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Not at all. You are defending him as a friend and not simply as a fellow member of a universally privileged group.
{I]
SLG- Dear Seasider... I quite assure you that our beloved JBI isn't a misogynist.
It would take much more than your assurance to convince me of that.
...undiluted bad mouthing is not criticism as much as professional assassination
Seriously, I can't think of any member her who has more often called attention to the efforts of women writers, be it Jane Austen, P.K. Page, Atwood, Toni Morrison, or Anne Carson. From mys experience he has discussed their writings no differently than that of any male writer. By the same token, he is just as quick to make broad dismissive comments about any number of male writers regardless of their esteem and his opinions, though sometimes harsh and not always in agreement with my own, are certainly based upon a rich reading experience. There are few members here who can even begin to approach the wealth of reading experience JBI has.
As a fairly recent contributor I regret that I have not had the pleasure of reading JBI's comments on the literary scene past and present. But I do wonder how you manage to form conclusions about the relative wealth of reading experience possessed by other members.
Now that you have called him to task, I have little doubt that JBI will eventually present you with a far more in-depth criticism of Atwood... although considering he is currently studying in China and has limited time on the internet, you may just need to wait.[/]
And I will. I hope that he will produce criticism more scholarly than talk of gimmicks, bandwagons, rants, flimsy politics, irrelevance and age.
That is cynicism uttered from the heights of elitist privilege.
And that's little more than PC thought... also from the heights of privilege in academia.
It was your choice to introduce Wilde's thoughts on art. I have great admiration for the man as an artist and as a victim of Victorian hypocrisy and bigotry. But I think he was unable to resist the lure of the witty and epigrammatic put down and it did him no good at all in front of Bow Street magistrates.
How does Guernica or the Raft of The Medusa, to name but two, fit into this mindset?
Wilde was not being cynical, but rather rejecting the notion that art can be judged by values or standards external to art. A work of art is not to be judged as "bad" because it expresses the wrong religious views, the wrong political views, the wrong social views. This goes against the very purpose of art which is not merely to reinforce the values, standards, and beliefs of those in the position of power or those of the audience, but rather to transmit the perceptions of the individual artist in the most artful manner.
I agree wholeheartedly with this except I think there may be a place for the beliefs of those who are not "in the position of power or those of the audience" but who find solidarity in association.
Guernica and the Raft of the Medusa both have powerful social messages and are both a sort of protest... but neither disintegrates into the pathetic phenomenon of our time... the anti-aesthetic "protest art". Protest art is shallow and one-dimensional. The message is to regurgitate the ugly reality of the world back at us as if highlighting the ugliness of the world were a revolutionary act. Neither art nor tragedy are one-dimensional. Protest artists fail to recognize that beauty is the ultimate protest against ugliness, which is why the absence of beauty or the aesthetic shows that they are not truly critical... but rather wallowing in self-pity.
I agree about the shallowness of the {I]anti -aesthetic protest art{/I] whose followers seem to want to
regurgitate the ugly reality of the world back at us.
This is very reminiscent of Marx's views on philosophers who {I]up to now have only interpreted the world; the point however is to change it.[/I]
As Donald Kuspit suggested in his critical text, The End of Art:
In the post aesthetic world the work of art becomes a bully pulpit; and the artist tries to bully the spectator into believing what the artist believes. He becomes a self-righteous bully, preaching to us (or rather at us) about what we already know- the ugliness and injustice of the world. ("Come see the injustice inherent in the system")- without offering any aesthetic, contemplative alternative to it. Indeed, the aesthetic, the contemplative, the "beautiful" are bad words in the revolutionary's vocabulary.
If we recognise the ugliness and injustice of the world, like Owen and Shelley and others did we can make art that is not bullying but persuasive and convincing that things need to change.
Both Guernica and the Raft of the Medusa... as well as the poems cited employ a mastery of formal aesthetic... contrast the horror and the tragedy and the ugliness of the subject with an aesthetic beauty that transforms the work into something sublime.
I would never deny the importance of beauty or its immanence but I dispute the preeminence of the views of Oscar Wilde on the exclusivity of Art. And I wonder whether his experience of 18 months Penal Servitude changed them. De Profundis isn't as full of witty quips in my recollection.
I doubt that Wilde, a bi-sexual in Victorian England, was ever so naive as to not be aware of the ugliness and horrors that existed in the world. He merely recognized that fixating upon such subjects was no guarantee of aesthetic merit:
I think it is one of the artist's obligations to create as perfectly as he or she can, not regardless of all other consequences, but in full awareness, nevertheless, that in pursuing other values- in championing Israel or fighting for the rights of women, or defending the faith, or exposing capitalism, supporting your sexual preferences or speaking for your race- you may simply be putting on a saving scientific, religious, political mask to disguise your failure as an artist. Neither the world's "truth" nor god's goodness will win you beauty's prize.
William Gass[/I]
No comment.
In the poems I chose as illustrations the views concerned the savagery of war and the damage that the excesses of inequality produces. Self evident truths to the majority, I would say.
Yes... they represent one aspect of "truth"... that experienced by the poets in the trenches. As such they are not far from the truth witnessed and expressed by Francisco Goya in response to an earlier war: the Napoleonic invasions of Spain:
But are these inherently superior to the paintings of J.L. David, who witnessed the events here unfolding from another perspective... that of the rise of Napoleon as hero and savior of France?
Certainly we may empathize more with Goya, but does this make him the greater artist? What if we were take this dichotomy of artistic views into another realm... that of religion. If we are of the Catholic persuasion do we dismiss the art of Cranach and Durer and Breughel that ennobles the Protestant cause... or that of the Islamic painters or Hindu sculptors? The "art pour l'art" that Wilde and Baudelaire and Pater championed was not as effete view art without moral outrage... but it was a view of art that suggested that taking the "right" stance was no assurance of aesthetic merit.
Agreed. I don't think we should make qualitative lists of artists simply because they reflect our own preferred versions of Utopia. But neither do I think we should condemn those whose vision may disturb us.
So Coe is a politically oriented artist and while some may agree with her politics, others may not. My main point in response to JBI's rant is that his hope for the post-modern world, that people, and particularly women poets will stop complaining about oppression, give up the struggle and go back to their safe pastoral/traditional roots, is indefensible on any grounds.
My guess is that JBI, from his position as a contemporary college student, does not see a great deal of oppression and disparity based upon gender. There are probably as many or more students in his classes who are female and the same probably holds true of the professors. At the same time, he probably recognizes any number of the leading Canadian writers as being female (carson, Atwood, Page). I suspect he doesn't see a need for a continued focus of women writers upon "protest" themes. I would add that there may also be a sense of posturing involved by any artist who plays up the social and political and racial cards as a way of grabbing attention, in spite of their own privileged position. I, for example, find the artist Kara Walker hard to stomach with her continual focus upon racial inequality inherent in the system ("Come see the injustice inherent in the system!") considering her own experience born into a position of wealth.
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
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