abstract painting, sculpture and textiles
Block K
13 Bell Yard Mews
175 Bermondsey Street
London SE1 3UW
Exhibition opens Wednesday – Saturday 14 April – 22 May 2021
Visiting by prior appointment only, two persons per visit.
Phone or text 07866 583629
Or email robingreenwood2@gmail.com
The entrance to Bell Yard Mews is opposite White Cube.
Block K is at the rear of the mews: the gallery is on the 1st floor, no lift.
Facemasks continue to be required for a visit.
This is the first exhibition of abcrit.org, showing a variety of works of painting, sculpture and textiles. A limited number of works are for sale.
Works in the show, clockwise on entry:
“Antivenom”, EC, 2019, mixed media on canvas, 50x40cm.
“Brutal World”, John Pollard, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 150x119cm.
“Misai” (Misaje clan emblem of the river plant), Martha-Jean Uhamo (Doganne), Papua New Guinea, 2012, natural pigment on bark, 130x111cm.
“Mad Salt”, Harry Hay, 2019, acrylic on paper, 49x34cm. (framed)
“Yarn Through the Spars”, Harry Hay, 2019, acrylic on paper, 49x36cm. (framed)
Kilim Carpet, probably middle eastern, early to mid-20th century, 384x197cm.
Untitled quilt, American Mid-west, unknown artist, pieced octagonal pattern, c.1930. 208x168cm.
“Songsmith/Slide”, Robin Greenwood, 2020, oil on canvas, 165x135cm.
“Yclept”, Alexandra Harley, c.1996, wood, H.69cm
“Freeloader”, Harry Hay, 2019, acrylic on paper, 32x30cm. (framed)
Untitled 1, Steven Walker, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 100x140cm.
“Oranges and Lemons”, Anne Smart, 1986, oil on canvas, 61x92cm.
“Canoeing to Kansas”, Sarah Greenwood, hand-sewn quilt, 1991-92, 205x201cm.
Untitled, Robin Greenwood, 2018, steel, H.73cm.
“Turnberry Rough”, Alan Gouk, 1987, oil on canvas, 46x66cm.
If you are unable to visit, full viewing online will be available towards the end of the exhibition.
Some notes on form, meaning and interpretation in abstract art.
1.
The previous heads of two of London’s biggest art institutions, Nick Serota of Tate and Neil MacGregor of the British Museum, were reported in 2009 to be in agreement on the future of our art galleries and museums: “Our future lies on the web, say museum heads”, published in the Guardian, 8.7.09. One can see the attraction; the on-line world-wide dissemination of information about the British Museum’s historic collection; and the ease of access to Tate’s interests in conceptual and contemporary art, which are on the whole compatible with new forms of media. When it comes to painting and sculpture, however, the value of the internet tumbles to almost zero, becoming mainly a source of information regarding background and times of physical access to such art, with some dubious backlit reproductions. No mention was made by either party of the shortcomings of not being in the physical presence of the work itself – disadvantages which make finding meaning in visual art close to impossible.
Serota was further quoted on the Guardian website as saying of Tate that “In the past, there has been an imperfect communication between visitors and curators. The possibility for a greater level of communication between curators and visitors is the challenge now.” If there was to be a “communication” involved in any interaction with Tate gallery, should it not have been between the artist and the visitor? Is not the curator’s job surely and simply to facilitate that process, rather than be the source of it, or indeed even editorialise it? What’s more, in the case of painting and sculpture, the physical presence of the work itself is a primary requirement for the meaning of the work to be “communicated”, if that is the right word. What is certain is that the meaning of a work of visual art is not to be found on a label next to the work, or on a website, or indeed in any kind of contextualisation or mediation or interpretation. The meaning is in the work, which is the point of visual art.
To quote the late, great Bryan Robertson, “Art is many things but it is not primarily a means of communication as we normally understand that utility. There are easier and certainly less laborious ways for one person to express an idea directly to another than by painting a picture or making a sculpture. In itself, the action would be unreliable. Conversely, no written or printed document, film or TV program, the proper media for communication in the usual sense, could ever convey with any compensatory degree of accuracy the true imaginative quality of Piero’s Baptism of Christ or The Moroccans of Matisse. For media is an intermediary device: concerned with visual art, it uses inaccurate or irrelevant language; finally it involves falsification.”
2.
