The lecturer traces the historical development of attitudes toward the arts over the past 150 years, suggesting that the present is a period of cultural liquidation, nothing less than the ending of the modern age that began with the Renaissance.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How much Art to do we need?,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Use and Abuse of Art (Bollingen XLV) (Paperback)
This is the text of set of talks in the series of A W Mellon memorial lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D. C. This is number 22 in the series, delivered in 1973. Barzun comes as a lover of art, and a lover of progressive, avant garde art moreover, on the evidence of his earlier book The Energies of Art. However he sees a need to challenge art, or Art, on account of the diverse and contradictory theories and interests that are promoted under the banner of Art. To clarify his concerns he identified "three productive moments in western civilization, all of which unfortunately are called modern." First the Renaissance, representing a break from the Middle Ages from 1400 to 1600. Second, the era from the French Revolution which he labels the Romantic Period from 1789 to 1840. And finally the more recent turn of modernism in ideas, art and manners that he places at the turn of the century from 1890 to 1914. In the first lecture Barzun examined the complex of institutions and vested interests called Art to consider the contribution that they made to individual people and to society in the large. He justified this examination for two reasons: first, the power and influence that Art can exert as a vehicle of communication and second, the amazingly perverse messages that are being conveyed by Art at the present time "in opposition to every traditional idea, feeling and activity, including art itself" (24). In the second lecture he examined the rise of art as a substitute for religion in the nineteenth century. Art simultaneously became the "ultimate critic of life and the moral censor of society". The next phase in that development is the topic of the third lecture on Art the Destroyer, treating Estheticism and Abolitionism during the period 1890 to 1914. He made a rash claim that the world since 1920 "has merely amplified and multiplied what the nineties and early 1920s first achieved...a long list of inventions and activities, from flying machines and motion pictures to skyscrapers, psychoanalysis, and organ transplants, and from the concentration camp to the strip-tease, date not from now but from then. I shall suggest later on why western civilization has not had a new idea in fifty years". Atomic power and the rise of the computer would appear to test that proposition! But still, getting back to Art, he sketched its destructive function over the last 150 years (now 180). "By the tradition of the New, art unremittingly destroys past art, though by the cognate tradition of historical sympathy we deny ourselves the unity of a contemporary style. By making extreme moral and esthetic demands in the harsh way of shock and insult, art unsettles the self and destroys confidence and spontaneity in individual conduct." Art in this function has helped to undermine the assumptions that the state and civilized society are valuable or admirable, thus impairing the effectiveness of political and social institutions and proving the destroyers' own case. By linking the growing interest and respect for art in modern times with the "dominance of bourgeoise values" Art has effectively turned on art itself by becoming a vehicle for every kind of assault on traditional standards of beauty, craft, morality and commonsense. This was written thirty years ago and all that has changed is the increased number of students who are exposed to more advanced "theory" to justify the assault of Art on our senses and sensibilities. In the fourth lecture he moved on to another piece in the crazy pavement of modern art, the function of art as redeemer, linked with the previously noted concept of art as a substitute for religion. Barzun accepted the common ground, that the power exerted by great art on receptive persons is a religious power, and he pursued the defects that follow when that insight is not checked by critical thinking. He discussed the individual and collective forms of salvation through Art that have been promulgated for 200 years. By the term collective salvation he means the appeal of revolutionary art which offers the artist a special role, first as evangelist and later as beneficiary, in the utopian society brought about by the revolution. In the next lecture he turned his attention to the troubled relationship between Science and Art, describing how artists have entered into competition with scientists to claim some of the respect (and the material benefits) that have been generally granted to modern Science. One of the fruits of this endeavour has been the proliferation of "art bollocks" that is , the use of pretentious jargon to emulate the (supposed) precision and profundity of scientific discourse. The following passage is an early example of the genre, with a translation provided by a cynical commentator. For Rousseau a painting was a primary surface on which he relied physically as a means for the projection of his thought [Translation: Rousseau wanted to paint on canvas]. But his thought consisted exclusively of plastic elements. While structure and composition constituted the base, the pictorial substance was distributed gradually as execution progressed. [He painted while painting, since one cannot cover the whole canvas at one stroke]. In his work, what simplicity! Nothing descriptive - only surface relations on the given primary surface. These relations are infinitely varied and, without losing their inherent reality, they can also compete with nature within the limits of the painting. [He drew natural objects in two dimensions, or, to avoid tautology, he drew objects]. Rousseau does not copy the exterior aspect of a tree: he creates an internal rhythmic whole conveying the true, grave expressionism of the essentials of a tree and its leaves in relation to a forest...But his style was established neither derivatively nor in obedience to fashion. It stemmed from the determination of his whole mind as it incarnated his artistic ambitions. [Rousseau painted just as he liked, and he liked painting trees]. Read the following review for a good critical view of this book. When I re-read the last chapter I may have to reduce my rating to four stars.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Some good ideas,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Use and Abuse of Art (Bollingen XLV) (Paperback)
This series of transcribed lectures can be a bit too arcane. But many of the ideas are good if you can stick with it. I put it on my night stand and read it when I was in the mood for some occasionally heavy art philosophy. Gives some good insights into the traditional/post-modern dichotomy.
0 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Barzun Needs Burke and Keats's Letters to Make a Cogent Argument,
By
This review is from: The Use and Abuse of Art (Bollingen XLV) (Paperback)
I first read "Barzun" while attending university in Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1970. UCLA was closed down for a few days while fatuous and noisy students and other hangers on disrupted courses and the university. Finally, and rather quickly, most courses returned to normal.
My four professors all felt obliged to comment on the student strike and the disruption of the college. Their insights, whether they really believed them or not, varied widely. One history teacher gave everyone A's and preened like a peacock--he was a diluted Marxist and was very, very politically naive. Another professor who was very left-wing, but also felt strongly about the integrity of the university, offered to meet with students in small groups outside of class and teach them whatever he taught in the normal class meetings. He was a friend of mine and felt the campus intrustions and disturbances were childish--at best. My best professor that spring quarter of 1969 was Chinese and had grown up in Eastern Europe and had experienced viscerally the oppression of the USSR's totalitarian war machine. He spoke eloquently against communism and its goal to suppress and eliminate all means of dissent etc. in Russia's sphere of influence. He made no concessions to the student dissidents in his course. He spoke with passionate eloquence about the dangers of a totalitarian regime. A man of integrity, this professor made most of the professors on campus seem to be spineless and foolish fascist followers. UCLA, like many other schools across the country, was humiliated by its craven acquiescence to loud and intolerant students and off-campus demonstraters. Soon we will pick a new president, and the viable candidates who remain in the race leave little choice for a principled follower of Burke and, more important, Kierkegaard. In any event, the thousands of men who have died to keep this country and many other countries free will quite candidly and not glibly have died to keep a country free, a nation unworthy of any principled support. I am saddened. I feels the shackles squeezing the life out of me. Moreover, I understand that supporting Clinton, Obama, or McCain makes little difference, except that Hillary's overt and aggressive socialism renders her totally unacceptable to lead a free country founded by Jefferson, Washington, Adams etc. Clinton is already up the river, soon to meet Kurtz with open arms and falling at his feet to further her left, left wing views. The sadness pervading the U.S. is fully justifiable. As Bill Clinton once said, "I feel your pain."
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Listmania!
So You'd Like to...
|
|
