and then our world changed

Note that I didn’t title this “and then the world changed.”  Most elements of our physical world have not changed – the buildings and mountains still stand, birds and insects move about and reproduce, and we certainly still have weather.  Continuity abounds.

John and I are fine and grateful.  I do most of my academic work and my painting at home anyway, and I have always cooked most of our meals.  I’ve reformatted my courses to be accessed entirely through a “learning management system,” but the fine-tuning and grading continues apace.   

I’ve started a series of paintings in my current favorite format – smooth 12”x 12” hardwood panels, cradled atop a 1½“ frame, so they present well without any further framing.  The series is Dovic, and generally entails straight-sided figures in muted colors, with the shape and shade of the figures implying spatial relationships. The minimalist approach seems in keeping with these fluid, shape-changing times.

About what do we paint?

Continuing my reading of Meyer Schapiro ("The value of modern art" (1948) in Worldview in Painting: Art and Society), 

Schapiro acknowledged the heterogeneity of early- and mid-century visual arts.  But he went on to apply a broader view of its commonalities.  “However, if we consider the art of our time – and I speak only of that art which is fresh and original and could not have been done in a previous age – I believe it is possible to discover in it certain features that set it apart from the work of preceding times” [134; emphasis added].  Citing claims that modern art does not have subject matter, Schapiro asserted “in the art of the last fifty or seventy-five years [before his 1948 presentation], types of subject matter that are sufficiently standard and characteristic” [134]:

1)   direct observations of everyday life

2)   the life and work of the artist

3)   “the consciousness of art itself:  [paintings in which] the constituting elements do not form images or signs for objects, but are themselves ideal figures of elementary operations in the shaping of things;  these, too, are an important subject matter of art, drawn from art itself” [135]

4)   “the interior world of the artist,” expressed through non-representational composition of color, line, shape, and/or brush strokes.

Schapiro compared these themes to those of earlier periods of Western painting.  “If the art of the Middle Ages is about supernatural beings whom one never saw directly or in ordinary vision, if the art of the Renaissance is about mythological and historical figures, and if the art of the Baroque period is rich in moral and political allegories, then the art of the last seventy-five years is about ourselves” [137].

If modern artists are individualistic, and face no art-world limitations on subject matter, why was there, up to Schapiro’s writing, so little reference to human inequality and suffering in modern art?  Schapiro turned to this question at the end of his essay or lecture, and gave it too short a treatment.  He glossed over the paintings emphasizing the horrors of twentieth-century war, for example.  He suggested that modern artists’ reliance on individual patrons and purchases disciplined them to emphasize themes of leisure or related to pleasure.  

Formal qualities of "modern" art

I've greatly enjoyed reading "The value of modern art," a 1948 lecture by Meyer Schapiro, published in the compilation Worldview in Painting: Art and Society.  He wrote with a perspective that is rare for someone in the midst of major changes.

Schapiro attempted to analyze the formal qualities of the contemporary art of his period with the same eye that art historians train on art from their past.  “In the same manner that we are able to distinguish the art of the Renaissance from the art of the Middle Ages, the art of Egypt from the art of Mesopotamia, by careful observation of the forms, so we discern in the immense diversity of modern art a broad constancy in its structure and expressive means” [138].

1)   The artist leaves clear signs of the act of painting.  “Hence, in modern painting, the touch or stroke is so very pronounced” [138].  The trace of the act of painting becomes an important part of the form of the painting.

2)   “The modern painter treats the surface of the canvas as a concrete definite tangible ground, as an object in itself” rather than a transparent window into an image somehow beyond the canvas [139].

3)   “The work is so designed or constructed that the composition though well ordered looks undesigned, independent of any a priori scheme.  The artist does not aim at symmetry or a legible pattern” [139].  “The result is a constant interplay among chance, incompleteness, and the final order, completeness and rightness of elements” [140].  Schapiro presented this as a manifestation of the modern emphasis on individual creativity, self-expression and (re)invention.”

4)   “in a modern painting, the artist preserves in various parts of the work the traces of the original instigating object or experience,” [140], rather than hiding the original impetus or pattern under a beautiful representation of a scene.

I cannot but agree with these generalizations of the formal qualities of mid-twentieth-century painting, and conclude that they represent the ascendency of the artist as individual auteur, visibly placing her/his creative ideas and process at the forefront.

Abstraction

As a viewer, abstraction appeals to me because of the authority it gives me to determine what I’m seeing and what it brings to mind and heart.  Abstract expressionism can be defined in many ways, but most simply, “abstract” visual art doesn’t represent any single set of physical objects, and “expressionist” painting uses color, form, texture, and their juxtaposition (composition) to evoke conscious or not-quite-conscious feelings in the viewer.  The work is what it is – not a mountain, vase, or person – but for me, it can be at least as powerful as painted images of such objects.