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Posted on 10/31/2016
By Donald Fox
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Window with a Smiling Face
Sometimes I come across statements about art that make me laugh or give me a chuckle. Here are a few favorites.
“How vain painting is – we admire the realistic depiction of objects which in their original state we don’t admire at all.” – Pascal, Pensées (1670).
“That which hears more stupidities than anything else in the world is a painting in a museum.” – Edmund and Jules de Goncourt, Idées et Sensations (1866).
“There are two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk.” Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39).
“Painting, n. The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1881-1911).
“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982).
Posted on 10/30/2016 6:33:50 PM
By Donald Fox
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Abstract paintings appear challenging to some people if not outright obscure. A painting that represents something recognizable is a bit more comforting since the viewer at least feels that he or she knows what is being looked at – it’s a picture of something. This idea certainly held sway in Western art for over five hundred years. Subjects are basically the same as what is experienced day to day except when they turn mythical or fanciful, but even then a viewer can recognize a unicorn or mermaid notwithstanding never having seen one in real life.
Abstraction, though, is something else. The terrain is unfamiliar. There is no entry point to a swirl of colors, conglomeration of shapes, or a mass of texture. If these things are free form, then confusion likely will be the response. If, however, the shapes or colors have some organization, then a viewer might at least recognize a pattern and appreciate a pleasing arrangement.
In a landscape painting, a still life, a street scene, or interior scene, any of these with or without people, a viewer might infer a narrative of some kind or possibly question the presence or absence of human reference. These can be indicators of some larger meaning behind a particular rendered scene. The astute viewer may begin to notice similarity of shapes, repetition and variation among colors and other design elements that complement the visual subject. A viewer may also make associations with other visual experiences similar to the one represented. Anyone can do this with literature or music or other art forms and thus enlarge those experiences accordingly.
Music can be an interesting parallel to abstraction, especially instrumental music, since there is sound only. Even inexperienced listeners can respond emotionally to music and might possibly feel transformed in some way by its energy and power. A listener might associate certain music with a particular kind of experience and be able to describe that to another person. If so, the abstractness of the music has been made palpable and understood in a way outside the strict realm of musical sound. That emotional content of the music takes on meaning for the listener.
Abstract painting can be experienced very much like music except this experience is visual rather than audial. Color combinations, thick and thin paint, gestural movement of the artist’s brush or tool, contrasts created by color, shape, or form, all affect the image in whatever way the artist has chosen to create it. There can be ideas or philosophy behind the creation, which may be visible or not, or possibly may be intuited from the final piece. It is not likely that narratives will be suggested by these paintings although it is not out of the question depending on the imagination of the viewer. It might be noted that some symphonic musical pieces do have a text associated with them, which was part of the composer’s original musical concept. The same could be said for some abstract painting, but this begs the argument between a kind of symbolic abstraction and what some painters might call pure abstraction, the latter being strictly about visual experience that is not translatable in any way to verbal experience. I suppose one could make a verbal description of a painting, but it would have little to do with the direct experience of the painting itself – that would have to remain visual and emotional.
Abstraction is about using the physical tools of paint, canvas, and implements to create a visual experience. What the viewer does with that is something else entirely.
Posted on 10/29/2016 5:03:15 PM
By Donald Fox
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Dreams have been a source of inspiration for many artists if we rely on anecdotal accounts. Each of us, of course, has personal experience of dreams and stories that I have heard very greatly as to the nature of these experiences. My friend Tom, for example, fully believes that dreams are the result of chemical processing within the brain. He characterizes his own dreams as cartoons. They have no significance or relevance. They are the sleeping brain’s response to random firing of neurons stimulated by random chemical releases as the body goes through various stages of restorative relaxation.
Throughout history and literature, dreams are linked with various imaginings such as hallucinations, delusions, mirages, prognostications, presages, and other figments that are often highly symbolic, metaphorical, sometimes narrative, episodic, nonsensical, surrealistic, repetitive, visionary, prophetic, threatening, euphoric, transcendent, hyper-real, enigmatic, sensible, but often outside the realm of everyday logic. Dreams can be mythical, and many cultures interpret dreams in order to discover guidance for the individual or the group. The noted psychologist Carl Jung believed dreams to be expressions of the unconscious mind that gave evidence of the collective unconscious or universal mind that all humans share (not that we share one mind but that we share patterns of conscious and unconscious behavior). Jung also suggested that dreams were one way that the conscious and unconscious minds blended into a whole, a process he termed individuation.
Many psychologists who subscribe to some form of dream interpretation suggest that rather than there being specific symbols that always mean the same thing, dream images should be seen in context of the individual’s life experience. This is similar to the idea that although we may have similar experiences, we do not always interpret those experiences in the same way. Red, therefore, may not always evoke passion or excitement. Its meaning or emotional response may well differ from person to person. We may still find some universal symbols, but those symbols may also take on other meanings for some people.
Similarly, we find that art has multiple meanings and is open to varying interpretations. This in itself is one strong reason that dreams are such powerful resources for artists and other creative individuals. The power of dreams lies in possibility just as the power of art allows for varied response.
Posted on 10/28/2016 6:28:15 PM
By Donald Fox
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Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, 1665
Many portraits, perhaps the majority of them, but I would have no way of knowing that because even if I observed a dozen portraits a day for the next year or two years or five years, I would only have begun to see the array of these that exist around the world, the majority are likenesses that might be captured accurately in a good photograph, but they are not likely great paintings, accurate for rendering that likeness but not much more than that. I have seen the hundred or so greatest portraits like Durer’s Self Portrait, the range of Rembrandt’s self-portraits, Titian’s Doge Andrea Gritti, or Picasso’s Portrait of Gertrude Stein. Any of these, including Vermeer’s portrait Girl with the Pearl Earring, have that extra something, a psychological depth that either reveals character and emotion or presents an enigmatic figure about whom we can make assumptions, but the artist keeps us guessing.
Some critics have written about the eye that looks outward and the eye that looks inward in portraiture. One connects the sitter to his or her own world and reality and the other gives the viewer a glimpse into the mind of that sitter. Rembrandt was a master of this psychological effect in his portraits whether of lone individuals or individuals as part of a group.
An interesting short discussion of Vermeer’s famous painting of the young girl with the earring is presented on the TedEd web site as an educational lesson asking why this painting is considered a masterpiece. The lesson is comprehensible to middle school children but also has a depth that appeals to an adult audience. Contemplation takes the audience deeper into the question and the painting. Here is a link: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-is-vermeer-s-girl-with-the-pearl-earring-considered-a-masterpiece-james-earle?utm_source=TED-Ed+Subscribers&utm_campaign=3107c19e9a-2013_09_219_19_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1aaccced48-3107c19e9a-49052749
As a piece of visual poetry, this painting has the main elements of modern artistic thinking. The anonymity of the sitter lends an air of mystery as does isolating her against a dark background. There is no context here as in other Vermeer works that depict people in specific environments. Our only clues are the loveliness and freshness of the girl (here age unknown), her sensuous but not overtly sexy appearance, the turn of her head (as the narrator of the lesson questions, is she turning toward or away from the viewer?), the casual yet knowing eye contact, the oriental style headdress, and that luminous pearl earring which is only hinted rather than painted with detailed clarity. It’s as though Vermeer is saying that the real pearl is the young woman herself.
