Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by frond, 10.11.02 01:06 pm
Something Im noticing these days. Whether the result is installation, painting, video, or whatever, when artists BEGIN the process with a concept or word or idea there is a greater degree of freedom and energy as opposed to getting stuck on an image.
I realize there are exceptions, but perhaps if freedom in art is defined as considering a broad universe of images,ideas,etc as fodder then those who are less concerned with the representation of images,ideas,etc. display much more freedom in their work.
But is freedom important to begin with?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by Ouch It Hurts (10.11.02 04:40 pm)
Artists are free to do whatever they want.
Duh.
Re: Do Conceptualists think?
by zip (10.11.02 05:27 pm)
Your conceptualist mode seems to be defined as:
Keep an overarching theme in mind while undergoing some process like free association.
Your other way seems to be ....craftsmanship? I dunno, I didn't get a good answer ever on what non art was, so maybe this one is atill up for grabs. Dovetail joints are people too.
Also I don't think you have to have a theme in mind when you start. I'd agree it saves time and money if you do. I'm thinking mostly about "plastic" arts - stuff that has an immediacy and fluidity that allows you to sort of think as you work (as you think).
In any case, freedom is not art. Art includes a good deal of editing. In fact it's exactly 10% freedom and 90% editing. Make that 1 to 99. I don't want to look at the directors cut unless I'm married to it.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by ellepeach (10.11.02 05:34 pm)
I would rather not look at art that's 99% editing. YAwwwwn
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by ellepeach (10.11.02 05:50 pm)
Frond—Every artist's process is individual and usually visible in the work...
Mental restriction-The Concept or Premise—is a self-imposed limitation that dictates what the piece will illustrate. If this is a constant then, yes, the studio practice may be more variable to best express the fixed point of the idea. We all begin with an idea and bring it into existence-that's creation and is freedom. As the thing itself emerges, it may seem to have less potential, because of practical narrowing of choices or —a number of things....Can you think of an example?
Stuck on an Image— Doesn't have to be that way—the image can mutate/ its meaning can change by adding other images or changing visual relationships as the work progresses. and that's how narrative enters figurative pictures, even if it isn't intentional or direct.
JibberJabber Only—Hope it helps?.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zip (10.11.02 06:04 pm)
More jabber:
By editing I meant joining rather than deleting. If you edit you use your rule system.
I think a lot of young artists try to include too much because of the esthetic sense of "possibility". Less IS usually more when it comes to the underlying idea. A single theme has many tangents, but at a certain point it is more interesting to pare things down than it is to entertain every one (of these). In Go there is an initial phase of placing stones at random, after which game play becomes slower and more deliberate. I think thats an ideal workflow for me. The last stretch is allway s the hardest because it is easy to quit too early or go too far. The middle is the best, except when a starting idea comes out of the blue.
"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose."
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zip (10.11.02 06:11 pm)
The coolest, I think, as an ideal, is that you are a Jazz musician. You take an idea (or song) to almost abstract levels, bizarre associations, unpenetrable patterns, and then bring it back, all in one solo.
I believe in that.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by Skull (10.11.02 06:13 pm)
If I am not mistaken...the 20th century is about the "edit"
The uncertainty of it all, the pain of existence and all that type of argument. the AbEx guys and it continues today with the "Abstract Existentialists" Maybe Sze, Stockholder, Meadows and those along that line. The over edit (read white gesso here and there) is a style nowadays in college abstaction it comes from a long line maybe the french school? I don't know. Elle, are you an abstract painter? Who is in your camp?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zipthwung (10.11.02 06:24 pm)
Editing ...the pain...is it escapist or do you mean estheticising pain? Or is it excision?
To me editing is not subtractive, but preferential.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by John Doe (10.11.02 07:36 pm)
I wonder how much pressure Artists feel to be a"Conceptualist" given how the critics won't write about anything unless it has some type of Conceptualist angle? I'd say at this moment in time it looks like all the "DOS and DONTS" are pretty clear and thats NOT FREEDOM
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by CLEM (10.11.02 08:28 pm)
Yes Like I wrote in my essay"American Style Painting" stop drawing and making Art Keep everything Neutral but you Conceptualists got it all wrong your still making objects just write about it your so bourgeoise set your self FREE theres lots of power and money Just write about it theres plenty of old paintings and sculpture to lay your theorys on Im so free and Dead [snort-snort] Its a nice day for a white wedding [love that song]
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zip (10.11.02 09:28 pm)
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by frond (10.12.02 12:14 am)
Issues of "craft" and "skill" and "editing" come in to play during the making and not related to the setting out into art making.
I guess what Im getting at in my observation has less to do with conceptualism as a mode or style and the art political manifestations and all that. What im supposing is that say an artist begins with a word..say "balance"... the visual result could be anything to represent balance if the artist has that sort of mind where the concept is supreme. If an artist began with an image or object in mind rather than a concept the resulting art object may be limited to just a painting or sculpture.
Of course, Im not saying that to make great art you must begin with a concept. Perhaps this is a point that would only really be usefull in an excercise in an art class to get students out of the idea of always thinking art must be a visual representation of a real object,person,feeling ect. I live far away from the art world and the art practices around me including in universities are very conservative, so im not as sensitive to the negatives or standardization of conceptualism in art.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by ellepeach (10.12.02 01:30 am)
Zip—what's go? I liked the images. Joining, like a craft with wood. Did you mention dovetails before? The middle is the hardest part for me (should I stay or should I go) and I save the ends for a stretch when i have clear vision.
Skull Half Empty/ Half Full
I don't use editing but engendering neutral. The concept of the noble struggle of the edit is overdetermined and now lacks interest as the subject matter itself.
Allowing an image to resurface or form itself...is different from the quandary of second guessing.
Your idea about the French origins of the intentional overpainted edit was clever though. Yeah, Ingres' disembodied limbs that make the whole, Matisse's redrawn and redrawn figure, and the moment to moment reconsideration of the figure all point to the edit. The white goauche phenomenon, now fashionable and at times looking like affectation to mime editing, comes from American origins with late DeKooning and Guston—who makes sexy reconsiderations with white gouache.
My camp I'm a free agent. yippee-ki-yay
You have an acute interest in grad school politics, what's yours?
Frond—a huge question. Keep looking and reading.
French edit because they're only considering the edges...............................................
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zipthwung (10.12.02 02:15 am)
The game of Go - other thread
The beginning I read was
referred to something like
"Wild Goose phase"
but maybe that's a fib.
I get hung up on avoiding pattern ("pattern and decoration")
Getting hung up on patterns is a common thing.
I was warned against it by a sculpture teacher. But there are uses for patterns.
