The Great Art Debate

[bobo the clown]

Horseshit

Thanks Bobo. I'm strangely pleased to see you confirm the feelings I guessed I had about that tosser Mondrian. And the rest of the post was interesting too.

In the spirit of trying to thrash out an understanding... what does Horseshit really mean: to 'cut things down to basics' or 'the bare essentials'. Which sort of horses are we talking about, Roan, piebald, Shetland ponies?

In all seriousness, what effect on my feelings would turning horseshit through different rotations have? Do we have the technology, Bobo?! Maybe it would have a different effect on the 'rhythm' of the shit (is that a meaningful question?!), especially given that we instinctively smell things in a certain way (not deeply sniffing horseshit for example ).

Mondrian has now joined Rothko on my Horseshit List of Artists to Avoid.

It was the most I could say on the subject.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

It was the most I could say on the subject.

[Prufrock]

What the feck is going on with the spellcheck/quoting lark. I'm pretty sure Crayon's doesn't think the Romanians invented the straight line!

And, if he did, I certainly don't think thebish would have let him get away with saying it

ahh - very clever Pru - criticise someone's spelling under the cover of suggesting you are surprised I didn't....

I wasn't doing that at all. Someone suggested the other day some sort of internal TW spellchecker was autocorrecting people's posts substituting bizzare words for the word meant. I thought that might have happened here. Turns out it was Crayons' own spellchecker autocorrecting. More ammo for Bobo.

[William the White]

Thanks Bish. I'm strangely pleased to see you confirm the feelings I guessed he had about he time he was painting. And the rest of the post was interesting.

In the spirit of trying to thrash out an understanding... what does it mean to 'cut things down to basics' or 'the bare essentials'. What are straight horizontal and vertical lines, primary colours, white space and rectangles the 'basics' of.

I suspect there is something to do with Theosophy going on here - which I can't pretend to grasp... but - my guess is that he viewed lines and colour as the irreducible stuff at his disposal as a painter..

primary colours - not mixed or blended - straight lines - the simplest form a line can take??

Rietveld did summat very similar with furniture..

I don't respond to Mondrian's work with anything more profound than curiosity - I don't find beauty, feeling, revelation, power. It leaves me cold, barely affected.

But I'd really like to own that chair...

[bobo the clown]

Own ?

Isn't property theft Bill ?

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Own ?

Isn't property theft Bill ?

If he owned it, Theft would be the right word - as it belongs to the Museum of Modern Art.

PS. The chair was designed and built in 1917. It was painted the colours it now is as an afterthought in 1923. That means the original chair has been vandalised!

[William the White]

Own ?

Isn't property theft Bill ?

Surprised you are a fan of Proudhon, bobo...

[William the White]

Own ?

Isn't property theft Bill ?

If he owned it, Theft would be the right word - as it belongs to the Museum of Modern Art.

PS. The chair was designed and built in 1917. It was painted the colours it now is as an afterthought in 1923. That means the original chair has been vandalised!

Not at all, often second, third and, even, fourth thoughts are better than the first...

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

[

It was you who started to talk about non man-made things - which I assumed to be "nature". If you didn't mean that was "simple" - then I don't know why you drifted off down that path!

I've forgotten myself, now. I think my appetite for the discussion is waning.

All I was saying that I was not trying to equate nature with simplicity. My question was, what does it mean to say that a straight line is 'simpler' than all the other not quite straight lines we see in in nature, when such care has to go into making one?

Maybe the process has nothing to do with how simple the end result is and I did go off on a frolic, but i am now bored of the question.

And that chair is fecking horrible.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Own ?

Isn't property theft Bill ?

If he owned it, Theft would be the right word - as it belongs to the Museum of Modern Art.

PS. The chair was designed and built in 1917. It was painted the colours it now is as an afterthought in 1923. That means the original chair has been vandalised!

Not at all, often second, third and, even, fourth thoughts are better than the first...

To other people, yes. But to the artist, no.
Carl Andre wasn't best pleased when somebody took one of his bricks for a walk around the gallery on a leash (I knew the nutter who did that: the bloke who walked the brick, not the bloke who 'made' the pile).

[thebish]

Own ?

Isn't property theft Bill ?

If he owned it, Theft would be the right word - as it belongs to the Museum of Modern Art.

PS. The chair was designed and built in 1917. It was painted the colours it now is as an afterthought in 1923. That means the original chair has been vandalised!

Not at all, often second, third and, even, fourth thoughts are better than the first...

To other people, yes. But to the artist, no.
Carl Andre wasn't best pleased when somebody took one of his bricks for a walk around the gallery on a leash (I knew the nutter who did that: the bloke who walked the brick, not the bloke who 'made' the pile).

I'm not 100% sure you're right...

there were at least 2 chairs of the same design

first chair - unpainted - later painted black by Rietveld himself
second chair - a new one - the one i pictured above - in red/black and yellow (thinner wood than the first chair - not the same chair)

both chairs - at each stage - the work was done by Rietveld himself - as far as I know, nobody else repainted his chairs.

can an artist vandalise his own work?? How is an artist adapting his own work anything like a bloke fannying about with someone else's work?

[thebish]

All I was saying that I was not trying to equate nature with simplicity. My question was, what does it mean to say that a straight line is 'simpler' than all the other not quite straight lines we see in in nature, when such care has to go into making one?

