Living the literary life?

[Bitterfly]

It has been suggested by some critics that "beauty" and concern with aesthetics have been dismissed as shallow because they imagined as being inherently feminine... as opposed, no doubt, to the more rigorous art that is more focused upon rigorous thought.

Does that idea of beauty as feminine come from the Burkean (or Kantian) distinction between the beautiful and the sublime? Is it still used nowadays? It's strange that the works of so many masculine artists can be "dismissed...as inherently feminine".

Perhaps... but then again it may also convey the inability of those who are "experts"... even artists within a single genre, to recognize the beauty in other artistic forms when these go beyond the accepted forms that beauty took in the past. I have pointed out to my studio-mates that their inability to appreciate the more jarring "beauty" of Gorecki, Ornette Coleman, Osvaldo Golijov... or any Modernist/Contemporary "classical" composer is certainly not unlike the response that many others have when responding to Modernist/Post-Modernist painting.

Yes! Beauty is almost a question of habit. Only some musics/paintings/poems are more difficult to see as beautiful than others, because they don't fit classical criteria. I didn't like Picasso or Matisse straight away, for instance, but now I find their works beautiful. Same for some of Schubert's pieces, funnily enough. I wonder whether I'll end up finding dodecaphonic music beautiful one day though - I know some people do.

Thanks a lot, by the way, for the pictures and comments. Very interesting.

Charming sentiment, that to some degree fits my own, but I always needed specific-rendered role models, somewhat less lavish than Kafka's exuberance for Wilde. Decadent wit and art for art's sake was quaint when I was an impressionable underclassman.

Hmm, I agree and disagree with you. Of course it's easier being impressed by and try to follow such models when you're just out of your teens (don't know why, though). But as an adult, while you can admit to yourself that you'll never live such a life (too many responsibilities), and that's probably part of growing up, I don't think it's wise to completely forsake them. There's nothing particularly "quaint" about decadent art, if you think of Huysmans or Mirbeau. Rather, it points to a certain ideal - of cleverness, of aesthetics, of beauty - and what a pity it is to abandon all ideals! I'm rather sick of having to leave them to adolescents!

[stlukesguild]

It has been suggested by some critics that "beauty" and concern with aesthetics have been dismissed as shallow because they imagined as being inherently feminine... as opposed, no doubt, to the more rigorous art that is more focused upon rigorous thought.

Does that idea of beauty as feminine come from the Burkean (or Kantian) distinction between the beautiful and the sublime? Is it still used nowadays? It's strange that the works of so many masculine artists can be "dismissed...as inherently feminine".

Since the Renaissance there has always been a sort of division between masters of disegno (drawing and design) and color. One can almost attribute this to Vasari who argued that the Roman and Florentine painters who focused upon drawing were somehow more "serious" than the sensuous colorists of Venice. Intriguingly, a large majority of the Florentine/Roman tradition focused more upon the male nude than the female (Botticelli and Raphael being obvious exceptions. Arguably this may owe much to the sexual preferences of these artists (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Bronzino, Pontormo, Mantegna, Donatello)... but it also makes a certain logical sense. The male nude with greater definition of musculature is far more conducive to a style that focuses upon linear contours and sculptural form... while the softer female nude was far more suitable to a greater tactile sensuality and soft-focus atmosphere as found in the Venetian tradition.

These two polarities continued into later painting. Rembrandt and Velazquez were clearly colorists... or rather, "painterly painters". Ingres... and even Blake were far more about line... disegno. Of course there was always Rubens who could draw like Michelangelo and paint like Titian... and as such he has long proven problematic for some. But then again... if we are honest we will recognize that this division is not so clear. Ingres, for example, is an absolutely exquisite colorist. Nevertheless... what he does exhibit in his work (and the same can be seen in Blake, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Pontormo, Bronzino, etc...) is a clear "abstraction". Blake would declare, for example, that while there may be no such lines or abstractions in nature, they do exist in imagination.

It would seem thus that the focus upon disegno became a focus upon abstraction... and abstraction, as an invention of the imagination, was thought of as more rigorous than the colorists who merely responded to their visual perceptions. Cezanne famously said of Monet, "Monet is but an eye... but my God! What an eye!" In spite of the compliment, one must admit that there is also a certain condensation involved. This condescending manner continued into Modernism where a great sensualist such as Matisse or Bonnard could be dismissed as intellectually "light-weight"... after all, they were but responding to their perceptions. Duchamp would push the gap even further. Fearing the old French dictum, "dumb as a painter" he developed an artistic language in which the idea was everything... the form negligible.

