Criteria for Abstract Art: Image vs. Text, Part IV

Can we discuss abstract art without resorting to text? Is there a way to see a painting without being blinded by the artist’s biography or the work’s appraised (monetary) value? Are we able to make a fair judgment, based only on the image before us, and come to a determination about a painting’s artistic worth? 

We need to avoid some rather familiar descriptive terms; I use them, too, words like “energy” or “intrigue” or “artistic intention” or “finesse.”  But these are not objective terms, are they? One person’s “energy” is another’s “confused mess.” How can we escape the emotional and often divisive nature of subjective terminology?

There aren’t too many truths that we could all agree upon, but here are some terms that might help us avoid our tendency to become arbitrary. Let’s think about: color, line, surface texture, form(s), composition, process and method, space, symmetry (presence or absence), and, when relevant, historical context or influence (Cubism, for example, or Op Art). 

Now take the two paintings I presented you with, here, on February 26^th, and we can work with each of the two, using these terms to try and investigate the work on its own terms.

First,

 Color: prevalent, from bright yellows in the background to red, green and blue overlays. There is a softly painted, not-quite-“squared” grid painted in black, echoed by thin marker lines. Some forms have black edges. The final layer seems to be drips of color, mostly deep blues and pure white. Color is a big part of this painting.

Line: broad, soft strokes for a grid, and smaller grids in thin marker lines echo the bigger grid from center to lower right. The dripping paint forms a line with its color. Two forms upper right are outlined in black marker.  There is a kind of script or faux signature at lower left.  Except for the broad grid, line seems less important than color here.

Surface texture:  the paint seems in places to have soaked into the canvas, and there is a bit of bare canvas at bottom right.  The paint layers are thin, with the only build-up coming from a collaged typed square near the center and the poured or dripped paint lines, which appear to have been the final layer.

Forms: At top right, the grid comes over the bottom yellow layer; some thin grids follow in lower right.  There is one white triangle center left, but all the other forms (except two that are outlined, top right) are organic, rounded, with no clear outline and no apparent reference to known objects.  Or: there may be one green feather coming up from the lower left. The splatters create forms, too.  The meeting of the grid and these organic forms seems to provide most of the focus for the painting.

Composition:  this category overlaps with Forms, above, but the composition also seems to be centered in the painting’s upper two-thirds. The lower part of the painting is spare, nearly a blank canvas.  This forces the eye upwards to the yellow colored ground.

Process and Method: (see Surface Texture, above) Actual brushstrokes are not obvious, except for the soft grid. Soaking and dripping seem to dominate otherwise.

Space: (see Composition, above) Despite the heavy paint application, there is enough blank canvas and enough yellow to offer plenty of room here for the eye to move.

Symmetry (or its absence):  Generally not; the composition is off-center, the bulk of the painting moves towards the top of the work.

Historical Context or Influence: Mixed: this is a post-Pollock, post-Frankenthaler work, but seems to be in a world of its own.

Now, let’s look at the second painting:

Color:  Subtle browns and grays, with shadings of black and whites; outlining and over-lining in blacks and whites.  Color does not seem to be a major preoccupation here.

Line: Line seems dominant in this work.  Almost all of the lines curve, with only two short vertical straight lines in the right half, and many of the lines are outlines, either for painted figures or for figures not otherwise made visible.

Surface Texture: Uniform, with no apparent paint build-up or collage.

Forms: Organic, mostly, with forms that look like test tubes or glasses and bottles, and there is one possible breast and one possible bottom.  The forms overlap, and seem more in this painting than in the first to refer to real objects, but those objects have been rendered unclear and ambiguous.

Composition:  All-over. There is no concentration of images in one spot rather than another; the paint and lines are applied equally across the space. Attention is paid here (more than in the first painting) to edges; the forms here begin to fade all around the edges of the work.

Process and method: As with the first painting, the brushstrokes are not obvious here. The lines dominate.  It would appear that the colors of grays and browns were set down first, perhaps from a sketch, and then the black and white lines were applied.

Space: The forms as outlined overlap and leave very little un-painted, un-accounted for space.  The painting fills the canvas almost completely.

Symmetry:  The artist seems to be working with symmetrical forms; some of the curves echo one another or invert one another. There is almost an upper-lower, left-right symmetry, but it is just off, which means it calls attention to itself as a composition.

Historical Context or Influences:  This is a more important category for this painting than for the first. The work seems very tied to the colors and overlapping shapes of Cubism, and may also refer to the dream-like forms of Surrealism.

Overall, while these two paintings are very different, it is not possible to raise one over the other, for me, simply by concentrating on the paintings themselves.  One does not seem, even after study, to be “better than” the other. If we were to stand before the two in a gallery, questions of scale and application of paint and true color, none of which we can refer to here, might sway the balance.  But I think it is a very interesting question. I would like to know what you think. The first painting is mine, from the mid-1990’s, and the second is an early (1945) Mark Rothko, titled “The Rites of Lilith,” and it is now owned by his daughter. 

Image vs. Text. Let me know.

Image vs. Text, Part Three: In Which We Try to Establish Some Criteria for Abstract Art

I have been looking at the “image vs. text” question (see posts from January 20, 25, 31 and February 8). I find that what is lying just underneath what I have said, is this: “text” over-determines matters in the art world. And it is empowered in this way because we do not trust “image” without its accompanying (nemesis) “text.” When we see the image -- alone -- we have no way to determine whether or not we should care about the painting in front of us.  Without text, we are down to the old joke, “I know what I like.”  Without text, it’s all up for grabs. 

Text shows us the way to paint, where to attend art school, who our mentors and influences should be, who ought to be shown and sold in a premiere gallery, what to acquire for our museums, what interests collectors, even what we might be saying when we are in front of a work of art.  Without text, it’s all totally arbitrary, floating, unfixed.  Text gives us authority and a fixed, mostly scrutable art world.  But what nobody says, out loud, is that text is flawed. The world, as the term ukiyo-e would tell you, is floating. Consider the case of the art forgery.

