Mark Rothko, one of the foremost members of the Abstract Expressionist movement was born Marcus Rothkowitz in 1903 in Russia. In 1913, Rothko, with his mother and sister, immigrated to Portland, Oregon, where they were reunited with his father and two brothers, who had emigrated from Russia previously. After studying at Yale for two years (1921-23), Rothko settled in New York in 1925. In this same year, he began to study painting at the Art Students League under Max Weber. This was Rothko’s only formal artistic training. In 1928, at the time of his first group exhibition at a New York gallery, he established a close friendship with Milton Avery, whose simplified forms and flat color areas informed Rothko’s art.

In 1929 Rothko took a position teaching children at the Center Academy, Brooklyn Jewish Center, a job he retained until 1952. He had his first one-person show in New York in 1933 at the Contemporary Arts Gallery. In 1934 Rothko participated in the organization of the Artists’ Union and later became involved in the American Artists' Congress and the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors. Also in 1934, he joined the newly established Gallery Secession in New York, but a year later he and several other artists left it to form a loosely associated group of progressive artists called The Ten (or The Ten Who Are Nine). From 1936 to 1937, Rothko was working in the Federal Works Progress Administration's easel project, established during the Depression as a means of supporting artists. The late 1940s marked the beginning of his color field paintings, works for which he is known. In these works he used the technique of soak-staining, applying thinned paint onto the canvas to create abstract fields of color, horizontal cloud-like rectangles, which pervade the picture space with their lyrical presence. His large canvases, typical of his mature style, establish a one-on-one correspondence with the viewer, giving human scale to the experience of the painting and intensifying the effects of color. As a result, the paintings produce in the responsive viewer a sense of the ethereal and a state of spiritual contemplation. Through color alone—applied to suspended rectangles within abstract compositions—Rothko's work evokes strong emotions ranging from exuberance and awe to despair and anxiety, suggested by the hovering and indeterminate nature of his forms.

During the summers of 1947 and 1949, he was a guest instructor at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco. He also taught at Brooklyn College, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Tulane University. From 1958 to 1969, he worked on three major commissions: monumental canvases for the Four Seasons Restaurant and Seagram Building, both in New York; murals for the Holyoke Center, Harvard University; and canvases for the chapel at the Institute of Religion and Human Development, Houston, known worldwide as “The Rothko Chapel.” The dark and somber works he created for the chapel are thought by some to foreshadow the artist’s suicide in 1970.

http://www.phillipscollection.org/american_art/bios/rothko-bio.htm

Ambas as exposições são promovidas pela Tate Gallery, a de Bacon pela Britain, na margem norte do rio Tâmisa, a de Rothko pela Modern, na margem sul, e encompassam duas grandes correntes formais da arte, o abstracionismo --representado por Rothko-- e o figurativismo --de Bacon.

A mostra dedicada a Bacon, artista que levou a representação da figura humana ao limite da abstração, comemora os cem anos do nascimento do pintor, e tem como um de seus destaques as anotações, recortes e colagens recolhidas de seu ateliê, e que serviam de inspiração para muitos de seus trabalhos.

Outro destaque é um retrato do papa Inocêncio 10º baseado em Velázquez (tema recorrente em seu trabalho), que o próprio pintor acreditava ter sido destruída e que foi recentemente encontrada na oficina de um de seus moldureiros.

O destaque da exposição dedicada a Rothko fica por conta de 15 pinturas monumentais (de uma série de 30) que o artista executou sob encomenda do restaurante Four Seasons, localizado no edifício Seagram, em Nova York (projetado por Mies van der Rohe). O artista teria desistido do contrato pois não queria que as obras ficassem expostas num restaurante e as doou, parte para a Tate, parte para a National Gallery de Washington e parte para a fundação Kawamura, no Japão. Esta é a primeira vez que um grupo tão grande delas é reunido.

A exposição de Rothko fica em cartaz na Tate Modern até 1º de fevereiro (próximo à estação Southwark de metrô); a de Bacon fica até 4 de janeiro, na Tate Britain (próximo à estação Pimlico).

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Barack Obama / Portrait (TEXTPORTRAIT).

textportraits by Ralph Ueltzhoeffer.

