That's really taking a long view.
At 12:42 PM 10/29/2007, you wrote:
>How about Ozymandias, king of kings?
>
>Mark Weiss wrote:
>>It actually brought on a further set of reveries about art and its
>>subjects. Go into any museum and you'll find hundreds of portraits
>>of the once-famous and those who were able to pay to have their
>>features rendered in a medium more permanent than flesh. In most
>>cases even important historical actors have been significantly
>>forgotten. Look at the Mona Lisa or a Raeburn portrait, or a
>>Rembrandt, or the parade of Borbon kings and princelings by Goya
>>and one is rarely interested in researching their lives. It's the
>>painting we value as object. Does it matter to us which king and
>>queen stand in the doorway at the rear of Velasquez' Las Meninas?
>>
>>Or restrict it to entertainers. Toulouse-Lautrec painted and drew
>>figures as iconic at the time, as immediately recognizable as
>>Marilyn Monroe. A few of them are remembered for a particular song
>>that's remained popular in France, though nowhere else, but their
>>faces would have been forgotten if not for their presence in T-L's
>>posters. And the posters remain so compelling that even in the
>>cheapest mass-produced versions they sell like hotcakes. T-L was
>>among those (and the best of the lot) transforming the industrial
>>process of lithography into a dominant medium, bringing a
>>post-impressionist bel epoque sensibility, and an amazing hand, to
>>bear on japonisme in depicting his own floating world.
>>
>>Great art adds value that lasts when the subject no longer has
>>iconic value. Eventually we remember the subjects because the
>>artist chose or was hired to depict them. Somebody probably
>>remembers the name of the courtesan who posed for Botticelli's
>>Birth of Venus and several of the figures in La Primavera, but her
>>name is now only that and a footnote to the social history of Florence.
>>
>>So what about Andy Warhol's various Marilyns, a photographic image
>>transferred by assistants to a silkscreen and reproduced under his
>>direction in various ways? How dependent are they on her iconic
>>status, which probably won't last more than another 30 years at the
>>outside? Would they be considered kitsch or camp if the subject
>>were as unheroic in the popular imagination as Michael Jackson? Is
>>there the added value of great art to sustain them?
>>
>>How much, to cite a different artist, would we value Duchamp's
>>urinal if he hadn't also been a great and seminal (no pun intended)
>>artist in media other than shopping?
>>
>>I don't know if Warhol would have cared. I was at his estate
>>auction--the good one, the one of his art collection--through the
>>good offices of a curator friend. The detritus of the rest of his
>>collecting--mostly the silliest junk, which seemed as random as the
>>tshotshkes most of us gather and then only occasionally remember
>>why we bought them. In his case there was a warehouse full of them
>>at his death. Some of the art was wonderful, but a lot of it was
>>hard to distinguish from the tag sale junk.
>>
>>The audience was well-heeled to say the least. This was a major
>>event to be seen at, apparently. Much of the crowd could have
>>endowed a third world orphanage for the cost of the clothes on
>>their backs. I remember one very well-maintained young woman whose
>>pumps were mosaics of small pieces of differently-colored leathers.
>>Well-heeled in both a non-metaphoric and a metaphoric sense. The
>>crowd bought every scrap, at above-estimate prices, value added,
>>presumably, for what's called in the trade "association," which
>>meant "Andy touched it." Which is supposed to confer some grace,
>>like the relics of saints.
>>
>>But even that sense depends more on the housing than the object.
>>Remove the bone from the reliquary and it's anonymous. Remove the
>>piece of moon rock from behind the label, likewise. At a point in
>>the not-too-distant future, even if Warhol's work remains more than
>>a footnote, his own iconic status will have diminished to the point
>>that a urinal from his collection (he did collect them, but of the
>>bed-pan variety) with the best of provenance will only be worth a
>>few bucks more than any other old urinal. If the current owners
>>aren't careful about labelling and housing their children will sell
>>it at a garage sale along with the cracked teacups. Even if they
>>keep it it's unlikely to maintain its pride of place on the mantel.
>>
>>Mark
>>
>>At 11:26 AM 10/29/2007, you wrote:
>>>Wow. That's some piece of work! One of its ironies is that as a simultaneous
>>>commentary and meta-commentary, the work's aesthetic content remains beyond
>>>the natural lifecycle of its subject's career. I doubt that the original
>>>purchaser bought it simply on account of being Jackson fan, though who
>>>knows?
