The Visual Arts: Exploring the History of "Fine Art" and Beyond

[Cioran]

Trite.

[Cioran]

In addition to real or imagined occult symbolism, fitl seems to prize in the visual arts a refined, academic technique; prettiness (or is that pettiness?) and cheap, saccharine sentimentality. There is plenty of kitsch art around to satisfy those sugar cravings; others of us crave something more substantial.

[mortalterror]

I do not think Mortal is saying post-modernism - purely an chronological accident - will devalue modernism. I think he is saying all XX century art will be devalued and then "selected" by an aesthetic shift. Which is pretty much natural.

Thank you, JCamilo. That is sort of what I was saying. There are some overrated and underrated artists right now at the very least, and a great many excesses which will be considered poor taste in future generations. My personal hunch is that Kiefer and Mondrian will not age as well as others. I am hoping that Stanislaw Szukalski will overtake Henry Moore, Jorge Gonzalez Camarena will outpace Mondrian, and Gottfried Helnwein will overtake Anselm Kiefer. Then Edward Hopper for Paul Klee, Tamara de Lempicka for Mark Rothko, Werner Tubke for Jaspar Johns, Franz Marc for Georges Braque, Odd Nerdrum for Sean Scully, etc.

[Cioran]

Well, a lot of these pairings are odd. Edward Hopper for Paul Klee? Hopper is already esteemed highly, and his place is secure. Several of his works are timelessly iconic. But his and Klee's art really bear no comparison. Klee's reputation is also secure, and I have no doubt it will continue to be so. Same odd pairing with Jorge Gonzalez Camarena and Mondrian. It seems a real apples-and-oranges comparison. Several others, the same. The reputations of Rothko, Braque (co-inventor with Picasso of Cubism, no less) and Johns are secure. Why is it necessary to think in terms of such competitions, as though art were a race or a sporting event? Particuarly when people like Hopper and Klee were playing different games? It's like asking who would win a game between the New York Yankees and the Boston Celtics.

[stlukesguild]

ftil... you seem to like to to look at art through the lens of certain academics... Giordano Bruno and Marsilio Ficino among them... as well as through the filter of Art Therapy. I'll offer you some thoughts by various acadmics/theorists/philosophers with regard to the issue of "beauty".

I personally agree that certain traditional concepts of "beauty" were somewhat eclipsed during the 20th century. Part of this is due, no doubt, to the very real horrors of the 20th century: WWI, WWII, the Holocaust, the genocides of Stalin and Mao, the looming threat of nuclear obliteration. Of course one might point out that in past eras there were events just as horrendous, and yet art did not take on an overwhelmingly dark look. The "Black Death" and the Spanish Inquisition, for example, resulted in some bleak and horrific images such as these two paintings of The Triumph of Death...





... still a great majority of the art of thixs period looked more like this:





Logically, much of this is due to the fact that for better or worse, by the mid 19th century it was the artists and not aristocratic of clerical patrons who were dictating the subject matter of painting... and as many of the most influential artists lived through one of more of the horrors of these recent centuries, we should not be surprised that their art was impacted by these events.

At the same time... there were aesthetic philosophies at play that also impacted the eclipse of traditional "beauty" in Modern art. The art historian, Wendy Steiner, explores these in some detail in her book, Venus in Exile. Among the influences touched upon, there is the writing of Edmund Burke and Emmanuel Kant. Burke offered up a theory of two opposite strains of "beauty". On the one side is "beauty"... that which evokes pleasure... the highest being sexual. Thus the beauty of the female body (assuming a male audience at this time) was considered the greatest beauty. On the opposite end of the spectrum is that art which inspires fear... "shock and awe"... the greatest fear being that of death. Art which spoke of this was defined as the art of the "sublime".

Kant built upon this dichotomy. He suggested that those subjects which are inherently beautiful... pretty flowers, a sunset over a lush landscape... and of course a beautiful woman... had the ability to short-circuit the (again male) audience's ability to judge them intellectually on aesthetic terms. The emotions and passions (especially love, desire, and lust) inspired by the image of a beautiful woman... especially the nude... were recognized as likely to overwhelm man's rational thought and ability to judge art as art.