I won’t say more about the narrator’s reading of the painting except that I think he is on target. As he suggests, the painting says a lot about the girl, the times, the economics, and the politics of that period of the Dutch Golden Age in the mid-seventeenth century, the time of Rembrandt, Hals, Van Ruisdael, and so many other fabulous painters. There is much to be gleaned from the lyricism, the enigma, and the ambiguity in the work, which again is in keeping with much modern art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Spend some time with this painting and consider it as a portrait of a person, of a time, and of the artist who crafted it. Raise your own questions and answer them as you will.
Posted on 10/27/2016
By Donald Fox
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Moonlight Window
In the arts, certainly within the western tradition of the arts, there are cycles where one form of cultural expression tends to dominate or at least exerts large influence on others. In ancient times, there was cultural dominance as a result of victory in war, which often meant the great empires held sway for numerous generations. There might be artistic influences for a time, but this was usually imposed by the ruling power and not because a conquered people decided that they liked the occupying culture’s art so much that they wanted to emulate it.
We do see certain cultures looking to others, for the most part those in the past, like Rome did Ancient Greece, and to some degree Ancient Greece did Ancient Egypt. Perhaps there needs to be an historical gap, a time lapse, so that one culture can think critically about the other without fear of reprisal or other threat. The Italian Renaissance looked back to Classical Greece for its artistic and philosophical achievements. In fact, for hundreds of years, a classical education meant that students learned Greek and Latin and read ancient texts in the original languages. Even many of the founding fathers of the United States were products of this kind of classical education and they built some of their legal concepts on Roman law.
During the Renaissance there was an interesting split between pagan and Christian subject matter, both represented according to classical artistic principles derived from Greek art and often a single artist would be exploring both subjects. For several hundred years, Italian painting was at the forefront and had influence on northern painters like Durer and later Rubens (both of whom traveled to Italy), but then the emphasis shifted north during the Dutch Golden Age of painting in the seventeenth century (the early part of which Rubens was active). Italian Renaissance painting, however, continued to influence others as generation after generation of European artists traveled south to study the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and the Florentine and Venetian painters. Even early modernists studied these works including such diverse painters as Manet, Cézanne, Monet, and the next generation of painters that included Matisse and Picasso.
We can see a dramatic shift in subject and style through the centuries in many countries, but the tradition can be said to have evolved and even thrived while in the process of changing. In a country like the United States that had European roots but little indigenous tradition (except for Native American which has had more regional impact), it was natural for artists to become iconoclastic while also paying tribute to the tradition from which they had grown. It took time to grow a tradition, but that tradition was more fractured and centered (if not too paradoxical a term), as one might suspect from a nation created from diversity and focused on individual freedom, on individual expression. Though several generations of artists went to Europe and studied there, we also created powerful artists like Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Henry Tanner, and Robert Henri on the realist side and numerous abstractionists and experimental artists in the next generation who launched American painting as a worldwide force. James McNeil Whistler and John Singer Sargent were already spreading American values abroad (Tanner primarily in France) while Eakins and Homer forged Americanism at home (and were both recognized abroad).
Today we tend to think multiculturally although those with strong cultural roots can easily live in two cultures simultaneously. I see that every day in Texas. We also have the Web and the Internet, which bring those influences right into our homes or go with us via smart phone. This is a fascinating experience that suggests a growing world culture with many branches and leaves of varying colors. Artists will create many hybrids with such abundant resources.
Posted on 10/25/2016
By Donald Fox
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Glassed Window
I enjoy revisiting ideas as much as I enjoy revisiting paintings. I hardly think anyone interested in art would say that seeing a painting one time is sufficient. Even if not a painter, wouldn’t someone who loves art relish spending more time with a particular work? I know that I do. The same is true with my own work; I don’t just paint it and not look at it again. I come back to many pieces often for the pleasure of it, but also so that I can learn from what I have done.
As I think about painting and read what other artists say, or about what they have done, I come across interesting statements that I jot down. I don’t necessarily agree with everything another artist may say (and certainly not what critics say), but I take an interesting idea as a starting place, as one side of a conversation that I will continue singly or with another at a later time. Here are a few quotes that I revisit from time to time.
“Treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, all in perspective.” - Paul Cézanne in a letter to Emile Bernard. This has been used by many as evidence that Cézanne was moving towards abstraction, and he himself might have arrived at Cubism or some variation of it had he lived long enough. What he seems to be suggesting, though, are simplified principles based on direct observation that a painter would translate to canvas or paper. That he was concerned with the depiction of spatial planes can be seen in his work. Would he have gone beyond that to an abstract/non-objective painting? That seems too much of a stretch, especially if one considers the large semi-classical works of bathers in a forest (ones that obviously inspired Matisse later on).
“The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed (in a painting), will set off a revolution.” – in a letter to Joachim Gasquet. I love this Cézanne quote. He certainly created a revolution in painting from his freshly observed and carefully constructed still life paintings to his equally crafted landscapes.
“Nations are destroyed, or flourish, in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish!” – William Blake, Jerusalem. C. 1818. Yes, yes, yes. Inscribe this above the portals of Congress.
“Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.” – Vincent van Gogh from a letter to Theo van Gogh. What painter wouldn’t relate to this statement? We can feel that powerful emotional response to a potential subject, but keeping that feeling and then transmitting that to paper or canvas – what a task!
“Everyone wants to understand painting. Why don’t they try to understand the song of the birds? Why do they love a night, a flower, everything which surrounds man, without attempting to understand them?” – Pablo Picasso in an interview with Christian Zervos, 1935. There is a paradox here, but I think Picasso is saying that the emotional response is enough. As rational beings (sometimes), though, we do strive to explain. Some of us do this more than others. Certain spiritual seekers move away from the rational, thinking mind to a state of no mind, away from the conscious ego. I admit I’m somewhat addicted to rational thought and do question frequently many things others take for granted. I do also have moments of sensing – meditating, if you will, in a sensuous way. Some of these moments come while standing before a work of art, especially one that may leave me speechless. Inevitably, though, I begin to question the experience as part of my response to the work. I don’t consider this a failing, simply part of the paradox. Repeating this on a regular basis, or at least as frequently as I can, is one of life’s greatest pleasures.
