Ed,
Your comments about romantic are confusing
to me as an artist. Romanticism has a highly specific
meaning to me. Emerson for example was a romantic,
does that mean that his observations are untrue or
untrustworthy? The root of the word in Art goes back
to the Greek duality of Dionysus vs. Apollo.
Dionysus defined form from content while Apollo
defined content from form. Frank Lloyd Wright
who developed an organic architecture, build from
the ground where it sat, allowed the form to proceed
from the meanings of the surroundings.
In Japan, the surrounding content of an earthquake
prone area demanded a new form built upon the specific
needs of that area. The building survived the earthquakes
of the region because Wright was a romantic. He paid
attention to the content and let the form flow from its needs.
Sometimes he failed, like at Falling Water where it seems he
didn't put in enough steel in the cantilever but on the other
hand the contractor added steel and made Wright's design
heavier so who knows? But in the Johnson's Wax building
and the Price Tower as well as the Imperial Hotel, he
succeeded brilliantly. Not bad for a romantic.
Romanticism appreciates the power of nature and its
basis as the root of all human creativity. The Environmental
movement is a Romantic movement with the economic
monetarists being a classical one.
Beethoven was the beginning of romanticism in music
and was followed by Brahms, Wagner, Wolf, Schubert,
Schumann. "One of a kind" those folks. Ives was a
Romantic as well. Romantics consider tradition to be
a part of the scene that the art must spring from.
Phillip Johnson is a romantic while Mies Van der Rohe
was not. A romantic can appreciate both Johnson
and Mies while it is difficult for that to flow the other
way around. So I love Mozart although I find him a little
tight assed at times. I would prefer a little more
complexity but then I have Schoenberg and Puccini
for that. As well as the southern drum but more about
that in a post that I have spent time thinking about.
Henry Ford was a classicist. He made his functions
to fit his forms. They had to be simple clean and elegant
like a production line. The real point here is that mass
production and economies of scale are classicist while
a one of a kind masterwork is romantic in impulse even
if it is classicist in form. Artists body form forth from
perception of the beat of the world and the shapes of the
environment for their own sake. The meaning of that form
found in its use is secondary to the truth and exceptional
quality of that moment in time and space. That is at its
root romantic even if the result is "form defining meaning."
So the gist of all of this is that Dionysus without Apollo is
like a body with only one hand. The reverse is true as well.
So perhaps it would be good to have a romantic economist
or two to fill out the synergy.
That is a pretty good definition of the natives whose
language speaks the opposite of English. Lame Deer
said the only Europeans who could understand us were
their artists. I tend to agree but add those others who
have built the discipline to think like artists. Artists,
like traditional Indian Peoples are concerned with
mirroring first the balance of the world.
I don't mind
being called a romantic although I'm pretty good with
form as well. That is why I am a teacher and have both
company and students with success. I have taken
students the classicists have said were too "damaged"
to sing and presented them in the great halls with
successful careers. My art master was a great black
voice teacher who taught Paul Robeson and many of
the greatest singers in America. Roberta Flack was
his last success before he was murdered. He was a
romantic. I feel honored to be considered in the
tradition of seers that he represented.
The rest of this post is from a friend on another list.
lt presents an interesting form.
REH
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If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100
people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would
look something like the following.
There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, (both north and South)
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth
and all 6 would be from the United States
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer
When one considers our world from such a perspective,
the need for both acceptance, understanding and education becomes
glaringly apparent."
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So true, REH
