Allo!

I have given life to a new, "site-specific" internet diary which one may discover here: http://angoulimon.blogspot.com/. Linkless Apple products eh?

First from France.

These keyboards...one must hold shift for a full stop! I will be staying in a variety of places and have already dissolved enough coffee for five stout Englishmen - I shall return addicted and aged! Tomorrow I will set up a new account for Euro notes, Blogger account that is. The school of art appears by the river and it is both calm and daunting - these are serious comic artists.

I must leave now to meet my host Caroline, I am babysitting her son this evening [something of an initiation process for fresh Pommes] and she will be out front in a matter of minutes.

I have written a lot and listened a lot. I shall speak this language!

Tube range - colour/order/variety/system/beauty/utility/lists/etc

My craze is sweeping the hard disk - and now I'm off to France!

Two thoughtful articles from the States.

Idol Thoughts
The glory of Fountain, Marcel Duchamp's ground-breaking "moneybags piss pot"

by Jerry Saltz
February 24th, 2006 1:55 PM

God is not an art lover. At least that's what a lot of people have surmised over the centuries, citing as proof the second commandment that states "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image . . . or carve idols . . . for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God." In addition to suggesting that God knows there are other gods, proscriptions like this appear throughout the Bible—in Deuteronomy, for example, God decrees that stone shall not be "hewn." The Koran contains similar prohibitions. Basically, you may look upon the things of the world, but don't reproduce them.
Over the millennia these injunctions have caused iconoclasts, or "image breakers," to destroy countless works of art because it was believed that they housed demonic spirits. This destruction wasn't only prevalent; it was pathological. First, the eyes of an image or statue would be scratched out; next, a line would be drawn though the neck to behead it; finally, the head or face would be removed and burned. Of course, the extent to which images can stir people to violence is on view across the globe these days. Theorist Thomas McEvilley and others have brilliantly surmised that underlying this religious fervor may be the latent Platonic idea that essentially states that 'A' can only equal 'A' and that nothing can represent anything else.

So, God may or may not be displeased with Pierre Pinoncelli, the 77-year-old French performance artist who on January 4 took a hammer to Duchamp's famous urinal, Fountain, in the Dada show at the Pompidou Center. As with most bad artists, Mr. Pinoncelli was repeating himself. In 1993 he urinated into Fountain and then damaged it. Fountain, recently voted "The Most Influential Artwork of the 20th Century" by over 500 British art professionals, turned art on its head, set many of the innovations of the last 100 years in motion, and has rankled viewers ever since.

In the winter of 1917, Duchamp—then 29, in America less than two years, teaching French, but still a sensation for the scandal his Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 caused at the Armory Show of 1913 (the year he created his first "readymade")—along with collector Walter Arensberg and artist Joseph Stella, bought a Bedfordshire model urinal from the J.L. Mott Iron Works at 118 Fifth Avenue. Duchamp took the fixture to his studio at 33 West 67th Street, laid it on its back, and signed it "R. Mutt 1917." The name is a play on its commercial origins and also on the famous comic strip of the time, Mutt and Jeff (making the urinal perhaps the first work of art based on a comic). In German, armut means poverty, although Duchamp said the R stood for Richard, French slang for "moneybags," which makes Fountain, or "moneybags piss pot," a kind of scatological golden calf.

The work was delivered to the Society of Independent Artists, which claimed it would exhibit every work submitted. But not Fountain. Duchamp's work was immediately rejected; the public never saw it. The artist took it to Alfred Stieglitz's gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue, which was about to unveil the work of unknown painter Georgia O'Keefe. There, Stieglitz photographed the urinal against the fabulously homoerotic backdrop of Marsden Hartley's The Warriors. In the photo you can read "R. Mutt" written in a beautiful hand on the entry tag still attached to Fountain. The original sculpture was lost. Duchamp eventually authorized eight editions of it, none of which were exhibited in New York until 1950. The version Mr. Pinoncelli smacked is number five, and is valued at 3.4 million, according to a Pompidou official. It is listed in the catalog as "courtesy Larry Gagosian."

