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PLAYING WITH PERCENTAGES—social personality and creative production—Hyman Bloom to Paul Brach, Amy Stein to Paul Shapiro by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D., © 2006

Many years ago as a Professor at Radford University in Virginia I noticed that most of the members

of the class were using the names of artists to determine what they thought might be the acceptable response to matters of aesthetic value, that is, relative “goodness” and that there was very nearly a perfect correlation between that and their inability to recognition “goodness” in the art work. In short, they recognized the name but could not distinguish aesthetic value.

When given the names of 10 artists and asked to arrange them in the order of their “goodness” the name of Rembrandt was almost universally placed at the top, the number one “great artist”. When asked to judge the “goodness” of works by these artists which were not well known the name of Rembrandt” appeared at the bottom. From this information I believe I justifiably arrived at the conclusion that our students were very obedient to what they perceived to be our “wishes” and “expectations” and were steadfastly unwilling to make their own judgments known…if, indeed, they had had any. In short, while they might be able to tell us, in a rote fashion that Rembrandt was great they lacked the ability to recognize in his work why he was great. That situation is intolerable.I am, of course, aware that the original proposition was more than ridiculous but what I was attempting to assess was the attitude these students had toward famous names and to determine whether in their assigned judgments they were using aesthetic values as criteria. They were, of course, using aesthetic values as criteria but NOT those of artists. From this experiment I concluded that there is not a shared culture between the producers and scholars of art forms and the general public. This constitutes a serious cultural fracture. I am not looking for a uniformity of opinion, but rather a general body of perceptive awareness. When Bruce Chatwin, as one in a group of individuals who daily are exposed to several hours of looking at art, is notable for his unusual ability to recognize a genuine work from one that isn’t and to do so within a matter of minutes, or seconds, as the story is told, we are dealing with a mind that quite thoroughly recognizes the language of excellence and genuine aesthetic character from among a group (of professionals) that doesn’t. This is one of the abilities that should be a standard among art critics upon whom the general public depends for guidance. Although, it must be stated at the outset that , as in all fields, that sort of ability is achieved through considerable effort together with the willingness to accept when one is wrong.The following comes from a document file I have saved on two American artists, one, Alex Katz, and the other Jacob Lawrence: the text in brown are my comments to selected comments published by the museum . Irish Museum of Modern ArtÁras Nua-Ealaíne na hÉireann

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Royal HospitalMilitary RoadKilmainhamDublin 8 Ireland Telephone: +353-1-6129900 Fax: +353-1-612 9999Email: [email protected]

The unedited text follows:Alex Katz is one of the most important American artists of our time, and his impressive body of work constitutes a unique aspect of modern Realism. In 1992 Alex Katz donated more than 400 of his works to the Colby College Museum of Art with the understanding that a wing would be built to house them. The Paul J. Schupf Wing for the Works of Alex Katz, which opened in 1996, was made possible through the generosity of Colby trustee Paul J. Schupf, who contributed the naming gift for the building. The Schupf Wing makes the Colby museum one of the few in the United States with a wing devoted solely to the work of a living artist.

Beach Sandals (Museum of San Francisco)

“Boy with a Hat” (Museum of Modern Art)

“Ada” (Addison Gallery American Art.Andover, Massachusetts)

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“Vincent and Tony” (Art Institute of Chicago)

“Jessica” woodcut (Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Chicago)

“Striped Jacket” (Currier Gallery of Art. Nashua, New Hampshire)

I have tried to make as broad a selection of Katz’s work as have been currently available to me without burdening the intelligent reader with the tremendous weight of visual boredom Katz creates…in those of us who have the opportunity to explore the choices given us within “arts and leisure”.

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I have put that currently popular expression in quotation marks in order to draw attention to its inherent stupidity. I also have used that word carefully giving attention to the fact that its intended meaning is to describe a behavior that normally would not occur with a person using his intelligence. Newspaper reporters and writers of exhibition catalogues are, I believe, normally considered to be among the normally intelligent, but there are many occasions when it would be impossible to prove by what they produce.

Perhaps in the case of Alex Katz and their public relations judgments of his work they are a subgroup of intelligent people who have never learned how to look, or to understand what they are looking at. However, it occurs to me that after one has achieved twenty years of normal education and have been employed as curators at prestigious university museums and write blurbs for the public, (a public which is evidently thought to be incredibly imperceptive) that at least a limited amount of shame and a bit of modesty might accompany their publications. But there is neither as evidenced by those quotations printed above.