We are very proud to announce that we will be the first gallery on the planet to receive the new Andre de Dienes “Platinum Edition Prints” of Marilyn Monroe published by OneWest Publishing.

Most photographers and or publishers will take the two or three best images in a series of images to feature as limited edition photographic prints. In the case of Marilyn Monroe and the photographic work by Andre de Dienes OneWest Publishing has said, print them all. Yes, OneWest Publishing has produced all of the out takes from 1945 until 1953 as “Platinum Edition Prints”.

Norma Jean Bakers (AKA Marilyn Monroe) first professional modeling job was with Andre de Dienes. He photographed her from 1945 to 1953 and to this day some people feel de Dienes captured the true Marilyn Monroe.

We are very proud to announce that we will be the first gallery on the planet to receive the new Andre de Dienes “Platinum Edition Prints” of Marilyn Monroe published by OneWest Publishing.

Most photographers and or publishers will take the two or three best images in a series of images to feature as limited edition photographic prints. In the case of Marilyn Monroe and the photographic work by Andre de Dienes OneWest Publishing has said, print them all. Yes, OneWest Publishing has produced all of the out takes from 1945 until 1953 as “Platinum Edition Prints”.

Norma Jean Bakers (AKA Marilyn Monroe) first professional modeling job was with Andre de Dienes. He photographed her from 1945 to 1953 and to this day some people feel de Dienes captured the true Marilyn Monroe.

The second of the Autumn series of evening lectures put on by the Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery is this coming Tuesday, 7 October

Aspects of Art – COLOUR AND FEELING

This study of colour in art is timed to coincide with Tate Modern’s exhibition of the works of Mark Rothko, which runs from 26th September 2008 to 1st February 2009.  All three artists to be considered in the course, JMW Turner, Mark Rothko and Pierre Bonnard, used colour in a powerful, expressive, yet intensely individual way.

Rothko wanted people to look at his paintings from close up, so that they filled the field of vision, to enable their scale and powerful use of colour to dominate our feelings. While many of his early works were glorious and pleasing to the eye, his palette darkened and he said later that he was “interested only in expressing the basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on ...”.

The nine canvases that comprise Tate Modern’s Rothko Room were delivered to the old Tate Gallery on the same day that the news arrived of the artist’s suicide. This was a tragic ending for an artist who wanted his paintings to be in the same gallery as Turner, whom he greatly admired.

It can truly be said that Rothko was Turner’s greatest follower.

Frank Woodgate lectures extensively for Tate Britain, Tate Modern, throughout Britain and internationally.

To find out more or to book for this lecture or the next, visit the main gallery site.

"Silence is so accurate"
Mark Rothko

(Naar aanleiding van een documentaire over zijn werk op Canvas)
(Bron foto: http://www.museum-folkwang.de/index.php?id=3296. Bron quote)

And so it came pass that we spoke of suicide, warmed to the bone by little more than breadcrumbs and the corpses of mice. Such things surely the begging for attention, supplication for a reason to live. We would like to think so.

But then the paradox of the internet's impact is that, while it is possible to 'meet' a much wider number of people than would have been the case before, this very possibility decreases the need to actually go out into the world and make thyself heard. Especially if the world at large is a place that feels you with terrors, rational and irrational - a place that makes you want to hide under the nearest table, or even call upon armageddon.

All of which would be made easier if you could believe that each and every person alive today would leave some significant mark upon the world should they peg it in the night. The truth is that most people won't. The best we can hope for is to be remembered well by small groups of people, who will nevertheless forget, with time, and in time will die themselves. Another notch on the sad bedpost of life.

Suicide or no, it seems that the most talented amongst us go young. And this has surely helped their legend. Poor souls. I wish to live to walk upon the Sussex shore, my own arcadia, my sacred grove.

Christie's owned gallery Haunch of Venison opened its New York location on September 12 with an impressive lineup of 63 blue-chip Abstract Expressionist works. The not for sale show, titled Abstract Expressionism:  A World Elsewhere, includes many works borrowed from museums in a grand gesture to make an impressive début on the New York contemporary art scene.

The show is curated by well-respected London based critic, curator, and art historian David Anfam and includes artists such as Barnett Newman, Aaron Siskind, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Franz Kline, Clyfford Still, David Smith, Willem de Kooning, and Arshile Gorky.