Modernism during and since the 1950’s, comprising of the reductivist formalism of Abstract Expressionism and post-painterly abstraction, and the post-modern anti-form conceptualism in all its many variations which eclipsed it in the 1970’s, can be seen as the two opposing sides of a single inevitable trend towards the literalism of our age. Even the eminent Clement Greenberg, great modernist critic though he was, seemed to favour the literal condition of flatness as an ambition for advanced painting, though stopping short of endorsing Minimalism. He was perhaps correct in identifying flatness as painting’s default state, though it is hard to see how this supposed purity makes it better than the compelling condition of a fully integrated plastic and spatial complexity. Similarly, Anthony Caro, an artist highly favoured by Greenberg, and the creator of much of the best sculpture of the 1960’s, was an early champion of the notion that anything can be sculpture. On the anti-form side, Joseph Beuys declared everyone to be an artist (In direct contradiction to which it is interesting to note how his cult of personality is his biggest legacy). Whilst one might enjoy the sentiments of both views, neither of these truisms has benefitted visual art. Neither achieved real freedom for sculpture, which was presumably their worthy aim; on the contrary, they helped to drag sculpture down into the maelstrom of literalism where most of it now languishes. “Literal” being an antonym of “creative”, it is the destroyer of a properly-visual content in art. Yet literalist art, despite not really being properly visual, has attained recent popularity because it so easily begets a superficial and popular explanation of itself, in the manner of an everyman’s interpretation. This is generally thought to be “what it means”.
3.
Whilst some of the freedoms won for sculpture in the Sixties were real, they are easily confused and conflated with the literal state of “objecthood” which so many sculptors took on board at the time, often by simply calling anything they did “sculpture”. These freedoms can now be seen to be bound up with the much more difficult and complex task of finding a fuller, more imaginative three-dimensionality. The potential for such a truly liberated abstract sculpture is huge, and the possibilities for new and expanded plastic and spatial values so potent that weak form will not contain them; nor will illustration, nuance, mild sensibilities, good taste, literalism or conceptualism – or even, I might add, figuration. All these can be left behind. But complexity, uncertainty, and difficulty come with these freedoms.
As far as painting is concerned, I incline to the rather anti-Greenbergian notion that the convincing realisation of deep “plastic” space is painting’s greatest accomplishment. I’m thinking maybe of the best of Titian and Tintoretto, Rubens, Poussin, Constable and Pissarro (see especially the late series of the quays and bridges at Rouen); indeed, there are many painters of serious ambition who have, since the spatial gains of the early Renaissance, imaginatively assimilated the horizontal spaces of the real world as places where the structures of painting could rewardingly operate, and in ways which meant that the picture plane did not dominate. The best painting has often been an invitation to imaginatively “roam around”, albeit with the reality-check of the passage across and through the medium itself always held in close conjunction. (It is noticeable in some landscape painting how physically arresting a divergence from the norm of horizontality can be – see Pissarro again with The Climb, Rue de la Côte-du-Jalet, Pontoise, or Constable’s Dedham Vale, or the big Rubens View of Het Steen in the Early Morning, all of which establish horizontal spaces only to upset them with the physical jolt of a change of level or incline). It might be reasonably argued that figurative painting since the early Renaissance has rarely benefited from flattening of any description – think of Velazquez’s Las Meninas, full of vertical planes, yes, and yet primarily dependent upon the horizontal interaction and separation of its players and us for its structure and meaning. The same might be said of another masterpiece, Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.
There is no doubt that the best figurative painting of the past is spatially more adventurous than the best abstract painting of the present (so far). We should take note of that, and not, therefore, make retrospective judgements on the plastic and spatial achievements of the figurative painting of the past using rather feeble “formal” or compositional criteria often employed in conventional evaluations of art. These have more to do with good design, taste or second-rate art theory. These weak criteria cannot be asked to function as some sort of codebreaker for ambitious painting. Tintoretto, Constable et al were into something far more audacious.
4.
Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, if we turned our backs on all of the shallowly-entertaining sophistry of world art, we could try a more challenging experiment altogether. We could ditch all that literalist thinking and instead focus on the creation of new, robust, imaginative three-dimensional abstract form, ambitious and unfettered. Such a change would be fraught, not least for abstract painters who have clung to a two-dimensionality of ever-diminishing returns for the sake of – what? Purity, clarity, a complacency of thought about the potential of painting, at the expense of serious content? Difficult for abstract sculptors too, who cling to “the object” as their excuse for three-dimensionality. Difficult all round, but it would be an electrifying development.
