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| Kathe Kollwitz, The Peasants' Revolt |
In these divisive political times, words can't seem to keep pace with our anger. Insults on social media are so prevalent that words have lost their sting. Hyperbole is so overused that it no longer impresses, so people have resorted to lies instead. (As Nietzsche observed, "no one lies as much as an indignant man.") Many people have given up searching for words that persuade, and settled for words to offend.
But when words become ineffectual as a means of expression, we can always rely on good ol' drawing to raise the decibel level.
Unlike words, drawing is not a polite game ruled by grammar and punctuation. Drawing is a more primal mode of communication with a broader range of expressive tools. In this sketch from Kollwitz's shattering series about the peasants' revolt of 1524, her charcoal strokes on paper are the equivalent of those arms flailing in rage and despair.
Kathe Kollwitz, study for The Peasants' Revolt
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| Goya, a gang rape by soldiers |
Amsterdam artist L.J. Jordaan penned this blood curdling image of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands:
Oceans of words about the Vietnam war were written by armies of talented writers, yet Tomi Ungerer's stark drawings remain vivid in people's minds.
The talented Tom Fluharty could've made a career out of his blistering portrayals of Hillary Clinton:
Today's polarized environment has revved up talented, indignant artists, such as Michael Ramirez on the right or Ann Telnaes on the left. But I can think of none more unsettling and brilliant than John Cuneo. His pen seems the sharpest, his ink the most acidic, his imagination the most outrageous.
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| A response to Donald Trump's statement that his opponents should "go back to where you came from." |
This next Cuneo drawing-- simultaneously brutal and brilliant-- is an excellent example of what I mean by artistic powers strong enough to contain rage:
51 comments:
Hey , what about McNaughton ?
Kollwitz was awesome. Cuneo on facebook is the funniest artist in the world. No one can touch him today.
Setting aside the field of political cartoons, for what little it's probably worth, I regard political art as generally inferior art -- especially when subject matter is approached negatively. Positive political art that extolls people or ideas is not usually very good either, though works are normally less ugly than the hate-filled negative kind.
I suppose the problem is that political art is often little more than political cartooning with a better pedigree (I mean YOU, Goya!).
This matter is clearly complex, but let me grossly simplify with the following observation: Would readers and others be pleased to hang some of the examples in this post on their living room walls? And keep them there?
Cuneo is one dark dude but maybe I am too cuz I can't stop laughing when I see his work.
JSL
David, do you allow me to quote (and translate) this text on my blog?
al mcluckie-- Excellent point, McNaughton is the perfect example of what happens when you have all rage but no art. He is obviously sincerely agitated about the political situation and that fuels an endless stream of pictures. Unfortunately they are simple minded, heavy handed and horribly painted. Someone with talent might've been able to fuse those political beliefs into an effective work of art.
MORAN-- I agree with you on both counts.
Donald Pittenger-- I agree that art and politics are a delicate balance. I've previously quoted Yeats who said that we make art out of our arguments with ourselves, but we make propaganda out of our arguments with the world. However, I disagree with you about Goya; I think his Disasters of War series is some of the most powerful graphic art around.
I hope you won't think less of me, but I actually have two of Kollwitz's etchings from her Peasants Revolt series hanging on my wall. Every day I think they are stunning.
David, I have no problem with what you hang on your wall -- I was making a generalization, thinking more in terms of the Hillary and Trump pieces. Kollwitz is not my cup of tea, though was capable of capturing hands, etc. powerfully. And I've never been a Goya fan, nor a Picasso fan, nor a .... Clearly I must have a character failing art-wise.
PS. Manuel sent me a copy of your fine Briggs book: hope to post about it next week.
David, I think I know what Donald is getting at with his:
Would readers and others be pleased to hang some of the examples in this post on their living room walls? And keep them there?
I hope he'll forgive me if I'm wrong:
The meaning of statements such as 'war is hell' or 'Donald Trump crawled out of Satan's arse' or 'exploiting an animal for trivial ends is vile' are completely and sufficiently expressed in words. The only gain in illustrating them is the psychological kick we receive due to the fractional delay between seeing the image and realising it is the visual embodiment of such statements. After that it's utility is over for us. Although I'll concede that there is perhaps an afterglow of morbid fascination at how such a thing has been so sensitively constructed. But a steaming turd resting on the coffin of Maximilien Robespierre painted by Delacroix would add up to the same aesthetic lack of result (which is not true for his Liberty Leading the People, which even though it was incited by a 'political' event its content is far from simple).
However, I believe the first Hillary Clinton image and the Kollwitz image approach the condition of art because they embody far deeper levels of meaning. In other words; their content cannot be reduced to a verbal statement that comes remotely close to what the image itself conveys. Which, I would hazard a guess, is precisely why you have the Kollwitz on your walls. Perhaps even the Hillary Clinton? I would, even though, if I lived in America, I'd probably vote Republican... :)
I don't think Cuneo's skilled drawing of Satan's anus, or Fluharty masterful Clintons, are Art at all.
They may become more 'artful' as time passes, but only insofar as their arguments are so historically distant as to become moot. So historically distant that people no longer understand the shallow attacks on Trump or Clinton contained therein, mistaking them instead for merely eccentric statements about something more Universal.
That is, they may feel like Art someday, but only after the Artist's intentions can no longer be discerned. And if it requires that the Artist's intentions are forgotten (or ignored) before something can start offering the universality of good Art, I don't think either work can ever technically be Art at all.
The same goes 10x for Ungerer's Vietnam drawing, which is not Art now, being again a shallow politicking. And will never even be mistakable for Art later, because after you remove that politicking, there's no skill or interest left to recommend it in the slightest.
And I would contrast that with most of the commercial Art celebrated on Illustration Art.
The commercial artists may have had the shallow goal of selling consumer products, but the images are trying to get at something much larger. They rise above their commercial goals.