There are four ways to authenticate a painting: provenance; scientific testing of the materials; fitting the work in question into the artist’s oeuvre; and “a connoisseur’s eye” (Patricia Cohen, “An Art Trove’s Authenticity Goes to Court,” The New York Times online, February 12, 2012).  A court case has surfaced over paintings “by” Motherwell, Clyfford Still, Jackson Pollock, Giacometti, and Barnett Newman.  Over a period of ten years, a Long Island dealer brought first one, then two, then more paintings to the Knoedler Gallery; none of the art came with the usual papers, but that didn’t seem to matter. Over time, the gallery and the Daedalus Foundation and the National Gallery of Art (and even the artist Frank Stella) examined the lot and pronounced them to be genuine. But, soon, the Motherwell pieces, titled as if they belonged to his “Elegy to the Spanish Civil War” series, came under scrutiny for problems with “signatures and styles,” and the Daedalus Foundation shifted its opinion: these were now deemed forgeries, and all the paintings acquired from the little-known Long Island dealer were called into question. The Knoedler Gallery has closed; they say the closure is not due to this case (see the article and photographs: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/22/arts/design/20120222-fake-paintings-compared.html?ref=arts ).  As paintings become more and more valuable -- Christie’s has recently, across three separate auctions, sold three Motherwell Elegies, at prices ranging from $2,144,000 to $2,919,500 – artists, auctioneers and galleries find that the desire to forge works and the resulting need to authenticate has created a little fear and trembling. The Pollock-Krasner Authentication Board dissolved in 1996. The Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, faced with lawsuits, is no longer accepting new pieces to either include in the catalogue raisonné or to (literally) stamp with DENIED.

But the four methods of authentication all deal with text and not image. The provenance is all text: first, the labels from the back of the canvas indicate the date the work was painted, or where it was exhibited, and then the papers, testifying to the original acquisition, past ownership and sale prices, previous dealers’ evaluations, perhaps a note from the artist or the biographer.  None of the pieces at Knoedler came with any of this.  The collector had acquired the pieces directly from the artist, it was said, or from the artist’s own dealer; they had been in storage.  It was said.  When the pigments were tested, the researchers found paints not yet in use at the time the work was created. Not a problem, the dealer said, the artists were given the newest sample pigments to try; it happens all the time (Cohen). More text. Then, the third method of authority, fitting the work into the artist’s other series: simple. Works are uneven, but each series, each new piece, will share characteristics with previous or concurrent work; the titles would take care of any doubts.  And, last, the connoisseur’s eye; we now know what happened there -- every eye was fooled.  

It was Plato who said that if we knew what we were looking for, we would be all the more able to see it [“Suppose that a short-sighted person had been asked by some one to read small letters from a distance; and it occurred to some one else that they might be found in another place which was larger and in which the letters were larger --if they were the same and he could read the larger letters first, and then proceed to the lesser --this would have been thought a rare piece of good fortune” The Republic, Book I].  If we are looking for and expect authenticity, because authenticity excites us, we will find it.

If, on the other hand, a painting called “Untitled, 1950: After Jackson Pollock” appeared at your local coffeeshop, hanging between the comfy chairs, looking just like a Pollock, but the artist’s name was, say, mine, and the sale price was listed as $650, there wouldn’t be a problem.  If you liked it, and you had the $650, fine. But if you were paying $300,000, as the gallery did, or $3,000,000, as a collector did, for an “undiscovered” Pollock with the simpler name “Untitled, 1950,” then you’d want the Jackson Pollock signature -- and the provenance. You’d want the text.  And mine wouldn’t have any text … in fact, worse, it would be trading on Pollock’s lifetime of text.

And everyone in the art world trades on text, because text creates “value” for a painting.  It is the only way we know to create value. It is also the only way to create the canon of artworks, the chosen few that we love, and teach, and discuss, and visit in museums. There are no objective criteria that guarantee that the beauty, or ugliness, or power, or authenticity that we see in a painting is … “real.” 

But it is still beauty, or ugliness, or power, or authenticity, isn’t it, if we see it?  I have walked through painting studios at a college and seen a fabulous thing, in progress, by a twenty-year-old; but she doesn’t have any text yet.  Intrinsically, the work is beautiful, to me; I like the application of the paint, the subject matter, or lack of it, the figure-ground blending … but extrinsically, outside of itself, out there in the world, the painting has no value at all.  If she ships it through the mail to her great-aunt in Brixton, she can only insure it for the value of the materials.

Outside of the monetary value, is there any other reason to go straight to text? I could argue that when I am standing in front of Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein, I like to think of her walking from 27, Rue de Fleurus to Picasso’s studio in the Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre.  I like to think of the painter and his subject speaking in broken French over eighty or ninety sittings, and wonder about the influence they exerted on one another during the time it took to make the painting. I would like to see how many faces of Stein there were before Picasso crossed out the last one and replaced it with a mask.  Part of a painting’s value is its history, the fact that the text confirms that this is, in fact, the painting based on an Ingres, the painting where we can just see Picasso’s brushstrokes at the edges of the chair, this is the painting that was wrapped up in Paris and driven by Stein and Toklas over to the Ain for safe-keeping during World War II.  Text can ensure a kind of romance.

But.  Is there any way, at all, that we can establish a way of SEEING that is based on ... SEEING? We can try. Look at the two paintings below. One was painted by someone with an acre of text, the other with, perhaps, a window-box full of text.  Draw up some criteria to judge them.  See which one engages you, but be prepared to explain why. On my next visit, I will talk about some ideas of my own for discussing image and tell you which painting … is which.

Repeatedly Painting Closed Worlds, or Inventing Open Worlds: What is Abstract Art For?

“An original author always invents an original world …. There is no such thing as real life for an author of genius: he must create it himself and then create the consequences.”

