Taking Aim: Rhetoric of the Gun in Images and Words

On a day filled with tragic images of the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, it seems absurd to blog about anything else. As advertised, this is a blog about how “looking at art leads to thinking about life,” but today I’m interested in how looking at certain images (and the words that accompany them) lead to thinking about death, specifically death delivered from the barrel of a gun. For all those who proclaim a constitutional right to bear arms, I’ll counter with a 9-year-old girl’s constitutional right to know what it’s like to be 10, something one of today’s victims will never experience. Yes, guns don’t kill people—crazy people with too easy access to guns kill people, sometimes under the influence of visual and verbal propaganda that makes light of taking aim on a human being while knowing full well that someone may take it serious, deadly serious. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Taking Aim."

Special Forces: Is Specialization Killing Art Today?

The 18^th century French Neoclassical painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres played the violin well enough to hold his own with “Sold His Soul to the Devil” good musicians such as Niccolò Paganini and Franz Liszt. Ingres took that intimate knowledge of music to add a different kind of beauty to works such as The Turkish Bath (from 1862; shown above). That little piece of trivia came to mind as I read an interview with The Moderna Museet’s new director, Daniel Birnbaum, in the October 2010 issue of The Art Newspaper. “Specialization is a problem of our time,” Birnbaum complained in response to a question regarding his interest in literature and philosophy as well as art. “There are many artists who work in different fields. A big museum such as the Moderna can tear down the walls between art and literature, for example, and I want to try such things.” What is the cost of specialization today, when art schools prepare artists who may know the techniques of their discipline but little else? How do we get back to the “good old days” of Ingres? Have artists today sold their souls to art schools at the risk of never being “true” artists? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Special Forces."

The Next Best Thing?: Digitizing the Museum Experience

One of the greatest art experiences of my life was going to Paris and roaming the Louvre. Making the pilgrimage to the Mona Lisa, checking out the Nike, walking around the Venus de Milo—we hit all the highlights that time allowed. And yet time always felt like it was running out. Nothing beats standing in front of a work of art and studying every nuance. But the problem of getting to stand in front of masterpieces is insurmountable in many cases. Reproductions in books have always been “the next best thing,” but a far second. Now, with improvements in digital reproduction, “the next best thing” comes pretty darn close. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "The Next Best Thing?"

[Many thanks to Adrienne B. for tipping me off to the Halta Definizione site.]

Getting in Shape

The greatest argument for going out and seeing paintings in person is the insufficiency of reproduction, especially when it comes to modern art. Barnett Newman’s Vir Heroicus Sublimis seems small and paltry in a book or on a computer screen, but when you stand before it you are overcome with a world of red-hued emotion. Likewise, the works of Kenneth Noland suffer in reproduction. Born April 10, 1924, Noland sometimes finds himself linked with Abstract expressionism, perhaps in his kinship with Newman, but is more often grouped with Color field painters such as Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler. Noland’s work can be broken down into fairly self-contained sections, beginning with the circle paintings he did from 1956 through 1963, such as Beginning (above, from 1958). Although they might remind one of Jasper Johns’ target series, Noland’s circles focus on the interplay of color rather than the repetition of familiar shapes. Many of Noland’s circles seem almost mechanical in reproduction, where the subtle touches of the human hand are lost, much like the feathery edges of Newman’s “zips.” Beginnings shows more clearly Noland’s gamesmanship with the boundaries of the circle. Noland uses circles and shapes to emphasize the way that shapes contain or set boundaries and then breaks out of that containment. The colors in Noland’s circles and other shapes interplay to create a mood while simultaneously push beyond the canvas into the viewer’s imagination.

