Exhibitions, Workshop, Book and more ...

Much has transpired since my last post! Here's what's happening in 2012:

• March: Solo exhibition at the Lincoln Street Center in Rockland, Maine.
• April - June:  Group exhibition featuring my series "Clark Island Intertidal" at the Chocolate Church Gallery in Bath, Maine.
• May:  Solo exhibition of my series "The Laws of Nature" at the fabulous Rougette Gallery in Rockland, Maine.
• Now:  publication of a book on my new series "The Laws of Nature"
• June 25 - 28th:  teaching a workshop "Finding your artistic voice" at the Gibson House in Haverhill, New Hampshire
• August 24 - 26th:  "Echoes" a joint exhibition with Marilyn Quint-Rose in Port Clyde, Maine.

And, some marvelous students to work with on a regular basis, to boot!

NWS and more!

Image: Fourier's Law by Katharine A. Cartwright; watercolor on Arches paper; 26"x 19"

Time flies when you're having fun (who said that??) and I've neglected this blog. However, there's good news to report. My recent work (see image) was just juried into the 91st Annual Exhibition of the National Watercolor Society (NWS) ... and ... it won the Loa Sprung Award for the best abstract painting ... and ... it will go on tour for one year .... and ... I earned Signature Status from NWS! This is a fantastic honor, and I'm thrilled to be part of this most prestigious watercolor society.

"The Laws of Nature" series continues. I've painted 15 so far and will keep going for many more years. This work has also caught the attention of major collectors and publications. So, I'm enthusiastically moving forward.

Additionally, I've had the joy of teaching many students over the summer the rewards of creating authentic work - painted expertly in their own voices. I look forward to working with more students and creating an individualized experience for them.

Otherwise, we're readying our home for winter. It was 20 degrees this morning. And, I'll leave for Los Angeles in two weeks to attend the NWS award ceremony.

Life is good! What's new with you?

Avante-garde, kitsch, and propaganda

Art and Culture: Critical Essays
By Clement Greenberg (1961, 1989)

Part 1: Culture in General, Section 1: Avant-Garde and Kitsch

While I know far less about the history of art and art theory than Clement Greenberg, I do know an elitist when I encounter one. After finishing the first section of Chapter 1 of this book, I’m fairly certain it’s written by en elitist who believes that the “lower classes” is limited in its ability to understand art and appreciates only kitsch while the "privileged elite class" support and protect the “fine art” produced by the avant-garde. Phooey! I’ve been in many poor and working class homes that hang prints of great works of art on their walls. True, they can’t afford the real thing, but they value it enough to stick it in a frame and hang it on their walls.

But, there are some interesting ideas in this book. Greenberg gives us insight into the control of World War II politics on art, especially Hitler’s rejection of fine art in favor of kitsch, and Stalin’s use of kitsch for propaganda. This led me to think about how I, as an artist, would react to absolute control over my work.

Would I continue to paint if forced to produce kitsch and/or propaganda? Although the urge to make art would be irrestistible to me, I wouldn't want to produce propaganda. At least, I’d like to think that I could be that pure of heart and deed.

What about you?

Kitsch

Art and Culture: Critical Essays
By Clement Greenberg (1961, 1989)

Part 1: Culture in General, Section 1: Avant-Garde and Kitsch

Image: Kitsch Biennale, 2010 Palazzo Cini

According to Greenberg, kitsch arrived on the scene at the same time as avant-garde art: Kitsch is a product of the industrial revolution which urbanized the masses of Western Europe and America and established what is called universal literacy. Before that time, the literate class was culturally separate and considered more “refined” than the “folk culture.” Once the country peasants moved into the cities and became literate, they had more leisure time, but didn’t share the tastes of the more elite class. Nor were they interested in folk art any longer, since it didn’t fit their new urban sensibilities. It was in this setting that “kitsch” was born.

What, exactly, is kitsch? Greenberg describes it this way:
Kitsch is the source of its profits.
Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas.
Kitsch is a vicarious experience and faked sensations.
Kitsch changes according to style, but remains always the same.
Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times.

Kitsch pretends to demand nothing of its customers except their money – not even their time.

The precondition for kitsch, a condition without which kitsch would be impossible, is the availability close at hand of a fully matured cultural tradition, whose discoveries, acquisitions, and perfected self-consciousness kitsch can take advantage of for its own ends. It borrows from it devices, tricks, stratagems, rules of thumb, themes, converts them into a system and discards the rest.

Since its inception, kitsch has become ubiquitous. It exists in nearly every culture all around the world and has displaced folk art to a large extent.

Greenberg asks us to consider why kitsch is virulent – nearly irresistible. And, why is it much more marketable to “fine art?” His explanation has to do with the viewer’s ability to reflect and digest art. That is, fine art requires the viewer to do some mental work and kitsch is predigested by the artist giving the viewer a shortcut to pleasure.

