What essence of things? What is the essence of a rock other than the minerals that are present in it? WC
----- Original Message ---- From: armando baeza <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: armando baeza <[email protected]> Sent: Fri, March 12, 2010 5:28:14 PM Subject: Re: Physician, heal thyself 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