So, how do we go about making new, more three-dimensional, more imaginative abstract form? How do we go about making abstract art as complex and particular as the best figurative painting of the past five hundred years? And indeed, how did we miss the fact that great painting was always very specific; the best figurative painting really does buttonhole physicality somehow, doesn’t it? How did we let abstract art drift into vagueness and generalisation? The business of making complex abstract painting or sculpture now is a long way removed from the spontaneous abandon and carefree self-expression which constituted the popular myth about being an abstract artist in the second half of the 20th century. That idea still has romantic appeal, but it will no longer suffice to produce progressive results. Having tip-toed all around the edges of abstract art, we now have to plumb its depths. Our modern abyss which we must face up to is the amorphous and vast complexity of possibilities, the endless potential, of empty abstract space. Having ventured there, we will have wondered if perhaps the very emptiness denotes order (see Minimalism again; it still seems a good option sometimes, but only for a moment, until you get bored). There is not even an extant tradition of painting and sculpture in there to pick up on. Yet, that will turn out to be a good thing if we are resolved upon creativity and not literalism. We must enter the abyss; and we must return with our sanity intact and our imaginations loaded with new “form-meanings” which can extend the disciplines of painting and sculpture into the future. We can’t any longer trust the “next new thing” like we did in the 1960’s; what we need is a better new thing altogether. We need progress. The artist has to put him or herself through a set of encounters, of chances, of coincidences, within the constraints of their chosen medium, but without limit to their scope or duration, that show the appearance of interconnectedness, of transformative visual relationships, of structures that mimic thought, that run in parallel with human consciousness. Each artist must find his or her own way to do this, but collectively these endeavours must answer to the future of visual art. The forms, the spaces, the elements that go to make up painting and sculpture are subject to the same recalcitrant and obstinate physicality that we, as human beings, are. We can get ill, we can get lame, we can die. These are real things, and the elements of real painting and sculpture are subject to these conditions too. They reflect what we are. Putting oneself in the way of such discovery and loss is where the hard work is. Chance plays a part, but persistence does too, particularly in dealing with the “loss” part of it. If we can get past that, then the form of the work itself can begin to look spontaneous and uninhibited, rather than simply being demonstrative of a literally spontaneous process. Then we can contemplate the true lucid order and inventiveness of the unconscious. We can feel the thrill of looking into the abyss; but our gaze will be contemplative and steady, our vision measured.
5.
If we can indeed make such new and properly abstract work, we will need to look after it, and exhibit it properly, and look at it properly – that will be very important, and we might have to learn how to do it all over again. We will have to find strategies to enable us to be in the physical presence of the work in order to see it “in the present”. We will have to avoid the ubiquitous tendency in contemporary culture to historicise events, actions and ideas almost immediately, to ascribe interpretations in an instant. All art has, in the past hundred years or so, been re-mediated and recontextualised endlessly; first by books and photography (in blogs like this!), then by film and television, now by the internet and mobile technology. This puts a distance between us and art, and few people seem to believe they can trust their own feelings and responses enough – just watch people in galleries now, who, having taken the trouble to turn up, take a mobile phone shot of the art (then photograph the label) and walk away: they cannot trust themselves to take away in their head anything of the experience of the art itself; nor do they have time to discover what is real in the work.
We are encouraged to believe, by artists, galleries, curators, critics and commentators – and indeed, directors of institutions even – that in accessing images of art via these new media and reading an accompanying text, that we can get a measure of the work. This may be true for art history, where the study of art is about context, and it may work for conceptual art, where the content of the work is literal or literary, but it will not work for real painting and sculpture, no matter what lengths are taken to elucidate it, even if the writing about the art is good. It misses the point of personal contact with such art. It misses out on that moment of entering the same actual space as a great work of art and being gripped to the core of one’s central nervous system by the physical interaction; it misses out on spending time with the work and unpicking that initial encounter and beginning to understand how and why the thing was put together in the way it was; and then it misses out on being able to imaginatively reconstruct the experience with a greater insight than before, such that one can walk away from the work with something very distinctly gained: not an image on a phone, but its meaning – or at least a first go at it. It is easy to think that we have seen a work of art by looking at a photograph or a screen image, but rather hard to remind ourselves every time that this is just not true. Looking at some form of reproduction is now so easy to do that it often seems too big an exertion to experience art unmediated by the “inaccurate or irrelevant language”, to quote Bryan Robertson again, of the media. We really do have to make that effort, though, if we are to experience what Robertson so cogently described as “a convergence of circumstances which enforce an unprecedented act of recognition”.
