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[pyshnov]

Overnight I got some relief from heavy feeling of frustration with the ignorance of new art historians: they are rarely malicious, I thought, especially those mentioning God, from Wichita, they may be really looking for truth. Here is more concretely:
1) I spoke of all art, not just 20 cent. art. I do not say that late-19 and 20 cent. artists had no "ideas" before starting a painting. And that was their fault. Of course, pointillists had an idea: by this time paints were not unctious, so, they decided to use dots, decent brushstrokes were not possible, although pre-raphaelites used a fantastically good techniques at the time.
2) I cannot recall a book written before mid-19 cent. that speaks of "ideas" (correct me if I am mistaken). The first to do this was apparently Ruskin (in English lit.). And the result - obsession with Sublime which is a low-taste garbage. He was much better watercolorist than a philosopher. Then came Berenson and all others, encouraged to give interpretations having nothing to do with actual paintings. The proof - you cannot get any idea of what paintings are just by reading interpretations. Art history before that time was lives of painters and techniques of painting, nothing about "ideas".
3) When I say "intuitively", it doesn't mean, as some here said, that they had empty head. They had tradition of seeing art and a pattern of beauty in their heads. They had no sinful desire to be original (well, except for Rembrandt who had so much talent that he would be even greater if he didn't make use of side effects, so to speak, created by light and chunks of paint).
4) The only description that a painting can bear is a distribution of lines and color, which would be a mathematical description; however, attempts to do this partially, by words, must be encouraged. Examples: I belive that Gothic architecture has too many similar repeats and too little difference between repeats. Romanesque was better in that sense. The best ornament ever produced is Islamic. Here, there exists a theory that they tried to "fill the space" which is a first (and a very weak and wrong) approach to describing art mathematically. Yet, I am convinced that your eye scanning a painting does exactly that, looking for the elements, their similarity and their "evolution" in complexity and distribution. Good artists created this intuitively, they looked again and made changes. Nothing about "ideas", just watching what is more beautiful and therefore more justified. Human figure and face obey the same principle: this is simply the way the cells of the body create form: small elements repeated in larger ones but not exactly, always with change. Don't tell me that human body is not an ornament. Good music obeys the same principle. That's what beauty is all about. Perception of beauty is a resonance in your brain which is capable of responding, resonating because it is constructed on these same principles.
5) How beautiful is the above and how much it is just a cry in the tendentious/communist wilderness of "ideas"!

[gastr1]

Beauty is an idea, pyshnov. You seem to think that aesthetics are not constructed, not an ideology, not a culturally-created situation. Even the most conservative historians know this. "Ideas" are not limited to the political sphere.

Cases in point:
Hierarchical scale in paintings of the medieval era--check out those Orthodox icons; naturalistic; perspectival scale of the Renaissance; the use of dots and patterns in Australian aboriginal art; the intense color and brushwork of Van Gogh; and the flattened Egyptian figure.

How do you explain that each of these cultures called these different things "art"?

[gastr1]

"They had no sinful desire to be original"

"how much it is just a cry in the tendentious/communist wilderness of "ideas"!"

You've pretty much tipped your hand with these. It's too bad you can't be objective about something so expansive and rich as art. I feel sorry for you.

[pyshnov]

"Hierarchical scale"? but that's what I am talking about (if this is what you are talking about). It's an element of beauty. And all the rest of the "tricks" and dots is just what I was referring to and calling art. Add here the cold greens in Sezann's apples, they practically are a system on a canvas. That they are not interrupted by any warm greens, what do you think about it?
"...called these different things "art"?" Why you do not ask the same question about fiddle, organ and piano? There are millions of sorts of combinations, they just have to be harmonious within themselves, congruent, to be called art. Kandinsky square is not art because it is so lone, the only repeat (that is supposed to present a harmonical sequence of many elements) of this square is its frame, and a wall. He meant: eat this square, idiots, that's the only thing I give you and I am the first genius who dared to do this. He had his idea.
A circle made with compass is not art. Drawn by hand - is, because it has irregularities. Give your students a task to draw circles with large irregularities and with small ones. Then, make them combine these in one circle, then say you want a beautiful circle, the one where the size and shape of irregularities follow some system. At this stage you will find out who of them is a proletarian and who is a dreaming female, according to their tastes. A joke of course, but this has everything to do with what art is.