I used to try to make metaphorical systems - ambiguous of course. I couldn't stick with any. For example, a sheet of plywood = X
a sheet of plywood next to a dog = Y
two sheets of plywood = Z
That was undergrad.
Grad was reading tea leaves.
And then thinking in terms of film.
RS once told me to lose my love of surrealism
Which means (heres some dirt):
She got left at the train station for an hour by a TA.
OR
She read my painting as sort of a Salvador Dali weirdness for weirdness sake.
I should have asked her what she meant but instead I nodded sagely and waited for more...
It's interesting in view of the recent Surrealist shows...
I was kind of tired of defending stuff - and one of the ways to steer a critique is to say very little and repeat what you hear back. Like a psychologist.
Well that's enough...just think its interesting to think about art as I have sort of lost the urge to do anytrhing but draw and futz around on the computer - no grand gestures....no subversive anti-bourgeoise issues based....and no therapy, yuck.
You can take the kid out of the system but you can't....
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by thingsthatgo (10.12.02 09:06 am)
Nice art talk goin on ( I forgot where i was)—a little out of my league to express at the moment:
Still good practice process starts and almost resolves in analog process—so hope mucking round in the digital you're not looking for the start—patterns if you think of them as alive freaks people out—if unaware then it is just a pattern not even identified—thus some of the most blandest do well to jog where you are—-JS probably was referring this way.
Oh, digital as I understand it, is a pattern—analog would, then, would suggest else.
Interesting here—a lot of R&D in communication among the young are going back into analog to get a digital edge—
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by Domenico Olivero (10.12.02 09:44 am)
liberty to communicate and being able to begin is essential... even if today all seems confused and indefinable
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by thingsthatgo (10.12.02 09:56 am)
oh, plotting simple points in information and studying the weaknessess in and between these points—information to give different information —well, is anolog—in case.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by Art Lover (10.12.02 11:44 am)
Peter Schjeldahl once wrote something like he thought Freedom in Art was a Lame idea ,but then anyone who can like the paintings in "Exposed:The Victorian Nude" as much as he does.....
Conceptualists don't have to maintain a studio or material fees
by all i got was this lousy (10.12.02 12:19 pm)
TTG - 'Oh, digital as I understand it, is a pattern' -an algorithm ? like programing - what about digital video ? editing digitally rocks! it is so much more intuitive when you can sit there with your 'pallate' select and play with, (16 mm/35mm film is good like this as well) but the process of analog liner editing on a analog liner system like Beta Decks - yuck ! insert edit - broken time code - broken time code - forget it ! besides i think our minds work more akin to a digial system then analog.
ziPpY - the Surrealist agenda was originally - 'the over throw of rational thought and the barriers between Art and life' - it had 2 major manifestoes and several minor, a theoretical position, political commitments (initially to communism and then to Trotskyism) and now ... (i know we have had this conversation) is over the bed of every 12 year old smoking there first joint (in black lite poster form) and 'waky housewife' wall ... so Surrealism has become a 'style', its vocabulary convoluted and its agenda subverted threw its acceptance -we will kill them with our love perhaps it is the afore mentioned concerns that you were turned on by in 'Surrealist' work first. you should never 'lose your love' of anything but you can get to the real 'why' and melting watches and flying whatever is more 'pattern' than anything
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by frond (10.12.02 02:37 pm)
"Freedom in art" is rather oversimplistic although I dont disagree with the idea.
I was thinking how amazing countercultural ideas become integrated by capitalism when I saw my first add for the Mellow Mushroom.
Hippies.
by ellepeach (10.12.02 03:24 pm)
Frond, No "amazing countercultural idea" can be corrupted by a pizza gimmic. Borrowed, maybe.
Hippies didn't get anywhere. They became Wall Street 80s cokeheads when that was the next fashion.
Personally, (except for musicians) I can't think of one great artist or thinker in the hippie category.
I saw Yoko Ono last year and she said that waving flags—just doesn't do it anymore. She said if you're an artist then you're in the peace business rather than war.
where's tagent when you need him....
More off topic
by ellepeach (10.12.02 03:38 pm)
just the word counterculture makes me shake my head. It's a stance in reaction to, adolescent rebellion. (maybe a place to start from, but not an ideal)
it takes more energy to get a perspective then the hippies were willing to put in.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by kittyking (10.12.02 04:08 pm)
Most artists in the 60s were hippies. In other words—influenced by and/or leading the ethos of the day. Jasper Johns listened to the Beatles in his studio. Robert Smithson took a lot of acid. People lived in communes, started artists' galleries. Part of it was a fashion, but mostly it was very deep and influential.
And re: counterculture. You have to stand up and say no to some things. And you have to say yes to what you affirm. They are both equally mature responses.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by kittyking (10.12.02 04:19 pm)
Jimmy Carter is a hippy. Get it?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by ellepeach (10.12.02 05:30 pm)
Kitty—I am not undermining the importance of the 60s to the 60s. What I am addressing is young Frond's fascination with the myth of the collective culture. What I believe in—(please allow your concept of Oneness which is in Hippidom Solipcistic to embrace my opinion)
Our generation keeps looking over our shoulder to the 60s as some kind of pocket of utopia. (if we could just crawl back in, but it's an empty nest!) Also the tribe mentality presumes a correctness. A collective demands unity and conformity. Now the consciousness is shifting to a more global view, more compicated. You could argue immobolizingly so. That is what I'm addressing.
Johns using acid—the Impressionists drank absinth until they were lunatics, doesn't mean i'm gonna. Doesn't make Johns a hippy.
Um, listening to the Beatles doesn't make one a hippy. Lennon even got disillusioned with the collective after Maharishi—
Carter-extending peace doesn't make him a hippy. It makes him an individual who used his power and opporunity to support and actualize what he believed in.
The fixation on the hippy ideal is burdening our generation with all kinds of falsehoods in my opinion that are out of synch.
We do need to find a way to come together. (People were I think trying with Nader but like Weimar germany the division of the liberal parties allowed the autocrats to move in).
It's like Snowball's point about holding onto the Teddy Bear of Warhol—ditto for hippies. I wasn't even alive in the sixties, but hippidom in my generation translated in to no motivation and screw yourself up to vaguely rebel. That's what I'm getting at. Not romanticizing so as to
lose perspective of personal potential.
So, yes, you are right, we can't undermine the importance of hippies on amazing strides like civil rights and peace and liberal acceptance in the mainstream.
Maybe the def of hippy is different to pre gen xers. ( and different in translation between the coasts)?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by Art Lover (10.12.02 08:30 pm)
Every Artist who was in there 20s-30s by1964 LOOKED LIKE A HIPPY
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by frond (10.12.02 08:31 pm)
Well elle im not too young, although I missed the sixties also just by a coupla years.
