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Papers by Barnaby Fitzgerald
Studio Notes, 2024
The Space Between Sin and Creation The model who works with us, Caroline Leest Rose, is writing a... more The Space Between Sin and Creation The model who works with us, Caroline Leest Rose, is writing about the distinctions and coincidences between Pornography and Art. Of all my great colleagues in the visual arts, Rose is the most intelligent, and perceptive. Professionally the object of observation, the specimen in so many clinical studies, and often the Muse for those of us (many it turns out) who simply adore her, hers is a particularly advantageous position. Presumably, her years of experience have trained her to make important distinctions, many of which are under the rubric of desire. This last word is coincidentally a scandalous one, since it doesn't as easily apply to cooking, skin discomforts, or even nostalgia, whereas it always denotes love and at the very least, possessiveness. I don't think I can write nearly as well about what distinguishes Pornography from Art than will be the case with what Caroline Rose will write. Instead, prompted by another artist colleague, Jessamyn Plotts, who asked me to dwell in a short essay on the parallel subject of transgression and its affiliation to pornography.
The International Journal of the Arts in Society: Annual Review, 2011
This paper demonstrates how poetry can enhance the process of inquiry by releasing the inner voic... more This paper demonstrates how poetry can enhance the process of inquiry by releasing the inner voice of the researcher in ways that more conventional forms of academic research may not. Poetry removes the insulation between me and my experience to reveal what is "true" for me. Interpreting my "generated" poetry as artefact has reinforced my educational convictions: it is who we are, not what we do (Arendt, 1974), that will determine the ultimate success of our educational endeavours. The writing of a "found" poem can unearth otherwise hidden-or possibly forgotten-connections between finding poems and educating youth.
The International Journal of the Arts in Society: Annual Review
Kim Van Do at Blue Mountain Gallery, NY, Feb 2021, 2021
The New York painter Kim Van Do accomplishes a rare feat: he ties vision to the visionary emotion... more The New York painter Kim Van Do accomplishes a rare feat: he ties vision to the visionary emotions of space as experienced in an open setting.
Paper submitted for publication in Italy, on occasion of the Conference "L'Arte Cultura dei Popol... more Paper submitted for publication in Italy, on occasion of the Conference "L'Arte Cultura dei Popoli" to be held in Perugia, Sala Dei Priori, Palazzo dei Priori, on May 6, 2017
(In Italian)
Abstract (in English)
Complexions of the figure in painting: ideas about dioptric color mixing and layering in the depiction of human skin from Byzantium to New York
The algorithms of distance: Metaphors in Pictorial Language OVERVIEW The text attempts to eluci... more The algorithms of distance: Metaphors in Pictorial Language
OVERVIEW
The text attempts to elucidate the motives behind the breaking of perspectival constraints in art throughout the 19th and 20 centuries before World War II. It points to Cubism and Constructivism and most importantly Mondrian’s Neo-plasticism as salient examples of style and ideas about space and representation which attempted to transcend the mediating geometry of customary picture making, by enlisting modern industrial methods of representation such as the ‘Parallel Isometry’ of William Farish, of 1822, and the methods of the École Polytechnique’ in Paris between 1770 and 1830. The narrative addresses, with feeling, the limits of naturalism within the range of expressions. Of particular interest is Mondrian’s growth, the choices made by him and the truthfulness of his conclusions with regards to the destiny of serious painting in history.
An effort is made to place Mondrian and others in a setting, described with a broad brush, made of a past and of a future. I summarize the great forces of political ferment, scientific experimentation and cultural analysis that characterize the last three quarters of the 19th century, with an eye to the fragmentation of imperialist hegemonies and the national unifications in Europe. The return of the monarchy in France, the Risorgimento in Italy and the rise of socialism paint a complex picture of industrial growth, disintegration of the Hapsburgs, unification of Germany and Italy, that together with a new urbanized, literate middle class rising from the ranks of the proletariat, all of which frustrates the traditional aspiration of monumental art and religious art, evolving into a language of pictorial thought which is intimate and real; whose methods of representation often coincide with parallel projections in Asian art, which are coincidentally also those of industrial machine design.
