[TheForge] Art, doncha know....

[ries]

I gotta disagree with your thesis.
It has been my impression, after a mere 50 years or so of travelling  
the world and looking carefully at art, craft, and industry, that  
there has always been crap, and there have always been diamonds  
scattered in amongst it.
I had a high school teacher, of the classics, as it happened, at an  
exclusive prep school, way back when in the 60's, who advanced a  
theory, certainly not his own, that 95% of everything was crap.
And there is a great Mark Twain quote, something to the effect of "I  
hate the damn Greeks- they already stole all the good ideas".

I would suggest that instead of living in an era of charlatans and  
cheapjack hustlers, we are actually living in an age of some of the  
greatest craftsmen ever. But since there are 8 billion or so of us,  
you have to look a bit harder to separate the wheat from the chaff...

As for your theories on modern art- they dont hold up to actual  
scrutiny. Jackson Pollock, for example, was quite a good draftsman-  
he could draw and paint realistically, to quote Archie Bell and the  
Drells, "just as good as he liked". He chose not to, intentionally,  
depict realistic scenes, after having done it for 15 or 20 years,  
because he was more interested in other ideas. This does not make his  
work any better or worse- just different. Personally, I have stood in  
front of quite a few large Jackson Pollock paintings in the flesh,  
and I believe that he was extremely skillfull, and created quite  
beautiful pieces that did exactly what he wanted them to do. He  
certainly cared almost not at all about money, fame, or publicity- he  
was, after all, the artist who urinated in the fireplace of one of  
the richest art patrons of his time, and frequently destroyed  
paintings that he could have sold.

I know a bunch of unbelivably good craftspeople living, and working  
today- certainly, in many ways, the equals of any that ever lived. In  
most cases, they have not only 20 or 30 or 40 years of skill and  
practice, but a comprehensive knowledge of their materials that just  
didnt exist in the old days. Take blacksmithing and metalsmithing,  
for example- people like Daryl Meier, or Phillip Baldwin, have a  
better understanding of alloys, metallurgy, and technique than  
virtually any mokeme gane or damascus maker from any historical era,  
and then, on top of that, they have an art history, theory, and  
general educational background the breadth of which simply did not  
exist in the 18th century anywhere.
I can think of another dozen or so smiths today that can equal  
virtually any historical smiths- in fact, since the greatest  
historical work was done by teams of large amounts of specialists,  
they often know more and are more widely skilled than in the 19th  
century. Certainly, people like Miccelucci were geniuses, and  
geniuses are rare in any time. But we have a few.

As for modern sculpture- you need to dig a bit deeper. I have the  
feeling you made your conclusions first, then found examples to back  
them up. Sorta backwards, if you ask me.
You are certainly entitled to dislike any artist, living or dead. But  
to say somebody like Richard Serra doesnt understand form, mass,  
materials, space, and fabrication as well as Bernini- well, it just  
aint so. I once saw a film of Serra working with a crew in the Ruhr,  
in Germany, in the 70's, forging 6 foot cubes of solid steel with a  
20,000 ton press- and believe me, the man is no faker- he knows, and  
understands, steel, on an intuitive level, as well as anyone alive.

I have also seen quite a few of Chris Offili's paintings- the ones in  
which he occasionally wraps up an elephant turd in gold leaf, and  
uses it as part of the frame. He doesnt toss it at the canvas, he  
paints, and again, he is a skilled draftsman who paints the way he  
does out of choice, not ineptitude. He is of african descent, living  
in england, and to him, the elephant turds have meaning, alluding to  
colonialism, and the fact that western donors will spend millions to  
preserve elephants, while in a village a few miles away, children die  
every day of diaharrea due to the lack of a hundred dollar well- the   
gold plated turd, if you will.

I could go on about a hundred more artists working today, in styles  
and subject matters you may dislike, but whose command of their  
materials and degree of education and intensity of thought is totally  
first rate.

You have chosen to become extremely good at what interests you. And  
naturally, it disappoints when the entire world doesnt see how great  
many of the things you love are. But this is due to lack of education  
on the part of viewers, on our capitalist system of cranking out  
cheap crap for quick consumption- it is not because other artists,  
who have chosen other areas of interest, are somehow dragging down  
the civilisation.

Ries




On Nov 6, 2007, at 8:01 AM, George Dixon wrote:

          Looking for a Silver Bullet for Our Silver Age of Art

   You live in historic times.  I am not referring to the issues of  
climate, war or politics.....I am 'talking art' here.
    First some perspective:
    A common touch-stone in history is Rome.  Roman society was  
different than ours, very different, but at a level of human  
commonalities....we are them and they are us.  Humans act, at a macro- 
level, in ways that have less to do with the times or the society and  
much more to do with how humans act in large groups when faced with  
large realities.  Call it 'how humans are wired as a species'. While  
a Roman had to walk to the local arena for visceral amusement, folks  
today have to be urged by the first responders to "move along" as  
they slow down to scope out a crash scene.  Capice?

    Rome had what is termed a "Silver Age" (40 BC to 130 AD) in all  
things creative.  Architecture, intellectual literature and art all  
reflected the dysfunction of complacency.  While volumes of  
literature were generated, they were largely overly stylized and said  
little that was new.  Dogmatic repetition was the order of the  
literary day.   Architecture did nothing new in either material  
innovation or design.  In fact buildings often incorporated the  
finest details of older structures because those components exceeded  
the quality of contemporary work.  Art followed suit. Sculpture  
mirrored past compositions and conventions of design, but it did so  
at a lower level of competency. Skills that were difficult to learn  
were not popular.  Oh....to be sure, there were those who produced  
and wanted to be recognized as, shall we say 'artists'.  However, it  
appears that they put more intellectual capital into wanting-to-be- 
known-as or into self-promotion than they did in achieving mastery of  
their medium.
     Rome in its Silver Age was a powerful, even dominant geo- 
political empire.  War existed, but far away...the threats of  
tomorrow seemed to be  several tomorrows into the future.  The  
economy worked, goods and food flowed, water flowed, mass  
entertainment was common and cheap. Things were 'historically good'.   
That is the backdrop of (and perhaps the criteria for) an age of  
mental complacency.

