Kandinsky


Kat

Abstract Expressionism  

21 members have voted

  1. 1. Kandinsky - Is it art?

    • Yes
      12
    • No
      8


Recommended Posts

Dragonfly wrote,

Do I smell an argument from authority here? The fact that there is a lot of rubbish in abstract art doesn't imply that all abstract art is made without skill or vision, just as the existence of a lot of worthless novels doesn't imply that all novels are trash, and that literature therefore isn't art (or mutatis mutandis, music).

I think that "Mutatis Mutandis Mantis" might be a good title for my splatter painting.

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 92
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Dragonfly wrote,
Do I smell an argument from authority here? The fact that there is a lot of rubbish in abstract art doesn't imply that all abstract art is made without skill or vision, just as the existence of a lot of worthless novels doesn't imply that all novels are trash, and that literature therefore isn't art (or mutatis mutandis, music).

I think that "Mutatis Mutandis Mantis" might be a good title for my splatter painting.

J

An artist of your skill...doing a splatter painting. Shame. What I see is a Julliard trained musician who dabbles with modernist philosophy--playing the role of a postmodernist "piano player" who sits in front of his piano for an hour while in concert---and plays nothing.

"I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly." [Michel De Montaigne].

Edited by Victor Pross
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Art & Physics, Parallel Visions of Space, Time and Light

Leonard Shlain, 1991

<<As the new century progressed, post-cubist artists developed styles that refined flatness in their images. Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian all eliminated the very notion of perspective from their work, and modern art then entered a phase in which lack of depth was de rigueur. Depth became anathema, and its absence has carried forward into the remainder of the century until one can safely say that painting-as-pancake has been one of the most enduring features of this century's art. This compressed space is what a viewer would see looking forward or backward from the observation car of a high-speed relativistic train.>>

***

<<As a result of insights garnered from both relativity and quantum mechanics, the field more than the particle came to be recognized as the true nexus of reality. Walter Thirring, a physicist said:

"Modern theoretical physics...has put out thinking about the essence of matter in a different context. It has taken our gaze from the visible--the particle--to the underlying entity, the field. The presence of matter is merely a disturbance of the perfect state of the field at that place: something accidental, one could almost say, merely a "blemish"...Order and symmetry must be sought in the underlying field."

In Einstein's formulation of the special theory it was the field of light itself that determined the structure of space and time. Quantum physicists discovered that "things" constructed out of matter originated in fluctuations of insubstantial fields of energy. Since the field was made of nothing and was invisible, it had to remain a mental abstraction. Painters, too, began to explore the idea of art without an image. Though the great movement of abstract art began in 1910 with Kandinsky, it culminated in 1945 with Abstract Expressionism in New York. This tight-knit group of artists went further than previous abstract painters to create new images that spoke directly to the issues Einstein considered concerning our perceptions of space, time and light.>>

****

<<Forty years before Einstein demonstrated that empty space was not nothingness but had real characteristics that could be expressed as geometry, Cezanne was already basing his art in geometry. Not only did he insist on simplifying shapes into the cone, the cylinder, and the sphere...in addition, he began to treat the space in his art as a geometry with tensile characteristics.

During the second decade of the twentieth century Kandinsky, the first abstract painter, assumed that space had an inherent geometry and organized many of his later abstract works geometrically. Coincidentally the Russian supremacists, headed by Malevich, and the Dutch De Stijl school embraced this geometrical motif enthusiastically. Mondrian, an outspoken proponent of De Stijl, asserted as a basic principle of his art that "force is geometry," about the same time Einstein's equations declared that space is geometry and the force of gravity is due to the shape of spacetime. A leading avant-garde artist and the most prominent physicist both concluded at the same time that space was in fact a geometry and force was due to this feature of space. A representative example of Mondrian's work is his "Composition (1933). Much later, in the 1960's, the minimalist artist Frank Stella created a series of paintings known as his "Protractor" series in which the space of the canvas is converted literally into a geometry--precisely as Einstein declared that it is.>>

RCR

Edited by R. Christian Ross
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Synchronicity, Christian. Not really, of course, just continuation of parallel tracks. I took the Torres and Kamhi book with me when I went to dinner at a restaurant near here and started reading their chapter about modern art. I was thinking, in objection to what they were saying, look, people, this was the 20th century, the century where in physics we were finally being able truly to get beneath the surface, to start to know what's there underlying the visible world. It's supposed to be wrong for artists to be as interested in penetrating down below appearances as the scientists were?

