Art as Microcosm (2004)

[Jonathan]

1 hour ago, anthony said:

Is art derived (and understood) from consciousness? Yes/no?

 

YES, MORON, YESSSS!!!!!!!

The answer is YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The next questions are: "Whose consciousness?" "Are all consciousnesses the same?" "Consciousness means to be aware. Are some people more aware than others?" "Or are all people limited to the same degree that Tony, Rand, Roger and Kamhiandtorres™ are?" "How did Tony, Rand, Roger and Kamhiandtorres™ achieve the status of possessing The Upper Cognitive and Aesthetic Limits of All of Mankind?" "Were they given some sort of objective test which measured their observational, visuospatial, aesthetic, and hermeneutical abilities?" "If so, where may I review the results of those tests, and where can I take the test myself?" "If we're attempting to identify the limits of human consciousness based on the assertions of these alleged authorities, I'll need to see some proof of the qualifications behind their claims of authority -- something objective, and not just their self-graded assertions."

J

 

 

[Jonathan]

22 minutes ago, anthony said:

When not art-empiricism, we get elitist-rationalist-art. Sides of the same false coin, Rand makes sense.

Not at all. There's nothing elitist about it. Normal people get it, along with the "elite."

 

22 minutes ago, anthony said:

Both ways, the dumb public doesn't know shit! We don't know how to see ... you see.

 

No. The public isn't dumb. You're dumb. You and other frantic Rand-followers who share the same severe visual limitations. The public gets it! As I mentioned earlier, the public loves Kapoor's work, due to their observing and experiencing so much more in it than cognitively substandard people, like you, do.

 

22 minutes ago, anthony said:

We need art courses on perspective, art history and whatever -- to understand a picture! -- what rubbish.

(I gotta listen to this grandstanding of visual techniques I knew from photography in my 20's. Nah).

There's the resentment!

I correctly identified the core problem earlier: This all comes down to your resenting the idea that others might observe, know and experience more than you can. You take their enjoyment of art that you don't grasp as being an insult! Why, they're not really enjoying it and finding it to be deeply meaningful, but just pretending to in order to make you feel inferior! You're so insecure that you need to lash out at people who are brighter than you because they are brighter than you!

It's nothing but a defense mechanism. Your notion of consciousness as pertaining to aesthetics is really nothing but a blurry mess bent around the misshapen form of your personal weaknesses and psychological problems.

J

[anthony]

Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.

If one distrusts his identification, he distrusts his consciousness. Then, his knowledge. Skepticism, iow.

So. Shall we move on to "abstract art", and what it has "achieved"?

Or perhaps, voluntarily educating oneself in the minor nuances of art which ~improve~ one's perception--and which I have never denied is valuable. But that's not what this is about. This is about elitism for the gifted few, who try to stifle philosophic enquiry.

[william.scherk]

11 minutes ago, anthony said:

So. Shall we move on to "abstract art", and what it has "achieved"?

Why not? Here is Michael Newberry's newest, again. It could serve as an almost-perfect frame to hang your ideas and values on, Tony.  It is without a doubt beautiful to some eyes.  Why not give your personal, individual, Rand-informed fully conscious reaction ... ?  

Why not?

See also the Newberry triptych above on the previous page. Can somebody sustain an argument on abstraction and consciousness in art, while using these recent works as examples?

Edited May 18, 2016 by william.scherk

[Jonathan]

Just now, anthony said:

Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.

If one distrusts his identification, he distrusts his consciousness. Then, his knowledge. Skepticism, iow.

Then quit practicing Skepticism by demanding that others distrust their identifications and consciousnesses! Quit telling other people that they don't observe and experience what they do, based on the illogical reasoning that if you don't experience it then they don't either!

10 minutes ago, anthony said:

This is about elitism for the gifted few, who try to stifle philosophic enquiry.

Yes, I agree that it's about elitism! You need to believe that you are elite, rather than the reality that you are dull, unaware, and unobservant! You need to believe that your cognitive limits are the elite, upper limits of all mankind, and therefore that anyone who claims to observe and experience more than you do must be lying! No one can possibly be more cognitively advanced or elite than you!

J

 

[Jonathan]

5 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

Why not? Here is Michael Newberry's newest, again. It could serve as an almost-perfect frame to hang your ideas and values on, Tony.  It is without a doubt beautiful to some eyes.  Why not give your personal, individual, Rand-informed fully conscious reaction ... ?  

