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The Hot Mother Goddess Debate
This blog describes Paintings I created between 2019 – 2021 that explored European Neolithic art and the culture of my ancient forebears. I am interested in this culture as it appears to have been focused on female fertility and the regenerative power of the earth. There is strong disagreement among archaeologists about this so I also touch on the hot mother goddess debate.
The painting below is based on one of the ceramic human figurines unearthed in northeastern Romania. They were made by the Cucuteni culture, which lasted from 4800 to 3000 B.C. in what is now Romania and Ukraine.
From Time to Time, 2019, Marion-Lea Jamieson, oil on canvas, 40″ h x 30″ w This mysterious culture appears to have worshipped Earth-Mother goddesses but there is a sometimes nasty debate among archeologists on the Mother Goddess theory. This represents a collision of world views: there are the passionate proponents of the theory that the Mother Goddess or Earth Mother preceded the Father God or Sky Father and that Neolithic societies were matrilineal and peaceful. The most well-known proponent of the theory that belief in a Mother Goddess preceded worship of the Father God was archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. She also argued that Neolithic societies were matrilineal and peaceful.
This is forcefully argued against with such feeling that one suspects the theory’s opponents find it threatening in some way. A Wikipedia entry on the topic of the the Mother Goddess is remarkable for its lack of coherence. The first part of the article is a less than objective attack on what the author calls the popular view of the Goddess movement – that the Neolithic era would have been just, peaceful and wise. The author concludes that it is highly unlikely that such a civilization ever existed, based on the following rationale:
“There isn’t a scintilla of physical evidence that anything of the kind occurred. There is no archaeological evidence of a supersophisticated civilization 10000 years ago—no gleaming cities, no factories powered by Earth energies…”.
This argument is so beside the point, it is hardly worth a riposte.
After deriding the theory of an archetypal fertility cult of the Mother Goddess which “supposedly” would have existed prior to the rise of patriarchy, the author concludes:
“Carl Gustav Jung suggested that archetypal mother goddess was a part of the collective unconscious of all humans; various adherents of Jung … have argued that such an archetype underpins many of its (I am assuming Western civilization’s ) own mythologies and may even precede the image of the paternal “father.” Such speculations help explain the universality of such mother goddess imagery around the world. The Upper Paleolithic Venus figurines have been sometimes explained as depictions of an Earth Goddess similar to Gaia.”
So the author contradicts the earlier stance that there “isn’t a scintilla of physical evidence that anything of the kind occurred” while providing evidence from Psychology ( under the heading New Religious Movements). This evidence supports the idea that Neolithic worship of the Earth Mother Goddess preceded belief in the Sky Father God.
While the Wikepedia entry makes no effort to be objective, then gets lost in conflicting evidence, another footnote to the entry admits that:
“the issue of the Mother Goddess continues to be an exemplar for the problems of studying women in antiquity: mysterious images disembodied from their contexts, multiple scholarly biases and motivations, and conflicting interpretations of the scanty and fragmentary evidence.”
Belief in gods and goddesses is a complex issue in the history of human thought. Philosophers and other thinkers have wrestled with, not only whether earlier human societies worshipped a Mother Goddess before a Sky God, but the very existence of a Supreme Being of any gender. Pascal argued that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas if God does exist, he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).
![The Creation of Adam, Michelangelo , c. 1512, Fresco Dimensions280 cm × 570 cm (9 ft 2 in × 18 ft 8 in)[1]](https://marionleajamieson.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Michelangelo_-_Creation_of_Adam_cropped.jpg)
The Creation of Adam, Michelangelo , c. 1512, Fresco Dimensions 280 cm × 570 cm (9 ft 2 in × 18 ft 8 in)[1] How is this relevant to the Mother Goddess debate? An article in the Guardian on a UN report summarized the infinite losses, or hell on earth, that we humans are creating. There is an argument that this destruction can be traced back to our widespread belief in a clear mandate from the Sky God to rule the earth and everything in it for our own wants & needs. As a result, human society is in jeopardy from the accelerating decline of the Earth’s natural life-support systems: coral reefs dying; rainforests desiccating into savannahs, nature being destroyed at a rate tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years.
Forest clearance in Indonesia. Scientists have warned of the impact of deforestation on animals. Creator: Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace The biomass of wild mammals has fallen by 85%, natural ecosystems have lost about half their area and a million species are at risk of extinction – all largely as a result of human actions. Two in five amphibian species are at risk of extinction, as are one-third of reef-forming corals, and close to one-third of other marine species.
Bleached staghorn coral on the Great Barrier Reef in March 2017. Bette Willis / ARC CoEAt least one in 10 insects are threatened with extinction and, in economic terms, the losses are jaw-dropping. Pollinator loss has put up to $577 billion of crop output at risk, while land degradation has reduced the productivity of 23% of global land.
Permissive land-use policies and cheap farm acreage here have helped catapult Brazil into an agricultural superpower, the world’s largest exporter of soy, beef and chicken and a major producer of pork and corn. This area has also lured farmers and ranchers away from the Amazon jungle, whose decline has spurred a global outcry to protect it. | Ed White photo Other impacts on humankind, including freshwater shortages and climate instability, are already “ominous” and will worsen without drastic remedial action. “The health of the ecosystems on which we and other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide,”
Pictures taken at Radical Bay, Magnetic Island of a scalloped hammerhead shark listed as endangered, snared on a drumline hook. Photo / HSI, AMCS, McLachlan 
Climate Change Means ‘Virtually No Male Turtles’ Born In A Key Nesting Ground”
Megan Nagel/USFWSIf Pascal were alive today he would likely suggest that a rational person should live as though the Mother Goddess or Earth Mother exists and seek to believe in her and act accordingly. This would entail worshipping nature instead of converting it to consumer goods and then dumping it in the landfill, and preserving the earth because it is sacred. If the Mother Goddess or Earth Mother does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas if the Mother Goddess or Earth Mother does exist, we all stand to receive infinite gains (as represented by the continuation of life on this planet for our children and grandchildren) and avoid infinite losses (Hell on earth as represented by a scorched planet where humans have destroyed the ecosystems on which they depend).
Meanwhile the Hot Mother Goddess debate can be viewed as a clash between those who see the need to change the very basis of our belief systems and those who cling to those beliefs. A corollary of belief in the Father God is that one species and gender created in His image has a mandate to rule the earth in his own interests. The Mother Goddess or Earth Mother is a challenge to that world view at its most basic level as it entails an earth-centred approach to our economic and social organization rather than a human-centred one. Those committed to a system oriented toward the interests of human males understandably feel threatened by such a radical change. So they counter with convoluted and contradictory attacks on the earth-centric view that we humans were previously in matrilineal societies and worshipped a Mother Goddess. Meanwhile our earth mother continues to heat.
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Finding the Life Force
For some years, I have been thinking about issues of gender inequality and exploring the idea that gender inequality and gender violence have the same root as human violence against nature. In both cases, the violence stems from belief in a superiority that justifies dominance: of humans over nature and of men over women. This has not always been the case because for thousands of years people revered nature and cultural systems did not assume the superiority of men over women. Instead, women were recognized as a sacred life-force. This blog seeks to understand the problems and delve into how contemporary Westerners might go about finding the life force once again.
The problems are formidable. The UN states:
“While the world has achieved progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment… women and girls continue to suffer discrimination and violence in every part of the world. …Providing women and girls with equal access to education, health care, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes will fuel sustainable economies and benefit societies and humanity at large.”
CREDIT: ADAPTED BY C. AYCOCK/SCIENCE FROM ISTOCK.COM/JOZEFMICIC Statistics shows the appalling lack of gender equality:
• every year in Africa there are three million women and girls at risk of female genital mutilation.
• in 30% of cases globally, women suffer violence from their partner within their home.
• More than 33.000 girls become child brides every day. Globally, 12 million girls get married before the age of 18 every year.
• Women are 47% more likely to suffer serious injuries in traffic accidents, because the safety features of cars are designed for men.
• Women in rural areas of Africa spend 40 billion hours a year to collect water.
• 137 women are killed every day in the world by a member of their family.
• Worldwide, it is estimated that around 35% of women have experienced sexual and non-sexual violence at least once in their lifetime.
• Worldwide, women earn on average 23% less than men.
• Women spend an average of three hours a day more than men in household chores and family care in developing countries, and two hours a day more than men in developed countries.• Single mothers with children make up about 75% of all single parent families and suffer higher poverty rates than single fathers.
• Women are largely excluded from the executive branches of government and are rarely leaders of major political parties.
• only Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Sweden scored high on eight indicators (from receiving a pension to freedom of movement) that influence the economic decisions made by women during their careers.• Femicide is “intentional killing of a woman following the alleged transgression of gender roles deriving from tradition and social norms. Transgressive behaviour therefore varies according to the social context in which the crime is perpetrated“.
There are the problems of parental leave punished by companies and governments, the consideration of the ‘responsibility’ of women in sexual violence, hatred (also online) for women who are judged by their appearance instead of by their professionalism, etc. The UN estimates it will take another 108 years at the current pace to achieve gender equality.
The question is: Why did Western cultures reject the European Neolithic belief in the female principle as a life-giving source and nature as our Earth Mother? How did we instead a become a culture that subjugates women and degrades the planet?
The European Neolithic culture’s reverence for nature as Earth Mother was expressed in their arts. This took the form of inscriptions on ceramics and their sculptural images that often depicted sacred female forms or goddesses.
Photo: Women in the Cucuteni civilization.
A figurine of Cucuteni in fired clay,
from 4050 to 3900 BC.
Credit: Marius Amarie
These goddesses were powerful deities usually taking the shape of animal/human hybrids that showed the relationship between the female life-force and the forces of nature. Clearly the degradation of women and nature is not an ingrained human attribute, but could be considered a relatively recent development. So there is the potential for humans to return to their earlier more benign beliefs.
In my art practice from 2019-2021, I worked with the art & images of the European Neolithic era that existed between about 6000-3000 BC. Research indicates that early human kinship during this era was everywhere matrilineal. Images from early human societies in what is now Western & Eastern Europe depict figures incorporating human female and animal characteristics that are clearly supernatural and/or divine.
One image used in paintings from my Neolithic series was a female form abstracted so that the arms are like wings and the body narrows down to a point like an insect. My theory is that this figure represents a bee goddess, which often appears in Neolithic art. As we are only now re-discovering, bees may be the force of nature that will determine if life on this planet as we know it continues.
Here & Now, 2021, Marion-Lea Jamieson, oil on canvas, 48″ h x 36″ w As discussed in another blog, that series of paintings created between 2019-2021 explored the pre-historic alternatives to patriarchal religions.
Patriarchal religions are based on the idea that the human male is made in God’s image, human females can only access God through men, and all other species are subordinate to humans. The theory that inspired this series of paintings suggests that the patriarchal religions are the root of, not only the problem of gender inequality and violence, but the disastrous impacts of violence against the planet.
Michelangelo’s gorgeous painting, shown below, is the powerful and iconic image of this system of belief.
The Creation of Adam, Michelangelo , c. 1512, Fresco, Dimensions 280 cm × 570 cm (9 ft 2 in × 18 ft 8 in) The challenge for the patriarchal religions of the world is to reconcile the conviction that God has passed the spark of divinity directly to human males and no others, with recognition that the rest of Creation is also of divine origin. As our understanding of nature deepens, we are faced with the inevitable conclusion that we depend on the earth and its life-giving force.
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At the Forefront of Art
As discussed in other blogs, from 2019-2021, my work was inspired by European Neolithic images from thousands of years ago. In those blogs, I compared the societies that created European Neolithic art to contemporary Western culture in terms of attitudes toward women and nature. In this blog, I question the idea of progress in art and what it means to be at the forefront of art. The idea of progress, the Avant Garde, and the cutting edge have as their inescapable corollary the belief that prehistoric arts were unsophisticated attempts to depict reality, stymied by ignorance and an undeveloped understanding.
As It Were, 2019, Marion-Lea Jamieson, oil on canvas, 35″ x 42″ Many artists have been inspired by what many authoritative figures have called the “primitive” artwork of either contemporary or ancient cultures. Artists instinctively recognize the compelling strength and impact of these works. In an homage to the sophistication and skill of these ancient artists I worked on a series of paintings from 2019-2020 that were inspired by European Neolithic images, such as the one on the left..
The series questions the idea that art, and indeed the human race, are progressing such that whatever is created today is superior to what went before. It investigates the concept of an Avant Garde that rejects the misapprehensions of the past, brings art boldly into the present day and charts it’s path into the future. This concept is undermined by the work of European Neolithic artists that were creating images as subtle, evocative and strong as anything that has been created since.
Their art has a power that appears to come from total involvement of their minds, bodies and souls in their work. They were not, like contemporary Western artists, motivated by the imperative to create work for the market or personal gain. It seems that Neolithic art sprang from a deeply spiritual connection to nature and their culture. These qualities are often missing from the work of contemporary Western artists who lack a passionate, all-consuming belief in what they are doing.
Another fascinating aspect of European Neolithic art is that many of the themes that appear and re-appear in their work also appear in disparate and geographically distant cultures.This suggests that there are powerful images integral to human consciousness that can be used to create a connection to, and understanding of, the world.
A neolithic ivory bison located in Musee National de Prehistoire, France 
Unidentified artist. Caribou, 1874–1892.
Ivory, black colouring.
Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery;
Egyptian (Artist), Sculptor’s Model with a Relief of a Bull,
ca. 282-200 BCE (Ptolemaic), limestone,
Collection Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MDFinally, the artwork of the Neolithic era in Europe is of interest to me because I am a descendant of Europeans. Though the lineage is convoluted, the influence of the images created by Neolithic artists inspired Egyptian artists, who in turn influenced Greek artists, who in turn influenced modern European artists, who set the contemporary visual arts on their current trajectory. But currently, that trajectory is often one of cool intellectualizing, in which artwork requires an explanatory page of curatorial interpretation for the viewer to get it. While the busy mind is everywhere omni-present in post-modern, post-post-modern and other modern schools, a sense of body & soul are lacking. And the death-grip of post-modernist academe encourages artists to eschew a passionate, all-consuming belief in what they are doing in favour of ironical detachment and cynicism.
Images from early human societies in what is now Western & Eastern Europe, often depicted figures incorporating human female and animal characteristics that are clearly supernatural and/or divine. Divinity at that time was not an exclusively human male attribute and these images ascribe divinity to non-humans as well as female humans.
Bird headed Mother Goddess and Divine Child figurines, 1500-1200 BCE. Tyre, Lebanon. The immediacy, power and beauty of Neolithic art and the arts of contemporary cultures that are still connected to body & soul are therefore an inspiration. This is why to be at the forefront of art may mean being in the Devant Garde rather than the Avant Garde.
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Abstract Art vs Real Life
This blog is about real or imaged disparities between abstract art vs real life. Abstract art entails the freedom of creating a visual language of form, colour and line to create compositions independent of the “real” world. But the suspicion remains that it is a safe way to create artwork that won’t alienate anyone by saying anything about the “real” world.
Continuum, ML Jamieson, 2005, concrete & pigments, 60″h x 20″w x 20″d Some suggest that the preference of the establishment for abstract art, rather than representational art, sprang from the uproar associated with a mural done by Diego Rivera. A program called The Rockefellers on PBS describes Rivera’s confrontation with the American oligarchy and its implications for freedom of visual expression.
Rivera was an artist with strong political convictions that were not satisfied by abstract art. Drawn by the social movements unleashed by the Mexican Revolution, Rivera returned to his homeland in 1921 where he developed a unique style that combined the influences of European art and Mexico’s distinctive pre-Columbian iconography. In his populist murals, he used vibrant colors and simple scenes to illustrate his Marxist ideals and the plight of the working class throughout Mexican history. In 1922 his revolutionary convictions led him to join the Communist Party.
In 1932 Rivera travelled to the US where the culmination of the trip was to be a large mural as the centerpiece of the most talked about architectural project in the country —- the new Rockefeller Center. While still in process, a furor erupted over a portrait of Vladimir Lenin included in the mural. The mural was removed, hammered off the walls and all evidence of it destroyed.
Diego Rivera, 1933, Man at the Crossroads, Fresco, 15.9’× 37.6′ (destroyed) Another example of how realist art threatened the establishment was the Tim Robbins film The Cradle Will Rock (1999). It is a true story of politics and art in the 1930s USA, centered around a leftist musical drama and attempts to stop its production. It includes a dramatization of the confrontation between Rivera and New York’s elites set in the context of a general repression of the arts during the mid-1930’s using anti-communism as a rationale. The film suggested that this was the turning point in the history of modern art in which the political, media, financial & industrial ruling classes decided to actively promote abstraction as a politically neutral, non-threatening art form. Abstract art is safe art in that no contentious political issues are raised such that anyone could notice.
Not that hot debates haven’t raged over abstract art. The was a big kerfuffle in Canada in the 1990’s when the National Gallery paid $1.8 million dollars for Barnett Newman’s 1967 abstract painting, Voice of Fire, with a red stripe and two blue stripes. (The image shown below was downloaded for purposes of critical commentary on the artistic school or tradition to which the artist is associated, by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.)
