T. J. Clark (1) (1943–)

This isn't a bad book; it just isn't a book for me. It seemed to set out as a Marxist analysis of Impressionism. That was OK with me, in fact, I thought it would be interesting.

But I didn't find it interesting. I found it went on and on and I really couldn't concentrate. I suppose I don't really care about critiques of paintings. In fact, I rather dislike art criticism. What I do enjoy is learning about the people, the history, and the culture of the times. There wasn't enough of that in this book for me. Of if it was there, I couldn't find it, being bogged down by too much academic discussion.… (more)

I've only read about half the book, so that's what I'm commenting on.

The basic premise, as far as I understood it, is this: modernism (as in the styles and trends that characterized the modern era, including modern art) was an attempt to retain something sacred or mythic in a world that was becoming more and more secular. Along with this, modernism also wanted to find a system of representation that would directly reflect and communicate with the reality that people were living in (as opposed to the idealized images of pre-modern times). However, these two wishes could not be reconciled. Using a number of very specific examples, art historian TJ Clark explores how these conflicting wishes of modernism crop up again and again in history during moments of extreme conflict and change. And through this, he tries to get at what modernity (the modern era) was really all about.

My personal favourite, out of the chapters I've read, is the chapter on Kasimir Malevich and the Black Square. I have certainly developed a new understanding and appreciation for abstract art, and I know I will never be able look at a black square the same way ever again.

This is not a book for the casual reader. You really need a basic background in modern art history and preferably modern history as well to even begin to understand the things in this book. Clark does provide a lot of detailed background information on the society, history and politics surrounding each example but he never writes about it in any sort of easy-to-understand way, preferring to weave bits and pieces of information and references in and out of the text as he goes along. I had to do a lot of Googling and Wikipedia-ing as I read, although admittedly my knowledge of history was, and still is, quite limited. As much as I struggled with this book, I am very grateful to the professor (one of my faves!) who forced our class to read it. If you manage to get through even one chapter, I guarantee that it'll be very rewarding.… (more)

The great irony in this monumental and superlative effort of TJ Clark's is that Picasso was adamant his work should not be subject to multiple interpretations. "Only fools" would think that what he (and Braque) did was abstract. Instead, Picasso called it "exactitude". "There is no painting or drawing of mine that does not respond exactly to a view of the world." And yet, here we have a six part lecture examining the possibilities in interpreting Picasso, and defending premises and conclusions as if they were scientific theories, with all the attendant proofs. It's ironic that exactitude requires so much speculation. Picasso would not approve.

The book prints the 58th annual AW Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts (2009). Clark has collected his lectures, fully illustrated with the works he examines. He reprints them as he talks about them, which makes flipping back and forth much less onerous. He zooms in to portions of paintings as needed. And his lectures are nicely divided and largely independent.

Clark seems to have lived to present these lectures. He made notes over decades. He is totally comfortable with his subject. He can say things like "I think the work of art is the product of calculations, but calculations often unknown by the artist himself," and it is completely believable. Or "Every age has the atheism it deserves" and you read on. Or "Cubism was the last of the nineteenth century's historical revivals," and you wonder. So the journey is both challenging and fascinating.

The six lectures are:
Object (Blue Room, Composition)
Room (Guitar and Mandolin)
Window (Young Girls Dancing In Front of a Window)
Monsters (Painter & His Model)
Monument (Women by the sea)
Mural (Guernica)

There is an entire lecture on the painting, Painter and His Model (1927), where Clark demonstrates unfathomable effort and research. He examines every element of the painting; even its dimensions are significant. He relates it to philosophers and psychoanalysts, quotes Picasso's friends and acquaintances for clues, and poses endless possibilities, questions and charges regarding this one painting of a room with a painter and model. They are typically cubistically grotesque, which leads Clark into all kinds of theorizing about sexuality and violence. The painting is overlain by two large yellow transparent cubist shapes that cause him no end of almost frustrated speculation. Clark goes on about them for pages, regarding their color, shape, placement and raison d'etre. The amount of thought and consideration that went into this analysis is staggering. It's intimidating when I consider that I spend less than two minutes in front of masterpieces in museums.

But when I look at Painter and His Model I see a room which at some point earlier had been occupied by a painter and a model. That's why they alone are simply black outlines (including the easel, canvas and palette). They're not there now. The yellow shapes are our eyes, our glasses, allowing us to see the empty room occupied in the past. This is a cinematic flashback scene. Really simple to understand. It's a perfect example of the exactitude Picasso described. To me.

