Art and Style

 

            Take any Baroque composer--Bach, Buxtehude, Pachelbel, Vivaldi, doesn’t really matter--and then ask someone today who knows musical composition if they can construct an original piece in their Baroque style that’s about 10 minutes long.  They have free choice in terms of instruments and whether it’s a concerto, cantata, et cetera.

            Okay, so your musical acquaintance goes off to work and knocks out a beautiful and original work in the Baroque style.  My question: is it Art?

            This is the problem also in the visual arts.  You are sight-seeing in a city and come across a neighborhood with art galleries, and there in a window of one of them is a Cezanne-like painting.  I mean, it’s super-Cezanne, the artist enhanced colors and lines a bit to sharpen that style.  You might even say “wow!” 

            Then you think to yourself that this is someone who paints like Cezanne and does it very well.  But…is it Art?

            So presents the problem of style in the Arts.  I notice a distinctive style among many artists though most of them certainly belong to a particular era; i.e., Rembrandt was as much a part of his time as was Thomas de Keyser, although most of us like Rembrandt more.  While they each had a distinct style, it was a style of the time.

            And that’s just it, while Rembrandt may have imitated some of de Keyser’s style, he made it uniquely his own.  Nonetheless, today we recognize both artists within a particular time and place. 

            That brings us to the former issue.  You may be able to construct an original artwork in the style of an era that has passed, but is it really Art?  Everything to which the artists of that time responded has now passed, the technical innovations of their day are no longer the case.  That does not mean that the imitative work you made is “bad,” but I don’t think it is a work that dialogues with its generation.

            A painter today may paint like Jackson Pollock, or a sculptor may create a piece alike to Louise Nevelson, but they are extending a style more than they are creating a personal impression.  Granted, it will be their interpretation of Pollock or Nevelson, but it would be tough to separate the style from the original artists.

            Thus, artwork of the past does impact us today, it even inspires some to imitate those styles.  Nonetheless, we realize that they were part of their generation, and while there are time-less elements that impress us currently, those were birthed in the past.

           

 

Just for Fun, Not for Exhibition

 

Untitled; wood, 8" x 11" x 6"

     After viewing some sculptures in some WNY shows the past few years, I thought about purchasing one or two.  They were not that pricey, somewhere in the hundreds of dollars, locally-known sculptors created them, and, of course, I liked them.

    Still, having started out my university degree as a sculpture major, I figured why not give it a try myself?  Now, it's been decades since I tried my hand at it, and one of the reasons I switched to a painting major was simply because I enjoyed it more and was better at it.  

    So, with scrap wood and less than $12 in materials--voila!  The above construction was the result.  (I know, someone's thinking "Yep, with scrap wood and cheap material this is all you can get.")

    Now, the style does not follow what I engage in my 2-D art but that wasn't my aim.  I was thinking about the few non-representational sculptures I made back a long time ago, and how I might go about that now.  

    As it turns out, I like this better than those past works.  It looks like a model for some kind of monument though works fine as a small sculpture in the foyer of the house.  And except for this venue, I'll never exhibit this in an art show; it was strictly for fun and not for exhibition. 

    An enjoyable exercise!

 

A Limerick about the Import of Art

What is important about Art?   Is it the brain or is it the heart?   Is it psychological   or epistemological?   You’ll have to ask Jung or Descartes!

32nd WNY Regional Exhibition in Buffalo, NY

The Phantom of Liberty; mixed-media on panel, 36" x 24"

 

You never know if a judge will accept your art but when it happens for a large exhibit as this it affirms that there is at least one person who thinks what you're doing is up to par.  

Of course, that hardly means that those artworks that did not gain entry are not good enough, it just means that they weren't the juror's preference.

Anyway, glad that the juror, Tiffany Gaines, curator assistant of the Burchfield Penney Art Center, chose one of my entries, The Phantom of Liberty, for this regional show.  

It runs from October 13-November 10.  

On the Fringe Exhibition

 This poster says it all!  I forgot to post about the AAG July show at The Little Theater so didn't want to miss presenting the current exhibition.  My drawing is one of about 20 other artists, another good show.

The one caveat emptor is that the show is only accessible when there is an event at the MUCCC but as the Fringe Festival continues through for another month there will be plenty of them. 

 

 

Un Chien Andalou: Revolutionary or Revolting?

Depending upon the audience, Un Chien Andalou (1929) remains either as a revolutionary film or as a revolting work of Art.  What do you think?

Color as Attraction, Distraction, or Something Else?

 

             Color appeals to nearly all of us and I remember the days before color television.  I even recall my father discussing it at the dinner table concerning the attraction of color after which I thought: why bother?  B & W television was presenting the shows well enough to my satisfaction; although my reflection on it was that of a little boy, I simply didn’t see the need for color tv.  It was not because I did not like color or that I thought that B & W was better, but it was more that I thought the latter was enough.

            Is this the reason I don’t use much color, if at all, in my drawings?  No.  The main reason is that I don’t see the need for color as the content works well with black, white, and gray.  It’s not that it’s “enough” but that it is appropriate, whereas if I added color in some of my drawings this would be a mere paint-over, as it were.  It really would not add much and might even be distracting.  Now that I think about it in terms of television or movies, maybe my drawing is more film noir than it is technicolor.  If one person is correct that my drawings fall into the category of “dystopian surrealism” (Rachel Gould in this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV0tbVb4Hxg), then I suppose that the lack of color makes more sense.

            In the future, I wouldn’t be surprised if I employed color more though it likely would never be just for the inclusion of color for its own sake.  Instead, I would hope that it enhanced the drawing.  At least, I would hope that would be the reason; otherwise, it would just be the color-book effect wherein the drawing becomes a vehicle for use of color instead of the color supporting the composition and whatever thought the imagery presented.

            So, currently, color in my drawings might be more of a distraction than an attraction.  Yes, there are a few of my drawings that have color but it’s working more as black, white, and gray; I don’t think the color in those drawings really pops out at the viewer. 

Made in NY 2023

The jurors for the 2023 Made in NY exhibit selected one of my two entries, The Industrial Revolution.  This is my third version of this concept, using a double-portrait in the top section and a graph of the prolate cycloid involving railroad wheels and track.

With 480 artworks in front of them, judges Kevin Larmon, Theda Sandiford, and Gary Sczerbaniewicz had a lot of work to do, eventually paring it down and accepting 81 artworks.

It’s been a while since I was in a MiNY show, 2019.  And yet, this is my fourth time out of eight tries that I gained entry so that’s not bad, really.

MiNY is held at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center annually in Auburn, NY and will be open to the public from March 25 to May 28.  Admission is $10 per person, I believe children under 12 are free.

You can read more about it here: https://schweinfurthartcenter.org/made-in-ny-2023/.