Theorists who followed Kant pushed the idea further. They linked the rejection of traditional beauty with the misogynistic ideas that were rampant as a result of the increasing demands by women for equal rights as well as the ideas of Freud concerning sex. This was further linked with the Romantic ideas of the artist as an outsider... a visionary... a Bohemian... almost a prophet... in contrast to the Bourgeois and ideas of domesticity... which centered upon women. The architect, Adolf Loos, wrote a manifesto entitled Ornament and Crime in which he dismissed the decorative and the beautiful as only worthy of the lesser thinking of women. His concepts on architecture would impact the Bauhaus and architects such as Mies van der Rohe... and combined with kick-backs from manufacturers, this would result in a lot of the bland, faceless modernist architecture of the latter 20th century. Bauhaus painter, Joseph Albers, would have a similar impact on later American painting through his role as a professor at Yale.

In spite of this, there is plenty of truly traditionally "beautiful" art to be found in the 20th century:

Renoir (active into the 20th century; died 1919)



Matisse:



Modigliani:



Raoul Dufy:



Sonia Delaunay:



Elie Nadelman:



Gustav Klimt:



George Bellows:



John Singer Sargent:



Edouard Vuillard:



Pierre Bonnard:



Claude Monet (active well into the 20th century; produced some of his most influential "water lilies" murals in the 20th century; died 1926)



Edgar Degas (active into the 20th century although declining eye-sight led him to focus mostly on sculpture in his last years; died 1917)



Balthus:



Maillol:



You will notice not a single artist here is a minor or obscure figure.

So let's return to Robert Coombs and Andrew Atroschenko:



Speaking of Atroschenko, who I deemed pure schlock, you responded, "You may call Atroshenko's paintings “pure schlock”. I like this painting as I appreciate beauty." Believe it or not, I actually appreciate "beauty" as well... and I suspect the others here who have admitted to an admiration for some of the knottier works of Modernism also appreciate "beauty" as well. The debate is about how beauty functions in art.

My own paintings would likely be recognized by many as quite "beautiful" by traditional standards. I'm a figurative painter, and my figures are accurate to a great extent... based on an understanding of anatomy... but not "realistic" in the academic sense...closer to William Blake or the artists of the early Italian Renaissance. I tend to employ a harmony of bright colors, a great deal of pattern and gold leaf so that the results are unabashedly decorative. My most important influences range from Persian miniatures, Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, Byzantine, Medieval, and early Renaissance painting, tapestries, Ingres, Gauguin, Bonnard, Modigliani, early Picasso, Matisse, Klimt, Alphonse Mucha, Balthus, Beckmann, and Robert Kushner... with an increasing element of Pop and Post-Pop-Art influenced satire and irony.

My favorite artists of the 20th century, Matisse, Bonnard, Modigliani, and Max Beckmann certainly created some of the most beautiful paintings. Along with these artists, a list of my favorite painters would include Michelangelo, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, Raphael, Titian, Veronese, Ingres, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, and a slew of others who almost anyone would recognize as having produced a wealth of the most "beautiful" paintings. Even if we were to turn to Abstract Expressionism, I would have to admit that my favorite Abstract Expressionist painting is the most sensuous and resplendently colorful painting of the entire era: Arshile Gorky's "The Liver is the ****'s Comb" (The title added after the fact by the French Surrealist poet, Andre Breton):



I say all this to make it clear that I am not "anti-beauty". The problem I have with paintings by Atroschenko is that which Kant feared: the subject may be beautiful... but the art... what the artist brought to the subject is not. The average Playboy centerfold is "beautiful". The girl is likely stunning. The setting and lighting carefully chosen. The satin and lace and velvet fabrics are chosen with the eye of a fashion designer. But the photographer really brings nothing to the subject that leads the viewer to be impressed by the art as much as one is by the subject. Atroschenko, to my eye, handles paint miserably. I am reminded of any number of paintings of Spanish bullfighters and Señoritas sold in bargain furniture stores across the US. His colors are garish and he lacks any sensitivity to touch... let alone originality or sense of composition.