Im not fascinated by the 60's in any way.. I think my earlier post stated "amazing countercultual ideas" .. "amazing" not intended to be an adjective..it should have been writen "its amazing how former countercultural ideas are appropriated blah blah..." sorry bout the mix up. I was just responding to all I got's post describing the way surrealism has been redifined without the original meanings (I assume we mean Essenhigh?) this made me think of the new Mellow Mushroom joint that opened up near me.
As to hippidom, I always thought that alot of that was derived from the beat generation right before. I would say the beats have had a more significant influence on cultural history...wouldntya say?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by thingsthatgo (10.12.02 08:33 pm)
alligot
'our minds work more akin to a digial system then analog. ' in the sense of streaming?fragmenting?
I can go with that. I was considering the 'break' resembling 'the reason for' the edit ( up here>>>), and in that way analog. But certainly not those in the editing lab.
Your model is closer to art. Mine was based on digital vs analog in communication data industry, in and out, while routers have proved an interesting step back—
The brain to brush is digital too, wouldn't know—never owned a pallete. :)
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by thingsthatgo (10.12.02 10:40 pm)
Back to the freedom thing—trying to think of a one-liner——
'the begin process would be born out of limitation', whether it be a word or idea or concept except before the 'begin'—before getting involved in process, prior to hitting the 'freedom trail'—which values less freedom once things are in process, lay the more fluid freedom. I guess when this turns uninhibited into process it’s this streaming thing happen’n. ‘VERY HIP(PY)’. I like streaming just as much as I value but not necessarily like breaking—or the breaking down. I like the idea here of decomposing, and also the idea of stitching things back up again—knowing, well, that things will eventually break down. I like the idea of holding on to things (and ideas) after they are gone.
WHY?
The contingency plan, the ‘plan==survival’ and the ‘plan==stash’ can then be seen for what they are, and what they are, are impediments, like the 'brakes' on taxi.
It’s where you want to get off.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zip (10.13.02 02:12 am)
Alligot - Overthrow of rational thought = weirdness in my book.
For three, Dali does very little for me. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Freedom is boring. Transgression is boring. Show me something built. Something cool. Something invested. Something that isn't the next line of SUV's, or figurative coyness.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.13.02 02:50 am)
How many conceptualists are there now, installing things, trying to make something happen by thought. When you ask such a naieve question, would you actually expect to get some genuine freshness from the old duds?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by all i got was this lousy (10.13.02 01:01 pm)
TTG - i was thinking about 'digial' just interms of non-liner
zip. P.C.SUV's@MM=hot no?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by maxherman (10.13.02 01:12 pm)
I think the term "conceptual art" was premature, hasty. To balance, I think changes in arthistry are marked by new work that appears "conceptual" just because it's a new line. Deleuze and Guattari said artists have to create new concepts, which I think is a good idea, but it in no way means artists should be doing "Conceptual Art." So maybe just drop the caps, and say good new art has new concepts, but isn't "Conceptual Art", which is very possibly an oxymoron or redundancy. It could be called "Clue Art," as in, if you have a clue you're more free.
Sphincters scream thus: rrffeeeeeaaiiiieeefffrrhhhpppbbb.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.13.02 01:20 pm)
Conceptual is a premature? The term if I may add, came from, at first Fluxus, then there was a happening thing that happened, and Duchamp, it seems to have evolved from the Dadaists, then moved through the Surrealists, and into other spin offs with additions from the installations of AbEx and Sculpture art. How is that premature? Perhaps you mean the Name isn't acurate enough anylonger because there is no pure conceptual work, and man mades, ready mades, found objects, conceptual space, conceptual space of museums.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by frond (10.13.02 03:24 pm)
well I think a distinction can be made between
1. Conceptual Art with caps and anti-art object and anti-commercial gallery agenda and
2. conceptual practices incorporated into art making,the art object is the focus
Here is an example of the basic denominator set forth by dadaist,fluxus, et al. being re(animated?) without the various political numerators in the mix.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by furtherfield (10.13.02 06:40 pm)
These days I reckon that the 'Conceptualist' is a rather old fashioned term. With the rise of Net Art & its many nuances as well. Art now, is a totally different ball game. From my own perspective Art Activism is the most intriguing and most involved and alive, form of creative energy - which includes coders, musicians, writers, installationists, street artists, film-makers and much more.
Part of the problem for many artists, is that they have been culturalized certain methods and ideas that actually are not appropriate in an age when Post-human issues, Information & technology are at the fore front of everyday life, changing our identities and the way we live - the best art (in whatever form) is awake & brave enough to deal with such things.
marc garrett
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by Art Lover (10.13.02 08:00 pm)
furtherfield, Thats hilarious Did you get that CULTURAL MARXISM from one of your professors at Columbia? or did you find some old copy of October?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by thingsthatgo (10.13.02 09:08 pm)
I gotcha alligot—that's the problem posting here in short intervals—I always end up thinking one-liners——and block almost everything else.
Maybe time to break the habit.
I noticed that Max threw in a curved ball and took it up elsewhere. I gottheswing but you know 2X knows a great deal more about those topix—but from my own experience, and from an art point of view, space gets wild when things get flat.
—Lot like color if you want to express red you need to block it. So that 'smoothology' show would be using architecture and body architecture, reinforcing vertical/horizontal, to draw out the sensual, the zillion reference points that throws the curve—it can come up quite sexy. Reference points are intriguing.
Nothing Is, what it seems—and that's the fun in it.
Net.art, though, is just like any other art, there’s this person behind the scene—conceptualizing testing maybe building—erasing, editing—doing almost anything to get it right!
Anyway nice thread—I can here people instead of being told where it’s at.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by furtherfield (10.13.02 10:01 pm)
No Art Lover - I did not bother with college, I went my own way, just talking from real experience really. Although I am glad that you've got a sense of humour, you'll need one once you have realized that you have painted yourself into a small corner - LITERALLY.
bye cheeky monkey;-)
marc garrett
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by ellepeach (10.13.02 10:03 pm)
i like it too, things....
The surrealism conversation could keep going or make a new thread?
DeChirico said, There is no such thing as surrealism.
(That's a gem I personally excavated from an obscure source. Sharing cause i liked reading this. feeling generous of spirit. my favs were critiquee as shrink and * what are you painting? can't tell yet. Took those to heart, thanks.)