The exhibition is billing itself as the first major retrospective of Abstract Expressionism in New York in over 40 years. The New York Times, art critic Roberta Smith wondered whether a retrospective of Abstract Expressionism was even necessary, however, since it has been done very well so many times before.  She points out in her review that the show has an undeniable all-star cast of artists and a few moments of curatorial genius but ultimately falls short due to its predictability and lack of soul:

"Although there is plenty to look at, it recaps a story already told too many times, this time with the crowding and randomness of an auction-house hang. Still, you’ll find some gems: five good but small Pollocks, two exceptional David Smith sculptures, great paintings by Clyfford Still and Willem de Kooning, a wonderful early Robert Motherwell collage, a beautiful red Ad Reinhardt and an unfamiliar Barnett Newman painting...The main lesson here is that it takes more than great art, new walls and a no-sale policy to make an art gallery. Galleries are forms of expression; they need at least a smattering of vision. Absent that, the effect is soulless and corporate."

In any case, witnessing the much-hyped gallery's inaugural show complete with blockbuster artists, star curator, and exciting renovated space just around the corner from Christie's, should be more than enough reason to see the exhibition.  Then ArtsÉtoile readers can make up their own minds whether they think Abstract Expressionism:  A World Elsewhere is a successful exhibition or whether they think it symbolizes yet another contemporary art foray into the overly commercial and predictable.

A very enjoyable Newsnight Review's highlight was the pretentious pishness talked by some art lovey's appreciation of Mark Rothko.  One of the 20th Century's most important abstract impressionists.

She waxed lyrical about his emotional anxiety, suicidal tendencies and visceral use of black paint.

Ian Hislop said it like it was, except he held back for the BBC.  What he meant to say was "Pretentious fucking pish."  What he said was "I'm not sure I agree with you (Mrs bloody Pseud)."

For the record it's all a lot of old tosh.

Get down B and Q tomorrow, buy some canvas and a couple of tins of black emulsion and you too could be on your way to millionaireship.

I know I'm going to.

Horizon 1

House Paint on Canvas on Salvaged Silk Screen Frame

26" x 34"

]]> http://oddtag.wordpress.com/?p=459 Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:18:34 +0000 OddTag http://oddtag.com/2008/09/23/nothing-to-lose-and-a-vision-to-gain/ [txt] Tons of verbiage, activity and consumption - www.guardian.co.uk
Mark Rothko's views on what was happening to art in 1969 are worth examining. What would he make of the art world today?

When I was a younger man, art was a lonely thing; no galleries, no collectors, no critics, no money. Yet it was a golden time, for then we had nothing to lose and a vision to gain. Today it is not quite the same. It is a time of tons of verbiage, activity, and consumption. Which condition is better for the world at large I will not venture to discuss. But I do know that many who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where they can root and grow. We must all hope that they find them.

[img] Oops, Building REsources - heather on flickr.com

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Iron Bridge Tools began out of a need to bring better quality product, value oriented pricing and innovation to the Hand Tool Category.
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On first glance, Vermeer's work lacks the heavy metal doom of Caravaggio or the sensory dizziness of Peter Paul Rubens, painters who would perhaps more immediately share a sensibility - aesthetically and thematically - with the films of Lucio Fulci. Vermeer is altogether too domestic, too ordinary, too provincial, too twee. Fulci, on the other hand, is best known for epic, explicitly gruesome horror films and giallo. At his horror best, Fulci produced some of the more fascinating and loved genre films in both Italy and the world, notably E tu vivrai nel terrore - L'aldilà (The Beyond, 1981), Zombie (1979) and Paura nella città dei morti viventi (City of the Living Dead, 1980). Despite this, there is still a vague attitude that surrounds Fulci as a poor-mans-Argento, an overzealous, bumbling second-in-command who sometimes just happened to fluke a remarkable film.

This is, of course, simply untrue. If one can extract oneself even momentarily from the starry-eyed cult of Argento, Fulci's work differs substantially and, lets face it, both directors are as guilty of producing duds as the other (Il Cartaio, I'm talking to you). If there can be one distinct formal feature that separates them, it would be this: light is to Fulci what colour is to Argento. And it is precisely this point that marks the first intersection between Fulci and Vermeer - in their respective mediums, both artists relied on light to create their unique visions.

