The illustrator A.B. Frost drew with a marvelous line. He had a special knack for infusing animals with character:
 |
| Note the unorthodox way Frost depicts that tail, the stance of the barking dog, the way Frost captures the shape of the dog's skull, the comical exaggeration of the open mouth and those long, droopy ears. |
I'm dazzled by the speed and confidence of Frost's beautiful line capturing this dancer wearing an apron. You have to wonder whether this was drawn with a pen or a rapier.
Note the shading on those shoes; what beautiful ink!
 |
| I love the powerful shadows under the man's arm, under the flaps of his jacket, and on his ankle. Those shoes are sheer poetry! |
SO we can safely conclude that this is a beautiful drawing, right?
Uh oh!
So what do you think? Beautiful? Ugly? Both?
________________________________
The drawing was exhibited at the recent show, "Imprinted" at the Norman Rockwell Museum and will be traveling to other museums. Definitely worth seeing if you get the chance.
97 comments:
I admit I might feel differently if I was black, but for me this is still a beautiful drawing.
A caption, like a title, has no intrinsic connection to the picture. One could just as well write under it; "Dis damn critter ain't gonna be botherin' our hens no more" or "See what your taxidermy hobby can do with this Ma!" and the drawing changes not one jot. So it is ridiculous to believe that the drawing's quality, whether it be good, bad or indifferent, is changed by whatever text is pasted under it.
These days, I think a drawing like this would probably get written off as racist right away, and no one would even stop to talk about A.B. Frost’s talent or skill—which is a shame. It’s not really beautiful or ugly—it just is. And technically, it’s masterful. Dave, do you have any sense of what Frost’s personal views were when it came to race? Seems like he did quite a few drawings like this, and I’m curious what his mindset might’ve been.
chris bennett-- It's possible that Frost was illustrating that specific line from the text, but it's also possible, as you suggest, that some editor just picked that line to attach to the drawing after the fact. But putting that sentence aside, do you think the racial exaggerations Frost put in his drawing to ridicule his subjects -- the huge lips, the protruding eyes, the little "pickaninny" children dancing around-- make this an ugly drawing?
Movieac-- I don't believe that Frost was particularly racist, but there was no shortage of assignments like this for illustrators looking to earn a living. If you flip through magazines from this era, the percentage of blatantly racist material is astonishing.
It’s an ugly slander, one that anyone sensitive enough to draw that well should have recognized as evil and the antithesis of art. It’s one thing to dehumanize adults, but involving children is completely unconscionable and repugnant. This is not a political statement, it’s an artistic one. Good art is good living
A poem means both what it says and how it is said. Pictures work just the same. You cannot and should not separate form from content. Pure art was always a scam.
An elementary schooler’s inelegant and naive picture about loving their mom is better art than Frost’s and Cuneo’s sick trash. This is because we are human. If that explanation doesn’t seem sufficient, then I don’t think you understand art, no matter how smart you are.
Richard-- I've raised a question here about the relationship between artistic form and content, and whether you can have beauty in one category if the other category is ugly. Your response is just the ipse dixit that form cannot be separated from content and anyone who doesn't understand that doesn't understand art.
There is a mountain of evidence on the other side. The greatest illustrators for women's fiction magazines in the 1950s and 60s-- Briggs, Parker, Whitmore, Fuchs and a dozen others conceded that many of the stories they were illustrating were sappy, soap opera stories and yet they made art that transcended its subject matter. Mort Drucker did brilliant line drawings for lame parodies of some of the trashiest, most forgettable sitcoms on TV. Artists like Norman Rockwell and Haddon Sundblom made marvelous paintings to sell consumer products. On the other side of the spectrum, concept art or idea art has produced a generation that cannot draw or paint but many believe their chicken scratchings are great art because of its content.
One constant lesson in the debates that pop up here is that before we make broad pronouncements about what art "is" or "isn't," it would behoove us to think about the contrary examples that might be lurking in the bushes, and try to articulate why we think they don't matter.
Dear first time commenter-- Thanks for writing, I'd be happy to engage with you on this.
First of all, my reason for structuring this the way I did (which I consider more of a "slow reveal" than a "gotcha") is that one of the most scientific and objective ways to test a theory is to isolate the elements of the theory one by one, putting each element to the test separately. If I had co-mingled Frost's physical lines with the racist subject matter, we could still be having muddled debates over why some people didn't like the drawing. I took a page from the scientific method established centuries ago by Francis Bacon in the Novum Organum and Isaac Newton (or what lawyers call "laboratory conditions,") to first establish (I hope) that Frost was a brilliant draftsman. After that, we can bring back the content for separate reactions, and analyze how each element infects/transforms the other.
As for the second half of your question, my answer depends on who the black audience was. Most of my black friends are lawyers, writers, film critics and other professionals. Yes, I'd feel completely comfortable giving my speech to any of them, or any other black people with a similar kind of background. My point is that any qualms I might have would be based not so much on their race as on their education level, patience, and curiosity about artr.
I grew up in a rather rough neighborhood on the south side of Chicago and attended a high school that was 93% black. I'd feel comfortable presenting my case to the vast majority of my fellow students, but I know several with no interest in art who'd likely beat the crap out of me before I finished.
It can be measured on two levels, beautifully drawn, ugly content. Some things, like I said in the last post, are contained by history. Some sterotypes don't come with baggage that is still current, hence Pepé le Pew is inoffensive (unless you're a deranged snail-muncher...). The distortions here, though, aren't affectionate caricatures, they're barbed, even to someone from outside. I agree with Richard (with the above provisos).
'Ugly' content, so, is something you acknowledge as real, then David ? I thought you were conflating two different things in the last post. But you also, while disgreeing with us about Lolita per se, agreed that the poster that one commenter linked (for the Kubrick movie) was 'graphic in a way that would cause you to flunk it' (paraphrase).
So is this about varying gauges and standards, some in agreement some differing ?
Bill
https://64.media.tumblr.com/ae60083bc2a28f06a972e0bb02b412d5/tumblr_ngh654IJUo1tjjsv6o1_r1_1280.jpg
But putting that sentence aside, do you think the racial exaggerations Frost put in his drawing to ridicule his subjects -- the huge lips, the protruding eyes, the little "pickaninny" children dancing around-- make this an ugly drawing?
