Guardian - With Lucian Freud's death, the art of the portrait has passed from the canvas to the screen.

Full article article here.

'State of the Art' - The New York Times website, 2005

Here is the article in full. But, below are some of my favorite paragraphs...

'In 2001, a high-priced gallery in London exhibited a work by Damien Hirst consisting of discarded coffee cups, empty beer bottles, candy wrappers and other detritus. It was valued at six figures. But a cleaning man, not being an art connoisseur, tossed the whole thing out with the trash. "The cleaning man," Kuspit comments, "was clearly the right critic."

'We live at a moment when artists have been asking the kinds of questions children ask - What is art? What is it good for? - and critics have for the most part been giving answers not even an adult can understand. "Mommy, why have we come all this way to see pictures of soup cans?" "It's Andy Warhol, sweetheart, and he's wielding a sharp, insinuating heuristic chisel to pry at the faultlines and lay bare the sedimented faces of his surround. "

'Once abstract art had taken hold, what did it matter if one person liked red squiggles and another preferred blue splashes? To Greenberg it did matter. "The nonrepresentational or 'abstract,' " he wrote as early as 1939, "if it is to have aesthetic validity, cannot be arbitrary and accidental, but must stem from obedience to some worthy constraint or original." True artists were conscious of "inflexible obligations," of standards and limitations.'

cannot be arbitrary or accidental - has to stem from criteria or rules... the skill is knowing /feeling/sensing/understanding the rules... the rules are the essence, the beginning and the point - why it's relevant.

it's finished when you have made a decision about every part of it, or decided to not make a decision.

Joan Miro.

Didn't expect to like this exhibition as much as I did. Wasn't so pleased about having to pay the concession price of £12.20 too, but Tate needs to fund their mission somehow.

First of all, reading Tate's brief biography on the wall with sentences such as 'testifying to his sensitivity to the world around him' and 'Miro lived through turbulent times and he was not immune to their impact' made me begin to relate to him and his practice. We, I am living in turbulent times - anti government protests in this country and many others - and this has had a significant effect on me, but I'm finding it hard to convert or channel this into any work.

Art isn't separate from big events - wars, politics, social shifting etc - of the time it was made. I believe it is significantly impacted, be it by the artists design or not. Art that is rooted in feeling - that has the ability to convey, however explicitly, the significance and impact of historical events. To show the strength and depth and breadth of human tolerance and resilience and spirit. This to me is 'good' art, 'successful' art. AND it is timeless.

Abstract expressionist artists were living during a period in time that witnessed two major world wars and huge social and financial upheaval, and so it is hard to separate the art they made from the impact of this. Equally now, it feels impossible for me to ignore the impact that current political, social and financial events have had on me, and through me, my art. Although like I said, I'm struggling to see it at the moment.

Tate even mentioned the influence of Abstract Expressionist painting on Miro. That he 'admired the ambition of' of it and suggested the dramatic increase in scale may have been a response to it. The desire for big has been plaguing my thoughts recently actually... To go big is to stop the view be only a spectator and include them so they are a participant. Large scale also says that this is important, it is big - dares you to ignore it's significance.

Looking at his blue triptychs, I realised the the scale was clearly what made them appealing to me, satisfied something. But where they failed for me was the visible brush marks and human effort that can be seen without needing to look too closely. I can see how these might be effective, but for me they interfered, I hope in my work, for there to be less visible human action. I also was overwhelmingly more excited about he large blue tryptichs then the oranges and reds. Might be something to do with the clarity of that colour... not sure.

Miro's view of the social responsibility of the artist - that they must make sure they say something, and that it is useful to society - is inspiring to me too, and links with the impact of society and the historical events of the time that I mentioned before,