[worthless_meat_sack]

I do agree with AR point about derivation. That originality is the most important value in art is an assumption that many make without even thinking about it. I suppose it is rooted in commerce. Many other cultures value continuity and reverence for the past over originality. Neither is better than the other, just different.

I wish AR had what Jason wrote rather than the pompous, turgid bloat that is there. oops, be nice.

[Jason Manley]

great job keeping it all on topic..I was worried there for a minute..heheh

ya know..I think that they are mostly upset that art was taken from the painters...and given to the masses...twas like taking the mansion away from the snob on the hill....images created that once might have gotten them a medal and such in the french legion of honor or knighthood instead got them ridiculed....the knowledge loss too got them worked up...that got me worked up when I was pursuing painting.

can anything be original in art? I dunno...Should that even be a concern? Should we not just do the best we can and enjoy what we do? Does concern over originality distract us from making art that is contrary to our inner vision? ..or is it simply a part of our vision that we must adjust so that it is not cliche...

just wondering....

meatsack....you suggest the split in thought with the comments from ARC about originality vs studying the past....Do you think things are swinging back around and beginning to blend together that way? unifying in a way..in terms of art theory? Is it really a fork in the road?

jason

[spooge demon]

I would like to apologize on behalf of meatsack. He escaped from the attic without our knowledge, and the keyboard is all a mess now. We scolded him, gave him his bucket of fishheads, and now he is back upstairs, sleeping it off.

I think it is like freedom of speech. In places where speech can cost you your life, a person talking smack is REALLY listened to. The cost of speech being high, they must have something important to say. But in a free society, everyone blathers on endlessly. Speech and opinions have become devalued. Nobody listens, and I think that irritates a lot of self-righteous people.

I think that the art world is so fractionalized that there is no such thing as "acceptable". It is a thousand little guerilla camps all throwing poo at each other. Art snobs of all stripes believe that their camp is at the "center" of it , much like the Salon was. The fact is there is nothing like that. I think that is great. (We can sit on our little forum and delude ourselves that we are artists. Just kidding there.) The lack of a concentration of power and influence is good for everyone.

Unless....

You just KNOW you are right. It is so political, the struggle over the definition of reality.

AR has the freedom to promote art as they see it. But it seems they see their opinions as "right", want that enforced, and other opinions driven out. They want accolades and attention and reverence from everyone. In their paranoia, they see the whole world is against them and the situation is dire and the torch is going out. It isn't. There have always been people who appreciate the lineage of art back to the Renaissance, they are just not bellicose about it and want to enforce that opinion. I agree with their tastes, but I do not feel the need to have the world agree with me and like what I like nor do I feel like I am being hunted down and ridiculed like vermin by "authorities."

People have made the distinction between high and low art for years, and I am a low artist. Fine with me.

[Jason Manley]

well said...

Short of saying something inflammitory just for the sake of keeping the thread alive..I really cannot think of anything to add...except maybe a note that it is the "camps" that Craig speaks of help to keep us all competing and learning and growing...I too like it. hehe If it is that skewed perspective that helps to keep art up on the web than Im all for it!

this has been one of the better discussions Ive participated in on this forum. I appreciate it.

Nice job everyone!

jason manley
also just fine about not being a "fine" artist.

[shinji69]

Ahhh... what have I done? Did I open a can full of worms?!

Anyway, I started the topic....

[Lunatique]

If you find ARC's articles a bit hard to swallow, I suggest reading Ives Gammell's "Twilight of Painting." It is very informative, and he goes into great detail on the birth of impressionism, and how that movement was misinterpreted by some artists, which resulted in modern art. I consider ARC the direct descendent of Gammell's teachings.

The writings on ARC might be militant, but I don't think it's inaccurate. Those painters WERE mistreated and ARC's anger for their unfair treatment is out of their sense of justice.

Here's an example of the similar anger I felt:

I laid my eyes on a tiny b/w picture of Bouguereau in an art history book when I was a teenager. Practically NOTHING was written about him other than his name. I was blown away by the painting (Nymphs and Satyr)at age 14, and searched and searched for ANYTHING about him. There was NOTHING. Other art history books didn't even mention his name, let alone have pictures of his work. I couldn't understand how such brilliance could be overlooked, and I felt an injustice has been committed.

Now, thinking back, I realize that was the direct result of the merciless attacks by the modernists. They wiped him out of history altogether. Bouguereau was practically worshipped in his time, and extremely famous/successful artists don't just disappear from art history books like that. SOMEONE had to make sure it happened.

There is no paranoia. It DID happen.

If things weren't so bleak for the artists that the modernists attacked, then Godward wouldn't have committed suicide and said, "The world isn't big enough for me and Picasso." in his suicide note. If these artists weren't ridiculed and ostracized, Godward's family wouldn't have burned all of his photographs, letters, and journals out of shame. Not ONE article of Godward's personal items survived.

I can only imagine pain and fear these artists must've have felt when the modernist movement was in full swing. The only comparison I can think of is the cultural revolution in China decades ago.

