Frank Stella, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II (1959)One book I've been lugging around with me is the Phaidon retrospective Minimalism, edited by James Meyer. Minimalism was a reaction to abstract expressionism in a lot of ways (or so they say.) The earlier movement's philosophical yearnings were suppressed, the physical objects—often factory-made or otherwise produced without the artist's hand—presented merely as physical things (again, or so they say.)
Looking at the pictures and also reading some descriptions, I'm struck by the leanings toward a monochrome look. Robert Ryman started his all-white paintings around this time, with Ad Reinhardt inevitably going all-black. A lot of Dan Flavin's fluorescent light pieces are essentially all glowing white, at least the parts you pay attention to.
Black and white seemed to be having a moment. Truman Capote, fatally wounded as a novelist, hosted his black and white ball in 1968. And while acid rock album covers did love their bright colors, the Beatles and the Velvet Underground put out albums with, respectively, plain white and almost plain black covers.
Of course 1966 was the year that pretty much all scripted television shows in the US started broadcasting in color. It wouldn't surprise me if there were some kind of perverse anti-color reaction going on because of that.
Not that I'm complaining. I like a good black and white picture.
2 comments:
While I can't state categorically that I despise all modern art I certainly have profound misgivings about the value of most of what's come to be accepted as fine art in the recent past. When I read your post I had a vague memory of having read about the former director of some major museums and galleries in the UK who felt as I did - and expressed himself about the subject much better than I could. Julian Spalding is his name and I may have found the entirety of his book Con Art as a wordpress blog post (the book itself is 40 pages and is for sale on amazon). You might find some of it amusing.
As far as the Beatles White album and the Velvet Underground's black cover are concerned they looked very cool and they wrapped up some great music.
I like B&W images and movies too. We've found a treasury of the latter on the back end of youtube.
It's not a matter of approval or disapproval for me. Aesthetics is a corner of philosophy, and on some level everyone who creates or appreciates any kind of art is practicing it. So I'm curious about different ideas about art and beauty, even if they're not my own. Some minimalist art I like. Some doesn't do much for me. It tends to be abstract, often stridently so. I respect the idea of keeping things simple and practicing economy of gesture. But most of the art that inspires me has some kind of narrative content to it.
I read a little bit about Spalding online. He has interesting ideas of his own, for example about Stonehenge being built as a pedestal. He's got the kind of big ideas critics can develop.
Yeah, that's the main truth about both the Beatles and the VU.
YouTube can be a cool one stop shop for certain kinds of movies. Newer ones are likely to be taken down and moved to a pay site, but there are a lot of good films in public domain.
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