I previously posted a series of life drawings by illustrator Daniel Schwartz. In addition to pencil drawings, Schwartz regularly painted from the model with watercolors.
Schwartz was a highly respected illustrator, winner of eleven gold medals from the Society of Illustrators, yet every week he went back to study from the model.
It seems clear that Schwartz wasn't doing this to learn anatomy. He already understood bone and muscle structure. But long and close observation of the human figure can be an introduction to the greater world of natural forms. It rewards our discipline with enhanced perceptions of wider truths.
Some of the best draftsmen I know, including Robert Fawcett, Bernie Fuchs and Pat Oliphant, underwent rigorous training drawing from the figure early in their careers, yet continued to find fresh discoveries and substantial value by continuing the process late in their careers.
163 comments:
Very tough to thread the needle between haste and accuracy in (what looks like) mostly ten minute studies. One senses the time pressure. I feel only the second one nears the blithe buoyancy of David Levine, and I'd guess that one took a half an hour or more.
The haste of these makes them, imo, less figural studies and more hand-eye-coordination exercises. Interesting to see, nonetheless. Thanks.
Levine and Schwartz were good friends and were both part of the fabled group of "eleven rebels on the roof" who advocated for the ongoing value of realism. (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2025/09/eleven-rebels-on-roof.html ). I love Levine's watercolors even more than his pen and ink work, but I've never seen Levine do watercolor figure studies; his watercolors seem to be scrubbed and layered to achieve that rich effect, and his choices (such as his frequent use of a stark contrast between a pale figure and a dark background) were very carefully applied on a drawing board after the fact. Even his watercolors that started out on the spot (like his "shmata queens on the beach") were taken back to the studio and carefully reworked. All of which goes to say, can you point me to examples of his "blithe buoyancy" that threaded the needle between haste and accuracy?
As for your reaction to the Schwartz studies, yes, they were all done fairly quickly in front of a model, often when Schwartz was teaching a class on figure drawing. I would say that "accuracy" was important (I give Schwartz more credit for accuracy than you do-- for instance, the astute reverse 3/4 profile on the last picture, or the carefully controlled second to last picture) but it was clearly not the most important thing for him; note the 6th, 7th and 8th pictures.)
Not sure I understand why you think the second picture is so different from the first. It seems to me they are both similar attempts to capture a difficult angle of the head from the same modeling session.
Not sure I understand why you think the second picture is so different from the first.
Sorry, I meant the third picture (with the blinking hazard lights), not the second one. I glitched and melded the first two together in my mind because they're so similar. The hair alone in the third one is worth the price of admission. It looks dashed off in seconds, but there is a heck of a lot of information being subtly distilled just there into a deft bit of poetry.
"can you point me to examples of his "blithe buoyancy" that threaded the needle between haste and accuracy?
I think all Levine's best watercolors have the quality of blithe buoyancy. Which stems not from haste per se, but from a feeling of impromptu effortlessness in design and execution coupled with penetrating accuracy and humor. All but impossible to accomplish in real time, true. Though that is the presumed goal (or illusion) of most watercolor work when used transparently and broadly as here. (As opposed to Jaimie Wyeth's use of thick opaque watercolor.)
I sense Levine's work as washy; done in cascades, rather than "scrubbed." Burt Silverman once wrote a wonderful article on his own watercolor technique in Step By Step magazine, where he achieved a similar feel. The process even allowed for effortless error correction, a miracle in the watercolor world. However, the paper required for the technique has long since disappeared from art stores, along with its manufacturer from the planet. C'est la vie and so it goes.
I give Schwartz more credit for accuracy than you do-- for instance, the astute reverse 3/4 profile on the last picture
In general I feel that his drawing and aesthetic sensibility is stiffening where it is most accurate, and breaking down where it is too loose. Again, I would posit, the toll of haste - and now that you've shared that these were demonstration pieces - also probably due to split concentration. Not his fault in the grand scheme, but a reality of the pieces you've presented.
The third picture seems to me to be the only one that works as a completed work of art that is at once well balanced, loose yet confident in its drawing and abstract design, and humorously human.
'Burt Silverman once wrote a wonderful article on his own watercolor technique in Step By Step magazine, where he achieved a similar feel. The process even allowed for effortless error correction, a miracle in the watercolor world. However, the paper required for the technique has long since disappeared...'
Can you describe the paper ? (I imagine an ideal of a thick, very dense and compressed watercolour paper that has no existence I know of...)
A part of this book (Burt Silverman/Breaking the Rules of Watercolor) was excerpted into some art magazines in the 80s or 90s - https://archive.org/details/breakingrulesofw0000silv/page/n3/mode/2up , which you can 'borrow' like a library loan to view online.
Bill
Kev Ferrara-- yes, Silverman wrote an entire book on breaking the rules of watercolor and produced a splendid body of work that makes his case even better than his words do.
I view Silverman's watercolors as closer to what I call Levine's "scrubbed" effect, rather than "washy, done in cascades." I'm referring to that gritty, beaten, organic look that gives watercolors a weathered texture. (Dinnerstein, another one of the eleven realists, sometimes added pumice to his ground.)
For me, the high water mark for Levine was his brilliant watercolors from the 70s which create the desirable illusion of speed and casual application, but on closer examination are much tighter. For example, we see hundreds of detailed wooden slats on his "loose" paintings of the Coney Island roller coaster, where we also see carefully lettered advertising signs, painted with the aid of technical drawing tools. Similarly, we see meticulously painted stripes and patterns on a model's clothing, or individual furrows on the brow of an elderly garment worker, with numerous accurate wrinkles on his T shirt. These details are often juxtaposed against a "washy" background (to excellent effect, not unlike the way Bob Peak would carefully rehearse a drawing and then add rapid slashing lines at the end to create a feeling of spontaneity). Bottom line, I think Levine's watercolors are done on a different timescale, running in a different race, than Schwartz's figure studies. Levine spent more time perfecting the stripes on the model's robe than Schwartz spent on any of these paintings from life.
People are sometimes puzzled by the difference between Levine's small, fine lined, cross hatched drawings and his broad, "washy" watercolors but I think in the end Levine was too careful (and perhaps too anal retentive) as an artist to give "cascading" too long a leash. For me, both styles were done by the same hand (and I prefer his watercolors to his drawings). Schwartz could be precise too (as could Silverman, Dinnerstein and all of the eleven) but he was not as afraid of hydrology as Levine. Schwartz's mature illustration style involved casting liquid medium (turpentine or other) freely on a painted ground, tilting the board and letting the rivulets run down the surface, then coming back and seeking out the natural designs and patterns for a realistic treatment.
Bill-- It looks like you and I have been reading the same material. I think Dinnerstein was the most detailed of the eleven in describing papers. He said he tried to use "good quality, 100% rag paper," minimum two ply, which is "a fine surface to work on." He often used artist paper or boards manufactured by Grumbacher in several surfaces: hot pressed (smooth) and cold pressed (medium rough). He personally recommended Canson papers which had a different surface on each side, one side slightly rougher than the other.
Bottom line, these guys were working in an era with bountiful choices of quality papers from multiple manufacturers. Today it's a question of which Epson paper will go through your printer without jamming.
Returning to Schwartz, you can see instances in these studies where the thin paper began to crinkle up as a result of even minor contact with water.
Yes, there's a section in that Silverman book which describes treatment most (even heavy & stretched) paper doesn't seem able to take easily. There are quite a few good handmade rag papers, but even these are too spongey.
(Incidentally, for some really lovely work by him, which you probably know already but for anyone else interested, that site also has a great book from a 98/99 Silverman exhibition)
Thanks for these Schwarz pieces.
Bill
Silverman used ‘plate bristol’ paper. ‘Plate’ being the smooth surface version and ‘vellum’ being the textured version. Seems to still be available according to a google search, at least here in the UK.
"he was not as afraid of hydrology as Levine.
I see no fear in Levine's lovely wash technique. And accuracy hardly makes an artist "anal retentive." Especially someone with Levine's expressive drawing ability. Levine's work is not tricky in the sense of looking for shortcuts to give the effect of looseness. He has it inherently.
Meanwhile, I do find Schwartz's "looseness" to be something of a trick to escape his somewhat stiff drawing and compositioning. (In keeping with a lot of the 1960s and 1970s guys who jazzed up their surfaces to randomly "activate" and "energize" highly photo-referenced work.)
Laurence , Kev - thanks. Yes, there's Strathmore which does great bristol for drawing (though seemingly not as good as the older kinds according to those familiar with them), but it only takes very slight washes.
Bill
Thanks for these David, a pleasure to look at during my morning coffee. Being on a laptop screen there's no chance of spoiling them with drips...
What artist’s call 'touch' is a fundamental aspect of their imaginative grasp of the material along with its manipulation on the surface and I think watercolour tests this aspect in particular, which is why the nature of the papers plays such a strong role. An animal must be approached in tune with its temperament.
One thought on life studies in general: We behold the world through our senses and in terms of our body, so an artist drawing the limbs of a fellow creature is in the act of comprehending a concentrated or focused iteration of the world at large. To outsource this study to a machine (your point about the deleterious effects on an artist’s understanding and skill by using CAD modelling) would be equivalent to an astronaut not doing resistance exercises in a spaceship.
EDITED: Yes, the paper was 3-ply to 5-ply plate Bristol. Extremely smooth. But even though (presumably Strathmore) still makes a paper under this name, it is not the same quality as what was produced in the 1970s and 1980s which Silverman (and his pals) used and referenced in his how-to writing. Silverman said in an interview somewhere, sometime afterward, that it could no longer be gotten.
Additional tips in the article (A 'Workable' Approach to Watercolor - Step By Step Graphics - Nov-Dec 1989) but not in the book: The paper towels are always Bounty (durable when wet, very absorbent). And he used a No. 2 Charcoal pencil, finely sharpened, to draw into the work, which he said could be painted over.
Wonderful. Love the use of the blank paper for the direct light side of the back on the last one.
Delicious. More difficult than it looks to stay with primaries to such a degree.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
chris bennett wrote: "an artist drawing the limbs of a fellow creature is in the act of comprehending a concentrated or focused iteration of the world at large."
Agreed. Artists can sharpen their skills and powers of observation by painting a bowl of fruit or a bouquet of flowers, but change the subject to a nude human and suddenly all kinds of new elements-- psychological, sexual, intellectual -- enter the picture. The subject of "artist and model" is one of the most primal, and at the same time one of the most layered, in the history of art.
Many years ago, one of the most popular posts on this blog was an excerpt from the diary of frontier artist Audubon. He led a rugged existence in the wilderness drawing the beautiful lines and shapes of wild birds. Then through a fluke he had the opportunity to draw a nude woman ( what John Updike called "the first known nude American portrait done from life") and wrote that he was as stunned as if he had been "shot through the heart." https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2009/02/audubon-and-veiled-lady.html .
I agree with your assessment of Schwartz, Kev... i've seen nothing by him that is in the same league as David Levine's watercolours.
Laurence John wrote: "I agree with your assessment of Schwartz, Kev... i've seen nothing by him that is in the same league as David Levine's watercolours."
I think a more productive way to view Schwartz and Levine, and the rest of the eleven realists for that matter, is to recognize that they were all talented and offered a rich variety of images within a particular genre. They were each responsible for creating more successful and less successful works. I would say, for example, that Dinnerstein was not one of the best and yet his magnum opus "Parade" dwarfed the work of the other ten in important respects.
In my opinion, Levine did about 15 - 20 brilliant watercolors where he knocked the ball out of the park. They're the ones we see over and over, the ones reproduced in his book, the ones on which his reputation as a watercolorist is based. After that, there's a drop off, with a lot of more formulaic or repetitive images. If you compare Levine's top 20 finished watercolors with Schwartz's rapid figure studies, you might well conclude that the two artists are "not in the same league." However, if you look at Schwartz's finished watercolors (such as his peeled orange: https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2025/09/eleven-rebels-on-roof.html ) the playing field levels up mighty quickly, IMO. And when you turn to oil painting, which was Schwartz's preferred medium (and the source of his 11 gold medals from the Society of Illustrators), Levine wasn't even in the running, just as Schwartz didn't work in pen and ink as Levine did.
In his later years, Schwartz did literally hundreds of pencil drawings from the model. It would be easy for me to pick out 20 that I find far superior to any such pencil drawings I've seen from Levine, but what would be the point? We are not at the dog track. Far better, I think, to say, "Here's why I like this drawing, here's why I like that drawing, and here's why a particular drawing falls short in my eyes."
