May 13, 2009
Ah!... I See My Bribe Paid Off
(Tim Jones)
Tim Jones, here.
This is about a week late, but I wanted to let JA.O readers know that several pieces of my work are inexplicably featured in the current edition of a well-respected online literary journal, The Christendom Review.
This has been in the works for a while, and the actual date of publication sort of snuck up on me.
Many thanks to William Luse and to editor Richard Barnett for the opportunity to be featured in this fine magazine. The Christendom Review also regularly showcases some great poetry, essays, editorials, etc...
Don't worry, I didn't really bribe anybody. What I did do was send an e-mail saying, "This is a nice literary magazine you got going here... it'd be a shame if anything happened to it..."
Visit Tim Jones' Daily Painting Blog...
... as well as his Daily Spouting-Off Blog Old World Swine.
Posted by Tim Jones in Art | Permalink | Comments (5)
January 26, 2009
Will Paint for Food (or possibly beer)
(Tim Jones)
(from my blog Old World Swine)
Well, life is full of surprises, ain't it? Remember a while ago, when I was asking readers to send in their impressions of the local and personal effects of the recession and the stock market crash? I made my own observation at the time that I was seeing very little evidence of it, as yet, aside from lower gas prices. Then I did make note that some local stores would be closing (a Starbucks, Circuit City, Linens & Things).
Now the evidence I asked about has come up and kicked me in the aft end... as of Friday I was given the official two week notice that my job is being cut. My last check will arrive in a month.
It was a surprise, but not a deep shock. I had been aware for some time that the amount of work they had for me to do was steadily declining. When I started in my position, I was kept busier than a grasshopper kicking the seeds out of a watermelon, but in recent months I had not only begun to somewhat, shall we say, stretch the projects I had, but had actually started to create my own projects (which has never been in my job description). I began to create a library of stock illustrations that (based on my experience) I thought might be useful in the future. As this library expanded and went largely unused, though, it began to feel very futile. I was sitting at my desk, drawing a check and drawing (literally) whatever I thought made sense... food, mostly. Our company had used a lot of food art in their packaging.
I had the odd hot-potato-we-must-have-this-by-Tuesday job to break the monotony, but it began to feel like my own company was sort of holding me on a retainer for those increasingly rare instances when I was actually needed. I began to get frustrated and a bit depressed, which is a horrible position for a Christian.
The Christian should always be eager to go wherever God leads and do whatever is needed without complaint and with sincere gratitude. Constant thankfulness should be the default position for any follower of Jesus. Life is just too variously and mind-bogglingly wonderful - too "lopsidedly benevolent", as I have put it before - to allow oneself to mope because this or that aspect of it isn't meeting one's expectations.
So, when I began to get frustrated and depressed at my job, I knew something was deeply wrong. I was also feeling a more insistent desire to move ahead with my fine art, and the day job (with its two-hour daily commute) seemed to suck the life and energy (and creativity) out of me. But I have a family to support, and as long as I could keep the job, I figured that was where God wanted me to be.
So, it looks like I'll have a lot more time to devote to the fine art and to Catholic (and other) illustration. I'll be putting up some illustration and cartoons from time to time, as well as my painting. There are new avenues open to me, now, in terms of getting my art out there in front of people. As it turns out, instead of painting this past weekend, I spent the time getting my Etsy store up and running. Etsy is a cool, fairly new outlet for handmade goods and art, and I've been meaning to get my online store - er, gallery - started for some time. I may even have time to begin that series of the Mysteries of the Rosary I have been wanting to do.
So, check it out. Tell your friends!
(Thats www.oldworldswine.etsy.com)
The Esty site will most likely be where I direct people from my Daily Painting blog from now on, though I have had some early success with E-bay and may continue to use it. I don't know. You would think I might have more time to blog here at OWS, now, but that's not likely. I'm going to have to hit the ground running if I want to maintain any kind of steady income in all this, and so I'll be treating the fine art as a full-time job (and possibly more). I'm grateful, though, that I'll be able to make it to daily Mass.
