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SITE FOR POSTING CLASS READING RESPONSES AS COMMENTS. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT ON OTHER POSTS. History of Art, U.C. Berkeley. Instructor Sarah Hamill
FUR-LINED CUP, MERET OPPENHEIM, 1936
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Kelly Sun
ReplyDeleteSection 6
March 3, 2009
Greenberg describes a visual encounter with sculptural objects by comparing them to different artistic mediums like painting or architecture. He describes how painting has a wide field of possibilities in representation because it has been accepted as illusory, whereas sculpture has been critiqued for being too literal. The new construction-sculpture style has freed sculpture from its “monolithic” characteristics and become dynamic and abstract.
As Greenberg mentions in his article, modernist sculpture now has a variety of ways in which it can be put together. This medium is now flexible – its parts can “constructed, built, assembled, arranged”(509). Having been restrained to direct representation in the past, sculpture can now be just as expressive as painting. Greenberg talks about the sculpture by describing its unique qualities, such as how sculpture has in the past been ovoid, tubular, or have a dense mass. He then brings up how constructed sculpture no longer needs to have the mass characteristic of stone, bronze, and clay. Artists can perceive sculpting as a process by which they shape, divide, enclose, assembled, or arranged. Sculpture can capture the “openness and transparency and weightlessness” that was found in Cubist paintings. Greenberg describes how one encounters sculpture by entering an environment that is unique because of its permanence.
Smith discusses how sculpture is a unique ongoing experience that one is meant to take enjoyment in. When encountering a work of art, we are supposed to involve ourselves in it, not look at it from a separated, distanced viewpoint. We are to engage ourselves in the traveling of the sculpture and see it as an adventure that we have embarked on. This idea is shown in his description of how an artist creates a painting. The artist must invoke sentiments from within themselves as they paint certain scenes and transfer the energy into the object. In order to achieve strength in representation, the artist must go through this process of transmitting power into the images in order to create intensity.
Smith believes that we should approach art as a process that endures for the entirety of one’s life. He claims that “the work is a statement of identity, it comes from a stream, it is related to my past works, the three or four works in process and the work yet to come” (514). Smith wants viewers to observe his artwork as a lifelong process, not as individual works because he believes that the series is what characterizes him. He acknowledges that as the artist he is in full control of the entire process of creating works of art, however the process is not a conscious one. The artist is unaware of what the end result may be.
To me, Clement Greenberg’s most important sentence in his article Sculpture in Our Time is the following: “The human body is no longer postulated as the agent of space in either pictorial or sculptural art; now it is eyesight alone, and eyesight has more freedom of movement and invention within three dimensions than within two.” It recognizes the monumental shift in sculpture subject as well as the perception and interaction.
ReplyDeleteSculpture in ancient times was always dominated by creating human representations in a different medium, whether it was through a 3-D reconstruction or possibly bas-relief. When doing so, one become’s conscious of how one appears next to the sculpture, the reaction to the medium, the scale, and the texture. Sculptures of humans have always been less about the sculptures themselves but about how one reacts physically to the sculptures.
Yet, Greenberg dictates that sculpture has broken away from this limitation. By simply doing sculptures of humans, the available mediums become extremely limited. They always have to emulate the textures of real life objects and never really go past being made of steel, marble, or bronze. As soon as the sculpture changes the “agent of space” from the human body to eyesight, the figurative shackles of sculpture become broken. It does not need to recreate three dimensionality because it is three-dimensional. There is no reason to develop what is already given. In addition, the importance of the sculpture becomes dispersed between the sculpture itself and its audience. An audience will inevitably react to the sculpture, but the reaction is not of how the sculpture relates to the audience, but how the sculpture defines itself in its own environment. Furthermore, because sculpture let’s the object’s own three dimensionality define what it is, perception of the sculpture becomes one of infinite possibilities. A canvas is a flat two-dimensional surface and can only be seen as such. Seeing it from the left side is the exact same as seeing it from the right. With a sculpture, simply moving five feet to the right or left completely changes what the sculpture looks like. It is given more freedom in the way the materials define themselves in their own three dimensional environment that reacts with our own.
