Five Views on Five Meteors

Five Interdisciplinary Artists

13 Responses to 13 Ways of Looking at a Mockingbird

Thirteen Responses to McEvilly’s Thirteen Points.

1. On the point of representation, McEvilly’s arguments concerning the tendency of perception of nature to follow the perception of art I find to be a radical inversion of the very premise of representational art. Following McEvilly’s statement would suggest a complete liberalization of the figurative tradition, and a reorganizing of the boundaries of extracting “content” from non-figurative works as well.

2. It is fortunate that this method of extracting content from art is included in the piece. It most poignantly covers the quality of post-war art that extends beyond the picture plane or the physical volume of the work, and begins to critique its own environment. The work of art can never be separated from its description and title, and thus these two tags are fundamental to the nature of the work.

3. Genre or medium over the years seems to have dissolved the boundary between this point and the next. Material and genre appear to always be in flux, so this point finds more poignancy during the time that McEvilly was writing.

4. Aside from the implications of the previous point, I find this one to be rather straightforward, especially for post-painting pieces. Material outside of painting(as we have seen with numerous artists) is always highly politicized; as McEvilly suggests, material is a fundamental of the human experience of life.

5. This is especially true. I found myself considering the large-scale canvases that were the tendency in both abstract expressionism and neo-expressionism in the 1980’s. Ultimately this point is important in the realm of installation, as the work is no longer an infinitely displaceable piece and is instead necessarily linked to the institution in which it is installed.

6. Time is always political. McEvilly’s metaphysical Greek argument seems slightly forced here; instead a focus on the politics of intervening with time within a work would seem more appropriate.

7. This argument I find entirely applicable to more conceptual pieces that are politicized by means of their context. A Jackson Pollock canvas as a “traditional” painting seems less politicized by its context of production and its chain of custody rather than the mail art or site-specific art that McEvilly describes.

8. This reminds me of Jean-Luc Godard’s late 1960’s ethic of “film as an essay”. The critic-turned filmmaker mentality is applicable to traditional arts as well; the well-educated artist creates works that have that certain intangible “intellectualism” about them.

9. Perhaps art that has content within this category is truly exceptional art. We should seek, then, to produce art that is an immortal collection of ephemeral events and circumstances that have politicized it during its lifespan.

10. Iconography is important, but I find it less so in works except for those that actively use iconography with a clear aim in mind. This point is very applicable to pre-modern art as evidence of its intrinsic “goodness”, but is perhaps lost when applied to more recent trends.

11. Formal qualities are second most obvious in the entire essay. This is the reason why art history students are required to do formal analyses. Analyzing a work’s formal structure is oftentimes the key that unravels the mysterious of all of its other qualities (the other ones being those discussed here).

12. This is perhaps the contemporary substitute for iconography. Wit, parody, etc. play on society’s knowledge of language, pop culture, and so forth. This is perhaps the semiotic incarnation of religious and visual iconography.

13. Art that makes you squirm, is it good art? If music makes you dance, is it good music?