and interpretations thereof. Simply put: We inhabit a culture of simplification and generalization with the hopes that unpretentious agendas would be understood and assimilated by a larger audience. This has been documented extensively in other fields and is now seen to be creeping into the arts as well. Two examples from either sides of the Atlantic would further illustrate my point. more… »