The golden age ad men rebelled against the confines of commercial art, in a way that neither Cuneo or Fluharty have rebelled against the confines of hopeless propaganda.
JSL-- JSL-- Yes, I think Cuneo is a unique, authentic voice and I confess I find him hilarious in a savage sort of way.
Tororo-- thanks for asking, I appreciate your courtesy. Anyone is welcome to quote anything I've written here, as long as they give me either credit or a link.
Donald Pittenger-- I think that on rare occasions, Kollwitz can lapse into shrillness but in view of the horrific life she led, she was far more restrained than I would've been. Putting her content aside, I do love her forms. If you hold her etchings upside down, you can see her skill and sense of design without being distracted by the subject matter. Her notebooks are filled with sensitive yet powerful drawings such as (in my personal opinion) the example I've shown here. I view her subject matter as a bonus on top of her visual forms. She never succumbed to polemic about her specific tormentors, such as Hitler and the Nazis... all of her work was about universals, such as life, death, hunger, mothers and children. I admire that.
As for Goya, I admit I was slow to appreciate him and even after reading Hughes' excellent book, I still don't feel that I adequately appreciate his paintings. However, his etchings knocked my socks off from the very beginning. I find them powerful and gritty and spooky and imaginative. If I owned any they would be hanging on my wall too, I promise you (although probably not in my kitchen or living room).
Richard-- Your second comment anticipated my reaction to your first comment. I do feel that the angry content shown in this post is really the flip side of commercial advertising art: if a painting of dish washing detergent can be a thing of beauty then to be consistent the same must be true about angry, noncommercial art. If I can separate form from content for commercial work, I also have to be capable of separating form from content where the artist feels passionately and has no commercial motive.
When it comes to Cuneo, I agree I probably wouldn't place his devil's anus picture by my bedside, even though I smile at its audacity every time I see it. But what do you think about his other picture of the rhinoceros? I've shown that here before. I've had several unkind things to say about poorly drawn concept art in the past, but I can't think of a better example of concept art produced in the past decade. Simply drawn, I think it is nevertheless psychologically and visually brilliant and complex in a way that will withstand the test of time.
As for the Ungerer drawing, I think I understand what you dislike about it, but can you think of a different style of presentation that wouldn't detract from the subject matter? If you have a violent, raw subject matter such as white overlords jamming the American way of life down the throats of the yellow man do you think the picture would be enhanced by the skill you are describing?
“If I can separate form from content for commercial work, I also have to be capable of separating form from content where the artist feels passionately and has no commercial motive.”
If you need to separate the content from the work, you’ve separated the intention from the work. You definitionally aren’t appreciating the art, just the craftsmanship.
You don’t need to separate the content from great commercial art, because truly great commercial art doesn’t actually contain the commercial motive as content.
To illustrate: If Rockwell was selling Butterball Turkeys, we’d still end up with ‘Freedom from Want’.
When the great artist does commercial work, it’s indistinguishable from non-commercial work.
When Leyendecker is selling dress shirts, he gives us a painting which stands on its own. Leyendecker is making a work of art that merely happens to contain Arrow shirts. He’s not forcing Arrow shirts down our throat in a picture that happens to be well-made.
Cuneo and Fluharty aren’t just working in the subject space of famous politicians here – these are not mere portraits. The propagandic urge is encoded at the heart of these images. You can’t remove a logo, and then suddenly wash away the shrill polemics.
“But what do you think about his other picture of the rhinoceros?”
I’m not actually sure what the rhinoceros picture is getting at, the concept is lost on me, but like most of Cuneo’s work, I imagine it’s an extremely well-drawn picture of adolescent histrionics wrapped in a witty visual gag?
I consider Cuneo one of the great draftsmen of our time, and one of our worst artists.
Most political art is carnival food. With the first nibble any self-respecting soul would know to toss it in the trash where it belongs. But well-honed and integral talents like Kollwitz and Fluharty defeat the moral disgrace of politics by being consummate Artists with a longer view in mind.|
Vulgarity has it’s own timelessness. But for the opposite reason to truth and beauty. In the heat of the moment, regurgitated bile acid may offer catharsis from tribal stress, or some nasty chuckle of vengeance. But after the hot moment passes, all that is left is the pathology of it. And that will be the abject truth of it for the long haul. Vulgarity will be trash for as long as truth is beauty.
(I agree with the sentiments of Chris, Donald, and Richard above.)
I find it amazing that anybody would suggest that the litmus test for art is something as parochial as whether you'd hang it on your wall.
Richard wrote: "If you need to separate the content from the work, you’ve separated the intention from the work. You definitionally aren’t appreciating the art, just the craftsmanship."
It doesn't take much effort to "separate the intention from the work," the two often come apart in the natural course of things. For example, the intention frequently gets lost when the artist dies, or when a work of art is transplanted from one culture to another. Often we fault an artist for making his or her intention too plain, precisely because we value ambiguity over propaganda. Even when the artist explain his or her intention, they aren't always right; sometimes viewers supply a better intention than what the artist originally intended. My basic prejudice-- call it a rebuttable presumption-- is that the work of art must be able to stand on its own, independent of the artist's intention.
I'm not sure I understand your aversion to analyzing elements of a picture separately. Certainly we can overdo it by dissecting a work of art, but have you never rated a song's lyrics separate from its melody? Or concluded that a painting has poor color but great composition?
