[Baren]: The mailing list / discussion forum for woodblock printmaking. Baren Digest Monday, 26 April 1999 Volume 07 : Number 543 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Bull Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 22:08:45 +0900 Subject: [Baren 4190] Re: information access ... georga wrote: > this discussion is so good ive decided to save and print it before i > do though, i thought id ask if its being saved already. also can anyone > suggest a really good book on the hanga method of woodcutting and printing? georga, answers to both of your questions are at: http://woodblock.com All [Baren] discussions are archived, and can be reached from the 'Forum Archives' link on that page. I usually update the archives around 10 pm Tokyo time each evening. As for the book on 'hanga', there are a number of complete volumes in the Encyclopedia library. Just follow the 'Library' link on that same page ... Dave ------------------------------ From: Graham Scholes Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 06:51:38 -0700 Subject: [Baren 4191] Re: abstract or not? Gary wrote > What I am saying, from purely my view, from analyzing my own feelings, > is that the type of art known as Abstract Art is meaningless to me. I think Sarah and I are on the same wave length. As I said from day one, and has been repeated several times, it is education that is important for the growth of art appreciation. It is the growth of the mind, through the experience of art. You are not going to wake up one morning and suddenly like it. It is like good wine it takes time. What you think about abstraction today, will change as you acquire information in your endeavor at the creation process. To paraphrase my opening comment..... Abstraction allows the 'Minds Eye' to roam and imagine all matter of things. Maybe it is the process and not the image the is the bothersome factor..... I do have trouble with art that is achieved by: 1. Placing a canvas near an explosive devise which has pigment strapped to it. Setting it off and calling the results Art... I say bulls**t. 2. Throwing pigment into the back wash of a jet engine which spatter it on a canvas.... I say bulls**t. 3. Dipping worms in pigment and allowing them to crawl acrosss a canvas.... I say bulls**t. Hummmm have I opened a can of worms...... Graham ------------------------------ From: Date: Sat, 24 Apr 1999 09:01:35 -0700 Subject: [Baren 4192] physics April, I too am fascinated by quantum physics. And by all the discussions about abstract art. I admit that I sometimes feel that when so much explaining has to be done to help people understand a work that it is the written explanation that becomes important and the art irrelevant. I am strongly moved by some abstracts, notably Rothko and Kline, and left shaking my head at others. Not so different than representational work really. Andrea Rich ------------------------------ From: Elizabeth Atwood Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 12:08:25 -0400 Subject: [Baren 4193] Abstract or not! Interesting discussion....with far too many words.......life is short, guys! Learn to be more succinct! My schooling was in another discipline...architecture...but I'm married to an MFA. The arguments go on. My impression that what passes for outstanding abstract art is purely the product of outstanding hype. I love much of it......but refuse to accept it without question. I am constrained to hold off my appreciation of Michael's work until seeing "in person." I do not believe that anyone can truly accept it without that. Graham.....please add J. Pollack and his step ladder to your list. (Lovely floor covering!)........ElizA ------------------------------ From: agatha Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 10:41:33 -0700 Subject: [Baren 4194] Re: abstract or not? what about the monkey that paints and mashes fruit on to the canvas? is that art? ------------------------------ From: Graham Scholes Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 11:16:50 -0700 Subject: [Baren 4195] Re: Abstract or not! >Interesting discussion....with far too many words.......life is short, guys! >Learn to be more succinct! ........ Amen........ >I am constrained to hold off my appreciation of Michael's work until seeing >"in person." I do not believe that anyone can truly accept it without that. ........ Amen........ 3 x 5 digitized image ..... you got that right..... >Graham.....please add J. Pollack and his step ladder to your list. (Lovely >floor covering!)........ElizA ........ Amen........ Graham ------------------------------ From: Graham Scholes Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 11:41:41 -0700 Subject: [Baren 4196] Plates and end use? I was wondering what some of you have in mind for the plates you carve. Do you sell them...... Do you plane them down and reuse them...... Do you donate them to a museum..... Do you mount them for display.... Do you stick them in a cupboard and let the kids handle them down the road. Do you......well thats enough. Regards, Graham ------------------------------ From: "Bea Gold" Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 12:23:45 -0700 Subject: [Baren 4197] absstract vs realism Dave: I want to join in to express appreciation for your new work - it is so beautiful. Also want to put my two cents in on the abstract vs. representational work. I was working on my new woodblock and thinking that although representational the design is as abstract as any without a literal meaning. I respect and admire those artists who can create a beautiful work without hooking it to a representation, while also admiring those who can create a representational work that moves us to wonder and think about the content as well as the structure and design. There are