David, we've discussed the problems with the Schwartz 'magnum opus' oil painting in two separate posts. It doesn't need to be re-hashed. And I don't know what you think is so great about the peeled orange painting. It's a straightforward still life with a flattened pictorial space, and a pointlessly distracting (to me) washy background that resembles stone or leather. Do you have a link to see a selection of what you consider to be the best oils ?
Laurence John-- we seem to be entering a level of analysis that I'd love to discuss in person with 50 images in front of us, but which is very difficult to have trading a few urls on line. I wish there was a source on line with dozens of paintings by Schwartz and Levine and others we could use. I've posted a smattering of images myself in the past. Can I ask how you compare Schwartz's portrait of Henry Kissinger (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2014/10/daniel-schwartz.html ) with Levine's portraits?
It's OK that you don't care for the Schwartz painting of oranges. Personally, I've never seen another artist who was assigned to paint oranges who created such an interesting and unconventional response, with that partial peel. Schwartz found grays and blues and greens and deep reds in the color "orange," yet he still qualified as a "realist." We've discussed that organic, "scrubbed" feel to the picture, which you either like or you don't. I agree with you about about the "flattened pictorial space," but Schwartz himself deliberately flattened it out with the dominating carve out shape of the vignette. This is a feature, not a bug, in a design-centric, post abstract-expressionist image. This approach might make more sense viewed in the context of Schwartz's fine art paintings from around the same time; for example he did a whole series of waterside paintings with realistic figures in a flattened pictorial space, where the luminous colors and the shapes were the whole point. Such paintings are scattered throughout the internet, and many of his gallery paintings are not on the internet at all. But we could scroll through a thousand illustrations of oranges and not find that level of choice and innovation-- hardly what I'd call a "straightforward still life."
Similarly, while I'm not wild about the final version of Schwartz's "running man" magnum opus, he did several preliminary paintings, far more loose and liquid, which are in my opinion equal to any of Levine's paintings. He also did a series of beach paintings shortly before Levine began doing his beach paintings, that are similar in tone and and in my opinion every bit as good as Levine's beach paintings. (see e.g.,https://www.bridgemanimages.com/en-US/schwartz-daniel-bennett/the-rock-1967-oil-on-canvas/oil-on-canvas/asset/155606 ).
To provide context for my point, I suppose it would make sense to assemble a collection of Schwartz's fine art images, which are on collectors' walls and pretty much spread to the four winds right now. But of course, that's a lot of what this blog tries to do-- pull together unpublished images, collect scarce pictures, dig out preliminary drawings I admire. I'll see what I can do.
Ultimately, our differences of opinion may stem from the way that Schwartz opened the door to more abstraction, which I understand is an unforgivable sin in the eyes of many here.
The Kissinger Portrait is one of Schwartz's best uses of reference photography. Though the assignment is commonplace, he did make a work of art out of it through the sensitive drawing, abstractions and illusion of spontaneity.
Was he ever as clear and sure in his artistry again? I'm not sure. Attempting to willfully conduct surface "spontaneity" to alleviate inherent stiffness seemed to be his preoccupying artistic struggle, still palpable in many of his pieces. I think Austin Briggs solved the problem more efficiently by avoiding rendering entirely and sticking to agitating lines.
"Ultimately, our differences of opinion may stem from the way that Schwartz opened the door to more abstraction, which I understand is an unforgivable sin in the eyes of many here."
Please define what you mean by "abstraction". In some way that distinguishes it from meaninglessly diverting arty surface gibberish. You're a smart man - neither stubborn nor hidebound - and by now you are surely convinced there is an articulable difference.
Kev Ferrara wrote: "Please define what you mean by "abstraction"."
A fair point. I've been scolding people since the beginning of this blog that abstraction is at the heart of all good art, no matter how realistic or photographic the picture might be.
What I meant about Schwartz in this instance, when he was criticized for "flattened pictorial apace," is that he was perfectly capable of painting depth in a room or on a table top (having studied alongside Silverman and others for years) but that he deliberately chose to untether himself from the rules of painting depth, and to flatten the shapes, throwing out the descriptive details, accentuating the importance of the geometric shapes with little regard for their subject matter. In the same vein, he pushed the colors in a way that took him further from an accurate, realistic image than the other ten "realists" would normally go. My argument to Laurence John is that he is perfectly entitled to dislike Schwartz's flattening approach but if he thinks it's caused by a simple inability to paint figures in 3D space, that's not correct.
For me, the "running man" painting is a lesser example of this, with figures against a flat red background but the painting by Schwartz just below the Kissinger painting I cited is one of a large series where I think Schwartz did a good job flattening the figures and the background colors.
David, the Kissinger portrait is standard issue Fuchs-ish photo-ref stuff of the era. I don't see any of Levine's that look traced in that way.
Don't worry, I understand it's hard to find a good source for Schwartz's other works. Googling the oils the one that jumps out to me is the two boys sitting on the grass (1990). It reminds me of Michael Andrew's painting 'Melanie and me swimming' ...
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/andrews-melanie-and-me-swimming-t02334
... a large painting i saw as a young man at the Tate in London, and was very impressed by, but now just seems like an exercise in converting the exaggerated shifts of colour and flattening of space of an under-exposed photo into a painting. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, but it seems like a formal exercise for the sake of it. Many previous painters I like explored the 'flattened pictorial space' thing, such as Whistler and Degas, as did Levine. At the end of the day it can feel a bit like a gimmick that wows the painterly nerds, but has no real point. I'm willing to accept that this is my own weariness with painting showing at this point. Much of it just seems like technical / formal tricks for the sake of showing off.
While i agree that the Schwartz beach paintings are almost on par with Levine, they lack the observational bite, and the decisive mark of the best Levine work. That small area of sharp observation that provides a focal point while you go fast and loose with other large areas. See the hands and face in the 4th image down in this post for example.
https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2008/01/david-levine.html
btw, (you can print this on a t-shirt): it's ALWAYS about the hands and the faces.
If the hands and the faces in a painting are awkward or fudged then no amount of perceptual trickery - deliberately hard edges, lost edges, desaturated colours, weak values bounded by dark, flattening, texturing, dripping, shallow space - will make the painting great.
Laurence John— I’m just boarding an early morning flight to NY where it will be difficult to respond to your point about Schwartz / Levine with examples but in the interim, here’s a reaction to your T shirt slogan: It’s ALMOST always about the faces and hands— certainly the most expressive parts of a human (although I know some distill that further and say it’s all about the eyes). But we need to respect artists with a different agenda. It wasn’t all about the hands or the faces for Monet or Rodin or many others competing in a different race.
As a relevant anecdote, Mort Drucker (who was great with both faces and hands) once said he didn’t have the luxury of doing “lollipop caricatures” (with a big head and a tiny short hand of a body) because Drucker’s job might require him to draw 20 caricatures of the same person from different angles with different expressions in different lighting, which meant he needed to do full body caricatures, observing the way John Wayne held himself or the way Cary Grant walked or James Caan’s shoulders. MAD relied on Drucker to make a celebrity recognizable from behind, which is why his style was more detailed and realistic than most caricaturists.
David, don't get distracted by trying to come up with counter examples to the point (which I said hyperbolically for comedic effect). This is the key bit ..."they lack the observational bite, and the decisive mark of the best Levine work".
Take another look at the woman's face in the 4th image down here: https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2008/01/david-levine.html
It's Sargent-level quality in the way it has to nail it in that key moment or the whole painting fails, and needs to be started again. I see no portion of a Schwartz painting as good as that in its observational brevity.
"I've been scolding people since the beginning of this blog that abstraction is at the heart of all good art, no matter how realistic or photographic the picture might be."
No need to scold. On this point you and I, and I think everyone you are arguing against here (and most folks playing the home game, one presumes), agree. Abstraction is foundational to good art.
Therefore, our wrestling with "abstraction" here must be one of definition. (And further, what else is foundational that works in tandem with abstraction.)
"What I meant about Schwartz in this instance,"
Discussing instances is exactly what I was trying to avoid in asking for you to consider what you would find acceptable as a definition of abstraction.
"when he was criticized for "flattened pictorial apace," is that he was perfectly capable of painting depth in a room or on a table top (having studied alongside Silverman and others for years) but that he deliberately chose to untether himself from the rules of painting depth, and to flatten the shapes, throwing out the descriptive details"
I don't think Schwartz's ghost was "criticized" here for flattening pictorial space. I think Laurence simply pointed out that flattening pictorial space was what he was doing. With the further implication that there is nothing miraculous in flattening pictorial space, given that a camera will do it mechanically. And so will tracing. And so will a shadow on a wall, or backlighting, or bloody Grandma Moses.
"accentuating the importance of the geometric shapes with little regard for their subject matter."
Here we go. Now you've lost me. You are de-defining abstraction by combining it with an opposite idea. Abstraction is artful, clever summation; the very point of it is to nail the content and subject matter concisely - minimal means - yet with the utmost fidelity to the original source material. Saying more with less. As the foundation of all poetics, abstraction cannot be mere random decorative stylization. Reduction is not poetic. It is saying less with less. Or saying whatever with less. All forms of infidelity.
"In the same vein, he pushed the colors in a way that took him further from an accurate, realistic image than the other ten "realists" would normally go."
Again, the confusion of random lossy decorative design-stylization with abstraction. Where did this come from? Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie?
I think we all understand that you like visual play; random pretty colors and shapes, flattened space, cartooning, certain kinds of distortions. Which can turn any random scene into some novel graphic design trip. But must you insist that this is abstraction?
This is our fundamental long term disagreement in a nutshell. You seem to think that any intentionally distortive graphic designing or stylization of recognizable visual matter is poetry. Even if the end result is unrecognizable and anaesthetic; requiring verbal explanation.
To further Kev's excellent points, or rather to frame them in another way:
"Hi Honey, how was your day?"
"I was late, but things settled down a bit once they saw my portfolio. Their questions were tough though."
"And...?"
"I got the job!"
Abstraction. It is the means by which we know the world, the extraction of meaningful identity from the multiplicity of experience.
"Honey how was your day?"
"Well, I awoke to the alarm which I had set for 5:30. I didn't switch the light on so as not to wake you, but stubbed my toe and cursed and hope this had not awoken you as I went downstairs in my dressing gown to make a cup of instant coffee. I used the mug with the boat picture on it and put an extra half teaspoon to help wake me up. I then opened my laptop and the sound of the hard drive fan was a little higher than usual..."
See what I mean?
Chris, it seems you are making a distinction between being pithy and being verbose. That isn't the same thing as abstraction, I don't think. Or I don't understand what you are trying to contribute. What are you adding?
~ FV
FV, I'm saying that to live in the world, we are necessarily abstracting all the time. Not just in how we report or narrate our experience but how we existentially encounter the world. The hero in my little example negotiates the day with the embodiment of an evolving narrative formed by what he is abstracting out of the world as being important. In other words one's attention is an abstracting out of seeming chaos into meaning. It is inevitable therefore that an artist will be doing the same thing when re-presenting the world as a picture, a film, a story, a song or a poem.
>>>>>>>>"In other words one's attention is an abstracting out of seeming chaos into meaning."
One's attention can also focus us down on specific things which are not abstract. And looked at alone without context, they would lack meaning.
~ FV
>>>>>>"Again, the confusion of random lossy decorative design-stylization with abstraction."
Isn't all abstraction inherently lossy?
~ FV
"Isn't all abstraction inherently lossy?"
'Lossy' implies that salience had been mismanaged and that some key meaning or content had been dropped. Which is only what would happen if you merely simplified the communication of some object of interest in a heedlessly destructive or reductive way. Clarification and concision is the opposite of that and so are not lossy processes (thus neither is poesis.)
But the 'focus us down' of attention is the act of abstracting. What we find relevant, worthy of attention is precisely that which we find meaningful. We never, ever, 'look at things alone without context'.
>>>>>>>>>"But the 'focus us down' of attention is the act of abstracting. What we find relevant, worthy of attention is precisely that which we find meaningful."
So focusing on detail is now abstraction? So if an artist fills a picture with focused detail as in photorealism it must be a highly abstract work?
Either you aren't explaining yourself well, or you don't have this clear in your own mind. I'm certainly confused by what you're writing.
~ FV
Kev Ferrara wrote: "Abstraction is artful, clever summation; the very point of it is to nail the content and subject matter concisely - minimal means - yet with the utmost fidelity to the original source material.... This is our fundamental long term disagreement in a nutshell."
