Word: abstractions
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...compositions, is entirely acoustic and much more wide-open. The writing here suffers from a certain bland sameness, but, fortunately, the work of the individual musicians that Jenkins chose for this session is of high quality and originality. "Dancing On a A Melody" is self-descriptive: Jenkins bows an abstract written theme while trombonist George Lewis improvises on top. Lewis represents the younger second generation of AACM musicians, and here he manages to coax from his horn a variety of fluid sonorities that it was probably never intended to make...
MENOPAUSE has overtaken abstract art. Gone are the youthful days of combative manifestos and unexpected new styles. Abstract art has become so much a part of our culture that it reigns uncontested part of our culture that it reigns uncontested over the artistic community...
...more than 20 years ago, ciritcs hotly debated the acceptance of abstract art. Meyer Schapiro recalls those days in his collection of essays in Modern Art--19th and 20th Centuries. Schapiro asks three questions in particular: one, why do modern artists no longer consider nature the ideal model of harmony? Two, what has replaced it? And three, what has been the result of this change in emphasis...
...shortest of his essays, "On the Humanity of Abstract Painting," Schapiro defends modern art against the charge of inhumanity. He asserts that humanity in art "is not confined to the image of man. Man shows himself too in his relations to the surroundings, in his artifacts, and in the expressive character of all the signs and marks he produces...
...unenlightened viewer's problem, writes Schapiro, is one of "discriminating the good in an unfamiliar form which is often confused by the discouraging mass of insensitive imitations." His argument is simple: we have a moral responsibility to like abstract art and a moral duty to defend it. If we don't fulfill these tasks, we are insensitive. Worse, he labels as brain-damaged those who refuse to properly appreciate modern art. Those who condemn abstraction do so, because they require an "already known order, familiar and reassuring." Amazingly, Schapiro calls on a neurologist to verify this "handicap": "The sense...