I've finally realised that if I'm going to study art history, I'm going to have to stop looking at paintings so much and learn about philosophy. So I've picked up this book:



It doesn't seem badly written at all, quite the opposite, but it's chapter after chapter of stuff I can't understand. Semiotics, psychoanalysis, Marxism. And the book rubs it in by telling us it's ideal for "the undergraduate" who hasn't read anything about art before. Evidently I have seriously underestimated the capacities of the younger generation. Art historians are supposed to be posh blokes who go from Dante to Beethoven with a swish analogy, not posh blokes who stop every two seconds to challenge what they've just said.

Ploughing through this makes translating Aeschylus look like the teddy bears' picnic. That's my considered white male middle class view on the subject.

Well, The New York Trilogy did a pretty good job of making me feel thick recently.

But my all-time greatest feeling of stupidity came during A-level philosophy when read about Emmanuel Kant. I really struggled with that one, managed an A all the same but still couldn't tell you what the bloody hell he was on about. Albeit principally because, 6 years on, I've totally forgotten.

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I really struggled with that one, managed an A all the same

Coles' crib notes then, Sam?


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" A Clockwork Orange", i didn't understand a word of it, couldn't make out where he was going with it, was none the fucking wiser when i saw the film! and then you hear all the intellectuals going on about how great this book is and was an underlying damnation of the society at the time it was written. Nope, that bypassed me (and still does).

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Mine is The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - I've tried, oh how I've tried, but I just can't get past page two. It's like being in a book by Kafka.


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Essential ActionScript 3.0 (O'Reilly)

I've finally realised that if I'm going to study art history, I'm going to have to stop looking at paintings so much and learn about philosophy.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

It does sound a bit like "If I'm going to study art history I'm going to have to stop enjoying art", which seems a tad self-defeating.

Meanwhile, Finnegan's Wake, of course.

Amor, maybe there's an island where I can join Kenneth Clark looking at the Apollo of the Belvedere and drinking Burgundy, but I don't think that island's course is accredited.

I understand the need to do the theory properly, and maybe I'll enjoy it in the longer run.

Sam, I can do Kant, as it happens. Beauty is "disinterested"- that is we can only call something beautiful if there's nothing in it for us- we don't get sensory gratification out of it, and we don't feel morally good either. Seems odd to disassociate beauty from morals or pleasure, but there you go.

There are some people who think beauty is an evasion from political struggle or something. Give me Kant over them.

Anyway, Alma-Tadema did some pretty stuff, didn't he?

Nabokov. I always think that even with infinite time, patience, and diligence, I couldn't produce anything like he does.

Amor, maybe there's an island where I can join Kenneth Clark looking at the Apollo of the Belvedere and drinking Burgundy, but I don't think that island's course is accredited.

<sigh>

I understand, but be careful. The price of admission could be your soul. It's easy to — literally — lose sight of the picture when it's submerged with text. Elkins is very good on this.

My soul was lost a long time ago. I'll check out Elkins.

Is there anything resembling a neo-con school of art history?

If you do check out Elkins I'd suggest Why Art Cannot Be Taught first. (Which I actually bought when we were at the TM.) It is written specifically for students and teachers, and focusses particularly on the problems of discussing art.

Is there anything resembling a neo-con school of art history?

Buggered if I know. Why, does the idea appeal to you? Are you looking for a specific political filter to look at art through?

The Chubby Cyclist wrote:

QUOTE:
Meanwhile, Finnegan's Wake, of course.

Finnegans. 'Joyce removed the apostrophe in the title to assert an active process in which a multiplicity of "Finnegans," that is, all of us, wake, i.e., arise after falling,' says Wiki.

(Trust all is now clear...)

Anyway. Books don't generally make me feel thick as such, because I must admit I don't, you know, think I am thick in any general sense.

But there's a whole class of book, and indeed conversation, that makes me feel really Gradgrindian and literal-minded. The entire cultural area of lit crit, with its spin-offs in other fields, is something I've just never really got.

To a surprising extent this transcends mere schools of lit crit, as well. I'm not just on about postmodernism, for example. It's true that I don't get that, but I never got structuralism either, or trad Marxist criticism, or psychonanalytic criticism, or owt really. Even traditional stuff like historicism, biographical criticism and "close reading"; no, they all pass me by completely.

I just keep thinking "How do you know? How would the book be different if your assertions were false?" My answer to a trad question like "Why does Hamlet vacillate?" is "Because if he did all the business in Act One, that's the play fucked, and Shakespeare duffed up by groundlings after their money back." I suspect you ge nought out of ten for that.

I faked my way to a Grade B at O level in Eng Lit, simply by having read the fucking things and being able to write sentences. But there wasn't a single solitary insight in anything I ever wrote in Eng Lit class at school.

I mean, read Nabokov's Pale Fire (superb book) in Penguin, and then read Mary McCarthy's Introduction. It makes no sense. To me.