Perfection

Simple complexity -- isn't that an oxymoron? Well, I know what you mean. Lewis is the master of the negative space. The complexity is in the articulation of forms and colors on a picture plane. The simplicity, well -- it looks like it's so simple. Not.

Simplicity can often be as close to perfection as one can get, thus the less-is-more philosophy.

i suppose really, the perfect canvas is 'blank'!

the ultimate reduction to essence without redundancy.

Are you speaking of Ad Reinhardt's "white" paintings maybe?

Hey, that was 'my' idea!

I wonder, i saw a totally black painting at MOMA (many years ago), that i suddenly realized, as i was looking at it, was composed of six equal sections of six different blacks, side by side; i can't remember who the artist was, but now that you bring up the 'white' series, i bet it was Reinhardt!

It would almost have to be.

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truth
I too appreciate some expressions of minimalism. I like works that are very spare, Motherwell's Summer Open with Mediterranean Blue is a simple retangular and horizontal slightly shaded sky blue with a lean three sided ink-drawn rectangle descending from the top and "perfectly" placed. But this picture looks like a painter did it, not a machine. I also love the more "maximalist" dionysian works of de Kooning. What I do not get a charge from many of Pollock's works that are simultaneously maximalist (all the canvas is covered with busy-ness) and minimalist(ic) in that the same figures are repeated ad naseum like wall paper. If one dives into the painting it can work a bit, but I, personally, do need more figure- ground delineation and interaction. I thought I had the Wizard categorized as a minimalist pure and simple until he said that among his favorites are both Albers and de Kooning. Now I've got to start over again.

I'm afraid my taste is wide ranging in art and music. I try to tune into all imagery, even the most commercial stuff. Sometimes I am shocked when I get drawn to what on a closer look turns out to be banal decorator art.

Pollock's work suffers greatly from the reduction in size down to a book or PC page. I've covered this in the past -- his paintings utterly lose their impact unless you're standing in front of the painting. I've even compared it to watching a wide screen classic film in a pan-and-scan version on a 12" TV screen. "2001" for instance.

(Of course, that size thing applies to all the abstract painters who worked large).

Well perfection must be a matter of degree>
What Monet may have found imperfect in his work would be perfectly perfect to me.

Yes, I agree JL, a lot of the conceptual stuff
does not bear repetition. I can't imagine
yearning to see the tank full of sharks again!

Bogowo....this one goes a step further than the blank canvas......


"The ultimate Minimalist exhibit was French artist
Uves Klein's show of nothing at all, just a freshly whitewashed gallery containing no object or painting (two patrons even bought non-existent
canvases - Klein demanded payment in gold).
"Compared to them," art dealer Leo Castelli said,
"Mondrian is an expressionist painter."

The Annotated Mona Lisa

What was Yves Klein up to ? By emptying the canvas of objects and marks was he exploring the purity of silence ? This idea took hold in the 60's when minimalists pursued freedom from the prison or tyranny of objects, in other words silent abstract art. This is all reminiscent of John Cage's '4 minutes, 33 seconds of silence' which can either be seen as an exploration of the purity of silence or an acerbic comment on the state of contemporary music and its audiences. The same goes for Klein with 'Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility' - the states of nothing which he sold for gold. This could seen as a cynical statement on the increasing commercialisation and consumerism of art at the time. Klein's experiments with pure pigment and the pursuit of perfect blue suggests we should give him the benefit of doubt. I'm trying to draw a paralell between perfection and purity. If perfection exists would it not be pure?

Have you seen Piet Mondrian's White on White Louish?

Perfection
No I haven't but after a quick search I came across Malevich's White on White but the image was so poor I couldn't draw any conclusions. Where can I find Mondrian's.

jpgKasimir Malevich:


Some Ideas On Perfect

Sorry I could not find it, hmm, did I just imagine it. I thought I saw it in Philly but I am not sure now. But I did find the good example above. Of course there are many colors of white. "Art does not reproduce the visible, it makes visible" (Paul Klee)

Here a Mondrian entitled "Ocean," closest image I :
could find to a "white" painting:



Does give one the idea where Cy Twombly came from.

And a Malevich:



White on White

White on White is superlative - a seminal work(I imagine). It's taken me five minutes to work this out - I love the idea of a dialogue of white/s. I'm going to think about this. Incidently a good friend of Mondrians' Ben Nicholson did some very interesting white work -2D abstract reliefs- in the 40's. Top stuff JD serendipity is good.