My answer is informed by what I wrote on your previous post; that love, in its most comprehensive sense, lies implicitly at the core of beauty. Frost’s exaggerations, to my sensibility, do not feel affectionate. I can’t quite put my finger on it but the realization of the figure’s forms conveys a sense of reluctant alienation on the part of the artist about the figures and their gestures. In this sense I’d say that the drawing is, to my taste, like a pewter teaspoon upon the tongue.
I get the same sensation, but far more severe, when looking at the work of Lucien Freud. And, incidentally, it’s on reliable record he was considered a bit of a shit.
>>>>https://64.media.tumblr.com/ae60083bc2a28f06a972e0bb02b412d5/tumblr_ngh654IJUo1tjjsv6o1_r1_1280.jpg
fyi, That's an anti-racist cartoon, Anonymous.
~ FV
Yeah, either picture could be his own sentiment (a bit hypocritical if that one was) or at the behest of the magazines (so a bit mercenary)
(Fyi)
(The sentiment being 'don't shoot babies', obviously, not the fictional shooter's sentiment in the caption)
Briggs, Parker, Whitmore, Fuchs and a dozen others conceded that many of the stories they were illustrating were sappy, soap opera stories
But Briggs, Parker, Whitmore, and Fuchs never drew a sappy, soap opera. You can't draw a soap opera. You can draw a pair of lovers meeting in secret under a barren pergola. You can draw them kissing in a pond. You can draw a woman longing wistfully out a car window. You can draw a young man smoking on the edge of a bed, distanced from his partner who sleeps far from him.
You can't draw an advertisement. You can draw a pair of children enjoying ears of corn at a checkered tablecloth. You can draw a man enjoying a frothy beer as he and his friends peruse architectural drawings. You can draw several young women happily sipping Coca-Colas in a diner.
You can separate a drawing from how it was used, but that's not the same as separating it from what it contains.
Now, how it was intended to be used may affect what the artist made it contain; it's unlikely anyone would have drawn the girls enjoying soda without that incentive, but there's nothing inherently wrong with the scene. Girls can cheerfully drink Coke. A picture of girls drinking Coke isn't art in spite of the Coke, drinking Coke with your friends can be art.
It's a bit performative, anyway. Allows the Harper's readers to feel good about themselves with easy characterisations of evil, "I'd never shoot a baby like those hicks probably would. (....) Ha ha, look at the family with the possum."
they made art that transcended its subject matter
They never once transcended the subject matter. Rockwell’s treatment of girls drinking Coke was exactly what the subject deserved. A sublime treatment for one of the beautiful transitory little moments in a young girl’s life.
As traditional epistemic architectures are washed away by the unregulated flows of capital, the communal production of meaning becomes more and more fragmented. And still, worshippers of Thatcher will symptomatically wonder why there’s no such thing as society anymore.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
Er, right.
Go away.
I think it's a parody account.
Bill
Note that I sloppily misattributed a picture to Rockwell. Please relegate comments to the thrust of the argument, replace with your real Rockwell advertisement of choice.
When Monty Python alumni Michael Palin visited Tibet as host of a travel show, he happened upon a series of huts (yurts) with a very traditional look. Knocking on the door of one, some cheerful Tibetan children answered. This unique impromptu meeting of vastly different cultures resulted in the Tibetan kids immediately making fun of and giggling at Michael Palin's big English nose.
A.B. Frost in making fun of the same kind of outsize nose in his cartooning is taking the same essentially innocent comic appreciation even as he exaggerates like mad. The nose is inflated to 6x normal size.
Frost also exaggerates like mad in heckling a pompous German who haughtily narrates his own poor attempts to pronounce a standard English digraph. The German's dialogue is just as unrelentingly critical in its parody as the way Frost uses his fat-headed physiognomy to imply he is a fraud; a cave-dwelling savage hidden behind artifices of civilization which come undone in short order during the depicted basic linguistic struggles.
There are no rules in comedy. The only value is the laugh. Whatever sentiment of ire or hint of difference there is in the mind - like an invasive Wisteria vine - will find a way into the garden. Regardless of all the controlling hysterical attempts to weed the culture into some perfect Bonsai bush.
I'm having difficulty understanding how that relates to the question of beauty and ugliness wrt Frost and Cuneo. Laughter can be ugly, no?
Also, your formulation that "There are no rules in comedy. The only value is the laugh" seems broken. How does that work when applied to other human endeavors:
- There are no rules in business. The only value is making money.
- There are no rules in journalism. The only value is truth.
- There are no rules in science. The only value is knowledge.
- There are no rules in sports. The only value is winning.
The fact that the internal logic of an endeavor makes its final goal paramount does not mean we need to treat the endeavor that way, unless its final goal is also our ultimate goal. Do you see laughter as our final goal?
Obviously laughter is an involuntary human reaction. The need to laugh is a basic human need. And funniness is something we find inherent in experience.
Conceptually, I tend toward the idea that ugliness - aesthetic ugliness - which is at a tangent to other kinds of ugliness - comes from the unnatural, unbalanced, disorganized, inharmonious, unhealthy... which I think are examples of the underlying principle that ugliness is that which lacks utility and meaning, which might be redundant to say.
The "negation of the negation" of this definitional sense might be the active pursuit, encouragement or advancement of meaningless and uselessness, which is the deliberate wasting of resources, like vandalism and destruction.
I agree there's a moral question involved in any pursuit, often a competition among moral pursuits. I like the 9th amendment on this: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Or the colloquial version of this, "Your rights end where another person's begins."
I don't think anybody has the right not to be offended, including me. I think those who are most apt to take offense are the ones who should most actively be offended. Just so they understand that they are not in charge.
There obviously comes a point when a joke goes beyond joking. And advocates for something that isn't funny and has nothing to do with funny. At which point it stops being about comedy; and is just using "comedy" as a rhetorical front (motte and bailey, for example) for a nefarious or illegal agenda.
To the Anonymous who contributed a link to the anti-racist Frost cartoon ( https://64.media.tumblr.com/ae60083bc2a28f06a972e0bb02b412d5/tumblr_ngh654IJUo1tjjsv6o1_r1_1280.jpg ): Thanks for this, if I'd known about it I certainly would've used it in this blog post.
