Expressionism and Abstract Art

Inspired by the vibrant and not-necessarily-lifelike colors of Vincent van Gogh's paintings, Expressionists tended to exaggerate colors and lines for emotional effect.  Unlike Impressionists their goal was not to render subjects accurately but to express themselves emotively, and they used enhanced forms and intensified colors to do so.  They rejected the sanitized subject matter of much of classical and Impressionist art, depicting instead lifelike scenes of suffering, poverty, and angst.  In Germany, where, as E.H. Gombrich notes, the movement "found its most fertile soil," Expressionists tried to represent, among other things, the emotional and psychological effects of industrialization and urbanization.  

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street, Berlin, 1913

All well and good.  Until somebody took it too far.

Wassily Kandinsky, a Russian-born painter and theorist living in Germany at the turn of the century, thought he could express emotion with pure color—color abstracted from any recognizable form.  Gombrich states, "In his somewhat confused and passionate book Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912) [Kandinsky] stressed the psychological effects of pure color, the way a bright red can affect us like the call of a trumpet."  Thus began abstract art.

Wassily Kandinsky, Cossacks, 1910

Here's what I think Kandinsky didn't understand:  While abstracted color can affect mood and please the eye, it cannot inspire the same depth of feeling as representational art because our associations with color per se are so varied and vague.  We've had countless encounters in our lives with red things—some good and some bad.  A painting must be more specific—i.e., it must be representational—to elicit a meaningful emotional response from the viewer.  Van Gogh's paintings convey so much emotion in part because they are paintings of things and people—a wheat field, a friend, a night sky, his mother, etc.  His use of vibrant color (among other things) helps us to experience his subjects the way he did, at least to some degree.  He could never have achieved the results he did if he had simply applied color—no matter how bright or rich—to the canvass with no recognizable forms.  

Regarding Kandinsky's early efforts at abstraction Gombrich writes, "One may doubt whether [his] first experiments at color music were a complete success . . . ."  One may indeed.  The shame of it is Kandinsky could really paint.  His early representational works are worth hanging.  Alas, he never (as far as I know) returned to representational painting.

The Sad State of Art Today

Last week The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting piece on the state of art today.  Here's the link:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/remember-when-art-was-supposed-to-be-beautiful-1477090696

From Art to Non-Art in Three Easy Steps

Step 1 - Paul Cezanne

Cezanne wanted "to make of impressionism something solid and lasting like the art in the museums."  He often painted outdoors, and some of his works, especially from the 1870s, share the brilliant tones of Impressionist canvasses.  But as he matured artistically he wanted more than simply to record his observations of nature.  To his eye Impressionist works lacked something of the grandeur of seventeenth-century masterpieces (he particularly admired the art of Nicolas Poussin).  He wanted to reconcile the achievements of Impressionism with the beauty of classical masterworks—to unite the bright hues of Impressionist canvasses with the solid forms of traditional paintings, and to capture his experiences of nature without neglecting the harmony and depth of "the art in the museums."

Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen From Bellevue, c. 1885

He experimented fearlessly—with color, perspective, geometric shapes.  Often working in seclusion in the south of France, he ignored convention and invented new techniques to achieve desired effects.  And on various levels, according to art mavens, he succeeded.  Shortly after his death in 1906, a Paris salon put on a major retrospective of his work.  It changed art history.

Step 2 - Cubism

Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque attended the Cezanne retrospective.  Cezanne's art—particularly his use of geometric shapes and distorted perspective—fired their imaginations.  Together they began developing a radically new style of art.  They jettisoned single-point perspective, deconstructed (or "analyzed") objects into parts, and represented those parts on the canvass from multiple viewpoints and in discrete planes.  The result was a fractured, geometric aesthetic and the birth of Cubism. 

Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910

Other artists soon joined in the fun.  But unlike Picasso and Braque, who preferred making art to talking about it, many of the newcomers had a serious penchant for theory.  They were obsessed with grandiose ideas they couldn't understand, articulate, or relate to painting in any meaningful way (e.g., the so-called "fourth dimension").  But that didn't stop them from trying.  They held discussions, gave lectures, wrote papers, published books (1912's On Cubism was particularly influential).  And above all the theoretical white noise at least one idea, one claim, resonated:  in art ideas are more important than mere paint.  

Fifty years later this claim, this approach to art, would become a movement. 

Step 3 - Conceptual Art

According to The Tate, "conceptual art is art for which the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art object. . . . Conceptual art can be—and look like—almost anything.  This is because, unlike a painter or sculptor who will think about how best they can express their idea using paint or sculptural materials and techniques, a conceptual artist uses whatever materials and whatever form is most appropriate to putting their idea across—this could be anything from a performance to a written description."  

Joseph Beuys, I Like America and America Likes Me, 1974
(Beuys wrapped himself in felt and spent three days in a room with a coyote to protest the Vietnam War.)