Posted on 10/23/2016 4:53:56 PM
By Donald Fox
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A painting is a physical object that we can see and feel (though we’re not supposed to touch). Generally we can say that it does not change appreciably over time unless subjected to extreme conditions. There are many examples of older paintings that have deteriorated to such a degree that they cannot be understood for what they once were. Normally we think of a painting as always the same. Many masterpieces seen in one museum of another at very different times will always be the same image, and any viewer can refresh memory of details that may have been forgotten or misremembered. As a physical object, then, an art work is fixed and immutable, except again for unforeseen accidents or changes imposed by the artist who made it.
If we consider the experience of the art work, then that is a very different idea. Now we are dealing with the individual viewer and how he or she may perceive any given work at any particular moment in time. Most who study art and revisit works regularly know that individual perception will change. Some things not noticed earlier will become part of a new experience or interpretation or expanding comprehension of the work and its meaning. When we return to a work after a long absence, we may experience that work anew because we have changed, have grown, and see the work within a new context based on our personal experience. Sometimes we even say that art works change us.
The work may be in the physical world and available for all to see, but it is within the mental and emotional space of the viewer where the art experience takes place and that work comes to life. This is not a radical idea or even surprising news, or should not be. It does suggest, though, that the viewer has a responsibility to him or herself and to the artist to appreciate with discernment and with care. In this sense, art is serious business.
The artist attempts to persuade the viewer to accept the world that is presented in the art work whether it be a portrayal of an outwardly observed reality interpreted according to the artist’s insight and inspiration, or whether it be a portrayal of some inner experience of the artist that is given physical form as a painting. All kinds of questions could arise here like what is a painting? What is art? What is perception? What is experience? What is real or reality? We could go on with similar metaphysical and philosophical queries as many have done for centuries.
Ultimately, though, there are three elements that meet at some point in time: the artist, the art work, and the viewer. There may never be a direct dialogue between the artist and his or her audience, but there is communication that occurs, and that communication centers on the art work. Even after the artist and his contemporary audience have both passed into history, the work remains as a point that will attract a new audience eager to parse the artist’s message. The viewer is also interested in expanding personal experience through the art. The process of art viewing is not a passive activity. The viewer always brings personal history which ultimately blends with whatever history may be associated with the art itself. That history becomes available to the inquisitive viewer. Whether the viewer chooses to share personal experience of the work with others (as critics, scholars, reviewers, and other artists are wont to do), depends on the motivation of the viewer.
Posted on 10/22/2016 10:39:23 PM
By Donald Fox
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In the current Degas exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH), there is a large unfinished painting done late in Degas’ career. One can just make out a few figures, apparently in a landscape since bold black angular strokes could easily be interpreted as the mist basic forms of trees – we could say placeholders for trees. At first glance a viewer might think this is just the first stage, a brush drawing of the initial composition, and either Degas lost interest and never returned to the painting, or some other projects sidelined this one and again he never returned to it, or, a third possibility, is that he decided it was complete as a large oil brush drawing. We don’t know for certain since there is no documentation of the artist’s intention. There are examples of many drawings that are quite simplified and seem complete as they are. In fact, Degas’ work was moving increasingly towards simplification – I hate to say abstraction for that would be a stretch – but many of his late paintings are quite simplified with reduced modeling of figures and sometimes include figures without faces or other humanizing details. The point here is that we don’t know about many works from the past, and it is fun to speculate when comparing them to later work that moved in a modernist direction. With Degas, however, even though his working method was traditional, he also predicted many future directions and had a powerful influence on a younger generation of artists including Matisse and Picasso among others.
Posted on 10/21/2016 7:02:18 PM
By Donald Fox
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A recent posting from Edutopia, an email newsletter and online publication of the George Lucas Educational Foundation highlighted three reasons that the Arts are essential. First is that the Arts build foundational skills that help students improve in reading, math, and science while also helping students improve critical thinking skills. Reasoning is not only the purview of the sciences, for problem solving can develop from imaginative and playful exercises as well. Second, the Arts help to build a mindset that is focused on growth. In the Arts students can readily learn from their mistakes as engagement fosters further exploration while critical feedback offers direction and modeling of other possibilities. Third, the Arts encourage and energize the four C’s: creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communications. Creativity is, of course, the obvious beneficial exercise. Many areas of the Arts also emphasize and even depend on collaboration (the performing arts, for example, but also some forms of visual art). Critical thinking and problem solving were mentioned previously, and communication is at the heart of most artistic expression.
The complete original posting can be found here: http://www.edutopia.org/edutopianews.html?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=101916%20enews%20artsmusic%20l&utm_content=&utm_term=viewonline&spMailingID=15681415&spUserID=MTc4Mzg1MDE2NjA1S0&spJobID=881435796&spReportId=ODgxNDM1Nzk2S0
Posted on 10/20/2016
By Donald Fox
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It hasn’t rained here in weeks until this afternoon. Since about noon, it has rained steadily for hours, but even early this morning the sky was overcast with the most beautifully shaded clouds in variegated warm and cool grays. My computer applications students sometimes complain when part of an operation they are trying to do is grayed out, inactive and unavailable to them, which is considered a bad thing. There are lots of other associations with gray (or grey, depending on the preferred spelling). It’s a gray day. I’m feeling foggy (grayed out). The hair is turning gray from age or stress. And often the comment is made by art students that gray is not really a color anyway. Oh, but it is.
Gray is not simply a combination of black and white with varying shades and tints depending on the mixture. Gray is most definitely a color, but it’s a special color. It doesn’t show up on the color spectrum, but we will see it in nature all the time if we pay close attention.
As a paint color, most art students know that gray is a neutral, but neutral doesn’t mean absence of color. Neutrals still can be either warm or cool as we can easily see by combining complementary pairs, or the primaries or secondaries or tertiaries. A bit of simple experimentation will produce the most interesting varieties of grays that are lively, seductive, intriguing, and beautiful as nearly any other color except that they might be a bit more subdued. This, however, is nothing to put one in a bad mood, but it can convey something about lighting conditions.
Perhaps some people respond to grays in negative ways, but, come to think of it, so do some people respond negatively to red or green or yellow or lots of other colors. These are personal quirks that have little to do with the specific colors themselves. In fact, I’d venture to say that all colors are neutral from an emotional perspective. We learn associations from personal experience, and then collective judgments are made based on agreement. That’s okay. We do that with lots of things. I’d suggest, though, that if gray is problematic in any way, one could learn to see it differently. Begin to experiment and create some positive associations in order to appreciate beauties that may be missing from the palette or the heart.
Posted on 10/18/2016
By Donald Fox
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It starts as a blank pane
that is soon disrupted
by little dark marks
marching as if in profile
one after the next
until a thought or a notion
is complete
or an image rounded out.
The admonition to act
on a local scale
while thinking like an ocean,
a pulsar of energetic delight
flashes across millennia
in a microsecond,
or a whisper of white
shouted upon
by a rainbow coalition
a narration, observation, notation.
