A Couple of Astract Paintings--Thoughts?

[Newberry]

In other places I discussed the values I have gotten from abstract artists, but I wonder what others value about it, if at all. Here is a Kline and a Kandinsky, but if you would like to discuss some other abstract piece, by all means post it and do so. And, if you want to compare it to representational work, for clarity, that would also be welcomed.

I promise to be friendly and considerate--I am just curious about how others see abstract art.

Edited July 23, 2008 by Newberry

[Jonathan]

Here's another approach:

What's your response to each painting? Which emotions do the images evoke, if any? Can you objectively identify the artist's meaning that each image communicates? What are the artists' "senses of life" as revealed in their art? Which "metaphysical value-judgments" do the images imply or reveal? Which artists believe in volition and mankind's ability to achieve his goals, and which are determinists who believe that mankind is fated to defeat and despair?

J

[zantonavitch]

High-quality abstract art is pleasant to look at, and often constitutes a nice design. But it doesn't seem like art. Maybe it would make for good wallpaper or floor tiles...

Here's a question for Michael (or anyone else who dares): What's the difference between a good illustrator and a mediocre representational/realist artist?

[Newberry]

Kyrel:

What's the difference between a good illustrator and a mediocre representational/realist artist?

!!!

[Ellen Stuttle]

Kyrel:

What's the difference between a good illustrator and a mediocre representational/realist artist?

!!!

A good illustrator is good, and a mediocre representational/realist artist is mediocre?

Couldn't (ok, I could, but I didn't) resist it.

Ellen

___

[tjohnson]

High-quality abstract art is pleasant to look at, and often constitutes a nice design. But it doesn't seem like art. Maybe it would make for good wallpaper or floor tiles...

Here's a question for Michael (or anyone else who dares): What's the difference between a good illustrator and a mediocre representational/realist artist?

No difference.

[Brant Gaede]

High-quality abstract art is pleasant to look at, and often constitutes a nice design. But it doesn't seem like art. Maybe it would make for good wallpaper or floor tiles...

Here's a question for Michael (or anyone else who dares): What's the difference between a good illustrator and a mediocre representational/realist artist?

Ego.

--Brant

[william.scherk]

Here's a question for Michael (or anyone else who dares): What's the difference between a good illustrator and a mediocre representational/realist artist?

Maybe the difference is that of market. There is a middleman for the illustrator, whose work is done to contract and for a specific purpose not of the artist's direct choosing. The illustrator gives up his work to another. The artist does not compromise for a middleman -- he has no one to 'report to' with his product.

What this says about an artist who works under constraints of theory, subject, style and media to an untoward degree, I don't know. How many representational/realist artists seem to have an internal 'middleman' directing their output?

[james lee shay]

Here's another approach:

What's your response to each painting? Which emotions do the images evoke, if any? Can you objectively identify the artist's meaning that each image communicates? What are the artists' "senses of life" as revealed in their art? Which "metaphysical value-judgments" do the images imply or reveal? Which artists believe in volition and mankind's ability to achieve his goals, and which are determinists who believe that mankind is fated to defeat and despair?

J

Jonathan,

This is a good set of comparisons, well-constructed, but I can't answer the "sense of life", "metaphysical value-judgments" and other Rand-like questions by looking at an artist's art.

I like both of the paintings in Michael's images. I think they're art. They move me. When I have time I'd like to say why.

Both you and Michael look at this problem as artists, visually, which is the right way. I believe you're not attacking it. But, I don't like the sometimes inane pissing contests that have, from time to time, evolved here around abstract art. I mentioned to a poster on this thread that, as far as the abstraction vs. realism war in his mind goes, the battle is long over. Unless one wants to live with others on some marginalized edge, assured of never finding fulfillment, it's pointless. The dogs have barked and the caravan has passed.

Jim

I signed up here again differently because I got tired of fighting with the member recognition system with regard to my former name listing. It would, for an instant, open the site before closing it. I tried using the reset assembly, but it became circular, continually referring me to itself, and then rejecting the information.

