Thinking Alike: Fauvism or Just Color?

 

Gaugain lived with Van Gogh for a short time, until Van Gogh went truly stark raving mad, but both men agreed Van Gogh learned a lot about color from Gaugain.

Gabrielle Munter learned about color from Kandinsky, and the Fauvism experiment of Matisse and De Rain reflected the use of saturated color, said to express emotion rather than to reflect reality had its day.

But what of the man who paints as a hermit, who has not hung out with any of these artists, although their work is now available to anyone with a computer, but what of the guy who simply paints and then is told, "Oh, that's like Munter. Go check her out."? 

If he has never seen Munter or Matisse's Fauvism phase or DeRain, can an artist have "unconsciously" absorbed the elements by simply seeing their downstream effects?

Painters, for generations, were taught to paint by sending them to museums and plopping them down before the work of a master and instructing them to copy. The sight of those students was commonplace. That was not considered plagiarism, but learning.

In the March 10 New Yorker, Anthony Lane writes about plagiarism in music--Did George Harrison unconsciously plagiarize a three note riff from "He's So Fine," for his "My Sweet Lord," as a judge later wrote that he did?

If we unconsciously plagiarize three notes, or a style of short sentences or long sentences connected by "and's" and "but's" should we be sued and chastised, sued and said to have expropriated, acted unfairly? 

And what is language but imitation? And what is the difference between imitation and appropriation?

Of course artificial intelligence "learns" by reviewing the work of others, and incorporating that into an essay. Is that plagiarism? When we learn language as a two year old, are we not plagiarizing other people's thoughts and words? Are we not doing as we learn new languages just what AI is doing? 

Somehow, the visual arts seem less bound by the idea of plagiarism. In fact, the ability of an artist to render a "likeness" of a human face or a scene has been celebrated as a skill and as art.  Then photography came along and really stole images. Now, people argue about the rights of a sidewalk photographer to photograph someone without their permission. Some primitives, seeing a photograph were aghast and claimed the photographer had stolen their souls.

Sometimes, for fun, it's an exercise to simply see where people arrive, even if the road there is not clear.

So now, at the risk of displaying paintings which resemble each other in a way some may stamp "plagiarism," the Phantom provides:

Youngblood

DeRain

Youngblood

DeRain

Youngblood

Matisse

Youngblood

Youngblood

Matisse

Youngblood

Matisse

Youngblood

Youngblood

DeRain

Youngblood

DeRain

Youngblood

Gaugain

Munter

Youngblood

Munter  

Youngblood

Gaugain

Munter

Youngblood

Ineffable: Knowing It When You See It

 "I cannot define obscenity, but I know it when I see it."

That line comes from Justice Potter Stewart's opinion in Jacobellis v Ohio, in which he held a movie in question was not "hard core pornography."

He did not actually use that exact phrase, but it has been a reasonable and widely used paraphrase ever since, as it says that some things are hard to define but that doesn't mean we cannot make a judgment.

Flower Bed Porch, Obadiah Youngblood

The same is very much true for paintings and music.

People make good livings writing and talking about artworks--what makes Van Gogh exceptional? I cannot say, but I know he is. 

Gabrielle Munter 

But the same is true for other artists, who in their own way are just as stunning, although less known.  Gabrielle Munter's paintings adorned the Phantom's previous blog post and they are wonderful, but why the Phantom is at a loss to explain.

Gabrielle Munter

So is Andre DeRain, whose paintings are shown with this post, and so is August Macke. 

Andre DeRain

Munter, Macke, DeRain were orbiting the art world in overlapping orbits, although how much each influenced the others is beyond Mad Dog's ken.  Munter lived for a time with Kadinsky, a Russian artist, who became her lover after he became her art teacher. 

Andre DeRain

They are all wonderful, and they bear a familial resemblance, but like siblings and cousins, they are distinct, not clones or twins.

Andre De Rain