I feel that what has not change is, that the artists are still
expressing the essence things as they please and capable of.
mando
On Mar 12, 2010, at 9:12 AM, William Conger wrote:
My point is that when artists, like me, for instance, use a brush
to apply oil paint to a prepared canvas, there is an implied
recognition that my choice entails a corresponding and ironic
affirmation of contradicting painterly practice such as dripping,
pouring, rolling, printing, spraying, squeegee-ing, finding,
pasting, scraping, sanding, etc. By evoking painting practices
that deskill my painting practice, I symbolize the fragility of my
imagery despite the assertiveness of my brush and paint practice. I
am saying that all artists, all art practice, is in the same
position today. No practice is free from a contradicting practice
-- from a deskilling alternative -- that has also been affirmed as
art by the same processes or institutions or authority that have
always affirmed art.
When modernism -- and the Bauhaus idea -- centered on examination
and experimentation of materials and processes a tradition of
deskilling became the chief pursuit of art and opened up new ways
to embody meaning. It's as though the question changed from how to
draw according to a model of "good drawing" to what is possible
with pencil marks? Or, what is inherent to materials and what
concepts do materials engender? Thus the modernist art idea comes
from "tomfoolery" with the materials -- or the practice itself --
and is not preconceived in traditional uses of materials.
Later modernism, conceptualism, tended to reverse the relation
between materials and idea, going back to a classical notion of
taking the idea to the materials, but with the difference that the
"materials" have been hugely expanded through deskilling of
traditional practices. Now anything at all can be "materials" and
anything at may be "practice". The question that comes up however
asks whether or not art meaning can be embodied by anything at all
(the commonplace) or is art meaning necessarily linked to art
history, the genealogy of art? My own position right now is that
the genealogy of art is necessary to art meaning but it is
inescapably ironic since all art practice is now contradicted by
deskilled -- validated ahistorical -- practice. This is probably
a "conservative" position since the trend seems to be that the
genealogy of art is irrelevant to art practices that now engage the
broadest array of disciplines and endeavors from anthropology
to engineering, from economics to physics.
The genealogy of art is the historical discourse of art, as we know
it, as we can know it, as we want to know it. Call it the history
of world art. It assumes that form and content, as symbol and
metaphor, are intrinsic to embodied art meaning.
Deskilling is not a bad thing. It's an expansive term, not a
signal of decadence, necessarily.
wc
----- Original Message ----
From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Sent: Fri, March 12, 2010 9:24:40 AM
Subject: Re: Physician, heal thyself
In a message dated 3/11/10 11:35:39 PM, [email protected] writes:
No one can paint
without being aware that the use of a brush to apply paint is
deskilled. In fact, today, all art processes and skills, and
practices are deskilled (having been rejected without ending art)
and thus one can question whether or not they can embody any
meaning except through irony.
At the risk of asking too many questions without enough
thought,Do you
mean that using skill or craft in art is necessarily ironic?
If irony is
a statement whose meaning is conveyed by stating its opposite
(skipping out on hy[pocrisy and neglecting deception because you
couldn't
possibly have meant anything so simplistically literal) how is this
done with
a
brush? And what happens if the brush user's skill is not so good?
Kate Sullivan
