LAW AND WHAT I’VE BEEN THINKING: So I maybe get a bit aggressive on the subject of nonrepresentational art. Tepper provided by far the most interesting explanation of its appeal that I’ve heard so far. I will share with you all and see a) what you think of it and b) whether you agree with me that this seems like a very legal approach to art. (That’s neither an insult nor a compliment.)

I have found it hard to see the point of very abstract art. You know: what I called, talking to Tepper, “the stripey people.” The paintings that are just blocks or strips of color. Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt. On one level, I like them, the way that I like eating escargot, or Ghirardelli. There’s a strong sensual pleasure to be obtained from a particularly red red, an especially longing blue, or an unusually interstellar green. But this strikes me as craft (like cooking), not art. There is more meaning to be found in the contemplation of the sun setting orange over the low District skyline; and I am a meaning junkie even more than I am a pleasure addict. I am sure this is related to what I’ve called here my “lurid” tastes. I want blood and guts, and have a hard time taking the beautiful without a very high-proof shot of the sublime.

Dave offered a couple intriguing descriptions of the Rothko appeal: a) It’s a puzzle. You learn that Rothko was a landscape painter and suddenly all the studied abstraction falls into place like the solution of a Christie novel. Click-click-click, the sound of a key working the tumblers of a lock. He, though only at my urging, compared this to the logic puzzles on the LSAT (which I used to love–parents, please subscribe to Games magazine!).

b) It’s the same thing I was getting at when I quoted Witch Week here on the blog: “Charles liked poetry because the lines were so short. You could think your own thoughts in the spaces around the print.” You can fill in the blanks, and to some extent write your own text (as the postmodernists say), fill the gaps in the art with the presence in the self. I objected that this might be interesting but was unlikely to be surprising, and surprise is a large part of what I seek in art. Nonetheless, the fact that I did quote that Witch Week line should suggest that I see the appeal of this perspective–and it really is part of the attraction of poetry over prose, even as it’s also the reason I neither read nor write poetry nearly as often as I read or write prose. I don’t, anymore, much, read to escape the self; but neither do I read to encounter her, anymore, much. What I want to encounter is characters, world.

c) So my theory: It’s not just the logic-puzzle aspect of modern highly abstract (like uber-impressionism, as Dave pointed out) art that attracts the legal mind. Much of law is about filling in gaps. This is most obvious in common law, where you’re specifically supposed to be figuring out what the prior tradition and the gaps in that tradition suggest about the case at hand; but it’s also blatantly present, though often denied, in statutory interpretation as well. So this is a natural mode for the legal mind. But also, highly abstract art (as vs. surrealist or expressionist art, which are pretty much the opposite of abstract art!) is cerebral, depending for its impact on preexisting philosophy rather than serving as the bedrock of experience upon which philosophy can be based. Now, this is pretty obviously an exaggeration! But I do think it may help me, personally, figure out why I love both highly rational, syllogistic philosophy (the Parmenides, go read now) and character-rich, lurid literature and even modern art. The former can only subsist upon the meat of the latter; whereas abstract art seems to me to depend too much on preexisting worldviews to be able to radically reshape those worldviews.

On the other hand, I’ve been known to be wrong! That’s what email is for, friends….