It forms the formless
and becomes boundless
within the space of a frame or page.
Posted on 10/17/2016 5:42:58 PM
By Donald Fox
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There is an old cliché that says that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Another meaning can be culled from the statement besides making potentially fatal mistakes. One could also expend great energy on doing something that has already been done, thus making one appear foolish or ignorant. This has happened repeatedly in music and in the visual arts as well. When artists are aware of the past, something else often happens.
Many artists hone their craft by emulating or paying homage to a predecessor. More than one of the greatest artists have looked to the past as a way of moving forward with their work. Sometimes styles that have been practiced for years become stale, and younger artists, “revolutionaries,” chafe to do something new and different. Romanticism was considered radical in its time early on; so was Impressionism. However, the Romantics and the Impressionists, though critical of it, learned from the art of the past in order to move their work in new directions.
The twentieth century introduced creative exploration on a scale never before seen in the history of art and of science. A consequence of this has been the ongoing discord between artists who followed representation and easel painting and those who pursued abstraction and painting that moved beyond the easel, sometimes even beyond painting. Often, artists or critics aligned with one camp would denigrate the art of the other camp. That is very unfortunate because it tends to create blind spots among otherwise very intelligent, creative people.
Obviously art does not exist in a vacuum. Cultural influences, which can include social, economic, political, religious and spiritual pressures, can all come to bear on the arts and artists. Artists respond to or react against these pressures in various ways both positive and negative. Because of so many changes in late 19th and 20th century artistic expression, by about 1950 quite a few artists began self-consciously to create something, anything new and different to set themselves apart from groups and movements. Much of that work became increasingly divorced from the art public. What really got noticed was the most extreme, which often was the most insulting or obnoxious. Savvy marketers jumped into the mix and before long something that was new or revolutionary became mainstream, and then a new cycle would begin pushing the boundaries further beyond the general public. In fact, many artists no longer cared about the general public; they only cared about the critics and the diminished circle of self-proclaimed elitists who, in their own eyes, were the true arbiters of taste and the all important avant-garde. Like it or not this has become as much a part of art history as the more respected movements of the past.
It is natural for novices to have masters to look up to and learn from. They may study and assimilate the forms and techniques of the master, but then what? Do they continue to create in the master’s style and tradition? Do they turn inward to seek their own vision and inspiration? Do they reject the past, turn tradition on its head, and press into unknown territory for the sake of the novel and the yet to be imagined? All students eventually face these and other questions. How they respond will depend on personal make-up, creative intelligence, experience, and motivation plus the unpredictable variables that hide within. The outcome will be expressed in the work.
Every student may not eventually become a master, but many of the best masters have continually seen themselves as students. The outside influences may be beyond an artist's control – society, culture, or politics. How the artist influences him or her self internally is of great importance. A wise teacher once told me, “Look to the past for nourishment. Learn from the lessons of artists whose work resonates with you, but don’t readily dismiss the work of others that may not be as appealing.” There is value in understanding the work of other artists. We learn about seeing, interpreting, and, perhaps most importantly, questioning. Ultimately, we understand more about ourselves, and through that understanding comes our best work.
Posted on 10/16/2016 5:56:36 PM
By Donald Fox
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Where does the idea for a painting come from? The possibilities in answer to this question are practically endless. Artists are continually inspired by the environment, nature, experiences, memories, something seen or heard or felt, dreams, other artists and art works. We might better ask the question, where doesn’t art come from?
In the case of Degas and his numerous paintings and drawings of women – at work (milliners and laundresses), in public (in cafes and parks), in performance (dancers and singers), in private (before and after bathing and while being groomed), and portraits (friends and acquaintances) – he painted the world he knew and that interested him. Many artists of his time did the same thing, but many of them did not do so with such consistency and dedication to study and experimentation.
His large painting in the National Gallery London titled Combing the Hair was painted in 1896. It is painted largely in shades of red, the main exception being the white table that enters the frame from the bottom. A young woman sits leaning back (presumably in a chair that is not visible) with one hand to her forehead while a standing woman behind her brushes her very long auburn tresses. The scene is not at all unusual for Degas who did many drawings and paintings of women brushing their own hair or having their hair brushed by another. Several drawings with similar posture were done prior to the painting. He also had done other monochromatic drawings and paintings of similar subjects including women in brothels. The limited color and simplified forms developed over a number of years in Degas’ work and distinguish him from many of his contemporaries.
This particular painting was once owned by Matisse who, like Picasso, greatly admired Degas’s work. It is interesting to speculate that Degas’ red painting may have been the inspiration for Matisse’s The Red Studio of 1911 (Museum of modern Art). This painting is also predominantly red in color except for paintings hanging on the wall and a few objects within the studio that are mostly white or pastel in color. Matisse’s color is a singular red, which gives the painting a decided flat appearance in spite of suggestions of linear perspective. Degas’s painting contains a variety of reds, strong, muted, and ranging light to dark.
I don’t intend to make a strong argument here that Matisse was directly influenced by Degas’ specific painting, but there are curious connections between these two works and that does lead one to speculate.
Posted on 10/15/2016 7:24:43 PM
By Donald Fox
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Edgar Degas died in 1917, which means he was still alive like his contemporaries Monet (1840-1926) and Renoir (1841-1919) while the Fauves were creating their modernist art and early Cubism was being developed, all prior to the First World War. Paul Cézanne is often mentioned as the father or modern art especially for his influence on Cubism, but a careful look at many of the next generation of artists, in particular Matisse and Picasso, will show strong influence of Degas from his monotone work to his brightly-colored pastels. Compare the treatment of eyes in many of Degas’ portraits and self-portraits, their very distinctive shape and outline, with those of both Matisse and Picasso in their portraits. Though considered modern artists, these two and others still worked in a traditional manner with lots of preparatory studies and often included references to admired predecessors like Degas or Cézanne (as Degas had done with Renaissance masters as well as his friend Manet who reached prominence before he did).
Currently at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston is a stunning exhibition of work by Degas that spans his artistic career. From the museum’s webpage:
“Degas: A New Vision offers the most significant international survey in nearly 30 years of the work of Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas (1834–1917). The reputation of this celebrated French artist has often focused on his ballet imagery, and yet Degas’s rich, complex, and abundant oeuvre spans the entire second half of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th… Not since the landmark international retrospective Degas in 1988 has the artist's career been fully assessed. That exhibition led to a revival of interest in Degas, with dozens of shows focusing on individual subjects of his work—the bathers, the dancers, the jockeys, the portraits—or his influence on other artists. Degas: A New Vision benefits from that scholarship, puts Degas back together again, and offers an opportunity to see the artist anew.”
