Until the late 19th century art in any culture was judged by an extreme level of physical skill on the part of the artist. This skill was acquired through decades of arduous practice and study under the tutelage of masters.

By 1890 the relatively crude skills of the Impressionists were put in service to ideologies not far removed from the phenomena of religious conversion (Van Gogh) or political insurgency (the Fauve movement).

Right at the cusp of this change in bourgeoise tastes, the Impressionist Seurat and Signac visited the master dyer Chevreul at the Gobelin Tapestry works, and were inspired by the extensive knowledge of optics and perceptual physiology he incorporated into his extensive researches into color. They immediately incorporated some of his "technology" such as the principle of simultaneous contrast, into their painting. When you put colors that fall opposite each other on the color wheel, into close contact, the boundaries create a shimmering effect in the perception. Monet and other adopted this method systematically.

Of course, earlier painters of any skill and sensitivity noted the effect. Turner, Raphael and others used it selectively. What was different for the impressionists is that they created a kind of manifesto, which dictated the technology of their approach as a priority over subject matter.

This was a significant moment in the history of art as a bourgeoise, urban phenomenom. It allowed marginally talented, but aggressive and intelligent individuals to leap the hurdle of years of study and land in the face of indulgent audiences, usually with some kind of cause or factional idea to promote. Cezanne is another example, with his aboriginal geometry and low-resolution facture.

I am not saying these artists and the various "movements" are not worth the attention they received, or the trouble to get to know them. But I am putting them in context.

The examples of "bio art" discussed in this article have their roots firmly in the exodus of the impressionists from the academy in the 1880s, both as an ideologicial and cultural movment.

The cubists were motivated by theories of non-euclidean space that were being developed both in the world of mathematics (by the Russian Lobachevsky and the American Reimann) and in the emerging world of alternative Western spirituality (in the work of Bragdon, Ouspensky and others). The idea of the 4th dimension inspired Picasso, Braque, and Duchamp...but they didn't ask their audiences to accept their art on the basis of their theories. They expected their art to succeed or fail on more basic attributes of artistic endeavor. Picasso has succeeded. The others fare less well. It is probably no accident that Picasso had a thorough grounding the the classical discipline of painting and drawing before he developed his unique approach to iconography.

Ultimately "art" has to capture more than the attention of a bored collector class or a restless intellegentsia. It has to find a connection with the heart and spirit of a place and time. In that respect, technology has always played an important, but subordinate, role...going back to Praxiteles and far beyond, to the colors used on the cave walls of Lascaux.

So we're badk to telling people what "art" has to do, are we? And while we're at it, why not do the same for "science?" And when you're done with that, what should "philosophy" do? Your pocket history of art has some major lacunae. You know, there's a reason why Leonardo is the patron saint of art/science collaborations. He was at once the most technicallly enterprising artist of his time (and not always successful) and a groundbreaking anatomist, along with the stuff everybody knows about his engineering prowess. In his work, you can see art and science driving each other. The goal, for new technologists interested in the arts and for artists intrigued by science, is a revival of Leonardo's art/science exchange. he was able to incorporate the two in his own work, though as a public servant he was obliged to slow down and meet his patrons more than halfway. That wasn't necessariy a good thing, you know. It limited the project. Academic committees are bad, but patrons like the Sforzas are worse. Add to that a church that was happiest when roasting heretics over a slow fire, and the Renaissance seems more of a miracle than ever. Maybe it would be better to stop looking at art history (for a moment, at least) as a SUCCESSION OF GREAT MEN and think about it, instead, as an emergent system. It's a system that clearly wants to develop, and has affectional ties to its members. It's art, partly, and science, partly. It's what Spinoza would have told you was the potential of the material world, and is both God and the proof of God's existence. I realize talking about God has even greater crank potential than talking about Communism, but there was a reason for encoding genesis on some bacterial DNA; maybe ponderous, but instructive.

You wade in so cranky, but I don't see what the disagreement is. I don't think of the history of art as a succession of great men, and my observation about art and technology was pretty focussed on the emergence of bio art having roots in the secession of the Impressionists from the Academy in the 19th century, a premise I would be happy to debate further if anyone wants to stay on task here.

