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Winner,
Outstanding Essay, Advanced Writing Category, 2004
Dustin Smith
ENG 291-019
Instructor: Ms. Judy Cooper
11 December 2003
AN ARTIST’S CALL TO ARMS
I’ve been serious student
of art since I was 13 years old. I have learned from a dozen different
professors at two different universities and spent four years with one
teacher at the high school level. This whole time I felt uneasy about
what I was learning. All of my teachers were skilled and have been able
to teach me much about technique, but most of them had ideas about being
an artist that just didn’t seem quite right. Then I put my fingers
on it. It was happening during class critiques of student work. With exception
to my high school teacher and my Savannah College of Art and Design drawing
professor, all of my teachers have always asked what the items in my work
represent. Does the hallway represent your future? Does the teapot represent
your mom? My answer was always no. An item was placed in a painting because
of its compositional value not because it was representational of a period
in my life. This representational philosophy is called conceptual art,
and it is destroying everything that once made art great. Artists have
moved far away from the traditional fundamentals of art. Pieces hanging
on America’s gallery walls display no qualities of composition.
An alarming number of them are simply political or social statements.
Often this raises the question, “What is art?” In the past
this wasn’t a difficult answer. The painters and sculptors were
highly skilled artists and spent their entire lives trying to master their
discipline. Names like Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Dali will live on
forever, but the names of 20th Century political artists will soon be
forgotten.
Modern artists are too attached to the idea of creating art that addresses
political, social, or personal concerns. This is obviously influenced
by the general attitude of America. People want their opinions to be heard
and artists have a unique opportunity to be heard more than most. Whatever
artists are for or against can be made into a work of art. It becomes
a billboard for the artist’s political views. It can be a valuable
tool, but should not be the basis for an entire art movement.
In the late 1950s, Jasper Johns painted “Three Flags,” which
was simply three American flags painted one on top of the other. In the
next decade this painting began to have large political implications.
It sold for more than any painting ever by a living artist. The difference
between this piece and political art of the last two decades is that Johns
still gave attention to the elements of composition. There is repetition
of shape and also shading that adds depth to what would otherwise be a
very flat painting of a flag. Artists that create political statements
without remembering these elements of composition are not really creating
art. They are making campaign posters. They have forgotten the most basic
reason that people enjoy art, because it is beautiful. Their definition
of beauty may differ, but the same principles of art still apply. True
artists create images that appeal to the eye or excite the imagination.
The artist must display some level of skill or he/she cannot truly be
called an artist. Conceptual art has its place, but that place is not
hanging on the wall of our finer art galleries.
Things that happen in life will certainly influence an artist but don’t
always need to be the basis for art. Since attending Northern Kentucky
University I have heard many professors and professional artists speak
about their work. The overwhelming majority talk about things that were
going on in their lives at the time the art was created. One professor
made drawings of chairs and placed them into human situations. The chairs,
she said, represented her family. One in particular had two large chairs
in the foreground and a smaller chair off in the distance. The artist
said this piece was about her son going off to college. The drawing just
didn’t work. It was over-simplified and no attention was given to
the background. It was just three chairs and a horizon line. After listening
to her speak for an hour I still had not heard her mention any of the
elements of art, nor did I see them in her work. Jeffrey Jones, a visiting
artist from another university, made paintings that were influenced by
the town Oak Ridge. This town had one of the plants that was used in the
Manhattan Project. His paintings were well made and he had some innovative
techniques, but without an explanation the work made no sense. The paintings
could not stand alone. The story behind them was more important than the
finished product, which therefore becomes too conceptual to be successful.
Conceptual art hurts the general public’s opinion of art. They don’t
understand it. It can be too confusing. The art needs to be explained
to them and that takes away from the experience of viewing the art. Viewers
shouldn’t get caught up in the idea of the painting; they should
get caught up in the painting itself. An explanation may lend relevance
to the art but still doesn’t make me want to hang it on my wall.
The cliché thing for artists to say is that they don’t feel
the need to explain their art. The problem is that if an explanation is
needed then the art has already failed. At a gallery show the artist will
attend the opening but probably not come again. So the majority of people
don’t get the opportunity to speak to the artist. Therefore, if
the viewers don’t understand the art, they will most likely forget
about it and move on to the next piece. At the Cincinnati Contemporary
Art Center there is an entire floor that is filled with political art.
Most are posters with just words, speaking out against government or corporations.
These posters are not art. They are propaganda.
