OCR Text |
Show Page 3SA-T- HE HFRALD Provo Utah Sunday, February 24 1980 Six Simple Suggestions For Modern Art Enjoyment wm .?! . : "The title suggests no hidden meaning or significance," Myer claims. Rather, it suggests an arrangement of colors and shapes "On the other hand. Salvador Dali s Persistence of Memorr' (a painting depicting clocks, ants and a branch all against a shore backdrop) suggests an attempt to visually describe bow memory persists." 3. Give it time. Haltern says it is only after viewing an abstract painting several times that you learn to discern visual inventions in it. "People want to be confirmed in their preunder-standing- s, if not prejudices, about modern art; but they need to appreicate that it is a liberation of colon and of gestalt powers." be said. Myer ad mi ted be wasn't able to appreciate r Rothko's paintings until a told him not to of Utah the at University colleague look at them but just to sense their presence. 4. Learn about modern art. A basic understanding of modern art helps you get out of the art what artists put into it, Myer sub mi ted. "The History of Modern Art" and "Art Now" are excellent works to consult 5. Concentrate on one artist's paintings at a time. Value judgments about any artist's painting can only be made when the judge is acquainted with other paintings by the same artist. Smith stressed. Artists should be judged according to how well they accomplish their purpose. By viewing a collection of art by the same artist, you will notice directions of emphasis, Smith said, and these directions will reveal the artist's pur- By BRUCE U.NG Herald Suff Reporter Next time you see an abstract painting, don't rack your brain trying to figure out what it is. just look for pleasing colors and shapes. That is what three artist teachers at Brigham Young University say. They have outlined six ways to enjoy modern art. Peter Myer, Hagen Haltern and Bruce Smith, art faculty members in BYU's College of Fine Arts and Communications, have offered six suggestions that are guaranteed to help both artist and auke appreciate nonrepresentational paintings. The suggestions are simple and easy to implement. You may have already thought of them. 1. Look for pleasing colors and shapes. "Don't ask what a painting is! " Myer exclaims. "A painting is simply paint on canvas. Many artists are not trying to recreate or to symbolize something. They are not even trying to transmit emotion in many cases." Numberous modern artists are only trying to show color relationships or to demonstrate harmony between shapes, the professor explains. In short, they are simply trying to share visual possibilities. Myer recalled a noted artist who one day listened to two women try to wring a form out of a hodgepodge of hues and lines that hung in a Utah art museum. "I see a sunset,' one said. "I see a man s face," the other argued. They turned to the artist for his opinion. "It is a painting," he answered. Color relationships, shapes, textures, and lines are all elements of a painting to pay attention to. "See if the colors go well together," Haltern urges. "Consider bow one color influences another color and and the other color's appearance." "Search for a feeling of space," Smith counsels. "A patch of red behind a patch of green may create the illusion that one thing is behind another." 2. Look at the title. Malevkh, a prominent Russian artist, painted a red square and a black square on a white backdrop and called the painting "Red Square and Black Square." non-arti- st Wit' CKV ft: jV-i-- fA- jrw-THIS IS REALLY not modern art, but it is the closest thing to it in Brigham Young University's current art collec- - ot 84y-9-fo- solid-colo- pose. "We don't compare Michelangelo's muscular forms with Rembrandt's dramatic lighting," Myer noted. "Each artist tried to achieve something dif' ferent. Instead, we compare works of art by the same artist," 6. Have a positive attitude. "Don't approach modern art bent on finding bad things about it," Myer laughed. "The challenge is to find joy through the art. "There must be something good about abstract paintings hung in reputable galleries or museums." "loose" shapes of the representations give the work a flavor of modern art, at least to some lay persons. tion. The painting, "Evian Still Life," by P. Visson, represents things, conse- quently, it is not modern art. But the 00000000000000000000000 00000000000000000o o o 0 (CI QO We Have Doubled The Size o i Big Bucks ' For The Noihing Book' By CAROL FELSENTHAL Americas Library Aim. What happened to book publishing in the 70s? Plenty. But most of it was not very cheering to loyers of novels, poetry, short stories and on subjects that is, that will never make the cover of People magazine. For example: g Cne week last fall the "book" at a B. Daiton bookstore in downtown Chicago was one even chronic People readers would have to admit lacked substance. In fact, it lacked chapters, page numbers and type everything except a grabbling cover, an appropriate title ("The Nothing Book") and a price tag equal to that cloth-boun- d of an average-pric- e non-ficti- non-ficti- on best-sellin- novel. "There's nothing like it," said a representative of its Manhattan publisher. "Don't ask me why people will hand over real money for this piece of nothing. That's not my business. "My business