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by CLEM (10.13.02 10:33 pm)
furtherfield is right I keep telling you Artists to just stop making objects Make a video if you have to, but writing about it as a critic is were the ART is
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by Art Lover (10.13.02 10:49 pm)
furtherfield, I'm glad you said "Painted"
:)
by ellepeach (10.13.02 10:58 pm)
And from that corner, you can paint your way just about anywhere.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by Skull (10.14.02 01:08 am)
"Jimmy Carter is a hippy. Get it?"...
No, Jimmy was a Baptist...
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by frond (10.14.02 01:34 am)
so, furtherfield, we are living a post-human existance? Lets see...Where did I put those razor blades?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.14.02 02:10 am)
In music there was a group in the 70s called Montega Trio, who made music in this strange album entitled: Spell, they seemed conceptual, mystical, an erie sound, but facinating to me non the less. The music broke down in to words, and names of organic life forms: an ear of corn etc...
The color conceptual space of Morris Louis, seemed interesting to me but I wondered if it were enough or if his idea was just impotently realized, the idea greater than the expression of it.
In that sense freedom may be the limit of the means to produce the conception.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.14.02 02:16 am)
The statement by De Chirico is perhaps a statement which separates the great artists from the copyists of dreams, the creators like Dali and the metephysicians like DeChiraco.
De Chirico became an actual copiest in his later years after what was called a failure to create the reality. His goal I thought was to his realization to metephysically impose his conception, and turn it or manefest it like an alchemist, bring it to life.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by maxherman (10.14.02 02:35 am)
Frond, your latest post is where I'm at basically but very basically. So danke.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zip (10.15.02 03:58 am)
I just had the "courage" to crash my computer. After that, painting seems, so....much ...more...teeth grinding.....human.
I can dig the fact that tech is the new utopia, but uh, I wish I was a hammer.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more sex?
by mmuttt (10.15.02 09:57 am)
The way the conceptualism seems presented here seems very close to the genesis of Warholism in the other thread. Hard to describe; know it when you see it.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.15.02 11:30 am)
Are, any of you are really conceptual? I created a piece in 1967 involving a: vacuum, blowing and sucking, a stripped florescent plastic on frame, a black light and nude performers.
The problem of freedom is a tricky one. You have the freedom to not be just an artist or a relly great surface painter. You have the freedom to be anything but, and escaping the severe demands of a canvas' two dimensional to three dimensional surface is one of them, along with editing which is a different art form, it's anti-conceptual in the hands of Matisse, and Ingres and Diebenkorn.
Conceptual is anti-aesthetic.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.15.02 11:35 am)
ellepeach might add to her lists of schools; as far as I understand you do things of any importance you may need a University's greater power, or become an apprentice to some corporation.
Do blowing and sucking senior Conceptualists have more freedom?
by teisha (10.15.02 02:15 pm)
belchsonnyo
"...I believe I have painted more paintings, better than you have even if they were in the solitude of my studio. I think you are a mealy mouthed person when you think the person has no power, but what would you do if you found out, that I am powerful? Did you size up your enemy? HMMM?"
We live in a country that does not respect our senior citizens as much as other countries do.
Did you know to believe means to
W I S H?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by stashcrow (10.15.02 03:04 pm)
A lot of the ideas and arguments in this thread seem to point to the overwhelming desire we have to place ourselves in history BEFORE THE FACT. There’s always this incredible impatience to establish “what is important” and who or what embodies “what is important” and what shall we call this stuff that’s so important. For example, the argument over “hippies” — who is who isn’t, what is what isn’t, “hippy” as an encompassing term of the 60’s, etc.. I’m not old enough to remember the 60’s beyond breakfast cereals and Sesame Street, but my parents were big 60’s kind o’ people and a “hippy” to them was a person who aped a cliche of Madison Avenue marketing (Wowie Zowie, Sock-it-to-me, etc.). The term “hippy” is a cultural goof jargon created for easy consumption. To me it’s like calling the likes of Green Day or Blink 182 Punk bands: Sure whatever (personally, give me a f#ckin’ break!), but they’re nowhere near the stuff I was listening to 20 years ago in terms of what was being said or not said and the PRE-marketed understanding of such. Today’s Artworld is just as guilty as the pop world in turning to the institutions, magazines, social doctors, critics etc. to tell an artist (and a viewer) who to be and what to make and what is important and what we’ll call it... before any of it ever happens. Nothin’ new, I know Balzac bitched about this 200 years ago, but Christ. “Do conceptualists have more freedom?” Well if you come up with a keen little conceptual manifesto, then constantly regurgitate the given concept using various different media, all in the name of “____” you ain’t got much freedom. Freedom seems to be a personal relationship between you and what you do. I say give the McGradschool training the finger. That’s freedom.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by stashcrow (10.15.02 03:08 pm)
Oh, and Welch, are one of those people who think that just because you are doing an "installation" or a "performance" that you are making "Conceptual" art?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by frond (10.15.02 04:44 pm)
My inquiry into this continues to be less of a discussion of the merits of conceptualism as opposed to "painting what you see or feel". It seems to become a "yer either with us or against us" kinda thing with furtherfield saying throw away the brushes and grab the keyboard and stashcrow's disdain for the typical manifesto mentality. Where does it say that things are this black and white? Help me out here... name some paint slingin conceptualists or some conceptual paint slingers....
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zip (10.15.02 05:16 pm)
I think I could name any artist who can sustain output along a theme - try naming some and I'll say yes or no.
systemic theories work best -sustainable and regenerative.
No model is perfect
Best practical theory is non-dogmatic, relational/systemic and instinctual (learned but automatic-also: open ended).
Good psych profile.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by ellepeach (10.15.02 05:37 pm)
As usual, tagent's onto something. (BTW was that smilie holding a swagger stick ? :)
Frond—maybe the binary of painting VS concept is causing the two-tone responses.
The painters are gonna say, as zip has succinctly broken down, that there isn't any separation.
Clem wishes we could all have direct contact with art through writing about Inka's dimensions. Why do these "net pirates" feel the need to attack the painters rather than start their own thread? Well, perhaps because the personality type makes them prone to preaching/ conversion? I would enjoy it if they were agreeably takling about their passion. i'd read that. ANyway. Shrug
The recent talk about Kai Alt.. and Hirst_ right there are two who obviously do the kind of work i think you might be asking for? Like, Hirst's paintings were in relation to the installation.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by kittyking (10.15.02 05:49 pm)
Gosh almighty stashcrow. you and epeach are using the right-wing put-down "hippy", not the real free living outside of the mainstream hippies that were REALLY premarketed. You are getting your info from your parents, bad 70s movies and stoners at your high school. I was thinking of T. Leary, Abbie Hoffman, the Hog Farm and the Diggers, young peace activists who are now old peace activists. "Zabriski Point" by Antonioni. People who thought for themselves, and in new ways for their times. Whoever said the Beats were predecessors, I think that's totally true. Cassidy was the proto hippie. Ginsburg. Keroac laid tracks for the hippies, though he never wore the hair or clothes.