More artists should focus on creating art that looks appealing to the
viewer. There is a broad range of opinions of what is appealing. It basically
comes down to catching the attention of the viewer. It could be a large,
bold print that simply demands attention, or an amazing land-scape that
tested the artist’s skill and attention to detail. Visual art, by
definition, is intended to be viewed, so for a work of art to be successful,
people must want to see it. The only way to accomplish this is to catch
the viewer’s attention. A person can stare at Seurat’s “A
Sunday on La Grande Jatte” for hours and still not see all of the
detail. Any artist who has stood in front of that masterpiece knows the
ability of it to humble the viewer. It should be the goal of every artist
to create something this awe-inspiring.
Current artists are overly concerned with being individualistic and are
not able to see what can be accomplished as a whole. Fewer and fewer artists
acknowledge their predecessors as influences on their work. “Each
artist, regardless of medium or genre, who has created before us should
be of use. We each have a responsibility to read and see and hear as much
as we can” (Parks 26). Few artists will claim that a living artist
influences them. They do not see the overall historical relevance. T.S.
Eliot wrote about the idea that the individual is too often praised for
what makes him or her different from others. He writes,
We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors;
we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed.
Where-as if we approach a poet without his prejudice we shall often find
that only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those
in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most
vigorously (48).
Eliot was obviously writing about poetry but the same theory can be applied
to any form of art. By staying true to the form an artist becomes an immortal
part of art history. The masters of the High Renaissance were true to
this. “The great masters of the 16th century—Leonardo, Bramante,
Michelangelo, Raphael, Giorgione, Titian—were thought to have shared
the ideals of their predecessors, but to have expressed them so completely
that their names became synonyms for perfection” (Janson 478). Many
artists and art movements have the idea that if it has been done before,
then it shouldn’t be done again, but if the Renaissance reached
perfection, we really should have never left it.
There are artists currently working who embrace the idea of becoming a
master. Unfortunately the art community does not embrace them. The work
of Odd Nerdrum is a perfect example. I attended a gallery show of his
in Pittssburgh in 1996 and was amazed. Nerdrum is a Norwegian painter.
His paintings are always figures and are usually of nude males. He conveys
an eerie feeling with his paintings that usually have some form of stabbing
weapon in them. This feeling is amplified with his use of high contrast
between light and dark, a tool he clearly learned from painters before
him, including Leonardo da Vinci. At the time I had no idea art like this
was still being made. It is unfortunate that the art world doesn’t
promote work like this more. Roger Kimball writes that many critics, curators,
and collectors won’t even go to see Nerdrum’s work (57). Kimball
continues:
A large part of the reason is that Mr. Nerdrum’s paintings with
their unsettling, often violent allegorical themes and their unapologetic
recourse to a Rembrandtesque pictorial style, repudiate virtually all
the reigning orthodoxies of contemporary art. They are proudly anti-modernist,
yet they owe little, if anything, to the political posturing of the post-modernist
camp. This is an art that doesn’t fit into any of the trends, fashions,
or other excitements on offer at the moment, and it’s flaunting
of old master methods and a narrative allegorical subject matter leaves
at least some of the people who do get to see Mr. Nerdrum’s work
quite baffled, if not offended (57).
The people who are baffled are members of the art community. They no longer
accept painting in the traditional style. They are afraid that if master-style
painting becomes popular once again their political art movement will
come to an end. These artists would then be replaced by artists who can
actually paint. This would be the day that I have long awaited.
Chuck Close is another current artist who is painting masterpieces. “He
creates enormous faces blown-up from photographs, many times life-sized,
that confront the viewer even from a distance” (Johnson 33). These
paintings are often more than ten feet tall and demand to be noticed.
His work doesn’t resemble the work of any other current artist or
any artist from the past; yet, he uses many of the compositional techniques
that were pioneered before him. Close uses a strong sense of pattern by
using a grid technique to create these giant paintings. He often leaves
the grid noticeable in his paintings. This creates pattern, repetition,
and flow, which are all important elements of composition. He manages
all of this inside a painting that is otherwise just an extreme close-up
of a face, and it is because he uses what he has learned from artist who
came before him. His creations, however, remain uniquely his, and thus,
he adds to the positive progression of art.
The negative progression of art can be used as an effective tool also.