I always salute and learn from the rigor you bring to these analyses, but we tend to part ways when your rigor turns into rigidity (which the millennia have revealed is rarely a useful tool to bring to art). You've found a particular definition of abstraction you like, and which serves the kind of art that you prefer. That's dandy. But the Oxford English Dictionary lists 19 different definitions of "abstract," and says that the term was only introduced into the visual arts in the 1850s (as opposed to much earlier applications in law and literature.)
You and chris bennett seem to restrict abstraction to "nailing subject matter concisely" or "abstracting out of seeming chaos into meaning" but the predominant uses of the term over the past century say "abstract" art serves a different purpose, shattering the rules that bound us, piercing the visual surfaces that are familiar to us, re-examining ontological elements of pictures. (Note Katharine Kuh's influential history of modern art from Monet to Pollock, "Break-Up: The Core of Modern Art." And I've previously quoted Holland Carter's explanation for cubism: "The day of pure optical pleasure was over; art had to be approached with caution and figured out. It wasn't organic, beneficent, transporting. It was a thing of cracks and sutures, odors and stings, like life. It wasn't a balm; it was an eruption. It didn't ease your path; it tripped you up.")
Before you try to use your definition to banish modern abstract art from the land of artistic legitimacy like some super ICE agent, I'll remind you that the Latin etymology of abstract ("abstractus") is not a "clever summation" but rather means to split, drag away, or forcibly remove-- much closer to Katharine Kuh's version than yours.
But to return (thankfully!) to the question of abstraction in Schwartz's pictures, I don't know what I could have said that would lead you to conclude that I think "any intentionally distortive graphic designing or stylization of recognizable visual matter is poetry. Even if the end result is unrecognizable and anaesthetic." I've maligned and ridiculed plenty of "intentionally distortive graphic designing or stylization" on this blog. It's one of my favorite things to do.
Distinguishing between good and bad "intentionally distortive graphic designing or stylization," and finding beauty in unfamiliar forms is a subtler and more complex process than simply checking to see if a picture comports with the gospel according to Harvey Dunn. It's incumbent upon people who do see value in these kinds of abstraction to explain themselves and justify that value in ways that are persuasive. But it's a cinch those people won't be dissuaded by telling them, "I've got a definition here that explains your type of art is illegitimate."
Since the word "abstract" dates back to Middle English, it might not be inapposite to point out that Chaucer's artistic immortality stems in large part from his willingness to embrace vernacular dialects, to scavenge words and street slang from different sources and be open to useful infusions that would one day be standardized into the elegant, Early Modern English of Shakespeare and Milton. That's how I always think of art that lives and evolves; art that is lusty, robust, energized by street spirit, not afraid of change but not misled by it either. If you interrupted one of Chaucer's fart jokes by telling him, "excuse me sir but my definition of 'abstract' is the only legitimate one," he would laugh at you with a lusty, robust laugh.
David, 'to abstract from...' implies an artist translating something seen in reality into abstract marks that represent that thing in some sort of illusionistic way. The more common usage as in the term 'abstract art' usually refers to a non-representational image.
Over the years you've tried to compare the 'abstract' marks of 'abstract art' by the likes of Kline and Frankenthaler to the 'abstract' marks that coalesce to form the illusionistic images in works by Fawcett, Briggs etc.
I've never liked this because it feels like an attempt to suggest they're both doing the same thing, when they're obviously not. The marks in an anything-goes piece of abstract expressionism do not have the same concerns as those in an illusionistic image, even if they look superficially similar when viewed close up.
>>>>>>>>"Note Katharine Kuh's influential history of modern art from Monet to Pollock, "Break-Up: The Core of Modern Art." And I've previously quoted Holland Carter's explanation for cubism:"
Modernist scholars tout the dumbed-down Modernist definitions of abstract! Can you believe it! Also, water is wet! News at 11!
What kind of arguments are these? It's all basic appeal-to-authority fallacies.
"Chaucer disagrees with you!" is even worse. (What is this, a séance? And never mind "What are you, ICE?" Which is just pure libtard politics out of left field.)
I'm looking for a reasonable technical discussion with intelligent arguments.
~ FV
Laurence John wrote: "I've never liked this because it feels like an attempt to suggest they're both doing the same thing, when they're obviously not."
I agree they're not doing the same thing yet they share many of the same attributes and can be judged in part by the same aesthetic standards. It's interesting that you mention Fawcett, one of my heroes, because when I was a young boy reading his classic work, "On The Art of Drawing," I was impressed by the way abstraction infused his discussions of traditional realistic draftsmanship. His views really stuck with me, and reappeared in many of these blog posts.
For example, Fawcett wrote that as he worked on an illustration, realistic details inevitably came into focus, but “the longer the idea can be considered in the abstract, the better.”
He scoffed at critics who argued that realism was old fashioned and had been superseded by abstract modernism, replying that this view “demonstrates a misconception that abstract qualities are new to contemporary painting, whereas they have been the comparison of excellence since painting began.“
A sophisticated appreciator of classical music, Fawcett wrote that abstract drawing "is probably as close to music as drawing can come."
Given his recurring comments about abstraction, it shouldn't be surprising that he was friends with many modern artists such as Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland.
To put your point to the test, I'd refer you to this drawing by Fawcett: https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2013/03/warring-with-trolls-part-2.html . Look at the close ups of the marks he made on paper; they have a great deal of character with a wide range of shapes and sizes and physical attributes. It would have been faster and easier to draw realistically with straightforward descriptive lines, so why did Fawcett draw with marks that are beautiful and varied in the manner of Motherwell or Kline?
FV-- If you're looking for "intelligent arguments," you'll probably get a lot farther if you don't dismiss "modernist scholars" you've never read for having "dumbed down modernist definitions" you don't know. As good ol' Seneca said, "If you judge, investigate."
I have a a lot of problems with modernist art scholars starting with the daddy of them all, Clement Greenberg, and with the treatises and manifestoes of intellectual artists such as Kandinsky, but they tend to be hyper intellectual, and anything but "dumbed down."
A little history. All the definitions of abstract go back to Aristotle's understanding of abstraction. Except that of the Modernists. So obviously the Modernists or their PR people just used the idea and term incorrectly and spread it. And now we're stuck with their error because intellectuals are herd animals who will revere and repeat any intellectual bullshit published in book form or taught in college.
Anonymous-- Ummm, wouldn't you say that abstraction precedes Aristotle, at least as far back as Plato's "forms" (which would seem to be the embodiment of abstraction, as defined by Kev)?
I think your idea that modernist PR people used Aristotle's definition incorrectly and now we're stuck with their error is pretty funny.
>>>>>>>"but they tend to be hyper intellectual, and anything but "dumbed down."
I love that you still think "hyper-intellectual" can't be stupid beyond belief and blindingly ignorant. How cute and quaint. I don't know what world you live in.
Koh herself didn't think much of her understanding of art. She considered herself an outsider, forever and always. An abiding fan of Modernism. Aside from the short fan-girlish artist bios, "Break up" is a one note discussion of fragmentation as a theme in the various modernist painting movements. There's no meat to it. Van Gogh broke up color. Check. The cubists broke up perspective or something. Check.
It is certainly not about the theory of abstraction because it is not a philosophy book. It's more like a Sunday slide lecture by a passionate and nerdy nun. It is by a lay-person for lay-people.
That you touted it as some hefty, brilliant and important read about abstraction (gambling that I'd never seen it) is an interesting tell.
~ FV
Aristotle's theory is the one that pertains to this discussion. Where are you sniffing out references to Platonic forms?
It is pretty funny that people still think 20th century cultural intellectuals weren't mostly blowhards publicizing themselves.
Anonymous-- not sure where you're going here. Plato's concept of the forms, in addition to being a predicate for Aristotle, is exactly the kind of abstraction that Kev and Chris are talking about. When Kev says, "Discussing instances is exactly what I was trying to avoid," that's what Plato was trying to avoid: Don't show me examples of a chair, I seek the conceptual essence of a chair, the Platonic form. But I'm guessing that someone first felt that inspiration a good 20,000 years before Plato or Aristotle.
I never intended this to be a post about abstraction; if I had, I would've loaded a lot more source material. But as always, I follow the string wherever the discussion takes it.
Two pieces of background from wiki that I think could be useful for some commenters: First, that historically there have been different definitions of abstraction for art, philosophy, music, mathematics, neurology, psychology, etc. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction). Second, that the idea of "abstract art" as it has been commonly used for over a century but denied by a few resolute hardliners here has a longer and healthier involvement in the history of art than some might suspect. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_art)
David, If these drawings are quick demos as you say, then they're accurate enough to believe the last batch of pencils you posted by Daniel Schwartz were done directly from life. Those drawings were quite sensitive and accurate. Accurate enough for one comment to suggest they were traced and knowing he worked in the Fuchs school of projected drawings, it seemed likely they were traced and that left me disappointed after responding so positively to them on an emotional level.
But these life drawings have the same touch, accuracy and approach of traced drawings but aren't. He appears to have learned to draw as the Fuchs artists traced through that era, relying heavily on the outline shape drawn with a very light touch. But to do such from life and bringing it to the interior as in the last batch of pencils is no small trick and leaves me with a greater appreciation of his skills.
I’m seeing an influence of McMullen in the use of the red outline
and blue in the top two drawings. Of course Levine took
advantage of the nature of watercolor itself. They too
were a real surprise from his familiar NY Times drawings.
As for Fawcett and the mid-century illustrators who loved
black ink, charcoal and digging into that graphic communication
of line as weight, shape, shadow, space, movement, bristling leaves
and anything else one could make a line do, either one loves it
or they don’t. I love that stuff and I know you do too. No question,
the Daniel Schwartz pencil drawings possessed a sensitivity that
reaches one on a different and tender level.
I think I mentioned this story once, but forget. I met an old animator on the train back in the mid 70s and he was showing me his phone book full of artists and musicians names and I asked him if he had any favorites and he said with a big smile, I love it all. I understood what he meant. He loved the life of it.
"Kev says, "Discussing instances is exactly what I was trying to avoid," that's what Plato was trying to avoid"
No he said "Discussing instances is exactly what I was trying to avoid in asking for you to consider what you would find acceptable as a definition of abstraction." And he said that, I presume, because you switched on a dime from saying you would provide that general definition (which you said was a fair ask) to instead offering instances and examples of abstraction from Schwartz's work. (I presume, frustrated that you didn't provide what you had promised, he then guessed at your definition of abstraction based on what he could discern from the examples of abstraction you provided.)
Obviously human abstraction goes back further than history. But we were speaking of its definitions. Which is why Aristotle needed a mention. I still see no evidence of Plato in Ferrara unless your claim is that definitions themselves are transcendental or metaphysical in nature. Which is a bizarre idea. What definition doesn't get at the essential characteristics of the thing being defined?
I can't speak to Bennett's position until he clarifies it.
David: "I agree they're not doing the same thing yet they share many of the same attributes and can be judged in part by the same aesthetic standards"
No they can't. To repeat; 'the marks in an anything-goes piece of abstract expressionism do not have the same concerns as those in an illusionistic image, even if they look superficially similar when viewed close up'.
It does not matter if they look superficially similar. They are doing different things. The lines in a Fawcett or Briggs were not meant to be viewed in isolation.
David: "It would have been faster and easier to draw realistically with straightforward descriptive lines, so why did Fawcett draw with marks that are beautiful and varied in the manner of Motherwell or Kline ?"
The variation in the brush and line-work of someone like Fawcett is done to suggest the varying textures of the surfaces and forms in the illusionistic image he's depicting. Their 'beauty' is down to how eloquently / suggestively they describe the overall image. A huge thick black brush stroke in a Kline is not describing anything in particular, nor is it meant to.
If you can't understand this difference then there's no point continuing the discussion.
Platos forms would be the ultimate concrete, no ? I.e., the opposite of abstraction. Everything else is their partial instantiation.
A hyperdetailed drawing of a leaf is a concrete (though less so than its archetype in the Plato hierarchy), as is a whole noodly filigree of them in a painting of a tree by William Dyce.
But so is a few strokes of a pen suggesting one blowing in a breeze (where the limits of what is expressed, or can be expressed, nonetheless is not a hindrance to the expression of the subject's perceived/intuited quality with precision). Or any other kind of drawing or painting attuned to its subject & expressed in a similar way, which can eliminate much information yet remain precise to whatever part(s) of the exact qualitative poetry of the subject that is/are attended to.
And so is a system of lines on a canvass - whose 'meaning' is solely their own pattern and qualities; or coloured splodges; or ........ etc, etc.
These are also concrete in the way a painting of a pattern in nature with a circumscribed context might be, of, say, giraffe hide, or a portion lichen against stone texture. Patterns of vibration like music as in Fawcett's recognition.
