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For my second blog entry, I’d like to present the work of Mark Grotjahn, a painter working out of Los Angeles. He is one of the most important artists to gain prominence in the last several years, and has been trouncing his own auction records, important paintings edging towards half a million dollars each. I think his work will prove to be incredibly important to the current generation of young artists, and I am personally very attached to it.
Like Isa Genzken, the easiest way to understand Grotjahn’s practice is to look at it in terms of loose series. His most famous paintings are quirky, elusive abstractions that he refers to as “Butterflies”, each one composed of a series of lines emanating from a central vertex, the resulting divisions being filled in in various ways. The results are clear, simple, and elegant at first, but the details complicate a clear reading within the frame of abstract painting. Most obviously, Grotjahn often inserts an overly pronounced and usually stylized signature or monogram, immediately disrupting the “purity” of the image and undermining any Rothko-like effect it might have possessed. This approach, though, is inconsistent, and it becomes extremely difficult to understand the autographed paintings in relation to the ones left as they are.
Grotjahn also makes small paintings of masks on cardboard, which have a primitive and immediate quality. These too sometimes sport the artist’s name, but the relationship is just as ambiguous.
In person, the paintings I saw were extremely thickly applied and shiny. Their weight as objects was incredible, but the glare kept the images from fully resolving. The effect is simultaneously marvelous and frustrating.
Grotjahn is also known for a series of small found handmade signs acquired from shop owners in a compelling way: after finding a sign he liked, Grotjahn would paint a replica of it and then trade the shop owner his replica for the original, and then authorize the original as a work of his art. The transaction lends and incredibly complicated and interesting dialogue about artistic authority to the work that has had a huge impact on how I think about art. Normally, we understand the creative act as the painted stroke, the physical execution of the artwork. But in Grotjahn’s case, the object he physically paints is subordinated to the painting he’s copying; the object made by the genius hand is deemed less relevant as an art object than the sign painted out of necessity by a local sign painter. The inclusion of these paintings in his ouvre also has implications for the wider understand of Grotjahns work, but I’m still unsure of how to articulate them.
Also, since it’s a point of interest for some people here, Grotjahn is an avid and competent poker player.
You can buy his new Parkett edition here for a couple grand.
My opinion:
Grotjahn is positioned to be one of the absolute superstars of his generation. He is incredibly inventive and subtle, and epitomizes the ambiguous power that so much of contemporary art seeks to embody. As a collector, there isn’t much I would seek out first if I found 20 grand on the street than a Grotjahn colored pencil drawing. He is an intellectual’s anti-intellectual, and the more successful he becomes the better the art world looks from my point of view.
Mark Grotjahn shows with Blum and Poe in L.A., Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago, Anton Kern in New York and Gagosian Gallery in London.
Here are some images:
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That green one's quite pretty 
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If scroll up and down rapidly on his "vanishing point" pieces the lines appear to move and bend. Pretty cool.
On the other hand. This is what I hate about modern art. My initial reaction to the pieces were enigmatic. On the one hand, I felt disgust at human nature's attempt to give something great importance even though there is no distinguishable skill involved. In other words, to me, I feel like people can feel that the paintings are great, and aren't sure if they are or not; but in order to not be wrong or left off the bandwagon, they say the paintings are great. On the other, the paintings do have some potency. They are interesting to look at, and have some emotional resonance with me that I do not understand. There is no identifiable emotion I am feeling besides some medium-strength magnetism. In short, these pieces suffer from the truth that, the explanation is far more interesting than the piece itself.
This is why I like medieval art and renaissance art. Having no art training myself, I can satisfactorily explain to myself why I like or dislike a particular piece, notice certain things that are going on within a painting and generally come to a conclusion about its quality. Obviously, my opinion of quality matters little; but what else am I do at a museum or art gallery? To think about a piece and enjoy it, hate it, marvel at it, be attentive to it and so on. With art like Grotjahn's, there is very little discernible to the lay person and the key to understanding it, I would wager, lies within some byzantine art theory that all invariably seem so far divorced from the human experience it's no longer art.
That said, I'm still curious as to why this guy over all the others is getting attention. I'd be interested in your explanation.
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I only like the baboon faces. The rest of the pieces, I was thinking, were a joke.
I mean, I remember cheap by the mill posters of colored stripes in the 80's for 2.99 a pop baby.
And that robot head thing? I made a better one for 2nd grade.
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On October 28 2007 23:15 A3iL3r0n wrote:
If scroll up and down rapidly on his "vanishing point" pieces the lines appear to move and bend. Pretty cool.
On the other hand. This is what I hate about modern art. My initial reaction to the pieces were enigmatic. On the one hand, I felt disgust at human nature's attempt to give something great importance even though there is no distinguishable skill involved. In other words, to me, I feel like people can feel that the paintings are great, and aren't sure if they are or not; but in order to not be wrong or left off the bandwagon, they say the paintings are great. On the other, the paintings do have some potency. They are interesting to look at, and have some emotional resonance with me that I do not understand. There is no identifiable emotion I am feeling besides some medium-strength magnetism. In short, these pieces suffer from the truth that, the explanation is far more interesting than the piece itself.
This is why I like medieval art and renaissance art. Having no art training myself, I can satisfactorily explain to myself why I like or dislike a particular piece, notice certain things that are going on within a painting and generally come to a conclusion about its quality. Obviously, my opinion of quality matters little; but what else am I do at a museum or art gallery? To think about a piece and enjoy it, hate it, marvel at it, be attentive to it and so on. With art like Grotjahn's, there is very little discernible to the lay person and the key to understanding it, I would wager, lies within some byzantine art theory that all invariably seem so far divorced from the human experience it's no longer art.
That said, I'm still curious as to why this guy over all the others is getting attention. I'd be interested in your explanation.