We can’t, of course, avoid the progress of the internet; but, despite seeming incommensurate with expectations of modern life and the progressive virtualisation of the arts, the continuing value of painting and sculpture will not be denied. We cannot doubt the power and excitement of the best work of Titian or Tintoretto, Rubens or Constable, Cézanne or Picasso, when we experience them for real. And of course we need good new art too; we always need new art, not least to keep alive and extend our understanding of visual form and meaning. For art to be real and free and meaningful, it needs to be experienced in a manner largely liberated of interpretation, whether intellectual or technological. Anything that mediates between you and the work changes and diminishes the nature of that experience. Visual art is not a language, and its meaning is not, therefore, translatable into words. Visual art is, as Robertson says, a revelation.
Robin Greenwood, July 2009, with amendments July 2010 and April 2021
Abcrit 
Thank you Robin, We are looking forward to this! Your essay is fantastic, lucid, inspired, in depth and full of feeling and meaning. I shall enjoy reading it several times. I was particularly touched by part 4. Hope to see you and Sarah soon. Much love Noela xx
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Hello Noela, I’m hoping to meet you! Let me know date you’ll be there? Looking forward to this very much. Thanks to Robin. Best wishes, EC
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Best of luck Robin.
I am delighted to be included. Thank you for the opportunity to show.
Great writing too. Surely this is essential reading if you are invested in what it is to be an abstract artist.
I hope to be able to visit in the near future.
Best wishes to you and the family.
Steven
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Cheers Steven. Good to see your new work on Brancaster!
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Robin – I liked your article very much; full of home truths.
I remember, not so very long ago, Caro saying to me that the curators had taken over, that they considered themselves now to be the creative ones, not the artists; and that was Caro with HIS reputation.
The huge danger is that the Serotas,who are legion everywhere, are ‘educating’ generations of youngsters into not LOOKING at art at all. As you point out, it is the context that is now all and the entire media industry is in full support, having “zero” interest in real painting and sculpture.
I was told very recently by my German compiler that the Mannheim Museum, famous as the leading sculpture specialist museum in Germany, is no longer going to show sculpture; the Director likes video etc.,etc.
Could it be that, way back in the Sixties and Seventies, when the whole business of neo Duchampian trendiness got under way commercially, that art industry managers suddenly realised that they were promoting products destined, potentially (sometimes immediately) to make vast amounts of money, as we have all witnessed in the subsequent years ?
They can be forgiven for wondering to themselves why, when THEY are doing all the hyping and promoting of the wretched incompetence passing for art; (as well educated intelligent people they MUST have known that it was incompetent); they should not be at the receiving end of the loot ? It was all being siphoned off by the Auction Houses, Saatchis, and of course the ‘artists’ laughing all the way to the bank.
Their answer was to shift perceptions of their status into being recognised as the ORIGINATORS of the ideas; the ‘artists’ merely becoming the tools for completion; their new kudos would then deserve a large slice of those prestigious cheques ?
It is a thought.
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I agree, but lets not get too hysterical about all this nonsense. Remember Paris at the time of the young Cezanne – full of s**t.
Idiots with big, stupid ideas and concepts about art have always been around, waving bags of money about. We have to stick to our own convictions of what is real.
I’m not taking part in Brancaster Chronicles this year, but as you know, there are some very good things being looked at on line and discussed very knowledgeably. But I suppose my reservation is that nothing in art is real when it is seen in pictures (perhaps drawing comes nearest to reproducing well – at times). Consequently, I’m trying to do as much as I can in enticing a few people to come and look at a variety of real abstract art before seeing it all in pictures from the start. Will this work? Probably not, but lets see…
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Robin – Yes, of course not “hysterical “; but nonetheless an essential awareness of the necessity for an ‘audience’, and that the mechanisms for creating that audience are largely in the hands of the ‘art industry’ as it exists today; and that that industry is increasingly betraying its own ‘blueprint’, i.e. to promote and make available to the public the very best in the continuum of visual art.
Inevitably, they will claim that that is what they are doing; but – ARE THEY ?
“…we will need to look after it, and exhibit it properly, and look at it properly…” Quite; and then when “…few people seem to believe they can trust their own feelings and responses enough…” it becomes an extremely serious matter of concern. For, obviously, those who have not trained their mind/eye in LOOKING will not SEE; and supply, as a consequence, grist to the mill for the fashion promoters.
