 |
|
|
|
|
Art, working under the premise that Modernism was beyond traditional mediums such as painting, made the attempt to present pure ideas in art free of esthetics. Any visuals employed in the work such as photography was relabeled as �documentation�. The fallacy in this was the belief that ideas were the only thing worth preserving and could be estranged from visual sensibility. While concepts, theories, conjectures, etc, may be interesting (though more so in other contexts and mediums) they are always secondary to esthetics in visual art. Sensibility can never be divorced from visual art; if so it ceases to exist as art. |
|
|
|
Years ago I was a panel member as part of a Merleau-Ponty conference at Penn State and at Bucknell College in Pennsylvania. One of the other panelists was a Conceptual artist from Hawaii who discussed her frustration at how her work was constantly misunderstood; viewers kept appreciating their esthetic qualities rather then responding to the ideas she wanted to present. In response she kept stripping away the esthetic qualities, to provide more clarity for the �ideas�. What a foolish enterprise I thought then and still do. She was sucking the vitality out her work, in effect killing it, by forcing it to conform to a specific idea of what she wanted to express. I wondered why she even bothered to make visual art. Why not just write out those ideas in the dry lifeless prose they deserved so that anyone (that would care too) would clearly get the point. |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Bryon Browne, The David Findlay Jr. Gallery, 41 East 57th Street to Feb 22 |
|
|
|
An initial take on these paintings is that they channel Cubism, specifically Picasso, in the post-Braque partnership period. This is fair enough considering the wild swirling shapes and color schemes. But Bryon Browne was a member of the New York School of artists and although not a household name today his contemporaries included Hans Hofmann and Mark Rothko among others. This is telling when considering Browne�s art. You see a direct connection to and perhaps |
|
|
 |
|
|
