From: William Marsh (redcloud54@earthlink.net)
Date: 09/09/02-03:31:26 PM Z
I've been waiting for a chance to throw this in:
Go to any card shop and you will see a panoply of artists on greeting
cards and postcards - from the "greats" to the "unknowns." What does
that do to their status as Artists (note capital "A")? Is it even a
relevant question in this age of ubiquitous media exposure of
*everything*? If everyone is on greeting cards, does it make everyone
mediocre, or no one mediocre, or does it make greeting cards irrelevant?
Bill
Katharine Thayer wrote:
>
> 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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