Duchamp's impact continues to mark art today. Where a great painter recognizes that the process of painting... whether one is completely inventing one's imagery... or responding to a physical model... involves continuous thought... to the point that each mark is often weighed as carefully as a single word in a lyric poem... The conceptualists or Post-Duchampians argue that aesthetic and formal concerns are somehow false. They would have us all believe that Matisse and Bonnard and Morandi are are somehow not as good as they appear... while the gallery laden with inflated condoms, cuckoo clocks, sandbags, and random documentations are somehow far better than they look.

Of course they would never blatantly suggest that Matisse or any great sensual painter is too "feminine" while the Minimalists, the Art Brut, and the performance artists are more "masculine". Such would be clearly "politically incorrect"... and suicide as far as one's reputation went. Still the sub-text is clear. Art based in rigorous intellectual theory is to be far more valued than art rooted in sensuality and the artist's response to the physical, tactile world. Of course I am clearly biased toward the art rooted in sensory experience... art that embraces beauty and color and the sensual touch.

[Etienne]

StLukes, I think you are giving far too much credit to some of those Post-Duchampians, my experience with them is that they mostly make crappy art because they cannot make anything beautiful, but still want to pass as artists.

[Bitterfly]

Yep, it's annoying how ambivalent they are: I know how I always hesitate between wondering whether it's genuinely art, and thinking they're just intellectualising something quite uninteresting and/or trying to provoke. A friend of mine told me about this exhibition in Versailles, where a contemporary artist has, for instance, placed a sculpture of Michael Jackson and his monkey in front of a portrait of Louis the XIVth.... Not quite sure about what to think about it.

Thank stlukesguild, I have the impression that I grasp the implications more clearly now! Abstraction vs senses then. I definitely prefer art that makes an immediate impression on my senses.

[librarius_qui]

Some folks we consider artists now lived back then as common office workers ...

As well as some scientists.

I had a very interesting talk with a friend, these days, who loves to read. I thought with myself that she liked me because I write, and I'm intriguing, and, well, if she likes books, I'm a bit like a book, as well as books are like people.

A person learns from books. A writer writes books. A writer learns from people.

And, to finish with something else, there are a lot of arts ... Writing's one thing, painting is another, singing, playing a musical instrument are yet other things, and there's dancing as well, and theatre. I imagine you're talking about the life of a writer. I myself chose not to live from what I write, so, I have a common office worker life. I mean to sell [other people's] books, but not even this I managed to, not for long, anyway, however I haven't given up, and I work with something else ... I'd work gladly in a bar, I think, as a waiter. Only, it didn't happen this way.

And there are certain books I won't read at all! There are too many books, and I have a long line, and no hurry, and a short life. (I hope to reach Abraham's (out of the bible ...) life-span.)

I hope I'll get married! fer heaven's sake!, haha!

& I'm baroque ~

-x-

[Etienne]

or trying to provoke.

The problem with this, is what accounts for the interest of the ready-made art of Duchamp, for example, and most of what followed from it. Duchamp presented a Fountain. Great, new idea, funny, shocking. Now tomorrow, I present a different Fountain as a piece of art. That's just boring, there's no shock anymore. That's just the problem with the ready-made art, it's that the art was the idea. All subsequent ready-made art attempt are simply presenting the same work over and over, even though it might be something else than the Fountain, it doesn't matter.

So besides the exception, most of what is made is this view becomes in fact, an attempt to provoke watchers into boringness and is almost an exercise to try to be impressed, entertained, or shocked. A lot of it is insipid and boring. It's telling the same joke twice.

Now if someone present an exposition of fountains, but those fountain appeal to the senses, now this is something entirely different. It would be in some way an insight of Duchamp's idea, and taking something quite ridiculous and making a piece of art for real. But the difference is that now the Fountain is the art as well, and not just the idea.

But in fact, I think this whole conception of Duchamp, was a big joke from him. He was making fun of people while having fun himself. Some people just took him too seriously.

[_Shannon_]

Is the literary life the one where you write absolutely nothing because there are a million children around vying for your attention and your creativity is channeled into creating and growing babies and your hands are perpetually covered in dish soap, or laundry soap, or bubble bath...and the closest you ever get to writing is making a tablet to practicing the alphabet or a list of spelling words?? And yet in your heart of hearts you think still, somewhere, you are a writer...if only you had words....and time...and quiet....and not being needed....

Or is the literary life the one where your home is girded with books, and you met your spouse working at the bookstore where he still works, where everyone who ever gets a gift from you knows that they'll be getting a book. The one where when your gaggle stumbles into the Waffle House all but the smallest have books in hand...the one where several of the people in your home regularly stay up far too late reading or listening to stories???