Freedom is important. Image, word, concept. Whatever works. “Conceptual art,” Tom Marioni writes, is “idea-oriented situations not directed at the production of static objects.” Since his first conceptual action in 1969, Marioni has extended and expanded traditional art approaches in unprecedented ways, paying attention to forms that take place in the mind of the viewer, through sound, and through social situations, to name a few. His 1970 piece called The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art has become legendary. Dude was a hippy.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by kittyking (10.15.02 05:57 pm)
Frond: Fiona Rae is a conceptual painter, dont ya think? Richter too. Hirst's Spin paintings.
The painter I like is Marlene Dumas. She's got the chops.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by stashcrow (10.15.02 06:10 pm)
Frond,
It’s the “black and White” thing that I was getting at. Limitation and Stagnation are not reserved to method OR medium. You can be limited in an idea as much as a medium. If you are getting at what I think you are getting at, namely that the traditional canons of painting and sculpture are limited by their medium while working from an conceptual based criteria (examining the idea of what defines a chair... the role of gender in society... Popcorn balls are the gifts of Jesus... etc...) and choosing a medium that informs the idea is an open-ended road, I disagree. Schtick works both ways.
Cite some examples of artists I think have been limited by conceptualism? Big daddy Kosuth looms large. How long 'til his little jokes got stale?
On a personal note (not necessarily about freedom in Conceptualism), for about 7 years I abandoned painting because I thought it was too limiting in what I wanted to talk about (also “painting is dead” and all that) and began to base my choice of materials on the ideas I was trying to express (arguments like: “why paint a donkey? Why not bring a REAL donkey into the space? etc.). It was a great learning curve and I did some great shit. I found, however, that I soon felt MORE restricted in that mode and my real desire WAS in painting and I was just intimidated by the time and energy it was going to take to arrive at the skills I needed to do the paintings I wanted. I also got wrapped-up in all the rhetoric, The Dialogue, in school and that took me farther away from my work, not closer to it.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by stashcrow (10.15.02 06:20 pm)
Kitty Kitty,
Ummm I thought I was explaining that the term "hippy" and all its baggage IS from the sit-com gook. Do you really think everybody including Smithson, Marioni, Jimmy Carter, etc. were wearing purple bell-bottoms, painting peace signs on their cheeks, saying "Oh Wow" a lot. I don't use "Hippy" to talk about Everybody in the 60s, get it.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.15.02 06:27 pm)
Yea all of that, Teisha could you sing the the sloeyed po/mo blues to us all?
If I had 120Gs I would buy be an SFAI degree, oooohhhh, maaaammaaa gimme dat ol' degree.
I decided to not joke about why you do not deserve to talk to me. Ba Bye!
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom? p.s
by welchsonnyo (10.15.02 06:32 pm)
sNOWbALL www.cosmicsnoball.com
Welchy, your manners have come to this?
by tagent (10.15.02 06:58 pm)
www.velocity.net/
I'm disappointed.
L ove, as always, Your Mother
P.S. Love is growing thin, Welchy
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by kittyking (10.15.02 07:17 pm)
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by thingsthatgo (10.15.02 08:02 pm)
'What's going on inside keeps you free to concentrate on what the hell your doing or not—outside—only limit to know not know to limit— is an adage as old as adages go back.
How ideas come to be and how those ideas are driven into form, and how far into form they are driven is just as just a regular question for a regular day.
Well another magnificent morning for one-liners—
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.15.02 11:55 pm)
sNOWbALL www.snowball.com
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.15.02 11:56 pm)
No really this is realy good I am sure:
www.cosmicsnowball.com
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.15.02 11:58 pm)
not this but this put in cosmic snowball on your search, click the darn thing.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.16.02 01:04 am)
When I did the 67 Happening conceptual thing, I was Living in the Height-Ashbury, and
I had just met Jerry Garcia and we jammed a little.
There were several hippies, the type who were in to good food and ashrams (no drugs)
and the others (drop outs) and the artists doing the art scene, and the politicals called yippies (hoffman's crowd).
I couldn't fit with them.
When I saw the scene I liked the sensuality and not the dry steril mind. I liked the Alpha rythyms of J. Kimiah and "Dave aint here"
I didn't want to drop out with Leary, and I was already a Vietam Vet in 65, I had met the Rockefellers, the Amgassador to Uraguay, and a host of kids from the colleges who hung out in that summer.
J. Kosuth was not known to me, I guess the conceptual thing had no real name then.
Kaprow was doing his thing with happenings, and we called some of our things happenings. To make a long BS story short, People don't stop and say hey lets call this, this and do that. It's more European to do that, you know the manefesto, and the dedicated minion. We Like Jerry Garcia, were are loose players.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by maxherman (10.16.02 01:13 am)
As for the above def of Conceptual Art, it blurs to mess with Fluxus, which is not the same. For example, what does "Modern Art" mean? Not much. "Fine Art" is also very vague. So sometimes these categories are drawn with very transient value.
Re the call for samples, "Cubism" is a concept, so "cubist art" is conceptual art. Blake used the "concept" of burning away the dross from his plates with acid, using the "concept" of subtraction/revelation throughout his corpus.
What about the "concept" of the pieta? It has been utilized as a starting point and recurring subject-concept by many, but "pieta art" is not "conceptual art".
Sometimes single words are only transiently meaningful. Diminishing returns. I think we can see this with the already-flabby phrases "Network Art" and "Digital Art." It is very possible, for example, that "Pre-2000 Art" and "Post-2000 Art" are more precise taxonomically than all the other categories combined.
What's that concept of the razor—Finnegan's Razor?—that says the simplest explanation is the better, other things being equal?
"I saw—a snail—crawling along the edge—of a straight—razor...."
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by teisha (10.16.02 01:16 am)
What Hollywood means to the Art world
by welchsonnyo, 09.04.02 11:08 am
The current understanding of how our libidinal prowess has been turned again and again adds a query in my mind about the religio-polical pendulum of the relilgious right, and war time libertines. A peculiar work by Sue Williams are you Pro-Porn or anti-porn.
In the fly over area art there is a conscensus and abscence of pro- and a nearly unimous statement of con. While feminism cannot be blamed for the pro-con argument, nor can the in your face gay movements, and political stress which lowers the vows of carmelites, what picture do we draw from this menagerie now?