 --Vladimir Nabokov on Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park

Nabokov’s observation about one of Austen’s more controversial novels applies to artists as well.  No artist, no author, wishes to produce a work that has already been written or painted; “make it new.” I want to talk for a bit about what this means for abstract artists. For the purposes of playing with “original worlds,” I am going to pare down all the possibilities inherent in abstract art for a moment. I will divide the practice of creating abstract art into a choice of painting either closed or open worlds. Bear with me.

Representational paintings present the viewer with a battle, or a nymph and satyr, or encourage us to linger over the breakfast coffee cups or the delicate pinks of a rose, but the abstract artist is not re-presenting. Abstracts offer forms and colors to us … for the first time. This is the attraction of what I am calling the closed method: these painters draw geometric shapes, straight lines and repeated verticals and horizontals, not coffee cups, not armor, and not even their contours, in order to propose a different space to their audience.  A new space.  Josef Albers said that he felt that “abstraction is real, probably more real than nature. I prefer to see with closed eyes.”  Here is an Albers painting, “Homage to the Square: Terra Caliente”:

 There is no organic shape or line here, no delicate shading, and we could even call into question one of the most basic ideas of painting, figure against ground. While there are no straight lines in nature, Gertrude Stein (reputedly) said, Albers has given us several.  The squares reverberate; their colors move. Albers painted many “Homage to the Square” works, always adjusting the color and the squared forms. The titles alone call into question what we think we know; a homage is to …a person, isn’t it?  Agnes Martin said, in “The Untroubled Mind,” in her Writings, that

Then I drew all those rectangles

All the people were like those rectangles

they are just like grass

That’s the way to freedom ….

These paintings are about freedom from the cares of this world

from wordliness ….

Art re-stimulates inspirations and awakens sensibilities

that’s the function of art  (p. 39)

We are to be re-moved, waked up, re-imagined by this art.  Here is a Martin, from 1961, called “The Islands”:

 Paintings by Agnes Martin do not reproduce well in photographs. It isn’t possible, here, to see the careful pencil lines or to trace the slow movement of a brush from the beginning of a line to its end.  Seen in person, close, paintings by Martin are not only about different space, but about time, the time it takes to paint them, the time it takes to take them in. Because the works are so plain, so repetitive, so apparently “easy,” a roomful of Martins is very calming. Agnes Martin had begun her painting life in New York, in the full glare of the Abstract Expressionists. Early works of hers, now mostly destroyed, show her finding her way, but very much in the wake of others. Martin even stopped painting for a long period of time, until she arrived at this new way of painting, a way of working that is hers alone (just as Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons belong only to her, or e.e. cummings’ treatment of the poetic line will never, it seems likely, find an heir).  

It isn’t the “shock of the new,” but the “seduction of the new” that pulls painters in. More recently, the Damien Hirst spot paintings -- completed largely by his studio assistants -- are introduced by Hirst this way: “When I first painted them it was this brand new thing and I felt immortal in a way. The time was right. We were fucking dancing on the tables, changing the rules, nothing could stop us …. The spot paintings were definitely conceptual art. There’s an optimism to them which is amazing” (interview with Anthony Haden-Guest, January 10, 2012, www.galleristny.com). Here is a Hirst, “DL-P Chlorophenylalanine Methyl Ester,” 1998:

New … like the dots of Georges Seurat, these dots push and pull.  Hirst’s assistants had been making color and placement choices, “anything not to make a decision,” Hirst says (in the interview with Haden-Guest) but he did eventually take those rights back and planned the works, for maximum impact, one assumes.

The reason that I am describing these works by Albers, Martin and Hirst as “closed” is that there is no more to be done.  Every square is complete and framed, every line is finished, every dot is painted.  There isn’t any erasure, or softening of effect. It’s all there, planned, complete, conceptually perfect.  And there’s a good deal to be said for that -- I like Martin’s work, in particular – but there is a small problem with working this way now.

Rosalind Krauss wrote, in The Originality of the Avant-Gard and Other Modernist Myths, that “Perhaps it is because of this sense of a beginning, a fresh start, a ground zero, that artist after artist has taken up the grid as the medium within which to work, always taking it up as though he were just discovering it as though the origin he has found by peeling back layer after layer of representation to come at last to this schematized reduction … were his origin, and his finding it an act of originality. [And yet] …. The modernist grid is, like the Rodin casts, logically multiple: a system of reproductions without an original” (pp. 160, 162).  So these works are not … new.

What of the other category I have mentioned, the “open” painting? Here, I won’t give you several examples, just one, of a really powerful artist from Ireland: Patrick Graham.  (His solo show is now in San Francisco, at the Meridian Gallery, through April 14, 2012, and then moves to American University in Washington D.C. and will be shown in the fall at the Saint Louis University campus).  We saw the paintings and drawings (installed in the three stories of a beautiful Victorian mansion near Union Square) last week.

I should mention that Graham does -- often -- employ at least one straight line in his work. As a child, “I had a sense of being rooted” in Monaghanstown Bog in County Westmeath, Graham says. “I would look up at the sky with the larks hanging there, and then back down to earth in a great circular sweep …. I used to strip off and lie on the bog, feeling a sensual belonging to it. That meeting of earth and sky -- that horizon appears in all my paintings, locking everything together” (catalogue, p. 15).  Here is my husband’s favorite work from the show, “Deposition: Study 7,” from 2010 (all images are courtesy of The Meridian Gallery, San Francisco):

 There isn’t a straight line here, exactly, just the lining-up of the three central forms and the stretched-out figure of a man creating the sense of line among them.  The space is mostly white, with delicate tracings of pencilled-in forms (a pyramid or roof, something that looks like a table, lines and some scratches that are indeterminate) and phrases, bits of meaning, in two places on the painted board.  In an essay focusing on Graham’s iconography, Jarrett Earnest says that he sees these “tiny graphite specks” as “creating an ominous sense of pestilence or a dense invisible presence, like a ghost” (catalogue, p. 72).  Well, that “ominous sense” is certainly possible, although I did not see this work as prefiguring death or despair. There may be a ghostly presence, as I was certain that I saw a painting underneath, something painted out; this “Deposition” leaves you wondering.  The title is ambiguous, as well; is someone giving evidence (for himself? or against someone?) or is something simply being laid down … to rest? To think?