Your prayers would be most appreciated. At the moment I'm kind of excited at the possibilities, and am looking at it as an adventure... Wheee! another big dip on the roller coaster of life... but it is easy to talk that way when the checks are still coming. We have been through some lean times before, and the romance of such a position fades quickly. The sense of adventure turns into a rather permanent knot in the stomach.
As Chesterton has said (and I have often quoted before);
Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people's property.
I have to say that, as a Distributist, I do look forward to looking after my own property.
Posted by Tim Jones in Art, Miscellaneous | Permalink | Comments (18)
December 29, 2008
Check Out Tim Jones' New Daily Painting Blog!
(Tim Jones)
Hey, Tim Jones, here.
Today marks the *official* launch of my long anticipated (by me, anyway... I always was a procrastinator) Daily Painting blog.
Now, "daily painting" doesn't mean necessarily a painting a day...
it just means I plan to paint daily, and I'll offer that work on
the new blog (via e-bay). In practice I look for this to shake out at about
3 paintings a week, though that may increase as things progress.
These are mainly small - even miniature - pieces, but made with all the care I would give to any of my larger artworks.
I will also soon be offering some very special pricing on some of the art from my old fine art website, as I move into this new strategy.
Up until very recently, making a living in original fine art was mainly a matter of finding gallery representation (in viable commercial galleries) and building a reputation (and generating income) that way. Finding publicity through art competitions and art publications could help to make you more attractive to these galleries. But the whole process of vetting and courting galleries - in addition to actually trying to get any work done (on top of having, like, a day job) - has been like hiking through molasses. One needs almost to work full time just on marketing, scheduling competitions, hob-nobbing and the like. It doesn't help that I'm such an intense introvert.
With the advent of the internet, though, there are now more and more artists taking their work directly to the public. It's a transition I've been turning over in my mind for some time, but hesitated to jump into.
I have now made the jump. That means that the prices I had on a lot of my artwork will be reduced because I no longer need to consider the requirements of a third party (the galleries) or worry so much about impressing collectors that might drop by. So, in addition to the small daily painting pieces, watch for some larger work as well.
The long and short is that I would rather paint - and make my living from painting - than not. If that means pricing my work so that it will be more accessible to a wider audience, then that is a change I am happy to make. It could even be seen as very Chestertonian... a Distributist approach to fine art.
I'll be offering occasional opinions and commentary on my work interspersed with with the new paintings, but the next several posts at the new blog will just be new paintings offered for your viewing pleasure, with a link to the e-bay auction page for each piece.
Do check in often. I hope you like what you see.
Oh! Also please feel free to drop a line in the combox.
Visit Timothy Jones' Daily Painting Blog
Posted by Tim Jones in Art | Permalink | Comments (19)
June 09, 2008
Aesthetic Escalator
(Tim Jones)
Hey, Tim Jones, here. The following is a post I just put up at my blog, but I thought Jimmy's readers might find of interest;
I'm going to hurriedly try to respond to some recent art posts over at
The Aesthetic Elevator, even though I can't give them the time and
thought they deserve, right now.
First, on the art of Guy Kemper (pictured); Here's the long and short, for me; this represents precisely the problem with a lot of contemporary Catholic liturgical art, and more broadly with non-representational art... the question is this; where couldn't this art function just as well as it does here (the Catholic Memorial at Ground Zero)? It would be as much at home in the entryway to a shopping mall, or a high school, or in one of our new, featureless contemporary church buildings. It is art devoid of communication. It's called "Rise". It could be called anything.
