The most recent post, Number 1176 ( — ), from Tuesday, May 13, 2008, 3:04 pm. Link. 99 comments.
New modernism
As noted on last week's Nihilism as mannersim thread, we might find it useful to declare a new modernism (caps are still being debated) that takes the important points of modernism forward and leaves the historical modernism with its trappings behind. Walter Darby Bannard has already written that modernism, above all, is a working attitude, first in 1984:
If Modernism and Postmodernism are unitary enough to characterize, I would suggest that it will he useful to see them as working attitudes. Modernism uses self-criticism to aim at and maintain high standards. Postmodernism asserts that these things are unnecessary for art. In spirit, Modernism is aspiring, authoritarian, hierarchical, self-critical, exclusive, vertically structured, and aims for the best. Postmodernism is aimless, anarchic, amorphous, self-indulgent, inclusive, horizontally structured and aims for the popular. Modernism is idealistic; Postmodernism is political. Each proceeds from and represents a side of human nature.
Then in 1989:
The word "Modernism" makes one think of recent art. But Modernism is an attitude, not a time. Western art has been "modernist" for hundreds of years, since the Renaissance, at least. Modernism is the attitude of the modern, any modern, of learning from any art of the past to bring what is new and fresh into present art. The emergence of sophisticated modelling, the invention of perspective, the development of tube paints and stretched canvas- all this is modernist evolution. Modernism is less something new than a way to recombine something old to make something better.
Modernism took a long time to become explicit.
And since then, including this from 2000:
Modernism, as a working attitude over the past century and a half, has insisted that a work of art be valued for itself rather than for it's usefulness toward another end. This is more-or-less what is meant by "Art for art's sake." It is characterized by a spirit of high aspiration for art value or "goodness" and is driven by an engine of internal self-criticism.
It's important to understand that art made now with a modernist attitude, a new modernist attitude, may or may not look like the art we associate with the historical Modern period. Modernism as we might use it today has five markers:
Visual quality. Modernists make visual art for visual reasons. Only the outcome is important; process is important only to the outcome. Things that look better are better than things that look worse. Visual quality is the only inherent function of art. Everything else is either a subsidiary function or a trait. Art needs no subsidiary functions, but it needs traits.
Self-criticism. As stated above, this drives the whole project. Self-criticism presupposes that ever-higher levels of visual quality are attainable and desirable.
Selective indifference to traits. Modernists reuse the helpful traits of past art and discard its unhelpful traits. This means all past art, from one's own most recent sketchbook doodle to ancient cave paintings. Whether something helps or not depends completely on circumstances at any given moment in the studio, according to the artist's being. Modernism presupposes that one can and ought to discard any given trait in one's work if it stands in the way of greater quality, or embrace it and use it if it clears the way to greater quality. It does not say that one need not make anything, or that any thing might be as good as any other thing, or that some kinds of things are better than other kinds. It is a concerted effort towards greater visual quality at the potential expense or to the possible glorification of any single trait.
Sincerity. The above activities done in an ironic way do not constitute a modernist attitude.
Practice trumps theory. Outcome is more important than principle. Product is more important than intentions. 75% purity is enough.
Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.
I heard they just discovered that the Venus of Willendorf is a calcified potato(e)
Where's Clem from Nihilism? We need some serious comment after all that work by Franklin.
Apparently my comments weren't fit to be shown.
On the contrary. I didn't remove anything of Clem's. Did you get a timed out connection? The server has been doing that off and on today.
Oh sure they don't that's why there's near universal agreement on what writing is clear and what writing is "obfuscated".
Are you saying this sarcastically? Because there is amazing agreement about what constitutes clear writing.
Because you haven't learned a particular language-game doesn't mean that it doesn't operate according to a set of rules that might be clear to its own participants.
Language interests me. For language games, I play Scrabble.
Some people read Adorno or Lyotard in their sleep, for others it takes getting accustomed to. Much like learning their mother-tongue isn't seemless, or taking up a technical manual for your broken down car for that matter.
There are two kinds of jargon: technical jargon and stylistic jargon. Technical jargon expands when you clarify it. I'm learning PostgreSQL at the moment. I can't explain to you what a Left Outer Join is except as a database query that unions queries of unequal size into a single reply according to the left-hand portion of the request, and can handle NULLs on the right. Stylistic jargon shrinks when you clarify it. Give me a paragraph of Adorno and I'll make it say the same thing with half of the words.
No concepts of judgment, hey? So Greenberg's "seeing" isn't a particular aesthetic theory?
Right! It's something you do.
And "a reaction of some kind" continues your vague assertions. What kind of a reaction denotes the "correct" judgment, how is this distinguished from incorrect judgment?
Judgments are correct to the extent that they correlate to the perceived object.
You've got to have thought through what makes for taste before you can begin to assume you have it.
Taste is the ability to detect quality.
Clem, take heart. This guy Flatboy that used to haunt this blog was by no means in agreement with "the regulars". His style was very different too, in that he could deliver a respectable body blow at unexpected times, like when he "bobbed and weaved" with opie over some forgettable artists Greenberg gave high praise to in some admittedly minor essays that Flatboy dug up. It was like a right cross coming from left field, but it hit its mark. When I looked up those artists (can't remember their names now), I realized Flatboy had scored. Yet he never called anyone a nasty name that I can remember. And the regulars liked him and looked forward to what he had to say, with exception perhaps of his formal analysis of the urinal.
