Category: Extra thoughts

For my work in Constellation I’ve had to read a number of artists journals and manifestos. I have done so dutifully and tried to meet them on their own terms. But now I want to give my thoughts on the writing we have to read as writing rather than just theory. I know this is taboo-breaking. You’re not meant to say that your high-school English text is badly written. Just talk about the themes it contains. But I give my reverence to God and God alone. All things should be critiquable.

Including the writing of artists who should have stuck to making art and the art courses that make us read their work.

Forgive me if I let my emotions run away with me here. But I have exerted a great deal of effort doing the minimum amount of required reading and writing for Constellation. So, I feel I should be able to give my honest opinions about the work.

Besides. We are here to engage with 20^th century art critically, not to venerate it. I see no reason why this should not apply to the artists and critics writings or the course as a whole.

It seems to me that the ‘After Modernism‘ module is at least as interested in teaching us about art theory as it is about art works, or art history.

I can’t say I find art theory that interesting, but that is not the problem. My complaint is just how dense and inaccessible the subject is, and just how silly the whole art theory scene is.

I have had to read manifestoes and journals for four different art movements so far, and it seems that with each new one they get harder and harder to read.

I find myself asking “who was this written for?” It can’t be written for the layman. The text is too dense, too conceptual, and the vocabulary is too obtuse. I have been tested and found to have a larger than normal vocabulary. So, when I need to constantly check words for their meaning or context your work will be impenetrable to the average reader. So, far from advertising the work, it would put potential fans off.

“Is it then for other artists?”. I have a hard time believing it. The prose is so dry and academic that, I at least, can’t imagine being fired up to create after reading this stuff. Plus, the rules and concepts are put forward in a very obtuse and roundabout fashion. If you could figure out how to make Pop Art from just reading Pop Art journals without having seen any pop art, I’d be very surprised. Seeing the art in action trumps reading the theory behind it 11 out of 10 times.

So as far as I can tell, these think-pieces are written solely for artistic journals and opinion pages. Sacred texts written only for the initiated. It is certainly as dense as theology, and about as accessible to a nonbeliever.

So, what do I benefit from reading all of these self-gratifying journals that only seem to be tangentially related to making art? It doesn’t make me appreciate the art more. And even if it did, I tend to see any work of art that needs supplementary material to be understood as a failure

“Have you ever seen a movie that you needed to stop watching every five minutes to read up on what is happening? Apart from Dune!?” – Noah “The Spoony One” Antwiler. (The Spoony Experiment, 2013).

Nor does it even give much context as to why the art came into being. I find historical accounts like the ones on the Tate website do that better and in a shorter amount of time.

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Now that I have explained why these things don’t feel relevant to me. Let me get into why I dislike them so much.

I have, I am sad to say, read all of Robert Morris’s manifesto on minimalism. And I can say without any doubt it is the second worst thing I have ever read.

The only thing that beats it is the Harry Potter fanfiction “My Immortal”, which is often put forward as the worst work of fiction ever written (I certainly think it is).

The fact that this is considered good enough to be required reading leaves me flabbergasted. If this were an essay and I was asked to mark it, I’d have to fail it. I barely know how to write, being almost completely self-taught, but even I can write better than this.

First let’s talk about the prose. I’ve mentioned art theory pieces tend to be overwritten and obtuse. But this goes above and beyond. It barely qualifies as English. It reminds me of my one attempt to read “A Critique of Pure Reason” by Immanuel Kant. Kant and other philosophers speak in their own academic language. One that requires a constant juggling act of ideas and meanings. If you tried to read the text plainly it will come across as gibberish. You need to think of every word in its purest form, devoid of connotations, and then add in any personal definitions or qualifiers the philosopher has added on. In that respect philosophy is almost like a separate language. And Morris has chosen to write in philosophy rather than English.

Again, I must ask “Who Is This Written for?”. It’s not written for philosophers. It’s not written for artists, many of whom, even college educated ones, cannot read at this level. And it is now definitely not written for the man on the street (Pretty ironic considering so many of these late 20^th-century artists were trying to “Give art back to the people”).

I know it does not need to be written this way. You don’t need to say, “A work not consisting of impersonal construction will psychologically infer associations towards the surface imperfections rather than the collected and full idea”, when you could say “We prefer premade materials, so people don’t get caught up in the fine details instead of looking at the whole thing”. Who is Morris trying to impress here?

There is a reason why philosophy tends to be written this way. It is the study of ideas in their purest form. It is a science, even if not an exact one. If you put limits on how people like Kant and Sartre talk it will hamper their ability to do their job and to exchange ideas with other philosophers. Books like “A Critique of Pure Reason” and “A Treaties on Human Nature” are not written for the common man. They are written for other philosophers, just as science journals are written for other scientists. Physicists need their own speak to convey their more complex ideas to each other and so do philosophers.

