Beth Aleph Click For Link)
It is fascinating to me (and I am grateful to Anne for pointing it out) that my artistic style is similar to the style of the painter Morris Louis (originally Morris Louis Bernstein), whom I never heard of till this afternoon. There seems to me no denying the similarity. This painting is called Beit-Aleph, named posthumously by his widow (rachmanah litzlan). There is a hint of calligraphy, the design resembling marks made by a fountain pen. And he was apparently aware of the spiritual significance of Hebrew letters, which he used in his works. Also of interest to me is the fact that he developed his style while painting along to jazz music. I do my abstract painting to music.
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 10:25 PM
14 Comments:
I know I'm a philistine, but I just don't get paintings of this sort. For example, I find this one pretty, and wouldn't mind decorating a room with it, but it doesn't resonate with me at all.
Kishke: Studying art history and criticism is an amazing, often mind-bending experience. There really is a rhyme and reason to abstract art, and if I hadn't ceased to study it more than 35 years ago, I could tell you more! OTOH, at some point I felt that art critics and students became so infatuated with their own insider jargon and explication, they lost relevance for me.
But, re: Louis's technique... From the Jewish Virtual Library web site:
The basic point about Louis's work and that of other Color Field painters ... is that they continued a tradition of painting exemplified by Pollock, Newman, Still, Motherwell, and Reinhardt. All of these artists were concerned with the classic problems of pictorial space and the statement of the picture plane. [Anne's note: The plane of the canvas, the tension between image and edge, are Big Deals in modern art.]
In 1953, he and Noland visited Helen Frankenthaler’s New York studio, where they saw and were greatly impressed by her stain painting Mountains and Sea (1952). Upon their return to Washington, Louis and Noland together experimented with various techniques of paint application. Louis characteristically applied extremely runny paint to an unstretched canvas, allowing it to flow over the inclined surface in effects sometimes suggestive of translucent color veils. The importance of Frankenthaler's example in Louis's development of this technique has been noted. However, even more so than Frankenthaler, Louis eliminated the brush gesture, although the flat, thin pigment is at times modulated in billowing tonal waves. His "veil" paintings consist of bands of brilliant, curving color-shapes submerged in translucent washes through which they emerge principally at the edges. Although subdued, the resulting color is immensely rich, In another formula, the artist used long parallel strips of pure color arranged side by side in rainbow effects.
[Anne's note again: Louis's paintings, like many modern art works, are best experienced in person. They are LARGE and this affects the way the viewer perceives, and reacts to, them. I enjoyed visiting museums in Boston and NYC for this reason.]
Anne: Look how much of the description of Louis's work centers around technical points; the whats and hows of paint and canvas. Technique is certainly important, but when that's pretty much all that's being discussed, you have to wonder whether there's anything else there.
When you saw Louis's actual paintings, did they do anything for you?
To go to a different realm and then come back - Billy Collins once said that if poetry is to be cryptic then poetry is a synonym for bad communication. On the otherhand TS Eliot said that poetry is writing that is felt before it is understood. As usual the truth lies in between.
This painting grabbed me and moved me before I read a word about it. Learning about it helped me enter a world and better "get" it.
When I first started writing poetry a friend of mine told me that I couldn't claim to be a poet if I wasn't familiar with poets and the poetry tradition. I now think he was right.
Lehavdil - there's an infinite beauty to Torah, and it becomes more beautiful to you (me) when you learn the ropes of Torah learning.
Anne - thanks for the info and insight.
When you know the ropes of learning, the beauty is not in that you're now a member of the club; it's inherent. Is it the same with painting? I certainly don't know enough to say for sure, but I suspect not.
Kishke: Interesting question!
When I saw Louis's paintings in person, I had already been studying art history for the better part of two years in college. So I knew the backstory and vocabulary of modern abstract art.
The paintings did affect me: They are rather translucent yet brilliant in hue; they hang down like curtains or northern lights. Your eye keeps moving back and forth across the bands or strips of color. It's rather participatory, especially since without literal representation you don't have a narrative to occupy you.