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Vermeer's The Love Letter is much, much more than just a cute reference in the unfolding narrative of Fulci's giallo-supernatural hybrid Sette Note in Nero (Seven Notes in Black, 1977). Much critical attention to Vermeer's work by art historians has focused upon his signature utilisation of "paintings within paintings" - it is common for paintings to appear on the walls of the scenes he is depicting, and those mini, diegetically-contained paintings themselves provide "clues" as to the broader themes of the piece as a whole. In The Love Letter, for instance, it is the two paintings in the background that provide the main indication that the letter received by the woman in yellow is, in fact, a love letter. This frame-within-a-frame feature of Vermeer's work is pivotal to Sette Note in Nero, both aesthetically and thematically, and is emphasised by the privileged inclusion of Vermeer's painting itself.

Outside of the stunning Una sull'altra (Perversion Story, or One on Top of the Other, 1969) and the flawless Una Lucertola con la pelle di donna (A Woman in a Lizard's Skin, 1971) (two of the most interesting - and most famous - giallos ever made), Fulci's giallos on the whole are defined even more so than other directors of the genre by hyperactively detailed vignettes, strung together with little more than a flagrant disregard for coherent narrative. But on the whole, despite being such well-known genre staples, there is a distinct lack of consistency in Fulci's giallo compared to those of Umberto Lenzi, Sergio Martino or (dare I say it) Argento himself. Murderock - uccide a passo di danza (Murder Rock, or Slashdance, 1984) holds little allure outside of its spectacular and novel engagement with its own era, Non si sevizia un paperino (Don't Torture a Duckling, 1972) seems stylistically (let alone narratively) disengaged, and outside of some of the best gore in his entire filmography, Lo Squartaroe di New York (New York Ripper, 1982) feels like little more than an exercise in self-congratulation.

Sette Note in Nero is a relatively simple giallo, and despite the supernatural elements, there is nothing spooky or scary enough about these elements to dislocate the film from its firm giallo foundations. The film starts as a woman drives through Dover to a cliff, where she commits suicide by flinging herself over the edge. In Florence, her young daughter Virginia has a psychic vision and "sees" the death occur. These opening moments place us firmly in Fulciville - the lingering attention devoted to the collapsing skull of the falling woman allows no room for doubt as to why we are here:

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But despite this viscerally bombastic opening, the film is surprisingly low-key in its depictions of violence and (gasp) sexuality, with explicit displays of opened bodies kept to an uncharacteristic minimum. Cutting to a grown-up Virginia (played by Jennifer O'Neill of Scanners fame and, more recently, her vocal pro-life activism), it is she now who drives, smiling, happy and clearly rich as she takes her husband Francesco (Gianni Garko) to the airport. With a soundtrack gooey enough to make a Japanese bubblegum pop band overdose wretch, Virginia is a picture of wealth: it's all jodhpurs, furs, pot-o-gloss eyeshadow and fedoras in what appears to be no less than a picture-perfect, trouble free life. As she drives away, the film wastes no time as it launches immediately into its key enigma. Virginia has another psychic vision, and this becomes the riddle that the film aims to solve. It's a pretty straightforward method, and not that much different structurally from Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1998), Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock, 1945) or a multitude of other examples. Step 1: Provide incomprehensible sequence (dream, video, psychic vision). Step 2: Make sense of it. Virginia's mystery montage consists of a shot of a broken mirror, a shot of a room with a red lamp, flashes of red light on a black screen, a limping man, a cigarette, a dead woman's bleeding face, a magazine cover, a shot of a black and white reproduction of Vermeer's The Love Letter, and a first-person shot of a brick wall being constructed. The final component is aural, appearing over a black screen: the jingly, haunting seven notes of the films title.