One of the characteristics of an “open” painting like this is its indeterminacy; interpretations will vary.  Samuel Beckett, in speaking of his novel How It Is,

said that meaning is “a rumour transmissible ad infinitum in either direction.”  And rumour, like meaning, can be rather unreliable -- particularly when it might run in two directions at once.  Earnest has reviewed statements by Graham, and notes that “Graham stresses that all his work is strategically unfinished, that it is left open.  Openness -- to receive, to listen -- is an unfixed state of transition” (catalogue p. 56).  The openness means that the works seem to be “in transit.” They have not arrived at their final stages; we get the feeling that nothing is pre-determined. Unlike the paintings we looked at above, based on the grid, where movement comes from color placement, which tricks the eye, so that a dot of a certain color seems to leap past another, here, the movement must be contemplative. The movement, the sustained interest, must be supplied by the viewer.

“Open” also means imperfect. Graham has stated that he found himself, at a young age, accomplished, “a self-conscious possessor of gifts that focused a kind of attention on me that I simply didn’t know how to deal with” (catalogue, p.80).  He needed to begin again in a world of sturdy shapes; like Matisse, Graham isn’t delicate. His bodies are flattened and not entirely in the frame. Look at  “The Artist, the Woman,” from 1983-4, a painting that is 72 ½ “ square:

The dedication is to David Bomberg, the British painter whose early work was geometric, Cubist, Futurist, but whose time in World War I trenches changed his work completely to expressionist figures and landscapes.   The figures dominate only the upper half of the painting with torso and head and blue veils or clouds; the lower half, here, is the more “open” half.  Why this dedication, here? Why the energetic brushstrokes and bubbles? Is this earth or water? The interesting thing here is that we don’t need to know.  We can simply see the arrested face of the woman, the cancelled-out face of the artist (looking rather like a Francis Bacon).  The horizontal and vertical lines here seem to be holding the figures in, so they don’t simply fly off into space.  Intriguing, and totally open to interpretation.

My favorite of all the works on show is the painting (the title says drawing, but it seems … more than that implies) here, called “The Lark In the Morning: Reworked Drawing, 1994,” and it is 31 7/8 x 44 1/8 inches. This is one of two works with the same title, but this is the one I really love:

 The rose-colored (male? female?) nude on the right seems to be in a calm, quiet space, where the nude (male? female?) on the left is in the midst of scribbling, re-painting, lines, marks (including two x’s) and cliffs or smokestacks… a riot of disparate images.  Or perhaps it is the person on the right who is bereft, and the one on the left in the midst of happy energy. What’s wonderful about this kind of art-making is that it’s still open, like a landscape.

Patrick Graham said: “the landscape has influenced my work right up to the present, particularly the low horizon; and that great vista where you can encounter space, and figures in it, in all kinds of ways….  Silences. No conversations. A looking-in, rather than a lived experience. That ‘looking-in on things’ has stayed with me: a self-contained art” (catalogue p. 44). What Graham has done is to create his own “original world” and the “consequences,” for us, are that we have a new -- truly new – landscape to lose ourselves in.  And we are very grateful.

Text is Evil, Text is Good: "Image vs. Text," Part Three

Antoni Tapies’s work is difficult to find outside of New York, Barcelona and other cities in Europe; and yet, he is a well-known, influential, and powerful figure in the art world. Why is no-one here  mourning him as they did Twombly, Frankenthaler, and Rauschenberg?  

I have been suggesting (see posts from January 20 and 31) that text -- the long CV, the degrees, the artist’s statement, the wall labels, the gallery’s own press releases -- defines what we then see as “fine art.”  What is said, that is, becomes more crucial than what we see, which seems to me the wrong way around.  In its way, I have been saying, text is … evil.  It reinforces the power of writing and speech over the line and the color and the form of art.

But there may be room for text to be a force for good, to actually help us catch up to what we should see and know. Tapies is one such case. His text could be very helpful (he’s got it -- just consult any biography or obituary for his full story, his honors, his influence) but it is running a bit behind.  We Americans, for whatever reasons, just have not been paying attention to his bio; so, in the absence of knowing his text, we have to fall back on what we should fall back on-- our own sight.  And yet here, on the West Coast, his work can only be seen (at least in public collections) at MOCA in Los Angeles, and the Serge Sorokko Gallery in San Francisco where, yesterday, there were two Tapies etchings on the wall. Here is a photograph of one of the etchings from 1985, from the gallery’s website, named “Llull-Tapies (1038)” – and yes, those are handprints:

 Tapies -- even in death -- eludes Americans living outside of New York. It could be that he doesn’t lend himself easily to text, to being easily categorized. He lived in New York for a time, tried surrealism, and then developed his own voice in a body of work that includes etchings, paintings, and constructs (sculptures, but not quite sculptures, Rauschenbergian, really).  He is fearless with materials, and his paintings and etchings (I haven’t seen the sculptures except in photos) seem to me to open up blank areas of the canvas or paper or to build up the work outwards to the viewer.  Tapies said of his process that “As I go along with my work I formulate my thought, and from this struggle between what I want and the reality of the material -- from this tension – is born an equilibrium.”  The works have great power, even when -- as in the case of these etchings -- they are small, 14” x 20”.  Tapies’s closest artistic relative is probably Cy Twombly, but he is less about color than Twombly (there are fewer bravura flashes) and Tapies seems more interested in clusters of material and in scattered, but somehow overlapping, forms.  We stood for a long time in front of the etchings, talking with the poised and friendly gallery assistant about Tapies, Barcelona, and being in the presence of art.  Later that morning, we ran into three men visiting from Barcelona (looking for good Chinese food) and talked to them about Tapies and the headlines about him in Spanish papers.  They were well aware of his-- text.

