On Mar 27, 2008, at 11:09 AM, Chris Miller wrote:
I'm conflating excellence and achievement out of a kind of social
idealism --
i.e. I want a high status for those things I consider excellent --
so I don't
really accept the ordinary markers for achievement.
But what if Miller's judgment is wrong? He chastises the judgment of
others--you know, curators--who pronounce works "excellent" and
"great," but one he thinks are hideous, tendentious, hortatorical ...
or just plain ugly.
To them (the curators), the works they choose to exhibit do embody
"excellence" and "achievement," so for Miller to dispute that and to
prefer his own choices of "things I consider excellent" is simply to
replace their list with his.
It boils down to solipsism (Miller's list) or a popularity contest (do
more people like Miller's list or the curator's list). And judging the
works by dragging out a canon of standards that is literally centuries
old doesn't help.
For one thing, if one used 19th century musical standards to judge
compositions, that would categorically exclude jazz and other 20th
century compositions generally judged to be accomplishments of great
skill and even genius.
But beyond that, artists have always chosen to follow directions
different from the old standards because they (the artists) wanted to
produce works that they thought were equal to the old stuff, but were
clearly outside the rules. How did sculpture get from the Archaic
kouroi to the Hellenistic Apoxyomenos? from International Gothic style
to the High Renaissance and then Mannerism? Way, way before the French
Academy and the modern masters. The point that Greenberg made, btw,
was that the Modernists tried to equal the accomplishments of the
Great Masters in quality. They weren't flinging a paint-pot at the
public just for the hell of it or as a grand egomaniacal gesture.
Miller's constant excoriation of Modernist art and his equally
constant elevation of Academy standards of beauty and skill has the
ring of a old style Catholic looking around for a Tridentine service,
and I suspect his fervor comes very close to the sin of pride, namely,
of false humility.
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Michael Brady
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