Finally, as for my interpretation of the rhinoceros drawing-- the whole theme of this post is that pictures are fundamentally different from words, and any explanation I could proffer would be hopelessly inadequate. However, here are a few suggestions: At the most rudimentary level-- the "propaganda" level we've been discussing-- the drawing says that poachers are creepy, violent, heartless people. Go to a deeper level and it says that the impotent men who believe rhinoceros horn will restore their virility, and who wear that horn like a priapic crown are delusional. Visually I think it is a master stroke that this odious little character turns toward the audience to show off his new crown. We can tell he is the opposite of a masculinity, and his pride over the slab of butchered meat on his head just makes him look ghastly rather than powerful. At a third, deeper level the drawing seems to question the place of humans in the hierarchy of nature. You have a simple beast standing passively with his majestic horn amputated; standing next to him is a shriveled, twisted little man, plagued with human intellect and its accompanying psychological complexities, sadisms and insecurities. He has tried to steal the glory of other species by transplanting them in a superficial, misguided way. For me, there are many visually smart touches in the drawing-- not just the surprising, psychologically revealing act of placing the horn on the man's head, or the way the man turns to the audience with that weird, prideful grin on his face, but the horrific way Cuneo drew that jagged saw, or the stillness of the giant mutilated animal standing by the man, looking at him with that expression-- as I said, I think it's the strongest example of "idea art" I've seen in a long time.
Kev Ferrara-- I agree that most political art is carnival food (but then I think most commercial art is mediocre too, and that most art on the internet is pretty bad-- as Neal Adams said, people have always had to ferret out the 10% of art that isn't crap, so we shouldn't complain about the high percentage of bad art today). I also agree with you about Kollwitz and Fluharty.
As for vulgarity, I don't think it's that simple. I'd say Chaucer, after 600 years, has survived "the long haul." Mark Twain, James Joyce, Henry Miller have all been plenty vulgar in highly truthful ways. I think "vulgarity" has often been used as a term of class distinction (I once asked Ed Sorel what he thought about the art in Mad Magazine and he sniffed, "those artists are vulgar." It made me think of Sorel as a cartoonist who had escaped to the upper echelon and was eager to pull the ladder up after him.) Personally, I get annoyed at the vulgarity of rap music. But there's a lot of vulgarity in humanity and there can be a lot of truth about humanity in art about vulgarity. I submit that we've seen plenty of examples on this blog of art being rejuvenated by visiting the outskirts of good taste and bringing back innovation and originality and raw energy and shame and titillation , then massaging them for consumption by a mainstream audience.
Joe Procopio-- if you ever saw the art I keep in drawers you'd be shocked.
“It doesn't take much effort to ‘separate the intention from the work,’ the two often come apart in the natural course of things. For example, the intention frequently gets lost when the artist dies, or when a work of art is transplanted from one culture to another.”
“art” is not a mystical property that imbues visual artifacts with a transcendental value. That transcendental thing is called beauty, and people merely confuse the two. (1)
Little-a “art” is a human thing. It is merely visual communication.
As such, limits that apply to other forms of communication apply to art as well:
There must be a message, and there must be two minds, and one of those minds must send that message to the other, and the other must decode and understand it. Absent those simple, earthly limits, we don’t have successful communication.
Big-A Art has the same characteristics as little-a art, with the additional curatorial requirement that the visual statement communicates a universal, and does it well.
Now all that said, you were thinking something like: “But I can experience all sorts of value in an art object even when I don’t understand it as communication!”
Right, but that’s not actually a problem for the definitions of art/Art above. There are countless ways to appreciate an object that has nothing to do with consuming it as instance of communication. "Art" is not the only type of value an object can have.
We can appreciate an object as an artifact for its historical, cultural, ethnological, anthropological, sociological, political, or intellectual value. It can give us insight into philosophy, design, material culture, and so on. It might just look cool or weird.
And, perhaps most importantly for this discussion, we can also appreciate the artifact because it is beautiful. That is not surprising, the world is filled with beauty. Even transcendental beauty. But finding a thing beautiful does not mean that we’ve groked the message.
And there-in lies the rub for your art without intention. Absent that communication we don’t have art, only artifact. Your having found an artifact exciting, engrossing, beautiful, or even exalted, does not alchemically transmute it into an instance of visual communication.
(1) They’re then left trying to explain how ugly things are beautiful. This usually devolves into saying that Beauty means Truth, and so Ugly Truths can Be Beautiful. That sort of rhetorical gymnastics only becomes necessary when people have imbued Art with arcane expectations.
You have a simple beast standing passively with his majestic horn amputated; standing next to him is a shriveled, twisted little man, plagued with human intellect and its accompanying psychological complexities, sadisms and insecurities.
Okay, that was plain enough. I was under the impression there was something more topical about it that I was missing, which is often the case with Cuneo’s work and me.
It gets that across well enough, but I’ll point back to my ‘adolescent histrionics’.
My problem with “idea art” is almost never the skill with which it presents the idea. (Stick figure comics like Randall Munroe’s XKCD or Nathan Pyle's Strange Planet often do much more with much less than Cuneo).
Rather, idea art sucks because of how often the idea it does get across is exhausting naive moralizing. This Rhino picture is a great example.
Looking at Cuneo’s artwork is like listening to a bunch of 7th graders tell it like they think it is. No matter how well he transports me there, it’s just not a place I want to spend any more of my limited lifespan. If I wanted that sort of "insight" I could get it by lurking in Spencer's Gifts or watching American Dad.
What is meant by Truth is Beauty is that an Aesthetic expression of Truth is what gives the sensation of the Beautiful (to the average contemplative viewer.)
But the meaning of Truth in this context matters.
Truth is something like a concise and recurring abstract relationship that appears so universal one feels it must have a reality beyond any particular suite of facts that might instantiate it. But whether it does or not, Truth is predictive by definition and in correspondence with the world. And thus people recognize Truth when they see it. Truth is also hidden, or sublime; as it is a predictive relationship, it transcends facts. So it must be uncovered, so to speak, in order for it to be symbolized. Truth also has a unique kind of integral hypnotic power which has long been a subject of debate and fascination.
The word truth is also used in the more mundane sense of an accurate comprehension of the big idea behind some suite of facts, without any reference to predictive power or the appearance of universality. Such are the predicates for our basic judgments about situations. But these are very manipulable to mediation and elisions, particularly where epistemological humility is not present.
