Art & Abstraction Comments

I found Donald Judd's notation about how painting would always "retain a semblance of illusion". Does this mean that his sculpture would always retain a semblance of object? It doesn't. Just as painting is not always a semblance of illusion. Where does that line disappear when is art disconnected from the schemas that give it a type?

I also found interesting the idea of drawing leaving the viewer with the experience of making that mark. Abstraction, by placing the viewer into the position of the artist. This may not even need to be through abstraction, but it is an area of art that I think is interesting and often looked over. Letting the viewer recognize how exactly that mark was made, or exactly how it felt. Leaving the evidence of the process behind.

This idea is seen in Willem de Kooning's "Untitled IV" from 1984...



I question the work of Robert Ryman. He strips down everything in painting to just a painting itself. A blank canvas with imageless brushstrokes, wood and fastners. I guess there is a sense of purity that he is describing, but where can he go from there? Is that the beginning of painting or the end?





Robert Ryman "Philidelphia Prototype" 2002




Terry Winters "Morula III" 1983 Lithograph