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Tag: Barnett Newman
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This is not an Essay
This blog is part of an ongoing investigation into the visual arts, primarily painting, and with a side interest in why important public galleries feel obliged to exhibit work that alienates all but those initiated into the world of artspeak and arcane discourse. But trying to make sense of the art world is like trying to nail jelly to the wall – as soon as you think you’ve pegged it, a later re-think makes the whole thing slide. So this is not an essay because, as I often say, I’m not a scholar or an essayist, but a mere artist trying to make sense of the art world and my place in it.
So I look for ideas from writers that have tried to capture a sense of what is happening in and to the Western visual arts. This is a daunting challenge as it is impossible for anyone living in a period of time to stand outside of it and look objectively and from a future perspective to say that this or that phenomenon, philosophy or paradigm represents the times. Harold Rosenberg was just such as writer who tried to see where art was going in his time and what might be expected in the future.
Though written 50+ years ago, Rosenberg’s early 1970’s book on art criticism Harold Rosenberg was prescient. At first I was put off by his use of terms like “the artist is a man who…”, but I came to overlook his gender insensitivity. Rosenberg’s primary concern is that art, and he is primarily concerned with painting, is in danger of going over the edge that separates it from crafts, commercial design and the mass media. This concern no doubt grew out of the success of artists like Andy Warhol, a former commercial artist, who wholeheartedly embraced popular culture and commercial processes.
Marilyn Monroe, 1967, Andy Warhol, Printed by Aetna Silkscreen Products, Inc., NY What’s interesting about Rosenberg’s views, is that, though he is deeply immersed in the art world, he is not aware of the term, or the fact, of post-modernism. He is writing at a time of huge changes in attitudes toward art and he is documenting this change as it is taking place. Thus he is able to report on the transition between the philosophical endorsement of modernism that was widely accepted by the art establishment, and the shattering of this consensus through emerging artwork critiquing that philosophy.
In many ways, his writing was prescient as it can be said that art has since gone over the edge he described. But this jump was a conscious choice by the artists involved and made out of a sense of necessity. That felt necessity was to rebel against the commodification of art and the modernist illusion that the art object could meaningfully convey a response to a world that was capable of creating two devastating world wars and weapons of mass destruction. The jump was also motivated by photography that could record life much better that painting and had replaced it in many ways.,Instead of making irrelevant art for money, artists such as Marcel Duchamp were making art as criticism through parody, irony or subversion. Artists like Troy Emery continue that tradition today. though one has to question whether using parody, irony and subversion has become an avenue to sure commercial success. Whereas Duchamp only made one Fountain, like Jeff Koons, Emery makes dozens of pieces, with slight variations. He has fully embraced the post-modern acceptance of commercialization as a defensible and even central aspect of an art practice.
Marcel Duchamp Fountain, 1917, photograph by Alfred Stieglitz 
Woolly Woofter, 2013, Troy Emery, 62 x 45 x 37 cm 
Titi, 2004–09, Jeff Koons, High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating. Perhaps one of the reasons that painting has been considered an outdated art form is that it is difficult to crank out paintings at an industrial/commercial scale. While it is accepted that sculptors will farm out the actual casting or fabrication of their artworks to artisans, there is no similar tolerance for painters. Sophisticated collectors of paintings expect it to have been the work of the artist that signs it, not a painting factory. Of course there were the screen prints of artists like Warhol, and currently there are Gicleé prints of paintings, and paintings that have clearly been mass-produced. But these never have, and likely never will, achieve the recognition and respect given to mass-produced sculptures.
Rosenberg’s primary concern was that painting would become commercial design and mass media, but this has not happened. Instead, it became somewhat irrelevant to the art establishment and by extension, the art market and many artists. Rosenberg’s insensitivity to gender issues reflects his lack of attention to other important issue that created the post-modern revolution. Though he touches on the fact that taste in art, especially modernist painting, was set by an elite made up of white, middle & upper class males. They in turn found they most admired the work of white, middle-class male artists, so that women & visible minorities were excluded from exhibitions & sales.
There were many other artists who did not accept that there were insurmountable problems with making artworks such as painting. For instance, Rosenberg suggests that “…if Miro had a “problem” it was how to reach a state of creation unhindered by problems”. And as Rosenberg says, many artists saw the only other alternative to be making art for oneself.”For Barnett Newman, painting was “…a way of practising the sublime, not communicating it
Others such as Piet Mondrian, believed that it was possible to “…conceive of a grand vision such as the salvation of the human race.. that could be expressed in paint.” He believed his work was a “plastic vision” that would help to set up ” …a new type of society composed of balance relationships”.
Mondrian was aware that his work could not speak for itself without a “new phase in human development” so he wrote statements and manifestos explaining his ideas. The irony, for Rosenberg, was that in contemporary art, the meaning of artworks is not in themselves, but in the personality of the artist, “…his ideas, his role, his pathos.” He saw with clarity that what would become post-modernism would replace ideas in art altogether.
Modernist painters wrestled with the issue of content and the reaction against using recognizable images. Rosenberg refers to “pre-formlist abstraction” as that which has an unmistakable subject but “…projects a content that is implicit in but not restricted to the marks on the canvas”.
Abstraction, Willem de Kooning,1949 – 1950, oil on canvas, 46 x 37 cm, In this approach, a painting “…comes into being through unanticipated responses to what is taking place on the canvas”, as Rosenberg describes the work of Joan Mitchell. Whatever has gone on before provides the clue & the motivation for the next move.
The “meaning and emotional intensity of Mitchell’s pictures] are produced structurally, as it were, by a whole series of oppositions: dense versus transparent strokes; gridded structure versus more chaotic, ad hoc construction; weight on the bottom of the canvas versus weight at the top; light versus dark; choppy versus continuous strokes; harmonious and clashing juxtapositions of hue – all are potent signs of meaning and feeling.”(1)
Joan Mitchell, Wood Wind, No Tuba, 1979, Oil on canvas, two panels, 9′ 2 1/4″ x 13 1 1/8″ Rosenberg describes these as pre-formalist modernist painters as differentiated from the formalists who conceived abstract art in terms of “…a grammar of dimensions, edges, and color relations”. Formalism also focused on eliminating metaphorical references, perhaps in reaction to what had become a cloying use of metaphors by some artists in earlier periods.
But the ultimate destination of this formalist direction were paintings that eliminated not only metaphor, but dimensions, edges, and colour relations as well, to become a flat plane of one colour. My question is, where’s the fun in that compared to Mitchells’ aim and method: to express delight at having been taken by surprise?
This is not an essay in that it does not attempt to wrap up an argument with a neat conclusion that summarizes previous rambles but is an ongoing exploration that can be continued in another post.
1) Nochlin, Linda (2002). “Joan Mitchell: A Rage to Paint”. In Livingston, Jane. The Paintings of Joan Mitchell. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art. p. 55. ISBN 0520235703.
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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.