Duchamp is invariably referred to as an "anti-artist" and an "iconoclast." This is entirely false. Duchamp was a great art adviser to collectors. He wasn't against art at all; he was against the hypocritical aura surrounding it. More importantly, Duchamp may be the first modern artist to take God's prohibition against "hewn" objects to heart. Fountain is not hewn or made in any traditional sense. In effect, it is an unbegotten work, a kind of virgin birth, a cosmic coitus of imagination and intellect. Like a megalithic stone, Fountain is merely placed on view, pointed at as the locus of something intrinsic to art and as art itself. Duchamp's work relies on a leap of faith: that new thought structures can be formed based on things already in the world. Fountain is the aesthetic equivalent of the Word made Flesh: It is an incarnation of the invisible essence of art, an object in which the distance between image and prototype is narrowed to a scintillating sliver. Just as Christians perceive Christ as the invisible made visible, Jesus said "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," so Fountain essentially says, "He that hath seen me hath also seen the idea of me."

Duchamp adamantly asserted that he wanted to "de-deify" the artist. The readymades provide a way around inflexible either-or aesthetic propositions. They represent a Copernican shift in art. Fountain is what's called an "acheropoietoi," an image not shaped by the hands of an artist. Fountain brings us into contact with an original that is still an original but that also exists in an altered philosophical and metaphysical state. It is a manifestation of the Kantian sublime: A work of art that transcends a form but that is also intelligible, an object that strikes down an idea while allowing it to spring up stronger. Its presence is grace.

Idiot Wind

Today's self-styled image-breakers, or iconophobes, are as predictable and bellicose as ancient ones. A few weeks ago, not long after The New York Sun's Lance Esplund haughtily dismissed Robert Rauschenberg's groundbreaking combines at the Met as "colorless, muddled, mute, faithless, boring," etc., the even more conservative Mario Naves, of The New York Observer—who never actually describes works of art and who only pontificates—bragged that he hadn't seen the Van Gogh drawing show at the Met, glibly sniffing that "a friend tells me I didn't miss much." Then he calls the drawings "a respectable, not spectacular, achievement." Oy!

Next, Naves set his dull-eye on Rauschenberg, chiding the combines, currently gloriously ensconsed at the Met, with the exact same meaningless phrase, "far out," that Clement Greenberg used in 1967 when he was essentially blind to contemporary art. Naves, who is also an artist, fabricates small generic abstract collages that could have been made any time in the last 50 years and that owe much to Abstract Expressionism, Schwitters, and Rauschenberg, allows that the combines "evince a sensitivity to the materials used in their crafting." This boring nonsense sounds like a 1930s textbook. Finally, he concludes that had Rauschenberg "explored this tendency on the intimate scale it called for" (Mr. Naves's scale) "he might have made an unassuming and welcome contribution to the history of 20th-century American art." Ah, dogma.

Copycatalog.

Using the lazy and limited methods that I associate with the Paint application, I made a Miro tribute in 2 minutes. I ought to use real objects like paint and ink and white surfaces instead. I really love Miro's art. After knocking back the following hunk of text, I see the true value of

Aunt Wiki says:

Surrealist automatism

Automatism is a surrealist technique involving spontaneous writing, drawing, or the like practiced without conscious aesthetic or moral self-censorship. Automatism in Surrealism has taken a many forms, from the automatic writing and drawing initially practiced by surrealists, to similar, or perhaps parallel phenomena, such and the non-idiomatic improvisation of free jazz.

Surrealist automatism is different from mediumistic automatism, from which the term was inspired. Ghosts, spirits or the like are not purported to be the source of surrealist automatic messages.

"Pure psychic automatism" was how André Breton, surrealism's founder, defined surrealism, and while the definition has proved capable of significant expansion, automatism remains of prime importance in the movement.

In 1919 Breton and Philippe Soupault wrote the first automatic book, Les Champs Magnétiques while The Automatic Message was one of Breton's significant theoretical works about automatism.

In the 1940s and 1950s the Canadian group called Les Automatistes pursued creative work (chiefly painting) based on surrealist principles. These artists, led by Borduas, sought to proclaim an entity of universal values and ethics proclaimed in their manifesto "Refus Global".

Some surrealists write automatic mathematics or equations.

The anatomy of Joan.

From the virtual home of some Spaightwood Galleries or other I loaned an image and a description, and here they are, followed by my own thoughts and feelings on what I would call "a fucking beautiful piece of art".