Also, something I've had in mind for several days about the trend toward abstract art. I've twice already quoted a comment I like (by ?) which I've remembered (approximately) as: "The function of art is never representational, even when it uses representational means." A qualification to that is portraiture and landscape painting, which in days past were the only ways of recording what people and scenes looked like. We didn't have photography back then. But methods of photographic recording (starting with daguerreotypy) began to be developed in the mid-nineteenth century. By the time the modernists were getting well underway, photography could be used for portraiture and landscape-recording purposes. (And meanwhile X-ray was developed, giving us pictures of certain underlying structures, in keeping with the point about the quest for what's underlying surfaces.)

Ellen

___

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd never heard of Shlain before, but judging from these quotes I haven't missed anything. This kind of pseudoscientific babbling reminds me of the nonsense Peikoff spouts in his Ominous Parallels, looking for connections everywhere to "prove" his thesis. How can you take seriously anyone who writes: "In Einstein's formulation of the special theory it was the field of light itself that determined the structure of space and time"? A quick look at the Amazon reviews confirmed my suspicions, this kind of idle speculations by someone who has little understanding of physics is worse than useless.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd never heard of Shlain before, but judging from these quotes I haven't missed anything. This kind of pseudoscientific babbling reminds me of the nonsense Peikoff spouts in his Ominous Parallels, looking for connections everywhere to "prove" his thesis. How can you take seriously anyone who writes: "In Einstein's formulation of the special theory it was the field of light itself that determined the structure of space and time"? A quick look at the Amazon reviews confirmed my suspicions, this kind of idle speculations by someone who has little understanding of physics is worse than useless.

Well, I certainly would agree that it is not a perfect thesis, and there are lots of gaps in his argument (most notably, there isn't a lot of corroboration from the artists themselves). But, he does not (like Peikoff) carry an arrogant, omniscient tone, nor make moral proclamations every other sentence. Shlain is rather like an early map-maker, proceeding by way of curiosity, and independent observation. And by the way, if you aren't out looking for connections, how do suppose to ever find them? Human knowledge is made out of connections, and in general I admire the quest for them.

Specifically, I find the idea of parallel paths with some meaningful connection points (bridges) between art and science to be quite interesting. Thinking about such things may or may not help to garner a greater understanding of the universe and the human context within it, but I find it interesting, none-the-less.

Shlain's book, in my opinion, is not without fault, but it is none-the-less an interesting, and at times thought provoking read.

RCR

Edited by R. Christian Ross
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dragonfly, your point about the physics in the Shalin excerpts being garbled is of course on target. But actually I think it doesn't contradict the thought that what the artists who started the modern art trend in the early 19th century were seeking visually was a parallel quest to the probing into underlying phenomena in physics. My belief is that it's no accident that among the people I know who genuinely like modernist art is a high percentage of physicists and mathematicians and biologists (and Jungians, who also are interested by what underlies appearances). I think that there was a cognate quest that was going on -- whatever specifically the modernists themselves said about their philosophic views. As Kevin Haggerty has pointed out, I've forgotten whether on this thread or another -- and I think as you've indicated as well -- what an artist says he or she is doing isn't necessarily a guide to what's gotten at in the work itself.

Ellen

___

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was thinking, in objection to what they were saying, look, people, this was the 20th century, the century where in physics we were finally being able truly to get beneath the surface, to start to know what's there underlying the visible world. It's supposed to be wrong for artists to be as interested in penetrating down below appearances as the scientists were?

Ellen,

This is one hell of an insightful statement. I love it, especially if you consider that art deals with the mind, not just the brain.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Victor wrote,

An artist of your skill...doing a splatter painting. Shame.

Why is it a shame? Paint is a product created by man. He invented it to protect and beautify his world. As a still life, a painting of a splatter of paint implies that man is active and using paint to improve the value of the objects which provide for or give meaning to his existence. It's a heroic symbol of productivity.

What subject matter would you prefer that I paint instead, the "ideal apple" that Rand described -- an entity whose existence and beauty are accidents of nature? Is that what you're saying, Victor, that you think man is a plaything of fate and that you resent the idea that I used my skills to present the opposite view?

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

http://www.prodos.com/archive036sansteadca...reativity1.html

MORE CAPITALISM MEANS

MORE AND BETTER ART!

"Artists flourish in a capitalistic system!" says Art Historian, Professor Lee Sanstead (Adjunct professor of Art History at Montclair State University and Caldwell College in New Jersey.)

So why are so many Artists so hostile towards Capitalism?

Proffessor Sanstead provides example after historic example of the link between Capitalism and Artistic quality and quantity. And in one chilling contrast compares the artists and the Arts of the free world with that of an oppressive regime such as modern Afghanistan.