LOL! Then yes--we, I, live a very literary life!

[stlukesguild]

StLukes, I think you are giving far too much credit to some of those Post-Duchampians, my experience with them is that they mostly make crappy art because they cannot make anything beautiful, but still want to pass as artists.

That may be... but had they not been convinced during their years of formal studies in art school as to the merit of ideas and Duchampian conceptualism as opposed to art based upon drawing and painting... the image making that is the most primal urge behind the creation of art that begins when a child starts drawing Mom and the dog... had they not been pushed into spending far more time reading art criticism, and theory, and philosophers who naturally assume the idea is far more important that the form than they did with actually learning to draw and paint... they might have actually developed those skills. Surely very few 18-year olds enter art school because they wish to be the next conceptual artist. Most entered art school because they loved to draw... to create images. Unfortunately, the ideas of conceptual art can be quite seductive... and far easier to master than the skills needed to paint well.

[stlukesguild]

Yep, it's annoying how ambivalent they are: I know how I always hesitate between wondering whether it's genuinely art, and thinking they're just intellectualising something quite uninteresting and/or trying to provoke. A friend of mine told me about this exhibition in Versailles, where a contemporary artist has, for instance, placed a sculpture of Michael Jackson and his monkey in front of a portrait of Louis the XIVth.... Not quite sure about what to think about it.

Acckk!! You speak of Jeff Koons. The virtual Satan of contemporary art. Where Thomas Kinkade paints endless sentimental schlock that is loved by those with virtually no artistic sensibility (not far from those sad-eyed children of several decades ago), he is not given the least attention by the 'serious' art world. Yet Koons works are just as shallow... sentimental... glitzy and schlock-laden. The only difference is that Koons and his dealers have been able to convince a large enough audience that his work is "serious" because he recognizes how bad it is (which I don't believe) and as such they are saved by being ironic.

[stlukesguild]

But in fact, I think this whole conception of Duchamp, was a big joke from him. He was making fun of people while having fun himself. Some people just took him too seriously.

Exactly... If you read the history of Duchamp... and especially his Fountain... you will find that it was all intended as part of a grandiose joke upon the art world. Certainly the urinal was never intended to be actually seen as an art object. Perhaps the best critique of the iconic status of this work was the "artist" who peed in it, declaring that it was his intention to reduce the work to its original purpose. As conceptualism has grown more pervasive I have noticed that there is an increasing division of art world between those who would embrace art as idea and those who see themselves first as painters, print-makers, sculptors, etc... Where a few NY galleries and a few pompous critics once dominated what constituted ART... and what ART was GOOD ART, their control has greatly waned. Magazines such as American Art Collector now rival Art News and Art in America, and the strongest artists featured there are often able to demand prices that rival or even surpass the average Art in America artist.

[Etienne]

Exactly... If you read the history of Duchamp... and especially his Fountain... you will find that it was all intended as part of a grandiose joke upon the art world.

Well you know, I never had this confirmed, it just seemed to me so obvious. Duchamp is one of the characters I respect the most.

Certainly the urinal was never intended to be actually seen as an art object. Perhaps the best critique of the iconic status of this work was the "artist" who peed in it, declaring that it was his intention to reduce the work to its original purpose.

That's great Typically Duchampesque too.

Unfortunately, the ideas of conceptual art can be quite seductive... and far easier to master than the skills needed to paint well.

Well I do get what you mean, but let me add something here. It's that I don't think conceptual art is (should be) easier to master, in fact, I think it is (or should be) harder, as one should be able to paint well in order to create great conceptual art. What's easier is to fake or give the illusion of great art by playing on the ignorance of the public and it's will to appear sophisticated, or simply living in the illusion of doing great art, because of the general example. I do think that art today ought to be something else than what can be done through photographic means, for example, and in this respect a degree of conceptualism is needed, but as a mean to extend boundaries, and not to reduce art to "mere" conceptualism.

[Jozanny]

Is the literary life the one where you write absolutely nothing because there are a million children around vying for your attention and your creativity is channeled into creating and growing babies and your hands are perpetually covered in dish soap, or laundry soap, or bubble bath...and the closest you ever get to writing is making a tablet to practicing the alphabet or a list of spelling words?? And yet in your heart of hearts you think still, somewhere, you are a writer...if only you had words....and time...and quiet....and not being needed....