Voice of Fire (1967) by Barnett Newman But this is the kind of issue that politicians love – where the public attacks some small vulnerable minority like artists, rather than questioning the governing party’s self-serving policies. Though it is fun to witness the play of forms, colours, lines & ideas in abstract art, how can this be justified in a politically apathetic culture in need of consciousness-raising? This, of course, drags forth the whole question of the meaning and purpose of art.
For many years I worked on the Running Man theme, described in an earlier blog, as a vehicle for investigating political and philosophical issues, using a representational image that was abstracted so as to be widely applicable. The figures were expressly designed to raise questions about our economy, society and culture.
All That Glisters, 2000, wood, plexiglas, found baubles, hardware, 48” x 72” x 30” When Running Man had run his course, I experimented with the purely visual universality of abstract painting while remaining wary of the pitfalls of decorative art. Below are a few examples of works from a series called Ephemera. These were studies for future sculptures in sheet acrylic and were depicted as though constructed from highly coloured transparent sheets of two-dimensional plastic.
Antedeluvian Celestrial Geometry #1, ML Jamieson, 2000, acrylic on canvas, 36″w x 48″h 
What Time it Really Is; 2001, ML Jamieson, 48″h x 36″w, acrylic on canvas Later works imagined creating these forms in three dimensions in the more durable medium of concrete. I did a number of drawings and paintings to develop a vocabulary of sculptural forms and the resulting sculptures experimented with concrete pigments to create a painterly surface. The drawings, in oil pastels on paper, were done during the Okanagan Thompson International Sculpture Symposium where I created a steel & resin public artwork called Running Man . This piece and other works on this theme are described in another blog. I was living in a cabin beside an organic orchard just outside Kelowna BC and when not working on my commission, I cranked up Glenn Gould‘s Goldberg Variations and played with oil pastels & coloured paper. The results were an adventure in line & colour.
Fractional Fiction, ML Jamieson, 2002, oil pastel on paper, 20” x 26” 
Changed Utterly, ML Jamieson, 2002, oil pastel on paper, 26” x 20” 
Memory, ML Jamieson, 2005, oil on canvas, 36” x 48” I was guided by an inner sense of direction and excitement in the work, using an unrestricted palette and exuberant scribbles, eschewing precision and favouring expression.
When exhibiting these drawings and the later paintings that grew out of them, I described them as exploring the relationship between mind and body; time and space; physical and spiritual. The actual motivation behind these drawings and paintings was play as opposed to consciously working toward the expression of some profound meaning. These descriptions came because of the need to provide a rationale for artworks in the real world. But really I was just having fun. These drawings were used as a basis for a series of oil paintings called 2D/3D.
Having said that my primary objective was play, as opposed to consciously working toward the expression of some profound meaning, any artwork exists on a number of different planes and no one plane describes its totality. While playing with colours, lines and forms is a critical ingredient of painting, a painter is at the same time looking for harmony, balance, and rationality in the work. The work has to work and in order to do so, the painter has to set up criteria, even if those could not be verbalized. This in turn requires that the painter has internalized those qualities – not necessarily in relation to the “real” world, but in relation to the work. It could be said that the daily pursuit of the elusive goal of expressing ideas visually provides direction to artists in the same way that a religious discipline or philosophical framework provides structure and meaning to others.
This is not a far-fetched analogy because the creation of visual art demands in-the-moment presence that is otherwise sought in meditation and other disciplines associated with religious practice. The act of drawing & painting can produce a level of awareness that is not dissimilar to the results of meditation or prayer. The joy many painters experience comes from overriding the over-busy mind and being present in the moment. And to be in the moment, in the zone, all other worries, problems, desires and ambitions have to be put aside to listen to the artwork speak (or not) and be tuned into what needs to be done next in order to bring it to life.
The act of creation is not always joyful and uplifting. In most cases, the thing imagined and the actual result are unrelated. For instance Cross Purpose #1 was re-painted as Cross Purpose #2 to move away from the work as a painting and make it more of a sculpture study. It went throught several more iterations before it finally came to rest.
Cross Purpose #2, ML Jamieson, 2006, oil on canvas, 48” x 36” 
Cross Purpose #1, ML Jamieson, 2002, oil pastel on paper, 26” x 20” There is a tension between painting to produce a painting and painting as a study for something else. Sculpture has to exist in 3 dimensions – to withstand gravity and all the slings & arrows that sculpture is heir to, so a sculpture study has to make sense as though it existed in the real world. The freedom to allow surfaces to appear & disappear without explanation, as can be done in painting, is lost.
In the Fall of 2002, I began creating abstract sculptures in concrete based on the vocabulary of forms developed through these drawings & paintings. If pressed to explain the series, I would say it was an experiment in combining feminine and masculine energies, hard and soft lines, curves and angles, balance and imbalance, lightness and weight. To wax even more wordy, I would say they explore paradoxical states of being, the resolution of differences and the melding of opposites.
Below are a few examples:
Sine Wave, ML Jamieson, 2005, concrete and pigments, 60”h x 20”w x 20”d 
Still-Life, ML Jamieson, 2003, concrete& pigments, 3.5’h x 3’w x 3’d 
Conundrum, ML Jamieson, 2005, 66″h x 28″w x 40″d, concrete and pigments Conundrum, is one of the few sculptures for which I documented the process. The following images show the piece in progress.
Carved polystyrene armature First an armature was carved out of found scrap high density polystyrene using a hot wire and saws. More about hot wire cutting is discussed in an earlier blog and more in another earlier blog. What isn’t shown is the next stage where this polystyrene armature was entirely covered with expandable wire mesh (stucco wire) which provides a surface for the concrete to grab onto. Also not shown was the rebar that was attached with this wire to strengthen the top arch.
Then the concrete was added as shown below.
Concrete layered onto armature The concrete used is a mix of 1:3 cement/ sand with liquid added to make it just wet enough to stick. The water is a 1:3 glue/water mixture to add strength. Later I added fibers for more strength. With the gravity-defying surfaces that need to be covered in a sculpture (ie overhangs etc.) the concrete can’t be heavy. It is hand applied, built up in layers, with each layer kept moist to allow the next layer to adhere. I would mix small amounts of concrete at a time (maybe 4-5 litres max) so that the concrete wouldn’t dry out but would last for 3-4 hours of work. It’s slow, careful work, not like pouring a pad all in one go.
Red iron oxide pigments added to last layers The last few layers of concrete incorporated iron oxide pigments, as shown in the final image. Apparently this pigment is not good for you, so I wear thicker gloves for this portion of the work. Normally, I wear thin latex gloves to have maximum manual control.
I intensely pigmented small amounts of concrete then added them somewhat randomly to create a marbled effect. I really enjoyed the serendipitous patterns that were created – like painting with concrete in 3D. The inspiration for this approach were ancient stones in the Mayan ruins in the Yucatan peninsula. They effects of time on the stones had created beautiful patterns and colours.
Mayan columns at Chichen Itza I haven’t returned to purely abstract forms since 2005. After that I created abstracted representational forms as discussed in other blogs. But the pull of simply working with pure form, colour & line is always there and I feel the pull of working with pure abstraction and no recognizable images. The debate in my head continues however, the main points of which are outlined in the next blog about art and changing times.
Many decades that have gone by since abstract paintings were le dernier cri and there were public outcries over their purchase by public galleries. From the current perspective, they seem elegant and somehow naive in the face of the radical change in attitude of the arts establishment that came after. They were not the bold critiques of social injustice of Diego Rivera, but they worked toward redefining beauty, because the pursuit of beauty had not yet become anathema. The idealism of the moderns, as expressed in the abstract works of the period, now seems to have sprung from a time that was more positive, innocent and hopeful than the present day.
There were many who suspected that elites with the money to buy art or decide what would be bought, preferred abstract art because it supplanted any movement toward social realism or other artistic critiques. But one can’t help but wonder if the irony and anti-idealism that has replaced it is even more preferable to those same elites.
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The Consolation of Philosophy
Art and Aesthetics
Philosophers have attempted to address issues to do with aesthetics, such as who should make aesthetic judgments and whether it is even possible to make them. This blog explores how philosophical theories have shaped current attitudes toward art & aesthetics. It suggests that the consolation of philosophy has not extended to the arts.
Previous blogs have wrestled with the conflict between contemporary art and aesthetics and attempted to identify and understand the problems and philosophical efforts to resolve the quandary of aesthetics. This blog makes further efforts at understanding. Wikipedia defines aesthetics as: “… a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of art, beauty and taste and with the creation or appreciation of beauty… the study of subjective and sensory-emotional values”.
Analytical Philosophy
All western philosophy appears to be refinements of the thinking of its founding fathers, Plato and Aristotle. In brief, Plato‘s philosophy is a transcendental metaphysics based on his theory of forms and he is described as an absolutist.
Bust of Aristotle, Marble, Roman copy after Greek bronze original by Lysippos, 330 BC 
Plato, copy of portrait made by Silanion, ca. 370 BC Aristotle by contrast, believed that the proper goal of metaphysics is to present a non-transcendental essentialism. Two major schools of philosophy have developed from Aristotle’s approach Analytical and Continental.
Logical Positivism
Analytic philosophy is identified with the logical-positivist principle that there are not any specifically philosophical facts and that statements about value, including all ethical and aesthetic judgments, cannot be objectively verified or falsified. Instead, the logical positivists adopted the theory that value judgments expressed the attitude of the speaker. The first half of the 20th century was marked by skepticism toward, and neglect of, subjects, such as aesthetics. During this time, utilitarianism was the only non-skeptical type of ethics to remain popular. The influence of logical positivism began to decrease mid-century but it’s influence in the arts, especially the visual arts, continues to hold sway.
Logical positivism attempted to analyze & critique culturally damaging & limiting bourgeois assumptions. Based on the idea that what is cannot be extrapolated to determine what ought to be, this approach has given rise to a revolution in thinking. Politically and socially, this revolution has, in some instances, led to more diversity & inclusivity. But these ideas have been applied more widely than they merit as well as misinterpreted and wrongly applied. While the main thrust of logical positivism was the uses & misuses of language, especially the written word, these ideas have been indiscriminately applied to the visual arts. Especially at the university level, administrators & teachers eager to embrace current thinking have embraced the idea that aesthetic judgments cannot be objectively verified or falsified. As a corollary to that it has been assumed that aesthetic judgments should therefore not be made and as a further corollary, that aesthetics itself is an unsound basis on which to view art. The influence of logical positivism has been to downgrade the role of aesthetics in the visual arts . This is based on the assumption that, as there is no objective way to determine if a work of art is beautiful or not, attempts to create beautiful works are naive and irrelevant. This transition can be seen by comparing Claude Monet‘s *Water Lilies painted in1906, to Mark Rothko’s “No. 14” painted in 1960 and Joseph Beuys‘ “Ben Vautier wrapped in String”, May 23, 1964 and “The Table”, created in 1971.
“No. 14,” 1960, Mark Rothko, oil on canvas 
Claude Monet *Water Lilies *1906 *Oil on canvas 
“The Table” (Schellmann 41), 1971, JOSEPH BEUYS 
JOSEPH BEUYS, Photograph of Ben Vautier, 1964 A previous blog has explored a change in the direction of art criticism as a result of this interpretation, or misinterpretation, of logical positivism. This change has made it risky for critics to make any value judgments about works of art and they are more comfortable expressing their views in the form of a personal response to the work, rather than trying to make objective observations. Critics are wary of forming or adhering to criteria on which to form judgments, or of analyzing artworks according to any criteria other than subjective experience.
A visual arts establishment fearful of taking on questions of aesthetics has left the determination of value to the marketplace. So the final outcome of one hundred years of philosophical works designed to circumvent the bourgeoisie’s stranglehold on western culture has been to consolidate and strengthen its grip on the visual arts.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Versus Medici, 1982. Sotheby’s sold it for $35 million Continental Philosophy
The term “continental philosophy” is used to refer to a range of thinkers and traditions outside the analytic movement. It differs from analytic philosophy in that it rejects the natural sciences as the only or most accurate way of understanding natural phenomena. Continental philosophy considers experience as variable: determined by factors such as context, space and time, language, culture, or history.
A major strain of continental thought is structuralism/post-structuralism. Structuralism proposes that one may understand human culture by means of a structure—modelled on language that differs from concrete reality and from abstract ideas. Post structuralism emphasizes plurality of meaning and instability of concepts that structuralism uses to define society; language, literature etc. So though these philosophers were mainly focused on the application of their ideas to analysis of written material, their work has been extrapolated to apply, however erroneously or tenuously, to the visual arts. The post-structuralist thinkers with the most important influences on the visual arts include Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault.
Barthes felt that avant-garde art should maintain a distance between its audience and itself. By presenting an obvious artificiality rather than making claims to great subjective truths, the avant-garde ensures that their audiences maintain an objective perspective. He believed that art should be critical and should interrogate the world, rather than seek to explain it. Strict adherence to this approach can be observed in any description of the goals and objectives of contemporary artists by galleries, museums of the artists themselves. These descriptions are always careful to state that the artist is “investigating” this or that in an objective way, rather than making any definitive statement as to what the art is about. This open-ended approach is a cornerstone of post-modernism.
Derrida’s work retains major academic influence and has been influential on thinking about aesthetics, art and art criticism. Derrida argued that that the whole philosophical tradition of Western culture rests on arbitrary dichotomous categories (such as sacred/profane, signifier/signified, mind/body), “by which an order is imposed on reality and by which a subtle repression is exercised, that excludes, subordinates, and hides the various potential meanings.” Derrida refers to his procedure for uncovering and unsettling these dichotomies as deconstruction of Western culture. Again, this post-structuralist approach has been widely applied to contemporary art and has become the accepted measure by which it is viewed. Any clear statement of goals or reference to absolute principles is suspect, such that contemporary art practices and criticism are based on a relentless relativism. The more vague and open-ended an art-work, the better, to avoid accusations of the artist’s attempt to impose a subtle repression of the viewer’s freedom of interpretation.
Foucault’s theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Often cited as a post-structuralist and postmodernist, his thought has influenced academics working in critical theory.
The rarefied philosophical musings of these thinkers have had a profound impact on contemporary art. Critics have attempted to interpret, translate and apply the moral relativism of Continental Philosophy to the visual arts to profound, but detrimental, effect.
In her book, The Long Life, Helen Small says she does not wish to “revisit the deconstructive/Heideggerian debate over the “destruction” of metaphysics – or what sometimes looks like a competition for the credit of having murdered it (Derrida v. Nietzche)”. If we define metaphysics as “thoughts which seek to penetrate beyond the boundaries of experience” by denying any metaphysical basis for either existence or thought, this view assaults traditional criteria for aesthetic judgements. Artistic forms can no longer be linked to any substantive affirmative metaphysical meaning.
Professor Helen Small, Merton Professor of English Language and Literature
No Consolation of Philosophy
This brief discussion of analytical and continental philosophy suggests that both branches of the discipline have contributed to deriding the role of aesthetics in the visual arts. Both branches agree on a central theme – aesthetic judgments express the attitude of the speaker rather than any objective fact and artworks can only be analyzing according to subjective experience. However, the continental philosophers have been most effective in convincing the Western contemporary art establishment of this view.
The previous blog On Criticism, described how the thinking of post-structuralists colonized universities and shaped contemporary art institutions and through them, contemporary art. These assumptions have been transported to institutions of higher learning where students learn the words and phrases that are designed to convey their superior understanding of art and denote a belt of intellectual rather than technical tools. Some critics argue that universities have been transformed in the late twentieth century into institutions where the broadly humanist educational curricula of the past have been replaced by a free-market model of learning and where the assumptions of moral relativism are scarcely challenged.
As David Balzer explains in his book, Curationism, it is no longer adequate to go to art school, one must have a Masters of Fine Arts to be taken seriously. He describes how critical theory imported from Europe, mainly from France, became trendy in the 1980’s and colonized universities in the 1990’s. One of the main objectives of this critical theory, particularly post-structuralism, is to explode assumptions about language, tradition and privilege. Graduates of programs based on these new theories were embraced by contemporary museum and gallery curators as a way to ostensibly break free from their image of themselves as having a stodgy, dead-white-male-focus. Artists thus came under pressure to professionalize by taking graduate degrees from the institutions that offered these new theories, especially for those working outside painting, drawing and traditional sculpture.
While the post-structuralist theories discussed above challenged the white male privileges of the modernist era, they have led to unanticipated effects on the visual arts that, some would say, have damaged Western culture more than the previous philosophical errors. These effects include more social control by societal institutions, less creative freedom for artists and far less creation or appreciation of beauty and subjective sensory-emotional values, or aesthetics.
