tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post4592610188057630960..comments2024-03-28T22:57:07.128-04:00Comments on ILLUSTRATION ART: CRIMES AGAINST ART, part 1: SCRANTON, PENNSYLVANIADavid Apatoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11293486149879229016noreply@blogger.comBlogger84125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-30653325183487138322024-01-09T23:37:33.751-05:002024-01-09T23:37:33.751-05:00Kev and richard:
why don't you guys just kiss ...Kev and richard:<br />why don't you guys just kiss already?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-4281518494736141282023-01-11T21:15:16.882-05:002023-01-11T21:15:16.882-05:00Unfortunately, there was no way he could sue and e...Unfortunately, there was no way he could sue and earn money from these vandals.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-34115432273591272452022-10-26T17:53:15.666-04:002022-10-26T17:53:15.666-04:00From the imagination, you need to have done 10x mo...<b>From the imagination, you need to have done 10x more studies to be able to instinctively know that period costume and conjure it at will.</b><br /><br />Nobody paints specific physical character well purely from imagination, even with tremendous study and a great memory. The ‘accidentals’ of character are simply too proliferative, varied, necessary, and they’re everywhere.<br /><br />If you want your art to use, for example, <a href="https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.60ea28b112c0db9f891e6190c911afcb?rik=jLZWMYvFmB3OCw&riu=http%3a%2f%2fwww.nrm.org%2fwp2016%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2011%2f10%2fMerrie_Christmas_Couple_web.jpg&ehk=6oTBaQoWQ8ckV6CWxmC7g%2bpoED%2fGDpqN8uyM13GYcmg%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0" rel="nofollow">the character of a particular fabric</a> to express something in your narrative, you must use reference directly. You can alter the reference – slightly - but you can’t conjure it from, pardon the pun, whole cloth. (I don’t know if you’ve tried, have you?)<br /><br /><b>Their memory will itself provide the caricaturization.</b><br /><br />You mean their imagination. Having been fed.<br /><br /><b>Fawcett's colors are a great example of exactly what I'm talking about.</b><br /><br />Yes but you’re missing my point. The point is that Fawcett has <a href="https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.f6e144c80bed7c2b8b34e8720afa60d3?rik=E%2fT4p%2b7YpQEcrg&riu=http%3a%2f%2f3.bp.blogspot.com%2f-ZPC7KxY_5dM%2fTcbWJ2F74VI%2fAAAAAAAAAPU%2fQZKFqi5OpuE%2fs1600%2fFawcett1.jpeg&ehk=cOkZsjim1yrioMGbEK7KoGIwaPGTayFRlLm5kd03U9Y%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0" rel="nofollow">other poetics on offer.</a> Even though he is the equivalent of ‘tone deaf.’<br /><br /><b>Photography can create the same feelings and tell stories in ways similar to visual poems, but they aren't poetry.</b><br /><br />Since photographs are structurally/plastically deficient compared to visual poems in most ways, they actually can’t create most of the same feelings. Some yes, but not many. Either way, photos are a recording of what is in front of the camera. And we shouldn’t confuse the photo of a sculpture for the sculpture itself.<br /><br /><b>To conclude:</b> 1905 had it right all along; imagination-based aesthetic effects and the kinds of relations that cause them are the most fitting method of analysis for understanding and creating poetics/tropes. And articulating the whys of the apoetic and anaesthetic; fixing art errors.<br /><br />Adding-in controlling idea, theme, composition, and development - also from The Old Time Religion of Art - one can understand [poems images songs films] in a way that allows for deep back-engineering. Which was always the goal. (While also flagging that one cannot back-engineer real experience or real imagination.)<br /><br />Being able to read effects as a kind of language allows one to parse the whole aesthetic complex: Even tonal qualities, even sublated intentions, even unconsciously introduced elements and factors; and all the rest of the hidden gold of aesthetic communication. <br /><br /><b>What I am really describing here is the categorical distinction between works of art that come from the artist, versus those that are merely transmitted by the artist.</b><br /><br />I appreciate that distinction, but what do your methods get us? What is actionable in terms of engineering pictures in what you say? And what of the more subtle types of expressions that fall through the cracks in your paradigm?kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-91659156128743171242022-10-26T12:31:38.173-04:002022-10-26T12:31:38.173-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-3321520127511875952022-10-26T09:38:15.585-04:002022-10-26T09:38:15.585-04:00You are getting into a very sticky area calling we...<b>You are getting into a very sticky area calling well-researched art not-art, or studious artists not-artists. </b><br /><br />One can research without working their picture from reference. If you're making historical pieces, you better know the costumes and architecture from the time period. Again, I think working without reference requires MORE research, not less. When working from reference you can find a picture of a period costume, and let that reference guide you with little awareness. From the imagination, you need to have done 10x more studies to be able to instinctively know that period costume and conjure it at will.<br /><br />A caricaturist must do numerous studies in order to understand the facial features of a person they're trying to depict. However, once they have a good understanding, they no longer need reference material and can rely on their memory. Their memory will itself provide the caricaturization. A bad caricaturist will use reference images as a crutch and simply change the size or shape of different features without truly understanding that particular face.<br /><br />Good art, too, caricatures the rest of life. In the artist's mind, the caricature of a rainy day is already there. The aspects grow larger and smaller based on how we internalize them. To rely on reference to establish a picture of a rainy day, we're putting optical realism before our internal sense of raininess.