The only justifiable conclusion that might be made regarding the popularity of Katz’s work…and I suspect that a “real” popularity of his work doesn’t, in fact, exist and that his whole reputation is built on the intimidation many feel that should they be honest in their criticism they will be labeled as anti-Semite which is certainly a process which feeds that sentiment.

It is merely a matter of social pressure, money, ethnic promotion and the tax structure that allows those with extra funds to donate museums to educational institutions and tax-break worth a great deal and for the absence of which from the tax income of the country, and/or state, the ordinary, less affluent, and gullibel,public must pay out of tax money’s they have provided to the national coffers. In addition to that outrage, insult is added to injury in the form of a relatively worthless craftsman assuming the status of genius with some one with less influential contacts is ignored. This is the age of deceit and what it means for future historians, if there are any, especially if there are any honest ones, their jobs will be extraordinarily difficult BECAUSE history, to a great extent, is controlled, governed, and limited by what is called “documentary evidence”. Someone is making sure that some documentary evidence is handy. Thank God for DNA which provides us with some more refined evidence of fatherhood. On the other hand. how many have gone to the gas chamber on the early evidence of the lie detector?

Personally, I probably wouldn’t complain were the results of such sacrifice worth the benefit to even 1% of those who visit galleries and museums, but in the case of Alex Katz there is so very little to offer that the effect upon the general public and its meager resources is similar to a double-edged hari-kari sword, It is a societal suicide committed all for the glory of an individual who has cynically chosen to be a smidgen above incompetent, just enough so slip under a raised bar.

JACOB LAWRENCE ‘S WORKS

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“The Street” 1957 “Pool Parlor” and “Ironers”

“The Pool Game” “Café Comedian” “Forward”

If I were to be pressed into making a one sentence conclusion concerning my response to the Katz and Lawrence experiences, that is those experiences they provide their viewers, I would say the following with no excuses or explanations whatever. “Katz is boring, cynical, manipulative and destructive; Lawrence, is instructive, entertaining, and caring as well as graphically inventive which is one of the more legitimate reasons for being an artist.”

Yet, Lawrence does not have, to my knowledge, a museum at a university setting housing his (unsold) works at some unannounced reapportioned cost to the U.S. taxpayer, and of the two he is the one who deserves it. But then, the Jews and the Blacks have always been at each other’s throats. One wonders why.

History does not always appear to make the playing field more level for those artists who have been largely ignored during their life times. Both Katz and Lawrence have received a great deal of notice and published acclaim. Whether history will judge that Lawrence deserved it and Katz did not will ultimately make little difference as to the degree of economic comfort, great or small, either of them were able to enjoy during their life times. Little comment is ever made, these days at any rate, on the established, accomplished or potential aesthetic value these works have had or will have on those who see them, but for the record I think it important to indicate, at least, a starting point where having some contemporary judgments made about these cultural contributions to our lives might be found.

This programmed cultural disceit is not limited to the arts, and as we have learned, to political pronouncements as well, but we even find it among those august academicians who maintain the reputation of being the intellectual leaders of all humanity. From some points of view they stand even taller than Presidents, Kings and prime ministers and certainly taller than the artists in the community. A recent appearance of a glowing report of a new master’s degree being created at The University of Malta with one John J. Schranz being labeled by the reporter Massimo Farrugia of the Times of Malta as the mastermind. Nine years ago Alexandra Dingly told me of her desire to do precisely that and a year or two later I offered to help her. I wonder what happened to her? I also wonder from where these academic intellects got their ideas when these ideas appeared in published form more than forty years ago under the names of E. Paul Torrance and Paul Henrickson. I had thought all along that what the academic were all about, if nothing else, was the perpetuation of truth. Well, even the underwater zoologists are learning that what they thought was extinct, isn’t.

In regard to the general category of what I have called “cultural deceit” , or, to be more generous perhaps we might call it cynical cultural humor when we see the

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public works of Claes being placed in prominent places through the cities in the western world. For example these illustrated here.

One is tempted to ask the question why? Why might these works be more acceptable as sculptured works, public or not if they were reinterpreted as non-objective geometric forms such as the following drawings might illustrate.