Michael Dreibelbis
ReplyDeleteHOAR1B
Response Essay 8
Greenberg begins “Sculpture in our Time” by saying that modern sculptors, in an attempt to create modern art, are rejecting any outside influence other than the medium with which the work is created. He states that by “renouncing illusion and explicit subject matter” artists are creating works of a more pure form than their predecessors. He then goes on to talk more about this idea of the “empirical and the positive”. Art is taking on this empirical form, moving from the more complex illusionistic art of the past. In Greenberg’s opinion, modern art (specifically in painting) by rejecting the third dimension is somehow freer than classical painting. Despite painting making the move to the empirical, it is in sculpture that Greenberg believes the most benefit will come of returning art to this basic form. Greenberg specifically notes that Brancusi has done this in taking complex shapes and forms and reducing them to “ovoid tubular or cubic masses”.
Greenberg also goes on to talk about how this stripping the illusion away from sculpture has created a “new flexibility” that was not there previously. It does not matter anymore the medium with which sculpture is made. It no longer needs to be carved, as Greenberg notes, and can now be machined or even just glued together. Greenberg says that because sculpture is now “reduction sculpture,” it is “liberated from the monolithic,” that is to say that it no longer is required to be large or even to depict illusionistic representations of ritualistic things as Renaissance sculpture often contains.
Sculpture is, according to Greenberg, moving towards attaining a sense of purity. Greenberg would define this purity as something completely anti-illusionistic and focuses on things like “visibility” and the “neutrality of space” which goes against the classical which focused more on illusion and space. Sculpture is important because it is now self-sustaining. It does not rely on a wall like a painting. It does not have to have a purpose other than to be a sculpture, and that is what Greenberg thinks makes sculpture purer than other art forms. Sculpture can just be.
Danielle Beeve
ReplyDeleteHistory of Art R1B
Section 6
Greenberg describes the old belief that sculpture was “too literal, too immediate” (508) when explaining why until now, sculpture has stood in the background when it comes to the visual arts. By this I think he means that when you view a sculpture, it seems too true to form and lifelike. Sculptures generally were only “representations of animate forms” (508) and didn’t offer the range of availabilities in subject matter that painting could. However, in modernist sculpture, which Greenberg describes as “the new construction-sculpture” (509) many new ways of creating a sculpture are available and this allows a much greater range of subject matter. “The medium has acquired a new flexibility, and it is in this that I see its chance now of acquiring an even wider range of expression than painting,” (509) states Greenberg when describing how the new modes of construction in creating sculptures has changed this form of artwork. When referring to the new style of modernist sculpture, Greenberg says:
One of the most fundamental and unifying emphases of the new common style is on the continuity and neutrality of a space which light alone inflects, without regard to the laws of gravity. There is an attempt to overcome the distinctions between foreground and background; between formed space and space at large; between inside and outside; between up and down. (510)
I think that Greenberg is saying here that these sculptures are throwing away the rules of what is expected in reality such as in the old statues of people: gravity can no longer be thought of as down in these works and there is no “right” perspective when distinguishing “between inside and outside; between up and down.” Sculptures are now able to be anything at all, not just representations of animate objects but abstract ideas of all forms.
Smith, as an artist himself, has a different take on sculptures. He describes his artistic vision as being immersed inside the sculpture and the process of creating it:
My position for vision in my works aims to be in it, and not a scientific physical viewing it as a subject. I wish to comment in the travel. It is an adventure viewed. I do not enter its order as lover, brother or associate, I seem to view it equally as from the traveling height of a plane two miles up, or from my mountain workshop viewing a cloud-like procession. (513)
Here Smith seems to be saying that he enters into all different perspectives of his artwork to create it, he imagines viewing it from a far distance as well as seeing it up close and personal.
Julia Herron
ReplyDeleteReading Response for 3.5.09
In Greenberg’s criticism of Modernism, he describes modern art as satisfying a “taste of the immediate, the concrete, the irreducible”. Art should touch the viewer instantly and convey a unique feeling or experience. Greenberg argues that sculpture can accomplish this goal, and that it possesses “much larger possibilities of expression” than painting (Greenberg, 55). Sculpture has the ability to expand into three dimensions and physically represent its subject, making it more literal and less confined than painting. The physical act of viewing a sculpture is, according to Greenberg, very interactive. He states that, “eyesight has more freedom of movement and invention within three dimensions than within two” (Greenberg, 59). Sculpture invites interpretation, for the eyes and the subconscious to assign a known identity to an unknown shape. A work of sculpture “exists for and by itself literally as well as conceptually” (Greenberg, 61). A sculpture is whole, and in experiencing this whole, the viewer finds the modernist aesthetic at its most complete and self-sufficient.