It does do one thing admirably well; it breaks up the enervating monotony of rectangles that make up the space. It beats looking out on the parking lot. Let's be honest, modern architecture doesn't make use of repeated rectangles because the rectangle is a shape the meaning of which we just never get tired of exploring. Rectangles are cheap and plentiful, and curves cost money. Look at the granite slab tub at the left. A baptismal font, or a water feature with coi fish? Generic acoustic ceiling tiles (how daring!) and floor tiles just like I have in my bathroom. Look, I know the architect is dealing with a limited budget, as well as building codes, so a lot of this is simply fore-ordained and out of his/her control. Our culture just makes dull buildings, that's all. In this context, the artwork is a welcome relief from the assembly-line blankness of the space. It is aesthetically pleasing (competently composed and harmonious) and gives the eye something to do for a few seconds. In that sense, it performs a function. That's setting the bar awfully low, but there you go. Kemper doesn't need me to like his art... he is successful and there are plenty of people who love this sort of thing. It functions as a placeholder for the idea of a piece of art, and it offends (could offend) no one.
This is the kind of art that I hope the Vatican's Council for Catholic Culture studiously avoids in it's search for new talent, which TAE notes here.
Moving on...
TAE has some thoughts on the Catholic League's Bill Donahue having some thoughts about the art of some college student, who further has some novel thoughts regarding the proper use of rosaries and other devotional items...
"Whoa, lad! That crucifix doesn't go there!" (think Robert Mapplethorpe).
TAE makes one good point; nine times out of ten, pounding the table about stuff like this only draws attention to it. In that sense, I would rather that "Shoutin' Bill" would just let things be. His heart is in the right place, but I look forward to seeing him on the news probably about as much as thoughtful evangelicals look forward to seeing Jerry Falwell.
That said, how anyone could mistake the art for anything but plain, bigoted hate speech is beyond me. The paintings are calculated to disgust and offend, and yet TAE manages only;
"I can’t help but think he could have approached his canvases in a more deft manner."
Deft manner? Does anyone really hold out the possibility that the artist has some genuine, thoughtful critique of the Catholic Church, but (poor boy) chose an unfortunate way to express it? Is anyone naive enough to suppose that the artist seethes with loathing for Catholics, but generally thinks highly of other Christians? Do you figure that he quite approves of Pentecostals, for instance? Yeah, and rosaries might fly out my butt.
Let's imagine a college art exhibit critical of gay marriage that made it's point by pornographically lampooning Matthew Shepard and Harvey Milk. How many hours would it be be open before someone was fired? Yet, this art is no different. Some adolescent wanted attention, and his fawning professors (with the help of the Catholic League) have obliged.
Finally, in his post on Donahue, TAE says;
Referring back to Donahue’s criticisms, perhaps he believes his own denomination to be Divine and infallible as an institution. I’ve known of Catholics with this attitude, although I don’t sense it’s a prevailing conviction. If I may be so bold, this would in fact be a naive belief, and I don’t understand how anyone could presently think so highly of the Catholic Church in light of the recent scandals that — unfortunately — plagued this enduring institution. No part of the Body of Christ can say with a straight face that they or their particular congregation has not made certain gross missteps along the way..."
This will require another post to address, but in brief, it (unsurprisingly) reflects what seems to be an incomplete and overly simplistic view of what the Catholic Church believes on the subject(s)... very similar to what I thought Catholics believed... before I became one!
Posted by Tim Jones in Art, Current Affairs, Other Christians | Permalink | Comments (11)
May 06, 2008
Why Is Christian Art So Lame These Days?
(Jimmy Akin)
That's a question that's worth asking.
I mean, it isn't as if Christian art has always been lame. A visit to the Sistine Chapel or a read through Dante or a listen to Mozart will tell you that.
But for some reason, right in the here and now, an enormous amount of Christian art--whether visual, literary, or musical--is just really, really lame.
And it's not driving the culture the way it used to.
Instead, it feels like a shallow copy of secular culture.
That's something explored in a recent article at Salon.Com. Here's the money quote:
For faith, the results can be dangerous. A young Christian can get the idea that her religion is a tinny, desperate thing that can't compete with the secular culture. A Christian friend who'd grown up totally sheltered once wrote to me that the first time he heard a Top 40 station he was horrified, and not because of the racy lyrics: "Suddenly, my lifelong suspicions became crystal clear," he wrote. "Christian subculture was nothing but a commercialized rip-off of the mainstream, done with wretched quality and an apocryphal [sic] insistence on the sanitization of reality."
