If one paints a work with three marks, and two mark are identical to
make the whole,
I would consider the one mark as dominant. Seems to me, that what
ever the painting
is remembered for, is the important mark.
mando
On Oct 6, 2008, at 7:24 PM, William Conger wrote:
I simply cannot accept that any one mark in a painting is less or
more important than any other. The work is always a whole, with
all the marks orchestrated together, each one relating to all the
others, even those covered. Casual viewers may not understand that
but people who paint paintings do. I should say people who paint
good paintings do. Rembrandt was a master of that but to see how
he did it you have to look at his paintings, not reproductions.
Ditto for Delacroix. And ditto underlined three times for Leonardo.
I like Brady's analogy. Here's another: Which heartbeat would you
give up as superfluous?
The whole topic is ridiculous and too much the stuff of ignorance
to be of any merit on this list, presumably a bit beyond the
utterly naive level. It's Miller's topic and it goes nowhere in
serious dialogue. It's the sort of topic one hears in the first
week of the most elementary art appreciation course by the sort of
student who admires Palin.
And why it asked if the requirement re equal importance of marks is
limited to AbEx? I did point out, for instance, that Hans Hofmann
in reiterating that point about a work to be finished at any stage
of development was repeating a dictum going back to the earlier
Renaissance. And I didn't even mention the Egyptians who felt the
same way.
Art eras are not distinguished by subject matter as much but by
some whole vision of Form. If one is without sensitivity to that
wholeness of vision, one does not see art; with it one has access
to all art. Here's an example: The expressiveness in late Gothic
art relies on a convcave form, with scalloped recesses and sharp
undercutting. In Renaissance art expressiveness relies on convex
form, rounded bulges, and soft ridges. Of course there's much more
but if you can see those differences you can begin to enjoy the
greatly varied art of three centuries in Europe.
WC
--- On Mon, 10/6/08, Michael Brady <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: Michael Brady <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Perceptual Cropping was Marks on Canvas
To: [email protected]
Date: Monday, October 6, 2008, 8:04 PM
On Oct 6, 2008, at 8:42 PM, GEOFF CREALOCK wrote:
Could it be that all marks are equivalent has more to
do with say,
abstract expressionism than
Asserting that all marks are equivalent doesn't mean
that all marks
convey the same descriptive or pictorial effect. Which
pieces of wood
are not important in the floor? Which bricks are less
important in the
wall? But which have more dramatic or picturesque effect?
The painter claims responsibility for everything inside the
edges of
the canvas, whether the painting is an "abstract"
image of non-
descriptive shapes and colors, or a "realistic"
image with highly
descriptive shapes. In your other message, you muse that
people might
object if Mona's nose was longer. But we have a similar
example:
Matisse's painting of his wife with a green nose. The
critics sniffed
at it, but that painting demonstrates that the painter is
responsible
for all the marks, and they are all equivalent on the
surface of the
canvas.
Reminds me of the shrewd quip, "My, we've had a
lot of weather this
year."
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Michael Brady
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