Smith saw sculpture as an opportunity to include the viewer and excite them. A painter before he became a sculptor, Smith believed that “sculpture is more immediate than painting for visual action” (Smith, 196). The combination of gravity, space, and hard objects present in sculptures has a stronger and more immediate impact on the viewer than a two-dimensional painting where the medium is limited to paint. Smith calls for viewer participation: “My position for vision in my works aims to be in it, and not a scientific physical viewing it as subject… [Sculpture] is an adventure viewed” (Smith, 196). Smith argues that the viewer should not examine sculpture from afar, picking apart every element and analyzing it scientifically. Rather, sculpture should draw the viewer in immediately and create an exhilarating experience based around the elements the artist chose to include.
Jenny Zhang
ReplyDeleteHA R1B Section 6
Reading Response #9
From their respective essays, I can tell that Greenberg and Smith both share a great appreciation for modern sculpture. I believe that in the past, painting dominated the field of art and although sculpture did receive more recognition during the Renaissance, its range of subjects was not as broad as painting. Greenberg even mentioned that modern art is dominated by new forms of painting expression like: Cubism, Impressionism, “Matisse” (itself considered early modern art). However, all of these newly arisen modern painting is due to artists’ growing interests in focusing more on the absolute and empirical feature in their paintings’ subjects. What I mean is that instead of trying to create illusions of their paintings’ subjects, features of subjects that are not naturally present but added to create a three dimensional effect to a two dimensional painting canvas. Modern art seeks to paint what can be seen and purely expressed on a canvas. This includes lines and color. There is more emphasis placed on the mediums used and is not afraid to show that painting is purely two dimensional. This interest in mediums and how painting can also give physical dimension gave rise to Cubism. Greenberg describes Cubism as a form of using different overlapping shapes to represent three dimensions, but as that became increasingly difficult, Picasso, one of Cubism’s founding fathers, physically raised the surface to his paintings. Likewise, when Smith spoke about how his interests in sculpturing began (since he was trained a painter), he also spoke about how he started off just raising the surfaces to his paintings, which eventually turned into using the painting canvas as a base for his sculptures. This is such an example of how sculpture gained a lot from the modern art’s method of reduction (of complex subjects to simple shapes and lines).
What is interesting about modern sculpture is that it is okay for it to appear pictorial (since modern sculpture arose from modern painting, per say) because the eyes reduce all things to two dimension. Brancusi paved way for modern sculpture by reducing his subjects into a two dimensional surface through which the form/shapes of the materials and the space around it to present a pictorial image. For instance, when looking at a sculpture, one has to walk around is because our eyes only allow us to see on side (from one vantage point). Modern sculpture works with the raw material by taking advantage of space and on the physical mediums used. Another interesting aspect of modern sculptures is that it is physically independent. A sculpture is what it represents. The materials are space, gravity, light and hard objects, which are naturally occurring or physical constants. This different from modern painting in which these physical constants are not present and what is painted is a result of these physical constants. So overall, Smith and Greenberg mean to say that modern sculpture succeeds at purely delivering the subject because it is always going to be more visually immediate than painting.
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ReplyDeleteIn his essay, “Sculpture in Our Time,” Clement Greenberg writes about the transformation of sculpture. What was once created out of “stone, bronze, and clay” and was “handicapped by its identification with monolithic carving” has now liberated itself (Greenberg 57). According to Greenberg, this art form has done so through a variety of ways. He states that Brancusi, who played a key role in this liberation, shined a new light on sculpture by opening “up the monolith under the influence of cubism.” Abandoning the traditional means and mediums of the past, sculptors like Brancusi would go for “industrial materials like iron, steel, alloys, glass, plastics, celluloid, etc., etc.” (Greenberg 58) Another main part in the changes of sculpture over the years could be credited to the “modernist reduction sculpture” which “has turned out to be almost as exclusively visual in its essence as painting itself. (Greenberg 59)” Painting, according to Greenberg, “meets our desire for the literal and positive by renouncing the illusion of the third dimension. (Greenberg 56)” So, through this “reduction” sculpting, the artwork has gained a sense of illusionist depth that it had once lacked.
