responding to Abstract
Art Isn't Art by Robert J. Lewis
user-submission@feedback.com
I love how the people going against the author are saying simple,
almost childish comebacks, like "you're wrong", "you're
simple minded", "you have no idea what its all about",
without actually giving a concrete form of rebuttal; almost
as if they're bigotting themselves by further emphasizing the
lack of creativity, concreteness, and objectivity in abstract
art. It is sad that these people believe that their work has
any meaning. They could honestly learn to actually draw or paint,
like say a tree in an empty field would have been a lot more
brain-working than just a slab of paint or a streak of pee onto
a canvas. Tell me I'm wrong, boys.
motawfik81@gmail.com
Master artists and painters of the highest order are high level
souls that are accomplishing their final practice and rehearsals
in arts in order to move forward to a far sophisticated artistic
experience; is contributing in the creation of the nature on
earth …
By injecting and forcing “Abstract practices”
on earth is a part of the devilish plan to destroy the planet
earth or in other words delaying planet earth progress toward
a higher degree of development by vanishing the visual art and
natural drawing talents, so by the time earth will look like
"Abstract Arts."
On the other hand Abstract Arts considered being
one of the best candidates for money laundry and bribery serving
the dominating practices on Earth now days.
Pressure and stress, health problems on earth
is mainly due to the selfishness energy that is dominating Earth,
that makes lots of art lovers switched to “Abstract Drawings”
it gives a sort of energy relieve and it requires only a simple
study on how to match colors or simply they can cheat color
matching from the nature using the exact colors with respect
to proportions like looking to a colorful bird and cheat his
patterns and color mixing into a stretched canvas or any painting
material.
I wish I can help and contribute in presenting
a better Art model that makes the current model obsolete. Please
let me know what kind of activities I can join and Help.
Sorry for my poor English writings, I did my best
to describe what I know.
Mohamed Tawfik
from: Cairo – Egypt
user-submission@feedback.com
Hello. I myself am working on a painting but as an known artist
I feel no matter how grand or beautiful my art work is it will
be worthless, now Jackson Pollack for instance will draw three
lines on a canvas and it will reach millions of dollars in the
Christie's auction house by looking around the art markets today
I get very discouraged to start at all as I feel my work will
be for nothing and years lost I appreciate the detail of the
old masters eg, William-Adolphe Bouguereau.
It just makes me angry that this beautiful detail will be lost
one day and left only in museums as a memory even in architecture
this abstract form is reshaping our society ,are we becoming
more intelligent or are we going backwards Rothko's orange on
canvas went for tens of millions of dollars I guess we have
to except every form of art work and different cultures but
I believe that we shouldn't reject the beauty of natural painting
and not to lessen its value.
from Lydia Schrufer, Arts Editor
As Arts Editor of Arts & Opinion, I want to put
on the record my disagreement with my editor and author of the
essay "Abstract Art Isn’t Art." I find his views
uninformed, if not ignorant, and at best, very narrow minded.
If he were to pick up a brush, he would discover just how difficult
it is to produce an abstract painting he assumes himself capable
of. I will grant that there is a great deal of pseudo, bad art
on the market, but a blanket statement isn't helpful.
He goes on to suggest that Newman, Gaucher, Molinari
et al, spent their entire careers pulling the wool over the
public’s eye, that they were not interested in advancing
a new concept and shaking up the status quo.
Looking at Lewis’s argument from the perspective
of music, one could make the same blanket statement about contemporary
jazz which many people consider noise. There’s much in
music between Cage and Marsalis that listeners find offensive,
but these artists felt compelled to push the envelope despite
public opinion. Artists have always been driven by the zeitgeist
of their environments; at times their creative efforts succeed,
sometimes not, but it's important to applaud their efforts.
I am not against honest criticism, but it should be educated
and authoritative. The fact of the matter is that most museum
and gallery visitors spend mere seconds in front of a works
before passing judgment, and usually in front of works that
are traditional. They then take their habits of viewing to more
complex, demanding works and are disappointed. Before one can
develop an appreciation of complex music, one must listen and
listen again; the same applies to the visual arts.
And let’s not forget that the impressionists
were the pariahs of their time and now we revere their bravado
and innovation.
from Neila Mezynski:
Having painted abstractly
for 18 years I have some energy on the subject. The Eastern
painters give as much importance to what is not on the canvas
as to what is, some Zen philosophy there, I suppose. The painter’s
choices are defining and revealing. What is on the canvas and
what is not is all about the individual’s life experiences
and how he wants to “discuss” it through his work.
The hard core abstract painter spends years developing a “language”,
if you will, and sometimes that language is in the form of drips
and dabs and marks, mixed media, collage, you name it. The most
surprising thing is that the painter is looking for something
that only he/she can recognize as working or making sense. Robert
Motherwell, a great abstract painter of the 20th century, called
it “the shock of recognition.” If one is going to
dismiss this sophisticated and intelligent painter’s entire
body of work as nothing, or not art then I guess you would have
to dismiss the whole person and the whole movement of modernism.
Warhol and Duchamp rattled our cages and knocked “art”
off its gold encrusted pedestal and showed us that great art
is not any one thing. That would be too easy!
user-submission@feedback.com
Any argument that relies on an appeal to a definition's self-evidence
is begging the question. Art is not self-evident, which is the
entire point of much abstract art: attempting to discover the
answer through experimentation. Difficulty or skill is irrelevant,
and you have the burden of proof to establish that it is.
user-submission@feedback.com
Crock of shit. No talent, a poser and a bum.
alexandriaesparza18@yahoo.com
Who are you and what scholarly backup do you have to be able
to say such ignorant things?
user-submission@feedback.com
Abstract art is not real art, to me it's considered childlike
and more like a background to a soon to be awesome piece but
its missing the actual painting.
user-submission@feedback.com
You are joking
I hope. Otherwise you need help.
