I came across a pretty interesting bit of rhetoric, lately, and thought I'd share it. I've been helping Lu get moved into her place, and part of that entails cleaning out Hal's stuff, since she's moving in to the mobile on my ma's property and Hal's studio/storage was right next door and Lu's cleaning that up as part of her rent, and I came across an old book that Hal had bought from some art supply store. The book's Amazon review <http://www.amazon.com/TREASURY-AMERICAN-PRINTS-First/dp/B000FJKJCK>spells out some issues I'd say are highly relevant to the MoQ, the influence of the American Pragmatism upon the international art scene, and as a reflection of the American Character. It's a four page introduction, which can't be found anywhere on the web, so I'll have to just bite the bullet and type somebody else's words for a while. Deal with it.
First, he exhuberantly proclaims the ascendancy of a vibrant American movement, independent and scornful of Europe's trends and fashions. "Today save for a few feeble Marxians, and a handful of defeated purists who believe with Picasso that art is a species of vacuous dabbling removed from the pressures of time and place, there is not a self-respecting artist in this country who is not eager to contribute to a movement which has gained the sympathies and the support of the American public." He goes on to describe the great appetite for exhibitions in every town, the rise in lithography and publication, and then, most fascinating, brings in the hero of the tale -The Federal Government. "The reasons for this astonishing efflorescence may be briefly enumerated. First, the natural reaction against the hollowness and over-refinement of the modern art of France, which, whatever its validity as an "old and urbane civilization" has no access to American psychology. Second, the organization, by the Federal government, of the art business into a national industry, a bureaucraic maneuver which, by subventions, competitions, and the disbursement of millions of dollars for the purposes of relief, has stimulated professional activity and enormously increase production by bringing into art, for the first time, the measures of pump-priming." This suggests to me that there's an opportunity for encouragement along the same lines today. Why spend billions on welfare and dole, for no good reason than just to keep people alive? I agree, that we want to avert starvation tragedies, but it seems to me that if more artistic endeavor was encouraged or promoted, we could reduce some of the welfare. A sort of "workfare" for the arts which has benefits to society as a whole. He goes on to decry much of the attending evils to a Federal Bureaucracy endorsement of art and especially what he terms as communist influences "These renegades, notorious in their contempt for everything native, are now whooping it up for American Art, and endorsing for personal gain, every move made by the officials at Washington" - pandering, in other words. But notwithstanding these evils, he points out that "the Federal government has rendered inestimable service to American art: it has recognized the existence of a native movement, and by co-operating with regional boards, it has not only publicized the importance of local themes and subjects but has also helped to restore the artist to his former position as practitioner, or workman." Now I really perked up my ears. The artists as practitioner or workman. Does that not coincide with the goal of the MoQ to restore "art that makes sense and science which is not ugly? He goes on to point out that the government did not create this movement or tendency, "-- it seized upon and promoted a changing order of things. The honor of putting the new tendency in motion--which amounts to the founding of a distinctly American school -- belongs to a small group of original artists who, bravely and steadfastly for many years, and in defiance of great opposition, have produced a body of work leading to our cultural declaration of independence. " This is how revolutionary movements occur. Not in lone individuals, but in small groups of individuals who support and dialogue with one another, in defiance of the current flow. But aside from that aspect of the communal nature of evolutionary intellectual change, what interested me was the explanation of what, exactly, constituted the new American style. What was distinctive about it, was it's pragmatic aspect and it's orientation toward objects. Pirsig talks a great deal in Lila, about the large influence the Native American Indian had upon the culture of the country - how this cultural input was abstracted in the movies and fables of the American west - the cowboy mythos, which was at heart, a blend of native and victorian values and it is from the Indians that America got its predilection for pragmatism. As Rudy always told me, Indians are Pragmatic. Royce, in his "William James and the Philosophy of Life" points out that James was the closest match of any philosopher, modern or classic, to the heart and soul of what constitutes this American style. He expressed best this affinity and what I found in Crane's introduction mirrored this and explained it in when he first asks, then answers, What is style? "Taine got at the root of the question when he treated style as environment affecting form; that is to say, when he stressed, as the most important element in the formation of style, the artist's response to the substance and color of his environment." "A new style is born when an artist's acquired technical habits or methods, are put to work in the new surroundings; when his inherited processes are transformed in the crucible of experience; when environmental pressure and interests residing in life, not in art, rouse him to a personal utterance capable of imparting the force and flavor of direct experiences. The subject matter afforded by the American background cannot be enclosed in imported forms; nor can it be convincingly presented in foreign styles. The selection of subject matter, of course, is conditioned by the artist's individual attitude toward life, which in turn, is conditioned by the prevailing social tendencies of his time. I should say that the American people, in their group attitudes, are essentially pragmatic, or 'thing-minded', to use a clumsy word. Americans are much more interested in things - the objective machinery of life -- than in ideas. They have never been strong on the theoretical; and their enormous distrust of long-range planning, at the moment a political fetish with the economic prophets, is a good example of the skeptical attitude towards all that is not plainly at hand and practicable." "I do not wish to imply that our artists are merely recording appearances with a skillful technique or photographing the various aspects of their country. Some, in their first enthusiasm and touched, no doubt, by the popularity of the camera, are inclined in that direction, but our major workmen and their more serious followers are concentrated on accomplishments peculiar to a creative medium. With these, draftsmanship is of prime importance; they are more concerned with the anatomy of the human figure and the topography of the landscape than with the appearances of nature at a given moment. Their aim is to get at meanings, to know America, and to design compact structures communicating the poetry and magnificence, the irony, the humor, the shabbiness, the tragedy and not least, the social significance of their chosen materials." Worthy aspirations for writers as well. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
