i like munch at tate modern

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i like munch at tate modern

Postby jasperjoffe » Sun Jul 01, 2012 3:53 pm

I saw a munch show about 18 years ago, before my ruskin interview, and then when they asked which contemporary artist i liked answered munch, who wasnt alive even back then. I remembered him as a bit boring. But these sketchy pictures were good in the now times. There's a large munch bunch in contemporary painting (think thin with brushy bits), doig, dumas, baselitz, daniel richter et al. Munch leaves the faces underpainted which means the paintings haven't dated or at least it adds mystery (like hemingway said, leave a part of the story missing). His pictures don't exactly make you jump for joy, there's a lot of green in them, but they manage narrative without tedium, and their distortions of colour and shape and finish keep you looking and puzzling. Yeh, and it appealed to me that he painted the same picture a few times, why keep making new ones up if you have scored a hit.
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Re: i like munch at tate modern

Postby CAP » Thu Jul 05, 2012 1:46 am

I agree you see that curvy outline to figures a lot in current work > Doig to Dumas to Dan Richter etc. It's even easier with photo-tracing. But it gets boring. Yes it's efficient, cuts corners (literally) maintains proportions, up to a point. But I'm sick of it. I don't want to go the way of Picasso or Braque either - the geo reductive primitive line. All stations to Dubuffet and the inner child.

What are the options? Collage? Abstraction? De Kooning's halfway house? Bacon's blur or wipeout? Even he lapsed into curvy in later years...

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mannerism NOW

Postby jasperjoffe » Fri Jul 06, 2012 12:36 pm

I think there's room in picasso and matisse for growth. I was thinking the other day that we are living in a mannerist age, after the great tumult of modernism. Our attempts at art are frustrated by the genius of the previous great age, as we pick over its corpse and exaggerate and mine minor parts of its achievement. Not perhaps very novel or profound, but some truth or just bonehead nostalgia and excuses?
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Or Rococo-U-Like

Postby CAP » Sun Jul 08, 2012 8:30 am

I think it’s more like Rococo times – frivolity while Rome burns, Paris sizzles and the peasants starve. Let’s all bury our head in the sand and hope the Big Issues go away.

“Desperate times…” as they say, and Picasso et al certainly lived through those. I don’t think it pays to be in too much awe of the past though. Ultimately it’s a foreign land. You will have to bulldoze it to make way for a future. You always do. It’s called making history and it starts with ‘tude.

But at this stage we can at least look seriously at the first half of the 20th century again. There was a long period when artist daren’t even look there. That’s how we got to be in the pickle we’re in now. Not enough history – too much ego and business. Easy to say in hindsight of course.

Sometimes I test myself by asking would you rather a Cezanne still life or a Picasso still life? (Cezanne) Would you rather a Renoir nude or a Matisse nude? (Renoir) Would you rather a Van Gogh landscape or a Braque Landscape? (Van Gogh) The first half of the 20th century was not that great….
;)
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Re: i like munch at tate modern

Postby jasperjoffe » Tue Jul 10, 2012 2:11 pm

I'd go for cezanne landscape, but take picasso still life and matisse portrait from the moderns. Anyone no excuses, let's get on with making some good stuff.
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