This is a pretty common response obviously to a lot of modern and contemporary art. I always make the same simple argument:
I know it seems at first like there is something super complicated and intellectual about them that you can't understand. In some ways, this is true. They are engaging art history in a way that is fairly complicated and that you probably won't understand. But I would say this is about 10% of the meaning. You have access to by far the most important characteristics of all modern and contemporary art: the way it resonates (looks, feels, etc.).
It seems like you would need to do more learning to access the work, but in truth I think it's the opposite. I would wager that if you were able to divorce yourself from the expectation of skill and craft and representation in art that you could see how interesting and inventive these objects are. Try to ask yourself if they are like anything you've ever seen before in the "real world." If they aren't, ask yourself why human society would produce them. If the answer ends up being mysterious to you, you're in much the same situation as me, and if you can feel that such a mystery is really amazing and powerful and hopeful, then you can start to access contemporary art. It's my bet that someone with no knowledge of art would be moved walking into a museum show of Grotjahn's work; it's the people with a little bit of second hand knowledge about what paintings were supposed to look like a long time ago that struggle to engage them.
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On October 29 2007 00:10 SuperJongMan wrote:
I only like the baboon faces. The rest of the pieces, I was thinking, were a joke.
I mean, I remember cheap by the mill posters of colored stripes in the 80's for 2.99 a pop baby.
And that robot head thing? I made a better one for 2nd grade.
happy birthday!
If you could make a better one in second grade then you must be able to make a WAY better one now. This one goes for about $50,000, so I would encourage you to seek a career in art! It will be very easy!!!!
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bine thanks for posting this, I look forward to more, for the sake of this being a blog and not a thread can we PLEASE not have the a third grader could paint all modern art debate
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a3iL3r0n abstract art is the experimentation of color, form, space, etc. A successful artist needs to have extremely good understanding of artistic composition in order to experiment in the first place. And about the content, this Grotjahn does seem to instill a lot of art history into his paintings and perhaps alludes to it. I doubt he could've painted the painting with the dark background and light lines and his signature on top, without having knowledge of Picasso and Basquiat. And ofc Rothko for his large blank ones. He seems to have a very mature and distinct style though I can't say much cuz these images are small and few.
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On October 29 2007 01:32 bine wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2007 23:15 A3iL3r0n wrote:
If scroll up and down rapidly on his "vanishing point" pieces the lines appear to move and bend. Pretty cool.
On the other hand. This is what I hate about modern art. My initial reaction to the pieces were enigmatic. On the one hand, I felt disgust at human nature's attempt to give something great importance even though there is no distinguishable skill involved. In other words, to me, I feel like people can feel that the paintings are great, and aren't sure if they are or not; but in order to not be wrong or left off the bandwagon, they say the paintings are great. On the other, the paintings do have some potency. They are interesting to look at, and have some emotional resonance with me that I do not understand. There is no identifiable emotion I am feeling besides some medium-strength magnetism. In short, these pieces suffer from the truth that, the explanation is far more interesting than the piece itself.
This is why I like medieval art and renaissance art. Having no art training myself, I can satisfactorily explain to myself why I like or dislike a particular piece, notice certain things that are going on within a painting and generally come to a conclusion about its quality. Obviously, my opinion of quality matters little; but what else am I do at a museum or art gallery? To think about a piece and enjoy it, hate it, marvel at it, be attentive to it and so on. With art like Grotjahn's, there is very little discernible to the lay person and the key to understanding it, I would wager, lies within some byzantine art theory that all invariably seem so far divorced from the human experience it's no longer art.
That said, I'm still curious as to why this guy over all the others is getting attention. I'd be interested in your explanation. This is a pretty common response obviously to a lot of modern and contemporary art. I always make the same simple argument: I know it seems at first like there is something super complicated and intellectual about them that you can't understand. In some ways, this is true. They are engaging art history in a way that is fairly complicated and that you probably won't understand. But I would say this is about 10% of the meaning. You have access to by far the most important characteristics of all modern and contemporary art: the way it resonates (looks, feels, etc.). It seems like you would need to do more learning to access the work, but in truth I think it's the opposite. I would wager that if you were able to divorce yourself from the expectation of skill and craft and representation in art that you could see how interesting and inventive these objects are. Try to ask yourself if they are like anything you've ever seen before in the "real world." If they aren't, ask yourself why human society would produce them. If the answer ends up being mysterious to you, you're in much the same situation as me, and if you can feel that such a mystery is really amazing and powerful and hopeful, then you can start to access contemporary art. It's my bet that someone with no knowledge of art would be moved walking into a museum show of Grotjahn's work; it's the people with a little bit of second hand knowledge about what paintings were supposed to look like a long time ago that struggle to engage them.
I disagree with the assertion that someone who did not have preconceived notions of what art should and shouldn't be would somehow have more access to these sorts of pieces than someone who didn't. Why? Because you need to have some sort of context in which to understand the art, which any lay person, prejudiced or otherwise, would not have. With more formal art, the context is visual. You can see that the nude lady is weeping under the tree and the imp is hiding at the edge of the scene laughing to himself. With Grotjahn, I need to know how he is engaging the different art theories and art history itself in order to form some cohesive opinion about it. So, back to the topic sentence: I don't see how someone without some knowledge of art theory and/or history could possibly appreciate his art that deeply. His art is too random; appreciating his art deeply at this point, for me, would be like assigning meaning to the phosphenes I see when I press on my closed eyelids. Sure, there's colors and shapes, but what does it mean? Is that valuable? My point is that there's no narrative or context; nothing in his art means anything without prior knowledge and acumen, as with most things I suppose, but especially in this case. So this is the problem I have with modern art: it is not self-contained.
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South Africa4316 Posts
Ok, I'll comment on the paintings quickly, because I'm much more interested in the debate going on here.
I love the paintings. This is my kind of abstract art. Clean, colourful, concise art. I can honestly say that the four minimalist paintings at the bottom, and the green abstract with the red signature are some of the best abstract paintings I've seen in a while. Truly beatiful. I'd buy every single one of them if I had the money.