I also found the Guernica discussion misleading. Picasso clearly put the disaster indoors. You can see the joint where the walls meet the ceiling, and there is a ceiling fixture with a bare bulb shining. It says Guernica happened in private and no one knew about it. It was denied. It also says the inhabitants were trapped there. Clark prefers to deny what he sees. He explains it as a conundrum of Cubism, with exterior being unacceptable, with the ceiling also being rooftop, and several other such theories. But it is what Picasso painted.

I did not know that Picasso denied viewers of his work any interpretation. But now that I do know, it suddenly became clear to me that his work is directly related to the other great innovative art of the day - atonal classical music. Mahler, Bartok, Stravinsky, Schoenberg - all created music for musicians, as firmly, rigidly and arrogantly as classical music could be. They didn't write it for the public. They didn't want interpretation; they made statements. (See my review of The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century)

Picasso was the visual counterpart of modern classical. He expressed exactly the same arrogance in talking about his work. For all the self-declared exactitude of his art, the viewing public faced an infinite number of choices/interpretations, because the work didn't communicate clearly. Instead, Picasso stated it. So at that level, he failed. In a sense, this whole book examines that failure.

He was trying to find himself as a unique artist at a time when music was taking off into uncharted waters, and he caught that wave. When it proved less than he had hoped, he dropped it and moved on, consolidating his newfound trademarked style. For all of Clark's attempts to associate him with the Germanic philosophers of the day - Wittgenstein, Kant, Nietzsche - I think Picasso probably related more to trailblazing musical artists. So I disagree that "Cubism was the last of the nineteenth century's historical revivals." It was an experiment, a land grab, and a power play.

Clark's own choice of words - arrogance, belligerence, monsters, absolute, infantile - points to this conclusion, but he sticks with his multi-faceted, patchwork approach to Picasso, leaving nothing answered decisively. Which is fine, valid, and enlightening.

Clearly, I am no art historian. Some semi-profound expert must have come to this same conclusion 80 years ago - and was probably debunked 79 years ago. But it seems clear to me, and answers a lifetime of questions. And it does not detract one daub from my thrill of reading this book. I thank TJ Clark for forcing me to think it through.

In the end, Picasso and Truth is not so much a trip into the extraordinary mind of Picasso as discovering the extraordinary mind of TJ Clark. Definitely worth the trip.

David Wineberg… (more)

'Afflicted Powers' by the RETORT collective of Berkeley, California, asks whether Guy Debord's thesis - expounded in 'The Society of the Spectacle' in 1967 - is still capable of explaining our present situation, post-9/11 and post-Iraq. Brutally condensed this thesis was that capitalism and Soviet communism were converging toward a single system in which advertising and propaganda colonized the very human imagination, to produce a historyless world in which appearance dominates reality. We the inhabitants become spectators onto our own lives, we define ourselves by the brandnames we consume and live vicariously through our love/hate worship of celebrity. Debord's Situationist International had its brief moment of glory during the Paris events of 1968, but he dissolved it in 1972 on the grounds that it had itself become part of the spectacle, and killed himself in 1994.

RETORT concludes that with some modifications the thesis still holds, and these authors are well qualified to answer, at least one of them having known the Situationists first hand. Despite overly modest disclaimers to the contrary they capture at least some of Debord's caustic and pithy tone which makes a refreshing change from the post-post-structuralist treacle of so much modern social commentary. They describe our present state as being governed by 'the contradictions of military neo-liberalism under conditions of spectacle', and pose the central questions: to what extent did '9/11' usher in a new era?; are US actions since 9/11 simply a historical regression to naked force?; and does the concept 'society of the spectacle' still have any explanatory value or are we now facing a cruder, older kind of statecraft?

The book doesn't claim to answer these completely, but merely to open them up for further debate as a precondition for rebuilding any sort of coherent leftwing opposition (the title 'Afflicted Powers' is from Milton's Paradise Lost, uttered by Satan when recounting his failed rebellion).

The book takes off from two striking (ie. spectacular) images of al-Qaida's devastating attack on the Twin Towers and the grotesquely hooded Iraqi prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison. RETORT contends that al-Qaida fully understands that US military power is now based as much in spectacle as material firepower, so it committed an outrage that while itself confined within the spectacle (that is, which could achieve no conceivable political goal), still inflicted great damage on the spectacle of US power.

RETORT does not in any way defend al-Qaida, but on the contrary explains lucidly how Revolutionary Islam used a toxic combination of the worst of Leninist/Guevarist vanguardism and anti-modern religious fundamentalism to defeat all its secular progressive rivals. In an excellent chapter they also untangle the circulation of oil, construction services and arms sales between the US and the Middle East, which is far, far more complex than any crude leftist claims that Iraq was invaded only to grab the oil fields.

This book is in a different league from most of the anti-war books published since the Iraq invasion, and really should be required reading even for those who will not agree with its analysis.… (more)