A painting of pattern with no qualitative relation to a phoney meaning attributed to it is abstract (but the splatters are concrete when correctly observed solely as a pattern of splatters).
The shorthand Rembrandt sometimes used to represent foliage in his ink drawings is also an abstraction, but of an intermediate kind. The symbol has a partial qualitative concurrance with the thing represented, like a pictograph on its way to becomming a letter (but if Plato was right, the symbol - but only at that at that cusp on the turning horizon towards abstraction - is also 'concrete'. And instanced in things like light split by folage into rays, & suns painted by children, or carved on prehistoric stones)
Bill
(The anon you were replying to wasn't me - apologies for butting in)
It would help if you were more attentive to what I actually wrote, which was: "...the 'focus us down' of attention is the act of abstracting.
This is why you are confusing detail with abstraction.
You and chris bennett seem to restrict abstraction to "nailing subject matter concisely" or "abstracting out of seeming chaos into meaning" but the predominant uses of the term over the past century say "abstract" art serves a different purpose, shattering the rules that bound us, piercing the visual surfaces that are familiar to us, re-examining ontological elements of pictures.
David, as a lawyer, you'll have to do better than that, what you're calling 'abstraction' is just the transgressions of practices. According to your definition if I were to take a dump on the table at a dinner party or lay under the table while talking to someone I could be excused for performing an act of abstraction.
But if such a scene were sketched, it would be figuration. This is all so difficult...
>>>>>>>""...the 'focus us down' of attention is the act of abstracting."
It obviously is not. You might need a primer on abstraction.
~ FV
To abstract is to extract, take out, edit down. I'm in the park on a sunny day, I don't pay attention to the blade of grass, the stone on the path, the trousers of the guy ahead of me, the scuff on his shoe, the sparkle of the girl's earring, the discarded crisp packet... I'm centered on the ice cream van, then the money in my pocket, then buying the soda, then drinking it. Of all the gazzillion things and conditions I could have paid attention to in that moment my thirst abstracted out from the world before me the meaning of a soda in relation to my need.
>>>>>>>"my thirst abstracted out from the world before me the meaning of a soda in relation to my need."
You think abstraction is the act of finding and concentrating on something to the exclusion of other things because of some interest or need? That's called focusing. You may as well declare distraction to be a form of abstraction if all that is required is the narrowing of attention. No wonder your posts are so confusing.
~ FV
FV, I appreciate your trying to understand my meaning here, but you are clearly not seeing what I'm pointing to in the way the world manifests to our attention. Unfortunately you are now taking the position that this is a lack only on my part and thereby ending any feeling of a debate in good faith. Thanks for taking the time to push back though.
>>>>>>"the way the world manifests to our attention"
You're flattering yourself instead of writing more clearly. We are speaking of abstraction. You are speaking of concentration or focus to the exclusion of all else as an altered perspective or something. These are not the same things.
~ FV
"The Oxford English Dictionary lists 19 different definitions of "abstract," and says that the term was only introduced into the visual arts in the 1850s."
So all the abstractions we see in Renaissance drawings have magically disappeared? Has the Oxford Dictionary used a neuralyzer on you? And made you think that abstraction doesn’t happen without the specific English word “abstraction” attached to it?
I’m struggling to talk about the actual process and results of abstraction particularly as it pertains to visual perception/conception and art. I’m talking about the human act of abstraction. One presumes Aristotle was after the same thing. I’m not talking about the term “abstraction”. This is not the same idea as design, stylization, cartooning, simplification, or graphics. Or anything else the Oxford Dictionary is forced to shoe-horn into their entry because of popularized distortions.
"The Latin etymology of abstract ("abstractus") is not a "clever summation" but rather means to split, drag away, or forcibly remove-- much closer to Katharine Kuh's version than yours."
Reality isn’t “mine.”
The salient essences (that define a thing in reality) are what are “split off and pulled away” during abstraction. They are peeled and pulled off from the specifics of the instance; spirited away from the idiosyncratic substances and the momentary facts and details of the unique instantiation of interest because those probably will not generalize or port to other instantiations. Whereas, ephemeral mind products; as ghost-meanings floating in the mind, abstracted essences will and do port. That’s what makes them not only useful, but foundational to our success as humans. A key point that is at least implicit in all the definitions of abstraction as a human process, except those descended from the Modernist’s distortion (or solipsistic Postmodern know-nothingism).
The reason abstraction (optimally) results in effective summation is because abstraction gathers all the salient essences necessary to re-evoke the source material absent all the fluff and most of the details. Which is where concision, clarification, editing, and the like come into play. (Which then brings in matters of taste, intelligence, judgement, and aesthetic sense.)
When necessary and sufficient essentials - those that minimally define objects - are left out of a symbolic re-build, that is what I mean by reductive and lossy.
The pretensions of the modernist designers were in thinking they could abstract without a source idea, that they could make visual music without understanding the true complexity of actual music, and that graphic simplicity was smarter than poetic complexity. All of which smack of laziness, a lack of imagination, and the classic Dunning-Kruger arrogance born of ignorance.
Perhaps best not to invoke Aristotle in support (?) of an understanding of abstraction grounded in a mystic aesthetics tuned towards Plato.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
Aristotle's theory of relations is actually the more important and influential part of this, which is directly applicable to the use of abstractions in art. I don't think it makes a practical difference whether essences exist in some ideal realm or whether they are mind products. Or whether the signs we find in nature come from a deity. That's all interpretation anyway.
The consistency of phenomenal dynamics through time, including human nature (including our intuition to abstract), means abstractions will repeat through the ages. And abstractions are naturally purified, thus more ideal than reality. Therefore, so long as we experience consistent phenomena similarly, we may speak together about it intelligently using abstractions, essences, and the like.
Beautifully explained and appreciated, but this wasn’t what the non-representational movement was about at all. It was a continuation of the movement to see things in new ways going involving cross cultural influences in Degas and Post-Impressionists where eastern and western picture making formulas had been merged.
Yes, it morphed quickly into design in the decorative movements but, there was a larger political agenda as commercial art was sought as useful to government and industry. The atom bomb had blown up the faith of many in the west and people were looking for alternatives. Americanism was on the move selling itself to the Vatican and anyone else it thought influential who would give it their ears through ambassadors such as Clair Luce Booth.
Meanwhile, the melding of different cultural influences in visual art was part of breaking things down to phenomena as forces. Getting into the elements as visual sense experiences, or ontological verses a linear world which post WWII intellectuals had placed responsibility for the wars.The artists were the canaries in the coal mine and not the true power driving things. Of course the very idea of sensory forces with no larger context had nowhere to go.
But all notions of former understandings were giving way to zen inspired
ramblings, stream of consciousness writing, psychiatry, improvised music,
LSD experience, searching the subconscious mind, breaking barriers and so on. Much of which didn’t last but as monuments of a social breakdown we still haven’t figured out was swallowing us the entire time. No one talks about Kerouac, Sartre, Robert Mangold nor minimalism anymore. A blur of isms just gone, kaput.
The US government volunteered a huge military transport plane to
bring Rauschenberg’s paintings over to compete for the International Grand Prize in the 32nd Venice Biennale in 1964. The government’s interest was to portray America as a brand new cultural force, replacing Europe with its royal habits still recovering from its military compulsions. The target was Russia of course which was striving for its own world dominance. Somehow the Americans sold it and Rauschenberg won his big prize. Modern art found its supporters in heavies such as Nelson Rockefeller. Its sculpture sat in public plazas with often less than nothing to support human comfort but a cement
seat to park oneself and unwrap lunch.
But America had claim to Jazz, “Abstract” and Pop Art, rock n’ roll and a new way of life with its all glass skyscrapers, televisions, dishwashers accessible to working people. How much of art was politically driven or just taken advantage for political reasons we may never know, but art had been hijacked into some earlier form what today we might call Environmental Social Governance or some other private-public partnership which ordinary people have nothing to do with, nor any idea what it means nor how it involves them.
Of course what was lost were foundational understandings that were the basis of western development. But abstractions are experienced on one level as sensations, and they may gain value as they reflect the human heart. No one has a monopoly on the human heart, but oddly enough, there are
sensations of order with no apparent catalyst other than order itself, and such can reveal a depth recognized that is counter intuitive to all common presumptions. I wouldn’t say that finding such a gem is “all interpretation anyway”. It’s exactly what Aristotle and Plato recognized as something objectively more ordered than the world that lived within it.
This discussion is beginning to come apart. Which message is beautifully explained? What would be figuration? if you want your comments to be understood put some damn identifier on them or its wasted.
This is downplaying the fundamental difference. To Plato, abstraction is a movement towards the transcendentally, eternally true, to Aristotle (the nihilistic postmodernist!) it is not.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
ai
"This is downplaying the fundamental difference.
That's the point. Fundamental difference to whom? The philosopher... The theologist... Who cares? It's all just interpretation. What is the practical difference to the artist? Zip.
If you believe that one needs to be per se religious or "mystical" to believe in truth, beauty, or idealism, or to partake in metaphor and poetry, then I feel sorry for you. It's a pyrrhic victory to deny all that just to keep your egotistical nihilism (and solipsism) pure. Which doesn't work logically anyway.
And if you believe that Aristotle didn't believe in the portability of truth, then you are mistaken again. You think he didn't believe in the applicability of abstract math equations to different situations? His idea of logic/logos alone proves that he believed in the portability of truth. He was no postmodernist. In fact he wrote a book called Metaphysics.
(Edited)
Fundamental difference to whom? The philosopher... The theologist... Who cares? It's all just interpretation. What is the practical difference to the artist? Zip.
Thus spake Zarathustra! Well, he’d not like the nihilistic «Zip», but the preceeding is pure Nietzsche.
It's all just interpretation.<\b>
As for your reading of Aristotle:
The air you're breathing? Postmodernism.
just interpretation.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
E. L. Wisty.
Oh look! An attention-starved narcissist with nothing to say. Shoo! sad little troll. Shoo!
"the preceeding is pure Nietzsche."
We are discussing abstraction as it relates to art. What’s your contribution on that question?
1. Abstraction is a process of production, not extraction. It is a lateral move, neither a drawing down from above (transcendence) nor a summoning forth from within immanence).
«Abstract art» serves little function besides that of drawing attention to abstraction as a productive process.
Abstracted details of mimetic art, be they particular marks, graduations, contrasts etc might naturally gain synechdocal status as part of the meaning-production that occurs in the interface of art and observer, and they surely are traces of the techne involved in the making of the work.
2. The reference to Nietzsche wasn’t intended as a slight. Contrary to the notions of idiots like Jordan Peterson, N was neither a pessimist nor nihilist - quite the opposite. And he was a philosopher of immanence, far more aligned with Aristotle than with Plato - whose takes on abstractions are not aligned at all.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
As a note, whenever I state that something IS, I mean that it seems thus to me. I don’t write in E-Prime, and I probably never will, although I probably should.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
Ah, actual intelligent content. Finally.
"1. Abstraction is a process of production, not extraction. It is a lateral move, neither a drawing down from above (transcendence) nor a summoning forth from within immanence)."
You are in a life drawing session. The model poses. You lightly sketch in the gesture of the pose, sans detail, on your paper. Just to get the sweep of the figure roughly placed on the paper as a general expressive foundation to build upon along with a satisfactory layout with respect to the figure's proportions. You check your work. You find there is a correspondence, an evident one, between the simple abstract gesture on your paper and the actual model such that you feel confident going forward with further elaboration.
Now how was the gesture derived from the figure in your telling? In noting correspondence after the sketch-in, is there any sense that the drawing is "true to the model" in any way?
Without overly emphasizing the phrase as a point in your presentation, I’d say that primarily, the «true to life»-aspect of my work would matter less than then the degree to which I’d consider the result a meaningful metaphor for my experience in the situation of drawing from life (yes, I see what I did there).
Secondarily, if the particulars of my mark making were technically pleasing, the flow from eye to hand occurring with just a little less friction than in the previous session, this would add even more meaning to the metaphor I had produced.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
"I’d say that primarily, the «true to life»-aspect of my work would matter less than the degree to which..."
You conspicuously avoided answering the question. Please don't do that. Here are the questions again...
How was the gesture derived from the figure in your telling? In noting correspondence after the sketch-in, is there any sense that the drawing is "true to the model" in any way?
Derived? It’s not true to life in any essential way, no matter the mimetic fidelity. No more than the word «gesture» is. A dog wouldn’t confuse the gesture for the model. The traces of charcoal on paper cannot produce an offspring. It does not sweat.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
"Derived? It’s not true to life in any essential way, no matter the mimetic fidelity."
