Miller wrote:
Other than personally attacking me and flattering William,
I did not personally attack you. If I had called you an imbecile or a
low criminal or moral blackguard--or even a Democrat--that would be a
personal attack. I have not done that. It reveals a lot about your own
interpretive prism that you charaterize that my *respect* for
William's contributions as flattery (remember, you called me Sancho
Panza to his Don Quixote several years ago).
I repudiated your solipsistic logic, your inability to concede that
William or others have worthwhile, genuine, and worthy ideas about
art, and your constantly assailing scholars, art commentators, and
other in the art world. I repudiate your clumsy syntax and grammatical
presentation, which make your assertions hard to follow. I repudiate
your harangues against received knowledge in Western art by means of
Western education (universities, museums, and such) conveyed by
Western professors, tainted with some kind of institutional plague.
You conveniently ignore any such antipathy to studying from scholars
when you refer to Asian works (such as the Hinustani music you
recently mentioned) of obscure notoriety in the West.
I also repudiated you plain bad manners in sneering at the work of
others, again, mainly those with established credentials.
what have you contributed to this topic, Michael ?
Nothing, because I do not know much about Titian or the Venetian
artists, and I was more interested in reading what others with more
direct familiarity and knowledge had to say. I chose to follow my
humility and listen to others. I frankly don't know enough about the
paintings to decide which parts to cut up and protect from the bad
parts.
And, might you point to any phrase on this thread where I have
"impugned the integrity both of the scholarship and the moral
character of scholars, curators, artists, and others who work in the
different institutions of art"?
April 6--William is too craven with careerism or other academic
ailments to think independently: "While I find William's verbal
response problematic because he is so enmeshed in academic authority,
he's wary of contradicting it. Indeed, I wonder whether he even allows
himself to feel the work of iconic masters without looking over his
shoulder at what the respected authorities have written."
I've only gone after "the school boys" -- i.e. those who, rather
than share their own experience or introduce us to specific
scholars, just present a supposed consensus of scholarly opinion.
Do you not think that art scholars, of Titian and other artists and
works, have not actually looked directly at the artifacts and works
they discuss? Do you deny or dispute that when Katzenellenbogen or
Focillon or Boardman or Shapiro discuss any manuscript illustration or
romanesque jamb sculpture, a Greek vase or Abs Ex painting, that they
are not "sharing their own experience"? Do you not believe that anyone
of us here who comments on any work of art is in fact reporting our
own experience, too, even if that experience is influenced or informed
by scholarly knowledge?
This is nuts.
Speaking only of my own experience, which I think is pretty universal,
I can grasp and see so much more of any work of art when I have
learned more about its making and its historical and cultural context.
I was never much of a fan of El Greco--too much dark stuff and those
elongated figures--until I studied some art history. Then when I saw
my first El Greco (in a big show at the National Gallery in the 80s,
after many of them had been cleaned), they took my breath away. Gone
were my misgivings about the dark, tenebrist palette and noodly anatomy.
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
