A lot of art is made by mechanical reproduction. If you say the quality is in the object and if you require handiwork to produce that quality then your judgment is justified. But if we seek a general definition of facture, we can't dismiss even the mechanical means of production. I don't see how being handmade is a necessary feature of art. And also, art is a concept before it is a medium. Or is it? It used to be that art might result from somewhat purposeful but not excluding aimless tomfoolery with the medium. The concept emerged from the medium and was embodied by it. Now I think the dominant approach is to take the concept to some medium most appropriate to it. The trouble with this latter approach, in my view, is that the concept is primarily narrative or text, or language, and the medium is visual. The gap between them favors text and not visuality. Under this approach the artist's intention is usually regarded as primary and language based, as in the ubiquitous "artist's statement" so highly regarded nowadays. The other approach, the fooling with the medium approach, may elicit a narrative but it's a narrative or text or intentionality that often fails to be very interesting, as spontaneously blurted by DeKooning when he said "Artists have dumb ideas". Instead the content, if that's what it is, is exemplified by the object somehow and is ineffable.
So Mando seems to be choosing that medium over concept approach and I of course think it's fine (since I do the same in making my own work). But in the more reflective, philosophical sense, we can't get by by simply asserting that approach as the definitive one when in fact, there is abundant evidence that the other approach is also valid, beginning with Duchamp's Urinal, snow shovel, and other "readymades", all of them products of "touchless" manufacture yet each with distinctive facture. wc ________________________________ From: armando baeza <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: armando baeza <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 11:49:44 AM Subject: Re: Facture I some, so called "art', the hands are not even used. The so called artists, take a "person" of his choice ( his choice, being his only contribution) to a machine to be photographed three dimensionally, then from that,exact reproductions in any material in monumental sizes are made. The question or facture or Human creativity is lost along the way some how to me. But it has become the next popular art. mando On Sep 29, 2009, at 8:25 AM, William Conger wrote: > I think it's wrong to say that facture in art depends on some overtly visible > and agitated surface treatment. There is as much facture in the most > glass-smooth Ingres portrait as in the clumpiest Lucien Freud portrait. And > the argument that declares handiwork over machine work is spurious on the > face if it since what mode of making is lacking some "machine" or tool? > Tools are extensions of the hands and machines are extensions of such tools. > Where does gradual change in degree become radical change in kind? Where > one's weak eyes loose the ability to discern marks? Or when a prosthetic > device enables -- a better lens or even a microscope -- takes one to the > absolute limit of observable evidence? Absurd? No. Such devices are standard > equipment, together with even more exacting tools such as x-ray, in any > serious art conservation laboratory and they are all crucial to the > examination of facture. > > The interesting and salient question is, How does facture in a particular > artwork affect response to that work? By extension, we can intelligently > ask, How does an art era or culturally defined group of artwork symbolize > values through facture? Most certainly, the question is not the presence or > absence of facture in art objects, but facture of what sort. > > > > ________________________________ > From: armando baeza <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Cc: armando baeza <[email protected]> > Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 10:58:44 PM > Subject: Re: Facture > > The same applies to to photorealist sculpture, now so prevalent, > Also not hand made. From photo to computer manufacturing, > and into the galleries. > mando > > On Sep 28, 2009, at 7:40 PM, [email protected] wrote: > >> The more I think about it the more I reach the conclusion that facture >> is more a cultural sign than a sign of artistic impulse. One of the main >> reasons photorealists were reviled was that their facture resembled a >> photograph-was not handmade, unlike the Abstract Expressionists. >> Kate Sullivan