Maybe someone better with the archives than me could ferret out some of those conversations so Clem could see that dissension is more than welcome here. The place is at its best when the heat is turned up and the sweat is flying.
Franklin, I can't agree that "ever-higher levels of visual quality are attainable", no matter how desirable they may be. The "French horsie cave paintings" are as good as it ever gets, for instance. The Venus of Willendorf may be older, but it comes up a little short.
Brueghel is as good as it gets1
Hey Franklin, I clicked your Drawing link, but all that came up was a crude stone relief sculpture....
I'm not disheartened, and maybe it's even a blessing that some of the frustration of my long post is lost to the internet. What's difficult about this conversation is how different our bearings are even before specific arguments come up. Funnily enough, it becomes a question of taste!
The role you've assigned criticism, as ancillary to the art itself, is a big stumbling block to talking about this with you. This is of course related to your overall perspective on language, which seems equally reductive.
I really question the notion of purity that you keep using. How can you talk about visuality without bringing in cognition and socialization? How do you even begin to talk about value or judgment without either of these? I don't see how you can insist that there is one primary function for art? Art's many functions are produced and changed according to individual perception and social context.
Your criteria for texts are also very different from mine. You keep using "clarity", but it seems like you just want a text to be clean. Syntax is only part of language. Meaning, tone, and situatedness are quite another. I'm not trying to equalize all texts, but you need to be open to different kinds of functions and audiences. Texts and language shift according to needs and settings. To borrow a reoccurring phrase from MC, I think it's "in bad faith" to reject even more technical theoretical writing as unclear. Readership has responsibilities, just as authorship does.
If you're unclear about any of this let me know, and I'd be glad to draw it out in some of what you've written.
... decorated with doodles.
I'd also be really interested to get a sense of which "pomo" thinkers or critics you feel have abandoned the notions of quality or self-criticism regarding art. Certainly not Adorno, however much you might try to paraphrase him!
I really question the notion of purity that you keep using. What notion of purity? Seriously. I think the first time I mentioned purity was above and I said 75% was enough.
How can you talk about visuality without bringing in cognition and socialization? I don't split internal and external processes. It's all external as far as I can tell. We would experience it as such if we could feel our brains operating. Of course "external" becomes the wrong word at that point. I tried panjective but it didn't go over very well.
How do you even begin to talk about value or judgment without either of these? I don't remember getting into value at all. As for judgment, I think the above answers your question at least provisionally.
I don't see how you can insist that there is one primary function for art? Art's many functions are produced and changed according to individual perception and social context. But all art objects have been specially marked for a particular kind of perception. Take that away, and you're talking about some other kind of object.
You keep using "clarity", but it seems like you just want a text to be clean. Clear, clean - I won't split hairs on this.
Syntax is only part of language. Meaning, tone, and situatedness are quite another. I'm not trying to equalize all texts, but you need to be open to different kinds of functions and audiences. Texts and language shift according to needs and settings. To borrow a reoccurring phrase from MC, I think it's "in bad faith" to reject even more technical theoretical writing as unclear. Readership has responsibilities, just as authorship does.
You asked me on the earlier thread to elaborate what good writing about art entails. I answered: "Good writing adds to knowledge. Well-written writing makes you want to keep reading. That's all there is to it." On a gross level, you're correct - you wouldn't use the same style to write a modern children's book and an analysis of aesthetics for an 18th C. German audience. Within like examples, there are optimal and sub-optimal ways of presenting information. Assuming that we're talking about non-fiction, clarity is typically a virtue. If the reader doesn't know what the words mean, it's his responsibility to look them up. If the reader can't know what the words mean, the writer is jerking him around and shirking his responsibility to add to knowledge. My problem isn't with hard words, but with empty words.
'Product is more important than intentions.'
That's why intent is so important, save for us mumbling about it.
I'm not sure what is exactly meant by 'goodness' here, but when I aim for quality in my work, I aim for goodness too. Bannard's goodness might not include it, but I mean to imply a grounded basic human goodness. The kind that makes it obvious that life is not art. The kind that makes you laugh cause we've figured this much out and we're all just a bunch of monkeys anyhow.
I like the word and I think Bannard makes an important appendage to the discussion of quality with it. As much as new moderns hate words having any sort of lever on the visual, these terms, which can sound rather esoteric, need all the humanizing they can get. The danger lies in them being dumbed down and rendered useless.
For myself, my address to quality excepts me from using irony and cynicism as a base for anything I should want to put out in the world.
As an aside, Catfish, you've mentioned sex a few times in other threads as having a role in the impulse to make or appreciate or understand art...
Could you say a bit more about this? I've been meaning to ask about it for a while. If there's an old thread that you can recall where you've gone into some detail that'd be fine.
Franklin, I'm glad that you re answering Clem point for point. I'm afraid I wouldn't have the patience for it.
Clem, this may just be my nature and perhaps a fault, but when I read what you write and try to think about an aswer I begin to feel as if I am grabbing air. For example, I can't understand the criticism ancilliary to art statement. Can it be anything else, by its nature? That our language is "reductive" - why, because we insist on precision and clear meaning? I am not trying to be snide; I just don't understand. And "purity" - did anyone bring up purity? You speak of "Art's many functions". Could you mention a few? I'm sorry but I just can't deal with the non-specific.
