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I Don't Get It
By Judith Ann Moriarty
Film, video, and photography. Three categories
heavily favored in the 2006 Mary Nohl Fellowship
awards. In a recent piece, “The End of Art As We
Know It,” written by Jan Roberts for Art In
Wisconsin, a publication of Wisconsin Painters &
Sculptors, she asks “why only this type of art is
being noticed and honored, and what impact that
has on the more traditional artists and the general
public.” She goes on to say that “those who are in
a position to control and dictate the direction the
arts take seem to be fueling this movement by
their enthusiastic support of it, and general
rejection of traditional art.”
Roberts, a painter who has worked at her craft for
forty years, feels that art is a “very human
endeavor,” and that somehow film, video and
photography, remove (or may eventually remove),
…the human element. What a strange notion. I’ve
always felt that it is the mind of the artist that
drives the art. The idea of minds working through
machines seems alien to her, enough so that she
frets the traditional may be replaced by art made
via high-tech methods. She buffers that a bit, by
adding “I am not here to halt that progress, or to
limit or censor anyone’s creativity…as cerebral as it
might be. I would, however, like to have that
freedom extended to me and others who still
prefer paint and clay over technologically produced
ideas.”
I don’t get it. In what way is her freedom being
threatened? Certainly not at Katie Gingrass
Gallery, where she and others are currently
exhibiting in Art Alfresco. Traditional approaches to
painting, drawing, and sculpture are often given
prominent display in galleries and international art
magazines.
By “traditional,” Roberts seems to imply that artists
who prefer paint and clay are left out of the
conceptual club reserved for cerebral insiders. After
all, she argues, “music (for the most part), is still
based on the standard scale of notes and has a
certain structure.” But thank heavens for Igor
Stravinsky, who, in 1913, at the age of thirty,
unveiled his Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of
Spring). Fights broke out between folks tuned to
the traditional, but Stravinsky paved the way for
composers like John Cage and Prince and our local
and energetically experimental Present Music…risk
takers all.
Apparently she feels a similar kinship with
traditional literature, i.e. literature with a
“recognizable” structure, which I assume it must
mean it has a beginning, middle, and end. Buy why
close our eyes to the sparsely elegant words in 60-
year-old Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s After
Dark? Nor should we ignore octogenarian Norman
Mailer, who can still skew structure, as he does in
his recent Castle In the Forest, a fairytale (if only it
weren’t true!), detailing the bizarre life of Adolph
Hitler. The poetry of Charles Bukowski, who, in his
1992 The Last Night of The Earth Poems brought to
fruition the ugly, the despairing, the wretched…the
un-beautiful made beautiful.
Where would today’s filmmakers be without the
‘50s “New Wave” of European filmmakers, who
decided It’s a Wonderful Life (a beginning, a middle,
an end) wasn’t cutting it. Add to that a young
actor (Marlon Brando) fresh out of the cerebral
school of Method Acting. He re-defined the art of
acting forever, never mind that he was dissed for
being a “mumbler.” Quentin Tarantino’s 2007
Grindhouse flick doubles over on itself, and his Pulp
Fiction remains one of the greatest films ever.
Bloody, creepy, and certainly non-traditional, it is
beauty re-defined.
In linking the “traditional” with rubber-stamp ideas
of “beauty,” Roberts uses the example of a “lovely
and well-executed landscape” vs. piling concrete
blocks on a museum floor. She not only takes issue
with concrete blocks piled on a museum floor, but is
piqued if they are taken seriously, particularly at
the “expense of the lovely landscape.” In 2007,
Kyoung Ae Cho arranged “blocks” of compressed
sage on the floor of the Inova/Kenilworth
building…to great effect, I might add. Her work is
currently (until July 15) at The Wisconsin Triennial,
along with art produced by various digital
techniques. In the same Inova event,
photographer Tom Bamberger exhibited digitally
altered landscapes. The beauty was not in the
altering per se; it was in the thoughts driving
Bamberger’s head.
