From Courbet to Che By Francis Haskell Social Radicalism and the Arts: Western Europe by Donald Drew Egbert Knopf, 928 pp. 1970 Professor Egbert's enormously long book refers to the opinions on art of almost every left-wing writer (in the loosest sense of the term) in Western Europe from Saint-Simon and Fourier to Mr. John Berger. Though in his Preface he is careful to disassociate himself from most of these opinions, he is fair and dispassionate throughout, and his volume can be recommended as an invaluable source of facts for those teachers trying to cope with the 'Che Guevara and Art' kind of lecture now in demand. It also deserves to be looked at (though hardly read through) with some attention by anyone interested in the wider relationships between art and society... http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=10700
From Courbet to Che
By Francis Haskell
Social Radicalism and the Arts: Western Europe by Donald Drew Egbert
Knopf, 928 pp. 1970
Professor Egbert's enormously long book refers to the opinions on art of almost every left-wing writer (in the loosest sense of the term) in Western Europe from Saint-Simon and Fourier to Mr. John Berger. Though in his Preface he is careful to disassociate himself from most of these opinions, he is fair and dispassionate throughout, and his volume can be recommended as an invaluable source of facts for those teachers trying to cope with the 'Che Guevara and Art' kind of lecture now in demand. It also deserves to be looked at (though hardly read through) with some attention by anyone interested in the wider relationships between art and society...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=10700
And my thanks to LEP for his hospitality. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
Second afew's understated praise. Sets a new standard for historical village blogging, or bridge between cultures blogging, or how to extract the most salient from where you are at the moment blogging. Not to mention really good, and for me, interesting. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
gaugain's art described as superstition got me thinking too. paradise as eternally 'other' and 'far away', rather than a responsibility to create here. an institutionalised worship, fetishisation of exoticism, that hints at europeans' lack of enchantment, what kc describes as magic, or sense of the truly beautiful being able to exist, in all the pollution, noise and confusion from modern speeds turning ancient brains.
escapism that has had huge economic effects for good and ill, obviously.
nostalgie de la boue morphing into nostalgie de la plage.
it's symbolic of one of the ways we use to split our integrity, (to then get really into searching for it again in some sunnier clime, or on a psychiatrist's couch?)
the painting style the impressionists displaced looks so contrived, skilful, but emotionally flat, empty virtuousity. the very definition of mannered!
certainly something at the end of its journey through meaning.
sisley's painting is charming, the english influence pastellises and washes some of the emotional intensity seen in van gogh or other continental painters, with their more passionate colours and tones.
there's a fairytale quality, diaphonous, and a little removed, yet the subjects are still fierier than those the english painters had to contemplate, so there's a lovely fusion.
the pix of LEP's house are gorgeous, you can just feel the peace amidst the green, and the quiet hum of nature in the garden.
well done, and merci. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Sitting with the windows closed (on another hot day, with pollution levels leading to speed restrictions on main roads) to cut the roar of traffic, especially the hordes of bloody motorbikes, and electric drills, etc. I wouldn't mind escaping to a nice calm island myself :-)
"sisley's painting is charming, the english influence pastellises and washes some of the emotional intensity seen in van gogh or other continental painters, with their more passionate colours and tones."
There wasn't much English influence, Sisley was brought up in France, spent a few years in England before abandoning a career in business, to return to France to study in Gleyre's studio with some of the other Impressionists and then worked and socialised with them and his work is quite similar to theirs.
Van Gogh is usually identified as a post-impressionist and early Expressionist - it wasn't just a matter of him being a "continental" painter. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
There wasn't much English influence,
in the blood, innit!
does anything else differentiate his work from his gallic comrades?
that quality is slightly tenderer, shyer, more ethereal. he uses their techniques, but it comes out less 'in your face', imho, still largely suggestive but a little less direct.
(playing art critic on the internet, lol)
the problem i found with island life is the spell only lasted 10 years or so, then you wake up to how much people living at powers' periphery suffer from that fact, the happy ones don't think about it much...
wishing you a peacefully sybaritic, low decibel day ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