What do you mean by mimetic fidelity then? Can one mimic without deriving?
Further, show the model the initial gesture drawing and she will agree with it as corresponding to her pose in a wholly haptic sense, without having any outside view of herself. She will agree that she embodies the general gesture shown in the drawing, understanding it as a completely real aspect of the experience of her posing.
What do you mean by mimetic fidelity then? Can one mimic without deriving?
Monkey see, monkey do?
Further, show the model the initial gesture drawing and she will agree with it as corresponding to her pose in a wholly haptic sense, without having any outside view of herself. She will agree that she embodies the general gesture shown in the drawing, understanding it as a completely real aspect of the experience of her posing.
Well, I doubt this would be the reaction to my doodles, but yeah - additional layers of meaning would in that case be produced. There would be communication. Resonance and reflection. There would be art.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
"What do you mean by mimetic fidelity then? Can one mimic without deriving?"
Monkey see, monkey do?
Can anyone "do" what they "see" without intermediate steps of abstraction and embodiment?
You have admitted to mimetic fidelity in drawing. To draw is to set down abstractions. So, again; How does one mimic the model (in any sense) without deriving the abstractions that correspond to the model from the model?
"She will agree that she embodies the general gesture shown in the drawing, understanding it as a completely real aspect of the experience of her posing."
"But yeah (...) There would be communication. Resonance and reflection."
What would be resonating with what? Be specific.
Can anyone "do" what they "see" without intermediate steps of abstraction and embodiment?/b>
Humans aren’t the only imitating animal, we’re merely the only animal that imitate in a particularly human manner.
…Octopi? Other primates? Certain song birds? Are there any evolutionary biologists onboard? If so, does the lyre bird have the mental capability to embody the model by means of abstraction?
You have admitted to mimetic fidelity in drawing. To draw is to set down abstractions. So, again; How does one mimic the model (in any sense) without deriving the abstractions that correspond to the model from the model?
The abstraction is produced, not drawn forth. It does not exist meaningfully beyond itself. The word «gesture» is just that.
What would be resonating with what? Be specific.
Meaning, being continually produced, altered, reproduced in language.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
"...additional layers of meaning would in that case be produced. There would be communication. Resonance and reflection"
Resonance. Meaning. And without words.
https://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/sound/u11l4b.cfm#resonance
Short of there being hypothetical little djinn behind the appearances, this can't happen when the model is a non-human natural phenomenon. But it can occur in the opposite direction - to a viewer of one to the extent there is a relation: weight, thrust, flow... even while staying on the cautious end of anthropomorphising.
Add memory and pattern and relation recognition (to other things in nature, & even to anthropic patterns)....& there are whole netwoks of meaning.
What about colours ? Does the quality produced by the vibration have a relation to the thing it springs from ? Who knows.... but is there any real difference to a quality from a sense impression to a memory of one ? Any more than two individuals' imagination of a geometric form....or any number and broader kind of archetype, arising in separately spontaneous intuitions.
Or, back down to earth - what about emotion ? Seeing a crying face ? A sequence of intelligible events leading up to one ?
Things Expressing felt qualities, and patterns of them, sequentially and in concurrance; the original of 'language', producing meaning.
'Inheres' or is 'produced' ? Neither the relations nor resonances are arbitrary....
Somebody then puts them in a picture....
Bill
"Can anyone "do" what they "see" without intermediate steps of abstraction and embodiment?"
Without abstraction - if by that you mean creating a code-based model - Yes. The "...communication. Resonance and reflection..." occurs in immediacy. (Embodiment is always there at each end of any two people, things...)
Bill
"Humans aren’t the only imitating animal, we’re merely the only animal that imitate in a particularly human manner."
We are speaking of Art, yes? Thus humans. Let's not get side-tracked. (We probably agree in the belief that there are surely some mechanisms conserved across the animal kingdom, which humans use in a more advanced way.)
"The abstraction is produced, not drawn forth. It does not exist meaningfully beyond itself.
You just reverted to last saved version like a crashed computer. Please avoid relying on your dogmatic talking points. They are not arguments.
One more time...
How does one mimic the model (in any sense) without deriving the abstractions that correspond to the model - the selfsame abstractions that the model herself senses in her pose - from the model?
Stop dissembling. Confront the question of how a correspondence between the drawing and model comes to be and feels agreeable to all parties.
Meaning, being continually produced, altered, reproduced in language.
Please convert the ^ above phrase ^ so that it refers to visual art. So that it can be understood in the context of this discussion of visual art.
Sorry Bill, this particular discussion is already arduous enough. I will not respond to your multiple disorganized interjections and I would encourage Postmodern Anonymous to ignore your posts as well.
How does one mimic the model (in any sense) without deriving the abstractions that correspond to the model - the selfsame abstractions that the model herself senses in her pose - from the model?
Mimicry occurs in nature. Mimesis occurs in the language of the human animal.
The abstraction isn’t derived, it isn’t drawn forth, it isn’t from anywhere, it isn’t a quality, it isn’t a phenomenon, it isn’t an event, it isn’t sensed, it - like all things metaphorical - does not exist
until produced and given meaning in and through language.
Drawing from life isn’t a work of magic or purification. No essence is actually distilled. No part of the model is captured. In terms of visual art, which is sat on the same spectrum as pictographic and verbal language, the meaning of the gesture resides entirely inside the mechanics of communication that produced and maintains the production of it.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
"Mimesis occurs in the language of the human animal.
The abstraction isn’t derived, it isn’t drawn forth, it isn’t from anywhere, it isn’t a quality, it isn’t a phenomenon, it isn’t an event, it isn’t sensed, it - like all things metaphorical - does not exist
until produced and given meaning in and through language."
Q.1 - are you equating mimesis (here, drawing) with abstraction ?
& 2 - are you including art as a type of language ?
(If 'yes' to #1, how is mimesis not also a phenomenon, which would also induce/have quality ?
If no to #2, then how does this stand:
"Well, I doubt this would be the reaction to my doodles, but yeah - additional layers of meaning would in that case be produced"
witu regard to the model's recognition of the drawing to her pose ?)
Kev - fair enough, Il'l leave it at that; but the point is pretty clear - the 'abstraction' (as you both** seem to be using the term) of a drawn line used to convey the turning form, doesn't seem to mean a code or generalisation, but the concurrence of the same quality in both the line drawn & the form (of the model).
But then it ceases to be an 'abstraction' insofar that it is - in part - identical, the same thing (the experience of recognition by your model to the drawing is a resonance of the same mode to a green paint that matches the green apple. An identical quality experienced in the original and the painting/drawing in both cases).
Insofar as it (the drawn line) 'is' an abstraction, that is where it is more than + other than the model's form.
Bill
(**unless p.m.a. answered 'no' to Q.1. Then you seem to be describing different things as 'abstraction', but I'm not sure if p.m.a. is being inconsistent [or if I'm misunderstanding] with its use.)
The abstraction isn’t derived, it isn’t drawn forth
It's been the understanding of abstraction since antiquity that it is. If you don't believe in abstractions, what are you even discussing?
No part of the model is captured.
You have already stated your belief in mimetic fidelity; definitionally the “capturing” of the model in art via manifested abstractions.
like all things metaphorical, it does not exist
A visual metaphor requires a visual vehicle and visual tenor superposed. This is not that. (However, I'd encourage you to think fundamentally about how a visual vehicle and tenor get mapped to one another.)
You speak of "linguistic" meaning production. In your telling, what is the structure of the visual language... what are the component parts of the visual language wherein we get fidelitous abstraction-based mimesis of the model in a drawing?
like all things (poetical) it does not exist. (shifting your term from the specific to the general)
I never said abstractions were material entities. I said they were ghost-products in the mind. And yet, they port between instances. That’s why they are true. Linguists could not rid language of the concept of truth, and gave up trying to do so in the 1970s. The trueness of metaphor (or other forms of poesis) is why it never leaves us (except in the case of mental disabilities).
Charles S. Pierce long ago distinguished the real from the existent. He was a pragmatist. These are pragmatic issues. When a great art teacher teaches a gesture drawing class, he points out the gesture of the model and everybody can see it. Not because it exists, but because everybody sees the reality of it. And it rings in us. That is what is meant by truth. Abstract, immaterial, but we all can see it (or sense it in some way) such that it rings to us. Because it is evident as a phenomenon. (It is also, further, efficacious; which is a hallmark of the true.)
We all walk into a room, and we all sense the mood similarly. We hear a chainsaw grinding at a tree and it sounds angry to all of us. No language is required to experience shared truth. Only to communicate that it was shared, which is quite often unconsciously done and in ways that would hardly qualify as linguistic, like one's arm hairs standing on end.
I have attributed the experience of the true to the consistency of two phenomena; humans and the world. I am not interested in the metaphysical predicate of trueness, as, again, that is interpretation. Interpretation doesn't change the reality of the abstract phenomena we experience nor its efficacy in creative and intellectual work.
"BILL: But then it ceases to be an 'abstraction' insofar that it is - in part - identical"
That it is only in part identical is one of the reasons that it is an abstraction. Other reasons include that it is essentialized, idealized, generalized, purified, symbolized, signified, or what have you.
I was thinking there more of how the medium can come close to the model but fall short (the tone may be off, maybe to suit the key of the picture as a whole....the outline at best can only have a close correspondence to how it hits the eye, etc).
But, yes I got that ("Insofar as it (the drawn line) 'is' an abstraction, that is where it is more than + other than the model's form.")
But you were highlighting the correspondences/close equivalences:
"How does one mimic the model (in any sense) without deriving the abstractions that correspond to the model from the model?"
Those part of the abstractions are the bits that aren't abstractions, but concurrences.
The term is inaccurate to use for the correspondence part of figuration. Where the drawing, etc., has more intent than just fidelity to the particulars of the model, it is seeking to match other correspondences.
It is & isn't abstraction, it's a messy term. All the others you list (essentialized, idealized, generalized, purified, symbolized, signified) are better in their particular emphases.
We can leave out metaphysics, but green paint and straight or curved lines are better described as concurrences of the things in the world we recognise a match in than abstractions of them.
Bill
"Those part of the abstractions are the bits that aren't abstractions, but concurrences."
All aesthesis or poesis is abstraction. A tighter fit with reality is simply the result of an increased density in the weave of abstractions. This is my understanding.
It's been the understanding of abstraction since antiquity that it is. If you don't believe in abstractions, what are you even discussing?
Are you so unable to bear the idea that abstraction is also an abstraction? That conflating Plato and Aristotle’s theories of forms, too, is an abstraction? That «antiquity» is an abstraction? «Wrong» and «right»? That it’s meanings and abstractions and definitions and metaphors all the way down?
All of these are products of the language we’re using (or that’s using us). Like all other metaphors - some living, some dead - they’re mapped onto the world. But they aren’t the territory - even as they mimick territorialization! They’re nuaces of the particular squeakings and garglings of the human being, and non-sensical to the dog and the oak and the bacteria.
The pragmatist, like the phenomenological stance is fine. These aren’t Plato’s nor Aristotle’s, though. Claiming so is too postmodern even for my sensibilities.
As you said above, it’s all just interpretation. Observe, sing, paint, build - and talk about it. Rejoice in the mimickry. Partake in the ecstacy of communication. Good luck, have fun!
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
"All aesthesis or poesis is abstraction. A tighter fit with reality is simply the result of an increased density in the weave of abstractions. This is my understanding"
Increased density in the weave of abstractions could mean creating something of a complexity comparable to the model but moving away from it.
If it's a tight fit, it would be moving closer, and doing so by methods that replicate the quality arrangements of the model.
Bill
"Increased density in the weave of abstractions could mean creating something of a complexity comparable to the model but moving away from it. If it's a tight fit, it would be moving closer, and doing so by methods that replicate the quality arrangements of the model."
Since abstractions come from the model, an increased density of them would tend to increase the "realism" of the drawing. I'm speaking over-simply here of course because there are ways and ways of drawing/abstracting, with different sorts of results. Dull drawing, evocative drawing, and sparkling, effective drawing are very different animals under the hood.
Nevertheless, once one is personally translating the model into pencil, charcoal, ink, paint, or even digital form... I find it hard to see how that is not abstraction. Trying to copy a photo in some exact way may even include some abstracting, even if the process was an amateurish slog with the intent being spiritless photorealism.
"that abstraction is also an abstraction?"
Whoah, man! Heady stuff! (jk) I hardly need a first year lecture from you on the nature of language. That its abstract in nature? Map not territory? Really? Are you writing from your dorm?
