"Less is only more when more is no good."

fate_faith_change_chains · December 30, 2009

I don't necessarily think of less-more, light-dark,... as seperate opposites. We can only experience them in continuous relationship with each other. The elusive key to me is more in seeing and recognizing this relationship, than in photographing or using an individual "less" or an individual "more" or than showing less because it may tell or conceptualize more. Less is more, I don't know... Less equals more, yes, absolutely, why shouldn't it.

clive_murray_white · December 31, 2009

Martin's light comments stayed with me for most of the day and prompted me to take this picture, I've been working with low light for some time now, a bit crazy I know with an Olympus-3 (not noted for low light capabilities) but better than my other digital camera a Leica Digilux 3.

I guess there's a number of acknowledgements I should make but I'll stick at Ad Reinhardt as he started this genre in painting - though I'm not sure I've seen this before in photography.

The most interesting thing about this is that apart from it possibly being the ultimate less is more example I tried its opposite and it just didn't work.

Captioning was also very demanding as I just couldn't work out whether it was all light or no light. Clive<div></div>

Norma Desmond · December 31, 2009

Kandinsky seemed to want to strip away the representational (less?) in order to get to, for him, a spiritual essence.

I am able to relate his personal aesthetic philosophy (something he utilized in his approach to his paintings . . . something many people are reticent to employ and/or express -- a personal philosophy relative to their artistic/photographic creations) to Equivalence, recently discussed here. What I take away from the Minor White discussion is that abstraction can be part of even a representational photograph, the abstraction of clouds, the abstract qualities of shape, color, etc. to achieve the expression (perhaps even the visualization) of emotion even in a depiction of real-world and recognizable objects. Kandinsky took that many steps further, wanting to rid his paintings of as much representation (less?) as could suit his desire for the abstraction of various concepts and emotions.

Though I don't believe the kinds of spiritual claims Kandinsky made (Clive seems to have a stronger negative reaction to Kandinsky's thoughts than I do), I was more impressed by the obvious inspiration his beliefs gave him, recognizable on his canvasses. For me (as I stated above), the inspiration an artist draws from his beliefs trumps the beliefs in most cases. (Reifenstahl, as always, may arguably be the classic exception, though I have no trouble respecting her art and abhorring her beliefs . . . at least from this distance.)

Less order and less organization was also significant for Kandinsky, as exemplified in his love for and emulation of Shoenberg's music. As the latter gave up on the traditional musical key, the binding order that had held music together up until that point, Kandinsky sought the non-representational and dis-orderly structure of the kind of music Shoenberg was composing, aiming at what they both considered to be a more passionate abstraction of emotions than could be achieved with traditional harmonies or organization of elements in a painting.

Music, they both felt, is less tied to a narrative or verbalizable content, so it is a baser (more elemental) medium. Kandinsky was not only inspired by music, he sought to paint what music could provide.

Interestingly, the Kandinsky exhibit, mostly chronological, began at the bottom and wound its way upward. A painter friend who accompanied me suggested that she likes viewing art "on the go" and so disagrees with many who object to the Guggenheim. There is a linear, dynamic/moving quality to viewing paintings at the Guggenheim that can be exhilarating.

aplumpton · December 31, 2009

Architecture either works (for most of the viewers/users), or it doesn't. Architects are not different from photographers or other artists, who can have moments of great inspiration, or less significant ones. Form and function are necessary for most architecture. The Guggenheim and the new Liebeskind ROM fall a bit short on function, but are inspirational in form. Photography can get away sometimes with only one (something purely aesthetic with no function, or, at the opposite end of the "spectrum", a recording of someone's perception of reality, but with little or no form or aesthetic interest).

Art can get by with only form sometimes (as in abstract art, unless one ascribes function simply to the reaction of the viewer). A good read for photographers and other artists is Kandinsky's famous "Point, Line and Form".

The ultimate of minimalist photography is an empty white page, or as discussed above, a black hole perception.

Norma Desmond · December 31, 2009

"The ultimate of minimalist photography is an empty white page" --Arthur

</blockquote>

I disagree with this. This might be the ultimate idea of a minimalist photograph, but it would probably just be a bore to look at . . . nothing ultimate to see, which to me is the point of a photograph. If I were looking to create a minimalist photograph of any significance, I'd look elsewhere than an empty white page. I'd probably use Kandinsky or others as inspiration (as he used others as inspiration). Kandinsky, for example, used a lot of white, suggestively and effectively, but didn't stoop to the obvious or empty. For me, the empty white page would be a case of less being just that . . . less ("less" both in quantity and in aesthetic value).

