Come on Chris,
I'm, leaving the website for an undetermined time at the end of the
year,
so don't get me into unnecessary trouble. I respect william very
much and
want him to be here when I come back.
mando
On Dec 9, 2009, at 7:21 AM, Chris Miller wrote:
That's a funny story about Yuri Gagarin, but it's irrelevant to that
portrait's believability as far as I'm concerned, and I have no
idea whether
it's a good likeness or not.
That sculpture is only believable because it feels that way -- as
it seems to
tell an important story about a real person in a real time and
place.
What might makes it feel so real and important? (and these two
notions are
inter-dependant)
Can the extent of that effect be explained by describing "actual
shapes and
form and cultural patterns, cues, etc" ?
Not if we acknowledge that believability and importance are
qualities of a
whole that is more than the sum of its parts. Every spot of texture
makes it
feel that way, yet by itself, every spot is meaningless.
(which is exactly the lesson that expert forgers like Hebborn
continuously
teach as they imitate that which they can - the parts - instead of
that which
they can't - the whole)
This is not to disparage the role of scholarship, concerning
which William
is so sensitive.
It's only to say that scholarship answers different kinds of
questions.
For example, in a hundred years or so, all that stuff that Boris
knows about
Yuri Gagarin's plane crash will only be known by scholars, and
then we must
rely on them to to present that portrait as a window into the world
of Soviet
Russia.
Kerbel's portrait presents a man-boy who would not seem adverse to
being
locked up in a big tin can, set on top of a ton of explosives,
and then
fired into outer space.
In contrast, if that fellow in the Roman portrait had been involved
in a
rocket launch , he would have been the one lighting the fuse, with
probably no
concern for the cosmonaut's safe landing. Those pater familias
from the
Roman Republic had to be real tough guys. They all had serve in the
military, which meant standing and fighting, not shuffling papers,
and would
eventually have the power of life and death over an extended family
and small
army of slaves and retainers.
Very different men -- very different societies -- and the scholar
can help us
understand those different worlds (as they can with any artifact)
But the actual understanding comes from a one-on-one relationship
between the
viewer and the piece - and the extent to which portrait (or any
expression)
feels believable and important is based on a personal experience
that can be
called aesthetic.
Apparently, William feels that this notion of aesthetic personally
"insults"
him "through your unending hatred of anything representing serious
knowledge,
scholarship, intellectuality"
But William, good artist that he is, is hardly a serious
representative of
the world of scholarship.
He has not achieved an advanced degrees in any scholarly field
nor published
any books in them. So far, his academic claim to fame are the few
paragraphs
that Thierry de Duve wrote using him as an example of
"overinterpretation"
The only place where William can present himself as any kind of
authority is
here, on this listserv, surrounded by half-educated, sometimes
functionally
illiterate, obscure artists, with an occasional graduate student
passing
through.
Which is, I presume, why he sticks around and is willing to endure the
terrible abuse of which he complains.
As Mando has noted (and William agreed) , William likes play
"king of a
very shaky hill" -- but it's not even a hill.
It's more like a flower bed.
**************************************************************
I know Gagarin's face very well. The best part of this portrait,
beside good
likeness, is a scar on his forehead, as rumors say, is a result of
a drunken
pleasure flying of a military plain. (Boris)
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