By Means of Dots Per a Meany
I went to see the Impressionists at the Kimbell this weekend & I was disappointed. They were executors of color & technique, not ideas. I went from one painting to the next, from landscape to portrait to self-portrait to landscape. I dissected each one into its process & at their best, they were simple dot-matrix prints i.e. scientific Impressionism (pointillism) aka stippling...with colors!
It's hard to connect with them when all they created was what they saw. I guess there's a sense of journalism in it, some sort of gonzo departure from the previous schools, but a presentation of the mundane is still mundane. Ooooh, look at...some of the colors...from today...outside of my hotel/home. Hmmmm?
I guess it's easy to criticize an idea that I studied frivolously. I was fortunate enough to have a library at my disposal in my youth because, by default, I saw every style on the same ground, lined up next to one another, alphabetically. I stripped away the techniques as a basis of judgment because I felt that if it can be taught/learned, then it's not really important (the DaFen Oil Painting Village is a perfect example of this). After that & within my mind, everything lasted on the merit of its ideas. I wish that they didn't because it's easy to see something for its surface, but exponentially more difficult to see something for its humanity, intention, & dedication.
I finished Kafka's The Trial, started Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, & am still in the middle of Hofstadter's GEB. Not bad, pretty good (so far), & a mind trip (so far), respectively.