We are studying the Abstract Expressionists at The Colorist. Jackson Pollock has been covered, and we continue now with Mark Rothko.
His book from the grave, The Artist's Reality, arrived from Amazon late last week, and I find it interesting that I agree with what I've read so far of this great "color field" painter's philosophy.
I offer the following principles or vision for abstraction from the introduction of the Rothko book:
What are your thoughts when you read these "abstract" words?
Hill with Red Sky
Pink ForestEDMONDS ARTS FESTIVAL PREVIEW PARTY
We are inviting patrons to preview and purchase art in the Juried Gallery by attending the Edmonds Arts Festival Preview Party on Thursday June 14th. Over 600 loyal patrons of the arts attend this event, which includes dinner, drinks, and entertainment. For more information contact Edmonds Arts Festival Juried Gallery email: festivalgallery@comcast.net.
One of the preeminent artists of his generation, Mark Rothko is closely identified with the
Rothko is everywhere on the web taken out of context as saying "There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing". Of course, when read in context we see that he absolutely asserts the opposite.
”It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.”
Further to the subject of letting the great "color field" painter speak for himself, his son and daughter, Christopher and Kate Rothko have published The Artist’s Realities, Philosophies of Art, Mark Rothko, 2004. Walmart. Amazon.
The artist died by suicide, and apparently left a royal mess of his affairs. His estranged widow, Mell, died the following year, only exacerbating the legal disarray of their estate. The fallout from all of the hassles is said to have been so overwhelming for the Rothko offspring, that the handwritten notes that later comprised this memoir were not discovered or read for decades. I found this great, great piece quoting Christopher about his feelings while organizing the manuscripts.
As a matter of marketing and presentation, it's a lucky turn for the unlucky progeny of the artist. Who doesn't love to "discover" the long-lost history of a great man? It remains now for the art historians to review the writings of the "Theologian of the Abstract Expressionists" and give them some context within the broaden understanding that we have of Rothko's vision.
Rothko
Personally, I'd like to find a box of van Gogh's long-lost letters to his sister.
Links:
http://alla-prima.blogspot.com/
http://linesandsidelines.blogspot.com/
http://marinabroereart.blogspot.com/
http://bachmanart.com/wordpress/
http://www.stephen.com/mondrimat/
http://nzart-lizzie-l.blogspot.com/
So, here is our dear Teri, holding onto this (virtually worthless to her) painting that maybe could fetch up to $140,000,000 if she can just find the right sucker buyer for it. I am doubled over in laughter watching clips of this lady and a host of arts professionals tearing their hair out trying to make up establish a provenance for it.
If a Pollock really could be purchased for $5, then what is the real intrinsic value of a big canvas covered with drips? If he were any good, why couldn't he just paint a figure, a faerie or a piece of fruit, like any other normal artist?
It all comes down to provenance, in my humble opinion. No signature on the work? Then, if the artist Jackson Pollock painted it, and didn't sign it, then he was devaluing it, himself. Then, he failed to destroy it, which is the accepted norm for artists. It seems that our Teri Horton was offered 9 Million dollars for the piece, but refused it as too little. Bad move.
"Ultimately, it does not matter if the painting is a Pollock or not. The value of it is determined by what someone is willing to pay for it. There is no intrinsic value of any 'Art' piece. There is no MSRP in the art world. She was offered 2 million dollars for it, so that is what it is currently worth (if that offer even still stands). If she rejects that offer and /or it is rescinded, and there is no other offer, the painting is worth 5 dollars. plain (sic) and simple. This is economics 101. 'Art' is no exception."