The exhibition runs through January 16, 2017.
https://www.mfah.org/exhibitions/degas-new-vision/
Posted on 10/14/2016 11:09:28 PM
By Donald Fox
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We do not generally think of time as an element in painting. Unlike literary models where it takes time to follow through a narrative or to move down the linear development of a poem or the lyrical stanzas of a song, a painting is said to be taken in all at once. The visual impression is immediate. This, however, is a false notion initially suggested to separate the experience of a painting from that of a piece of sculpture where the viewer has to physically move around the piece, which inevitably takes time.
Most paintings can be taken in at a single glance unless the pieces are environmental like Monet’s water lily murals in the Orangerie or one of many James Rosenquist room-filled paintings like F-111. These the viewer has to turn in space and move in order to view their totality.
I expect many painters, though, would feel slighted and perhaps offended if viewers only gave their paintings a single glance. Paintings are intended for extended viewing, for there often is much to see whether the work may be depicting a complex narrative (as in a history painting) or whether it may be a multifaceted abstract design with many colors, shapes, and textures. Even the late mural-sized paintings of Mark Rothko, though seemingly simple in reductive design, are filled with subtlety that is best perceived through extended contemplation. Indeed, don’t most painters want viewers to linger over the painted surface and to allow both logical and emotional responses to build as the work is gradually absorbed?
The sophisticated viewer is educated in the finer points of painting and will notice brushwork, color manipulation, drawing and painting finesse on the part of the painter. This viewer understands that to comprehend a painting, the viewer must observe closely and attend to as many details as possible. This kind of careful observation takes time, and this inquisitive viewer does not want to be rushed.
Posted on 10/13/2016 7:07:27 PM
By Donald Fox
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“Before modernism, painting was the noise in culture, because it attracted attention. Now, the culture is the noise, and painting – especially abstract painting – attracts little attention, either in the culture at large or in the art world.” Laurie Fendrich, “Why Abstract Painting Matters” in Drawing Us In: How We Experience Visual Art, Deborah Chasman and Edna Chiang, editors, Beacon Press, 2000. The quote is by an abstract painter who at the time she wrote the article, had been painting in that manner for about twenty-five years. One could argue that in the sixties and the seventies it was a different story within the art world but still not within the culture at large. Even so, abstract painting never had the effect on American culture that Pop art had, especially the work of Andy Warhol.
Artists, and painters in particular, generally are not concerned about those things. Most of them simply want to get on with doing their work. There may be some hope for or desire for success on a large scale, but by and large that is not the motivating factor. If so, artists would have gone into investing or some other aspect of finance. Perhaps they might even have become attorneys or doctors. There is not even the possibility for painters to be nominated for, much less receive, a Nobel Prize as Bob Dylan did recently for his poetic lyrics over fifty some years.
Artists that pursue an audience by exhibiting their work will find one, large or small, depending on the quality of the work and the tenacity with which they pursue both work and audience. Whatever noise is made will likely be by the artist him or herself, but that will be up to the individual. However, there is a certain kind of popularity that does exist for artists, even abstract ones who reach a certain level of notoriety. This usually comes after they die in the form of retrospective shows in museums that are mostly quite heavily attended within metropolitan communities. We might say this is part of the rarified strata that puts that work in the historical stream with all other art of world civilization since museums are where most of that resides and is available on a regular basis.
Abstract painting in general lives within its own cultural tradition, which is not insignificant in the overall stream of art since the turn of the twentieth century. By comparison with other cultural expressions, however, art generally takes a back seat to popular culture, especially music and film, so the effect of abstract art as Ms. Fendrich points out, is to make little noise. She also rightly observes, and I agree with her wholeheartedly, that abstract art offers respite from the noise of culture for those who take the time to look. It can also be engaging, uplifting, and more than a momentary distraction for those who consider their experience while in its presence. What culture has robbed many of is that ability to critically appraise, to experience and to look within, and to respond with empathy while being open to possibility. I won’t say that abstract painting is a cure for any of this, but it is a means for contemplation, which is rare enough these days.
Posted on 10/12/2016 6:48:33 PM
By Donald Fox
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A painting is a physical object. It is made from various materials that include a support or surface upon which is applied layers of pigment bound into paint form by some kind of adhesive material appropriately called a binder. The physicality is important, for that is how a painting is initially experienced and is appreciated for the image it depicts and how that image is composed from design elements like color, shape, line, form, texture, and suggestion. The latter moves the former from a certain kind of physicality into a different realm, a different plane of existence, if you will. All of the physical elements together create the suggestion, possibly the illusion (but not always) of some other experience – space, light, temperature, illusionistic imagery, feeling and emotion, spirituality. This realm is the realm of metaphor where the physical traits elicit experiences that a viewer might have had from other stimulations. The painting has now also become conceptual, for it is in the realm of ideas and thoughts that we recognize metaphor. We are dealing with meaning whether we only consider that the painting is beautiful in some unique sense or that it is reminiscent of something we have experienced elsewhere – thus it appeals to memory and knowledge. Certain kinds of things may be alluded to, others may be mimicked, and still others may elicit emotional responses.
The painting is considered art, not so much for what it represents (especially when it pictures something), but rather for how it convinces us of something else. This something depends on what the painter has considered in the making of the work. It could be any of the things mentioned above, but whatever the artist has chosen to represent (realistically or abstractly or in combination), the work has evolved from that artist’s consideration of artistic form and his or her take on the human condition. There is something implicit in art regarding human experience and perception, and it is as though artists are always attempting to grasp something that is elusive in life – what it is, its purpose, its meaning, its motivation, or its direction. Art represents the ineffable in concrete form or at least artists attempt to represent this.
Mario Vargas Llosa in his Letters to a Young Novelist looks at the various ways writers attempt to convince their audience of the worlds they create through narrative and use of language. Through the constructive and imaginative world of art, the artist creates an experience that enables the audience to glimpse something of the reality of self in the fabrication as if it were a mirror into which that audience can see more clearly than the confusing lens of reality. Any artist does the same with his or her chosen medium. Some people reject art because it is only a fabrication and not real; they say that it is a lie. But the artist knows, and the audience comes to know, that the experience of art shows us a way into the heart of understanding.
Posted on 10/11/2016
By Donald Fox
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Art is a multi-faceted area of cultural expression. We may think of art as a historical subject, which places its main support within the realm of academics. As an academic subject, it is linked with philosophy, aesthetics, psychology, sociology, economics, politics, and history (and sometimes religion). From any of these perspectives, art illuminates aspects of culture as it records the culture from the inside. We could say that art is the culture looking at itself. As aesthetics or psychology, art raises questions of beauty, truth, personal belief and preference, and it reveals cultural attitudes as composites of those personal beliefs or personal beliefs that sometimes grow out of cultural attitudes.
As cultural expression, some art is not about the personal; it is strictly cultural or regional and sometimes racial. Indigenous cultures often create art that is applied to nearly everything within the social order. It is a kind of communal expression, and within this framework there is no room for individual ego since most of the art serves utilitarian purposes rather than personal expression.