Why not?

See also the Newberry triptych above on the previous page. Can somebody sustain an argument on abstraction and consciousness in art, while using these recent works as examples?

It just looks like a lump of poop that came out of a vagina. Ho-hum. Inspirational, huh. Poop and vaginas. The artist has a fixation with poop and vaginas. Whatever.

His Royal Published Highness,
Dodger Pissell

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, anthony said:

What are you now, another Wolf?

;)

Because you're sincere, I wish you well.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

On May 16, 2016 at 0:34 PM, william.scherk said:

What fun this thread is. Some carefully wrought insults are not being received. A micro black hole of discussion.

Quote

Anish Kapoor Coats “Cloud Gate” in the Darkest Black Known to Humanity

• by The Editors on April 1, 2016

Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” (2006) following the artist’s recent recoating in Vantablack (photo courtesy City of Chicago)

Taking advantage of his exclusive rights to make artistic use of the high-tech, light-absorbing material Vantablack, the British artist Anish Kapoor has covered the entire surface of his Chicago public sculpture “Cloud Gate” (2006) with it. The result, a looming black orb that neutralizes 99.965% of the radiation that hits it, is a far cry from the mirrored selfie beacon that Chicagoans and tourists have come to love.

“The public has had a decade to interact with the reflective surface of ‘Cloud Gate,’ and I felt it was time for a change,” Kapoor told Hyperallergic. “Whereas the sculpture was originally about play and surface appearance, I think the Vantablack version is more about introspection, about becoming disoriented, lost, and enveloped in an overwhelming void of nothingness.”

Visitors take selfies in front of Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” (photo by@iannahlouisehimel/Instagram)

In spite of the artist’s existential ideas about the revamped sculpture, the change of tone doesn’t seem to have deterred the droves of selfie-snappers. Since the artwork’s re-unveiling on Monday, tourists have been posting photos of themselves standing in front of or playfully cowering beneath the towering blob of blackness. Meanwhile, locals have taken to calling it “The Black Bean,” a twist on its prior nickname, “The Bean.”

“I didn’t believe my friends when they first told me that he’d covered the Bean in that ultra-black paint of his,” said Leigh Millicent, a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, who visited the sculpture earlier this week. “But he did, and it’s really, really black. Black as midnight on a moonless night.”

Kapoor said that he was pleased with his first public experiment with Vantablack and plans to spend the next year applying it to all of his large-scale outdoor works, beginning with his London tower, the fire-engine red “ArcelorMittal Orbit” (2012). “Since I started taking on these large public projects, the world has become a much darker place,” he said. “I want my work to reflect that.”

 

 

April Fool's?

J

[Mikee]

10 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

It just looks like a lump of poop that came out of a vagina. Ho-hum. Inspirational, huh. Poop and vaginas. The artist has a fixation with poop and vaginas. Whatever.

His Royal Published Highness,
Dodger Pissell

You are a really sick person Jonathan.  Perhaps this would help:  http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2011/07/how-to-recognize-and-fix-a-brain-infection/

[anthony]

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

Why not? Here is Michael Newberry's newest, again. It could serve as an almost-perfect frame to hang your ideas and values on, Tony.  It is without a doubt beautiful to some eyes.  Why not give your personal, individual, Rand-informed fully conscious reaction ... ?  

Why not?

See also the Newberry triptych above on the previous page. Can somebody sustain an argument on abstraction and consciousness in art, while using these recent works as examples?

Therefore? It's smoke, doing what smoke does. Well executed, but it doesn't do much for me. 

Is this one of those 'test the idiot Objectivists' with ambiguous images that you guys always put up? Maybe I could go into raptures about a diaphanous robe over a maiden's knees. You well know the 'abstract art' we are on about, not Impressionism.

 

[anthony]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

Because you're sincere, I wish you well.

--Brant

From one who once could out-cynic anyone, I thank you.

[Jonathan]

On May 18, 2016 at 3:51 PM, anthony said:

Therefore? It's smoke, doing what smoke does. Well executed, but it doesn't do much for me. 

Is this one of those 'test the idiot Objectivists' with ambiguous images that you guys always put up? Maybe I could go into raptures about a diaphanous robe over a maiden's knees. You well know the 'abstract art' we are on about, not Impressionism.

 

Let's put on our Rand Romanticizer Hats!

