My newest Dr Great Art podcast! Episode 19: "(No) Rules in Art." This Artecdote concerns supposed rules in art, especially painting. It describes how there are really no rules in art, and it decries the obsequiousness of those who believe there are rules and who seek to follow them.
http://drgreatart.libsyn.com/episode-19-no-rules-in-art #arthistory #art
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This is the script (not a transcript, as I change elements when recording).
Dr Great Art Podcast 19: (No) Rules in Art
Hi this is Mark Staff Brandl, with the 19th
"Dr Great Art" brief podcast. I hope you enjoy it and come back for
each and every one.
Today my Artecdote concerns supposed Rules in Art, especially
painting.
"I've
seen most creative minds of my generation destroyed by obsequiousness."
Toadying to those who espouse rules for art.
One and all
seem to want to rewrite the beginning section of Alan Ginsberg's wonderful
first line of his poem Howl. The original: "I saw the best minds of
my generation destroyed by madness, ...." Yet I could not resist, for in
art, culture and politics, as well as elsewhere, I find my version to be true.
Recriminations
run rampant in the artworld. What's wrong with curators? What's wrong with
critics? What's wrong with galleries? I would like to add "What is wrong
with us?" By that I mean primarily artists, but perhaps beyond that, all
of us in all the mentioned categories.
Tessa Laird
wrote of researching the artworld, that she "felt like [she] had stumbled
into an anthill, where thousands of industrious (anty) intellectuals were going
about their business of empire-building and ankle-biting." When exactly
did we turn from manifesto screaming, naive-yet-hopeful creators-with-attitudes
into fawning, trendy Sophists?
This
podcast is the beginning of a rant I will likely return to in various fashions
in the future in my podcasts. This one, however, was motivated by two
particular discussions I recently remembered, although I had them years ago.
It, and my complaint, concern painting, but thereby synecdochically all art.
I, as most
Americans do, make paintings with somewhat deep stretcher frames, with the
canvas or linen stretched around the side, stapled to the back, with an
unpainted edge. Europeans tend to use very flat, rather flimsy-looking
stretched canvas, often purchased pre-primed or at least appearing so.
I have done
this for years, although now I also do paintings on top of wall paintings in
large installations, even involving performance-lectures, which inspired these
podcasts.
Anyway, a
Swiss painter I know was very bothered by my, and other thicker, stretchers.
This at first seemed to me to be rather unimportant, a simple visual preference
one way or the other. They find ours (and us) too self-assertive; I find theirs
too shabby and amateurish. Second, I heard from a curator, that while he really
liked my work, he did not know "what to think," as this Mongrel
approach of mine was something he "had never seen."
This can't
be really important, just taste. Or is it?
I thought
more intensely about this question after the conversations, and realized that
it is very pertinent to my metaphor(m) theory, strangely enough, and to all
art.
First ---
if the second person mentioned had REALLY never seen anything like my art, that
would make me one of the greatest living innovators! It would be something to
delight, not befuddle you! It is of course not true, there are always other
artists working similarly to anyone, earlier, later and especially at one's own
time.
Second, and
most importantly, EVERY aspect of a work of art is important. Tropaically,
desperately important. And they must be worked out for the artwork AT HAND, not
by following rules. The idea that this artist had, that paintings must have a
narrow stretcher, "to express its flatness," has been learned by rote. It is part of a vast litany of
prescriptions for painting, which although a supposedly "dead"
entity, still raises the hackles of fear on the necks of many an academicist.
Therefore
any painting-survivors must be administered the medication of ordinance, until
they become well-behaved casualties. These zombie-paintings are required to
have a relatively featureless, enervated surface facture; consist of
indifferent, unmodulated paint, preferably apathetically diluted with excessive
turpentine; be painted lackadaisically; have either drab, mundane forms as
motifs or be based on dull photographs. All these admonitions serve to enervate
and debilitate painting. Keep it in its place. Other art forms such as video
and installation are encouraged to engage in dialogue with outside forces
(albeit also only in decreed fashions), however paintings — that is, painters —
are only allowed to solipsistically iterate and dissect their rudimentary,
elemental components. And do so with the proper air of listlessness. As painter
the late Charles Boetschi described such work, "those indifferent little
bits and pieces made with a wearied sigh while cell-phoning an 'art
facilitator' for the more important activity of doing lunch." Rules for
imaginativeness cannot be memorized, but those for sycophancy and conformity
can.
These
directives resemble an enforced Munchausen Syndrome by proxy. It is time for all
art, but especially painting to stop being enfeebled, flabby, a victim. To
cease assisting with its maltreatment and vitiation. We can do it, one aspect
at a time, by rebuffing such "understood" edicts and creating our
own, vigorous and vital metaphor(m)s.
Stop being
sycophantic, stop bootlicking. You canNOT memorize your way to greatness.
Goya in his ADDRESS TO THE
ROYAL ACADEMY OF SAN FERNANDO REGARDING THE METHOD OF TEACHING THE VISUAL ARTS
of 1792, one of the first speeches ever made to an art academy, made several
points that are STILL problems for us. In fact I think I will read his whole
speech as a future podcast. But back to my theme now:
He said, "there are no
rules in Painting, and ...the oppression, or servile obligation of making ALL
study or follow the SAME path, is a great impediment for the young who profess
this very difficult art."
Study, learn, work,
critique, argue, make make make --- but there are NO hard-and-fast-rules in
art.
That was "(No) Rules in Art."
Thanks for listening. Podcast number 19. If you wish to hear more cool,
exciting and hopefully inspiring stuff about art history and art, come back for
more. Also I, Dr Mark Staff Brandl, artist and art historian, am available for
live custom Performance-Lectures. In English und auf Deutsch.
I take viewers inside visual art and art history. Entertainingly, yet
educationally and aesthetically, I analyze, underline, and discuss the reasons
why a work of art is remarkable, or I go through entire eras, or indeed through
the entirety of art history, or look at your desired theme through the lens of
art history. The lectures often take place with painted background screens and
even in my entire painting-installations.
Some recent ones were on the entire history of Postmodernist Art from
1979 through today, on Metaphor(m) in Art History, and on Mongrel Art. Once
again, I'd like to thank Chloe Orwell, Brad Elvis, and the rock band the
Handcuffs for composing, performing and recording my theme song, "Shut Up
and Paint," a tiny portion of which begins and ends every Dr Great Art
Podcast.
You can find or contact me at
book me at www.mirjamhadorn.com
or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all as Dr Great Art.
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