            "History does not repeat itself but people always do"  
said Voltaire, the 18th c philosopher.

      Art used to mean that one achieved a level of mastery of the  
tools and materials and then transformed those materials into objects  
that were pleasing to the viewer, qualitative in their design and  
construction and challenging enough in their execution to put demands  
on the artist.
Fast forward to now.  The 20th century displays a devolution in both  
innovation and execution of 'art' that can be measured in generations.

As the 20th century dawned, Claude Monet was innovative as well as a  
master of his oil paints.  Impressionism showed a world that 'new'  
could be complex, different and still demand a growth curve of its  
practitioners.  The work was not literal images of trees or  
buildings, it was stylized impressions of the subject.  But it had to  
represent the subject well enough that a casual viewer could figure  
out what was going on in the painting.  That took clever, masterful  
use of color and shape to convey an impression from one mind (artist)  
to another (viewer) in a manner that everyone saw the same  
thing....no easy task.

Impressionistic and realistic depictions take effort and time both to  
learn to do and then to do.  It is called 'delayed gratification'.   
Post WW2 was the onset of instant gratification.

By mid-century the slippery slope had produced the Jackson Pollock  
generation.  Paint was tossed at the canvas.  Since there was no  
possibility that anyone could recognize the imagery as representing  
anything from their world, titles became more important.  Frankly, it  
takes no skill to toss paint, bend bars, or stack fired clay sticks  
into pyramids....and then call it 'art'.  It does take clever titles  
(if it comes with an explanatory title then the imagery failed to  
work....it must be art) and some marketing to turn a buck with it.

             "No body ever lost a dime underestimating the taste of  
the general public"  P T Barnum.

As the last quarter of the 20th c moved toward the millennium  
minimalism came to the forefront.  The rich artistic traditions in  
metal, ceramics, jewelry and paint were eschewed (or were considered  
too difficult and time consuming to learn or master) and in their  
place we got red boxes placed in subways, cloth draped over both the  
German Parliament building and some dinky island in the Florida Keys  
followed by plasma-cut silhouettes in cor-ten steel. Cor-ten has one  
art property beyond being plasma cutable and wire-weldable....it  
rusts.  It rusts just so far and then stabilizes.  Wow!

The equally rich traditions of craftsmanship faded as well.  A 1990's  
waltz through the Sculpture Garden of the Hirshorn Museum on the Mall  
in Washington, DC takes the viewer from silhouettes in the distance  
that are not unpleasing, up to a more intimate range where the crappy  
welds and the low level of craftsmanship are dominant.  That work  
simply will not last, too poorly joined, and it has nothing about it  
that rewards someone who takes distant notice and then walks over to  
look more closely.  The outline at a distance is all the satisfaction  
you are going to get.  Get closer and the basic flaws overwhelm  
whatever gross design was attempted.  Anyway, the walk over is a  
waste since there are no details to see when you get there.

What we have now in our Silver Age is painfully obvious.  What got us  
here was the both intellectual laziness and complacency in prior  
generations (a by-product of instant gratification)....from which our  
generations have drawn too accurate a lesson....and a philosophical  
attitude that the past (pre 20th c) was dead and not to be reflected.  
Time for something 'New".  In that the past had incorporated  
competency, mastery, material manipulation and a classical sense of  
design (which was a natural human-wiring evolution by the way...) as  
its hallmarks; to do something 'New" meant none of that!    
Cool....except that when you say none-of-that and toss it off the  
table you are left with a minimum of options for your 'New'.  Hence  
the minimalism shows in our tarnished silver age of one-trick-art- 
ponies.

It is past time for something 'New' again.  It's time to toss the  
tired old 'modern art' conventions and vacuous art-speak baggage of  
yesterday and today...(see 'found objects' in 'art').  How 'modern'  
can a 60 year old art concept be, especially in an interconnected  
time like we have?  Let's learn from the Pollock evolution that  
minimalism is the Emperor's-New-Clothes road to 'art'.  Let's realize  
but not accept that 'art' has been debased both as a term and as a  
process.  (That is, unless elephant poop onna religious icon works  
for you as art.  The elephant worked harder to generate the poop than  
the 'artist' did to fling it.)  Today, good design which is executed  
with craftsmanship and a masterful manipulation of a medium  
incorporating rich visual imagery and detail is as strong a rejection  
of the gray haired status-quo rut of contemporary art as their paint  
or poop tossed at canvas was a rejection of pre-20th century art  
traditions.   They took a wrong turn, called it art and no-one that  
knew better spoke up.  Then they became academics of art and taught  
their inadequacies to several generations....and here we are.

If you want to have an impact and/or make something which stands the  
fabled test of time in both design and durability, then you need to  
consider the pre-20th and early 21st century's art criteria of  
achieving competency and then mastery of your medium. Once you have  
done that, start to tackle innovative design.   But don't get fooled  
again.

Francis Whitaker used to urge new smiths to strive beyond good  
enough: "there is plenty of room at the top".
_______________________________________________
Manage membership or unsubscribe at:
http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/theforge
theforge mail list group photo site is
http://www.photoaccess.com
Login:  blacksmithblacksmith at hotmail.com
password:  anvil
___________



Ries Niemi
Industrial Artist
http://www.riesniemi.com/