Perhaps I have prematurely injected a value decision that such would be the case for everyone. It would be more acceptable to me than the affront I experience with the subject matter of a discarded apple core and an image of a spoon barely supporting a cherry. Perhaps Oldenberg wished to suggest that man’s (societies’) need for self-pride, personal achievement needs some conceptual revision and that an apple core and a spoon and cherry, as unimportant as they appear, sort of underscore the lie we tell ourselves when we apportion effort and expense and fame to public works. If that were Oldenberg’s intent, I find it too removed from mutual contact points to reach very many, if any at all. The non-objective and in Kramer’s terms, the “abstract” is much more pertinent, applicable and enduring as works of art.

Using the same elements as in Oldenberg’s spoon and apple core I have tried to re-emphasize the importance of clarifying the difference between a visual reality and an aesthetic organization. the drawings below represent only 2 minutes, at the very most, of “variations on a theme” that moves the banal imagination of Oldenberg (which may have been, although I doubt it, his cynical comment about his view of the public’s ability to perceive aesthetically into the realm of aesthetic potential…and from there we might take a giant step into considering what the natural world has to offer in that regard.

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By way of contrasting attitudes the work of Reuben Nakian, offers the viewer more aesthetic material to which to react than does Oldenberg and Oldenberg seems, by contrast, to be rather superficially attracted to the pubescent fascination with the commonplace and arrogantly expects applause from the equally mindless. At the very least Oldenberg cannot be defended on the grounds that he deals with any degree of sophistication with aesthetic matters. Nakian is an artist, albeit, at times, some what flippant, Oldenberg, like the Norwegian painter Nerdum, is common.The aesthetic value doe not lie in the technique, but in the focus.

Nerdrum Nerdrum Nakian"The more minimal the art, the more maximum the explanation."Hilton Kramer (1928-), The New York Times art critic, in the late 1960s, referring to minimalist art which was in vogue at the time. I was amused by this comment which someone sent me (I believe to provoke me so I would not succumb to boredom). My correspondent was insightful. The comment provoked me to amusement in that I thought I recognized Kramer’s cynicism and it is really to that I would like to address myself. I would suppose Kramer’s cynicism is rooted in his observation that there is a great deal of pretence present in the increasing mystical myst that surrounds the importance of art in “these latter days”. If Kramer has in mind to call the reader’s attention to the absolute need of linguistic support for a crumbling sentience characterized by a community of response I can only applaud him. What is so productive of frustration is that a cult of believing loyalty has arisen among all the babel that it often resembles the offensive beligerance of many evangelists as though they, and no on else, had the “right” concept of God. Speaking of this mystery of “the kingdom of heaven is within you” in terms of a creativeness in art, a matter which concerns a few people, I see the artist’s effort to “find himself” which means to

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evolve into a form (of expression) that transmits with a similar conviction the essence of the meaning when an individual as of whatever moment. proclaims loves you.

Some decades ago it had been generally accepted that if a business which sent out a general mailing hoping to attract customers should consider itself fortunate if its return on this mailing resulted in as much as 3% . Such was the figure used as a measure of the success of the mailing.

On the course of following my own curiosity about the status of academic vitality in one state institution of higher education in one of the western states I came across a department of Education which boasted 317 faculty members. The way the design of the web site for this institution was arranged made it easy to determine who among the faculty had websites of their own and just as convenient to go to them without undue mouse maneuvering.

Consequently I discovered that six of the faculty had designed websites for themselves. Two had very subdued indications of the extent of their intellectual and professional initiative and one of those included some odd links that led the viewer right out and into another reality altogether. Three had taken the opportunity to show their public who they were professionally but did not go beyond the general parameter of a normal resume. Only one of the 317 potential mother loads of creative and intellectual value exhibited an exciting thought and that particular thought was a descriptive condemnation of the remaining 316 although, I must hasten to add that I do not think that was its intention.

The author of the website had included an essay he had written within which he referenced the work of Thomas Kuhn in the book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. This faculty member was, apparently, struck by the Kuhn observation that the typical scientist was not objective nor independent in his thinking but, rather, conservative, had accepted what he had been taught and like obedient technicians, simply applied their knowledge to the problems that confronted them.

Having read this comment, with considerable relish I might add, I was immediately reminded of the parallels in other fields as well, fields in which I have had some practical experience such as studio art, art history, experimental psychology and art education. All fields, even those ostensibly emotion-free, have their mountebanks , stock card-board-like characters playing the stereotypical role to the hilt and so good at it they even convince those who should know better. I know of a few who happen to wield great influence nationally, especially in the area of art education, have a great bibliography of published material much of it based on the research of others…others too modest to know how and too busy to bother taking care of their own professional interests.

