New Art

G. Ayres Example of New Art?

Having gone through a series of old vinyl recors from the 60's and 70's, I've noticed the strange word "New" appearing on the covers, and not a few times. Quite frequently the word "New Music" shows up, even today, to desribe contemporary composed music that is not always easily categorized. It includes a wide range of different types of musical projects.

During this time period (60's - 70's) people were actually fascinated, and paid good money, to hear silence in a concert hall for a few minutes and call that "composition", someone plucking and banging various intruments, workshops with modern composers spending hours expounding on the content of their music, which had to be explained to be understood "correctly".

There was a contemporary New York School both in art and music, but only the latter was sometimes referred to as "new".

As so called "modernism" came relatively late to the musical scene, compared with visual arts, I wonder where they got the term "new" from. Because art, as modern and radical it could ever be, wasn't typified "new".

Or, was it?

Kline on taste

Painting Number 2, 1954

Franz Kline once said 'You instinctively like what you can't do', when commenting on Fra Angelico, as interviewed by Frank O'Hara in 1958.

So, with that logic applied, everyone should like Kline's works.

Motherwell's signature

Titled "untitled", this litho from 1966 (ed. of 225 copies) shows the typical works of Robert Motherwell of the day. This particular image has a little resemblance to the map of the British Islands. But you could say that it, together with his similar artworks of the period, was his signature at that time.