Hollywood has always been involved in the arts. Now that there are academy wards for the visual arts, like paintings, I applaud that. I contemplate what it could mean. You see so many beautiful people in Hollywood, beautiful clothes, beautiful hairstyles, saturation of beauty, the tinsel and the tarnish? Will visual art stars loose the stoneplug uglies? The beautiful wantobes ugly horses asses? From the horses ass.
Speaking of Assy art
by Skull (10.16.02 01:41 am)
www.artnet.com/
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zip (10.16.02 01:43 am)
MAx - it is Occam's razor, though I forget who Occam is (simpler that way).
I'm for any art that requires food as an "in"
Food
by ellepeach (10.16.02 03:03 am)
Stopped by Erik Parker opening. I was wondering— does the artist have to digest beyond personal cataloguing. Parker makes lists that are webs of association. I liked that he makes visible his thoughts. These are concept-first paintings with theme (and always the subtheme "homage to my dick").
Anyway, the feeling i had that was a qualm-ish reaction was that I wasn't sure if he really meant what he was listing or if it was just an exercise to demonstrate pop-media-awareness and hipness. If the visual layout of the bubbles had even been more organic or intentional — would have shown real ...investment. The inventory seemed kinda hopeless and random which gave me the idea he was telling me that he's just smarter than me?
So when is food food?
Razing Finnegan
by ellepeach (10.16.02 03:06 am)
BTW MAx, Finnegan's Rainbow is some wierd musical about leprechauns.
Process/Digest
by ellepeach (10.16.02 03:43 am)
I think i'm arriving at an answer to my own question. Parker: He didn't process his own sources (going back to the derivatives of digestion—there are a million ways to do it)
in this case there was a guiding concept
but he was constructing something, erecting something. An impenetrable unreceptive fortress comprised of the semantics of modern life. Shields.
Plant food
by zip (10.16.02 04:53 am)
Ideas are an armature -
Parker seems to make an armature of his associations.
www.paolocurti.com/
Good.
otherwise why not write or use a computer flow chart/relational database.
I am into the form finding through association school.
Interesting duality between an easy to read big shape or two and the parts that no one has the time to read (in NYC).
Also maybe what is seen as mature (formal simplicity) vs. immature (maximal complexity- "edit yourself, my good man, for God's sake! AND tuck in your edges! And wipe that drip up!")
I saw a drunk archetypal artist in Tribecca doing the West coast free associative "hippie" Kabbalah thing - and it doesn't work well cuz theres no structure, even an invisible conceptual one, or at least one that doesn't require me to bring my own cup. Too much work=no there there.
Basquiat - I'd like to think I see some theses....but if Schnabel can make a good copy...how deep?
I guess I'm getting at the sort of idea of rose bush:trellis :: free association:grid
or
ideas and framework
I can't tell about Parker. But it looks ok online.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by mmuttt (10.16.02 10:07 am)
So when we mix 'conceptualist' and hippy culture are we talking about people practising today or the artist's Kosuth, art & language, Larry Weiner, Barry LeVa, Mel Bochner, who came to prominance in the Sixties Nyc, although Benar Venet I guess should be included? do photoconceptualist like Victor Burgin count? Anyway, why this topic, conceptualist? It just seems kinda beside the point. Their lack of political awareness, except for Hans Haacke ans some Dennis Oppenhiem, seems dulling today.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by maxherman (10.16.02 11:55 am)
Zip, I like to cut up plants and scanner, name 'em clever, and eat 'em! Ever read "inviolate rose"? It's a deep enough concept, kinda vague for the general and hence deep or wide or whatnot. If round is funny. Relates to Martha Stewart.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.16.02 01:04 pm)
Alpha rhythms are from bio feedback. The focus of the mind is on a greater amplitude than Beta Waves.
It is with in the interest of the writer and curator from whence the conceptualist comes, and if as everyone agrees every work of art from a pre-schooler to professional, had an idea to start something. T.S. Eliot's notes lead us through is Imagist maze, while there are works who are not so referential of past biblical or poetry. I cannot call Elliot's references plagiaristic. A term which has now taken lesser importance.
From Kaprow's Installation, to Buren's From the Marxian dialectical materialism providing instead a classical formula: "Rapid paced progress occurs in the infrastructure, the economic sphere of productive activities which supports but also subverts the superstructure, the social sphere of ideology which includes religion, art, politics, law and all traditional attitudes.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.16.02 01:07 pm)
addendum: The superstructure evolves more sloly and is more resistant to change than the ecomomic infrastructure, especially in the modern industrial age of advanced capitalism.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by maxherman (10.16.02 04:37 pm)
Form finding by association, my god, that's g2k. And yes I would say if a huge poll was done of "one word descriptions of MH" the winner would be "immature."
I like the leprechaun in the Simpsons, the goofy one, not the Notre Dame one—at all. He's gross.
Also smarties, Deleuze and Guattari said "the artist must create concepts," which plays out to "any art is active conceptualisticization transience." His words lack form a little, but what he spake was not like madness. Love? His affections do not that way tend.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zip (10.16.02 05:31 pm)
I did the leaf cutting thing in 4-H, no inviolate rose, coffee cold.
SHould I go for a doctorate? The superstructure pays for that..not like MFA.
Thoughts?
WIll I be subverted or empowered?
Heroes grail quest.
Dissolved on attainment.
No reason for being.
But was real on the way there.
Fitting end to meandering stream?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by ellepeach (10.16.02 05:38 pm)
Zippy—-
Are you ambitious as an artist or just ambitious?
2. NOticed earlier you called yourself an "amateur" artist. Describe.
3. Are you getting an MFA? Not a bad idea/. What is it like for ya?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zip (10.16.02 06:58 pm)
Ambitious, Yes.
Amateur: I don't want to be made. I stay away from plastic lined rooms.
Product of the system. I am facinated that people still consider going to grad school for art, without getting paid to do so. Here are reasons though:
1) Free time (party, read, paint, indulge your whims, collect thrift store junk)
2) Hook Ups - meet Jerry Saltz (ha!) or Robert Hughes or whoever you think you want to meet, but don't be surprised if they are not above it all. UCLA was hot I guess, Spin magazine and all. Wouldn't you be bitter if you got passed up after shelling out all that cash? Yale still has a little pull.
Otherwise go to a good state school (not so provincial).
3) So you can teach, miserable warden!
4) A ready audience for your erudition.
5) You can luck out and get a good group of inmates. A crew. A posse. A bunch of thugs. But then I think if you are extroverted just go to a major city and dive in. Read some books. Moving to a new city without friends is scary. Run up against the myth of it all. Yelling in the streets. Better to be born into it. Thouroughbred. "FAME! I wanna live forever!" I thought it was a TOTAL fantasy. Turns out you CAN go to an arts high school and do good drugs.