[thenewyorker]

Hierarchical scale, dots, brushstrokes, or color: that is what is known as FORM, not beauty. Those elements can work together to be something beautiful, but that is not always the goal of the artist.
Malevich made the squares, not Kandinsky and Sezann is spelled Cezanne.
At least get your facts straight and spell the artists' names correctly before you try to engage with two (although there are more on the CHE: magistra? maggiesimpson?) experts in the field.

And if you want a discussion of beauty read Kant. I don't think that counts as 'trash literature.'

[gastr1]

"Hierarchical scale"? but that's what I am talking about (if this is what you are talking about).

No, you [edited for name-calling. mods], "hierarchical scale" is type of compositional convention used in the medieval West prior to the return to naturalism in the Renaissance, where because of cultural value systems (earth and humans were one step from hell; the godly realm was most important), the figures considered most important were rendered the largest.

http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/medieval/art/cimabue2.jpg

The same cultures very soon after had a radical shift in beliefs--the onset of the Enlightenment, science, and secularism--that created tolerance for the naturalistic depiction of the earthy realm and perspective (see Raphel and daVinci, and that non-artist non-painter, Brunelleschi, as well as Michelangelo). This is called: different ideas of what is "art" and what is "beautiful" according to different cultural belief systems.

Now. I hope to move on from this. Pyshnov, you obviously have read a few things and it is good that you are interested. But you are very uninformed and, at the same time, incredibly opinionated. While art is not an absolute thing--the very aspect that enables us to discuss it in a lively way--I hope you will at some point discover that there is in fact much, much, much, MUCH more to be understood than what you are currently "seeing." Cezanne, for example, never once intended to paint "just" a pretty landscape as you seem to think, and he is the considered to be the father of cubism because of his visual ideas.

We don't have to agree, and it's in some ways good that we don't. But your insistence on one modality for what is "art," when there clearly are so many that most casual observers are mystified by the sheer variety, is too limiting and limited to permit useful discussion.

One more thing: Aristotle and Hume, as well as Kant, defined ideas of what art "is," and classified aesthetics and subjects appropriate and inappropriate for "art," far before Ruskin did.

Have a nice life.

[thenewyorker]

Ta ta. Nice chatting with you gastr1.
I will be teaching Cezanne tomorrow. Perhaps pysnov would care to be a guest lecturer in my class? Then on to the challenges of Cubism, then the politics of Expressionism.
Goodbye pyshnov.

[gastr1]

Ta ta. Nice chatting with you gastr1.

You too, tny. Have a knish at Yona Shimmel, an open-faced reuben at Sarge's, or a slice at your favorite Ray's for me while I languish out here in flyover country.

Cheers!

[pyshnov]

I find the last comments worthy of that clueless angry mob of which I spoke earlier. Here, there is a corporation defending, tooth and nail, the trash on which their salary depends. I was wrong giving them a benefit of doubt: the uncivilized reaction speaks of moneys at stake. (Example: I tried to say that hierarchical scale was used because the composition, the size of figures, etc. were beautiful. If that would appear ugly, it wouldn't be brought in just for the "cultural value system" behind it. But the mob would not even understand what I said, nor could they understand.) Such expressions as "challenges of Cubism", "the politics of Expressionism", "cultural value systems" cannot describe art, they are brought in as a salary-producing stuff. And what does this mean: "art is not an absolute thing--the very aspect that enables us to discuss it in a lively way"? Why "an absolute thing" (a rigid thing?) cannot be discussed "in a lively way"? Trash language, trash brains. Rephrasing gastr1: It is bad that gastr1 "is interested", this was a sad mistake of Nature; those unable to see must be born blind.

[thenewyorker]

Can two people be a mob?

[pyshnov]

thenewyorker:

Can two people be a mob?

If they are so uncivilized and are occupying the positions that since the time immemorial were reserved for the best, yes, they can.

[pyshnov]

Somebody, teaching art, is chosing the name "gastr1", so nauseating and presumptious at that. Damn, I never have enough arrogance to reject fraud upon its first appearance.