The fact I have a friend that graduated with a degree in fine art, but can't draw/paint his way out of a paper bag is also the direct result of the modernist's teaching. He told me that he was never taught how to draw or paint properly the whole time he was an art major. In fact they taught him to be ashamed to be concerned about technique. If anyone in class did a well-executed painting that demonstrated superior technique, the teacher immediately attacked that work, saying it has no substance, and it's just technique. Of course, the other students would echo that same mentality and REALLY drive the point home. But, if someone did some abstract piece, or glued junk together, they would spend a long time discussing the meaning behind the piece, and spew all kinds of pretentious pseudo-intellectual crap. That is a horrible thing for aspiring artists that DO want to learn how to paint.

Luckily, things are different now. There are plenty of good art schools that can provide excellent training for young artists.

Anyway, I support ARC. If I had to choose between two overbearing tyrants, I would pick ARC over the modernists any day.

[ November 14, 2001: Message edited by: Lunatique ]

[Anthony]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jason Manley:
it is the "camps" that Craig speaks of help to keep us all competing and learning and growing...I too like it.

---

Personally I like to sneak into the various camps and steal what I like from each. But I'll be damned if I'm gonna enter one and start thinking it's the sun and moon. The sad thing is that people who do this also are grouped together in a way...and don't we think this is the best way? Grrrr, there's no way out! Unless.....Yes, I think it'll work. If we don't think anything at all, we won't form an opinion on it. Then we can be artists pure and true, woohoo! But seriously, I personally don't care enough about the whole thing to have an opinion on what "camp' is good, if any. I just like drawing damn it. Grrr ^_^

"I steal from the rich and give to the needy."
"He takes a small percentage"
"But I'm not greedy"

[worthless_meat_sack]

In some ways it's like a Greek Tragedy. From Whistler's lawsuit until 1920 it was open season on anyone who did not support academia. Ever heard of the salon de refuses? Ever heard of the vicious quotes of the academics toward the fauvists and impressionists? There was direct opposition in the halls of artistic power so as to block non-traditional artists from support. The same thing happened in reverse in the 20th century. Same stupidity, names changed.

It's all payback for perceived slights, and the human tendency to feel that the center of power is always slipping to the opposition. Ideologues are the problem, not which kind of art is "better." It is political.

To me, suggesting that Bouguereau is the greatest painter of all time is hysterical. The idea that someone who is involved in art could actually think seriously of the concept of there even being a "Greatest" Painter" is amazing.

[Jason Manley]

well lunatique...you sure have a way of reopening a topic that was closing down..hehehe

all that was well said...everything you said reminded me of my experiences in art school. Thankfully I was a transfer student with three others from the same or similar traditional backgrounds so we survived by taking all the classes together and directing them by group willpower. The teachers used to go nuts...haha..

that book..."twilight of painting" is very well written. One of the points gammell makes that I used to hammer in my figure classes (with underskilled art theory teacher types) was that "any good teacher can only truly teach what he himself has mastered....if a teacher has not mastered a skill that he is professing then he will only teach what led to his own failure!" hahaha...can you imagin a snotty art kid with a realist slant spouting that off in a "fine art" figure class?

I definitely enjoyed that book...It showed me a perspective that helped me to understand the unspoken things about art history. It also gave me ammo to use in my high brow art classes that often disgusted me.

ARC basically does a poor job paraphrasing gammell...and yes it seems to be the same people...society of classical realism types...gandy gallery types....

yes..I agree with you lunatique...it did happen...it happened for many reasons not mentioned by gammell....

here are some...

two world wars...millions killed...nations ruined...hatred by the peoples toward the establishments (bouguereau was considered the establishment back then..at least part of)...even though he died 12 years before ww1 started...that kind of art was connected to the government...honored by the government..structured by the governement...Bouguereaus school was a state run institution if I remember correctly...His group..and the 19th century academics held the art world within their fists...at the tip of their brush...they ruled with iron hand...or so to speak. It takes a lot of concentration to learn academic painting...complete structure...and wars break that kind of structure entirely...tis true.

control of the art establishement...like that...breeds passionate rebellion...first the impressionists (color and light phenomena as subject matter) then the cubists (the intellectual build up and break down of form and pattern as subject matter) then the expressionists (wars cause pain...anger...Mood!) at this point the establishement of the past had been rejected...it is too bad it became neglected at the same time. with neglect things get further and further away...few were studying art like that...it became something that was almost not art as Modern mumbo jumbo had distanced itself so far from it....when no one studies the past and the same people only study the future and the now then what do you think will happen to the art history books information? it disappears...until it is rediscovered....

I too found it disturbing to have to read about helen frankenthaler in my art history class but not hear one word about the 19th century academics....luckily my figure teacher was a gammelite! hehe

Im rambling...so off to sleep I go.


jason

[Munier]

Just so you all know,

IT is so untrue that Bouguereau represented the old order art establishment, that it was because of his popular appeal that he was able to use his personal influence to go up against them and open up first the Academy Julien and then L'Ecole des Beaux Arts to women, for the first time in history.

