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Modern primitive
Nov. 2nd, 2006 11:59 pm
Currently at UW: -1.5. High today: 1.5. It's snowing lightly outside right now; it's been snowing briefly at intervals of several hours all day.
My favourite dumb thing hockey commentators say: "The Ps are down x+y:x, but it would be much worse if not for $goaltender." Well, yeah. Generally, without your goaltender, you'd give up about 27 goals a game.
Another thing, along the same lines, that bugs me, though it's not so illogical on its face: "You can't blame $goaltender for that one." Maybe not, but the great goaltenders stop most of the ones you can't blame them for not stopping--and they stop a lot of the ones you would've said they had no chance on. If you only stop the ones you could be blamed for not stopping, you're never going to give up less than five goals in a game.
I had meant to say something about the Tate Modern, which was the one place we set out to hit on our one day in London. At one point, L. wandered off ahead of me, and then came back and asked if the reason I'd wanted to go there was that they had a big heap o' Rothkos. Actually, I'd had no idea what they had; its name was just stuck in my head as one of the two Names of modern art galleries (along with MoMA).
So, Modern Art. Seeing so much modern art all together at once, one thing is insistent: a lot of modern art is primitive, whether it's Giacometti's stick people or Rothko's luminous squares.
And another thing: a lot of it is crap. I'm not sure having a modern art gallery of that size is a good idea, really, because the cumulative effect of the crap is hard to get over; if you want to get people into modern art, given that people are generally inclined to believe that modern art is crap, then one (good) piece at a time would be, I'd think, a much better way to go. (So, the usual problem: is so much of it crap because it's so time-limited--i.e., if you put together a museum of sixteenth century art, would you be forced to put up just as much crap--or does modern art particularly lend itself to crappiness? I don't think you can doubt that it's harder to tell what's crap from what's not. Or, at least, it's harder to pin down why what's crap is crap and what's not is not. And, of course, the problem is compounded by the modern hyper-intellectualization of art, the idea that art is supposed to make you think--the art is the occasion, not the thing itself. (But then, this runs counter, in a lot of instances, to the primitivism. But modernisms tend to have their romantic twins....) Which strikes me as probably the worst thing that ever happened to art.) It may especially not be a good idea to include one pretty much pre-modern work, that being, in this case, Monet's water lillies, providing an uncomfortable contrast. (A woman walked by me toward it saying something like, "Here's someone doing Monet ... oh, it is Monet?) You could quite easily say that Monet's painting is quite easily the best single work in the gallery. That context aside, it really is remarkable, in its largeness, up close. There are trees reflected in the water.
I might wish I'd been in a better mood for the Rothko room, but, well, the terrible thing about art galleries--especially touristy ones--is it's basically impossible to be in the right mood. You probably couldn't have a reasonable chance at it without at least an entire day to spare--but the whole idea of the gallery is, you take your mental snapshot, you take your captioned edification, and you move along. (Have I ever mentioned the "I have nothing against education, or art ... " encounter here?) That, I guess, is a large part of what makes the Voice of Fire such a great work for the age--it just blasts right through all the crap.
Rothko is a little more subtle than that, but there was, at least, one glaring out the door as I approached the room, and it was the one I kept coming back to while I was in there. There's probably about nine of them, remarkably similar--outlined rectangles as opposed to solid ones, reddish colours, not much contrast--and I was thinking, I guess he never imagined they'd all be in one place like this. The weird thing, though, was the lighting, which was dim and yellowish and made it hard to see the paintings really well. I couldn't imagine what that was for.
Until, on my way out of the room, I read the blurb on the wall. (For the most part, I avoided the captions in the Tate, while L. was being driven into murderous rages by them). The blurb explained that Rothko had been commissioned to paint this set of paintings for a hotel dining room, and that he imagined them as bricked-up windows; he had decided they were too dark for their intended purpose, so he gave them to the Tate instead. The dim lighting was supposed to mimic the environment they were painted for. (Didn't say if Rothko thought that would be a good idea.) So, that was pretty funny. But what struck me was that this was another instance of abstract artists being unable to resist imagining that their art pictures something. It's disappointing. ("Voice of Fire", to me, is already too much. Already way too much.)
