Yeah, but you didn’t.I have never really understood the all-black canvas. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems that of the handful of modern art museums I’ve visited, they each had a plain black canvas. Granted, maybe there was some texture, but it was all black. Or all blue.
Ad Reinhardt, Abstract Painting, 1960–66.
Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 inches.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
And that’s where the disdain starts. You hear it right there in the museum. You say it. I say it. We ALL at least think it: “Well, shit, anybody could do that.”
I repeated this sentiment to an old instructor of mine.
With a bit of irritation he said, “Yeah, but you didn’t.”
To some degree, maybe that’s the case with all art. Anyone could do it. But everyone isn't doing it. It’s about the doing, the exploration, and the sensory experience that happens at the end. Whether that’s looking at a textured all-black canvas. Or a smooth, almost iridescent blue canvas. You see something. Maybe you feel something.
And if you don’t, move on to something else. Maybe a Rothko that at least blends two colors.
Or go paint your own all-black canvas. Ad Reinhardt apprently spent fourteen years doing it. He described his black canvasas thus: "A free, unmanipulated, unmanipulatable, useless, unmarketable, irreducible, unphotographable, unreproducible, inexplicable icon.”
Whatever you do, don't just stand there in the museum talking about what you could do.
posted by Lorraine Rossini Hamby @ 2:05 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Hey - I love all this art talk. I don't get to think about adult stuff too often, so I like watching someone else do it.
Anyway, I don't find the "but you didn't" explanation very satisfying. It's pithy. It shifts the burden. But, it feels a little disengenuous.
I like this better - maybe the single color stuff is asking a question, like - is art about ideas or technique? is it static or is about your experience?
And, I think that stuff is interesting to talk about - not at the expense of doing mind you, but, also maybe, what some of us have to add is the conversation.
Whew - that was fun. I got to talk about art too. Keep painting and writing about it. It's fun to see.
Thanks for your comment-- I like the idea of people contributing to the conversation of art, and also the idea of these single-color paintings forcing a question.
I think these single-color canvases were about both the idea of art, and the experience of it. From a conceptual perspective, they ask the question of what art is. And from an experience perspective-- how does it affect the viewer to look at this single color? Rothko, who sometimes blended just two or three colors, seem to be about that experience as well.
Rothko talked about trying to achieve "the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea and between the idea and the observer." http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/intro1.shtm
"...shapes have no direct association with any particular visible experience, but in them, one recognizes the principle and passion of organisms."
But, coming back to the challenge of talking about art, Rothko also said, "Silence is so accurate," fearing that words would only paralyze the viewer's mind and imagination. !
Still, I will keep painting, contemplating and writing about it.
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