abstract art continues to provoke
annoyance and confusion in equal measure
you know the kind of thing a large blue
canvass for the solitary white line down
the middle white paint swapped over a
deep black background a seemingly random
bunch of steel beams sprouting like
weeds what does this mean is someone
making fun of us
surely this could be the work of
children to adopt a more sympathetic
approach which can be useful and fair we
need to go back to first principles and
ask what’s so good about not showing
what something looks like the central
intention of abstract art is to bypass
representation and get straight to
emotion like music abstract art is best
interpreted as echoing or giving a form
to certain of our inner states or moods
some might be relatively straightforward
like anger or calm but others will defy
easy definition in language it is
therefore not very helpful to say this
painting doesn’t look like anything it
is true that it doesn’t look like
anything in the outer world but this is
because it is trying to represent the
inner one we should be asking what does
this work feel like does it evoke any of
my emotional states what piece of
mankind’s inner landscape is being
summoned the great abstract artists side
family was born in 1928 in the pretty
ultra conservative town of Lexington
Virginia his father had been a pitcher
for the Chicago White Sox in UK terms
today that’s the equivalent of being a
Premier League footballer the artist was
actually christened Edwin Parker Tom Lee
but became known as psy in honor of one
of the most prominent figures of
baseball history siyoung he went to
Darlington a fancy expensive private
school and eventually made his way to
New York to study art in the early 1950s
he then spent a year touring the
Mediterranean the journey changed his
life he found himself an aristocratic
girlfriend moved to Rome and inaugurated
his trademark abstract style he hadn’t
left reason behind he was deeply alive
to the lessons of Roman and Renaissance
art what he wanted to do was give form
to the inner states of humankind just as
the ancient masters had given form to
our outer ones take his panorama
of 1955 which is now in the Museum of
Modern Art
New York we can’t see the lines
precisely but they fill the canvas like
mysterious script on a blackboard we are
held at the moment of being on the cusp
of something we are about to understand
but have not yet understood this work
homes in on what it’s like when you
almost know what you think about
something but not quite it pictorial
eise’s a moment in reflective life
suggestive of ambition and confusion it
shouldn’t surprise us in any way that
Twombly loved figurative
representational art indeed his favorite
artist was the 17th century painter Pusa
who had also lived in Rome but he wanted
to do something different in his own
work the title of this painting hero and
Leander makes reference to a tragic
couple in classical Greece Leander used
to swim three kilometres every night
across the Hellespont to meet his lover
Lord Byron tried it and now there’s a
club but formerly hasn’t tried to show
us the dripping torso or the treacherous
moonlit waves like Poussin would have
done instead he has made a picture of
what a certain feeling of love is like
the sense perhaps that someone you care
about is making desperate efforts to get
close to you or the sense that someone
you love is desperately longing to make
contact with you it is a work of drama
and passion showing without representing
gazing at the intricate soft swirling
surface one is drawn into the precious
sense of the price of love 12 Lee’s
career was devoted to making portraits
of our inner lives so he might learn to
communicate its fruits to others
cutting others to share our experiences
is notoriously difficult words can feel
clumsy this is more elegant
apart from abstraction Tom Lee had a
tendency to go in for some very simple
looking bits of writing it’s a bit like
a note to oneself half doodled on the
back of a company report an idea or a
phrase that’s come into one’s head but
doesn’t yet have a definite meaning it
looks like graffiti something scrawled
on a neighbor’s wall to give a fence to
express anti-social aggression but in
warm Lee’s hands that urgency that
excitement and daring that risk-taking
that readiness to cause offence and
upset people’s comfortable expectations
are being deployed in the name of wires
cultivation and true
self development of the enlargement and
refinement of the spirit all things for
which Goethe in Italy is shorthand it’s
a reminder of what we should think about
and pay attention to far more than these
slogans and brand names to which we are
continually exposed sigh Tom Lee died in
2011 in his beloved Rome he was 83 and
he’d lived to see his works game immense
prestige and appreciation amongst those
whose opinions he greatly respected his
paintings are simultaneously about
nothing and about everything that is
most powerful private and hitherto in
communicable but important within us all
he will last as long as some of those great Romans he so deeply admired