The painting is a joyous representation of smoke qua smoke. It's the ideal type of smoke that the ideal man would have swirling from his ideal cigarette which ideally signals that he is deep in thought -- the burning ember is like his mind or something, and the strands of smoke are like the complex and beautifully intertwined and perfectly integrated ideas that are flowing from the ember (which, if you'll recall, is like his mind). We can't see the ember, but we know it's there because everyone knows that old saying that "where there's smoke, it's probably coming from an ember."

The artist has not just copied smoke in reality, but has essentialized and idealized it, making it more beautiful and more real than smoke is in reality. No real smoke could ever look this perfect. The smoke takes us into a stylized, imaginary world, and allows us to experience what existence would be like if our wildest Objectivist wishes came true in reality! This is how smoke might and ought to be! It is smoke that is proper to man!

J

[william.scherk]

On 5/17/2016 at 1:51 PM, anthony said:

Is this one of those 'test the idiot Objectivists' with ambiguous images that you guys always put up?

Yes and no.  It is just a recent canvas by Michael Newberry.   Yes, it is a 'test' insofar as commenting on contemporary art is concerned.  It is kind of a challenge to you, Tony.  You discuss things in the abstract -- to my knowledge you do not select and feature illustrations to accompany your points.  To discuss art 'in the abstract' and then to be cowboy laconic on actual art works strikes me as bizarre and almost frightening. How can one talk about art without profuse (if only imaginative) references to actual art. That is Beyond Me.

Anyhow, no.  You are not an idiot. You have trouble expressing yourself in clear English, but that can be improved by careful editing and thinking about your intended audience.

Of all the smokey recent things from Newberry, this one below is one of my favourites. I like it for the free gesture. It has an exuberance and confidence that is so lovely to see in Newberry's production. He is not over-painting to the point of distortion or contortion, he is not finicking over a deep message to convey. 

If these recent things don't turn your crank, Tony, that is wonderful. We each have individual responses. That you can't say much more about it -- and yet complain about the lack of "Consciousness Talk" -- is kind of funny.   I should think that you could take any example of any art, and simply apply the Tony Treatment to it:  discuss the things that root the art-work (or dislocate it) in philosophy of mind, of Romanticism, of the dignity of Man, of the primacy of his consciousness in interpreting art, and in designing it. 

Tony, when you write above that 'everyone knows' ... what you are talking about when you are talking about awful abstract art -- please, please, try to understand that this is an unwarranted assumption.  It would do your argument and discussion better if you stuck to your guns and to your main argument points. Don't let the posting of a Newberry or two shut you up. If this is not a useful starting point, then for heaven's sake (and the sake of Reason), bring up examples of that which you are intending to be examples.

It is a pretty simple request: please try to illustrate your arguments about art.  And please take the time to more carefully edit your compositions for run-on sentences and garbled syntax and missing subjects and objects and over-long object-less subordinate clauses. That extra work will pay off in clarifying your thought.  

Edited May 20, 2016 by william.scherk
Added crabbiness

[Jonathan]

27 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

Of all the smokey recent things from Newberry, this is one of my favourites. I like it for the free gesture. It has an exuberance and freedom that is so lovely to see in Newberry's production.

Give me a break!!! I can't believe it!!! You can't be serious!!!!

"Gesture" and "exuberance," ha!!!!  What pretentious nonsense! Snooty artspeak! Emperor's New Clothes!!!!!!

I just told my wife, who, like me, is a refined and sensitive appreciator/authority of the arts, about your statement about the smoke painting, and she said, "No way!!! Get the fuck out of here!!! Stop pulling my leg!!! Cease attempting to fool or upset or bother me!!! William cannot truly believe that a painting of smoke can convey such things!!! He must be lying or insane!!!"

 

39 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

If these recent things don't turn your crank, Tony, that is wonderful. We each have individual responses. That you can't say much more about it -- and yet complain about the lack of "Consciousness Talk" -- is kind of funny.

It is indeed funny. And all too common in O-land. Rand's followers like to keep the rubber from meeting the road.

J

[william.scherk]

20 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

"Gesture" and "exuberance," ha!!!!  What pretentious nonsense! Snooty artspeak! Emperor's New Clothes!!!!!!

"Gesture" is about the only thing I retain from Grade 9 Art class.  The poor woman who was our teacher found it hard to make contact with her students, who were still mostly at  the construction paper, white glue and sparkle stage. She was not pretentious, except in her heavy sighs. which were recurrent.  