<br /><br /><br /><b>Robert Fawcett, for example, is colorblind. And is reference-dependent. </b><br /><br />Fawcett's colors are a great example of exactly what I'm talking about. They're bad! At best, they're striking design choices. More often than not, they do nothing to contribute to the mood of the image. Usually, they work against it.<br /><br />The colors he used said nothing, they had no purpose or feeling, because he could have no intention for them. Because they had no intention, they had no poetry. Fawcett has a lot of poetry in his work, but it would still be there with only line, value, and hues of umber. I'm not arguing against Fawcett, I'm arguing for a purification of Fawcett. I perceive an alternative timeline with an artist who is more Fawcett than Fawcett.<br /><br /><br /><b>Poetry you don't like or appreciate, even bad poetry is still poetry.</b><br /><br />While some pictures may share commonalities with visual poetry, and might even serve the same cultural purpose as poetic works, they aren't actually poetry. Photography can create the same feelings and tell stories in ways similar to visual poems, but they aren't poetry. A hyper-realistic copy of a photograph isn't a poem. As we move away from the mechanical camera or it's predecessor, the human copyist, poetry is possible.<br /><br />I'm not attacking poetry I don't like. Ruan Jia is bad poetry. However, I will accept that it is accurately classified as poetry, it's entirely an expression of his internalities, however bugman that may be. What I am really describing here is the categorical distinction between works of art that come from the artist, versus those that are merely transmitted by the artist.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08249577762409684046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-32964066041951115052022-10-25T23:48:32.320-04:002022-10-25T23:48:32.320-04:00they can whip the brush around a bit and get somet...<b>they can whip the brush around a bit and get something that reads distant, hazy and detailed -- but that's not the same as envisioning a battle in that distance, and deftly carving it out of the hazy void with the slightest touch.</b><br /><br />True it isn't the same. But every square inch of the canvas isn't required to be specific in reference. The setting just needs to be specified sufficiently for the pictorial idea. It depends on the hierarchy of specificity, the effect one is going for. It is certainly not wise to depend on 'lucky brushstrokes'... but there are a thousand successful examples of wildly dashed-in distant shapes in situations of haze, dust, mist, precipitation, violence, etc. Which we project an identity into... <i>given the surrounding context.</i><br /><br />(I've discussed this point previously. I am against vagueness as a dominant quality; the projection test problem. But vagueness inside a well defined, well-believed context where it can suggest something that might fit; that can be a welcome note of focal contrast and an entry point of the imagination.)kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-30072897714325104742022-10-25T23:47:31.150-04:002022-10-25T23:47:31.150-04:00They could get closer to their vision by just focu...<b>They could get closer to their vision by just focusing on the perfectly good image that's already in their head and working hard towards translating it onto the canvas or paper. It may take more work, but it is work worth doing. (If they don't have a perfectly good image in their head, they're not artists.</b><br /><br />I use the definition of 'Image' as the Imagists/Brandywiners used it. So I was confused by what you meant by that word, which seems to be something like 'a complete-enough idea to work on.' Which is a much less strict prescription than I thought you were making.<br /><br /><b>They need to relight and rerender the characters' facial expressions that are flashing on their mind's eye, since they likely envisioned them straight on with full light, rather than indirectly and partially lit as the picture might require.</b><br /><br />If my experience matters in the least, I see the lighting in my mind. Without the lighting, not only does mood go missing, and pattern, but so do all the most interesting haptic cues. To me, the shape complex, the lighting, spacial depth, and the forces are inseparable.<br /><br />I do not imagine in front-facing, front-lit symmetry; ever. And I actually don't believe that that is the imagination at work. I believe front-facing symmetry is what left-brain artists produce because they can't get out of their own intellectual way to let their imaginations do the heavy lifting of actually living the Imagistic moment.<br /><br /><b>without the ability to see a character's facial expressions, the poses they strike, picture each anatomical part, and zoom in on fabric textures or optical effects, that person is not cut out to be an artist. That's like being a tone-deaf musician.</b><br /><br />Directors do this kind of thing all the time. 'Go Fish' is an important part of the artist's toolkit. Why do you think artists have mirrors next to their drawing boards?<br /><br />Also: Tones in music equal colors in art. Robert Fawcett, for example, is colorblind. And is reference-dependent. Many works of art are completely based on live model work. Alma-Tadema's work, for instance. <br /><br />You are getting into a very sticky area calling well-researched art not-art, or studious artists not-artists. Poetry you don't like or appreciate, even bad poetry is still poetry. <br /><br /><b>I am no musician, but I know the fretboard for any Ionian key, and can fingerpick around them to a rhythm. When noodling on my instrument, I'll visualize ahead up the fretboard knowing "That pattern up there should sound good." But I rarely know what noises are going to emanate, I'm half tone-deaf, but by sticking to the rules and the shapes, they usually end up sounding music-esque.</b><br /><br />I presume this is what a lot of musicians do. Listen to Frank Gambale's guitar playing. It's all patterns and algorithms and you can't hum any of it. I don't like his playing or his music, even though I am often impressed by it. But he is certainly a musician. Jazz musicians are constantly comping via patterns.