Artist's floor installation is made of pencils

JLN,

Well first of all, it's all art. That is to say that iff something was made with the intention of being art, then it is art.

I would say that crappy art is any art that does not impress the viewer, either in terms of aesthetic appeal or display of technical skill. So it would be a relative judgement. Usually it is a combination of both aesthetic appeal and technical skill that impresses us the most.

In terms of abstract art, you can usually remove technical skill altogether and replace it with tedium, which does not contribute towards impressiveness at all. It is still possible for abstract art to score in the aesthetic appeal category, but the more simple and repetitious it is the less actual content there is, and the lesser the appeal can be there.

I think that a good way to think of it is this. First remove all redundant information from a piece of art, reduce it to it's most compact form of representation, and then judge this remaining packet of information for it's aesthetic appeal...because that is how your mind sees it.

For example, if someone has constructed a large sphere made out of tires, this could be described as "large sphere of tires" and it is basically just these two pieces of information that have a chance of scoring with the viewer.

Or take a painting. If the painting has 1 stroke, you are judging that 1 stroke -- you do not individually focus on each square millimeter of the painting and become pleased by it.

If the painting has 10,000 strokes, then you are judging it based on 10,000 pieces of information. The amount of information puts an upper bound on the aesthetic enjoyment you can recieve because each piece can be contributing something new that can be enjoyed.

However, I'd saythere is a catch because what counts is the number of pieces of information you percieve, not necessarily the amount of information that was truly put in.

For example, if there are a billion strokes of all approximately the same color paint, then you will only be able to resolve and think about this 1 giant area as 1 mostly solid color. That's one piece of information.

Or, if the artist had tediously painted 1000 polka dots, the fact that it is polka dotted is really just 1 piece of information, not 1000 pieces. And if you don't notice something, it doesn't count at all.

How does this jive with minimalism...well, like I'm saying, each piece of information has a chance of contributing to your enjoyment. But they don't all contribute equally. There is definitely diminishing returns. The most drastic pieces of information contribute the most, and the smaller ones contribute less and less until there is some point where they just don't contribute at all because your mind just abstracts it away as "all the rest" or "more of that stuff."

For this reason, a minimalistic painting where each stroke has been made very carefully could easily have greater appeal than one that has 1000 times as much percievable information.

How to estimate the amount of enjoyment that an individual piece of information might contribute? One way might be based on it's similarity to real life. Our enjoyment is an emotional thing, and emotions and feelings are conjured up by showing our brain images that remind us of certain emotions for one reason or another. This gives traditional art a big advantage because it is closer looking to stuff that might trigger our associative memory. But, it also is helpful to have a certain level of abstraction, because for some reason we like to see the emotion represented as most basically as possible. So it is a balance between the real and the abstract that is needed, which is why I always am a sucker for impressionistic art.

Another way to look at (or intellectualize) art.
Personally, I find it mysterious and, as you said, it's the aesthetic impact that matters most (and I do not, of course, refer to "prettiness").
Technical skill is very difficult to assess. It may be a technical achievement not to look too "skilled". This applies most particularly to the painterly abstract artists such as early Diebenkorn, and all those who are not interested in the faithful mimicking of what they see. Great art, as opposed to illustration and commercial design, involves so much that no critic I've read yet has managed to encompass its ingredients.

Well, I don't feel that way. I think that skill is very easy to see...it just has nothing to do with making careful strokes, as you point out with Diebenkorn as an example. He does very messy stuff, which is totally ok.

Well, let me rephrase that. I think skill is easy to see when it is applied. A skilled artist can still totally f* up and create a painting that is below their potential skill level.

Personally I don't think Diebenkorn is amazingly talented, but for example, there is a decent amount of skill demonstrated here:







vs practically no skill demonstrated here:

Hmmmmm

Hmm. Maybe I can elicit more of a response if I go on.

To clarify even more the skill in the first picture is demonstrated by the way he was able to capture the essence of light and shadow with minimalistic, messy strokes, combined with the confidence that is apparent in the strokes...specifically, by intentionally putting in additional incorrect reference lines that could, if done correctly, ruin the painting...but they didn't. It's these kinds of risks that heighten the excitement of looking at it.

In the sketch, he has just captured the essence of the 3d shape very accurately and casually. This definitely demonstrates skill, although there are many thousands of artists that produce sketches of this caliber and beyond whose names you'll never hear of. Actually, a lot of the best artists the world has ever known, in my opinion, live in today's era...and aren't particularly famous for their work, but do it for a living. There were less artists in the old days, so it was more impressive when they painted something like the mona lisa...nowadays, it is easy to find someone who can paint 10 times better than that, they just don't get the recognition because they're not doing anything groundbreaking anymore.

