Bob,

You gave me a head fake! I didn't think you were bitin' on this one.

For the record, some of my favorite painters are Sargent, Sorolla, Zorn, Fechin, Arkhipov, Levitan, etc. More of the direct painter crowd. I don't like the Salon painters much at all.

When people are talking about realism in painting, they are talking about the realistic depiction of nature (trees, hills, water, faces, pots, pans, etc.). They aren't talking about celebrating or upholding some passing era. The proof of this is that you can enjoy such great work created back then in the present, even if you know little or nothing about the time period when the painting was created. Great art always lives in the present, when viewer meets viewed. You understand very well what I'm talking about.

Modernism is saying "Screw nature and beauty; They bore me. I don't want to take the time to learn how to paint that stuff anyway. I don't like my culture, my world. I'm an outsider, and I resent it. Now I get the chance to judge you, and I'm going to tear you apart. I'm going to reject your values, your sensibilities, and your culture. I'm going to break the rules and ridicule and mock you. And if you don't like it, I'll just pretend that you're stupid, and not smart enough to understand. Eat that!"

Cezanne is innovative because he couldn't draw well. He is a rebel because he accepted that shortcoming. If you want to like him, that's okay. I'm not saying anyone can't, or that they shouldn't paint that way if they want. I'm just saying that its inferior to the true greats of painting. See, I'm JUDGING based on, of all things, QUALITY! I realize that in Modern painting, being a craftsman is irrelevant. IDEAS of quality are everything! Well, only the proper rebellious ones, anyway.

By the way, you still haven't answered my question about WHY Modern Art is obsessed with rebellion. So I'll ask it again. WHY IS MODERN ART OBSESSED WITH REBELLION?

Breaking molds, pieces and shards, tearing things down, leaving things behind--YES, YOU'VE GOT IT NOW! Its all about destruction. The destruction of realistic painting techniques, the destruction of the prevailing culture, the destuction of whatever. Or "ironic commentaries thereof". I just wonder why these guys can't keep their work on the bathroom walls where it belongs.

Posted by: Brian Minder on January 28, 2006 7:20 PM

Cezanne couldn't master perspective, but he had the moxie to keep painting even though, by the standards of the last 400 years, he was incompetent. His paintings came out rather nice, but it would be helpful if museum curators would mention that basic fact about his work.

Posted by: Steve Sailer on January 28, 2006 8:27 PM

Mr. McManus:

Sorry if I'm not being very clear, but I'm trying to point out that there is a contradiction between Modern Art Theory and the notion of a canon of Modern Art "old masters"...of whom Cezanne is clearly one.

This contradiction is not new; the creation of an orthodox list of "Modern Old Masters" (as funny as that sounds) was one of the major preoccupations of the first generation of Modernist critics, theorists and apologists for Modern Art. But I do find it odd that this formulation continues to be trotted out by contemporary art critics without (apparently) their even being aware of any incongruity.

I intend to write a post in the near future on exactly why this contradiction has been historically necessary, at least to the marketing of Modern Art.

Posted by: Friedrich von Blowhard on January 28, 2006 8:48 PM

I am tryng two arguments at once here. I also hang out at Obsidian Wings, where Edward is a NY gallery owner selling modernism. In that world, which may be Friedrich's, a representational painting wouldn't sell, and some variant on abstract expressionism is not seen as rebellion but as conformism (unless it is too passe). I suppose the modern defines itself as the new, and defines new as breaking with and refuting the past and tradition. You can see that as rebellion, I don't necessarily see it that way or think that artists see it that way. And you are talking about a very tiny part of culture, I can point you to original artists selling for 5-50k doing everything from conventional portraits to cubism to everything else. The high art world is about as small as the novelists trying to take the next step past Joyce and Pynchon or whatever, or classical composers trying to improve on Boulez. Tiny, miniscule, insignificant. Pittenger here talks about repulsive public architecture but we still have the glass boxes and tudor revival homes built every day. Civilization is not collapsing around us.

For the record, besides the obvious giants, I like the impressionists especially Gauguin before the 2nd Brittany 1886-88;Rogier van der Weyden, Georges de la Tour, the big sky Dutch guys like Salomon Ruysdael and most of that Dutch era, and late Sargent, the Italian watercolors. But I like a lot of stuff, obviously.

Posted by: bob mcmanus on January 28, 2006 9:12 PM

I venture to suggest that it's not so much that the artists are canonical, but that museum curators want an excuse to check out the French Riviera. Bear in mind that "Cezanne in Provence" follows upon "Matisse in Nice" and "Van Gogh in Arles" and "Van Gogh in St Remy and Auvers." I'm sure "Renoir in Cagnes-sur-Mer" and "Picasso in Antibes" are not far behind.

Posted by: winifer skattebol on January 28, 2006 11:12 PM

Bob,

I guess we agree to disagree about Modernism. I know the market for living painters is pretty small. Still, though, this stuff will be the relics of our Great American Era. It pains me to think that the colored square paintings will occupy this space.