ReplyDeleteGreenberg uses words such as “liberate” and “handicapped” to describe past sculptures. He describes them as “monolithic carving and modeling in the service of the representation of animate forms. (Greenberg 57)” These words he chose to use have a derogatory, negative effect. He later goes on to write about the transformation of sculpture, however, and speaks of the “illusion” of modernist “reduction” sculptures. He describes this as art that renders its substance.
In, “The New Sculpture,” David Smith writes about his impressions and experiences with sculptures. According to Smith, sculptures are much more “immediate than painting for visual action.” He describes this statement through an explanation of natural constants. Sculptures have something paintings lack; they have “gravity, space, and hard objects.” Paintings, as Smith writes, are simply illusions of these natural constants. He summarizes this idea with the statement, “A sculpture is a thing, an object. A painting is an illusion.” (Smith 29) The underlying difference between these two types of artwork deal with the natural constants of gravity and space. Sculpture has a physical, immediate presence, while painting is much more illusionistic.
An underlying theme in the descriptions of sculpture for Smith, is strength. He uses phrases such as “impression of strength” and “sentiment of strength” in his comparison between Japanese paintings to steel sculpting (Smith). When he works with the medium, steel, he associates it with “power, structure, movement, progress, suspension, destruction, brutality.” All adjectives, he relates back to this current century. Within Smith’s essay, he asserts the modernity of sculpture through the materials it is composed of. He states that sculptures of the present day are progressive and powerful much like the steel they are composed of and the century they are created in.
Brendan Cronshaw
ReplyDeleteHA R1B
Response 9
3.4.09
Clement Greenberg’s description of sculpture tends to use words that are more abstract, vague, or at least not concrete. Take him referring to sculpture and its new “liberat[ion]” (509), “It has been “liberated” from the monolithic as much because of the latter’s excessive tactile associations, which partake of illusion, as because of the hampering conventions that cling to it” (509). Words such as ‘illusion’, ‘tactile’, and ‘hampering conventions’ all lend themselves to certain ideas and understandings however they are not concrete in definition. An illusion could be any number of things just like the word ‘color’ could mean any millions or billions of color, it is just not a concrete word. However, later on in his essay, he gets more concrete, or at least somewhat more specific and clearer in his language, “A work of sculpture, unlike a building, does not have to carry more than its own weight, nor does it have to be on something else, like a picture; it exists for and by itself literally as well as conceptually” (510). This makes sense in that sculpture stands alone, whether in a museum, gallery or outdoor setting, while other forms of art are built on top of other things or next to them, like paintings which are paint on canvas, and buildings which are meant to be occupied, hence the extra “weight” that they need to carry; they need to serve a purpose for people and the surrounding environment and thus they are more than what they appear to be.
His descriptions and writing seem to be more abstract and ambiguous in order to allow us to understand the greater meaning of sculpture and how it varies from painting and architecture in form, appearance, and concept.
David Smith’s The New Sculpture uses much more concrete words and is much more grounded and easier to follow. For example,
“The painting developed into raised levels from the canvas. Gradually the canvas became the base, and the painting was a sculpture. I have never recognized any separation except one element of dimension. The first painting of ace man was both carved line and color, a natural reaction and a total statement” (513).
Words such as ‘base’, ‘carved’, ‘line’ and ‘raised’ are all much more concrete and thus we are able to grasp what it is that he sees in sculpture and why it is important to him and groundbreaking in the realm of art. He later goes on to say that,
“A sculpture is a thing, an object. A painting is an illusion” (513).
Immediately the difference in his opinion and understanding of painting and sculpture becomes clear. We can see this because he uses two concrete, or at least quasi-concrete words: ‘thing’ and ‘object’. In the context that it is given they are connoted as even more concrete, and the word ‘illusion’ is very ambiguous. And thus we can see that sculpture is powerful in that it is there for us to behold in its entirety and that it is what it appears to be, it is not a representation or relay of something else, that paintings often are.
