Boris,
Frances and I have been going round and round on this one for years now.
She will not move from this position. Peirce will not allow it.
mando
On Jul 6, 2009, at 7:04 PM, [email protected] wrote:
William insists that " Art objects, like anything else do not have
such
affective qualities. They simply are of such and such material,
for such and
such purpose, and so on. Any qualities, such as interesting or
boring, are
projected by perceivers..."
"Artworks are nothing but objects. They attain the status of art
objects
through our own projections, personal and cultural".
Projection is one way process. If it only in play we don't need art
object at
all. I think the main thing is a Reflection by an exposed one to
the info in
an art work and a projection is just a part of individual imagination.
Art is not "nothing but object". It is highly organized human created
structure.
Boris Shoshensky
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Worringer: Abstraction and Empathy
Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2009 22:33:03 -0700 (PDT)
Frances continues to assume that art objects have qualifying
attributes that
we find interesting or boring, etc. I insist that this is a manner of
speaking and not a correct statement. Art objects, like anything
else do not
have such affective qualities. They simply are of such and such
material, for
such and such purpose, and so on. Any qualities, such as
interesting or
boring, are projected by perceivers and are only make-believe, as-
if they
belonged to the object. Thus it's ridiculous to say that an
abstract painting
(or anything at all) can be boring, or interesting, or good or bad, or
meaningful. When we say that we are saying they are metaphors of our
subjective regard.
Artworks are nothing but objects. They attain the status of art
objects
through our own projections, personal and cultural. Worringer is
quite clear
about this. Again and again he refers to abstraction and empathy as
subjective states and art objects as (at best) symptoms of those
states.
Today, I believe he would say metaphor instead of symptom.
wc
--- On Mon, 7/6/09, Frances Kelly <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Frances Kelly <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: Worringer: Abstraction and Empathy
To: [email protected]
Date: Monday, July 6, 2009, 12:02 AM
Frances to Boris and others...
Some good instances of abstraction actually entail a degree
of
iconic similarity. When a small microscopic section of an
object
or work is cropped and isolated and then telescopically
enlarged,
as was superbly done with the photographed marks of
paintings in
a recent post, then the exciting result can be held solely
alone
as a final abstract artifact in its own right. The degree
of
iconicity in such a case however can be very vague, so that
the
original distant source has little similarity or
familiarity to
the new picture. Any pure abstract artwork made from
scratch by
an artist would of course not be directly or
microscopically
derived as a section from another distant source, but the
artwork
would nonetheless entail a degree of iconicity, because its
form
would in the least be similar to some quality of feeling.
In any
event, it is likely that what makes any good abstraction
great is
at least partly found in its "beautiful" formal quality,
yet it
is agreed that what makes it mainly nice or good or great
or art
is not by way of its form alone, but is by way of something
else
other than its form. My standing guess is that the
something else
other than form alone will be found in the "power" the form
bears
or has that enables it to reflect worthy aesthetic values
of a
natural and cultural kind, and to evoke intense aesthetic
experiences of an emotional or practical or intellectual
kind,
that are furthermore worthwhile both individually and
communally.
You wrote...
To me the strongest and unique point in Worringer's thesis
that
it lays with its account of abstraction in art. In my
thesis
level of pure abstraction has nothing to do with the
formalist
element, but a degree of artistic greatness.
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