Astre et fumée / Star and Smoke (Dupin 424). Original color aquatint and etching with carborundum, 1967. 75 signed and numbered impressions on Mandeure rag paper printed by Arte Adrien Maeght and published by Maeght éditeur, Paris. One of Miró's most important prints, this work was selected by the Museum of Modern Art's Riva Castleman as the only Miró included in Modern Art in Prints (NY: MoMA, 1973), p. 39, an exhibition that was shown at MoMA before touring in the Far East, Australia, and New Zealand. Castleman wrote of this work, "Liquid washes form the smoky passages that swirl around the crusty star-disks. Raspy linear jottings are magical messages in a code devised by the artist. This abstract, placeless composition is typical of the abandoned gaiety of Miró's inventively modern spirit." She adds, "Spontaneity and rhythms were basic factors in the artistic developments occurring in the decade after World War II. Miró displays in his work the roots from which some of these developments grew." Image size: 750x560mm. Price: $40,000.

Thoughts 'n' Feelings

an eye dots mountains bright wet faded alive star asterisk flames nature alien planets language nonsense fence bold definite alphabet joy weird infinite innocent young lost anywhere many things mess chaos primary smear animation life living ongoing balanced passive to danger variety simplicity lines circles spheres monsters people symbols representations sun heart land elements essentials physical truths colour black gret-white graphical fine art 'space'...

Spectrum



I will use this spectrum to produce a Microsoft Paint variant. Viva Joan.

The Thames Walk: tah tems worc.

Today, I walked from the Cutty Sark, Greenwich's premiere boat, to Waterloo, London's premiere toilet. There is a descriptive [or instructive if you prefer] website hidden under this word: link.

En route, as the French say, I passed an art gallery called Tate Modern. I went inside and looked and saw lots of paintings and installations and visitors. The only one that mattered to me was made by Joan Miró.

This I read and then moved from Wikipedia.

Joan Miró
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Joan Miró (April 20, 1893 – December 25, 1983) was a Catalan Spanish painter, sculptor and ceramist born in Barcelona.

Joan Miró photo taken by Carl Van Vechten, 1935His work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a fascination with the subconsious mind, an interest in recreating the child-like, and Catalan and Spanish pride. In numerous writing and interviews dating from the 1930s forward, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods and his desire to abandon them (in his words "murder" and "assassinate" them) in favour of more contemporary means of expression.

As a young man, Miró was drawn towards the arts community that was gathering in Montparnasse and in 1920 moved to Paris. There, under the influence of Surrealist poets and writers, he developed his unique style: organic forms and flattened picture planes drawn with a sharp line. Generally thought of as a Surrealist because of his interest in automatism and the use of sexual symbols (for example, ovoids with wavy lines emanating from them), Miró’s style was influenced in varying degrees by Surrealism and Dada, yet he rejected membership to any artistic movement in the interwar European years. André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, described him as "the most Surrealist of us all." Breton was known for his affinity to automatism and promoted using starvation, lack of sleep, and drugs for inducing hallucinogenic states conducive to create art that reveals the subconscious. Miró confessed to creating one of his most famous works, Harlequin's Carnival, while hallucinating due to a lack of food.

By not becoming an official member of the Surrealists, Miró was free to experiment with any artistic style that he wished without compromising his position within the group and being accused of not being a “true” Surrealist. He pursued his own interests while the art world, both within and between groups which politicked and jockeyed for prominence. Miró’s artistic autonomy, in that he did not adhere to any one particular style, is reflected in his work and his willingness to work with several media.

In an interview with biographer Walter Erben, Miró expressed his dislike for art critics, saying, they "are more concerned with being philosophers than anything else. They form a preconceived opinion, then they look at the work of art. Painting merely serves as a cloak in which to wrap their emaciated philosophical systems."

In 1926, he collaborated with Max Ernst on designs for Sergei Diaghilev. With Miró's help, Ernst pioneered the technique of grattage, in which he troweled pigment onto his canvases.

Miró married Pilar Juncosa in Palma de Mallorca on October 12, 1929; their daughter Dolores was born July 17, 1931.

Shuzo Takiguchi published the first monograph on Miró in 1940.

Joan Miró won the 1954 Venice Biennale printmaking prize, and in 1980 he received the Gold Medal of Fine Arts from King Juan Carlos of Spain. In 1959, André Breton asked Miró to represent Spain in The Homage to Surrealism together with works by Enrique Tábara, Salvador Dalí, and Eugenio Granell.