If abstract painting and sculpture are to remain: “…real and free and meaningful, it needs to be experienced in a manner largely liberated of interpretation…” and that is precisely what the art industry is NOT doing.
To my knowledge, it was always professionally axiomatic for Directors and Curators of museums, public collections, and composers of exhibition programmes, to have a broad take on what constitutes the most important efforts of the time; which, by definition, means a comprehensive view, not a narrow one, of the VARIETY of what is available.
I can vote with my feet if I am not interested; but I want at the same time to access the joy of the ones in which I am.
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Another thought:
I’ve come to the conclusion that a large variety of “things” happening within the visual activities of both abstract sculpture and painting is generally a good thing. I’ve come to the further conclusion that seeing different kinds of abstract art together, that operate visually in different ways and means, is a very good thing indeed. Hence, part of the intentions in abcrit.org is to put together such variations for viewing and comparing in ways that complement and challenge and resonate with each other in unforeseen combinations. This is beginning to interest me more and more.
Generally, what do you think about the benefits (or otherwise) to showing abstract painting and sculpture together? Do you think they are very separate and unrelated disciplines? Or is there merit in seeing seemingly unrelated things interact in ones head…?
What is the relationship between abstract sculpture and painting?
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Robin – On your first point concerning ‘things happening’, I suppose my own answer must be to repeat what I have said a few times before: that all good art starts off by being experimentation; but has to be ‘edited’ through much experience to become meaningful. Seeing and digesting as many ‘experiments’ or alternatives as possible must be a good thing for the mind/eye, either within ‘abstract painting and sculpture’ or even without it
Personally my strong preference is for showing sculpture and painting separately, because I think that they both have a completely differing relationship to, and need of, surrounding space and the environment. Alas, it is rarely possible for galleries to manage the luxury of such an arrangement.
I do agree, however, that this is not a rule; one could happily benefit from seeing such a juxtaposition creating a visual surprise and shock.The danger, I would have thought, is what we were discussing above, the deliberate ‘contextualising’ for ulterior motives to that of the works themselves.
My only thought on your final point is: exactly the same as with music or poetry or any other major art form. That is to say, fulfilling a particular human aesthetic/emotional need which can only be properly served by a very specific practice as known by these definitive titles.
There is also, of course, the ‘historical’ argument which could state that had it not been for painting, there would probably never have been an ‘abstract sculpture’ !
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Mmm… The differences and/or similarities in the way space is used in abstract painting and sculpture are very difficult to define or to discuss. But looking at the two together, I do find that exciting. I’m still thinking about why that is…
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I was only actually referring to the comparatively mundane matters of the environmental space we view painting and sculpture in, and that they occupy, and what effect it may have, rather than the abstruse questions of what constitutes ‘painting space ‘ and ‘sculpture space’
However, I grant that the interconnection in some way of those two might indeed be fascinating
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Hi Robin, I agree with your analysis here, particularly about the importance of the viewers’s experience of an artwork in its actual space and context. It also underlines the pervasive influence of curators who want to intetpose themselves between a viewer and his or her experience of a work or a particular exhibition of work. I think this lies at the root of the recent withdrawal of the Guston show in various places. It is in the seeming reluctance of curators to let people make up their own minds about what is ( or is not) relevant to their understanding of art?
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Totally in agreement. We are faced with something in the order of a dictatorship of Curators.
How to return them to their role as ‘enablers’ to the enjoyment of art; not instructing us HOW to enjoy it ?
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Robin wrote:
“Even the eminent Clement Greenberg, great modernist critic though he was, seemed to favour the literal condition of flatness as an ambition for advanced painting, though stopping short of endorsing Minimalism.”
Here is a short quote from Greenberg’s 1941 essay on Paul Klee:
“The direction of painting since the latter half of the 19th century has been towards greater and greater emphasis upon the decorative and abstract qualities of pictorial art. This has entailed the abandonment of the representation of three-dimensional space, and the picture plane has become shallower and shallower, until now in the form of the purely two-dimensional abstract painting it has been reduced to its actual physical fact as a flat surface. Almost every attempt to achieve the illusion of depth has been surrendered. The difficulty which besets the abstract painter in so far as he wants to create more than decoration is that of overcoming the inertia into which his picture always risks falling because of its flatness.”