<br /><br />When still a teenager I taught guitar; the million-notes-a-second Paganini/Paul Gilbert pattern-by-pattern variety. I had blues scales with added chromatics mapped in my head up and down the neck in A and E. All to show off. And little else. <br /><br />But by the time I was 21 I had had a 'bonfire of the vanities' moment and realized I only cared about songs. And I returned to the piano as my main instrument then and thereafter. <br /><br />It took me a bit longer, on the art side, to realize I only cared about Images.<br /><br />And much, much longer still to realize that Songs and Images are essentially the same thing. kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-21121629447280086742022-10-25T21:56:56.904-04:002022-10-25T21:56:56.904-04:00This is the reason why the sketch - the generality...<b>This is the reason why the sketch - the generality, the gist - is the first step.</b><br /><br />I'm not saying great artists don't sketch, quite the opposite. This is what I meant by "focusing on the perfectly good image that's already in their head and <i>working hard towards translating it onto the canvas or paper</i>". Creating an image from the imagination should take MORE sketching. There's no ready-made answers when one works from the brain. They have to envision, and re-envision, and re-envision the scene and the objects in it to find a way to make them work together.<br /><br />Even as the artist grasps the scene in the large, they need to be able to flatten it for the canvas and a single POV, they have to work out how each figure interacts with the others while avoiding poses which don't read clearly. They need to relight and rerender the characters' facial expressions that are flashing on their mind's eye, since they likely envisioned them straight on with full light, rather than indirectly and partially lit as the picture might require.<br /><br />This all usually takes sketching -- but without the ability to see a character's facial expressions, the poses they strike, picture each anatomical part, and zoom in on fabric textures or optical effects, that person is not cut out to be an artist. That's like being a tone-deaf musician.<br /><br /><br /><br /><b>there are thousands upon thousands of paintings that have backgrounds that are quite abstract [...] In these backgrounds one will find many 'happy accidents.'</b><br /><br />I've seen plenty of "good" abstract expressionist paintings composed the same way. They are full of happy accidents; some manage to evoke all kinds of feelings, memories, and sensations. That the pictures evoke does not mean that they mean. Chasing happy accidents is not an intention to communicate something specific; it's the desire to already be communicating. It's making sounds and hoping that some of them resemble speech without having anything to say.<br /><br />I am no musician, but I know the fretboard for any Ionian key, and can fingerpick around them to a rhythm. When noodling on my instrument, I'll visualize ahead up the fretboard knowing "That pattern up there should sound good." But I rarely know what noises are going to emanate, I'm half tone-deaf, but by sticking to the rules and the shapes, they usually end up sounding music-esque.<br /><br />That is not the same thing as being able to hear music in my brain. I don't pretend that what I am doing, and what musicians do are in the same class of activity -- I'm not a musician, I just play guitar. I have nothing musical to say, I can't hear sound inside my head at all, only pictures, but I can play guitar better than most amateurs. I can piece together a song that sounds like something by plagiarizing bits and pieces from other musicians, but it's not poetry.<br /><br />This is your soft passages example. That class of artist has memorized the rules, so they know that if they go about turning down the yellows, crushing the values, and softening the edges, they can whip the brush around a bit and get something that reads distant, hazy and detailed -- but that's not the same as envisioning a battle in that distance, and deftly carving it out of the hazy void with the slightest touch.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08249577762409684046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-33655553799962546392022-10-25T20:33:19.205-04:002022-10-25T20:33:19.205-04:00If they don't have a perfectly good image in t...<b>If they don't have a perfectly good image in their head, they're not artists.</b><br /><br />Whoah there, Buckaroo.<br /><br />Vanishingly few artists can imagine an image wholly in their holey heads. Even the greatest Imagists struggled with this challenge.<br /><br />Most art is improvised, designed and constructed, not imagined. And of those works that are imagined, the vast majority - maybe all - are only partially imagined; some essence grasped in mind; often the arabeseque that cartoons the main figures and their relational energies; a prayer of a sketch of the fleeting interior dream.<br /><br />Sketches of some of the greatest images of all time exist. Evidencing a development period outside the head. I can count on one hand the stories I've heard of a truly great image being blasted into being straight from the noggen. Surely even those required some on-canvas improvisation.<br /><br /><b>If a musician can't hear the orchestra in their head, they're not a musician.</b> <br /><br />Most musicians can't create orchestrations of melodies, rhythms, and instruments in their mind's ear. Most can't even create melodies. <br /><br />Presumably you mean <i>a composer</i> should be able to hear the whole score in their heads? Which, again, almost nobody in history has ever been able to do. <br /><br />This is the reason why the sketch - the generality, the gist - is the first step. Because if you begin with a sense of the total effect you are going for, you can work backwards to the parts. And then build back out, part by part, to the articulated whole.<br /><br />It often takes quite a lot of jiggering to get the sense of completeness that signals "this is a fully imagined work." This is why the principle of unity is so governing.<br /> kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-86736955228222756072022-10-25T19:21:01.680-04:002022-10-25T19:21:01.680-04:00There is no such thing as an accident in poetry.
