04w16:1 Denis Young's 'About Painting'

by timothy. 0 Comments

Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 16 number 1 (Denis Young’s ‘About Painting’)
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About Painting, The Old Paradigms: Are they still with us? | Denis Young
http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/denisyoung/aboutpainting.html
“So: are the old paradigms still with us? Obviously, some survived, somewhat transformed, throughout the modern period and some did not […]Their history may be seen as that of the rewriting of earlier achievements in new terms — terms which, once established, modified the template taken for granted in the production of paintings, the template of what was ‘given’. […]Once the implications of this were understood some 50 years later, it became possible for philosophers like Arthur Danto to declare the history of art to be over, and all the old paradigms thus made available, if only through a rear-view mirror in a Looking-Glass world ruled by irony. […] But the paradigm changes that were once called ‘progress’ can equally be seen as the creation of an expanding universe of texts, all ‘nuanced reruns’ from the past (there really isn’t an alternative to that): a view that still leaves viable the old formula ‘instruction and delight,’ that does not limit the scope of painters to raise our consciousness of some issue, private or public, with enough freshness, subtlety or éclat to hold our attention; nor limit intellectual enterprise, or forthright, hedonistic works — though there, of course, the painter, skating around obstacles of taste, between high art and kitsch, will find thin ice.”

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emailed by Timothy on Sunday 11 April 2004 @ 11:50 PM

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