6) People use school for motivation - to read, to write, to make work, to have something to rebell against, STRUCTURE.
Don't go if you HAVE A LIFE and think there has to be more. Is that cynical? I saw an art star recruited and then leave out of boredom. How do you think that made me feel? Pretty good.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.17.02 02:53 am)
It's the same perception that I had about Grad School. They were bored to death, were in there wasting time, with out the spirit, and excitement of a real white hot experience required of the ferment in a genuine artistic experience. You are there and bored with everyone else? Who needs it? You do if you need the degree to teach, and then get the support of the school.
It seems that some of the best painters were not intelligent in a lot of things, they were just smart in painting, like basket ball players, they were smart about the game, they had real agile minds but they didn't know a lot, but they can do a lot with a little.
Who can add a stupider comment about why the heck anyone cares whether or not conceptualists have more freedom? More freedom than what? It's like asking do conceptualists have more fun? But everyone's got a lot to talk about. We are all lonely souls wasting time. Getting paid to go to art school? Yes, that would make sense if you were a sort that made sense, but then you would not be an artist if it didin't make sense. We love to nurture that dream, or refuse to come to terms with the truth of opposition, like the japanese determination, and even beyond, like a gila monster that bites into something and wont let go.
Conceptualists really don't need any more. It's about the easiest way to do art. And seem really famous. Conceptualism is still rambling on. Why? It isn't that nifty?
What the is the purpose to go to an art school or university to get a MFA, and listen to some inane instructor whose bored with and uninteresed, and just waiting to get his call from the galleries we sold all your stuff you can retire, we're putting you on a stipend, then it's to hell with you imbeciles I'm out of here. Or worse yet you get an overbearing oppressive great artist Like Hans Hoffman who has it all figured out for you. Wow thanks a bunch.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zipthwung (10.17.02 03:18 am)
Well, uhh, I'm sure it's like that in some places, and in others, different. I made it out. yeah. More F'n ART. I figured out the business guys are in it for another reason. There was a good article in the Atlantic? about the business thing. Herding students through and hiring art stars. Well that's ok, unless the money goes to buying more buildings instead of paying teachers.
Still, as artificially stupid as institutionalized art is, it's the best thing going for socialization of aspiring art types. I just wish I'd paid more attention.
As a product of the system and "real" life, I realize that I'd rather think than perform many of the other tasks people find meaningfull. I'll admit I'm self absorbed - goes with the territory.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zipthwung (10.17.02 03:49 am)
Carpe Diem, which means "use your liver", in Latin.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.17.02 08:07 am)
I thought it was seize, pluck or, enjoy the day, a prase from Horace, Odes, that enjoins full use of time, or the commercial Have a nice Day :)?
or My carpe diem would be: Eat, Drink, write poetry, Sing Songs, Make love, Make art.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.17.02 08:18 am)
You are still jaded by the taint of empty promise: its a monkey trap, = a small mouthed brass vase with a piece of fruit in side, the monkey sticks its hand in side and then can't get his hand out and his desire will not let go of the fruit! Ha Ha.
In our Graduate schools they seem to like to break up the students who were in the movements and opress everyone not interested in the grad chair's art style. They would go in it (the grad school) thinking wow they think I'm great. Did they cut you a deal with a gallery, or a benefactor? Ha Ha. Duey Cheatem and Howe, law offices?
Imagine just how rare you are, over one hundred graduate degree offering colleges, and undergraduate offering colleges, and at least 50 students in, each times twenty years. = the number of Will Cottons.
Oh yeah? Yeah!
Now all the likable social paths that run this net will kill the messenger? Nope they know better.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.17.02 08:23 am)
And as for structure that oft time quoted mysterious reason you have to go to grad schools with STRUCTURE, d'int you know that any attempt to mask the obvious irrational construction of the working of social order would just bring more meaningless rational to a world that runs amok?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by mmuttt (10.17.02 10:14 am)
I started out as an undergrad in art school, moved to nyc to "really see" the art world. It was so depressing to see who buys this shit, the proverbial bitch in fur stepping over the bum on the subway grate from her chauffered Rolls on the way to la gala opening. Grad school
was refuge, asylum; but studio painting was too factionalized, so I switched majors to art history and hid in the stacks for a couple of years. I just kept painting on my own. And being an art shitstorian kinda gave me a license to paint without anybody getting too upset since i was just an art historian painter wannabe. It also gave me a better sense of what happened to American painters in relation to the received European tradition. Now, the thing is though in relation to grad school qua conceptualism, grad school can be a great resource, but imagine if Pollock had been a grad student with a TA in painting. He would have had to ass kiss, not be so violently drunk, pass tests, still stay sober and probably never have realized the plastic implications of automatic writing and Kamrowski's drip paintings. Wellshonnyo mentioned rationality, well that is the exact problem with grad school conceptualism based training, rationality. Pollock's move was purely gut level irrationality egged on by alcohol induced behavior. You can't be that way in grad school since they throw you out, after you paid your cash however. We use to count the amount of people who did something in the art world who did not have art degrees or who were like smithson or thomas Pynchon with degrees in other fields, geology and engineering respectively. The university system turns out conceptualists and they are getting more and more tepid as time goes on, the Will Cotton cited above is a case in point, sweetened Photo-realism done in a brown sauce academic style that even makes chuck close a little embarrassed. And, oh, my, god, the amount of Francesco Clemente's I had to sit through on review committees when I was still teaching art history.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.17.02 02:23 pm)
I wondered how Pollack stumbled on to the drip method, at first I thought that it came from Miro, but there was a mention of Navaho sand paintings, and in a book by Susan Loundes there was a painter in San Francisco who used autobody paint drips and splashes, and I recall the paintings of Picasso allowing the happy accident, and that being validated.
I know he rode a motorcycle, and that he had a retrospective in SF, he was born in Cody, Wy. and then moved to LA with his parents, and his father a Doctor? He painted with TH Benton, and then Siqueros, for WPA Murals. But there is no real connection to Christopher B. Davies. Yeah none at all only every blabber mouth in the art world.
It would make sense to put the painting on the floor and paint with the auto body paint since it was just too viscous to not do that. And as for the Pollack movie I thought it was interesting, and well for the public. Pollack was as I had read a student of Bridgman's anatomy class in ASL.
However, the drinking thing may have been the least of his problems with violence, since there have been reports (not about Pollack) of violence caused by paint fumes, and contact.
A relative (distant ) got her PHD in AH at Columbia, god help her.
