I feel that every art attempt is representational of something in
nature regardless how abstract it may be.
To me, that is the only possible choice.
mando
On Aug 1, 2007, at 8:43 PM, Michael Brady wrote:
On Sep 1, 2008, at 9:01 PM, William Conger wrote:
No one can intentionally make an artwork. One can make something
that looks, sounds, reads like art or one can try to propose
something as an artwork, but the naming of something as an
bonafide artwork is a social approbation that can't be fully
controlled or even predicted. Each real artwork is a once and
never again event or experience, unique and inimitable. That's why
it always fails when someone "imitates" art to supposedly achieve
its same expressive quality. It's fine to imitate the structure
or narrative but that in itself will not do the trick. This is the
opposite of what Reynolds told his Royal Academy students. He said
one should imitate the spirit, not the style.
I disagree with this, William, on two basic points. (1) The maker
intentionally makes something that is, from the outset, formed as a
work of art, that is, as a fictive thing that offers itself
entirely as a probationary, propositional, conditional object. And
(2) I believe the role the everyone else serves is to give it
public acclaim or disregard, not to give it the status of a WOA.
The prestige or stature and value accorded a WOA by the public is
independent of its original status as a fiction, i.e., a work of
art. Every work of art is a "bonafide" work of art, but they are
not all of the same quality.
I've described what I mean by "fiction" before, so I won't go into
it in any great length. But I just want to reiterate my central
point that WOAs are constructed of parts that often represent
something else (they're 'representational' or 'figurative'), and
when they do, the maker can do whatever he wants with the
components, can combine parts haphazardly, can color them any way
at all and give them any kind of symbolic or denotational
capacity ... or not. Because the signifying capacity and power is
wielded freely, completely unanchored to any contingent connection
to anything else. And 'nonrepresentational' works, i.e., 'abstract'
works, are even more completely fictions, because they offer no
signifying power and concomitantly no referents, and thus they
aren't subject to any questions of truthfulness at all.
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Michael Brady
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