SOURCE [WARNING: There are a few just plain gross references in the article.]
The article largely focuses on culture schlock in Evangelical circles, but we all know the same thing is true in Catholic circles, as the insipid folk-esque musical spoutings of Oregon Catholic Press or the chunky abstract patterns that pass for stained glass windows in many parishes reveal. Those are just cheesy ripoffs of secular music and secular art (and dated ripoffs at that.)
So why isn't contemporary Christian art better than it is?
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Art | Permalink | Comments (95)
February 18, 2008
But, Is It Art? - Abstraction Pt. 1
(Tim Jones)
From Old World Swine, the long-ago promised
conclusion to my "But Is It Art?" series, Part One;
I titled this series "But, Is It Art?" because that was the question I sought to answer regarding non-representational (purely abstract) art, like the Robert Motherwell piece at left. My first instinct - my bias early on - was to say that, no, it wasn't really art. As I have explained earlier, I have come to modify that position, and in the process have come to a new appreciation of abstract art in its proper place.
I'm sure that in part my reaction against abstract art was due to the particular kind of art education I slogged through as a young man. The new broom of modernism had swept the academy clean, and it was made plain again and again that only the dullest sort of hack artist would bother to paint a straight, traditional portrait, still life or landscape. The concept of seeking Beauty was actually derided, and one poor grad student who let the term slip out during a critique was met with snickers and the shaking of heads. She was done for.
In regard to non-representational art, we were trained not only to see things that were not there, but to write papers about it... with footnotes. We were all expected to take seriously the idea that a canvas with a few lines and blobs of paint on it was as significant and praiseworthy as Caravaggio's Crucifixion of St. Peter. Not surprisingly, I don't recall any student in the MFA program I went through who wasn't simply adrift as an artist. There was no sense of connection with history or tradition beyond the last 100 years, or so, and indeed little sense of connection even with one another. There was very little in the way of technical help or instruction, and even less in terms of personal artistic development, no cohesive approach or philosophy - no rules, except "There are no rules". We were all making it up as we went along, with more or less success.
It took quite a while for me to begin to see past this, to gain some perspective. When I at last reached a point where I decided it was just a matter of plain sanity to prefer beauty to ugliness or meaning to emptiness, I was no longer painting at all, but was doing design and illustration. It was no doubt due to my embrace of historical, orthodox Christianity and the influence of writers like Tolkien, Chesterton and C.S. Lewis that I came to think about the mystery of beauty at all. In my new enthusiasm for tradition, meaning and beauty, I turned smartly on my heels and completely dismissed non-objective art as a fraud and the last refuge of talentless duffers.
But I digress.
In my next post I will give what I consider to be the strengths of modern abstraction and talk about in what contexts and in what ways I believe it does function well. In this post, though, I will focus on why I believe non-objective art can not be placed in the same category as the truly great works of art history.
Art is one of those magical, mysterious things - like writing and music - that only humans do. It sets us apart from the animal world by a gulf that is incomprehensibly wide.
There are two things - two fundamentally mysterious and magical things - that traditional representational art does that non-representational art does not do. The first is the most obvious; representational art, well, represents something. It calls to mind something that is not there, or that never existed except in the imagination of the artist. It communicates symbolically in a way analogous to writing. Writing is just ink on a page, figures of varied kinds that we string together to make words, and then sentences and presently we are drawn into a world, with its own people and events... we are with Frodo and Sam on the slopes of Mount Doom, or tied to the mast with Odysseus. One undeniable mystery of visual art is this power to symbolically represent things that are not really there. It's something we may not often think about (because we are too busy doing it), but the fact that I can draw a few lines and make you think of a goat or a sailing ship is just indescribably awesome. It's something only we humans do... even cavemen knew that.