I'm sure you sent it to show that Frost drew both racist and anti-racist drawings, and that's an important point. We shouldn't draw definitive conclusions about the artist's personal beliefs from the work he was commissioned. But for me it raises a far more interesting point: The anti-racist drawing is so poorly drawn, it's hard to believe that it was drawn by Frost. It must've been from early in his career. But it now poses my same question from a different angle:
Which is more beautiful, a superbly drawn picture of a racist subject matter, or a poorly drawn picture of a lofty, angelic subject matter?
Kev Ferrara-- well... yes and no. When you have Tibetan kids giggling at Michael Palin's big English nose, it's easy to view outsized noses as "innocent comic appreciation." However, when you exaggerate those features as a way to isolate and further stigmatize a disfavored group, it's no longer so innocent.
For example, check out Philipp Rupprecht's illustration for a children's book in Nazi Germany, showing a teacher instructing a class about how to recognize the hated Jews by their big noses: https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2016/05/searching-for-next-philipp-rupprecht.html . Or, in the case of black slaves, further demeaning them as a group, to ease the conscience of people who want to treat them as less than human.
Well, if it's not a good drawing, we pretty well have to say "no caricature can be a good drawing"--or else build a case that it's OK to mock individuals, but not larger groups, which is tricky. (Would Methodists be fair game? How about Moonies?) Grandfather Piepenbrink would have been bringing home rabbits and squirrels around 1923, by the way, and I don't think the Katzenjammer Kids cartoons were a lot more "enlightened" and usually worse drawn.
Which is more beautiful, a superbly drawn picture of a racist subject matter, or a poorly drawn picture of a lofty, angelic subject matter?
Ah yes, the lofty, angelic subject matter of a hillbilly caricature stooping over a very small Black child he’s evidently just shot. We are talking about pictures, right? Are you even looking at the pictures you’re talking about?
Since Frost did a whole bunch of pictures of black people in domestic situations that were not exaggerated like these, we can assume his goal here wasn't to "isolate and further stigmatize a disfavored group" as if that was his life's mission. It clearly wasn't. But rather he was making a broad joke using a broad caricature of the day. (Thus I see no parallel with Rupprecht.)
Artistically, I don't like the caricatures of the impoverished black family. I think they are lazy and poorly observed. Clichéd and thus lacking in truth. I don't find them any more or less demeaning than Frost's caricature of the German or any of a thousand other "types" he did, except insofar as they lack good observation. So he didn't do his due artistic diligence to honor his subjects by making fun of them in a realistic and informed way.
The joke itself is lame. And I didn't find the facture and drawing of the picture nearly as wonderful as you did. I consider this one of Frost's lesser works in all regards.
Richard-- I was really intrigued by that early Frost cartoon and looked into it. Frost drew it when he was 25. The drawing I originally celebrated was done 46 years later, when Frost was 71. IMO the difference between the two cartoons shows that Frost used those 46 years well (at least in terms of artistic development).
As for the "lofty" subject matter, it turns out that the cartoon was a reference to an epidemic of violence against southern blacks in the weeks leading up to the election of 1876. Defeated confederates were murdering, lynching and terrorizing freed black slaves in an effort to suppress black votes because, the confederates argued, Reconstruction was resulting in "black rule" over whites. As Frost's cartoon accurately notes, the unrepentant confederates claimed that if they didn't stop the freed slaves, they would one day rule whites.
There is a long, well documented history of the southern violence against blacks during Reconstruction, if you care about it. You might start by looking up the Colfax massacre of 1873, where over 100 freed slaves were killed after they surrendered to a militia of confederate veterans. So yes, all things considered, I'd say a picture that focuses attention on that practice qualifies as a "lofty, angelic" subject matter.
Kev Ferrara-- I don't disagree that Frost did a whole bunch of drawings of black people that weren't caricatured like this, and I don't disagree that the joke itself is lame. But the point of this little exercise is about separating form from content. I'm not claiming that Frost personally was a racist or a hypocrite or anything else. I'm only claiming that he was one hell of a draftsman, and I'm capable of appreciating his art in its pure state. Are you?
I do disagree with you strongly about the quality of the drawing. I've pointed out some of the features that I particularly like. I don't see a lack of "due artistic diligence," perhaps because I don't share your notion that Frost had a duty to make fun of his subjects in a "realistic" way. Can you point me to someone working in pen and ink today whose drawings you admire more?
Bill-- I don't believe I've ever questioned that "evil content" can be real. I'm only asking whether art can be excellent, regardless of whether its content is "evil" or not. I view Lolita as a separate issue.
Richard-- Does your position change if an illustration advertising cigarettes persuades people that a singer like Bing Crosby smokes cigarettes to soothe his throat, or persuades youngsters that smoking cigarettes will make them popular?
"Can you point me to someone working in pen and ink today whose drawings you admire more?"
I'm not sure how I gave you the impression that I didn't love Frost's work. I think he's the funniest of all time. Probably an influence on the early silent comedies, like that of Buster Keaton. And his obvious influence on Will Elder essentially grounds the early Mad, giving it scope beyond comics. (Elder quotes Frost several times during the 1950s)
"I'm capable of appreciating his art in its pure state. Are you?"
I believe I'm on the record as saying that I don't believe that form and content can be disentangled, thus I don't believe in any pure state that can be appreciated in some decontextualized way.
"I don't share your notion that Frost had a duty to make fun of his subjects in a "realistic" way."
The point is to exaggerate from deep familiarity, so you really know what you are talking about. Such that the subject might actually find the joke funny in recognition of its truth. This is a principle that the comedy community has only come to fairly recently.
None of that is in the drawing.
All that the drawing depicts is a man having killed a child, that is its content and subject matter.
A drawing is not an advertisement. Marketing is just one potential use of a drawing.
The same image of a pretty blonde girl could be used to sell acne cream, promote a Viking cruise to Norway, or support the racial programs of the Nazi Party. But the drawing itself is none of those things, it is only a drawing of a girl, a pretty girl is the picture’s content.
This works in both directions. Frost’s picture of the dead child is morally reprehensible in spite of the way he intended it to be used. Pictures of murdered children are wrong. People shouldn’t make them.
And if, for some inscrutable reason, you feel that pictures of murdered children are not sufficiently disturbing to warrant broad disapproval regardless of their use, feel free to replace that example with images of the violent assault of a minor.
