| | A CHEAP SHOT (PART 1)
[Michael Newberry accused me of a "cheap shot" at him when I said that too much romantic realism resembles social realism. Here is my reply to him on that, sent via SOLO mail.]
Michael, with rare exceptions, I never label anybody. If you are asking for criticism from me, considering that I got a B in Art History and a D in Art Studio, Man from Manhattan looks like social realism and Woman in Blue does not.
Art is tough to judge. In Cleveland, we have the museum's annual May Show and one of the criteria is "How long did it take?" and one artist not selected replied, "It took me all my life, of course, or I couldn't have painted it." If you are good with a brush, you can work quickly, but then, the next question is, "What does this mean?"
These guys on cable-tv paint a landscape in 20 minutes. Landscapes are at once meaningless and insightful. There is not much morality in brute nature -- except in how you perceive it. I have never seen a cable-tv landscape that reflected my own deepest values.
But I have seen social realist art that does.
When I run up against a group of stupid people -- engineers in committee, for instance -- and I have to be among them (say, I actually have a job), I find one of those pictures of Lenin Addressing the Workers and put it up in my office to remind myself that "someone has to tell these people what to to."
Another one of my social realist favorites is the statue, "Swords into Plowshares."
Anarchist Bob Black advocates a "ludic" society based on play. He points out that socialism and capitalism alike define people by their work and in both systems, those who do not work shall not eat. I mention this because among the many scenes in David Lean's Dr. Zhivago (1965) that were emotional for me was one reflective of both social realism and romantic realism. After telling his niece the true story of her father, General Zhivago asks the girl about her boyfriend and she says, "He runs that," and points to the hydroelectric plant which fills the camera.
As for not labeling people -- and the exceptions to that -- allow me to close with this. When I was in high school, my senior year English teacher had a drama class. Unlike the kids doing Our Town or Carousel, this group was off-Broadway, experimental. I watched a rehearsal. Atfterward, I said to my teacher that it was obvious that some of these kids do not have talent. He said that when he was in college, he was in a company in NYC whose director was famous for saying that to Marlon Brando when he was off-Broadway. So, I learned early not to announce value judgments -- regardless of what Ayn Rand claimed. There are exceptions. We all engage in banter and argumentation and dialectic. The online world is "fluid print." So, we all have opinions here on SOLO. One of the regulars whom I find singularly open to criticism is Tibor Machan. He never says anything interesting, exciting, novel, or insightful. He just tells us what we already know. He repeats what we want to hear.
Philosophical writing is not supposed to do that. Art is.
Michael
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Radical Remodeling of Romantic Realism --The Art of Michael Newberry
