This is the post originally from www.Henrimag.com our other publication!
It's been a slow news week in the Art World - so I've been ruminating on Postmodernism and it's affects on abstract painting. I think it boils down to 2 distinct types.
They sometimes overlap but their origins lie in Abstract Expressionism's split into Pop and Minimalism. This is the great fork in the road at the end of Modernist abstraction. The Pop side is what I call the Lens Based – Computer Driven group, the Minimalist side is Material Based – Technique Driven. Lens Based Computer Driven abstraction is defined by collaged space, media reproduction and system delineation. A few of the artists who practice this form of Postmodern Abstraction are Frank Stella, David Reed, David Salle, Shirley Kaneda, Matthew Richie and Fabian Marcaccio. For this group the computer is important to organization, reproduction and fabrication of the final model. These artists either use or employ techniques of organization or understanding that model their visual interactions on electronic media's broadcasting saturation and programming. Basically it is a type of composition allowed through a hyper-collage – a systematic visual dump. The employment of systems organizations or contextual interpretation is imperative to understanding this type of work.
The Minimalist side is the Material Based Technique Driven group which is defined by surface/support issues, painterly techniques and cartographic assimilation. Some artists connected with this form of Postmodernism are Brice Marden, Sean Scully, Terry Winters, Carroll Dunham, Ross Bleckner and Phillip Taaffe. Here we see the historical model as a basis for continuation. Materiality of paint, surface, support and grid are imperative to the operation of these paintings. Composition is all-over related to High Modernism's grid. The techniques of standard painting are emphasized as subject and content of the work. It is basically a handmade operation aping the space of lens based reproduction - isolation and flatness. A mapping of space or implications of spatial connectiveness are freely elucidated - like a bulletin board - and this is important to the understanding of the work. This cartography is used to obtain a kind of simplification and examination of the painting subject and ground . It is a reductive form rather than an additive one. It demands a poetic interpretation of subject and ground rather than a schematic one of program and sequence.
For both of these groups the use of historical perspectives are the basis for their interpretation of visual experience and this remains tied to the use of reproductions and the lens.
This split in POMO is really where I've begun to concentrate. I prefer to think of this as the Gordian Knot of abstraction. The point now is to untie it. Both of these forms of abstraction are reactionary and mannered. They rely on previous forms and ideas in order to make paintings - these works do not come out of lived experience but out of perceived experience. Of particular note in this precedential mannerism are the punning forms of Bleckner and Taaffe and the over indulgence in materials of Winters and Scully. These artists remain tied to the visual precepts of a generation lost to the success of american type abstraction. What we need is a more personal involvement in defining how we understand, how we see and how we might translate this vision into painting. I think that we must - like Matisse and Picasso - find a way to abstract our humanity. What is an encounter with another human or landscape, what does it look like at this time?
With lenses everywhere mediating how we see one another - how do we actually see - I can elucidate. The lens is specific in the things it picks up and the ways it parcels space. It is governed by a certain flatness that demands sharp angles and broad planes to define forms. It skews reality in ways that we do not actually see in real life. An arm closer to the lens is huge in comparison to the shoulder that it's attached to, and the arc of that measuring is visually fast so that a ballooning effect happens. What is close is huge - what is behind is flat. That is why plastic surgery is used in Hollywood. It's not for us in the real world, but it is for the camera - it is how reality is reformed to make sense in the lens. A bent or bulbous nose can balloon in many ways through the lens - but a straight and aquiline nose recesses nicely. We make ourselves over for the lens. This is but one example of lens hegemony that has infiltrated all interactions in our lives - how we conduct business, how we obtain and generate information, even how we look into our own bodies - it has become necessary to define a new theoretical base of visual understanding.
End of part 1....
They sometimes overlap but their origins lie in Abstract Expressionism's split into Pop and Minimalism. This is the great fork in the road at the end of Modernist abstraction. The Pop side is what I call the Lens Based – Computer Driven group, the Minimalist side is Material Based – Technique Driven. Lens Based Computer Driven abstraction is defined by collaged space, media reproduction and system delineation. A few of the artists who practice this form of Postmodern Abstraction are Frank Stella, David Reed, David Salle, Shirley Kaneda, Matthew Richie and Fabian Marcaccio. For this group the computer is important to organization, reproduction and fabrication of the final model. These artists either use or employ techniques of organization or understanding that model their visual interactions on electronic media's broadcasting saturation and programming. Basically it is a type of composition allowed through a hyper-collage – a systematic visual dump. The employment of systems organizations or contextual interpretation is imperative to understanding this type of work.
The Minimalist side is the Material Based Technique Driven group which is defined by surface/support issues, painterly techniques and cartographic assimilation. Some artists connected with this form of Postmodernism are Brice Marden, Sean Scully, Terry Winters, Carroll Dunham, Ross Bleckner and Phillip Taaffe. Here we see the historical model as a basis for continuation. Materiality of paint, surface, support and grid are imperative to the operation of these paintings. Composition is all-over related to High Modernism's grid. The techniques of standard painting are emphasized as subject and content of the work. It is basically a handmade operation aping the space of lens based reproduction - isolation and flatness. A mapping of space or implications of spatial connectiveness are freely elucidated - like a bulletin board - and this is important to the understanding of the work. This cartography is used to obtain a kind of simplification and examination of the painting subject and ground . It is a reductive form rather than an additive one. It demands a poetic interpretation of subject and ground rather than a schematic one of program and sequence.
For both of these groups the use of historical perspectives are the basis for their interpretation of visual experience and this remains tied to the use of reproductions and the lens.
This split in POMO is really where I've begun to concentrate. I prefer to think of this as the Gordian Knot of abstraction. The point now is to untie it. Both of these forms of abstraction are reactionary and mannered. They rely on previous forms and ideas in order to make paintings - these works do not come out of lived experience but out of perceived experience. Of particular note in this precedential mannerism are the punning forms of Bleckner and Taaffe and the over indulgence in materials of Winters and Scully. These artists remain tied to the visual precepts of a generation lost to the success of american type abstraction. What we need is a more personal involvement in defining how we understand, how we see and how we might translate this vision into painting. I think that we must - like Matisse and Picasso - find a way to abstract our humanity. What is an encounter with another human or landscape, what does it look like at this time?
With lenses everywhere mediating how we see one another - how do we actually see - I can elucidate. The lens is specific in the things it picks up and the ways it parcels space. It is governed by a certain flatness that demands sharp angles and broad planes to define forms. It skews reality in ways that we do not actually see in real life. An arm closer to the lens is huge in comparison to the shoulder that it's attached to, and the arc of that measuring is visually fast so that a ballooning effect happens. What is close is huge - what is behind is flat. That is why plastic surgery is used in Hollywood. It's not for us in the real world, but it is for the camera - it is how reality is reformed to make sense in the lens. A bent or bulbous nose can balloon in many ways through the lens - but a straight and aquiline nose recesses nicely. We make ourselves over for the lens. This is but one example of lens hegemony that has infiltrated all interactions in our lives - how we conduct business, how we obtain and generate information, even how we look into our own bodies - it has become necessary to define a new theoretical base of visual understanding.
End of part 1....
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