>>>
>>>The ghastly smiles shared between monkey and Michael, rendered in a medium
>>>with decided enlightenment/evolutionary associations (Josiah Wedgwood being
>>>grandfather of Charles Darwin) invite the pointed question, did we evolve
>>>for THIS? (Answers on the usual postcard.)
>>>
>>>P
>>>
>>> > -----Original Message-----
>>> > From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>>> > Behalf Of Mark Weiss
>>> > Sent: 28 October 2007 00:05
>>> > To: [log in to unmask]
>>> > Subject: Re: sentimentality & 'classism' Re: New at Sharp Sand
>>> >
>>> > Somebody somewhere is living with a lifesize painted ceramic of
>>> > Michael Jackson and his dog, for which privilege said someone paid
>>> > over $5.5 million a few years ago at auction. Check it out:
>>> > http://server1.fandm.edu/departments/English/d_steward/koons.jpg
>>> > Jackson's sun having set that's a lot of low-cost porcelain now. One
>>> > has to have been incredibly stupid.
>>> >
>>> > I'll confess to a deep affection for select garden gnomes. Among the
>>> > more harmless creatures. Not that I live with any.
>>> >
>>> > Otherwise I pretty much agree, except that you've left out a
>>> > category, kitsch that's deliberately produced as kitsch, without
>>> > irony, to appeal to its primary audience, people who collect kitsch
>>> > without irony (for whom kitsch is not kitsch?).
>>> >
>>> > Mark
>>> >
>>> > At 02:16 PM 10/27/2007, you wrote:
>>> > >(Apologies if you receive this more than once: the original went AWOL
>>>some
>>> > >hours back. CW)
>>> > >
>>> > ><snip>
>>> > >I don't think it's any truer that kitsch is the commodification of
>>> > >high culture. [MW]
>>> > ><snip>
>>> > >
>>> > >Perhaps _dominant_ would have been better, with less sense of
>>>consecration:
>>> > >kitsch as the impression of democracy without the underlying reality,
>>> > >sneered at from the sidelines. I wouldn't underrate its dangers BTW.
>>> > >
>>> > >During what were (perhaps) its 19th C origins somewhere in Germany you
>>> > >bought (having made a little money) the trappings of advancement off the
>>> > >peg; but what you actually got were very bad paintings, almost a sort of
>>> > >Giffen good, because you couldn't afford the good ones or couldn't tell
>>>the
>>> > >difference. And then, of course, all those miniatures of the Eiffel
>>>Tower,
>>> > >those fake furs, faux wood, all those cocktail cabinets...
>>> > >
>>> > >The sneer that's often used for kitsch was also used for fish knives
>>> > >incidentally; Cf Betjeman. Here the point was, presumably, that fish
>>>knives
>>> > >were owned only by someone who had also 'bought his own furniture'.
>>> > >
>>> > >But I have left out garden gnomes. Though that's maybe not
>>> their loss. Or
>>> > >indeed yours necessarily.
>>> > >
>>> > ><snip>
>>> > >Jeff Koons achieves kitsch, for instance, equally by appropriating
>>>already
>>> > >kitsch children's toys and greek sculpture. [MW]
>>> > ><snip>
>>> > >
>>> > >Just as *irony* and *sentimentality* come to blows over feigned emotion,
>>> > >over who is swindling whom exactly, so *kitsch* and *camp* are a sort of
>>> > >argument over subjectivity. On the one hand, the _creation_ of kitsch is
>>> > >objectifying, commodifying and all those boo! hiss! things. Whereas, on
>>>the
>>> > >other, the _recognition_ of kitsch is (at least potentially) a form of
>>>camp,
>>> > >a sort of emperor's clothes moment which returns the subject back to the
>>> > >thick of things, where it belongs.
>>> > >
>>> > >Koons (whom I also abhor) is certainly making use of *camp*, as indeed
>>>you
>>> > >go on to suggest. However, the stuff used by the great commodity broker
>>> > >isn't employed to promote some sort of helpful break but to
>>>_anaesthetise_
>>> > >instead. Thus the gap between *kitsch* and *camp* becomes so narrow that
>>> > >they almost coalesce. (The analogy might be with Warhol's *Marilyns*,
>>>where
>>> > >the gap between the set comprising these works and some notional set of
>>> > >monetary tokens likewise reduces to zero.)
>>> > >
>>> > >CW
>>> > >_______________________________________________
>>> > >
>>> > >'The possibility now arises that art will no longer find time to
>>> > > adapt somehow to technological processes.'
>>> > >(Walter Benjamin)
>
>--
>Tad Richards
>http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
>http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
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