Art history nerd alert: Richardson's face is much better handled than his clothing, quite probably because the latter was done by studio help or a so-called "drapery painter" employed by Richardson, as was common practice at the time. It was routinely done by Kneller, the leading portraitist in England between the death of Lely (1680) and his own (1723), who ran a veritable portrait factory.
Part of the problem is insecurity and the kind of open-mindedness via which one's brain eventually falls out. I practice a very firm, focused and ruthless approach: it's ultimately between me and the art, the work as such, period, and that interaction is personal--with me as the ultimate authority, meaning my criteria, my judgment, my taste and my understanding. I don't look at art for the sake of other people, so it's my business, not theirs. Don't like it? Not an issue. It's not about you.
Franklin, I left a comment saying I didn't agree with you, and have no idea where. But, it might be semantics, and it involves universalism. Do you mean, commonality within what we all share?
Unlike Artblog.net, since I didn't build this platform I can't reason about its behavior, sorry. But at least I see this comment.
To answer your question, yes. I mean universalism in the sense that Kant used it, that art-value is both urgent and communicable because it has a basis in common humanity. Which part do you disagree with?
It was on Instagram. I'm happy to delete (or for you to) this whole question. The semantics of universalism give me a knee-jerk response associatively. So it's more a futility implied by the actual word (ie. exclusionary past) than the concept.
It's okay. For some reason art history has always been prone to weird orthodoxies, and one picks them up by exposure, like a cold. Worringer, in a book that's a likely candidate for Asynchronous Studio Book Club...
...wrote in 1906 that the Renaissance ought not be the measure of all other art. Which means that one, it was necessary at one time to say so, and two, no one alive remembers that time. The current weird orthodoxy is that white critics are going around enforcing white supremacy with their white criticism (essentially, saying that the Renaissance is the measure of all other art), and now it's necessary to state that good Western art is innately good and has cross-cultural appeal, just like all other good art. Mendez Berry is the kind of person that Worringer had to contradict in the early 1900s. Is it too much to ask just to open one's eyes and describe what's in front of them honestly? I guess for some people it is.
We can see in the #MeToo movement how actions once acceptable are no longer. There is a societal process to upending mores that takes time; society moves like an extended caterpillar. The term universal hits me like that after watching Something Wild (1961) on Criterion.
Understood. People being people, there's a tendency to replace the old hardened discourse with the new hardened discourse, which is how you end up with the dippy speculation in this review of James Brooks that Laurie Fendrich just wrote:
Somehow the artists know instinctively to guard against cliches, without suspecting that the cliches of art history and art criticism may be just as pernicious, or that the new cliches are as bad as the old ones.
Jonathan Richardson (the elder), by the way, for those unfamiliar with him, was a leading English portrait painter in his day, and that is a self-portrait (though I prefer https://tinyurl.com/5h36j559 etched by him). He was certainly a serious man.
Franklin, I sympathize because of who you are and what you do, but I care less and less. I walked away from the bunk and rot well before 2020. I don't respect, want or need it, so it merits no special consideration or concern. Let it masturbate to whatever fantasies it cares to, till hair (or something) grows on its palms, but I'm not interested. I have come to find it demeaning to take it seriously.
Still, regardless of the state of published art criticism, everyone serious about art should be his or her own art critic. I am, and my judgment is always definitive for me, as it should be. Others' views have their place and potential value, but actual dependence on them is a weakness, or at least a form of immaturity or underdevelopment. If one's own eye cannot do it, maybe one shouldn't be looking.
As for the significance of Swaby's "tight social circle," it presumably consists of black females, which guarantees nothing in terms of the artistic quality of her work (only her talent could) but does guarantee checking the requisite boxes--not art-wise, of course, but that's not what this is about.
Regarding jacked up museum admission fees, there are museums I will not pay any fee to enter, simply because the outfit disgusts me, and others where I will only pay to see a sure thing which I consider worth the money--and trust me, I'm not easy to entice, even when I can get in free.
The kicker about the higher entrance fees is that the institutions know (they'll even admit it to the NYT) that they're going to drive away the diverse audiences that they purport to crave. This reinforces my impression that they don't actually care who sees these shows so long as they can claim to the donors that they want a wider demographic in the building.
BINGO. What really matters, both to the institutions and the donors, is striking the PC pose and projecting the corresponding image. As someone inherently averse to such ploys, and to fashion victimhood in general, I can smell that game a mile away, and to me it stinks something awful. Needless to say, it's also automatically discrediting.
Art history nerd alert: Richardson's face is much better handled than his clothing, quite probably because the latter was done by studio help or a so-called "drapery painter" employed by Richardson, as was common practice at the time. It was routinely done by Kneller, the leading portraitist in England between the death of Lely (1680) and his own (1723), who ran a veritable portrait factory.