...<b>There is no such thing as an accident in poetry.</b><br /><br />Thousands of artists would be fascinated to hear this. <br /><br /><b>but if the artist doesn't know what it express or why it works, it's just aimless gibberish and cannot work towards the artist's intention.</b><br /><br />Don't you understand that the conscious mind is stupid and the unconscious mind is a genius. When the artist says he doesn't understand why something works, he means his intellect doesn't get it. Because the intellect is inherently analytical-linear, and art is not. Most artists I've met, and almost all non-artists, are disconnected between the types of minds they run in parallel.<br /><br />Fyi, there are thousands upon thousands of paintings that have backgrounds that are quite abstract, even vague, which get increasingly coherent as the depth comes forward, until the focus crystallizes on a subject. In these backgrounds one will find many 'happy accidents.' The effective movement between vagueness and clarity/identity is a perfectly valid one. kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-61187777095923503392022-10-25T17:47:19.396-04:002022-10-25T17:47:19.396-04:00it could be argued that the ‘poetic’ quality resid...<b>it could be argued that the ‘poetic’ quality resides in the total dramatic effect of the final image - the staging, acting, art direction, attention to real-life detail, quality of sentiment, message etc.</b><br /><br />All of those factors can play in expressing some visual poetry. Absolutely.<br /><br /><b>In which case, the fact that he'd used lots of photo-ref to aid the realisation of the final image would make no difference to its 'poetic' effect</b><br /><br />I think it still matters. The artist's specific goal will be better conveyed when directly from the source, rather than pieced together from references. The artist has a picture in their mind, they can see what it is they are trying to communicate before looking for external references. Although there may be close matches to what they're envisioning, it will never be exact. The image in their head tastes Cartoon, in this broad sense.<br /><br />Therefore, the artist who works directly from reference is left to struggle with trying to balance their internal vision against the information in the external reference. They must be careful of manipulating the reference in a way that it continues to match their internal vision. They have to to ensure that it does not add effects, details, or qualities not in their internal vision.<br /><br />And it seems to me that the artists become reliant. With the reference providing a hundred ready-made answers, the artist is now out of the driver's seat to the little questions that make a world of difference. The mind naturally gravitates towards the path of least resistance. Imitating elements of the reference material – even if they don't quite communicate what you're thinking – is so tempting.<br /><br />Even for autistically painstaking artists who carve up details from hundreds of pieces of reference to approach what is in their mind's eye, it will never be a perfect match. They could get closer to their vision by just focusing on the perfectly good image that's already in their head and working hard towards translating it onto the canvas or paper. It may take more work, but it is work worth doing. (If they don't have a perfectly good image in their head, they're not artists. If a musician can't hear the orchestra in their head, they're not a musician.)<br /><br />For Rockwell, his characters were all modeled after his neighbors. Are we to believe that every scene in Rockwell's head was only of people he knew and had at hand? He never envisioned an image where someone outside of the 25 living people in his 10 mile radius would have been a better fit? Never was someone from his past a better match? His grandfather never earned a place in his pictures?<br /><br />Obviously, he thought that the realism of the face (or the ease of using reference) mattered more than faithfully creating the art in his head. This is putting reference before poetry. A society that starts down the path of over-referencing reality finds it hard to turn back; audiences become addicted to the magic trick of art, to the sensation of the lifelike, and appreciate them more than organic free-range human expression. Artists become addicted to the easy answers of the morgue.<br /><br /><b>An accident can produce a relation that causes an effect that works in the context of a work, without the artist knowing why. Where is the ‘intentionality’ in that?</b><br /><br />There is no such thing as an accident in poetry -- poetry is all purposeful. Accident is journalism. An accident is how we get to splashed paint -- a perfect history of paint that got splashed. Something that happens without intention may be striking, but if the artist doesn't know what it express or why it works, it's just aimless gibberish and cannot work towards the artist's intention.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08249577762409684046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-86459076031598740732022-10-25T13:37:54.858-04:002022-10-25T13:37:54.858-04:00EVERY RELATION is a potential source of sensual me...EVERY RELATION is a potential source of sensual meaning/effect. Every relation, from the tiniest to the most comprehensive, in out, up down, skipping, linear, scalar, reverently referential or expressionistically cartooned; it doesn’t matter. The Effect - in the context of narrative - is the organizing form of poetry.<br /><br />The organizing form of poetry is not mind-flavor. The failure of a sand-dry medical illustrator to accurately render a heart has “mind-flavor”. An accident can produce a relation that causes an effect that works in the context of a work, without the artist knowing why. Where is the ‘intentionality’ in that?<br /><br />Meanwhile, there are intentional aesthetic attempts that fail to produce an effect, or which screw up other effects. Such is ‘mind flavor’ that actually destroys poetry.<br /><br />FYI, there are different period in Norman Rockwell’s career. Early he was much more of <a href="https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/219827731_10222164693039754_998961339820194379_n.jpg?stp=cp0_dst-jpg_e15_fr_q65&_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=ca434c&efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&_nc_ohc=G6foeictzWIAX9U-CQi&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.xx&oh=00_AT-KLr1p8ps4dVIFIiuor3jD_-BvbyXVaKFb6nz4OmXxRg&oe=635C43B8" rel="nofollow"> poet of form. </a> Only after his studio burned did he bifurcate his work into rendered jokes vs Art for the ages.kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-78602034196807770312022-10-25T12:29:28.605-04:002022-10-25T12:29:28.605-04:00Richard: "I don't think I mean representa...