However, given that I already was exposed to this artistic tradition, I can't say with any certainty whether I would have enjoyed the paintings in the museums had I simply encountered them without preamble.
One thing is clear, though: I am extremely happy to have learned about art in the modest depth that I did. The knowledge adds to my experience not only of art, but architecture that I see around me every day.
I'm sure the same is true with music appreciation. For example, I love Jack White's music viscerally, but I appreciate it even more because I understand the transition of popular American music from the blues and gospel to more modern forms of rock. (I could similarly cite my enjoyment of Mozart if the White Stripes aren't your cup of tea!)
I don't know whether they're my cup of tea, as, sadly, I've never heard of them!
I'm reminded of the exhibition of The Gates, which I was ready to
dismiss as so much bunk. Then I saw for myself and felt a childlike emotion and was washed with nostalgia as I walked through them, playing make-believe in Central Park. It had snowed the day before I went and I bought a photo of the curtains and doorways in the snow.
Here's an online photo to illustrate what I'm refering to (generally, not the snow, or my experience):
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/77/84677-004-82B080DB.jpg
BTW - I recommend the movie,My Archtect, which comes to mind. He almost redid the Churvah Synagogue. Fascinating stuff. I learned about the art aspect of architecture - something I never had thought much of before.
I had that experience with regard to fine wines. I knew there must be something to it, b/c so many people said so, but I hated it. I wouldn't go so far as to pooh-pooh it, as some do, but I definitely didn't get the point. It's only recently - under the influence of a friend - that I've begun appreciating the tastes and subtleties of a good wine (and of some not-so-good ones too).
I'm not there with the wine. The fancy ones generally taste bitter to me. I don't get it. (Something I did turn around on was sushi. At first the idea of eating raw fish troubled me, but it tastes really good.)
Kishke,
I think I hear you. I paint and draw (see my blog if interested). But I usually draw a blank in myself when it comes to responding to abstract art. I love many artists who are modern and verge on abstraction -- Chagall, Matisse -- but paintings that lack a visual subject are a puzzle to me.
The elements of composition -- line, color, value -- these are abtract in themselves. You can use them in design, but my eyes and mind enjoy a painting that tells a story. The "story" may be contained in a landscape, a person, an animal, but if I don't see the story, then I am somewhat confused.
I think different peoples' minds just work differently. Some of us find a more complete experience in traditional painting; others are moved by abstract painting.
On the poetry front, T.S. Eliott has always been a burr in my fur. I dislike his poetry (forgive me, thou gods of English poetry). It's a gut reaction; I can't analyze it too much; but my response to a poem like "Sweeney Among the Nightingales" is to throw the book across the room. (Never actually have, but would love to.)
Thanks Miriam, I hear your point. There is always a story to a picture but it becomes more accesable when there's a human element introduced.
For me the abstract, sometimes - not always - speaks to me, I feel the story. The proof is that when given the choice of what to paint, that's the story I'm most apt to tell, the passionate story of colors and spaces and overlaps and and and.
Someone dear to me pointed out that Morris Louis passed away a month before I was born. I am not closed to the spiritual possiblity that his spirit to some extent, somehow, entered mine.
In regard to poetry, while I like Elliot's saying about poems being felt before thy are understood, I've never been prompted to feel or undertand anything via his poetry. Give me a straight forward and accesable Sirowitz, or Collins over Elliot any day.
Miriam: Yes, the absence of any "story" is part of what I don't get, but even more it's the absence of any object. Yes, there are lines and squiggles and blotches of paint, and skillfully-applied wash on top of the paint, but to what end? Tell me, is it the same if done by a small child in kindergarten? How about by a monkey? Obviously, I can't speak for others, but what I admire about a painting is not the craft by which the paint is applied to the medium, but the skill and imagination with which the object or the scene, was rendered. Without the object, there's nothing there for me. In reading about Louis, I came across the name Frankenthaler and her "great" painting The Mountains and the Sea. I googled the painting. It no more resembles a mountain and a sea than a flower and mud puddle or a squiggle and a blotch. Had Ms. Frankenthaler not named the painting, I'll wager no one would ever have attached these words to this painting.
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