Posted on 11/21/2007 11:37:41 AM PST by JZelle
Yes: down with either/or. As for evolution and creation—and I know this is wildly off topic for this thread—I’m of the mind that the best science is simply the close and careful investigation of God’s fingerprints unburdened by any preconceptions of what the investigation will reveal. Just as the best art (to get back on topic) has to closely and deeply investigate a truth beyond the surface of what is being portrayed.
No, his name was Boris B. Gordon and I was wrong about the 1906, it was painted in 1912.
And Lucien Freud?? Good God. Chacun a son gout.
But it's a throwback, a monument to a bygone age. Art doesn't look like that anymore.
If I'm honest, I think that visual art may have run its course. Once one takes painting from an act of worship to storytelling to allegory to depiction to impression to abstraction to dreams visualized to paint-on-canvas to blahblahblah, there's really no place left to go. Dada was the Punk Rock of visual art; just as the Sex Pistols were the End of Rock 'n' Roll, so Duchamp and Magritte wrapped it up for Western Civ's deconstruction of cave painting.
And just as "rock" since the Sex Pistols has been nothing but pastiche and dance music, the visual arts after Dada have been little more than styling and profiling. Post-Dada, what did we see? A whole lot of nothing, in my opinion: de Kooning scrawls, Stella boxes, Rothko stripes, and that stupid Jasper Johns flag thing. In other words, a bunch of people jerking off. With nowhere to go post-punk, rock became either pure commercial product or went over to theater (e.g. Hair Metal). With nowhere to go post-Dada, visual artists either went pure commercial (Pop Art) or went over to pure shock theater — dead animals, messy bedrooms, etc. Rock Star, Art Star — there's really not much difference.
I admire the pugnaciously backwards spirit behind artrenwal.com, and I also like some of the works featured there. (I think this work is a fine example of craft painting. It is sentimental, yes, and breaks no new ground, but even so it's a powerful piece, well-executed and beautiful.) However, I fear that today's art "renewal" movement is more nostalgic than truly revanchist. The sort of folks who buy Thomas Kinkade's wet-cobblestone Main-Street fantasy paintings are not doing so out of any intellectual bent towards the culture and values of the past; they just think they're pretty.
(And that's okay: if pretty is what one wants, one should have it. Still, as a reactionary of the Altar-and-Throne school, I can't help but wonder what an artist's brush in the hands or a real hard-ass Right-winger might produce.)
A few more words on Kinkade: I admire Thomas Kinkade as a businessman, but his self-stated goal is to "bring to millions of people an art that they can understand", and I'm not sure that mass appeal is the most important aim when creating a work of art. To my mind, art (of any kind — painting, music, whatever) is an intellectual activity, not an emotional activity; art should proceed from the artist's true self (that is, his reason) and is meant to be understood via reason. ("Art" that can be immediately grasped on an emotional level is called "entertainment".) In other words, I think Art is an intellectual activity, and should be born from and perceived through an act of intellect. Putting on Bach in the background while folding shirts is fine, but one does not truly listen to Bach except by sitting quietly and focusing one's mind upon the music. Bach used as background music isn't really Bach at all. In like manner, a "purty pitcher" may please the eye of the Average Joe, but the Average Joe is cheating himself out of the true esthetic experience if "purtyness" is all he wants out of a painting. Esthetics is a branch of knowledge based upon Reason, not emotion, and as such must be taught to people just as must every other branch of knowledge. To grow up without a proper education in esthetics is to grow up blind to the beauty that lies beneath the surface of art.
(This is why art education from elementary school on up is so important — but don't get me started on that subject.)
Anyway, I don't want to harsh on Kinkade too much. He's skilled, and he sells a lot of paintings, but James McNeill Whistler he ain't. Let's leave it at that.
Yes, indeed, chacun a son gout! But it’s interesting to discuss and compare taste. The conflict in the elderly black lady’s case is resolved as soon as it is presented—the conclusion is foregone, and canned, like muzak. Take a look at the face of St. Matthew in Caravaggio’s painting of his first encounter with Jesus. The artist gives us no easy answer to his feelings of bewilderment, fear and awe. As for Lucien Freud—maybe I just like to feel disturbed by art sometimes. I will admit that seeing a whole exhibit’s worth of his paintings is a lot to take.