My favourite dumb thing hockey commentators say: "The Ps are down x+y:x, but it would be much worse if not for $goaltender." Well, yeah. Generally, without your goaltender, you'd give up about 27 goals a game.
Another thing, along the same lines, that bugs me, though it's not so illogical on its face: "You can't blame $goaltender for that one." Maybe not, but the great goaltenders stop most of the ones you can't blame them for not stopping--and they stop a lot of the ones you would've said they had no chance on. If you only stop the ones you could be blamed for not stopping, you're never going to give up less than five goals in a game.
I had meant to say something about the Tate Modern, which was the one place we set out to hit on our one day in London. At one point, L. wandered off ahead of me, and then came back and asked if the reason I'd wanted to go there was that they had a big heap o' Rothkos. Actually, I'd had no idea what they had; its name was just stuck in my head as one of the two Names of modern art galleries (along with MoMA).
So, Modern Art. Seeing so much modern art all together at once, one thing is insistent: a lot of modern art is primitive, whether it's Giacometti's stick people or Rothko's luminous squares.
And another thing: a lot of it is crap. I'm not sure having a modern art gallery of that size is a good idea, really, because the cumulative effect of the crap is hard to get over; if you want to get people into modern art, given that people are generally inclined to believe that modern art is crap, then one (good) piece at a time would be, I'd think, a much better way to go. (So, the usual problem: is so much of it crap because it's so time-limited--i.e., if you put together a museum of sixteenth century art, would you be forced to put up just as much crap--or does modern art particularly lend itself to crappiness? I don't think you can doubt that it's harder to tell what's crap from what's not. Or, at least, it's harder to pin down why what's crap is crap and what's not is not. And, of course, the problem is compounded by the modern hyper-intellectualization of art, the idea that art is supposed to make you think--the art is the occasion, not the thing itself. (But then, this runs counter, in a lot of instances, to the primitivism. But modernisms tend to have their romantic twins....) Which strikes me as probably the worst thing that ever happened to art.) It may especially not be a good idea to include one pretty much pre-modern work, that being, in this case, Monet's water lillies, providing an uncomfortable contrast. (A woman walked by me toward it saying something like, "Here's someone doing Monet ... oh, it is Monet?) You could quite easily say that Monet's painting is quite easily the best single work in the gallery. That context aside, it really is remarkable, in its largeness, up close. There are trees reflected in the water.
I might wish I'd been in a better mood for the Rothko room, but, well, the terrible thing about art galleries--especially touristy ones--is it's basically impossible to be in the right mood. You probably couldn't have a reasonable chance at it without at least an entire day to spare--but the whole idea of the gallery is, you take your mental snapshot, you take your captioned edification, and you move along. (Have I ever mentioned the "I have nothing against education, or art ... " encounter here?) That, I guess, is a large part of what makes the Voice of Fire such a great work for the age--it just blasts right through all the crap.
Rothko is a little more subtle than that, but there was, at least, one glaring out the door as I approached the room, and it was the one I kept coming back to while I was in there. There's probably about nine of them, remarkably similar--outlined rectangles as opposed to solid ones, reddish colours, not much contrast--and I was thinking, I guess he never imagined they'd all be in one place like this. The weird thing, though, was the lighting, which was dim and yellowish and made it hard to see the paintings really well. I couldn't imagine what that was for.
Until, on my way out of the room, I read the blurb on the wall. (For the most part, I avoided the captions in the Tate, while L. was being driven into murderous rages by them). The blurb explained that Rothko had been commissioned to paint this set of paintings for a hotel dining room, and that he imagined them as bricked-up windows; he had decided they were too dark for their intended purpose, so he gave them to the Tate instead. The dim lighting was supposed to mimic the environment they were painted for. (Didn't say if Rothko thought that would be a good idea.) So, that was pretty funny. But what struck me was that this was another instance of abstract artists being unable to resist imagining that their art pictures something. It's disappointing. ("Voice of Fire", to me, is already too much. Already way too much.)
