Art as I See It

Lawrence Salander

Description

A working painter for over 50 years, and owner and director of the internationally renowned Salander-O'Reilly Galleries in New York City, where he was responsible for presenting over 600 museum quality exhibitions of art to the public, Salander is in a unique position to have a deep insight of all aspects of art and its making. This is an extremely personal book, and it is evident that Salander is both passionate and knowledgeable about his subject.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 29 mars 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528965439
• Langue: English

Extrait

Art as I See It
Lawrence Salander
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-03-29
Art as I See It About the Author Dedication Copyright Information Acknowledgments Words The Mathematics of Art: Classical and Romantic Fathers and Mothers The Amazing Continuity Mathematics II The Creative Force Process Painters and Sculptors Poussin (On the Shoulders of Giants) The Question of Finish The Early Renaissance in Siena Florence Venice Artists Tintoretto and the Vastness in Between Museums: How They Are Hung and Why The Importance of Art Turner’s Necessity Restraint and Tension: John Constable Constable’s Skies Delacroix Change Spirituality in Art Rembrandt’s Fathers Pierre Bonnard Personality, Behaviour, Character Vincent Van Gogh Pollock: Saint and Sinner Bernini Luca della Robbia: A Soul’s Empathy Titian and Cezanne Growing Old Decoration The Anatomy of an Exhibition Dog Facility, Virtuosity and Struggle Cynicism, Greed and the Emperor’s New Clothes: Art in the Twenty-First Century (A Cautionary Tale) The Tragic Case of Pablo Picasso Miró: Forever Young (Salvation) Matisse and His Little Audacities The Big Rush: Katherine Porter and the Negligence of Society God’s Role The Real Reason
About the Author
Salander owned and directed the internationally renowned Salander-O’Reilly Galleries in New York City for the entire 40 years of its existence. He presented over 600 exhibitions to the public over that period of time, including the work of artists such as Rembrandt, Donatello, Bernini, Corot, Tiepolo, Pollock, Gorky, de Kooning, Titian, Tintoretto, Constable, Delacroix, Géricault, Bonnard and many others.
He has written extensively on the subject of art and is also a working artist whose work has been the subject of many one-man shows in both museums and commercial galleries. His work is owned by museums such as the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, the Butler Institute of American Art, the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, etc.
He believes that his work as a working artist and an art dealer has put him in a unique position to understand art in a way few others have. The father of seven lives and works in Duchess County, New York. He is also a poet.
Dedication
To all artists, past, present, and future.
And to all my children and Layla.
Copyright Information
Copyright © Lawrence Salander (2019)
The right of Lawrence Salander to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528928328 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528928335 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781528928342 (Kindle e-book)
ISBN 9781528965439 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Clement Greenberg, Hilton Kramer, Leon Wieseltier, William C. Agee, William E. O’Reilly and especially Katherine Porter for teaching me so much.
To all the artists I have known through the years and their work.
And to Lilia Mannes for her crucial help throughout and without whom this book could have never been finished.
Words
With thanks and respect for the great minds who for centuries have grappled with the subject of art in the effort to make sense of something that is, for me at least, as necessary for life as the food we eat, or the air we breathe.
But there has always been a very high, perhaps an impossibly high, hurdle to clear in order to talk or write about the subject of art with clarity. It is that difficulty which has made it impossible to get those who talk and think and write and make and love art to agree on the meanings of the words used to discuss it, for example the word art itself.
Some years ago, I had the chance to set up an experiment, which I believed would go a long way to proving the following hypothesis, to wit: there is no consensus of agreement as to the definition of the word art. On the evening the experiment was to take place, I had sponsored a panel discussion about some small technical issue in art that was intended for art specialists and professionals, including curators, conservators, and professional artists. In other words, for those who made their living in art in one capacity or another, and for whom, if only for that reason, art was of vital interest.
The panel that evening consisted of two men whom I greatly respect and who are now, as they were then, among the handful of great thinkers and writers on the subject of art alive: J.P. and L.W. I served as the moderator.
About an hour before the discussion was to begin, the three of us met to review what it was we were going to speak about, and the form in which the discussion would take place. I offered up the following:
“Gentlemen, did it ever occur to you, who write so well on the subject, that there is but very little if any agreement about the meaning of the words we all use in the discussion of art?”
As one they replied, “Of course it has.”
I continued, “I propose that if I was to ask each of you to write down your definition of the word art, and if I did so myself, we would not define the word alike, certainly not exactly alike. But accepted definitions of words is the only way to ensure that there can be the least precision in the language we use to describe anything. Why, I wonder, have we allowed the discussion of art to be carried on in words that mean whatever the individual using them wants them to? And the same applies for those who hear or read the words.”
“So?” J.P. replied.
“Let’s distribute pencil and paper to our guests tonight, all of whom are professionals in the world of art, and most highly educated in the subject. And then let us ask them to define the word art.”
“OK with me so far,” L.W. said.
“My guess that if all two hundred people we expert tonight were to try to define the word art, a word in which they are all so vitally interested, no two will be exactly the same. In fact, no two will be able to be construed to have the same meaning.”
“My guess is that at least fifty pairs of answers will be close enough to be called the same,” J.P. said.
“Twenty-five pairs,” L.W. opined.
As amazing as it still seems these years later, and as distressing as it was to discover, no two answers could be construed to be close enough to be the same. There were, of course, certain words that came up more frequently than others in the two hundred answers; like some forms of the words create and express. However (and even) with all that no two definitions were the same.
So that in making the decision to write this book, which will be devoted, as my life has been, to the subject of art, I thought it was necessary for me to take a try at defining it; the word art I mean. Take it or leave it, improve on it if you can and will, but for this book to make sense in any respect we must start somewhere. I challenge some younger, more able person than I to write a dictionary of the words used around the subject of art. This would be a great contribution and necessary if we are to begin to find, excavate, and then separate the truth from the mountain of shit under which it has been for so long buried. Shit which when analysed will be shown to consist in great measure of words without meanings, undefined.
If the words used in the discussion of art are allowed to mean anything, then a logical conclusion to the resulting mish-mash of ideas will be that art can be anything too. And that may be fair enough as long as we are all clear, at least, as to what the word art means. It seems obvious to me that the low place at which we have arrived in the making and appreciation of art is the result of the fact that in discussing it using meaningless words, we have rendered the establishment of criteria impossible, and we have destroyed the criteria that may have once existed. We have made it possible for those who would to take advantage of this situation to the great detriment of art. People who will not stop until we define the words used to discuss art, to then use those words to set the criteria for it.
Since I have decided to write this book in words, I feel it has fallen to me to provide definitions for at least some of the words I will use to write it. And thus I have taken it upon myself to set the record straight, as I see it, and in the hope that someone other than I will do it again soon, and more accurately. Here and until then, I will offer up my definition of the word art: art is the product of the conscious human decision to combine or subtract the components in which a work of art is made, which results in the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. An artist then is a person who engages in the enterprise above described, which is to say that a person who consciously decides to be a combiner or subtracter of the components that are used to produce a product in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The product of such an endeavour may be physical or ephemeral.
But there are many forms of art made in media that has nothing to do with words, like painting or music. And there is a real question, in my mind at least, as to the desirability of discussing them in words, which is in effect a translation from the language in which it is made to another language, entirely. Though we seem to need to talk and write about these things (this book is proof of it) one wonders how much is lost in the translation of works made in the media of paint and sound into