I understand the points in your last post about architecture and agree that the Guggenheim, for me, falls short, though I think it does provide some novel functionality (as I already discussed and more) that often doesn't get addressed in the many functional dismissals I often hear.

I don't think photographs (other than documentary, journalist, forensic and perhaps a few other genres) have the same kind of goal of functionality as buildings. The "function" of expression and communication is different from the function that may require someone to live comfortably inside something or view paintings reasonably inside a structure. A building will also communicate and express, even if only through form. But it usually is made to function in a certain way, by design. I don't feel the same motivating factors in creating photographs (except in my documentary work).

aplumpton · December 31, 2009

Fred-

I agree about the white page, it has the same artistic effect for me as a black hole picture, virtually none. I was being somewhat facetious when I said minimalist.

Architecture must have form and function to be successful. My point is that photographic art and abstract art (for instance) do not depend always on the two. The function of a photograph or another work of art for me is what it communicates beyond its form. What was its author attempting to say? Sometimes that function can happen even without photographer's intent. We all have examples of photographs that we have taken somewhat accidentally and which are interesting in form (two dimensional) and also have a function that we had not anticipated at the time of exposure. But function does definitely exist for me as an element in photography.

luis_g · December 31, 2009

Fred typed - " (Reifenstahl, as always, may arguably be the classic exception, though I have no trouble respecting her art and abhorring her beliefs . . . at least from this distance.)"

Though of no relevance to the discussion here, Fred can add FLWright to that list. FLW reportedly made anti-semitic statements often in private, but his family, friends and students protected him well enough while he was alive that he got a commission for a synagogue, which he had no problem accepting. He was also openly critical of homosexuals in public, while in private he tapped anything that moved from either gender, and instituted homosexuality among his students. Things were a lot more scandalous at Taliesin than most people imagine. Wright was well aware of the distinction between public and private and how one affects the other. He betrayed many of the people that loved him and those who furthered his career, as needed. He, on the other hand, was smart enough to surround himself with loyal and devoted people. BTW, like Minor White, but in a less direct way, Wright was also affected by Gurdjieff through his wife Olgivanna.

Kandinsky, btw, is mentioned by William Eggleston (among many, many others) as an inspiration. Given W.E's interests in music and color, this is not surprising. I was influenced by Kandinsky and other Modernists regarding the use of color (Johannes Itten, Luscher, and Albers). Kandinsky's spirituality (but less so the heavy Theosophist notions, with which I was familiar through my paternal grandmother, who was a Theosophist and medium) and ideas about the emotional directness of color touched me, the symbology, color and line/curve ideas, but the geometric form and their links to color much less so. His system is curiously more dogmatic/rigid than the paintings appear. The theoretical strictures didn't do much for me, though they certainly worked for him.

"All art aspires to the condition of music" -- Walter Pater, 1873.

Norma Desmond · December 31, 2009

Arthur, for me, sometimes the only "function" or point of a photograph is its visual impact. Even representational photographs don't always "communicate" something to me beyond their form. It is sometimes simply a striking form that I don't really think about though there may be simple recognition on my part.

There are times when I think about what the photographer was trying to say, to be sure. But as often, I don't go there. I may think about what the photo is saying to me (without considering what the photographer meant) and sometimes I just enjoy the view, basking but not really cogitating. That direct experience of the photograph is different from my discussing that same photograph which may, indeed, involve a lot of thought.

Obviously, a discussion of function and form would be a long one, with a lot of nuance . . . books have been written. The relationship between "art" and "function", I think, is a precarious one. I don't like to think of form and function as a dualism, much like Phylo was saying about less and more. They can be symbiotic and one can determine the other and they often seem to be on some sort of reciprocal continuum.

To get back to the topic, I think, perhaps not consciously, I've often viewed form as a "less" and function as a "more." And sometimes, with art, considerations of functionality are too much.

Norma Desmond · December 31, 2009

Thanks, Luis, for the tidbits about Wright. Private and public are, indeed, two different things. I can't claim not to be swayed by things I hear about people. But sometimes the artistry really just outweighs the nonsensical or even hateful political and social beliefs. So much homophobia, at least, is internalized and thrust upon people by a world that is afraid and feels the need to scapegoat. I tend not to blame, but rather feel sorry for, hypocrites who like to practice the sexual "abominations" they preach against. As a matter of fact, it makes a certain kind of point. They may be blameless for things so natural and innate that they do them even in spite of their ridiculous public beliefs.