The second mysterious thing that traditional representational art often does can be related to the first, but they are not the same; this is the breaking of the "picture plane", or the property of taking the viewer past the surface of the painting and into an illusory space. One can represent an object in a very flat and abstract way (again, think of cave painting or modern road signs), but the ability of the artist to create a believable space, with its own sense of light, atmosphere and perspective adds a dimension to the experience that is, again, powerful and mysterious. It gives the viewer the sensation that they could reach past the frame and into the painting. Most often they see past the surface of the picture without thinking about it. That's magic. Alice through the looking glass.
These two properties are so fundamental and potent that they could very nearly be the definition of what fine visual art really is. Without them, what is left are the merely formal aspects of visual art... composition, color harmony, texture, etc... all important things, but by themselves inadequate to move the viewer in anything like the way representational art can.
Now, there is a line of thought that holds that symbolic representation and the illusion of form and space are irrelevant to the appreciation of visual art, or even that such things get in the way, which to me is exactly like saying "That could have been a great novel, if not for all those characters, locations and plot developments getting in the way", as if the true essence of a novel were in formal concepts like "paragraphs" or "grammar".
The formal aspects of art are very significant, and can be appreciated and admired for their own strengths, but there's one problem with that way of thinking; every great novel and every great work of art possesses these formal strengths and uses them to great effect anyway... and in addition also provides the kind of narrative and symbolic communication that gives meaning to the whole. In other words, with any great work of visual art, you get the symbolic communication, the illusion and the brilliant use of the formal aspects (like composition, color, texture, etc...) thrown in, so the experience of traditional, representational art is much more comprehensive, making use of all the strengths of abstract art, but in service to the substantive mysteries of symbolism and illusion. The great thing about, say, a Sargent portrait is how a dash of paint can function so completely, powerfully and simultaneously as both a vital and evocative bit of brushwork and as a totally believable reflection on the bridge of a nose or the curve of a shoulder. We see it as one, then the other, then both at once. The passage resonates with the energy of this meaningful dichotomy.
The point being that if you're going to toss out
representation and illusion to begin with, you had better have
something pretty damned powerful up your sleeve to give meaning to the
formal properties of the piece... that is if you're after fine art.
There is another way of thinking that says that visual art shouldn't be compared to the concrete symbolism of writing, but rather to the abstract patterns of music. Being wholly ignorant of the subject, I will not even try to write in any meaningful way about how music works, how it engages the emotions, but I will say that art, music, writing, dance, etc... all enter the mind and move the human consciousness in very different ways. Art is not meant to affect us just as music does, or one of them would be redundant. In a similar way, it would be a mistake to push the analogy of art to writing too far. Fine art can be a great deal more like visual poetry than straight visual story telling. There certainly can be a very musical sense of rhythm, texture and mood to a piece of visual art, but the mystery and power of visual fine art flows from its own spring and can't be understood simply and solely as visual music.
There is a kind of art that functions something like visual music, though... decorative art, which figures large in the next (and final) post.
Posted by Tim Jones in Art | Permalink | Comments (96)
January 31, 2008
The Nekkid Truth
(Tim Jones)
Another from Old World Swine;
I remember the first time I sat in a figure drawing class and worked from a real, live, nekkid model. I was a little nervous before, as were probably a lot of us wet-eared art undergrads. I don't know how everyone else responded when the young lady dropped her bathrobe, but I expect their experience wasn't too different from my own; there were a few moments of awkward ogling, a few moments of stern and studied pretense at ignoring the obvious, and then - something else. I began to think about how I could wring a good drawing out of the pose. As I started to draw, my brain began to break the model down into her component elements... line and form, light and shadow, muscle and bone. Within a minute, and for the remainder of the class, she registered no more on my libido-meter than a clay pot or a fern. And I was not nearly such a paragon of virtue and restraint as I am now.
Not everyone has had the benefit of such a class, of course, but it did demonstrate to me in unmistakable terms the very real difference between appreciating the beauty of the human form and what might be called the Look of Lust. I had the great privilege of having my view of the female form somewhat redeemed and baptized long before I knew anything of John Paul II's Theology of the Body. In this work, he makes brilliantly clear that the mere repression of lustful thoughts is not enough, and may even be unhealthy in the long run. We must learn - through the help of the Holy Spirit, the teaching of the Church, the sacraments and prayer - to change the way we perceive the human body. We must have our thoughts redeemed. We should work toward being able to thank God for the breathtaking beauty of the human body, and through giving thanks and praise to the Creator, disarm and disable Lust.
