The difference here,is that Congers is a Great Art Professor, and is
duty bound the have an answer for every historical event in art,
which has occupied a larger portion of his life, and a ready put down
for every one that follows a different path. I'm not loaded with
all that "kick ass baggage" attitude that he professes & preaches.
I'm free to enjoy doing art the way I want. Art is a very simple
endeavor for all those that really love to do it, rather than trying
to outdo every one else in the attempt to be King of the shaky hill.
mando
On Nov 16, 2009, at 3:36 PM, William Conger wrote:
Here's my expert comment: Manet's painting of the Bar is poorly
composed if we judge it by the conventionalized story-telling art
with eros standards of 19C salon painting. His painting is well
composed if we judge it by the standards that developed after
Cezanne. What makes Manet's compositions interesting in that
respect is his prescience and ability to actually present pictorial
ideas that had been slowly emerging since the 1860s (ideas centered
on the pictorIalism of time vs, the frozen moment of painting, and
the slice of life pictorialism that imitated the darting of the eye
over the field of sight. In addition Manet purposely quoted other
artists, like Courbet, in his work, to underscore the assemblage
notion of time, experience, seeing).
Miller's proclamations to apotheosize the so-called individual
opinion, as if it came directly non-stop from God, unaffected by
any mortal breath, are ridiculous in a list devoted to discussion
and inquiry of ideas, and history. He goes so far as to honor this
absurd solipsism as "integrity". If that's what integrity rests
on, smug and arrogantly dumbfounding ignorance, then the concept
it points to is newly impoverished and shriveled beyond compare.
The literature re Manet in the history of art and criticism is so
abundant, and so varied and so well examined by so many thoughtful
and educated people who have actually seen his paintings, etc.,
that it is the folly of complete fools to interject their
unreasoned, unreflective, unknowing, inexperienced, and totally
irrelevant opinions into the mix and then, with the splotchy
nuttiness of a tyrant insane, to declare such inanities as proof of
integrity. With such oddly strange views as Miller's, and Mando's?
regarding the Bar composition, one would be better off covering
over the painting altogether in an effort to deny that Manet was
in fact a great artist who influenced art and to deny that it
contradicts their opinions in every stroke of paint.
Some artists are content to stand aside from art history and do
artisanship or shine up yesterday's beauty. Fine. But ambitious
artists want to be in the thick of ongoing art history, to make a
contribution, to kick 'em in the ass, to help symbolize their time,
to lavish praise on the gods for keeping the whole messy reality
alive and ever new, complex, paradoxical, promising, frightening,
present. Manet is such a great friend to anyone who can actually
look at painting.
wc
-----
Original Message ----
From: Chris Miller <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Mon, November 16, 2009 11:49:11 AM
Subject: Re: Where do opinions come from
Saul, I challenge you to find a single opinion from the last
hundred years, in
print or on the internet, that asserts that "Bar at the Folies
Bergere" is a
poorly composed painting by whatever standards the writer advocates.
(and if, by chance, you actually do find such a person, that person
will be
unanimously recognized by us as an eccentric crank)
Do you even, in your wildest dreams, imagine that a staunchly
middle-brow
publication like "American Artist" or "Western Art would publish an
article
condemning Manet for poor composition?
Perhaps a self-acknowledged high-brow, like yourself, would
attribute that
opinion to those of a lower class -- but that's not the same as anyone
actually having it.
The important question is not "where do opinions come from?" -- but
"where
does your opinion come from?"
It's rather clear that Mando's opinion about Manet's composition
comes from
his own sense of design, that he's been practicing, for better or
worse, for
60 years.
Where does your's come from?
.....................
It was fairly conventional he was comparing traditional standards
of a good
composition (balanced) with what Manet was doing - in the sense
that for Mando
what manet did in the 1870s was out of the loop", quite outside those
"dominant rules of thought that are necessary to produce a
relatively stable
framework which will enable "good" art and mando wanted to get it
back to a
norms of finish and composition that still dominates most middle
brow views
of good art
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