Posted by pmfaricy on Sun, May 6, 2007 9:17 PM ET
Another Blogger's opinion:
http://www.bookofjoe.com/2006/11/what_teri_horto.html
The Ed Harris Movie About
Galaxy, 1947
Pollock's Studio Floor
The Connoisseur Norman Rockwell
Color Field painting, an abstract style that emerged in the 1950s following Abstract Expressionism, is characterized by canvases painted primarily with stripes, washes and fields of solid color. The first serious and critically acclaimed art movement to originate in the nation’s capital, Washington Color School was central to the larger Color Field movement. Its roots were with painters who showed their work at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, a short-lived museum promoting contemporary art during the 1960s. Its 1965 “Washington Color Painters” show formalized recognition of the Washington Color School of painters “More than 40 years after that historic D.C. exhibition, their paintings reveal not just a shared passion for color but highly individualistic visions,” writes Jean Lawlor Cohen, guest co-curator at The Kreeger Museum. “They represent a moment when Washington heeded Willem de Kooning’s call for ‘hallelujah painting.’”
Among the best known Color Field artists are Leon Berkowitz, Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jules Olitski, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Frank Stella and Alma Thomas and Larry Zox. Among the best known Washington Color School artists are Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Howard Mehring and Paul Reed.
Le rêve 1932
Red Corner
Yellow Sky Detail
For the next several days I will be hosting Turkey Camp. I like her overall thesis, about the failure of art criticism. If this is true-that the critical career is lacking in potency, then there is a vacuum for advice about art based on a theoretical structure. This set of values, or art critical theory, has been a service to art patronage who look for some sort of rational basis for which art should be considered good, and which should not.
... who determines whether art is good. Today, the market itself tends to make stars, giving top dealers and collectors (like Charles Saatchi) the role once reserved for curators and critics.
A museum director confided to me that the market has "pushed museums to the side as arbiters of taste." Nowadays, the public already has an opinion about which new artists are "important" before a museum exhibit can be organized. Only a few museums, like the Whitney, even dare try. It's a fool's errand: If they show artists who aren't the annointed stars, people think the curators are out of touch. If they show the reigning favorites, everyone snipes that the curators are in the pocket of the dealers.
A generation ago, high-brow critics like Meyer Schapiro and Clement Greenberg wrote intelligent criticism that anyone could understand with a bit of effort. They provided a framework for asking questions, so a viewer could learn to evaluate art for himself. Today's scholarly criticism is often obtuse, theoretical, and unhelpful. (I was looking at an art history graduate program recently, and the Art History Department could have changed its name to the Michel Foucault Department without having to alter a single course description.) Newspaper critics may be excellent --especially Jerry Saltz and Tyler Green -- but reviews are case-by-case and don't provide an overall framework, so insecure collectors rely on a thumbs up/thumbs down for each individual show.
Or they rely on dealers, which takes us back to the market creating the stars.
Is there a better way? How should novices learn about contemporary art? Do we leave them, sink-or-swim, to figure it all out for themselves? Or is the art world failing them and, ultimately, itself?
Our previous discussion raised interesting questions about who determines whether art is good. Today, the market itself tends to make stars, giving top dealers and collectors (like Charles Saatchi) the role once reserved for curators and critics.
A museum director confided to me that the market has "pushed museums to the side as arbiters of taste." Nowadays, the public already has an opinion about which new artists are "important" before a museum exhibit can be organized. Only a few museums, like the Whitney, even dare try. It's a fool's errand: If they show artists who aren't the annointed stars, people think the curators are out of touch. If they show the reigning favorites, everyone snipes that the curators are in the pocket of the dealers.
A generation ago, high-brow critics like Meyer Schapiro and Clement Greenberg wrote intelligent criticism that anyone could understand with a bit of effort. They provided a framework for asking questions, so a viewer could learn to evaluate art for himself. Today's scholarly criticism is often obtuse, theoretical, and unhelpful.
(I was looking at an art history graduate program recently, and the Art History Department could have changed its name to the Michel Foucault Department without having to alter a single course description.) Newspaper critics may be excellent --especially Jerry Saltz and Tyler Green -- but reviews are case-by-case and don't provide an overall framework, so insecure collectors rely on a thumbs up/thumbs down for each individual show.
Or they rely on dealers, which takes us back to the market creating the stars.
Is there a better way? How should novices learn about contemporary art? Do we leave them, sink-or-swim, to figure it all out for themselves? Or is the art world failing them and, ultimately, itself?