I've been considering a thread about music for time now. I'll get to it eventually.

luis_g · December 31, 2009

I agree, Fred, that the artistry and genius are the significant parts. There's countless drunks and hikers, but not many Bashos. Innumerable anti-semites, but not many TS Eliots, etc. And it is also undeniable that Wright was a man of his time, hardly alone in all this, like so many people of our own day. Like Fred, I feel compassion for people that struggle with denying part of their being. And it is something all of us do to a degree, at least once in our lives.

As Fred probably knows, W. Kandinsky was moved by a variety of music beside Shoenberg's. Wagner and Jazz also affected him deeply.

jtk · December 31, 2009

I think it's interesting that instead of discussing Wright's architecture or Kandinsky's paintings, there's a focus here on alleged and unattributed quotations, received truths, and selective biography....

Leslie Fiedler (onetime famous literary critic) championed the idea that works can stand on their own, be appreciated best for what they seem to be (as primarily intended by the writers), leaving biographic/gossip/contrived titallating bits to sophomores.

One might guess, from this thread, that the actual life works of Wright and Kandinsky, even including their teachings, were less significant than selective juicy bits.

sobeystudio · December 31, 2009

So- less is more, Maybe. As I lived 3 blocks from the Guggenheim for 2 years and was a member, and went at least twice a week- sometimes more just to "pop in" for 15 minutes of world class art and architecture before hitting the reservoir in Central Park- I have a pretty good grasp on the building- and its awesome collection of Kandisnky's. He and his fellow non-objective artists- Maholy-Nagy, Hilla Rebay, Bauer, Mondrian- have left a huge impression on me- so much I can't escape it. The power of abstraction to convey greater things- the potential of life- is overwhelming. As we go back to the idea of less being more, that abstraction gives us- the viewer the power to interpret. It is not all there. Most artists today understand this art/viewer relationship, even take it for granted. In the 1930's though- wow, what a concept. It was moving that way with modernism and the atomic undercurrent of the era- but wow! Initially, the Guggenheim's collection of Non-Objective art was not in the "Guggenheim", it was in the "Museum of Non-Objective Art" in mid-town, and the artwork was in smallish rooms with music and benches to promote thought. What a concept! Of course Wright's absolutely gorgeous and forward thinking building was the perfect place to house the millionaire family's wonderful collection and show off their great taste at the same time;) It isn't, the same for the non-objective art any more, ironically. The building itself is amazing though, and fairly non-objective in its own right: concentric and non-concentric circles, triangles and a lack of adornment. The funny thing is that, although it was orignally conceived in pink (barf), the bright white simplicity stands out against a world of noise and visual chatter. Its like a breath of fresh air.

By the way, I would start a show by going directly to the 7th floor on the elevator and working my way down. Gravity will always win over looking at art- I like to enjoy it, not work at it.

jtk · December 31, 2009

"It is not all there." - Martin S

Yes. That is exactly the point, related to the works we call "art". To the extent that a work has value, it exists in our ability to remember it and/or add to it as participants in it. Seeing a Picasso, I find myself participating. And I may remember it.

Without participants in Wright's work, it has zero value. Zero value in any absolute sense. Zero value in itself. And, since his work has no value in this thread (save for odd negativity about Guggenheim), Wright has no value here. All we seem to have here is an alleged, out-of-context quotation and a tasteful selection of peripheral neo-biographic tidbits.

Irving Mills (immortalized musically by Duke Ellington") was closer to truth than our alleged Wright quote was, with "it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing." We do know what "swing" is because we can tap our feet to it. Similarly, we know what Wright was about if we take a little time with his spaces, sans pre-digested, proper ideas.

One failing inherent in "abstract" works is that if we can't grasp them enough to expand upon them or remember them, they're reduced to decorative graphics. In photography, "abstract" seems usually to mean little more than "pattern" or "decorative"...there's rarely much potential for expanding upon or remembering. IMO of course :-)

Norma Desmond · December 31, 2009

I like that addition, Martin. I read you as saying that less from the artist may mean more from the viewer and it seems a relevant concept to the thread.

In this case, you seem to be talking about the power of the potential that abstraction can suggest. There can be a fullness suggested by what has been stripped down.

As you, I had also considered potential . . . related to my own photographs. In my case, I was saying that sometimes the potential I wind up realizing in a photo as I'm working on it is finding places where I can cut back. That's not necessarily to allow the viewer more latitude for interpretation, though it might be. It can also be simply to change the emotional impact. There is always the potential for less as well as the potential for more, though I'm not sure I used to consider the former as much as the latter . . . and I currently do. Focusing myself and the viewer can be as significant as using or giving the viewer longer reigns.