It’s meanings and abstractions and definitions and metaphors all the way down?
Wait now. So it’s language all the way down? Nothing but language? No non-linguistic contact with reality?
Ohhhh-kay. Am I properly picking up the solipsism you're laying down?
But then you’ve also said that metaphors aren’t real, definitions and meanings aren’t real, and so on. All the components of language.
Which means language isn’t real either, the very thing you’ve apparently used to construct your entire ontology.
Who are you helping with this stuff?
This isn’t ontology, it’s epistemology. Aristotle isn’t Plato. You can’t eat an abstraction.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
"Since abstractions come from the model, an increased density of them would tend to increase the "realism" of the drawing. "
This isn't, to me, necessarily the case.
You said being "only in part identical is one of the reasons that it is an abstraction". I'd say it's the defining reason.
The weave of what you call abstractions can be brought closer without increasing density. (When the density is brought up to the point of an unmistakable identificability with the model it can stop there.)
It's not necessarily making the model denser/detailed that brings a fit. That's one of the ways. But increased fit can apply to line drawing, restricted tonal representations, and oils in great fealty to their subject. The picture can be prescribed by the medium; or prescribed by the limits of what parts of the model one chooses to attend to.
Winnowing away that which is not identical is also what brings the weave closer.
Alternatively, adding to it can bring elements from elsewhere so that the representation has broader applicability. Such as adding emotive accents to create something like poetic fallacy. Another would be pushing it towards having something of a symbolic turn. Another would be de-emphasising the particular. The last of which would be the most 'abstracting' .
Which seems to suggest that while your use of abstraction for the conversion process into paint or line is fine, the word has that other meaning which makes it unsuitable.
(especially when aristotelian, or po-mod., versions of 'abstraction' are brought in, or if the qualia or phenomena are confused with 'essences', platonic forms, etc. - abstractions behind or beyond the phenomena themselves.)
Aesthesis = 'perception', rather than 'abstraction'; "an unelaborated elementary awareness of stimulation" coming from things in nature, of qualia in other words.
I think that this meaning adds to the sense of 'aesthetic' in an important way - the subective becomes objective.
Forget laboured attempts at precision for now. With regards to picture-making, imagine, say, matching the character of a landscape by bringing the contours, or tonal distances between elements, into accord. So that the qualitative experience of each chimes in an identical (or v. close) manner. Much as we experience the character of a chord, and can recognise its recurrence.
In a very real sense, the same thing is happening twice (the partial bit of the mimetic art that's the same as its model in qualitative experience), the co-identity can't be an abstraction.
Bill
'But then you’ve also said that metaphors aren’t real, definitions and meanings aren’t real, and so on. All the components of language.
Which means language isn’t real either, the very thing you’ve apparently used to construct your entire ontology.'
Postmodernism, the Cretan liar paradox.
"This isn’t ontology, it’s epistemology. Aristotle isn’t Plato. You can’t eat an abstraction."
Ah. I believe I have you clear now.
You have no real faith, belief, confidence, or trust in; you put no stake in, find no actual justification for anything except your raw being. Raw direct experience: no filters, no interpretation, no questions, answers, meanings or thoughts. No ideology, politics, or religion; no values, no mores, taboos, morals, or ethics, no consideration, contemplation, intuition or judgement, nothing linguisticized, symbolized or signified, nothing named, no metaphors, no tropes of any kind. Nothing “understood” or “appreciated”. Nothing visually sensed beyond what would be captured in a photograph. Nothing supposedly “meant” by a touch. No love or friendship or family.
Just raw being.
That is all that you can or will truly put stock in such that you feel unshakably confident that you could rationally justify it as existent and real.
Everything else to you is mere seeming. aka "It seems to me." Or "it seems to you." Absolutism in your being, everything else is relativism/interpretation.
That it?
"Since abstractions come from the model, an increased density of them would tend to increase the "realism" of the drawing. "
This isn't, to me, necessarily the case.
I am speaking of an idealistic situation as a kind of model for understanding my meaning. I am speaking of “correct” proportions, angles, etc in the first place. And of increasingly fine abstractions with each pass. As to how they add to and merge with the existing more general drawing there is a lot of technical things to be said about how relations are established and redundancies omitted, correcting/abrading general lines in favor of additive specificity, and so on. “Realism” would emerge in passes. I obviously can’t drop a ten part class here, so you are responding in the absence of complete information.
As a general point, I don’t know why you think I’d be able to understand how you write as you flit from idea to idea, caveat to caveat, supposition to supposition half of it written in some code-like shorthand, the other half in casual speak. All the while seemingly expecting me to be doting on your every thought. (“Forget laboured attempts at precision for now.“) Don’t be another Sean. There’s no reason to hurriedly brain dump on here when you’re not even sure anybody wants to read your most tailored and logical thought-essays. Next time try to write ultra-clear and perfectly logical on a single insight you think you’ve had.
You brought up noodly photo-realist precision, I said forget it for now.
What are the angles being corrected against ? What are inreasingly fine abstractions being brought increasingly fine against or to if not the model ?
If it is the model, in what sense are they becoming increasingly fine as abstractions ?
Your own writing (and theses) more often than not it has to be said have a rigidity and stiffness of thought which hampers your thinking and brings it away from being useful or accurate in desccribing what you try to clarify.
"...expecting me to be doting on your every though'..."
Jesus Christ....Get some air, Kev, I don't hold you in the, erm, esteem you're imagining there.
Bill
Bill, at the moment I'm interested to see if "Postmodern Anonymous" will respond to my most recent attempt to understand his position.
If you have a body of research on these topics that you could point me to; writings, diagrams, demonstrations, drawings, passages from rare art books you've excerpted and discussed, etc... where you go through your various theses and your thinking in some detailed, organized, thoughtful way, that would be much better than what you're interjecting with here. It would at least prove that you research and think about this material away from this particular blog and at some length that demonstrates seriousness. At this point I have no idea who you are or what you think you know.
That it?
I don’t think a socially or mentally functioning human can exist in the state you describe. Do you?
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
"I don’t think a socially or mentally functioning human can exist in the state you describe. Do you?"
Tell me where you differ from what I presumed. That was an earnest effort to understand you, a perfectly logical fit to the information you have provided so far as far as I can tell. I have no idea if you are a socially or mentally functioning human. I thought you were an AI for years.
What a bizarre little man you frequently are...
I interloped in this sub-thread, fair enough, but more generally no-one here needs to pass your weird qualification test to throw something on here. Which you seem periodically demand from numerous other commenters here when caught out on a minor inconsistency in the elaborate art-theory structure you've built up (which is occassionally quite good, but those parts aren't anything anyone else hasn't read elsewhere before, if that's your own qualifying 'body of work'; your art-illustration history knowledge notwithstanding). You're a decent artist, but certainly not someone I'd be seeking advice from, any engagement we've had here was not on the basis of esteem in that regard. So, no, I won't be 'posting pictures' (I've only done that before to shut up a smart-arse who took umbrage at something I said about L.Freud).
It's very simple, Kev. The use of abstraction for figurative art is problematic (see 'abstract art', 'abstract realism', Laurence's/David's comments above, do a bloody google search and you'll see the confusion that arises...). Particularly your use of the term, which seems to be that by adding increased 'abstractions' the work can be brought closer to the model, when the mark-making is being brought into alignment with what the eye sees.
Not just chroma, tones, contours and so on, but subtler things.... all of which can be summed up as qualities.
And the greek term aesthesis, to perceive (it only means 'to abstract' in kevsperanto), is telling in regard to the changes in thought that have led to 'aesthetics' as being conceived of as something subjective. (Which may throw some lighton the 'abstraction' problem)
But never mind, I'll let you get back to trolling postmodern anon.
Bill
n earnest effort to understand you, a perfectly logical fit to the information you have provided so fa
Now, now.
I think an actually earnest effort to understand perspectives and lines of thought that differ from your dogmatic aesthetics might be good for you. Some serious reading up on philosophy might also be beneficial. The bits and bobs you’ve adorned your priestly robes with lack unity.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
Bill wrote: "writing (and theses) more often than not... have a rigidity and stiffness of thought which hampers your thinking and brings it away from being useful or accurate in describing what you try to clarify."
Your point circles back to an issue I tried to raise at the beginning of this discussion: the conflict between rigor and rigidity in talking about art.
Sure, the absence of rigor in today's art scene is exasperating. It's understandable that the ignorance, self-indulgence and lack of standards can trigger counter-reactions. One of the fun things about this space is that people are free to say bluntly that the emperor has no clothes, without the euphemisms employed elsewhere.
On the other hand, the challenge for intelligent people speaking about art is not to let their rigor harden into rigidity, a characteristic not well suited for the meaningful exploration of art. We are free to develop strong opinions about the kind of art we prefer, and use all our powers of eloquence to explain or defend it, but If art is to remain a thriving, innovative, truthful, inspiring, and sometimes subversive enterprise, we can't simply put it in the straightjacket of our choosing. We cannot, for example, say "I don't care how the majority of the world has used the term "abstract" art for the past century, I know the one true definition and I declare all others null and void."
It's a dilemma to have strong standards and yet at the same time be open minded and tolerant in the search for other forms of quality, but that's the challenge of an intelligent person in the arts today. If we get that difficult balance right, I think there are great rewards to be reaped.
"I don’t think a socially or mentally functioning human can exist in the state you describe. Do you?"
You didn't answer the question.
Tell me where you differ from what I presumed. That was an earnest effort to understand you, a perfectly logical fit to the information you have provided so far.
Bill, you are also making me repeat myself.
The great artists draw and paint with effects; aesthetic, poetic, dramatic, etc. The better the artist as poet (by which term I mean to include all the realms of applicable artistic effects) the more the viewer thinks they are seeing the model in the drawing, but are actually seeing a parallel aesthetic world built of effects.
I always use "fine" and "sublime" in contradistinction to "graphic."
do a bloody google search
Stop citing Google at me like a fucking idiot. Google is not a fount of artistic understanding. It can't be. Almost none of the greatest art notes I've found are in the digital realm. I personally know of great art notes that are buried in storage facilities, or were destroyed long before digitization. Nearly 100% of what has been said and shared among the great artists was not written down.
Google farms/mines data indiscriminately, comes to an average result. Meanwhile the documented history of art theory is filled with amateur pontification and contradictory academic dogmas and littered with scores of different names for similar phenomena and the same names used for different phenomena, and all sorts of missteps, elisions, dogma, and delusions. Some of the greatest art notes use language where the words no longer mean now what they meant then.
What is the mechanically-derived average of all that but generic slop?
Everybody sensible ends up with a private art language offline. Yet those who have put in the effort can still find Rosetta stones through which to share ideas intelligibly in the name of pragma. Because we're all talking about the same phenomena.
We cannot, for example, say "I don't care how the majority of the world has used the term "abstract" art for the past century, I know the one true definition and I declare all others null and void."
There is no "majority of the world" that uses the term 'abstract' with any integrity. The term is now just a token used to present one's bonafides as a culturally-educated person. (Which means less than nothing given how debased our culture and its milieu have become.) The bedraggled masses have been trained to look at a bunch of colored shapes and say the brand name “Abstract Art" in response, with no idea of what they are actually implying. Bully for them and their puppeteers.
Humans are consistent. They have been abstracting forever. They also have been designing forever. But they haven’t been “abstracting” in the high modernist sense of designing forever. That used to be called simply designing. And so it is. (I direct you once more to the fact that Mondrian’s art style stemmed from Frank Lloyd Wright’s design style.)
One cannot simultaneously believe that art has jumped the track and also that no errors of thought were made along the way and that everything that is currently believed and taught about art is equally valid. Especially when art and anti-art are spoken of as cut from the same cloth by teachers who aren’t artists. Absurdities abound; confusing, dispiriting and chasing-off perfectly good art students of immense talent and earnestness of purpose. That must end.
It's a dilemma to have strong standards and yet at the same time be open minded and tolerant in the search for other forms of quality,
“Open-mindedness” is a big part of the problem, especially as it seems to go hand-in-hand with closed eyes.
You want to continue to sail out into the ocean of possibilities like a cave-man on a raft wishing upon stars for proper guidance you go ahead. But don’t advocate that everybody continue to go with you. Especially after we all got waterlogged, seasick and lost. I’m going to track back to the beautiful island that we left where the trees still bear fruit and the deer and the antelope play.
Which is to say, the deepest principles of plastic form and metaphor and narrative have changed not one iota. And they never will. Only the results change.
