Mark Rothko - Abstract Expressionism and the Decline of Western Art

8 posts

Ash
Yes, this is largely the situation we are in.
My post was an argument against art for art's sake. Didn't you notice?
Talk about Hallmark!
It's very difficult to have a conversation with someone who keeps deciding for me what I will or would say.
Trajan

I know your argument was against art for art's sake. I was being general. Stop making everything about you , for fuck's sake.

Also I had a feeling you would dismiss Emerson...I used to, as well, before I read Lasch's chapter on him in True and Only Heaven . Take a look at it, it disproves the common notion that Emerson was some kind of proto-New Ager.

Ash
Also, when I listen to someone like Julian Lee what I hear is Emerson far more than, say, Shankara. Tell me why I'm wrong; I'm not going to read that book any time soon.
Trajan
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Ash

Let me guess: I'm dressed anachronistically and you're dressed as a girl.

Trajan
The conventional portrayal of Emerson as a drawing room liberal with a boutique spirituality, a SWPL avant la lettre , is only half-correct. Emerson said some pretty banal things in his time when you get right down to it -- how else could he appeal to Obama, who listed 'Self-Reliance' on his Facebook page? -- but his philosophy was issued as a challenge against an entity which was far more banal, Harvard's brand of academic Unitarianism. Emerson tried to throw a new spark into religion when all around him was this petrified, liberal museum-piece Christianity, not unlike Kierkegaard. He can't be blamed for trying, though the end result was far from satisfactory -- Transcendentalism faded away as a spiritual fad, utterly inconsequential.

He's a tragic figure in a way and contemporary liberal biographers misrepresent him. Nietzsche's interpretation was probably closer to correct, that Emerson was a vitalist who was struggling against the moral sluggishness and spiritual pusillanimity of Victorian society. Lasch brings this interpretation to light in his chapter 'No Answer But An Echo', which also brings up Emerson's surprising conservatism, of a populist/country party bent. And of course, I regard him as a keen thinker on aesthetics, which is why I stand by his quote.

If you want to read something that will really change your mind on Emerson, read his 1860 article on fate, available here:
http://www.xmission.com/~seldom74/emerson/conduct.html

Niccolo and Donkey
Herr Gundolf
Here is an irony: probably the best living painter is Odd Nerdrum. His paintings are figurative. In order to justify this he simply said "Art" was a German concept, and he painted Kitsch. There is very little kitschy about his art. Here are examples of his kitsch:
odd-nerdrum.jpg twilight.jpg (this second painting is actually one of his worst).
Most of his art is not like this. By Kitsch he means highly pathetic. This is opposed some kind of "Kantian" view that art is supposed to be appreciated abstractly, at a distance.

An unsurprising tragedy is that sentimentalism a la Rockwell has been the escape for infantile tastes of nostalgics, instead of the much better Andrew Wyeth.
1962_271.jpg 325fbde9c6bf2b9baa874dae37c9a62c.jpg 07-andrew-wyeth-Outpost.jpg