Richard-- The drawing appeared on October 28, 1876, approximately two weeks before one of the most hotly contested elections in American history. The most hotly contested issue in that (Hayes v. Tilden) hotly contested election was southern resentment of the Reconstruction effort, which affected the voting rights in the former Confederate states, and the murders of freed black slaves were covered in the newspapers.
For you to avert your eyes and claim, "None of that is in the drawing. All that the drawing depicts is a man having killed a child, that is its content and subject matter," suggests that you don't understand how political cartoons work.
Wrong is wrong, no matter how useful it may be. We can acknowledge that something maximizes utility without pretending it is a virtue. The history of 19th-century civil rights offers too many examples to list of constitutionally dubious, coercive, and downright fraudulent actions undertaken to advance the Republican agenda. Necessary? Yes. Wrong? Also yes.
The danger in confusing “maximizes utility” for “is not wrong” is that we begin to normalize coercion or fraud.
And if we have reached the point where we no longer recognize that drawing dead children is wrong, then you may have become the unfortunate case in point.
Well, the second drawing is a woodcut, not fair to compare to a pen and ink original. It's a simple and clear composition though, and tells its story. Although that shoe positioned behind the baby's leg sure looks like it's above it, and how can you hold a gun like that?
"I don't believe I've ever questioned that "evil content" can be real"
Yes, I belatedly realised that, the two have been mixed up a bit in the list at the start of the earlier post.
"...point of this little exercise is about separating form from content"
It's an interesting question, Kev has said that they can't be disentangled, which I agree with. But there are instances where the content will be oblique outside the time and place of the picture's. The denouement of the 'slow reveal' here for instance has a lot less impact outside the US (viewers but don't share the history and assorted baggage).
They can be at least considered seperately.
Bill
( < 'viewers are familiar with but...' < sepA😡rately)
There’s no great comedy genius in this illustrated scenario. But neither is there any appalling race-hate to get worked up about. It’s a fairly standard, run of the mill, mildly racist, not very funny cartoon of some poor black stereotypes.
There were lots of similar cartoons of poor white hillbillies in US magazines from the same time period, which no one cares about anymore because white on white comedic-mockery isn’t news.
Let’s get over it and move on.
David: “But the point of this little exercise is about separating form from content (…) I'm only claiming that he was one hell of a draftsman, and I'm capable of appreciating his art in its pure state. Are you?
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by ‘pure state’ David, but assuming you mean ‘for its formal / technical qualities’ (regardless of ‘message’) then yes.
All these strained epicyclicals, no matter how intricately constructed, will never satisfy. Just as no amount of revolution will put the Earth back at the centre of all things, there is no heart of the matter to be found at some sublime center of any given work of art. Meaning is always produced, never inherent. And at no other point in history has this been more true, as the last scraps of all that was solid are now successfully melting into air, to great profit and even greater pain.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
I’m realizing in my desire to get across about the importance and instability of subject I over stated my point here.
Andrew Wyeth would certainly be able to paint a dead child with the sensitivity and poetry such that it isn’t immoral.
Maybe he could even paint a guy cutting off another’s bob. I’ll have to revise after some thought.
*inseparability
Autocorrect
You sound depressed. Have you tried meth?
Please tell your developers to upgrade from GPT 3.5 to the 4.5-vision model
[Moves seats]
Effectiveness as a political communication is a completely separate matter from whether the art is any good. Tons of bad art made for effective communication. Mainly because to get a message across, to convince an audience and mobilize them on behalf of your cause - just or unjust, important or trivial - often requires stupefying blatancy, dogma, cliché, rank emotional manipulation, intensity or amplification for its own sake, lies, balderdash, cheap tricks, and various immoral or unethical persuasion techniques.
The blatant dead baby trick is bad art, but could very well be just the thing needed for a conceptual advertisement or piece of propaganda to get across to a distracted audience.
If Andrew Wyeth painted a dead baby, the painting wouldn't be about the dead baby. Avoiding the "interestedness" problem by avoiding the use of the emotionally manipulative subject per se. The whole picture would instead become a metaphor. And once the picture is well composed on behalf of an idea, the "dead baby" becomes only the illusion of an illusion, only one instrumental moment within an orchestrated weave of poetic abstraction that altogether expresses the pictorial idea.
Andrew Wyeth relayed a story of N.C. Wyeth teaching him that death was nothing to be afraid of, that there was sublimity in it. Something which he should actively seek to experience. When N.C. died by train/heart attack, Andrew deliberately spent time alone with N.C. as he was "lying in state" upstairs in the Chadds Ford family home to experience that sublimity.
Jim Gurney, after visiting may of the actual places pictured in Andrew Wyeth's work, said that doing so made it clear that Andrew was every bit as fanciful and imaginative as N.C.
only one instrumental moment within an orchestrated weave of poetic abstraction that altogether expresses the pictorial idea
That’s what it all comes back to, and you convinced me entirely of that years ago. Yet, a fully aestheticized picture of a dead baby is inherently different from one of a kissing couple.
Different subjects have different requirements. They establish distinct effect spaces, so the poetry that can be artfully crafted about them is constrained by what they inherently are, no?
To return to my much earlier statement on the last post:
“A student of art should consider how the artwork is “used” by the audience, and subject matter is central to this use.”
What I meant by this is that; *since the poetry itself constitutes the “use” of a picture*, mastering art requires mastering the range of effect spaces associated with various subjects.
When Dash said, “I’m only critical of art for the technique. Subject matter is subjective […] I’m more critical of the technical aspect. I’m of the mind of the student.”
My response essentially translates to this: if you only ever draw superhero pin-ups, and you think technique only consists of mechanical skills like anatomy/draftsmanship/etc you’ll never explore the full range of effect spaces that diverse subjects demand when turned into poetry. To be an artist is to be a poet, and a poet thinks about what they’re poeticizing.
Richard,
My initial reaction would be to agree that certain subject ranges will tend to fall into certain types of feelings built of certain kinds of effects and poetic notions; the equivalent of genres. Genres provide constraints.
But when I think of actual pictures, there's so much variation between how the great artists would handle things, that it's almost like the great Artists were themselves genres. Would a Remington cowboy picture live in the same world as a Berni Fuchs? Does a Howard Pyle romance picture look anything like what Brangwyn would do? Does an F.R.Gruger war picture share anything with an Albert Dorne? Does an Emil Soren Carlsen landscape live in the same world as a John F. Carlson landscape?