In his final decades Miró accelerated his work in different media producing hundreds of ceramics, including the Wall of the Moon and Wall of the Sun at the UNESCO building in Paris. He also made temporary window paintings (on glass) for an exhibit.

In the last years of his life Miró wrote his most radical and least known ideas, exploring the possibilities of gas sculpture and four-dimensional painting.

Miró died in Mallorca December 25, 1983.

Many of his pieces are exhibited today in the Fundació Joan Miró in Montjuïc, Barcelona; he is buried nearby, at the Montjuïc cemetery.

Today, his paintings sell between US$250,000 and US$8 million


The official Fundació Miró website is this.

I only love his art.

Today's ism is:

"Vulgarism" derives from Latin vulgus, the "common folk", and has carried into English its original connotations linking it with the low and coarse motivations that were supposed to be natural to the commons, who were not moved by higher motives like fame for posterity and honor among peers— motives that were alleged to move the literate classes. Thus the concept of vulgarism carries cultural freight from the outset, and from some social perspectives it does not genuinely exist, or— a perhaps this amounts to the same thing— ought not to exist.

Although most dictionaries offer "obscene word or language" as a definition for vulgarism, others have insisted that a vulgarism in English usage is different from either profanity or obscenity, cultural concepts which connote offenses against a deity and the community respectively. One kind of vulgarism, defined by the OED as "a colloquialism of a low or unrefined character," substitutes a coarse word where the context might lead the reader to expect a more refined expression: "the tits on Botticelli's Venus" is a vulgarism.

More broadly, as "vulgarity" generally has a social and moral component, a "vulgarism" offers a substitution for a commonplace that is not a mere euphemism; it draws attention to the speaker's high-toned moral superiority or sophistication. Some fatal flaw in the usage often reveals that the speaker's ambitions are not based in reality: vulgarisms are pretentious, in that they lay unwarranted claim to social graces and education and attempt to inflate the user's status.

Several examples will be instructive.

A case in point is objects d'art which denotes ornamental decorative objects of little practical use but considered by the user to be of some artistic merit and material value. The phrase is taken from 19th-century English auctioneers' puffery, with the assumption that if it were French it was of a higher standard of artistry. "Objects d'art" is a gaffe aiming at the French objets d'art ('artistic objects' ). It appeared in Rothschild wills published in the late 19th century, and it is an expression now in common English usage. Like most vulgarisms, it is a shibboleth, defining the status of the speaker.

The substitution of homes for brick-and-mortar houses had its origins in real estate salesman's pitch which implied that the hearth or foyer of family life could be bought in the market, ready-installed in its architectural shell. The inflation was a vulgarism for at least two generations. Today it has gained such wide acceptance that it simply distinguishes middle-class from upper-class usage; or as Nancy Mitford, an expert on the subject, would have said 'U' from 'Non U' usage.

Thomas Carlyle equated vulgarism with materialism when he wrote "The deepest depth of vulgarism is that of setting up money as the ark of the covenant". The religious image that he used is a clue that for Carlyle vulgarism had an inescapable moral component, and its specific Old Testament origin evoked the image of the Philistines in their 19th-century connotation, the embodiments of Philistinism.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgarism"

List of isms from Wikipedia.

A
ableism
abolitionism
absenteeism
absolutism
abstract expressionism
absurdism
accidentalism
acosmism
activism
adoptionism
adultism
aestheticism
Afrocentrism
ageism
agnosticism
agorism
agrarianism
alarmism
Albigensianism
albinism
alcoholism
alter-globalization
Althusserianism
altruism
Americanism
American exceptionalism
anachronism
anarchism
anarcho-capitalism
anarcho-communism
anarcho-syndicalism
aneurysm or aneurism
Anglicanism
Anglicism
aniconism
animalism
animal magnetism
animism
anthropocentrism
anthropomorphism
anti-Americanism
anti-abolitionism
anticlericalism
antidisestablishmentarianism
anti-imperialism
anti-intellectualism
antinomianism
anti-Polonism
anti-Semitism
anti-Zionism
Apollinarism
archaism
Arianism
Aristotelianism
atavism
atheism
Atlanticism
atomism
Atticism
attitudinism
Augustinism
Australianism
authoritarianism
autism
Averroism