Catfish that wrangle with flatboy was indeed him throwing curve. He was entirely correct in the facts of his allegation but the allegation itself was specious, and I think I was able to point that out to him.
Roy, we both know what "goodness" is. We just cannot say what goodness is. Most knowledge is non-verbal. If we both talk about goodness (about art, anyway) we can each refer to our own notion and be fairly sure we are on common ground. It is very important to be able to regularly separate kinds of knowledge when discussing any difficult subject..
Of course intention is important, but it is imperfectly represented in the work, so it is usually futile to talk about it. And, frankly, I find it difficult to tke seriously even when artists talk about their own intentions. I think we just had an example of this with Mr. Sturgis's work.
Sure Roy, it's not very high falutin' sounding, but sex seems to be at the bottom of how we go about doing many things. The impulse can go over the top, as in Jock Sturges, but most of the time it behaves itself, more or less.
I think it is more than "motive" (which we don't know much about anyway), it is just a rock bottom foundation for our energy to do anything, but especially art, because sex and beauty are so connected. I don't mean this grossly, as in having sex with art works as part of the process of making them. But categorically, if it were not for our sex drives, I don't think much art would get made. Even as we age and the urgency fades a bit (a relief, sometimes I think), it is still foundational.
I don't see how sex can help understand art, but it is also foundational to our being drawn to art, its "appreciation" as you put it.
Saint Augustine wrote of how his heart would not rest until he reached the beatific vision. Made sense to me at one time, maybe still does. It makes great sense that uniting with God is uniting with beauty. Having sex with someone makes them seem more beautiful than ever. Getting off on an art work is a union between our intuition and the work's perfection (or beauty). Maybe all these aspects come together when we reach the other side.
I am a congenital lumper. What artists try to do and what lovers try to do seem more alike than different, though they are not exactly the same thing. There is nothing I like to do more in my studio than show my work to my bombshell soul-mate.
I meander. This stuff is more felt than understood by me. Perhaps in a previous life my first name was Sigmund ... He had sloppy theories but I think he got the fundamentals right.
addendum to catfish: in taxonomy - the science of classification - there are "lumpers", who want to make one species out of two, and "splitters", who want to make two species out of one.
'Of course intention is important, but it is imperfectly represented in the work, so it is usually futile to talk about it.'
I really like this sentence opie. It says something about self-criticism as it applies to intent or even a useful discussion of it.
As for "intent" I didn't mean to imply the idiocy of an artist statement or a description of process. I guess what I meant runs mostly parallel to the spirit in which the thing is made.
Well, opie brings me back to earth. When I looked at those pictures I just saw that Flatboy was correct in his facts - the artists so highly praised were not so hot (can't remember who they were). Specious means plausible but false. He had it right as far as what he asserted ... right is right (I think-it was several years ago).
His successful curve ball drove home the fact that great critics are remembered for what they get right, not what they get wrong, and especially what they get right about the best artists of their time. It seems like the subject of the time had something to do with why don't people read what Greenberg actually wrote, and Flatboy did just that. Didn't he also praise Greenberg for his Marxism in "Avant-garde and Kitsch"?
When a writer publishes something they are responsible for it. Flatboy made that crystal clear.
He also did a good job advising a grad student on how to get through her review, much better than anything the rest of us suggested. His view of the urinal was downright strange, though. And so on.
My point is that someone with a very contrary/unusual point of view can get along nicely here at artblog. "We are large and contain many things." (What Chesterton said in response to a statement that he had contradicted himself.)
Smart artists don't discuss their intentions.
I'm not even clear yet. Thank you catfish. And your comment affirms me as well...i trust no words put to the intent i mean to describe here. I make no claims for it outside of my own awareness.
Catfish, thanks for the reply btw. i can totally identify.
clem you should be happy. You got a MUCH warmer welcome than I did when I first appeared here.
Nominees for the $50,000 Sobey Art Prize (a Canadian thing)were just announced, and it looks like friend-of-artblog craigfrancis is one of the potential recipients...
Congratulations, cf...
Bannard says,
"If Modernism and Postmodernism are unitary enough to characterize, I would suggest that it will he useful to see them as working attitudes"
What does that mean, that they can be characterized as singular units, or as distinct from one another? Or unitary as a unit conjoined by the word and?
"Modernism uses self-criticism to aim at and maintain high standards."
A specific instance could be helpful, ie. to describe the nature of the self criticism and the nature of the standards at which it aims and maintains
"Postmodernism asserts that these things are unnecessary for art."
Specifically?
"In spirit, Modernism is aspiring, authoritarian, hierarchical, self-critical, exclusive, vertically structured, and aims for the best."
Pure generalization.
"Postmodernism is aimless, anarchic, amorphous, self-indulgent, inclusive, horizontally structured and aims for the popular."
More generalities, nothing specific.
"Modernism is idealistic; Postmodernism is political. Each proceeds from and represents a side of human nature."
Glad we go that out of the way, whatever it means.Is idealism ever political?
"The word "Modernism" makes one think of recent art."
OK.
"But Modernism is an attitude, not a time." Western art has been "modernist" for hundreds of years, since the Renaissance, at least."
Modern - [French moderne, from Old French, from Late Latin modernus, from Latin modo, in a certain manner, just now, from mod, ablative of modus, manner; see med- in Indo-European roots.]