<br />Richard: "I don't think I mean representational, I think I mean journalism. Cartoons are also representational, they represent stuff. I'm talking about a journalism-to-editorializing spectrum within the representational."<br /><br />I'm using 'representational' in the same way you're using 'journalism'; a realistic study from an external reference, whether from life or photo. <br /><br />The problem with the word 'poetry' is it's so broad and subjective. I understand the way you're using it here, but in your Rockwell example (as in my Cornwell example) it could be argued that the ‘poetic’ quality resides in the total dramatic effect of the final image - the staging, acting, art direction, attention to real-life detail, quality of sentiment, message etc... In which case, the fact that he'd used lots of photo-ref to aid the realisation of the final image would make no difference to its 'poetic' effect... if that's where you saw the poetry. Laurence Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11988700485839219253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-2942263648294503582022-10-25T10:44:29.899-04:002022-10-25T10:44:29.899-04:00Richard claims that cartoons are more 'purely ...<b>Richard claims that cartoons are more 'purely poetic' than more realistic painting because there is less (or even zero) 'journalism' in them, which I'm taking to mean 'representational' realism.</b><br /><br />I don't think I mean representational, I think I mean journalism. Cartoons are also representational, they represent stuff. I'm talking about a journalism-to-editorializing spectrum within the representational.<br /><br />Ron Mueck and Hyper-realism are on the furthest side of the journalistic end of the spectrum. Next to hyper-realism is Trompe-l'œil still life, slightly more editorializing but still squarely journalistic. Pieces on this end try to recreate an experience that the artist is having.<br /><br />On the opposite side, pure editorialization.<br /><br />So the primary rubric is the degree to which an artist or artwork relies on external reference material, as opposed to human memory and the rendering engine of the brain. When filtered through mental systems, any subject will take on a distinctly mind flavor. Works that are informed by reference may have a more naturalistic flavor but will be less "of mind".<br /><br />At the opposite end of the spectrum from Mueck, where works are entirely human-mind flavored, are pictures I classify as cartoons. I don't mean this just in the Waterson/Thompson sense, this mind-flavor does not need to stop at the highly simplified. Kim Jung Gi tastes entirely mind-flavored. Rubens tastes almost entirely mind-flavored. An image with pictorial depth can be built up from the same mental faculties, memory and imagination, without reliance on external reference. <br /><br />This mind-first way of working is largely relegated to entertainment today, with <a href="https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/053/666/996/large/ruan-jia-black-dragon-crown-004.jpg" rel="nofollow">Ruan Jia</a> perhaps being the most obvious example, but there's nothing inherent to the process which limits it to works for entertainment. In the middle ages and in the folk art of several cultures, this was the standard practice for picture making. Landscape painting, prior to tube paints and photographic reference, were also historically of this character -- and so the older pictures are best.<br /><br />To talk about an artist in specific, Norman Rockwell is an amazing painter but I believe he could have been significantly better by putting the camera down and firing the models. Every effect in his paintings that comes from a source outside of his mind is an area of the picture where art was not allowed to happen. This can be seen in "How I Make a Picture" where, for instance, the initial sketches of the fireman inside the frame are filled with character and imagination and poetry, until the stage that he fleshes them out from reference. Then the picture dies, and becomes only slightly more interesting than a photograph of the same.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08249577762409684046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-34704359168346855632022-10-24T12:47:20.542-04:002022-10-24T12:47:20.542-04:00Therefore, the less a drawing adheres to a real-li...<b>Therefore, the less a drawing adheres to a real-life likeness of the thing it represents - i.e. the more stylised / built out of cartoon conventions / built out of 'blithe ready-mades' (your phrase) - the more 'intrinsically poetic' it is.</b> <br /><br />Dubious claim. <br /><br />Cartooning is graphic, and graphic is blatant. The 'fine' in fine art means subtle. The subtlety of great poetry is that you sense meaning beyond the narrative veneer, but you can't put your finger on why. That's because the meaning is sublated/subliminal behind some narrative front that appears naturalistic. <br /><br />But the more you look at great work the more you realize even the 'naturalistic' veneer is built of suggestions, effects. To make poetry seem naturalistic requires wave upon weave of suggestive effects. Everything manifests and is part of an aesthetic effect of sensual meaning-force at every scale, from edge to edge, all interwoven. This gets scary, it is very intense.<br /><br />Whereas cartoons are simple big effects, with the appeal of simplicity. And built of blithe conventions; conventions being a kind of pre-developed code, codes being anaesthetic in terms of how their meaning is conveyed.<br /><br />The aim of the poet is to present significant aesthetic experience and to vivify or revivify whatever is representated by seeing it afresh through the filter of emotional-sensational meaning (aesthetic force-effects). <br /><br />Poesis is thus, necessarily an imaginative process. And a difficult one. Poesis is observation, imagination, or realized construction distilled down to abstraction then articulated through suggestions. (What is observed, imagined, or constructed is experience.)