annoyance and confusion in equal measure
you know the kind of thing a large blue
canvass for the solitary white line down
the middle white paint swapped over a
deep black background a seemingly random
bunch of steel beams sprouting like
weeds what does this mean is someone
making fun of us
surely this could be the work of
children to adopt a more sympathetic
approach which can be useful and fair we
need to go back to first principles and
ask what’s so good about not showing
what something looks like the central
intention of abstract art is to bypass
representation and get straight to
emotion like music abstract art is best
interpreted as echoing or giving a form
to certain of our inner states or moods
some might be relatively straightforward
like anger or calm but others will defy
easy definition in language it is
therefore not very helpful to say this
painting doesn’t look like anything it
is true that it doesn’t look like
anything in the outer world but this is
because it is trying to represent the
inner one we should be asking what does
this work feel like does it evoke any of
my emotional states what piece of
mankind’s inner landscape is being
summoned the great abstract artists side
family was born in 1928 in the pretty
ultra conservative town of Lexington
Virginia his father had been a pitcher
for the Chicago White Sox in UK terms
today that’s the equivalent of being a
Premier League footballer the artist was
actually christened Edwin Parker Tom Lee
but became known as psy in honor of one
of the most prominent figures of
baseball history siyoung he went to
Darlington a fancy expensive private
school and eventually made his way to
New York to study art in the early 1950s
he then spent a year touring the
Mediterranean the journey changed his
life he found himself an aristocratic
girlfriend moved to Rome and inaugurated
his trademark abstract style he hadn’t
left reason behind he was deeply alive
to the lessons of Roman and Renaissance
art what he wanted to do was give form
to the inner states of humankind just as
the ancient masters had given form to
our outer ones take his panorama
of 1955 which is now in the Museum of
Modern Art
New York we can’t see the lines
precisely but they fill the canvas like
mysterious script on a blackboard we are
held at the moment of being on the cusp
of something we are about to understand
but have not yet understood this work
homes in on what it’s like when you
almost know what you think about
something but not quite it pictorial
eise’s a moment in reflective life
suggestive of ambition and confusion it
shouldn’t surprise us in any way that
Twombly loved figurative
representational art indeed his favorite
artist was the 17th century painter Pusa
who had also lived in Rome but he wanted
to do something different in his own
work the title of this painting hero and
Leander makes reference to a tragic
couple in classical Greece Leander used
to swim three kilometres every night
across the Hellespont to meet his lover
Lord Byron tried it and now there’s a
club but formerly hasn’t tried to show
us the dripping torso or the treacherous
moonlit waves like Poussin would have
done instead he has made a picture of
what a certain feeling of love is like
the sense perhaps that someone you care
about is making desperate efforts to get
close to you or the sense that someone
you love is desperately longing to make
contact with you it is a work of drama
and passion showing without representing
gazing at the intricate soft swirling
surface one is drawn into the precious
sense of the price of love 12 Lee’s
career was devoted to making portraits
of our inner lives so he might learn to
communicate its fruits to others
cutting others to share our experiences
is notoriously difficult words can feel
clumsy this is more elegant
apart from abstraction Tom Lee had a
tendency to go in for some very simple
looking bits of writing it’s a bit like
a note to oneself half doodled on the
back of a company report an idea or a
phrase that’s come into one’s head but
doesn’t yet have a definite meaning it
looks like graffiti something scrawled
on a neighbor’s wall to give a fence to
express anti-social aggression but in
warm Lee’s hands that urgency that
excitement and daring that risk-taking
that readiness to cause offence and
upset people’s comfortable expectations
are being deployed in the name of wires
cultivation and true
self development of the enlargement and
refinement of the spirit all things for
which Goethe in Italy is shorthand it’s
a reminder of what we should think about
and pay attention to far more than these
slogans and brand names to which we are
continually exposed sigh Tom Lee died in
2011 in his beloved Rome he was 83 and
he’d lived to see his works game immense
prestige and appreciation amongst those
whose opinions he greatly respected his
paintings are simultaneously about
nothing and about everything that is
most powerful private and hitherto in
communicable but important within us all
he will last as long as some of those great Romans he so deeply admired
Please follow and like us: