Ars Ingenica

[nyuanshin]

". . . boldness alone is not yet exploration unless it is coupled with a critical sense. . . . the more we learn to look at the individual and particular work of art as the work of skilled hands and great minds in response to concrete demands, the more we shall teach authority that what the artist needs is not more myth or more propaganda, but

Comments

[airstrip]

I think the best cure for the romantic ideas about art is a critical study of the art markets at those historical turning points we feel imbued the world with artistic genius. Nothing makes you appreciate the raw force of art as a vehicle of petty political squabbles and social climbing like letters in Italian that bitch about a fresco painted with a blue that cost less than four florins to the ounce or contracts specifying who paints what in a piece and then the correspondence where the duke of some shit-hole demands satisfaction because the work of a lower-ranked, but arguably better, artist has been used in some prominent place, tarnishing the duke's good name

[airstrip]

Just a note, this is precisely what made me start to love Rubens.

[nyuanshin]

Hahahaha. I believe every bit of it.

[airstrip]

Also, a note: the movement of artistic genius from residing outside the artist to residing inside the artist is driven by economic, not philosophical considerations. The transition for this corresponds to a rise in the value of artistic talents, because of increased demand, that made artists more valuable than the commodities they used to paint with. This is when gold becomes less prominent in paintings, oil starts becoming the medium of choice and so on. Because of this, competition for original works climbs dramatically because copies could be produced easily the artist's workshop; this leads inevitably to the cult of the artist just as heavy demand for financial services leads to the cult of Wall Street bankers.

In the former the end result is Bouguereau, in the latter it is Bernie Madoff. Both have similar qualities to the untrained eye, it is the trained who are fooled.

[nyuanshin]

I should clarify that I was trying to make a general observation about ontology being shaped by pragmatics, so this isn't really in contradiction and actually makes a lot of sense. I find your recent bolshie turn unexpectedly pleasing.