Greenberg has an interesting approach to the topic of sculpture. He begins with painting, and has a lengthy discourse about how “modernist painting meets our desire for the literal and positive by renouncing the illusion of the third dimension”. He is saying that the trend toward flatness is a result of the modernist movement, but more it is a break from the representational form, yet he says this break “does not commit the painter to the “merely” decorative.” His highlight of the word merely suggests that there is more to the art than what looks nice next to the bedside stand. He suggests that it must be waded to find meaning. Yet earlier he stated “all pictures of quality ask to be looked at rather than read”, which brings us to a crossroads. Sculpture itself is a representation. The nature of the physical world creates allusions and allegories to other things, which is inherent in each sculpture. He says “sculpture is permitted a greater latitude of figurative allusiveness than painting because it remains tied, inexorably, to the third dimension and is therefore inherently less illusionistic.” Thus he says that a great strength of the sculpture is its innate ability to take physical objects and directly relate them outside references. He says that the eyesight of the sculpture has more freedom than that of the picture for the same reason: the third dimension. I found this sentence interesting “Instead of the illusion of things, we are now offered the illusion of modalities: namely, that material is incorporeal, weightless, and exists only optically like a mirage.” Thinking of a statue, which is made of metal, clay, earth, whatever as “incorporeal, and weightless” leaves me thinking about means. The means to the sculpture is the bending of metal, or the carving of rock. These things, previously, were touchable, feel-able, and concrete. After the transformation to sculpture, however, these things become something else. They lose their form and take on new meaning in the context of the whole. They become what the sculpture made them: a rose, a weird golden egg-fish woman, a shoe with the gallows behind it, and they incorporate previous meaning and relevance into the new structure.
ReplyDeleteSmith provides some interesting ideas as well. He uses the metaphor of a stream as his life's work. He says “The work is a statement of identity, it comes from a stream, it is related to my past works, the three or four works in process and the work yet to come.” Although the works are separate and distinct, they all belong together in one family. Each work is tied to the other, he says, and that no one work can be viewed alone. This is why he says “I believe only artists truly understand art, because art is best understood by following the visionary path of the creator who produces it.” He thinks a certain expertise is required to view an art work and understand it. The average person, he thinks, does not possess the required skill set to accurately appreciate and understand a certain work.
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ReplyDeleteFelby Chen
ReplyDeleteHA R1B
Section 6
Clement Greenberg and David Smith definitely have different approaches when describing a visual encounter with sculptural objects.
In Greenberg’s “Sculpture of Our Time”, he discusses how the nineteenth century began to move towards an empirical and positive conception of life. People wanted “the immediate, the concrete, the irreducible…[and] that which is most positive and immediate in themselves, which consists in the unique attributes of their medium” (Greenberg 55). Greenberg’s view of sculptural objects is in part influenced by the thoughts of those from his time. After all, he believes that “sculpture is still permitted a greater latitude of figurative allusiveness than painting because it remains tied, inexorably, to the third dimension and is therefore inherently less illusionistic” (Greenberg 59). The words he uses to describe his visual encounter with sculptural objects often include words like “immediate”, “positive”, “irreducible”, and “less illusionistic” to convey his perception that sculpture is more long-lasting and tangible than paintings usually are. Furthermore, sculptures allow the “eyesight more freedom of movement and invention within three dimensions than within two” (Greenberg 59), which reiterates the physicality of sculptures in comparison to the flatness of a painting. A sculpture is a concept, and forms its own existence.
In Smith’s “The New Sculpture”, he discusses how “his success had a lot to do with establishing a reciprocal relationship between the idea of ‘new sculpture’ and the achievements of contemporary painting…[as] sculpture is an adventure viewed” (Smith 195). Smith simply wanted to connect the two, and felt that sculptures were like paintings in three-dimensional form. It would be as if a “painting develop[s] into raised levels from the canvas [and] gradually the canvas bec[o]me[s] the base” (Smith 196), which ultimately forms the sculpture. One can easily see the way Smith describes his visual encounter with sculptural objects includes language that often incorporates paintings and the connection between the usual two-dimensional paintings and three-dimensional sculptures. Sculptures are objects, after all, with “a difference in degree in actual space and the absolute difference in gravity” (Smith 196), which shows Smith’s emphasis on shape and form. Smith also holds the materials iron and steel, which are often used in sculptures, “in high respect” (Smith 198) because they “arriv[e] at a form economically, [which] no other material can do” (Smith 198). Iron and steel do not have much background in art history, but instead are often associated with progress, movement, and power.
