Greatest Culture...

[hannah_arendt]

There is no greatest literary culture. You make it very difficult by thinking it is possible to get an answer to this.

You are right. It is very dificult and even impossible. Why is the reason to do it?

[mortalterror]

So you are saying we can take Poland out of the running?

[hannah_arendt]

I am not however I am concious of the fact that polish culture isn`t well known. Many artist coming from this country creat things considered as 'strange' or not understood for non-polish. To tell you the truth, I haven`t been brought up on polish literature and I am very gratefull for it. Thanks to this fact I am not so passive and pessimistic.

Other thing is that before the II ww Poland was a normal, european country such as UK, France or Germany. If it comes to literature, I like very much polish literature from 20s. and 30s. I think it was a beautifull and very creative period in polish history.

[cacian]

this is getting a little bit like the Eurovision culture contest haha.
I personally could not tell a greatest culture from another not yet anyway. The other thing is what does one mean by culture?

[mortalterror]

this is getting a little bit like the Eurovision culture contest haha.
I personally could not tell a greatest culture from another not yet anyway. The other thing is what does one mean by culture?

I for one can't even make distinctions among the English language and I don't understand what you mean by "personally" "greatest" "another" or "yet." I don't judge words or see differences between them. You see, I lost my sense of judgement in a freak paper or plastic bag accident when I was a young boy. Ever since, I don't know my right hand from my left, or my own **** from steak tartare. I don't even know how I feel about that, because is happy better than sad and who am I to privilege one emotion over another? I drive when I see red or green, because they're both nice colors, aren't they? And what's a contest? Is that one of those divisive things with winners and losers? I'm not for that. In fact, I think at the Olympics everyone should just receive a participation trophy for showing up. You can't say Usain Bolt ran faster than all the other runners! That would hurt their feelings.

[hypatia_]

I for one can't even make distinctions among the English language and I don't understand what you mean by "personally" "greatest" "another" or "yet." I don't judge words or see differences between them. You see, I lost my sense of judgement in a freak paper or plastic bag accident when I was a young boy. Ever since, I don't know my right hand from my left, or my own **** from steak tartare. I don't even know how I feel about that, because is happy better than sad and who am I to privilege one emotion over another? I drive when I see red or green, because they're both nice colors, aren't they? And what's a contest? Is that one of those divisive things with winners and losers? I'm not for that. In fact, I think at the Olympics everyone should just receive a participation trophy for showing up. You can't say Usain Bolt ran faster than all the other runners! That would hurt their feelings.

green is go, red is stop, but the definition of culture is not as concrete.

[stlukesguild]

Dan Brown sucks. Shakespeare doesn't. Seems pretty concrete to me.

[stlukesguild]

In terms of painting I give it to Spain for Picasso, and Salvador Dali, followed by Mexico for the muralists Diego Rivera, Jorge Camarena, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueros, then maybe France for the late Impressionists, Magritte, and Matisse.

I agree with much of the rest of your posts... but your anti-Modernism really mars your appraisal of Modern painting/sculpture. Picasso is the Titan of the age, no doubt... and after that the Spanish produced Dali, Miro, Juan Gris, Tapies, Antonio Lopez-Garcia and a few others of real merit. Mexico is underrated, I will grant you... but greater that the French? France remained the undisputed center of the art world until WWII. Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne, and Rodin all lived well into the 20th century and produced some of their most influential works late into their lives. Post-Impressionism continued even further in the form of Signac, Vuillard, and Bonnard. The Fauves (French Expressionists) are the first major 20th century art movement and included artists such as Derain, late Signac, Kees van Dongen, Maurice de Vlaminck, and early Braque and Matisse. Picasso only really comes into his own in Paris and with Braque and the example of late Cezanne they develop the mnost influential movement of the 20th century: Cubism... which shatters the notion held since the Renaissance that the goal of painting is to mimic the appearance of reality. Matisse will go on to rival Picasso... and in many ways his influence is felt more today than Picasso's. Sonia and Robert Delaunay will go on to become leading figures in the move to absolute abstraction. Other leading French artists will include Constantin Brâncuşi, Fernand Léger, Jean Arp, Yve Tanguy, etc... A great many other artists from abroad (including Picasso) will make France/Paris their home and becomes part of the School of Paris. Among these we might include young John Singer Sargent, Modigliani, Soutine, Chagall, etc...

France was also the leader in the graphic/commercial arts. Both Art Nouveau and Art Deco are of French birth and leading graphic artists include Alphonse Mucha, Theophile Alexandre Steinlen, Pierre Bonnard, Jules Cheret... as well as crafts-artists Émile Gallé and René Lalique. Leading practicioners of Art Deco include the architect, Le Corbusier, George Barbier, Pierre Brissaud, etc...

Then if we look into the post-WWII we find Jean Dubbufet, Giacometti, and Balthus all as major alternatives to the American Abstract Expressionist juggernaut.

The United States... especially New York... clearly becomes the art capital after WWII but the work is difficult to judge in many ways. First of all, we are too close in time. Secondly, the critical writings in support of "The Triumph of American Painting"... especially those of Clement Greenberg... are clearly overblown hyperbole and we find many of the Abstract Expressionists being reassessed with the passage of time. There is also the problem of the huge sums of money invested in the works of artists such as Andy Warhol and the even more questionable Jean-Michel Basquiat and thge blatant attempts to maintain the reputations of these artists. Quite honestly, I can think of no American post-WWII painter that begins to rival Beckmann, Klee, or Bonnard... let alone Picasso, Matisse, Monet, and Degas.