is to sell books, and "The Nothing Book" sells." In fact, it sold so well that like a hot new novel it was quickly "reprinted" in paper. In this case, "cloned" might be a better word. On a Cleveland bus, a young of man is absorbed in a book d sorts. His seat companion is a librarian who's millimeters d away from having her head on the stranger's shoulder, straining to share his look. "How old are you?" she asks the complaisant young man. He's 22, he says. He is in training to be a salesman and hooked on "visual" novels comic books for adults in paperback format in which the living-colo- r characters hop from frame to frame, their dialogue d floating from their mouths in high-style- Afro-harie- black-outline- balloons. "These take no effort but I wouldn't be able to tell you an hour from now what it was about," he admits. By the end of the 70s, most bookstores stocked more tomes on running than on World Wars I and II. the Civil War, the War of 1812 and the Revolutionary War combined. Finally, even the most inventive marketing men had to admit that they'd exhausted the subject, that running books had, so to speak, run their course with the most arcane e running subtopics bloated into 400-pag- books. They were resigned to walking instead of running to the bank when someone had a brainstorm: How about 300 pages on walking? Yes, books on books "walking equipment," on walking in the dark, on walking in pairs, etc., how-to-wa- lk etc. Which is not to say that all that's available are treatises on intimidation or dressing for success, 300 pages on nail care or 600 on hair care, books on hot tubs or Nazis, Watergate or ficus trees. Writers like Saul Bellow and Joyce Carol Oates, Joan Didion and John Updike continued creating books in tlw even better good 70s. But what about the potential Joan Ly 0 0 0 0 o o 120 13)80 00000000000000000000 0 Didions and John Updikes? Most publishing houses have canned their sludge-pil- e dredgers, also known as readers of the scores of unsolicited manuscripts that a Simon & Schuster or a Random House get every year. Now such manucripts are slung into the garbage can instead of the or, if a sludge neap stamped envelope is attached, into the mailbox with a photo-copie- d form rejection letter. Publishers are putting nearly all their resources behind the big names the Henry Kissingers and Richard Nixons whose advances alone make the millionaries or at least add another "multi." as one "The big bucks" publishing executive puts it have gone to Hollywood (i.e., selling movie or TV rights to a hot new novel). Many of the major houses are opening up Los Angeles d, branches to be closer to the producers and directors and he' "novelization" possibilities. The novelization is a late-70- s coinage that refers to a reversal of the traditional publishing process. It works something like this: "Saturday Night Fever" is going to be a hit film. Some lucky publisher wins a bidding war for the right to novelize the movie into a well, into a novelization with guess-wh- o disco-in- g on the cover. The publisher assigns the project to one of a stable of experts in the "art of novelization." Yet, the forecast for the '80s is not relentlessly gloomy. Polls show that while peole may be overdosing on "How to Do Anything and Everything" or "The Joy of Sex (With Your Socks On " or "The Joy of Sex (With Your Socks Off)," people are reading more. Every suburban shopping mall comes equipped with a B. Daiton or a Walden, on the lower level. Although it's easier to find a greeting card or a poster than a people are still reading more. And using their libraries more. A recent Gallup poll found that 51 percent ot aduiu had visited a library in the past year vs. only 42 percent in 1975. But meanwhile the federal estimates that in the !;overnment in five adult Americans is pecent to be more precise functionally illiterate. That means they can't read a street sip or the label on a soup can or the questions on a job ampliation. Predictions are that the 23. percent could inch up toward 30 percent in the '80s. Which just goes to show that the publisher of "The Nothing Book" knows what he's doing. 23 PDCDS Central Utah PnOCRESS N. o 0 0 o 0 0 0 o 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 o o' o o 0 0 0 0 0 o o 377-420- 2 I o pi 11 em i ii ii I uu y 19xz11 1 1 fiweioinioi'i? 0 0 o o University Of Our Office Supply Store. Come See Our Creat Selection Of Office Products! CI 1! t " " ,J1""",J , MlyJ Mwmmm to-- office sappfy 1; .t 1 w 1 u1 KJ fK ;rR I i ' hen it comes to office supplies or quality of furniture we're the people you need to see. ve offer the finest in desks, filing cabinets, chairs and office supplies. Good service and quality products combined with fair prices has made us a leader in the office equipment business. Come in and visit our office furniture .showroom. You'll be glad vou did. VSii.,,,,, & fice d ir ' ' -. A34- - Oy. Complete Line Commercial Office Supplies Free Delivery In Utah County Free Customer Parking Buy Or Lease AH Your Furniture Needs Off-Stre- et 0 o o o o o o o o oJ o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o O O o o o o o o o o 0 0 o o o 0000000000 0000000000 0 o 0 o o 0 o 0 0 0 o 0 o o 0 o o O o 0 0 o o 146 N. University 0 o 0 0 0000 0000000000000000000000000000000000 Art Morris Owrxr Joyct BMrtfail Managar 377-420- 2 |