The meaning of the word Aesthetic matters as well. Aesthetic is a symbolic communication that requires no deciphering to understand. That is, it is not written in any codified symbolic language. Rather it is written in the sensual symbolism of Art, in illusions that are only expressable through plastic manipulations of form itself (and possibly archetype) which all human beings (in the normal distribution) are able to understand wholly through the intuition. Thus the aesthetic transcends tribe. (And if it doesn't it isn't.) It turns out that creating aesthetic communications also requires a great deal of concision, because anything ugly (in the wider sense) confuses the message and reduces its communicative power. And thus, the aesthetic also has its own kind of integral hypnotic power.
(The causes of ugliness can be enumerated; and such are very instructive as to the nature of its opposite; aesthetic power, truth, beauty, et al.)
The above paragraphs are in reference to the idea that the phrase "the ugly truth" constitutes unto itself, some kind of argument or refutation of the aesthetic connection between Truth and Beauty.
Regarding the vulgar....
Stimulating the reptile brain is never Art. It is always gratuitous. How one goes about it may have artistic worth, sure. And a truly great work of art may even overcome the presence of the gratuitous poking a hole in its aesthetic fabric. But most do not, because the gratuitous - that which arouses hot or covetous interest or the sense of disgust - is anti-art and in competition with art. (There is a reason why Suggestion is exalted in all the Arts by its best practitioners.)
Being against the wanton activation of the reptile brain isn’t even a question of taste, let alone “class”. Royalty and Peasantry are equally susceptible to heroin addiction. Avoiding or rejecting vulgarity and its fellow travelers pornography, politics, and drug use, is almost a matter of personal self-worth or self-respect alone. (In psychology this would fall under the heading: Conscientiousness.)
That's my opinion anyway.
What is meant by Truth is Beauty is that an Aesthetic expression of Truth is what gives the sensation of the Beautiful (to the average contemplative viewer.)
I grant that aesthetic truth exists. I even grant that there is a relationship between beauty and aesthetic truth, but I’m forced to reject the notion that they share an identity.
Perhaps beauty is a subset of aesthetic truth.
Perhaps beauty is an aesthetic statement which is more compelling when truthy.
But the idea that ugly truths can be beautiful is stretching the concepts too far to bear — it just doesn’t pass the experiential sniff test.
There are truly ugly aesthetic truths, like the kind David is celebrating in this post.
To describe them as beautiful because they are truthy is jumping the shark.
The idea they are equivalent appears to me to be simply a dialectical artefact of enlightenment-era aesthetic philosophy compressing reality into a comprehensible logic, rather than an accurate description of the aesthetic experience itself.
I already answered all your points above.
With the Trump and Devil illustration; I would have visualised the scene with a colossal devil, the size of a mountain, looking down (maybe over his shoulder) at a tiny Trump. The anus could have been a mouth to a cave, or old wooden doors opening, through which you could see a fiery, cavernous interior.
The scale of the Cuneo scenario doesn't make sense to me; if Trump did manage to crawl into the Devil's anus he would be about the size of a 2 year old child inside the devils abdomen. How well is that going to play out for either of them ?
With the rhino illustration, i assumed the horn on the guy's head was supposed to resemble a dunce's pointed hat. 'Killing endangered animals is done by idiots'... but maybe that wasn't intentional.
Richard is that a poacher on your avatar?
David wrote
“It's extremely difficult to balance art and anger, but when properly fused, the two make a powerful alloy.”
Well art certainly doesn’t need anger. But anger is just another form of energy. Kollwitz understands the unfairness and the wickness of men but what shines in her work is a love of form her love of life. She caresses with her lithograph crayon the way a mother caresses her child with love and complete attention. Subjects or themes are only starting points, consciousness has its own motivations that have little to do with the mind’s intentions and desires.
David, I really like your blog, it's so mind opening and I've finished binge reading your blog for several weeks straight haha. Aren't you interested to make posts about japanese comic/manga by any chances?
In particular, I think you will be impressed by a manga called Air Gear because it has serious mindblowing art which clearly suit your standards of comics despite the tendency to overwork the details and hard to follow narratives in the last half of the story. For example, the 16th volume of Air Gear is more than enough to discuss about the greatness of manga even if we're solely discussing the flashy acrobatic action sequences
chris bennett wrote: "The meaning of statements such as 'war is hell' or 'Donald Trump crawled out of Satan's arse' or 'exploiting an animal for trivial ends is vile' are completely and sufficiently expressed in words. The only gain in illustrating them is the psychological kick we receive due to the fractional delay between seeing the image and realising it is the visual embodiment of such statements."
Chris, I think of "completely and sufficiently" as adverbs that might apply to an engineering report, not to profound artistic statements such as "war is hell." If you look at the words employed by Shakespeare or Remarque or Crane or Hemingway to say "war is hell," they move us or make us think but I question whether any of these authors aspired to completeness or sufficiency. There was very little overlap in the words they chose to communicate this message. As for what we gain from illustrating these ideas, I don't think it's just "the psychological kick we receive due to the fractional delay." Visual images do give us immediacy, which I agree is important, but images also give us a whole continent of tools-- symbols, colors, shapes, velocities-- which affect the tone and the power and the sequence and the path that these messages take as they wend their way through the various chambers of the human brain. Pictures also give us fruitful ambiguity-- you saw in my discussion with Laurence John different interpretations about whether the poacher viewed the the horn as a crown or a dunce cap. If Cuneo were to put his drawing in words, he would write either "crown" or "dunce cap" and there would be no deliberation.
For me there is potentially huge magic in illustrating a message.
Richard-- I agree it is sometimes useful to attempt a taxonomy of art (for example, offering a definition of "transcendental value" or asserting that Little-a “art” is merely visual communication, or drawing distinctions between art/artifact and art/Art ) but my experience is that that these efforts are best regarded as temporary conveniences, like holding a prism up to the light to see what might be gained from different perspectives, with no one perspective as definitive. In my experience, the less detailed and absolute the taxonomy, the more useful it becomes as an analytical tool.
