"The painter who is just beginning thinks that he paints from his
heart. The artist who has completed his development also thinks he
paints from his heart. Only the latter is right, because his
training and discipline allow him to accept impulses that he can, at
least partially conceal." (105)
Henri Matisse
"... if art is dulling - if it offers no quickening insights, no
deep or revelatory experience, but is only a more prestigious way of
passing time than watching television - it loses its only real
justification for being." (106)
Thomas Albright
I find paintings of the `squeeze tube, string snap all over the
canvas then cut out the part you like' variety, boring, superficial,
and meaningless.
In my dislike of texture paintings I have felt like a minority of
one, or at least one who would admit it. That is, until I found
Rudolf Arnheim's writing about a psychologist who did an experiment
of just this type of painting. His texture painting was made of a
random field of little squares, painted black and white in an
unhomogeneous, non-redundant way. He was struck with the monotonous
result, because "he had previously associated homogeneity with
redundancy." (107) Arnheim's conclusion is "THAT PILES OF
ACCIDENTS ADD UP TO VERY LITTLE" (108) He goes on to say that in the
work by texture painters, "the level of the structure is low because
it lacks diversity and hierarchy... An artistic statement, be it
representational or `abstract', hardly begins to be interesting
until it deals with segregated, different entities, whose
interrelations are worked through. All such distinctions are here
submerged in the texture pattern." (109)
106. Thomas Albright, On Art and Artists, (U.S.A., The Chronicle
Publishing Co.,1989), p.169
107. Rudolf Arnheim, Toward A Psychology of Art, (Berkeley and L.A.,
Cal., University of California Press, 1966), p.171
108. ibid., p.171
109. ibid., p.p. 172, 174
