I can't speak to John McLaughlin, but many abstract expressionists were talented painters. You may like this piece that looks at early works of many abstract expressionists: https://substack.com/@etiennefd/p-138333214
Lol the first paragraph of that piece calls me out so hard.
"A funny thing about abstract art is that it has non-believers. Skeptics. People who will see a masterpiece by Mondrian or Rothko and think, “this is dumb, my 3-year-old nephew could make this.” It’s funny because their 3-year-old nephew could not, in fact, make this. But also, those people, having established that masterpieces of abstract art is at the level of toddlers, are then forced to conclude that abstract art is either some kind of provocative prank by untalented artists, a scheme by upper-middle-class people to feel sophisticated and high status, or outright financial fraud."
I recall Deutsch has a chapter on objective beauty in BoI (I don’t remember which argument he made unfortunately). How would expressionism work through that lens?
I suppose there are two responses. One is to disagree with me and think that abstract expressionism is actually capturing some aspect objective beauty. The better abstract expressionists are taping into whatever that is, and I'm just missing it.
The second is would be to acknowledge that objective beauty exists, but abstract expressionism is not capturing it. That's more where I sit. And then you have to ask the question: well, why are certain abstract expressionists famous and others aren't, if they're not dealing in objective beauty? And that's where I want to appeal to social status, signaling, elitism, etc
Fair inference. But not sure how it advances the argument re whether objective beauty (& the criteria to deciding for its objectivity) exists. And furthermore how we can then conclude that expressionism fails against those criteria.
Btw, I agree with your arguments (essentially that my 3 year old can make it) and conclusion (has to do with curators & wannabe self appointed elites). But I worry that we will be told it’s just our preference and there is no objective place to stand on whether it’s crap or genius.
I can't speak to John McLaughlin, but many abstract expressionists were talented painters. You may like this piece that looks at early works of many abstract expressionists: https://substack.com/@etiennefd/p-138333214
Lol the first paragraph of that piece calls me out so hard.
"A funny thing about abstract art is that it has non-believers. Skeptics. People who will see a masterpiece by Mondrian or Rothko and think, “this is dumb, my 3-year-old nephew could make this.” It’s funny because their 3-year-old nephew could not, in fact, make this. But also, those people, having established that masterpieces of abstract art is at the level of toddlers, are then forced to conclude that abstract art is either some kind of provocative prank by untalented artists, a scheme by upper-middle-class people to feel sophisticated and high status, or outright financial fraud."
I recall Deutsch has a chapter on objective beauty in BoI (I don’t remember which argument he made unfortunately). How would expressionism work through that lens?
Yeah good question.
I suppose there are two responses. One is to disagree with me and think that abstract expressionism is actually capturing some aspect objective beauty. The better abstract expressionists are taping into whatever that is, and I'm just missing it.
The second is would be to acknowledge that objective beauty exists, but abstract expressionism is not capturing it. That's more where I sit. And then you have to ask the question: well, why are certain abstract expressionists famous and others aren't, if they're not dealing in objective beauty? And that's where I want to appeal to social status, signaling, elitism, etc
Fair inference. But not sure how it advances the argument re whether objective beauty (& the criteria to deciding for its objectivity) exists. And furthermore how we can then conclude that expressionism fails against those criteria.
Btw, I agree with your arguments (essentially that my 3 year old can make it) and conclusion (has to do with curators & wannabe self appointed elites). But I worry that we will be told it’s just our preference and there is no objective place to stand on whether it’s crap or genius.