Mmmmmm...Artistic Bacon!
Only half as much as the dogs playing poker. But three times as much as the dogs playing pool.
How the hell do you make a “Bridge” with paw! Sheesh!
Great points. I would add: art is perceived through an act of intellect that ultimately resonates in the heart. I was in Rome last summer and went into the church where the Caravaggio paintings of the St. Matthew story are and I stood there looking and looking and taking it in and by the end I was just sobbing. I wonder whether a Kinkade painting, or one of the salon winners on artrenewal, could have that effect on somebody? Where they end up wiped out for an hour afterward, and then, finally, elated and inspired?
Absolutely. That's what knowledge is. Of course, there are aspects of Reason that lie beyond the intellect, as Pascal reminds us:
Le cœur a ses raisons
que la raison ne connaît point;
on le sait en mille choses.
I was in Rome last summer and went into the church where the Caravaggio paintings of the St. Matthew story are and I stood there looking and looking and taking it in and by the end I was just sobbing.
What a powerful story! I had a similar experience with the Chagall windows at the Art Institute of Chicago a couple of years back.
Me, too. But I also like Miro's paintings. Kind of resembles those.
Going waaay off thread here: you say you are a monarchist. Very interesting. Is there a claimant to the American throne somewhere? Or would we revert to the Hanoverians? My father was born in Russia in 1913, emigrated to Canada and finally to the USA and once told me: “I lived under the Czar, under Kerensky, under Lenin, under Stalin, under King George V and under 12 U.S. Presidents, and from my fairly wide experience I will tell you: the best government of them all is constitutional monarchy.”
The states descended from the thirteen original British colonies would no doubt be given Commonwealth status, most likely as a Dominion, making the King or Queen of England the legal head of state, as HM Elizabeth II is in Commonwealth nations today. (HME2R is the Queen of Canada, for example.) This would also apply to the Pacific Northwest states.
Maryland, having been established as a Catholic colony by Lord Baltimore, might be allowed to acclaim the sitting heir to the true Jacobite crown (the Bavarian royal House of von Wittelsbach) as their sovereign. (The true current King of England is HM Francis II, aka Franz Bonaventura Adalbert Maria von Wittelsbach, Hereditary Prince and Duke of Bavaria — who would indeed make a fine king.)
Hawaii would go back to the Hawaiian royal family. (They had one, you know.) The Czar of all the Russias would reign over Alaska and parts of the Pacific Northwest.
As for the center of the country, I suppose the area of the Louisiana Purchase should rightly go back to being a part of the French Empire. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a King or Emperor of France since 1870 (Napoleon III), and he was kind of iffy, so no one really knows who the true King of France even is these days. For my money, the crown of France (and Louisiana) should go to Louis Alphonse, the present-day Duke of Anjou (who would be Louis XX if he were king).
The West belonged to Spain, and the Spanish Empire could conceivably lay claim to everything within the bounds of their North American colony, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, including California, the desert Southwest, and almost all of the Rocky Mountain states. Texas, as everyone knows, has existed under six flags (in reverse order: U.S.A., C.S.A., Republic of Texas, Mexico, French Empire, and Spanish Empire); its most recent non-U.S. flag was that of Mexico, so a case could be made for Texans to hail one of the current heirs to the Imperial Throne of Mexico as their king or queen. Unfortunately, there were two Mexican Empires (the Iturbide empire and the one under Maximilian von Habsburg), so nobody really knows who the Emperor of Mexico is today. Bearing this in mind, it's likely that Texas would revert back to being part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and thus would have HM Juan Carlos, King of Spain, as its king.
awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
Well, let’s not bring Kinkade into this. I think the discussion was about whether it’s still possible to do something valuable in representational art, and Kinkade isn’t even trying to do art.
Wow. Somewhere in all of this there is a fantastic what-if novel, movie or maybe best of all graphic novel.
As for whom I would chose as King Of All The Americas, given his recent, immortal “Porque no te callas,” long live HM Juan Carlos.
#27—one of the oddest pix I have ever seen—where did it come from?
I just Googled ‘pig painter’ in an image search.
I seriously doubt I would pay more than $50.00 for this "art"
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