Till Baumgartel.

Baumgartels figures inhabit what he describes as a multioptional society, in which large sections of society have abandoned all the old certainties and dogmas and all promise of salvation, and live in environments that reflect their their inner hopelessness and despair.Baumgartel method or practise is to use sketchbooks as a point of departure to transfer received ideas to canvas or paper. These ideas or images create a sense of Melancholy. The scene that the figures in habit does not quiet fit and creates a scense of displacement.Many of his scenes take place in a nocturnal environment which creates a feeling of displacement eg Out after dark. To quote the artist " tries to capture madness, beauty, questionable things, strange things, in his pictures to create a certain resonance. The painting resemble theatrical stage sets that suggest decay and past glories. The figures are isolated and do not communicate.In many cases the scene is exterior and interior at once, suggesting the tension between the exterior and inner world of the figures.

Thoughts on Hopper.

I have been looking at a lot of Hoppers painting more closely lately .What an amazing artist this man was,when you examine the painting technique it's plain that technically Hopper was not a virtuoso ,but that's immaterial ,he uses images of every day physical manifestations to give form to an idea or more commonly an emotion or phycology, such as isolation, loneliness .Hopper is such a master that for me the idea or emotion is more present in the work than the means used to convay it.The emotion is the more powerful content in the painting.To quote Hopper himself " I believe that the great painters,with their intellect as master,have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record     of their emotions .I find any digression from this large aim leads me to boredom".

Rothko paintings.

It's interesting to note how completely Rothkos method of painting and producing images,so completely identifies with his aesthetic conception and subject matter.Rothko method of using thin washes,that dematerialise into the weave of the canvas,the complete fushion of surface and paint and the simplicity of form create a medative mood in the viewer. The subject matter is one of universal immateriality, in which the presence of artistic gesture is completely absent, and therefore so is the artists presence. At this stage Rothko describes the feeling of " the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea,and between the idea and the observer" The images eliminate the iconography of cultural and historical  memory .Rothko states that he is for the " the simple expression of the complex thought". Jonathen Fineburg describes the subjective experience of the viewers encounter with the indescribable painted object ,provides a foundation for the defining of object and self and how they relate.The work does not describe experience the works are an experience .Due to the large scale of the work the viewer is in and surrounded by the image. " We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal to quote the artist.

The sublime in Abstract Expression

Some interesting quotes with regard to the sublime aspect in Absract Expressionism and Newman and  Rothko in particular.Dominique de Menil patron of Rothkos last murals ,said the work invoked " the tragic mystery of our perishable condition . The silence of God, the unbearable silence of God. Newman describes his artistic motivation in the following words ......" We are reasserting mans natural desire for the exhalted.".........The image we produce is the self evident one of revelation, real and concrete, that can be understood by anyone who will look at it without the nostalgic glasses of history." Jonathan Fineberg when discussing Casper David Friedriches painting Monk by the Seashore 1809-10   describes, The small scale of man against the endless space of the heavens and the sea evokes a breathtaking apprehension of the infinite , a sense of cosmic boundless ness , and by contrast a profound realisation of one own insignificance and mortality.                                                                  This statement would cause me to reflect that when we see how religion has been such a fundamental feature of human society in all cultures, that the sense of cosmic boundless ness described above may well be the root of mankinds religious experience throughout history.

Necessary Illusions

classes. Through the construction of this marketplace, western governments forged firm and enduring links between socioeconomic position and ideological power, permitting upper classes to use each to buttress the other ... In the United States, in particular, the ability of the upper and upper-middle classes to dominate the marketplace of ideas has generally allowed these strata to shape the entire society’s perception of political reality and the range of realistic political and social possibilities. While westerners usually equate the marketplace with freedom of opinion, the hidden hand of the market can be almost as potent an instrument of control as the iron fist of the state.15.                                           Interesting extract from N,Chomsky ,Necessary illusions

Willem de Kooning.Excavation 1950

De Koonings painting Excavation 1950 and his use of newsprint in the in the creation of this painting,anticipates Rauschenburgs use of found images and texts in his own work ,has made me realise that the modern environment,especially the urban environment is virtually a living text.This text is not necessarily narrative in nature.Just as John Cages symphonies utilises the arbitrary way sounds interacts with our senses,the modern media and message saturated environment,with its colidescope of images and text.Each one competing for our attention as we journey through the streets and hi ways of our modern cities is completely arbitrary in its power to work on our perceptions.This is a completely new phanomonom unique to the 20th and 21st century.The modern city dweller is spoken to and enticed daily by images and texts,each random turn of the head exposing him to a new message.

Benjamin Ginsberg. Market place of ideas.

western governments have used market mechanisms to regulate popular perspectives and sentiments. The “marketplace of ideas,” built during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, effectively disseminates the beliefs and ideas of the upper classes while subverting the ideological and cultural independence of the classes. Through the construction of this marketplace, western governments forged firm and enduring links between socioeconomic position and ideological power, permitting upper classes to use each to buttress the other ... In the United States, in particular, the ability of the upper and upper-middle classes to dominate the marketplace of ideas has generally allowed these strata to shape the entire society’s perception of political reality and the range of realistic political and social possibilities. While westerners usually equate the marketplace with freedom of opinion, the hidden hand of the market can be almost as potent an instrument of control as the iron fist of the state.

