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Inspiration from Artists Wk 109 : Still Life and Abstract Paintings
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Posted
Thanks Martin I was hoping you would join in ,you have posted varied selection some I like others I look at and don’t have any opinion as they don’t appeal. It’s really good to look at different artists and styles I often find something interesting in the works presented , Martin you introduced some artist I’ve never looked at before.
Posted
Frank Auerbach and Paul Klee, Howard Hodgkin I know, de Stael I’ve heard of, the others not. I intend to look them up. Of the above, Klee is a favourite, especially his North African work - perhaps because I can “ understand” them more.I've just finished reading Kandinsky and Klee in Tunisia by Roger Benjamin. I learnt a lot of fascinating stuff from this book. For instance, Klee used a simple 6 colour watercolour palette on this trip, which to me is remarkable given the colour intensity he achieved in some of his works (the one I posted above is not the best example of this [edit: thanks Marjorie for posting that excellent painting which is a great example of what I mean]). Also that he quite often cut up his paintings into two, which then became individual paintings. Some of his best known pictures from this trip are actually offcuts (this wasn't known until relatively recently). Also that the vertical lines on some of his works that look like they're part of the design are the result of using rubber bands or the like to hold his paper to a backing card. Something else that isn't apparent is how small his paintings of this period are. They're typically sold as poster-sized reproductions but are often A4 sized or smaller. They blow up really well.
Edited
by Martin Cooke
Posted
A few other thoughts on abstraction:
Malevich made, I think, a perceptive remark when he said "Colour is the essence of painting, which the subject always killed". I interpret this to mean that any subject in a representational painting tends to overpower everything else. I paint a castle and you (probably!) see a castle. One could say that colour (and I would add 'form') is suppressed by the representation of the castle -- the subject takes precedence. The Fauves made for me the key first step by realising that only by using saturated and unnatural colours could they rescue the fundamental visual and emotive characteristic -- colour -- from its subservient role in academic painting. Logically, pure abstraction was the next step, and is quite a small step from fauvism.
Something else that struck me, inspired in part by an essay from the 1930s or early 40s by the critic Clement Greenberg, was that we are used to abstraction in sound but find it far more difficult to accept in visual form. The entire classical music canon, let alone more recent forms, is a case of pure abstraction -- we hear the instruments and the combinations of sounds they produce as a sensation, which we go on to interpret in our own individual way, often with a great emotional impact. In music (without lyrics) there is nobody saying 'hey, look at this, its an X', so instead we are free to enjoy what one might call the listener's share. I see abstract art in the same way. It isn't meant to be understood, it is meant to be experienced and responded to, just as in music I don't need to understand Richard Strauss' four last songs for them to have a huge emotional impact.
I think in part it is the capacity of provoking an individual response rather than imposing a subject on the viewer that has made dictators through the 20th century regard abstract art as degenerate and difficult to vet (under Stalin, Malevich himself was imprisoned briefly at one point and forced back to a representational style).
But, just as is the case for music, it isn't a case of 'anything goes'. As anyone who tries to paint abstract or semi-abstract works will know, there are some arrangements of colour and forms that work, and others that don't. Abstract art has its own rudiments and vocabulary, and I imagine a lot of it is tied up with the way our visual brain works at a basic level. What I find exciting about abstraction is that, like music, it is capable of continually reinventing itself in ways that representational art possibly, ultimately, is not -- because the constraint of having to look-like-something severely restricts the allowed permutations of paint on canvas.
Posted
Well and clearly explained. I see what you’re saying about “ understand” and I used quotation marks because in the case of this Klee it doesn’t seem completely abstract - I recognise certain shapes ( cupolas, trees etc ). The shapes attract me but the colours too. Other abstracts appeal to certain emotions but I suppose in a subconscious way because I certainly don’t consciously associate them with a particular thing. You might think me a Philistine but Pollock does nothing for me and I’ve sat in front of some Rothko’s and it’s the same.
Posted
I enjoyed Rothko's Seagram Murals at a recent exhibition although it was too overcrowded to properly 'commune' with the paintings, and I did find the experience less emotional than I expected perhaps as a result of this.
I'm fascinated by Pollock's art in a different way, perhaps more analytically than emotionally, and when I find the odd 80 million lying around and a bigger flat I can imagine living with one and enjoying the fractal optimisation that he seems to have discovered (when he said "I am nature" some believe he was referring to this)
I'm fascinated by Pollock's art in a different way, perhaps more analytically than emotionally, and when I find the odd 80 million lying around and a bigger flat I can imagine living with one and enjoying the fractal optimisation that he seems to have discovered (when he said "I am nature" some believe he was referring to this)
Posted
I am a fan of abstract. Kandinsky, Miro, Picasso. It is Francis Bacon that always stops me in my steps. His paintings are unsettling, disturbing and yet interesting. That doesn't necessarily equate to me liking them, just that they interest me. I did some reading about him some time ago and he didn't have a very good childhood. He didn't think much of the world or the people in it. Here is one I do like.
Isabel Rawsthorne Standing in a Street In Soho.
Posted
The Tobey and the Richter are attractive for their colour and use of pattern. They are new to me, thanks.
Rothko and Pollock in the flesh were so underwhelming.
Martin, I would disagree with your point about sound being abstract. Conventional music follows the rythms and patterns of the human voice and nature. Atonal music would seem to be more linked to pure abstract visual art. Consciously breaking any representational connections.
Here's part of my favourite abstract piece, the stained glass of Coventry Cathedral. It goes beyond the patterns and pictures that came before. I enjoy any time spent with it, whatever my mood.
Posted
Owen, thanks for your comment. For me the question is: can we agree on what any given piece of music represents? If you and I listen to Satie, say, I'm pretty sure it will create different images in our heads. On the other hand, at some level it might produce similar feelings of peacefulness, or boredom, or whatever, but I would say that is analogous to the general impression created by an abstract work. We can't pin down what it represents, but we might be able to agree on the mood, the energy, etc.
Where I would concur is when a particular piece of music is so well-known that it becomes a cliche and starts to symbolise something e.g. the Hovis bread advert, or nessun dorma = the world cup, or Ravel's Bolero = the film '10', or the 4 seasons = being in a phone queue...