B
Ba'athism
Babaism
Bábísm Bagism
Bahá'ísm
baalism
baptism
behaviourism
Belgicism
Benthamism
bicameralism
bilateralism
bilingualism
bimetallism
bjjism
bipedalism
Blairism
bogyism
bohemianism
Bolshevism
Bonapartism
bonism
boosterism
bossism
botulism
breatharianism
brianism
bromism
brutalism
brutism
bruxism
Buchmanism
Buddhism
Bukharinism
Bullism
Bushism
Buzaism

C
Caesaropapism
cambism
Calvinism
Caodaism
capitalism
careerism
Carlism
Cartesian dualism
Cartesianism
Castroism
Catharism
Catholicism
centralism
centrism
charlatanism
Chartism
Chassidism
chauvinism
checkbook journalism
chemism
classicism
classism
clintonism
clericalism
Clitorism
clonism
cognitivism
coherentism
collectivism
collectivist-anarchism
colloquialism
colonialism
communalism
communism
compassionate conservatism
Comtism
conformism
conformitarianism
Confucianism
consequentialism
conservatism
Conservative Judaism
contextualism
contrarianism
constructivism
consubstantiationism
consumerism
corealism
Coreanism
corporatism
cosmism
cosmopolitanism
cosmotheism
creationism
criticism
cronyism
cubism
cultism
cultural relativism
cynicism
czarism

D
Dadaism
Daoism
Darwinism
deconstructivism
decontextualism
defeatism
deism
deontologism
decentralism
despotism
determinism
deviatonism
disablism
Discordianism
disestablishmentarianism
Docetism
dodoism
dogmatism
Dominionism
Donatism
do-goodism
do-nothingism
druidism
dualism
dwarfism
dynamism

E
echoism
Edwardianism
effeminism
egalitarianism
egocentrism
egoism
electromagnetism
eliminativism
elitism
embolism
empiricism
environmental racism
environmentalism
erotism
escapism
essentialism
etatism
ethnic nationalism
ethnocentrism
Eudemonism
Eurocentrism
Eurocommunism
evolutionism
existentialism
exotism
expansionism
expressionism
extremism
extrinsicism
extropism

F
fabianism
faddism
Falangism
fanaticism
fascism
fatalism
Fauvism
federalism
Feeneyism
feminism
Fenianism
fetishism
feudalism
fideism
finitism
fogeyism
Food faddism
foot-fetishism
Fordism
formalism
foundationalism
Francoism
freeganism
functionalism (philosophy of mind)
functionalism (sociology)
fundamentalism
futurism

G
Gallicism
Gaullism
gay liberationism
geocentrism
Geoism
Georgianism
Georgism
Germanism
gigantism
globalism
Goreism
Gnosticism
gradualism
Grundyism

H
Hacktivism
Hassidism
hedonism
Hegelianism
heightism
Helenism
heliocentrism
Hellenism
henotheism
heroism
heterosexism
heterosexualism
Hinduism
hirsutism
historicism
Hitlerism
Hobbesianism
hoboism
homoousianism
Horthyism
hucksterism
humanism
Hussitism
hypnotism

I
idealism
idolism
imagism
immanentism
imperialism
impressionism
individualism
instructivism
intellectualism
internationalism (linguistics)
internationalism (politics)
interventionism
intrinsicism
independentism
irenicism
irredentism
Islamism
isolationism

J
Jacobinism
Jacobitism
Jainism
Jansenism
Japonism
jingoism
journalism
Judaism
jujuism
juridical positivism

K
Kantianism
kathenotheism
Keynesianism

L
laborism
laicism
lamaism
Lamarckianism
Lancastrianism
leftism
left-liberalism
legalism
legal positivism
left-anarchism
Leninism
lesbianism
liberalism
libertarianism
Linuxism
localism
locoism
logical positivism
Lollardism
luminism
Lutheranism
lycanthropism

M
magnetism
malapropism
Manichaeanism
Maoism
Marxism
Marxism-Leninism
masculism
Masochism
materialism
maximalism
McCarthyism
mechanism
Medism
melanism
Menshevism
Mercantilism
mesmerism
metabolism
Methodism
militarism
millennialism
minarchism
minimalism
Mithraism
modalism
Modernism
Mohammedanism
Monarchianism
monarchism
monetarism
Mongolism
monism
monolatrism
Monophysitism
monotheism
monotropism
moral absolutism
moral naturalism
moralism
moral positivism
moral relativism
Mormonism
multiculturalism
multilateralism
mysticism