To restate, then. Using technology as a side door for those who don't want to pay their dues as artists results in some interesting and many boring works. Before the Impressionists, this would be taken for granted and the mature artists would try to minimize the impact of sophomoric fascination with technique. After the Impressionists, this tendency became wedded to ideologies ...with the result that we are all at risk of being tyrannized by novelty. Novelty, and its steward technology, has a subordinate role in the real substance of art. What part of that don't you agree with?

You start out by attacking my presumption, then say some interesting things that I can't take as disagreement, then stop. Why do you feel the need to lash out at me before setting out your own thoughts?

I wandered into this Fray section lonely as a cloud and a refugee from Today's Papers board.

I can't weigh in on art history or the relationship between technology, technique and the rise of art movements.

I can say that I also doubt the veracity of the image of Alba as a uniformly glowing green rabbit. For one thing, GFP would NOT be expressed in hair unless expressed as a fusion protein to keratins. It might be more reflected glow from the flourescent light used to excite GFP than actual GFP excitation.

All in all, I'd say Alba shares more with Lunesta, the soporific glowing green moth than to bio-art resulting from the creation of a transgenic GFP rabbit.

You stated baldly that up until the late 19th century art was judged on the basis of its technical execution. That's nonsense. You seem to believe that before the Impressionists, all of western art consisted of salon painting all the way back to the Romans. I couldn't believe that anyone would actually believe that so I tried to remind you about Leonardo, though there are ample other instances of art and technology advancing in tandem.

You seem so eager to attack that which you (crankily) see as ideological or over-novel about contemporary studio practice that you make a hash of art history -- and since all you present about art history is nonsense about what the Great Picasso thought (about which, by the way, you are wrong; what he knew about post-Euclidian Geometry you could stick in a flea's navel) I took this to mean that you're a believer in the Golden Parade of White Male Genius theory of art history. If that misrepresents you, I'm sorry, but evidence is lacking for an alternative reading.

Since we do not have an academy or a Salon system, there is no institutional structure within which artists could "pay their dues," if they wanted to. But if you want to see just such a structure in operation, you have only to witness the fine products of the Soviet art system as it developed under Stalin. I know that won't please you, but there was a universal artists' union, dues were indeed paid, minimum standards of proficiency were maintained and seniority was respected.

If you would prefer a return to the Salon system, I would like to hear how you would hope to manage such a thing (we have, instead, a FREE MARKET system -- perhaps you do not agree with such freedom, but the art market is as free a market for cultural products as has ever existed in human history, so why is it that reactionaries always hate what it does? This is a mystery to me, ane perhaps you will explain this, too). Thank you.

My Stalinist Social-Realist Quilting circle meets Thursdays and we will decide whether to let you have your proper place in art, philosophy, history and technology, or not.

Yes, I guess I have given up trying to engage you in serious dialog. Anyone want to help Melvyl make his case here? Otherwise I guess its time to let a frayed thread break.

I think you're talking past one another by overemphasizing personality over points.

Zeitguy - you've left yourself an escape hatch wider than the barn door with your statement "Using technology as a side door for those who don't want to pay their dues as artists results in some interesting and many boring works." At that point, the statement is so bland that it means nothing. One could just as easily write that "Training in the classical arts and years of experience results in some interesting and many boring works."

So, if Melvyl sharpens your point before rebutting it, it's a natural and forgivable impulse. Especially in a field like bio-art, where there's a very real possibility that the frontiers of art can be pushed as far back conceptually as those of technology, it's equally possible that classical training in classical visual arts could lock artists into hidebound cliche before they've even gotten out the gate. Melvyl's example, Leonardo, is an excellent example of a relatively mediocre "conventional artist" whose service to technology ended up producing several iconic works of the modern era - especially his anatomical sketches. I'd also point out that the existence of prodigies - artists like Mozart, Rimbaud and [name a painter] who achieve levels of technical mastery at an early stage of training and experience that very bright and well-educated spend their entire lives falling short of - also challenges the significance you place on classical training.

That said, I think Melvyl is missing a lot of points of common agreement. Zeitguy's opening statement's conclusion - that art is ultimately to be judged by a more populist standard than its technical achievement... i.e., of a popular reception that spans both time and culture, actually overlaps strongly with your own empahsis on market forces as the determinant of art's aesthetic value. Is popular taste - whether measured by surveys or the movement of dollars - itself beyond critique? Are demotic appeals in aesthetics of any real value? What of anti-populist appeals (perhaps Schaffer's throwaway line about the inappropriate of "genesis code" is relevant here?)