<br /><br />A poem is a kind of narrative, even if that narrative takes place in an instant (even a face is read sequentially). And narratives refer to reality. <br /><br />Poetry is the narration of scalar or 'musical' suggestions about sequential referential suggestions; in superposition, orchestrated, concatenated... that all contribute to a revealing central great effect, also suggestive and recognized as true and fateful.<br /><br />To the extent anything refers to reality as it appears, it has Iconicity. Cartoons and illustrations alike have iconicity. Cartoons, to the extent they are poetry, could not be so without referring to a reality we all share. So it is hardly the case that cartoons have 'zero' journalism. (Most journalism is a cartooning of its own; most journalists are neither great minds nor great poets. And they usual proffer highly simplified narratives.)<br /><br />As I said before, the difference between a cartoon/comic world and a more fully fleshed out poetic world is that the cartoon comic world can simply drop out whole chunks of experience without suggesting them. Leaving blanks and glosses. Whereas something that poeticizes an experience naturalistically must marshal every quality of the event, setting, atmosphere, to expressing the epiphany of the main pictorial idea. <br /><br /><br />kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-19991587389931402852022-10-24T12:00:19.284-04:002022-10-24T12:00:19.284-04:00Kev: "Since when is poetry not exceeding(ly) ...Kev: "Since when is poetry not exceeding(ly) observational ?"<br /><br />I probably shouldn't have used the word 'observational'. Let's stick with 'representational' while I try to steel-man Richard's take: <br /><br />Richard claims that cartoons are more 'purely poetic' than more realistic painting because there is less (or even zero) 'journalism' in them, which I'm taking to mean 'representational' realism. <br /><br />Therefore, the less a drawing adheres to a real-life likeness of the thing it represents - i.e. the more stylised / built out of cartoon conventions / built out of 'blithe ready-mades' (your phrase) - the more 'intrinsically poetic' it is. Laurence Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11988700485839219253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-9430703077119585322022-10-24T10:42:57.883-04:002022-10-24T10:42:57.883-04:00But I get the point that you think painting has a ...<b>But I get the point that you think painting has a large amount of observational in it, therefore cannot be as pure (in poetic terms) as a cartoon image which contains almost zero observational, and is therefore almost entirely expressive.</b><br /><br />Since when is poetry not exceeding observational? The artist-poet is a sponge; distractingly perceptive. And necessarily so. For who would want to look at art that is not showing you something you both recognize and never quite saw?<br /><br />The great talents have the capacity to resynthesize reality from a profound and hypersensitive absorption of their experience. Is it just emotions that they observe? Or the seeming synaesthetic equivalance of emotions with certain abstract designs? Hardly. <br /><br />Splash paintings are ‘entirely expressive’, entirely emotional, or sensational… but they aren’t poems. Make some crazy noises with your mouth, and they will be ‘entirely expressive.’ And won’t be poetry. Look at an alley wall and you’ll find expressive forms at every scale. And what of it? Something is missing that keeps these examples from being poetry.<br /><br />To again refer back to Herbert Read's aphorism; The function of art is not to transmit feeling so that others may experience the same feeling. The real function of art is to express feeling and transmit understanding. This is a qualitative matter; organizational, linguistic, referential.<br /><br />There is no such thing as <i>purifying</i> poetry of content. Poems are about; they mean. How can something mean without saying something about something? <br />kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-47337014353339445712022-10-24T10:40:30.016-04:002022-10-24T10:40:30.016-04:00Laurence,
I don't think Richard means "c...Laurence,<br /><br />I don't think Richard means "created from the ground up" by "Intentionality." I think he means that some reference has been purposefully distorted from fact/mimesis/journalism for expressive purposes, and evidently so.<br /><br />I can't agree that "poetic" can be defined as "processed or filtered through human intentionality towards an aesthetic purpose."<br /><br /><i>What</i> exactly is processed or filtered? <i>How? Why? To what end? And what is an 'aesthetic purpose'?</i><br /><br />This blogger page was intentionally made, and has an aesthetic effect. Is it then poetry?<br /><br />Everything you can see has an aesthetic effect. You see a blue bowl; you feel the color sensation of blue, you feel the haptic sensation of the bowl-shape. You see wood paneling on the wall, you feel the flatness, you detect the woodiness, the hardness, the naturalness, maybe the era or means of production, etc.<br /><br />Nobody is going to say a bowl or wood paneling is poetry, however, even though they have aesthetic quality. <br /><br />The “What is Poetry?” question comes down to whether any particular aesthetic effect has some artistry, whether it has sufficient linguistic complexity, whether it suggests and evokes ideas beyond its own identity, beyond fact. And in doing that does it get at some truth (or Truth) in a roundabout way? <br /><br />What is true is movement, change, force, dynamics, modulation, evolution. Photographs freeze an instant, thus producing a lie. There is a story, a narration in every moment, in every thing. The world is alive. Thus poetry is always structured and orchestrated as a narrative and with subnarratives; which only means we experience information sequentially; from the general to the specific, from early to late, from weak to intense, from stability to activity, and so on. <br />kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-53405411683817107822022-10-24T04:21:46.668-04:002022-10-24T04:21:46.668-04:00I want to see if we can agree what 'poetic'...