[Dragonfly]

Time to resurrect an earlier post that seems appropriate here:

An interesting example of increasing abstraction in the work of an artist is a series of paintings of trees by Mondriaan, where you can see the transition from a recognizable tree to an increasingly abstract geometric pattern:

The Red Tree - 1908

The Grey Tree - 1911

Apple Tree - 1912

[Newberry]

Maybe the difference is that of market. There is a middleman for the illustrator, whose work is done to contract and for a specific purpose not of the artist's direct choosing. The illustrator gives up his work to another. The artist does not compromise for a middleman -- he has no one to 'report to' with his product.

Good post.

What this says about an artist who works under constraints of theory, subject, style and media to an untoward degree, I don't know. How many representational/realist artists seem to have an internal 'middleman' directing their output?

That is an interesting way of looking at it, but the idea would not be limited to representational artists, the postmodernist have different kinds of constraints, but parameters just as well.

[Newberry]

Jim:

...as far as the abstraction vs. realism war in his mind goes, the battle is long over.

I think the "battle" can still play on the hearts and minds of the artists caught between the two--they are different.

[Newberry]

What's your response to each painting? Which emotions do the images evoke, if any? Can you objectively identify the artist's meaning that each image communicates? What are the artists' "senses of life" as revealed in their art? Which "metaphysical value-judgments" do the images imply or reveal? Which artists believe in volition and mankind's ability to achieve his goals, and which are determinists who believe that mankind is fated to defeat and despair?

I would think art to be very boring, kind of like "ooh, what a lovely color to go over the couch," if these kinds of concepts weren't part of it. And these kinds of ideas have been around a long time, for example, in religious art like Christ on the Cross.

[Jonathan]

Here's a question for Michael (or anyone else who dares): What's the difference between a good illustrator and a mediocre representational/realist artist?

Over on OO, Nicholas Provenzo has been posting reviews of Norman Rockwell's work. Here's his review of The Homecoming Marine.

Is the painting an "illustration" or is it "representational/realist art"?

It was painted with the knowledge that it would appear on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, and my understanding is that it and most of Rockwell's other cover paintings were created at Rockwell's discretion, with no creative input from the Post's editors. Does that somehow make it less than "fine art"?

Maybe the difference is that of market. There is a middleman for the illustrator, whose work is done to contract and for a specific purpose not of the artist's direct choosing. The illustrator gives up his work to another. The artist does not compromise for a middleman -- he has no one to 'report to' with his product.

Does the fact that an illustrator contracts for a specific purpose mean that he can't express his independent artistic vision in his work in addition to complying with his client's utilitarian requirements, much as an architect does? If Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish and Mary GrandPre were hired to illustrate the same text, each of their distinctly individual styles or visual personalities would show through as strongly as Frank Lloyd Wright's, Frank Gehry's and Santiago Calatrava's would if hired to submit designs for the same building site.

What this says about an artist who works under constraints of theory, subject, style and media to an untoward degree, I don't know. How many representational/realist artists seem to have an internal 'middleman' directing their output?

Exactly. I don't think that working under a contract, and for a specific purpose not of the artist's direct choosing, is necessarily a defining aspect of illustration. The online dictionaries/-pedias define "illustration" as visual matter that is generally used to represent, clarify or decorate a text. One needn't be under contract with someone else to do so. In fact, an artist could "illustrate the text" by painting characters and scenes similar to those in his favorite author's novels, or by basing his images on his favorite philosopher's descriptions of what heroes or heroic art should look like, or by fleshing out or mimicking his favorite novelist/philosopher's rewritings of Greek mythology.

J

[Jonathan]

What's your response to each painting? Which emotions do the images evoke, if any? Can you objectively identify the artist's meaning that each image communicates? What are the artists' "senses of life" as revealed in their art? Which "metaphysical value-judgments" do the images imply or reveal? Which artists believe in volition and mankind's ability to achieve his goals, and which are determinists who believe that mankind is fated to defeat and despair?

