The study interprets the meaning of abstract art, taking into consideration the phenomenological investigations of the Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden. In 1958, Ingarden drew attention to a ...specific method of the constitution of a non-representational, “abstract” image. In the framework of his theory, he focused on the necessity of the viewer turning away from the image while at the same time he defined the abstract image closely to that of decoration, which can be the cause of the image’s demise in the sense of a newly forming reality. Considering the works of art created at the time when Ingarden wrote his study, his concept can be elaborated and the meaning of the abstract image can be presented as leading the viewer beyond the image. The goal of this approach is the constitution of a consciousness of the image in the sense of a new perception of the present reality.
The sublime has been a baffling concept since its introduction by Longinus nearly two thousand years ago. What do we mean when we say something is sublime? This paper will attempt to answer that ...question by proposing a radical new theory of the sublime, examining the aesthetic experience called the sublime through the lens of the Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophical view of emptiness (Skt. śūnyatā). Drawing on Guy Sircello's work (1993), I critique traditional Western accounts of the sublime, with their explicit or implicit-but always problematic-commitments to epistemological and ontological transcendence. A brief summary of the Madhyamaka Buddhist view of emptiness, as elucidated in the Prajñāpāramitā literature, Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, and elsewhere, provides a context for examining the dialectic of the sublime and emptiness. I make the argument that the sublime experience is, in fact, an experience of emptiness. I conclude by surveying five years of the early work of visual artist Robert Rauschenberg, which express the open, clear, vivid, and unselfconscious space of emptiness in his approach to, and process of, artistic expression.
The apparent plaintiveness and autobiographical transparency of Should Love Come First?, and its early prominence in the then unknown Rauschenberg oeuvre, felt intensified by its obliteration by the ...artist himself. If ever an artwork had a story worth sleuthing, I figured it was this one, even if it was just the story of its own production.
Gregory Bateson observed that cybernetics is not essentially about "exchanging information across lines of discipline, but in discovering patterns common to many disciplines". This paper adopts his ...line of thought to join the dots between cybernetics and the philosophy of Existentialism, and then interconnect both with contemporary art. It demonstrates that while terminologies may differ, many of the three fields' primary concerns closely cohere. The world's most ground-breaking artists are found to apply and fuse cybernetic paradigms and Existentialist themes, from Robert Rauschenberg and Marina Abramović to Damien Hirst, Stelarc and Anish Kapoor. The research offers the first detailed comparison between cybernetics and Existentialism, and reveals surprising commonalities. Feedback loops, circular causality and negative entropy are not only central tenets of cybernetics, but also of Existentialism. Autonomy, autopoiesis and interactivity equally unite both fields, and each is visionary and forward looking in seeking radical change and transformations. Both explored artistic endeavours, with Existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus equally renowned for their powerful novels and plays as their philosophical works, while cybernetic art became a major phenomenon in the 1960s following the landmark exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity: the Computer in the Arts (1968), and influenced artistic practices thereafter.
Gregory Bateson observed that cybernetics is not essentially about "exchanging information across lines of discipline, but in discovering patterns common to many disciplines" (Bateson, 1971, p. 23). ...This paper adopts his line of thought to join the dots between cybernetics and the philosophy of Existentialism, and then interconnect both with contemporary art. It demonstrates that while terminologies may differ, many of the three fields' primary concerns closely cohere. The world's most ground-breaking artists are found to apply and fuse cybernetic paradigms and Existentialist themes, from Robert Rauschenberg and Marina Abramović to Damien Hirst, Stelarc and Anish Kapoor. The research offers the first detailed comparison between cybernetics and Existentialism, and reveals surprising commonalities. Feedback loops, circular causality and negative entropy are not only central tenets of cybernetics, but also of Existentialism. Autonomy, autopoiesis and interactivity equally unite both fields, and each is visionary and forward looking in seeking radical change and transformations. Both explored artistic endeavours, with Existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus equally renowned for their powerful novels and plays as their philosophical works, while cybernetic art became a major phenomenon in the 1960s following the landmark exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity: the Computer in the Arts (1968), and influenced artistic practices thereafter.