<br />I want to see if we can agree what 'poetic' means in the context of a visual image. <br /><br />___<br /><br />Richard: "By poetic I mean processed or filtered through human intentionality towards an aesthetic purpose. A cartoon is entirely processed through intention" <br /><br />I assume you mean by 'intention' that the cartoonist / artist has built the image from nothing, without something in front of them to observe / study (or very little anyway, in terms of visual reference), and that everything is marshalled to the expressive force of the cartoon idea. <br /><br />"A painting is part intention, part indexically journalistic"<br /><br />As Kev has already pointed out, I don't think 'journalistic' is a good choice of word. When i look at great realist painting I never think that I'm looking at 'journalism'. It sounds like a trendy term that someone would use to disparage such painting, as in "Sargent is mere journalism". I would suggest replacing it with 'representational' or 'observational'. With all of the decision making that that type of painting involves - the artist has everything in front of them to observe, and make an interpretation of. <br /><br />But I get the point that you think painting has a large amount of observational in it, therefore cannot be as pure (in poetic terms) as a cartoon image which contains almost zero observational, and is therefore almost entirely expressive. <br /><br />___<br /><br /><br />Kev, <br /><br />Richard says that cartoons are 'intrinsically poetic', so how are you using the term 'poetic' to differentiate it from Richard's (bearing in mind my own reading of his statement above) in the context of your statement:<br /><br />"To develop a poetic reality is an order of magnitude more difficult than creating a comic reality"<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Laurence Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11988700485839219253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-39427714609965498462022-10-23T20:13:40.829-04:002022-10-23T20:13:40.829-04:00I don't have time to wack every mole you'v...I don't have time to wack every mole you've scattered about on the head, so I'll just bang on this one noggen, which goes to the core of your argument....<br /><br /><b>All paintings, whether they be realistic or impressionistic, have a connection to reality. This means that all other paintings can exchange relevant information between them. They all rely on the same general principles of anatomy, surface, optics, perspective, atmosphere and value.</b><br /><br />There is a profound problem in this view. Which is that poetic works of art do not use ‘reality’ in the same way that journalistic works use it.<br /><br />In journalism, in recording or photography, a thing is a thing; physics is physics and can be explained via recourse to physical theory, which is a kind of dogma. All dogma, all facts are analytic, and analytic work is pre-deconstructed into distinct identities.<br /><br />In poetry, we have synthesis. And in synthetic works of art, there is only really distinctions of effect. The particular identity of an object or reality of a phenomenon is only incidental – only incidentally evoked, like a standing wave – in the flowing process of expressing the meaning of its larger poetic context; what it helps symbolize, metaphorize, suggest, or otherwise imaginatively analogize.<br /><br />This is a fundamentally different ruleset. <br /><br />You cannot compare an evoked horse to stated one. Unless you have the imagination to complete the evoked horse in the mind and visually associate it with the stated horse, or whatever horse archetype or memory you have stored in your memory banks.<br /><br />But AI does not have that imagination. So it can only compare one stated horse to other stated horses.kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-62297196365242705872022-10-23T12:50:59.805-04:002022-10-23T12:50:59.805-04:00On Dean Cornwell, Thornton Oakley, a Pyle student,...<b>On Dean Cornwell, Thornton Oakley, a Pyle student, once called the Brandywine Method a 'cartooning of the depths.'</b><br /><br />Kev, I missed your comment before I posted. Busy chasing four kids around while trying to type that out.<br /><br />I've expressed that same idea on this blog before about Rubens. To me, the great painters are all cartoonists but with traditional painter's tools. I see that quality in Cornwell as well. The work as a whole reflects a singular personal vision.<br /><br />I refer to Rubens as a cartoonist because his work, much like Waterson's, contains "a sensibility that creates its own realm." Well said, thank you.Richardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-10391653622949064362022-10-23T12:33:31.501-04:002022-10-23T12:33:31.501-04:00You need to define what you mean by ‘poetic’ first...<b>You need to define what you mean by ‘poetic’ first.</b><br /><br />By poetic I mean processed or filtered through human intentionality towards an aesthetic purpose. A cartoon is entirely processed through intention. A painting is part intention, part indexically journalistic. <br /><br /><b>Does it follow that Richard Thompson or Bill Waterson is therefore a more ‘intrinsically poetic’ artist than say, Dean Cornwell ? </b><br /><br />I think I would frame this as more "purely" poetic. Dean Cornwell's work is filtered through a mile of intention, it's why he's so much better than the competition. But his work still contains many layers of the journalistic as well. Bill Waterson is entirely intention/entirely poem, there's nothing journalistic that remains in his work after reality has been filtered by his personal vision.<br /><br />Where painting is concerned, journalistic content can be used to fill in the gaps where intentionality is lacking. An AI (or a human painter) can hide its lack of intentionality by making something look real. In cartoons, this trick doesn't exist. There is no hyper-realism for cartoons.Richardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-45956543815802361092022-10-23T12:33:10.108-04:002022-10-23T12:33:10.108-04:00I can imagine that the AI will have to be trained ...<b>I can imagine that the AI will have to be trained JUST on good line drawing, before it gets any better.</b><br /><br />Laurence, I'm going to do a bad job explaining this, and I apologize...<br /><br />I don't think it's going to work out to be that simple. <br /><br />All paintings, whether they be realistic or impressionistic, have a connection to reality. This means that all other paintings can exchange relevant information between them. They all rely on the same general principles of anatomy, surface, optics, perspective, atmosphere and value. By being grounded in these shared principles, AI can apply knowledge between them.