Max Moriyama
ReplyDeleteHOAR1B
The thrust of modern art, according to Greenburg, lies in its being concrete, immediate, and positive; she argues that sculpture can best accomplish this. She claims that this direction of modern art, both the creation and appreciation of, correlates to the direction of thought, which has become far more empirical and literal. Our aesthetic sensibilities—our visual encounter with art—yearn to be presented with something that is wholly un-illusory, and that is an end in itself. This aim is what Greenburg calls purity. To get near purity, art in a given medium must use only what is necessary, and not more, to express itself.
In painting, this has resulted in the rejection of the third dimension, because a third dimension would require the observer to make a conceptual leap from the fact that there is literally only two dimensions, to the observation—illusion—that there is three. This leap detracts from the immediacy of the art; the resources of the medium of canvas are limited to a flat plane, so the art must be respectively reduced to the flat plane.
This is not so with sculpture. Inherent in sculpture is three dimensions; thus, a work of art in sculpture may be reduced to the basics of the medium, while still presenting more of a visual experience to the viewer than in painting. This is the reason for its physical independence, which is the foundation for how Greenburg describes a visual encounter with sculpture. Sculpture is inherently three dimensional, and thus needs no illusion to create three dimensions, so sculpture can take innumerable shapes without adding illusion. This lack of illusion is at the heart of what Greenburg means by positive art; it is at its most reduced state, it is what it is and nothing more — it is as pure as one can hope for. This reduction is how we get the visual encounter we do; Greenburg describes an encounter as immediate, because it is immediately presented to us, we need not think it as a representation of something else, or infer a third dimension where there is only two, as in painting.
Greenburg describes the visual encounter as sheer visibility; again, this has to do with the fact that the sculpture is as positive as possible. Greenburg states that part of the reduction is to reduce the encounter to optics. When one encounters a sculpture, it is not on or part of something else, like a picture, or a line on paper. A sculpture can in fact be a line in space, without the need of paper. It stands on its own. This is its sheer visibility, for there is nothing abstracting from the view, and there is nothing that is necessary to make the view possible, i.e. paper for the drawn line.
Smith’s description of an encounter with sculpture runs in the same vein as does Greenburg’s. At the heart, Smith believes that the sculpture is more immediate that painting for visual encounter. The essential difference for Smith, like Greenburg, is that one element of dimension. Smith, however, seems to state that the caveman drawing, for example, is just as much a total statement, as pure as, a sculpture could be, despite its needing support, i.e. the cave walls, or being only two dimensional. Nevertheless, Smiths visual encounter with sculpture is unique in that it utilizes its three dimensional aspect. Smith aims for his encounter to be in it, to be involved in the sculpture more than just a viewer viewing an object. It seems, then, that the value of visual encounter for Smith lies not in its being more pure, but in Smith’s ability to be in the sculpture, to identify with the sculpture. Smith speaks of sculpture as an extension of himself, while Greenburg speaks of sculpture as an object to be viewed in and of itself. While they differ on how and why they value the visual encounters, the reason behind the unique visual encounter of sculpture is its physical independence, and its being most expressive while remaining un-illusory.
I would like to address the Greenberg article for it has reminded me of a conversation I had recently with two of my friends late at night over some cheese, wine, cigarettes and the inevitable nostalgia over the modernist Parisian nights of Hemmingway and others which we never had. It was about art and its, as both Greenberg and ourselves termed it, PURITY. The problems which Greenberg presented with painting and his proposed direction for sculpture, including it as a medium almost ready-made for purity – the dissolution of illusion, were the same problems addressed in this conversation. Greenberg states on page 56 – 508 of the reader, “no attempt at a pure work of art has ever succeeded in being more than an approximation and a compromise. But this does not diminish the crucial importance of “purity” of concrete “abstractness” as an orientation and aim.” His idea of purity is a direct translation of experience into the artistic medium of choice. Once done, the piece objectively, is an end in itself, a device which can be subjectively experienced as the sole generator of new and original experience into the audience. The way we termed it in our conversation, was that art, as an attempt to describe experience, is perpetually asymptotic to the experience itself. It is an illusion of the experience for once the experience is transferred to the medium, through the artist’s hands, it becomes an attempt to describe – a translation of the experience, much like the translation of a book from the Russian to English. Certainly, Greenberg and ourselves could not defame art for its attempt towards purity is honest.