The impact of the post-structuralists has gone far beyond the arts and could be said to have negatively affected the earth itself. As Zadie Smith says in the collection of essays, Feel Free (2018):
“What will we tell our granddaughters about our collective failure to address global warming? So I might say to her, ‘look: the thing you have to appreciate is that we’d just been through a century of relativism and deconstruction, in which we were informed that most of our fondest-held principles were either uncertain or simple wishful thinking, and in many areas of our lives we had already been asked to accept that nothing is essential and everything changes–and this had taken the fight out of us somewhat.“
Where the cultural establishment does not tolerate expressing opinions based on firm principles, and where it is assumed that every work of art is subject to any number of various interpretation, none of which are more true or relevant than any other, there is an authority vacuum created. As David Balzer explains in Curationism, this vacuum has been filled by the sector with the most to gain from creating its own measure of value for artworks – the market. Value is imparted by popularity, sales and giving people what they want. Curators have become visual merchandisers so that contemporary art has become a seemingly timeless zone of consumerism and spectacle. Two examples of highly successful artist/merchandisers are Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons.
Damien Hirst in front of dot painting 
We have been schooled by university cultural-studies departments and their end-of-snobbery messages to believe that anything is fair game for “critical discourse” from porn to action films and mainstream hit-driven music. Balzar goes on to suggest that the equal aesthetic rights given to all expressions of human activity prevents the addressing of internal structural oppression. “It invokes an abstract idea of equality that is institutionally normalized without being able to see the means by which that normalization occurs”.
Thus this blog concludes that aesthetics in the visual arts have come full circle after a century of philosophical attempts to construct or deconstruct the ways in which aesthetic judgments are made. Instead of social control effected through value judgments by societal institutions run by stodgy white males, social control is effected through dollar value judgments imposed by the marketplace. As Balzar points out, however, the arts may be in a worse position now than before because this social control is subtle and internalized, so it is difficult for dissenters to frame their opposition in the face of an entrenched and highly popular system of belief.
How have relativism and deconstruction, in which our fondest-held principles are wishful thinking, nothing is essential and everything changes, become so entrenched? In any overview of philosophy, relativism and deconstruction are included as only one of many lines of thought and not considered the most important in terms of contributing to an understanding of the most vexing quandaries of our existence. So how has suspicion of any clear statement of goals, reference to any absolute principles and denial of any metaphysical basis for existence or thought become the dominant paradigm? If we follow the money, we find connections between moral and aesthetic relativism and the triumph of free-market capitalism.
An interesting topic for other blogs, but meanwhile relativism has taken the fight out of us at a time when we need to battle against art as commodity and the earth as an environmental catastrophe. For these crises, there has been no consolation from the most influential philosophies.
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A New Academy
As further research into painting in the 21st Century, this blog looks at some modernist art criticism from the 1960’s & ’70’s. It briefly reviews how two major art critics of that era shaped current attitudes toward painting. It argues that their perceived need to develop a comprehensive and defensible explanation for why certain works of art can be considered “good”, and others not, has had a profound effect on the direction of modern & post-modern art. It has led to the creation of A New Academy of Art that is just rigid as the French Academy the Impressionists rebelled against. This piece also suggests that the influence of these critics has created an emphasis on the cerebral aspects of the visual arts as a whole, not just art criticism. Further, that this emphasis on the cerebral has been instrumental in shaping attitudes to what is, or is not ,acceptable painting practice. This cerebral focus has been promoted by institutions to serve their own ends and these institutions have skewed the discipline of painting in a direction that it may not otherwise have gone.
Though many, if not most, self-defined post-modernists would seek to differentiate their views from those of Clement Greenberg‘s, there is a clear link between his theories and post-modern attitudes toward painting.Greenberg’s theory was that the point of painting was to “… determine the irreducible working essence of art…. Under Modernism, more and more of the conventions of the art of painting have shown themselves to be dispensable, unessential…the irreducible essence of pictorial art consists in but two constitutive conventions or norms: flatness and the delimitation of flatness…” Greenberg also insisted that painting establishes a purely visual or “optical space”, one addressed to eyesight alone and unmodified or revised by tactile associations.(1)
Onement 1, 1948, by Barnett Newman Though disparaged and eventually de-throned, Greenberg’s views have had an overwhelming impact on contemporary art practice up to the present and they have been widely accepted as unassailably true. The creative path of artists like Mondrian or Picasso might have been the source of Greenberg’s theory that painting is on an unswerving trajectory toward perfecting itself through jettisoning the inessential.
How artists were to define what is inessential Greenberg left up to individual self-criticism, but it soon became clear that only what artists that Greenberg admired deemed inessential led to irreducibly “good” paintings.
Later, Michael Fried took on the Minimalists (whom he also refers to as Literalists) for their wholly literal approach to painting & sculpture. By that he meant that they followed Greenberg’s idea about finding the irreducible essence of art to its logical conclusion which was “the surpassing of painting (or sculpture) in the interests of literalness” or what he called “objecthood”.
Tony Smith Night, 1962, Steel, painted black 
Piet Mondrian, Evening; Red Tree, 1910, oil on canvas, 
Piet Mondrian, Composition No. 10 (1939–42), 
Kenneth Noland, Reflections Alit, 2003, acrylic on canvas, 18-3/8″ x 51″ (46.7 cm x 129.5 cm) © The Paige Rense Noland Marital Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Fried drew an analogy between the works of Henri Matisse and Kenneth Noland as both having “unbrokenness, uniform intensity and sheer breadth of colour”.
The Dessert:Henri Matisse, 1908, “Harmony in Red” 
Donald Judd, Untitled 1980, set of six aquatints, 28 3/4″ x 33 3/4″ each Greenberg and Fried were writing at a time when the modernist experiment still had life in it and they could see that the direction of painting could either go toward work that “deadened its expressiveness, denied its sense of humanness” or work that could “stand in comparison with the painting of both the modernist and the premodernist past & whose quality is be beyond question.” They were living & writing during a period when what was considered to be important paintings were works that they had in large part encouraged through their criticism. These were hard-edged, non-pictorial, intellectual works, some of which retained some aspects of painterlyness and others that had rejected any claims to be arty. They both assumed that the direction they had pointed to in their critiques was based on a more-or-less objective assessment of the art world in which they found themselves. But a remove of a few decades reveals that their criticism was not objective in any way but emerged from their own desires to ennoble art criticism and themselves as art critics.
Fried considered that what Nolan has done is to make work like Matisse’s “radically abstract”. This agrees with Greenberg’s assertion that progress in painting has to do with discovering its essence, its irreducibility.
Kenneth Noland, “Shoot, – Acrylic On Canvas – 264 x 322 cm – 1964 But perhaps in searching for the irreducible essence of painting, the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. What artists like Nolan may have felt were inessential were aspects of painting that convey life, the human factor, nature, a sense of place, joy, warmth, paint strokes & images to name a few of what Greenberg would term inessential “conventions”. Because some artists &critics did not consider these “conventions” to be essential does not mean they were & are inessential. They may have been inessential to those particular artists at that particular time, but may be essential to another time & place. However, this idea of whittling away everything extraneous to reveal the essence of art took hold as the dominant paradigm until painting itself became dispensable.
This ennobling desire on their part, and on the part of most art critics today, is understandable and defensible, especially in an art world that has become increasingly focused on monetary value rather than the intrinsic values of a work of art. And at the time they were writing, Greenberg & Fried were both wrestling with the emerging permission to create anti-art or non-art and demand that it be called art.
Marcel Duchamp, “Fountain
1917, ready-made, 23.5 x 18 cmor non-art
Anonymous, Bas relief, Stocking nailed to wooden plank So they felt the need to formalize their objections to these emerging trends by expressing their ideas in a quasi-theoretical, quasi-intellectual mode. Much of their cogitations appear to be long digressions with no useful result – as worthwhile as the angels-on-head-of-pin debates of yore.
But through their convoluted writings they paved the way for a new attitude toward the visual arts for artists, curators, critics and viewers. This new attitude assumes that art is primarily a cerebral activity that can only be appreciated through close mental study of an art work. In other words, it is not enough to feel enchanted with a painting through its immediate visual impact transmitted to the nerves and sinews and bypassing the analytical brain.
These assumptions have been transported to institutions of higher learning where students learn the words and phrases that will convey their superior understanding of art to the outside world as well as a belt of intellectual rather than technical tools. Universities have been transformed in the late twentieth century into emasculated centres of learning where the broadly humanist educational curricula of the past have been replaced by a free-market model of learning and where the assumptions of moral relativism is scarcely challenged.
As David Balzer explains in Curationism, It is no longer adequate to go to art school, once must have a Masters of Fine Arts to be taken seriously as someone who understands art. He describes how critical theory imported from Europe, mainly from France, became trendy in the 1980’s and colonized universities in the 1990’s. One of the main objectives of this critical theory, particularly post-structuralism, is to explode assumptions about language, tradition and privilege. These ideas are explored in more detail in the next blog,The Consolation of Philosophy. Graduates of programs based on these new theories were embraced by contemporary museum and gallery curators as a way to ostensibly break free from their image of themselves as having a stodgy, dead-white-male-focus. Artists thus came under pressure to professionalize by taking graduate degrees from the institutions that offered these new theories, especially for those working outside painting, drawing and traditional sculpture.
For instance, in my home-town of Vancouver, the Vancouver School of Art founded in1925 has morphed into the Emily Carr University of Art & Design.
Vancouver School of Art (1930) Photo Credit: City of Vancouver Archives 
A lecture hall at the new Emily Carr University campus in Vancouver. (Emily Carr University) This university-based approach has spawned a network of artists, critics, curators and funders who speak the same language and are comfortable that they are promoting a true appreciation of art based on Greenbergian ideas about determining the irreducible working essence of art by jettisoning technique, meaning, and especially aesthetics. Conceptualist practice in particular was readily abetted by such academic training given obvious overlaps between those working in institutions and those working in academe.
An Oak Tree by Michael Craig-Martin. 1973 The institutions of higher learning have a stake in continuing to be the arbiters of intellectual taste in the arts and have created a new Academia whose rigid conformity to the Greenberg/Fried intellectual tradition rivals that of its predecessor in pre-modernist France. This intellectual tradition – the stripping away of anything extraneous (ie visual, visceral, sensuous) – leads to major galleries mounting exhibitions that are monotonous in the extreme
and comprehensible only to those willing to read the page of explanatory text beside each piece describing why it is important and meaningful.
pieces in Vancouver Art Galery, Entanglements show, 2017 
This does not suggest that we should dumb-down art or that there is no place for art criticism. Instead it suggests that there is a greater-than-ever need for art criticism that can shake itself free from the overwhelming influence of A New Academy and re-examine the critical tradition inherited from the 1960’s. There is no denying the fact that writing about the visual arts is difficult, as any artists trying to describe what s/he is doing for an exhibition, grant or other application can attest.
Trying to put a purely visual/visceral/sensuous experience into words is an attempt to describe the indescribable. To paraphrase, writing about the visual arts is like dancing about architecture, a category error. A writer can either surround each thought with clouds of verbiage, as Fried has done, in an effort to finally get close to the germ of the idea struggled with or, like Greenberg, simply state that s/he has good taste, knows art and knows what’s good. In order to avoid these shoals of garrulousness and ego, later writers have acceded to the belief that art criticism is necessarily subjective and that criticism can only consist of detailed descriptions of one’s personal experience of the subject artworks. None of these approaches is ideal and finding a workable alternative is the challenge for art critics today.
Fortunately, I am an artist rather than an art critic, so the task of finding a more relevant and constructive approach to art criticism is not mine, though I assume the role of critic-of-art-critics in these blogs. But my purpose is to understand what is meaningful in my painting practice and analyze the temporal/historical space in which I work and the influence of A New Academy on the arts.
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Identity and Neo-Liberalism
This post continues the exploration of the philosophical currents that shape current art practices, in this case the issue of identity and Neo-Liberalism.
A previous post, More on Painting, touched on the issue of identity, in terms of “self-differing”, or the self as a collection of “innumerable configurations of personality and emotion” as opposed to an “all-at-oneness”. This is a more esoteric aspect of identity than what has become known as “identity politics” in which various groups who define themselves by gender, sexual orientation, or level of ability, rightly demand greater recognition, respect and a share in social benefits.
While these demands warrant attention & positive societal action, the issue of identity and its implications for art has become a confusing areas for artists and critics in the post-modern era. The issue has ballooned into something out of all proportion to its importance as a focus for the arts. While in its original form, the exploration of identity presented some social challenges and critical philosophical questions, it has become an ideology with all the attendant dangers of wildly popular but poorly understood ideas.
The first victim in the art world, especially with regard to painting, has been an understanding of self. As I understand it, the idea of self-differing, or the self as a collection of personal and emotional reactions, is a re-stating of the relativist philosophy that Socrates opposed.
A marble head of Socrates in the Louvre c. 470 BC The Sophists believed that “you can never step into the same river twice” because every moment is different and there are no constants. They extrapolated from this that, because there are no constants, there can be no right or wrong, so every person should act in their own interests. Today’s neo-liberals are the modern version of this thinking.
Socrates countered this with a belief in ethical virtue as something that should be aspired to and is immutable, permanent and unchanging. As such he was the father of absolutism that continues in today’s religious traditions and other groups with unswerving beliefs in moral absolutes.
A definition of the self as a collection of “innumerable configurations of personality and emotion” is a pillar of post-modernism and revives the sophistry that Socrates opposed. A widely accepted modern version of sophistry has facilitated imposition of the Neo-Liberal agenda which has been accompanied by the rise of “identity politics”. While having no wish to detract from the justified demands for equality made by disempowered and disadvantaged groups, the cost of identity politics has been a fragmentation of what might otherwise have been a unified opposition to unfettered capitalism. The popularity of a relativist perspective and fragmentation through identification with smaller minority groups may be responsible for low voting numbers and a general lack of participation in organized political groups, especially among younger voters (or non-voters).
The relation between identity politics and relativism is described by writer Ian McEwan in his novel, Nutshell. He describes the young as “…on the march, angry at times , but mostly needful of authority’s blessing, its validation of their chosen identities. …I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close…I’ll feel, therefore I’ll be. Let poverty go begging and climate change braise in hell. Social justice can drown in ink. I’ll be an activist of the emotions….My identity will be my precious, my only true possession, my access to the only truth.” This captures the naïveté of identity politics and suggests why it has been nurtured and embraced by neo-liberals.
In the visual art world, more so than most, the primacy of identity has had a schizophrenic effect. On one side, artists who create large, grand or durable artworks are suspected of egotism. This potent charge has encouraged a generation of artists who ensure that their works are small and self-effacing, or if not small, constructed of recycled waste products. In this view large paintings are a throwback to the modernist era when gigantic artistic egos created giant canvases.
The flip side of the current obsession with identity in the visual arts is the unprecedented importance placed on the personality of the artist rather than the artworks themselves. Artists are brands, marketed on the strength of name recognition, rather than artistic excellence.
Nutshell: McEwan, Ian, Vintage Publishing, London, 2017
Titi, 2004–09, Jeff Koons, High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating. Who can judge excellence in a world without right or wrong, good or bad? The last absolutist critic to have any influence, Clement Greenberg, based his judgments of excellence on his own good taste, rather than any more fulsome philosophical rationale. Having been discredited in accordance with the current relativist world view, along with the modernist artists he championed, the market has become the final arbiter.
That we have become a culture of change, rather than a changing culture also lends itself to the neo-liberal agenda. Where the only constant is change, it has become the only absolute and almost a religion. The most damning accusation that can be levelled against those who oppose any change is that they are “afraid of change”. Thus changes, no matter how harmful or ill-advised, are protected from critiques and in every election, all parties claim, “it’s time for a change!” as though it were an ethical virtue. But the change brought about by victorious Western political parties has been an intensification of Business-As-Usual policies that enrich some and impoverish an increasing number of people and the natural world. The climate change crisis can be directly linked to the policies of parties calling for change, such as the two Canadian examples, below.
In conclusion, the effect of identity politics has been to make most people in Western cultures more aware of, and tolerant of, differences. However, the melding of Identity and Neo-Liberalism has been used by elites to deflect attention from pressing issues of environmental degradation and economic disparities. In the arts, the focus on identity has encouraged a self-reflexive culture, where art is all about itself rather than a mastery of the medium and its aesthetic potential, which has contributed toward commercialization and stunting of Western culture. While contemporary art products can be whimsical, clever and highly original, they lack commitment. Much of what we see is unconnected to the artist’s soul, expressing ideas mainly from the busy, market-oriented mind.
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Art, Activism & the Avant-Garde
This blog, Art, Activism & the Avant-Garde sets out to discover whether art has a meaningful role in the face of considerable global ecological, social, economic and cultural problems.
Art as Counterbalance
When the arts are under attack, artists generally defend their disciplines as providing a counterbalance to contemporary Western culture’s obsession with getting and spending, And while the attacks are increasing, artists have a decreasing ability to argue convincingly that the arts are relevant. What could, in previous decades, have been described as a general lack of interest in the arts, appears to be blossoming into antipathy towards the arts in general & painting in particular. One of the reasons for this is the sheer impossibility for art to capture the scale of the disaster the planet faces as the anthropocene age progresses through mass species extinction,
climate change,
rising sea levels,
and so on, all of which creates a widening gap between rich & poor.
In Wealth: Having it all and wanting more, Oxfam calculated that the richest 1% of people in the world owned nearly half (48%) of the world’s wealth. The vast majority of the remaining 52% of the world’s wealth was owned by the next 19% of the world’s richest people (which would probably include everybody reading this post) leaving just 5.5% of the world’s wealth for the poorest 80% of people in the world.