I would think art to be very boring, kind of like "ooh, what a lovely color to go over the couch," if these kinds of concepts weren't part of it. And these kinds of ideas have been around a long time, for example, in religious art like Christ on the Cross.

I'm not suggesting that art should be meaningless to us, that we shouldn't have profound responses to it, or that we should treat it like choosing a fabric color for a couch. The point is that neither the still life paintings nor the abstract paintings that I posted communicate objectively identifiable "artists' meanings," or the artists' "metaphysical value-judgments," or the artists' views on free will. The representational images do not have meanings which are any more "intelligible," as Rand uses the term, than the abstract images.

J

Edited July 23, 2008 by Jonathan

[Mike Hardy]

Kyrel:

What's the difference between a good illustrator and a mediocre representational/realist artist?

!!!

A good illustrator is good, and a mediocre representational/realist artist is mediocre?

Couldn't (ok, I could, but I didn't) resist it.

Ellen

___

I have to agree with this one. -- Mike Hardy

PS: Ellen are you writing something for publication?

You've suggested on some occasions that you're

guilty of having a life, so I hope that or something

like that is why.

[Mike Hardy]

OK, being too dumb to discuss what Roland Pericles

might call the "prose and cons" of this topic, I "hear

buy" (as Roland would say) offer for readers'

consideration this example of representationalist

art, found in the world's largest non-military

cemetery:

<http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Hh-friedhof-ohlsdorf-bombenopfer.jpg>

Carlo Karges, among others, is buried there. If

you don't know who Carlo Karges was, he's the

author of a work that all of you know but may

associate with someone else's name. -- Mike Hardy

Kyrel:

What's the difference between a good illustrator and a mediocre representational/realist artist?

!!!

A good illustrator is good, and a mediocre representational/realist artist is mediocre?

Couldn't (ok, I could, but I didn't) resist it.

Ellen

___

I have to agree with this one. -- Mike Hardy

PS: Ellen are you writing something for publication?

You've suggested on some occasions that you're

guilty of having a life, so I hope that or something

like that is why.

[Jonathan]

Carlo Karges, among others, is buried there. If

you don't know who Carlo Karges was, he's the

author of a work that all of you know but may

associate with someone else's name. -- Mike Hardy

19 Ayn Read Bull Loons?

J

[Edited to change the spelling error "Red" to the correct "Read"]

Edited July 27, 2008 by Jonathan

[Ellen Stuttle]

19 Ayn Read Bull Loons?

J

[Edited to change the spelling error "Red" to the correct "Read"]

Off with both your heds. I don't want that silly Read Bull Loon toon playing in mine (rhymes with Ayn).

LNS

PS: Yes, Mike Hardy, or something to that effect.

___

[Mike Hardy]

Carlo Karges, among others, is buried there. If

you don't know who Carlo Karges was, he's the

author of a work that all of you know but may

associate with someone else's name. -- Mike Hardy

19 Ayn Read Bull Loons?

J

[Edited to change the spelling error "Red" to the correct "Read"]

Jonathan, that is an excellent pun, worthy of Roland Pericles. Maybe I'll plagiarize it. -- Mike Hardy

[dongrimme]

High-quality abstract art is pleasant to look at, and often constitutes a nice design. But it doesn't seem like art. Maybe it would make for good wallpaper or floor tiles...

I am in no way knowledgable about "art", but my lay opinion is consistent with yours. [Didn't Ms. Rand say something to this effect in, perhaps, The Romantic Manifesto?]

My wife and I moved recently and we purchased several small accent rugs – all with colorful, abstract designs. And we have a print of a Native American rug (with a colorful, non-representational design) hanging on the wall. I don't stare at them in contemplation, but they make our home look nice.

I feel the same way about most New Age music (much of which I like very much). I like living with it in the background. That is not how I feel about a Shostakovich symphony or even good pop music, which command my attention.

Don

[anonrobt]

What's your response to each painting? Which emotions do the images evoke, if any? Can you objectively identify the artist's meaning that each image communicates? What are the artists' "senses of life" as revealed in their art? Which "metaphysical value-judgments" do the images imply or reveal? Which artists believe in volition and mankind's ability to achieve his goals, and which are determinists who believe that mankind is fated to defeat and despair?