From here, the narrative trajectory from beginning to end is clear. As each element of the psychic vision is explained, the story moves along, snakes and ladders like, to its next stage. Shaken after he initial vision (and peevish at the dismissive response of her parapsychologist ex-lover, Luca - Marc Porel, who was also in Don't Torture a Duckling), Virginia visits one of her husbands apparently many mansions to renovate it "as a surprise". Entering a room, she is struck immediately: it is the same room, with the same red lamp, as her vision. Compelled, she decides to dig into the wall, and discovers a skeleton:

When Francesco is arrested for the murder of this young woman (an ex-lover of his), Virginia's investigation begins in earnest, despite Francesco's often-violent dismissal of her psychic abilities. Assisted by Luca and his gorgeous assistant, Bruna (Jenny Tamburi, who was just as memorable in Martino's 1975 film Suspected Death of a Minor), begin to unravel the past. Led to an art gallery, it is here where the film takes a radical shift in mise en scene as Luca and Virginia are suddenly reduced from key players to flat black silhouettes:

It is only moments before the sight of the Vermeer painting strikes Virginia down. The camera lingers so unnecessarily long on the title plate of the painting that it becomes apparent it is not unnecessary at all: Fulci goes to great lengths to make sure we know what this painting is and who this painting is by. To prove the point, the camera pans up and is intercut between the "original" hanging in the gallery, and Virginia's memory of it from her vision:

The discovery of the Vermeer leads them to the last of the film's key players, Emilio Rospini (Gabriele Ferzetti), one of the policemen involved when the Vermeer painting was stolen years earlier (note here the synchronicity between the diegetic world of the film and the extratextual realities of this particular paintings history). As the man with the limp from her vision, Virginia is convinced Rospini is involved with the murder of the girl and Francesco's arrest, and lies her way into his house past his wife to confront him. As she awaits his arrival, Fulci carefully restages in three separate shots Vermeer's own "picture within a picture" structure:

The film barrels along at a cracking pace, until Luca realises that Virginia's visions may not be a flashback to the past at all, but a prediction of the future. Having proven her husband innocent of the girl's murder, Virginia should theoretically relax, but the opposite tellingly occurs: she becomes even more determined and frantic to discover the truth behind her vision, suggesting that whatever had lay behind her previous motivation to liberate her husband was, by now at least, far from her primary concern. The discovery of the body of an old woman who had left a message on her answering machine regarding the promise of clues to the riddle corroborates again with another element of her initial vision, confirming Luca's theory that it was in fact a premonition rather than a memory. Hastily grabbing "the clue" in question (an envelope, its hiding place also divulged to Virginia through her vision), she is chased into an old church in one of the most perfectly executed sequences in all giallodom:

With such a satisfyingly taut climactic chase scene, it seems only necessary to conclude with the perfunctory dénouement. Virginia arrives back to the mansion and awaits the return of Francesco. She takes the letter but, not reading it, places it on a sideboard. As Francesco approaches, he walks with a limp. having hurt his ankle, and Virginia realises that was he, not Rospini, from her vision. Seeing the letter, Francesco assumes Virginia has learned the whole story and, for our benefit, Rospini recounts from a hospital bed the truth that Virginia had sought. Francesco, Rospini and the young girl were in cahoots in the theft of the Vermeer painting, and Francesco had murdered the girl to keep the spoils, telling Rospini she had in fact escaped with the valuable art. Realising Virginia is now a dangerous witness, Francesco bops her on the head and places her in the empty wall cavity, and begins to brick it up: in a bitter twist, this is the image that she had seen in her vision.

By the time Luca and the police arrive, Francesco has removed all traces of Virginia who is by this time buried beneath the wall, falling in and out of consciousness. Luca questions the cocky Francesco, but the police become increasingly disinterested until all men decide to leave. It is only here, in its final moments, that Sette Note in Nero shifts from colour-by-numbers giallo to something far more important. A large dresser stands at the wall in front of where Virginia has been buried alive - we do not see her again, and we do not know whether she is alive or dead. Just as Luca is about to leave the room, the alarm to Virginia's watch - the "seven notes" of the title, the same that featured so notably in the church chase sequence with Rospini, goes off.