Roberts fears that viewers who don’t “get” the
concept of piling concrete blocks, have been
railroaded onto sidetracks of un-hipness. Perhaps
there is nothing to “get.” Sometimes a pile of
blocks is just a pile of blocks and stripped-down
minimalism is the point, but you are unlikely to get
the point unless you ponder the impact of negative
space surrounding the installation. A landscape
may also be just a landscape, no matter how
certain “the human touch.” From June 9 to
September 9, the Milwaukee Art Museum hosts
Pissarro: Creating the Impressionist Landscape.
MAM’s promotional packet says the exhibit explores
the artist’s transformation from a traditional
landscape painter to a “daring pioneer of
Impressionism.” Had Pissarro feared change, we
wouldn’t have much to think about. Sitting dead-
center limits the many possibilities of art. Had
Santiago Calatrava waffled, we wouldn’t have
MAM’s addition. Had Victorian décor stuck in our
heads, the ideas fueling George Nelson’s 1956
Marshmallow Sofa would have fallen flat.
It’s difficult to understand how the hi-tech
components of art (film, video, photography)
negatively impact traditional artists and the
general public. Feeling “left out” does not form the
basis of a sound argument, nor does her
suggestion that “we not loose the magic” of the
traditional. The magic of which she speaks is not
magic at all. It is the hard work of bringing
together a swarm of ideas buzzing in the heads of
“cerebral” (a word not to be feared) artists. “For
whatever reasons,” Roberts says in her artist’s
statement for Art Alfresco, “I seem to need the
safety net of a traditional genre in order to push
my creative boundaries.”
Way back in 1983, Bill Viola fashioned Science of the
Heart. His medium? It was primarily video. The fact
that the 2006 Mary Nohl Fellowship awards
embrace artists working in film, video, and
photography should come as no big surprise,
24-years down the line. Why it didn’t happen
sooner is anyone’s guess.
Judith Ann Moriarty is a frequent contributor to
Susceptible to Images.
Email comments@susceptibletoimages.com
Copyright 2007. Content may not be used or
reproduced without the permission of the author.
By Judith Ann Moriarty
Film, video, and photography. Three categories
heavily favored in the 2006 Mary Nohl Fellowship
awards. In a recent piece, “The End of Art As We
Know It,” written by Jan Roberts for Art In
Wisconsin, a publication of Wisconsin Painters &
Sculptors, she asks “why only this type of art is
being noticed and honored, and what impact that
has on the more traditional artists and the general
public.” She goes on to say that “those who are in
a position to control and dictate the direction the
arts take seem to be fueling this movement by
their enthusiastic support of it, and general
rejection of traditional art.”
Roberts, a painter who has worked at her craft for
forty years, feels that art is a “very human
endeavor,” and that somehow film, video and
photography, remove (or may eventually remove),
…the human element. What a strange notion. I’ve
always felt that it is the mind of the artist that
drives the art. The idea of minds working through
machines seems alien to her, enough so that she
frets the traditional may be replaced by art made
via high-tech methods. She buffers that a bit, by
adding “I am not here to halt that progress, or to
limit or censor anyone’s creativity…as cerebral as it
might be. I would, however, like to have that
freedom extended to me and others who still
prefer paint and clay over technologically produced
ideas.”
I don’t get it. In what way is her freedom being
threatened? Certainly not at Katie Gingrass
Gallery, where she and others are currently
exhibiting in Art Alfresco. Traditional approaches to
painting, drawing, and sculpture are often given
prominent display in galleries and international art
magazines.
By “traditional,” Roberts seems to imply that artists
who prefer paint and clay are left out of the
conceptual club reserved for cerebral insiders. After
all, she argues, “music (for the most part), is still
based on the standard scale of notes and has a
certain structure.” But thank heavens for Igor
Stravinsky, who, in 1913, at the age of thirty,
unveiled his Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of
Spring). Fights broke out between folks tuned to
the traditional, but Stravinsky paved the way for
composers like John Cage and Prince and our local
and energetically experimental Present Music…risk
takers all.
Apparently she feels a similar kinship with
traditional literature, i.e. literature with a
“recognizable” structure, which I assume it must
mean it has a beginning, middle, and end. Buy why
close our eyes to the sparsely elegant words in 60-
year-old Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s After
Dark? Nor should we ignore octogenarian Norman
Mailer, who can still skew structure, as he does in
his recent Castle In the Forest, a fairytale (if only it
weren’t true!), detailing the bizarre life of Adolph
Hitler. The poetry of Charles Bukowski, who, in his
1992 The Last Night of The Earth Poems brought to
fruition the ugly, the despairing, the wretched…the
un-beautiful made beautiful.