Wealth: Having it all and wanting more, Oxfam Artists are faced with the dilemma that the works we create are entirely unlikely to make a difference to the onslaught of late-capitalist destruction.This dilemma is nicely described by the writer, Rick Bass:
“What story, what painting, does one offer to refute Bosnia, Somalia, the Holocaust, Chechnya, China, Afghanistan or Washington DC? What story or painting does one offer up or create to counterbalance the ever-increasing sum of our destructions?”Painting is especially helpless in this regard as it cannot compete with installations designed to shock viewers into recognition of the crisis we are part of, or photography that can record the disasters in relentless detail.
Cai Guo Qiang, China 
Man Crushed by Building; Fra Biancoshock, Czech Republic Artists are faced with the dilemma that the works we create are entirely unlikely to make a difference to the onslaught of late-capitalist destruction.This dilemma is nicely described by the writer, Rick Bass:
“What story, what painting, does one offer to refute Bosnia, Somalia, the Holocaust, Chechnya, China, Afghanistan or Washington DC? What story or painting does one offer up or create to counterbalance the ever-increasing sum of our destructions?”
https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/10-conflicts-watch-2024 
https://saferenvironment.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/
oil-spill-adverse-effects-on-marine-environmental-
bio-system-and-control-measures/But then he goes on to say, “Paint me a picture or tell me a story as beautiful as other things in the world today are terrible. If such stories and paintings are out there, I’m not seeing them.”
Richard Prince, “Radical New Boring Shit”, 2015. He is referring to the fact that, instead of acting as a counterbalance to the misery humans are creating, intellectual discussions on the role of art promote the idea that creating beautiful paintings, and indeed beauty itself, is part of the problem instead of part of the solution. Bass suggests that,
“Rampant beauty will return”, but in the meantime, “activism is becoming the shell, the husk or where art once was….The activist is for a real and physical thing, as the artist was once for the metaphorical; the activist, or brittle husk-of-artist, is for life, for sensations, for senses deeply touched…The activist is the artist’s ashes”.
Is this true or are artist/activists arising, Phoenix-like from these ashes imbued with creativity and meaning?
Art & Gentrification
An ambivalent view of arts and activism is bolstered not only because artists themselves are rejecting the creation of art but because urban activists have focused on artists and galleries as the enemy – the thin edge of gentrification’s wedge. Artist-driven urban renewal typically leads to artists being priced out of the neighborhoods they have helped to revive. This is sometimes referred to as “the SoHo effect.” Artists are complicit in the gentrification process, which has an impact not only on the artists themselves, but on other residents of neighborhoods that are being gentrified. This process is called “artwashing”—a term for adding a cultural sheen to a developing neighborhood that then sends rental prices up, forcing out the original inhabitants.
Photo credit:Maya Dukmasova Artists find themselves in the uncomfortable position of being inadvertently complicit in driving gentrification, even as they are being victimized by the trend.
The term appears to have first been used in mainstream media in 2014 by Feargus O’Sullivan of The Atlantic, in an article about a tower in once-destitute East London that had been redeveloped for high-paying tenants. They were being enticed, in part, by suggestions that they wouldn’t be gentrifiers but, rather, original members of a new artistic community. “The artist community’s short-term occupancy is being used for a classic profit-driven regeneration manoeuver,” O’Sullivan wrote. He labelled the process “artwashing.” Years later, the conflict is escalating, and someone shot a potato gun at the attendees of an art show, and someone spray-painted “Fuck white art” on the walls of several galleries.
Artwashing hands, Credit (on his Twitter age not sure if he is artist) Stephen Pritchard 
Photo credit: Scott Hard As explained by Jillian Billard in the online journal Artspace, artwashing takes place “when artists and galleries move into what is branded as a “newly established art community,” they generally don’t think of themselves as gentrifiers so much as they think of themselves as pioneers of a “new community,” (as opposed to new members of the pre-existing, already culturally-rich community).
Activists in cities with the highest levels of gentrification and displacement of longstanding residents, such as LA and New York, disrupt exhibitions and readings in new galleries. As Billard says, “It’s not that they don’t like art; rather their efforts proactively address the historically damaging effects that art spaces can have on a community’s deep-rooted residents. When developers see a neighborhood flourishing with art galleries and bougie cafes, they see a potential for exorbitant profit. Art galleries are part of a broader effort by planners and politicians and developers who want to artwash gentrification.”
In the past year, across North America, artist/activists are voicing their discontent with developer-driven artwashing and displacement. The Chinatown Art Brigade, an anti-gentrification group of artists and activists in New York, protested an exhibition by a Berlin-based artist. Their banner read “RACISM DISGUISED AS ART” as the installation included a room replete with objects indicating a sparsely merchandised Chinatown business that visitors walked through in order to view an artwork screening in the back of the gallery.
https://hyperallergic.com/405812/james-cohan-gallery-omer-fast-racism/ In Vancouver BC, a member of the Chinatown Action Group likened the artwashing taking place in New York’s Chinatown to developers and new businesses in Vancouver. These employ stereotypically Chinese imagery or aesthetics to gain authenticity, pay a misguided homage, or clumsily conceal an exclusionary agenda.
Though the movement is often called Anti-Art, some powerful art is being created by these activists, such as the art washing hands image shown earlier, the above image and the following by an unidentified artist on the Defend Boyle Heights Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/defendboyleheights/ Another compelling image emerged from Vancouver, B.C activists protesting developer Westbank’s arrogant use of art-washing discussed in the blog Anti Art. This is a strong piece of activist art using the format of Westbank’s advertising blitz and capturing its hypocrisy and contempt for neighbourhoods. Westbank is the largest real-estate developer in Vancouver and it launched a disingenuous ad campaign called “The Fight for Beauty” for its new condo development that would displace many residents of the city. On its website, the activists posted the following:
“Everything Westbank does serves to displace culture created by the people. The real estate development company is not a cultural pioneer or patron, but a corporate entity that takes advantage of culture as a facade to push forward their profit-making agenda at all cost. They distribute their manufactured “culture” as soulless condos globally to offshore investors, while they wipe out Vancouver’s neighbourhoods and affordability. Westbank is not a culture company; it is a vulture company.“
http://themainlander.com/2017/12/16/fight-for-affordability-local-group-plans-alternative-tour-of-westbanks-fight-for-beauty/ 
http://themainlander.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/ANDREI.png The activists oppose artists and galleries that act as vehicles for gentrification & displacement but ironically, the images arising from that struggle are some of the most evocative being produced today. Perhaps that is because these images are coming from strong feeling and beliefs as opposed to what tends to be the coldly intellectual art promoted by the arts establishment.
Role of Arts Establishment
In addition to galleries, the arts establishment contributes to gentrification & displacement in cities under pressure from development interests. A good example of this in Vancouver is Artscape, an arts and culture non-profit with a multi-million dollar budget used to “revitalize” neighborhoods and promote mixed use developments.
Artscape’s method is to purchase or lease underused properties, more often than not in low-income neighbourhoods. The spaces are then rented out to professional artists and registered not-for-profits at below-market rates. In the case of BC Artscape, the project was also helped with $900,000 – from the City of Vancouver, the credit union, VanCity and the J.W. McConnell Foundation: a match made in real estate heaven. Over the past decade Artscape has become a very attractive partner for developers because developers can build bigger condos if they provide “community benefits” such as arts studios.
The New Avant-Guard
The arts establishment and some artists continue to be guided by the pursuit of such non-issues as whether an artist should ” move away from …the imagistic and textual and toward a probing of the real and historical” as discussed in a recent work of art criticism. But the artworks that are promoted by what the arts establishment would term, “progressive debate” have done little to counterbalance “Bosnia, Somalia, the Holocaust, Chechnya, China, Afghanistan or Washington DC”. And as we have seen, the arts have been complicit in localized class wars, also called gentrification.
Palestinians search for casualties at the site of Israeli strikes on houses in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, October 31, 2023. REUTERS / Anas al-Shareef
However, the work of the artist/activists explored in this blog are pointing the way forward and that direction is one of meaningful (as opposed to theoretical) day-to-day involvement in the ongoing struggle to protect common social and economic values from the ravages of greed and opportunism.
An article in the online journal colouringinculture.org suggests that, “The radical avant-garde today can therefore be seen to exist in the cracks of neoliberalism as re-politicised acts of resistance against the totality of capitalism, grounded in collectivism and …nonaesthetic reason…in keeping with the radical avant-garde, disobedience and dissent, non-compliance and non-conformity, are what make us human and make us creative.” It is an interesting that anti-art activists are art’s newest avant-garde.
While the arts can do little to halt the ravages of the anthropocene age and the totality of capitalism on the environment, they are able to have a meaningful impact on local issues of gentrification and displacement. But as previous blogs have argued, they continue to enrich our lives in dark times. To quote Joseph Conrad (ignore his use of the gender-specific pronouns this was written in early 1900’s):
“the artist appeals… to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mysteries surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation – to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of enumerable hearts, to the solidarity… which binds together all humanity – the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.” -
Anti-Art
Since the 1970’s, painting has been declared dead, defunct and irrelevant. This blog explores the anti-art (school? movement? philosophy? fad?) phenomenon and likely reasons for antipathy to art, especially painting and in particular, painterly aesthetics.
As a place to start this exploration, we can use the 2017 Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition called Entangled: Two Views on Contemporary Canadian Painting. A review by Robin Laurence titled, “Entangled shows contemporary Canadian painting is alive and well” said the painters exhibited, “found ingenious and sometimes revisionist ways of revitalizing the object and justifying their medium”. But the paintings, such as the those shown below, uniformly rejected the notion that beauty has any role to play in painting. As this show was designed to represent the cutting edge of contemporary painting in Vancouver, why was it so clearly adverse to aesthetics? Is this anti-art or simply a redefinition of art, especially painting, as a discipline that must eschew aesthetics in order to be contemporary?
Sandra Meigs, horse tack 2013, acrylic on canvas 
Sandra Meigs, pile by furnace, 2013 acrylic on canvas While Laurence’s review agreed that painting is considered a dead art form, he describes the painters of Entangled as not entirely convinced of its demise. “Human beings, after all, had been applying pigment to receptive surfaces for tens of thousands of years.”
Why do painters continue to paint if the medium has been declared “dead, defunct, or worse, irrelevant”? One good reason was given by Gamlin, the maker of oil paints who describe painting as the most complicated, all-encompassing, and rewarding experience, “because painting requires us to see, think, feel, and perform complicated physical tasks all at the same time, striving for something meaningful, striving to make order out of the very raw material that is oil colors” and because painting makes the painter “feel so good to be so alive.”
Clearly other art forms offer the same experience, which is why artists persist despite a general lack of pecuniary benefits and worldly disinterest. In his book, The Blue Guitar, John Banville‘s goal is not narrative but “linguistic beauty …pursued as an end in itself “. In one passage, he describes what happens to the painter protagonist as he “…sank steadily deeper into the depths of the painted surface, the world’s prattle would retreat like an ebbing tide, leaving me at the centre of a great hollow stillness…In it I would seem suspended at once entranced and quick with awareness, alive to the faintest nuance, the subtlest play of pigment, line and form”. Banville hints that in much of writing or painting this state of hyper-awareness eludes us. “How treacherous language is, more slippery even than paint.”
So why was there so little attention to visual beauty …pursued as an end in itself, in the Entangled show? No artist wants their work to be irrelevant, so the works shown were largely concerned with challenging modernist ideas of aesthetics rather than breaking new painterly ground, with the possible exception of a few works such as this one:
The primary goal of most of the exhibition’s painters appeared to be to challenge the idea of paintings as objects of beauty, value or egotism. While clever and in some cases original, many, if not most, paid no attention to visual beauty …pursued as an end in itself.
Some, like the piece to the right are a replay of ideas that have been done many times over the last half-century. Such works reflect the dominant art paradigm in which emotions or any feelings other than amused irony are part of an outdated modernist sensibility and strictly renounced.
So why has visual beauty, pursued as an end in itself, become an unacceptable pursuit for a self-respecting contemporary artist? And is the Anti-Art movement a logical culmination of the antipathy to aesthetics? The following investigates a number of very good reasons why aesthetics and art itself have become suspect.
1) Looks Good Over the Couch
The most obvious reason for disavowing aesthetics in painting is its use as decoration. Paintings are generally chosen not for their technical skill or visual discoveries but because they complement the decor. Painters at the beginning of their careers often strive for stereotypically beautiful paintings of landscapes, bunches of flowers, nubile nudes etc.
Those who persevere realize that beauty is a snare and a delusion – the more a painter strives for beauty in a familiar form that has been portrayed by other artists and recognized as such, the farther s/he gets from it. Those who make a profession of creating “beautiful” paintings that look good over the couch never set out on the life-long journey to scale painting’s insurmountable cliffs, at the top of which is another insurmountable cliff and so on.
2) Artwork as Investment
The second most obvious reason is that paintings exemplify the commodification of art. As in this article in the Huffington Post the wealthy looking for safe investments are advised to buy real estate and artworks, especially paintings.“The art market rebounded quickly after the last recession, faster than traditional investments. High net worth individuals (HNWI) with a portfolio diversified into art assets were not as greatly affected. Additionally, rather than investing in stocks or bonds, art provides investors with an alternative, tangible opportunity.”
They are not, of course, buying paintings they like, but works attached to a highly valued brand (aka artist). Artists have always had to deal with the philistinism of the market, but there has likely never been a period in history when the art market, with its focus solely on profit, has so dominated artistic production and public understanding of the value of art.
3) Art & Big Egos
In the contemporary visual art world there is the belief is that artists who create large, grand or durable artworks are egotists. To avoid this damning charge, a generation of artists has been careful to ensure that their works are small, self-effacing, unserious and/or constructed of waste products.
Yu Qiucheng, The Re-painterly Nature of Found Objects, 
Takashi Murakami (photo by Maria Ponce Berre Large paintings are viewed as a throwback to the modernist era when gigantic artistic egos created giant canvases.
In an attempt to democratize art, especially painting, the post-modernists discarded distinctions between “high” and “low” art. Into this aesthetic vacuum stepped the phenomenon of the artist as personality and the unprecedented importance placed by the market on the personality of the artist rather than the artworks themselves.
Artists such as Jeff Koons or Takashi Murakami, are not so much artists as brands marketed on the strength of name recognition.
4) Relativism
An offshoot of identity politics has been a revival of the relativist philosophy that Socrates opposed. Socrates believed that virtue was something that should be aspired to and is immutable, permanent and unchanging – a moral absolute.
His antagonists, the Sophists, did “not offer true knowledge, but only an opinion of things” and held a relativistic view on cognition and knowledge. In a relativist universe where there is no right and wrong or standards of excellence, every person can only act in their own interests and neo-liberalism is the modern version of this thinking.
The implication of relativism for the arts has been that, since Clement Greenberg, no one feels they can say whether an artwork is good or bad, or even if an object can rightly be called art. Who can judge excellence in a world without right or wrong, good or bad? So for contemporary artists it is safer not produce something that clearly strives for excellence but to produce works that abjure technical skill and aesthetics .
5) Truth is Beauty & Beauty Truth
Our culture and its tools have changed more in the past 30 years than in the previous 1900, so that it is no longer a changing culture but a culture of change. It is a culture where change has attained a god-like status of inevitability and determinism.In this philosophical climate, there is no potential for art to reveal truths as there can be no absolute truths , so what is the point of art? If painting is not metaphysical or about making money or beautiful objects to please the bourgeoisie, it can only be an in-your-face repudiation of all pretentious, presumptuous, egotistical aims and a reminder of all that is wrong with society. Thus contemporary artists produce works that eschew aesthetics.
Joseph Kosuth, ‘Clock (One and Five) 6) Art & Gentrification
A new argument against aesthetics, art & culture has surfaced that goes a long way toward explaining the hostility to art and the rise of an anti-art sensibility. This argument appeared in an article by Dorothy Woodend in the online journal The Tyee.The article states, “Beauty doesn’t need any help. How about we fight for ugly?” This statement is odd because, after 30 years of exploitative, poorly planned, free-for-all growth, beauty in Vancouver has been effectively expunged. However, Woodend was referring to a PR campaign by one of the more neighbourhood-unfriendly developers in the city. They are running a marketing bonanza under the guise of an art exhibition featuring giant pink billboards, transit ads, posters and pink cars emblazoned with the words “Fight for Beauty” that are currently everywhere.
This PR campaign highlights a debate about art & culture that is gaining momentum in all cities where housing is an international commodity, locals are displaced and artists who remain are forced to scramble for studio space and affordable housing. The displacement is a result of gentrification where local governments allow the demolition of affordable dwellings and their replacement with unaffordable condos. In the cities where this is taking place, activists rightly term it class war as the less wealthy are replaced by higher-income earners.
The Mainlander One of the tools local governments and developers use to create acceptance of this process has been termed art washing. The Vancouver Mural Festival amply demonstrated this approach. In the same way that condominium marketing campaigns re-purpose words like “community” and “regeneration” to sell boxes of air, art is used to divert attention away from the gentrification and displacement taking place. As Woodend says, “..it is difficult not to lose respect for the very idea of art itself”.