The formal construction of these final moments is far more brutal in its ambivalence than it ever could be by showing the dying or dead body of Virginia. Luca approaches the dresser, but despite his position as the rescuer in the scene thus far, this action is instead depicted with so much melodramatic foreboding as to make a German Expressionist blush:







There has previously been little evidence to suggest that Luca is anything less than an ally - a little biased towards Virginia, perhaps, considering their implied romantic past and his consequent dislike of Francesco, but certainly nothing warranting the vicious condemnation of this shot. The camera follows the trajectory of the approaching shadow until the final shot of the film is reached and, in case you dared to miss the savageness of the past moments, ends with this image as the credits begin to roll over the sound of Virginia’s alarm:

Why is this one final image so important? Take another look at Vermeer's The Love Letter, paying particular note to its composition:

The semantics of this visual match cannot be underappreciated. In effect, Fulci has "cut out" the middle 'action' section of the frame. He has removed Virginia, just as the lines of Vermeer's paintings suggest that centre third of his paintings may be equally detached, as it hovers in a strange feat of perception both behind and above its frame. In this way, the two paintings behind the couple in Vermeer's work are not the only internal fractures. The painting as a whole functions as a kind of triptych. Not only has Fulci removed this central "panel", but he has removed all decorative traces from the already less ornate side blocks: there are no curtains, there are no maps. There is just a block of brown, and a block of black. The violence inherent in this reduction - a reduction at the expense not only of Virginia herself, but in many ways the narrative as a whole as it was so intrinsically linked to her perspective - for me commits an act of aesthetic subversion akin to that which can be measured by the difference in approach between Vermeer and the American abstract expressionist, Mark Rothko:

Flip Black on Grey (1969/70) on its side, and we can see precisely the jump that Fulci made at the end of Sette Note in Nero. There are exactly three hundred years between Vermeer's The Love Letter and Rothko'sBlack on Grey, and Fulci - in some crystalline stroke of manic formal genius - demonstrated the pure force of that leap in 20 seconds of languageless film. Argento came close to completely crashing the framework of representation through his art historical engagement with the Italian renaissance painting in The Stendhal Syndrome (1996), but while doubtlessly his most unrecognized master achievement, it simply does not come close to the eloquence, simplicity and unmitigated power of Fulci's Sette Note in Nero.

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Mark Rothko (1903-1970),  “Light Red Over Black,” 1957
{Source: Tate Modern}

Mark Rothko (1903-1970),  “Black on Maroon,” 1959
{Source: Tate Modern}

Mark Rothko (1903-1970),  Untitled, 1969
{Source: Tate Modern}

...recollecting and listening to Arvo Pärt (link via http://www.arvopart.info/)

For more RED go here...

Beitragsforum Kunst & Kultur allgemein: Die Faszination erwächst aus seinem System der kombinatorischen Lesbarkeit, seiner Verschlüsselung, Änigmatisierung, die ihrerseits die Kunst der Deco-dierung verlangt, um an die im »I-ching« verborgenen Weisheiten zu kommen.

"Textportraits" by Ralph Ueltzhoeffer & Laura May.

In the other extreme, you have art that
that is meant for the mass audience. I think it was my mistake in the past to
think of art as ALWAYS meant for an audience--TRUE: the artists wants his
work to be appreciated--but what does that mean exactly? Again, in the
extreme case, it is where EVERYONe can appreciate his work--most likely without
work--which is fine if our measure is a simple "head count" of who "gets it".
BUT what I've realized is that a work like that must be pretty daft AND
uninteresting--it must be something so simple and unchallenging that SUCH a
work would hardly fit our definition of GOOD art. In these cases, what comes
to mind instead is "pop" art--art for the masses--but like pop songs, or
pop-anything, there is a negative connotation--and one that I think is
warranted: IF the work of art is simple brain-candy, then what TRUE purpose
did it serve.

What I am assuming, of course, is that ART challenges its viewers. Why is a
Britney Spears song so much more enjoyable (and therefore, less artistic--by
my measures), than a song by John Coltrane? (I choose this stark contrast to
make the points of relief that much easier to perceive) There it is:
Everything in a Britney spears song is laid out for you in 4/4 time--with a
simple bridge and a catchy melody to boot. The ideas are simple enough: I love
you--and always will, blah blah. And indeed, WE ALL "GET IT"--this isn't
rocket science!! And although we don't admit it, we also enjoy it--we enjoy
the brain candy--that is if we're in the mood for brain-candy. But when we're
in the mood for more substance--for something to EXPLAIN why we are
inexplicably drawn to love this person for all time, how we hurt ourselves
in doing so, etc. etc., The britney spears, for me--at least, has fallen
short--like relying on cotton candy and sugardaddies for a full meal.

