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Tag: Abstract Expressionism

September 5, 2014

parsing art – David Hockney‏

David Hockney - "Rubber Ring Floating in a Swimming Pool"

“Rubber Ring Floating in a Swimming Pool“ (1971)

David Hockney

_________

in responding to the powerful dictates
of Abstract Expressionism, dominant
in mid-Twentieth-Century art, its return
to essentials, the technical elements
of the medium – as indeed was taking
place in music and literature as well
during that period, see John Cage,
or Samuel Beckett, for instance, if
you dare – David Hockney, as well
as other related artists at the time,
were, it would seem, looking to
reconnect with a more general public,
their, after all, burgeoning market in
the post-war rise of the Middle Class,
not only with objects it would find
familiar, even iconic, Campbell Soup
cans, Marilyn, but with outright fun,
a not inconsequential attribute

out with ontological musings, they
were saying, dry taxonomy, and in
with, as it were, the bomp sh’ bomp
sh’ bomp

or Pop Art

noteworthy for its sense of
outrageousness, levity

and fashion, incidentally

not either inappropriately, fashion
was what the popes had been doing,
after all, adorning the Sistine Chapel

David Hockney here takes colour field
– flat, undifferentiated areas of a single
colour, a founding element of Abstract
Expressionism – and applies it to a
recognizable surface, which,
incidentally, he insists in his very title,
is not “Abstract”

we delight in the ingenuity of this
conjunction, form has become
function, or the reverse

and note furthermore the aptness
of other painterly preoccupations,
texture, a consideration that goes
back to Vermeer, and further

dimensionality, there is no horizon
to force representation of a third
dimension, which nevertheless
ingeniously doesn’t obliterate
clear three-dimensional
perspective

geometry, a hats-off to Mondrian
perhaps, and Cubism, though
we’ve come a long way from the
more diaphanous and shimmering
Cubism, just click

in fine, I’m impressed by the manner
in which this painting, despite its
naked and overt representation of
its subject, devoid of any context,
urges a more theoretical
consideration than substantial,
indeed “Abstract” rather than
grounded, rock, materially
speaking, solid

does “Rubber Ring Floating in a
Swimming Pool“ inform the form,
in other words

or does the form inform the
“Rubber Ring Floating in a
Swimming Pool“

is this grammar or a poem

you tell me

Richard

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August 30, 2014

a reply to BookInhabiter, a.k.a. Brain (2)

Wolf Kahn - "Orange Cloud Over the Adriatic Sea" (1996)

“Orange Cloud Over rhe Adriatic Sea” (1996)

Wolf Kahn

_______

a reader writes, about “Poème d’amour“,
Hans Hofman

“This is a bizarre painting. It bewilders me. I can’t make sense of it. But maybe that’s the point.”

below is my answer

Richard

______

with the invention of the camera, Brain,
representational art became irrelevant,
unable to present the accuracy a
photograph would it had to discover
for itself an alternate purpose, which
is to say, reinvent itself

the medium became the message,
as Marshall McLuhan would’ve
put it, art began to study itself, it
reached for its sinews, arteries,
its colours, textures, its planar,
dimensional, limitations, limits

its form, in other words, was
becoming its substance

Abstract Expressionism was the
nadir of this movement, after the
less ethereal, more visceral,
German Expressionism, and up
to Andy Warhol, who brought us
back down to earth again with
pictures of Campbell Soup cans,
Marilyn

more matter, less theory

note the residual attachment to flat
colour fields nevertheless

that said, what part of Hofman‘s
“Love Poem“ is indeed a love poem,
search me, I think it’s just pretentious,
failed Miro

but do read the sidebar on the upper
left at the site for less partisan perhaps
insights, just click “Show details” there

I don’t either much like Schönberg,
who did the same kind of thing to
music, eviscerated it, I want to see
the body, not the entrails, these
should be studied at art school,
the conservatory, creative writing
classes

but that is of course just what I think

Schönberg and Abstract Expressionists,
however, have left their indelible marks
on art history, commendable marks for
their theoretical underpinnings, rigours

see for instance the marvellous Wolf
Kahn above for the evolution of these
ideas, you get it in less than a minute,
and delight in it

that is what real art does

thanks for asking

Richard

psst: Wolf Kahn was a student of
Hans Hofman, incidentally, he
just put everyday references
back into the picture, I call it
heart, something organic

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February 9, 2012

“The Connoiseur” – Norman Rockwell‏

The Connoiseur - Norman Rockwell

“The Connoiseur” (1962)

Norman Rockwell

____

serendipitously trolling Rockwells after sensing his spirit in a
poem I’d just been reading I happened upon this marvelous
piece, an homage of course to Jackson Pollock, perhaps the
most successful of the Abstract Expressionists

but lurking behind the obvious surface of this painting it was
easy to recognize also another glaring, though not as explicit
maybe, tribute, misted perhaps by the transformational
permutations of context and time, wherein a seed becomes
a tree, a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, to no less an iconic
masterpiece than Caspar David Friedrich‘s “Wanderer Above
a Sea of Fog“, the work we just, a blog or so ago, explored

both look upon their own idea of a new horizon

and a Pop Art stab at an Abstract Expressionist through a
High Romantic is a cute trick, witty, wonderful, wise

it’s an easy step to a literary counterpart from there, Keats’
“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” nearly automatically
comes to mind, another iconic Romantic new dawn

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Beethoven, were I to go to music, is always, especially in his
later works, contemplating new dimensions, new worlds, he
more than any other composer is a metaphysical explorer

maybe also Pink Floyd

who’ve taken me to their own also exalted musical galaxies,
awesome commanding perspectives, transcendental heights,
to my own “wild” indeed “surmise / Silent, upon a peak in”
my version of “Darien”

Richard

psst: Chapman’s “Homer”

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