Topics covered include:

The modern rejection of audiences and objective standards in Art. The descent into pure subjectivity and irrelevance. How the market is part of objectivity. Modern contempt of audiences and reality leads modern artists to seek state support i.e. to forcing people to 'buy' their work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Victor,

It is better to stick to aesthetics instead of economics in art. I haven't paid attention here in the USA, but I wager that it is the same as in Brazil. Down there, banks, law offices, corporate offices, doctor's offices, fancy hotels, etc., are full of abstract art on display. They buy the stuff in droves.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Victor,

It is better to stick to aesthetics instead of economics in art. I haven't paid attention here in the USA, but I wager that it is the same as in Brazil. Down there, banks, law offices, corporate offices, doctor's offices, fancy hotels, etc., are full of abstract art on display. They buy the stuff in droves.

Michael

Micheal,

It is better to stick to aesthetics instead of economics in art? Huh? Did you listen to the interview? It’s not me being interviewed.

Still, let address your post: Abstract painters have one talent: they have a talent for winning foundation grants and garnering critic’s kudos by making an impression at the right parties.

I have stressed that the word ‘art’ means—at the root---‘skill.’

The only skill exercised by the Modernists, however, is the one applied to marketing and public relations--because without the sustain of a huge network of deferential and submissive art critics, cynical art dealers, powerful museums and institutions that have great interest in its promotion. This glorified “high sounding nothing” of modernism would have disappeared long ago--destroyed by its own barrenness, while actual art would thrive as it does fulfill a human need of the mind. Finally, just to let you know, polls have been conducted: people purchase abstract painting as a decorative sublimate to their home—not as a work of art.

Question: why is there nevertheless government funding for modernist ‘art’ –while actual art thrives on the market on its own merits?

-Victor

Edited by Victor Pross
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Victor,

I don't deny that abstract artists seek and receive public grants. But this is not limited to modern art. Representational artists do too, all the time. The examples are all over the place. Right off the top of my head, this John Wayne Statue was a government commission for a statue to decorate the airport.

On the capitalistic market, are you saying that banks, etc., do not buy abstract art (and even commission it)?

Heh.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Victor,

I don't deny that abstract artists seek and receive public grants. But this is not limited to modern art. Representational artists do too, all the time. The examples are all over the place. Right off the top of my head, this John Wayne Statue was a government commission for a statue to decorate the airport.

On the capitalistic market, are you saying that banks, etc., do not buy abstract art (and even commission it)?

Heh.

Michael

Michael,

I know. In regards to that, this interview is very interesting.

http://www.prodos.com/archive014fundingkillscreativity.html

HOW GOVERNMENT FUNDING OF THE ARTS KILLS LEADERSHIP AND CREATIVITY

Do the Arts actually NEED government funding? Arguments used to defend funding such as - providing community access, it's too important to be left in private hands, necessary to shape national identity, countries like Australia are too small to succeed without it, etc. The historic development of Arts funding. Shifting the focus from creativity towards pleasing funding bodies. The importance of individual passion and how creative types are undercut by the funding regime.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I consider the abstract sculptures lining the streets of the downtown of my suburb an incitement to vandalism. This is, of course, all government funded. You see, some artists need the government to pay for their piece of shit brain ejaculations. I'm walking around my downtown with some friends tomorrow. I'll take some pictures if I remember.

My least favorite has to be the abomination that is on the corner of State and A. It is a red, metal sculptured which is roughly in the shape of my favorite sculpture ever (I don't know the name, it's the man throwing the discus, if anybody finds the name and posts a picture or link or something I'll be grateful). However, it is contorted, flattened, and generally destroyed. Holes are in it. It's distressing to think about.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am sure some readers will consider this comment little more than a nit, however it is something that has been irking me for awhile...and an accurate sense of art history is important.

The beginning of this thread asks the question of whether or not Kandinsky created "art". However, contrary to the title of the poll Kandinsky was not really a part of the "abstract expressionist" movement. Although the movement does spring in part from Kandinsky's ground-breaking abstract works, and borrows from his theories of color, typically, the "abstract expressionist" movement itself is considered to have come after Kandinsky (who died in 1944, and did much of his work in the early part of the 1900s).

According to some sources I've read, the term "abstract expressionism" may have been used to describe Kandinsky's work ~1920, however, the more commonly accepted genesis of the term (according to Wikipedia and other sources) is 1946 by an art critic named Robert Coates. Further, the movement did not gain much widespread popularity until the early 1950s.

Also, "abstract expressionism" is usually considered to be an American movement with its locus in New York City (Kandinsky was Russian). Jackson Pollack, Gottlieb, de Kooning, and Rothko are typical examples of the "abstract expressionist" movement.

RCR

Edited by R. Christian Ross
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now