For that we have to turn to coltrane: who on our first hearing is jarring to
the ears--quite hard to understand. That confrontation--that "WHAAAAA" that
rankles in our head as these exultations of pain are belted out from a
saxophone that is too weak to contain them, THAT misundertanding IS the start
of the artistic process. So you want to know about "love" on a deeper level--
MR. Coltrain asks--well, look at this essay that i've written on the subject.

And as we read this cryptic exposition created by a person who has clearly
delved DEEPER than us, we are confused: what is he talking about?? Its over
my head? I don't "get it"?--these are the reactions. If Mr. Coltrane has laid
down the gauntlet and says: "THis IS a Love Supreme!"--is it Mr. Coltrane's
fault that we, as the pedestrian in these affairs are caught stairing blankly
into its headlights?

So the HEART of the matter is APPRECIATION. And I want to spend the rest of
this entry talking about how the audience appreciates artwork. Why does the
artist need an audience at all? Should an artist ever stoop to "pedestrian"
terms to communicate these ideas to the mass audience? What is the role of the
art critic in all of this? How does one strike that perfect harmony between
artist and audience?--what does that even look like?

I've already answered the first question of why the artist needs an audience:
as I've said above, unless the artist INTENDS and is content with artistic
masturbation, then he needs an audience. Most artists will want to tap into
the cultural fabric and produce agents of change--artworks that raise the
awareness of the broader audience: in a prophetic voice, "Stop! this is fucked
up--you must CHANGE!" That is the fundamental message that the artist
is conveying. And how would he enable this change if no-one is meant to
receive it?

The second problem is harder. In fact its what I've been strugglin with these
past couple days: Is the message lost by transposing it into pedestrian terms.
Back to the example of "Love supreme" b/c its so accessible and rich. Could
Coltrane have expressed the ideas of "Love Supreme" in 4/4 time w/ a pop-y
melody so that we can appreciate it immediately?? VERY unlikely. There
are several reasons for this: 1. Lets suppose that up to the point before
Coltrane releases "Love supreme", that he's the only artist to understand
what that type of love is--in other words, he's understand love at the deepest
level--deeper than any other person alive. And now it is his job to express
these new and deeper realms to a broader audience. Well, just as Einstein
was the only person to discover Relativity--and only about a handful of people
were able to appreciate his work when it was first published, should we expect
it to be any different with an artistic endeavor??!! Do we expect young
einstien to write a pop-up book explaining relativity to us in nice graphical
and "fun" terms? Do we expect coltrane to "translate" Love supreme into a
"hit"?? OF COURSE NOT!!!!

And just as it takes us many years of education even to understand the beauty
of Relativity--shouldn't it also take us time to understand Love supreme? MORE
to the point: why do we EXPECT an instant gratification in ART--when did we
buy into that lie that "good" art is "understandable" art??!! RATHER--it is
GOOD art, like good science, which CHALLENGES US: A. it calls us to introspect-
to learn the necessary concepts (e.g. math/jazz theory) to understand the
LANGUAGE of expression. It calls us to BE MORE: to THINK...to CHANGE our
way of seeing things...etc etc. And you can't ask people to CHANGE their
way of thinking by expressing things in pedestrian language!

Of course, I am too heavy handed with my words: the work doesn't "call" anyone
to do anything: Love supreme could have sat there and gone unnoticed--just as
the theory of relativity could have just sat in some unknown journal.
It is still the case that MANY people do not understand these two artworks.
That is b/c, and this is more a commentary on the sad state of our education,
--it is b/c there is no one to go around to each person in the world and
telling him: "hey did you hear Coltrane's Love supreme!--awesome stuff...go
listen to it!" -- So people are never introduced to the great works. Even if
they were introduced to them, they wouldn't understand it--would the average
person have the mathematical training to understand Einstein's 1905 paper!?

So that is largely a matter of education: IF the majority of our society cannot
understand the GREAT works of our ARTISTIC and SCIENTIFIC heritage, then that
is the fault of our education system. I have nothing more to say here.

But though the education system may fail us, that vaccum is still something
that we can't ignore. WE must constantly call people to fill that gap within
their own lives: to strive for more and more understanding--to make them
better appreciators of our cultural legacy: to make them MORE human--to help
them see the light that we all see. I admit that ADULTHOOD is not the best
time for conceptual change: people, in their inertial malaise are NOT compelled
to change they way they think unless their lives are directly threatened--and
history has shown this over and over again--the concepts of democracy and
the a French Revolution would have fallen hollow were it not for starvation
to compell THE change!