N
narcissism
nationalism
National Socialism
nativism
naturalism
naturism
Nazism
negativism
neo-classicism
neoconservatism
neo-Darwinism
neoism
neopaganism
neoplatonism
neoclassicism
neoclassicism (music)
neo-romanticism
neoromanticism (music)
nepotism
Nestorianism
nihilism
nomianism
non-consequentialism
non-interventionism
nonsituationism
nudism

O
obelism
objectivism
occultism
ogreism
oligarchism
olympism
onanism
ontologism
optimism
oralism
Orangism
organism
orientalism

P
Pabloism
pacifism
paganism
paleoconservatism
pan-Africanism
pan-Arabism
pandeism
panentheism
pantheism
pan-Germanism
pan-Slavism
pantheism
papism
patriotism
Patripassianism
Pelagianism
Pentecostalism
peonism
perennialism
Peronism
Persianism
personalism
pessimism
phallocentrism
pharaonism
phenomenalism
philhellenism
philistinism
panism
pietism
Pilgerism
plagiarism
playganism
platonism
plenism
pointillism
political absolutism
polycentrism
polydeism
polymorphism
polytheism
populism
positivism
postcolonialism
post-Freudianism
postimpressionism
post-Keynesianism
postmodernism
poststructuralism
post-Zionism
pragmatism
Presbyterianism
presentism
priapism
primitivism
progressivism
Protestantism
proto-capitalism
Psilanthropism
Puseyism

Q
Quakerism
Quietism

R
racism
radicalism
Raelism
raptivism
rationalism
reactionarism
Reaganism
realism
recidivism
redneckism
reductionism
regionalism
relativism
reliabilism
republicanism
Republicanism
revanchism
revisionism
rheumatism
rightism
Roman Catholicism
romanticism
Rosicrucianism
Rousseauism
rugged individualism

S
Sabbatarianism
Sabellianism
sadism
sado-masochism
Saint-simonism
Salvationism
Sandinism
sanism
Sapphism
Satanism
Scandinavism
scepticism
Schmederalism
scholasticism
Scientism
Scotticism
sectarianism
sectionalism
secularism
sensualism
separatism
sesquipedalianism
sexism
Shachtmanism
shamanism
Shiism
Shintoism
Sikhism
Situationism
sizism
skepticism
slumism
social Darwinism
social realism
socialism
socialist realism
Socianism
solecism
solipsism
sophism
sovereigntism
Sparticism
speciesism
Spenglerism
spiritism
spiritualism
Spoonerism
Stalinism
standpatism
stasism
statism
stoicism
structuralism
Sufism
surrealism
syllogism
symbolism
syndicalism
syncretism

T
tachism
Taoism
Tarantism
Taylorism
terrorism
Thatcherism
theism
Thomism
Titoism
Toryism
tourism
totalitarianism
transcendentalism
transgenderism
transhumanism
transsexualism
transsubstantiationism
transvestism
tribalism
tricameralism
Trinitarianism
tropism
tsarism
Trotskyism

U
Ultraintuitionism
Ultraleftism
Ultramontanism
Unificationism
unicameralism
unilateralism
Unionism
Unitarianism
unitarism
Universalism
uranism
utilitarianism
utopianism

V
vampirism
vandalism
veganism
vegetarianism
Victorianism
Vorticism
voyeurism
vulgarism

W
Wahhabism
Whiggism
Whitlamism
witticism

X
xenocentrism

Y
yellow journalism
Yezidism

Z
Zapatism
Zionism
Zoroastrianism
Zwingliism

With a title like that, how can I fail? Cheeky rogue, no arguments.

Art theory is bird flu and I am indoors.

Critical Theory: Too much to bother with.