To this observer, you both seem to have quite reasonable positions which could benefit from some poking and prodding. It's a shame you're not seeing and acknowledging them in one another.

Oh, and ARMCX1... you bring up an interesting point as well... though, I don't know enough about the subject to say anything further on it. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it. I feel like I benefitted from it, even though I don't have much to add.

Hi Freditor_G.

Thanks for the reply. These dust-ups are real joy killers on the Fray, but this time around I am interested in pursing the social dynamics more carefully than the last time I was here.

I don't want to beat a dead horse here, and what I wrote is there for all to read or re-read as they are so inclined.

"Until the late 19th century art in any culture was judged by an extreme level of physical skill on the part of the artist. This skill was acquired through decades of arduous practice and study under the tutelage of masters."

Please note the phrase "until the late 19th Century". I will stand by this statement. Additionally, "physical skill" does not presume a "classical" mode or an academic infrastructure in culture...something which seems to bhave misdirected both you and Melvyl, and so I will take it under advisement. Physical skill in craft or art can be the result of any kind of guild organization, whether the moieties of Polynesia or the true guilds of the middle ages, for example. And it isn't limited to men, or white men, or great white men by any imaginable means.

If anyone wants to put forward counter-examples I am open to discussion!

(Mozart certainly didn't fail to live up to his childhood promise as a prodigy, unless you consider flirting with the subtext of Freemasonry a failure on the face of it.)

"Zeitguy - you've left yourself an escape hatch wider than the barn door...At that point, the statement is so bland that it means nothing. "

I wasn't looking for an escape hatch. What I said, in its full context, was:

"Using technology as a side door for those who don't want to pay their dues as artists results in some interesting and many boring works. Before the Impressionists, this would be taken for granted and the mature artists would try to minimize the impact of sophomoric fascination with technique. After the Impressionists, this tendency became wedded to ideologies ...with the result that we are all at risk of being tyrannized by novelty. Novelty, and its steward technology, has a subordinate role in the real substance of art. What part of that don't you agree with?"

Since I spend a great deal of my time composing and performing experimental electro-acoustic music, I am intimately familiar with the implications of this conclusion, however blandly or badly I have expressed it.

While I don't agree with your characterization of either my expression or intent, I can at least understand how the misperception arose on your part.

As for Melvyl, as I stated before, I don't understand the disagreement but I feel the full force of the disapproval, and don't know where to go with that. My offer of considering other viewpoints was and is sincere. My form of expression on the Fray is not as well behaved, but it isn't mean-spirited.

Since you're a composer, what baffles me is why you don't use your own field as the basis of comparison, rather than painting, about which your education appears to be spotty. (PAUSE --this version of the fray doesn't seem to recognize the formatting that my browser (safari) introduces -- so my submissions emerge from its digestion as unwieldy big paragraphs-- (sigh) -- such is life) You want art to be judged, but I ask you again, by whom? A Salon system? An arts union or other bureacracy? I pointed to a specific instance of the latter and that didn't amuse you. And if your argument is with composer/musicialns like Fennesc or Christian Marclay, you should address them directly, not fiddle around with bad analogies drawn from an imaginary history of painting. AND if your argument is with Cage, then TALK about Cage, not Signac. ACTUALLY, your argument seems to be more with science than with art. science has an actual avant-garde of independent thinkers who have original ideas and are sometimes quite successful and sometimes not. it also has a much larger vanguard of committee scientists and academics -- mature thinkers, you'd say. It's true enough that artists in the twentieth century were big fans of the avant-garde of science -- they shared that with a lot of non-artists. And a return to the craft guilds? Attempts were made in that direction during the arts & crafts movement, and for a lot of reasons, they failed. As i pointed out to you, we have an open market. I am not crazy about how that market works, and for whom, but any alternative is necessarily going to be (like the alternative art spaces of the seventies) marginal to it. I should also point out to you that during the early days of the National Arts Endowment an attempt was made to support the arts through a peer review process empaneling senior, mature artists. I thought that overall, it worked pretty well, though it did reward a core group of the well-connected a bit excessively. But if you remember it at all, it's probably because that peer review process approved a number of grants that feuled the Culture Wars in a big way.

I did not assert the desire to return to the guild system or re-institute an academy.You are imagining that in what I wrote. The transmission of craft/art quality from generation to generation across cultural bounds is an open question for me. I could go on at length within the field of electro-acoustic music but far more people are aware of Signac and Seurat than Schaeffer or Xenakis.

