From: Natasha Vita-More (natasha@natasha.cc)
Date: Sun Feb 16 2003 - 16:30:56 MST
At 01:25 PM 2/15/03 -0500, Technotranscendence wrote:
>"It is possible, in fact, that abstract art became more appropriate as
>scientific insights became more inclusive and abstract since the two
>disciplines often work in complimentary accord." -- Kirk Hughey
>
>You observed: "Excellent statement and I think Hughey makes the more
>percipient point."
>
>Hughey's statement fits very well into the rhetoric of Extropianism and
>transhumanism, but can you recover the "scientific insights" and the
>like that a particular Abstract Painting deals with? What does, e.g.,
>one of Rothko's late canvasses tell us that is so "inclusive" that no
>representational work could us the same?
Yes, science + art = components of Transhumanist Arts period. You are
right about "Extropianism" being <rhetoric. It's Extropian :-) (Those
"ism" bog down clear thinking.)
Rothko canvasses? I suppose that looking at the pavement on a rainy day
and seeing the marks made as the water permeates the cement and lifts up
nature's marks in ways that are at times stunning and at times like a Sumi
brush on Japanese paper. I like his big canvasses, their economy of
expression and way of making a surface. Makes me think of a rainy
day. The Spirit of Myth collection of 26 paintings which have been rarely
seen and unlike his mature abstract style which is renowned for its
atmospheric fields of color, is characterized by conventional themes such
as landscapes, still-lifes, figure studies, and portraits, painted in an
expressionist style. Lots of stories and real world images.
After studying at Yale University, he was influenced by Surrealism and also
Nietzsche's _Birth of Tradgedy_. (Could have influenced his suicide, but
not his extropian or transhumanist thinking.) Most of Rothko's mythological
paintings portray hybrid figures, combinations of decorative and
architectural elements and "compositions reminiscent of Roman sarcophagi."
_______
"Rothko's mature work, we must agree, is voluptuous, gorgeous, at once
ample and spare. People also - as Rothko himself knew, and as Golding notes
- look great in front of them. But too many people turn them into
backdrops, and there are almost always too many people nowadays. The
details, the pleasures of their thinly washed, matted glazes and breathy
surfaces, and the time the paintings take up (they sort of eat you, and
root you to the spot) are a lesson, too, about a kind of art that isn't
really made any more, a kind of looking that's all too rare.
...
"His last works, harder-edged, more overtly referential than anything that
preceded them for two decades, are unavoidably close to a kind of
terror-filled but otherwise empty landscape. They unavoidably recall Caspar
David Friedrich, as well as, in their colour, the grimly washed studio
portraits of Giacometti. They are grim, stoical paintings. Their stoicism
outlasted Rothko, who committed suicide in his studio by slitting his
wrists, aged 66 in 1970. You can't help but think of his last days when you
look at them. But then again, the paintings are not equivalents to
character, or human failings. They're better than that, and about more than
despair. They invite lengthy contemplation. The trouble is, even if there's
no one else in the room, Rothko keeps getting in the way. I wish he'd go
away. " -- Adrian Searle
> > Thanks for your reply.
>
>Likewise!
Natasha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Feb 16 2003 - 14:33:14 MST