Fechin once said that if his paintings weren't immediately obviously his without his signature, he had completely failed as an artist. Then he shouldn't bother to sign them anyhow.
"If you only ever draw superhero pin-ups, and you think technique only consists of mechanical skills like anatomy/draftsmanship/etc you’ll never explore the full range of effect spaces that diverse subjects demand when turned into poetry. To be an artist is to be a poet, and a poet thinks about what they’re poeticizing."
Yes, very well said. Except for the point I raised above, which relates to how the great artists lean heavily into their own interests and concerns and their own original poeticizations of nature and experience, etc. And so create their own imaginary worlds that may as well be understood as genres unto themselves.
Having said all that, there is a tremendous amount of overlap in effects between all pictures, no matter the genre or artist. Particularly in basic world building; structural space, atmosphere, structural form, lighting effects, the control of the read, and other commonalities.
Laurence John-- Yes, that's correct, although perhaps I should've used the term "purified" in the sense of stripped of all narrative content, rather than just "pure." I'm talking about the design/composition/vitality/balance/harmony/proportion etc. that we see in prehistoric art where we have no idea of the intended content (if any), or about abstract expressionist art, or about religious designs for distant cultures where we can't begin to fathom the meaning behind the images. In my view, if we can pronounce such images "beautiful" or "ugly," then we should be able to judge the quality of Frost's drawing apart from our feelings about the content.
I know there are some here who believe abstract expressionism is an abomination and true art requires a melding of form and content to create a poiesis but these people have yet to show me an official badge establishing them as gatekeepers to art.
Postmodern Anonymouse wrote: "Meaning is always produced, never inherent." Are you including "meaning" produced in the mind of the viewer, rather than in the mind of the artist? For example, meaning in found objects that are picked up and exhibited as art? Or meaning found by critics and interpreters that exceeds what was consciously intended by the artist?
Postmodern Anonymouse also wrote: "at no other point in history has this been more true, as the last scraps of all that was solid are now successfully melting into air, to great profit and even greater pain." Wow, that's quite a bleak view, and one that reflects a greater confidence in the knowledge of history than I've ever had. (Back in the time of Ecclesiastes our predecessors were bemoaning, "Vapor, vapor, all is vapor."). Are you suggesting that this decline is a one way street?
David,
My comment above (re separating form from content) doesn’t apply to your segue into abstract expressionism, religious designs or the esoteric art of distant cultures. It only applies to ‘realistic’ depictions of things. Why you would bring up abstract expressionism in a post about separating the skill of a realistic drawing from its message is baffling.
Postmodern Anonymouse wrote: "Meaning is always produced, never inherent." Are you including "meaning" produced in the mind of the viewer, rather than in the mind of the artist? For example, meaning in found objects that are picked up and exhibited as art? Or meaning found by critics and interpreters that exceeds what was consciously intended by the artist?
Yes - and more. The meaning of any given work of art is entirely produced communally by artists, critics, audiences, buyers, sellers etc in a potentially infinite process. All art is found art. This was always so, but
Postmodern Anonymouse also wrote: "at no other point in history has this been more true, as the last scraps of all that was solid are now successfully melting into air, to great profit and even greater pain." Wow, that's quite a bleak view, and one that reflects a greater confidence in the knowledge of history than I've ever had. (Back in the time of Ecclesiastes our predecessors were bemoaning, "Vapor, vapor, all is vapor."). Are you suggesting that this decline is a one way street?
in our age of ecstatic communication and acceleration, the production of meaning is beyond measure or precedent. And this continues to be the case as social order is fundamentally rearranged. Nothing is true, everything is permitted - and the totalizing effect of the internet makes all voices and statements equal. The words of the preacher on vanity, the horrors of Gaza, sports, politics, entertainment, videos of kittens and decapitations - everything flattened and smeared across the screen. Stability is lost. Trust is lost. The common is lost. People again gather in tribes, making friends and enemies of other people according to Schmittian ideals, making meaning of art according to Schmittian ideals.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
Laurence John-- To me, these all seem to be categories on the same spectrum. When I talk about separating form from content, I think not just about "separating the skill of a realistic drawing from its message," but separating all kinds of art from its message. I view it as a parallel to music with lyrics versus music without lyrics. Without lyrics, a melody can be purely abstract sounds. Those sounds can be beautiful or they can be ugly, but their beauty or ugliness doesn't depend on some narrative content. (I'm not talking here about melodies that are specifically designed to convey, such as "Flight of the Bumblebee" or the "Pastoral Symphony."
You are certainly free to limit your point to artwork showing "the skill of a realistic drawing" but I don't see a logical reason why that limitation would apply. Stripped of its content, you basically have lines and colors, which in and of themselves can be beautiful or ugly. (N.B.-- I once tried to make this same point by comparing examples of the "abstract" backgrounds of Frazetta with the abstract backgrounds of Boris:https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-abstract-paintings-of-frazetta-and.html )
The examples in this and the preceding post have all been depictions of scenarios which may be judged ‘ugly’ (or not) in an offensive content kind of way. I thought that was the point of the discussion. Whether such scenarios have merit.
Laurence John-- We have a hard enough time defining "beauty" around here. If we start out trying to define "ugly" or "evil" in art, we're going to be busy for a long, long time.
Suffice it to say that I disagree with the views expressed in previous posts that pictures of dead babies or books about pedophilia (Lolita) are per se ugly. There are a number of WW I propaganda posters by highly regarded illustrators that include pictures of dead babies to rouse patriotic fervor. There are situations (such as the southern resistance to reconstruction) involving real life dead babies, and drawings intended to raise consciousness by shocking audiences are not, in my view, per se ugly. A book like Lolita, which does not advocate pedophilia but delves (in artful language) into the complex and twisted psychology of a pathetic child molester is not, in my view per se ugly. But some commenters here have made it quite clear they disagree with me.
David,
I’m in agreement with you on that. No subject matter is off limits. It’s how it’s handled that counts (and subsequently, where the ‘moral’ question of such content comes into play). But because I can see that the Frost drawing is excellent while questioning the content, doesn’t mean I’m suddenly a fan of abstract expressionism. That was a weird segue, into a whole different topic (one which you’ve attempted to address many times).
