Rob;
I can't pretend that you don't make some good arguments here.
However, admittedly working in a specialized corner of academia, as an
artist in Engaged Humanities and Depth Psychology programs, I can't
condemn academic scholars outright, especially as there are some whose
work influences mine, and whose integrity I've come to respect.
As for the canon, the best work that enters it is only after the artist
is dead and the dust has settled. So that the artist-at-work isn't
tainted by rising prices, grants or prizes. I best know the world of
poetry, and of poets whose work was lauded when they were young and then
succumbed to thinking they could get away with anything they wrote
thereafter, sort of like Duchamp, Warhol, and now Koons.
Digital Art is fascinating to me because most of the artists are young,
and are using tools some of which didn't exist until a few years (or
hours!) ago. However, because of this, many are dazzled by the
technology, instead of patiently learning their craft within the larger
arena of art and history of ideas across fields. It is sort of like how
Hollywood has adopted computerized effects to make quick bucks from the
superficial, instead of hiring the best writers and cinematographers, as
they used to do. So what I'm wondering which digital work being shown by
Google, et al,, will survive even this decade, much less this century.
I also think that critics of Digital Art on the level of a Greenberg,
Rosenberg, Stein, etc., first need to appear, and not those who are
academics (to take your side), but (self)educated amateurs. Edward has
the talent!
-Joel
On 9/6/2014 1:00 PM, Rob Myers wrote:
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On 04/09/14 06:24 PM, Joel Weishaus wrote:
Interesting that we're reading this differently.
My take: I read her last paragraph as meaning: Before the kind of
art history that's now practiced in universities, only white men
were canonized. Now art history is being re-written to include
woman, African-Americans, and non-Europeans.
Yes this is the positive self-image of Pollocks' political programme.
And of the art-history I was taught two decades ago in a provincial
English art school.
Part of what I am doing here is examining the ways in which its
effects contradict its stated intentions.
Here's an earlier paragraph:
"The real problem is that even in the game of source hunting and
influence tracing, ideology is already at work. Influence, linking
artists and artworks in a one-way direction, such as family
descent, is a dressed-up way of protecting the canon (and the art
market), and this machine-aided form of looking for similarity
would only reinforce it."
Pollock is arguing that the software doesn't look for influences
outside "the canon". This Manichaeanly reinforces "the canon", and the
art market. Protecting "the canon" and the art market are presumably
bad things to do.
But Pollock is involved in the same work, only with inkier fingers.
Increasing the reach of "the canon" hardly decreases the importance of
nodal works within it, and those works newly added or related to "the
canon" will see their value within the art market increased or in some
cases newly created.
This is why I argue that switching to Moretti-style study of
populations of works can be of use to soi-disant progressive art
history. It can move beyond merely laundering regional canons and
adding a few works to the market to turning the entirety of art
production and reception into objects of critical study.
The Digital Humanities also has a similar program for literary
history, which is just as superficial, if not silly. When scholars
become programmers, the soul of scholarship is lost.
I enjoy writing greatly but society no longer needs the pen-wielding
colonial administrators that academia trains. For scholarly regard to
be something other than historical re-enactment, it must engage
critically with and *through* digital methods.
It makes me think of art critic Jed Perl who asks the question of
critics looking at a piece of art, "What do you/feel/."
We can check that with consumer EEG headsets now. ;-)
Okay, so I'm heading into territory where coders will come after me
with pitchforks. Of course, virtual ones.
- ----∈ ψ Ψ ;-)
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