After Lawrence Weschler wrote about David Hockney’s theory about how Old Master painters might have used optical devices as aids in their work, he got an avalanche of protests. “I write about all sorts of things–hell, I write about relations between Jews and Poles, for God’s sake – so I’m used to getting letters. But I’d never found myself on the receiving end of anything like this. It turns out that the question of technical assistance may be the Third Rail of popular art history. Most people, it seems, prefer to envision their artistic heroes as superhuman draftsmen, capable of rendering ravishingly accurate anatomies or landscapes or townscapes through sheer inborn or God-given talent.”
Tag: 12.02
End Of A Historical Line
Art historian Sir Ernst Gombrich was “the last member of a formidable dynasty of philosophers and historians who, beginning in central Europe during the nineteenth century, devoted themselves to discovering the deep structures of human culture.” Gombrich’s narratives describe “the progress of art as a slow, successful conquest of the difficulties of perception. The problem with this view is that the tide of taste runs in absolutely the opposite direction…”
The Best Arts Charities In America
Which are the best arts charities in the US? Worth Magazine ranks the top 24 in its annual list. Mind you, these are “best” in terms of how they run their non-profit status, not necessarily “best” for the art they produce…
Lumped Together – How Do You Reduce A Culture to “Latino”?
“Latino” art and artists are hot right now in the US. But what is “Latino” art? “The gross American simplification of grouping into one ethnic and cultural qualifier the nearly 30 New World nationalities and two European ones that currently make up the uniquely American term ‘Latin’ or ‘Latino’ is beyond me.”
What Kinds of Books Were Published Last Year – A List…
The book industry published almost 115,000 titles last year. Fiction was by far the biggest genre – accounting for almost 16,000 of those titles. But the next biggest category is a bit of a surprise – Sociology and Economics – accounting for almost 13,000 titles. Here’s a chart that breaks down what was published…
Explaining The Glenn Gould Phenomenon
Glenn Gould was (and remains) a phenomenon of the music world – a figure taken up in the broader culture to a remarkable degree. Why?”What made Gould’s Goldbergs so popular that they could be plausibly incorporated into the cultural décor of The Silence of the Lambs? Why are they still so popular today? The answers, not surprisingly, have almost as much to do with extra-musical factors as with purely musical ones.”
Copyright-As-Incentive – It Doesn’t Work
Defenders of copyright laws say stringent protections are essential to ensure the continuing viability of intellectual property. Is it true? Jason Schultz did a few calculations on the movies. There were 36,386 titles released from 1927-1946, he says. Of those: only 2,480 are available on VHS; only 871 are available on DVD; only 114 are available on Pay-Per-View; and only 13 are available in theaters. “If that assumption is correct, then only 2,480 out of 36,386 titles from 1927-1946 are available, or 6.8%. 93.2% are commercially dormant.”
Why Philosophy Has Lost Its Grip On The World
There was a time philosophy was thought a lofty pursuit – a calling that tried to explain the world. But “despite important developments in recent decades in philosophical accounts of thought and meaning, law and ethics, and knowledge and consciousness, the enterprise of philosophy is no longer taken very seriously nor accorded any special status in the broader culture.” Why? “Too often these days we reduce philosophy to confession and intimacy to kitsch precisely because we live without a sense of the democratic res publica.
Can Architecture Overcome Its Ideology?
“What does it mean to say that an architect, considered in his capacity as an architect, espouses an ideology? Think about it: Did Brunelleschi have an ideology? Did Alberti? Did Stanford White? They certainly had opinions about what made good architecture: they embraced some things and disparaged others. But having an opinion is not the same thing as espousing an architectural ideology.” But with Modernism, we’re dealing with a different animal…
Polling For Art
As times get tougher for artists, the pressure to try to create work more people will want to see increases. That’s why artists Komar & Melamid’s work in ferreting out what people most want in a painting has been way ahead of its time. It’s art-by-poll, and the artists have taken the trouble to find out what people in 14 countries most want (and don’t want) to see in their artwork. Here’s a gallery…