Yep! You pegged me. I am an art historian and an aesthetician only
as supports thinking about art and its vague meanings. You make
interesting points. I am completely involved in writing, editing,
grading and teaching and in strategic plans for our department of art
and design, at the moment, where I am reminded about how artists and
illustrators, graphic designers, interior designers, art educators
and art historians (but not philosophers) think. I hope to
contribute to the discussions when I can. Thanks.
kkd
That sounds like standard art history, suited more to a syllabi than
to reality. the distinction between modern and post modern has
never been defined for the arts generally, except artificially.
It's hard to find where the line is crossed. Is it when artists
began a new examination of irony, or with appropriation and
restatements of modernist imagery; Duchamp? How does one separate
Johns from any of that? Contemporary artists are those who are
"contributing to curtrent global ideas and issues"? That's very
vague. One of the issues may be the continuing relevance of
modernist impulses beginning with Kandinsky. After all, ideas don't
die but just go astray for a while, always finding their way back to
the path, and hailed as newcomers. I'll need a better definition of
contemporary than what you offer. Otherwise, it makes most sense to
say all living and working artists are contemporary, just like
today, this very day, is contemporary.
A relevant issue? See my commentary in the little journal Prompt,
to be published next month. I look at Trotsky and Breton's
manefesto "Toward a New Revoloutionary Art and find it very relevant
today.
The linear or progress notions of art history: modern, post modern,
contemporary seem irrelevant to me.
Anyway, I am happy you are joining in the discussions. Let's get to it.
WC
--- On Sat, 9/13/08, kathleen desmond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: kathleen desmond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: It's Hirst and Dickinson
To: [email protected]
Date: Saturday, September 13, 2008, 2:20 PM
I was going to comment on Chuck Close not being a
contemporary
artist, either, actually, even though I continue to admire
and
appreciate the work of both Johns and Close. Since we are
no longer
in a modern era, but a postmodern one, I guess that's
what I use as
the "dividing line." Jasper Johns certainly
contributed to the
contemporary avant-garde of the 1950s and 60s along with
> John Cage,
> Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg and moved to Pop
> Art making
> the way for the postmodern art of Damien Hirst and other
> Young
> British Artists, as well as the array of global artists
involved in
Intermedia, Installation and multimedia. I think of
contemporary
artists as those who are contributing to current global
issues and
ideas. I don't know about presumptions of confronting
relevant
issues. What relevant issues?
kkd
>I wonder why you don't consider Jasper Johns a
contemporary artist.
>Where, exactly, is the dividing line between, say.
modern, and
>contemporary? Johns is still making work and we may
presume he is
>still confronting relevant issues. Is a contemporary
artist one
>whose work is not yet widely influential?
>
>WC
>
>
>--- On Sat, 9/13/08, kathleen desmond
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> From: kathleen desmond
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Subject: It's Hirst and Dickinson
>> To: [email protected]
>> Date: Saturday, September 13, 2008, 1:33 PM
>> I couldn't help notice the inaccurate
spelling of the
>> names Damien
>> Hirst and Emily Dickinson, the inaccuracy of
calling Jasper
>> Johns a
>> contemporary artist, and the lack of context in
using these
>> artists
>> for comparison.
>>
>>
>> >To join William in reading between the lines
of the
> >> Sendak interview -- we
>> >might notice that the names he places into
the iconic
>> artist club are all
>> >writers or composers. (Mozart, Melville,
Dickenson etc)
>> >
>> >I.e. -- Sendak is not giving ground to any
visual
>> artists -- and I suspect
>> >that he feels (as I do) that his memorable,
poignant,
>> narrative vision is a
>> >greater achievement than the work of
contemporary
>> iconic visual artists like
>> >Jasper Johns and Chuck Close. (and
way-way-way greater
>> than the billionaire
>> >joke artists like Damien Hurst)
>> >
>> >Either way -- only the obsessive mind of
Cheerskep
>> would find him nourishing
>> >the Platonic forms of "illustrator"
or
> >> "artist"
> >>
--
