...schmart!
The Sanity Inspector
critic encounters a "Gay Fantasia" or an art critic encounters an
exhibition of soiled teddy bears -- indeed when anyone trained in
anything encounters the self-congratulatory work of someone trained in
nothing -- it is very difficult to resist the temptation to lay back
one's ears and bray.
-- J. Bottum, review of _Against the Grain: The New Criterion on Art
and Intellect at the End of the Twentieth Century_, edited by Hilton
Kramer and Roger Kimball, in _National Review_, May 15, 1995
--
bruce
The dignified don't even enter in the game.
-- The Jam
John Bonanno
"The Sanity Inspector" <syna...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1122607710.9...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> The temptation to be a curmudgeon is hard to withstand. When a drama
> critic encounters a "Gay Fantasia" or an art critic encounters an
> exhibition of soiled teddy bears -- indeed when anyone trained in
> anything encounters the self-congratulatory work of someone trained in
> nothing -- it is very difficult to resist the temptation to lay back
> one's ears and bray.
>
> -- J. Bottum, review of _Against the Grain: The New Criterion on Art
> and Intellect at the End of the Twentieth Century_, edited by Hilton
> Kramer and Roger Kimball, in _National Review_, May 15, 1995
"Whether Mr. John had been sent home with a diuretic or composing draught to
some patient far gone in the poetical mania, we have not heard. This much is
certain, that he has caught the infection. . . . For some time we were in
hopes that he might get off with a violent fit or two, but of late the
symptoms are terrible. The frenzy of the Poems was bad enough in its way;
but it did not alarm us half so seriously as the calm, settled,
imperturbable drivelling idiocy of Endymion." John Gibson Lockhart (Z) in
Blackwoods Magazine, from the review of the much lampooned "Endymion" that
was said to send John Keats to an early grave
"He chooses to daub paint on a canvas and spread it around with a comb or a
toothbrush. This process produces landscapes, marines, still lifes,
portraits... if he is lucky. The procedure somewhat recalls the designs that
schoolchildren make by squeezing the heads of flies between the folds of a
sheet of paper." From Le Petit Parisien, by Valensol on Paul Cezanne's
exhibition at the 1904 Salon d'Automne in Paris
"The impression given by all these clumsily daubed portraits is truly
painful; they bear witness to a fatal impotence." Sarradin, in Les Debats on
the same Cezanne exhibition
"Olympia can be understood from no point of view, even if you take it for
what it is, a puny model stretched out on a sheet. The color of the flesh is
dirty, the modeling nonexistent. . . . We would still forgive the ugliness,
were it only truthful, carefully studied, heightened by some splendid effect
of color. The least beautiful woman has bones, muscles, skin, and some sort
of color. Here there is nothing, we are sorry to say, but the desire to
attract attention at any price." Theophile Gautier on Manet's "Olympia", the
first realistic nude of the "modern" (late 19th century) era
Limited minds have always taken great pleasure in mocking intrusions artists
have displayed in ther comfortable realities.
Heidi
> The temptation to be a curmudgeon is hard to withstand. When a drama
> critic encounters a "Gay Fantasia" or an art critic encounters an
___________________
Baths may be lovely for people - adult people that is, but bears are not
that keen. When did you last see or hear of a bear taking a bath, willingly?
~Ted Menton
--
Heidi
__________________
The Sanity Inspector
painting about paint itself". Its subject matter is paint, or the
formal principles of painting. The first claim is nonsensical: saying a
painting is about paint is like saying a poem is about the alphabet. A
poem uses the alphabet to represent words, which can in turn be used to
convey knowledge or express ideas. The second claim is just as banal. A
painting that is "about" its formal principles is, again, like a poem
that is about rhyme, about onomatopoeia, or about iambic pentameter. In
other words, it is art as a jigsaw puzzle of the lowest order. An
endless pseudo-intellectual game, slightly mesmerising because of its
futility - like a Rubik's cube. Even fun to play occasionally - in jest
- because it keeps the pattern-recognition parts of the brain occupied.
By this definition, a Rubik's cube is probably the world's most
successful work of modern art - it refers only to itself, it has the
sacred cubic form, and it is covered with more colored squares than a
Mondrian.
If art had ever been about this kind of cerebral playing with formal
principles it would have died a tedious death millenia ago. But this is
what modernist critics would have us understand is "abstract" art.
-- Fred Ross, "Abstract Art is Not Abstract and Definitely Not Art",
http://artrenewal.org/articles/2005/abstract/ross1.asp
John Bonanno
All art is an abstraction; especially when it purports to represent
"reality".
So-called "pure" abstract art is anything but.
A great painting is a living being.
And you know it when you see it.
"The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through." -Jackson
Pollock
"'Abstract' literally means to draw from or separate. In this sense every
artist is abstract... a realistic or non-objective approach makes no
difference. The result is what counts." -Richard Diebenkorn
"I have not tried to reproduce nature; I have represented it." -Paul Cézanne
"It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a
child." -Pablo Picasso