I know that my response mainly pinpoints just a couple of things in the reading but I could not help but comment on a couple of them. Really…”visual art should confine itself exclusively to what is given in visual experience” ? Well please tell viewers how they are going to hang their experiences outside on a coat rack while they view the art. Besides, who is the one who gets to make that rule? How about I think I will make up my own rules for the way that I want to make art and if you want to look at it, great and if not, don’t let the door get you on the way out.
How can the only consistency in art that counts be aesthetic consistency when aesthetics are so subjective and defined by a culture, a time period, a school of thought or an individual? So what, Soutine’s Carcass of Beef is aesthetically consistent with Monet’s Parliament in the Fog and Goya’s Chronos Devouring one of His Children or Pollack and Autumn Rhythm? How is that so? I’m not saying that they are not aesthetically pleasing but I would venture to question whether or not they could be viewed under the same aesthetics scope? I am still thinking on that…hmmm. If you ask an average viewer, I can answer resoundingly-no, they will not think so. Since artists, critics or experts are not the only ones who come into contact with art, doesn’t it matter what the average person on the street thinks too? Or not?
Regardless of what an artist makes, I believe it continues to serves under a few basic guidelines and will continue to do so no matter how it changes, who questions it or how they question it. Art will always serve these functions: personal (expression), social (reaction), physical (utilitarian)
How art serves is not the issue. Greenberg is pointing out in his essay the rise of the self critical model, which I believe parallels the post modern 'meta' concept of self reflective 'anything' (meta fiction for example which could be Moby Dick but thats a discussion for another day- let's say the novel A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Eggers which reflects on its own writing throughout.) Anyway, to respond in particular to your comment I think you misunderstand the 'visual experience' quote - Greenberg is not referring to the viewers experience at all but the artists duty in creating the art itself, which Greenberg believes is best left to no more than the issues of plastic quality- that is, paint about paint (meta painting, or for the sake of argument, Modernism) and any criticism of such material must apply only to those basic qualities that can be rationally seen.
ReplyDelete"every discipline must use the characteristic methods of that medium to criticize the medium" (Rinatti, pg 3, paraphrasing Greenbergs support of Kantian critical method)
As to the 'who is he to tell me what to do/see/etc.?" the answer is flatly - nobody. However, I think you will find escaping the scholarship of Greenberg difficult in that his writings and reflections turn up constantly and provide a framework for the reflection upon Late Modernism and the flowering of Post Modernism. Further, in the reading concerning kitsch Greenberg lays out a path of social standing and cultural order that is quite clear. The Aristocracy is consumed by, or pushed into, the Bourgeois who create imitations of the unachievable high culture through mechanical production (ie, cheap and easily consumable) and the proletariat which may also be the garrison of the burgeoning avant garde, continue to provide their art tethered by the 'umbillical cord of gold' to the remaining aristocracy or the sham bourgeois pretender. So in a fashion, yes, what the average person thinks matters but only insofar as they respond within their framework, as Greenberg sets it out. So if he is guilty of anything it is a certain elitist snobbery but regrettably, I dont think he is patently 'wrong'. I have to point out though that the very expression of the 'Who are you to tell me? trope is precisely the sort of self critical analysis that Greenberg suggests as a mark of the rising avant garde- do you not make your profit as an artist from selling to the highest bidder? and is not your goal to sell ever higher to an even more rarified client? Finally, as to the final statement I offer these parallels- personal (expression) = avant garde, social (reaction) = the self critical or Marxist revolution, and physical (utilitarian) = production, ie kitsch.
Carpediem301 posts
ReplyDelete“If you ask an average viewer, I can answer resoundingly-no, they will not think so. Since artists, critics or experts are not the only ones who come into contact with art, doesn’t it matter what the average person on the street thinks too? Or not?”
Yes it does matter and it is a given responsibility of the artist and the writer to speak for the man on the street, to put a spotlight on the reality of the street.
Drew
I just want to retitle this Kristin's response to reading #1
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