I use, partly as a contrast, William Dunning’s excellent work, ‘Changing Images of Pictorial Space’ who also paints large tracts of historic time in similar synthesis and sweep, though he reaches complementary conclusions. Dunning summarizes the same time period with “Space and composition… (were to become)… the central theme of modern art. Conceptual, infinite space was a consequence of the spatial illusion first realized by the artist.”
I come close to mass communication and propaganda, without entering the territory to keep the text short. I bring in the notions in Marxist parlance of ‘ground’ ‘sedimentation’ and ‘hegemony’. Naturally I think of Le Corbusier as the embodiment of the architect of the future, as I imagine Mondrian would think of the architecture that makes pictures finally irrelevant. Le Corbusier gives us a global architecture that would be a responsible expression of a caring and rational society.
What is actually new in what has been so often called new in 20th century modernism? What is actually and succinctly old about what is generally thought of as old in the period prior to the 20th century? They are not easy to extricate from each other, and one could always argue that the new is always a latent energy of what has grown old, and conversely what remains strong and vital of the old has the capacity for renewal. Nonetheless there is much in modernism that was never seen or even imagined before as art, and its old age has arrived too brusquely. Modernism has devolved to taste and style from modernist philosophies of style and taste. In the story briefly told here the protagonists are dignified minds who dismissed the mercantile aspect of art making as a matter of course.
Drafts by Barnaby Fitzgerald
KIM Van Do Landscapes at Blue Mountain Gallery, 2021
The tenacity of painting a wide angle landscape on site.
Light and Air of Summer, 2021
Vision and space in unity in Kim Van Do's painting
Short critique of Kim Van Do's landscape paintings at Blue Mountain Gallery, New York City, Febru... more Short critique of Kim Van Do's landscape paintings at Blue Mountain Gallery, New York City, February 2021.
Studio Notes, 2024
The Space Between Sin and Creation The model who works with us, Caroline Leest Rose, is writing a... more The Space Between Sin and Creation The model who works with us, Caroline Leest Rose, is writing about the distinctions and coincidences between Pornography and Art. Of all my great colleagues in the visual arts, Rose is the most intelligent, and perceptive. Professionally the object of observation, the specimen in so many clinical studies, and often the Muse for those of us (many it turns out) who simply adore her, hers is a particularly advantageous position. Presumably, her years of experience have trained her to make important distinctions, many of which are under the rubric of desire. This last word is coincidentally a scandalous one, since it doesn't as easily apply to cooking, skin discomforts, or even nostalgia, whereas it always denotes love and at the very least, possessiveness. I don't think I can write nearly as well about what distinguishes Pornography from Art than will be the case with what Caroline Rose will write. Instead, prompted by another artist colleague, Jessamyn Plotts, who asked me to dwell in a short essay on the parallel subject of transgression and its affiliation to pornography.
The International Journal of the Arts in Society: Annual Review, 2011
This paper demonstrates how poetry can enhance the process of inquiry by releasing the inner voic... more This paper demonstrates how poetry can enhance the process of inquiry by releasing the inner voice of the researcher in ways that more conventional forms of academic research may not. Poetry removes the insulation between me and my experience to reveal what is "true" for me. Interpreting my "generated" poetry as artefact has reinforced my educational convictions: it is who we are, not what we do (Arendt, 1974), that will determine the ultimate success of our educational endeavours. The writing of a "found" poem can unearth otherwise hidden-or possibly forgotten-connections between finding poems and educating youth.
The International Journal of the Arts in Society: Annual Review
Kim Van Do at Blue Mountain Gallery, NY, Feb 2021, 2021
The New York painter Kim Van Do accomplishes a rare feat: he ties vision to the visionary emotion... more The New York painter Kim Van Do accomplishes a rare feat: he ties vision to the visionary emotions of space as experienced in an open setting.