Funny how you never hear the biased modernist historians mentioning that, because it contradicts their wish to vilify him. I'm sure his second wife, Elizabeht Gardener Bouguereau deserves some of the credit of having convinced him to do this. She was an American from New Hampshire and quite talented and accomplished in her own right.

Look at her work on ARC too.

[Gandalf-]

Munier,

You obviously know your history, and you obviously have some rather strong opinions in relation to it.

I'm curious though, are you an artist yourself? I'd be interested in seeing some of your stuff...

[worthless_meat_sack]

"If we tried to judge the past from it's art, we would get a distorted impression of Paris in the 1880's. It was not an ideal world populated by Renoir girls or Degas ballerinas, put rather by pompous bourgeois who admired Cabanel, Gerome,and Bouguereau and reacted with spleen to any reminder of the recent spectre of the Commune."

-Jiri Mucha, daughter of Alphonse Mucha.

It was not just the nazi modernists who balked at the Salon, obviously. The Academie Juilian also produces some very forward looking artists during this time.

It is not only the radical modernists who employ selective history to promote point of view.

And that is all it is or will ever be, a point of view.

[Jezebel]

Wow... this thread is still alive and kicking!

You guys are crazy

[Steven Stahlberg]

Hey mr Sack escaped from the attic again!

[Lunatique]

Mr. Sack leaves teeth marks when he bites. Owwwww.

I love a healthy debate/discussion. As long as it doesn't turn impolite. Little smiley faces does wonders.

[Anthony]

I like Gerome, he's probably in my top 10 or 20.

[sacrelicious]

Funny, you'd think that a "spooge demon" would leave more of a mess on the keyboard than a "worthless meat sack"...

[sweet euphoria]

what a great topic!

[ November 16, 2001: Message edited by: sweet euphoria ]

[Jason Manley]

munier...mullins touched on this a bit above...but Bouguerau was indeed part of the "establishment"...maybe not to the ladies...but to the impressionists he was exactly that. If it had been up to him and his angry petitions the impressionists would have never shown. The refined and polished schools of painting led and controlled by bouguereau and gerome were the top art education places in the world at the time. If you didnt finish your paintings they were not considered art (any impressionist paintings were simply considered color studies...rough..hastily made images with little care for draftsmanship)...it is exactly this kind of painting that stood against the ideas of perfection that gerome and bougueraus schools tried to embody. In the refined painters eyes...the impressionists were simply amatuers who never masttered the true craft of painting...and what those same masters failed to recognize is that the study of light is an art unto itself which would provide the most usable period of color theory in all of art history. If the refined painters had their way we would never have had impressionism...expressionism...cubism...or any other ism than their own.

I guess you could say that they were open minded and close minded at the same time. They controlled the art world and lost their dictatorship to the chase of the "new". That chase has paid off tenfold...the study of mood..the self..light...color...shape...all have progressed in the twentieth century.

it is exactly at that time that painters and artists started looking away from the past...finally we as artists have started to include them in a part of the future. Thankfully we have more opened minds...is that not the best tool an artist has??...the open mind?

......the nazis may have admired the perfection of draftsmanship that mucha also stood for they also hated his subject matter. They jailed him for it...and that is where he died..in a nazi jail. Thats what he gets for painting 14-15 humongous images glorifying the enemies of the germans. lame.

if any of you ever get a chance to see a mucha show...GO! his drawings are so goooood...his paintings simply glow...When I saw his retrospective in palm beach a few years ago I tried to do a master copy of one of his sketches. I felt like I was drawing with my toes. He is a favorite of mine for sure. The books do him NO justice.

the comment about skewing history to fit a certain point of view was well said.


jason

[Anthony]

Mucha died in a Nazi prison? Now I really don't like them! I wish Mucha had done more paintings, fewer prints, more drawings.

[spooge demon]

Gerome causes acute renal failure in me. Uhh, I mean that I like He's in my top 5.

But I don't confuse my reality with objective reality, mainly because there is no such thing in matters like these.

I guess I am also hipped up on goofballs about this because, although not a religious person, the two biggest sins one can make in life are:

**spooge puts on robes and dusts of an orange crate, steps up, clears throat...**

1) to take your life or people in your life for granted, and

2) to confuse opinion and value systems with fact, and to use facts selectively to enforce your opinion or value system.

To me this has caused more pain and suffering throughout history that just about anything else on both a personal and global scale.

*returns to wallflower mode*

[Lunatique]

Ermmm. I love some pieces by Gerome, but I also find him very inconsistant. Some of his pieces makes me go, "Arf?! He painted that? WTF??" When he is good, his colors are vivid yet convincing, and his rendering tight yet not plastic. When he's bad, he is the opposite.

Alma-Tadema seems a lot more consistant, but he doesn't paint Orientalist themes much.

From the 19th century, my favs are: Waterhouse, Sargent, Mucha, Klimt, and Zorn.