Yow. I do not disagree with your premises, and agree that technique or craft is subordinate to the creative statement.
I'm less familiar with Kant than you are, and I'm not sure how to interpret your use of the word "existential", so I'll have to do a bit of research before I respond further!
I screwed up terribly when I referenced Frank Stella. I had his name confused with a favorite sculptor of mine, and I am pulling my hair out because his name has totally escaped me. He was on the faculty of the University of Illinois Champagne/Urbana back in the 70s, and Hugh Hefner has purchased lots of his work. He works in resin, mostly nudes, and he's a master sculptor. I had the opportunity to watch him create a life size bust in clay over a period of about a week in 1968.
Very annoying that I cannot recall his name.
I have several close friends that paint what the average man would call "abstract", and we have had some spirited discussions. My background in drawing and painting is classical, but I've been working for the last 8 years on stuff with no recognizable subject matter. I sometimes feel like I'm arguing against myself. <G>
If you get a chance to see any of Gregory Gillepie's work, I encourage you to do so. He was adamant about not having his paintings reproduced in any way because he felt it degraded the work. He wasn't excited about trying to explain his work, either. He was an amazing painter. I remember one visit to his home in Northhampton when he asked me to take some Polaroids of some paintings he was working on. One was a life-size self portrait of himself sitting on a bed. The Polaroid looked like an actual photograph of him; the photographic image lost the quality of the paint. When I showed the photo to him, he smiled and said, "You see?" He was also working on several smaller paintings which were lyrical and rather mystical. They had a profound influence on my own work. His favorite painter was Carlo Crivelli. I think he was Carlo Crivelli in a past life. He managed to take Crivelli's tempera technique to a very high level with oil based acrylic paint that he applied in a translucent glaze.
kfki.hu
I was in graduate school when I first met him in 1976. I met him by accident, I had no idea who he was or that he was a painter. When he found out I was a painter, he invited me into his home and his studio and we talked for about 4 hours. He stopped painting to talk with me. Every time I visited him, he stopped what he was doing to sit and talk about technique. He was a really good man, a very kind man.
I thought twice about posting this publicly, but there it is. |