All those pretty murals, full of blandishments like “The Present is a Gift” were a quick way for the city to run with a branding scheme for neighbourhoods in a way that ultimately served the interests of developers, realtors, and property owners – stakeholders the then ruling municipal party, Vision Vancouver is beholden to more than working class residents who live in these areas.
Ironically, given Vancouver Mural Festival’s message of improving neighbourhoods and communities, their flagship mural, titled “The Present is a Gift,” adorns The Belvedere and its painting was the catalyst that began the renoviction process of the dozens of artists who lived in the building some for over the last 30 years.
Conclusion
The reasons above provide convincing arguments for contemporary painters to eschew painterly aesthetics. Painting has been commercialized and successful painters are entrepreneurs. The connection between art & gentrification overshadows all other concerns about the arts as it is a scourge in every major city in the world. This issue warrants further exploration and research.
However, the nagging question remains – why anti-art? The commercialized consumer culture touches every aspect of contemporary society from food to games, so why have visual artists felt their disciplines must not search for visual beauty, “pursued as an end in itself “? Clearly this question deserves further study so I have continued the discussion in my next blog.
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Even more on Painting
This and other posts that discuss painting, more on painting and even more on painting, are an effort to understand how painting has become a suspect art form. How had it become assumed, among the cognoscenti, that painting has an irredeemable connection to everything that was wrong with art and society before the post-modern revolution? These blogs also explore the role of painting in the wider Western socio-political realm outside the arts. Modernist painting (and less so sculpture) has been singled out as representing the cultural sins of the current epoch and its repudiation was to be an expiation. However, radical changes in painting, how painting is defined and ways paintings are evaluated, have made no improvements to Western society. It could even be said that the current place of painting and other arts, is worse than at any time in history. This is because, in the last half-century, the culture of getting and spending has come to dominate most areas of life including painting and the arts. The commodification of the visual arts is such that it is now the second most lucrative area for investment after real estate and this has had a deleterious effect on Western culture.
The question is whether painting is relevant and can have an impact on the wider society, or whether it is an art form that is only about the painters’ connection to the painting and the viewer’s personal connection to the painting. Is it a passive art form or can it make the leap from canvas to galvanizing political action?
Paintings in History
In many periods of history, painting has played a powerful role as political propaganda. Earlier civilizations such as the Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks and Romans used murals, bas-reliefs and sculptures to celebrate political triumphs and the power of the elites. This tradition continued through the 20th century with the commissioning of paintings and sculptures commemorating battles won and their victorious winners. As the last centuries’ winners have been outed as ruthless and immoral by any standards, there has been demands for removal of these sculptures and paintings from the public realm. So in that sense, paintings depicting the triumphs of ruthless men have had a strong political impact even in the present day.
Napoleon Crossing the Alps, oil on canvas, Jacques-Louis David, 1801. There have been powerful paintings that generated controversy and influenced public attitudes and even political outcomes that were not sanctioned by ruling elites. For example, the painting below, Raft of the Medusa, had scandalous political implications in France; the incompetent captain, who had gained the position because of connections to the Bourbon Restoration government, fought to save himself and senior officers while leaving the lower ranks to die, so Géricault’s picture of the raft and its inhabitants was greeted with hostility by the government. As Jake Hirsch-Allen says in his analysis, “the power of The Raft as a political tool of propaganda was immediately apparent and has been its most enduring historical facet. As the story of the Medusa became a cause célebré, embroiled in the complexities of
Bourbon-restoration politics and tensions between the Liberal and Royalist factions…and, as
events progressed, with the highly emotive subject of the slave trade, the Raft of the Medusa
itself became a symbol these debates.”Though Géricault’s painting was still part of in the heroic “history painting” style, this muscular work was transformative in re-defining the scope of painting’s subjects and impacts.
Raft of the Medusa, 1818–19, Théodore Géricault, oil on canvas, 4.91 x 7.16m The Impressionists
While Impressonists such as Claude Monet and Edouard Manet are not usually associated with shaping political attitudes, their work had influence. As art historian Nancy Locke said in transcripts of her talk to students at Penn State University, “By painting the homeless, for example, Manet depicted the social implications of poverty. Similarly, by painting scenes which blurred class lines (like many subjects of the Impressionist canvas), artists influenced shifts in society.”
The Ragpicker,1865-1870, Eduard Manet In his paper on Intersections of Art and Politics, John Kim Munholland, argues that Monet also communicated a strong political message, “The Rue Montorgueil, Celebration of June 30,1878 and its twin The Rue Saint-Denis, Celebration of June 30, 1878, in which the words “Vive la République” appear on a flag…blurred class differences with their patriotic, republican messages. Set in the streets of a popular quarter of Paris, they reminded viewers that the Commune uprising also had been an expression of outraged and frustrated nationalism among the people of Paris, who had held out against the Prussians during the siege, but had been forced to capitulate by the Versailles government.”
Rue Saint Denis, Fête du 30 Juin, 1878, Claude Monet Early-Modernism
The “history painters” and Impressionists sought to influence the direction of their societies through content, or depiction of their subjects. The modernists scorned content and expressed themselves only through form. For instance, Piet Mondrian, working during the appalling upheavals in Europe during the 1930’s & 40’s, believed that his work was a “plastic vision” that would help to set up ” …a new type of society composed of balanced relationships”.
According to the online Encyclopedia Britannica, Mondrian’s artistic direction was “Rooted in a strict puritan tradition of Dutch Calvinism and inspired by his theosophical beliefs, he continually strove for purity during his long career, a purity best explained by the double meaning of the Dutch word schoon, which means both “clean” and “beautiful.” Mondrian chose the strict and rigid language of straight line and pure colour to produce first of all an extreme purity, and on another level, a Utopia of superb clarity and force. When, in 1920, Mondrian dedicated Le Néo-plasticisme to “future men,” his dedication implied that art can be a guide to humanity, that it can move beyond depicting the casual, arbitrary facts of everyday appearance and substitute in its place a new, harmonious view of life. This kind of magical thinking is like a poignant glimmer of a previous era’s optimism about art and the human imagination. Mondrian’s philosophy could be thought of as self-indulgent navel-gazing, except for the fact that it produced these astounding works of art and revolutionized thinking about painting.
Modernism
From a twenty-first century perspective, the conviction that rigidly controlled lines and blocks of colour could contribute to world peace seemed laughable. Modernists, like the Minimalists who came after Mondrian, did not share his belief in the power of art to transform society. Like Frank Stella they had a reductionist approach to art, wanting only to demonstrate that every painting is “a flat surface with paint on it—nothing more”, and rejected the idea art as a means of expressing emotion. He summarized his apolitical and anti-social approach by saying, “My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object… All I want anyone to get out of my paintings, and all I ever get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion…. What you see is what you see.“
So with Modernism, painting became what in another blog is described as “self-reflexive”, or concerned only about itself. This could be considered to be a political statement as it is in keeping with the growing individualism of the second half of the twentieth century. Ties to community were weakening and western governments pressured their citizens to become individualistic consumers to bolster the economy.
The drive for purity by Modernists like Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, and Kenneth Noland influenced, and was strongly influenced by, the thinking of the American art critic, Clement Greenberg. His theories could be said to have built on the ideas about purity that inspired Mondrian, but lacked the painter’s Calvinist & Theosophical zeal.
Frank Stella – The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II, 1959, Enamel paint on canvas, 91 x 133 in. Greenberg believed in progressively purifying painting of all representation and illusion and promoted the hard-edged and colour-field abstractions of his favourite artists. Mondrian believed that his painting would contribute to a more harmonious and peaceful world. The only rationale provided by the Modernists for cleansing away any spatial depth or sculptural qualities in painting, was that it is ridiculous to try to create spatial illusions on a flat surface. Modernists did not feel that art should play a role in the larger world, but believed in “art for art’s sake”. The rise of a consumer culture and the commodification of art during this period was not a concern.
Post-Modernism
The Postmodernists were more aware of consumerism and the emerging role of the art market but the movement tried to neutralize it by absorbing it. Postmodernists reversed the Modernist contempt for popular culture, the mass media and mass consumerism and looked for inspiration in the everyday. In his blog The Postmodern Revolution, David Adams comments that this approach “…seemed much more vital than modernist art. (See for example fig. 7, which also suggests the revival of painting that took place).”
Adams goes on to say, “…postmodernism refers to the end of an epistemologically centered philosophy based on the efforts of a knowing subject to know truth by achieving a true mental representation of objective reality (the Cartesian subject-object dualism). It argues (among many other things) that there is no temporally invariant truth since human understanding is always historically-based (or “contingent”).
Post-modern relativism, which has been discussed in other blogs, was a direct outgrowth of the individualist and anti-social introspection of the Modernist era. In this approach, not only does painting have no relation to anything outside itself, it assumes that there is nothing outside itself that is true – only what a particular individual might happen to believe. This brings us to the present day where relativism is widely held and could be called the dominant paradigm. Part of this paradigm is that there can be no possibility of an authoritative assessment of artistic worth or quality as everything is only relative. Anyone’s taste in art is equal to anyone else’s as there are no absolute or even conventionally accepted criteria. Into this moral and authoritative vacuum, the market has taken on the role that used to be held by what used to be called experts on art.
The Market Monster
In a culture of getting and spending where there are no other standards for gauging excellence in art, the marketplace is the logical arbiter. A painting is worthwhile if it can obtain a high price. A previous post, On Theories of Art, suggested that objective assessments of art are difficult to attain because art is about feelings rather than reason, but feels the need to be justified by some form of reason other than marketability. As in all aspects of life in a capitalist society, the market has skewed relations between artists and their work and between artists and viewers.Though written in 1975, Harold Rosenberg’s Art on the Edge, contains many ideas that remain highly relevant. Rosenberg calls the influence of the marketplace on the direction of contemporary art “…a process of transformation whose end is not in sight” (p.8) and over 40 years later, this transformation continues to mutate. For an artist, alternatives to the market are either art-as-criticism, (parody, irony, subversion) or making art for oneself. The irony is that ironic, subversive, parodies of art have been absorbed by the establishment so that they happily sponsor shows that are opposed to them. “To create the illusion of an adversary force, everything that has been overthrown must be overthrown again and again”. (p.90)
This relates to a discussion in the previous post describing the current epoch as not a changing culture but a culture of change. The ideology of constant change has, like the end of history, eliminated real change. It will not be possible to rescue art from the market’s perverse influences through renunciation of artistic sins that went before. And it is naive to believe that one art form or another can have an effect on a pervasive economic system that manipulates every aspect of life.
The Contemporary Era
As I am an artist not a scholar, this is a necessarily brief and sketchy overview of the social and political influence of the visual arts, especially painting, over the last 100 years. I have divided art history into three major art movements: Pre-Modernism, Modernism and Post Modernism. These divisions are only visible from historical perspective and the current era is made up of many disparate schools such as Post-Post-Modernism, Anti-Art, Conceptual Art, Site Specific Art, Installation Art, etc. Their commonality is the assumption that easel painting is dead, or at least irrelevant. But as I have argued here, jettisoning easel painting and conventional concepts of aesthetics, has done nothing to bring greater harmony or halt the commodification of art. Western societies teeter on the brink of instability and the art market continues to go from strength to strength. As I update this blog in April of 2024, I include the latest figures for the art market in 2023 from Artsy:
“The art market experienced a down year in 2023. Total sales in the art market fell by 4% year over year to $65 billion. The figure represents the lowest since the COVID-blighted year of 2020, but is still higher than pre-pandemic levels when sales were $64.4 billion”.
However, their good news for art market was:
“Most dealers and auction houses expect stable or improving sales in 2024, and those predicting lower sales were in the minority both for their own businesses and with their peers.“
This is not the Utopian, harmonious culture that Mondrian hoped to bring about through an extreme purity, superb clarity and force in painting. The modernists and post-modernist that followed, and the elimination of aesthetics and painterly painting they endorsed, have been happily absorbed by the market. So where does this leave contemporary art and artists? This is a topic for future blogs about even more on painting.
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Doomed by A Culture of Change?
Richard Powers book, Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance includes an interesting section about progress and technology. Powers suggests that, as culture and its tools changed more in 30 years than in the previous 1900, the curve of progress reached a critical moment when it was “no longer a changing culture but a culture of change”. How has this constant change affected the arts? Are we doomed by a culture of change?
Now that change is the constant, Powers suggests that nothing has substantively changed since that critical moment. And when progress of a system becomes so accelerated, “it thrusts an awareness of itself onto itself and reaches the terminal velocity of self-reflection”. This produced a species capable of understanding its own biological evolution. In terms of its psychology the species has become aware of its defence mechanisms, so that the self can never again defend itself in the old ways. And “Art that was once a product of psychological mechanisms is now about those mechanisms and – the ultimate trigger point- about being about them.” (p. 81) “Art takes itself as both subject and content; post-modernism about painting…” and other disciplines about themselves.” (p. 83)
The self-reflexive aspect Powers refers to is clearly evident in, for instance, a film recently shown at the Vancouver International Film Festival called Faces, Places by 89 year old French filmmaker, Agnès Varda.
Still from “Faces, Places” a film by 89 year old French filmmaker, Agnès Varda. A quintessentially post-modern piece, the film, feature 2 film-makers who travel around the French countryside taking photographs of ordinary folks, blowing them up to monumental size and pasting them on buildings. It is a film about making a film of 2 film-makers who travel around the French countryside taking photographs, etc.
It was a charming film and very well done. But it was as insubstantial as the photographs that would be washed away by the first storm. Other than being a delightful portrait of the 2 artists and their working relationship, it made no attempt to touch on anything outside that frame. It was a portrait of a world where nothing is constant. so we came away from the film visually gratified and celebrating the ephemeral.
In contrast, an Egyptian film, The Nile Hilton Incident, directed by Tarik Saleh, was a riveting political allegory. Set in Cairo on the edge of revolution, this film explored the corruption that is endemic to tyranny and the near-impossibility for any of us to remain uncorrupted in a culture of greed and violence. While from a post-modern perspective, the film broke all the rules about narrative and morality, this was a piece of great art. It is impossible for the viewer not to be changed by the powerful experience of seeing the film. It was at once illuminating but challenged our complacency and willingness to comply.
Still from the Egyptian film, “The Nile Hilton Incident”, directed by Tarik Saleh This is a good example of how art can be transformative, despite the widely held belief that this is no longer possible in the jaded 21st Century. This jaded view holds that, as self-reflexive beings, art can no longer charm us into believing in a reality that isn’t there or make us suspend our disbelief. The Nile Hilton Incident showed us that whether or not we can fully participate in the experience is not a problem because art can explore powerful ideas and reveal truths outside itself.
However, the idea that there are any truths to be had or that artists can reveal truth and make us more aware is challenged by contemporary art criticism. In his essay, Doubt, Richard Shiff explores modernist and postmodern criticism. Though the nomenclature differs, the self-reflexive issue arises when he discusses the matter of identity which looms large in postmodern discourses. He also refers to the present as in a constant state of change which, to him, precludes absolutes. He then goes on to relate this lack of absolutes to the individual sense of self. if there are no absolutes & everything is relative, there can be no fixed self but a series of selves that appear according to the situation.
Dr. Richard Shiff Shiff calls these “innumerable configurations of personality and emotion” self-differing. He contrasts the self-differing self to the idea of a phantasmatic “all-at-oneness” that suspends the temporal dimension. Shiff discounts this idea by stating that the self always self-differs and never integrates, so that self-difference becomes its identity and that to differentiate the immediate from the temporal is pointless. He claims that all modern & postmodern art explores “orders of difference and temporalized plays of memory” then describes how some artists have attempted to resist self-differing: “the gap between reason & emotion, mind & body, identity by name & identity by feeling”. He suggests that this is impossible based on the aforementioned constant state of change, lack of absolutes and the irreconcilable divide between belief & doubt.
The point of his argument is to critique the style of art criticism that entails a consciously subjective approach, where the critic simply relates a personal response to the artwork. A good example of this is John Berger‘s 2015 book, Portraits, in which he provides a wholly subjective review of mostly male artists. Shiff’s point is that, if there can be no fixed self, there can be no coherent subjective point of view.
So though this may be very true of art criticism, an appreciation of the irreconcilable divide between belief & doubt may not lend itself to understanding art. Shiff’s thinking about art is based on ideas about the nature of the self (a series of selves ) and art as an expression of self-differing. But in my view, the integration of the self has little to do with the dichotomy between belief and doubt as these are simply mental states. The self is not a mental state but a state of being, of which the mind is but a part. Integration of the self does not entail reconciling belief & doubt but is a process whereby body, mind and emotions become one with the self rather than conflicting and disintegrating states. Complete integration of body, mind, emotions and soul is clearly present when a great dancer or musician performs with total commitment and belief in the work and no evidence of an irreconcilable divide. At one remove is the experience of viewing a great painting or other artwork that is clearly the product of an artist wholly integrated during the creative process.