The black and white stencil (is that what they were? You mentioned his stencil drawings, but the paint splatters makes me think they're oil paintings...) ones I feel a bit ambivalent about. On the one hand I find them slightly boring, on the other hand I like the asymmetry in them.
I don't like the first dragon face, but I like the dragon face with the big signature on it. Very nice, especially the big signature!
The found art pieces are also nice. I'm just wondering, why don't the shop owners sell their paintings as well. I'm sure that they will still fetch a substansial price, even though buying them defies the purpose of the painting slightly, they would still be a collectors piece. "I bought the found painting that Grotjahn painted to replace the found painting he found..."
As to the comments on art:
It seems like you would need to do more learning to access the work, but in truth I think it's the opposite. I would wager that if you were able to divorce yourself from the expectation of skill and craft and representation in art that you could see how interesting and inventive these objects are. Try to ask yourself if they are like anything you've ever seen before in the "real world." If they aren't, ask yourself why human society would produce them. If the answer ends up being mysterious to you, you're in much the same situation as me, and if you can feel that such a mystery is really amazing and powerful and hopeful, then you can start to access contemporary art. It's my bet that someone with no knowledge of art would be moved walking into a museum show of Grotjahn's work; it's the people with a little bit of second hand knowledge about what paintings were supposed to look like a long time ago that struggle to engage them.
I really love the way you stated that. I've never looked at art like that before, and it was a very interesting statement. I don't agree with it, but it made me think a little.
I believe firmly in Hegel's theory of historicism. As Fukuyama explains it:
History proceeds through a continual process of conflict, wherein systems of thought ... collide and fall apart from their own internal contradictions. They are then replaced with less contradictory and therefore higher ones, which gives rise to new and different contradictions -- the so-called dialectic.
Francis Fukuyama, 1990
or, more to the point, as Le Bovier de Fontenelle says:
A good cultivated mind contains, so to speak, all the minds of preceding centuries; it is but a single identical mind which has been developing and improving itself all the time ... but I am obliged to confess that the man in question will have no old age; he will always be equally capable of those things for which his youth is suited, and he will be ever more and more capable of those things which are suited to his prime; that is to say, to abandon the allegory, men will never degenerate, and there will be no end to the growth and development of human wisdom.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, 1688
So basically, I believe that modern abstract art, as it is now, is art that has been developed over centuries of art history. The mind of Grotjahn contains all the information on art of all those before him (whether he is consciously aware of this, or if it has been given to him through the medium of society) and because of this, he is able to create art that is fitting for the 21st century, and that can be analyzed by others that understand the progress of art.
Exact meanings might not be understood in his paintings, but by understanding where he comes from we are given a groundwork from which to experience and interpret his art. Unfortunately information on the history and progression of art is not as easily accessible through society as many other things (liberal thought for one), and so people without an art education have more trouble interpretting the art than those with an education in art
Btw bine, how come you make such nice blog posts and such retarded forum posts? I'm just wondering cause I'm sure I've seen some pretty shitty posts by you in the forums
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On October 31 2007 06:59 PsycHOTemplar wrote:
Show nested quote +
and yes. then there are the bitch shirts. I guess its something that will sell in america since ppl are so ego pumped, i dont see it in china or other places where the average person is more modest. Wearing a shirt that says "Rich Bitch" or "Hottie" or "Gold Digger" really reflects how crude and low you are as a person and I can't believe how popular it's getting.
North Korea has it's propaganda machine, North America has it's media machine. Both make non-cynical/skeptical people do really stupid things. Ever seen people pay $60 for tacky look golf shorts? Some unique person was trying to be different, and wore these stupid looking things, then 'cool hunters' for corporations like American Eagle started mass producing it, and suddenly everyone who thought that guy who first wore them was so cool and unique buys the same thing, essentially defeating the purpose without realizing it. 3 months later it's onto the next retarded mass produced 'fashion statement'. I took a course in the study of this kind of phenom, and let me tell you it was depressing, especially when you could see 80% of your class was part of it.
I think this post from another thread is quite appropiate for some of his work. The second painting reminds me of the panorama of a highway taillights disappearing in the vanishingpoint. The butterflies are like doodles alot of people made during boring telephoneconversations.. I like the 4th and the other abstract face. Making almost white paintings with small nuances devided by lines is nothing new. It is an anti-statement. It is even predictable. Contemporary art seems to be mocking in nature. Mocking intelllectualism that takes itself to seriously. I think in his mind eye he regards people buying his work as clowns.
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Bine, won't you share with us how you interpret Grotjahn's work? I'm interested in hearing an informed opinion on why his art is valuable.
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Daigomi Hegel is a very important philosopher but not many intellectuals today believe in the kind of progression in systems of thought his dialectics describe. In continental philosophy and science everything has changed completely many times with not so much remaining from previous systems. Art History is I guess different and harder to analyze but I don't think you can really apply Hegel to a lot of postmodern art. Everything's just way too hectic. For example I feel like the last four paintings aren't really minimalist at all, the images are too small but I can just make out the extending rays or "butterflies" which makes them really light butterflies which in that context, hints that the artist probably just wanted to do a different butterfly and not make anything decidingly minimalist, that is of course assuming butterfiles themselves arent minimalist, which I don't think they can be called that in the traditional sense of the word, minimalism is a distinct period in art history like art deco, abstract expressionism, etc, it's popular because it's been around for a long time and we have "minimalist" interior design now and "minimalist" cars and it's come to mean everything simple and elemental, which it pretty much is but of course more complicated. I just looked at the butterflies again and yea I'm not gonna call it minimalist, i'll call it a sign or something, but if there ever is the description American minimalist Mark Grotjahn I'll eat my words. I think there's no way Grotjahn can be just a minimalist, he's influenced by it just as he's influenced by other periods of art. The paintings where he signs Big Nose Baby Noose are obv above just being minimalist. He actually looks a lot like Cy Twombly but I really don't know much postmodern art and Twombly is like the only othe artist I know. And yea, like it says in the OP, by signing his name that big I think it's safe to say his paintings are quite some ways above minimalism. Anyways I'm just rambling, my point is, the definition of postmodernism is = incredulity towards metanarratives, so try not to use metanarratives aka history is... this painting is art deco, etc, to analyze good postmodern art.