In 1917, when Marcel Duchamp hung a urinal on the wall of a gallery and
called it art, he was making a significant point. Duchamp was lashing
out at the Impressionists and other painters of pretty pictures. “Duchamp,
through his ready-mades... managed to throw off art’s bondage to
prettiness” (Yanal 161). He wanted to show that thought was just
as important to art as the actual creation of art. This idea became very
influential and led to the creation of some important works of art, but
then artists began to take Duchamp’s idea too far. Now we have art
being created where thought is more important than the finished product.
The artists feel they are doing something that is important to them, but
the problem is that it isn’t necessarily important to the viewer.
If there is not an inspiring image to go along with the statement that
the artist is trying to make, then the viewer is left with nothing at
all.
Artists are always concerned about being true to themselves. Of course
this is important to an artist and it should be, but it seems like this
idea has gone too far. No one wants to be a sell-out, but what defines
a sell-out isn’t exactly clear. Artists cannot forget that many
of the World’s art treasures were works that were commissioned.
Many of these, like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, were paid for by
the churches. Kings and wealthy citizens requested thousands of others.
A large percentage of artists today would never consider making a portrait
of the President if they didn’t like him. They would give up the
chance to create a portrait that could be studied as a classic one hundred
years from now, just because of their political views. Michelangelo had
problems with the church but he would never have let these differences
stop him from painting that beautiful ceiling. Toulouse-Lautrec made flyers
for brothels. It might not seem like an admirable form of art but it was
a way of funding his art, and even his posters are viewed as high art.
Today we study these artists as some of the greatest that ever lived.
They are far above the level of most modern artists. Betsy Powell cites
an example of modern art. She writes that there was a sculpture by post-minimalist
Richard Serra and this sculpture was covered with shoes and photographed
by artist David Hammon (W002). Powell claims this piece as art, but she
is wrong. Hammon simply vandalized an existing piece of art and photographed
it. The work of Basquiat is similar. Andy Warhol took a graffiti artist,
Basquiat, and let him spray paint on top of Warhol’s existing work.
The graffiti on top of the original didn’t really add anything desirable.
It did help open the door for graffiti artists to be recognized, but shouldn’t
necessarily be recognized an art. Without Warhol’s name on it, it
probably never would have.
Artists need to come together for a new Renaissance. The first Renaissance
was considered a time of rebirth. The good thing about a rebirth is that
it can be done more than once. The Renaissance period, like most other
important art movements, extended beyond the visual arts. This “New
Renaissance” should extend to the other forms of art. Music, writing,
and film would all have strong importance in the movement. Jordanian artist
Khalid Khreis says, “The Renaissance signaled a freer environment
for culture and the arts with different and clearer styles of painting
emerging on the scene” (Ibrahim). “Clearer styles” is
an important phrase. Renaissance artists were focused on beautiful, inspiring
images. The portraits of the era, especially those of women, were often
soft in texture, and the details of the face, while realistic, were more
fluid than reality. This style makes the subject appear more beautiful.
Ironically, the closest we have to this today are photographs of models
in advertisements. After being touched up with an airbrush, these models
seem to be more beautiful than what is actually possible. They are. Graphic
artists use 500 year-old ideas to sell products, but fine artists no longer
attempt such beauty. It may be that artists have become lazy, or maybe
fine art just isn’t as important to people as it used to be. In
either case, we need to make a change.
The call to arms is this: Make beauty with regularity; make art extraordinary.
With this as a battle cry we can lead into the 21st century with a new
attitude toward art. It is an attitude that really began with Phidias
in ancient Greece and has since been periodically forgotten. The Renaissance
masters remembered it. The Impressionists remembered it. Maybe we will
remember it again. Artists will again be known as makers of the finer
things in life. Artists that lash out against the standards of art will
again be viewed as radicals, and all art will be important.
Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” The
Sacred Wood,
New York: Barnes, 1928.
Ibrahim, Louis, “The Mystery of Art in the Past Millennium.”
The Star (Jordan) 31 Dec. 1999: unpaged.
Janson, Horst W. History of Art-5th ed. Ed. Joanne Greenspun.
New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995.
Johnson, Mark M. “Chuck Close.” Arts and Activities 124.2
(1998): 33-35.
Kimball, Roger. “Exhibition Notes.” New Criterion
15.10 (1997): 55-57.
Parks, Susan-Lori. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.”
Theater 29.2 (1999): 26-31.
Powell, Betsy. “Give it Meaning.” Toronto Star 5 Apr. 2001:
W002.
Yanal, Robert J. “Duchamp and Kant: Together at Last.” Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities 7.1 (2002): 161.167.
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