I am hoping for some critique of my suggestion that excellence and achievement are not parallel terms; that excellence is a one-time experience in relation to an object whereas achievement is abstract, a standard, a measure. I don't think excellence and achievement should be synonymous terms.
Miller chooses to ignore that distinction and goes on with his usual conflation of excellence and achievement, the popular usage. OK, but that's not a critique of what I propose. Also I would say that Miller is the Ideologue here, far more than I am. He has a knee-jerk negativity to anything modernist and certainly to some vague notion of what passes for art education today, particularly in college-level art curricula. All I can say to that is it's an attitude without evidence. Modernism is saturated with art tradition; in fact, modernism relies on art tradition and would be insensible without it. Also, any look at art programs, easily obtained with some web surfing, will show extraordinary breadth among competing porgrams. Clearly, there's something suited to any student's interest among the plethora of options today (unlike, I may add, the Academic era of art training in the 18-19C). Yes, I am a huge fan of David, ever since I had the opportunity to see his retrospective at the Louvre a dozen years or more ago. He was a painter's painter, for sure, with his robust handling of pigment, blunt, unfussy compositions, and a remarkably confident manner. Yes, some of his big official compositions, like his Coronation of Napoleon, are quite illustrational, but then that was the goal in those days before photo documentation. He did his job in those instances, as did Velasquez and Goya and other greats who are still admired as masters. Take a close look at the David Oath of The Horatii at the Met (is that right?) It's brushy, thickly painted. forceful. Don't be fooled by the abuse of David in old fashioned art history books where he's presented as a foil for introducing anti-academic experimentation (Delacroix, etc). I was transfixed by David's first Death of Marat, rarely exhibited, because it was so deftly painted, much of the flesh of Marat being only the underpainting, applied with a sponge. Yes, we must rise above the art historical categories, the tricks that separate artists from the historical flow to enable the forefronting of ideas over facts. And since I mentioned Delacroix, if you get the chance to visit the Yale Museum of Art you'll see a superb "academic" portrait by the master. You won't forget its presentation of the moment, the precise moment of consciousness of the "frozen right now", fusing spectator and painting in a sphere of infinitude. This was Delacroix's notion of the classic, the frozen moment, so he was simultaneously a revolutionary and traditional artist. And that's the common trait among all great artists and their best work. I've got a nice book of Manship's work. I'll agree that some of his sculpture transcends the confinement of stylization. There's a standing nude, and some animal pieces. I'll back down on Manship. After all, he did do the work. Yet I'm reminded of Delacroix's admonition to unambitious fellow artists: "They do not even wish to be Rubens". The artist's frustration and madness is to aim high, very, very high, and yet accept the limitations of one's ability to to make the most of it. It's called the pursuit of excellence. WC > > I'm raising the issue of ideology -- because I > suspect that's really what's > behind the differences between WC and I regarding > Manship, Art Deco, and the > 19th C. Academy System. The imaginative arts are > "excellent". (and curiously -- I can't recall him > ever speaking of any > canonical modern artist with the same reverence he > seems to have for Jacques > Louis David, that paragon of French Academicism)