In the mid-1960s, Noland shifted from circles to chevrons, such as those found in Blue Veil (above, from 1963). Another common motif structure for Noland during this period was stripes, which essentially just unbent the chevrons. Both series again explore the way that colors can be arranged to create a mood. Blue Veil stands out from many other Noland paintings in that the dark background evokes feelings in strong contrast to the white backgrounds and brighter colors of other works. Noland cites Paul Klee as a great influence on his approach to color, but you could make a similar argument for the influence of Matisse. Noland could then be seen as a Fauve minus the beastliness but with the same aggressively innovative approach to experimenting with color’s capacity to bypass the mind and touch the heart. By eliminating the recognizable imagery of Matisse and others and going straight into abstract color, Noland defies rational explanation while inviting irrational responses.

By the 1970s, Noland went beyond putting shapes on canvas and began to shape the canvas itself into irregular delivery systems for his ideas. In Moon Ray (above, from 1976), Noland paints a series of stripes radiating from a point and physically stretching the usually square or rectangular canvas into something unique to the composition. Again, form follows function for Noland. Where circles and chevrons once supplied containers for him to overfill with color, the dimensions of the canvas itself now bend to his will. Ellsworth Kelly, Noland’s almost exact contemporary, similarly uses irregularly shaped canvases to express an idea, but more often using a single color, such as his Lake II, which “steals” a lake right out of a Cezanne. Noland experimented with many other shapes, some of which resembled surfboards. Still active, Noland continues to work the edges and surf conceptually through the very idea of painting, testing the boundaries and yet, unfortunately, rarely recognized for how he helped shape modern art.

Higher Frequencies

For whatever reason, the first time that I saw one of Barnett Newman’s zip paintings, I thought of the paper chromatography I did in chemistry class in college. Aside from the visual similarity, perhaps it was the similarity in how the paper chromatography broke down a compound and identified its individual components by light frequencies that made me think of it in front of Newman’s paintings, which break down all of human existence and isolate individual components such as love, fear, death, heroism, etc. Born January 29, 1905, Newman may have been the best pure philosopher in the history of American art. “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" Ralph Ellison writes at the end of his amazing novel Invisible Man. Newman’s Vir Heroicus Sublimis (above, from 1950-1951), which translates as “man, heroic and sublime,” speaks for all of us on the higher frequencies of what noble things we can aspire to. In the 1950s, when the Cold War threatened mutual mass destruction and other forms of repression-driven madness haunted the human soul, Barnett Newman looked to inject a sense of nobility, gentleness, and humor.

Sometimes, Newman’s message is misinterpreted by a damaged receiver. Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue IV (above, from 1969-1970) was attacked in 1982 by a deranged young man who felt that the work compelled him to destroy it. Several of Newman’s works have been assaulted over the years by people to whom they have misspoken. Sadly, Newman’s reputation suffers because his works lose so much in reproductions. Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue IV looks more like a simple, computer-generated graphic. Yet, in person, it can inspire emotional responses, sometimes violent, similar to those inspired by the works of Newman’s contemporary Mark Rothko. I admit that I didn’t fully appreciate Newman’s work until I had an opportunity to view a retrospective of his work at the PMA in 2002. I’ve always found the combination of the power of Newman’s words and the power of Newman’s wordless paintings fascinating. To be so articulate and dynamic in such a wide range of means of expression leaves me personally speechless.


Newman was wise enough to know that some situations are beyond reason, beyond words. For many, Newman’s Broken Obelisk (above, from 1967) has become the go-to visual image of irrational injustice in all its forms, from 9/11 to the latest school shooting. It seems almost inevitable that every great senseless tragedy will be accompanied by Newman’s Broken Obelisk, usually set to a soundtrack of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, another seemingly inevitable source of wordless solace. It says a lot about the American psyche that Newman’s presence in the popular culture falls far short of that of Jackson Pollock, his hard-living, fast-dying, cinematic-ready contemporary. Nobody will ever make a movie of Newman’s life and art—pure box office poison. Newman is far too subtle and nuanced for our quick-cut, impatient lifestyle. Yet, when our world is turned upside down, we reach not for the visual violence of the drip paintings but for the measured cadences of Newman’s art, who continues to speak to us on the higher frequencies, whether we chose to listen or not.