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and postmodernism has many sets of definitions, that phrase is just from Lyotard
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and lol at him being a poker player, I guess he's at least decent at math then, which I guess I'll take into mind when looking these butterflies
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bine do you have have any like, ultra big sized images of these paintings, and how big are they in the first place
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South Africa4316 Posts
On October 31 2007 22:23 zulu_nation8 wrote:
Daigomi Hegel is a very important philosopher but not many intellectuals today believe in the kind of progression in systems of thought his dialectics describe. In continental philosophy and science everything has changed completely many times with not so much remaining from previous systems. Art History is I guess different and harder to analyze but I don't think you can really apply Hegel to a lot of postmodern art. Everything's just way too hectic. For example I feel like the last four paintings aren't really minimalist at all, the images are too small but I can just make out the extending rays or "butterflies" which makes them really light butterflies which in that context, hints that the artist probably just wanted to do a different butterfly and not make anything decidingly minimalist, that is of course assuming butterfiles themselves arent minimalist, which I don't think they can be called that in the traditional sense of the word, minimalism is a distinct period in art history like art deco, abstract expressionism, etc, it's popular because it's been around for a long time and we have "minimalist" interior design now and "minimalist" cars and it's come to mean everything simple and elemental, which it pretty much is but of course more complicated. I just looked at the butterflies again and yea I'm not gonna call it minimalist, i'll call it a sign or something, but if there ever is the description American minimalist Mark Grotjahn I'll eat my words. I think there's no way Grotjahn can be just a minimalist, he's influenced by it just as he's influenced by other periods of art. The paintings where he signs Big Nose Baby Noose are obv above just being minimalist. He actually looks a lot like Cy Twombly but I really don't know much postmodern art and Twombly is like the only othe artist I know. And yea, like it says in the OP, by signing his name that big I think it's safe to say his paintings are quite some ways above minimalism. Anyways I'm just rambling, my point is, the definition of postmodernism is = incredulity towards metanarratives, so try not to use metanarratives aka history is... this painting is art deco, etc, to analyze good postmodern art.
zulu_nation, I'd disagree with you on your very first statement. A great deal of intellectuals still believe in Hegel's historicism if it is taken to mean human progression, where they disagree with Hegel is his theory that History is heading towards an ideal. Hegel's view only becomes teological if an end is envisioned, otherwise it remains a theory of systematic growth which is undeniable (take science for instance, all scientists today contain the knowledge of all those before them).
Culture itself is a constant dialectic of culture and counter-culture. Perhaps this is not as clear-cut "taking the best of each system and leaving the rest behind" as Hegel envisioned it, but with every progression previous contradictions are solved, and new ones are found. Post-modernism is just the current step in this evolutionary cycle, and is simply the counter-culture of the enlightenment age.
As to the last four paintings not being minimalist... Minimalism never meant "no picture", it simply means that the work must be at it's most fundamental level, nothing more can be removed from it without changing the piece itself. Here is directly from wikipedia:
Very soon they created a minimal style, whose features included: rectangular and cubic forms purged of all metaphor, equality of parts, repetition, neutral surfaces, industrial materials, all of which leads to immediate visual impact.
While the forms might not be rectangular, but are rather angular, the forms are purged of all metaphor, there is equality of parts, repetition, neutral surface, all of which leads to immediate visual impact. Surely these paintings are as minimalist as you could get.
And I definitely never said his just a minimalist, in fact I only said that his last four paintings are minimalist, while the green one is clearly an abstract expressionist painting (with a very contemporary, all incorporated touch), rather than a minimalist painting. Today, very few artists confine themselves to one specific style of painting, because, as you mentioned, it's the post-modern age now. Paintings can still be defined by their most obvious visual similarity to a style though, otherwise all art would simply be classified as post-modern art, for few artists stick to one style, and even fewer artists can say that they fully believe in one art movement.
And finally, your post states that postmodernism is correct, or does so by implication (if postmodernism wasn't correct then why shouldn't I make statements that are not postmodernistic) which in turn turns postmodernism into a metanarrative. Your explanation of postmodernism as an "incredulity towards metanarratives" becomes didactical when it is used as a law for the study of anything. Rather, postmodernism is a system of thought based on doubt and incredulity.
Post-modernism is not a rule, it is simply a system of thought which rejects judgments based on a teleological basis. I did not judge anything, I described it in a way that was easy for me to describe it, and in a way that should have made it easy for others to understand what I was talking about, which lies at the very root of categorization.