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Robertson is quoted thus:
“To quote the late, great Bryan Robertson, “Art is many things but it is not primarily a means of communication as we normally understand that utility. There are easier and certainly less laborious ways for one person to express an idea directly to another than by painting a picture or making a sculpture. In itself, the action would be unreliable. Conversely, no written or printed document, film or TV program, the proper media for communication in the usual sense, could ever convey with any compensatory degree of accuracy the true imaginative quality of Piero’s Baptism of Christ or The Moroccans of Matisse.”
My comment is not really relevant to the argument here, just a footnote of sorts.
Comment: The fact that “there are easier and certainly less laborious ways for one person to express and idea directly to another” than by painting a picture – this does not imply that painting a picture is not primarily a means of communication.
He refers to “the proper media for communication in the usual sense” as the “written or printed document, film or TV program” – but this is clearly not true. The usual medium for communicating is talking – the use of language. But there are “easier and less laborious ways” for communicating than talking – for example gestures like pointing. (A baby learns to communicate by gesture before it learns to talk.) But that fact about using language – that there may be simpler ways of communicating in no way implies that using language is not primarily a means of communication. It’s odd that Robertson does not mention talking here, and at least in this short quote, he does not state what the primary function of painting pictures is, if not to communicate something to another human being. (The fact that it is impossible to translate a painting or a musical phrase into words hardly suggests that a painting or musical phrase is not communication.)
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““Literal” being an antonym of “creative”, it is the destroyer of a properly-visual content in art. Yet literalist art, despite not really being properly visual, has attained recent popularity because it so easily begets a superficial and popular explanation of itself, in the manner of an everyman’s interpretation.”
I do not agree that “creative’ is the important antonym of “literal”. “Creative” is too broad and lacks the specificity of the word “literal” in this context. A literal thing or things made by, say, Carl Andre is “creative” after all, if only because Andre created it – it did not exist before he made it.
I think that visual artists have always struggled with the problem of the literal, or “objecthood”, because a painting or a sculpture is – whatever else it may be – a kind of object, if only because it is a material thing, like a chair or a rock. In order to be “art”, the painting or sculpture has always had to invite and reward the kind of experience we call “aesthetic”, and that means overcoming the risk of being seen as an object, which is to say, its literalness.
So I would say that the proper antonym of “literal” is “illusive”. In pre-modern art (to speak somewhat crudely), literalness was overcome (at least in successful paintings and sculptures) by means of representing things in the world (whether real or imagined), but when representing things lost its power to do that (beginning in the mid-19th century), illusiveness had to be achieved by other means, or abandoned, as demonstrated by the work of Carl Andre for instance. How is an abstract work to overcome its literalness if it does not represent things? How can it achieve the illusiveness (i.e., aesthetic value) that we find in the Old Masters without providing an image of something that exists outside of the work, that is, in the world? How can it avoid being seen as mere decoration or design? I think of certain 20th and 21st artists who were and are capable of producing works that overcome their inherent “objecthood” while at the same time acknowledging it as an immovable fact (a fact conclusively established by modern science beyond refutation).
This is where Robin’s words (and his wonderful sculptures and paintings) come into play – finding new ways to defeat objecthood that do not rely on methods established in the context of modernism. Not by being “creative” but by achieving illusiveness without, in the case of sculpture, being seen as two-dimensional (like pictures), and in the case of painting, without relying exclusively on color (a la Morris Louis). Robin’s sculptures never mask their objecthood (for example by hiding in some way the individual welds that hold the thing together, and without relying on picture-like qualities, yet their are not objects in any ordinary sense. His (and those of other artists associated with abstract-critical (thank you for keeping this going, Robin) paintings seem to carve out infinite spatial depth while at the same time not denying their flatness, and not repeating ways of working that were exhausted when modernism was abandoned in favor of the post-modern.
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Well put, on the whole, Carl.
I’m not taking part in it this year, but there is an interesting conversation on Brancaster at the moment (on Mark Skilton’s work) about abstract sculpture’s relationship to objecthood and physicality.
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Carl – I agree with you that it is very odd that Bryan (Robertson) does not mention ‘talking’ in his definition of communication; also that “…he does not state what the primary function of painting a picture is, if not to communicate something to another human being…”
However, to return to your other comments concerning ‘how’ it is to be done given the descent (?) into flatness (in painting), and ‘objecthood’ in sculpture:
I cannot speak for painitng and painters, but sculptors (some) are trying to overcome the objecthood syndrome. literalness, representation, reference, et al. having (at last) recognised them as problems for ‘meaningful’ new sculpture.