Why is Tapies so unfamiliar to us? I would have said that he has pretty formidable text. Maybe it is not the right sort, and that is the reason for his (relative) obscurity. Can we suggest that text, when it is working for the artist, when it is the right sort, narrows the field and provides the necessary codes for entry?  How else (I can hear judges who work with residencies and competitions say) can we be certain this artist is, well, one of us?  My husband cites poetry competitions that ask for degrees and prizes awarded, up front; there is no blind reading.  How else would we know?  But I would argue that text doesn’t guarantee anything, and it does narrow the field.  Don’t we want to see all the horses run?  Tapies said his artistic goals were clear: “the artist has to make the viewer understand that his world is much too narrow; he has to open up to new perspectives.”  Stand in front of a painting and ask yourself about … image … and open when the image moves you to. That’s all we ask.  I think that Tapies has text that works for “good” for him in Europe, but works for “evil” here.  It’s a draw.

Finally, in our explorations, there was no more Barcelona or Tapies to be had, and we began to try out new places.  The “stuff” vs. “fine art” divide (see January 20 entry) concerns us, still, when we walk into a gallery … will we even be welcome?  As non-buyers?  And then we were met with unbelievable kindness … and it made me think of Wallace Stevens … all we need is “one thing”:

If the rejected things, the things denied,

Slid over the western cataract, yet one,

One only, one thing that was firm …

One thing, remaining, infallible, would be

Enough! Ah! douce campagna of that thing!

Ah! douce campagna, honey in the heart …

Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed

                        --from “The Well Dressed Man with a Beard”

“One thing.” We were only looking to feel a little more at ease in an art world that sometimes seems too absorbed in … text. We walked into the Meyerovich Gallery that shows, as a matter of course, Picasso, Matisse, Motherwell, Frankenthaler, and Frank Stella.  I had seen the postcards in the lobby and felt I needed to see Stella and Frankenthaler; it had been a long time.  We told the gallery owner that we were an artist and a poet, and that we were looking for inspiration … and were not able to buy. Alex Meyerovich did not seem at all perturbed. The gallery was quiet, and so he talked to us freely about meeting his artists, knowing their families, and then he pulled long, smooth storage walls out to reveal a Stella here, a Frankenthaler there, another Stella (“which did you like better?” he asked). Meyerovich obviously loves and understands art and his artists. A sold Motherwell rested on one wall; we discussed the merits of Elizabeth Murray and Frank Stella (Stella wins, for him, but I have the hope that someday, their canvases will merge).  These were fine Stellas (go to the gallery itself or to his lush website to see them): big, bright, layered paintings embedded with collages and drawings.  So here was a case of “good” text: Stella met all the demands of his considerable reputation.  I can still see these paintings in my mind, which is pretty much my test for good work; it follows me around.  If I were buying, I thought, I would buy these.  

And then a smaller triptych caught our attention, by a local artist named Matt Phillips, who works mostly in monotypes. Here is a similar one from Meyerovich Gallery’s website, called “Traveling Along,” from 2009, a collage/monotype measuring 15” x 22”:

Phillips may not have quite as much text as the other artists in the room, but he didn’t need it, because his very strong work won the gallery owner’s confidence, which was followed by a place on his walls. Phillips is known in other places, of course, but very few images can hold their own in the midst of abundant good text like Motherwell’s, Frankenthaler’s, Stella’s … The image was “a thing affirmed,” as Stevens says.  Matt Phillips was a welcome discovery -- as was the generosity of the gallery owner.  This was a case of text and image … where image won every time.

For Eduard Manet, for Helen Frankenthaler: on Renewing a Painting Passion

I read an article called "What Paint Does," by Robin Greenwood, in Abstract Critical (16 January 2012).  Greenwood argues for a new awareness of abstract art; we must look at the artists we love with some purpose, or else risk simply "re-inventing" everything that abstraction has already accomplished, both successes and failures. Greenwood writes: "If ... perish the thought ... I were to offer advice to an abstract painter starting out today, I would suggest they copy the artist they most admired until they got somewhere near to competing with them, and then move on to someone better; and so on, till there was no-one left and they themselves were the best of all (I'm an idealist)."

Well, I was looking to start again... the odalisques in abstract landscapes are a complete series on their own, now, and ... what's new?  And I thought about all the artists I most admire. I have consciously worked from the starting point of David Hockney, in a series of landscapes in 2003, and I un-consciously have leaned on Joan Mitchell, Willem de Kooning, and Kandinsky.  But I had never tried to look at Helen Frankenthaler's work from the perspective of how it was really feasible, in part because I thought she would be, like Gertrude Stein or e.e. cummings, an act impossible to follow. But I really thought that Greenwood had made a wonderful suggestion, and so I looked at a catalogue of Frankenthaler's work that I have, called East and Beyond. In his essay, John Yau shows us, at one point, that Frankenthaler took an Édouard Manet painting, "Fish (Still Life)," (which is 28 7/8" x 36 1/4") from 1864 as a starting point:

Here is Frankenthaler's, painting, completed in acrylic on canvas, 71" x 115," in 1981:

We can see the spaces and light that both paintings share. John Yau writes the essay for this catalogue and he says "a point-to-point comparison ... would ultimately miss"  Frankenthaler's pursuit here, which he says is "the desire to grasp that which remains elusive," memory, the fact that "the world is constantly appearing and vanishing" (24).  That may be true; but artists, when pressed, are unwilling to say too much about the point of their work.  I looked at these two paintings and thought that this would be a way in to Greenwood's prescription.  So I started, with two 30" x 30" wood panels. I took photographs after each stage of the painting I was making; I won't give you all of them, but here are a few on the way to my "somewhere near to competing with" the Frankenthaler:

This was the first shot over the bow -- it was really fun for me -- burnt umber with burgundy and yellow ochre, acrylic paint thinned down with water and glazing liquid and spread with bits of an old pillowcase. It became an effort of my full body, walking around the painting, with each additional layer, pursuing the Frankenthaler pursuing the Manet, which was a photograph in an open book in a corner of the studio floor:

Black and purple wash over the top to get at some of Frankenthaler's and Manet's fabulous blacks, then, skipping forward a few sessions:

More yellow ochre, then white, permanent green middle and pthalo green and white, then thalo green and glaze.  More blacks to right. Then, two steps later:

Cerulean blue hue, more green, more whites, yellow ochre with raw sienna and burgundy. Now, for the final picture, which I got to stages later, after throwing white paint, adding yellows and oranges and details of red, green, browns, pouring, and scraping and pouring the whites:

Now, this isn't precisely the same as the Frankenthaler. And yet it was so luminous, and so balanced, and so much fun.  Now, I decided, I had to try and make the painting my own. "Seize the glimpse," Robert Motherwell said, and then "the ethic lies in erasing that glimpse." So here I go, erasing, scraping away with sandpaper, and adding some white and lighter hues:

Then, layers of more paints, more scraping:

One of the things that is emerging is three horizontal spaces, which I did not want to encourage. So I went into the painting with brushes and scrapers and splashes. Another idea that emerged from looking was that there were no straight lines or geometric shapes here, as there aren't, generally, in Frankenthalers, but I wanted them, and so I added a triangle in the lower right:

Now I am liking the light here, but there needs to be more surface and we need some pencil and drawing here, too. We had gone for a walk along the Alameda shoreline, and the boats, balconies, rocks and scattered birds gave me the last few images here:

I think this is to Frankenthaler as she was to Manet; I am calling it "E.M. and H.F. Walk on the Beach in Alameda."

Tintoretto's "Susanna and the Elders": Image vs. Text, Part II

Figure and Ground

We saw this painting at the De Young’s “Masters of Venice” show a few days ago; at 57” x 76 ¼,” it takes up most of one wall and is absolutely luminous.  It is the second of Tintoretto’s known versions of the story (the first is in the Louvre) but this is the one that … well, everyone swoons over. The Biblical story behind “Susanna and the Elders” begins with a habit: she frequents her husband’s gated orchard at the same time each day. The “elders” of the title know this, and arrive as she is deciding to take a bath; Tintoretto captures the moment before they see her and before she sees them. Susanna refuses their advances, for which they punish her by accusing her of adultery with an (unknown) young man; at the trial, their lies are discovered and the elders are killed.  Many painters give us the moment when Susanna becomes aware that the elders see her; Tintoretto shows the elders just getting into position.

Despite the many stories we could follow here -- Susanna’s chastity (in these times, faithfulness after marriage was just as important as virginity before, and the Susanna of this painting was often used as a model to follow), or the idea that “the truth will out”  -- but I would like to follow a line of argument about figure and ground, to see if we can’t tie it back to -- text.

Here is the painting with some lines I have added to trace the peculiarities of the ground:

Take a look at the whole picture, with these outlines; you can see that the painting does not really hang together. To begin with the farthest-away portion, framed in yellow: a beautiful, pastoral garden, with deer to the left, ducks floating in water to the right. This clearly suggests Eden, innocence, perhaps to give us the idea that nature empathizes with our heroine; the eye doesn’t linger there, however, because it moves on to the title characters, who, oddly, are really part of the ground and not figures in their own right. The elders, outlined in red, bookend the hedge. The elder to the right of the hedge is tucked into the dead center of the upper portion of the painting, something that escapes us at first, because he is mirrored by a statue to the right of the archway that leads back to yet another level of paradise.  He, and the un-articulated statue, are, essentially columns, supporting the arch.  Perhaps Tintoretto has done this to let us know that this elder will not present any real problems in the long run.  The second elder is curled into a space behind the hedge. If his robes were green, they would be a grassy hill. He cannot see Susanna yet, and as a non-actor, seems more ground than figure: he is given no shoulder-space and no real second arm, so he is, like the other elder, compromised, already.

Now look at the tree trunks behind Susanna, outlined in green; she could not possibly be leaning against them -- where are the roots?  What is the relation between the bath, a squared edge filled with water (not outlined) and the trees?  Another bit of ground is the vertical hedge: why does it appear to be wrapped in burlap, like a canvas in transit (did Tintoretto paint what was in the studio)? Why are the roses so evenly spaced? Why are there no breaks in the hedge, no pieces of light?

The strangest part, though, seems to me the ground that I have framed in blue, which is divided into at least two separate perspectival planes.  First, along the hedge, the ground rises in a triangle back to the elder and the pastoral distance; and the source of that perspective would be the elder at front left, if he were in position to see Susanna -- but he cannot see Susanna, and we can.  The ground inside my blue line is very difficult to read or reconstruct. It doesn’t make sense as real terra firma.  Even the ground that surrounds Susanna’s clothes and borders the pool in the front is dark and vague.  This makes no sense. Grass is easy to paint. Susanna is solid, but the ground she rests on is not. She is not sitting on dirt, or lovely little grasses and flowers, or a tree-root. Even the elder in the top center of the painting seems to be looking down, trying to find his footing… where can he step?  The ground cannot be visually understood, mapped, or defined. It comes at us, as if we were overhead, in an apparent anticipation of Cézanne’s tipped-up table (see below, from 1890-4, “Still Life with Apples”):

So the ground is tilted, almost as if we were standing over Susanna, or standing in front of her. Oh, that’s right – we are. There is a second carefully-constructed perspective that gives the audience a role. We are supposed to see Susanna nearly head-on.  David Rosand, in Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice, notes that, in this painting, the viewer is “a voyeur, but with even more privileged, and aesthetically sanctioned, access to the bathing body. Pictorial desire and sensual desire are conflated” (p. 181).  So, whether we “desire” to be or not, we are the elders, except, of course, that we are not in a position to harm Susanna, to save her, or even to breathe Susanna’s air. She is, for us, like the figures on Keats’s Grecian urn, frozen in time: “For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!”  But the question remains, as Robert Hahn notes: “If the painting could make me feel I shouldn’t be looking at all, why was it painted, and why in this particular way?” (“Caught in the Act: Looking at Tintoretto’s Susanna,” Massachusetts Review, Vol. 45, No. 4, Winter 2004-5, p. 635).

