1/6 The Rules Of Abstraction With Matthew Collings

Thanks ever so much for uploading and sharing this documentary!

thanks for your page, always waiting for new great docos. Lovely to see Collings back with something new. Bravo

I like how the subtitles are sometimes inaccurate and say "yeah" now and then out of the blue. The video itself is abstract art

Remember watching this 2 years ago and being taken aback by Klint's work, so pleased to have finally seen them in the flesh, absolutely amazing!!

I love the comments! Thank you everyone! Truly inspired! Liked the documentary too! ❤️ thank you!!!

Ive never felt so visually connected to an artist as an artist myself, hilma af klint, a kindred spirit.

absolutely grateful for this series of documentaries! thank you!

Beautiful concept - to look for some visual metaphor that is great enough to touch on the feeling of reality

Abstract art is built on common language. It is a commonality by all that is made by a humans. Any mark, gesture, swatch of color holds a language. The color blue might elicit different feelings or thoughts in different people, but blue in itself speaks of human physiology/biology and our range of vision in the visible spectrum, as well as all the present manifestations of that color in life. An aggressive gesture mark might express anger, speed, the noncontinuous reality of time, or it could mean nothing at all. Abstract art can be an action, like a dance. It can be about the present, a moment immortalized in time. It can be just as readily about nothing. Something and nothing are opposing poles of the same dynamic. How far can you go in the direction of nothing, until you get back to something? If merit were only credited to meaning; how much meaning would a piece of art need to qualify? What level of insight has to be proven for praise? Everything is a sliding scale. Disgust, offense, repulsion, are just as readily explored in art. Art was never synonymous with beauty. Aesthetic language spans all language, even the negative. If art undermines the categories by which you set to access value, might art challenge those categories and question as to why you have them in the first place? Not understanding a piece isn't an attack on the viewer's intelligence. It might only be in conflict with where your values lay in art. Some people have trouble looking for meaning in abstract art. My question is why are they looking for meaning at all? What questions do you think art should answer? If a portrait painter painted a woman, with flawless technique; what would be the meaning in that? The beauty of women? Beauty of natural shapes or light? Is that enough meaning? Is that important meaning? Or maybe, just the skill, merits the praise. Thinking like, a child can do it, or I can do it, isn't a valid critique on talent. Someone who says this is scribble, is more than welcome to buy the supplies, scribble and try to sell it. The term Starving artist is a stereotype for a reason (representational or not). Do we know how long this man has been drawing? Did he go to school? How many has he made? I guarantee, if an art school graduate and someone who never draws were both to scribble; the art school student's scribbles would be more appealing in a variety of subtle ways. The marks would have more confidence, the way the line interacts with the available space, more considered, and the balance of mark making between compression and space would be thought out. Every man can throw a punch, but a trained boxer doing the same kinetic action yields a much different result. There is plenty of representational art that people would say is bad. A beautiful landscape may express the beauty of nature. But for a person that was ever lost in the woods, they would say this is a lie, saying that nature instead is brutal and unforgiving, impersonal and uncaring. Meaning can be vast or narrow. Graphic designers, for ads, work to have narrow meaning. They want to tell you what to think without variation from their purpose. Abstract art is vast. Every person approaches and has a different experience with it. This is why people collect together in galleries with wine, but don't collect around billboards. If you have spent your life trying to decode abstract art, maybe try the polar opposite and decide there is nothing to decode; that there is nothing to get which is sitting outside or your intellectual range. It can be something that you totally get because there is nothing to get, and in that nothing can be everything, if you decide that too. A beautiful flower tells you all it wants to say. There is no more to decode, than there is a sunset.

I thoroughly enjoyed this documentary and video. I clicked the favorite and the watch again so that I can re-watch it and learn from everything you said through the repetition. I have not learned this much about art since taking "art appreciation" in school and that was all about Christian art in the early and middle ages. There turned out to be NO TIME for learning about any modern art in the private school I was attending at the time. I thank you SO much for sharing this.

Thank you v much for upoading - missed this the first time round, always enjoy Matthew's docs.

This video too funny! Comments below enhancing the mirth. What joy it brings tonight. Gratitude for cast and commentary. <3

Matthew Collings is like your favourite Uncle explaining something tremendously confusing in a very understandable matter. Every time i watch him explain something, i would like to paint a canvas with him cause we are so complementary in our styles. Would be a great experience!

Helmet of Clint, one of my favourite artists.

So grateful of the uploads! 

I love you for posting these, I love you so much

Great video :) Spirits are all around us and in us. You can feel them each time you get lost in the music, fall asleep at the beach or paint.

Photography changed everything. If you wanted something to look realistic, taking a photo was easier, faster and more realistic. Artists simply started painting things cameras can't see.

Art Documentaries & Matthew Collings, good job. Together we are stronger! :) :)

Thanks for the upload!