The idea is not to cage our lust, but to drag it out into the light where it can be transformed by the Holy Spirit.
Not that nudity is something to be treated lightly. We are fallen, after all. There is nudity - even under the pretext of art - that is wholly inappropriate. If it is intended to excite lust, or if it in fact does so, then it is unhealthy.
How do we tell the difference? Obviously, this is a matter of judgment. For one aware of his own weakness, one sincerely committed to trying to please God in everything, one familiar with Original Sin, one who has been trained to respect the dictates of conscience... a certain amount of confidence in personal judgment is possible, and can be developed. In the words of St. Augustine, "Love God and do as you please".
For one lacking these things, it may be impossible, though I believe that even based only on natural law one can tell the difference between a painting that is basically an act of praise and homage, and one in which the body is displayed like a piece of meat in a butcher shop window. In the first case, the viewer's response is "Yes, that is beautiful - God does great work". In the latter case, the viewer's response is "I want that".
In short, if you are truly concerned about lust in regard to viewing nude figures in art, then the battle is half won already. Trust your judgment, and be watchful of your own thoughts. Where truly great, classical, historically significant art is involved, I don't think even children need be cocooned and shielded as much as one might think. Most children likely have a much saner and simpler response to these things than we give them credit for. If you have concerns for kids, look things over for yourself first, but don't get too wound up over them seeing this or that body part, in the right context.
Posted by Tim Jones in Art | Permalink | Comments (133)
January 11, 2008
Winding Up to a Conclusion
(Tim Jones)
(Note; I use the word "abstract" in this post as a synonym for
"non-representational" art, that is, art that doesn't depict or
represent any object. In truth, all visual art involves abstraction,
but I use the word here as a less cumbersome way of saying
"non-representational" - T.J.)
The topic of this post (at my blog Old World Swine) brought me back to a series I authored here at JA.O , on how I understand modern abstraction in terms of where it fits in the broad movement of art history.
In retrospect, I see that project was too great a stretch for a layman and average schlub like myself. I have absolutely zero credentials as either a philosopher or art historian. I am a working artist (Masters Degree, thanks) not that widely read or traveled. What I can do is talk very honestly about art from my own non-expert perspective and hope that this becomes a useful bit of grist for the mill. I'll begin with a little background that might help explain why it has taken me so long to finish this series of posts.
A commercial art client with whom I worked for years had a very large abstract painting hanging in his office. It was dreadful - the kind of thing one would buy at a discount furniture store - a mass produced vomitous mess of cream and "earth tones". It was bad in every way that a painting can be bad. The abstract equivalent of a black velvet Elvis.. I saw this painting off and on for years, and one day the undeniable bad-ness of it got me thinking; I had seen a lot of other abstract paintings that were much better than this one. If they really were better, I thought, what made them better? If we can talk at all about "bad" and "good" abstract art, that almost proves there must be something worthwhile in the good abstract art, doesn't it?
Where I had been all set to consign abstract art to the dustbin, I decided to hold off and rethink my position. I mulled things over for quite a while, and ended up reaffirming my first intuitive response to abstraction (that it is a subset of decorative art), while at the same time developing a genuine appreciation of abstract art in its proper place. I can now say that there are a number of pieces of abstract art that I think are successful, interesting, even engaging... just not what I consider to be great art, for reasons I'll get to in the next post. One of the things great art does is move the viewer, and I have never once been moved by a piece of abstract art. I don't see how that works.
There is, of course, the real possibility that I may just be missing something, that I am a thick-skulled, irrecoverable rube - what C.S. Lewis called a "trousered ape" - who simply lacks the imagination, the emotional depth and psychological complexity to plumb the mysteries of abstract art. That's fine. I'll admit the possibility... but it's not for lack of honest effort.