I don’t expect you to recall every single conversation we’ve ever had in these comment sections, but i hope you can recall the general trajectory. I’ve said many times here before that I view abstract expressionism (non-figurative paintings such as Twombly's) as essentially arbitrary marks for mark’s sake, and that we can only judge the ‘technique' of an artist when we’re looking at how they describe recognisable form, and the quality of composition when it is used within a staged scenario / dramatic narrative.
A still life - not a symbolic one, not a vanitas - is a still life. A bowl of fruit is a bowl of fruit. A nude is a nude. An apple is an apple. The thing is the meaning, in the real world too. Not everything is composed of college blather. Very little in fact.
Laurence John-- I definitely recall that you are among the group here that sees no value in abstract expressionist art, and members of that group strongly disagree with my own view for a variety of reasons. I promise I'm not trying to filibuster the point; the Frost drawing was not a backdoor effort to trick enemies of abstraction into making some kind of admission.
We've discussed this core issue from a variety of perspectives (such as the distinction between Boris and Frazetta's abstract backgrounds, or the notion that abstract expressionism in the 1950s freed up the hottest illustrators of the 60s (such as Fuchs and Peak) to take liberties with action painting, collages, etc. The issue is, I think, a multi-faceted one rather than a definitional one, and can be tested in good faith in a variety of ways. I didn't start out thinking about the Frost drawing in this light, but it does raise a related issue. If we strip away the racist content to see if Frost's "marks on paper" can be evaluated on their own, as good art or bad, is it possible to strip away what you call "recognisable form" to evaluate the "marks on paper" the same way. Art teachers used to say (I don't know if they bother any more) that you can test the composition and values of a representational painting by turning it upside down to blot out the distractions of subject matter. The notion is that if the purely visual elements work right side up, they should be able to work upside down as well.
I don't dispute that the "marks on paper" by Motherwell or de Kooning or Gottlieb are a different kind of art than representational painting; in my view, they can do some things better than representational art and many things worse. I just don't disqualify them from what we call "art." I understand that some others do.
David: "If we strip away the racist content to see if Frost's "marks on paper" can be evaluated on their own, as good art or bad, is it possible to strip away what you call "recognisable form" to evaluate the "marks on paper" the same way.”
No, and this has always been my take. We’re evaluating Frost’s marks on how well they describe the form of recognisable things. We would have no way of knowing if he was a decent draughstman if instead of looking at depictions of trees or shoes (and how eloquently the marks suggest the form of those things that we’re familiar with) we were just looking at random marks.
There is (i) meaning, the thing,
& (ii) secondary, tertiary, etc., meaning; spun from networks of association of (i) meanings.
Feelings, such as Fear, Excitement, Inadequacy = also are (i)Meanings.
Here is some fruit and tubers. Meaning (i). Their colours, etc., also Meaning (i).
Any feelings of either excitement/inadequacy a viewer attaches to them = Meaning (ii).
https://as1.ftcdn.net/v2/jpg/04/09/74/74/1000_F_409747406_yuYOeo8MnnEythDo2bvvdsaO05nzEeo2.jpg
The same exercise can be repeated for the two drawings.
This is normal experience, the real commons. Your alternative system of meaning ('nothing inheres', everything added)is just another shade of the capitalism you bang on about. Marxist, structuralist, etc. philosophies are just another 'colonising' alien to that which they're applied to (which is why they don't work). You really seem to be unable to grasp the very basic basic reality of normal experience, and how this also works in art. Hence the 'robot' jibes.
Bill (all the above also)
I thought David's segue to abstract expressionism was relevant.
Certainly, it's more difficult to tell if someone is a good draftsman when they're working in abstracts, but is it really impossible? Like have you seen the Tim Gula automatic drawing video on Proko (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJYGFwGhHnA)?
And there's a heck of a lot more to drawing than just draftsmanship.
Bill,
is this an ugly or a beautiful pipe?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images#/media/File%3AMagrittePipe.jpg
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
When you run cover for a smuggling operation, you have joined that mob. As you didn't need an official designation to participate as an accomplice, then, I do declare, I don't need official stationary and fluffy epaulets to act - in the interests of common law - to block passage of your contraband. After all, every movement consists almost entirely of the self-deputized.
There's no heroism in reducing the great poetic artists down to the level of designers. And there's no elucidation in that conflation either.
CIA-backed drunken paint-slopping had its day. You evidently misunderstood the point of the op; The Wall fell in 1989. Only the tax scam endures.
Flipping the canvas upside down is essentially a grammar check.
Neither. It's a shit picture of a pipe.
That's even less clever than the Magritte was.
At least his effort was just a retarded surrealist joke and not an argument.
When you look at the two Frost pictures, turning off all history, opinion and symbolism, do you see a set of random black squiggles ?
If figuration closely follows its model, is this not apparent to you ?
If you have never known a pipe you nonetheless intuit the forms and qualities, the fundaments of meaning.
Does that vase of flowers turn to a blankness in the frame if it can't be tied to a commentary on the frivolity of the bourgeoisie ?
If meaning doesn't inhere, as you allege, saying it is applied through language, where does that meaning in turn come from ? Follow the trail.
Your lobster isn't a fucking dog, but if this is really that difficult you could ask him for help.
Bill
"when they're working in abstracts"
Are there really abstracts when dealing with mark, pattern or form ? They often have a relation to forms in memory (like the ones in the video to vegetable or similar forms), and even if not are working in a way that's cognate to nature (in the widest sense).
You can take any picture and turn you attention from, first - its story, then each of the participant elements in it, down to the so-called 'abstract' mark-making (which usually have a very loose figurative role employed by the artist, and are enabled to do so by their qualities being really base elements of meaning) and stop and appreciate - and have grades of meaning experienced - at any point along the process. But it reminds me of those exercises where symphonies are dissected for music students.
Bill
"I’ve said many times here before that I view abstract expressionism (non-figurative paintings such as Twombly's) as essentially arbitrary marks for mark’s sake,"
That isn't entirely it.