Having said that, let's look at a similar artist, Serge Marshennikov:









The subject matter is no less "trite" ( a pretty girl in pretty clothes) than that employed by Atroschenko... but then many a masterpiece has been produced from the most "trite" subject. Marshennikov, however, has an undeniable facility with paint. Few artists, myself included, wouldn't envy his technical skill. But Marshennikov is more than just a good technician. He has a strong eye for composition and a sensitivity to color harmonies. I'd have no problem with acknowledging that he is a damn good painter... even if his work is not to my taste. The one area in which I find his work lacking is in the realm of what is often referred to as "originality". Marshennikov's paintings lack a unique artist's "voice". They look like paintings by so many other technically skillful, academic realists. I have no problem with the fact that the subject is trite. There is a time and place for visual bon-bons. The greatest artists can bring a unique voice to their bon-bons so that they stand out for the works of everyone else:



-Francois Boucher



-Jean-Honoré Fragonard



-Anders Zorn



-Peter Paul Rubens

When looking at Art... the beauty must lie in the Art... not merely in the subject matter. Quite honestly, there is far more artistic sensitivity and "beauty" in the works of a skillful pin-up artist like Gil Elvgren, than in the paintings by Atroschenko:



(And I cannot help but love the tongue-in-cheek parody of Fragonard)

[stlukesguild]

There are some overrated and underrated artists right now at the very least, and a great many excesses which will be considered poor taste in future generations. My personal hunch is that Kiefer and Mondrian will not age as well as others. I am hoping that Stanislaw Szukalski will overtake Henry Moore, Jorge Gonzalez Camarena will outpace Mondrian, and Gottfried Helnwein will overtake Anselm Kiefer. Then Edward Hopper for Paul Klee, Tamara de Lempicka for Mark Rothko, Werner Tubke for Jaspar Johns, Franz Marc for Georges Braque, Odd Nerdrum for Sean Scully, etc.

Well... we can all play that game. I suspect Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Yue Minjun, and Tracey Emin are all grossly overrated. Jorge Gonzalez Camarena is interesting... but quite honestly, I feel the whole of Latin-American Modernism is grossly undervalued, and the Mexican Muralists... especially Diego Rivera... deserve far more recognition. Franz Marc vs Braque? They strike me as being about equally admired. The same holds true of Nerdrum and Scully. Neither one is struggling. I just don't get Tubke... and haven't seen many others who do... on the other hand, Helnwein's reputation seems to be on the upward swing, yet comparing the Romantic tragedy of Kiefer's battered elegies to Helnwein's polished, photo-realistic satire and irony may prove quite difficult.

[ftil]

Originally posted by stlukesguild
ftil... you seem to like to to look at art through the lens of certain academics... Giordano Bruno and Marsilio Ficino among them... as well as through the filter of Art Therapy.

LOL! I don’t. How many times I need to tell you that. Don’t try to sit in my head……it’s serious problem. Very serious indeed.

BTW, your choice of art inspired me to look deeper at painters. Too many ugly paintings. So, blame yourself for bringing such an ugly art. Second, I was very curious why you were fixated on nudity as you posted nude women on many threads. It led me to renaissance magicians and occultists. Thanks to you.

I'll offer you some thoughts by various acadmics/theorists/philosophers with regard to the issue of "beauty"

Hmm…you assuming that I don’t appreciate beauty or I don’t know what beauty is. I don't want to be sarcastic but don't you think that it is ironic that you want to show me “ beauty”.

You didn’t say anything about Robert Coombs painting I have posted. I am curious what you think.

[Cioran]

I already told it her was trite, but then, she has me on Ignore.

Such wonderful educational work Stlukesguild is doing here, and it is met by sneers and mockery from ftil. A typical Internet message board experience.

[Cioran]

"Too many ugly paintings," ftil says. And there is the point, which I raised earlier: for ftil, beauty in art is prettiness. Sorry, pretty is not enough, not for great art.

I wonder what ftil thinks of this:

[Cioran]

Atroschenko's stuff is trite squared, and no doubt hugely commercially successful.

[Cioran]

[COLOR="#B22222"] I feel the whole of Latin-American Modernism is grossly undervalued, and the Mexican Muralists... especially Diego Rivera... deserve far more recognition.