Interestingly, the pink of the Marin County Civic Center seems oddly appropriate set in the changeable green-to-golden-brown northern California landscape as winter and then spring turn to summer.

clive_murray_white · December 31, 2009

Fred - my reason for bringing up Kandinsky's circle and triangle quote was that I think it has had a very detrimental effect on the course of art, I acknowledge that this is a really stupid statement because we always get the art we deserve and even if WK hadn't said something like this someone else would have.

My mention of architecture being the greatest of the arts was also a criticism because it always subliminally effects all the other arts, I have a firm belief that there are two not particularly high minded things that an artist can do to cut through and seriously reduce the infinite pile of decisions they are confronted with.

The first is always consider your work in relation to the newest architecture - quite simply if your work does not cut it in new built spaces it really isn't going to get looked at.

The second is that although beauty became a dirty word, attempting to create your own idea of beauty is the easiest way to ensure that every value you possess is in your art. Above all it is the most straight forward path to honesty.

The biggest conundrum for me is a belief that art and the values of society are joined at the hip, so when a society goes through a somewhat un-meritorious phase art does the same. I think we are in one such period, many people can feel it but no one seems to know what to do about it. Art with the same greedy (more) values as the Wall Street Bankers is not something that appeals to me a great deal.

If a concept of "Less" or "enough" had driven our world we may be in a better state.

Happy New Year to you all - All the best - Clive

mizore · December 31, 2009

Clive, I agree with you -- art is part of the social world. I think, however, that graphic arts have a better chance of escaping or subverting it than some of the other arts do. Maybe music can even more, but most of us have unexamined assumptions that we share with others in our culture that we're not always aware of.

William Morris said people shouldn't have anything in one's house that they didn't believe to be either useful or beautiful. At least some people are afraid that they'll be judged by what they find beautiful, that others with better taste will find what they find beautiful to be corny, so they go with what they think they should find beautiful rather than what they do find beautiful. I suspect that if one lies about one's taste, one can't really develop it later.

Beauty also has an air of escapism to it these days, much as entertainment has.

luis_g · December 31, 2009

Clive - "... we always get the art we deserve and even if WK hadn't said something like this someone else would have."

The art we deserve... reminds me of Munson's book.

Happy New Year's to Everyone!

I wish all of the denizens of the PoP forum (including John) a happy, healthy, productive year filled with love and wonder.

Norma Desmond · January 1, 2010

"The first is always consider your work in relation to the newest architecture - quite simply if your work does not cut it in new built spaces it really isn't going to get looked at." --Clive

</blockquote>

I imagine that's quite a bit less true nowadays especially regarding photography, in particular, which is often being created for and looked at on computer monitors, though it's a good idea to keep that in mind, and I wonder how many do.

I love Kandinsky's painting and admire his philosophy (though I don't share it) and I think it's one prong in many forks in a complex of roads. I don't see it as detrimental to art. If Dadaism didn't destroy it, I doubt Kandinsky and his ilk could.

I found myself responding most to his early Expressionist landscapes, the rich blues with mountains and suggestions of moving horses, before the abstraction became as complete as it did later on. I found most powerful the suggestion of the abstraction of color and shape with still some representational aspects. His work seemed to follow a natural progression and, taken as a body, I kept being moved even though some of the later stuff wasn't quite to my taste. Also, the simplicity of the watercolors on paper always blows me away. That was probably my favorite room, off the circular winding path of the main exhibit.

clive_murray_white · January 1, 2010

Photo.net's gone nuts, the whole format of replies etc has changed at my end, log in etc, maybe its 1 Jan and we all have to start again, so I'm going to have to dart back and forth from email versions of postings as I'm not getting the whole thread as usual.

Luis: Sorry I don't know Munson.

Rebecca: Sure you're right about the corny escapism etc with beauty but the funny thing is honesty shines through and the idea works for everybody, just we don't have to like it. If you add in another good path "make sure you make your art for yourself" first and foremost, most other beauty issues will just fall into place.

I have my own art gallery and one of the most interesting things is that I get to see first hand all the time which artworks get a response from the public (in the broadest sense), and though I have no idea how to use this knowledge the most common linking feature for work that gets a very enthusiastic response is the stuff that contains absolute honesty/integrity, I guess it can just be felt.

