A very visual blog link

http://thatsinkedup.blogspot.com/


T.Parker, check her postings out [she's a great printmaker and teacher in her own right].

Hi Terry!

~tcb

Alex Katz

From Salle, David. How to See: Looking, Talking, and Thinking about Art

One more post on this wonderful book.  Laid out in 4 sections, each sections containing a number of insightful essays, they are: How to Give Form to an Idea; Being an Artist; Art in the World and Pedagogy and Polemics.

This is from the first essay, primarily on Alex Katz:

Every major artist is an amalgamation or synthesis of diverse sympathies and influences. De Kooning, for example, combined, among other things, cubism and surrealism, Ingres, Dutch still-life painting, the nudes of Rubens, Picasso’s line, Mondrian’s structure, the Accabonac landscape, jazz, and the energy and angst particular to his time, place, and personality. There is a fairly direct line from de Kooning to Katz himself. They share some traits, such as a workmanlike approach to the practice of painting, a lack of sentimentality, and ferocious intelligence. With Katz, the bouillabaise includes Jackson Pollock, Matisse, billboard advertising, the movies, Japanese screens and woodcuts, modern dance, fashion, and poetry. Once asked to name his favorite artists of all time, Alex started his list with Jackson Pollock and ended with “the guy who made Nefertiti.”

Salle, David. How to See: Looking, Talking, and Thinking about Art (p. 20). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. 

Really just break down and buy the book.

~tcb

Ah, what to say

For starters I've been obsessing over the election since the conventions.

You may understand, wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

After the swearing-in of the new President, I too took an oath: stop obsessing and get on with life.

Enough.

Moving on, I've started doing some reading and reviews of the many 'art to do' notes i've made during this period.

The readings:

David Salle's 2. to 1.How 3. See  [crazy title].  This is a book by an art critic who wished to change the conversation about art, to lose the academic/gallery speak and converse on art and artists the way artists talk among ourselves.

That idea kinda' hooked my attention. A longish introduction followed by a number of essays is the basic structure.

Gems I liked from the introduction:

[Quote marks omitted]

1.    The most convincing works tend to be those in which thinking is inseparable from the doing.

[if you're a process artist like myself you should dig that]

2.    Nothing I can say is going to improve how it looks.

3.    The right idea, one that is in productive sync with one's talents, can unlock a whole worldview. If that idea is also part of a sensibility that is forming and spreading in the larger culture, or zeitgeist, a multiplier effect comes into play, and the art will resonate strongly with the viewing public.  We will feel that it express us.

4.    Art is more than a sum of cultural signs: it is a language both direct and associative, and has a grammar and syntax like any other human communication.  The act of paying close attention to what someone made, in all of its particulars, is what stimulates an authentic, as opposed to a conditioned, response.

5.    The wall label might inform you that the work is about the artist's investigation into the semiotics of performative strategies, while you find yourself wondering if the cafeteria food is any good.

[i so love that one]

6.     Form is the raw material, and style is the forge.

[as a derivative thought I recall a lyric ". . . style is just another word for limitation. . . ']

As I come across these on further reading I'll post more.  I find the thinking generated by reading books like this helps place and reaffirms my internal dialogues; new art has never come out of reading such stuff, that's not the point, it is instead creating the mental studio that in it's self allows new directions for me.

~tcb