This is aside there was in interesting cosmic unconscious juxtaposition of Pres Bush on the front page of The SLTrib this morning and a rounding up of Bison below a caption and an inset photo: Bush Concedes War Risks.
Concerning the women arriving in Rolls Royce's, out here they come in Lincolns, Lexus, Mercedes Benz the Mercedes Benz drivers are I assume the Janis Joplin followers.
I like them I'm not prejudice about the people who possess power and money and influence, and how do you know they don't have faux fur on? Prince Charles is dedicated to not wearing real fur?
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zipthwung (10.17.02 03:51 pm)
I agree mutt. Nice Pollock refs. I want to look up...
Obviously you know some stuff - note my lack of commentary.
I enjoy analytical but enjoy analytical process over facts. But you have analyze something...
Also art history for me is more a grab bag of stuff to do than a logical ordered account of discovery. Not a "how to" but a "what to".
Teachers asked my peers who our favorite critics were. No one had one. They did. Outside of their scenes what these writers say doesn't really make any sense. It's (what do you call) fiction based on life. Like the food in the back of the NYT magazine. Like hearing every third word in a conversation.
Outsider view.
Look at how other countries interpret Hip Hop, or american pop culture in general. Weird. And in reverse, NYC imports stuff. Can be cool. Cargo Cultish.
I'm jaded maybe, but it's a pose, a uniform.
I learned in 4th grade your art is only as good as your popularity. Harsh. The other guy didn't have any freckles. The hell with him.
Not everyone digs ideas - also learned in school.
Catching up after anti-intellectual self hate period :)
Kids dig cartoons, many of my peers got into drawing through Marvel. Old story. But it's weird after about 22. Art too. Peter Pan syndrome? Anime? Manga? Different strokes for different folks. Mike Kelly was GOD for a while - club kid raver style infantilism. Did they get him or just use him? Who's the lady did Max Fish and Sonic Youth cover...where are they now? People grow. Or they don't. The more things change the more they stay the same....
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by zipthwung (10.17.02 03:56 pm)
Interesting anecdote: Couch pissing drunk drug dealer art student kicked out after first year. (Not I).
Forget if was any good.
Food Art, a niche for me.
by zipthwung (10.17.02 04:15 pm)
"Imagine just how rare you are, over one hundred graduate degree offering colleges, and undergraduate offering colleges, and at least 50 students in, each times twenty "
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by hagheid (10.17.02 08:25 pm)
The members of Art Language ate fish fingers with a finesse borrowed from Gene Hackmans' digit(al) artistry.
Top buttons were uniformly fastened. Typeface selection caused weeks of angst. The endless rimming of their epistemological mentors removed freedom from their odourless party piece. Using this formulaic method of attaching credence to ones' 'aquired' ideas by association justified by droning out an endless chant of quotation after quotation ultimately militates against any diversity of imagery.
The seeds of their rhetoric is alarmingly evident within this parochial & tedious artspeak.
ga da goo bee brft mapa lalaa gestural feedoo barrr.
by hagheid (10.17.02 09:16 pm)
...one hand typing.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by ellepeach (10.17.02 09:19 pm)
or the sound or skullbrain flapping
Re:And critique my work, please
by frond (10.17.02 11:39 pm)
the painter of tight. $9,000? A steal!!!
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.18.02 12:51 am)
The Kinkades are quite efficient, are any of you working as the touched print painters? I would pay a pretty penny for one of them touched print paintings with out the print. I think that they are going to just need the signature from now on, until they slump like in 87.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.18.02 12:54 am)
You could take a router and cut a die for the signature and just put an art-o-graph on wheels set the pen in a clamp and let it sign 24/7! That's modernism.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by maxherman (10.18.02 01:00 am)
Boy is that Garden of Prayer ugly. If only people with $9k weren't so arrested and terrified. We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying—DHL
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by welchsonnyo (10.18.02 01:43 am)
YOu know the biggest insult I have had from the east coast, and not just that the area is a fly over area (Fkoffers think that) But one year after Karl Momen sent a tree to Utah bonniville Salt Flats ((( place of the land speed record) but that was good,) and you got to realize that the people here are cheapskates) they won't tip or do much for artistic creations, you have to squeeze it out of them like turnips squeeze out blood) But this lady artist from New York brought out a Man-hole form made of cement and punched holes in it (about 8 x 12 foot by 8" wall) as if we were not impressed with the anasazi indians and that idiot had to explain her culture to us! My golly I was in side one of them things as a kid working of construction, do you think we want to visit your stupid man hole sculpture when we could do better ourselves? Hye Get over your selves you aint all that!
The best compliment is:
by zip (10.18.02 02:37 am)
A) "Look at the detail on that!"
B) "I am deeply moved by the sureness of the hand and the clarity of vision. Hanky please."
c) "Must have taken you hours!"
D) "My snotnosed whelp could have done that."
E) "Lets eat!"
What Would Welchy Do?
by tagent (10.18.02 02:55 am)
www.pitt.edu/
Stay tuned, for the next exciting installment!
How IDEA art?
by mmuttt (10.18.02 10:26 am)
It struck me as funny, in the 20 th C., the age of logical positivism and Behaviorism and the collapse of the mind/body problem, that we have an art dance called Conceptual art or as it was early on called too, Idea Art. With scientific verification, technology and the loss of the 19th C. MIND to 20th C. Brain FACTS being the overiding themes how come no one asked what constitutes and Idea? Is this noumenal/phenomenal reality? Mental reality exclusively? And then how does the concretizing process alter the IDEA? Mudderfuker, I been had, now behave yourselves.
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by maxherman (10.18.02 11:47 am)
There's an eardrum bleedin'
Yeah it's in my head
How could I be so in love when I know
We been had
Re: Do Conceptualists have more freedom?
by thingsthatgo (10.18.02 12:07 pm)
You're in a sweet mood there recently mmutt—what gives?
Did you always have 3 t's I didn't notice? Sorry for the mispell, if, then!
There has been a bundle of interesting posts recently, not really artforum quality—some almost spoken (I wish the 'I gotta tell ya' would give a break though—still) still—mmuttt—you have to loose it before you can find it—no?
Those going about business and definitely not posting here haven't lost anything worth loosing—that's pretty clear.
So is the argument that those who don't post should loose something? Or is it another way?
Like the other older expressionist thread—you can agree or disagree and till the buffalo roam.
It becomes an issuer of agreement.
Hardly a point—
I can garner around the cloud that the conceptual is only a historical contextpixy.
Pixy, here, means in the palm of the slightest hand, 'small', put ’able in your pocket. It is something-magical—something-formula—pixie ears (cute).
Someone said I was two feet tall— what a beautiful thing to say—thanks.