Black Bucket Essays
Volume 1, Issue 5
"Ethics and aesthetics are one"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Bart O'Reilly
One of the key concerns of painting, particularly abstract painting is aesthetics; apparently devoid of recognizable content the work of abstract painting relies on plastic formal relationships. But the definitions of this form of art practice, even today in our era of late capitalism, globalization and postmodernism rely heavily on modernist thinking, that in the past 50 years or so have been subject to serious revaluation and critique. At times so extreme that the medium of painting itself was declared dead. The key criticisms of paintings legitimacy do not lean on its aesthetic merits or demerits rather on its ethics. In the postmodernist reassessment of modernist paintings seemingly tyrannical reign in the art world its ethics were seriously challenged there by negating its aesthetics. It would seem natural to agree with Wittgenstein. The ethics and aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism and Post Painterly Abstraction were high jacked by a conservative agenda; the CIA co-opted the work of artists like Jackson Pollock to spread the idea that the United States was a free nation. All of this backed by the criticism of Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried left abstract painting floundering with one key objection, its ethics. To make abstract work was to align oneself with an outdated conservative ideology. All this I might add completely ignores the true intent of the artists associated with this way of working.
So what does it mean to make abstract painting in 2015? Is it possible to separate its aesthetic from the ethics of high modernism and make them relevant to our postmodern condition? Is there really any need to separate painting into the categories of abstract or representational? Anyone who has seriously engaged with the medium will realize that abstract painting represents something while representational painting abstracts. Why do we have to think about it so dualistically? If Ethics and Aesthetics are one shouldn’t the ethical position of the artist be considered before a rush to judgment is made?
I’m not an abstractionist, I’m not interested in relationships of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on — and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate those basic human emotions… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!” Mark Rothko.
Rothko a famed abstract painter said this about his work. This is the kind of thing that drove him as he made the work. The fact that a Rothko canvas now goes for up to 72 million dollars and might match your sofa can cloud our judgment for sure, but the artist’s original ethical intentions seem sound.
Speaking from the experience of painting for over 15 years I can say that my sensibility aligns often with that of modernist artists. Aesthetically my work often looks the same. When I felt the need to comment on our culture of digital overload I projected moving images from television on the canvas and painted them as they moved. The results looked like de Kooning or Pollock but the ethics had more to do with postmodernism. Aligning my ethics and aesthetics has been a lifelong struggle but I refuse to accept that abstract painting can only be associated with the outdated conservative criticism of the past. It is relevant today for a whole new generation of painters who reassemble its codes from the wreckage of modernism and adapt for our postmodern age.
Volume 1, Issue 5
"Ethics and aesthetics are one"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Bart O'Reilly
One of the key concerns of painting, particularly abstract painting is aesthetics; apparently devoid of recognizable content the work of abstract painting relies on plastic formal relationships. But the definitions of this form of art practice, even today in our era of late capitalism, globalization and postmodernism rely heavily on modernist thinking, that in the past 50 years or so have been subject to serious revaluation and critique. At times so extreme that the medium of painting itself was declared dead. The key criticisms of paintings legitimacy do not lean on its aesthetic merits or demerits rather on its ethics. In the postmodernist reassessment of modernist paintings seemingly tyrannical reign in the art world its ethics were seriously challenged there by negating its aesthetics. It would seem natural to agree with Wittgenstein. The ethics and aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism and Post Painterly Abstraction were high jacked by a conservative agenda; the CIA co-opted the work of artists like Jackson Pollock to spread the idea that the United States was a free nation. All of this backed by the criticism of Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried left abstract painting floundering with one key objection, its ethics. To make abstract work was to align oneself with an outdated conservative ideology. All this I might add completely ignores the true intent of the artists associated with this way of working.
So what does it mean to make abstract painting in 2015? Is it possible to separate its aesthetic from the ethics of high modernism and make them relevant to our postmodern condition? Is there really any need to separate painting into the categories of abstract or representational? Anyone who has seriously engaged with the medium will realize that abstract painting represents something while representational painting abstracts. Why do we have to think about it so dualistically? If Ethics and Aesthetics are one shouldn’t the ethical position of the artist be considered before a rush to judgment is made?
I’m not an abstractionist, I’m not interested in relationships of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on — and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate those basic human emotions… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!” Mark Rothko.
Rothko a famed abstract painter said this about his work. This is the kind of thing that drove him as he made the work. The fact that a Rothko canvas now goes for up to 72 million dollars and might match your sofa can cloud our judgment for sure, but the artist’s original ethical intentions seem sound.
Speaking from the experience of painting for over 15 years I can say that my sensibility aligns often with that of modernist artists. Aesthetically my work often looks the same. When I felt the need to comment on our culture of digital overload I projected moving images from television on the canvas and painted them as they moved. The results looked like de Kooning or Pollock but the ethics had more to do with postmodernism. Aligning my ethics and aesthetics has been a lifelong struggle but I refuse to accept that abstract painting can only be associated with the outdated conservative criticism of the past. It is relevant today for a whole new generation of painters who reassemble its codes from the wreckage of modernism and adapt for our postmodern age.