But Robert Morris is not a philosopher. He has nothing to gain, and nothing to prove by pretending to be one. He is an artist, he can only prove himself via his art.

I have looked up videos of Robert Morris being interviewed or lecturing. He does not talk this way in real life. He comes across as a fairly grounded and normal, if intelligent guy. The fact he can talk like a normal person only makes this reading extra infuriating.

Now I’ve explained why the text is so redundant let’s go into why it’s bad on a technical level.

In the 10 pages I was given to read Morris almost never uses line breaks, and the first half has no paragraph breaks whatsoever. It reads like a brick of text written by an angry 12-year-old on Youtube. This is not acceptable for an apparently college educated man. When you add this to the denseness of Morris’s writing the journal becomes borderline unreadable.

It took me 10 hours to read the whole thing. In the time it took me to read 10 pages I could have watched the original Star Wars trilogy and started on the prequels. It was one of the most painful reading experiences of my life. And I am told that future manifestoes get even denser and more philosophical. Suicide is painless, right?

Forgive me for asking, but I must know. Why are we reading texts that we would be admonished for writing?

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There seems to be an idea that the more inaccessible a work is, the smarter it is, and the better it is. This applies to critical writing, to fiction, to fine art, and it has even bled into cinema. 2010’s Inception has gained a massive fan base purely on making a concept extremely obtuse when the anime Paprika, explained similar ideas in seconds.

The whole thing smacks of elitism. The idea that if the common people can’t understand this but you can (or at least claim you can) that makes the work better. That you are now part of a small club who “get” it, and you feel smarter for it.

I would like to go back in time and find the first person who had this sentiment and shove a pineapple up his ass.

Just because a work is accessible or has broad appeal doesn’t make it bad! The most highly praised film of all time is Hitchcock’s Vertigo. A Gothic drama about obsession and control. I liked it as a child, even if I didn’t get everything about it. And of course, I appreciated more as an adult. But the fact I was able to enjoy it just as a suspense movie doesn’t make it less of a film. The same can be said for things like Shakespeare, Homer, Beethoven, the Portal games, and The Simpsons.

These are all enjoyed by millions of people across the globe. And if you really think that that makes them worse then I can’t understand your mindset.

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The sad part is I like Robert Morris as an artist. I still like him as an artist. His works strike me as clever, warm, sombre, curious, and very human. He has an experimental, playful mind that is a tool of great happiness. Happiness that comes across in both his art and in interviews.

But now I’ve read his writings, the knowledge of how terrible they are will always be in the back of my head. And that’s depressing.

The hard part for me criticising Minimalism as part of this course is that I am already a fan. Have been since I first saw a photograph of a Carl Andre sculpture back in 2011. I now own Alistair Rider’s massive book about Andre. I also own James Meyer’s book on Minimalism and have read it cover to cover. I almost cried with Joy the first time I saw a Donald Judd Sculpture in person. I went to London just to see an exhibition of the paintings of Agnes Martin. Dan Flavin has actually influenced art that I have made and put on display.

I don’t think I can be objective in analysing the art here.

So what can I say? I could talk about the ideas behind the movement and the drama it inspired. I probably will. But I honestly find it far less interesting than the art itself. I could also talk the influence Minimalism has had. But again, I would probably end up just fanboying about it.

It seems strange to me that Greenberg and the Minimalists hated each other. To the casual observer modernist and minimalist art would probably look very similar. More to the point both seemed very interested in reducing things to their simplest and purest forms they had very different ideas about the use of paint or what the shape of a painting should be but honestly to me these feel like trivial details, not worth getting furious over.

It honestly seems to me that the history of 20^th-century art is a lot of overeducated people writing absurd and near impenetrable manifestoes of art theory at a public never reads and is happier for not having read.

Said writers then see their parameters for art as gospel and spend the rest of their lives feuding with each other over whose idea is better. And I am sad to say that reading up on these things it seems that the arguments between these artists and art critics had all the dignity and nuance as two people having a Twitter feud today. Apparently people have always been this stupid. It’s just easier to see now.

Many of these theorists thought that they would reinvent art forever. That history would end with them. That there would be no innovation or experimentation after them because they had figured out the perfect formula for art to follow. None of them ever have and I suspect no one ever will. Art is too big a subject to be contained by one theory of how it should be done.

So when the dust settles the only question really worth asking is if these art theories ended up producing good work. Work that has enriched the art world and added to the cultural lexicon.