Then there is the integration of the self with consciousness itself – that “phantasmatic all-at-oneness” that is dismissed in this relativistic view. But by dismissing this possibility – the potential for transcendence, this view also dismisses the potential for art to reveal truths, to transcend “orders of difference and temporalized plays of memory”.
In Buddhism, the Sand Mandala painting originated in Vajrayana Buddhism for meditative purposes. The center of the mandala mostly contains a circle to represent spiritual enlightenment, freedom, or the Buddha. Mandala helps practitioners to find themselves as part of nature and become one with the wholeness of the universe. It may not be possible to describe this process using reason, no matter how elegantly delivered but it may be perceived if we suspend the busy reasoning mind.
So there are examples, both contemporary and traditional, that counter Power’s pessimistic view that art is doomed by a culture of change to only be about itself and not relevant to the rest of the world. There is still the potential for transcendence and for art to reveal truths, to transcend “orders of difference and temporalized plays of memory”.
For more on transcendence and the arts, you can visit another blog on the topic.
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What is Good Art?
I’m always looking for readable theories on what is good art as opposed to non-art, mediocre art or art that is not worth talking about. So I’ve been reading the third in a series from the Routledge & University College, Cork, called Doubt, by Richard Shiff. This book is also discussed in another blog .Though it’s a critique of critics, it has interesting ideas for me as an artist. Referring primarily to painting, Shiff suggests that interpretation has replaced an understanding of the painting itself – what he call the “materiality” of the artwork.
text interpreting the textual artwork “High Price” by Ron Terada. But the focus of his discussion is the perceived conflict between absolutism and relativism, though he does not frame it in these terms. He begins with the concept of identity – something that many contemporary artists find of interest. But in the face of all the other crises and disasters in the world today, identity may not merit the attention it is given. Shiff explains that this concept is more than what is commonly referred to as “identity politics” and encompasses a wider philosophical issue.
This wider definition of identity has to do with an understanding of the self. Is the self a constant, or is it situational, differing according to outside stimuli? This difference is described as one between the “temporalized” self and “all-at-onceness”. He believes the assumption of the “temporalized” self is the crux of the post-modern approach to criticism. Because their critiques are based on this assumption, Shiff describes the lengths critics go to avoid the extremes of absolutism and relativism. This is achieved by, for instance, providing criticism as a subjective exercise of simply giving the critic’s personal views.
He also attempts to address how this dichotomy has influenced the post-modern approach to art-making. For instance, he uses the example of the artist Robert Irwin, who refused to have photographic representations of his work made as they would set up a duality by “explaining one thing in terms of another”.
Robert Irwin: Scrim Veil, 2013—Black Rectangle—Natural Light
This duality or “self-difference” (where the self differs from itself) is what Shiff assumes artists must struggle to avoid. He suggests that the goal is to “resist the gap between reason & emotion, mind & body, identity by name & identity by feeling”.
Some would argue that self-differing is an aspect of the human condition, and that it is impossible to attain any “all-at-onceness” that suspends the temporal dimension. And many in the secular West would say that religion is not the remedy. To post-modernists for whom there are no absolutes and everything is relative, religion is a remedy that worked in the middle ages, but is irrelevant to materialistic contemporary society.
So it is left to artists and critics to explain how to overcome “self-differing” or the condition where there is no integration between mind & body, body & self, self & consciousness. The results are sometimes elegant but tortured thinking about why artists make art, what the higher meaning of art should be, what artists should be creating, what is important and so on.
This is not to disparage the role of art criticism, and, as discussed in another blog, Harold Rosenberg’s early 1970’s book on art criticsm Art on the Edge makes a good case for it’s importance. Rosenberg argues that artists, critics, writers and thinkers need to be working toward over-arching theories to explain what is good art and what differentiates good from bad. Otherwise, he says, it will be left to the market to decide.
But in the field of art criticism there seems to be uncertainty about the legitimacy of developing theories. In other fields, it is accepted that the critic avoids accusations of subjectivity, absolutism or relativism by stating values, assumptions and objectives at the outset, carrying out a review and presenting the findings. Some would say that this type of objectivity is unattainable in art criticism because art is about feelings rather than reason. But theoreticians in every field likely have strong feelings about their subject that do not deter them from stating their views.
As Rosenberg says, someone needs to develop an over-arching theory as to what is good art and what is not. Otherwise the market happily decides and Western culture declines. It’s a challenge that few contemporary art critics seem willing to accept. Where is someone with the self-confidence of a Clement Greenberg, but a more rigorous and rational approach?
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Postmodernism, Now What?
Along with many others, I have written several blogs on modernism and postmodernism, what defines them and differentiates them in an ongoing effort to make sense of the relevance of art and artists in current Western culture. This blog asks, having made the transition to postmodernism, now what?
I’ve revisited a New York Times article about Hilton Kramer, who died at age 84. As the New York Times stated: “Mr. Kramer made it his mission to uphold the high standards of Modernism. In often withering prose, he made life miserable for curators and museum directors who, in his opinion, let down the side by exhibiting trendy or fashionably political art.”
The Whitney Museum of American Art, in particular, felt the full force of his scorn every time it raised the curtain on a new biennial, whose roster generally favoured installation, video and performance art, usually with a political message and an emphasis on gender and ethnic identity.
Mr. Kramer would have none of it. “The Whitney curatorial staff has amply demonstrated its weakness for funky, kinky, kitschy claptrap in recent years,” he wrote in a review of the 1975 Biennial, “and there is the inevitable abundance of this rubbish in the current show.”
Two years later, he threw his hands up in despair. The biennials, he wrote, “seem to be governed by a positive hostility toward — a really visceral distaste for — anything that might conceivably engage the eye in a significant or pleasurable visual experience.”
Mr. Kramer was impassioned in his praise when art met his high expectations. He was a high Modernist, but he embraced a rather diverse lot that ran the gamut from Richard Pousette-Dart to Matisse to the Russian Constructivists.
‘Symphony No 1, The Transcendental’, oil on canvas, Richard Pousette-Dart,1941-42 
“No. 5”, Jackson Pollock, 1948 
“Woman with a Hat”, Henri Matisse, 1905 
Lyubov Popova, “Air + Man+ Space”, 1912 He could surprise. Julian Schnabel, precisely the sort of artist one would have expected him to eviscerate, won qualified praise.
St. Francis in Ecstasy, 1980, Julian Schnabel, 96” by 84”, oil, plates, wood putty And the work of the highly eccentric Norwegian figurative painter Odd Nerdrum.
“Early Morning”, Odd Nerdrum, oil on canvas, 206cm x 175.5cm I too consider myself a Modernist and an advocate for mastering technique in an era of novelty art, video and installations. However, where I differ from Kramer is in scorning art with a political message. Indeed, I’ve argued that art SHOULD be political. By this I mean art should come from an internal source of values, assumptions and beliefs that serve as a moral rudder. This doesn’t mean it can be kitchy or amateurish. For arguments supporting the role of politics in art, see my blog on abstract art.
But where Kramer & others are misled is in characterizing the current worship of “funky, kinky, kitschy claptrap” as “political” rather than the result of a profound philosophical shift in thinking over the past half-century. This shift has been described under the catch-all phrase “postmodernism“, but in fact, the values, beliefs & assumptions of this perspective have been around for millennia. In previous centuries, this philosophical approach has been called “Relativism”.
Wikipedia defines Relativism as the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration. The term often refers to truth relativism, which is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture . Wikipedia describes the Sophists as the founding fathers of relativism in the 5th century BC. The thinking of the Sophists is mainly known through their opponents, Plato and Socrates. In a well known paraphrased dialogue with Socrates, Protagoras said: “What is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me is true for me.”
Sophistry has been around for 2500 years and its current incarnation, called postmodernism, extends the idea of truth to any assumption of expertise. In the arts, this has meant the end of the “artist as seer” or the popular perception of the artist as an individual somehow uniquely blessed with talent. In the postmodern world, it is the idea rather than the execution that is important and everyone can have ideas even if they are not able to express them with technical expertise and a highly developed sense of aesthetics.
Postmodernism has instigated its own cultural revolution and like revolutionaries everywhere, the targets of revenge are images that represent the ancien régime. As the Christians did to statues of ancient Greek gods; as the Protestants did to Catholic religious icons; and as the Chinese Cultural Revolutionaries and later the Taliban did to Statues of Buddha; adherents of postmodernism have metaphorically smashed the noses off earlier artistic and aesthetic values. And just as the former experts in every field were vilified & made to wear dunce caps s during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, so the experts in every field in the West have been discredited by the Postmodern Cultural Revolution.
three young Chinese Red Guards from the Cultural Revolution. The book’s title is Máo Zédōng. Just as in China there was a perceived need to tear down the established order, so in the West there was a perceived need to destroy an art establishment rife with race, class, gender & sexual biases. A quick net surf reveals the following snippets that indicate the continuing existence of an art establishment that defends against outsiders. For instance, Wikipedia includes an article by writer Jennifer Weiner who has been a vocal critic of the male bias in the publishing industry and the media, alleging that books by male authors are better received than those written by women, that is, reviewed more often and more highly praised by critics.
In addition to the exclusionary tendency inherent in it, Modernism, had its basis in Enlightenment beliefs in the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation. At the core of the Enlightenment was a faith in human progress toward a higher level of civilization . For instance Spinoza, felt that through the application of Enlightenment thinking, human society could achieve “democracy; racial and sexual equality; individual liberty of lifestyle; full freedom of thought, expression, and the press; eradication of religious authority from the legislative process and education; and full separation of church and state“.
After two world wars, economic depression, the rise of fascism, totalitarian regimes and the eclipse of democracy by capitalist oligarchies the optimistic views of Modernism were abandoned. Many described Modern Art as the institutionalized purview of an established elite so that modernism lost its appeal to progressive thinkers. This transition is described in detail in the first chapter, Typologies & Twists, of the the book, Modern Art Despite Modernism, by Robert Storr, published in 2000 by The Museum of Modern Art.
In the 1960s the anti-modernist movements began to take shape and pave the way for the emergence of postmodernism. Thus postmodernism evolved as an antidote to an established elite and institutionalized bias against those of the wrong gender, race, class or sexual orientation. In some ways the postmodernist critique has furthered its aim of widening the definition of who could make art that would be seen. However, this has come at a cost of quality control. Now everybody is an artist.
I ran across this quote in The Walrus magazine by Adam Gopnik, a bestselling New York writer, as saying, “My work at this point is about the longing for modernity in a postmodern world.” He said he is moving on to the larger, humanist, even spiritual themes and that much of his recent writing is driven by a need to find meaning and purpose within a radically secular world, to find powerful and grounding symbols of order. His current writing is about “finding a sense of home and rootedness and meaning in a fragmented postmodern world.”
Postmodernism has done a disservice to Western culture through its lack of any point of view, moral or otherwise, or even the assumption that an artist should have a point of view. This has led to the current culture of ethical & intellectual fragmentation. The postmodern revolution was a necessary step in freeing Western culture from the iron grip of an institutionalized elite. But once that grip has been slackened, the next step in any revolution is one of re-building. And this is the step that we are not seeing in contemporary Western art, as the imperative to be outrageous, shocking, irreverent or irrelevant continues to hold sway. Now the difficult role for artists is to find a sense of rootedness and meaning in a fragmented, postmodern world. Having made the transition to postmodernism, now what?
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Endless Possibilities
My recent paintings are inspired by ideas from Quantum Physics in which there is no hard & firm reality but a range of endless possibilities. In my limited understanding of Quantum physics, I take it to suggest that objects exist not so much as material entities but as mists of possibilities of being that are here, there and everywhere at the same time. Then as sentient being brings their attention to this mist and the possibilities collapse into definite locations. That is contrary to our everyday experience where objects exist at one place at one time. We know something is either here, or not here, and that does not depend on whether we look at it. (1)
I have been working with the idea of the “mist of possibilities” in a series of oil paintings I am calling, what else? Possibilities. The first group of paintings in the series used the human figure as a vehicle for imagining the world “out there” arranging and re-arranging itself then collapsing into possible locations in the presence of the viewer.
Blue Satin, Marion-Lea Jamieson, 2016, oil on board, 24″ x 24″ 
Flowered Dress, Marion-Lea Jamieson, 2016, oil on board, 24″ x 24″ 
Draped Nude, 2016, Marion-Lea Jamieson, oil on board, 24″ x 24″ In his blog, Paul Levy says, “quantum physics…activates the psyche, inspires the imagination and synchronistically dissolves the boundary between mind and matter”.
He suggests that, “Quantum theory demands a radical re-visioning of the role that consciousness plays in the unfolding of reality. Quantum physics is pointing out, in unequivocal terms, that the study of the universe and the study of consciousness are inseparably linked, and that ultimate progress in the one will be impossible without progress in the other.”
He goes on to say, “Quantum physics obliterated the classical notion of an independently existing world forever and has destroyed the concept of the world as ‘sitting out there.’ The universe will never afterwards be the same…According to quantum theory, the idea of a world independent of our observation has conventional meaning, but ultimately speaking, is incorrect. Our perception of the universe is a part of the universe happening through us that has an instantaneous effect on the universe we are observing. It makes no sense to think of ourselves as a self-enclosed, encapsulated, independent agent existing separate from the universe. Quantum theory has opened up the door to a profoundly new vision of the cosmos, where the observer, the observed and the act of observation are inseparably united…”
These ideas are compelling not least because of their impact on our ideas about objectivity and the ability for experts to make value neutral judgments.
In quantum physics, we are no longer passive witnesses of the universe, but rather, we unavoidably find ourselves in the new role of active participants who in-form, give shape to and in some mysterious sense “create” the very universe we are interacting with. As Levy says, “Quantum physics is itself the greatest threat to the underlying metaphysical assumptions of “scientific materialism,” a perspective which assumes that there is an independently existing, objective material world that is separate from the observer.” Then he ramps the discussion up to the next stage where it is believed by some that, “…quantum physics heralds the advent of an altogether new stage of human psycho-spiritual evolution. What seems to be an independent universe is in actuality a play of appearances…”
The next in the Possibilities series of paintings looked at this “play of appearances” using botanical images to explore the illusion of reality in our perceptions.
Yellow Tulips, August 2017, Marion-Lea Jamieson, 36″ h x 48″ w, oil on canvas It is a richly visual concept with enormous painterly potential but I felt that a stepped gradation from disorganized to organized image seemed too orderly to address the idea that that there is no independently existing, objective material world that is separate from the observer.
So I began to allow a greater disorder into the work to capture the spirit of this greatest threat to the assumptions of scientific materialism again but continuing to use botanical images as the essence of the world “out there”.
Lace Curtain, 2018, oil on canvas, 48″ h x 36″ w 
Rock with Leaves, 2017, oil on canvas, 36″ x 36″. Levy describes multi-faceted quantum reality as giving us “a greater resolution and capacity to see what no single vantage point can reveal. This confined, unfamiliar quantum animal is like a dream figure that exists within ourselves.”
This idea of the dream figure relates to the next paintings in the Possibilities series, using the human figure in an unconstrained way. This piece worked toward expressing the permeable barrier that exists between humans and the “outside world” from a quantum perspective
Man Dreaming, 2017, Marion-Lea Jamieson, oil on canvas, 48″ x 36″ Levy goes on to outline the moral/ethical/spiritual potential of this new paradigm: ” In re-visioning our idea of the world we live in, we change our perception of the possibilities available in our world, thus opening up previously unimagined pathways of creative and effective action…The apparent world “out there” has its roots in a field of sentience that is inextricably interwoven with the physical world while at the same time being shaped by the world of innumerable observers.”
This is the area of Quantum Physics that aligns itself with thousands of years of philisophical and mystical traditions. These traditions have been telling us for millenia that humans are connected to everything else and that what goes on “in here” affects what happens “out there”. For instance the ultimate goal of Yoga, according to my limited understanding, is to awaken individual consciousness to awareness that it is part of a universal consciousness.
I like his explanation for why the objective world “out there” appears to have an independent reality. He suggests that “…because of the quantum, dreamlike (i.e., consciousness-based) nature of reality, once we view the universe “as if” it independently, objectively exists, it will manifest in a way which simply confirms our viewpoint. Nature seems to respond in accordance with the theory and beliefs by which it is approached.”
It’s a fascinating theory that makes all of us creators because we are participating in creating our experience of the universe. Levy takes his blog to that most interesting and exciting aspect of quantum world where we are “bringing about that which appears to be happening as well as creating our experience of ourselves…Being a form of insight, physics is a form of art; as such, quantum physics is reflecting back to us the part of ourselves that is a creator of experience”.
Who knew that science was an art form? Or that life itself is an art form? So Joseph Beuys was right after all, everyone is an artist and there are endless possibilities.
(1) The New York Times (web version), Science, July 11,2000
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On Fish
This post, On Fish, explains why I have found fish such a compelling image to work with. Here is one explanation I found in the free Vancouver newspaper, “The Georgia Straight“, in an article by Paul Watson. He stated that worms are more important than humans…”because worms can live on the earth without us but we can’t live without them. we need them and they don’t need us. And bees and insects and fish: we need them and they don’t need us. It makes them ecologically more important than we are.” As Watson says, “A lot of people don’t like to hear that“. This is a succinct statement of the philosophical premise behind the series of sculptures, paintings, prints & drawings I have been working on since 1985 with the working title, “Back to Nature“.