An illuminating exploration of the meaning of abstract
art by acclaimed art historian Kirk Varnedoe "What is
abstract art good for? What's the use-for us as individuals, or for
any society-of ...pictures of nothing, of paintings and sculptures or
prints or drawings that do not seem to show anything except
themselves?" In this invigorating account of abstract art since
Jackson Pollock, eminent art historian Kirk Varnedoe, the former
chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern
Art, asks these and other questions as he frankly confronts the
uncertainties we may have about the nonrepresentational art
produced in the past five decades. He makes a compelling argument
for its history and value, much as E. H. Gombrich tackled
representation fifty years ago in Art and Illusion ,
another landmark A. W. Mellon Lectures volume. Realizing that these
lectures might be his final work, Varnedoe conceived of them as a
statement of his faith in modern art and as the culminating example
of his lucidly pragmatic and philosophical approach to art history.
He delivered the lectures, edited and reproduced here with their
illustrations, to overflowing crowds at the National Gallery of Art
in Washington in the spring of 2003, just months before his death.
With brilliance, passion, and humor, Varnedoe addresses the
skeptical attitudes and misunderstandings that we often bring to
our experience of abstract art. Resisting grand generalizations, he
makes a deliberate and scholarly case for abstraction-showing us
that more than just pure looking is necessary to understand the
self-made symbolic language of abstract art. Proceeding decade by
decade, he brings alive the history and biography that inform the
art while also challenging the received wisdom about distinctions
between abstraction and representation, modernism and
postmodernism, and minimalism and pop. The result is a fascinating
and ultimately moving tour through a half century of abstract art,
concluding with an unforgettable description of one of Varnedoe's
favorite works. Please note: All images in this ebook are presented
in black and white and have been reduced in size.
This article examines the evolution of Soviet non-conformist artist Ilya Kabakov’s work to consider questions of influence and reception from within the U.S.S.R as well as in Europe and beyond. ...Komaromi compares Kabakov’s use of poor-quality objects (plokhie veshchi) and trash (musor) with the practices of Italian artists associated with Arte Povera to determine in what sense Kabakov produces a Soviet poor art. She further juxtaposes his approach to trash with the techniques of Robert Rauschenberg’s combines. While Rauschenberg’s combines present the resistant materiality of discrete objects, Kabakov’s trash ultimately invites consideration of the material context according to what Komaromi calls a syntax of reception. Audience responses to Kabakov’s works, including his famous installations with trash, speak to western and post-Soviet perceptions of Soviet and Russian identity, with implications also for how those audiences understand themselves.
Robert Rauschenberg Sara Sinclair, Peter Bearman, Mary Marshall Clark
08/2019
eBook
Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) was a breaker of boundaries and a consummate collaborator. He used silk-screen prints to reflect on American promise and failure, melded sculpture and painting in ...works called combines, and collaborated with engineers and scientists to challenge our thinking about art. Through collaborations with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and others, Rauschenberg bridged the music, dance, and visual-art worlds, inventing a new art for the last half of the twentieth century. Robert Rauschenberg is a work of collaborative oral biography that tells the story of one of the twentieth century's great artists through a series of interviews with key figures in his life-family, friends, former lovers, professional associates, studio assistants, and collaborators. The oral historian Sara Sinclair artfully puts the narrators' reminiscences in conversation, with a focus on the relationship between Rauschenberg's intense social life and his art. The book opens with a prologue by Rauschenberg's sister and then shifts to New York City's 1950s and '60s art scene, populated by the luminaries of abstract expressionism. It follows Rauschenberg's eventual move to Florida's Captiva Island and his trips across the globe, illuminating his inner life and its effect on his and others' art. The narrators share their views on Rauschenberg's work, explore the curatorial thinking behind exhibitions of his art, and reflect on the impact of the influx of money into the contemporary art market. Included are artists famous in their own right, such as Laurie Anderson and Brice Marden, as well as art-world insiders and lesser-known figures who were part of Rauschenberg's inner circle. Beyond considering Rauschenberg as an artist, this book reveals him as a man embedded in a series of art worlds over the course of a long and rich life, demonstrating the complex interaction of business and personal, public and private in the creation of great art.
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