In Caravaggio, some level of technical accomplishment is noted.
Hmmmm. - Dr X
Let me rephrase: you've heard of naturalism? Not really real, until
Caravaggio. (This is still the 1500s, recall, correct
perspective hasn't even been around all that long). A good
comparison is this contemporary Titian
- the change is the fully intergrated naturalism around the whole
canvas . In other words, Caravaggio was arguably the first
painter, and maybe the first person, to see light and dark and space
the way we think we see it now - and now that I think about it, this
kind of naturalism is kind of sociopathic, which is too cute but there
you are. A perfect example of how brutal the clear eye is is my
friend Ann Gale's work.
These pieces take months and months - and frequently sell (at
Hackett-Freeman downtown SF, don't ask how much) well before they're
done.
I'm very far from the first person to point out that perspective is brutally cold, mathematical, and somewhat anti-human, (and a little bit mistaken,
in the name of full disclosure) liberating enough against the church,
but as a norm became its own orthodoxy, which lead to its rejection by
modern art, which in about 30 years had urinals in the galleries and
much much later opened up a whole can of Warhols, which has lead to the
new orthodoxies of sterility and recontextualizaton, which... oh hell.
Which is why I look at cheerful Gothic paintings recently, when you can find something other than an icon. I'm through being cool, and I'm going to go look at the best thing that happened in 1492.
posted by JAB at 12:09 PM
1 Comments:
I would certainly agree in the case of Homer, but not in the case of Hopper. It's hard to explain, but it's apparant when viewed in person - I saw a big dollop of Hopper's work at the Whitney a few years ago, and its actually a little less interesting than I thought from the prints. (The surface betrays, I'm afraid, his background in advertising) The quality of the "negative" space is critical for any painting - handled well, a painting can be quite beautifully composed of solely empty space - it's the quality and interest in the empty space that's ironically lacking in Hopper, because his imagery is all about emptyness - hey, that's pretty good.
For the lasting radical innovators, like Brunelleschi (perspective), Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Turner, Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp, Pollock...(sorry), you see a massive effort and great visual intellect, but the idea of transformative abandonment is overstated for most of these guys. All of them had long, long periods of training, and where generally around the best people in the field (Van Gogh was painting in the same room as Gaughin - if I did that, I might have learned something.)
But the greatest work? A tough one to characerize- among my favorites are Diego Rivera's large murals in the Detroit institute of the Arts, a portrait of Jeanne Samary by Renoir, that Botticelli, any good DeKooning, Diebenkorn's an early favorite (speaking of activated space), the massive late Monets, a Picasso brass skull, a couple of poplar trees by Van Gogh that had me in tears...there's not much in common with these except unblinking humanism and a visual courage ennabled by understanding. To my aesthetic, Warhol's success at total emptyness through an evening of subject matter (for example his portraits of Mao becoming visually equal to his portraits of Monroe) is my primary aesthetic, even moral, enemy. (But definitely not Lichenstein- funny, that)
I can't say this enough - it's not Van Gogh's madness that moves you in his best work, but the unqualified love that touches every brush stroke- its unending search to connect with its subject. Warhol, I think, consciously set out to destroy this, and largely succeeded, in terms at least of the art scene for about a decade. It's just now showing signs of recovery, but the technological hijack of the human eye may make that futile.
What drives the greatest work is just too hard to characterize - its about the same as whatever gets Lance Armstrong up in the morning. You can say that it involves both understanding the history and the rules and a willingness to break them, fierce visual intelligence, and the persistence to do whatever is required to match in the artwork one's ability to perceive artwork.
Post a Comment
<< Home