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On November 01 2007 05:44 Daigomi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2007 22:23 zulu_nation8 wrote:
Daigomi Hegel is a very important philosopher but not many intellectuals today believe in the kind of progression in systems of thought his dialectics describe. In continental philosophy and science everything has changed completely many times with not so much remaining from previous systems. Art History is I guess different and harder to analyze but I don't think you can really apply Hegel to a lot of postmodern art. Everything's just way too hectic. For example I feel like the last four paintings aren't really minimalist at all, the images are too small but I can just make out the extending rays or "butterflies" which makes them really light butterflies which in that context, hints that the artist probably just wanted to do a different butterfly and not make anything decidingly minimalist, that is of course assuming butterfiles themselves arent minimalist, which I don't think they can be called that in the traditional sense of the word, minimalism is a distinct period in art history like art deco, abstract expressionism, etc, it's popular because it's been around for a long time and we have "minimalist" interior design now and "minimalist" cars and it's come to mean everything simple and elemental, which it pretty much is but of course more complicated. I just looked at the butterflies again and yea I'm not gonna call it minimalist, i'll call it a sign or something, but if there ever is the description American minimalist Mark Grotjahn I'll eat my words. I think there's no way Grotjahn can be just a minimalist, he's influenced by it just as he's influenced by other periods of art. The paintings where he signs Big Nose Baby Noose are obv above just being minimalist. He actually looks a lot like Cy Twombly but I really don't know much postmodern art and Twombly is like the only othe artist I know. And yea, like it says in the OP, by signing his name that big I think it's safe to say his paintings are quite some ways above minimalism. Anyways I'm just rambling, my point is, the definition of postmodernism is = incredulity towards metanarratives, so try not to use metanarratives aka history is... this painting is art deco, etc, to analyze good postmodern art. zulu_nation, I'd disagree with you on your very first statement. A great deal of intellectuals still believe in Hegel's historicism if it is taken to mean human progression, where they disagree with Hegel is his theory that History is heading towards an ideal. Hegel's view only becomes teological if an end is envisioned, otherwise it remains a theory of systematic growth which is undeniable (take science for instance, all scientists today contain the knowledge of all those before them). Culture itself is a constant dialectic of culture and counter-culture. Perhaps this is not as clear-cut "taking the best of each system and leaving the rest behind" as Hegel envisioned it, but with every progression previous contradictions are solved, and new ones are found. Post-modernism is just the current step in this evolutionary cycle, and is simply the counter-culture of the enlightenment age.
I shouldn't say most intellectuals since I don't have that kind of knowledge but the philosophers I have read. I am specifically referring to the two quotes you have posted
"History proceeds through a continual process of conflict, wherein systems of thought ... collide and fall apart from their own internal contradictions. They are then replaced with less contradictory and therefore higher ones, which gives rise to new and different contradictions -- the so-called dialectic.
Francis Fukuyama, 1990"
Fukuyama uses the word "higher" which is inseperable from the word you use, "progress". If you don't believe that history is taking us to an ideal then how can you use the phrase systematic growth. Fukuyama's quote, if it is indeed an accurate representation of Hegelian hisotricism, seems to be overly positive, meaning only describing what is occuring and not trying to explain what drives the change. I won't argue about pure science but in human science the change that have occured, this time I think it's safe to say, most intellectuals believe are anything but a systematic progression, see Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault.
As for culture, I think postmodernism simply arose out of advancement in technology, in the way knowledge is spread. I'm not too fond of the idea that it is a counter-culture to other older cultures. I think viewing postmodernism through Hegelian historicism is a very anachronistic and oversimplying perspective of thinking.
Historicism still exists but just not Hegelian historiism.
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On November 01 2007 05:44 Daigomi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2007 22:23 zulu_nation8 wrote:
Daigomi Hegel is a very important philosopher but not many intellectuals today believe in the kind of progression in systems of thought his dialectics describe. In continental philosophy and science everything has changed completely many times with not so much remaining from previous systems. Art History is I guess different and harder to analyze but I don't think you can really apply Hegel to a lot of postmodern art. Everything's just way too hectic. For example I feel like the last four paintings aren't really minimalist at all, the images are too small but I can just make out the extending rays or "butterflies" which makes them really light butterflies which in that context, hints that the artist probably just wanted to do a different butterfly and not make anything decidingly minimalist, that is of course assuming butterfiles themselves arent minimalist, which I don't think they can be called that in the traditional sense of the word, minimalism is a distinct period in art history like art deco, abstract expressionism, etc, it's popular because it's been around for a long time and we have "minimalist" interior design now and "minimalist" cars and it's come to mean everything simple and elemental, which it pretty much is but of course more complicated. I just looked at the butterflies again and yea I'm not gonna call it minimalist, i'll call it a sign or something, but if there ever is the description American minimalist Mark Grotjahn I'll eat my words. I think there's no way Grotjahn can be just a minimalist, he's influenced by it just as he's influenced by other periods of art. The paintings where he signs Big Nose Baby Noose are obv above just being minimalist. He actually looks a lot like Cy Twombly but I really don't know much postmodern art and Twombly is like the only othe artist I know. And yea, like it says in the OP, by signing his name that big I think it's safe to say his paintings are quite some ways above minimalism. Anyways I'm just rambling, my point is, the definition of postmodernism is = incredulity towards metanarratives, so try not to use metanarratives aka history is... this painting is art deco, etc, to analyze good postmodern art. As to the last four paintings not being minimalist... Minimalism never meant "no picture", it simply means that the work must be at it's most fundamental level, nothing more can be removed from it without changing the piece itself. Here is directly from wikipedia: Show nested quote +Very soon they created a minimal style, whose features included: rectangular and cubic forms purged of all metaphor, equality of parts, repetition, neutral surfaces, industrial materials, all of which leads to immediate visual impact. While the forms might not be rectangular, but are rather angular, the forms are purged of all metaphor, there is equality of parts, repetition, neutral surface, all of which leads to immediate visual impact. Surely these paintings are as minimalist as you could get. And I definitely never said his just a minimalist, in fact I only said that his last four paintings are minimalist, while the green one is clearly an abstract expressionist painting (with a very contemporary, all incorporated touch), rather than a minimalist painting. Today, very few artists confine themselves to one specific style of painting, because, as you mentioned, it's the post-modern age now. Paintings can still be defined by their most obvious visual similarity to a style though, otherwise all art would simply be classified as post-modern art, for few artists stick to one style, and even fewer artists can say that they fully believe in one art movement.
I agree, that I think those paintings are minimal but not minimalist.