Paper submitted for publication in Italy, on occasion of the Conference "L'Arte Cultura dei Popol... more Paper submitted for publication in Italy, on occasion of the Conference "L'Arte Cultura dei Popoli" to be held in Perugia, Sala Dei Priori, Palazzo dei Priori, on May 6, 2017
(In Italian)
Abstract (in English)
Complexions of the figure in painting: ideas about dioptric color mixing and layering in the depiction of human skin from Byzantium to New York
The algorithms of distance: Metaphors in Pictorial Language OVERVIEW The text attempts to eluci... more The algorithms of distance: Metaphors in Pictorial Language
OVERVIEW
The text attempts to elucidate the motives behind the breaking of perspectival constraints in art throughout the 19th and 20 centuries before World War II. It points to Cubism and Constructivism and most importantly Mondrian’s Neo-plasticism as salient examples of style and ideas about space and representation which attempted to transcend the mediating geometry of customary picture making, by enlisting modern industrial methods of representation such as the ‘Parallel Isometry’ of William Farish, of 1822, and the methods of the École Polytechnique’ in Paris between 1770 and 1830. The narrative addresses, with feeling, the limits of naturalism within the range of expressions. Of particular interest is Mondrian’s growth, the choices made by him and the truthfulness of his conclusions with regards to the destiny of serious painting in history.
An effort is made to place Mondrian and others in a setting, described with a broad brush, made of a past and of a future. I summarize the great forces of political ferment, scientific experimentation and cultural analysis that characterize the last three quarters of the 19th century, with an eye to the fragmentation of imperialist hegemonies and the national unifications in Europe. The return of the monarchy in France, the Risorgimento in Italy and the rise of socialism paint a complex picture of industrial growth, disintegration of the Hapsburgs, unification of Germany and Italy, that together with a new urbanized, literate middle class rising from the ranks of the proletariat, all of which frustrates the traditional aspiration of monumental art and religious art, evolving into a language of pictorial thought which is intimate and real; whose methods of representation often coincide with parallel projections in Asian art, which are coincidentally also those of industrial machine design.
I use, partly as a contrast, William Dunning’s excellent work, ‘Changing Images of Pictorial Space’ who also paints large tracts of historic time in similar synthesis and sweep, though he reaches complementary conclusions. Dunning summarizes the same time period with “Space and composition… (were to become)… the central theme of modern art. Conceptual, infinite space was a consequence of the spatial illusion first realized by the artist.”
I come close to mass communication and propaganda, without entering the territory to keep the text short. I bring in the notions in Marxist parlance of ‘ground’ ‘sedimentation’ and ‘hegemony’. Naturally I think of Le Corbusier as the embodiment of the architect of the future, as I imagine Mondrian would think of the architecture that makes pictures finally irrelevant. Le Corbusier gives us a global architecture that would be a responsible expression of a caring and rational society.
What is actually new in what has been so often called new in 20th century modernism? What is actually and succinctly old about what is generally thought of as old in the period prior to the 20th century? They are not easy to extricate from each other, and one could always argue that the new is always a latent energy of what has grown old, and conversely what remains strong and vital of the old has the capacity for renewal. Nonetheless there is much in modernism that was never seen or even imagined before as art, and its old age has arrived too brusquely. Modernism has devolved to taste and style from modernist philosophies of style and taste. In the story briefly told here the protagonists are dignified minds who dismissed the mercantile aspect of art making as a matter of course.
KIM Van Do Landscapes at Blue Mountain Gallery, 2021
The tenacity of painting a wide angle landscape on site.
Light and Air of Summer, 2021
Vision and space in unity in Kim Van Do's painting
Short critique of Kim Van Do's landscape paintings at Blue Mountain Gallery, New York City, Febru... more Short critique of Kim Van Do's landscape paintings at Blue Mountain Gallery, New York City, February 2021.