=
> I posted this link awhile back, too.  It's a larger image.

Yes and I opened the link at the time, but I saw what I *expected* to 
see, a red painting on a white wall.  This expectation was based on my 
association of Malevich's name with the painting I remembered which is a 
white square against white ground.  Now I am even doubting that memory.
> 
> If you notice, the square is not [square].  

This is seen as introducing a *tension* to the composition within the 
reduced pictorial elements.  So, in a way, it's supposed to bother you.

> Ok.  So what seemed like a worthless picture (to me) initially is suddenly
> taking on some meaning.  Even so, I'm not sure I'll ever truly understand
> it. 

Doubt I will either.

  However, some of those Yves Klein paintings were quite intriguing.

Well Klein is a real showman and its hard not to enjoy his various 
antics and means of poking tradition in the eye.  He mocks the 'system' 
then promptly makes money off of it.

> That said, I still prefer realism and/or surrealism (leaning more toward
> "real" than "surreal").
> 

Nothing wrong with it, just remember, many cultures over human history 
have shown a decided preference for the abstract.  And no doubt you do 
enjoy the formal abstract qualities of some architecture, music, and car 
design, even some paintings.

One more anecdote.  I should start by admitting my bias that I dislike 
the artwork of a German artist named Joseph Beuys.  I know I am probably 
offending some Germans in the audience but I mean no disrespect to 
Germany or Germans, I just don't like Beuys' art.  It seems overly 
precious, serious, and didactic to me, and most of the time quite 
derivative.  Never-the-less he enjoyed a tremendous popularity, 
internationally, a few years back.  At this time I did not realize how 
much I disliked the work.  Beuys was so embraced by the modern art world 
that I figured I had better learn to like/understand his work or remain 
a philistine.  So it was that I returned several times to a large 
retrospective of his at the Guggenheim. On one visit, I was standing 
near a work that was a small piece of dull steel, a few cm's in each 
dimension and flat, just sitting on the floor.  An older, middle aged 
man, with a weatherbeaten face, very sincere, looked like he earned his 
living with his hands, came over to me and asked me if I could explain 
to him what it meant.  With my newly minted MFA degree I was quite taken 
aback as I realized I didn't have the first idea of what it meant nor 
could I even speculate about it in any kind of terms that this man was 
likely to understand.  I felt quite embarrassed on behalf of this 
artwork, myself, and modern art by extension. It seemed to me, suddenly, 
that it had become so inbred that it pretended that looking at a small 
piece of steel on the floor was an enlightening thing to do.  The man, 
when he got no satisfactory answer from me, went over to a nearby museum 
guard and asked him the same question.  The guard, young and seemingly 
fresh from the Marines, tried to be helpful and suggested that they look 
at the title.  I'll never forget the sight of the two of them bending 
over the museum tag, next to this piece of steel, and the guard reading 
in a dispirited voice, "steel plate".  I felt that the whole edifice of 
modern art had nothing to say to these two men who in their own way, 
probably knew more about steel than did Joseph Beuys.  I suppose in the 
same situation today I might point out that our shared knowledge of 
steel is what Beuys was about.  Still don't think it would have 
impressed the guy much.

-Jim

Post a reply to this message