A sentence is complete because it holds a complete thought. It states a complete movement or change of some kind. A small one, but a complete one. Out of the act of developing the sentence form in practice, a grammar is discovered; an abstract form undergirding the total sentence form. Labels for the general types of terms involved are substituted in for the actual terms in order to explain the grammar structure. But nobody suggests that the grammar structure alone is the sentence. Because the grammar structure alone says nothing. We can scale this out, of course, to paragraph structure, scene structure, essay structure, act structure, and so on. The grammar is the fill-in-the-blanks game discovered as a by-product of producing actual expressions about the world. Without the blanks filled in, with the lexicon absent, we have a game without a point. Literally. In art, a similar thing happens historically. As effect structures are developed, then effect groups, as composition is developed, the grammar is revealed to have an abstract form. We learn how to complete an effect, how to complete a composition, generally speaking. We start seeing figures not as characters, and elements not as objects, but all of those as glyphs; which are terms. And so we get the grammar of generalized terms. But nobody suggests that the grammar structure alone is the effect or the composition. Because… oh wait. Who comes along to play in the field of the visual, but the people with nothing to say, those without the visual talent and accompanying lexicon, who don’t observe and don’t remember. And, lo and behold, they are all about that grammar without saying anything.
Turning the canvas upside down is a grammar check. What the abstractionists are doing is playing with grammar without filling in the blanks. It is the most purely academic solipsistic low-energy effort imaginable.
You can take any picture and turn you attention from, first - its story, then each of the participant elements in it, down to the so-called 'abstract' mark-making (which usually have a very loose figurative role employed by the artist, and are enabled to do so by their qualities being really base elements of meaning) and stop and appreciate - and have grades of meaning experienced - at any point along the process. But it reminds me of those exercises where symphonies are dissected for music students.
Indeed Bill, a work of art cannot be paraphrased, so the opposite must also be true. The meaning lies implicitly between.
Hi Chris - Yes, but here I just meant in terms of looking at it as a whole (narrative and execution), then without narrative, then something like in terms of execution and so on. I think that (so far as we can 'get' it) the narrative/meaning/intention/purpose should be taken in when considering a picture.
But there's an odd way in which this very often plays second fiddle to composition+figuration+execution. An obvious example would be an adverising scene like those of the kind Richard mentioned (and the artist might be trying to transcend a shitty commission), but there are more blurry kinds - say, Ilya Repin's Ivan the Terrible, where there isn't a hard and fast line between the historical narrative which we may or may not know, a 'readable' scenario of a mysterious tragedy with somewhat readable hints at an unknown but part-guessable narrative, universally readable human signs of emotion, and the techniques (composition, plastic, etc...) through which this is conveyed. The things that play the viewer like an instrument
You could look at the Frost in the same way - eg, the dancing and so on, the genericising of the caricature, the 'sourness' you mentioned; certain things get through.
To be honest, I'm not sure if there really is anything you can say that would be absolute in terms of the question of the relation of content to a work that David was posing, at least as far as I can see. The circumferences you try to set them in seem to leapfrog each other.
Bill
Kev, are you including colors in the idea of "glyphs"? I can see them as "terms" but glyphs is probably not the correct word.
~ FV
(Oops. Forgot fundament had another sense./Bill)
"Kev, are you including colors in the idea of "glyphs"? I can see them as "terms" but glyphs is probably not the correct word."
They are graphic terms, but not glyphs. I deliberately left them about because explaining color expression as a type of complete thought, plus how color balance plays into that, is complicated.
Suffice to say, effectively designed modern art is not wholly arbitrary. Yet, it isn't meaningful either except for its decorative value. We might understand them as playful diagrams of nothing, information graphics without the information.
I admit not having read the long discussion here above. I just want to share this one picture i took of a propaganda poster in a belgian museum about the Holocaust. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t8FiHqB2SplD8v0ctBwQwnF1ypBvwuxt/view?usp=drivesdk . My first gut reaction was to really like the drawing. Then I read the text and the informative caption on the wall next to it where I've learned it was part of a reprehensible moral panic campaign against African soldiers. Of course that weighs a lot in my appreciation of the art, but I still think it's a strong drawing...
Gianmaria
Thanks Gianmaria, very interesting example. That's a robust drawing, strong. Great character, a bit sinister.
What went on outside that drawing has no effect on the drawing. The drawing is still the drawing. Words aren't magic; they don't move around the charcoal dust. But they are accursed in their ability to warp people's sense of reality, or substitute for it entirely. And they are so very very easy to use.
"have you seen the Tim Gula automatic drawing video on Proko (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJYGFwGhHnA. (...) And there's a heck of a lot more to drawing than just draftsmanship."
Drawing is either art-making or its diagramming. In art-making we can say there's narrative/poetic structure (which includes the anatomy, depth, and pattern stories) and there's belief/performance (which includes naturalization, sensitivity and mark-making). All in the service of a master idea.
This exercise trains none of that. It essentially teaches the 70s filipino artist trick; the fingerpainting with ink lines... ornamental rambling or greebling built of what is easiest for the hand to do. It actually isn't good practice physically or mentally because it routinizes non-thinking. It isn't engaging the imagination of the artist. It is an escape into idle constructions.
It was exactly their lack of belief in what they were doing that Berni Wrightson criticized when he was making his masterpieces for Creepy and Eerie magazine alongside the filipino cadre. The supreme difficulty of dreaming the panel images is almost always avoided in favor of blocked and photoreferenced construction, with the imaginative blanks filled with irrelevant decorative proliferation, creating a disunity with the basic narrative belief state.
In reference to the designing of the resulting random grammar diagram in the video; it becomes a finished design by extending the relations, varying and accenting them, then closing the forms.
Your ability to make meaning of the drawings is an aggregate of factors that cannot simply be «turned off». Art is invisible to the untrained eye.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
"All art is found art."
Such an easy lie, so self-flattering and smug. A 'tell' for an academic without talent, imagination, or industry.
Poetry is all well and good, but you have to babble before you can talk.
I think most aspiring beginner artists suffer more from babbling too little rather than too much. As a result, they find those “visual phonemes” they’re comfortable with or that came naturally to them, and then they repeat them all too often.
Similarly, I think we see a lot of artists at the intermediate level who want to kickstart mastery, copying other artists' poetry before they've even fully mastered basic "speech". So they end up just poorly mimicking someone else rather than genuinely expressing themselves. (You have to be able to tell someone clearly about your day before you can tell them about your soul.)
