{"id":11,"date":"2011-09-20T12:53:33","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T12:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/canvas\/?p=11"},"modified":"2016-06-07T16:29:48","modified_gmt":"2016-06-07T16:29:48","slug":"the-long-slow-death-of-visuality%e2%80%a6responses-to-matthew-collings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/canvas\/?p=11","title":{"rendered":"The long slow death of visuality\u2026responses to Matthew Collings"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On Facebook ( that noted art history forum:-)
\nMatthew Collings posted the following:I have highlighted what seems to me the key lines. The second paragraph is his introduction to the set of photos which even I, \u00a0as someone accused of convoluted and dense and unreadable sentences, found hard to fathom and only after several re-readings did I get a sense (I think) of what he on about. My interpretation is he is concerned that at a time when we surrounded by a tsunami of visuality (more artists, more imagery than ever) that there is no coherent \u2018ethical\u2019and \u2018aesthetic\u2019agreement of what is \u2018good\u2019or \u2018right\u2019. i.e. that we live in immoral times and that affects judgement too. This chimes with the \u2018Rediscovering Aesthetics<\/a>\u2018standpoint. I do not know to what degree he agrees\/disagrees with their views. The idea of visual achievement V visual success may be contrasting actual artistic creation with visual success i.e. cheap fame\u2026.low artistic worth..I am not sure. Below my response on facebook and a continuation of my \u2018objective argument\u2019which I apparently regularly fall short on \u2026woof woof:-)<\/p>\n

Matthew Collings:On some very visual and recent art<\/strong>
\nIf there is celebrating it\u2019s celebrating the visual dimension,but the reason to post the album (and others) is not \u201clet\u2019s party\u201dbut to look at the possibility of visual substance,depth,richness in art,because in the general idea of what contemporary art \u201cis\u201dthat operates at the moment this visual dimension is virtually either actually absent or else unseeable (and consequently undiscussuable or unappreciatable).<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Some very visual current and recent art:
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\nReassurance of pre-modern and even modern art no longer available \u2014universal Rembrandtian Shakespearean etc greatness out now \u2014meantime fragmentary but very visual art does exist. Problem in heads is to get visual to connect with ethical. Many steps. First is to be visually observant. Then questioning. What is all this visuality for? How can we make it be for something else,something better? (That is not for wrong ideology,wrong life dictated by consumerism etc,as exemplified horribly by contexts in which this art is actually usually seen.) And is a visual system aiming at high visual achievement,or visual success \u2014and which therefore has the possibility of failure \u2014and therefore entails some kind of judging \u2014is it connectable to moral and ethical dimensions,political dimensions etc? (Nazis judging good notes in symphony,still chuck victims in ovens etc.) Or do we have to accept visually abject art that has moral excellent credentials? Plus accept visual abjection that has excruciating pseudo thoughtful credentials (idiotic pretence at engaging with history society etc while remaining in-crowd smugness only)? <\/em><\/p>\n

My response:Part one ( from facebook)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ironically my period of intense engagement with painting coincided with the publishing of artscribe which was my bible in mid eighties. I stopped any meaningful production of art in 1992 and am now trying to begin again. So in some ways I am heavily influenced by the artscribe ethos and coming back to the art world I acutely aware of the marginalisation of visuality and the lack of a coherent and representative forum\/magazine for that visuality. Both Modern Painters and Frieze seem to be ad driven fashion mags and art monthly is simply art monthly\u2026long on theory short on images. My feeling (I will expand later) is we are at a watershed moment and that all this visuality is not looking,making and time based to the same extant it once was in the artscribe era. Fragmentation is an aspect of globalisation and the rise of the internet which may also mean a fragmentation of values as you hint at. Could artscribe exist now at all in the same \u2018moral\u2019and \u2018tightknit\u2019way it did in the 1980?s when it ringfenced not only a seriousness about painting etc but also a relatively coherant worldview and small set of tuned in artists? We live in a \u2018bigger\u2019artworld but not necessarily a more serious or a more productive one. Was artscribe a magazine dedicated to \u2018visuality\u2019?
\nMy response:Part two<\/strong>
\nARTSCRIBE<\/strong><\/p>\n