[astrum]

Paintballing culture.


That's the greatest.

[cafolini]

It has been said: Wine yeast wins, followed by San Francisco sourdough.

[JBI]

Dan Brown sucks. Shakespeare doesn't. Seems pretty concrete to me.

The thing I don't get it this - some people think there is no such thing as an aesthetic criteria, the problem is they don't understand their own theory. Post-modernism says the canon is assembled from a ruling class's Aesthetic criteria - usually attributed to white, male, Christians and usually they throw dead in there too. My point is, what better criteria has one actually proposed to replace this. If we agree that criterias are biased, as they assuredly are, the question remains, is this actually a bad thing?

The dead old white canon has been the foundation of "western culture" for thousands of years already, wouldn't it make sense for us to study it, seeing as how it has been the norm of studied works until now? Why must people look to bring a mediocre person who does not fit such an aesthetic requirement into the same ranks as a tradition developed on a specific criteria, namely that of the white male christian.

It's one thing to say we must look at other cultures (the most important being the Arab, Persian, Indian and East-Asian traditions in terms of literature), but when you begin to unpack those other civilizations, it becomes clear that you are required to absorb yourself within those specific aesthetic criteria in order to get the works. Someone who reads Chinese poetry needs to recode their interpretive and critical judgments to the tradition of Chinese literature in order to delve deep into it.

One of the poems I have been reading almost daily lately has been Sima Xiangru's High Park Rhapsody. The work has been translated into English successfully at least once by one David Knechtges, but the work does not translate. The translation is helpful to someone as me, as the poem is virtually a dictionary in and of itself of every plant, bird, river, type of rock, type of tree imaginable, loaded with layers and layers of internal rhyming and rhetorical flourishing. It is more baroque than baroque, and reading it is like chewing through marble.

How do we approach something like that in English? How do we ever get near that, given that it requires a very specific language background that 99.9% of Chinese native speakers don't even have. Do we simplify it into English and pretend it was better in the original as a means of justifying reading a poem we don't find interesting (which happens with many translated works), or do we simply ignore it?

The tradition is the only thing that keeps the literary world together. IT has maintained a sort of conversation for thousands of years, my point is why should we abandon that now, given that it has been successful for so long. We can modify, or develop the canonical standard, but abandon it? To what purpose?

[PeterL]

Paintballing culture.


That's the greatest.

Nah, there are some yogurt cultures that better.

[cafolini]

Nah, there are some yogurt cultures that better.

That's true if the Pasteurization doesn't happen after fermentation. One more piece to deal with in healthcare. We shall soon have a statement: fermented after Pasteurization is over.

[lichtrausch]

The thing I don't get it this - some people think there is no such thing as an aesthetic criteria, the problem is they don't understand their own theory. Post-modernism says the canon is assembled from a ruling class's Aesthetic criteria - usually attributed to white, male, Christians and usually they throw dead in there too. My point is, what better criteria has one actually proposed to replace this. If we agree that criterias are biased, as they assuredly are, the question remains, is this actually a bad thing?

The dead old white canon has been the foundation of "western culture" for thousands of years already, wouldn't it make sense for us to study it, seeing as how it has been the norm of studied works until now? Why must people look to bring a mediocre person who does not fit such an aesthetic requirement into the same ranks as a tradition developed on a specific criteria, namely that of the white male christian.

It's one thing to say we must look at other cultures (the most important being the Arab, Persian, Indian and East-Asian traditions in terms of literature), but when you begin to unpack those other civilizations, it becomes clear that you are required to absorb yourself within those specific aesthetic criteria in order to get the works. Someone who reads Chinese poetry needs to recode their interpretive and critical judgments to the tradition of Chinese literature in order to delve deep into it.

One of the poems I have been reading almost daily lately has been Sima Xiangru's High Park Rhapsody. The work has been translated into English successfully at least once by one David Knechtges, but the work does not translate. The translation is helpful to someone as me, as the poem is virtually a dictionary in and of itself of every plant, bird, river, type of rock, type of tree imaginable, loaded with layers and layers of internal rhyming and rhetorical flourishing. It is more baroque than baroque, and reading it is like chewing through marble.

How do we approach something like that in English? How do we ever get near that, given that it requires a very specific language background that 99.9% of Chinese native speakers don't even have. Do we simplify it into English and pretend it was better in the original as a means of justifying reading a poem we don't find interesting (which happens with many translated works), or do we simply ignore it?

The tradition is the only thing that keeps the literary world together. IT has maintained a sort of conversation for thousands of years, my point is why should we abandon that now, given that it has been successful for so long. We can modify, or develop the canonical standard, but abandon it? To what purpose?

Great post. I think a sort of global canon is something worth striving for, even though people from varying cultural spheres are going to have a difficult time learning to appreciate each others' literature. It would help if polyglottery was encouraged more. This sort of effort is a good first step:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002...ooks.booksnews

[country doctor]

'greatest culture'? the doc aint gonna get pulled into that, literature chatters...

but he will let you all know where you'll find the strongest culture...

and that's in texas, literature chatters...the lonestar state...

on the other hand if you want to associate 'strongest culture' w/ 'greatest culture', you probably won't find an argument from the doc...

some examples of the tall texans that have helped produce the strongest, most capable culture known to man?

nolan ryan, billy joe shaver, larry mcmurtry and coke stevenson are just a few...

and as long as that texas culture remains as strong as forged steel, america will stand tall...

if the literature chatters ever have a chance they need to get down to the lonestar state for a couple of months...

if and when you do, the doc's sure that you will agree 100 percent w/ his analysis...