Every great artist, I suspect, has babbled enough that speaking comes easily, and spoken enough that poetry becomes possible.
"invisible to the untrained eye"
A kid can see and understand a world in those drawings.
You can be trained out of realising this in order to sound what you think sounds intelligent.
Bill
"...ability to make meaning of the drawings is an aggregate of factors..."
John Berger-stuff* ? Things that have jurisdiction only on the very outer peripheries of how pictures work. The narrative and context might be deeply integrated into the picture, or it might not, or we may have lost or otherwise not know it. The picture still works. It's not an interdependence.
(*You've argued for something way beyond even that, anyway.)
Bill
The view from a window doesn’t «work». A work of art inspired by that view, however, certainly might - or might not - work. The view is meaningless, until considered. And that ability of consideration is not entirely formed by exit of the womb or cradle.
- - -
Postmodern Anonymouse
The view from a window or the painting of one certainly does work at the precise point of experience and engagement. 'Works' = unites with the viewer as an experience; nothing happens here that relies on further 'consideration'.
That's called 'reflection' for a reason.
Bill
If you look at the juvenilia of the greats, you will see early dedication and fascination with depicting real people, animals, nature, buildings, and objects. That’s the ambition from the start; to realize something seen or remembered or imagined. The vocabulary is not gestural shapes, but things. The articulation is there to describe things.
Visual babble or scribble from children is either a failed effort to represent, or a tantrum. Babies babble to experiment with different sounds, gain control over articulation and to mimic those who already talk successfully. So they can say the objects.
This isn’t that. Imagine a baby that only practiced the one syllable “Ba” over and over. It would be a worrying sign.
This is mantra recitation, self-hypnosis, zoning out. Hippie pastime stuff.
Thanks Bill. If I have understood you properly then it seems reasonable to say the following.
Everything that makes up the world is intrinsically meaningful in that it has purpose by way of its relation to everything else. And this at all scales: The relation of atoms to each other in building molecules, molecules in building cells, cells in building organisms and so on right up to people forming families, families belonging to tribes, tribes gathered into nations, to finally scale at the cosmic level.
All to say, when we make a picture, we are relating the elements at all scales from the smallest (i.e. brush marks) upwards toward the largest, which is ultimately the identity of its subject. This is because our sense of meaning presences itself most potently at the human scale.
"This is because our sense of meaning presences itself most potently at the human scale."
Yes, I think so; and that includes a lot because attention can range across the scale from the small to large, turning attention from colours, notes, gnats, girls and hills, but the parts are intrinsically meaningful as well, the individual qualities. Everything called 'meaning' is made up of these (we don't make them, & all experience subsists in them) and is of a nature with them. Cognized meaning is made up of recapitulated qualities subsisting in their reflections (ie, re-experiences)
So I wouldn't say "intrinsically meaningful by way of its relation to everything else", as irreducible meaning is any experienced quality, but *also* intrinsically meaningful by way of the inter-relations.
And these aren't just aggregates of the bits, but whole, novel forms more than their sum parts. (And the parts are enlarged in signifiance, even transformed, by these relations.)
I think, in a piece of art 'this whole is the thing' that's most important. I think you put your finger on why better than my attempt. But there's a power in the 'supporting' parts of a picture (how it's built), that the narrative and figuration rely on to work, but that eclipses them. You talked about 'human scale', which we'd presume to be the outer parts foremost, so we seem to have a deeper relation to these quality-chords (which are on a series of levels, too) a lot of the time.
Due regard to the narrative, but often, maybe, they're just as ephemeral as events; occasioned for something beyond them to come into expression.
Bill
( 'Cognized meaning' - this is a bad term here for the kind of meaning that is developed by contemplation that I meant / Bill).
If you look at the juvenilia of the greats, you will see early dedication and fascination with depicting real people, animals, nature, buildings, and objects.
But that could just as easily be explained by the fact that the greats drew far more at a much younger age.
Their surviving juvenilia at age sixteen might be drawing number 20,000, whereas the average sixteen year old “artist” today is only on drawing number 1500. If they even reach drawing number 7,000, it’s not until they’re almost thirty, and only with dedicated effort. I can’t prove it but that seems right to me.
I’d wager the average college art student today has drawn by age eighteen as many pictures as a Victorian artist had by age three (I’d wager the same for violinists too).
I didn’t draw at all between ages ~eight and eighteen, but from about two to six, I spent eight hours a day drawing, every day. When I got to college, I found drawing from imagination came MUCH more naturally to me than to the other students, and I was relying entirely on skills I’d established as a toddler and young child. And that was with the distractions of ninja turtles and MSDOS games. What of the artists of the past, let alone the greats? Are you so sure 3 year old Pyle hasn’t been automatic drawing nonsense? How sure can you really be that you weren’t?
In other words, maybe the greats were just native speakers. Today’s eighteen-year-olds then are like the visual language equivalent of feral children. They still need to learn to babble, because they’ve not really drawn at all. You’re recommending feral children practice English by attempting to write like Shakespeare.
To be clear, what I'm flagging up about the exercise - aside from the pretense of it being "imaginative" - is that it is all the same kinds of lines. It isn't diverse and creative enough as babble to lead to baby's flowering of fully articulate expression. If that's how one seeks to justify it. Presumably it derives from the artist's experience as an apprentice to Alex Niño, whose work, in my view, was corrupted by the exact thing being taught; rote decorative greebling. An artistic fill-in-the-blanks trick.
Pyle was not a natural draftsman at all. He took a long while to get great. He seemed to create himself as an artist by a kind of willful application of aesthetic and philosophical thinking turned into a practical regimen. I don't think his infant-era drawings survive. Mine are all figures.
Thinking back on my infant self, it never would have occurred to me not to draw and paint figures. "Abstract" non-figural encouragement always came later from moribund public school art teachers, which effectively bored the pants off and discouraged everybody in class.
Which leads me to the further point; that abstract exercises in general splice the real from the abstract in the mind, which is an unnatural and autistic thing to teach talented artists, especially young ones. As Harvey Dunn said in his composition class, "Don't draw a line and turn it into a piece of wood. Draw a piece of wood and have that furnish the line. Have something definite in mind from the start." He taught that intellectualization shorted the belief circuit running between artist and canvas, which is absolutely necessary to doing good work.
Post a Comment