also those who push us beyond beauty so that we have to react with some emotion. AND last week I went with my family to the University of California at Santa Barbara to attend our grandsons' art show opening. He and nine other graduating Honors Art majors were given the opportunity to be a part of a major art show. They each were provided with an individual space and encouraged to show their best works. My grandson, Brad Swonetz, used in addition to the room his creations were shown in, a spectacular outdoor space. He developed a soft sculpture that utilized a kitelike structure, sewn of stretch fabric in shades of tans, white and black. This was stretched between two buildings and attached with nylon fishing line so that the abstract design was creative and beautifully balanced. In the center of this seven-sided figure was a striped tube sewn of the same fabric that extended down approximately 15 feet holding several textured rubber balls at the bottom as a weight. The day was windy and the structure, named Mondrians Umbilical Chord, moved with the air currents, acting as though it had a life of it's own. The tube moved up and down and to and fro and seemed to interact with the observers. As each gallery attendee left the building and saw the tube moving between the guests they poked one another and pointed up to show the work. They smiled, they walked over to it try to figure out what it was doing, they bounced the tube up and down, they swing it to and for and seemed to talk to it. People sitting on the bench under it had the enclosed balls join in their conversation. The public reaction was remarkable. Abstract or realistic - Mondrians Umbilical Chord? Bea Gold ------------------------------ From: Jack Reisland Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 10:23:28 +0000 Subject: [Baren 4198] Re: abstract or not? Yes, I think that part of the problem is that the label "abstract" is much too broad in the first place. It is used for everything from slightly abstracted representational art, carefully thought out and planned, to "accidental" art, the paint in a cannon variety. When the motive for creating is so broad, perhaps the labels are useless. And of course, as you say, each work should be judged on it's own, so maybe the labels are really pointless anyway. But without the labels, we couldn't have this discussion, and we'd all have to get back to carving, washing the dishes, and... well, whatever. Jack Reisland ------------------------------ From: Jean Eger Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 13:22:49 -0700 Subject: [Baren 4199] abstract vs realistic Picture this scenario. It's 1940 in the United States and World War II is about to start. The higherups at the CIA want to send agents to Europe to bring back information. What cover story will they give? Ah ha, why not send them as artists. But what if someone asks them to paint a picture? We can ask them to paint abstractions, like Picasso. Anyone can do that, even little children. Then we will plant good reviews in all the art magazines. They will be lionized when they go abroad. Moreover, our artists will start doing abstracts instead of documenting our industrial life in the United States. WE don't want any information to get out to the Nazis. OR we can use them to paint fake landscapes showing things that aren't really there. The printmakers should be good at that because everything they do comes out backwards. All kidding aside, I really like abstract art. I admire people who are really good at it. I interviewed one printmaker for my thesis who described the emerging, receding forms in his monoprints giving them depth. I wish I could do as well. The little bit of training I had before San Francisco State trained me to make abstract art. Of course, I grew up during the cold war, in the pre-pop era, when people were actively discouraged from painting realistically. I resented not being allowed to paint realistically. This was a youthful bias against abstract art which I have gradually overcome. Ralph Waldo Emerson, our venerable American philosopher, has some interesting insights on nature and art (with apologies for the sexist language contained therein): "All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is Taste. Others have the same love in such excess, that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is Art. "The production of a work of art throws a light upon the mystery of humanity. A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature. For although the works of nature are innumerable and all different, the result or the expression of them all is similar and single. Nature is a sea of forms radically alike and even unique. A leaf, a sunbeam, a landscape, the ocean, make an analogous impression on the mind. What is common to them all--that perfectness and harmony, is beauty. The standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms--the totality of nature; which the Italians expressed by defining beauty "il piu nell' uno." Nothing is quite beautiful alone; nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the architect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world onone point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which stimulates him to produce. Thus is Art a nature passed through the alembic of man. Thus in art does Nature work through the will of a man filled with the beauty of her first works." This appears to leave room for admiration of both realistic and abstract art. Jean Eger ------------------------------ From: Jack Reisland Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 11:25:46 +0000 Subject: [Baren 4200] Re: crazy ideas ... David Bull wrote: > I certainly agree that Pollock's painting is 'about his relationship > with the canvas'. My problem