The differences between Cubism and conceptual art parallel the differences between art and non-art.  Cubism (at least initially) was about the artist's idea of an object.  Conceptual art is about the artist's idea of anything.  Cubists took a new approach to the age-old challenge of representing three-dimensional objects on a flat surface.  Conceptual artists have no interest in representing objects.  Cubists rejected the canvass as a window.  Conceptual artists reject the canvass altogether.

If we accept conceptual art as real art—that is, if art can take any physical form (or no physical form) and can be about any conceivable idea—then we empty the terms "art" and "artist" of all meaning.  And if we do that, then to talk about art is to talk nonsense.

The World As We See It

A lot of artistic isms sprouted in the early twentieth century—Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Primitivism, Fauvism, to name a few.  They varied aesthetically and theoretically, but they had one thing in common: their adherents were no longer interested in representing the world as we see it.  Indeed many believed the very notion of representing the world "as we see it" was confused or illegitimate.  This was an abrupt about-face from Impressionism, which had revolutionized the art world just 30 years prior.

Edouard Manet, Boating, 1874

Disillusioned with the stale and limiting (as they saw them) conventions of the art academies, Impressionists had moved their canvasses outdoors to paint objects as they appeared in nature.  Manet and his clan were particularly interested in the effects of light and air on the visual experience, and they developed new techniques to capture these effects with greater immediacy and accuracy than ever before.  Representing the world "as we see it" was the goal, and some of these revolutionaries eventually claimed they could paint the visual experience with "scientific accuracy."

Vincent van Gogh, Fishing Boats on the Beach, 1888

But Cezanne, van Gogh, and Gauguin wanted more from their canvasses than Impressionist ideals and techniques could yield.  And there was no going back to the art of the academies.  Each began painting something other than what he saw, sacrificing a measure of lifelikeness to greater artistic ends (and in the case of van Gogh, with gorgeous results).  Each inspired future artists to do likewise.  And each posthumously inspired one of the isms mentioned above (stay tuned for more on that).  This was the beginning of Modern art.  

The Rise of Modern Art

When you read the history of Western art at the turn of the twentieth century, you get the feeling the rise of modern art was inevitable.  So many people, in different places and for different reasons, broke with tradition and began producing radically new kinds of art—and all at the same time.  The names of the artists, where they lived and worked, what they were going for—these seem almost incidental.  It was going to happen anyway.  Sometimes the new art (and the theory behind it) seems to have nothing to do with what came before (e.g., Cubism).  Other times it seems to be a corollary of art history to that point (e.g., Expressionism).  Always it seems to be a paver in a road that art history was destined to travel.  

Georges Braque, Violin and Candlestick, 1910

 

Emil Nolde, The Prophet, 1912

Plato vs. Pollack

On Plato's theory of art as imitation, Professor David Clowney of Rowan University writes:  "It is at least plausible as a theory about representational painting, drawing, and sculpture; and it can be stretched to fit some abstract work, as in the case of Brancusi and Mondrian.  But even with such work it leaves a lot out.  With an artist like Jackson Pollack it leaves out everything; what do his drip paintings imitate?"

Jackson Pollack, Lavendar Mist, 1950

I think Professor Clowney has it the wrong way around.  We shouldn't use Pollack's drip paintings to critique Plato's aesthetics; we should use Plato's aesthetics to critique Pollack's drip paintings.  Twenty-three hundred years after his death Plato's dialogues are taught in schools and universities around the Western world.  Will anyone remember Jackson Pollack two millennia from now?  That the art world calls his drip paintings "art" (not to mention "groundbreaking" and "influential") says more about the art world than the paintings.  Pollack's drip paintings should be called "decoration" not "art."

A Love-Hate Sonnet

No man can loathe himself and love his son;
His smaller self alike he must despise—
Yea, though his love his lovely wife has won
And though his smaller self has mamma's eyes.
To wife's life-plan a man will lend his seed,
And for the sake of love risk twice the hate;
But thrice the hate the loving scheme will breed,
If son from father takes the hateful trait.
Then father's hate for father gains a friend,
For larger self son's hate will also rate.
Thus husband's love-choice spawns a loathsome end:
Four times his hate his love does propagate.
       So husband, loving, hopes for daughter sweet
       And that one child makes wife's joy complete.

Representation

In trying to define "art" it's tempting (for me at least) to rely on the notion of representation.  "All art is representational.  If it's not representational, it's not art."  It's clear.  It's concrete.  And it excludes many of the works we intuitively want to exclude.  Like this . . . 

Dan Peterman, 25 Years of Quality Control, 2015

And this . . .

Matt Mullican, Death Pulling the Soul From a Dead Man, 1976

There are two sticking points.  First, there are countless borderline cases—Picasso's Head, for example.