My impression is that Diego Rivera has quite a bit of recognition, but I feel you are right about Latin-American modernism in general being grossly undervalued. Some astonishing work there. A whole museum devoted to it in southern California, from which I had a huge book of the paintings in the museum, sent to me as a Christmas present. I lost it on the New York subway. Not before I had thoroughly immersed myself in it, happily.

[stlukesguild]

I don’t know what annunciation has to do with holiday season.

The Christmas Season traditionally involved the telling of the "Life of the Virgin" from her marriage, the Annunciation, the Visitation, on through the Birth of Christ, King Herod, and the Flight into Egypt. This cycle of narratives was a counterpart to the Life of Christ and the Passion which tended to be told during the Easter Season. These two related cycles were often painted as a cycle of paintings.

Having said this... let us return to the Christmas Season themed painting... moving further into the 20th century:

There were a number of artists we might truly define as Christian or Religious Artists. One of the first names to pop into my head when seeking out Modern artists who might have painted the Nativity or other Christmas-related themes was Georges Rouault. Rouault painted a great many paintings on Biblical themes, and even has a painting in the collection of the Vatican. Delving through his work... which often has the appearance of weather-beaten stained glass windows... I found that almost all of his paintings on Biblical themes centered on Christ as the "Man of Sorrows" and the "Passion" and Crucifixion:





The next artist whose name immediately came to mind, was Emil Nolde. Nolde was a personally and politically quite conservative. he grew up on a farm and was raised as a devout Lutheran. He joined and exhibited with both of the radical German Expressionist groups, Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter but he was eventually expelled or left both of these groups – foreshadowing of the difficulty Nolde had maintaining relationships with the organizations to which he belonged. His paintings often explored Christian or Germanic myth and legend. Nolde was a supporter of the Nazi party from the early 1920s, having become a member of its Danish section. He expressed negative opinions about Jewish artists, and considered Expressionism to be a distinctively Germanic style. In spite of this Nolde was also one of the first and most audacious of the German Expressionists... and as such he was particularly targeted by Hitler and included in the Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937, despite protests of various high-ranking Nazis, notably Joseph Goebbels. He was forbidden to paint—even in private—after 1941... on penalty of death. Nevertheless, during this period he created hundreds of watercolors (which didn't have the tell-tale odor of oils), which he hid. He called them the "Unpainted Pictures".

One of Nolde's greatest works is a great polyptych or multi-paneled painting... a sort of Expressionist "altarpiece" entitled The Life of Christ.



Among the individual panels, is a painting of the Nativity in which Mary joyfully holds the newborn child aloft while Joseph smiles and in the distance the three magi can be seen. The simple forma and brilliant color convey the narrative in a manner as fully accessible as a Medieval sculpture.



In contrast to Nolde's image of the Virgin as joyful mother, we might look at the image of the Madonna as presented by the Norwegian Expressionist, Edvard Munch:



Munch was obsessed with mental illness and death, having witnessed almost all of his siblings die or slip into madness. He declared "I inherited two of mankind's most frightful enemies—the heritage of consumption and insanity." His rather Bohemian sexual appetite and fear of syphilis (combined with his alcoholism and preference for reading darker works of literature) only furthered his fear of women. Munch spoke of his goal as painting the soul just as Leonardo painted the anatomy. His Madonna with her halo clearly alludes to THE Madonna... but this red glowing halo also suggests a bloody red mood. The point of view is that of the male artist looking up at his lover astride him, her head thrown back and eyes closed in orgasmic ecstasy... and yet she appears almost as a Vampire or Succubus... the woman who brings death in the form of Syphilis... or further generations of consumptive and mentally ill children.

The third artist who I immediately thought of in terms of painters of religious subjects, was Marc Chagall. Chagall, a Jewish Russian painter working in France produced an endless array of magical and mystical images drawn from Biblical narratives. As a Jewish artist, most of his paintings, unsurprisingly, centered upon the narratives of the Hebrew Bible. Nevertheless... Chagall did paint some Christian narratives:



His images of Jewish brides often suggest the Virgin Mary in a landscape populated with animals out of Jewish folk tales that talk and sing and play instruments and fly.