Part of the contextual studies bit in our compulsory studies word list is something about old and new ideas about art and its use in the world. The whole thing is not worth discussing to be honest; sophisticated opinion has no more value than any other in this department of thought and the years of books and contradicting beliefs are far too dense to begin to understand or inflate to significance. The real magic is of course nothing to do with the information, but the power that wielding it can bring. Everyone is looking to have sex and theorists are no exception. To have a good theory is like having a nice car. People just want to fuck the best, be that the prettiest, smartest or strongest. To be top of a field is to be a clever businessperson. To find a field with a gap at the top of its hierarchy is to award you a little prospective importance. You can get excited and confident and plan your win. Is this a load of rubbish? I don’t care. I couldn’t care less. Art is a method of courtship and there are established faces and disguises. The only promises are fickle and restless. The only definite things are physical, and they are prone to description. The truth can be manipulated until it seems true, just as a plain face can be sprayed gold. It’s all a joke, an expensive waste of time. The best thing about it is that the denial of your own simplicity can make the idea of sex seem as sinful as our old pal Bible did at primary school. The winner takes all their clothes off. The loser reads more theory.

Am I wrong? That is a matter of opinion. To get a degree, I must agree to consider the thoughts of some frustrated old German or other. Is that true? No. I feel an obligation to satisfy the intellectual tray, but that is only because I need to have sex. At least, that is how it seems today. I win.

I posted this, then read it, then reacted to it. Please give me a good grade. What IS a good grade?

Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art”

Artforum (June, 1967)

The editor has written me that he is in favor of avoiding “the notion that the artist is a kind of ape that has to be explained by the civilized critic”. This should be good news to both artists and apes. With this assurance I hope to justify his confidence. To use a baseball metaphor (one artist wanted to hit the ball out of the park, another to stay loose at the plate and hit the ball where it was pitched), I am grateful for the opportunity to strike out for myself.

I will refer to the kind of art in which I am involved as conceptual art. In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman. It is the objective of the artist who is concerned with conceptual art to make his work mentally interesting to the spectator, and therefore usually he would want it to become emotionally dry. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the conceptual artist is out to bore the viewer. It is only the expectation of an emotional kick, to which one conditioned to expressionist art is accustomed, that would deter the viewer from perceiving this art.

Conceptual art is not necessarily logical. The logic of a piece or series of pieces is a device that is used at times, only to be ruined. Logic may be used to camouflage the real intent of the artist, to lull the viewer into the belief that he understands the work, or to infer a paradoxical situation (such as logic vs. illogic). Some ideas are logical in conception and illogical perceptually. The ideas need not be complex. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of ideas the artist is free even to surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition. What the work of art looks like isn’t too important. It has to look like something if it has physical form. No matter what form it may finally have it must begin with an idea. It is the process of conception and realization with which the artist is concerned. Once given physical reality by the artist the work is open to the perception of al, including the artist. (I use the word perception to mean the apprehension of the sense data, the objective understanding of the idea, and simultaneously a subjective interpretation of both). The work of art can be perceived only after it is completed.

Art that is meant for the sensation of the eye primarily would be called perceptual rather than conceptual. This would include most optical, kinetic, light, and color art.

Since the function of conception and perception are contradictory (one pre-, the other postfact) the artist would mitigate his idea by applying subjective judgment to it. If the artist wishes to explore his idea thoroughly, then arbitrary or chance decisions would be kept to a minimum, while caprice, taste and others whimsies would be eliminated from the making of the art. The work does not necessarily have to be rejected if it does not look well. Sometimes what is initially thought to be awkward will eventually be visually pleasing.

To work with a plan that is preset is one way of avoiding subjectivity. It also obviates the necessity of designing each work in turn. The plan would design the work. Some plans would require millions of variations, and some a limited number, but both are finite. Other plans imply infinity. In each case, however, the artist would select the basic form and rules that would govern the solution of the problem. After that the fewer decisions made in the course of completing the work, the better. This eliminates the arbitrary, the capricious, and the subjective as much as possible. This is the reason for using this method.

When an artist uses a multiple modular method he usually chooses a simple and readily available form. The form itself is of very limited importance; it becomes the grammar for the total work. In fact, it is best that the basic unit be deliberately uninteresting so that it may more easily become an intrinsic part of the entire work. Using complex basic forms only disrupts the unity of the whole. Using a simple form repeatedly narrows the field of the work and concentrates the intensity to the arrangement of the form. This arrangement becomes the end while the form becomes the means.

