Rational Abstract Art

                                     Word Art          First as preparation, consider written artworks such as Jenny Holzer’s sign -- Protect me from what I want. and Martin Creed’s sign -- Everything is Going to be Alright.       I don’t see those as strictly conceptual works. I take Holzer's to be anti-consumerism philosophy and Creed's to be reassuring psychology with a touch of farce.                              Logic and Semantics          Contrary to Holzer and Creed, strict conceptual artists prefer self referential worded statements or semantic word play. The following 2005 statement, by Lawrence Weiner was displayed in an art gallery on the wall in large stylistically mismatched scrap let...

   Intimate Relations, Authenticity, and the Art Market Continuing the social theme, we turn our attention to romantic relations between artists.  Earlier we pointed out that Jackson Pollock died in an auto accident. Now we will look into the details and aftermath.  Jackson Pollock married Lee Krasner in 1942. She promoted his career by introducing him to collectors, critics, and artists as well as orienting him to contemporary art.  He became famous by the mid 1950s but due to his alcoholism, Jackson and Lee became estranged and she was in Europe at the time of his death in 1956. Further, at that time in 1956, Jackson, 44, was having an affair with a younger woman, Ruth Kligman, 26, also an artist.  As to the auto accident, two women passengers were in the speeding car that Pollock was driving recklessly. In the resulting crash, Jackson and one woman died, but Ruth Kligman fortunately survived.  She says his foot was all the way down on the ga...

                     Christo and Jeanne-Claude Christo, a man, and Jeanne-Claude, a woman, were a married artist couple who designed and organized large-scale fabric spreading projects.   They wrapped monuments and buildings and spread floating fabric skirts around islands. A typical project involved years of planning as well as the hurdles of obtaining funding for the project and dealing with protests and lawsuits opposing the project.   Please look at one of their most famous projects  ‒ wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin.                                The wrapping occurred in 1995, for a period of 14 days.  After that, according to Christo, all the wrapping materials were recycled.   There was substantial opposition before the wrapping but when the publ...

               The United States Embassy in Paris As a comprehensive example of abstract art in a domestic setting, we turn to art in a mansion ‒  the U. S. embassy in Paris. The American ambassador there, in 2016, was Jane D. Hartley. To select artworks to display in the embassy she drew from her own collection as well as from works available from the division of the state department called Art In Embassies.  That department has a knowledgeable staff she could consult. Besides they have contacts to obtain art on loan. Together they chose, as a theme, works by American artists with a connection to France.  For example Alexander Calder spent many years living and working in Paris, so a large stabile by him was installed on the grounds. We start a tour of the embassy interior by showing Ms. Hartley in front of the painting from 2010 by Cy Twombly called Camino Real.  It is also shown from anot...

                                                                            Introduction       Black paintings were made by Frank Stella and by Ad Reinhardt.   We show Stella as a young man making one. By the way, two from-the-tube black pigments are Ivory black and Mars black, but used straight they look plain.  There are very deep purple paints available which when added to the straight black produce a more voluptuous black. There is another attractive “chromatic” black that can be mixed from a very dark blue and very dark brown, resulting in an intense lively black. But in the photo of the young Stella, he is succeeding admirably with black paint out of a can and freehand ‒ amazing. Digression ‒ Black Used For Clothing Isn’t it strange that black is the...

Musical Minimalism Martin Creed can even make music ‒ or at least sound.  In the Summer of 2018 the Birmingham Museum in Britain had on display a work called Three Metronomes installed by Creed.  Look at the photo in which three Yamaha metronomes are attached to a wall. They are just compact green disc-like devices and each one makes a tapping sound at a set interval. It sounded a bit like this to me.  ba-dat ______ dat-a-dat_______a-dat_________a-dat-a-a-dat-a-dat___.  It continues in that fashion. You hear the dat sounds spaced further apart or closer together and in different combinations ‒ almost like some unexpected little rhythm played with drumsticks on a table. What is going on?  A metronome can be set to tap at a chosen specific interval, say one beat per second.  To explain creed’s work suppose the first A metronome makes a tap every 1.0 seconds, the second B metronome taps every 2.1 seconds, and the third ...

                     Minimal Works with Flair and Humor Is minimalist art austere? reserved?  To answer, let’s look at the work of Martin Creed.  He is British and seems to express a certain British kind of zany humor.  Start by looking at his message sign, then on to a step-pyramid of colored bars, and then painted x’s, large at the top getting  smaller down to the floor. Do you think those x’s would be more effective with largest on bottom going to smallest on the top, or better horizontally, or randomly, or in a circle?  Why do you think Creed chose the X progression getting smaller downward as he did?                                                     ...

                                       Iron Man, Part 2           Outdoors, the public found the rusty finish of Serra's works objectionable and at times intolerable.  As an example, take Serra’s work called Tilted Arc which was erected in 1981 in Foley Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan in New York City.  It was 120 feet long and 12 feet high and formed a barrier wall that people had to detour around. It was removed in 1989 because of public protest.  The rusty finish was depressing and the shape was rather plain. In contrast, please look at a maze-like wavy steel sculpture called Inside Out, assembled in 2013 in cooperation with the Gagosian Gallery whose credits appear in the photo.  The dramatic back lighting and the fine vantage point in this photo show the beauty of the sculpture, but it is easy to appr...