Elkins,
J. (2002) Stories of Art. New York,
Routledge.
Chapter 1. Intuitive Stories
Again Elkins presents a wonderful set of thoughts and paradigms, and an approach to thinking about art. It can be difficult to summarise abstract thoughts.
The idea that everyone has their own mapping ideas of art history, which may or not correspond in any logical way to the actuality, is beautifully illustrated by examples. These intuitive maps are revealing in so many ways: the ideas which we retain, and which we feel are important to us.
He also reminds that there is no real consensus or even overview about periods of art history - we can only indicate, and then fill in what we mean, remembering that everyone has their own sketched out history, conscious and studied, or more random and vague.
It's also interesting to consider art history from the terms of no history, and that all art could be catagorised by type. There is much overlapping also in models of history, the phases of growth in a style, both nations and periods of time, and an individual artist's practice.
It's a paradox, mostly about overlapping decades, styles, and old and young artists - how to locate in time?
Post history and post modernism - another paradox. It poses some other lovely open ended questions about before art, before art history, before history, and so on.
Again Elkins presents a wonderful set of thoughts and paradigms, and an approach to thinking about art. It can be difficult to summarise abstract thoughts.
The idea that everyone has their own mapping ideas of art history, which may or not correspond in any logical way to the actuality, is beautifully illustrated by examples. These intuitive maps are revealing in so many ways: the ideas which we retain, and which we feel are important to us.
He also reminds that there is no real consensus or even overview about periods of art history - we can only indicate, and then fill in what we mean, remembering that everyone has their own sketched out history, conscious and studied, or more random and vague.
It's also interesting to consider art history from the terms of no history, and that all art could be catagorised by type. There is much overlapping also in models of history, the phases of growth in a style, both nations and periods of time, and an individual artist's practice.
It's a paradox, mostly about overlapping decades, styles, and old and young artists - how to locate in time?
Post history and post modernism - another paradox. It poses some other lovely open ended questions about before art, before art history, before history, and so on.
Reflection
I took from this piece for the group seminar the ideas of how we map and locate inner ideas, thoughts and feelings, and how we have a sense of self located in space, which is separate to how we know things look.
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/group-seminar-student-led.html
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/elkins-inspired-art-history-map.html
The recent rehang of Tate Britain according to time places art against the usual current trend of curating by art movement, and returns to showing by year, thus old and young artists show together in a certain year, as the art is made, and according to the slice of time of its creation.
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/500-years-of-british-art.html
16th July 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment