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… »
A story about children…
The last weekend of March was a cold and a dark one. Spending a lazy weekend at home is not my kind of relaxation. I decided to haul a couple of my cousins visiting our family for a quick trip to the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University (about 15 minutes from our home). It is a fairly good museum by New Jersey standards and we were fortunate to run into works by the Indian artist Natvar Bhavsar who was having a retrospective there. His work was characterized by very large abstract forms and shapes thickly overlaid by oil, encaustic and sand. My cousins were very excited on seeing the abstract art although they could not make much of it.. We also visited a hall that exhibited abstract American artwork (1960s – 1980s) and also imbibed some brilliant Soviet non-Conformist art of the 1970s. By the way, the Soviet art representation at this museum is outstanding…
They asked me a lot of questions on what each of the paintings meant and how we could read meanings into diffuse forms on the canvas. I am not so sure if I gave them proper perspectives, but from their faces they seemed a little confused. After about three hours at the museum, we headed back home all charged up on artwork and abstractions… They then decided that they were going to create a quick piece of artwork if I were to lend them a canvas to work on… (considering their original plans on watching a Spiderman movie that night, I thought the museum visit really set their creative juices flowing).
I told them the ground rules were that I would not participate in the painting process, but would offer suggestions and oil paints whenever needed. I told them to open their minds, forget what they learned at school and just express their thoughts on the canvas (easy words to say – I still cannot seem to practice it). They initially asked for color pencils and wax crayons and then proceeded to fill the canvas with words and phrases that they were taught at school with smaller pictures dotting the periphery and the centers of the canvas a la Basquiat style. I then handed them dabs of oil paints mixed with linseed and proceeded to give them disposable brushes with which to apply the oil at spots they felt would highlight aspects of what they had drawn into the background.
Title: Undecided; Artist: Aswin, Anusha and Hari; Material: Color pencils, wax crayons and oil on canvas; Size: 4 feet wide X 3 feet high (Click here for a higher resolution image.)
What they had created is pictured above. Of course the artwork was helped by bits of finishing touches added on by my three year old son (who had proceeded to hijack one corner of the canvas entirely to himself – the dark splotches at the top right corner was his handiwork). At the end of the exercise they felt elated, forgot about Spiderman and wanted to work on another canvas right away. It was about 10:30pm and I told them that it was late for bed and we could work on another one the next time they visited our home. I was very excited to see the activity and the energy that my cousins displayed on developing the artwork.
The next day, I remember feeling a little alarmed that I might have demolished some of the careful teachings in artwork that their teachers were imparting at school beginning with forms like drawing a house, sunrise and animals. In retrospect, I am not so sure if I did the right thing in exposing them to abstract art at so young an age but they sure had fun doing so. I would be very much interested in your thoughts…
My cousin’s names were Aswin and Anusha. He was 9 and she was 8. My son Hari will turn 3 in a couple of months.
Artists and Non-critical Thought
Painting From Life vs. From Photos
Guest Post by Mark Hobson
Some graffiti and a mural in Pittsburgh, PA. The mural, lower right, is of Pgh’s 2 Andys – Andy Warhol and Andrew Carnegie – getting their hair and nails done. • The photos can be seen large on my blog
Recently, on my photography blog (The Landscapist), I posted a topic about graffiti – for purposes of this discussion, it might be helpful to read it.
The gist of it was simple – I had just returned from Pittsburgh, PA where the Graffiti Task Force had made what was being billed as the biggest graffiti bust in U.S. history. A lone graffiti artist with over 80 ‘tags’ to his credit is estimated to have caused over $500,000.00 in public and private property damages (keep in mind that, in this case, ‘public’ = bridge abutments and ‘private’ = abandoned structures).
Without going into great detail and for those of you not familiar with Pittsburgh, I will simply sate that the city is awash in visual eyesores which are the inevitable result of the severe economic devastation the area has experienced over the last quarter century. The city keeps trying to rise from the ashes of the end of big steel but it never quite seems to get it right.
The U.S. graffiti community considers Pittsburgh as a target-rich environment, quite possibly the largest ‘canvas’ in the U.S. Many travel here for the abundance of ‘opportunities’ the decaying public and private infrastructure present. The powers-that-be in the Pittsburgh body politic, to include law enforcement, have essentially declared this activity to be a scourge. The ‘miscreants’ need to be hunted down and punished with the full weight of the law.
No effort or, for that matter, consideration has been given to the notion of harnessing this situation for the enrichment of the community. No effort or consideration has been given to the fact that there is a difference between vandals with spray paint and artists with a voice. No effort or consideration has been given to the possibility of turning the area into the Sistine Chapel of the graffiti world.
That said, I am wondering what a diverse group of artists such as the one here on Art & Perception thinks about this situation.
Whitman on art: it’s about world building
Painting From Life vs. From Photos
Works of art create their own worlds, with their own rules. . . Internal coherence is more important than any resemblance the work might have to something outside of it.
–Arthur Whitman
I think this is one of the most insightful statements about what art is about, or supposed to be about, that we have had on Art & Perception so far. As Arthur points out, it is not so much a definition of art, as a statement of what is most valuable in art.