The Spanish philosopher Ortega wrote that there is no definable "human nature" because one can always come up with contrary examples. (If we claim it is human nature to be good, someone can always identify humans who are evil. If we claim it is human nature to be bad, someone can always point to examples of saints, and so on.) So Ortega says what humans have is not their "nature" but instead their history. And this is consistent with the scientific approach to understanding nature: science holds that nature is as nature does. If scientists identify what they believe is a law of nature, but then come across a contrary example, they have no choice but to change the "law."
Which is all a long winded way of saying that when you conclude, "Absent ...communication we don’t have art, only artifact," I immediately think of plentiful examples of art where we don't know the message, or where there is intentionally no narrative message (other than, for example, "the color red"). I think of "artifacts" that a huge percentage of the world would also say is simultaneously art. I'm not sure they'd honor your definitions.
Richard also wrote: "My problem with “idea art” is almost never the skill with which it presents the idea. (Stick figure comics like Randall Munroe’s XKCD or Nathan Pyle's Strange Planet often do much more with much less than Cuneo).Rather, idea art sucks because of how often the idea it does get across is exhausting naive moralizing. This Rhino picture is a great example."
I tend to fault contemporary "idea art" on both grounds-- it's lack of skill and the poverty of the ideas being expressed. However, as noted above, I believe it is the challenge of those who wish to keep growing that we continue to slog through the 90% of art that is crap in order to find the 10% of quality that may arrive in new and unpredicted forms. I recognize that Cuneo is not for everyone's taste, and if you can point to any art where you think the idea doesn't "suck," I'd be very interested in seeing it. However, I think your comparisons of Cuneo to Munroe and Pyle, as well as your observations about "naive moralizing," are pretty silly, and suggest to me that your eyelids may have clanked shut some time ago.
Kev Ferrara wrote: "Stimulating the reptile brain is never Art."
Wow, for me it is often an important part of art. We've seen so much cerebral art-- refined, complex and airless-- produced by civilizations that have gone on too long polishing and polishing the same core aesthetics. The work may be elegant, enlightened, sophisticated but when it ceases to stimulate the reptile brain in us, people jettison it because it is no longer spiritually fulfilling.
The ancient Athenians were as cultured as any civilization ever, but as they got closer and closer to refining their idealized art forms, the Athenian citizens began turning back to the highly uncivilized cult of Dionysus. Beautiful sculptures of the Olympic pantheon are admirable, but they don't inspire like naked corybants in frenzied moonlit dithyrambs. I think that's why modern concept artists such as the fraudulent Richard Prince try to piggyback on pulp magazine covers and other trashy popular art, or why so many contemporary films rely so heavily on rock n' roll soundtracks-- anemic work produced by tired civilizations needs to borrow a pulse from somewhere.
Having said that, I recognize that I may be using a broader definition of "vulgar" than you. I think a gaudy color or a raw line can be vulgar, jumping out of a painting to appeal to our reptile brain. I don't know if such elements fit within your definition of vulgar.
Also, since I know you are a Frazetta fan, I will add that I think Frazetta's vulgar (sexually explicit) work is simply awful, for all the reasons you cite.
I think of "completely and sufficiently" as adverbs that might apply to an engineering report, not to profound artistic statements such as "war is hell." If you look at the words employed by Shakespeare or Remarque or Crane or Hemingway to say "war is hell," they move us or make us think but I question whether any of these authors aspired to completeness or sufficiency.
The authors you mention do indeed go well beyond stating familiar aphoristic platitudes. And in the case of truth one could even say it is the whole function of art to do that. This is why I said the Kollwitz image (as well as the first Fluharty) approached the condition of art. Whereas the two Cuneo drawings perform no more than illustrating their respective aphorisms. And as such I consider their functioning upon our minds to be un-aesthetic (forgive the contrived pun, I couldn't resist :) ).
Having said that, I recognize that I may be using a broader definition of "vulgar" than you. I think a gaudy color or a raw line can be vulgar, jumping out of a painting to appeal to our reptile brain. I don't know if such elements fit within your definition of vulgar.
I don't think "raw" lines or "gaudy" colors appeal to (what I mean as) the Reptile Brain. I think rather that such lines and colors engage one's sense of theatricality or performative signalling via (one supposes) the action of mirror neurons. I also don't think ugliness, sloppiness, or a lack of taste necessarily entails vulgarity, although I recognize that tastes and aesthetic judgements can vary widely.
I think what appeals to the Reptile Brain (At least what I mean to say when I use the term) are signals which fool our deepest primitive nature into either 1.) thinking its base longings will be satisfied. (Say via luscious come-hither images of sexuality, food, or comfort.) Or 2.) triggering base reactive responses such as fear or disgust (via images of gore, mutilation, scatology, hysterical emotion, torture, insect infestations, worms, the physical results of profound illness, or for many, genitals.)
The reason stimulating the reptile brain is not art is because it doesn't require art. All that is required is for the signals in the communication to look sufficiently like those found in life to trigger the atavistic response. Such are the quintessential cheap tricks; The come-on that's actually a bait and switch, and the "fooled ya for a second there, didn't I?" kind of prank we associate with "novelty items."
Of course, we are overrun now with the blatant, the explicit, and the graphic. The mass effect of that is a whole other conversation.
Also, since I know you are a Frazetta fan, I will add that I think Frazetta's vulgar (sexually explicit) work is simply awful, for all the reasons you cite.
I agree that Frazetta's explicit work is mostly bad. Now and again some of the sculptural forms and abstractions in that strain of his output are, however, structurally interesting. But the stuff is certainly compromised by reptilian excesses which are not overmatched with artistry. On the other hand, he clearly did it just for yuks.
I agree with Chris Bennett's take regarding the problem of too-literally translating words into picture.