We in the West tend to separate out the artist. We think of artistic expression as individualistic expression and consider it cultural only in the broadest terms. Especially in America, the so-called great melting pot, there is no distinctly American art. The closest we might have come is the Pop Art movement in the sixties and seventies. During the formative years of this country, artists and craftsmen were newly emigrated from Europe, or younger artists traveled to Europe to learn the latest techniques and styles of painting. Even decades later when many regional artists depicted uniquely American themes specific to different parts of the country, most of the artists were trained overseas or they were trained by artists who themselves had been trained overseas. The European influence was palpable.
Groups of artists or artistic themes that have been cited as particularly American - the Ashcan School, the Hudson River School, Western Art from Remington and Russell, so-called American Impressionism, and others were too limited in scope to be considered representative American. Many of them contained or addressed American themes of self-reliance, personal independence, open spaces, iconoclasm, or the spiritual wilderness. But these spoke of regional subjects that did not represent the country as a whole. The nation itself was too complex and made up of too many eclectic influences. Even the great abstractionist movements at first appeared to be specifically American, but the artists themselves were from widely varied cultural and national backgrounds.
Should it be argued, then, that American art, like its people, is eclectic, multi-cultural, even mongrelized? It does not exist in any pure form that is instantly recognized as American. Most of the great artistic traditions of the past – Ancient Egyptian, Classical Greek or Roman, Northern or Southern Renaissance – these have distinguishing characteristics with few variants. Some of these cultures did influence others, but the others usually assimilated those influences and made the resultant expression their own. Perhaps America has done the same, but because it took in so many influences, it likewise created many variations. We can easily identify countless numbers of American artists, but it is not so easy to identify American art.
Posted on 10/10/2016
By Donald Fox
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Cool Passage
Someone looks at a painting, say a landscape or still life of flowers, and says “I can’t even draw a straight line.” This is supposed to be a complement for the artist, a recognition of the skill or talent that person has in order to be able to make such a picture. There is something impressive about a well-done painting or drawing, and the term well-done is open to interpretation, for it could mean anything from a photographic likeness of the subject to an interpretive, impressionistic rendering that projects some inner emotional response of the artist to an observed subject. There is so much leeway in artistic interpretation as well as in the general public understanding of what art is, much less what good art might be.
Then again, one could think about art from numerous perspectives and still not fully define what is being discussed, i.e. art itself. A painting, for instance, regardless of subject or style, is a collection of layers of paint laid down side by side or one over another or some combination of both. There can be thick paint over thin or the reverse, or so many combinations of the two that it is easy to lose track and often impossible to observe the difference in a finished work. Many visual effects depend on varieties of paint manipulation. The techniques employed by an artist to create the appearance of or the illusion of something – it looks like a tree or flower or piece of paper – also vary from one artist to another (part of what we call style). Yet, what is always true is that paint is the material from which an image is suggested.
Personally, I like paintings that hover somewhere between realistic image and abstract imagery, that is, that paint strokes are visible as is the texture of the paint. Though the work may be illusionistic, the physical paint can also readily be seen. The painted image is believable as whatever it depicts while also existing as textural pigmented color on a surface. All paintings, of course, are always exactly this, but certain stylistic paint handling disguises the paint, the brushwork, and any evidence of the making of it. The image stands as a reality of its own well separated from any sign of an author. Painters like Velasquez or Ingres or Fragonard or David tend to disappear behind the work (though viewers familiar with their styles can recognize each from the other). Other painters like Rembrandt, Hals, El Greco, or Goya, as well as most of the Impressionists create strong realism while also giving the viewer something else to contemplate – the physicality of the paint.
How is it that a smear of color or a dab of a gel-like substance can be seen as part of an eye, the rim of a glass, or the edge of a table? The physical paint is so disguised that it is no longer recognizable as itself, and in fact has no value as itself. It only comes to life when its manipulated form suggests something that it is not. The paint has become a metaphor for either something perceived as real (an object) or for an idea or feeling (the artist’s projection). The casual viewer will experience a painting as a real thing and not simply a picture of something (and thereby judges the work’s validity on its verisimilitude). He or she may not make the distinction between the representation of the thing and the actual thing that is represented. No philosophical question arises as to what this visual experience (of the painting) might mean.
Painters, too, relished the sleight of hand for centuries, thought philosophically about what they were doing, and gradually experimented with expressive ideas and techniques, which eventually led some to consider the latter as equal to or more important than the former. Ultimately, abstraction became the subject of painting, that is, the idea that a painting is colored pigment on canvas and truth to that concept must ignore any observed subject to be translated into a painting. This process only produces a fiction regardless of how believable it might appear. Others considered that a painting is just visual information and any information can be made visual – therefore any subject, realistic or not, is fair game for a painting. Art of any kind is a construction, a fabrication, fantasy given form, and so even stylistic consistency is a constructed imposition by the painter.
The painter is the artistic builder, the architect of the art, and as such decides what kind of structure is to be built. The idea that form follows function has impacted modern architecture for many decades now including a move through post-modernism where some non-functional embellishments began to make their way back into design. Purpose in art motivates all artists, and from whatever guiding purpose, the artist manipulates his/her materials and tools to create a powerful, expressive statement that can look forward or backward or at whatever is presently of concern to him/her. This may be cast in a well-defined philosophical framework, or the philosophy may be left others to discern. It has always been the artist’s choice.
Posted on 10/9/2016 3:30:17 PM
By Donald Fox
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Looking back from a star billions of light years away, I can scarcely see the blue marble much less any painted image that may have lasted five hundred years whose light presumably will shine on for at least five hundred more. This little span of six or eight feet, the depth of a several thousand dollar box filled with the bones of memory, has been scraped over again and again to produce one of those images that hopefully will last beyond next week unless it’s scraped again and re-engineered, updated, if you will. The imagination takes a leap of faith every time the box is opened and the bones revealed. What a horrific thought some might say, but it happens all the time. In fact, time is the great equalizer of the squeamish. Time heals all wounds, so the saying goes, and time can make the ghoulish seem academic, for some will stake their reputations on what comes out of the box since they interpret what must have gone into it. There is that eternal moment where past, present, and future coexist like that distant speck that always follows the same path night after night, or so it seems.
Posted on 10/8/2016 8:12:47 PM
By Donald Fox
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A story proceeds to its end by following its chronological path that may include twists or turns, or retreat via memory or exposition to some previous point in time essential to the understanding of events or motivation in the present time of the narrative. The form of this narrative is selected by the author, the artist, and is not so much an imposition as it is a shell from which the story hatches step by step until fully birthed. We do not always have such clear choice in our everyday affairs about what, when, and where. We do make schedules, or we accommodate our schedules to those of others, but many forces can move deadlines or cause disruption of what we might like to be easy forward flow. The artist creates structure and order for the sake of the overall design while attempting to make a narrative believable, characters animated, and the created world truthful to what we know.
