The resulting video presents the voices speaking passages into the camera while seated in a space of their choosing home, office. These collectors are not, in their own minds, capitalists, if such a general designation makes sense today. Indeed, they have separated themselves from the world of capital by creating trusts and foundations and getting heavily involved in philanthropy.
They lead comfortable lives to which many would aspire. The work explores this contradiction of having money but apparently not being possessed by it. Capital is indifferent to people, and the humanism of the piece could be perceived as foregrounding this.
Indeed one might read some of the dynamics of the global art market, particularly in the USA, as a wish to return to an older form of accumulation that is visual. The Zmijewski and Sullivan pieces operate slightly differently: they invoke reality as a fetish — the representation presents itself as reality rather than remake and, instead of a critical distance or reflection on the limited scope for action that the project allows both viewer and artist, promises a more direct but impossible connection. These works are interesting because of the ambivalent way they both evoke the possibility of art participating in and providing an understanding of contemporary realities and social change, and at the same time carefully insist on the impossibility of this project.
Hence the enduring paradox of what happens when aesthetic positions become substituted for their referent — reality becomes a fetish and perhaps just another commodity. His most recent book is Screen Theory Culture , published by Palgrave.
Skip to main content. Twitter Facebook Email To Pinterest.
By Mark Nash. Reality in the Age of Aesthetics. Mark Nash. Issue April Art Criticism. More Like This Previous Next. Stuck on You, John Ashbery. Craig Owens: Portrait of a Young Critic. Weekend Reading List. A Life Experienced. On Hating On To Touch Lightly.
More Opinion Previous Next. The Renaissance of the House Museum. Piazza del Pop! Most Read Previous Next. The Threat to Freedom of Expression in Japan.
On View Previous Next. Stories of Finnish Art. Ateneum Art Museum. Art Museum of Estonia. Neue Galerie Graz, Universalmuseum Joanneum.
Rebecca Warren. Maureen Paley. Ceal Floyer. Jun 08, Leslie Clark rated it it was amazing. I enjoyed gaining personal insights into Mark Rothko's thinking since I adore his paintings. Glad the book included a few color examples of Rothko's work. I understand the cover page was trying to be authentic to Rothko's found personal notebook complete with dirt spots and pencil scratchings. I would think if Rothko knew his notes were to be published posthumously, he would require that one of his colorful paintings be wrapped around the book. Pls consider if you reprint:.
Aug 15, Zac rated it really liked it. Jan 30, sam howie rated it it was amazing. This book is an absolute treasure. Preconceiving it, I could never have had predicted its pages, however, after reading it, it is, and only is, all I have ever known or thought of him. It is, undeniably, a trip into the mind of Rothko, the artist and the fanatic. Essentially he taps into an essence of art, perhaps the essence of art, one that has fascinated humans since the first marks were ever noticed, right up to what was on Rothko's doorstep and infinitely beyond.
Aug 03, Ed Smiley rated it liked it. This work has an interesting history. It has been published postuhumously by his children. Mark Rothko had a tremendous verbal facility and analytical and critical skills, and perhaps, for an artist, even too much facility, or pedantry, which can become paralyzing. Words are not, after all, paint.
The book was written earlier on in his career, prior to his mature style, and reflects some of his searching for what, after all, is art supposed to be? Rothko, as you know, committed suicide years later This work has an interesting history. Rothko, as you know, committed suicide years later and it is perhaps too much to read this ultimate frustration with life into a much earlier work.
He felt that publishing it would lead to critical confusion in his lifetime. Given that, the most interesting portion and most clearly defined portion in my opinion, is his question of "plasticity", in other words, what makes a work of painting succeed as a painting? His answer is really that there are two answers. One is to choose the plastic values and emotional timbre in specific images chosen to fulfill them, as one sees in the extreme in academic painting.
Although a continuum does apply, people usually fall into one of two camps, and denigrate the other on the basis of applying the other standard. He also uses the words "visual" for the former, and "tactile" for the latter. His basis for the distinction was that the first kind of art wishes us to see beautiful objects and they are seen inside the painting not inside out actual space that we can touch, whereas in the second kind of painting, the painting itself is made to be a beautiful object and its space is touchable.
Marshall McCluhan used a similar distinction later on to establish what he meant by cool and hot, and confused everybody, but far before this book was finally published. The latter part of the book was programmatic, perhaps OK for a critic, but not so fine for an artist, and it doesn't wear well with time although it does point to some of the high-art existential angst that became evident in the abstract expressionist era, and a mythology that transitioned from the image to the act.
He describes a search for a timeless, and yet contemporary myth, which reflects some of the concerns of his transitional work. His work ended up looking for the sublime in expansive, and solemn shimmering sheets of color, without a trace of myth in any direct sense. Feb 07, Kate rated it really liked it. Mark Rothko's book "The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art" is a verbosity telling his views of philosophy, art, and plasticity. Although the son, Christopher Rothko claimed to have cleaned up the writing from it's original version, the writing still presents itself as a virgin first draft of unedited ramblings.
This goes to further support Christopher Rothko's notion in the introduction is that this book was never meant to be published. However, there is substance past the extensive wording. Mark Rothko has definitely put a lot of thought into the manuscript in what he is trying to portray. I picked through this book with a fine comb, wrote in the margins, and even rewrote some of the chapters in my own wording to understand this things I never did before with a book.
The positive end result is mostly practical. I became able to articulate artistic philosophy more effectively, hich is good if you're like me and participating in a college level art or art history class. The negative part is that it's going to take a long time for my brain to reconform itself from the oatmeal it became trying to comprehend the concepts in this book. Mar 19, Amy Neftzger rated it liked it. Let me first state that I love Rothko's work and am also a fan of the play Red which is about Rothko.