I am sorry if it horrifies you that my views on this are unshakeable. But my eyes are wide open.
p.s. just to unpack this statement by Fawcett which David has quoted a couple of times before, because it makes a difference how you read/ interpret it:
David: "He scoffed at critics who argued that realism was old fashioned and had been superseded by abstract modernism, replying that this view “demonstrates a misconception that abstract qualities are new to contemporary painting, whereas they have been the comparison of excellence since painting began.“
___
Firstly, Fawcett is obviously talking about 'abstract qualities' as in 'abstract marks that coalesce to form the illusionistic image' since he's mentioning them as having long pre-dated 'abstract modernism' which begins around 1912. He said "since painting began'.
Secondly, how are they "the comparison of excellence" ?
Well, how can we tell that Sargent is a better painter than Janet from the local amateur art club ? Because of the subtly, sophistication and eloquence of his 'abstract qualities'. However, we can only judge the sophistication of the marks in relation to what they're describing within the illusionistic image as a whole. An isolated fragment of them - in which you can't tell what you're looking at - is sort of meaningless.
I began to wonder if David thinks Fawcett is talking about looking at 5 square inches of 'abstract qualities' divorced from their function within the image, and going "oo that looks nice".
I'm certain that Fawcett means their 'abstract qualities' in relation to their function within the illusionistic / representational image, NOT isolated from it.
:the viewer thinks they are seeing the model in the drawing, but are actually seeing a parallel aesthetic world built of effects."
Which usually in the case of figurative reason are matching large parts of those that appear in the model. Adjusting for planes, compression, eye movement & a host of other things no doubt, there is likely a potentially measurable-by -mechanical-means similarity to how light is reaching the eye in both cases.
Where the effects diverge from those of the model, they also have a counterpart in visual patterns in the larger natural world, either subliminally selected by us from memory or built into us as we a part of it. All the patterns that suggest rhythm, balance, movement, calm, harmony, discord...can be found pre-existent in nature, and have been imbibed by us or are built into our physicality .
All the illusionistic devises and techniques are employed to push what the artist is seeing closer and closer to a visual onomatopoeia (the least abstract language) of the model till the two 'chime' in his interior asethethic (perceiving) world of qualities.
Or the whole lot can be made to make something 'new'.
The artist doesn't originate a single thing.
Bill
Which usually in the case of figurative reason are matching large parts
Craft your thoughts for a change. Proofread. I'm seconds away from skipping your posts going forward on ten other grounds.
Where the effects diverge from those of the model
Nature states itself plainly and is continuous, disorganized, and unedited. Art suggests interpretations and is discrete, organized, and edited. A fundamental difference in structural form. Thus, it is all divergent. That it seems not to be is an illusion; a testament to the effectiveness of strong aesthesis/poesis.
An isolated fragment of them - in which you can't tell what you're looking at - is sort of meaningless.
I began to wonder if David thinks Fawcett is talking about looking at 5 square inches of 'abstract qualities' divorced from their function within the image, and going "oo that looks nice".
I'm certain that Fawcett means their 'abstract qualities' in relation to their function within the illusionistic / representational image, NOT isolated from it.
Well, Fawcett is also treating his mark making as a decorative, tonal thing. Which is why his rendering style remains consistent across the surface of his pictures. It gives the picture vibe unity.
Yeah, - fig. reason < 'figurative realism'.
Nature flows in all directions, and up and down at all scales, so that it natually has be 'edited' for a two dimensional rectangle.
But it is certainly organised, anything to the contrary is down to our own finite capacity to wield or attend to what is coming at us through our senses.
And everything is already there - everything that an artist employs.
They are utterly concrete.
Call them 'abstractions' by all means if you can't otherwise withstand "This isn't, to me, necessarily the case" without the need to adjust your meds.
Bill
Kev: "Which is why his rendering style remains consistent across the surface of his pictures"
Consistent ?
David has done several posts extolling the "extraordinary array of marks" in his works....
https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2013/03/warring-with-trolls-part-2.html
Consistent ?
Yes. In tone. (By which I mean a certain regularity of aesthetic feel over the field, not a certain steady grayscale value. I mean a mood texture.)
Fawcett makes lots of different kinds of marks, but they hover around one specific tone-feel when appreciated as a field for each piece. Look from picture to picture and you'll see that the "field tone" of each is consistent unto itself. Some of his pictures have very neat and tidy mark making. Some seem to use only one effect brush. Some are electrified and jazzy in their lines. And so on.
It was longstanding art teaching/wisdom that this had to be the case for the sake of unity. Pyle and Dunn both talk about it. If you look for example at Alex Raymond's sparkling mature work, you'll see that he mostly limits himself to only three line thicknesses. This guarantees tonal unity across his strips, which are heavily line-based.
And the greek term aesthesis, to perceive (it only means 'to abstract' in kevsperanto)
No. That isn't the meaning of the term in painting, Mr. Google. It is the process of converting or translating the real or existent into the artistic-aesthetic. It is distinct from Poesis in kind, though there is much overlap.
But (Nature) is certainly organised, anything to the contrary is down to our own finite capacity to wield or attend to what is coming at us through our senses.
Oh. So all the art teachers were wrong. All the great landscape painters were wrong. All the horticulturalists, gardeners, and landscapers are wrong. And you're right? Have you ever gone landscape painting?
Have you, “Bill”?
Have you ever gone landscape painting?
Call them 'abstractions' by all means
What am I calling abstractions in this randomly imagined-in-your-head situation or argument? I can't tell.
Again, don't expect me to be slavishly following your every random thought, chasing all the twists and turns in your thinking, when you don't craft anything for your readers. If you don’t care, I don’t care. This isn’t a dumpsite. Nobody wants to wade through your rhetorical landfill looking for bike parts so we can eventually ride your ideas around.
'aesthesis'.... - let it go.
I very much doubt that any artist since Romanticism literally meant that nature needed their treatment in order to be organised.
It's a good job that the gardeners, horticulturalists, palladian estate designers and all the other kinds of husbandmen came along to prevent the earth from spiralling out into lunatic dissolution.
Is a similar Ordering Principle the role you see yourself as providing here for us all ? Or Art will fall apart?
"Have you ever gone landscape painting?
Have you, “Bill”?
Have you ever gone landscape painting? "
I really don't mind popping back here every so often to wind up your spinning top with something more to rail against, but are you sure it's doing you any good ?
Bill
We're done, Bill.
That's ok. Be sure to wear your crash-helmet if you're going to run in circles around your bedroom like that again.
Bill
You understood all the concepts. You never made any mistakes. You wrote well, made your points carefully. You knew all the terms. You did all the research. You have all the talent and experience. You're around a great group of artist friends who you share information with. Lots of people know your name, your work, and look to you for advice and thoughts on art and illustration. And to the extent I found you irritating, you meant it all along; ha ha! You were just trying to get my goat and succeeded!
That means you're the victor here. No contest. I bow to you.
Bye.
Kev, everyone can see you're attempting to affirm things for yourself after the breakdown, despite your (r)use of the 2nd Person.
Bill
You didn't answer the question.
I’m actually not quite sure how to answer it, because your take on mye position seems diametrically opposite of what it is.
When I posit we cannot speak meaningfully of things beyond language & that abstraction is a process of production, not extraction, that is a lateral move, neither a drawing down from above (transcendence) nor a summoning forth from within immanence)
…you gather that I must mean I have access to «raw being»?
Which is to say, the deepest principles of plastic form and metaphor and narrative have changed not one iota. And they never will. Only the results change.
I am sorry if it horrifies you that my views on this are unshakeable. But my eyes are wide open.
… that I believe I have access to «raw being»?
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
>>>>>>"It is distinct from Poesis in kind, though there is much overlap."
Kev, can you explain the Aesthesis vs. Poesis thing a bit further? I get that Aesthesis relates to Aesthetics (feeling, sensing) and Poesis relates to Poetics (Are we talking rhythm, meter, simile, metaphor here?). What era were these terms used?
~ FV
Laurence John wrote: "I began to wonder if David thinks Fawcett is talking about looking at 5 square inches of 'abstract qualities' divorced from their function within the image, and going 'oo that looks nice.' I'm certain that Fawcett means their 'abstract qualities' in relation to their function within the illusionistic / representational image, NOT isolated from it."
Well, wonder no longer. David means both. Certainly no one could deny that Fawcett meant abstract qualities in relation to the illusionistic image. Fawcett's trademark Sherlock Holmes illustration of a polite conversation in a Victorian parlor ( https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-book-on-robert-fawcett.html ) is a tightly realistic image. It is ablaze with distinctive marks but every drybrush swirl or chop of a bamboo stick is in the service of the representational picture.
Note that nowhere do you see a direct outline of a figure (which would have been the most efficient way to draft a representational image.) No matter how realistic the end product, Fawcett clearly thought the abstract marks were worth the extra work.
However, Fawcett experimented with abstract (by which I mean here "non-representational" -- sorry Kev--) drawings in his spare time and did discuss modern art with friends like Henry Moore and others I mentioned above. He kept some abstract works on his wall. He died before my time so I can't guarantee what his position would be on "abstract qualities divorced from their function within the image." But I've posted Fawcett drawings here before where I think it's pretty clear it is the abstract qualities, not the illusionistic image, driving the train. (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2009/04/one-lovely-drawing-part-24.html ). In my view, Fawcett's aesthetic choices for such ink marks-- how much yin and how much yang, what kind of texture, how much speed, wet or dry, what kind of design-- are the same kinds of aesthetic choices made by Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline for their black and white paintings.
This was not unique to Fawcett; in the 1960s, at what may have been the highwater mark for abstract expressionism (somebody please explain to Kev what that term means) it became popular for illustration to stray farther and farther from representational work in favor of abstract design. https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-energy-of-1960s-part-2.html
Laurence, I haven't forgotten that earlier in this discussion when the question was raised whether the marks in a representational drawing could be judged in part by the same aesthetic standards as an abstract drawing, you answered unequivocally, "No they can't." At the time I read that and thought, "Gee that's funny, I've been doing it every day for years."
David: "In my view, Fawcett's aesthetic choices for such ink marks-- how much yin and how much yang, what kind of texture, how much speed, wet or dry, what kind of design-- are the same kinds of aesthetic choices made by Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline for their black and white paintings."
In that example (the portrait of Al Dorne) the marks are STILL coalescing to form an image, however wild they might be. They are still describing form, just in a more agitated, broken way than is conventional. They are not stand-alone 'abstract' (non-representational) marks in the manner of Motherwell or Kline.
Thanks for answering David, but I can tell this one isn't going to be resolved between us.
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The 60s illustrations (your 2nd link) go much further toward pure 'abstract expressionism' but it's notable that the representational bit is still there somewhere (to fulfil the brief) even if almost overwhelmed by the messy abstract flatness. This brings us back to Levine when I said "That small area of sharp observation that provides a focal point while you go fast and loose with other large areas". They push the fast and loose areas - and flattening of space - to the absolute limit. You could view these as the missing link between traditional illustration and abstract expressionism if you like, but to me they feel stylistically contrived to fit that place (which is similar to what i said in the comment section of that post).
When I posit we cannot speak meaningfully of things beyond language & that abstraction is a process of production, not extraction, that is a lateral move
A lateral move between what and what? What is "being moved" in your quote?
Laurence John-- with apologies to dead horses, let me see if we can still find some commonality, coming from a different direction. Would you agree that a picture can be beautifully designed or composed, completely detached from its representational qualities? If you took a visually beautiful painting and turned it upside down so as to negate its illusionistic qualities, couldn't it still be visually beautiful? The color, the composition, etc. are still likely to work, even with a now-nonsensical representational content. Similarly, a badly designed image would still be badly designed no matter how skillful its realism, or whether you turned it upside down or sideways.
I would call those constant qualities "abstract," and consider them as valid a basis for judging artistic merit as musical notes in a song with no lyrics or story.
David, I'm a simple man. I like seeing the way artists translate and reconfigure the real 3D world into drawn or painted images of people, interiors, places and things. That's the whole point of it for me; to see how the marks describe recognisable form. To empty it of the subject matter leaving only abstract marks for marks sake is to miss out the interesting bit.
"Would you agree that a picture can be beautifully designed or composed, completely detached from its representational qualities?"
When I look at a representational painting I'm always judging the quality of the marks in respect to the things it depicts. That's how I can judge if the painting is well done or not. If it went through a nonsensical-machine to somehow scramble the image but keep the nice passages of paint, I would still see nice passages of paint yes, but devoid of context the image would be meaningless and become sort of arbitrary. At best a 'mood piece'. Kanevsky and the 'disrupted realism' types went in this direction and I find it semi-interesting, but a bit of a superficial trend (similar to your 1960s illustration examples previously).