Sister Fish #1, December 2003, 6’ h x 2’ w x 2’ d, hand formed concrete and acid stain But whether or not people like to hear that we are no more important than Rockfish, this is a message that humans need to internalize. Ecologists like Watson prioritize the needs of ecosystems over the social or economic demands of humans and this is as it should be.
Humans are merely one of millions of species in a biosphere that depends on the health of the ecosystems within it. It is not rational to believe that the demands of one of these species should be met at the expense of all the other species and the ecosystem as a whole.
Unless we lose our human hubris and practice humility, we will continue to obliterate our fellow-species. One example is Rockfish. Years ago, Rockfish were everywhere and people caught them by simply dangling a line into shallow water off docks & dingys and pulling them in. They were a favourite catch for children, being so easy to hook. But Rockfish are particularly susceptible to overfishing, because they rarely survive after being caught and released. Rockfish are long-lived fish (living about 60-100 years), and they do not reproduce until they are at least 10 years old.
Me posing for the human part of “Sister Fish” in Elbow balance Sister Fish, the sculpture shown above is about the interdependence between humans and fish. As reference material for the human part of the piece, I used images of myself in the yoga pose called in Sanscrit, Pincha Mayurasana, also called elbow balance” or “forearm stand”. Though I used this pose as the basis for the sculpture, Sister Fish, this pose is actually known as “Feathered Peacock Pose”.
Here I am in elbow balance in 2003. At the time, I had only been studying yoga for a couple of years so I had to use a number of props to get into “elbow balance”. Also please note that I have since learned to better contain my ribs & belly and develop more strength & control in my core. This pose is all over the place. As a result, “Sister Fish”‘s Elbow Balance is not a text-book illustration of a fish-woman in the pose.
For the fish part of the piece I purchased a Rockfish at the fisheries wharf on Granville Island in Vancouver. I took it home, photographed it then baked it for dinner, and I must say it was delicious. At the time I didn’t know they were endangered and I thought it had continuity to it – I ate the fish and it became part of me and then I made a sculpture about being part-fish/part-woman.
The main point being, of course, that we are all part of the same ecosystem and further that we are all – fish & humans – only slight variations on the carbon-based life forms template. In other words, in the overall scale of things, fish and humans differ only marginally as expressions of cosmic consciousness solidifying briefly in amalgamations of atoms that coalesce into a form recognizable as one species or another.
Below is my Rockfish. A heartfelt thanks to this fish for providing it’s image for this piece. Not that it volunteered, or that I killed it for art. It was already frozen solid when I bought it off the boat. Even in death it’s a beautiful creature. Certainly more elegant than myself in “Elbow Balance” in 2003.
The fish that was the model for the fish part of “Sister Fish”. Below is the sculpture in progress before I fattened up the legs, corrected the arms and applied acid stain.
Concrete version of “Sister Fish” in progress An Aside on Yoga
I’ve now been studying Yoga for almost 10 years and the more I get into it, the more I realize I have hardly touched the surface of what there is to learn.
BKS Iyengar Today I got a book out of the library with the teachings of Mr. B.K.S. Iyengar, one of the foremost yoga masters in the world. Opposite is an image of him in a very advanced version of the elbow balance pose was in above. I just read the first few pages of his 1998 book, The Tree of Yoga, but was struck by his philosophy in terms of taking action in the worldly world. If I understand correctly, he says it is the expectation of benefits or rewards stemming from one’s actions that we must learn to avoid. The goal is to act according to an understanding of what is the right thing to do in a particular circumstance, rather than acting in the hope of some future outcome. This sounds like a subtle shift in attitude, but requires discipline for all of us raised in a culture of competition and individual achievement.
Yoga is a path to not only physical health , but clarity of mind and spirit. Wikipedia defines the Sanskrit word yoga as meaning “yoke”, from a root yuj, referring to the discipline involved. BKS Iyengar, however, defines “Yoga” as “union”, the union of the body with the mind and of mind with the soul.
After 10 years, I consider myself an advanced beginner in Yoga. I am making some progress in the union of body and mind through the practice of yoga poses, but am not gifted in my pursuit of the union of mind and soul. Having been raised in a family of intellectual atheists where religion was viewed as the opiate of the people I have the challenge of overcoming a tendency toward forming strong opinions. However, Mr Iyengar warns against making distinctions and saying we are doing a better yoga than this or a worse yoga than that. He teaches that Yoga is one, as the world is one, and the people of the world are one.
The Fish Pose – Matsya-asana One of the reasons I love Yoga is that it is all about the integration of humans and their environment. For instance, many of the asanas have animal names, such as the fish pose and cobra pose. This is because yogis devised their asanas partly by observing how animals instinctively act in the wild. They understood that animal poses can help us to connect with powerful aspects of ourselves that we often repress in our busy lives.
The fish pose is called matsya in Sanskrit. Matsya is a divine being, found in Hindu mythology, that saved mankind from a universal flood. The king of pre-ancient Dravida and a devotee of Vishnu was washing his hands in a river when a little fish swam into his hands and pleaded with him to save its life. He put it in a jar, which it soon outgrew. He then moved it to a tank, a river and then finally the ocean but to no avail.
Incarnation of Vishnu as a Fish The fish then revealed himself to be Vishnu and told him that a deluge would occur within seven days that would destroy all life. Therefore, the king was instructed to take “all medicinal herbs, all the varieties of seeds, and accompanied by the seven saints” along with the other animals. Lord Matsya is generally represented as a four-armed figure with the upper torso of a man and the lower of a fish.
At the beginning, I studied Yoga thinking that it would make me a better artist. I practised in order to be physically fit enough for the feats of strength involved in moving around the weighty materials of my trade. Then later on I realized Yoga helped me overcome the ego-crushing rejections, disappointments and slights that any artist must learn to accept and deal with. As the years went by, I realized that Yoga was not in a separate compartment from my art practice but was an integral part of it. Now I’m beginning to think that my art practice is an aspect of my Yoga practice which is the whole of life.
Back to Art Practice
There have been many iterations of the Sister Fish image. After the concrete version, there was a wooden maquette shown below:
“Sister Fish”, May 2007, painted wood, found hardware But I thought that a final full-size sculpture in steel would have more stability if the sides of the body were in one piece rather than two. So the next iteration was a very small maquette that was sent to France as part of the application for a sculpture symposium. The regulation size for the maquettes was 30 cm., so the second model was cut out of sheet aluminum.
The other reason it was cut with a scroll saw out of sheet aluminum was that at the time that I submitted this proposal, I didn’t have the capability of welding steel at that gauge or any other.
Sister Fish, 2006, aluminum 30 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm; The tiny aluminum maquette that was mailed to France was accepted for the symposium and I immediately set about learning how to weld steel.
So my partner Colin & I took a one-day course in MIG welding at KMS Tools in Burnaby BC. As a practice piece, we brought along some steel to KMS to make a smaller version of the steel Sister Fish to be fabricated at the symposium in France.
The instructor, Doug, was a very nice guy and showed us how he would put such a piece together. We worked on it enough that we figured we would be able to produce a steel sculpture for the symposium and left for France.
Symposium Atrium was held in Amneville-les-Thermes, Lorraine, France in 2006. There were 19 invited international sculptors working outdoors in a parking lot in this tourist-oriented centre. The sculptors and their work were on display and busloads of people arrived constantly to view the works as they progressed. Below is a picture of the site with the flags of all the participating nations. For some reason, the Canadian flag was stolen on the first day, so it is not shown.
The Symposium Atrium site with the flags of all participants, except Canada It was a wonderful experience to be working with so many accomplished sculptors from all over the world. Sculptors are my favourite people. The working conditions were quite grim – it was either raining or blasting hot, but everyone helped everyone else and there was no rivalry or competition. Below Colin (R) and Chuan Shu Xing (R) from China are assisting Javier Astorga (C) from Mexico to bend sheet steel.
Artists working together at Symposium Atrium We managed to complete the sculpture we had proposed on time but it was hard work and I sometimes thought my hands would fall off from overuse. Below, I’m working on the piece in my fetching overalls.
Working on “Sister Fish” onsite at Symposium Atrium Below is the completed painted mild steel version of Sister Fish we did in France.
Sister Fish #3, 9’ h x 3’ diameter, fabricated onsite at Amneville-les-Thermes, France There were stability problems with the piece that weren’t apparent in the maquettes, so when we got home, I added wings to the design to triangulate the arms with the base. Below is the version of Sister Fish with wings added and re-named Angel Fish. it was spray painted silver and is shown at Big Rock Sculpture Garden in Bellingham WA.
“Angel Fish”, 5’6” h x 3’ in diameter, shown at Big Rock Sculpture Garden, Bellingham WA But this version of the piece tended to accumulate debris that obscured the hands and the figure was too low to the ground. So we cast a big concrete pedestal for it. Here is is again in Port Angeles WA as shown below.
Angel Fish, June 2009; 92” h x 26″d; Painted mild steel, found hardware, cast concrete, pigment; Shown in Port Angeles, WA, 2009 The sculpture was damaged while on exhibition (the drunken, destructive lout factor) so it was taken home, media blasted and powder-coated. In 2010, Angel Fish travelled to China (minus the 600+ lb base) for the 4th Beijing International Art Biennale. So this fish/human image has been all over the world, spreading the word that fish are people too.
“Angel Fish” entry in catalogue for Fourth Beijing International Art Biennale, 2010 While looking through some old drawings I found a fish image from my days as a committed peace activist. During the 1980’s my life was devoted to the peace movement, especially the anti-nuclear weapons side. I was a member of The Peace Flotilla which was a coalition of disparate activists from church groups to communists who were united in their opposition to US intentions to use Vancouver as a naval base for their nuclear-armed warships.
Poster for the Peace Flotilla – an anti-nuclear armaments activist group in the 1980’s. This was a poster I did for a fund-raiser at the now-defunct La Quena coffee house, which was a centre for community political information & discussion on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive.The poster was done on scratch-board using the cross-hatch technique I studied & developed for the illustration work I did for a living at that time.
On Fish has described my identification with and attachment to fish imagery in the early 2000’s. But fish are difficult to ignore, so they re-appeared in subsequent works, which will be shown in future blogs.
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Anything But Grotesque
Years ago, I spent 3 weeks in Florence Italy, with day trips to Siena & Lucca. It was a heavenly immersion in Italian Renaissance art, with a generous helping of my favourite motif – wingéd human/animal creatures. In Renaissance Florence, these creatures were called “Grotesques” and embellished everything from ceilings to ceramics and are anything but grotesque. Beautifully painted with technical panache, they are a light-hearted treatment of otherworldly beings.
Florentine Ceiling in the Uffizi Gallery with “grotesques” Though the styles are very similar in all the ceiling “grotesques” the artists let their imaginations run wild in ceramic “grotesques”. For instance, the figures below appear to be hermaphrodites.
15th C. ceramic in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy 
close-up of “grotesques” in Florence that appear to be copulating 
15th C. ceramic in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy The artists must have had such fun with these images that embellished surfaces everywhere. It makes our sterile interiors seem lifeless in comparison.
As described in earlier posts, images conflating animals & humans have fascinated me for over 30 years so it was very exciting to explore a cultural period that clearly found much pleasure in these images. The first painting I did that was inspired by the Florentine images was called Wingéd Seraphim II, shown below. In company with artists for many millennia, I am fascinated by the idea of flying humans. These are sometimes depicted as angels and sometimes as devils. In my version, they are otherworldly beings plying the heavens in their own interests and oblivious to anything going on below.
Wingéd-Seraphim II, Dec. 2015, oil on canvas, 24″ x 24″ According to Wikepedia, the word seraph/seraphim appears three times in the Torah and four times in the Book of Isaiah. In Isaiah the term is used to describe a type of celestial being or angel. “Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.”
The Bible contains the words of Ezekiel as he described his vision of “…four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, but each of them had four faces and four wings.Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze.Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. All four of them had faces and wings, and the wings of one touched the wings of another.Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces. They each had two wings spreading out upward, each wing touching that of the creature on either side. Four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. All four of them had faces and wings, and the wings of one touched the wings of another. “
Before now, I felt uncomfortable about a visual exploration of mythical creatures in the context of the Abrahamic religions. I was concerned that melded human/animal figures would be anathema to that tradition, based as it is on the idea of humans as made in God’s image. So it was a surprise to discover that references to “winged seraphim” in the Bible also refers to serpents. When I worked on my painting Wingéd Seraphim, I assumed that the images would be a challenge to Christian orthodoxy, not realizing that flying serpents were a part of the tradition. It would likely have been assumed by Biblical writers & scholars that all these creatures would be male, as the tradition is deeply patriarchal. So the painting challenges the unacknowledged assumption in the Abrahamic tradition, that important players are male.
Having assured myself that animal/human beings are part of, rather than offensive to, the Abrahmic traditions, I have resurrected some paintings I started many years ago but never finished. These are part of the “Grotesque” series because they use the animal/human motif, but they are re-workings of famous classical art, some to do with Christian imagery, some to do with classical mythology. The first of these is also called “WIngéd Seraphim”. This painting questions the belief that humans are made in the image of God and are the only creatures with a soul.
Wingéd Seraphim, Jan. 2016, 26″ h x 32″ w, oil on canvas WIngéd Seraphim is based on a classical painting that likely refers to the Biblical reference, John 1:51. Jesus tells Nathanael that he will “see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man“. Unfortunately, I am unable to locate the original painting, but will keep trying. The angels Jesus refers to are usually depicted as in the following image – as Anglo-Saxon humans in long white Grecian-type robes.
Traditional Angels, Unknown artist While I have been unable to find an attribution for the above image, it is widely used on Christian sites. But according to explorefaith.org, “Occasionally, an angel takes the form of an animal. According to standard Christian, Jewish, and Muslim belief, an angel can take any form it wishes…”. The idea is, that in order to communicate with humans, angels take on human form. So again, an idea that I was concerned may be offensive to Christians is, again, acceptable in the doctrine.
The second painting in this series, called Elegy, shown below, again questions the assumption that God only cares about human animals as they are the only beings with souls.In essence, the Christian story is that God sent Jesus to help humans perfect their souls, but instead, they murdered Him. This painting investigates the possibility that God cares about all creature here below, even and possibly especially, frogs. I chose frogs because they are an endangered species due to climate change & the thinning of the ozone layer. They are beautiful creatures created by God, but humans are murdering them. Through their demise, like Jesus, they are messengers that we are destroying what is most precious.
Elegy, Dec. 2015, 32″ h x 42″ w, oil on canvas I found the original painting in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and here it is.
Pietà (1516), Fra Bartolomeo, color on wood, 62.2″ × 78.3″, Palazzo Pitti, Florence. But there are 2 versions of this painting and here is the other one.
Compianto sul Cristo morto, Fra Bartolomeo, 1511-1512, oil on wood, 158×199 cm Uffizi Gallery, Florence In the “Grotesque” series, I also explore human conceptions of beauty. Naturally, humans seek physical attractiveness in other humans, but our anthropocentric world view means that we tend not to see the grace & of beauty of other species. To question this view, I used the one of the most famous images from classical mythology and art – the three graces. Called, “The Three Graces”, this painting features 3 female figures with melded human/Great Blue Heron bodies. This work was based on the famous 16th C painting of the same name.
The Three Graces #2, 1986, Marion-Lea Jamieson, oil on canvas, 36” x 36” 
The Three Graces, 1504–1505, Raphael, Oil on panel, 6.7 in × 6.7 in, There was an earlier version of the The Three Graces, found in Pompeii, so I’m not the only one that has borrowed this idea for my own use.
Three Graces/Charites from Pompeii, now in the Archaeological Museum in Naples I had also created a linocut print on the theme.
Three Graces, 1986, Marion-Lea Jamieson, linocut print on paper 16” x 13” Mouse Madonna is an even earlier piece that was the starting point for the series based on the animal/human theme.
Mouse Madonna #3, 1986 oil on canvas board 30” x 20” Mouse Madonna #2, 1986, Marion-Lea Jamieson, linocut print on paper, 20” x 13”
I have also described this area of inquiry in Blog Post #10: On Women which goes further into the inspiration for the human/animal themed series. The theme of Grotesques, and all the work based on images showing the fusion of humans and animals in art and myth, was investigated in paintings, prints and sculptures over a period of about 30 years, and it may be resurrected again any time. It is a fascinating theme as it is so imaginatively rich and potent with symbolism and meaning and this discussion has been continued in other blogs, and again in other other blogs.
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Being and Becoming
As I am a keen gardener, I created a series of paintings, using my plants as subjects, to capture in oils my understanding that life is a continual state of flux in which formless takes on form then returns to formlessness. Everything is in a constant state of being and becoming. Many philosophical traditions suggest that the only way to live within this flux is to focus on the present moment. This series depicts the momentary nature of existence as that which has become form is in the process of becoming something else as we observe it. It is a celebration of the beauty and wonder of this constant creation/destruction. By using as a visual metaphor for this, I celebrated in painting the vegetable kingdom in which tiny seeds become edible plants then return to the earth in the inevitable seasonal cycle of growth & decay.
