Art and Meaninglessness

Medardo Rosso - image source.

The Guardian's Johnathan Jones wrote an article today called "Why the Best Art is Meaningless." In it he elaborates on his belief that once the concept or meaning of a work of art is made clear then, "what is left to say?" To Jones, "beauty is better than a big idea," going on to say, "Real art doesn't have a message, doesn't necessarily say anything."

It is interesting to read the comments on this post as well - poster BestoftheBest writes, "it's possibly the abstraction of a meaning or intention and the involvement this beckons, rather than the bleeding obvious, that nourishes. The veneer of meaningless is a bluff. But if there's nothing there, it evaporates pretty quickly." Another comment by shakinwilly reads, "Not meaningless but ambiguity is a characteristic of great art."

In undergrad I was frequently asked what are my "concepts" and even in grad school it was a very concept-driven program - I'm not saying these are bad things but the freedom of making art that doesn't have to push an idea is very appealing to me as an artist.

I have been having this constant quarrel in my mind about my next show - whether I should have a more defined concept or not. The statement I wrote for the upcoming issue of New American Paintings reads, "These images are a response to natural processes and the noticeably unnatural human habitat. They depict the effects of construction and destruction – each image functioning as a visual pause; a contrast in this persistent turbulence." I stress the visual image in this statement - perhaps more than a clear concept.

I personally agree with the sentiments of Jones and as it stands right now, my next show will be "about" ambiguity - with what Jones calls, "real art's difficulties."

A post at Learning to Stay blog called, "Why We Need Art" goes on to stress more than our desire for mystery but our need;

• "We now know enough to know that we will never know everything. This is why we need art: it teaches us to live with mystery. Only the artist can explore the ineffable without offering us an answer, for sometimes there is no answer. John Keats called this romantic impulse 'negative capability.' He said that certain poets, like Shakespeare, had 'the ability to remain in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after facts and reason.' Keats realized that just because something can't be solved, or reduced into the laws of physics, doesn't mean it isn't real. When we venture beyond the edge of our knowledge, all we have is art."

~ Jonah Lehrer, from Proust Was a Neuroscientist

Early Simeone

Suitcase 2003, Inkjet, 24x40 inches

A Chart with Peaks and Valleys 2005, Inkjet, 45x76 inches

Record Cover in a Flash (Air Supply) 2006 Inkjet, 28x28 inches.

I found these landscape variations by Early Simeone at Regina Hackett's Another Bouncing Ball blog, following a link discussing the worth/usefulness of a MFA degree at Freese. I think they relate to another post I was reading at Edward Winkleman's blog regarding pluralism in the visual arts and the age-old artist question of cohesiveness. As I see it, these three works are cohesive in that they all explore a similar topic through multiple visual avenues. I've posted about the concept of a 'body of work' vs more inconsistent/eclectic approaches to art making before - it is a frequent topic of discussion among artists. The topic inevitably returns to whether we are trying to develop a "style" or whether the stylistic similarities should be secondary to concepts or ideas. In my education, I approached most works with a series or show in mind - carefully considering how each would relate to the others formally. Of course formal cohesion can become a bore - as too much of anything can be in painting,interior design, fashion, film, etc. Over time I have been approaching individual works more individually, aiming for the tone and/or concepts to bring cohesion to the works.

Fake Ruins or Follies

Fake ruins, which can also be known as "follies" are buildings or parts of buildings that are constructed as ornamentation. The thought of building a structure purposefully in a state of ruin is intriguing. By taking the function out of the architecture it becomes more closely aligned with sculpture or even installation/land art. It also makes interesting comments on history, wealth, and the function of truth in art. Intentional impracticality is especially provocative in the current climate of economic uncertainty. I mean what could be more frivolous than building a giant castle that functions as a prop in your landscaping? Well, This could be more frivolous, but the concept of a folly is fascinating beyond the seeming absurdity. On a trip to Germany in 1999, I saw the estate called "Sans Souci" in Potsdam, where a fake ruin was placed in the distance to enhance the viewers experience on the grounds:

Sans Souci fake ruins, photo by Maureen Gallagher

I was reading about this particular folly in a review of Daniel Eisenberg's movie "Persistence". I have not seen the movie, but the review is very well written and brings up interesting insights into the film and the post-war German landscape. Jeffery Skoller writes, "Early in the film, we see images of Greek ruins on the grounds of the Sans Souci Castle on the outskirts of Berlin. These were built as ruins by Fredrick the Great in the eighteenth century, as his own personal History Machine, perhaps to contemplate his own place in time through the evocation of the signs of an imagined past. As a fake ruin, the monument becomes, in the film, a metaphor for the way in which objects are imbued with meaning and then used as fulcrums to understand relations between moments of time."

If we can't believe our ruins to be true than in a greater sense, we question the truth or realness of everything- including history and especially art. Art critic Clemet Greenburg said of Barnet Newman, "the truth of art lies for him, as for any genuinely ambitious artist, somewhat beyond what he knows he can do." In this sense, fake ruins could be an admission that presenting real truth may be beyond what one can create. I suppose there are a few ways of viewing this:

• "Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn't the dream destroy reality?”-George Moore
• "Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth"-Pablo Picasso

Pardon my philosophical meanderings. Maybe it is a matter of interpretation - that some of us see the dream trumping reality and some see the lie and what tells us about truth...

Paleo-Future

A lecture I attended on Thursday by contemporary artist Matthew Ritchie was thick with theories of physics, quantum mechanics, histories of the formation of the universe, and our perception of the future. Ritchie noted that in the war-era of the 20th century, leaders of nation-states and the great thinkers of that time had big ideas for monuments, ideal cities, and what the future will hold. One example he gave was the proposed monument Tatlin’s Tower - a grand monumental building envisioned and blueprinted by the Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin, but never built. It was supposed to be erected in Petrograd after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917;

Matthew Ritchie went on to say that after the destruction of two world wars, the proposed trajectory of ideal societies was lost and he quoted Samuel Beckett as saying, "To find a form that accomodates the mess that is the task of the artist now." At this point, Ritchie said Jackson Pollock captured the sythesis of creation and destruction through his so-called 'action paintings' of the late 40s/early 50s:

Ritchie asserts that the idealism that was lost at mid-century then led to the sarcastic, recontextualized and appropriated works of the later part of the 20th century that often recycled art of previous eras - pop art, and the work of Sherrie Levine being good examples:

Marcel DuChamp, "Fountain", 1917 and " Fountain (after Marcel Duchamp: A.P.)", by Sherrie Levine, 1991, bronze

Levine said, "I try to make art which celebrates doubt and uncertainty."

The 'doubt and uncertainty' that Levine ascribes to her work is especially evident in the barrage of doomsday global warming scenarios we currently see in the news every day:

and in popular media/film like Independence Day, Deep Impact, and The Day After Tomorrow.

Ritchie then assigned the role of art and artists is to show what is not yet known.

For more information and interesting/humorous predictions about the future check out an engaging blog called Paleo-Future; A Look into the Future that Never Was in which many of the visions of the future have been documented and well organized by decade.