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Original Message
"RE: The Death of Painting"
Posted by abvg on 31-Jan-03 at 05:50 PM
David and Ilia,

I send this post to keep current with the posts so far and, hopefully, I will get it in before either of you send anything else.

David,

As I think I explained in one of my posts a long time ago, if this were a real café we would have the chance to interrupt each other in order to clarify specific points as soon as they are raised. Since we are not in a real café, all we can do is try to extract what meaning we can from what is before us.

I would like to explain something about myself so that we may understand each other better.

I am a minimalist by nature. What I mean is not that I paint minimalist paintings but that I live my life in a minimalist fashion. It was not a conscious decision to do so, it just seems to be the way I was put together. I was not even aware of it until, a few years ago, a friend of mine happened to make casual remark to that effect. It surprised me at first, but I quickly realised that he was right.

Being a 'minimalist by nature' has several consequences but the one I want to mention here is that I tend to severely distil my thoughts (no matter how complex) into one or two sentences. It causes me no end of problems particularly in an environment that does not allow immediate two-way interaction.

It is true that we are coming to the problem from two different directions. Mine is from the viewpoint of art history, yours from a culture-critical perspective. Both viewpoints are perfectly valid. We just have to be careful to differentiate between post-modern culture, post-modern art (something that I dispute exists), and art in the post-modern period (not necessarily the same thing).

This is Donald Judd from 'A long discussion not about master-pieces but why there are so few of them -Part 1 - 1984.' Here he is talking about post-modern art.

"Much is made now of the catchword 'post-modern,' which includes more every day. This term has been made by changing the meaning of the word 'modern' from 'now,' which is all it ever meant, to a meaning as a style, which the word cannot mean, since no style can include such diversity. Wright, van der Rohe and Corbusier are thrown together and tossed off as being 'modern.' This 'modern' means only earlier and by now opprobriously established, and 'post-modern' means modern. I've thought of an even better label, 'post-contemporary.' 'Post-modern' is being used to obscure the issue of quality by claiming a presentness and a popularity supposedly superior to that of acknowledged art and architecture, no matter how good they are and in fact regardless of their pertinence, democracy and acceptance so far. This is cant. It's hypocrisy to seem to criticize the work of the recent past, especially by ascribing spurious purposes and meanings to it, while indiscriminately mining the greater past. It's setting up a straw man to supersede to identify 'modern' with the 'international style,' a commercial simplification of van der Rohe's work, made by the same architects, Johnson for one, who now say that the style is cold and repetitious, as they made it, and that it must be replaced by another, hopefully diverse and entertaining. The elaboration of the term 'post-modern' is not due to real change but is due to naked fashion and the need to cover it with words."

In my previous post, I said that I am preparing a piece on philosophy's comments on art. This is not entirely true. The piece will deal more generally with art criticism but includes philosophy's writing on art. The reason I mention it is that the Camus text you supplied has a direct relationship with my central point in that piece.

Also (incidentally) from 'The Rebel':

"… the fact that creation is necessary does not perforce imply that it is possible. A creative period in art is determined by the order of a particular style applied to the disorder of a particular time. It gives form and formulae to contemporary passions. <…> Today when collective passions have stolen a march on individual passions, the ecstasy of love can always be controlled by art. But the ineluctable problem is also to control collective passions and the historic struggle. The scope of art, despite the regrets of the plagiarists, has been extended from psychology to the human condition. When the passions of the times put the fate of the whole world at stake, creation wants to dominate the whole of destiny. But, at the same time, it maintains, in the face of totality, the affirmation of unity. In simple words, creation is then imperilled, first by itself, and then by the spirit of totality. To create, today, is to create dangerously.

Collective passions must, in fact, be lived through and experienced, at least relatively. At the same time that he experiences them, the artist is devoured by them. The result is that our period is rather the period of reportage than the period of the work of art."

By the way, we Brits always excuse Americans their quaint attitude towards spelling.

Ilia,

I thought everyone knew that the answer to the great question of life, the universe, and everything is 42.

Best wishes to you both,


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