ReplyDeleteA funny interjection Greenberg makes is this: Of course, “purity” is an unattainable ideal. Outside of music, no attempt…[then the previous quote].”(56) This interjection is key though. Music is the direct flow of experience, music is an experience no matter the ideals that went into it. We can listen to music made four hundred years ago and experience it subjectively and immediately understand it in our own way as well as the piece itself being an end in itself. It becomes an end in itself because of our subjectivity, because of its universal subjectivity. It is pure sound, only experienced through the ear drum – a direct transition from source to body, just as any experience. Greenberg I think, means this when he claims that music attains purity, as autonomous, as abstract, as explicit subject matter, experience. The reasons attributed to painting for its failure to become abstract, an end in itself, is because it is constantly an illusion. Greenberg characterizes it with “suggestions of the third dimension”(56). He claims that modernist painting slightly overcomes this suggestion in its attack of form. Through cubism, painting acknowledges its two dimensionality and rectifies it such that its visual two dimensionality becomes experience itself. Greenberg characterizes this as modernist “reduction”, but explicitly states that it “threaten[s] to narrow painting’s field of possibilities”(56) Additionally, painting, even through modernist reduction, continues to be a representation, for it is an image on a two dimensional plane either derived from a third dimension or in recognition of its own two dimensionality. Then it becomes merely “decorative” because it appeals to the visual, the fundamental sensory visual perception.
And so, Greenberg gets to the heart of the matter by arguing that sculpture readily approaches the ideal of “purity,” not only because it is a visual sport, but that if it breaks away from the purely imitational representation of organic matter, “Sculptural seemed too literal, too immediate”(57), it can become an experience in itself – abstract. This is due to its appeal to visual sensory perception in its purest form as it is three dimensional, opposed to two-dimensional painting. The sculpture, like music, attacks an explicit sensory perception fully.
Of course, I can find problems within this ideal since humans experience with all five senses, so in a sense, the art is limited and not abstract, then again, the audible can affect the visual and so on. Ultimately, our conversation ended in disarray for the topic turned to focus on the transition from the artist to his or her medium which we decided was still asymptotic because it is the description of a feeling, or sense transferred. Then again, one could compose an autonomous piece of music if they played the instrument and the sound evoked an experience before they pre-meditated one into it. So in a way, the notes could inspire more which reflect the liking of the artist and then, a composition would be made where the composition itself was an ecperience to the artist in making it – simply, it incited the feeling into the artist rather than the artist into it. Then, it could be taken as subjective and unbecome of the symptote for it would be an experience itself.
Bing Lin
ReplyDeleteGreenberg first describes pre-modernist sculpture as being “handicapped” because it seemed “too literal, too immediate”, acting opposite of modernist painting’s rejection of “explicit subject matter” and the renunciation of the “illusion of the third dimension”(508). He explains that the method of the modernist painters excludes that of representational and three-dimensional elements in their works, striving to achieve purity through abstraction and reduction. In contrast, sculpture in its essence is a representational object possessing three dimensions and thus seem handicapped in achieving that pureness the modernists so craved.
Having explained the lack of sculpture in its representational form, Greenberg then introduces Brancusi and his sculptures that capture the reduction needed for sculpture to transform and break from its handicap. Greenberg explains that Brancusi was able to transform simple geometry to “pictoral, graphic” representations of humans, and that this new form of sculpture is “not so much sculpted as constructed, built, assembled, arranged,” and thus “acquired a new flexibility” (509). Because of this new flexibility, the limitations posed by the literalness of sculptures has now turned into an advantage because sculpture still suggest recognizable objects and images and now it is up to the viewer to interpret what the image is. Greenberg summarizes this idea buy stating “now it is eyesight alone, and eyesight has more freedom of movement and invention within three dimensions than within two” (509). He also expresses the idea of freedom by stating that sculpture has a “physical independence” that is self-sufficient, able to carry its own weight while portraying the medium.
While Greenberg celebrates sculpture over painting as the predominant method of art to portray the ideals of modernism, Smith states that he does not “recognize the limits where painting ends and sculpture begins” (513), as he interprets his works as “a statement about form and color [he] could make” (513). However, he shares the same attitude towards sculpture in that he also believes sculpture is “more immediate than painting for visual action” (513) and utilizes the qualities already present in the materials of sculpture to convey and further strength the concept he tries to achieve.