I assume ‘recognising’ the problem first and foremost is the essential primary move ?
The debates on Abcrit, hopefully continuing, are a step in the right direction.
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Hello Tim, thank you for reading and responding to my comment. Because I am not a sculptor, I have no idea how objecthood or literalness is to be overcome – but you certainly do, because the only evidence for it being overcome consists in actually doing it, which is shown (not proved once and for all like a mathematical proof) by way of the individual sculptures you have made. I think the word for this used to be “quality,” which word is almost shamefully retrograde in the post-modern age. I believe that objecthood has always been a fundamental issue for visual artists because if it’s an object or thing, it’s not a work of art. It’s just that – in my understanding – only with the advent of modernism did it become a pressing issue because in the mercantile world of science, technology and finance, it became all but impossible not to experience the world itself as a kind of object, or collection of objects. (From what perspective could the world be seen as a huge object? Answer – the perspective someone outside of the world, i.e., a spectator. This is why critics like Michael Fried associated “objecthood” with “theatricality.”)
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Helloi Carl again – after a long time. Yes, It is indeed “shamefully retrograde” to even mention that a work might be good, bad, or indifferent. After all, if art can now be ‘anything’, what is the point of any qualitative judgement ? It has a sort of inverted logic I suppose?
Perhaps ante Modernism and pre photography, the viewing public was so enthralled with the fantasy worlds of Gods and Goddesses; Heaven and Hell, beautiful gardens, landscapes, seascapes, scenery, earthly worlds and Paradise ones; that they scarcely felt any need to be concerned with any intrusive ‘objectness’ ? Quite apart from the important fact of art being the sole means of human self recognition, other than mirror reflection.
I have always thought Michael Fried’s ‘theatricality’ to mean pretense (acting being pretense), and that therefore there was a direct contradiction in Minimalist claims of being at one with objectness/objecthood/the object whilst pretending to be art at the same time. Fried, I think, supported Caro’s alternative for, amongst other factors, exactly this reason.
Coming to the present, my own feeling is that, as far as sculpture is concerned, the best model to attempt to emulate is that of music, in which the plastic (aural) spatial sequences are read in time, gradually, and added by the mind/eye into a ‘whole’, rather than being presented immediately with an image as a complete whole.
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Incidentally, it occurs to me that this (if a correct assumption) now distinguishes (abstract) painting concerns and (abstract) sculpture concerns considerably, not in possible quality of course, but in their initial conception.
I cannot see that it is possible to view a painting, however large, as other than a ‘whole image’ at least at first sighting. (Unless, of course, it is on some sort of Sistine Chapel level). The simple fact of it being ‘flat’ sees to that.
‘Time explored’ (to coin a term) sculpture, initially visible and seen as some sort of indistinct mass, only gradually unfolding itself three dimensionally and spatially as it is ‘explored’ physically, as well as by the mind/eye, seems to me to posit a totally distinct aesthetic experience ?
I personally view this as a gain (for sculpture); What do others think ?
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Tim,Ill hope to be brief.I accept the rectangle and concentrate on what goes on it and how,where ,weight and colour.My life and work have become extremely concentrated during the last two years.I seem to have got to a place with my work,where I am communicating my ambivalence regarding decision making .I am using a light touch on purpose,to register doubt,even fragility.I have had one show during Lockdown in the Chelsea Arts Club.I mention this because it became obvious that the generally sympathetic audience ,liking the colour,hadn’t got a clue how to react.The work needs time,perception,feeling and some discipline to engage with .I hid in the audience and watched several observers staring at the canvasses for up to half an hour,shaking their heads in wonder,fatigue or incomprehension.I had a nice time,Andrew Wilson came from the Tate and I sold enough small works to pay the transport costs.Nobody bought a big picture,altho several remain on show in London.As I was waiting for my taxi home,the receptionist came over and said how many people had said they had loved my show.She said I must work on my profile?I decided to look at Luxembourg ,a serious gallery,where my work could be seen,after their Cezanne show,which was beautifully hung and lit..I read their copy and the gallery claimed to be questioning the relevance of Painting ,any longer ,as a historical act.After my audience reaction at the Club,I felt I had stretched the boundary so that people were not sure how to react at all.I wasn’t demonstrating skill,asking for applause,I was asking them to look and make up their own mind.A step too far ,I fear,but isn’t that what Art is all about,fresh experience?
