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Showing posts with the label abstract art

Odd bloke that Kandinsky

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 I read On The Spiritual in Art , by Kandinsky interested to see what he meant. He was the first famous abstract painter and I do like his paintings.  The book is as odd as he is. He says (and I agree with him, 100 years later) that: " The observer these days is incapable of emotion when looking at a work of art.  The observer looks for objective reality or interpretation. Thus the observer misses the whole point. "  Elsewhere in the book though he goes into mechanical detail of how to construct colors and images to have this emotional effect. Here is a small selection: Black mixed with any other color evokes tragedy . (Does it? Really?) Green contains yellow and blue as paralyzed forces which can be reactivated. (Here he shows he does not understand light mixing.) Blue evokes the infinite. (That seems true if you only think of skies. But why not black as well? A dark night sky full of stars for example) Yellow never contains a profound meaning. (A bit of an arbitrary stat

The Museum Of Bad Art (MOBA) has no abstract works

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   The Museum Of Bad Art (MOBA) has no abstract works. Could this be because it is impossible to tell if an abstract work is any good or not?  The abstract artist makes you "work hard", and after you have worked hard the only thing which remains are meaningless words like dirty dust in your mouth. You start coughing in unbelief.

The core of mystery is reality. The core of reality is mystery.

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I was struck by Leonora Carrington's paintings... ...at the same time as I was re-reading The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien.... It occurred to me that mystery can be transmitted best when it contains, or is contained by, reality. Pure abstract art (like some music with no lyrics and some abstract paintings) may sometimes trasmit emotions but I reckon that mystery, the unsayable stuff, you know what I mean, is most effective when connected to concrete things we are already familiar with.