Fred: Dont get me wrong I'm not suggesting that Kandinsky isn't a very significant artist, and I'm with you on the early water colours he's just not in my top ten. or so. The outstanding thing about many of these early moderns is that you feel the passion and enthusiasm for the "new world", sad that we're not living through something similar - though it is usual for the first 10 years of each new century to throw something very new up. Something to watch out for!

Sure the screen has heaps to do with how art and photography get seen these days, you could even add that if our work doesn't hold up at minimum pixels and a few inches across its doomed. My whole interest in photography stems out of trying to make images of my sculptures - 1 Tonne or so of marble - work in a few inches on the net. But the medium is awfully seductive!

All the best Clive

aplumpton · January 1, 2010

The question of architecture and the viewing of works of art that has been addressed in the preceding posts is an interesting one. I agree with Clive that as seductive as the computer and internet may be to providing some idea of a sculpture, photograph or painting it can only approximate the real nature of the work. The advantage of the web is the additional means of acquainting others with our output, but it is usually a very mitigated form of presentation. The showing of work in a gallery or other place is still the best way of connecting the artist and viewer.

In recent years I have eschewed most conventional forms of information communication on gallery agenda except for those complimentary announcements of local newspapers, art critics and tourism bureaus. Recent studies by our local tourism and cultural groups have clearly shown that most (well over a half of those polled) who are interested in visiting our area obtain their information via the web.

In the context of the idea of less is more, I believe that the viewing space for art should be as simple and as comfortable as possible. As a student in London, I would often spend hours in one or two rooms alone of the Tate or other galleries, in front of the images that most interested me. Sitting on the floor is OK for a limited time and comfortable seating doesn't hamper the visual part of the experience. A local sculptor friend has brought many of his larger sculptures out of his small gallery and placed them in an adjoining large garden/park that he has energetically developed through his own labour. The setting is simple. The outside natural lighting and weather is variable, but in terms of the visual experience, less is more.

My use of an 18th century farm building (coach shed) suits most of the sculptures and paintings I seasonally exhibit of other artists quite well, with a mixture of light toned interior walls and original outside wall spaces. I took the following photo of one portion of my gallery where I held my own small exhibition last summer. In the desire to provide breathing space for the works of invited artists, I used ony a quite small space, and it shows. Normally, this 16 foot wall would contain only 5 photographs or small paintings, positioned usually only at eye level.

However, I feel that the marriage of old wooden building surfaces provides a warm architectural enclosure that helps to create a relaxed area of contemplation, but that may well be considered by some to be "more" rather than "less" in terms of the viewing experience. The advantage of the NY Guggenheim gallery is no doubt that of a linear viewing experience (albeit helicoidal), performed, as I think John mentioned, by winding one's way down from the 7th floor. An architectural "less is more".

2009 was from my viewpoint a very good year for POP. Rewarding exchanges.

A happy, healthy and successful New year to all ! <div></div>

luis_g · January 1, 2010

Clive typed: " The biggest conundrum for me is a belief that art and the values of society are joined at the hip, so when a society goes through a somewhat un-meritorious phase art does the same. I think we are in one such period, many people can feel it but no one seems to know what to do about it. Art with the same greedy (more) values as the Wall Street Bankers is not something that appeals to me a great deal.

If a concept of "Less" or "enough" had driven our world we may be in a better state."

I agree in the sense that art, like so many other things, has a timespace coordinate stamped on it. However, culture tends to lag behind art. And I'm not so sure about that. Only in the past 25 years have people become comfortable with Modernism's less radical works, though when one talks with many, they're still largely clueless, in spite of Hughes' best efforts. Maybe it's not so much a lag as it is a limp lapse into oblivion.

A lot of people who know better are still hanging on to many Modernist ideas, long after their failure. This is the period I think we are living in. Never mind how much has been said and written about Postmodernism, the number of people in the art world, let alone outside it, who have any grasp of it is tiny. We are living in the Endo-Modernist Period, as far as I can see. The Pope's early edicts against it turned out to be prophetic (before someone suggests it, I'm not a fan of the Pope). The promises of Modernism did not materialize (and why they didn't can and has filled books, way too much to go into here), and what we are seeing when Clive mentions greed is the ultimate extension and mad clawing of a failed pervasive philosophy and, simultaneously, the backlash against it (9/11, fundamentalism, eastern and western, etc).

Clive - " The outstanding thing about many of these early moderns is that you feel the passion and enthusiasm for the "new world", sad that we're not living through something similar - though it is usual for the first 10 years of each new century to throw something very new up. Something to watch out for!"