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Patrick – Yes, of course, what has gone on in those rectangles is an immeasurable part of our joy and visual pleasures.
My observations of contemporary audience reactions to art are somewhat jaded. On the whole it is a matter of “Nice colours, – might look good on the bedroom wall (if it matches the curtains)” and banalities of that order.
In sculpture it is even worse. Once upon a time ‘Ten Green Bottles standing on the wall’ was a schoolboy song. Now it is a ‘sculpture’.
Your Luxembourg Gallery comment must be part of a new ‘Curator is Boss’ syndrome spreading like Covid.
I mentioned previously somewhere that the most famous sculpture Museum (Mannheim) in Germany has decided NOT to show any more sculpture !!
LOOKING has become a lost biological faculty; I think we probably have TV / IT to thank for that. I would go so far as to say that schools will actually have to start teaching children how to do it ! The problem,being, of course, the teachers !
And, it is no good chuntering on about that being what Art is for, etc., etc. You forget, ART is finished; over. We now have ALTERNATIVES.
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Incidentally Patrick – Don’t let my cynicism get you down. As Clement Greenberg said to me (in the Stone Age) : “Carry on”.
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That was useful!
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Robin – We live in hope
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Further thoughts on the ‘Curator is Boss Virus)
Surely one of the most, if not the most, insidious manifestation of this syndrome is the ever expanding notion of the ‘Themed Show”, in which a collection of (that ghastly word) ‘artworks’ is put together willy-
nilly to illustrate some sort of pontification of an idea of the Curator’s own fevered imagination as his/her ‘theme’.
As a practicing artist who cherishes making the attempt to evolve my own ‘themes’ for my work, however successful or not, nonetheless genuinely original to the work in question; I find it a trifle arrogant for a total stranger to my thoughts and perceptions to then inform me that they are inadequate by comparison to what he or she has cooked up for them.
Not only is it the height of intellectual arrogance; far worse, even, it spells a dismal lack of any true feeling for or perception of what art is for or about; and these are the people in charge of our collections !
I have always fondly been under the impression that, if you, say, went to the Courtauld to spend several years examining the works of Old Masters in depth, and not only that, writing your own thesis to prove the depth of your understanding; that that would, in turn, provide you with aesthetic judgement at the very least.
So then why place yourself in a position which announces to the world that you are no longer interested in aesthetic judgement, but are replacing it with ‘commentary’, not of a written variety, but by actually using the works in question as no longer having any import of their own, but are merely vehicles for your ego ?
It certainly is nothing if not insulting to the various artists you are making use of.
Is this possibly yet another aspect of Patrick’s “looking”?
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Oops… Better shut down the next two shows that I’m in the middle of mentally “curating”.
Actually, I largely agree with you, Tim, which is why, on the whole, I tend not to give a commentary or explanation on the shows I have put together. The written stuff can suffice as an addendum.
The art of curation (and yes, there is one, not to be scoffed at}, is in my opinion at it’s best when it is used to allow the work to speak for itself, and is in itself for the most part invisible. But that is by no means to say that it does not involve serious work and difficult considerations.
However, watch how many people look at the label longer than the work. I think that has often been the case for as long as I can remember. It is actually a complete waste of time for everyone.
The interest for me, in putting together shows in, for example, abcrit.com, is to see and compare different works by different artists, together – not in illustrations, but in real life. Then we can all form our own opinions. And that may not always include or relate to the intentions of the artist…
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Robin – The sort of curation I am denigrating (NOT your sort of course), I am sure will be justified on the grounds that ANYTHING that gets bums on seats to look at art is worthy.
But that is just my point; it isn’t and doesn’t.
“The art of curation…is at its best when it is used to allow the work to speak for itself “. Quite.
‘Theme Curation’ actually sets out a plan for individuals, as an ‘audience’, to be diverted from encountering perhaps with amazement as well as shear pleasure, the individual uniqueness of a particular work, and replacing it with a generalised formula not stemming from perceptions derived from the works as such, but compiled with ideas that are generated by the whim of the curator.
(Unless, of course, it is a perfectly valid compilation of works sharing a philosophy such as ‘Constructivism’ for example).
“Then we can all form our own opinions, and that may not always include or relate to the intentions of the artist…” Yes, exactly; that IS what curation should be about; and the “real life” of the works will be transported to a new “real life” of the viewer
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Trying my best to keep the “audience” at a minimum…
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You’re not having an Ice Cream girl in the aisles then ?
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Enough already.
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