“Les éléments mécaniques“ (1920)
_________
more John Cage, if you dare
just click
with, if you can believe it, Garry Moore,
“I’ve Got a Secret“, a trip down memory
lane
also ads for Winston, and Bufferin, very
Andy Warhol, thrown in, entirely the
1950s
Richard
“Mrs Edward L. Davis and Her Son Livingston“ (1890)
______
about John Cage my mom writes,
“Hi Rick…..
When you called I had written the message but not sent it….I am trying again..
I cannot see people spending $100 or more and wasting almost 8 minutes of their time
to watch that crap…..
As for David Hockney…..well…..not my style….but for your sake I hope a lot of people like it…..
See you at 6 p.m……will give you enough time to digest what I said…..All my love….MOM….XXXX”,
most uncharacteristically, the last time
she used an epithet was when I landed
some Schönberg on her, which she
returned promptly and categorically,
that was some fifteen years ago, even
maybe twenty
bravo, Mom, for your robust opinion,
that’s what art’s about
but I’m reminded thereby that art is not
just for effetes, pretenders to arcane
insights, it’s for all of us, not getting it
is not necessarily our fault, sometimes
the artist is obtuse, even trite
what is true should be clear, I believe,
to everyone, which is why I ever adhere
to art, art cannot be anything other than
true, manifestly, else it falls apart
love you, mom
Rick
psst: if you’ve got quarters, please bring
some over tonight
“Rubber Ring Floating in a Swimming Pool“ (1971)
_________
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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