So, perhaps there are answers in the last bit of un-articulated ground, the mirror.  Why have we not seen more than a bit of satin and an hair-ornament reflected there?  Why is the mirror there at all? What sort of woman carries her comb, her powders, and her vanity-table mirror with her into an orchard?  She is not using it to apply make-up. Why is it there? I think the mirror is there so that Susanna has somewhere to look besides out at us.  She looks happily at her own reflection, a female Narcissus.  We are thus meant to be -- just like the elders -- voyeurs.  (It is worth noting that in the earlier version of “Susanna and the Elders,” Tintoretto shows her looking out  -- “as frankly as Manet’s Olympia,” Hahn says, p. 637).  Here, I think there is meant to be more innocence -- on her part -- and more guilt, on ours.

So is there anything in the figure that relates to, or is in marked contrast with, this uncertain ground?  Susanna, to begin with, is one solid piece of work.  I wrote in an earlier blog piece (11/30/2011) that “she is all we see.”  Sometimes, as would happen later with Rembrandt’s Saskia or Manet’s Victorine Meurent, an artist paints the same model in several different pictures. But Susanna is unique. Nude artists’ models were not readily available in sixteenth-century Venice, so Tintoretto often sketched from wax figures that he created, and he also drew “male nudes” and translated them later into “female figures” (Claus Virch, “A Study of Tintoretto After Michelangelo,” Department of Painting, Metropolitan Museum of Art). Susanna seems to have been modeled on a pretty hefty, almost manly, scale. Her arms and legs are muscular, and the one visible breast seems more male than female. Susanna’s strength and almost surreal calm make her seem sexually powerful, self-contained, as if she doesn’t need anyone else (rather like Matisse’s “Blue Nude – Souvenir de Biskra”).   The ground is terribly ambiguous, the main figure, a rock. Why?

Because of … Text

I think it all returns to text.  The ground is uncertain because it is an afterthought. The figure is certain because it obeyed the rules: all the naked ladies painted in Tintoretto’s time brought their texts with them, and so were guaranteed safe passage. They were goddesses or mythological or Biblical women.  They were not Venetians.  Griselda Pollock, in Differencing the Canon, writes that in this era, the genre of “the erotic female nude … was emerging … shifting the connotations of the female nude from its traditional iconographic association with truth towards its modern significance of (masculine) desire and its privileged visuality” (p. 105).  So Tintoretto has done well to choose Susanna -- for his viewers.   But what about the precise moment that he chooses?  She looks at her reflection in the mirror with apparent pleasure.  The elders are not yet completely on their marks.We look at her looking (as in this photo, below, from a New York Times review of an earlier Tintoretto show):

Why not choose another, later moment, as Anthony Van Dyck did, in 1621?

I think we can see why Tintoretto rejected this idea. Van Dyck’s Susanna is not calm, not a study in nude perfection, but a terrified young woman, confined in a small space with two men and three very large hands.  (His aim is very different, of course -- he is a devout Catholic and an emotional painter of religious works).  Van Dyck’s painting resembles a document: “Exhibit A.”  Tintoretto’s vision, in contrast, is so painterly, so light-filled, that it leaves us with just enough room to mock the elders.

Tintoretto wanted achievement: “il disegno di Michelangelo ed i colori di Tiziano” (the drawing of Michelangelo and the color of Titian) was written on the wall of his studio.  The shape, precise outlines, the delineation of the ground in this painting was unimportant to him. “Susanna” was painted in 1555-6, when he was 38, which would be young for an artist now, but in his time… he needed to get going.  “Tintoretto took up either techniques or subjects utilized by the older, more established artists in order both to challenge himself and present his talent” notes Dan Clanton (in The Good, The Bold, and The Beautiful, p. 123). Tintoretto wanted to set off that body. He wanted it to be the first and last thing anyone saw.  Robert Hahn asks, in all seriousness, a question he doesn’t exactly answer: “Is Susanna just another hot babe employed to strip for the bozos?” (p. 645).  And the answer is, in pursuit of text, just … maybe.

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?

Hanging (on) the Ineffable: Is "Text" the Difference Between 'Fine Art" and "Stuff"?

André Malraux invented le musée imaginaire, where works could be seen “without walls,” pulled away from their art-historical categories and their countries (and, I am assuming, the world of money).  It is now possible to create that musée imaginaire in our thoughts and … online … and the musée we create keeps us alive.

But artists and their audiences still need to see art, really see it, the brushstrokes and nail holes and scrapings and chisel marks, to stand close to the canvas, to walk across the room, to see the scale of the work and see what the artist saw as the work was progressing.  

We began a visit through the quiet rooms of a series of art galleries in San Francisco. About five galleries into the day, happy, we stepped into a small space and saw a solo show with drawings, paintings, and tapestries.  I had some questions, as I found the art rather uneven and its reach overly ambitious: the drawings tended towards kitsch (many, however, were sold!), the monumental paintings were perfectly cold and accomplished, but the tapestries –-carefully done and brimming with color-- were gorgeous. (I did not write down the price at the time, but on another gallery’s website, a tapestry by this same artist, a wide brush on a variegated field, is selling for $9,800). The assistant drifted away, and the owner materialized.  The tapestries were contracted out to Belgian weavers, he said; the artist made preparatory drawings in some detail, and he began to elaborate.  My husband moved, as he often does, to clarify who we were; an artist, a poet, and not people who are buying.  The owner said “yes, but artists must support other artists.” We said that we were looking for inspiration; coming to galleries is a kind of support, something we can do, particularly where the prices given are in thousands of dollars.  “I have heat bills, light bills, just like you,” the owner said, bristling.

But his door had been open; the ability to look at art was -- without engraved invitation -- still on offer.  My husband said “We don’t have this kind of money … so we don’t buy art … we hang her stuff.”  That hung in the air for just a minute. And then, not really having listened, not really seeing us anymore, still apparently arguing for a sale, the owner said “this,” waving his arm at the pieces on the wall, “this is fine art … your work” he said, looking at me for the first time, “is just … stuff.” 