In the case of minimalism, I’m going to say, yes. Again, this might be my bias showing. The work still seems to cause puzzlement and anger in people who see it. But I at least know that I like it. And I think it has really added to our culture.

I don’t know what it says about me that I liked Minimalist art as soon as I saw it. But I do like things that are simple and still. Like water in the pond, the moon at night, or stones worn smooth by the sea. I also like quiet (at least when I’m not listening to rock music). I like video games with no dialogue, white noise music, or just experiencing things through touch. I once spent a few days at a monastery with no computer and just a few books. While I found it hard going this quiet space was in many ways one of the happiest experiences of my life.

It may not be a very analytical argument, but I get something very similar out of minimalist art. It’s peaceful, and its playful. When you are small there is a large amount of joy to be gotten out of just playing with stones. Putting them in orders of size or colour or just trying to stack them up. There’s no intellectual aspect to this play it’s just fun to experience things being themselves. And that’s what minimalist art is to me. The quiet joy of well-defined shapes just being themselves. I get this particularly out of Carl Andre, Frank Stella, and Robert Morris as art. I get a more sombre but still pleasant calm out of Agnes Martin’s paintings. Ellsworth Kelly’s 3D paintings seem rather joyful and silly, probably due to the bright colours. But it’s a playfulness and humour that I can get behind. Minimalism doesn’t need to be Zen.

I do enjoy Donald Judd’s work. But I’m not totally sure why. For the one who was most insistent on purity his works seem to be the most aggressive and experimental. They also somehow feel more serious. For lack of a better term I will call his work mystical. It seems to suggest to me strange and fantastic new worlds. The fact that I enjoy video games with minimalist ascetics probably comes into this. I hope that if Judd could have lived to see videogames like Minecraft, Race the Sun, and Kairo he would have been pleased with the legacy of his movement.

The one minimalist that I can’t stand is Robert Ryman. I draw the line at a painting that might as well be blank. This suggests no mood nor gives any emotion, it feels like a waste of canvas. And when he does make his brushstrokes visible or tries to experiment with white on white it just looks ugly. If there is any emotion to it at all it feels harsh and salty. Robert Ryman is probably my least favourite fine artist. Pretty ironic considering how much I love the rest of the minimalists.

If nothing else I guess it shows how banal we think of white as the colour. He Yves Klein did similar things with the colour blue and I like his stuff.

The one I respect the most is Dan Flavin. I grew up with coloured lights displays for people with autism, and I still enjoy them now. Flavin’s work with multicoloured lights feels remarkably similar. It certainly triggers the same emotions in me. One is of joy and wonder at seeing colour in its strongest and most beautiful form. Both even feel magical to me. Like I’m in my childhood dreams again. So with Flavin there is a lot of nostalgia involved. But I feel certain even if I’d never had sensory toys as a child I’d still love his work, this is nature not nurture at work. It fills me with pure unobstructed emotion, which I think is what Donald Judd and his friends were trying to inspire.

And while I have no evidence to support this I have to wonder if Flavin’s work may have inspired the sensory art style that I love. It certainly didn’t pre-exist him. So I might owe him a great debt of gratitude for enriching my life long before I even knew of him.

“It’s hard to say I’d rather be awake when I’m asleep, because my dreams are bursting at the seams”

Fireflies – Owl City

While I said I didn’t want this to turn into fanboying. I’d like to point out that minimalism has entered the popular lexicon as a concept. We think of it in music, in design, and even in food. Minimalist interior design is often used to make a dignified environment. Minimalist style is often used in animation and illustration. Videogames have based their whole look on minimalism. I believe it was a big influence on the look of one of the most celebrated videogames of all time, Halo: Combat Evolved.

Donald Judd understood that minimalism was not the final word in the story of art. (Which is refreshing compared to his contemporaries) he knew his movement would come and go and didn’t try to claim it has been totally separate and superior to everything else that had come before it. He seemed like a fairly spiritual down-to-earth guy who just wanted to find simplicity inside himself. And I admire that humility within him. Minimalist art as he defined it is dead. But the ideas of it has bled out into the wider world. And hopefully all across the world many people have a greater appreciation for things that are simple, pure, and quiet. Thanks to the work of him and his fellow minimalists. If even one person has a better appreciation for simple still things that’s a good thing.

But to have given so many people so many chances to see what he saw and hopefully enrich many lives, even ones who have never heard of the minimalist art movement.

If that is not a resounding victory for an art movement, I don’t know what is.

My Thoughts on Fluxus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYo3wF_g-84

Okay. That’s a little harsh. I can’t say I feel negatively towards Fluxism. But I imagine most people would have the above reaction if you showed them a fluxus artwork with no context.