But the job of the "art critic" or the "science magazine editor" etc. is to
act as the adult educator: to take on that embarrasing job of making
popup-books and explain the deep concept in a "fun" and engaging way--not to
explain the beauty in its fullness, perhaps, but to encourage more exploration
--which of course, is unlikely to come. But that is the thankless task that
art critics SHOULD REALLY percieve themselves. So if there is a gap between
1. Producers/CREATORS and 2. the mass audience, then art critics/reporters/
aka DIGESTERS/"Primary consumers" are meant to step into that vacuum--and
compell the change--to educate.

Brief digression: Rothko HATED critics. He thought that they were useless--or
worse, interferring. And I want to write his position b/c I think I agree
with it: Art, he says, is a relationship between the artist, the artwork, and
the viewer who is READY to appreciate the art. For a person who was usually
taciturn, the best compliment that he gave was to call you a "human being"--and
it is no doubt that when he conceptualizes this ideal "viewer" that he thinks
of him as another human being that thinks as deeply as him--leaving out the
vast majority of people out there. Its elistist--but I like it: its not the
artist's job to stoop down and make things pedestrian (as we discussed exhaust-
ively above)--his job is to go to the frontiers and to report back discoveries.
IF a person cannot appreciate his discoveries, then THAT person must be
educated--he must be challenged to change how he looks at the world--not
Mr. Rothko, Mr. Einstein, or Mr. Coltrane. THEY see the truth, and want us
to see the truth too--for ourselves. If rothko tried to explain it in his
own words (just as if einstein tried to explicate the theory of relativity
for us)--he would use English in a way that would ultimately be
un-understandable: WE simply don't have the mental concepts to dive deep with
them.

Ok enough about that. There is one final case: there is a case of the
"perfect storm"--where an artistic idea is DEEP--meaning that it truly requires
us to change our perspectives; AND the mass audience is PRIMED for this
change in perspective: The result is a swell of mass change that usually leads
to social revolutions. The best examples of this is Uncle Tom's cabin--which
was the perfect story to hit an audience that was primed for a rallying point
for . There are many more, but that one comes
immediately to mind. It was something about that story that "clicked" in
the anti-slavery north: maybe it was the detailed depiction of human cruelty,
maybe it was something more.

But was uncle Tom's cabin "challenging" to its audience? Certainly not: they
understood its content--it had mass appeal. This mass audience had been
"primed"--meaning the hard ground work had been laid for years by other
abolitionists. To borrow that hackneyed term, the book simply put the movement
past its tipping point. It is very unlikely for a work to surpass the
tipping point WITHOUT years and years of ground work and massaging! (unless of
course it is a matter of life and death--as in the french revolution)

So here are the conclusions:
1. Why should an artist concern himself with mass audiences? Well, he
shouldn't unless he wants to provoke mass change--which is the underlying
ambition of most bodies of art.
2. The mass audience's ability to appreciate work from the "frontier" is a
function of education. The distance between the average viewer and the latest
work is an indicator of how "enlightened" as a society we are: imagine a
society that simply understand relativity, rothkos and coltrane!--That society
gets me excited just thinking about it! But its purely fictional.
3. The art should never be dumbed down; instead the audience should be
enlightened and challenged. More specifically: there is a lie here that I
discovered: the lie is that we EXPECT good art to be accessible to the broader
audience immediately: it is not a good song unless it has broad appeal etc.
etc. That is bullshit! Is relativity less of a breakthrough b/c only a hand-
ful of people understood it when it first came out? Is the proof on Fermat's
last theorem less valuable b/c only a few people, through the course of ALL
TIME, will only understand it??!
4. Crtics must play the role of adult-educators...that's all. They are most
necessary when our education system fails us--as in our current time.
5. Finally, IF there is a "perfect storm" scenario, then it is necessarily
preceded by LOTS of groundwork to get the broader audience PRIMED. Without the
priming, "perfect storm" scenarios would be like scientific / artistic /
social revolutions in a vacuum--something which I believe history has shown
never to occur.