Terrence writes;
I agree. I do concentrate on essence and at that I am very critical. What I
meant was they seem to be bound by being critical or they abide so noticeable
to it or seem to feel they have to carefully (perhaps pedantically)
contextually reference it somehow. I think its important and just relax and
create. If your reinventing then its is traditional critical mannerism. You
still have to make the work entertaining or attractive somehow. Some of my
early student works were mannered or powerfully barbaric. I wasn't trying to do
anything but learn to paint and play. I wasn't wanting to follow authority or
sit there and allow my mind to follow what some other person decided to do with
art in general. It was about exploration of technique and non technique/ my
critical eye and my psyche. Since then things have progressed but in a
different direction then almost every artist I know. My primitive nature and
garden paintings were about urgency a clash of ideals and culture and
traditional vs environmental. I carry that with me to my latest efforts which i
hope will bear fruit in this communication/ .com environment but i need to feel
grounded. I guess i am not swept away by what others have done however i do
admire and learn from them and carry pieces of their thoughts with me while not
wearing those pieces like scout badges. I respect the fact that i am every bit
as clever. I think everyone has that in them. I just don't imagine me selling
my paintings at the moment as anything but artifacts.
I think it is ok to ape it up but then even with critical concepts monkey see
monkey do. Duchamp though more about what it is art was doing and being. If you
look at any genre it is/was a work done within certain rules. Like a game. You
break the rules people notice. Break critical rules people notice. I think
about what art communicates in terms of audience and how that may never be
really satisfied. With that I just decide to play a game for a while if it
bores me I move on. I think about what i have to say rather then how i say it
or how whit one could be. I believe one still needs to say or comment on ether
their person or the world around them without feeling restrained.
I suppose i am subversive. If art is to break free it will have to be more like
that. Art can be its own patron if you allow it.
Terrence Kosick
artnatural
George Free wrote:
> >Terrence writes;
> >
> >I find it sad how many artits are taught to be so critical. They seem to
> create
> >under such burdons and with theortical restraints. I am anti bordom.
> >
>
> If you aren't critical, though, you will just repeat the past -- and
> actually you will only repeat the outward appearance of the past, without
> getting to the true essence of things (if I can put it that way).
>
> Being critical, as I understand it, is trying to understand the past and
> realize the best potential that is in it. That is what Buren is saying in
> the passage below. He says that Duchamp was great, but because he didn't
> take into consideration the context that he was working in he did not fully
> realize his intentions -- or his intentions were subverted.
>
> Perhaps Duchamp wasn't in a position to appreciate the limits of his work,
> for various reasons. Now we can see those limits, so if we want to be true
> to Duchamp, then we have to be critical. Duchamp was the ultimate "critical"
> artist, I think.
>
> Buren is saying that he is trying to realize what is best in Duchamp....
>
> >Everyone born a child. I can see more clearly what is ahead as I respond to
> >what is before me not behind. Why relive what is done? Art is techne.
> Humans
> >are tool makers, use them. Just play. Be observant. Poke fun my mon.
> >
>
> Criticism is often seen as intellectual, and opposed to spontanaeity and
> being "natural". I don't think it has to be seen that way. Being "critical"
> is just trying to understand and respond to one's situation in as full a way
> as possible.
>
> The future is a product of the past, so we are always reliving it in one way
> or another....
>
> Just some quick thoughts....
>
> cheers,
> George
>
> >terrence kosick
> >artnatural
> >
> >George Free wrote:
> >
> >> >What did Buren say ? In relation to Duchamp.
> >> >
> >>
> >> from an interview:
> >>
> >> B.M. According to you Duchamp's path leads to a cul-de-sac. In a way he
> >> wanted to be the last artist. Is this what you criticize?
> >>
> >> D.B. In its time this position was interesting. But subsequently,
> Duchamp's
> >> radical criticism of art has becomes the opposite of what Duchamp himself
> >> criticized. Duchamp was able to decontextualize an ordinary object --
> thanks
> >> to the gallery, where the context contradicts the object -- but the
> context
> >> itself was not thought about in any critical way. It didn't take long for
> >> the effect; the banal object is fetishized. The context and place exerted
> >> their influence. The object placed there to destabilize painting became
> like
> >> a painting, a work of art with the rest. And, in this case, obsolete.
> >> Duchamp thereby introduced a form of production which is no more, and no
> >> less, than the mirror image of what he criticized. For the last twenty
> years
> >> I have been against Duchamp in my work, I never took an 'anti-art'
> position,
> >> even if some people would have loved to find this so. One of the
> fundamental
> >> and serious questions I ask myself is: "What is art?" Of, if you will,
> what
> >> are the processes which operate so that a work becomes -- or does not
> >> become -- a work of art? And if one finds these rules, or, if not, how do
> >> they fluctuate? And under what pressures? Duchamp gave a deliberately
> >> comfortable answer to these questions. For myself, they are still
> unresolved
> >> even if a solution appears from time to time in my work.
> >
> >
