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Lesson Plans


Re: is anyone out there?Bill's still here.

[ Thread ][ Subject ][ Author ][ Date ]
elwood p dowd (harvey96)
Tue, 9 Jun 1998 07:22:55 -0400

my list would look something like this:
REAL ARTISTS 101: van gogh, gaugain, manet, monet, vermeer, bruegel,
turner, friedrich, duchamp, picasso, matisse, modigliani, soutine, degas,
rembrandt, titian, velasquez, rivera,pollock, rothko, kline, gorky,
reinhardt,
johns, raushenberg, tatlin, malevich, nevelson, o'keefe, butterfield,
hesse,
kirchner, nolde, ernst, on and on and on........
calder is a peripheral artist,out there on his own fringe

On Mon, 8 Jun 1998 20:12:04 -0700 (MST) taylorh <taylorh>
writes:
>On Mon, 8 Jun 1998, elwood p dowd wrote:
>
>> was calder a "real" artist or just an over grown kid playing with
>> his toys??? I always had my doubts about this modern "master".
>
>Was Jimmy Stewart a "real" actor? :)
>
>It's a context thing, isn't it?
>And YOU get to make the ultimate decision
>in terms of your context. You can't decide
>for me, nor can I for you.
>
>Sometimes, I tend to like the notion that "real" art is not a city or
>urban phenomena. After all, Until 1970 or so cities never even
>constituted
>1% of the planet's space, and though urban areas represent a somewhat
>larger slice of population they've still managed to stay on the lower
>end
>of the population curve in every historical era. Throughout history,
>most
>people never lived in an urban center. Therefore non-urban art
>predominates and the only reason art is believed to be an urban
>phenomenon
>is that pretty much all the (authorizing) institutions have been,
>themselves, urban centered phenomena.
>
>That's a pretty unrealistic perspective despite whatever validity it
>might be able to claim. I still like to pull it out now and again. The
>fact is that the urban artists can claim the lion's share of the
>artworlds.
>
>At the smaller scale then, the question of whether Calder is a 'real'
>artist or for that matter Duchamps or Bueys, Finster or Koons; dosen't
>seem to have a 'real' answer, fun as it may be to argue it out.
>
>I'd say that Calder was an artist and that play was an excellent
>marker
>for art better than un-alloyed formalism at the very least.
>
>BUT, what makes an artist an artist for you? And which ones top the
>list
>of artists in your book? What's the basis of your aesthetic model?
>
>Everybody ends up doing formalism eventually but its affectiveness
>that
>makes an artist an artist for me... what affect does the work have and
>Calder inspires playfulness. Top of my list, in no particular order,
>includes Phidias (sculptor), Vermeer, Rothko, The Altamira artists,
>Hasegawa Tohaku, Rembrandt, The sculptor of the Oni of Ife bust, Maria
>of
>San Ildefonso, and Fritz Lang just to make it a short list...
>
>I'm pretty impressed by the woman (Taymor?) who just did The Lion King
>too. Nice performance work that definately shares a great deal with
>visual
>artspace.
>
>I like instrumentalism but I'm not a big fan of contemporary efforts
>along
>that line which seem to be more politics than art.
>
>-henry
>
>