Posted on 05/08/2006 6:05:20 AM PDT by Republicanprofessor
And I thought I was perfectly clear. Rothko's work needs no commentary, from Rothko or anyone else, to be fully appreciated.
Your personal lack of imaginative capacity does not translate to "failed art." Most people experience imaginative triggers in the tangible world in much the same way that Rothko's work triggers the imagination, by simply experiencing the subtle color variations that predominate over identifiable objects when viewing a vast sky, a dusky horizon, the ocean, trailing forests, earth-scapes viewed from an airplane window, or the depths of space through a telescope.
Scale representations of tangible objects are not the only thing capable of eliciting emotion, captivating the eye, or triggering contemplation and imagination.
if you have to know the artist's history to understand the art, he has failed.Maybe the artist wasn't making the piece for others, but for himself (and he was probably aware of his own history).
See post 61.
I met Mr. Kelly a few years back and while I'm not overly fond of his or very much of minimalist Art his personality was the exact opposite of what I know of Rothko. He was a funny and totally delightful man. I think though that in his later years he has somewhat settled for redoing his more successful recipes rather than attempting further development.
Trust me, you can't reproduce a Rothko.
That may be true, but I am not one to seek out visceral or painful experiences. I would rather see work that exemplifies ideals or delivers me for a little while from the mundane.
Nor does being emotionally labile translate to artistic insight.
Many visual experiences — particularly those on a large scale — evoke an emotional response (but I hardly have to add that not all impressive visual experiences are art). It's no mistake that so many abstract painters work on a gigantic scale; scale all by itself is visually stimulating.
After that, an angsty personal biography is a must.
Boy, did you start a food fight. I need popcorn for this one.
I would agree (then again . . . begging the question of what is art). With Rothko, however, the stimulus is neither singular nor small, which is what sets him apart from many abstract expressionists. Depth of field, color gradation, variations in perspective, peripheral mirage, etc. work toward a curiously engrossing imagery that seems to be larger than even the enormous canvases employed.
Interesting choice of words. What is intriguing about many abstract impressionists is an ability to translate rather faithfully an emotional instability (or perhaps less derogatory, an ever-changing emotional state) into an ever-changing or unstable visual image. Perhaps it is the very mutability of the final image that separates the good from the bad in abstractions.
I paid for, and have another 5 year paying on, my BFA. You are free to dislike Rothko, or at least how the pretentious art world snobs go on about Rothko. I disagree with you on your dislike of his merit. But at least Rothko had people interested in supporting his work rather than expecting the taxpayers to take care of his needs.
I think practically all art requires some kind of social context to be understood. For example, in Hopper's painting "Early Sunday Morning", here, without the context of the title, you don't know whether it's morning, an abandoned town, or what. Further, if you didn't have a social context, you might interpret the barber pole as a space ship and the fire hydrant as an alien. I know that's stretching, but artwork requires a social context for understanding.
Check out the Japanese Manga. If you don't understand that the Japanese read from right to left, and their extensive use of aspect to aspect illustrations (use of the same object at the same time from different angles to establish a mood), the strips are incomprehensible. Artwork uses numerous pieces of "shorthand" to convey information to the viewer.
That being said, I'm not a big Rothko fan.
True enough. The problem is, that's all they can do, and emotional instability is pretty boring as a steady diet. Someone -- I forget who -- once said that atonal music is very expressive; unfortunately, the only thing it can express is anxiety. Abstract painting is similar: we got your rage, fear, depression, anxiety, nightmares. As an antidote to Victorian sentimentality, I suppose it deserved its hour on the stage. But modernism (and even post-modernism) is getting pretty long in the tooth.
The remarkable thing is applying the word "great" to this stuff.
"In the dimness the paintings appear at first fuzzy..."
That's because they *are* fuzzy!
Understood, maybe, but not enjoyed. It isn't the same thing. If Hopper retitled that painting "Abandoned Town," would it suddenly be less (or more) good as a painting?
Not that I hugely care for Hopper, but his paintings are what they are without a lot of biography and backstory.
Posting this reply to the Rothko thread....
Rothko's subject, according to something he wrote with Gottlieb, is the "tragic and timeless." I would say that any interpretations with blood, violence, and death is it. He painted his works large so that they could be intimate, and when you see one in person, they do fill the view all around you, and you feel the pulsing color almost physically.
There is a story that in his Russian family, at the end of the 19th century, the czar's soldiers came into his Jewish village and took all out to dig a large grave. Then they were shot and placed in the grave.
It may be an apochryphal story, but Rothko repeated it himself. I often think of the large blocks in his other works as grave-like and that the way the colors pulse is like a doorway to the beyond.
That's how they strike me: as quite deep, human, and tragic.
I'm copying this to the Rothko thread, BTW. (Also note: Rothko emigrated to the US with his family when he was ten.)
Perhaps, as with other identifiable styles, it is limited in its capacity to portray and provoke response due to repetition and consequent saturation of its audience. Then again, I find it odd that certain works continue to captivate long after a given "style" has passed from the stage, undoubtedly due to the skill of the practioner.
Also, I wouldn't agree that instability in abstract expressionist/impressionist imagery conveys only emotion. The "ink blot" effect (not unlike cloud watching) provokes shifting visuals in works of note in much the same way that the well-rendered written word provokes shifting visuals. I would go so far as to say that expanding visual associations on repeated viewings is what sets apart the successful work from the poseur.
Prion: "Understood, maybe, but not enjoyed."
Modern art needn't be positive or "enjoyable" to be powerful art. Yes, that bleak message is getting really redundant nowadays. But in the years after the destruction of WWII, that was still a relevant and powerful message. And when the Abstract Expressionists conveyed this content in their individual and Existentialist styles, they made a great impact worldwide.
Incidentally, Abstract Expressionism (especially that of Pollock) was promoted in Europe during the Cold War as examples of the freedom allowable in America. All abstraction is not Communist (to reply to an earlier comment in this thread). Some American congressmen made that same mistake: linking Communism with abstraction. However, the Communists cracked down on abstraction that they did not understand (like the work of Malevich) and solely supported propagandistic realism of the happy worker. So the Communism = abstraction equation doesn't fly.
Actually, I may be on your "side" in terms of a desire to see more positive art by the current "avant-garde." Perhaps there are emerging artists who have positive messages that are not (yet) being seen in the big name galleries.
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