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Classification / compartmentalization - why is it important?

Guy Tal

Editor at Large
My formal education in art likely falls short of others on this forum but one thing that always bothered me about art education is the incessant drive to classify everything into genres, schools, styles, disciplines etc. Breaking the molds or making exceptions is usually either greeted with extreme scorn or extreme reverence, depending on who is doing the breaking.

Is it really important that we have a term for everything and that anything we produce is first placed in a given "bucket" before its value is assessed on an emotional or, dare I say, artistic level?

Why is it that the perceived value of a given piece secondary to the fact that it's a painting or a photograph, or that it is pictorial or impressionist or post-modern?

And more importantly - does the practice of rigid classification and placement of strong boundaries that governs the academic study of art actually benefit art or detracts from it?

Guy
 

Colin Jago

New member
Human nature

Guy Tal said:
My formal education in art likely falls short of others on this forum but one thing that always bothered me about art education is the incessant drive to classify everything into genres, schools, styles, disciplines etc. Guy

I don't think this is just about art and art education. We human beings like to classify and codify. We work in tribes. Stereotypes work as short cuts. It is the way we are built.

I think one of the interesting things about art is that it manages to cope and create despite these conservative elements of our nature.

Colin
 

Ben Lifson

New member
Classification/compartmentalization -- their usefulness

Terms for "genres, schools, styles, disciplines, etc." are useful tools for art history, for although the elements and principles of art have not changed at least since the Venus of Willendorf (BC c. 25,000-21,000), the application of these principles and elements -- that is to say, style -- has changed constantly over the millenia. Moreover, in any specific era, no matter how long (e.g. the artistic eras of ancient Egypt) or short (the 20th centuries many artistic eras), a certain style, or certain styles -- or schools, etc. -- are dominate. The terms Gothic, Romanesque, Mannerist, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classical, Romantic, Realist, Impressionist, Symbolist, Post-Impressionist, Fauvist, and so on are primarily inventions of art historians and are used to indicate the dominate art movemements and styles of those terms' respective periods.

With respect to pre-ninettenth century art they were made possible -- as, indeed, was the discipline of art history itself -- by the invention of photography. In the late 1840s, when the French printer and, later, photographer Blanquard-Evrard began printing albums of photographic reproductions of art objects, it suddenly was possible to look at and compare, side by side, fairly faithful reproductions of two (or more) different works from different eras and which were geographically separated by hundreds or thousands of miles. One could look at the carvings in the tombs of Saqqara, Egypt, next to the bas reliefs of Persepolis or the sculptures on the facade of Chartres Cathedral and say accurate things about the differences in line, in surface, in the height of relief, in the shadows cast by the surfaces in relief. From reproductions of many objects from the same era -- many Netherlandish Renaissance altar pieces from the 15th and early 16th centures -- one could make accurate generalizations.

Some terms were already there: "Renaissance", for example, or "Classical" for the productions of ancient Greece and Rome. And in the nineteenth century some movements had already been named by the artists themselves or by the public: Realism. Impressionism.

But for art eras closer to the late 19th-early 20th-century, when the discipline of Art History really took off, terms had to be invented. Mannerism. Baroque. Rococo.

The early 20th century art critic Roger Fry invented the term Post Impressionism for the art of the 1880s-1910s, which now has sub-terms to distinguish some movements from others: Symbolism. Fauvism. Expressionism.

With the early 20th-century's splintering of art into several simultaneous movements, still other new terms emerged, some invented by critics, some by the artists themselves. Cubism (a critiic's invention.) Surrealism (first coined by the French avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire). Dada (invented by the artists themselves).

Later all these new movements, whose emphasis was on the new, were grouped together in a term Modernism.

Since World War II we've seen Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Pop Art, Post Modernism...Some say there are now terms like Neo-Modernism.

All of these terms have real value and use in separating certain eras and/or groups of artists from others, and of enabling us to make accurate, general comments about certain dominate tendencies in style.

For it is true that styles change over time and that at any one time certain styles are dominant and therefore typify or characterize the art of their eras.

In short, these terms are DESCRIPTIVE and of use only for ART HISTORY.

THEY ARE NOT EITHER PRESCRIPTIVE OR PROSCRIPTIVE AND SHOULD NOT BE USED IN THE TEACHING OF STUDIO ART EXCEPT AS REFERENCE POINTS FOR DISCUSSION.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Ben,

Such a great precis of the movements as styles of different periods. Not withstanding the proscription for use in studio art teaching, do you have objections to use in critique.

"This appears Dado or is this is meant to be cubist then ........... Warhilistic styles are fine, but for me to value must add the expression of a new vision rather than a production of "like Warhal" images."

