Romantic Manifesto and Painting Talk, Questions?

[Jonathan]

37 minutes ago, anthony said:

If the sense of life of Munch's The Scream is not clear, what is?

The simple fact that you feel strongly that you know the "sense of life" of the character in The Scream does not magically make it so. The fact that you unquestioningly believe Rand's opinions that artists' always overtly depict their "metaphysical value-judgments" doesn't magically make it so.

Your feelings and your uninformed, uncritical opinions would need some actual proof to back them up.

Here's a great quote from KamhiandTorres™ on the subject:

Quote

 

The two paintings chosen by Newberry to make his case are Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People and The Scream by Edvard Munch. Of Liberty Leading the People, Newberry (2001a) observes:

[T]he central figure is a very physical woman in the act of striding over a rampart littered with dead fighters. She is encouraging the masses behind her onwards, the French flag raised in her outstretched arm. The setting of the scene is quite clear and the focus of details and the composition are selected and arranged to make her prominent. The clarity of the scene, combined with an emphasis on some elements, conveys that reality is knowable to the artist, and he exhibits a selective focus that makes the event intelligible.

In contrast, Newberry argues, the central figure of The Scream

has a sexless face that is out of proportion and rubber-like. The background is swirling and the figure is on a bridge that is plunging downward in an impossible manner. The painting projects that humans are sexless and non-solid, without muscles or bone structure, and hardly intelligible as real humans. The painting also indicates that the universe swims and shifts, that its nature is unpredictable and unknowable. 

While we do not object to Newberry’s claim that Delacroix’s painting implies (not “conveys”) that “reality is knowable to the artist,” we would argue that any representational painting does this—including Munch’s Scream. Contrary to Newberry’s facile interpretation, the reality Munch was concerned with conveying was not the physical appearance of external reality but, rather, the inner, emotional reality of an overwhelming sense of terror. The artist’s meaning is not that “humans are sexless and non-solid, without muscles or bone structure” or that the universe, in general, “swims and shifts, that its nature is unpredictable and unknowable.” What Munch was getting at was something more like: “This is what it feels like to be gripped by terror (regardless ofone’s gender)—one feels limp and helpless, at the mercy of an unknown power in an unstable realm.” While the image is not one we are personally drawn to, it is a powerful expression of a moment in the artist’s own experience of life—a life beset, as he reported, by illness, insanity, and the death of close family members.

Notwithstanding such a somber view, bred in large measure of early personal tragedy, other works by Munch depict anatomically differentiated men, women, and children, in an intelligible natural world that is neither swimming nor shifting, and they thus belie the simplistic generalization Newberry draws from The Scream. Though this painting is one of Munch’s most expressionistically stylized images and has therefore been widely exploited as an icon of modernism, it is by no means wholly representative of his work. When viewed in the context of his life’s output, it is a sobering reminder of the futility of Newberry’s approach to artistic “detection.”

 

Heh. I love their use of "facile," "simplistic" and "futility." Their use of those terms are dead on balls accurate. 

In reading the above K&T™ quotes, Tony, has it started to sink in that there are complexities to the issue which you hadn't considered in your Rand-demented haste and hostility? See, the fact that an artist shows or expresses a given event, attitude or mood, doesn't necessarily mean that it represents his comprehensive "sense of life" or "view of existence." Get it? It's like when Rand showed the heroes in her novel We The Living failing to achieve their goals, and she delivered the totally devastating and disappointing tragic ending, it would be  completely irrational to suggest that that was her "sense of life" and her "metaphysical value-judgment." Understand yet? See how the weapon can so easily be used against Rand, and therefore that it's not a very good weapon with which to attempt to smear others?

J

[anthony]

The most salient point that comes out for me, is that one's judgment of a painting is made for oneself alone, almost completely. It's not a judgement necessarily made for public exposure and critique (as with a professional art critic). To the extent of one's rationality and knowledge, and the extent it is of aid and benefit to one's conceptualizing at that time, is its value (even a picture rated of non-value by one). That is, it is of ~objective~ value, after making an ~objective~ assessment to one's best capability. This is as distinct from an intrinsic "perfect judgment", of course never possible. And, from the 'subjectivity' of anything goes for anyone.