I don't have an argument with Science. Perhaps with the form of idolatry of science which some writers call scientism.

As to Picasso and non-euclidean math, I suggest you might enjoy reading through the following book. Its an education moment for those, like you, who, believe that what Picasso knew about non-euclidean math could be contained in the navel of a gnat.

Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.

That is the source for my statement that Picasso was in fact familiar with the field of 4th dimensional/non-euclidean thought. What is your source for asserting that he knew nothing about it?

Now, if you want to challenge any of my specific assertions without recasting everything into your own terms, I would be glad to respond. If you want me to pay appropriate attention, however, you really should quote a sentence we can both find in what I wrote.

To start with, you respond to damn little that I say and expect me to cater to you. This is extremely tiresome. As it happens, I HAVE a copy of Henderson's book. In it she says (page 58): "It should be stated at the outset that in no way is a causal relationshipbeing suggested between n-dimensional geometry and the development of the art of Picasso and Braque. Picasso's art was the product of his own artistic genius in its quest for alternatives to the classical figural tradition and to renaissance perspective space." WELL? That's YOUR source. Where, in that book, is there the assertion that Picasso either knew enough about n-dimensional space for it to have affected his work in any way, or even as much as the average newspaper reader today knows about genetics? \ Youwrote approvingly of an imagined past in which pre-impressionists had to master their craft with arduous labor under the watchful eyes of masters and yadda yadda yadda. That isn't a guild system? In fact, the system of supplementing income by taking in students contimued through the impressionist period, all the way into th twentieth century, when the studio system was largley replaced by public art academies for reasons which had nothing at all to do with avantgardism. But this is pointless. Prove to me that you're something other than a crackpot. Say something reasonable about the relationship between art and science, which is where this whole matter supposedly began.

Alas, I'm not likely to find the time to finish what I started in this thread (the drawback of being pulled every which way at once, I'm afraid).

My advice for the social dynamics is learn to roll with it. Even when conversations bring bad blood to a boil or are spoken at cross-purposes, they still have a tendency to sharpen or clarify one's thoughts and positions. Come back to this thread in two months, and I guarantee you'll read it in a very different light (and might I suggest that selecting a post as a "Favorite" could be a useful way of flagging conversations to review later). Some of the dumbest and most aggravating Fray conversations I've had (assessed in-progress) ended up having profound and positive effects on my own thinking.

If I had to write a Zeroth Law for successful Fraying, it'd be "Check your pride at the door."

I can't claim expertise in the subject of music, but I still find several of your statements highly dubious. Take this line: "Before the Impressionists, this would be taken for granted and the mature artists would try to minimize the impact of sophomoric fascination with technique. "

Now, I'm not an expert in music history, but I seem to recall that many Baroque and Classical compositions displayed a marked fascination with technique (I can't engage the adjective "sophomoric," I'm afraid). I enjoy playing Bach on the piano, but I have to confess I find many of his pieces far more satisfying for their appearance on a page and their challenge to play than for any pleasure they hold for my ear (thinking of Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach).

Perhaps you've dropped a few steps in the chain of reasoning due to a deep familiarity with the subject. Perhaps I just can't quite get your point. But it's a statement which seems freighted with value judgments you haven't exactly buttressed.

My point with the Mozart example was not that he didn't continue to improve as he aged - but rather, that as an 8 year old boy he was already composing at a level that adult composers spent lifetimes achieving. The Beatles seem a contemporary example of very informally trained musicians who nevertheless achieved a degree of aesthetic success standing head and shoulders above the work of more disciplined and well-trained artists.

The existence of prodigies and "expert" drudges shows merely that success was judged by a somewhat arbitrary standard of taste as much by any formalized system of education. What little I know of art and musical history suggests that your description is either too mushy to be of service or wildly underinclusive.

In the case of bioart, I would argue that new technologies open vistas for new definitions of art. An argument that devoting one's life to teasing artistic potentialities out of a new medium wholly unlike the classic visual arts (Joe Davis) somehow reflects a desire to exploit "a side door for those who don't want to pay their dues as artists..." well, that seems to me to begin with a truly unfair premise.

But again, I'm certain I've read in overhaste. At a minimum, I think you've laid out a provocative thesis and it's worth (my) thinking further about. So, thanks. Welcome back, and all that...