Now, maybe he was just using my husband’s term -- “her stuff”  -- and hadn’t just thrown out an insult.  (He hasn’t seen my “stuff,” after all, so how could he judge it?). Or, maybe, he meant it.  There it was, and couldn’t be un-said: my “stuff” vs. “fine art.” I can guess that he is enmeshed in a musée imaginaire of his own, not a nice musée, either, but a museum for the initiates only, a place where text and the explanation trump the actual art.  What he claimed for his art would “brand” it as “fine,” worthy of investment. Perhaps he would have been happier if he could display four bare walls -- and could claim that only a special coterie could see the brilliance of the works on show, a kind of gallery version of the emperor’s new clothes, “hanging,” as my husband said, “the ineffable.”

Is there such a thing as “fine art”?  The definitions run from the most inclusive (all the arts, such as dance and architecture), to a simple mention of the visual arts, to, most precisely, a painting that is “pure of discipline.”  Importantly, “fine art” generates money; if we look up the largest amounts of money paid for paintings, we can collect a list of artists, (in varying order, depending on the most recent auction): Jackson Pollock, Gustav Klimt, Willem de Kooning, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent Van Gogh (and even, in one list, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” once she is adjusted for inflation).  

We can try a discussion of contemporary “fine art,” then, to escape historical certainties: how can we distinguish, in the art of our own times, the “fine art” from the “stuff”?

A critical work, Picture Theory, by W.J.T. Mitchell, on image vs. text in the visual arts, claimed that “the text is an intrusion on the image …. the wall labels in museums take more of the spectator’s time than the image” (209). I think it may be that text is the problem.  We hear text from the gallery owners, pronouncing work as “collectible,” “unique” or (really, once): “world class.”  We read dozens of artist’s statements, that day in the galleries, and many, many résumés.  We hear “experts” like the gallery owner pronounce work “collectible” in (spoken) text. The more generous the text, it seemed, the higher the prices, the “finer” the art.  

Each résumé posted in the galleries that day offered sections delineating “Solo” or “Group” shows. Every added line meant, the artist must have thought, added future revenue.  (I was solicited recently via e-mail by a man from a small picturesque Italian town, to apply to be shown in his gallery; it seemed my response would guarantee my being shown. The “entry” fee was 200 euro -- about $256 at today’s exchange rate. It turns out that he does indeed show the work that artists ship to him, at their own expense, and at their own risk of the art’s being stopped at customs.  In truth, his is a tiny gallery -- looking a bit like a former one-bedroom apartment -- in a tiny town, and it was unclear just what advantage this might bring his artists.  People ship work to him … probably in pursuit of that additional résumé line … of text).  Each line of an artist’s bio is proof that someone, somewhere, has chosen this art as “fine.”  Fine, finer, finest, as the text piles up.

Artists do talk about “when” to stop entering juried shows (competitions where a juror, or panel, selects the work); there is a discussion online now about this dilemma.  A juried show is better than an open show, everyone agrees, but not as fine, of course, as a solo show.  “Fine art” rears its ugly little head again here, I think. Even given their comparative lack of text-clout, I find juried shows invigorating -- I am delighted when my work (oops, “stuff”) is accepted.  What if Jasper Johns or Julie Mehretu entered a juried show?  Wouldn’t that be fabulous?  But they don’t need the text.; they have solo shows, retrospectives, which are, of course, the ultimate “text.”

An artist’s text on a résumé also includes work and schooling. We recently saw the paintings of a young man who works with a famous Bay area painter; he sets up the big guy’s canvases and paints, answers his phone, replies to letters.  This assistant’s work was selling briskly at a “fine art” price. The young man’s paintings?  “Fine.” Exact replicas of his boss’s work.  The text was winning, for the moment.

Then there is the art-school portion of the bio. Every artist in the galleries in downtown San Francisco mentioned an MFA.  I think that the classes in fine arts can teach materials, set-up, drying times, archival processes … but then, by the time one is in graduate school, one knows all of that.  I think that, most importantly, graduate school in the visual arts provides contacts, a.k.a., text: more lines for jobs, more lines for prizes.

(Two small asides about text:  First, I found a reference to an artist named Housep Pushman (1877-1966) whose work was terribly successful in his time -- consistently sold-out shows -- and his work is lovely and careful (see, below, his “Pushman Book, Number 555”):

But he is all but forgotten, now, and his work sells for a fraction of that of his contemporaries.  Did someone erase his text? Second, on text and success: I read that the Oscar committee is getting so many documentary submissions that they have decided to exclude any documentary for 2013 that has not had a review in The New York Times or The Los Angeles Times.  Now that’s some serious -- mandated -- text).

Suppose we got rid of all the text. Suppose we were presented with just the thing itself.  Would we know “fine art” when we saw it? Would we be able to construct a musée imaginaire that is no fairy tale?

This is the big question, for me.  Is “fine art” any more than endless, but very articulate, text?  Imagine two paintings on a wall. One was painted by an artist without much text, the other by an artist with considerable text. But you are not told which one is which.  Here they are:

The problem we face involves the very definition of “text” as I am using it, i.e., fame, marketability, etc. We know in advance the text that attaches to the famous painter.  The question is, however, can we say whether one is “better” without resorting to merely intuitive judgments?  The vocabulary of the subjective judgment of art is well known—“balance, beauty, maturity, energy, etc.”  But, the question here is whether we can we determine “objective” characterizations of both paintings that will allow us to say with certainty that one is better/worse than the other?  Are there facts about either painting that go to the question of their quality as art, as fine art, as “finer” art?  Or is it all really only a question of text?

The judgment whether one piece of art is superior to another is always entirely subjective.  It doesn’t change anything, either, that that subjectivity be enshrined in a culture of judgment, such as art criticism, or whatever.  If we now construct a musée imaginaire,  which of these two works would we enshrine?  Which do you think carries the weight of heavy text behind it?  Tell me what you think … and I will let you know which is which ... in a couple of days.