At bottom, as I see it, life is short and certainty is long, and one is only able to proceed on what one sees and knows NOW, correcting errors as one finds them. All the more emphatically, with art and its complexity and what you take from it, or leave behind.

I find I agree with the assessments of both Newberry and K-T,  though the latters' slights on "artistic detection" suggests their more intellectualized, less individual approach. However, does one really have to know all the ins and outs of an artist, e.g. his brushes with "illness, insanity and death" (that's another, selective "detection" by Kamhi-Torres, I think) or, say, that he was drunk at the time etc.etc., to know WHAT one of his paintings represents to one, and what can be inferred from it? Is it so unfair to Munch, that one accepts the existential terror which he (honestly) portrayed in a single painting - as an end in itself - regardless of his other works and history, and concludes that such concretized horror is NOT how one views and defines life? (The opposite, in fact). I don't think it's unjust to an artist, if you want to take art seriously at all.

The Scream stands for me as one of the dark senses of life and mv-j's. I think it could be true that even Rand showed a little s.o.l. bleakness in the finale of WTL, maybe somewhat despairingly at that age she was, concerning that tyrannous Soviet system. Although her character of Kira is one of my favorites, it's as if she 'had to be' shot in the end (for Rand's "authenticity' to the brutal regime), but still she died on her own terms, never beaten down. As Rand wrote too, a voltional consciousness defined by romantic fiction is both, but not always seen together in novels: of an individual creating his worthy character - and of him/her succeeding in reaching his goals. Kira attained one of them.

[Thorn]

On ‎2016‎-‎06‎-‎18 at 6:55 PM, Jonathan said:

Color-wise, we're thinking the same, but lighting-wise, I'd eliminate the back/side light, and illuminate the scene from the viewer's position (the character is already looking at us, so our startling him and shining a light in his face might as well be the cause of his anxiety). But rather than a small point of intense light, like that of a candle, lantern or flashlight, I'd make the light source unnatural by diffusing it and spreading it out, as if what the character is looking at is the size of a human form and emitting a ghostly glow, which, given the setup of the scene, would mean a combination of straight-on and under-lighting. Soft, diffused highlights and shadows, neutrals, blues and greens.

J

Ah, yes. I wonder why I didn't think of that. Maybe because I was blind drunk, or maybe because I tend to associate such lighting with spookyness (which is not quite right for desperation). But, I think your lighting scheme would work really well - the way I picture it. Give him an uncanny glow, with that expression, tweak the palette and I think you would get a very strong sense of desperation.

I think it would be a good exercise to do some paintovers when I go on vacation.

[Thorn]

On 2016-06-18 at 4:28 PM, anthony said:

A masterful work and why change it? The high key lighting gives it a lighter and less serious touch, more of momentary hair-pulling frustration/exasparation (at his wife, say) than dark desperation I think, ditto his expression. The tendons of his hands and wrists seem to have been paid much of the painter's attention, beautifully done.

Maybe the question was meant to make you think about the asethetic qualities aside from the narrative, and not a suggestion that the painting needed changing? You know, actual considerations you'd have to make as an artist. Considerations i'm sure Gustave Courbet did make.

How are you supposed to even discuss art if don't have a firm grasp of these aspects?

[anthony]

23 hours ago, Thorn said:

Maybe the question was meant to make you think about the asethetic qualities aside from the narrative, and not a suggestion that the painting needed changing? You know, actual considerations you'd have to make as an artist. Considerations i'm sure Gustave Courbet did make.

How are you supposed to even discuss art if don't have a firm grasp of these aspects?

Every painting made could have been styled by the artist a large number of other ways - though wasn't - but what's there stopping anyone later, from re-visualizing/modifying every picture, as a visual or practical exercise? The question doesn't "make" me rethink the possibilties, but I concede the point. Also, aesthetic qualities (stylization) are inseparable from "the narrative" (a subject), and in turn, the subject indicates what was highly significant to the artist . 'What' is there depends on 'how' it is done and 'why' it was made, briefly.