Jed Perl on art & three artists, makes this point:
I have always been uneasy with biological explanations of human
behavior. It is at the very least disquieting to find the actions of
human beings explained by analogies with the behavior of ants or bees
or wolves. And yet I cannot doubt that some kind of herd instinct or
groupthink goes a considerable way toward explaining the persistent
vision of art history, and especially of modern art history, as a race
from one style to another, from Post-Impressionism to Fauvism and
Cubism, and then onward to Futurism, Suprematism, Neoplasticism, and
Surrealism. Fitting Torres-García, Gorky, and Truitt into such
diagrammatic schemes is not easy. Those who take an interest in their
work often form opposing camps (which itself suggests a kind of herd
instinct), arguing for wildly different ways of locking them into the
historical scheme.
I think we could make the same argument about modern poetry, & each
poet's 'place' within the 20th (now -21st) century's series of groups
& -isms. Many 'belonged' (that is did not belong) to many, or entered
& exited with baggage from many.
Hmmnn?
Doug
Douglas Barbour
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http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
Latest books:
Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
Wednesdays'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
The secret
which got lost neither hides
nor reveals itself, it shows forth
tokens.
Charles Olson
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