Re: "CALENDAR ARTIST"

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From: Katharine Thayer (kthayer@pacifier.com)
Date: 09/08/02-07:15:50 AM Z


Keith Gerling wrote:
>
  Popularity alone does not establish one as an artist,
> but neither should it be reason enough to exclude somebody. Obviously. You
> claim that the consensus of the "critics of today" is that he his a
> "calendar artist", but you fail to mention who those critics might be.
>

I've been having trouble with the circularity, offered by several
contributors to the discussion, that anything that is appreciated by a
lot of people must be trash by definition. (Bach? Beethoven? Van Gogh?)
I'm especially having trouble following the circularity as it turns back
on itself and becomes a Mobius strip. The fact that so many people
appreciate Ansel Adams' work makes him a calendar artist, (not just a
calendar artist but a CALENDAR ARTIST!) but then there's Norman Rockwell
(Norman Rockwell?!) who is a real artist somehow in spite of the fact
that he was popular among the riffraff. Makes no sense at all, and
offers no useful information to guide our understanding of what makes an
artist and what doesn't, other than "critics of today agree" which
doesn't exactly make me want to jump up and salute. Critics of whatever
day have almost always been wrong about who the important artists of
their time are/were; only time sorts out the real from the flash in the
pan.
kt


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