Good effort quoting Henderson's caveat, but elsewhere in her book she states that a mathematician known to be familiar with these subjects frequented the Bateau-Lavoir while Picasso was working there...she also makes the connection with several other artists, writers, musicians of the same group at the same time (such as Max Jacob, if I remember correctly) who went on to write about or incorporate this theme into their work. While I respect the CYA intent of her generic disclaimer, the specific evidence accumulates in favor of Picasso at least having heard of these things to a degree greater than "the average newspaper reader.

If you want, I will look up the specific reference, since time does play tricks on our memory about these things.

I will cheerfully concede that it would be a waste of time to do much more than Henderson has done in establishing this relationship, but it hardly warrants your dismissal of Picasso's interest, exposure or involvement in the topic altogether. Admit it.

What are your criteria for a reasonable statment about the relationship between art and science.

I find many fascinating aspects of the relationship have a great bearing on our present circumstances, and I have actively engaged in some of these issues. For example, prior to the development of photography, the Royal Society was known to sponsor artists on expeditions to places such as South America. The artist/s would do detailed paintings of the flora and fauna, and "armchair" zoologists would use the pictures in their taxonomies. This precursor to the field of modern scientific visualization also had an impact on art itself.

When photography offered the world's amateurs the ability to emulate an accomplished artist's rendering of the detail, shapes and proportions of scenes and objects, the artists themselves raised the stakes of artistic achievement...which is why the importance of actual rendering skill is subordinated in Cezanne and Van Gogh in the service of a "higher" vision. This dynamic is a complement, but not a contradiction of, the ideological emergence and influence I mentioned above in a prior post. Picasso is quoted as saying "I paint pictures so I have something to look at" and I think there is a germ of revelation there. The representational skills of artists were acquired with zeal after the iconoclasm of Giotto and Cimabue opened the door to a secular interest in what the world really looked like. After representation reached its zenith as an intrinsic value in the Academic works of, e.g. Bouguereau, "serious" intelligent artists had to break through the constraints of the mere visual aspect of things, to a deeper truth, which wasn't always pretty or well drawn. Does this imply an alternating development of rendering skill against what you might call the metaphysical content of a work; such as a serious study might discover to be a spiral dance going back long before the academies or guilds of the literate west? I don't presume to say. I merely wonder. If that makes me a crackpot, then don't trust your soup to my leaky vessel. On the other hand, and finally, the Fray really is your marketplace, Melvyl. Rancor has no privelege here.

You wonder that you elicit rancor...it feels so unfair. You seem to believe that representation is the primary task of painting, and that painting is the sum total of visual art. Further, you believe that these painters should be judged (ah, judged, as if they'd committed some sort of crime, or submitted to some sort of beauty contest: how arrogant of you, how, in fact, offensive) in some kind of preliminary exam so that those with representational skills equal, I guess, to those of a camera (a Turing rest in reverse) would have the status of "real" artists. Sadly, for you, today's news is that meretricious poser Damien Hirst is now selling old work for seven-figure sums. I don't like that either, but I don't argue with the system that rewards him. Bougereau, whose earlier meretricious daubs you cite as an example of high realism, was the Damien Hirst of his time. And he was not that interesting as a realist -- his paintings are pastiches of academic cliches and photo collage, and are optically stupid. If you think of Vermeer as optically smart (and Vermeer not only KNEW people like Huyhens and Lewenhoek, but his awareness of their work is visible in his -- your conjecture about Picasso's having lived in a building to which a mathematician was a regular visitor is nothing better than gossip), then Bougereau is off at the other end of the chart. And I'm off topic again. If you want to know how you offend people, it's simple: you assume that your opinions are matters of fact, and you then throw up a smoke screen of names and texts when you offend others and they respond appropriately. And what is this nonsense about how Rancor Has No Priviege here... ? What makes you a crackpot is nour narrowness of view and your inability to engage with the criticism of its limits.

...Alba is what some would call a hoax, it's not the best word to describe the totality of Kac's provocative bunny, but it is a starting point to a deeper appreciation of what Kac's work is about.

I think it might be more useful to think of Kac as an agent provocateur.

The dialogue inspired by this 'Work' is very reminiscent of the kind of stuff I have heard when naive undergraduate students first encounter Borges's "Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote".

Kac, like Borges cannot be properly understood without a good deal of background, context, and of course a broad sense of humor.