Thomas A Dowson wrote:
>If as Maia thinks
> my statement is so bloated with nontruths how is that John Bookers
> original statement (more of which can be found in his web pages) to
> which I was originally repsonding was so traditional in character.
> Perhaps because I am not that way of the mark?
>
> "For example, the few items that can be given to the
> Waldalgesheim Master do not afford enough changes to construct a
> decent chronology, let alone a reconstruction of this individual's
> working methods and the tenets of his art."
>
> The notion of a master is one that is so socially and
> historically specific and yet it is entrenched in many types of
> analysis of art from all sorts of contexts.
>
LOL
Now I see where you were coming from! The "name" Waldalgesheim Master
merely demonstrates a very standard way of identifying artists whose
names are unknown to us. Don't get hung up on semantics -- it really
means nothing more than that. Don't we also use an abbreviation for
that term today (Mr.) imagine if everyone had to discuss the relevance
of every occurrence of the term.
My real point here, and the only one that matters in the context of
the subject at hand, is that we can understand more about an earlier
art style if we can examine a large body of work that was created by a
single individual, than if we try to analyze the art with examples
done by many individuals when we do not have a prior firm chronology.
It is the most objective way of looking at the subject.
My work on the art of Coriosolite coins involved finding a relatively
objective chronology (with maximum subjective order of 5 dies in only
one instance) by plotting the changes in many hundreds of design
elements. As far as I can see I invented this method. I am certainly
the only numismatist that has ever created a chronology that was
entirely based on die production rather than die use. Unfortunately,
very few such sets are so numerous as these Coriosolite coins. There
are only two examples of decorative art recorded by Jacobsthal that
came from Armorica -- if that isn't bad enough, I suspect that one of
these strayed there from central France. There are tens of thousands
of coins from the area though. An understanding of the Armorican style
is an understanding of these coins.
The chances of error in my chronology is one in hundreds of thousands,
or perhaps even millions -- about as close to objectivity as is
possible. It exposed distribution patterns that had never been seen
before, and even predicted variations that were later found to exist.
It also exposed tenets of Celtic art hitherto unknown and made it
possible to redefine the meanings of the boar and lyre icons in Celtic
iconography with considerable supporting evidence. It also made it
possible to define more about the relationships between Celtic artists
methods and their religion.
"Mr. anonymous artisan whose work was found at Waldalgesheim" is
definable as a person (see "The Waldalgesheim Master" by E. M. Jope -
sorry I don't have the full citation on hand) rather than an art
style, as some had called it.
I am generally considered in the vanguard of my subject by my peers.
No one has ever called me a "traditionalist" before!
Regards,
John Hooker
--
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