And I do feel that Fluxus was something of a mistake. But a good one. The kind you are wiser and no worse off for having made. Like having ordered the wrong meal but getting to try a new weird meal. If nothing else you’ve broadened your horizons and now have a better idea of what food is and isn’t good.

I really don’t know what I can say about Fluxus art as most of it seemed to take place “In the moment. I can talk about the theory of it though.

In “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”. Edward Cullen Kylo Ren says to Rey that they should “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to”. He suggests that rather than joining the Jedi/rebellion or Sith/Empire they should form a new faction that isn’t good or evil. He doesn’t seem to have any plan or solid idea of what this third faction would do, how it would gain members, or what it would champion. Just that it would be different from all the stuff that came before it. Much the same I feel can be said for the Fluxists.

In the Fluxus manifestos the fathers name a long list of enemies including traditional 2D art, traditional sculpture, abstract art, minimal art, Classical music, traditionally beautiful art, pop art, representative art, classical poetry and theatre, Cinema and pop music, and Narrative art.

This really does beg the question. When you’ve thrown all of that into the shredder what else is left?

Well the Fluxists do admit very reluctantly to having some forbears.  Dick Higgins talks about the connections Fluxus has with Futurism, Dada, Marcel Duchamp, Surrealism, and John Cage, with the same reluctance that a proud ten-year-old might admit that the rest of the team helped him win the football match.

I can understand why. The Futurists and the Dadaists also wanted to burn everything that was old down and throw it all away. Without even comparing their art, this fact makes the Fluxists seem derivative and horribly late to the party. Almost comical.

Fluxus theory has fallen at the first hurdle in that it is trying to be new and original in a very old and unoriginal way. So how does the art stand up?

It’s weird. Maybe not as weird as it would like to be. But even as an experienced fan of fine art I have no idea what I am supposed to get out of, or take away from this. And I imagine to the layman and laywoman it would probably just feel like a mistake.

When I watched the Black & White Fluxus short film ‘The Sun in Your Head’ It just felt like a series of unrelated images only head together by the style in which they were shown. It had no real themes or motifs. And it didn’t make me think about or feel anything. Not even boredom. It did make me reflect on the narratively abstract films of people like Jorden Belson, Jan Svankmajer, and Lawrence Jordan. Lawrence Jordan’s collage films have no story. And are also just images. But He uses certain types of images, music and slow animation to make a mood of sadness, wonder, and nostalgia. ‘The Sun in your Head’ has no style and thus no mood.

I had a similar reaction to ‘In Memoriam to Adriano Olivetti’, The musical act made using things like typewriters and cash registers as instruments. It’s novel to be sure. It totally breaks the rules of how music works and is supposed to be. And it does still sound like music. But once the novelty wears off it’s not that interesting. I doubt anyone has it on their music playlist.

What it did make me think about was how Paul McCartney and John Lennon would break the rules of how pop and rock music were meant to work and sound all the time, and every time they did they not only made their music better, but often helped form new genres and subgenres. They weren’t as rebellious as the Fluxists. But they changed music completely in the ten years they worked together. A much greater feat.

As for the rest of the Fluxus art works I’ve seen? Most of it seems to be live events or “happenings”, which are extremely hard to judge without video footage. But from what I’ve seen they feel more like live Monty Python Sketches played dead straight than real art works.

The made objects like a piano full of nails, or a chair covered in a huge chunk of fat just feel like Dada. But without any of Jean Arp’s strange beauty or Duchamp’s self-mocking humour. It isn’t much weirder than Dada, or notably different. But it doesn’t feel as fun.

Though it does perhaps feel purified.

Dada would sometimes take ideas and techniques from the old art world. Fluxus never does. Dada art can be beautiful. Fluxus art is mostly ugly. It’s quite ridged in that sense. But you do have to admire how dedicated they were in that regard.

In closing. The Fluxists set some very tight limits on what they were aloud to make. The idea that the stuff they were making would replace classical art is absurd. It just doesn’t have the appeal to even compete, let alone replace. But working with limits isn’t always a bad thing. A child playing with sand and a few stones at the beach has very severe limits on what he can make.  But that doesn’t stop him from making whole words of adventure and fantasy with his stones and sand.

I get the same feeling from the Fluxus artists. One of playfulness. Doing whatever strange things you can with what little you have. And it’s that same spirit of creativity and experimentation that gave us things like the surrealist paintings of Dali or the music of the Beatles. So maybe you can look at fluxus art is almost a tribute to that spirit of creativity that pushes art forwards. The art might feel like a mistake. But the heart behind it is not. And that is beautiful.