Where would today’s filmmakers be without the
‘50s “New Wave” of European filmmakers, who
decided It’s a Wonderful Life (a beginning, a middle,
an end) wasn’t cutting it. Add to that a young
actor (Marlon Brando) fresh out of the cerebral
school of Method Acting. He re-defined the art of
acting forever, never mind that he was dissed for
being a “mumbler.” Quentin Tarantino’s 2007
Grindhouse flick doubles over on itself, and his Pulp
Fiction remains one of the greatest films ever.
Bloody, creepy, and certainly non-traditional, it is
beauty re-defined.
In linking the “traditional” with rubber-stamp ideas
of “beauty,” Roberts uses the example of a “lovely
and well-executed landscape” vs. piling concrete
blocks on a museum floor. She not only takes issue
with concrete blocks piled on a museum floor, but is
piqued if they are taken seriously, particularly at
the “expense of the lovely landscape.” In 2007,
Kyoung Ae Cho arranged “blocks” of compressed
sage on the floor of the Inova/Kenilworth
building…to great effect, I might add. Her work is
currently (until July 15) at The Wisconsin Triennial,
along with art produced by various digital
techniques. In the same Inova event,
photographer Tom Bamberger exhibited digitally
altered landscapes. The beauty was not in the
altering per se; it was in the thoughts driving
Bamberger’s head.
Roberts fears that viewers who don’t “get” the
concept of piling concrete blocks, have been
railroaded onto sidetracks of un-hipness. Perhaps
there is nothing to “get.” Sometimes a pile of
blocks is just a pile of blocks and stripped-down
minimalism is the point, but you are unlikely to get
the point unless you ponder the impact of negative
space surrounding the installation. A landscape
may also be just a landscape, no matter how
certain “the human touch.” From June 9 to
September 9, the Milwaukee Art Museum hosts
Pissarro: Creating the Impressionist Landscape.
MAM’s promotional packet says the exhibit explores
the artist’s transformation from a traditional
landscape painter to a “daring pioneer of
Impressionism.” Had Pissarro feared change, we
wouldn’t have much to think about. Sitting dead-
center limits the many possibilities of art. Had
Santiago Calatrava waffled, we wouldn’t have
MAM’s addition. Had Victorian décor stuck in our
heads, the ideas fueling George Nelson’s 1956
Marshmallow Sofa would have fallen flat.
It’s difficult to understand how the hi-tech
components of art (film, video, photography)
negatively impact traditional artists and the
general public. Feeling “left out” does not form the
basis of a sound argument, nor does her
suggestion that “we not loose the magic” of the
traditional. The magic of which she speaks is not
magic at all. It is the hard work of bringing
together a swarm of ideas buzzing in the heads of
“cerebral” (a word not to be feared) artists. “For
whatever reasons,” Roberts says in her artist’s
statement for Art Alfresco, “I seem to need the
safety net of a traditional genre in order to push
my creative boundaries.”
Way back in 1983, Bill Viola fashioned Science of the
Heart. His medium? It was primarily video. The fact
that the 2006 Mary Nohl Fellowship awards
embrace artists working in film, video, and
photography should come as no big surprise,
24-years down the line. Why it didn’t happen
sooner is anyone’s guess.
Judith Ann Moriarty is a frequent contributor to
Susceptible to Images.
Email comments@susceptibletoimages.com
Copyright 2007. Content may not be used or
reproduced without the permission of the author.
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| Jason Yi, Allusion to Diamond Mountain, 2006. Water soluble starch packing foam, wood. Image courtesy of the artist (Click images to enlarge; use your browser's back button to return to article) |
| Amy Ruffo, Untitled, 2005– 2006. Ink on paper. Courtesy of the artist |
Sol LeWitt, Four-sided Pyramid
| Installation in Owen Park, Madision, Wisconsin. |
| Camille Pissarro, Hoar Frost, 1873 |
| George Nelson, Marshmallow Sofa, 1956 |