Thank God for Dissident Muse Journal.
Thank God for appreciative readers!
Part of the problem is insecurity and the kind of open-mindedness via which one's brain eventually falls out. I practice a very firm, focused and ruthless approach: it's ultimately between me and the art, the work as such, period, and that interaction is personal--with me as the ultimate authority, meaning my criteria, my judgment, my taste and my understanding. I don't look at art for the sake of other people, so it's my business, not theirs. Don't like it? Not an issue. It's not about you.
Franklin, I left a comment saying I didn't agree with you, and have no idea where. But, it might be semantics, and it involves universalism. Do you mean, commonality within what we all share?
Unlike Artblog.net, since I didn't build this platform I can't reason about its behavior, sorry. But at least I see this comment.
To answer your question, yes. I mean universalism in the sense that Kant used it, that art-value is both urgent and communicable because it has a basis in common humanity. Which part do you disagree with?
It was on Instagram. I'm happy to delete (or for you to) this whole question. The semantics of universalism give me a knee-jerk response associatively. So it's more a futility implied by the actual word (ie. exclusionary past) than the concept.
It's okay. For some reason art history has always been prone to weird orthodoxies, and one picks them up by exposure, like a cold. Worringer, in a book that's a likely candidate for Asynchronous Studio Book Club...
https://www.amazon.com/Abstraction-Empathy-Contribution-Psychology-Style/dp/1614275874/
...wrote in 1906 that the Renaissance ought not be the measure of all other art. Which means that one, it was necessary at one time to say so, and two, no one alive remembers that time. The current weird orthodoxy is that white critics are going around enforcing white supremacy with their white criticism (essentially, saying that the Renaissance is the measure of all other art), and now it's necessary to state that good Western art is innately good and has cross-cultural appeal, just like all other good art. Mendez Berry is the kind of person that Worringer had to contradict in the early 1900s. Is it too much to ask just to open one's eyes and describe what's in front of them honestly? I guess for some people it is.
We can see in the #MeToo movement how actions once acceptable are no longer. There is a societal process to upending mores that takes time; society moves like an extended caterpillar. The term universal hits me like that after watching Something Wild (1961) on Criterion.
Understood. People being people, there's a tendency to replace the old hardened discourse with the new hardened discourse, which is how you end up with the dippy speculation in this review of James Brooks that Laurie Fendrich just wrote:
https://twocoatsofpaint.com/2023/08/the-real-deal-james-brooks-reconsidered.html
Somehow the artists know instinctively to guard against cliches, without suspecting that the cliches of art history and art criticism may be just as pernicious, or that the new cliches are as bad as the old ones.
Jonathan Richardson (the elder), by the way, for those unfamiliar with him, was a leading English portrait painter in his day, and that is a self-portrait (though I prefer https://tinyurl.com/5h36j559 etched by him). He was certainly a serious man.
Franklin, I sympathize because of who you are and what you do, but I care less and less. I walked away from the bunk and rot well before 2020. I don't respect, want or need it, so it merits no special consideration or concern. Let it masturbate to whatever fantasies it cares to, till hair (or something) grows on its palms, but I'm not interested. I have come to find it demeaning to take it seriously.
Franklin, check out https://othernetwork.io/
and if you like it, make a connection to me
https://othernetwork.io/entries/hans
Still, regardless of the state of published art criticism, everyone serious about art should be his or her own art critic. I am, and my judgment is always definitive for me, as it should be. Others' views have their place and potential value, but actual dependence on them is a weakness, or at least a form of immaturity or underdevelopment. If one's own eye cannot do it, maybe one shouldn't be looking.
As for the significance of Swaby's "tight social circle," it presumably consists of black females, which guarantees nothing in terms of the artistic quality of her work (only her talent could) but does guarantee checking the requisite boxes--not art-wise, of course, but that's not what this is about.
Regarding jacked up museum admission fees, there are museums I will not pay any fee to enter, simply because the outfit disgusts me, and others where I will only pay to see a sure thing which I consider worth the money--and trust me, I'm not easy to entice, even when I can get in free.
The kicker about the higher entrance fees is that the institutions know (they'll even admit it to the NYT) that they're going to drive away the diverse audiences that they purport to crave. This reinforces my impression that they don't actually care who sees these shows so long as they can claim to the donors that they want a wider demographic in the building.
BINGO. What really matters, both to the institutions and the donors, is striking the PC pose and projecting the corresponding image. As someone inherently averse to such ploys, and to fashion victimhood in general, I can smell that game a mile away, and to me it stinks something awful. Needless to say, it's also automatically discrediting.