By «lateral move», I mean that you are not reaching up, down, outor in for information. You aren’t extracting intrinsic, hidden qualities. The act og abstraction is defined and confined by language. It has no meaning outside of language, because speaking of meaning outside of language is meaningless. It really forsn’t matter if you believe in Platonic, Aristotelean or Ferrarean forms - these are all entirely made up from and of words.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
"By «lateral move», I mean that you are not reaching up, down, out or in for information. You aren’t... It has no... It really doesn't matter..."
Can you stop with the negatively constructed explanations? You can't explain baseball by telling me what it isn't.
Tell me where you think information is gotten from. Or explain to me what it means to obtain information "laterally." Between what and what and by what method? What is that process of obtaining information "laterally" to which you refer?
Tell me where you think information is gotten from. Or explain to me what it means to obtain information "laterally." Between what and what and by what method? What is that process of obtaining information "laterally" to which you refer?
Language.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
”Would you agree that a picture can be beautifully designed or composed, completely detached from its representational qualities?”
You’re not appreciating that the representational qualities are also beautifully designed. And that that is so because they are poetically understood. The beauty of the design and the pictorial meaning are the same thing.
“We learned sooner or later that the idea itself provides the form of the design.” ~ Hal Stone on the pictorial composition teaching of Harvey Dunn.
"I would call those constant qualities "abstract," and consider them as valid a basis for judging artistic merit as musical notes in a song with no lyrics or story."
Abstracted from what? Don’t the principles of design account entirely for the success or failure of so-called “abstract” works?
Abstract Art is just a brand name. If there was an FDA for the art world, they wouldn’t be able to use that word on the label. (If the citrus in your orange drink is industrially extracted from mold rather than fruit, you can't call it "juice.")
Language.
What is the process by which language makes information?
What is the process by which language makes information?
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Postmodern Anonymouse
Yes go ahead. Answer that question any way you like.
Or answer any of these questions based on your simple "Language." answer to the prior post. (Obviously your vague answer "language" to four or five different question makes it tough to figure out what you are actually saying.)
1. What is the process by which language makes information.
2. What is the process by which language "gets" information.
3. How does language obtain information "laterally?"
Go ahead. Answer any of those questions. And I understand fully well that you can only give an interpretation.
1. Language.
2. «Information» is a particulary loaded term here. I gather you mean something along the lines of how does the body’s being in the world lead to language?
3. Se 2.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
1. What is the process by which language makes information?
1. Language.
Was it your intention to assert that "Language is the process by which language makes information?"
Language is the process by which all concepts are made. «Information» has no fixed meaning, it aquires meaning through the same unending process of difference and deferral that you currently seem to be to be pursuing.
There’s no pink ray from Sirius, no God of the gaps, no esoteric gnosis to be found at the end of this rainbow. Just words, and more words. The graph tends towards infinity, but you cannot break free from language by means of language.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
p.s.
David: "Similarly, a badly designed image would still be badly designed no matter how skillful its realism, or whether you turned it upside down or sideways....I would call those constant qualities "abstract," and consider them as valid a basis for judging artistic merit"
As I said above, the 'abstract' qualities can only be judged 'good or bad' by their function within the context of the image as a whole. What is their function, their purpose in creating the illusion ?
You keep talking as if the 'abstract qualities' are interesting in and of themselves, irrespective of context. This is where we differ. I don't recognise what you're calling 'constant qualities' that could be lifted out of a representational painting and transplanted into a non-representational painting and still 'work'.
Kev Ferrara-- I've always understood your view to be that we are able to distinguish between good and bad graphic design; your objection is that graphic design is not as lofty an art form as the summum bonum, the poesis of Howard Pyle and Harvey Dunn. Have I got that right? Because as long as we all agree we're able to distinguish between good and bad design, we can haggle later about its location on the artistic totem pole.
Laurence John wrote, " the 'abstract' qualities can only be judged 'good or bad' by their function within the context of the image as a whole. What is their function, their purpose in creating the illusion ?"
OK, I accept what you say, it's not my mission in life to argue you out of your views. But I don't understand then how you pass judgment on the music of Beethoven or Mozart, which for the most part is not representational and does not create illusions.
Kev and Laurence-- Just as reminder of how long we've been circling this issue, long ago I tried to make a similar point by comparing Frazetta's non-illusionistic, non-referential backgrounds with Boris' non-illusionistic, non-referential backgrounds. I urged people to take the Frazetta / Boris test and then tell me we can't distinguish between the good and bad: (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-abstract-paintings-of-frazetta-and.html )
Since that time, Heritage sold an unfinished Frazetta painting, what they called a "blank master." It had a few recognizable elements but for the most part it was hastily blocked in. In this highly inchoate state, I think it is still terrific and-- dare I say it?-- beautifully (perhaps instinctively) designed.
( https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/paintings/frank-frazetta-demons-and-bear-painting-original-art-c-1980-90s-/a/7192-93094.s?ic4=GalleryView-Thumbnail-071515 ). Do you consider this a hybrid, where we are able to judge the finished parts but not the non-referential parts?
David: "But I don't understand then how you pass judgment on the music of Beethoven or Mozart, which for the most part is not representational and does not create illusions."
David, I've never liked analogies between music and visual art (especially static visual art) and don't use them. I think they're deeply flawed, and I don't see abstract art as 'frozen music' as some people claim, but that's a whole other comment section.
However, I understand the argument that you could view an abstract expressionist painting as a purely sensual experience for the sake of it. For whatever reason I've just never had an interesting experience like that. I'm bored of such paintings after about 3 minutes maximum. Maybe I need to go to the Rothko Chapel, try LSD again and re-test it. I don't know.
David: "Do you consider this a hybrid, where we are able to judge the finished parts but not the non-referential parts?"
No, it just looks like an unfinished painting. A 'hybrid' for me would be more like a Kanevsky where the artist is deliberately using non-representational passages against representational...
https://dolbychadwickgallery.com/post/1439-huffington-post-alex-kanevsky-unstable-equilibrium-at-dolby-chadwick-gallery
«Information» has no fixed meaning, it acquires meaning...
There are, as you know, many fixed meanings for "information" in various interpretive systems created as models of language or communication. (Shannon's, say) When you introduced the term into the conversation, I assumed you were making a technical point about your interpretive system.
Despite what you have said that any of your claims merely "seems thus to me" because it's "language all the way down" one is forced to presume that you are adamantly and constantly writing in the opposite of E-prime because you absolutely believe what you are saying. (A strong indicator being your insistence on the same narrow framing about meaning using nearly identical phrasing more than two dozen times on this blog over the years.)
"Language is the process by which all concepts are made.
You've now said that language is the origin of concepts, meaning, and information. I'm assuming you have a "fixed meaning" for all the words you are using in some fixed understanding-system re: language, semiotics, and related topics. I'm assuming you can tie concept, meaning, and information together in some way that would bring clarity to the reader.
"There’s no... no... no.... Just words, and more words."
Do you have aphantasia, perchance? Or face blindness?
When I visualize a Cortland apple in my mind’s eye and rotate it around and light it different ways - purely in my imagination - is that part of what you conceive of as language? Or is it not? Is it rather meaningless, without concept, and of zero information?
The meaning of the words we make use of is constantly changing, and their definition is never entirely fixed - they are entirely made up. You can’t refute a definition of «abstract» and «abstraction» by kicking a stone. You can only appeal to some commonly and/or communally agreed upon source. Your personal definition is of no use.
I mean what I write, and my use of words in conversation is as non-personal and non-tribal as I can manage. I do not constantly look up the definition of words I habitually use. Like with most people, this will lead to ideosyncracies that might both confuse and amuse myself as well as others. But my personal experience of the stability of the language I’m languaging about language in, does not mean that it is stable in a noumenal or even in a phenomenal) sense.
I don’t know the reality of your mental visualization of an apple in your mind. But (and I’m no scientist), isn’t it an aspect of human psychology that we are, in fact, not very good at separating fact from fiction? We react to imagined threats pretty much the same as to actual threats.
When I rotate the apple in my mind, it at least somewhat seems as if I am rotating an actual apple - the more I concentrate, the more detail is added. Even memory detail of smell and feel adds to the experience. Is this an act of abstraction? Is it an act of language? Does it occur before or after cognition? Do dogs dream of apples? Is this abstraction? How many times must I write «abstraction» before semantic saturation occurs? Can semantic saturation become chronic? These are difficult questions!
But immediately upon consideration, the complex becomes confined and defined by language.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
"Is this an act of abstraction? Is it an act of language? Does it occur before or after cognition? Do dogs dream of apples? Is this abstraction? How many times must I write «abstraction» before semantic saturation occurs? Can semantic saturation become chronic? These are difficult questions!"
As I've assumed all along, the entirety of what I have been discussing all along - which you have dogmatically converted into a discussion of "language" (narrowly defined) every time out - is something you've barely scratched the surface of in your own considerations.
You might want to temper your adamancy going forward.
And I assumed you’d’ve withdrawn and begun deleting posts after having reached the spiralling phase of of you post-cycle, but hey, here you’re back at the faux-balanced stage. Anything’s possible!
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Postmodern Anonymouse
That was info I don't want the bots to have. Thanks for paying attention. Have a nice day.
"David: "Do you consider this a hybrid, where we are able to judge the finished parts but not the non-referential parts?"
As was pointed out long ago, pictorial realism - due to our ability to focus - may be quite hierarchical in how a sense of finish is achieved. Resolution in one area will make a vague suggestion in another related area "complete" sufficiently to our hyper-sensitive intuition for such things. Which is how balance manifests locally. The relatedness is essential, as the osmotic sense of realism seeping from focal area to perimeter is an effect.
Boris was somewhat more effective achieving this effect earlier in his career, heavily under Frazetta's influence. But he never had Frazetta's feel or knowledge. As he stepped away from Frazetta's style he failed to consider the issue much at all.
Thus it is a mistake to call areas that we can guess, assume, or background the precise identity of - given their relation to what is more resolved - "non referential."
(I saw Boris paint a picture once, start to finish in NYC. He's technically amazing (stunning actually), works totally from photos in his figures, and totally from habit and convention in everything else. Sorry to say; I don't think he considered anything of what he was doing as he was doing it. He wasn't reactive to his own work. He wasn't vibing with it. It was a machine-like process. He laid in one of those garish multicolored backgrounds in a few minutes with a technique that he was obviously surpassingly adept at from constant practice.)
fyi, the "hybrid" Frazetta is a hybrid of pre-stroke work overpainted with post-stroke messing about. I think it shows Frazetta's narrative, eidetic, and imaginative disintegration, but also his still-functioning knowledge of composition and design.
David: "But I don't understand then how you pass judgment on the music of Beethoven or Mozart, which for the most part is not representational and does not create illusions."
There are a lot of illusions involved in great music. Individual chords themselves map implied space (see C. F. Gauss). There is a lot of abstractions in the correct sense; we speak, argue and emote in untuned music, some of the more gifted people naturally speak in their personal song style, the world around us sounds in untuned music, etc. The movement between passages of music is like the movement between scenes in a film. The changing chords and keys change the sense of space. Themes are introduced, as are counter-themes. Themes and counter themes - for want of better term - argue. The Sonato form was understood as sort of an essay in its construction.
I came to the conclusion after a long battle with understanding the structure of music, song, and art that "Modern Art" as visual music was actually a viable idea. Which its practitioners have never actually conceptualized with any seriousness, thus without any sufficiency.
If you become sensitized to one single beautiful violin note articulately struck and sustained on a fine instrument with vibrato at the end - supplemented with help from audio visualization applications - you may appreciate that it is more complex and composed in its plastic form than virtually every work of "modern art" ever created.
Something I found interesting about research into abstract art since part of the discussion has faded into the meaning of abstract art.
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-mathematical-analysis-reveals-hidden-golden.html
Fun, although the limitations of the study are significant, as st least somewhat stated in the paper. Also, abstraction-wise, the specific selection of art and pseudo-art examples seems biased in favour of the findings discussed ( - this impression of mine might actually support the findings, though).
But, yeah, fun. This too, is abstraction.
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Postmodern Anonymouse
The human designs unify and give interest to their respective overall fields with a sufficiently intense self-related pattern. Each of which has spots of detail just within the frame edges all around to cauterize an implied interior frame that gives a sense of intentional finish to the main graphic-relational structures... and thereby the whole. The End.
There's no reason A.I. can't also accomplish this basic design trick.
(God forbid the scientists who "study" art with algorithms, calipers and microscopes pick up a design book or three written by people who know what they are doing.)
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