In the latter two images I selected, they are utter failures. They are minimalistic, sure, but they do not capture anything emotional or human about their subjects, nor very much resembling the environment. The trick is to use as few strokes as possible to still get the message across as a show of skill...but these just look like crap.

Hmmmm again. All I can do is register your perspective, valid but not mine. By the way you might want to look at Diebenkorn's abstract pictures of the early fifties, i.e., Sausalito, Albuquerque, Berkely. Much of the abstract paintings of the San Francisco school of abstract expressionism of the period appeals to MY taste intensely. But I think it might only elicit from you--and validly, given the pluralism and relativism of art today--your own Hmmmm.

The message may not be what it seems.

Fair enough!



And what does that mean, osso?

The message of art is not necessarily a show of drafting skill. A person will fill in the space of a canvas or a room installation or a violin concerto in different ways for different reasons having to do with the making of art.

yes, Osso. I do not like art where the artist's skill seems to be what is being presented as the message. For that reason I am not moved by the hyperrealists like Chuck Close, even though I admire his skill. A violinist who stresses his technical virtuosity rather than the beauty of the music or an abstract painter to emphasizes the "principles" of design informing his work tend to be considered superficial by more sophisticated audiences. The work must at least appear to be artless to carry the aesthetic grace of really fine art.

Lets go back to the drafting skills of artists like Picasso, DeMuth, Picabia, they were all extremely gifted draftsmen. They broke from THAT tedium of being constrained by the world Asit is, and went to one that they alone envisioned.

Diebenkorn is a great colorist and , to me, a master of simplification of the plane. If you go up in detail a few notches (and remove most of the figures) we see Edward Hopper 's watercolors in the same flat plane. Yet noone takes shots at Hopper (except for his oils)

Stuh, I feel that you embody the George Seurat school of art production. Youre "overthinking" the aesthetic..
Just because you dont get it, doesnt make it worthless.

I always had shitcanned Helen Frankenthalers work as mere"linseed oil on a hoagie wrapper" Then one day I found some work of hers that combined the many hues of blues and ochre and cad yellow. Her painting just knocked me out. Ive looked around for more of her work ever since.

For some visceral gut yanking lithography and conte sketching, go seek out the works of Kathe Kollwitz. Nothing pretty, quite disturbing, but the work of a master.

Pure unadulterated bullshit I'm afraid fm.

Helens don't do art. They inspire it.

stuh, So whats wrong with lightheasrtedness. Look at some of Levines and Weiners work. Or Charles Meryons gargoyles. Ive always followed his gargoyles as a stylistic model in my own work.

Abstract expressionISM , as a time of a body of work is pretty much aged beyond its date of expiration. Still, the lessons learned and the message conveted by all the AD Reinharts and Bill Baziotes and Adolph Gottliebs is ,"Its damn difficult to say something meaningful and original about the world you wish to portray"

Talk about tedium, my feeling of CGI is that its mind numbing samness generated by a host of talentless zombies. Its a celebration of the banal and is without any substance that generates any emotions, yet its the slickest snot on the doorknob. Were in an age that celebrates cartoon reality, not real art. Give me Goya and picasso, Diebenkorn and Kollwitz, Frazetta and Morrison thank you. Id just as not see any more Jorg Warda work or Jerry Vandersteldt, they are salespersons/ illustrators making belive that its fine art they produce.

Ther IS a lot of crap out there, but representation is not the keystone of quality

fm wrote-



That is very true. That is so, so very, extremely true.

spendi, Ive been quite easygoing with you, and Ive even tried to be supportive. Now youre just freaking me out. To troll , has nothing to do with fishing when in a pbb context. I would seek some carefully chosen professional help, quaff a deuce of "Extra Smooths" and call it a night and crawl back into your crypt atop your cubic yard of native soil.

Farmerman, I take your comments on art very seriously. They reflect the perspective of an obviously sophisticated observer.

JL, you and I have disagreed many times on art, its value , and the production process, you know me well enough that right or wrong, I will have an opinion about an artists work. Maybe I dont rank some artists in the same planes as you and vice versa. However , I think we both try to understand the work itself , the product separate from the process. I find it difficult to lump an entire group just because they often push the envelope in what they lay down on the board.

Lately Im more involved in trying to see more works of the late George Morrison whose abstractions in silverpoint, wood, oils and acrylics, have opened new ways to see the abstract llandscape when viewed from his eyes. He invests a high horizon line in all his paintings, symbolic of the life hed lived on the edge of Lake Superior.

I pay attention to the both of you, am different from each. But I'll nod on recent comments. I'm a tad sorry my comment was so weak, re drafting and certain excisioning to an nth as having much to do with art.

OK, maybe it does, but it's only a start, a start that can be toyed with.

Toy... play.

" I live in an air full of images , just waiting, waiting" Jacques Lipchitz

I googled Morrison (I wasn't familiar with him); very much like his use of color.