I wish i could express myself 100th as well as you. thanks mando
On Jun 23, 2008, at 7:22 AM, William Conger wrote:
Every artist works with a model in mind, however vague or eclectic. The artist is always working for and against some model of what art can be. There's no such thing as a canon. That's the creation of art history and it has no life of its own, as it were, but is animated solely by art historians doing their work and competing with one another for what's in and what's out. Artistic death occurs when some supposed canon becomes the measure of what an artistic success is. This has been proven over and over in the course of history. Sir Joshua Reynolds, a flashy painter and English Royal Academy director said it best: "He who follows must necessarily stay behind." It was said that the most adventurous American frontier pioneers moved on when they heard the sound of another man's axe. Similarly, for artists, as soon as the canon is defined, it's time to move on. In pioneering days the preachers, teachers, and lawyers followed after the frontiersmen. Likewise in art. For that reason I agree that art schools should "preach and teach" some of the "traditional" curricula and studio practices, the civilizing impulse and shaper of the art theory, but no one should equate those with the need for the serious artist to continually "break new ground" by moving on, and on, and on still more, and excited by the freshness and wildness of lawless discovery and free from canonical cautions. WC