"Modernism is the attitude of the modern, any modern, of learning from any art of the past to bring what is new and fresh into present art. The emergence of sophisticated modelling, the invention of perspective, the development of tube paints and stretched canvas- all this is modernist evolution. Modernism is less something new than a way to recombine something old to make something better."
Not exactly a vertically structured or hierarchical thinking going on here. "The attitude of the modern, any modern"?
"Modernism took a long time to become explicit."
And it's still pretty vague at this point in these bites of writing. And the bullet points below take whatever you're trying to say to a whole new level of discombobulation.
"Practice trumps theory....75% is enough"?
J@S, this person calling himself Clem actually disagrees with things being said here, which is why I'm willing to go back and forth with him. Your determination to misunderstand is a different sort of thing - akin to a three-year-old asking "why?" until her parents give her a toy to play with. I'm pretty sure that you can answer the questions you ask for yourself, and the challenges you offer are inconsequential. Sorry, but #27 doesn't merit further interaction.
My questions are perfectly valid.
So is "Why?" when asked by a child of three. But I have to get something out of the conversation too.
29:
Only your questions are perfectly valid?
Only your questions are perfectly valid?
Your questions are perfectly valid?
What do you mean, valid?
So it's below you to answer?
I mean legitimate, Ahab.
I wonder how one would begin to "answer" for the criticism that their discussion of artistic genera uses "generalities"... as if that amounted to an intelligible criticism.
Bannard's argument proceeds from the idea modernism and post modernism are unitary. Is that true?
Whheee! Dolphins!
Me likey dolphins!
Is that really what Bannard is saying, J?
I think Bannard sees them as unitary enough to describe them as distinct working attitudes... but, I can't be sure, I haven't asked him personally.... I'm just going by the obvious meaning of the sentence, as written...
What bannard is trying to say simplistically is that good is good,bad is bad, and to question why is bad,but to accept is good. And he prefers particulars,nothing vague.
Don't you get it?
I think the man is a bit misdirected,though.pomo as y'all call it doesn't value lack of quality . It embraces failure as a method for arriving at better at more thorough conclusions. Iwas talking to 'ol darby about this the other day.and he confessed a secret love for late stella and rauschenberg (rip),but I digress...
I asked you first Dad. I sounded it out and it looks like he wrote
"If Modernism and Postmodernism are unitary enough to characterize, I would suggest that it will he useful to see them as working attitudes."
What does he mean when he suggests they might be unitary enough to characterize?
Posie - Although I agree with Franklin #28 I may be able to answer some of your questions. Please understand that these are excerpts that franklin took for the purposes of the tone of the thread
"If Modernism and Postmodernism are unitary enough to characterize, I would suggest that it will he useful to see them as working attitudes"
What does that mean, that they can be characterized as singular units, or as distinct from one another? Or unitary as a unit conjoined by the word and?
It means singular, coherent. identifiale as a unit.
"Modernism uses self-criticism to aim at and maintain high standards."
The classic case, usually given in the literature its Manet who decided to make his art better - as art - by emulating Goya and Velasquez.
A specific instance could be helpful, ie. to describe the nature of the self criticism and the nature of the standards at which it aims and maintains
"Postmodernism asserts that these things are unnecessary for art."
You would have to search through postmodernist litereature to dind an example. I think there is general agreement about this.
"In spirit, Modernism is aspiring, authoritarian, hierarchical, self-critical, exclusive, vertically structured, and aims for the best."
Pure generalization.
"Postmodernism is aimless, anarchic, amorphous, self-indulgent, inclusive, horizontally structured and aims for the popular."
More generalities, nothing specific.
The characterization is very specific. There has to be some latitude for this. Otherwise any comment would have to be encyclopedic.
"Modernism is idealistic; Postmodernism is political. Each proceeds from and represents a side of human nature."
Glad we go that out of the way, whatever it means. Is idealism ever political?
Idealism is always political.
"The word "Modernism" makes one think of recent art."
OK.
This is not a question
"But Modernism is an attitude, not a time." Western art has been "modernist" for hundreds of years, since the Renaissance, at least."
Modern - [French moderne, from Old French, from Late Latin modernus, from Latin modo, in a certain manner, just now, from mod, ablative of modus, manner; see med- in Indo-European roots.]
Neither is this.
"Modernism is the attitude of the modern, any modern, of learning from any art of the past to bring what is new and fresh into present art. The emergence of sophisticated modelling, the invention of perspective, the development of tube paints and stretched canvas- all this is modernist evolution. Modernism is less something new than a way to recombine something old to make something better."
Not exactly a vertically structured or hierarchical thinking going on here. "The attitude of the modern, any modern"?
"better" is hierarchical, of course.
"Modernism took a long time to become explicit."
That was clipped off and does look a bit odd. It means thatt modernism took a long time to become recognized and examine as such.
What do you think he means, J?
"...pomo as y'all call it doesn't value lack of quality ..."
No, it lacks a value of quality...
Sorry for the spacing, franklin. I don;t know how to do italics etc
Opie,
You would have to search through postmodernist litereature to dind an example. I think there is general agreement about this.
That is not an annswer. That anyone here would accept.
So you fault Bannard for not citing specific examples, but general agreement about the postmodernist literature is good enough for you.
Go away, J.
Can you read?
Those were OP's words not mine.