Pablo Picasso, Head, 1928

I could probably live with borderline cases.  More challenging is the fact that representation alone is not enough.  All art may be representational, but not all representational works are art.  (A stick figure drawing, for example, wouldn't count in my book.)  We need additional criteria to exclude works that are representational but aesthetically crude, or depraved, or objectionable on other grounds.  And if we include additional criteria, representation may be superfluous.  

Suppose for example we decide symmetry, originality, meaning, and decency are all components of art:  we could eliminate representation altogether as a criterion.  I think most qualifying works would in fact be representational (it's hard to imagine a meaningful nonrepresentational work), but maybe some wouldn't be.

Art With a Capital A

"There really is no such thing as Art.  There are only artists."—E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

An unfortunate start to an otherwise great book.  (And an ironic start to a book titled The Story of Art.)  Gombrich in his introduction claims "art" means different things in different times and places, and obsessing over "Art with a capital A" can undermine both the creation and the enjoyment of artistic works.  

Cave Paintings, Lascaux, France, 15,000 to 10,000 BC

"Art" may mean different things in different times and places, but it must share some element of meaning in all times and places.  If it didn't, we couldn't have a story of art—not one that spans millennia at any rate.  And the works themselves, from the earliest cave paintings to Picasso's Violin and Grapes, must have something in common.  If they didn't, how would Gombrich know what to include in his book? 

Pablo Picasso, Violin and Grapes, 1912

Given what passes for art today, it seems worthwhile to try to identify the common denominator, both in the word and the works.  And it shouldn't be that hard.  Art comprises manmade, physical stuff.  Defining "art" is not like trying to define "beauty" or some other transcendent idea.  Some things are art, other things are not.  And it's easy in most cases to tell which is which.   

Defining Art

"There really is no such thing as Art.  There are only artists."--E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

"In the twenty-first century, when art is so pluralistic that nobody tries to define "art" anymore, it may be hard to imagine a time when the definition was being contested across the entire world of art."--Larry Witham, Picasso and the Chess Player

Art (n) 1.a.: The conscious use of imagination in the production of objects intended to be contemplated or appreciated as beautiful, as in the arrangement of forms, sounds, or words.--The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

"What is art?  That question would have been answered differently in almost every epoch of history."--Fredrick Hartt, Art: A History of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture

  "'Art'--isn't that a man's name?"--Andy Warhol

Art By Fiat

In 1917 Marcel Duchamp exhibited Fountain—a urinal he’d turned upside down and signed with a pseudonym.  He meant it as a comical challenge to prevailing aesthetic standards and traditional notions of art.  (So working ourselves into a philosophical tizzy over it would be playing into his hands.)  But somehow the joke turned serious and the idea that everyday objects can be art caught on.  Once during a visit to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art I distractedly reached out and touched a switch plate on a wall.  A docent approached and asked me not to touch the exhibits.  The switch plate was art.  In 1973 Craig Martin exhibited An Oak Tree—a glass of water on a shelf with an accompanying text claiming the glass of water was actually an oak tree.  In 1999 Tracey Emin exhibited My Bed, which was, in fact, her bed. 

 
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917


This kind of art —known as found object or readymade; I call it art by fiat—has huge implications for the philosophy of art.  If an artist can declare anything to be art—a urinal, a bed, a switch plate—then art, conceptively, is aesthetically empty.  The declaration is all that matters.  Specific works may have aesthetic value, but this is coincidental to their being art.  This makes defining art, at least in the visual sphere, simple:  Art is any physical thing or group of things an artist has declared to be art.  (As Tracy Emin once put it in an interview:  “ . . . it’s art because I say it’s art.”)  Or, to avoid being circular:  Art is any physical thing or group of things an artist has declared to be worthy of our attention or consideration.  The only question left to answer is how one becomes an artist. 



Tracy Emin, My Bed, 1999


(I wonder if someday an artist will attempt to abandon physical objects altogether.  Maybe someone already has.  If aesthetics don’t matter, why bother with physical stuff?  If an artist can claim a glass of water is an oak tree, why not claim an empty space is a glass of water?  Or a beautiful painting?  Or a beautiful painting of a glass of water that’s really an oak tree?)  

I think there are good reasons to reject art by fiat.  Aesthetically poor art cannot engage us the way aesthetically rich art can.  A switch plate cannot inspire sympathy, longing, sorrow, comfort, hope, guilt, faith, perseverance, or love.  A great painting can.  If we grant a switch plate the same status as a great painting, we devalue art, artists, and museums; we elevate everyday objects to a level absurd; and we frustrate and alienate museum goers in search of an aesthetically meaningful experience. 

As for Duchamp’s Fountain, Wikipedia states “in 2004 [it] was selected as ‘the most influential artwork of the 20^th Century’ by 500 renown artists and historians.”