I agree of course Michael. But there is the interesting question of the aesthetic value of the painting and the notion of aesthetic autonomy. I am currently reading Hans Urs von Balthasar on the aesthetic and wondering how that would apply to this painting.
Baker's painting offers such a radical separation of the beautiful from the true and the good. I am no expert at all on painting, but it seems to me that the painting is a fair to mediocre endeavour in the British Academy style. But it makes a number of truth claims centering around a narrative of the colonist as victim or near victim. There are a few black figures squeezed into the left margin but they constitute an absence in terms of their feeling and even agency. they are of no interest to the artist at all. So the painting is a monstrous lie. Nor does it have any ethical justification. It is important I think to realize that the writer attempts to justify the painting mainly on truth grounds. The good is fended off with the lie of equivalence between the Zulus and the British. So there is no ethical claim in this work. But is it an aesthetically valuable painting and should we separate that criterion out from truth and goodness? My answer is that there is little or no aesthetic value in the painting. It is a standard exercise in Imperialist propaganda and the lies therein and the evil being defended squeeze out all aesthetic value. to put this another way I agree with Balthasar on his insistence of the unity of the true, the good and the beautiful and Rorke's Drift fails trotally. comradely Gary -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#4668): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/4668 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/79118930/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