I find it very common that, although many young art-types (think they) know the "tenets of Modernism", they are blithely unaware of the founding anti-modernist "tenets of Post-Modernism". Today's generation is convinced that art made today simply IS postmodern (or, even, post-postmodern, I guess) by virtue of chronology, the fact that it is made now, and we are "living in postmodern times", they like to say.
I had an art history grad student interview me not too long ago, and she was bewildered at the idea that my work wasn't "postmodern", since she just couldn't imagine it was possible for current art to be anything else. I asked her what features of my sculpture she thought was evidently postmodern, and she cited my use of color... not how I used it, just the fact that my sculpture was colored. Yes, that's right, and Art History grad student, unaware of the existence of non-postmodernist colored sculpture.
It's staggering, really, and all the more so for its ubiquity.
Can you read? I said "go away."
"If Modernism and Postmodernism are unitary enough to characterize, I would suggest that it will he useful to see them as working attitudes"
This is straightforward to me. If Modernism and Postmodernism are unitary concepts, meaning if each concept is unitary, it would be useful to see them as working attitudes. What is the problem here? Bannard is not joining the two separate concepts together in that sentence. He is saying that the two concepts, Modernism and Postmodernism might individually be unitary concepts. Also, it is not uncommon for postmodernism to be seen as the bastard child of modernism because of its very name. Is this news to anyone?
You can't answer the question.
Hey Franklin, that HTML link gives a method for strikeout text that doesn't seem to work... I've tried "strike", I've tried "del" (in pointy brackets, of course), but nothing works for me...
Thank you Eric. Why only conditionally are they unitary?
"... the question."
Anyone else seen Goya's Ghosts?
Who can't answer what question, J?
del won't work. Strike does though.
Thanks. I guess it must just be on blogger that "strike" doesn't work.
Well, can you?
That does it, J. After this post I'm deleting your comments.
Is Goya's Ghost good? I will get it from Netflix if it is.
Good thing Franklin. Otherwise this blog will turn into the home of nonsensical non-sequitors like paintersnyc has.
Daddy will stop cleaning up all the messy poo-poo now.
My Bad.
It's definitely worth watching, Eric.
Good to hear mc. Thanks. I love Forman's earlier work and Goya is in my top ten.
How does it compare to Goya in Bordeaux?
The down side is that it gives rise to the "if they don't like what you say they will censor you" idea. I don't want to inhibit criticism. Maybe JP can go with the flow a little better.
I haven't seen GiB, but GG isn't really so much about Goya as the time in which he lived, and the characters that populated the world around him. I didn't expect it to deal so much with the Spanish Inquisition, but, you know what they say...
For the record, I love disagreement. But I'm not going to let threads bloat pointlessly with the inconsequential challenges of people who disagree but can't form a counterargument. Again, I have to get something out of the conversation too.
I think you are stuck ib. An 8os & 90s definition of pomo. Today it is regarded more as a time in which ideals and tenants of modernism were questioned.
We really do need a term that distinguishes postmodernism at its heights in the '80s and '90s from what we have now, which relates only tangentially. Peter Halley used to go around with a copy of Baudrillard on him, so the story goes. I don't think anyone is aligning themselves with theory with quite that much vigor anymore.
Wait a second... are suggesting that "postmodernism" is only conditionally unitary?!?
OMG conditional unitariness!!1
I think there's a case for calling the current work "late postmodernism."
... or maybe, not late, so much as tardy.
Opie (#69) and Franklin (#71): J@S was badgering. Something maybe to address in the guidelines. Myself, I wonder what would have transpired if no one had taken the bait, that is, no one responded.
Using theory to back you up, such as the intentionally impenentrable writings of Baudrillard, requires too much reading. The classic PoMo texts are unreadable. The writing style they exemplify is pseudo-technical and analytical, and just plain grueling to read. It is easier to invoke key names, Lyotard, etc., and then move on. People might say their work is PoMo, but that just means they don't really know what they are doing. At least they can consider themselves contemporary and hip if they say their art is PoMo. Has the art world decided that PoMo is the very last movement in art? Besides watered down and lazy PoMo, what is next? That is what I wonder about. Nitpicking over the definitions of Modernism and Postmodernism is not fruitful. We know that something different came along after classic European Modernism and its American counterparts. We know that whatever came after it fully embraced commercial culture, industrialism, the manufacturing sector, the entertainment industry. Modernism still included high ideals and the concept of self improvement, as if art meant something besides being yet another cultural product. Postmodernism does not imply a hierarchy of values and meaning. Modernism does.
Naming an art movement requires an art-thinker to look at the attributes of the art and discern a trait in common. But, as any respected art-thinker will tell you, art isn't for looking at any more, so naming a new movement becomes impossible. It is current academic orthodoxy to state that post-modernism ended at some vague point in the past, and we're in some new period now that has no traits to speak of, so they just call it all "contemporary", and pretend that they can still consider themselves "experts"...
Anyone want to buy my Postmodern Conditioned Unitard? I only wore it once!
I think it's unfortunate that this thread, which is supposed to be a continuation of the previous and very fertile thread, turned out to be a name-calling session. We were doing so well.
Probably part of the problem is that Franklin's original post is so perfectly self-contained. I'd sign on for his definition of modernism.
Although I'm a little hazy on the concept of "traits." When you talk about the traits of a work, Franklin, what do you mean? Are traits the things we use to categorize a work, like "uses construction debris" or "abstract pastel on paper"? So you're saying a modernist is willing to jump categories if it'll make the work better?
