Subjective? Objective? How Critical is the Weight of Text? And who made those paintings, anyway?

Let's look at these two paintings one more time, and see if we can evaluate them in some objective way, before I reveal their origins (and... text).  This first painting:

The first thing that we would notice, objectively, is color. The blues and greens of the right-hand side of the painting are softened, made warmer, as they merge into the oranges and yellows of the central diagonal line.  There are some obvious brushstrokes, but most of the surface is soaked in color. The obvious application of paint comes with the dots in the upper right and some streaks of gestural paint in the crossed lines. The painting is layered; the crossed lines show traces of several layers of paint, as does the circular shape at bottom.  The collaged elements at center left could be embossed or simply wrinkled paper; from this photograph, it is hard to tell. They also provide layers, by themselves, but also because whatever these collaged papers might have depicted is wiped out entirely by added paint in varied colors.  The eye is drawn around the painting's surface by the color and the two crossed lines. Objectively, I think that is as much as we should say.

Now, for the second work under discussion:

This painting, too, is suffused with color, most of it warm reds and yellows. Here the complication is not added by large crossed lines, or blues and greens, but by a floating gray mass, a figure, of sorts, attached by the yellow lines that function as straps at its bottom. It stops the flow of color and this mass is what forces the eye around the painting; we find ourselves looking for the colors around it. There are three thin directional lines of paint, two in black (moving off the painting's edges) and one red (it follows the yellow "strap"). There are some brushstrokes here, in the red areas at top center and left, and in the black figure submerged under the gray mass, but the colors in this painting are mostly applied in broad, rough swathes.  The painting is layered, with the gray and black and gold figures at the center, and with the blue at top right, which is soft and soaked into the surface. Again, I think that's as much as we should say.

Now, just for your own pleasure, look at them each one more time. Which one do you like, subjectively? Both? Neither?

Here's the answer (spoiler alert!). The first painting above is mine, from about 1995. It is 9" x 12" and was painted in acrylic, with collaged magazine pages.  The second painting is a Gerhard Richter, called "Georg," from 1981, and it measures 78 3/4" square.  For the record, because the paintings are so similar, I had not seen a Richter until well after I painted the work at the top. Interesting, no?

Too Much Color? Cy Twombly didn't think so....

In the November, 2011, issue of Artforum,  Arthur C. Danto reflects on getting to know Cy Twombly. Danto tells us in passing that Twombly felt the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel created what he called "Mannerist masterpieces." So I went back to my art books for some help. The term "Mannerist" is argued over a fair amount, but generally has come to describe a 16th-century movement, with the central painters being Bronzino, Parmigianino, and Tintoretto. Some characteristics that seem agreed-upon include:  distorted figures, small, crowded spaces and unrealistic settings  -- which create drama -- and, finally,  the Mannerist artist stresses his skill in the painting of drapery, skin, and the effects of light.

Here is a portion of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel:

When we entered the chapel, it was very difficult to see details like this. The paintings are so far away. But we did see the colors.  And that was a big change; for years, every reproduction I saw of these panels was dominated by grays and browns, shadows without light.  I remember, too, that after the work was cleaned, beginning in the 1980's, many people felt the colors were too brash, too much. But Twombly did not feel that way. So what paintings might he have compared it to?

There was a 2009 exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston called "Titian~Tintoretto~Veronese:  Rivals in Renaissance Venice."  In their catalogue, the curators discuss the ways in which these artists watched one another's progress (rather in the way Picasso would come to monitor the discoveries of Matisse).  They competed for commissions.  Tintoretto painted "Miracle of the Slave" in 1548; it was his breakthrough. Here it is:

And we were worried about the colors in the Chapel? Look at this space... look at the ways in which the figures are moving... look at the backdrop (an operatic backdrop, missing only the Supertitles)... look at the gestures... the oranges, the blues... this is wonderful work... Michelangelo is in good company. I love it when one artist calls across the centuries to another.  We will miss Twombly.