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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Edwarda who wrote (31326)	2/20/1999 2:28:00 PM
From: Rick Julian	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Genuine, focused devotion to another's development does require self-sacrifice. Many, many great artists were doted on by their mothers to the exclusion of their mothers' exploration of their own development--the result being spoiled, selfish brats that are self absorbed and very talented. This often sets up a paradigm which the artist seeks to replicate in adulthood, and in these times I don't think most women are willing to serve this role, so "hot house" nurturing is usually over once most budding artists leave the nest. Not a complaint, just an observation.

To: Edwarda who wrote (31326)	2/20/1999 7:37:00 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Must a muse sublimate --- The genius in art is rare enough under any conditions. Even I could look at Michelangelo's work at age 16 and tell this was going to be a remarkable talent if he could work and if other things went well. That , I believe, is why Lorenzo DeMedici picked him out and let him run. He had three years in the Ghirlandio's studio, and by the end was teaching them (for they never reached his level at age 16). M. believed that the nude male figure was the greatest even in painting or sculpture. Certainly the David (Il Gigante) is evidence of this but anyone with naturalistic or representationalist values will be shocked by the disproportions of the figures (also Pieta and Moses). I believe greatness in art is the capacity to arouse wonder and joy in a large variety of previously uncommitted viewers. Picasso does not qualify by this criterion. I believe most people have to be subjected to intense education (or indoctrination) before they claim to like Picasso. Mondriaan makes excellent wallpaper or linoleum designs. Brancusi is thought great by even little children. DaVinci is astounding, but is a little painter because of his small surviving output. Michelangelo the painter was sometimes almost disgusting. His distorted male figures are gross, but the sibyls have majesty. Rembrandt, at his best (and he painted over 2000 pictures, 3000 of which are extant) is the most humane of artists. Vermeer, except for the faces of his weird brain-damaged models (perhaps his daughters) appeals to almost every one, but as a friendly photographer, not a great imagest. Greatness is personal, and artists cannot be ranked like batters or pitchers. There is much "primitive art" (like the Ife or Shang bronzes that define the medium have a place regardless of where art may sometimes go. One is never able to say more than I like this, or I still like this, or the more I see and study the more I like this. I have traveled half around the world twice to see an great exhibit of my favorite painter -- because I knew that these paintings would never again be brought together or some of them (like the Rothschilds) ever shown to the public again. After paying several hundred dollars for a scalped free ticket I stood an artist's arm-length in front of the pictures and set my lines of sight go parallel and saw his strange capacity to add depth -- or viewed it through a pinhole and saw a brilliance that escapes the photographer or lithographers eye. Vermeer knew more painterly tricks than anyone I've ever seen -- but he could not paint teeth inside a mouth to save his life. I doubt that Vermeer was queer. His men are wooden, while his women express a loving domesticity that reflects sexual love even for his daughters. And this I believe is a limitation to his art. If one stands several hours before a naked woman and does not yearn to make love to her, painting can quickly become a bore. If a pure puritanical heterosexual male stands several hours before a nude man or boy, his disgust for the male form will show up in his painting or his drawings. But if he loves boys, as Michelangelo obviously and admittedly did, the male nude becomes a monoment of beauty. Any man or woman who cannot unashamedly admire the David is not in touch with his or her feelings. Even at his best (Pieta?) his female bodies do not generate in me the emotion that I feel before his great male nudes, and in behavior I am quite female focused. The best female sculpture that I know is Greek -- Phidias's head of Athene (in Roman Copy), I can't imagine how great the whole figure must a have been. The male Greek sculpture that survives reflects, I believe, the Athenian admiration of the ephebe as a cultural icon. I doubt if the best of Praxiteles and Myron could have been done by a man who was not deeply in love with the male form. The greatest artists, I believe, should tend to be bisexual with the ability to love deeply the beautiful of either sex. I do not mean that the great artist has to act out his sexuality, but I believe that artists, on the whole, tend to act out everything. They are rarely stable everyday people but are dominated by sensibility and passion. At least that what their biographers say. I certainly do not suggest that to become an artist one should first become a bisexual, but if one hangs around with artists he will find that many of the good and bad are intensely interested in sex and grab the nearest devent looking person to make love to. As for generals, again I was talking fabulously great. I never knew a really queer general my self, but plenty of queer soldiers. The most famous queer or bi- generals were Alexander, Julius Caesar, Epaminondas, and all of the great Athenians. I take as a working hypothesis that generals who did not travel with a harem or a wife, were probably bisexual or queer. Surely no man with the power of command would deprive himself of sexual surcease. Ask yourself, if you were in command would you leave your beloved woman somewhere where you could not get to her but your rivals could? So I conclude that if a man did not take his women with him, he was living off the land. We know Napoleon had women every where. We don't hear much about the others. This suggests that they were either impotent or queer. Make your own list. All of this, of course, depends on men making up the rules. Once women have a chance to command, to perform art, to star in theater and music, they make their own rules. When successes recognize that they are successful, they often act out fantasies. Bisexuality seems to be common among public figures as to be unremarked upon. Any one good enough to be a five-star muse usually has a song and dance she'd like to try out on the stage or studio.