Clive, we have no discernable viable future. Buck Rogers, The Jetzons, Marinetti, et al, proved to be weaker than the constructs they sought to displace. Though I agree with you about the headyness of it all, the tantalizing, Promised-Land aspect of it, etc. but here we are, a century later, unsaved, lost and deeper into the desert we have also managed to expand.

I also agree that the Next Thing is already here, far from new, largely under the radar and unseen, bounding with an obsidian knife clenched in its fangs towards the fat-marbled, enlarged, tachycardic heart of Modernism.

Norma Desmond · January 1, 2010

"it can only approximate the real nature of the work" --Arthur

</blockquote>

My point was that monitor viewing, in a great many instances, is not an approximation but is the finished product. And so there is no architecture involved other than the look of the monitor and the house or office the monitor is in, the effects of which should not be minimized.

I think, in many cases, we need to adapt and change our thinking. Monitor viewing is not just a substitute for prints. Many people no longer print. The photograph as print only is an anachronism. I think of monitor viewing as a separate entity from print viewing and I create two distinctly different files for monitor viewing and for printing. Many of my photographs will never be printed and are not intended to be. Those are not trying to be prints or falling short of being prints or approximating prints. They are what they are . . . digital images that are being viewed on a computer monitor.

Screen images have their shortfalls (for me, particularly the lack of consistency, not knowing how various monitors are interpreting the info and what exactly people are seeing on the various monitors out there) but it's also an exciting new medium, with its own inherent characteristics very different from the print.

I am learning the complex process of printing as well, and will be doing both side by side.

aplumpton · January 1, 2010

Buck Rogers? I certainly hope he wasn't an influence.

The first ten years of the present century have not seen changes like those of the Expressionists, Fauvists, Der Blaue Reiter, Cubists and others, a new artistic enlightenment that Clive and many of us might hope for. We are always in a dynamic flux of change and the benchmark years of change are not easy to predict. The change may be much later.

Many artists seem to be feeding off of already dead vines, or engaging in a form of intellectual cannibalism. In 2030 or 2050 we will already be well on the way to being hard wired with inbuilt nanocomputers to keep us alive longer and (more fearfully) to "compliment" our very inefficient (if so beautiful and independent) information handling system that is our brain. The 2010 computer is now one billion times more powerful and smaller than it was 50 years ago.

What will art be in 2030-2050? Surely different, because of these predicted changes. It took us 300 years to shed the overriding presence in art and architecture of Renaissance Roman and Greek classicism, but I think that before we make another major turn on the art roadmap we will be completely overtaken by technological influences on the human condition that are effectively beyond our personal control (Unless we become part of that outer "barbaric" world, away from the influence of the modern society in Margaret Attwood's "A Handmaiden's Tale"). For that, I think that artists are living in the best of all possible times.

luis_g · January 1, 2010

Regarding form, function and Wright, in spite of what he said, I see him leaning heavily on the side of form over function, particularly in his houses. While the form is stunning and leaves one breathless, their functionality as houses for humans comes in a distant second, according to the very people that lived in the houses originally, and now. But there was one type of 'function' that Wright invariably paid attention to: The spiritual. All of his buildings, whether they're temples or water fountains, have it.

I see the Guggy in the same vein. Its truncated spiral linearity and literal gravity is like a cattle chute, discouraging an individual non-linear viewing of the art being shown. A precursor to the streamlining/crowd-traffic control that come later in dealing with crowds in places like theme parks, drive throughs, etc. It's an impressive, imaginative, uplifting modernist structure, apparently derived from the design of one of his own buildings at the Florida Southern college. The Guggenheim has generated many copies, btw. In St. Petersburg Florida, there's a bank building that is a clear copy albeit with a rectangular slab cutting through it as a concession to commercialism, to display the bank's name.

___________________________

Arthur, I like the laid-back, inviting, homey space of your gallery. Love all the wood. It reminds me of private loft shows, only more intimate.

Norma Desmond · January 1, 2010

Arthur, I sense a lack of recognition of or excitement about the potentials of digital photographs and viewing that seem profoundly obvious to me. This means overcoming last century's mindset, parameters, mediums, and genres. I always want to break through my own aesthetic prejudices, what I have taken to be given. I prefer to embrace rather than bemoan new technologies, advancements, opportunities, methods of presentation and, therefore, ways of looking and seeing.

Whenever I hear how much better were the good ol' days, I smile and live my life in the moment.

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