Less Is More

I’ll explain this video in moment.

The phrase “less is more” comes from a Robert Browning poem from the middle of the Victorian era. It summed up the modernist reaction to the excesses of the Victorian era. Although strongly associated with Mies Van Der Rohe and the Bauhaus (please Google if not familiar with either) it also informed the less dogmatic modernism of architects like Frank Lloyd Wright or by the commercial works done in the Art Deco spirit.

Mies and his Bauhaus colleagues eliminated all ornament; Wright and the Art Deco modernists did not. But even when ornament was allowed, it was no longer ok to lather it on like in the Paris Opera House. I picked the Chrysler Building as a contrast – yes, it is richly ornamented, but the ornamentation is moderated to fit with the building shape and style.

Ok, the video. Art and Life are alternately about excess and restraint. A summer flower garden can be wild with shape and color. Only a few artists are able to portray this sort of excess in a palatable way. A few did and do. One is David Hockney, whose work celebrates excess – yet he also celebrates restraint. He has lived mostly in the US since the early 1960s, though his new show is of work done back home in his native Yorkshire.

The first video show a muted real landscape – no color is brighter than a muted yellow. The few greens are pale. It is from my backyard, and represents a typical late fall landscape, on the cusp of winter.

This second video shows 2 painters who paint excess. The Cabanal is banal –when an artist can do everything, show every color, paint every texture, the effect is not always worthy of praise. The second piece is by my hero, Hockney. And no, not all excess is failure. In Nichols Canyon, David Hockney manages a riot of color, texture and shape. It’s a wonderful painting. Still the muted paintings of Camille Corot (the last four shown) show just how much one can say about a quite, cloudy day.