David,Many thanks for your latest post.
"I'm a bit confused by your somewhat curt reply to my last post. (I've read through my last post again to make sure that my memory of it was correct). My account of my university painting professor - just to set the record straight - in no way constitutes my "assessment of minimalist thought". (I did give a reference to an essay which I said confirms my experience with minimalists and views of Minimalism in general - if anyone cares to read it.) Further, I understand completely that you "do not actively seek minimalism in life, nor do (you) advocate it" - but remember, you originally brought up the term "minimalism" (not me)."
I am sorry if my reply your posting seemed "somewhat curt". I had just uploaded my "Art - The Final Battlefield" piece, noticed your latest post, and wanted to make sure that you were aware that I had seen it. I had quickly read your posting online and it was your comment,
"At any rate, I'm skeptical of the idea that it may always be possible to distill complex and often contradictory phenomena into a sentence or two - without either risking jargon or outright falsification. (Economical thought-construction is another matter.)"
that made me wonder if you had misunderstood my earlier comments. It is this that I meant when I said, "I agree with your assessment of minimalist thought and the over-distillation of complex ideas. Understand, though, it is an error into which I fall. I do not actively seek minimalism in life, nor do I advocate it."
It was my intention to comment more fully upon your posting after I had the opportunity to read it more closely offline. I should have made this clear.
"I'm glad you agree with my thoughts concerning the over-distillation of complex ideas (maybe the term "over-simplification" fits better). What I have trouble understanding, however, is your sentence: "Understand, though, it is an error into which I fall." Am I only supposed to "understand" (overlook) that you fall into the error of the over-simplification of complex thoughts? Or am I only supposed step aside while you indulge in an even more self-indulgent personal tendency toward over-simplification at the expense of the entire discussion? (which is, as far as I'm concerned, precisely what you did in your last long post)."
This is precisely what I did not do, as well you know. In post 57 I warned you I was writing the piece. I reminded you of it again in post 58. I prefaced the piece itself with the words "David, As promised." To mistake this for a reply to an unrelated posting of yours is not a misunderstanding but deliberately perverse. It injures us both. It makes me look ungrateful for the hard work you have done and it makes you look foolish. I am not the one and you are not the other.
I am not asking you to "overlook" my tendency towards over-simplification. I am asking you to seek clarification at any time you think I have fallen into this error rather than just launching into a bad tempered tirade (to which, it seems, you have a tendency.)
"Quite frankly, I'm disappointed. I'd hoped for a discussion over "The Death of Painting". But this hasn't materialized. BRAIN WARS à la Betty Edwards? (you really can't be serious with all this nonsense)."
I am indebted to Betty Edwards and her book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain." It stepped into help when my local library was having trouble getting hold of the works by Roger Sperry and Jerre Levy.
Roger Sperry first made his name in the field of developmental neurobiology which helped establish the way nerve cells are wired up in the central nervous system. He later pioneered the behavioral investigation of "split brain" animals and humans. His research suggests that two separate realms of consciousness exist under one skull. His research led him to philosophy and the "mind/brain problem." He was Hixon professor of psychobiology at the California Institute of Technology for about thirty years and won the Nobel Prize in the early eighties.
As far as I am aware the left brain/right brain model is mainstream scientific thought and has been for about twenty years. Subsequently research has built on the foundations laid by Roger Sperry.
It was the documentary "The History of Writing", currently doing the rounds on the Civilization channel, and which makes extensive use of the left brain/right brain model that originally brought the piece to mind (if you pardon the pun).
In your earlier rant you wrote "Unless you bother to support your position with something more concrete - let's say something a bit more 'scientifically informed'<…>." Now, something a bit more scientifically informed is "nonsense."
To call it "all this nonsense" is certainly bold. It does surprise me though in two respects. Firstly, I know you hate over-simplification and yet here you are indulging in it (with a healthy dose of intellectual snobbery thrown in for good measure, I notice.)