Why I recall her mention of "Gesture" is by virtue of the examples she brought to class.  She showed on a large scale -- in large paintings and sculptures of human form, in tableaux vivants, in various more lyrical compositions from the late Romantic period -- and she showed us on a small scale (in calligraphy) and in modernist tropes in graphics.   What she seemed to be telling me is that where there is 'living' or 'vital' gesture, there is life. Pretty basic.  And I can't be bothered to go check how poorly I now denote "Gesture."

Jonathan, kidding and archness aside (if I can), what is "Gesture," how is it possibly a shibboleth, or a too-elastic term, where does it help a person understand their visceral reaction to art -- what is it to you, and does my reaction to what I perceive as "Gesture" strike you odd?

For myself the reaction is an  emotional/technical appraisal gestalt, a snapshot of my mind and heart. When I like something I cannot always immediately discuss the details, but I can point to this and that and the other that rings my bells.  I would have to be paid money for actually putting together an essay on the recent things from our fellow OL member ...

What I thought was useful in pulling in these new Newberry's is to illustrate a step or side path of the artist's journey. These pictures no more typify Newberry's production than does his still lifes, or his intricate renderings of objects other than humans. Because we know a fair bit about his career, we can find them a mere sport, an emanation of a particular time and place and range of influences (including, perhaps criticism he received here). They mayn't be used to judge his entire oeuvre.  

But, again, to the personal crank. I know it was a critic of Newberry who gave us here notice of the newer canvases flying out of his studio wet.  I sure would be interested in a plain old Jonathan reaction, without perhaps dragging in poor Tony and the Ghosts of Arguments Past.

But hey.  

Edited May 20, 2016 by william.scherk

[anthony]

6 hours ago, william.scherk said:

Yes and no.  It is just a recent canvas by Michael Newberry.   Yes, it is a 'test' insofar as commenting on contemporary art is concerned.  It is kind of a challenge to you, Tony.  You discuss things in the abstract -- to my knowledge you do not select and feature illustrations to accompany your points.  To discuss art 'in the abstract' and then to be cowboy laconic on actual art works strikes me as bizarre and almost frightening. How can one talk about art without profuse (if only imaginative) references to actual art. That is Beyond Me.. [And so on, and so forth]

I am not stopping you having your coffee klatsch on art appreciation, and suchlike. Knock yourself out. I pursue what fascinates me and that tends to ideas, here the ~philosophy~ of art, against the background of existence and consciousness. There's reality and reason (conceptualization) for you.  It all concerns existence, the absolute subject of any and all art - plus - the minds that produce it and perceive it. Good enough?

You began (I lose track after a while, you do go on) by replying to my query: Shall we move on to "abstract art" and what it has "achieved"? - with "Why not?"

Very well, put up some abstract art, which Newberry's is certainly not. I'll see again if it bears out my argument that any art and artist that makes it impossible - to be really kind, "difficult" - to identify the nature and content of the artwork, has as consequence the undermining of men's rationality and mind, intended or not. By making men doubt their perception. Or he/she can't paint, and is faking it. Anyone else hanging around who has special insight into your abstract paintings, will also have their say, I imagine.

(And that's only 'abstract' art, apropos "identification". There's more, about Modern art which, while usually identifiable, is clearly meant to undermine the concept of "Value". Either way, there is quite a bit of art attacking identity - or value: which reveals itself as cause and effect -  some can see if you can't - in the philosophical-skepticism and rampant cynicism all over).

    

[william.scherk]

3 hours ago, anthony said:

Either way, there is quite a bit of art attacking identity - or value: which reveals itself as cause and effect -  some can see if you can't - in the philosophical-skepticism and rampant cynicism all over).

Garble.

Moving on, then. Use some illustrative examples now and again, Tony. It can't harm you or your arguments, but only strengthen.  Otherwise, all told, sadly, we are not communicating. Our encounters seem unable to solve problems or even be interesting.

Now that you mention it, the Newberry canvas above can of course be viewed as in no way a work of abstract art. I am almost staring to see the florid headgear of a drag queen and her henchmen, now that you focus my attention on the intelligible forms. A very disturbing chunk of sexualized gray swirls and genitals.  Most improper.  

Edited May 21, 2016 by william.scherk

[Roger Bissell]

To me, it's very Objectivist. Old-school Objectivist, where smoking was a big deal to heroes and heroines, and those who tried to emulate them.

If I owned it untitled, I would make a little brass plate to attach to the bottom of the frame saying: "Mind if I (paint) smoke?" 