Asher
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Guy Tal said:
Why is it that the perceived value of a given piece secondary to the fact that it's a painting or a photograph, or that it is pictorial or impressionist or post-modern?
Guy

We need to have a name for "things" in order to talk about them in a meaningful manner. I name my houses & properties. I name rock art sites. I name my photographs. Otherwise, how could others and myself ever know what I am talking about? Ben's response points to the educational & historical value of the naming process in art.

Naming can therefore be considered a linguistic issue.

That a name is attached to a specific monetary value is an entirely different matter that has to do with marketing, perceived value, previous sale records and so on.

Monetary value can therefore be considered an art-market issue.

In other words, naming & monetary value are not the same thing.
 

Guy Tal

Editor at Large
Thanks folks!

Alain, I was not talking about monetary value.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that we should not have names for things, but rather that we tend to hinge our appreciation on first classifying a piece of art, before taking in its appeal as a self-contained visual message.

This is not unique to art. Take wine for example - I can taste a glass of wine and tell you whether I like it or not or whether it goes well with the particular food being served. I don't need to know the variety or vintage and in fact I will be able to proceed with my life never knowing anything else about this wine.

Others I know will demand to know the type, region, vintage, and any number of other characteristics before ever raising the glass. Without knowing these they will try to guess and inquire and may eve lose sleep if they discover they were wrong. All these things will precede their assessment of whether they simply like it or not.

Are we doing greater harm by presenting our work as belonging to a given genre and therefore asking the viewer to appreciate it as such rather than on its own merit?

Guy
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Guy,

It makes sense to show your landscapes alone or in an exhibition with other photographs or in an art museum positioned with a class of art that people recognize.

We then need to describe what people should come to see.

If yours, by chance was Dada, then it would be something people would either not want to see or might be drawn to. For good or bad, collectors go after particular types of art and photgraphy and giving labels allows them to beat a path to your door.

So we need names.

Asher
 

Ben Lifson

New member
Classifcation/Compartmentalization -- Guy Tal Asks the Right Question

And answers it correctly

Terms like Impressionism, Romanesque etc. enable those who don't know how to look at pictures to talk about something, anyway. They provide ready-made commentary--the more someone knows, or thinks he knows what a term means the more ready-made comments at his disposal. "Oh, Mannerism. See the distortions? The elongations? The most famous example is Peruginino's Madonna with the Long Neck. You know, the one with the long, long leg coming in from the left edge?" Even artists' names can provide ready made commentary. "Michaelangelo always left a piece of un-worked Smarble in his statues. See it, down there by the pedestal? He liked to honor the raw stone out of which he carved the form."

And so on.

All of which takes one farther and farther from the work itself.

This is convenient for most people because it relieves them of the hard work of looking and, by looking, seeing, and, through seeing, feeling and, while feeling, putting both the feelings and what it is about the work that provokes them into words.

Sometimes it helps seeing, though. I'll never forget the painter Jane Dixon saying "Oh, Bruegel. Not a generalized figure in the whole body of work." So now, when I stand in front of a crowded Bruegel painting -- and what painting by Bruegel isn't full of to crowded with humanity? -- I can immediately see that no matter how many human figures are represented on the canvas, and sometimes there are over 50 and in the great Netherlandish Proverbs, Childrens' Games and The Battle Between Carnival and Lent there are in each canvas over a hundred, I think...I can immediately see that not one human figure in the lot resembles another in any way. This is also true of Garry Winogrand's figures, of Henri Cartier-Bresson's crowded pictures, and so on. And when one can see that each of these human figures is a distinct form, and when one then contemplates the forms as forms as well as "people", one begins to feel the power of the artist's imagination and love of life...Yes, love, to be able to look at and represent life full of its particulars, without generalizing about anything, and put all those things into a composition that expresses a relationship unique to the picture...That is, a relationship that comes only from the artist's sense of what the relationships between and among people can be, and between people and the physical world around them. When you get that far into a picture, Netherlandish Baroque (Bruegel) or, say, Surrealism (Henri Cartier-Bresson) have very little use...

