The Rothko Chapel
Perhaps it's the latent art snob in me, but debates about an artwork's validity as "art" really annoy me. To me, if you're going to argue whether a painting in the Pompidou is art, you've indicated an ignorance and narrowmindedness toward the possibilities of art and the significance of certain artists' contributions to history and the value of their aesthetic explorations. You can be sure that there are academics and researchers and historians at the Pompidou who are good judges as to what art is. Are you really going to argue with them?
Movements in art can't be fully appreciated or understood without knowing about the movements that preceded them. Every movement has been a reaction to the past. Minimalist art might seem ridiculous at first glance -- this is a painting of nothing! -- but knowing the contemporary issues that artists faced in the time their work was produced adds value to the art-viewing experience.
Not all artists reacted the same way to history, and not all artists were driven to achieve the same goal, but every minimalist artist emerged off the heels of World War II and the ability photography had to accurately document the horrors of the world they were faced with. Who wants to paint a fucking portrait when someone can take a picture of millions of people forced into death camps?
Rothko wanted to achieve spiritual enlightenment with his larger-than-life colour field paintings. They were about ethereal experience, not representation. Malevich wanted to unburden the artist of the object -- why should an artist have to paint anything? -- and his minimalist works were some of the first to raise serious questions about the significance of representation. Much like Magritte's The Treachery of Images, where the artist reminds us we are not looking at a pipe, but a representation of a pipe, Malevich's work requires the viewer to intellectually deconstruct what it is they are looking at.
So yes, paintings of nothing are, in fact, art. And they are important to history and deserving of their space in the Pompidou. They are valuable works because the artists were the first to explore those ideas that have since become staples of contemporary discourse. Surely an artist painting colour field work now would be promptly dismissed for being about 50 years late to that party.
Here's what spawned this:
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/06/euroupdate_2_is_science_art.php
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/07/euroupdate_update_is_a_photo_a.php
Comments [1]