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On November 01 2007 05:44 Daigomi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2007 22:23 zulu_nation8 wrote:
Daigomi Hegel is a very important philosopher but not many intellectuals today believe in the kind of progression in systems of thought his dialectics describe. In continental philosophy and science everything has changed completely many times with not so much remaining from previous systems. Art History is I guess different and harder to analyze but I don't think you can really apply Hegel to a lot of postmodern art. Everything's just way too hectic. For example I feel like the last four paintings aren't really minimalist at all, the images are too small but I can just make out the extending rays or "butterflies" which makes them really light butterflies which in that context, hints that the artist probably just wanted to do a different butterfly and not make anything decidingly minimalist, that is of course assuming butterfiles themselves arent minimalist, which I don't think they can be called that in the traditional sense of the word, minimalism is a distinct period in art history like art deco, abstract expressionism, etc, it's popular because it's been around for a long time and we have "minimalist" interior design now and "minimalist" cars and it's come to mean everything simple and elemental, which it pretty much is but of course more complicated. I just looked at the butterflies again and yea I'm not gonna call it minimalist, i'll call it a sign or something, but if there ever is the description American minimalist Mark Grotjahn I'll eat my words. I think there's no way Grotjahn can be just a minimalist, he's influenced by it just as he's influenced by other periods of art. The paintings where he signs Big Nose Baby Noose are obv above just being minimalist. He actually looks a lot like Cy Twombly but I really don't know much postmodern art and Twombly is like the only othe artist I know. And yea, like it says in the OP, by signing his name that big I think it's safe to say his paintings are quite some ways above minimalism. Anyways I'm just rambling, my point is, the definition of postmodernism is = incredulity towards metanarratives, so try not to use metanarratives aka history is... this painting is art deco, etc, to analyze good postmodern art. And finally, your post states that postmodernism is correct, or does so by implication (if postmodernism wasn't correct then why shouldn't I make statements that are not postmodernistic) which in turn turns postmodernism into a metanarrative. Your explanation of postmodernism as an "incredulity towards metanarratives" becomes didactical when it is used as a law for the study of anything. Rather, postmodernism is a system of thought based on doubt and incredulity. Post-modernism is not a rule, it is simply a system of thought which rejects judgments based on a teleological basis. I did not judge anything, I described it in a way that was easy for me to describe it, and in a way that should have made it easy for others to understand what I was talking about, which lies at the very root of categorization.
I've never stated postmodernism is correct, I don't know what you mean by correct. I assume you mean postmodernism is, or postmodernism exists. Which I would reply of course it does. The explanation I give is the usual quote everyone uses to explain postmodernism in one sentence because it is what Lyotard says in the definitive book about postmodernism, "The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowedge", in which he says in the introduction, "Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives." However what he says after gives a better description,
"This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimaion corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements - narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on. Conveyed within each cloud are pragmatic valencies specific to its kind. Each of us lives at the intersection of many of these. However, we do not necessarily establish stable language combinations, and the properties of the ones we do establish are not necessarily communicable."
Lyotard proposes "clouds of narrative language elements" instead of a grand narrative. I think Hegelian historicism would be a metanarrative, but not historicism of course. Anyways, the wikipedia page on metanarrative explains it much better than I can. I have only recently begun reading the book. But, postmodernism isn't a system based on anything. So yes, a better way to explain what I meant earlier is to not look at postmodern art with categories.
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South Africa4316 Posts
Fukuyama uses the word "higher" which is inseperable from the word you use, "progress". If you don't believe that history is taking us to an ideal then how can you use the phrase systematic growth.
Taking us to an ideal implies that there is an ideal, a limit on the progression we can experience. As Fukuyama himself mentions, every new system will have a set of its own internal contradictions which need to be resolved. Perhaps one day there will be an ideal (although I doubt it, humans are adaptive creatures, they will adapt to perfect systems to make them imperfect), but it is so far away from today that I would not take it seriously.
Fukuyama's quote, if it is indeed an accurate representation of Hegelian hisotricism, seems to be overly positive, meaning only describing what is occuring and not trying to explain what drives the change. I won't argue about pure science but in human science the change that have occured, this time I think it's safe to say, most intellectuals believe are anything but a systematic progression, see Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault.
It's funny that you bring up Thomas Kuhn, because I was planning to bring him up myself. Paradign shifts are made possible only by containing all the knowledge that you had before you. In fact, Kuhn pretty much mentions the "internal contradictions" that are Hegel's problems with every system directly. According to Kuhn (if I remember correctly) a system reaches a scientific plateau so to speak, from which very little progress is made. The progress made is synthetic only. At this point, the "internal contradictions" of the current plateau begin mounting up until someone finds a new system/paradigm that replaces the old one.
I think this can best be explained by taking an example directly from Hegel. In 1792 (I think) in the middle of the French Revolution, Hegel commented that "History is over". What he meant by this was not that events would stop happening from then on, but that the dialectic was over, because in the French Revolution he saw the paradigm shift from a system based on masters and slaves (the old aristocracy) to a new system based on universal freedom. At the time he was scoffed at, and yet today we see that 90% of all countries have either democratic governments, or are becoming democratic governments.
Don't argue the specific stats please, you don't even have to agree with Hegel that "History is over", I just wanted to show how the paradigm shift is directly related to historicism.
The problem is, I think, that you are taking a too close view of the world when you are saying that progress is anything but systematic. If you step back a step, and look at the general trend rather than at specific happenings, you will see that systematic progress is inevitable. Historicism never said that History moves in a straight line, in fact, he uses the example of the Romans being overthrown by the "barbarians" to show that it specifically does not move in a straight line, but it always moves forward eventually, although it might have its ups and downs.
As for culture, I think postmodernism simply arose out of advancement in technology, in the way knowledge is spread. I'm not too fond of the idea that it is a counter-culture to other older cultures. I think viewing postmodernism through Hegelian historicism is a very anachronistic and oversimplying perspective of thinking.
This is simply wrong. I'm sorry, but you are not taking a wide view on this. You are saying that if prehistoric people had the technology we have today, they would have developped post-modernism? Lets make this even more clear, if the Romans, a nation that was technologically advanced and could be seen to understand our technology, had our technology, they would have skipped Modernism, skipped Marxism, skipped Humanism, skipped all the little "steps" (which you argue don't exist) between Roman philosophy (or Roman socio-cultural climate) and jumped straight to postmodernism? This is obviously not true.