<br /><br />In addition to sharing a ruleset with other paintings, paintings also share rulesets with photographs. Painting AIs are always trained on photography corpuses, which gives them extra context to create what appears to be new art.<br /><br />Because both paintings and photographs share a common foundation, the AI can glean useful data for painting from a group of photos. This is because they aren't that different--paintings usually operate on Semiotic Indexing in much the same way as photographs. This kind of likeness can be faked due to its light mediation by intentionality.<br /><br />Let me try to provide an example:<br />Fur. There is a clear relationship between a painting of bear fur to actual bear fur. There exists some algorithm that, given a photograph of bear fur, can extrapolate what that bear fur would look like if painted by any specific painter with a low error rate. <br /><br />But in cartooning, is there some algorithm that could extrapolate from a photo of a teddy bear to Winnie the Pooh? Or, let's set the threshold even lower, is there some algorithm that could extrapolate from Paddington Bear to Winnie the Pooh? <br /><br />My instinct, which I am struggling to put into words, is that there is a sort of barrier of intentionality which separates Paddington from Pooh, a barrier which does not exist for Generalized Bear Fur to NC Wyeth Bear Fur.<br /><br />To cross this barrier of intentionality, a cartooning AI would need to be able to extrapolate algorithmically from useful information in Bill Waterson and Jack Kirby and Paul Coker Jr to apply to Richard Thompson. Why? Because no one cartoonist will provide a large enough corpus in a human lifetime, just numerically speaking, to train an algorithm. It is necessary to include many cartoonists to provide enough data. <br /><br />But if the information in a Jack Kirby can't assist you in producing Richard Thompson comic, as I suspect, there is still a technological wall that we will need to cross with technological breakthroughs. We would have to discover the class of math equations which can produce Calvin from a photo of a zany boy before we could create something like that.<br /><br />There is also, I suspect, an issue with how current neural networks reduce error when applied to the problem of cartoons. When lines are meaningless, they're just meaningless. Value and hue have more "shades" of incorrectness.<br /><br />Richardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-56043691173778331942022-10-23T11:21:01.786-04:002022-10-23T11:21:01.786-04:00A cartoon tends to have one big expressive idea to...A cartoon tends to have one big expressive idea to it; goofy & silly, witty & clever, wild & wiggly, sloppy & overflowing, appealing & cutesy... whatever it is.<br /><br />Its particulars are articulated with whimsical and exaggerated stylistic conventions; good cartoons tend to be built of such blithe ready-mades, written in line, and literally nothing more. Any aspect of the moment depicted, where there is no ready-to-hand convention developed is simply ignored. And in the place of what should be, we get a gloss-over; either empty space or a super basic connecting-line that we barely notice, which hooks up two narratively-necessary spots into a relation. <br /><br />The predicate for the comic conventions, is that there is an underlying comic dream-world behind every comedic voice which is a little bit (or a lot) off-the-wall. We are constantly looking at comedic distortion through a layer of normalcy.<br /><br />Yet, for each comedian/cartoonist, there is a kind of consistency in that nuttiness. It isn't some filter; it is a whole way of being; a sensibility that creates its own realm. It goes far beyond handwriting or speech patterns, although those develop necessarily to accommodate the underlying sensibility.<br /><br />In short, a cartoon is the sketch of a funny sensibility codified via its unique blithe conventions.<br /><br />For most comic voices, it takes a whole childhood and many years of adulthood to develop the realm and its handwritten (or mouthspoken) conventions fully. <br /><br />AI doesn't truck in layered communication; which includes any kind of meaning, including comic meaning. AI is much more adapted to the superficiality of photography, light rays bouncing off surfaces.<br /><br />On Dean Cornwell, Thornton Oakley, a Pyle student, once called the Brandywine Method a 'cartooning of the depths.' To develop a poetic reality is an order of magnitude more difficult than creating a comic reality. Because nothing can be dropped; so every aspect of experience must be made to contribute to the central idea. And this requires orchestration in the composing. Which entails development and theme. And at this point, the work starts to get a little bit scary, weird, and intimidating; as it starts radiating with a density of meaning like no other communication in life. <br /> kev ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09509572970616136990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12189014.post-45068035074922977692022-10-23T09:15:54.360-04:002022-10-23T09:15:54.360-04:00Richard: “ To me, this illustrates that cartooning...Richard: “ To me, this illustrates that cartooning is more innately human than other visual arts, it is more intrinsically poetic”<br /><br />You need to define what you mean by ‘poetic’ first. <br /><br />If you mean by ‘poetic’ that the brain has to jump larger, empty gaps across the cartoony image to connect one highly abstracted / stylised mark-making decision to the next, in order to flesh out or ‘see’ the image, then I broadly agree. <br /><br />Does it follow that Richard Thompson or Bill Waterson is therefore a more ‘intrinsically poetic’ artist than say, Dean Cornwell ? <br /><br />That’s quite the debate, and again, it depends on how you’re using the term ‘poetic’. For instance, although a Cornwell requires less imaginative gap closing than a Waterson, you could argue that the ‘poetic’ quality of the final image resides in the total dramatic staging, which requires lots of subtle lighting effects and / or colour relations to pull off. <br /><br />(This points out a general problem in the (over) use of the term ‘poetic’ as if it’s synonymous with ‘artistic quality’). Laurence Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11988700485839219253noreply@blogger.com