Except as reference points. Knowing the Baroque generally gives deep insight into how Bruegel handled its terms -- into Bruegel's individuality and unique genius as an artist. Knowing Surrealism generally gives deep insight into how Cartier-Bresson handled its terms -- insight into Cartier-Bresson's unique genius. For example, knowing Andre Breton'searly 1930s novel "Nadja"(illustrated by Brassai's photographs), which is both a novel and a handbook of Surrealism's program, and knowing its important last sentence -- as all artists in the 1930s did: "From now on Beauty will be convulsive--Or not at all!" One can start to see Cartier-Bresson's 1930s pictures as his expression of just that: All that beauty occurring suddenly (the decisive moment is the convulsive moment), convulsively: People bursting into the scene, jumping through it, leaning out of their windows into it, dashing on bicycles right into the middle of it: hatred leaping out of the eyes of 2 Berlin railroad station porters, two gypsies blowing cigarette smoke at the camera, four Spanis prostitutes preening and grooming each other but what"s this? Isn't one of them about the cut the other's throat? Three Spanish prostitutes in an arabesque brothel improvising a sudden burlesque dance off kilter off balance, will that woman fall? All that energy., Those boys bursting through a damaged wall and taunting their comrade on his crutches.

But the pictures would be convulsive if we didn't know Andre Breton's sentence. It just takes looking to see it. But one must look long and carefully.

I understood all this at a Metropolitan Museum (NY) exhibition of the 17thC Spanish painter Zurburan. In the bottom right corner of an otherwise weak painting (Madonna with Infant Jesus and Infant John the Baptist) was a small wooden table holding a still life about 18 inches high by 12 inches wide: beautiful yellow apples in a beautiful silver bowl. There was hardly anything so beautiful in the whole exhibition as that few square inches of canvas with those silver and yellow colors and forms. How, I wondered, can this be? What is the explanation? How did Zurburan get so much beauty out of so little? It must be knowable: those effects can be explained by art experts to the general public.

So I went over to the side of the painting and read the wall label.

All it said about the still life was

"The apples most probably symboliz the fall of man."

So much for wall labels. So much for iconography -- the interpretation of a picture's symbols.

That stuff doesn't explain the beauty.

Nor do terms like Impressionism, Dada, Pop Art. They don't tell us why a work is good. They just tell us where, in the course of time, it belongs.

So Guy is right. Trust the eye (or, with wine, the palette).

But the eye must be informed.

But that takes years and years of looking. Very careful looking. Long and careful. At original works whenever possible.

Late in life, Duke Ellington once said about listening critically to jazz, i.e. judging a piece, an improvisation, etc.

"If it sounds good it is good."

But it was Duke Ellington who said that.

Think of how much music he had heard, his own and others, by the time he said it.

So Guy is right. We must trust our eye rather than rely on labels and terms. But we must inform our eyes, and terms like Impressionism are a good way of doing this for they help relate an individual artist to. and distinguish him from, the art and artists of his time. They provide a context within which we can see certain aspects of an artist more clearly than we can if we consider him in isolation.

At some point everyone wants to be able to say something like -- take Impressionism, but it's true of any art movement, e.g. Big Band Jazz, or BeBop small groups... Everyone wants to be able to say something like "Well, Yes, Monet did THAT and certainly the work is grand but Pissarro got to THIS and that's a very special aspect Impressionism that Monet never touched on and probably didn't understand..."

Or something like the following. "Yes, in 1910-1913 or so Picasso and Braque were so close together, even painting on each others' canvases, that it's hard to tell them apart at first. But when you look carefully you see that Picasso painted aggressively, living out a quarrel with paint, canvas and reality, but that Braque was tender: sweet, tender, delicate and gentle, caressing canvas and reality w/ his paint; Picasso went off into endless complexities but Braque stayed simple. So really, they aren't anything alike at all."

And for that, more looking -- throughout Impressionism, throughout Cubism.

For what are we after if not to get close to the individual sensibility, be moved by the individual emotions, be elevated by the individual unique genius of this artist or that?
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I like your exhortation, Ben!

"Trust your eye, Guy, but inform it and use Impressionism etc. as a way to relate the art you're looking at to its larger context."

This could apply to us all and I for one take this to heart. When we travel, my wife I spend much of our time in all galleries we can find. It is hard work. One can't just spend 30 seconds on a work of art that consumed the artist for months even years and was the result of a lifetime of experience in a particular cultural environment that we only know superficially.

Often, I'll stop and select one picture from a group, sit opposite it and try to understand some of that work and then rexamine works by the same artist and other artists of that "school" or period. We take one or two artists and read up the commentary in the museum text and then revisit the work and try to learn about the work.

When we arrive in another museum and find work by the same artists, we feel we are visiting friends.

So I'll rephrase your exhortation, if I may,

"Trust your eye, but inform it!"

Asher
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Guy Tal said:
Others I know will demand to know the type, region, vintage, and any number of other characteristics before ever raising the glass.
Guy

I let them ask while I drink their share ;-)

Guy Tal said:
Are we doing greater harm by presenting our work as belonging to a given genre and therefore asking the viewer to appreciate it as such rather than on its own merit?

Who says you have to present your work in a given genre? I just present it! The critics can put it in any genre they like.
 
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