What Updike brings to art criticism is refreshing
prose and insight. Never mind that he's almost always
very wrong in his attempts to catagorize art
traditions.
Nevertheless, as usual in art discourse as it is in
science, an isolated trace of evidence supports any
interpretation.
Many early America artists were untrained and it is
clear that linear diagraming is the first natural
impulse in rendering. So-called naive or outsider
artists tend to render very linear and exacting
compositions, putting in all that they see and all
that they know without much worry about the
ambiguities of time and space. Often, they produce
extremely lovely and lyrical work, as curious for its
sheer orginality as for its psychic oddity.
We must keep in mind that Kandinsky, Klee, Picasso,
and other early modernists were strongly affected by
the art of children, outsiders, non-westerners, etc.,
because it helped to release them from overly refined
art conventions. Thus those once-ignored artforms were
fused with modernism and one can't simply say that
modernist tradition is dominated by any one or two
rendering practices.
But the early America painters were not ignorant of
European traditions and more than a few of them were
highly trained in traditional manners, especially
portraiture (an English excellence in painting).
Others, so-called intinerant painters, learned on
their own and favored landscape or portraiture for
prosperous merchants or landowners, leaving the
"American Aristocrats" to the experts. These artists
tended to be more linear and design oriented but did
not lack exceptional perception and graceful
technique. (Interestingly, such work is readily
available at quite moidest prices, generally. 2 or 3
thousand dollars can obtain a wonderful early American
painting or portrait).
And then the 17-19C European traditions were still
emulating the Noble Contour of the Renaissance. And
what can we say of Medieval art except that it was
linear, or of Asian art of the 17-18C, or of Near
Eastern art, etc., etc? The painterly tradition is
mainly Baroque, and rather limited in time and place.
With Roccoco, the modern style at the time of early
America the emphasis was again linear. Painterliness
resurfaced in romantic painting and of course in
expressionism and in America during the 19-20C. Today
all of those painterly and linear traditions are
equally alive, often in the work of individual
artists.
WC
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> As the phrase goes, "Don't look at me." Just how the
> hell Updike would
> accommodate Americans like Rothko, Pollock et al,
> I'm not sure. He might say,
> "Well,
> they were American, but they weren't really American
> PAINTERS."
>
>
> In a message dated 5/31/08 9:15:37 AM,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
>
> > If American art (i.e. painting) is especially
> "liney" -- why would it be
> > so?
> >
> > Perhaps, because lines can be used to emphasize
> an action/narrative - and
> > can
> > define details sharply enough that we can easily
> recognize each by name:
> > "button" or "plane tree" or "ear lobe".
> >
> > This seems more like the world of shop-keeping
> than of aesthetics --
> > prompting enthusiastic responses like "isn't that
> still-life just like an
> > old
> > letter taped to a wall?" -- or "isn't that
> caricature just like Barbra
> > Streisand?"
> >
> > America has had many great painters -- but they
> all seem to be struggling
> > upstream against this current - even when they go
> "abstract".
> >
> >
> > The line quoted in the subject ("..taking nature
> as his only
> > instructor..")puts a nice Romantic spin on it --
> but it's not especially
> > accurate -- i.e. American artists have usually
> been well schooled, and very
> > interested in the European artworld - including
> the fashion for
> Romanticism.
> >
> >
>
>
> **************
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