So apparently academia is 100% blindly postmodernist to the point that the kids know nothing else (I have had experiences like MC's above) while at the same time the great majority of people still think art is painting and sculpture and that is still what sells in the auctions, and we (us embattled, disgruntled modernists) are muttering about "comes the revolution...".
Weird times.
Franklin's #73: Po-mo theory is tedious to read. Now that po-mo is rather universally accepted, the necessity to bone up on its theory fades. The easier the path is made to travel, the more people there are who will join the crowd.
So what I'm thinking about is the difference between the 80s when the po-mos had to work at their project, and now when they are cruising along comfortably with the wind at their backs. They and their variants (po-po-mo) are rather complacent.
So I come back to the subject of this thread and the vulnerability that anything fresh seems to have when it first approaches the vast monolith that has drawn so many into itself. What thing can penetrate the perimeter? What the new-modernist wants is that his or her work be seen, not necessarily that the monolith be destroyed. Unlike the Trojans, all we really want to do is get past the gate without compromising ourselves.
We don't need a theory. We need a strategy.
opie where do you live and can you share images of your work?
Eric I think the problem is we are all tangled up in words and we have to look at what people are doing, which people are doing it and what are the characteristcs, and maybe leave modern and postmodern behind.
The change seems to boil down to one's attitude toward the visual and in particular toward the values we feel are inherent in art, and how these things work themselves out.
Eric I sent you an email 2 days ago at
ericgelber@earthlink.net
"We don't need a theory. We need a strategy."
Agree 100%. Theories are easy and ineffective.
In the past the "strategy" has been the power of better art. I don't know if that will still work.
opeie sorry but I did not receive anything from you. I checked my spam folder carefully. Could you please send the info again. I would appreciate it and sorry for the inconvenience.
ericgelber@earthlink.net
How about these disturbing gems from current examples of art writing:
“Art that makes people think should not be such a novel idea! Art that just hangs pretty on a wall doesn't work in this century like it did in the last. It's just another facet of the elusive and changing definition of art.”
“[E]very artwork, of course, needs some kind of narrative to make sense of where it fits in with the world.”
“------ piece is all the more powerful because it exists as artwork solely in our perception of it…”
Are traits the things we use to categorize a work, like "uses construction debris" or "abstract pastel on paper"? So you're saying a modernist is willing to jump categories if it'll make the work better?
Yes. Traits are anything recognizable about the work, from the materials to the content. A modernist will do whatever it takes, including jump categories, if it will make his work better - visually better.
That's puzzling Eric because I didnt get a return.
Let me know if you get nothing in the next hour.
Okay opie. I am going to teach until 2:35 and I will let you know either way.
"Visual quality is the only inherent function of art"
The theme of purity that I mention involves absolute statements like this. Your version of "quality" reads exactly like an abstraction, as if art had a teleology. One of our key differences revolves precisely around this-- art's ontological status. Where you want to define it as something with essential or inherent properties—by which you contend we can straightforwardly judge it--I see this as limiting its potential, and am more open to the concept of multiplicity.
I’m not all that familiar with Bannard’s writing, but the opening quotations that you chose led me to suggest this notion of purity. The fact that his definition revolves around so many simplistic binaries (good/bad, mo / pomo, quality / anarchy, idealist / political) imply absolutes. That you settled for 75% purity seemed like some good natured reflexivity to me : )
I’m not going to project Bannard’s entire position on you, but look at a quote like this and maybe you’ll get what I’m saying:
“It all seems like anarchy, but it isn't. The forms are new but the dynamics are old. As always, there is only one real difference, the difference of quality, the difference between good and bad. That is the way it always has been, is now and always will be. There is no way around. Quality in visual art has belonged to painting and sculpture for hundreds of years. Despite a thousand new materials and methods it still does, because painting on a rectangular canvas and the organizing of a static, three-dimensional object still keep our best talent busy”
Could this come across any more elitist or limiting? These designations of purity are what irritate me.
“How can you talk about visuality without bringing in cognition and socialization? I don't split internal and external processes. It's all external as far as I can tell. We would experience it as such if we could feel our brains operating. Of course "external" becomes the wrong word at that point. I tried panjective but it didn't go over very well”
I’m not sure why you took that as a splitting of internal / external. I’m saying that visuality doesn’t take place in a vacuum. If we go back to your earlier comments about how art makes us feel something / is the source of pleasure, all I’m saying is that these processes aren’t inherently determined, When you write “Things that look better are better than things that look worse” I object to the notion that goodness/badness in of visuality have some essential property. These are defined and constantly shifting according to individual cognition and socialization. When you continue that “Visual quality is the only inherent function of art” I would respond that art doesn’t have an inherent function but only ones which are socially assigned. If we want to limit our discussion to visual art, then you might say that it has an overwhelmingly visual aspect or dimension, but this isn’t the same thing as a function.