As to your statement that postmodernism is not a counter-culture, it is one of the most clear cut counter-cultures there are. Postmodernism, at its very roots, is a direct counter-culture. What is postmodernism according to you..."incredulity towards metanarratives", isn't this simply another way of saying... "disbelief in the metanarratives of the englightenment"? According to wikipedia:
Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated Pomo[1]) was originally a reaction to modernism
Post-modernism rapidly developed an ... anti-enlightenment rhetoric
The movement of Postmodernism [architecture] began with architecture, as a reactionary movement against the perceived blandness and hostility present in the Modern movement.
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I agree, that I think those paintings are minimal but not minimalist.
I'd say we just about agree with each other here.
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I've never stated postmodernism is correct, I don't know what you mean by correct.
What I meant with correct is simply "correct" as in the "right way of thinking". You told me that I mustn't use metanarratives (because that is not the postmodern way of thinking). Why must I follow the postmodern way of thinking, if this way of thinking is not the "right way of thinking" according to you?
A further example of you stating that postmodernism is "correct" is by saying that "Hegelian historicism is a very anachronistic.". This must be one of the most ironic statements I have ever read. Reread it carefully, because that sentence is completely and utterly self-contradictory.
The explanation I give is the usual quote everyone uses to explain postmodernism in one sentence because it is what Lyotard says in the definitive book about postmodernism, "The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowedge", in which he says in the introduction, "Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives." However what he says after gives a better description,
"This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimaion corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements - narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on. Conveyed within each cloud are pragmatic valencies specific to its kind. Each of us lives at the intersection of many of these. However, we do not necessarily establish stable language combinations, and the properties of the ones we do establish are not necessarily communicable."
Lyotard proposes "clouds of narrative language elements" instead of a grand narrative. I think Hegelian historicism would be a metanarrative, but not historicism of course. Anyways, the wikipedia page on metanarrative explains it much better than I can. I have only recently begun reading the book. But, postmodernism isn't a system based on anything.
I never disagreed with your definition of postmodernism, I disagreed with the way you were applying it. The problem with the way you were applying it is that you stated that my way of thinking is anachronistic, while postmodernism clearly states that: "knowledge [is] inherently linked to time, place, social position and other factors from which an individual constructs their view of knowledge."
Thus, postmodernism, in order to avoid being a metanarrative itself, cannot tell others that it is the correct way of thinking. This is why it is more descriptive than prescriptive. By telling you that your way of thought is wrong, and that postmodernism is right, I'm saying that knowledge is not personal, and thus arguing using my own metanarrative, the metanarrative that metanarratives are incorrect.
So yes, a better way to explain what I meant earlier is to not look at postmodern art with categories.
Unfortunately this mode of thought has become all too prevalent these days, especially inside the art community. People do not want to be labeled or directly compared to anyone else. "I am my own person" bullshit. People who say this forget the original purpose of categorization:
Categorization is the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Categorization implies that objects are grouped into categories, usually for some specific purpose. Ideally, a category illuminates a relationship between the subjects and objects of knowledge. Categorization is fundamental in language, prediction, inference, decision making and in all kinds of interaction with the environment.
Categories do not "take away" from something, it simply organizes thoughts into things that can be grouped together, whether this is for purpose of communication (If I tell you "Mark Grotjahn has some nice minimalist paintings" you would have a good idea of what to expect) or for the purpose of preventing cognitive overload (everything we remember, everything, is categorized so that we can apply cognitive schemes to our thoughts quickly, and take mental shortcuts). So do not say "no categories", categories are absolutely essential for us to be able to discuss or even remember, anything:
Oh no no, you Angels, I say,
No hierarchies I pray,
Oh God, laugh not too much aside
Say not, it is a small matter.
See what your Angels do; scatter
Their pride; laugh them away.
Oh no categories I pray.
You've got to love Stevie Smith.
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Hey zulu you generally can't get huge images unless you're trying to buy something, and even though me and my partner are actively collecting, even if we found a million dollars on the street we couldn't get a Grotjahn painting. We could probably swing a drawing if we could afford it (a dealer we work with represents him and is good friends with him), but anyway the point is even if I e-mailed blum and poe they wouldn't send me anything, and they certainly aren't around on the web. If you have any questions about the paint application or something, let me know. I can tell you about them.
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The second you try to pin something like progress on art, you'll be subverted. Post-modernism is after all a response to modernism, and attempt to undermine it. Modernism is about progress, teleological or otherwise; post-modernism is about undermining, questioning, reversing that progress. I would say I know a good portion of the history that Grotjahn is engaging here, and I would argue that he's essentially firing blanks. My interpretation: Grotjahn is interested in executing conceptual procedures without having them necessarily resolve. Signing your name huge in bright letters brings up a bunch of issues about authorship, and then the images bring up a bunch of strange gaps in the history of abstraction, and then the titles bring up a bunch of questions about the interpretive process and the relationship of the viewer to the work, and then the complex relationship of the trade paintings to the butterfly paintings to the masks brings up questions of style, artistic identity, all the while dealing with primitivism and post-picasso modes of sourcing. But he's just sort of randomly bring things up, all at once, in ways that don't clearly relate. I would argue that Grotjahn is interested in what happens when you're talking about a billion complicated issues at once while looking extremely simple and even childish (the egoist tagging, for example), and even if he isn't interested in that dynamic, the work is doing it anyway and that's why it's engaging to me.
Also, they are super beautiful and unlike anything else I've ever seen.
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I know your post wasn't responding to my request for your explanation, but I appreciate it anyway.
Perhaps, if you weren't busy being immediately exhausted by my terrible questions, you wouldn't be such a bad ambassador for something you love after all.