What are your thoughts?

Next time … the links between avant-garde and kitsch.

The avant-garde

Art and Culture: Critical Essays
by Clement Greenberg (1961, 1989)

Part 1: Culture in General, Section 1: Avant-Garde and Kitsch

Image: Pablo Picasso

Greenberg begins this section with his theory that the emergence of the avant-garde artist is attributable to the inevitable break up of accepted notions in society over time. He sees the gradual evolution of society into one of stagnation and decay – where controversy is avoided and the arts are limited to tradition so that the only advancements are in the form of “virtuosity in the small details of form.” Variation on the same established themes become the norm and nothing “new” is produced.

It is in reaction to this stagnant condition that Western bourgeois society produced avant-garde culture around the time of the Western scientific revolution. A criticism of society and history emerged – one that challenged the established norms and examined cause and effect. A new viewpoint arose, one that places our present society in a succession of social orders over time. This challenged the former notion (Alexandrianism) that recognized only one timeless form of society. It is no wonder that the arts would stagnate under such a philosophy!

So, the avant-garde had to emerge from a group that viewed society in a new way – one that allows for challenge (criticism) and change. This required courage. “Courage indeed was needed for this, because the avant-garde’s emigration from bourgeois society to bohemia meant also an emigration from the markets of capitalism, upon which artists and writers had been thrown by the falling away of aristocratic patronage.” Ah…. The emergence of the starving artist! But, there was a compromise. The avant-garde remained attached to bourgeois society because it needed its money.

Eventually, every revolution must resolve itself in a new stable form of society. “Hence it developed that the true and most important function of the avant-garde was not to ‘experiment,’ but to find a path along which it would be possible to keep culture moving in the midst of ideological confusion and violence. Retiring from public altogether, the avant-garde poet or artist sought to maintain the high level of his art by both narrowing and raising it to the expression of an absolute in which all relativities and contradictions would be either resolved or beside the point.”

It is in this way the “Art for art’s sake” emerged and remains with us today. This IS the credo of the avant-garde and the foundation for abstract non-objective art.

“Picasso, Braque, Mondrian, Miro, Kandinsky, Brancusi, even Klee, Matisse and Cezanne derive their chief inspiration from the medium they work in. The excitement of their art seems to lie most of all in its pure preoccupation with the invention and arrangement of spaces, surfaces, shapes, colors, etc., to the exclusion of whatever is not necessarily implicated in these factors.”

We now have an art form that “moves.” It can change and evolve with society. In Greenberg’s opinion, this is what justifies the avant-garde’s methods and makes them necessary. However, a problem exists. The avant-garde can only exist through the patronage of the “rich” who support them. As that patronage shrinks, so do they. What does this mean for the future?

Next time, we’ll look at what Greenberg has to say about kitsch and its relationship to the avant-garde.

What are your thoughts?

Art and Culture

Art and Culture: Critical Essays
By Clement Greenberg (1961, 1989)

Part 1: Culture in General, Section 1: Avant-Guarde and Kitsch

Image: Clement Greenberg, 1909-1994

A book discussion on this blog is long overdue! So, let’s begin another. I’ve chosen Art and Culture: Critical Essays (1961, 1989) by Clement Greenberg, the distinguished American art critic.

In this book, the author addresses the following topics:
Culture in General
Art in Paris (various individual artists)
Art in General (primitive through modernist art)
Art in the United States (various individual artists and movements)
and, Literature (I probably won’t review this section)

A review by the Washington Post appears on the back of this book: “This book should be read by anyone who is interested in modern painting and is willing to look at its spectrum through the vision of a tough-minded, rightfully opinionated critic.”

Another review appears by the New York Times: “Clement Greenberg is, internationally, the best-known American art critic popularly considered to be the man who put American vanguard painting and sculpture on the world map … Jackson Pollock’s triumphant international recognition is also a triumph of this critic’s courage, eloquence and creative sense of action .. . An important book for everyone interested in modern painting and sculpture.”

And, so we’ll begin with Part 1: Culture in General, Section 1: Avant-Guarde and Kitsch.

According to Greenberg, the avant-guarde and kitsch are both on the order of culture and products of society. But, are they related? And, from what perspective can we view culture to see that relationship? Perhaps, he postulates, the answer is found through the examination of the relationship between aesthetic experience of the individual and the social and historical contexts in which that experience takes place. And, that’s where the author leads us … in my next post.

Are you interested?

I paint because ...

Very recently, a notable fine art museum curator decided to spend time with my new series, The Laws of Nature, which now includes fourteen paintings. Her questions were astute and delving: my developmental history as an artist, what I paint, how I paint, and ... especially, why I paint. At the end of her examination of me and my work, I was astounded by her praise and proclamations of "genius." I don't think of myself in that way, nor will I ever.