Clash of civilisations Samuel Huntington

In his book Clash of Civilisations,Samuel Huntington articulates the political theory that,with the sensation of the Cold War,ideology ,and the clash of ideologies is no longer the predominant factor in shaping the world we live in.Huntington believed that the source of future conflict in the world will be between cultures eg. Islam, consumerist western culture etc.The author believes these cultures have their origins in ancient historical civilations of the old world.This is an interesting idea,we see the populations of western democracies, being increasing moulded into a political and cultural consensus by the media.But what is notable is the resistance of Islamic cultures to this manufacturing of consent.what is more interesting is that cultures are no longer confined to geographical locations.Culture is no longer predominantly idetified with nationality.Clashes between cultures can take place within nation states.

Baudelaire on childhood

“Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.”

Assessment exhibition for 2nd year painting .

Rosalyn Drexeler

 Was watching program about forgotten female Pop Artists, very impressed with Rosalyn Drexler,she used photo images from popular news magazines and painted over elements and retained  other pre chosen elements to create new image and narrative.I feel she has created a tool for her artistic practise.What I find interesting is that like all tools, they can be used by others, not only their creators,the hammer was created by one,and used by all,intend to explore this tool in my own work.

Titian on drawing.

It is not bright colors but good drawing that makes figures beautiful.(Titian) - from The Painter's Keys Resource of Art Quotations. 

Article on Samuel Walsh exhibition

What in the world is abstract art about?

It isn’t just grown-ups painting like kids or gallery-goers admiring the emperor’s new clothes: good abstract art, such as Samuel Walsh’s, tackles the ideas behind things

Detail from Autumnus X (Bénodet) (2014), by Samuel Walsh

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Gemma Tipton

Topics:

Culture

Art & Design

Visual Art

Ben Nicholson

Charles Tyrrell

Milo Moire

Oliver Sears

Patrick Scott

Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 01:00

First published:

Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 01:00

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What do you see when you see a work of art? The answer might appear obvious, if it’s a picture of, say, a loaf of bread. But what if you’re confronted with what seems to be little other than a collection of colours, shapes and lines?

A frequent response from those not immersed in the wonders of the art world is: “What is it of?” They’re even more likely to say: “My five-year-old could have done that.” The latter remark comes up so often, there’s even a book: Susie Hodge’s Why Your Five -Year -Old Could Not Have Done That attempts to get to grips with what’s happening behind the lines, dots, lumps and bumps of contemporary art.

But the continuing presence and (even its detractors have to admit) popularity of abstract art means there has to be something more to it than grown-ups painting like talented five-year-olds, and gallery-goers admiring the emperor’s new clothes.

At first sight, Samuel Walsh’s exhibition Glance is at the impenetrable end of abstraction. The canvases are square, and coloured shapes are overlaid with black and sometimes grey lines that might hint at things (like a Rorschach inkblot test) without ever resolving into anything specific.

For Walsh, the purpose is to try to get to grips with the experience of seeing, of being in the world. “I don’t paint the world, but I live in it,” he says. “So how do I paint experience?”

The colours come from impressions of things he has seen, while the overlay of lines are from other sets of circumstances and observations. By doing this, Walsh hits on a truth that a simple representation of a loaf of bread, however accurate, can never achieve: that there is no such thing as absolute definition, or absolute meaning in anything. How you see something is always altered by its history, your own history, and (often most particularly) your feelings and emotions in that moment.

The ideas behind things

Abstract art attempts to grapple with the ideas behind things. Bored with his genius at pure representation, Picasso famously tried to paint the different perspectives: three-dimensionality on a flat canvas. And so, with Braque, he introduced Cubism to the world. Kandinsky attempted to paint music with his leaping lines and colours, and Cézanne tried to bring nature back to its basic forms, which he described as “the cylinder, the sphere, the cone”.

This isn’t a modern phenomenon. A visit to the marvellous Loughcrew Cairns in Co Meath (loughcrew.com/cairns) reveals shapes and lines carved into the ancient stone that are paralleled in prehistoric art across the world. Look forward several thousand years, and you can see similar symbols emerging in early abstract art from artists including Kazimir Malevich, Ben Nicholson and the Swedish mystic Hilma af Klint, giving rise to the idea that there may be archetypal symbols in the human mind that abstraction unconsciously mines.

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Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 01:00

First published:

Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 01:00

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William Kentridge on drawing

What does it mean to say that something is a drawing-as opposed to a fundamentally different form,such  as a photograph.First of all arriving at the image is a process,not a frozen instant.Drawing for me is about fluidity.There may be a vague sense of what your going to draw but things occur during the process that may modify,consolidate  or shed doubts on what you know .So drawing is testing of ideas ;a slow motion version of thought. It does not arrive instantly like a photograph. The uncertain  and imprecise way of constructing a drawing is sometimes a model of how to construct meaning.What ends in clarity does not begin that way.  My work is about a process of drawing that tries to find a way through the space between what we know and what we see.                                                                                                 William Kentrige. Phialdon press ltd.london 1999.                                   

Hunt museum Pieta project 10-2-014

  Having never had the opportunity to experience the visual power, of Michael Angelo’s Pieta, I have chosen the white porcelain created in Dresden by Kandler in 1732,as the subject for my project in Hunt Museum, and to relate it to modern visual culture.

 

     

 When I am in the presence of this work, it creates visual connotations for me of images of civilian casualties that are all too familiar in any armed conflict or war, from classical history to our present day news media saturated environment. Even today as we turn on our  T.V screens we are presented with identical images from the conflict in Syria. The Pieta for me is symbolic of all the mothers and fathers who have lost children to violent conflict throughout history. 

 

 In my project, I am investigating how modern day visual mediums for viewing such images have changed radically the way we perceive and interact with these images. As we view our television screens, we see these images in a moving sequence, each image treated as of equal importance by the visual medium. A news program communicating the horrors of war or famine, may be proceeded or followed by programs or advertisements containing images of celebrity or products for sale, all are reduced to media images.