“But all art objects have been specially marked for a particular kind of perception. Take that away, and you're talking about some other kind of object”
I’m troubled by what seems to be an unsupported generalization. What “particular kind of perception” are you talking about here—visuality for its own sake? It’s interesting that you say that it is “specially marked” do you mean socially, through language? Doesn’t this compromise a position in which visuality exists for itself? This last sentence gets to the heart of your argument’s purity, as if there was a fixed definition for art that can’t be challenged or modified in the slightest or it’s danger of collapsing. I may be making this a little more dramatic than you intended, but you need only look to history to see how conceptions of art have altered dramatically. When I read someone like Bannard’s objections to new forms of art, I tend to think of their more conservative outlooks as stemming from an inability or unwillingness to understand or integrate recent social and technological developments. Even Adorno hated film for its spectrality! Basing arguments against them on the basis of quality seems like an easy way to avoid exploring new mediums and forms. Visuality itself is something which isn’t fixed and has been changing rapidly over the last 50 years. This isn’t to avoid the issue of quality, but realize that new conditions for visual work require a new mapping of criteria for possible judgment. Getting back to your quote, I just don’t see how we can limit ourselves to either a “particular kind of perception” or even a particular kind of “object” that we qualify as artistic.
“Within like examples, there are optimal and sub-optimal ways of presenting information. Assuming that we're talking about non-fiction, clarity is typically a virtue. If the reader doesn't know what the words mean, it's his responsibility to look them up. If the reader can't know what the words mean, the writer is jerking him around and shirking his responsibility to add to knowledge. My problem isn't with hard words, but with empty words”
Again, the good / bad writing is simplistic. Personally, I find a lot of theoretical writing to be “sub-optimal” but I could say the same thing for a lot of writing which qualifies as highly readable. That a text is tidy doesn’t mean it’s going to be meaningful. I’m not arguing against your claim that good writing should increase knowledge, but rather your conditions for this exchange. I object to your generalization that academic and philosophical text’s intentionally jerk their readers around. Even if certain terms aren’t immediately apparent to your average reader (here I go with my own elitism, I guess!) this doesn’t mean that they’re meaningless or meant to confuse. Just because I’d have a lot of trouble even starting to talk about “Dasein” doesn’t mean that its empty, poorly developed, or used inconsistently.
I've had enough conversation with "Clem" on my own blog to come to the conclusion that productive dialogue is near futile (Clem's more restrained tack here points to the possibility I might be wrong), but I will make this one observation:
Incredibly long comments that are peppered with numerous questions are very hard to address completely (no offense intended, Clem, just an observation, one that perhaps you might agree with).
Nevertheless, knowing Franklin, Opie, et al, I'm sure someone here will have the patience to respond to Clem's last comment, and I only hope Clem will read and think carefully on that eventual response...
Agreed MC, dealing with an onslaught of comments can be difficult. Though it's funny that my post brings you to that point, while someone like J has had to deal with it all morning! I also think it's difficult to discuss some of these issues with a number of you when the constant charge of "that's not an argument", "give us a real counterargument" is being leveled. Not that the threat of removing posts and mutual un-civility helps things either.
There's too much for me to respond to also, so the last post tried to stick to Franklin's reply. But I'd like to touch on something that Eric wrote and that many here seem to agree with:
"Postmodernism does not imply a hierarchy of values and meaning. Modernism does"
I agree, most of thinkers that you've mentioned don't imply A hierarchy. But as a couple of us have mentioned, this doesn't imply that the question of quality has been abandoned. Just because some of Modernism's claims of objectivity have been critiqued or abandoned (the same as modernism's emergence critiqued other traditional criteria of judgment) doesn't mean that things have become a literal free for all. This often heard charge of relativism is more of a knee-jerk reaction than a thoughtful consideration of many of these writer's positions. I think that you'd find an overarching concern for specificity here which actually enables judgment and the designation of value. While this sometimes might seem like a reigning in of quality, I find that it actually emerges from the desire to clarify rather than abstract the way in which we make judgments and create art.
If it seems like this unnecessarily complicates things, then you need to see that it arises from the argument that modernism takes things too straightforwardly (and that these limitations are intentionally political). This is admittedly simplistic, but I think that many of these arguments extend what is required for, and deserving of, judgment.
Clem, instead of stating that we are invoking "pure" and being "simplistic", "absolute", "elitist, and "limiting" (many of which I would be happy to admit to) and assuming those words are negative, and writing very long statements which as MC says are very awkward to deal with, can you present one at a time and state very clearly what your objection is?
Otherwise I'm afraid we will get nowhere.
Opie (#86): "the power of better art" has to be one of the cornerstones of any strategy that would work. It is the integrity that binds us together. But in and of just itself, it does not seem sufficient to the task. After all, artists who hold that looks aren't important are the ones getting looked at, while those who do think looks are important, are not being looked at.
So. The "wedge" has to feature a certain kind of better art in order to break through. Other kinds can follow later. What I'm thinking about borders on pandering, but what the hell, here it is: When I say a new-modernist is an artist who has added something to modernism since 1960, that's too broad. The focus should be narrowed down to artists who have developed something that is clearly different than what modernism was before it sunk from public regard, yet that is also just as clearly an extension of modernism, not involving any revolt against it. The innovations developed by these artists should be clearly perceivable as being something that was not seen in the old modernism, but has modernism as its root.
And there ought to be the capacity to create gushing pleasure, immediate and hard to deny on a physical basis, so that the only objection can be "pleasure isn't what art is about". In 1987 Robert Hughes panned the Morris Louis retrospective at MOMA on exactly those grounds, saying something like "beauty is not enough". But now his objection is 20 years old and though it would undoubtedly be repeated, it certainly has become long-in-the-tooth.