I have both, passed this stage, in that my bylines in recent years have left me with no doubt that I am capable of penetrating markets that I care to penetrate, and regressed back to it, in the sense that my plumbing no longer works (raises hand and says to medical science I will take that regenerated pig bladder thank you, and can we throw in a new colon while we're at it? This actually used to be the basis for some dramatic science fiction I loved to read, remarkable) and I am no more now than a hag-nanny, like Macbeth's witches, not quite female anymore. How do old women with increasingly brittle gray hair and a spinster's cocoon slowly enveloping, still live for the work itself? Should I ask Toni Morrison? Listening to her or reading her anymore I find tiresome, and only care vigorously for her *daddy* novel, Song of Solomon, and The Bluest Eye, which she wrote, in an afterword, "didn't work". I got her gist on that. The POV she tries with this horror story doesn't achieve what she attempts, but by Christ what a hard hitting brilliant failure this work is. Is that damning praise? When I read Beloved I thought it was time for her to retire, phew!

Or is the literary life the one where your home is girded with books, and you met your spouse working at the bookstore where he still works, where everyone who ever gets a gift from you knows that they'll be getting a book. The one where when your gaggle stumbles into the Waffle House all but the smallest have books in hand...the one where several of the people in your home regularly stay up far too late reading or listening to stories???

LOL! Then yes--we, I, live a very literary life!

Sounds like a worthy essay on the matter of literary living!

[Bitterfly]

It's that I don't think conceptual art is (should be) easier to master, in fact, I think it is (or should be) harder, as one should be able to paint well in order to create great conceptual art.

Yes! Like to dance good modern ballet you have to master classical ballet.

Stlukesguild, it's rather reassuring to hear a specialist saying that contemporary art isn't that interesting. Because, as Etienne says, there's always that wish to appear sophisticated and therefore to shut up when you think you're viewing crap, and not at all great art. I've recently started to air my real thoughts, when I go to see a show that obviously takes its public for a bunch of fools, but it's hard not to go with the stream. And there's always a risk that you've really misunderstood the artist.

And the problem is that almost all novel forms of art were denigrated by the public when they first appeared (I read a book about Impressionism, recently, and the comments of the exhibition-goers!!), so one wonders whether one is not making the same mistake... I wonder what will be said about Jeff Koons in fifty years' time...

[Jozanny]

Well I do get what you mean, but let me add something here. It's that I don't think conceptual art is (should be) easier to master, in fact, I think it is (or should be) harder, as one should be able to paint well in order to create great conceptual art. What's easier is to fake or give the illusion of great art by playing on the ignorance of the public and it's will to appear sophisticated, or simply living in the illusion of doing great art, because of the general example. I do think that art today ought to be something else than what can be done through photographic means, for example, and in this respect a degree of conceptualism is needed, but as a mean to extend boundaries, and not to reduce art to "mere" conceptualism.

I have been trying to stay out of this, because my art appreciation these days extends about as far as finding Simon Schama's public tutorials sexually attractive, but I cannot damn photography as an entirely technical process with no artistic merit, if I understand your objection, although I might seriously hedge on the issue of computer animation and graphics. I am more accessible to pink sharks suspended in tanks and glittering madonna's partly sculpted in elephant dung than luke or bitterfly or you might be. Crass commercial materialism can teach as much as neo-classical reverence does, in my book. Like anything else, the mess will sort itself out, and when the smoke clears what's left standing will command respect. The literary world is not immune to this. One has to ask if Acker's joke (that she plagiarized and considered this worthy conceptually before her cancer metastasized her and any subsequent output as an issue, although she did lose in court against Faulkner's estate, while she was sick), is worthy on its on merits. I don't know. She does dollop out degradation nearly as well as any inner city drug dealer.

[librarius_qui]

The problem with this, is what accounts for the interest of the ready-made art of Duchamp, for example, and most of what followed from it. Duchamp presented a Fountain. Great, new idea, funny, shocking. Now tomorrow, I present a different Fountain as a piece of art. That's just boring, there's no shock anymore. That's just the problem with the ready-made art, it's that the art was the idea. All subsequent ready-made art attempt are simply presenting the same work over and over, even though it might be something else than the Fountain, it doesn't matter.

So besides the exception, most of what is made is this view becomes in fact, an attempt to provoke watchers into boringness and is almost an exercise to try to be impressed, entertained, or shocked. A lot of it is insipid and boring. It's telling the same joke twice.

(...)

I don't know ... What's a fountain in your time? This fountain you portray, will it last, within 50, 100 years? Will there be fountains within this period of time? (contemporary questions are onto ecology issues in a way ...)

If it does so you won't be alive to know anything about it, so, what's the difference, but: do you keep portraying things around you, no matter what the future will be?

Or do you care more to what critics say? Or about academic environment(s) opinions?

Do you write at all?

And you can write to someone, all right, or you can write to humanity, or to eternity ... You choose your public, and other people will like it or not but BLAST them! I choose my public!