Conceptual art doesn’t really have much to do with mathematics, philosophy, or nay other mental discipline. The mathematics used by most artists is simple arithmetic or simple number systems. The philosophy of the work is implicit in the work and it is not an illustration of any system of philosophy.

It doesn’t really matter if the viewer understands the concepts of the artist by seeing the art. Once it is out of his hand the artist has no control over the way a viewer will perceive the work. Different people will understand the same thing in a different way.

Recently there has been much written about minimal art, but I have not discovered anyone who admits to doing this kind of thing. There are other art forms around called primary structures, reductive, rejective, cool, and mini-art. No artist I know will own up to any of these either. Therefore I conclude that it is part of a secret language that art critics use when communicating with each other through the medium of art magazines. Mini-art is best because it reminds one of miniskirts and long-legged girls. It must refer to very small works of art. This is a very good idea. Perhaps “mini-art” shows could be sent around the country in matchboxes. Or maybe the mini-artist is a very small person, say under five feet tall. If so, much good work will be found in the primary schools (primary school primary structures).

If the artist carries through his idea and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance. The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product. All intervening steps –scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations– are of interest. Those that show the thought process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final product.

Determining what size a piece should be is difficult. If an idea requires three dimensions then it would seem any size would do. The question would be what size is best. If the thing were made gigantic then the size alone would be impressive and the idea may be lost entirely. Again, if it is too small, it may become inconsequential. The height of the viewer may have some bearing on the work and also the size of the space into which it will be placed. The artist may wish to place objects higher than the eye level of the viewer, or lower. I think the piece must be large enough to give the viewer whatever information he needs to understand the work and placed in such a way that will facilitate this understanding. (Unless the idea is of impediment and requires difficulty of vision or access).

Space can be thought of as the cubic area occupied by a three-dimensional volume. Any volume would occupy space. It is air and cannot be seen. It is the interval between things that can be measured. The intervals and measurements can be important to a work of art. If certain distances are important they will be made obvious in the piece. If space is relatively unimportant it can be regularized and made equal (things placed equal distances apart) to mitigate any interest in interval. Regular space might also become a metric time element, a kind of regular beat or pulse. When the interval is kept regular whatever is ireregular gains more importance.

Architecture and three-dimensional art are of completely opposite natures. The former is concerned with making an area with a specific function. Architecture, whether it is a work of art or not, must be utilitarian or else fail completely. Art is not utilitarian. When three-dimensional art starts to take on some of the characteristics, such as forming utilitarian areas, it weakens its function as art. When the viewer is dwarfed by the larger size of a piece this domination emphasizes the physical and emotive power of the form at the expense of losing the idea of the piece.

New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas. There is nothing worse than seeing art that wallows in gaudy baubles. By and large most artists who are attracted to these materials are the ones who lack the stringency of mind that would enable them to use the materials well. It takes a good artist to use new materials and make them into a work of art. The danger is, I think, in making the physicality of the materials so important that it becomes the idea of the work (another kind of expressionism).

Three-dimensional art of any kind is a physical fact. The physicality is its most obvious and expressive content. Conceptual art is made to engage the mind of the viewer rather than his eye or emotions. The physicality of a three-dimensional object then becomes a contradiction to its non-emotive intent. Color, surface, texture, and shape only emphasize the physical aspects of the work. Anything that calls attention to and interests the viewer in this physicality is a deterrent to our understanding of the idea and is used as an expressive device. The conceptual artist would want o ameliorate this emphasis on materiality as much as possible or to use it in a paradoxical way (to convert it into an idea). This kind of art, then, should be stated with the greatest economy of means. Any idea that is better stated in two dimensions should not be in three dimensions. Ideas may also be stated with numbers, photographs, or words or any way the artist chooses, the form being unimportant.

These paragraphs are not intended as categorical imperatives, but the ideas stated are as close as possible to my thinking at this time. These ideas are the result of my work as an artist and are subject to change as my experience changes. I have tried to state them with as much clarity as possible. If the statements I make are unclear it may mean the thinking is unclear. Even while writing these ideas there seemed to be obvious inconsistencies (which I have tried to correct, but others will probably slip by). I do not advocate a conceptual form of art for all artists. I have found that it has worked well for me while other ways have not. It is one way of making art; other ways suit other artists. Nor do I think all conceptual art merits the viewer’s attention. Conceptual art is good only when the idea is good.