Arthur’s statement is not so useful for telling us what is art versus what is not (in that respect it is far too broad.) Rather, it is an interesting way to think about what a given artwork is accomplishing. I say “accomplishing” in the present tense, because an artwork, to be perceived, must have a parallel representation in the mind of the viewer (the mind being the greatest world-builder of all). Whatever world the artist has created in their artwork must be rebuilt in the mind of the viewer in order to be seen and felt.
I read something tantalizing in Arthur’s statement about world building, something that suggests to me that art is the externalization of an artist’s inner perceptual world, or a world synthesized through an interaction of the inner world of the mind and the materials and stimuli of the outside world. The problem is that to be more than simply tantalizing, we need to take what Arthur is saying a lot further.
Let me ask then, what are the implications of the statements that I quote at the beginning of this post? How can the concept of art as world-building enhance our appreciation of, and ability to create, art?
The Empire State Building: Breaking The Second Commandment
EXODUS 20:2-14: “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
I’m fascinated by the relationship between secular and religious iconography. In particular, I have an intensely passionate emotional and intellectual relationship with one of the world’s most compelling and famous secular icons: the Empire State Building and it is through that passion that I’ve come to understand something more about religious iconography.
When it comes to religious iconography I am seriously handicapped as an agnostic, a cynic and as a Jew. This subject is particularly challenging for a Jew, secular or otherwise. Even a secular Jew grows up “understanding” that iconography is simple-minded at best, blasphemous at worst. The truth is found within our hearts and minds and to seek the truth through images is false, intellectually lazy and in opposition to the absolute word of God.
But my life long relationship with the Empire State Building has defied my Jewish perspective and seditiously lured me into the world of image worship. (Just one of the commandments I routinely break.) more… »
Molotov cocktail.
Harpers is one of my favorite magazines and a couple of months back I had the good fortune to run into some writing that resonated with the way I approach ideas for my paintings. The case concerns artist Joy Garnett of the ‘Molotov Man‘ fame. She is an artist who uses ‘found’ online imagery in the creation of her art and knowingly subverts photographs and images found on the web to suit the message that she would like to propound in her paintings. In her own words..
“I searched the web for images of figures in extreme emotional or physical states. I saved the most promising images in folders on my computer desktop, and I let them sit for a while so I could forget where I found them. I wanted my choices to be based more on aesthetic criteria than on my emotional attachment to their narratives. Eventually I would look through the folders again to see what struck me…”
To make a long story short, she was initially told by a lawyer representing the author of an image she used (Susan Meiselas shot one of the iconic images that Joy Garnett later painted) to secure permission before using the image. Naturally, Joy did not think it necessary to go through these motions as she had created ‘original’ artwork using the image as a springboard… and posted her predicament to Rhizome.org. The bloggers on Rhizome ran with it and produced hundreds of subversions of the original image challenging the lawyer to prosecute all of them.. The lawyers withdrew on seeing the shaky nature of their case in prosecuting Joy Garnett. You can read multiple points of view in two essays from Harpers hyperlinked at the bottom of this post…
Susan Meiselas “untitled” 1979 Color photograph
Joy Garnett “Molotov” 2003 Oil on canvas 70 x 60 inches
My technique is to paint from photographs. Every once in a while when I explore an idea, I tend to go to the web and download compelling images from the web to act as a spark that will lead to the creation of a painting. In my view I am engaging in a dialogue with art that already exists out there and in the eventual subversion of the original image in my painting, I am merely enriching existing art. I sometimes acknowledge the source and sometimes bother not to (especially if I do not find it on the web – I do not go crazy trying to find the source)… I do not regard this as plagiarism, but some people do…
How many times have you directly used images from the web in the creation of your art? How many times have you used web based images indirectly (as a spark generator and incubator) for an idea that you then use to create your art? If the former case is dubbed plagiarism by some people, then the latter case also should be… What are your views?
Like someone said, the cross pollination and extension of existing ideas is critical to human creativity, be it art science or commerce.
References:
On the rights of the Molotov Man – article by Joy G. and Susan M. in Harpers
The ecstasy of influence – an invigorating essay by Jonathan Lethem
Fuzzy Concept (part 2) or Ambiguity?
Steve’s previous post made me think about mystery and ambiguity in art, particularly as they help to create meaning. And his image reminded me of this recent image I made as part of my “Unholy Gost” series. I use ambiguous spaces and images in this series of paintings.
I talk to my students about the difference between “deliberate ambiguity” and disorganized confusion. While I encourage the happy accidents that occur in the process of creation, it can sometimes be an excuse to leave a piece unfinished, unclear and incoherent. Beginning students often want to make images that deal with the idea of chaos, but end up making disorganized messes. Mysterious images can so easily be so ambiguous as to be unreadable with no entry way into the work.
These can be pitfalls of art making. How can you tell if ambiguity is purposeful or if it reflects lack of clarity on the artist’s part?
Have you explored ambiguity in your own work? What are the challenges you face when doing so? Do you have any favorite artists who use ambiguity successfully?
PS – I tried to make the image larger, I swear, and the best I could do was a thumbnail you can enlarge. Anyone can go in and fix it if they are so inclined. I apologize for my ineptitude.