Most artists are concerned with truth while fabricating fiction. All art regardless of genre or expressive category is fabrication. It uses perceptions about life as the raw material for the subject, the story, the concept, or the expression, but then this is altered and formed to fit a structure and design that molds that story, vision, or perceived truth into shape as a new entity called art, which is at once an approximation of life and a manifestation of life as new experience.
Posted on 10/7/2016 4:40:46 PM
By Donald Fox
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Many historical dramas draw heavily on specific events and characters that are true to the time and situations from which the story is taken. This is also true of so-called bio-pics that tell the story of a noted person’s life or time in his or her life. Because, however, these stories are dramatizations, inevitably there are fictional elements mixed in to heighten the drama. These may be characters who might be composites of individuals who may have actually lived or composites that represent what the author imagined would have likely been present. These might be invented events or circumstances that illustrate some quality of a main character or something about the tenor of the time in which the story occurs. For example, the recent television drama about the period immediately following Winston Churchill’s stroke while he was still Prime Minister presents a compelling storyline between Sir Winston and a young but experienced nurse. They develop a deep bond and numerous plot twists turn on that relationship. At the end the audience learns in the credits that the nurse was a fictional composite character, which for me, at least, left a sense of betrayal. What had seemed an interesting drama now took on the air of a melodrama, and I felt cheated as a gullible audience member.
I suppose one should always keep a bit of distance from the story and the character being portrayed when this is supposed to be a real-life person’s story – we do know about artistic license – but when the writing, production values, and the acting are all excellent, it is easy to be swept into the story. Consequently, the audience might be forgiving even when being duped while also being engagingly entertained.
Similar experiences can be found in the visual arts including painting. There are lots of conventions found in history painting as well as in related offshoots like romanticism (consider Delacroix’s emblematic representation of bare-breasted Liberty Leading the People) or even Picasso’s ground-breaking Guernica. These visual bits of artistic license also give composite-like renderings of specific events or tableaus that stand in for specific events. But this is the nature of art isn’t it? The ordinary and specific have to be elevated in order to become universal and to become symbolic of something larger than the moment.
Perhaps this is why we might forgive the sentimentality of Benjamin West’s The Death of General Wolfe or the melodrama of John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark. One might wonder, though, what happened in the two hundred odd years between Matthias Grunewald’s gritty depiction of Christ’s suffering in the painter’s Crucifixion (The Isenheim Altarpiece) and these more genteel historical interpretations. Whenever I see West’s painting (or its reproduction), I can’t help but compare the classically composed Indian warrior contemplating the fallen general with Rodin’s robust Thinker, but that’s perhaps more about me than either artist. Even a post dramatic, post-traumatic depiction of murder as in David’s Death of Marat sidesteps the sentimentality issue in showing us a composed and peaceful aftermath of violence.
Painters and other artists may sometimes stretch the truth in order to put it into communicable form, that is, in order to make it into art. This seems to have been the case for hundreds of years if not longer.
Posted on 10/6/2016
By Donald Fox
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There are times in life when we may have important plans and goals, but the unexpected comes into play and we find ourselves dealing with new tasks that are priorities – and these must be handled first. I know this from personal experience relative to family, health, natural disasters, and any number of daily circumstances that become mandatory rather than optional tasks. Experienced business people learn quickly to re-prioritize, or, when there is this option, to delegate responsibilities so that all tasks are completed. For individuals, of course, we have to do what is first priority no matter how many times priorities may shift. In a way, this is basic survival. Call it placing the big rocks first or by any other name, and still that which is most urgent needs the attention.
I still easily remember as a student in high school (and even before) how simple it was to procrastinate, to create some fiction about how there was plenty of time and all would be completed when necessary. Perhaps that was because for me most school tasks did not seem particularly difficult. I accomplished many things, and most of those things were of my own choosing – me pursuing my own interests. The schoolwork would get done even at the last minute. Some of my friends, however, were more disciplined, and they succeeded more in school than I did. Their grades were better, they achieved more, and received more accolades because they had purpose in mind and had been planning their futures beginning much earlier than I did. I don’t make excuses. I made my own choices, and perhaps if I could go back I might do things differently.
What I have learned in the intervening years is the importance of doing what is necessary to get the work done. Some of this I learned from my father who was not academically gifted, but he was very smart and had a strong work ethic. I observed him at home using his time off to complete one task after another relative to the house, the yard, the cars, and anything that needing fixing. He put off nothing. He focused and used his time wisely and still took some time to nurture himself by playing golf or doing other activities that gave him pleasure. Always, though, he did those things after doing what needed to be done. And of course he made us kids do our share as well whether we liked it or not.
I can say that I have never been afraid of hard work though I sometimes took the opportunity to avoid it. Eventually I discovered that work done with intention is not really work. It is more like a kind of meditation that gives reward through focused attention and ultimate achievement. Life moves more smoothly from these tasks even when unexpected challenges may arise. Knowledge, skill, and intention are powerful allies regardless of what may arise.
One of the many lessons that comes to us through art from the past is that knowledge, skill, and intention are behind all the works that have impacted history. Craftsmanship does not manifest from nothing. Powerful expression does not arise solely from inspiration. The urge to create is nothing without the follow-through that manifests the resultant work. The lessons are all around us whether by the recognized masters or by the utilitarian artisans like my father (who never would have thought of himself as an artisan or a craftsman). The lesson is in getting it done.
Posted on 10/5/2016
By Donald Fox
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Art is the story of human thinking, feeling, and creative expression.
Art is the mirror of humanity as it has grown and flourished through the ages.
Art is the treasure that lies at the heart of progress and posterity.
Art is a means for an end that is always forthcoming.
Posted on 10/3/2016
By Donald Fox
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We in America, and perhaps all the West, live ironically. We encourage learning, not for its own sake or to become conscious, educated beings, but in order to be competitive on the world stage. We worship athletes and create a system whereby young, uneducated, but physically gifted boys can grow into men of substance (not so much for girls although this may very slowly be changing), be praised for their prowess and leave the slums behind ultimately to hawk underwear and motor oil when their knees no longer can support them on the field of glory. Athletics in schools get the lion’s share of investment while the arts shiver in rags or go begging with their tin cups in hand. We create a health system that is the envy of the world, but only the wealthy can afford to utilize it to the fullest. Meanwhile, the young suffer increases in respiratory, immune system, and diabetic illnesses and decline in general levels of fitness. We give rights and freedom to everyone and incarcerate more of our citizens, especially the poor and less educated, than any other country. In what is supposed to be the world’s greatest democracy, we invest most of the wealth and power in the hands of the 1%. In short, we are a land of paradoxes.
