From: armando baeza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Perceptual Cropping was Marks on Canvas
To: [email protected]
Cc: "armando baeza" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2008, 1:32 PM
Is the word "Disegno" the same as Diseqo or more
like Designio.
Or it plain Design?
On Oct 7, 2008, at 8:36 AM, William Conger wrote:
I stand by all of my comments regarding this worn out
thread.
Miller is wrong because he bases all of his arguments
on reception,
that is, the viewer, any viewer, and particularly the
less informed
and sensitive viewers. Would he advocate the man in
the street as
the deciding expert on a musical composition, a
symphony by a major
composer?
Ordinary viewers get what they look for. Art is not
made for
ordinary lookers but for some elusive standard of
excellence, based
on the excellences already evident to the most expert
judges.
That's how it works. Art quality is not a mob
rule sort of
degraded pop contest, despite the now pervasive notion
that all
passive audiences can evaluate anything.
As for the decorative, non-decorative issue, it's
mainly moot. The
word decorative has become a pejorative word, robbing
it of the
values it evokes, which are every bit as expressive as
any
illustrative narrative work. Since Hans Hofmann is
still being
mentioned here (by me, I suppose) one should read his
own remarks
about decoration. In fact, when the more civilized
past was less
drunk with vulgar culture, the word was quite
honorific. However,
it should be said that the decorative is also
metaphoric in the
sense that a configuration of form (the whole design)
can easily,
and always does, in fact, bring to mind multiple
associations and
imagery that we regard as explicit, or
representational. That's
why any shape at all will always "look like
something else". The
expression of any visual artwork depends on its
decorative
elements, synonymous with Form, Design,
"Disegno" Composition.
WC
These topics are interesting but they deserve more
nuanced
investigation that the list is willing to consider.
--- On Tue, 10/7/08, Chris Miller
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: Chris Miller
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Perceptual Cropping was Marks on
Canvas
To: [email protected]
Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2008, 10:03 AM
It looks like William's dogmatic formalism has
gotten
him into a hole, and
even the loyal Brady has only helped him dig it a
little
deeper.
Once again, it's time to apply the Miller test
for
aesthetic discrimination.
Change the nose of the Mona Lisa by only a
millimeter or
two -- and every
healthy human over the age of 10 will be able to
distinguish (and deplore) the
difference.
But change those lines in the background by a
similar
distance, and I'm
doubting that even the visual artists on this list
would be
able to notice.
While entire lines could be removed or added in a
Jackson
Pollack painting,
and no one in the world would be the wiser.
Unfortunately, William refuses to recognize that
his
aesthetic ideology is
appropriate to his own school painting (for which
he should
be proud) but
doesn't apply outside modern formalism or
historically,
what is usually called
the decorative arts.
Impressionable guy that I am -- the more I chat
with
William -- and look at
his work and the other geo-form painters, the
more
interested I am -- just
as my interest has grown in other non-figurative
genres
like calligraphy and
painted ceramics.
But once the thrill of new-ness is gone from
modern
abstract painting (and I
think it left about 40-50 years ago) -- how can it
still
maintain it's appeal
-- or more importantly -- how can it still
maintain that
high cultural value
that elevates it above the merely decorative arts
- and
allows the
practitioner to call himself an artist rather than
a mere
artisan.
This is a real challenge for those who care about
this