We artists typically view our work in a more practical way. We LIVE in, through, and by our artmaking. It's not our second nature, it's our first nature. We can't imagine life any other way.

Explaining myself compelled me to think about this a little more:

I paint because ...

I can't effectively express what I really want to say in words or music,
I see everything in pictures,
I must paint,
My life is incomplete if I don't paint,
I've always painted


You paint because ...

What's in a Name?

Fourier's Law
by Katharine A. Cartwright
Watercolor on Arches paper
26" x 20"


What's in a name? I began to think about this after reading your great comments yesterday. Influences upon our viewpoint about the relative value of art include not only outside "experts" and our own personal opinion, but also the title assigned to the work and (sometimes) the gender of the artist if the full name is revealed.

The title of a work of art often influences what we think we see and also the overarching concept that the artist wishes to convey to viewers. But, there are times when the title doesn't match what I'm getting out of the painting or sculpture. So, the name (title) can be confusing. For instance, my own work based upon the laws of nature led me to interpret each law according to what I see in my mind's eye. No one else has that viewpoint, so why would anyone look at the painting shown in this post and remark: Hey! That's Fourier's Law! Nope ... it wouldn't happen.

So, I must consider the importance of the names (titles) of my works. In this instance, they're essential. But, should that be the case? What would happen to my series (which is a comment on man's inability to create the perfect machine because of the limitations imposed upon us by the natural laws) if I named each work "Untitled"? I doubt that anyone would get it.

And then, there's my own name to consider. For this series of paintings, I decided to sign them all "K. Cartwright" because either sex could have created the work and it shouldn't matter which. Viewers are influenced by the sex of an artist when considering relative value and the "seriousness" of the artist.

So, it seems to me that names are very important when it comes to fine art.

What do you think?

Who's to Say?

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose by John Singer Sargent



Thanks for all your substantive comments to my last posts! I want to pick up a thread laid down by our good friend Robin . She wrote: I always wonder who determines how meaningful one's work is anyway, but I guess if it matters to at least one person (me) that's enough. This is a good point to explore.


Who does determine if our work is meaningful? As Robin suggests, it does begin with the artist her/himself and then perhaps at least one other person who “gets it.” Generally, we often look to directors, curators, critics, and art historians to identify the meaningfulness of works of art. But, those influences are extrinsic to the individual experience of just standing before a work of art and connecting with it.


In March 2010, we discussed here Robert Henri’s book “The Art Spirit.” In it, he writes: The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art. He needs no one to give him an art education; he is already qualified. He needs but to see pictures with his active mind, look into them for the things that belong to him, and he will find soon enough in himself an art connoisseur and an art lover of the first order.


I think that’s really the bottom line. The discovery of meaning is a subjective experience and one that can’t be left to outside influences if it’s to be real. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve read (or heard) from an expert about the importance and meaning of a work of art before actually seeing the original in person. Unfortunately, I can’t forget what the expert said when I finally get to the museum, but I do try to personally connect and shake off the voices of others.


Then again, when we go to museums, we are automatically influenced by the notion that the works of art in it are meaningful and important enough to be archived and displayed in a building worth millions of dollars. And, works of art appear in newspapers and magazines with articles written by “experts” who dissect them for meaning.

But, maybe we need experts to tell us what we can’t learn on our own. Or, maybe we need only to heed Henri and make the whole thing subjective.


What do you think?

Your Contribution to the Dialogue

Painting by Richard Diebenkorn

Frequently, I ask my workshop students to consider how their work contributes to the global dialogue of art. This means examining their work for its purpose. Does it truly reflect their own view of the world or is it imitative? The former lends authenticity to the work and has the best possibility for contributing to the dialogue. Each artist has something unique to share, even if the medium and techniques are traditional. What we have to say and how we say it are essential, in my opinion, to creating work that is truly meaningful.

I was never taught this in college, or even in any of the art workshops I took years ago. We students were given assignments that led to the mastery of technique and little attention was given to helping us develop our unique viewpoints. I never thought about it much until fifteen years ago. That made all the difference. I make no claims toward greatness, only that my work truly reflects how I see and think. That’s satisfying.

Recently, I saw a painting in a nearby art museum that had several technical flaws, but the overall effect was intact anyway. The viewpoint of the artist spoke to me and evoked a feeling. So, I started to wonder about the importance of the technical aspects of the painting. I’ve always felt that the best way to effectively dialogue through my art is to eliminate as many technical errors as possible so the viewer doesn’t miss the message. Then again, artists who are only technicians bore me to death. There’s a fine line there, somewhere.

What do you think?