This goes back to many conversations had over the years on and off this blog. But the basic bedrock principle was (imo) best set out by Dean Cornwell, which I'll once again offer to the gathered: Art is a language complete and distinct from literature. Anything that can be said in words is not a subject for a painting.
It is worth noting; it is also the literal that engages the reptile brain. Which is just why Art, to avoid the cheap thrills that trick the reptile brain, must be figurative, abstract, poetic, suggestive, evocative, etc. in nature.
Chris Bennett and Kev Ferrara-- I agree that "too-literally translating words into pictures" is a recurring problem, although its opposite extreme--totally abstract pictures with no literal reference point-- is probably equally problematic.
I see much value in Dean Cornwell's "bedrock principle" but I would modify it as follows: Art is a language complete and distinct from literature. Anything that can be fully said in words is not a subject for a painting.
I disagree that "It is the literal that engages the reptile brain." I think it's pretty clear, for example, that pure color engages the reptile brain (red= fight or flight, etc.) and I think you could make similar arguments about other non-literal elements of picture making that have been less thoroughly documented by scientists.
I think that Dean Cornwell and I both disagree that "the two Cuneo drawings perform no more than illustrating their respective aphorisms." The lines and the colors are, in my view, sodden with non-verbal editorial observations, and speaking as someone who attempted unsuccessfully to capture the rhinoceros drawing in words above, I doubt that you can articulate an aphorism that has been illustrated in a literal fashion by the rhinoceros drawing. In fact, I can think of a thousand Dean Cornwell pictures that are easier to describe in words.
Art is a language complete and distinct from literature. Anything that can be FULLY said in words is not a subject for a painting.
I would agree with SUFFICIENTLY, not "fully," since even the most slavish attempt to diagram a written thought will necessarily have some graphic transpositions both lossy and gainy.
The real issue is whether the core idea is conveyed aesthetically or in a word-like way. And I think it is clear the basic general meanings of the Cuneo pictures are fundamentally word-like and referential in their origin and nature. This fact seems quite blatant. Thus the Cuneo pictures can be sufficiently discussed in words, even though, yes, there is enough incidental aesthetic information to make it interesting to look at if one can get past the gross-outs.
I disagree that "It is the literal that engages the reptile brain." I think it's pretty clear, for example, that pure color engages the reptile brain (red= fight or flight, etc.) and I think you could make similar arguments about other non-literal elements of picture making that have been less thoroughly documented by scientists.
Don't mistake me. I meant literal in the context of what I was discussing, primal signals of a sexual, covetous, or repulsing nature taken as coming from actual and real entities by the reptile brain. I did not mean any old literal reference, which could be quite dull indeed, obviously.
Regarding Red: There's no such thing as pure color, except in ideality... but let's just take the Strongest Red one can think of. I think I can agree that such will have an effect at the intuitive level. But it will only have the absurd "fight or flight" effect on the proverbial hysterical woman who cries at the color red. Who, I think, we can safely dismiss as being outside the normal distributions of human reactions.
Kev Ferrara wrote: "it will only have the absurd "fight or flight" effect on the proverbial hysterical woman who cries at the color red. Who, I think, we can safely dismiss as being outside the normal distributions of human reactions."
Wow. You're either a whole lot braver or a whole lot more foolhardy than I thought.
"The real issue is whether the core idea is conveyed aesthetically or in a word-like way. And I think it is clear the basic general meanings of the Cuneo pictures are fundamentally word-like and referential in their origin and nature."
I think the Cuneo drawings I selected fall into two different categories but it appears we disagree about both.
The devil drawing is the more literal of the two (despite Laurence John's concern, expressed above, that the scale makes no sense because Trump would have a hard time getting past the devil's sphincter) Yes, the drawing is more easily described in words but for me the visual power of the drawing comes from its literal implementation of the concept. Trump's strength is that he operates as a vulgar brute amongst people who are, to a greater or lesser degree, constrained by conscience. Cuneo's response signals that he is not so constrained; he has escalated beyond civilized bounds. The literal quality of the drawing-- a virtual colonoscopy complete with polyps, hands spreading the pale butt cheeks like Bernini's sculpture of Hades' hands pressing on the thigh of Proserpina-- is essential to its shocking power. A more artistic sketch, a more metaphorical or symbolic treatment, a discreetly censored picture would mean that Cuneo was averting his eyes from the horror, just like Trump's critics who have proven so ineffectual against their shameless target. A written version of Cuneo's drawing (e.g. "Trump climbs back into the devil's ass") would be similarly ineffectual.
I also disagree that the second drawing, the rhinoceros, is "fundamentally word-like and referential in their origin and nature." Dean Cornwell painted lots of villains but I never saw him capture a villain's face as successfully as Cuneo drawing of the sadism and satisfaction in the poacher's face. As noted above, I came up with at least three plausible verbal explanations of the drawing. You might fairly attribute that to my meager powers of verbalization, but such ambiguity is characteristic of visual Art.
On the distinction between "fully" and "sufficiently" I accept your amendment.
Kev: "The real issue is whether the core idea is conveyed aesthetically or in a word-like way"
Kev, can you give us an example of a painting (with link) which you consider to be painted in a 'word-like way' and say, briefly, why it is word-like ?
Wow. You're either a whole lot braver or a whole lot more foolhardy than I thought.
The subject in question is in the psychological literature. I didn't make her up. And I'll take plain speak and unafraid scientific investigation over today's creeping Lysenkoism any day of the week. Even if it means the emotional-political psychotics come after me.
The literal quality of the drawing-- a virtual colonoscopy complete with polyps, hands spreading the pale butt cheeks...
I must admit, I found the drawing so disgusting that I turned away from it rather swiftly and never looked as "deeply into it" for the literal details you've described. Suffice it to say, your description above suffices to clue me in as to what I've missed.
Dean Cornwell painted lots of villains but I never saw him capture a villain's face as successfully as Cuneo drawing of the sadism and satisfaction in the poacher's face.
