Eloquence and articulateness should also engage substance in the way clothing looks better on a person than it does on a hangar. I like Erwin Panofsky's idea that form and idea (subject, for him) must be interrelated so that one requires the other with the result being content. Now, putting aside for the moment that for Panofsky content was something "out there" to be recreated by perception, his insistence that it required a blend of form and idea is apt when regarding it as an analogy for the blend of eloquence/articulateness and substance of communication.
I also have no patience for little axioms that have nothing to do with facts and truth even when -- especially when -- they are more about pretense than acuity. The first thing to be determined about a falling off of practice is to decide what practice is. In art history we see a continuing redefining of practice, often accompanied by an expansion of practice enabled by economics, beliefs, and certainly, technology. What was once a concentrated genre of art practice, say, the use of fresco, is little done today imply because other forms of architecturally embedded imagery are superior in several ways and more quickly made. Many other examples, some technological and some more aligned with a kind of meta-discourse regarding the evolution of societal customs, can be measured by noting how art practice changes. Guiltily, I offer a handy Emersonian axiom. "For every gain there is a loss." Simply on the basis of ever increasing populations in both developed and undeveloped societies, one can safely say that art practice is also increasing. For less global but perhaps more concrete evidence it's easy to show that enrollment in art schools and similar skill-practice fields is now at an all-time high. The one period in western art when one might argue that there was a sustained falling off of practice was the period from about 300-700 AD. The skills for naturalist depiction developed by the Romans from Greek models were put aside in favor of more symbolic, abstract, even grotesque imagery to the extent that know-how for naturalism was nearly lost. But the aim changed from imagery of a real world to imagery of a spiritual world and so the depiction had to grope for a new practice. Even here one would be hard pressed to say the change was really a falling off instead of a quest for innovative form to suit a new subject. Principles are, I suppose, distillations of theory. In western art, theory has always been tied to practice and more and more the connection has been prodded by the desire for innovation. That mirrors the nature of western culture as a whole for at least two thousand years. When the talking about theory(princIples) stops, so does practice; when the practice changes so does theory. The saying in question is completely worthless, specious, crude, dumb and an embarrassment, enticing only to fools. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, October 1, 2010 5:12:55 PM Subject: Re: is aesthetics dead? In a message dated 9/30/10 5:40:41 AM, [email protected] cites a George Gissing quote: > Principles always become a matter of vehement discussion when practice is > at ebb. > The sentence has a nice roll, but why believe it? Forget "proof", let's settle for persuasion. For me, Gissing would have to describe persuasively his notions of "practice at an ebb" and "vehement discussions of principle" (in general? just in aesthetics?). Then Gissing would have to cite, say, three extended periods when "practice was at an ebb" and vehement discussions abounded -- i.e. historical conditions that corroborated his theory. However, I'd also want evidence that he'd done the duly diligent thing of looking for data that contradicted his theory -- i.e. have there been periods in history when, say, practice was at an ebb but there also was no vehement discussion of principle? And vice versa: loads of discussion at the same time as loads of practice? Beware of the eloquent, the articulate. Those traits no more bespeak a pertinent intelligence and dependability than a handsome face and an Ivy League degree.