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On October 30 2007 04:10 A3iL3r0n wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2007 01:32 bine wrote:On October 28 2007 23:15 A3iL3r0n wrote:
If scroll up and down rapidly on his "vanishing point" pieces the lines appear to move and bend. Pretty cool.
On the other hand. This is what I hate about modern art. My initial reaction to the pieces were enigmatic. On the one hand, I felt disgust at human nature's attempt to give something great importance even though there is no distinguishable skill involved. In other words, to me, I feel like people can feel that the paintings are great, and aren't sure if they are or not; but in order to not be wrong or left off the bandwagon, they say the paintings are great. On the other, the paintings do have some potency. They are interesting to look at, and have some emotional resonance with me that I do not understand. There is no identifiable emotion I am feeling besides some medium-strength magnetism. In short, these pieces suffer from the truth that, the explanation is far more interesting than the piece itself.
This is why I like medieval art and renaissance art. Having no art training myself, I can satisfactorily explain to myself why I like or dislike a particular piece, notice certain things that are going on within a painting and generally come to a conclusion about its quality. Obviously, my opinion of quality matters little; but what else am I do at a museum or art gallery? To think about a piece and enjoy it, hate it, marvel at it, be attentive to it and so on. With art like Grotjahn's, there is very little discernible to the lay person and the key to understanding it, I would wager, lies within some byzantine art theory that all invariably seem so far divorced from the human experience it's no longer art.
That said, I'm still curious as to why this guy over all the others is getting attention. I'd be interested in your explanation. This is a pretty common response obviously to a lot of modern and contemporary art. I always make the same simple argument: I know it seems at first like there is something super complicated and intellectual about them that you can't understand. In some ways, this is true. They are engaging art history in a way that is fairly complicated and that you probably won't understand. But I would say this is about 10% of the meaning. You have access to by far the most important characteristics of all modern and contemporary art: the way it resonates (looks, feels, etc.). It seems like you would need to do more learning to access the work, but in truth I think it's the opposite. I would wager that if you were able to divorce yourself from the expectation of skill and craft and representation in art that you could see how interesting and inventive these objects are. Try to ask yourself if they are like anything you've ever seen before in the "real world." If they aren't, ask yourself why human society would produce them. If the answer ends up being mysterious to you, you're in much the same situation as me, and if you can feel that such a mystery is really amazing and powerful and hopeful, then you can start to access contemporary art. It's my bet that someone with no knowledge of art would be moved walking into a museum show of Grotjahn's work; it's the people with a little bit of second hand knowledge about what paintings were supposed to look like a long time ago that struggle to engage them. I disagree with the assertion that someone who did not have preconceived notions of what art should and shouldn't be would somehow have more access to these sorts of pieces than someone who didn't. Why? Because you need to have some sort of context in which to understand the art, which any lay person, prejudiced or otherwise, would not have. With more formal art, the context is visual. You can see that the nude lady is weeping under the tree and the imp is hiding at the edge of the scene laughing to himself. With Grotjahn, I need to know how he is engaging the different art theories and art history itself in order to form some cohesive opinion about it. So, back to the topic sentence: I don't see how someone without some knowledge of art theory and/or history could possibly appreciate his art that deeply. His art is too random; appreciating his art deeply at this point, for me, would be like assigning meaning to the phosphenes I see when I press on my closed eyelids. Sure, there's colors and shapes, but what does it mean? Is that valuable? My point is that there's no narrative or context; nothing in his art means anything without prior knowledge and acumen, as with most things I suppose, but especially in this case. So this is the problem I have with modern art: it is not self-contained.
I would say that there's sort of spectrum that can be split up into three groups. I think for people that look at objects in aesthetic terms in general, these would be compelling and unique ones that would be pretty immediately appealing and satisfactory. For these people, the work would be self contained.
Then there's a middle group who know about the existence of art, but have certain expectations for it without complete information (I'm not necessarily putting you in this group, by the way). They see a portion of art history (usually old, representational paintings) and develop from it criteria for looking at art in general, for example "Art should be a demonstration of skill" or "Art should evoke emotion" or something such as this. These people's expectations get in the way of enjoying objects just as objects (also, the museum full of objects as a beautiful space), but they don't have enough information about what art is now, and usually get lost in skepticism. For me, people who question the validity of modern art are sort of akin to people who don't believe in evolution or global warming; there's pretty much consensus, and everyone who's involved with art basically agrees. This isn't to say that art is better than non art, but just that except for at the edges, the territory of what we call art isn't really contested. Also, just fyi, these people normally call contemporary art "modern," so if you see someone talking about an artist who's alive today and calling their work "modern art," chances are they fall into this part of the spectrum.
Then there are people I would say like myself, who understand and accept what modern and contemporary art are and evaluate them using a number of criteria. At this point, I assume anything an artist says is art is in fact art, and evaluate things in the terms I think appropriate to the work. This is an important idea in looking at work: since everything is so diverse in the art world at present, you can't apply a single criteria to all art very easily. Instead, the general attitude is that you have to try to understand what criteria seem appropriate to the work, and go from there: is this painting mostly about formal concerns (aesthetics), or is it trying to promote a political agenda, or is it exposing or problematizing certain concepts, or is it addressing social situations, is it biographical or autobiographical, etc. Grotjahn is a complicated example, though, because part of the work is that his criteria are muddy or overlap, which is what makes him so interesting to me.
But the easiest way to think about this I think is with political work. When Raymond Pettibon makes a drawing that says "George Bush should be in jail.", we can immediately understand that the work is trying to deliver a persuasive political message, and we can evaluate it in terms of its effectiveness. For me, the work immediately fails then, because it feels stale and doesn't insight any strong political feelings on my part. Too, it's preaching to the choir: 80% of the people who walk into a gallery full of his work are already anti-war etc.
I tend to like things that aren't as easy to get to, but that are also immediately beautiful to me. When I can immediately identify criteria (or, in simpler terms, immediate understand the work), I get bored and feel like it's OK to leave.
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Nice read. Thanks
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