Modern Art
Two quotes I liked from Adam Gopnik’s article about van Gogh’s ear in the January 4 edition of the New Yorker.
On art-making:
“Where art since the Renaissance had attempted to limit luck in a system of inherited purpose and patterns, modern art demands that you press the pedal as hard as you can, and pray.”
On van Gogh’s dream of creating an artistic community in Arles:
“You always begin with a dream of community—Braque and Picasso in the bohemian hermitage Bateau Lavoir; the handful of painters brave enough to go abstract in the Cedar Tavern—and end with a reality of competitiveness and assault, suspicion and estrangement. …
…The real community is not that of charmed artists living like monks but the distant dependencies of isolated artists and equally isolated viewers, who together make the one kind of community that modernity allows.”
The one kind of community that modernity allows? Discuss amongst yourselves.
No Comments Yet