I think Gissing's point is all wrong. Just as we can't say that meaning is inherent to a word so we can't say that talent is inherent to an artist. Talent is a quality we ascribe to someone; meaning is an interpretation we ascribe to a word/s.
An artist does something that can be encircled by a context that members of a group regard as art for various reasons they choose. Talent, genius, creativity, all those qualitative words are interpretative and descriptive. They don't identify anything independent of interpretation. Further, Gissing's remarks hark back to older romantic notions of the artist as outsider, a different sort of creature, having unique uber-human but usually troubling traits. That artist is likened to a mythic mortal who might have been awarded the magical powers of a god. In the Renaissance a "cult of genius" arose that claimed the abilities of some artists were signs of divine gifts, something supernatural, godly and thus making those artists superior to other people, putting them on an even footing at least with their divinely ordained patron-rulers. The cultish honorifics had a practical benefit that helped to end the artisan tradition and make the artist more than a tradesman, something of a philosopher-scientist-theologan, akin to the class of bishops or monarchs. Truth? Nobody's got talent or genius until someone else ascribes it to them. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected]; [email protected] Sent: Sat, October 2, 2010 3:31:20 PM Subject: Re: is aesthetics dead? In a message dated 10/2/10 2:41:40 PM, [email protected] writes: > My guess is Gissing was making a basic error in logic: He noticed many > would-be artists studied to no avail. From which he dim-wittedly inferred > all > artists study to no avail. > Or he may have believed in "genius" and the idea that it is a gift given to few and can't be studied for. My money would be on genius. His initial sentence about principles being discussed vehemently when practice is at a low ebb is nonsense-argument is always freely indulged in by all. Kate Sullivan