The vegetable series portrays this continual state of change by showing the fruits of my gardening labours emerging then subsiding into background particles of energy. The computer digitization process is a perfect analogy for this process as all digital information exists as one of two digits, either 0 or 1. Digital images are made up of patterns of 1’s & 0’s.
These oil paintings on canvas were the result of a multi-stage process. First I grew the subject fruits & vegetables in my garden,
Basll plants growing on my porch 
Kale Plant, “Red Russian” then photographed them,
Blueberry bush (long ago lost track of what kind – “Elliott?” then manipulated the digital images in Photoshop and finally transposed these images into paint in my studio.
Beta vulgaris var. cicla, ‘Bright Lights’, 2016, Marion-Lea Jamieson,
Oil on canvas , 24” h x 18” wGrowing vegetables has always been an important part of my life, often warring with time in the studio. So it was particularly satisfying to connect two things I loved doing in this series of paintings.
The vegetable series also provided an opportunity to work with photographs & develop Photoshop skills. I’ve been taking photographs since 1972, when I borrowed the art school camera and learned to develop my own negatives & prints. Since then I have mostly used photography to document my artwork and/or play with creating interesting juxtapositions of sculptures in still-lifes or landscapes such as the” eggs” and “female torsos” series described in the blog, On Love.
Silver eggs & Shoes, 1974 (detail from Egg-Hanger); Marion-Lea Jamieson 
The vegetable paintings also built on a painting & drawing technique that has always fascinated me – where dots or lines are used to represent light as in traditional cross-hatch techniques. This technique was the style I used in my illustration career. Shown below is an illustration from “A Life in the Country” by Bruce Hutchison, Douglas & McIntyre publishers, 1988.
Linocut illustration by Marion-Lea Jamieson for A Life in the Country They also pick up on a style of painting that I was experimenting with in the late 1990’s & early 2000’s.
Swamp Grass,1998, Marion-Lea Jamieson, oil on canvas, 36” x 36” So what might appear to be a checkered body of work to some is to me a seamless tapestry of ideas & themes that appear & re-appear.
In some ways it has taken a lot of nerve to paint flowers & plants. Like painting nude women, a subject investigated in an earlier blog, On Women, painting botanicals is fraught with danger. As with paintings of women, such as Venus & Cupid by Giacinto Gimignani, shown below, languid nudes have become such a stereotype that it is almost impossible to use an image of a nude woman in art without it being trite – a cliche´.
Venus and Cupid, 1679, Giacinto Gimignani, Abraham Brueghel, Oil on canvas, 120 x 170 cm Similarly, paintings of flowers & plants have been done to death.
Since Vincent Van Gogh‘s masterly use of the subject, every beginning painter does flowers and every beginning collector buys them.They look so nice over the sofa. This version of Sunflowers is in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. He did seven paintings in total, three of which are kept in different museums all over the world. Of the others, one belongs to a private collection and another was lost during World War II.
Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1889,
95 cm (37.4 in) h x 73 cm (28.7 in) wA quick Google image search of paintings of flowers reveals the extent of this genre and some of the more obvious painterly pitfalls therein.
Model: st025, Shipping Weight: 1.5lbs, 10 Units in Stock,
Manufactured by: 1 one canvasSo it was necessary to overcome serious trepidation about exploring this over-blown subject. But the truth is, I enjoyed working on this series so I threw caution to the wind and created work in the risky field of botanicals.
‘Sweet Mama’, 2016, Marion-Lea Jamieson,
Oil on canvas, 18” h x 24” w
‘Frost’, 2016,Marion-Lea Jamieson
Oil on canvas, 18” h x 24” wIn the spirit of being and becoming, this series was worked on for about a year, then I moved on to anther interest, which was abstract images rather than recognizable subjects.
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Ephemera
The following paintings are from a series called Ephemera. This series worked through a number of ideas for sculptures in clear sheet acrylic that may or may not have been intended to be developed in three dimensions at some time in the future. The palette tried to conform to the colours available in sheet acrylic. For instance, Winter Song was a study for a hanging transparent sheet acrylic sculpture in three primary colours in a winter landscape.
Winter Song, November 1999 Marion-Lea Jamieson acrylic on canvas, 72” x 60” The series used an unrestricted palette which may have been a reaction against the preceding ten years of primarily black and white illustrations.This series was created during a fairly heady period when I was doing a lot of abstract thinking and grappling with weighty philosophical questions.
Antediluvian Celestial Geometry plays with the idea that if an idea, such as that of a shape, can exist in the mind, it must exist in the real world and if an idea for a shape exists now, it must have existed forever. The cloudy, spatial theme is suggestive of star clusters, the birth of creation, creativity.
Antedeluvian Celestrial Geometry #1, 2000,
Marion-Lea Jamieson, acrylic on canvas,
48″ h x 36″ wThough actual fabrication would necessitate adherence to the laws of physics, this series ignored rules regarding the play of lights and shadows, perspective and representation of forms.
Antediluvian Celestial Geometry # 2, 2000,
Marion-Lea Jamieson, acrylic on canvas,
36” x 48”
What-Time-it-Really-Is, 2000, Marion-Lea Jamieson,
48″ h x 36″ w acrylic on canvasWhat Time it Really Is, is another next world scenario where large explosive physical forms are moving at light speed through various dimensions while interacting with smaller, more one-dimensional forms. The questions were: “is this going on all around us? Does anybody really know? Are we merely conditioned to accept visual rules?”
These paintings are “what-ifs”. What if a clear acrylic form could move through space? What if it could kinetically change its form?
Becoming Unbecoming, January 2000,, Marion-Lea Jamieson, acrylic on canvas, 36” x 48” Every day, our bodies go through transformations between states of energy and states of matter. As we age, the matter begins to break down until finally we are ready to become an energy field or spirit. But if we concentrate on the needs of self, rather than persona, we do not exhibit expected behaviours and our behaviour may become increasingly unbecoming.
As a subtext, the series explores the life of the mind, body and spirit. For instance, Debate with Descarte is a visual argument with the 17th Century philosopher who formalized the mind/body dichotomy and championed the superiority of mental over physical processes. It contrasts cloudy, wavering thoughts and hard physical forms. Humans have always conceived of mind as emanating from above; as descending from the clouds and therefore superior to the earthly forms below. Several centuries after Descarte, we do well to question the superiority of the human mind over the works of creation.
Debate with Descartes, 2000, Marion-Lea Jamieson,
acrylic on canvas, 72” x 56”
Both Sides of Life, 2001, Marion-Lea Jamieson,
72″ h x 48″ w, acrylic on canvasBoth Sides of Life, asks “what if life could be summed up as a clear, transparent, colourless shape?” Is this more or less what is left over after our carbon-based physical form oxidizes?” Our physical form makes it difficult to see the rich flow of colour and energy going on around, through, in front of and behind us. We can act a lens through which ideas and energy flow or a lens cap.
The series also included studies for sculptures combining hardware such as metal rods, chains & sheet metal with transparent clear sheet acrylic. I was especially interested in the images of chains that suggest supporting, bonding & connecting as well as binding & enslaving.
Suspension and Place, July 1999
Marion-Lea Jamieson
acrylic on canvas,
35” x 42”
Vertical Connection , July 1999, Marion-Lea Jamieson,
acrylic on canvas,, 42” x 35”The series departed from studies for what could theoretically be fabricated in sheet acrylic and also simply explored visual ideas the vocabulary of forms that had evolved.
Passions in Passing, below, was influenced by the loss of my dear aunt, the painter Ione McIntyre. She was an artistic inspiration as well as a goad, demanding to know why I was studying the history of art in university instead of making art, which she knew was what I really wanted. I was with her when she died and it was my first experience of death. Witnessing the death of a loved one is a transformative experience underscoring the ephemeral and transitory nature of life. It makes one aware that we all go around in a state of oblivion, ignoring the fundamental fact that our days are numbered and living our lives as though we have an eternity to wallow in self-delusions.
Passions in Passing, December 1999, Marion-Lea Jamieson ,
acrylic on canvas, 72” x 60”Passions was the clearest reference to this paradox and raises the issue of humans as the only life form with a spirit. My aunt would certainly not have thought so and would have fully expected to see her dear cats on the other side.
Celebration captures the manic, joyous energy that painting imparts. It is a celebration of life energy zooming toward a known end point. The fact that there is an end point gives life its beauty and richness.
Celebration, 1999, Marion-Lea Jamieson Acrylic on canvas, 48” h x 36”w Coming Through, is another expression of the need to continually re-invent oneself as an artist. There is no form that can define without getting in the way, so there is a need to break down rigid self-images and break through to new awareness of self.
Coming Through, May 1999, Marion-Lea Jamieson, acrylic on canvas, 40” x 30” As the title of this blog suggests, all life is ephemera and paintings, though they are less evanescent than, say, dance, can still disappear, such as one of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Or the artist may decide to re-paint right over the original work in a sometimes misguided attempt to make it more…something. This was the case with Coming Through, that went through several iterations then was abandoned.
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On Painting: 2D/3D
I used to claim that, “I make art because I have to” as the daily pursuit of the elusive goal of expressing ideas visually gave my life focus and direction in the same way that religion or a strong philosophical framework might provide for others. Now I make art because I love to. The process of creation is like meditation in that it is centering, calming and builds self-awareness. Joy comes from overriding the over-busy mind and being present in the moment of creation. And to be in the moment, all other worries, problems, desires and ambitions must be put aside to be tuned into what the work needs as it comes into being.
The 2D/3D series built on earlier work in the Ephemera series. It explores the dualities of male & female, vertical and horizontal, soft and hard, open and closed, active & passive.
They built on the Ephemera series by again working with the transition between an idea realized in one dimension that could then be translated into a third.
Cross Purpose #2, 2005, Marion-Lea Jamieson
oil on canvas, 48” x 36”These works were intentionally lush to suggest the intensity of the process and to communicate that experience. This assumes that imagination and creativity are human attributes that offer the greatest potential for harmony. It also assumes that art can and should act as a counter-weight to the overwhelmingly empty or negative images with which we are continually barraged, rather than underline them.
I wrestle with being a modernist painter in a post-modern era. I recognize and accept the post-modern critique that has forced artists to examine their assumption of socially enforced dysfunctional paradigms. But now, artists should move beyond a critical stance to a more pro-active role. While cynicism and irony have been important tools for creating distance from unrealistic optimism, perhaps it’s time to rejuvenate art’s role as a vehicle for exploring the spiritual side of human experience. In an increasingly crowded globe with divisive differences, art is universally accessible and can help to focus on what is worthwhile.
Every/No Thing, ML Jamieson, 2005, oil on canvas, 36” x 48”
These paintings were developed during the summer I lived in a small cabin in an organic orchard in Winfield, on the outskirts of Kelowna while working on a sculpture commission for that city. After a long day onsite in the hot city I would return to the cabin in the evenings and draw. It was almost a retreat experience as I barely had electricity and no phone, fax, computer or all the distracting paraphernalia of modern life.
I bought a sheaf of drawing papers, a bundle of oil pastels and lost myself in the joy of form, colour, line and texture. In my nightly drawing sessions I was searching for an uninhibited flow of ideas from my unconscious to the paper via my oil sticks.
Working in euphoric bursts of energy, I had great satisfaction in having nothing to do with the rational mind. I produced about 20 drawings in that time.
The Winfield cabin drawings were experiments in colour, line & form and back in my Vancouver studio, were translated into oil paint on canvas. These drawing and paintings were then used as research for developing 3D ideas for concrete sculptures. Working through drawings and paintings was a good way to come up with ideas to develop in 3D .
Resonance, 2005, Marion-Lea Jamieson,
oil on canvas,
24” x 18”
Memory, Marion-Lea Jamieson, 2005,
oil on canvas, 36” x 48”The idea in Memory was subsequently translated into concrete in the two pieces below:
The Arrangement, 2005, Marion-Lea Jamieson,
concrete & pigments,
60″ h x 20″ w x 120″ d
Wonderlust, 2005, Marion-Lea Jamieson,
60″ h x 20″ w x 20″ d,
cast and hand formed concrete, pigmentsT
There were many other concrete pieces that grew out of the original 2D/3D series begun in that cabin in Winfield that can be the subject of another blog.
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The Singer in Progress
I’ve had a few requests for more information on how I worked on the polystyrene armature for The Singer, so rather give an individual response, I thought I would post a bit more detail on the Singer in progress in this blog.
Armature in Progress The writer wanted me to provide a list of processes to go through; for instance, did I start with the back, front or sides? The first thing I have to make clear is that I do not have a clear & simple formula for cutting a polystyrene armature. I can just describe what I did. If there are any more specific questions I can try to answer them.
As outlined in previous posts, I started with a maquette and my goal was to reproduce the maquette in a piece of polystyrene at a scale of 1″ = 4.5″. I began by drawing the x & y axis onto the base of the maquette with 1/2″ numbered intervals. I then create a vertical z axis measure as shown in an earlier post. Then as shown in that post, I marked off the x & y axis on the wooden base of the polystyrene piece at 2.25″ intervals and numbered them the same as on the maquette. Then I created a vertical Z axis measure with the same numbered intervals for the large scale. This was the easy part.
The hard part was actually transcribing the measurements form the maquette to the final work. A points system is more designed for an additive process like clay, when the artist can build the clay up to the point indicated by the measuring devices. With a reductive process like carving, the problem is that the point you want to get to is inside the block of material and figuring out how much & where to cut in order to reach that point is very difficult. I managed to cut away too much and had to glue more polystyrene back on. If you look carefully at the images in the same post you can see lots of yellow repair sites .(Speaking of glue, the best glue is Expanding Spray Foam Sealant. It expands to fill the space so you don’t have to cut the amended piece exactly to size. Actual styrofoam glues form hard lumps that are too hard to run a hot wire through & are a huge pain.
In order to record the location of reference points (such as the top of shoulder, bottom of elbow, top of knee, frontmost point of shin etc. ) I would measure it on the maquette and write down its numbers on the x,y & z axes. I started with the front and worked from the top to the bottom, then did the back. I would find a reference point on the polystyrene, mark it with a pen, connect the dots, and draw the outline. Then using the hot-wire, I cut off large swathes of polystyrene to create the very rough general shapes of the back & front. Then I did the same thing with the sides. As shown in another earlier post by that point I had the general squarish contours of the shape.
Here is where miscalculations caused later problems. The hot wire heats & stretches, creating a curve so that you are cutting not a flat plane but a concave surface. So my advice is to err on the side of caution when doing the initial big cuts. The process from there was one of going back & forth from the maquette to the polystyrene, measuring & marking points on the x,y & z axes and gradually whittling down this large squarish shape into a more rounded shape and carving in the more detailed forms. It was not easy and took considerable time, labour, concentration & organization.
I made jigs to hold measuring devices (squares, triangles, rulers) and a level together to make sure I was measuring accurately. As the reduction of the block progressed, I found the hot-wire was too broad to use and it can’t do indentations. So as I also discussed in that post I used a sawzall or reciprocating saw and a disk grinder to do more detailed work and a hand-held keyhole saw to do the fiddly bits. Here is the armature for The Singer as it was ten. I had hoped to complete it when I had a home for the final work. This entailed reducing the form so that it is 3″ smaller than the desired final size to serve as an armature for concrete or plaster added to the surface.
Measuring device for styrofoam armature of The Singer, to be clad in concrete The whole process was very labour intensive and I would love to have had the money to be able to just send my maquette to one of the CNC shops and have them scale it up to full size for me. But as this was my own experiment for my own interest and no one was paying me, I had to do it the hard way.
Cutting polystyrene is hard, unpleasant work, especially when I got down near the floor and had to work with the sawsall in a crouch. Wearing a mask against dust & ear protection against noise is tiresome, so for a break I have been working on other projects.
As a pleasant and easy task, I am making molds and casting the plaster maquette of the singer.
The Singer, (plaster model), February 2011
50 cm high x 30 cm wide x 30 cm deepI began by creating a polyurethane rubber mold, using Smooth-On’s Brush-on 40 product. They have a great video on their site explaining the process, though I wish they would choose a more challenging shape than a human head. Here is the rubber mold:
Then I made a mother mold out of plaster, instead of using Smooth-On’s recommended product, Plasti-Paste because I happened to have an old bag of lumpy Plaster of Paris in the studio. Big Mistake!! The plaster had been sitting absorbing water in my unheated studio for a couple of years & did not work! My advice – always go out & buy fresh plaster. Old damp plaster is clapped out & no longer reacts with water so the result is a crumbly mess. So a brand-new bag of P of P later, the mother mold took proper shape.
Once the mother mold hardened, both molds were removed, re-assembled without the original and placed upside down in a bucket for casting. I cast a few copies in hydrostone & a few in concrete, with varying results. Hydrostone is tricky to work with as it remains liquid for a long time while mixing then suddenly sets up leaving almost no time to pour. You have to pour before it starts to thicken or you’re done for.
To be honest, I had to patch up a few holes & sand them smooth again. I also experimented with casting in concrete which creates durable outdoor artworks at very low cost.
