tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post4835993334782262972..comments2024-02-23T03:28:33.435-05:00Comments on Culture Industry: reading (around) RuskinMark Scrogginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01431113440875342809noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-8177504822494698312009-06-18T00:42:37.463-04:002009-06-18T00:42:37.463-04:00Points taken: it's clearly unreasonable to imp...Points taken: it's clearly unreasonable to import modern critical ideas about the art of Ruskin's day into discussion of Ruskin's critical ideas about the art of days before.Vance Maverickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07477306994564623348noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-44534602808522206402009-06-17T21:50:18.647-04:002009-06-17T21:50:18.647-04:00Ah, the key phrase, Vance, is "as long as cri...Ah, the key phrase, Vance, is "as long as critics considered" poetry to be such or the other; I'd guess the shift between Addisonian/Johnsonian evaluations of poetry as mimetic to evaluations of poetry as expressive come along with Coleridge & Wordsworth & the gradual acceptance of the Romantic model of the poet over the first 3 decades of the 19th century.<br /><br />While we're apt to see late Turner as prefiguring Whistler (all those "Sonatas" etc), Ruskin defends him oddly enough as being the preeminent *realist* of the day, the only painter who's actually <i>looked</i> at landscape & accurately recorded what he <i>sees</i>. (Of course, he's mounting a defence of Impressionism avant la lettre, in one sense.<br /><br />But Ruskin was in many ways an idiot about music, & I think (here I'm stretching against the limits of my real knowledge) that he would resist a "musicalisation" of either painting or poetry on the grounds that (instrumental) music conveys only emotion, that it's not a representational language, capable of conveying truth in the same way that painting or words can.Mark Scrogginshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01431113440875342809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-48939790500216613182009-06-17T15:16:15.799-04:002009-06-17T15:16:15.799-04:00hmm, to tease out the relevant point I was trying ...hmm, to tease out the relevant point I was trying to make: this strikes me as odd because Ruskin was famously an advocate for a painter whose work prefigures painting's move from mimesis to music. Of course, I should admit that I don't remember in what terms Ruskin advocates him!Vance Maverickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07477306994564623348noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-85027810475532807652009-06-17T15:03:04.411-04:002009-06-17T15:03:04.411-04:00When does Landow think poetry changed from a mimet...When does Landow think poetry changed from a mimetic to an expressive art? I ask because (obviously enough) painting went through a change of purpose that could be stated in the same terms -- when its mimetic function was usurped by photography. I suppose the rise of 19thC landscape and documentary photography is too late literally to have influenced the career of Turner, but the strong expressionistic element in T's style is obviously ready to start playing music.<br /><br />There's a further contortion in that music, while paradigmatically "expressive", actually consists entirely of recycled bits of other music -- indeed that's how even the most "original" music works. But we needn't go there.Vance Maverickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07477306994564623348noreply@blogger.com