It isn't necessary to convince everyone this is the good stuff. Certain parts of the audience for art should be written off, cynical as that seems for one, such as I, who believes art is for everybody. But for now the wedge must be aimed at those who are not just open to being visually wowed, but actually hunger for it.
Thus, Laurie Anderson whom I would include in the broad understanding of new-modernism, would not work in this narrowed strategy. Neither would Ed Ruscha, despite his interest and success in keeping the look of his work in the forefront. Susan Roth, whose work I admire a lot, would not work either, because you must work through her toughness before you can get the pleasure. (And, as I worked out this post below, Anderson and Ruscha are far too well known to be cast as "new".)
"Color Field" and "Lyrical Abstraction" are problem categories. They clearly extended modernism, but are associated with its fall from grace, not its renewal. The rhetoric of new-modernism must avoid those categories initially, though they might and should come later. Those who made a "name" for themselves during the acceptance phase of those movements would be a liability. (Poons, Frankenthaler, for instance.) "New" means "new to the art scene" on certain practical levels. I keep thinking of Pearlstein and how he remained in the background until he was taken up by the revival of realism that followed AbEx - he was not new in any sense except new to the limelight - but that trumped every other fact. Anyone who has been in the limelight cannot be put across as new. Thus, the "New New" doesn't work either. Though they have not gotten much limelight, they have been visible for too long.
Yes, I think "new to the system" is important as I type through this. So:
1. Visibly connected to modernism before 1960;
2. Having adding something that is a clear innovation and hopelessly pleasurable;
3. Not well known to the current art system.
Then what? I'm not sure.
Yo. Thanks for the props, MC. Though I don't know about "friend" of artblog. More like drunken, obnoxious party guest.
Hey, just don't pee in the fish tank. Congratulations, CF!
No, Catfish, I'm not sure either, but it is fun to structure the idea.
I thought your point #1 was something you rejected. Do you mean that it must look like earlier modernism? I think whatever we might find might well look that way but I don't think it should be limited, except perhaps by medium. Even then, it might not have to be limited to earlier forms; I have a graduate student who conceives his videos in purely "formalist" terms. He is also doing modernist work which doesn't look much like pre-1960 modernism. And we have "nonconforming" modernists like Annie Walsh and Clay Ellis in Edmonton (althopugh I have not seen any of his work lately).
We can't be too categorical up front. The best procedure would be (if at all possble) to survey as much as possible being done out there and try to assess what is best, and keep it appealing, as you say, although I have found that i am a bad judge of what might appeal to other people. And then just stick the "new modernism" label on it.
Another factor is timing; people have to be at least "subclinically" sick of all the junk and all the excuses for it.
Clem, a lot of thought went into your comment, and I appreciate the time it must have taken. We may not have enough common understanding to proceed here, but I'll try, despite that you're rehashing a lot of postmodernist bromides against supposed modernist bromides.
First of all, we should distinguish what I said on behalf of new modernism in the mini-manifesto above and what I'm willing to say about art in general. That no one who identifies with modernism had any problem with my list (save a minor objection from Catfish in #8, which I'm still thinking about) indicates that I've done justice to the effort pretty well. I would not necessarily make those five points above about all art. In fact, the point was to distinguish new modernism from other approaches.
You claim these markers:
"more open to the concept of multiplicity"
"irritated" by "designations of purity"
As opposed to these:
"absolute"
"limiting [arts] potential"
"simplistic binaries"
"elitist"
"an inability or unwillingness to understand or integrate recent social and technological developments"
But if you look at "selective indifference to traits," you will find permission to include or exclude anything as suits your being at any given moment in the studio. By anything, I mean anything. That includes technology and any content you can put together (including the address of "social developments," whatever those might be). The only constraints here come from the conequences of deciding for and against certain traits in the effort to produce work of greater visual quality. This is not so much an elitist enterprise as an elite one, as befits any difficult human effort with a potentially impressive outcome. And like in any pursuit in which only the outcome matters, it is open to any participant who can cut the dots.
You, personally, do not have to work towards greater visual quality if you don't want to. Art permits you to do so. All I'm saying is that if you don't, you're not a modernist.
Another postmodernist bromide says that all knowledge is arbitrary framing, enforced by language, politics, and the relativity of perception. This assumption sanctions patently false statements like this: "Visuality itself is something which isn’t fixed and has been changing rapidly over the last 50 years." Things are visual or not because of mechanisms in the biological world that are so constant that we share some of the germane structure with trout. Even cognition and learning have a biological basis, and a theory that can't account for this, or even admit it, is a fantasy.
Even though your basis for doing so is wrong, art permits you to judge things according to other criteria than visual superiority. All I'm saying is that if you do, you're not a modernist.
Excellence, in the most general sense, is by nature a small target. Your self-described openness to multiplicity (excuse me, openness to the concept of multiplicity) only means that you're trading off excellence for inclusion. Art permits you to do this. I, in turn, get to point out where you have included things that are not excellent. Or, depending on the breadth of your inclusiveness, not even good.
Your comments about writing at the end do not contradict my statement that I am not against hard words, but empty words. I don't know what you mean by "conditions for this exchange."
1. MC
Tuesday 13 May 2008 3:24 pm
The Venus of Willendorf's got 10,000 years on your precious French horsie cave paintings...
I'm just saying...