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Jay Gidwitz

Artist / Photographer

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“Lost in a labyrinth of theory”

August 2, 2007 By Jay Gidwitz Leave a Comment

I unearthed a great 2005 article by Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones. The article called “Lost in a labyrinth of theory” had some great gems.

Among my favorites were:

Art today likes to think of itself as very, very clever. I understand the insecurity, but it does little for the work.

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Well, I have a debating point – this book is the final ludicrous monument to an intellectual corruption that has filled contemporary museums and the culture they sustain with a hollow and boring, impersonal chatter. Art has been lost in a labyrinth of theory. If this sounds anti-intellectual, let me clarify. There is no good work of art that cannot be described in intelligible English, however long it might take, however much patience is required. And yet this book begins with four theoretical essays explaining the post-structuralist concepts the authors believe we need before we can meaningfully discuss a single work of art. It is the supreme expression of an art culture that sneers at “empiricism” as a dirty word.

At one point the authors dismissively describe how the romantic, subjective approaches of bourgeois criticism have been replaced by a scientific method based on psychoanalysis, feminism and Marxism. As a bourgeois critic, I must take exception to this. Art criticism is not, and can never be, a science. But insofar as art criticism is an intellectual discipline – and it is – it depends totally on empirical data.

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Art today likes to think of itself as very, very clever. You can understand this insecurity, in a world where people are discovering superstrings and mapping the human genome. But what the ever more arcane books and talks and curatorial styles whose high temple is Tate Modern do is not to think, but rather provide a facsimile of thinking. You can learn all these big words – “narrativisation” is a good one – and actually feel you know something.

Knowledge, however, only comes from a sensory encounter with the world, and knowledge of art from a direct study. Forget the visual theories. Go and see Tate Modern’s brilliant exhibition of August Strindberg’s paintings and look at them, hard, for a long time. Or, as Leonardo da Vinci, a truly intellectual artist, wrote 500 years ago: “Beware of the teaching of these speculators, because their reasoning is not confirmed by experience.”

Read the full article at the Guardian.

Illusions: Janelle II in print

June 25, 2007 By Jay Gidwitz Leave a Comment

Paper & Pixel is a Brown University/RISD student magazine. “Illusions: Janelle II” will appear in the next issue.

Thanks to Drew Durbin and John Cockrell.

Art Show

April 12, 2007 By Jay Gidwitz Leave a Comment

I will be showing “The Illusionist” at Hillel on April 12th for the show Rejected: The Other Student Show.

Thanks to Janelle Sing and Bevan Weissman.

“The Illusionist” will also be in the upcoming issue of “Clerestory,” a Brown student arts magazine.

Dali's use of language in "On Modern Art"

March 21, 2007 By Jay Gidwitz Leave a Comment

Dali uses a number of techniques frequently throughout On modern art, to achieve his surrealistic style and tone. Some of these are (1) surrealist logic, (2) metaphor, and (3) paradox and reversal.
In his surrealist logic, his reasoning does not logically lead from one point to another, it just leaps from premise to assertion, or from assertion to assertion without any tight linear connection, and certainly without a deductive connection. His work still maintains a unity through an over-the-top tone. In part this tone is achieved through the flamboyant use of adjectives and concepts that is his trademark.
He uses unexpected metaphors though out the book to prove points.
He uses paradox and reversal often, both of which are common in comedy. Often in the case of his use of paradox he exploits the fact that all generalizations destroy themselves at some point in time–including that one. Reversal is when you think the story is going one way and then an amusing twist switches where you thought you were going to somewhere completely different.

Examples

  • Surrealistic logic: “Everyone knows that intelligence only leads us into a fog of skepticism, that its chief effect is to reduce us to factors having a gastronomical and supergelatinous, Proustian and gamely uncertainty.” (pg. 9)
  • Paradox: “… any attempt at a historical elucidation concerning it (modern art) would encounter the greatest difficulties, especially by reason of that contradictory and rare collective sentiment of ferocious individualism that characterizes its genesis.” (pg. 35)

The following sentence uses all three:

  • “Because it so happens that the critics of the very antiquated modern art–who come from more or less central Europe, in other words from nowhere–are letting their most succulently Rabelaisian ambiguities and their most truculently Cornelian error of situation in speculative cookery simmer in the Cartesian cassoulet.” (pg. 13)

Big Picture

His writing style is over the top in a way that is congruent with his public persona and the boldness and irrationality of many of his paintings. There also seems to be an underlying structure of thought that is pervasive in much of his work; paintings, writing, and public persona. He achieves his irrationality in very systematic ways: not randomly, but through the repetitive use of illogical and nonlinear thinking.

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