I would think art to be very boring, kind of like "ooh, what a lovely color to go over the couch," if these kinds of concepts weren't part of it. And these kinds of ideas have been around a long time, for example, in religious art like Christ on the Cross.

I'm not suggesting that art should be meaningless to us, that we shouldn't have profound responses to it, or that we should treat it like choosing a fabric color for a couch. The point is that neither the still life paintings nor the abstract paintings that I posted communicate objectively identifiable "artists' meanings," or the artists' "metaphysical value-judgments," or the artists' views on free will. The representational images do not have meanings which are any more "intelligible," as Rand uses the term, than the abstract images.

J

Other than the top left and bottom left, the others seem to be clips rather than the full painting shown, so of course, along with them being too small to see the details, grasping their meanings may be difficult... as for such as Pollock and Kandinsky, makes ok rug patterns and/or other decorative uses, but not as fine art, any more than gibberish makes for literature...

[Jonathan]

Other than the top left and bottom left, the others seem to be clips rather than the full painting shown, so of course, along with them being too small to see the details, grasping their meanings may be difficult... as for such as Pollock and Kandinsky, makes ok rug patterns and/or other decorative uses, but not as fine art, any more than gibberish makes for literature...

All of the images that I posted are basically as I found them on the web, and are the full images of the artworks, with the possible exception that in reducing them and placing them side by side into the format the I chose, I may have shaved off two or three millimeters from some of the images' edges. There is nothing missing to provide context that will help you to see some sort of story in them. There are no small details that you're not seeing that would turn the images into the type of blunt visual literature that would meet your Objectivist expectations.

So, since you don't appear to be capable of objectively identifying any of the "artists' meanings" that the images communicate, or the artists' "senses of life" as revealed in their art, or the "metaphysical value-judgments" that the images reveal, or which artists believe in volition and mankind's ability to achieve his goals and which are determinists who believe that mankind is fated to defeat and despair, then apparently all of the images, including the realistic ones, are "gibberish" -- very much like the music and architecture that I've asked you and hundreds of other Objectivists to objectively explain the meanings of.

There sure is a lot of stuff that doesn't qualify as art according to Objectivist theories, eh? But, hey, let's cling to those theories anyway!

J

[anonrobt]

Other than the top left and bottom left, the others seem to be clips rather than the full painting shown, so of course, along with them being too small to see the details, grasping their meanings may be difficult... as for such as Pollock and Kandinsky, makes ok rug patterns and/or other decorative uses, but not as fine art, any more than gibberish makes for literature...

All of the images that I posted are basically as I found them on the web, and are the full images of the artworks, with the possible exception that in reducing them and placing them side by side into the format the I chose, I may have shaved off two or three millimeters from some of the images' edges. There is nothing missing to provide context that will help you to see some sort of story in them. There are no small details that you're not seeing that would turn the images into the type of blunt visual literature that would meet your Objectivist expectations.

So, since you don't appear to be capable of objectively identifying any of the "artists' meanings" that the images communicate, or the artists' "senses of life" as revealed in their art, or the "metaphysical value-judgments" that the images reveal, or which artists believe in volition and mankind's ability to achieve his goals and which are determinists who believe that mankind is fated to defeat and despair, then apparently all of the images, including the realistic ones, are "gibberish" -- very much like the music and architecture that I've asked you and hundreds of other Objectivists to objectively explain the meanings of.

There sure is a lot of stuff that doesn't qualify as art according to Objectivist theories, eh? But, hey, let's cling to those theories anyway!

J

Oh, a few things could be said, despite them being too small to include telling details...

To begin with, there is a difference between a work done with contemplation in mind and one done as a recorder - for despite the advent of photography to remove the recorder mode which inflicted artists from millenia ago, many artists never grasped the freedom gained and only intuited the contemplation in their preferences of what was wished to be painted...