A few other works are clearly based on Christian narratives. The print, Mystical Crucifixion presents a vision of the crucified Christ and the Virgin Mary and Christ child hovering above a Russian Jewish shtetl that might have been little different than the stables at Bethlehem. Flying above all is Yahweh... God the Creator.



In the painting The Assumption of the Virgin, Mary rises... again from a shtetl into the heavens... to the great joy and acclaim of the Hebrew Angels and attendant farm animals. She is dressed in her wedding gown... and yet holds the baby Christ-child. From directly above her an angel descends to kiss her forehead in a manner merging Jewish and Christian traditions.

Moving into the mid-20th century I found it near impossible to find any paintings of real merit illustrating the Christmas narratives. Then again... "narrative" itself became a anathema at this time in painting. Artists like Mark Rothko suggested that abstraction could have a spiritual nature... but this was removed from the specifics of religion and religious narratives.

Sean Scully, building on the tradition of Rothko, gave his paintings names that alluded to specific religious/spiritual narratives... such as Gabriel:



Interpretation of these paintings in connection with the titles is left open-ended and up to the individual viewer. Does the gray and white allude to the silvery wings and robes of the angel of the annunciation? Doe the brown and black ladder-like panel suggest Jacob's Ladder and the man's wrestling with God?

And what of Maestà?



Duccio's Maestà was the masterpiece of the early Renaissance (International Gothic) in Siena:





The work was a sculptural multi-paneled altarpiece in the round made up of dozens of paintings telling of the Life of Mary and the Life of Christ. The center front panel presents the Virgin Mary as the Madonna... mother of Christ and Queen of Heaven seated in majesty... from which the title derives.

Scully's painting undoubtedly refers more to Duccio's painting than it does to the subject of the Virgin. Considering the title, the black and white stripes of Scully's painting suggest the similar stripes of the cathedral of Siena:





The last... almost contemporary variation on Biblical narratives related to Christmas are admittedly disconcerting. The first is entitled Adoration of the Magi.



The painter, the Austrian Gottfried Helnwein offers a disturbing image rooted in Austria's and Germany's not-so-distant past. A beautiful blonde Madonna... the Aryan ideal... holds forth her newborn son who appears quite like an infant Hitler. She is surrounded my the "magi" or high-ranking Nazi officers. One cannot help but recognize the satirical comment upon the almost religious fanaticism that the Nazis inspired.

Another pair of untitled paintings from 2005 strike me as alluding (even if unintentionally) to the theme of the Annunciation:



In the first painting, a young girl stares out at us as she sits on her bed in a stark cell-like room akin to those often portrayed in paintings of the Annunciation. A raking light enters the room.. not unlike the light that accompanies the entry of Christ as he calls forth Matthew in Caravaggio's Calling of St. Matthew:



... or in Henry Ossawa Tanner's Annunciation, which I posted earlier in this thread.

In the second similar painting from this series the young girl is confronted with a vision:



Hers is not the vision of the Angel Gabriel, but rather that of a rather nightmarish rabbit in a general's robe. He glows and seems blurred in a manner suggestive of the flickering images on a TV screen. Are dreams such as these what we have come to?

[stlukesguild]

I wonder what ftil thinks of this:

A marvelous Picasso... brutal... almost violent in his handling of paint and clash of colors and jagged lines. And yet incredibly expressive of the fear and horror and suffering of WWII... and ultimately quite beautiful.

[ftil]

Originally posted by stlukesguild
The Christmas Season traditionally involved the telling of the "Life of the Virgin" from her marriage, the Annunciation, the Visitation, on through the Birth of Christ, King Herod, and the Flight into Egypt. This cycle of narratives was a counterpart to the Life of Christ and the Passion which tended to be told during the Easter Season. These two related cycles were often painted as a cycle of paintings.

Hm… I didn’t know that it involved the telling of the ‘Life of the Virgin’”. I guess there are so many sects that claim to be Christian and create own versions.

[Cioran]

Hm… I didn’t know that it involved the telling of the ‘Life of the Virgin’”. I guess there are so many sects that claim to be Christian and create own versions.

Wow, stluksguild is giving you, gratis, such an education, and all you can do is sneer like a churl and repeatedly employ your stupid LOL smilie. Sad. And crazy.