I think, though, that one would have to effectively indict "the market" in order to fully prove this thesis. The free (art) market does respond to the forces of shared "taste". What is wrong with that? Doesn't the art critic serve a master, too? The university, or some periodical or news media, together with it's readership and advertisers, are the constituents of the professional art critic. You'll notice that I didn't say: "artists" there. Where do they fit in? I would say that the artist's interaction with his buying market should be valued as a viable critique of art. There are filters there, too.
What do you think?
Guernica, Picasso
Pablo Picasso. (Spanish, 1881-1973). La belle qui passe. (1904). Ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 15 3/4"
The Card Sharps,
Love Conquers All,
The Incredulity of Saint Thomas
The Crucifixion of Saint Peter
Abstract on it's SideSpeaking of art criticism, at Art News Blog Dion Archibald recently posted this:
Interpreting Art - Artist or Critic?
Ana Finel Honigman has asked an interesting question over at the Guardian blog. She asks, Is an artist's idea of what their work means more important than the viewer's interpretation, or are they both valid?
I like the idea of a work of art doing its own talking. If it needs an explanation by the artist, he/she has probably made the work too complicated. An artist and an art critic should be two very different people. One creates art and the other talks about art.
I would still rather listen to an artist talk about art, rather than a critic talking about art though.
Here's what Ana Finel Honigman says..
"..many academics or critics exploit art's "messages" for self-interested methodological or political ends. But many excellent artists leave themselves defenseless against such hijacking because they cannot articulate persuasively why they do what they do. And further complicating these relationships is that many artists who can explain their work are more articulate verbally than visually, which is why much of bad art is not really art but is rather merely illustrations of ideas.." Guardian Blog
At first, many things about these threads had me in disagreement with them. I do prefer the truth of the artist's intention in a work, over an interpretation by an observer.
The battle royale in such a case would be the conflict between the interpretation of an artwork by the originating artist and that of a professional art critic. The artwork is the artist's intellectual property, after all. In a hypothetical court case about the meaning of an artwork, I would hope that the artist's words would prevail over the third party writer, no matter how "professional" they may be.
I read the threads a little closer, then, and I see that the writers are coming down on my side of the fence, too. Dion asks which character has the best interpretation of a given artwork, but he prefers the artist's words as at least being more interesting than a third party observer. The UK Guardian's Honigman indicts the motives of some critics' interpretations as self-serving, but then adjures the artist to get on the stick and try to provide their own interpretations before someone else does.
I guess I flew off the handle a bit quickly. It was the calling into question of the unity of meaning and intent that rubbed me wrong, I guess.
If you are an artist, did it ever occur to you that there is a very large and broad profession of individuals who make their livings in art, but who are not producing any art themselves? I don't condemn this, by the way. It just lets us know that we ought to be able to find our share of the pie, given that we are, er...artists, after all. The blue collar members of the art business, if you will. The hands on guys.
I get a chuckle from Honigman's statement:"... much of bad art is not really art but is rather merely illustrations of ideas.." It's another thread, but it's good to put a little thought into qualifying art.
In defense of the critic, their job is important to the artist and to the public at large. They should be trying to position a given work or body of art, or a given artist or collection of artists in a stream of context. Either a movement, a school of thought or a style. Or maybe the lack thereof - maybe this work of art is a watershed work, a breakthrough, as it were. My point is these are contexts bigger than the artist and his artwork, and it doesn't harm the artist when an art critic helps to identify or describe that.
I know there is a place for "radical" art criticism, and I will address that in a future post.
Is the art viewer's interpretation valid? Certainly. But a thing cannot, in truth, be both Thing "A" and Thing "B" at the same time. The observer can respond authentically any way they choose, but the artist had "A" in mind, and I value the discovery of that thing that has been called the artist's "oeuvre".
I know, I know - some artists will create "participative" works. Great, more power to them. There is always a comedian in the bunch. (Light-hearted joking, here.)
Comments, please...
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