Morton Feldman on Art vs. Craft

version said:

It is the imitators who are interested not in what the artist did, but the means he used to do it. This is where craft emerges as an absolute, an authoritarian position that divorces itself from the creative impulse of the originator. The imitator is the greatest enemy of originality. The “freedom” of the artist is boring to him, because in freedom he cannot reenact the role of the artist. There is, however, another role he can and does play. It is this imitator, this “professional,” that makes are into culture.

This is the man who emphasizes the historical impact of the original work of art. Who takes from it and puts to use everything that can be utilized in a collective sense. Who brings the concepts of virtue, morality, and “the general good” into it. Who brings the world into it.

Proust tells us the great mistake lies in looking for the experience in the object rather than in ourselves. He calls this a “running away from one’s own life.” How many of these “professionals” would go along with this kind of thinking about art? They give us continual examples of looking for the experience of the object—in their case, the system, the craft that forms the basis of their world.

The atmosphere of a work of art, what surrounds it, that “place” in which it exists—all this is thought a lesser thing, charming but not essential. Professionals insist on essentials. They concentrate on the things that make art. These are the things they identify with it, think of, in fact, as it—not understanding that everything we use to make art is precisely what kills it.

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mvuent said:

also, along the lines of what padraig was saying earlier, once the signifiers / sonic components become fetishized it's all over. when producers start using hoover synths or sped up breaks it's because that's the best and quickest available way to achieve an effect. but then when they start talking about "proper amens" it gets boring. the specific tricks used to unlock aesthetic territory are mistaken for the territory itself.

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version said:

It is the imitators who are interested not in what the artist did, but the means he used to do it. This is where craft emerges as an absolute, an authoritarian position that divorces itself from the creative impulse of the originator. The imitator is the greatest enemy of originality. The “freedom” of the artist is boring to him, because in freedom he cannot reenact the role of the artist. There is, however, another role he can and does play. It is this imitator, this “professional,” that makes are into culture.

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luka said:

Version you can't resuscitate this thread. I know it's hard but some threads you have to put them out of their misery

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luka said:

That's his mate Guston on the cover. Funny artist

https://www.wikiart.org/en/philip-guston

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FOR PHILIP GUSTON
On the broken friendship between Morton Feldman and Philip Guston

Around 1967 the abstract expressionist painter Philip Guston underwent an artistic and
personal crisis. It was the era of Richard Nixon, of Watergate, race riots, a visibly active
Ku Klux Klan, Vietnam, massive anti-war demonstrations, student uprisings at virtually
every university, and a strong underground movement that was changing society from
within.
Increasingly, Guston wondered, “what kind of man am I”.
No longer could he bring himself to “go to his studio and adjust a red to a blue”. He
wanted “to be complete again” and recalled with longing the start of his career when, as
a politically aware figurative painter, he could use his work to respond to what he
thought and felt.
Partly influenced by underground strip cartoonists, from 1967 onwards Guston started
to develop a different, more expressive style of drawing and painting. He first exhibited
his new figurative paintings in 1970 at the Marlborough Gallery in New York.
Among the public that attended the preview was his greatest friend, the composer
Morton Feldman. When Guston asked Feldman what he thought of his new work, the
latter was lost for words. In Feldman’s version of the story that moment of silence
between the artist and the composer abruptly ended a 20 year friendship. They never
saw each other again.
In 1986, six years after Guston’s death, on writing about this minute of silence in his
essay “For Philip Guston”, Feldman explained that he greatly regretted this dramatic rift
in their friendship and that it was caused by the change in Guston’s work. He writes, “I
was in Europe for a year and he went to the Academy of Rome for a year, then I came
back and he had a big show. I went down and I was just confronted with a completely
new type of work. [...] I was looking at a picture, he comes over and says, “What do you
think?” And I said, “Well, let me look at it for another minute.” And with that, our
friendship was over.”
Feldman states that abstract painting and abstract music had always been the
cornerstone of the intense artistic and personal connection between himself and
Guston. That Guston started to work in a different style changed the lives of both artists
forever.
I think that something else happened as well during this much discussed and enigmatic
speechless moment between the two men. The intensity of their friendship and the
sense that their fates were connected was not just because both were active in artistic
fields. They also shared a common background. Growing up as children of Jewish
parents who had emigrated from Russia, they tried to make their way in the New World
and in the worlds of art and music.
Their friendship began in 1950 when composer John Cage took Feldman along to
Guston’s studio. Until Guston moved from New York to Woodstock in 1967, both men
kept in close – often daily – contact. Guston went to every first performance of
Feldman’s music in studios, galleries, and lofts. Conversely, Feldman saw and
commented on every exhibition and painting by Guston.
If Feldman and Guston met up at all during the period 1967-1970 apparently the
painter never told the composer about his new style of working. One thing is certain,
Guston never again admitted Feldman to his studio.
Perhaps Guston wanted to develop his new-found visual language in private. Did he fear
Feldman’s critique, which would likely have been merciless? Another possibility is that
Guston’s work was influenced by his budding friendship with the writer Philip Roth
who wrote about American society and who also lived in Woodstock. In addition,
Guston must have become estranged to Feldman’s uncompromising abstract sound
universe.
When the two men came face to face in 1970 in the Marlborough Gallery, Feldman
realized that his friendship with Guston had been over for years. Guston had excluded
Feldman from his life. No longer was the composer privileged to be the first to see
Guston’s works.
Feldman was hyper intelligent, hypersensitive, and vulnerable. As he stood between the
art public during the preview he suddenly understood that he was no longer important
to his fellow artist (who was 14 years his senior) and that he was cast aside.
I believe that this traumatic realization – not Guston’s changed attitude towards the
visual arts – was the real reason why all contact ceased between the two men. Feldman
found it impossible to discuss this with his former friend.
Philip Guston died in 1980. Two years later Feldman composed Three Voices in memory
of both the poet Frank O’Hara and Philip Guston. In 1984, Feldman created For Philip
Guston, an elegy in sound expressing his sadness over things past. For Philip Guston
laments a lost friendship, a lost love

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