Archie Rand - Part 8 Theories

There are two ways of art, neurosis (Ingres), that which focuses on the techniques and the correctness of drawings or communicative art (picasso).

Matisse and Picasso destroyed volumetric drawing. Without belief in volume, one could convey personality. Picasso was envious of Matisse cause Matisse could draw lines and convey humanity.

During the 1930’s Bridgman was famous for his gesture drawings. Beautifully sculpted for volume. Under him, figure drawing went from specific to architectural. 

Nicolaides, 1940’s. Figure drawing became more symbolic. He stressed the freedom of the human body in gesture drawings. This led to the blind contours of the 1960’s.

I have reached the dopey conclusion that the 20th century has seen 4 teachers who’ve changed the way we draw figures. 

The French started 2 dimensional recognition rather than belief. What is the difference between belief and recognition? A stop sign would be recognition, a sign showing a car wreck and carnage would be belief.

banksy

warhol

I have a problem with the concept of negative space. The live carves the object out of the space of the paper. It is a concept sprung from the western mind geared towards conquest and power. The Renaissance art and the use of negative space flourished under the Medicis, the family that killed and plundered Italy for unity. That is why the environment has been so ravaged by western culture. There is no care of negative space. In drawing everything contains information both positive and negative space.

We learned perspective this week in class. A visual language which has been developed specifically by western culture in basically France and Italy. The whole thing about perspective and the ideal of a hierarchy, the way shapes should appear in respect to each other it political… imperial French and Italians at the time were subjugating people left and right. It’s no surprise perspective was developed at the time of conquest and domination.

Jackson Pollock “Art requires new techniques and new techniques require new art”

Picasso “Art is the lie by which we convey the truth”.

My brother came up with a theory about the origins of perspective. Bayeaux Tapestries is a roll of tapestries about the battle of Hastings. It’s like a roll of toilet paper. It goes on forever. Anyways combat in those days was hand to hand, they used swords and axes. Then the battle of A. the English threatened to use the longbow. The contraption could shoot 1.5 miles. In that battle, the French lost 4000, the English 23. To depict the arrows,the artists could just represent (in scale) the space of 15.5 miles on this work by using perspective. 

There are two modes in artistry: the rendition and the subject matter. The problem with modern art today is that both the rendition and the subject are hysterical. There is no grounding for the viewers to respond. Van Gogh had a hysterical rendering of paint, yet he painted mundane subjects (French peasants and countryside, etc…) his paintings strike many as powerful. Poisson painted classically, but his subjects (Rape of Sabine Women) were hysterical. He is able to depict the hysterical gory scene in Roman History because his style is classical. Just like the Beatles singing Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. Maxwell is bludgeoning a teacher with a hammer yet the Beatles render the song so it allows it to be heard and accepted.

Religious painting, nobody likes it. Reform jews are ashamed, orthodox are offended, non jews have no use for it. 

Before the advent of photography, the body was portrayed as a mass. After photography, the depiction of the body became more symbolic.

They came up with concepts of aesthetics to counter the lack of belief.