REB

[Brant Gaede]

The value of attacking  the concept of "Value."

Leads me to the "value" of gibberish.

--Brant

?????

[anthony]

On 2016/05/21 at 4:53 AM, william.scherk said:

Garble.

Moving on, then. Use some illustrative examples now and again, Tony. It can't harm you or your arguments, but only strengthen.  Otherwise, all told, sadly, we are not communicating. Our encounters seem unable to solve problems or even be interesting.

 

Aren't there enough examples of 'modern art' in existence or in your memory all exactly pointing at dis-valuing of "value"? Modern art's distinct identifier is 'value-inversion' I'd say - instead of portraying a view of existence important to the artist (and potentially its viewers), largely it rather promotes a self-ironic, contemptuous "non-importance" of everything. The artist is saying: If something on a plinth under lights in an art gallery is considered an artwork, well, let's place a dirty toilet bowl up there and mock art, man's mind and the need of value in men's lives. That's been done, and many derivatives. You're very empirical, William. Use your imagination and do try to conceptualize the ideas. Modern art is a signifier, consequence and partial cause, of the general apathy and cynicism, I argue. (And there was an artist who sent out a dozen jars of his excreta to museums not long ago, one curator accepted one).

[anthony]

The "logic" of Modern and Abstract art, ad absurdum: If you accept art is "an expression" of an artist's mind, then any expression whatsoever is an artwork by an artist. If an artwork is paint on a canvas, then any canvas (paper..etc) with paint on it is art, by an artist.

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, anthony said:

Aren't there enough examples of 'modern art' in existence or in your memory all exactly pointing at dis-valuing of "value"? Modern art's distinct identifier is 'value-inversion' I'd say - instead of portraying a view of existence important to the artist (and potentially its viewers), it rather largely promotes a self-ironic, contemptuous "non-importance" of everything. The artist is saying: If something on a plinth under lights in an art gallery is considered an artwork, well, let's place a dirty toilet bowl up there and mock art, man's mind and the need of value in men's lives. That's been done, and many derivatives. You're very empirical, William. Use your imagination and do try to conceptualize the ideas. Modern art is a signifier, consequence and partial cause, of the general apathy and cynicism I argue. (And there was an artist who sent out a dozen jars of his excreta to museums not long ago, one curator accepted one).

Shit for brains is esthetics?

Anybody can be an "artist." There are no standards for that. The artist gains stature by what he produces or by self-evaluation, which could easily be fatuous.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

On May 16, 2016 at 0:51 PM, Jonathan said:

[....] Where people who are very aesthetically limited, visually unaware and unobservant -- like Roger, Tony, Kamhi and Torres, etc. -- see only the most obvious aspects of an abstract work, other people with normal aesthetic and visual/observational capacities see much more, such as the expressiveness of colors, surface textures, reflections, proportions, etc. And then there are people who have even more advanced knowledge, experience and sensitivities who see even more.

Let's try this one, from the final paragraph of Hilla Rebay's Introduction to the 1947 English translation of Point and Line to Plane. (The Introduction was originally written as a comendatory piece upon Kandinsky's death):

====  

//

// Quote - Hilla Rebay said - link:

// [...] conceived from the primary essence of creation.

====

In order to demonstrate that Hilla Rebay really was experiencing said "essence" upon contemplating Kandinsky's art, you'll first need to make a plausible case that there is said "essence."  Good luck.

Note: I'm not accusing Rebay of pretentiousness.  I think that she really was sincerely, deeply, profoundly moved by Kandinsky's art.  But must one be lacking in artistic sensitivity to doubt that whatever she experienced was in fact "the primary essence of creation"?

Ellen

[william.scherk]

Last week in New York, this oil on canvas item sold at auction for $2,405,000. I wondered at the difference in valuation between this item and another that changed ownership in 2014. That exchange at auction cost somebody or some entity $44,400,000**.  Not yet in Francis Bacon territory, but hey.

____________________

** the details of the transfer of value, which I searched down, are fun from an Objectivish/Capitalist/Altruism point of view.  

[william.scherk]

9 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

I'm not accusing Rebay of pretentiousness

Me neither. But. She sounds like there is more in her pipe-smoke than art -- reminding me of Madame Blavatsky once she gets up to a trot. Here's the truncquoat in context:

 

Edited May 25, 2016 by william.scherk
Added screen-capture images from Google Book cite