As far a civilization not collapsing, I wouldn't be too sure of that! Fractured families, soaring bastardization rate, decline of the schools, transferral of our industrial base to China, importation of rather dumb and fecund third worlders, continued decline of television, literacy and literature, massive government, personal, and corporate debt, dollar being phased out as the world reserve currency, etc. I wouldn't pull my finger out of the dike, if I were you.

As a side note on the Impressionists and the Dutch genre and landscape painters, I find that lots of people enjoy that stuff, as do I. These are just great painters painting the everyday life around them. When you go back and research, its amazing how hard it is for painters to do work like this, free to pursue their own subjects, and how popular and correct their decisions turned out to be. There always seems to be someone with an agenda to push on the painter, from the Church, to royalty, to aristocracy, to critics, to business, etc. Freedom is a precious thing.

Thanks for being a good sport. I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend. Its good to know that there are others who take the arts seriously enough to argue about it some. I wish there were more people like you out there.

Posted by: Brian Minder on January 28, 2006 11:25 PM

I think that winifer has a point. Artists always think art is about "the art" when everyone knows that it's probably more about the dealers, the curators, and -- most of all -- the customer. There are a great many newly rich people around now, trying to understand art, charity, and -- well, ostentation. Which is why shows, auctions, prices and so on are a poor way to tell what's REALLY going on in an aesthetic sense.

It strikes me that the better way to know what this canon and that canon is about is to check the sociology of who's buying what. Those who happened to see Picasso, Basquiat or Pollock in the movies will see that's what to buy -- unless they happen to think that the patrons in those movies are being mocked, in which case they might turn to good old cowboy art or even Alma Tadema. I personally love Alma Tadema. I just wouldn't argue that it's "great" except in terms of technique. But don't you think AT made a great impression on Geo. Lucas? I'm thinking of the romance in the middle of the second triad of Star Wars. That palace had everything but the tigerskin rug.

Prairie Mary

Posted by: mary scriver on January 28, 2006 11:31 PM

"...[Cézanne's] art is important because 'it effectively destabilized centuries of representation...'"

Er, no, it wasn't Cézanne. It was Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and Louis Daugerre who destabilized representation, and painting, by separating the two, and making the latter unnecessary.

Art, like marriage, has a need for need.

Posted by: Reg Cæsar on January 29, 2006 3:54 AM

Reg,

Photography didn't make painting unnecessary. If it did, then it would have displaced all the great paintings before photography too. But it didn't. If great art was made before photography, then great art can be made again without use of photography. Great painting makes photography irrelevant, not the other way around.

Representational art is more than just rendering. Its rendering plus a lot of other things, like composition, color, subject matter, emotional communication, etc. These things, by the way, are what lifts photography into being an art form too, instead of just rendering. You might want to think about that instead of parroting the Modern Art line. None of it stands up to any serious scrutiny.

Representational painters just want more control over the process than photography allows. Sometimes they even use photography to supplement studies from life, compostional sketches, etc. The means are not the end.

Posted by: Brian Minder on January 29, 2006 8:18 PM

OK, the tripod did not replace the easel, nor did the automobile replace the horse-- people still ride horses, as we see here by the rather high one on which Mr Minder is perched!

Actually, I was referring not to the art of painting, but to the trade, or, better yet, job. Let's say you want to save your family's likeness for posterity. In 1806, you hire a painter-- your only option. In 1906, you hire a photographer. Or a painter. In 2006, you get out the digitial and upload the result into iPhoto. Or hire a photograper. Or hire a painter. What percentage of people hire a painter in 2006? And, speaking of representation, how representative are they?

In 1806 there was an army of professional painters doing mostly workaday stuff like portraits of the wealthy and landscapes of their real estate while dabbling in a little "art" on the side. In 2006, this army is now a collection of fey poseuses in urban "villages" collecting grants from the wealthy in order to attack them. (Painting is less relevant than blacksmithery!)

Might this collapse in taste have just a little something to do with the disappearance of the "job" of painting, a disappearance brought on by the introduction of more convenient tools?

As for "parroting the Modern Art line", c'mon! "Modern art" is an oxymoron.

Posted by: Reg Cæsar on January 30, 2006 2:48 AM

Reg,

You are right about modern realistic portaiture. Most of it is just duped photography. But what about a Rubens or El Greco altarpiece, or Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescos? How does a camera do that?

I think the collapse in taste that really matters is the collapse in taste in the upper classes. The lower classes have always been mostly disinterested in the high arts. Look to the universities for that. Also, many super rich families used to train their heirs precisely in aesthetic taste because they were patrons and benefactors of the arts. I'm not sure if this is still the case. Now they want to improve the world by standing human nature on its head, like all leftists do, and the traditional arts seem like merely a sideshow to this more thrilling endeavor.

Posted by: Brian Minder on January 30, 2006 10:55 AM






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