I agree, a great face. But, here again, we have a telling point about the difference between the literal word-like thinking in play here and the poetic/figurative gestalt nature of what was being taught among the Golden Age illustrators: Harvey Dunn put it this way, "If you have to rely on a face to make your picture understood, you have failed." A face was considered incidental to the great thematic compositional abstractions (in the original sense of that word) that "played the song" of the image.
Trump's strength is that he operates as a vulgar brute amongst people who are, to a greater or lesser degree, constrained by conscience.
I agree with that point. Though I'd add that, in my opinion, he thinks or operates almost exclusively in 'forcing moves' as in chess. Most everything he does is like a coercive wrestling grapple that compels a response. Which is also to point out that those who criticize his sloppy and 'offensive' way of speaking are simply missing the point; he 'speaks' in coercion and doesn't give a damn about words. English is not his native language.
Kev, can you give us an example of a painting (with link) which you consider to be painted in a 'word-like way' and say, briefly, why it is word-like ?
There are so many, Laurence. Anything obviously allegorical or anything where the basic idea is built of incidental specific details which make it read in a literal way, thus the main point of it is easily translatable into words.
This one came to mind quickly. It is both obviously allegorical and built of incidental referential descriptors easily translated into an explanatory sentence.
The fundamental difference between the literary art and the Art art is where the audience is required to fill in the imaginative gaps. With the literary, the gaps are between the words, which are ready-mades. With Art the gaps are everywhere because there is nothing ready-made. Everything is bespoke, with the possible exception of archetypes. And even those are suggested or evoked with minimal plastic means in the best poetic work.
David wrote;
“I disagree that "It is the literal that engages the reptile brain." I think it's pretty clear, for example, that pure color engages the reptile brain (red= fight or flight, etc.) and I think you could make similar arguments about other non-literal elements of picture making that have been less thoroughly documented by scientists.”
I’m not sure I understand your whole point David, but I think I agree with you. It seems evryone is focusing on the work without considering the perceiver. Or the viewer is some sort of switchboard that is designed to respond to visual stimuli in the same manner each time the visual stimulus is presented. Sometimes I want to eat the apple and sometimes I want to admire its beauty.
David also wrote;
“hands spreading the pale butt cheeks like Bernini's sculpture of Hades' hands pressing on the thigh of Proserpina-- is essential to its shocking power.”
I be a little hesitant comparing Bernini’s understanding of the nature of things with Cuneo’s. The “ideas and thought,” contained in how Bernini drew, cut stone and designed architecture are innumerable and complete. He would not slop over and leave planes and planer intersections undefined and confused as the devils hands and buttocks Cuneo’s drawing.
The real “shocking power of art,” is how could a person cut stone in such a manner with such clarity. But one has to be receptive to it or even in the right mood, but that’s where real imaginative and creative “power” comes from, how will the thing be done.
Tom,
How can anything be communicated (in either art or literature) without moving the audience through the thought?
Unless you believe that something can be art without being a communication?
In literature, the pages get filled up. There are as many pages as can hold the content. Everything is unified to the narrative point of the book. That which is excess, or redundant, or confused without reason, is ugly and should (and usually is, if the editor is worth a damn) be excised/edited out. (Not coincidentally, what is argumentatively ugly and what is narratively ugly are equivalent.)
In art we have the rectangular canvas. That is 'the book' that is unified to the reason that book was written. All the above points transfer.
If you find a gem of a sentence, a sweet and memorable turn of phrase in a disorganized and foolish novel, that is as much a feat of endurance on the part of the reader as it is a mark of merit for the writer. It would be small solace indeed, given the expenditure of time and concentration. In fact, it is a failure of the writer. Almost any idiot can write something witty given enough monkey typewriter time. Meanwhile almost nobody can write a great novel. Or paint a great image. A sentence is not a work of art. A fact is not a thought, let alone a theme.
Kev: "Anything obviously allegorical or anything where the basic idea is built of incidental specific details which make it read in a literal way, thus the main point of it is easily translatable into words"
wouldn't that damn any painting that featured something which stood for something else ? e.g. a cupid, an old hag, a skeleton, a raging storm, a castle ruin, a fruit tree, a snake etc.
wouldn't that damn any painting that featured something which stood for something else ? e.g. a cupid, an old hag, a skeleton, a raging storm, a castle ruin, a fruit tree, a snake etc.
No, but that's a great question. There's (imo) two answers actually...
1.) Some symbols are natural and some are code. A raging storm, for example is a perfectly natural symbol; it is universal to humanity. While cupid is mostly code; it is a tribal symbol requiring prior tribal-code knowledge (to understand why some flying pink baby is shooting arrows with red upside down spades on them.)
As well, any piece of architecture (or anything at all really) has natural qualities to it that need no deciphering. Such is the purely aesthetic value of the (or any) structure. One feels whatever aesthetic meaning a building has purely experientially.
A building also might have coded symbolic information attached to it (for example, signage, or a sculpture of a long dead king wearing symbolic garb; the code book for which has been long lost. Thus the coded garb holds no meaning anymore. Yet whatever is naturally felt in viewing the sculpture in its association with the building still does hold and mean.)
And, of course, a building might have historical information associated with it, (which I'll deal with presently.)
An old-witch type character is an interesting test because while there is a universal antipathy toward a hideously aged countenance with a mad gleam in the eye (See: Graham Ingels), there are other accessories involved (the pointy black hat, the black cloak and dress, the wicker broom) which can be considered tribal-code symbols. Yet those symbols have an aesthetic feeling to each that is essentially equivalent to the symbolic meanings associated with them tribally; they're dark and creepy and old-looking and spikey, etc. (Most children have no idea of the puritan or victorian origins of the costume or accessories. Yet, they are disturbed nonetheless.)