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These usurping personalities are surprisingly effective even among the genuinely productively creative individuals, who, may, if they recognize the duplicity, be amused by the exaggerated theatre.

Recently, I came across a few examples of work by Robert A. Nelson who had been head of the art department at the University of North Dakota some half-century ago and in the intervening five decades there has been, as judged from these few examples, absolutely no fundamental growth in visual perception. This is not an expected result from enquiring and creative minds, yet, all my memories of this person center on his being very vocal, very verbal and vitally concerned with the array of visual potential. Even a partial remark from him would set my mind questioning all my assumptions.

This is a very valuable trait in any teacher, but, then, I must ask myself and out loud, how do we account for the astounding absence of practical application? It were as though, his grey matter functioned at high speed in a paraplegic. I saw no evidence of his having put into practice what he, seemingly, so clearly understood.

Or, perhaps, it really wasn’t all that clearly understood for in normal social circumstances he was overbearing, intolerant, impatient, arrogant beyond belief so much so that in a projected driving journey from North Dakota to Los Angeles I was forced to tell him that he was not welcome on the way back. I rarely, no, I never had made such a judgment, and did not do so easily, but I knew my tolerances.

On the other extreme, was certainly one of the more able draughtsmen and painters and one of the more socially reserved I have ever met Hyman Bloom whom I had met in Newton, Massachusetts some time earlier at the home of the psychic Eduard Du Buron who, himself, was an unusually sympathetic individual whose occupation in a local department store belied his talents had the insight to secure for exhibition perhaps the most significant work, “Job” of the Yugoslavian sculptor, Ivan Mestrovic.

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Ivan Mestrovic: “Job”

I had already become familiar with Hyman Bloom’s work as it had been prominently featured in a Boston gallery. In fact, at the same time another Jewish artist by the name of Jack Levine was frequently mentioned, sometimes in association with Bloom which often gave rise to the impression that it was their ethnicity which gave rise to their achievement. This may have been an intentional PR maneuver in which case, with an astute audience, it could have the opposite effect of what was desired. But this statement borders on a topic better explored another time and place, that is, the nature of the Jewish contribution to cultural expression in America.

Jack Levine and Hyman Bloom were, more than a half-century ago presenting in their chosen subject matter visions of a culture of which I, personally, at that time, had been fundamentally unaware, even though, without having been able to identify it, I had been influenced by it.

Levine’s cynically acid portrayals were of socially and politically prominent personalities. All of them had seemed remote to me and the variety of those presentations as well as their prominence were understood by me only on the level of genre picturesqueness.

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Jack Levine: “Modern Napoleon”

Bloom’s depictions of ulcerated, cancerous and amputated leg was far beyond my conception of a subject matter for a painting. It was, in consequence, an object lesson in the failure as well as the hope of mankind in that the human leg is what makes it possible for humankind to stand proudfully erect and that, therefore, the picture should be seen as a metaphor for the situation at least as Bloom saw it. Even then, however, I was astounded by Bloom’s technical ability and knew that it was in a painterly way far superior to that of Levine.

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Hyman Bloom: “Leg”

Hyman Bloom: “Rabbi with Tora”

Having the opportunity to meet him in such private and protected circumstances was a boon to me for I could begin to see the differences that gave expression to his work on canvas and to his social behavior. He, as opposed to the North Dakotan, was no nightmare come to real life..

Over the intervening yeas I have had the opportunity to deal with a number of individuals who were functionally well situated in the art world. Among them have been Paul Brach, Paul Shapiro, Amy Stein and Frank Ettenberg to come to the cautious observation that commerce in one’s association with others may be significantly correlated with the level of one’s creative achievements.

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Paul Shapiro: untitled

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Amy Stein: “”Indian Market”

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Frank Ettenberg: “Facing It”

The talents and the devices of those less able in terms of the primary discipline but astute to recognize a threat to the stability of their self concepts are numerous and, in many cases employed to great effect so that real talent is often enough squashed at the very beginning by the ego-starved intolerance of envious teachers, or the competitiveness of those who see their involvement as serious work as opposed to being delightfully involved…work as opposed to play. This difference in the psychological approaches to musical composition was repeatedly brought out in the Schafer film “Amadeus” in which the attitudes toward musical composition between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and that of his peer Salieri were effectively compared.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noUTz1dGr1Q


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