Is Abstract Art Staging a Big Comeback?

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Although, I am willing to confess that in the past, during flat or dry moments, I have examined reproductions for inspiration, with a conscious search for ideas--aesthetic ideas. But never has my next painting ever looked like those I found inspirational--for better or for worse.

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LW, here is an example of a painter whose work is clearly influenced by another (in this Diebenkorn's late Ocean Park works). Only the painter, Mcclung can know if the work has "authenticity."
Go to: www.abstract-art.com. Then click "What's New", then on top line click "New Artists Gallery," then scroll down to Roger McClung.
Damn, you'll have to get the link from your address bar.

Try this -

Roger McClung


ack, and then it was too long, so I tried to put it into a word-URL. Well, we'll see.

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Good try, Osso. Then when you've arrived at McClung continue scrolling down for another "derivative": Kho's "malevich."

Ok, that worked, good. Yes, very diebenkorniesque.

So, Art chat is back, announced for tomorrow at noon west coast US time, 3pm NY time, and is England 6 hours later?
I was trying to figure how to get Australia in it too, should anybody there be interested, but that would be, I think, around 5am in Adelaide. The chat room link is on the home page, in teeny letters to the left side...

Noon is a little early for moi, but maybe 9pm is late for our English artists to want to chat?

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Thanks for the Chat announcement, Osso (and for your efforts to bring it back). Yeah, the Diebenkorn influence on McClung's painting is pretty obvious, maybe a little too obvious, especially the top of the picture. But that's just MY response. There are other fairly obvious influences, some reflect Twombly and another Malevich. I wonder if the past provides us not only with "conditioned tastes" (nothing wrong with that; we've get to get them from somewhere) but also abstract archtypal forms and color combinations--images that stay with us for a long time.

Very near plagrism IMHO.

I have sold and know an artist personally, Jeanette DeBonne who's work resembles Cy Twombly. It don't know if I can find any images on the internet but I can scan some in. I have one of her paintings but don't have room for it right now so it is hanging in a friend's office.

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LW, aside from the unlikely possibility of "independent invention" is it not possible that DeBonne has been deeply "impregnated" by some of Twombly's images such that her expression by means of such images (scribblings) are artistically valid? The reason I ask this is that I have all through the modernist era (as much as I love and miss it) regretted the excessive emphasis on originality. I called it the "Cult of Originality" and felt that it sometimes eclipsed artistic sincereity, spontaneity, or expression to the point that I came to refer to much of it as merely clever "inventiveness." Granted, plagiarism is unacceptable (especially in intellectual work) even though a derivative painting is going to have something of the plagiarist in it, like it or not. The two poles, extreme plagiarism and alienated inventiveness, are both bad IMHO--BUT I SUSPECT THAT BOTH OCCUR IN MODERATE AMOUNTS IN ALL GOOD WORK.

I agree with you, JL. Invention is not my primary interest. I am not against it as an enthusiasm, as one criterion for analysis, but also have not liked its apparent paramount role. I am put off by what looks like bad copying, but can be wrong...it could be part of an art conversation in certain circumstances. That Manet/Velasquez show this spring at the NY Met was heavily embedded with examples of artists riffing, exploring, re others' work.

Just got back from viewing an exhibition by local (Boston) artists at the old Piano Factory on Tremont St. (Bostonians will know what I'm talking about). As a rough guess, I'd say about two thirds of the work was more or less representational, one third abstract. The Jackson Pollock influence very strong among the abstractionists. Whatever happened to Op and Pop? Lichtenstein and Warhol, where is thy sting?

Jeanette utilitzes the glyphs or automatic writing apparant in Twombly. But then, you can see the same figures in Paul Klee and others so again, nothing is truly complete original. She's inspired by archaelogical findings and many of her images feature a ghosly portal at the upper section of the canvas (or paper as she likes to work with oil on paper also).

It's hard to utilize the free spirited, intuitive technique of Pollock without getting trapped in emulating his style. An artists could drastically change the colors ways but even then, Pollock explored nearly ever palette I can think of (much like Albers in his "Homage to the Square" series).

That's definitely my point here -- can new abstractionist give us some variations that are by-and-large unique in abstract imagery with as few trappings of past painters as possible?

Richter, for instance, looks like a more complex and colorful De Kooning.

I rather like the lyrical stain painters (paintings like textile dyes on untreated canvas) but they were just a blip and I don't think that was explored to the fullest. Some of the work wasn't even stretched on a canvas but hung up in drapery fashion. Too tricky?

Hi LW,

I thinkabstract art is making a comeback because computer generated art hasn't won over many purchasers. Where abstract art still dares to kick it's heels around becuae it was created by a sweating hand over a non binary substance.
Real is for real and one time originals still currently sell. Unfortunately photography is also hurt by this reserection as well.

I was working with an artist who was trying to create computer generated abstract art and I could see the possibilities of a commercial market except that the imagery is so small. Abstracts do depend a lot on scale (even though the aforementioned artist, Takara, does a lot of small watercolor abstracts that are quite good and some of them have been turned into prints. The print was the original image rather than it being taken from a full sized painting.

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LW, yes nothing is COMPLETELY original and no derivative work is COMPLETELY unoriginal. Somewhere in the derivative work--and I'm not talking about counterfeit works, of course--the painter's own predispositions and tastes will find expression. All I care about is that the work be wonderfully aesthetic in its own way on its own terms. If this requires appropriations, so be it.

jln - seconded!

I see nothing wrong in any perceived appropriations but I don't believe the artist can consciously appropriate too much stylistically and technically or it becomes so obvious it can't be ignored. Every art historian uses the term "influenced by" but influence is different than emulation. With abstract art, it is better to have the influence come from the sub-conscious rather than consciously borrowing a stylistic or technical effect.

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Agreed, LW. This subconscious source of influence is what we might refer to as "taste."

I agree with all of you, and yet...and yet...

I think that too much potentially good art suffers from being too obviously 'derivative.' The artist, no doubt, can't help having been influenced by a particular style or a particular painter, but if the artist fails to overcome this, the resulting art may suffer.

I recall visiting the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts a couple of years ago. I had gone to see the Picasso's Erotica exhibit which was not going to travel to any venue in the USA. But, while there, I thought I'd look in on some of the permanent display of Canadian artists. They all, without exception, looked like Renoir or Monet rip-offs. The point is that, on their own, each painting was really quite good. But there was nothing original about any of them.

It's possibly taste in that it is an inate ability to place an aesthetic value on certain imagery that may be lying there in our subconscious.

I know what you mean, MA, and it's an artistic laziness that steers those artists into emulating past genres in technique and style. They can't even come up with a new palette, a new compostion, a new subject matter. It's without any imagination, sterile and inert. They might as well be painting dinner plates or creating wallpaper.

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LW and MA, but of course.