with that (and I think Gary's too), is > that this is an 'of course' kind of thing. I agree that there really isn't much point to self referential art, such as Mr. Pollocks. Especially a whole bunch of them. He made his point the first time, that being that he could change the definition of art. (Several museums are now having the same problem with his work, with no point of reference, it turns out to be too easy to forge, and several major purchases are now being questioned.) But I'm a little confused with Michael's work, or at least his statement. He seems to say that his work is about the process of carving, just as Mr. Pollock said his was about the process of painting. But Michael does sketches, and works out images before starting to carve. If it's just about the process, why work out composition? I think he's holding out on us! ;-) ------------------------------ From: mkrieger@mb.sympatico.ca Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 18:48:02 -0500 Subject: [Baren 4201] Re: What is meaning? Gary wrote: > Why are we "stuck" with it? We the collective culture. Individuals are not in any way stuck as you rightly point out. >But _I'm_ ready. My mind is so wide-open I'm getting a wind-chill in here!" Boy, there's a Manitoba moment! Gary's next question: >What determines where you go with it, how you develop it? What are you >using to judge its development and its completion?" I take photographs to remind me of the way things look - this is an environment I have spent a lot of time in so the photographs help to jog my memory as to specifics. I have a stack of them about 3 inches thick and growing which I continue to use as sources. I pick out two or three and then look for a block with a grain that is friendly to the composition. I use a large watercolor brush and sumi ink to rough out the black. The composition often combines elements found in several photographs - distorts the spatial relationships - zooms in or out as seems most appropriate. I work intuitively - if it looks right it is. I break frequently to look at the block from a distance of about 10 feet. That's where the composition has to make sense at this point in developing the image. Once I am satisfied that there is a interesting relationship between the major lights and darks, I begin to cut. I concentrate on using the tools to reveal the ink drawing - redrawing it as a carving, a translation rather than a copy. I want the patterns and contrasts to be interesting in themselves when I am looking at the print up close. I avoid sharp clear transitions as they flatten the composition. I don't have much space in the black and whites but what I do have is created with varying the size of the marks (the carving is larger and bolder in the foreground). I roll the cut areas up a little with ink as I go along and keep checking from across the studio. When the block is all cut, I proof. Check the proofs from a distance and from close-up looking for the ideas of form and value that I had in the ink drawing and checking for things that don't print they way they should. I do clean up and the block is ready to edition. I decide where I am going by looking at the piece. I decide when it is finished by the way it looks. Sorry visual thinking cuts in here - I really don't know if I can verbalize "how" I know - it just is or isn't. If it isn't, then I usually think it needs more or less of something in a particular area. I think all this sounds pretty much what you would hear from any artist. Mary Krieger ------------------------------ From: "Gregory D. Valentine" Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 17:34:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Baren 4202] Re: What is meaning? Jack wrote: The changing communicative role of purely visual art through the ages in response to the invention of writing, then printing, then photography is fascinating to me. Now that's a statement that is worthy of some explacation. At least a thesis; probably a doctorate there. Can you just touch on what you see as the high points? --GV ------------------------------ From: Sunnffunn@aol.com Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 20:53:35 EDT Subject: [Baren 4203] Re: Abstraction & meaning ifthe art is good as far as composition etc then the content even if it is realistic is up for grabs i have painted many a mood piece of scenery what is the mood???? the most wonderful piece of art i have ever seen was and is hanging in the seattle art musem modern art floor it is total abstraction it is surface and color and it is the most beautiful thing i have ever seen can we not appreciate beauty for beauty for the creation it is? just as we appreciate an ocean or a tree of a flower? i chose to be a representional artist because i felt i would interact with more viewers is that wrong???? this group is wonderful!!! i have not yet introduced me but i will and i am talking i will tell more when i am not burned out from travel but i find that good art evokes emotion whether it is ohh i think i have seen that lake or oh those colors are wonderful whatever? ------------------------------ From: "Gregory D. Valentine" Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 18:25:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Baren 4207] Re: abstract or not? Sarah wrote: > ...either art speaks to you or it doesn't, whether it is "abstract" or > not -- and everyone has their preferences... I keep thinking of the Monty Python sketch, of the two old biddies biting into a Turner painting, saying "I dont know if its art, but I know what I like." I think the emotional response comes first, in appreciating something; but where does that response come from? ------------------------------ End of Baren Digest V7 #543 ***************************