RE: [Leica] #$@%$^ art photographers

["Kit McChesney" <kitmc@acmefoto.com>]

Well, don't get all teary-eyed and romantic about Lorenzo il Magnifico (and
his heirs) building monuments to "greatness." The building of monuments was
yet another way to present in tangible form the consolidation of the power
of the Medici, which was considerable. Art was used as propaganda then just
as it is now. To show everyone else who had the most money, who had the most
power, and so on. Yes, Lorenzo was a great patron of many
artists--Michelangelo lived in his household for a number of years and
learned much from other artists and thinkers there--but surrounding oneself
with smart folks was part of the accoutrements of power. 

Kit

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of Peter Klein
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 9:32 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: RE: [Leica] #$@%$^ art photographers

At 06:29 PM 12/8/03 -0800, "B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net> opined:

>Allow me to throw a rotten tomato into this discussion and suggest that
>self-promotion has been an important aspect of the successful artists
>repertoire not for the last several decades, but rather for the last
>millennium. Do you really think that the successful artists of the
>renaissance weren't inveterate self-promoters? Obviously the
>self-promotion took different forms - sucking up to rich princes,

No thanks.  Besides, I don't think today's corporate CEO is the equivalent 
of Lorenzo the Magnificent.  Perhaps of the Borgias or the Medicis, but 
minus the patronage.  These guys don't build monuments to their 
greatness.  They just stash the cash offshore.

>sleeping with rich princesses, etc.,

*Now* you tell me!!!

>but it's always been part of the
>game. Virtually any artist who wanted to sell work in his or her
>life-time, rather than wait to be discovered after death, had to be a
>self-promoter.

True, but I'm not sure the self-promotion took quite the degree of 
flamboyance and self-indulgence that it does these days.  In most eras, art 
served God or society, self-expression was filtered through fairly strong 
conventions, and new techniques were based on the desire to find better and 
broader ways to order things to express how we perceived the world.

The idea of the artist as revolutionary, and the idea of emotional 
self-expression as an end unto itself is a 19th-century Romantic 
concept.  Some of today's so-called artists are the heirs of 
Romanticism--but their antics are amplified by the power of media and the 
science of mass influence into something much more.  Add to that the desire 
to sweep away all convention and regarding any sense of order as the 
enemy--these are things that the turn of the 20th century started, and the 
post World War I era cemented.

We end up with something that, yes, evolved from the sucking up to princes 
and sleeping with princesses; but has metamorphasized into something very 
different.  And in many cases it has replaced or supplanted the art 
itself.  Franz Liszt was in many ways the 19th Century equivalent of a rock 
star.  But he was also one of the finest composers and performers of his 
time.  The music came first, and the self-promotion served the 
music.  Today the music (or art) often serves the self-promotion, if it 
survives at all.

The revolutionaries of the early-mid 20th century knew what they were 
rebelling against.  I'm not sure many post-1960s artists do.  It is one 
thing (and, I think a good thing) to say that content dictates form.  It is 
quite another to say that lack of form dictates content.  It is a good 
thing to do something new and different.  It is quite another to do 
something completely incoherent, guided only by libido, ego and 
self-indulgence, and claim that anyone who doesn't like it is an ignorant 
Phillistine.

OK, I'll shut up now. . .

- --Peter Klein
Seattle, WA


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