Maybe the process has nothing to do with how simple the end result is and I did go off on a frolic, but i am now bored of the question.

pah! on one thread you castigate me for not engaging with your veiled questions about summat I post - and on this one - you ask questions that I try to answer and you declare yourself bored with your own questions!! pah!!

I wasn't saying anything particularly profound - merely this - my guess as to why mondrian thought straight horizontal/vertical lines were "basic"...

his lines are either horizontal or vertical - and they are straight. For the artist - not much to play with there other than positioning, length and thickness - once you have decided that - there is no other choice - a straight line is predetermined - you have no choice as to where it goes next...

had he allowed himself curves - then that introduces infinite complexity - a curve can go anywhere it likes - it is not rigidly restricted... it can bend to the left or the right - overlap itself - bend back on itself...

that was all - in that sense - a straight line is more basic and simpler - in the sense that there are less options, less variations... I don't know if that's what Mondrian thought - that's my guess... just like the colours being primary colours - and thus in one sense irreducible...

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Own ?

Isn't property theft Bill ?

If he owned it, Theft would be the right word - as it belongs to the Museum of Modern Art.

PS. The chair was designed and built in 1917. It was painted the colours it now is as an afterthought in 1923. That means the original chair has been vandalised!

Not at all, often second, third and, even, fourth thoughts are better than the first...

To other people, yes. But to the artist, no.
Carl Andre wasn't best pleased when somebody took one of his bricks for a walk around the gallery on a leash (I knew the nutter who did that: the bloke who walked the brick, not the bloke who 'made' the pile).

I'm not 100% sure you're right...

there were at least 2 chairs of the same design

first chair - unpainted - later painted black by Rietveld himself
second chair - a new one - the one i pictured above - in red/black and yellow (thinner wood than the first chair - not the same chair)

both chairs - at each stage - the work was done by Rietveld himself - as far as I know, nobody else repainted his chairs.

can an artist vandalise his own work?? How is an artist adapting his own work anything like a bloke fannying about with someone else's work?

There are two chairs, one of which was constructed later than the other and painted those colours, the original was unstained, unpainted until Doesburg painted it in 1923 to match the second (copy).

I'd assumed you were showing the original, which was wood until Doesburg daubed it and in my opinion 'vandalised' it. but, however, if that's not the original then yes the artist can hardly vandalise his own work, I agree, and concede.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

Yep, that has actually made some sense of it, I think.

Feck me it's boring though! Options, variations, choices - that's what makes the visual arts so interesting most of the time. Mondrian's work is eccentric enough to make me want to think about it, but it is pretty unrewarding at the end of it all.

[thebish]

Yep, that has actually made some sense of it, I think.

Feck me it's boring though! Options, variations, choices - that's what makes the visual arts so interesting most of the time. Mondrian's work is eccentric enough to make me want to think about it, but it is pretty unrewarding at the end of it all.

as I have said - mondrian's work doesn't move me - but the project is an interesting one.

I think he is playing with something that we all recognise - but maybe are not really aware of - that is - how shape/form/composition communicates something to us...

architects have long recognised it in the golden ratio/golden mean/divine proportion - whatever you call it!! they have observed that mathematical proportion DOES seem to provoke an emotional response in us - one we can't easily articulate

some have linked this to music too - and the note intervals at work - some have tried to match the golden ratio with musical intervals with much argued about results and claims...

it's at play in photography - where photographers use the so-called "rule of thirds" to compose pictures... very often we can recognise essentially the same scene - but one is a good photo we respond to and the other isn't - usually the one we respond to is the one using the compositional rule of thirds....

I think mondrian is playing with this idea (he doesn't use the golden mean) - and maybe he overplays it - how much can mere form (and I am probably using that word wrongly - but I hope you know what I mean) or mere composition - how stuff is arranged - cutting it down to basics - how much can that on its own communicate - can it communicate ideas - and what he called a manifesto of mutual equanimity (or something like that)...

I'm not sure it communicates as well as he thought it did - or hoped it would - but I still think it is an interesting and worthy thing to explore....

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Which is why Bish that Chartres Cathedral (for instance) is magnificent, glorious and gorgeous.
Mondrian might have been playing with the same ideas, but if so he failed miserably because his work is boring, pedestrian and shit

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

https://www.artfinder.com/story/gustave ... kers-1849/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Today's Artfinder image of the day. I doubt we'll have a Mondrianesque row over it. Make of that what you will.

[TANGODANCER]

Personally I wouldn't say that shouts any message at all. Just an artist painting something he may see in the countryside. This one, in contrast shouts loud and clear.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[Montreal Wanderer]

Ah OK.

It had happened to somebody else recently, so I thought it might have been a problem with TW somehow. DYAC!

Yes, it happened to me but you will notice that PB's post had a "last edited" comment which meant he went back to change the error. Mine did not. I've forgotten the word but a poster changed the spelling to an (equally correct) variant. He claimed innocence so something odd happened.

[Montreal Wanderer]

https://www.artfinder.com/story/gustave ... kers-1849/

Today's Artfinder image of the day. I doubt we'll have a Mondrianesque row over it. Make of that what you will.

Regarding your question, Jon, colour photography existed in some form from the mid-nineteenth century and was well advanced prior to WW2.