I have looked at and thought hard about abstract art for years. In some circles - circles I occasionally run in - verbalizing a lack of sufficient enthusiasm or appreciation for abstract art is a social blunder on the level of making fun of the handicapped - much worse, in fact (in the latter case, one could always pull a Mel Gibson and claim it was the booze talking). This is just not something a sophisticated and civilized person is ever supposed to say... particularly an artist. It will change what people think of you. It will cost you work and connections and references. I once knew an art history professor who was denied tenure partly because (he seemed certain) he had spoken well of Norman Rockwell.
I'm convinced that many people, especially in the art world, never say what they really think about abstract art because they are keenly aware of the social stigma attached to such opinions. They are frightened to death of being shut out and denied opportunities, of being thought of as ignorant hicks. But it is only by moving beyond this stigma and speaking plainly that we can begin to have a real conversation and honestly evaluate the benefits and detriments of the modernist movement in art, which began over one hundred years ago. We are in a unique position in history (the information age) that allows us to calmly and rationally toss out the bad and retain the good when it comes to the visual arts. We need desperately to get about this work. We need especially to develop an aesthetic of beauty that resonates with the modern world. That is our job as artists.
Next - my thoughts on the good and bad of modern abstract art.
Posted by Tim Jones in Art | Permalink | Comments (37)
December 23, 2007
No "There" There
(Tim Jones)
Tim Jones, here. From my blog, Old World Swine;
The painting at left, by Italian artist Angelo Casciello is an illustration that is part of the new lectionary approved by the Italian bishops. Sandro Magister comments;
The Italian bishops' conference has entrusted the illustration of the new Lectionary to thirty contemporary artists, with their styles. It's the first time that a liturgical book has been associated with modern images. An audacious undertaking – and one immediately criticized
I have tried to find a clearer version of this piece of art online, but so far have been unsuccessful. I would like to see it better so that I can do a more fair critique. I realize there might be objections to critiqueing the piece in this format, but right now it is all I have to go on.
I also Googled up the websites of the other artists named in the Magister article, and they all seem to be pretty well within the same broad stylistic milieu.
Where to begin?
Let me just say what this painting is not; It isn't beautiful, it isn't technically accomplished, well composed or evocative. It probes none of the human experience of the event it depicts (the healing of the man born blind), and it utterly fails to draw the viewer in or make them care about seeing it again.
It is not really a work of art. Like so many modern abstract pieces, it is a placeholder representing the idea of a work of art. There should be a little rectangle in the middle with the words "place artwork here". What this painting is, is easy. The shame of it is, there are probably many living artists in Italy who could have provided, even in a very simple format, art of beauty and depth.
Now, of course, there will be those who will counter that they like this piece and find it terrific in all kinds of ways, but I can only respond in advance that lots of people liked disco, too. I would like to hear explained why and how this is a good painting. To fall back on "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is a cop-out. There is certainly a subjective element to beauty, but that is not nearly the end of it. Some things are really beautiful and some things are really ugly, to the point of making mere opinion superfluous. This is why people drive as fast as they can through Nebraska to get to Yellowstone Park, and not the other way around. Sorry, Nebraska. I give thanks for you every time I open a bag of tortilla chips, but there is just not much to look at there.
According to Catholic News Service, there are a number of translation and typographical errors in this new Italian lectionary... so many that they are issuing a set of corrective adhesive stickers to cover them all. One wonders if they could not issue a new set of illustrations in the same way.
Posted by Tim Jones in Art | Permalink | Comments (54)
December 01, 2007
Combox Critique Roundup at Old World Swine
(Tim Jones)
I just wanted to thank everyone who came by my blog, Old World Swine, to participate in may first ever "Combox Crit" (this is when I put up a piece of art for critique on my blog).
The project was a rousing success. I have posted a summary of my thoughts on the painting and the comments I received. I will definitely do this again soon.
Again... thanks!
Posted by Tim Jones in Art | Permalink | Comments (1)