Secondly, if there is one thing we do agree on, it is the view that a broad interdisciplinary approach to art history is essential. In one of your earlier postings you supplied a wonderful quote from Max Raphael,
"Artistic creation involves the totality of dispositions, functions, relations, facts, and values - all of these in harmonious interaction: body and soul, inwardness and outwardness, the individual and the community, the self and the cosmos, tradition and revolution, instinct and freedom, life and death, becoming and being, the self and fate, struggle and structure, the Dionysian and the Appolonian, law and accident, structure and surface, contemplation and action, education and achievement, sensuality and spirit, doubt and faith, love and duty, ugliness and perfection, the finite and the infinite. Neither one of any pair of these terms should exclude the other nor should any pair exclude any other - they must be brought together into a higher unity." ("The Struggle to Understand Art")
My central point in the piece is that writing on art by philosophers, critics, and artists has, in general, become increasingly intellectually complex and abstract over the years and that art itself shows a trend to becoming overtly intellectual in nature and form. Had I said that in an earlier posting I feared that you would jump down my throat for over-simplification. So I wrote the piece in an attempt to explain more fully why I believe this is so. It seems I can do nothing right. If it is "short and sweet" it is "somewhat curt" or a "meaningless over-simplification." If it is a longer explanation it is "an even more self-indulgent personal tendency toward over-simplification."
I, too, am getting frustrated. I believe we are both doing our best to grapple with a complex problem but we are still having problems with our communication.
"If you want to throw around simplistic half- and quarter-truths over left-brain/right-brain functions (in lobotomized brains, yet!) in a manner elevating such "insights" into THE ANSWER which explains everything about The Condition of Human Art, you'll have to do it without me. (But then, perhaps this is your ultimate aim.)"
THE ANSWER is 42 (Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, A Trilogy in Four Parts.)
At the end of the piece, I realized that the form in which I chose to present it (to make it entertaining) could easily be misinterpreted to mean that I regarded this as the only issue in art worth considering. That is why I wrote:
"I have presented the material here in such a way that may give the impression that I believe that this is the only issue in art.
It is not."
Yet, you accuse me of it anyway! Is this NOT perverse?
I suppose you do realize by now that considering the number and type of outright errors in your posting, the whole thing supports my piece perfectly as a very good example of "left brain ego" denial. We like to think that we are the masters of our own minds. It is not unreasonable to expect that we ARE the masters of our own minds. As unpalatable as it may sound, as unpalatable as it may be, it does not seem to be necessarily so. There is something within us, call it "left brain ego" or any other label you care to stick on it, that does not always act in our best interests. It always acts in its own best interest, but that is not necessarily ours. I do not claim immunity. I am as much a victim as everyone else.
I will leave this with one final quote.
"Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art."
Susan Sontag
Against Interpretation
I, like you, do not want this to turn into a "yes it is, no it isn't" argument. You are correct in that we seem to be getting side-tracked away from the central problem.
If it helps, I propose that we draw a line under everything that has gone before.
The questions on the table are these:
1) Is painting / autonomous art dead as a valid and vital artform? Is it possible that it might be dead even beyond the "inevitable death of art in our revolutionary societies?"
2) Should we mourn its passing or can we find a new "position" for it - a reinvention of painting?
3) Accepting that cultural postmodernism was originated and dominated by 'an American Internationale', do you think that it is the inherent 'Americaness' that has led to the decline in the value of painting as an artform?
4) I have always felt that Americans (and I am speaking generally here) are isolationists at heart. You are in a better position than I am to comment on that. If it is true, does that leave an isolationist worm at the core of post-modern culture?
I do not have answers to these questions. That is why I ask them. I know you have promised me an answer on the last two and I really do look forward to receiving them.
Despite our differences, I still think you are my best hope for an answer to these questions. Though you may feel otherwise at the moment, I do value your opinions and your help.
Best wishes,