The arts have addressed some of these issues, most effectively, perhaps, in writing and drama or in film, for the visual arts have become less well suited for social criticism in an age of the internet and virtual communication. We have great examples of social criticism from the past, but even these we might wonder about their impact at the time they were created: Goya, for example, in his war etchings or in his late so-called black paintings, works by Picasso, Grosz, the Dadaists, and many forms of outsider art. How widely known were they at the time of their creation? Though some of these works may end up in art history texts or in museums, it is in the realm of criticism and historical writing that they are most widely known. Guernica is something of an exception, for there is no other singular work so well known in modern art.
Every piece of art is an expression of the subject in the context of the values, culture, and events of its specific era, but in modern times as art has become increasingly commercial and the collector market has spiraled out of control, work that criticizes the very culture that it comes from is not popular within that culture. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, for example, is known internationally for his art and his activism in criticizing human rights violations in China. In spite of difficulties with the Chinese government including months in prison, he continues to work in a broad range of mediums, but his stature internationally is much higher than at home where he is seen as a troublemaker. Would collectors and patrons support his work for its artistic value or for his activism against a totalitarian regime? This is part of the dilemma with political art. Its social impact has to be political and cultural; otherwise it is not significant work – it does not achieve its purpose. This is very different from art that is primarily emotional, intellectual, and is about art and artistic ideas.
Where is the artist in this cultural mix? Can we say that Al Weiwei is more dedicated to his art or to his social criticism? We might argue that there is no separation between the two concerns. Not all of Weiwei’s art is overtly political, however, and what is political is art that happens to express a political/cultural message. He is, after all, an artist, and art would be his natural voice. Isn’t it fair to say that most artists keep politics out of art, for their concerns are with aesthetic questions and not social or cultural ones? They may be good citizens within their respective countries and may vote or participate in cultural affairs at whatever level they choose. Their artistic voice, however, is reserved for art-related issues, And, if these artists are concerned with universal themes (those verities of the heart that William Faulkner addressed in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech), are the artists expressing a higher concern, one that may include political-social-cultural issues but is not limited to them?
I suspect that most artists have little interest in politics unless it directly affects them personally (budget cuts, censorship, or other forms of discrimination). Yet, just putting art out there in public is a form of social commentary if not a directly political statement. Isn’t it an expression of personal freedom? Isn’t it a bit subversive regardless of content? Isn’t it making some statement about the nature of reality even when seemingly innocuous like a painting of a vase of flowers or a pastoral landscape? Isn’t that freedom of expression what has always challenged authoritarian regimes whether secular or religious? Art provides an alternative perspective to whatever is the dominant point of view, and that artistic perspective can be expansive and growth-promoting or could be seen as rebellious and dissident. Art can be a bit dangerous, for it is most often advocating every person for him or herself. That can be a pretty radical idea even in societies that espouse freedom of speech and freedom of action.
Posted on 10/2/2016 5:24:02 PM
By Donald Fox
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Human existence would be a rather dull affair if not for curiosity. We can presume that even before there was language, the grunting or gesturing humans that existed questioned why things were the way they were. These would not have been sophisticated queries. Without words it would be quite tiresome to think or converse philosophically. However, somehow early humans managed to invent tools and create clothing and shelter, to find more efficient ways to hunt, to gather, and eventually to grow food instead of forage for it. What some have turned into mottos like continuous, never-ending improvement, has in fact been the mode of operations for thousands of years for the entirety of the human race. There are individuals and groups, of course, who may have less of the curiosity gene or for whatever reason simply do not use it. Fortunately for all of us, there are greater numbers that do exercise that trait whereby we all benefit (unless curiosity leads some nefarious direction as in Nazi Germany during the thirties and forties).
Art is a curiosity that grew and continues to grow from curious interaction with the physical world and with the world of the mind. Those who make that creative journey do so for as many reasons as there are sojourners along that path. We could argue about the different forms that art takes as well, and perhaps doing so would give some insight as to the why behind the creations. We might not be remiss in saying that generally artists wish to make some statement about the world or celebrate it by capturing some aspect of it as an alternate experience. Art is in the world and usually about the world yet it stands apart as a symbol, a representation, a metaphor, and something that is always separate from the thing it represents or symbolizes.
Art is also considered by many to be one of humanity’s highest achievements, and great praise accompanies the work and its creator. For others, art has no real purpose and remains one of many curiosities that can just as easily be ignored as embraced. Artists, no doubt, will continue to attempt to influence the thoughts of those who do and those who do not support it. This is part of what they do as creative makers. Whether the artist sees him or herself as a kind of philosopher of the imagination, there is philosophy behind each creation, and part of that philosophy, in my opinion, says something about the curiosity that manifested it.
Posted on 10/1/2016 8:12:06 PM
By Donald Fox
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As an undergraduate in college I majored in English Literature with a minor in Art and Art History. I was interested in the overlap between literature and the visual arts and saw in particular that with the turn of the century moving form nineteenth to twentieth century sensibility that there were influences passing back and forth among the various arts. Literature had moved into a strong realist phase beginning in the late nineteenth century as painters were also looking at the world around them for subjects rather than dwelling on classical themes that had dominated western art for centuries. A kind of social realism emerged all over Europe and America in the writings of Howells, Crane, Zola, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Balzac, Chekov, and others.
I read at least some of the works of these and other writers including women writers like the Bronte sisters and George Eliot, but one writer whose name I did not know until years later was Elizabeth Gaskell. In several courses I took that covered nineteenth century British literature, her name was not mentioned. This is odd since she was good friends with Charlotte Bronte and after Bronte’s death Elizabeth wrote what was considered for many years the definitive biography of her friend. But, Elizabeth was a very popular writer herself and wrote about the poor and challenges faced by women, subjects not popular with many readers, especially male ones; nevertheless, Elizabeth maintained popularity as a writer and was admired greatly by Dickens who sought out stories of hers to publish in his magazine.
Today it is easy to find out about the lives and works of many artists who might otherwise only be known within small circles. In pre-internet days a curious reader would depend on the work of scholars or the recommendation of knowledgeable librarians to move beyond the relatively limited of artists and writers already known to the public. The big names always get their due, and perhaps sometimes are overly lauded to the detriment of their contemporaries, many of whom were equally substantive and productive.
It is good to revisit the past, to delve deep well beyond those that show up in history books, and to adopt a scholarly attitude towards artists and how they fit within the cultures that bred them (and may or may not have supported them). The history of art is incredibly complex and is composed of so much more than what might show up in an Appreciation of Art or an Appreciation of Literature class or textbook. There is more evidence of what has occurred since written history began, and today we are inundated with information (and misinformation) as artists become their own publicists, their own gallerists, and their own agents. This will prove to be a good thing in the long run, but the voice of history likely will be amended again and again as information is sorted and resorted for our history is written daily and recorded just as often in numerous media platforms. This too will affect the ultimate outcome if that is even a concept that maintains viability. The lesser known become known, and we all benefit from this knowledge.