And this is how to think of a ruined castle too. A well educated viewer might know of the history of castles and the feudal era... but they should only be thinking of that long after they've actually experienced the aesthetic meaning and force of the image. If the meaning of the picture depends on the history of feudalism, it is not functioning aesthetically. With an artistically done image, castle history is basically un-needed because the castle will be expressively rendered to feels like what it means, both intrinsically and according to the themes of the picture. A castle has a posture and a mood. A ruined structure will tell of its ruination wordlessly. Both 'structure' and 'ruination of structure' are natural meanings. We don't need to decipher the differences between a stone stack wall and a messy stone pile. There it is. (Aside: Most things built of natural material seem to feel like their natural meanings.)
Overall, I'd say if the meaning of the gestalt pictorial idea requires the juxtaposition of tribe-specific symbols in order to be parsed, the picture is compromised at its aesthetic core.
1/2
2.) There is a secondary problem where the symbolization of some otherwise natural/universal phenomenon or dynamic is so stiff and dogmatic that it becomes an inert symbol, losing its aesthetic force. Or the symbol is a cliche/dead metaphor, long shopworn and over-used. And in these cases, the element is converted into (or is already) a word-like thing; a ready-made with a ready-made meaning that does little to express its meaning aesthetically.
And, again, the meaning of the literal is in the juxtapositions of the ready-made already-defined elements. While with Art, the aesthetic sensations of any object or association is produced in the viewer by virtue of how the rendering, suggestion or evocation of those elements was accomplished.
2/2
Kev, what if a painting committed all of the crimes you mention above, but was beautifully done nonetheless ? I'm thinking of something like Botticelli's 'Spring'.
is 'word-like' or 'coded' always a lesser form of Art, in your opinion, or could it be on the same level as your 'natural-integrated-aesthetic' Art if done well ?
Kev, what if a painting committed all of the crimes you mention above, but was beautifully done nonetheless ? I'm thinking of something like Botticelli's 'Spring'.
Everything I've already said about all this applies to Spring, if one cares to apply it. If one doesn't, so be it. Go enjoy and be merry!
But "crimes" is a word which doesn't belong in this conversation. There is no communal art penitentiary. Everybody is their own artistic judge, jury, and jailer. Also their own cattle rustler.
Though I do submit that there are intrinsic principles that arise from each artform's distinct nature (and from human nature) which hold whether one likes them (or principles at all) or not. It took the arts a very long time to mature. I think what it won, it won hard; and such were legitimate achievements in poetic tech. Nothing pretend or weak about it.
is 'word-like' or 'coded' always a lesser form of Art, in your opinion, or could it be on the same level as your 'natural-integrated-aesthetic' Art if done well ?
Everything has its reasons. We use decorative/applied art because it is pretty and pleasing and 'stays on the wall.' We use allegory/editorial because it keeps our simple-minded tribal goons all on the same page. Graphics make for good posters. Cartoons are fun. Etc.
Images* however, simply as communicative phenomena, have much more to them than any of the above named art styles. I can't say "better", because that begs too many questions. But I can say richer and deeper by far in terms of aesthetics, poetics, meaning structures, the most difficult negotiations between mimesis and expression, the nature of Truth and how it can be expressed aesthetically, and so on. If any of that matters to you.
*By which I mean the products of Imagism. Not simply any captured likeness of a noun or group of proximate nouns.
Anonymous-- I'm not familiar with "Air Gear" but I'll definitely check it out. (Not sure I'll be able to track down the 16th (!) volume, though.
Tom wrote: "I be a little hesitant comparing Bernini’s understanding of the nature of things with Cuneo’s."
To be clear, I didn't mean to suggest that Cuneo is a modern day Bernini. I agree with you that they are very different. My point is that, just as Bernini thought it was important to show fingers pressing into the soft flesh of that thigh, Cuneo thought it was important to show the devil's fingers pressing into the flesh of those resistant buttocks, and even squeezing some of the color out of them. Those touches are what make the Cuneo drawing more horrific than the mere concept, "Trump should go back up the devil's ass." As I quoted my artist friend, "his willingness to really GO there and SELL it is, ...well, frankly, a bit scary. "
Kev Ferrara wrote to Tom: "Unless you believe that something can be art without being a communication?"
I agree that art involves communication as you, Richard and others have asserted here, but I suspect that I construe "communication" more broadly than you. I believe that an abstract red painting communicates something, something different from an abstract blue painting. Similarly, I believe that slashing, violent lines with no external objective point of reference communicates something. I believe there is value in decorating our environments with that kind of communication, but I suspect you are looking for more of a narrative.
Kev Ferrara wrote: " in my opinion, [Trump] thinks or operates almost exclusively in 'forcing moves' as in chess. Most everything he does is like a coercive wrestling grapple that compels a response. Which is also to point out that those who criticize his sloppy and 'offensive' way of speaking are simply missing the point; he 'speaks' in coercion and doesn't give a damn about words. English is not his native language."
That's a very interesting and helpful way to put it, but I would add that "forcing moves" would not be nearly as effective with his audience if he wasn't simultaneously pocketing chess pieces from the board and paying off the referee. It really requires a combined approach.
I believe that an abstract red painting communicates something, something different from an abstract blue painting.
Of course.
But humans didn't invent red or blue, nor our inherent responses to those colors. What do we bring to the table, uniquely? That is the question.
Similarly, I believe that slashing, violent lines with no external objective point of reference communicates something.
Yes; non-specific slashing violence. (Drive through the mud in your car and this brand of expression auto-defines.)
I believe there is value in decorating our environments with that kind of communication...
Decorating does have value, sure. To set a mood; a subtle emotional state. And such are infinite in variety. And doing so with taste, harmony, and humanity is a valuable creative contribution to any environment and any event set within that space.
But I suspect you are looking for more of a narrative.
All thought is narrative. What I'm looking for is the communication of thought. Not simply random stabs at emotion.
The overall point is Herbert Read's: "The function of art is not to transmit feeling so that others may experience the same feeling. The real function of art is to express feeling and transmit understanding."
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