Given that, tho, one can note the top left and bottom left are formal floral arrangements, which in itself reflect a consensus of humanity being important, and that structure or orderliness is an attribute consequence.... the same can be said of the second down and the fourth, as these, too, reflect humanity's presence - the one being a garden and the other cultivated roses, and indeed the garden one evokes the emotion of gaiety and festive delight, tho not too much as the cropped universe only alludes to humanity by what it is and not by an overtness... the impressionist forest scene, however, involves nothing human - its universe is 'manless', yet even here it shows a point of upliftedness with the solo tree in the clearing, like a ballerina pirouetting on the floor, despite the subdued quietedness possibly pointing to the lessening of optimism as fall is preferred to, say, spring... the fall leaves, full of blemishes and deliberately so close cropped, have the same sense of decay...

The ones on the right leave little emotion other than the so-called psychological ones of color responses, best viewed in the one across from the leaves - the brightness of a drunken festivity - and the Pollock, bleary dismalness of low chroma best suited as a rug decorative but nothing more [unless perhaps in a psychiatrist office as a case study], or the second down as perhaps a tile design... indeed, the tree on the left side is so abstracted and so emphasizing chaos it might as well be a pattern for use too...

[Brant Gaede]

Other than the top left and bottom left, the others seem to be clips rather than the full painting shown, so of course, along with them being too small to see the details, grasping their meanings may be difficult... as for such as Pollock and Kandinsky, makes ok rug patterns and/or other decorative uses, but not as fine art, any more than gibberish makes for literature...

All of the images that I posted are basically as I found them on the web, and are the full images of the artworks, with the possible exception that in reducing them and placing them side by side into the format the I chose, I may have shaved off two or three millimeters from some of the images' edges. There is nothing missing to provide context that will help you to see some sort of story in them. There are no small details that you're not seeing that would turn the images into the type of blunt visual literature that would meet your Objectivist expectations.

So, since you don't appear to be capable of objectively identifying any of the "artists' meanings" that the images communicate, or the artists' "senses of life" as revealed in their art, or the "metaphysical value-judgments" that the images reveal, or which artists believe in volition and mankind's ability to achieve his goals and which are determinists who believe that mankind is fated to defeat and despair, then apparently all of the images, including the realistic ones, are "gibberish" -- very much like the music and architecture that I've asked you and hundreds of other Objectivists to objectively explain the meanings of.

There sure is a lot of stuff that doesn't qualify as art according to Objectivist theories, eh? But, hey, let's cling to those theories anyway!

J

Oh, a few things could be said, despite them being too small to include telling details...

To begin with, there is a difference between a work done with contemplation in mind and one done as a recorder - for despite the advent of photography to remove the recorder mode which inflicted artists from millenia ago, many artists never grasped the freedom gained and only intuited the contemplation in their preferences of what was wished to be painted...

Given that, tho, one can note the top left and bottom left are formal floral arrangements, which in itself reflect a consensus of humanity being important, and that structure or orderliness is an attribute consequence.... the same can be said of the second down and the fourth, as these, too, reflect humanity's presence - the one being a garden and the other cultivated roses, and indeed the garden one evokes the emotion of gaiety and festive delight, tho not too much as the cropped universe only alludes to humanity by what it is and not by an overtness... the impressionist forest scene, however, involves nothing human - its universe is 'manless', yet even here it shows a point of upliftedness with the solo tree in the clearing, like a ballerina pirouetting on the floor, despite the subdued quietedness possibly pointing to the lessening of optimism as fall is preferred to, say, spring... the fall leaves, full of blemishes and deliberately so close cropped, have the same sense of decay...

The ones on the right leave little emotion other than the so-called psychological ones of color responses, best viewed in the one across from the leaves - the brightness of a drunken festivity - and the Pollock, bleary dismalness of low chroma best suited as a rug decorative but nothing more [unless perhaps in a psychiatrist office as a case study], or the second down as perhaps a tile design... indeed, the tree on the left side is so abstracted and so emphasizing chaos it might as well be a pattern for use too...

I can't penetrate this prose even using all of my vast mental powers, but I preferred all the paintings on the left to those on the right.

--Brant