What distinguishes fine art from narrative art? Is this distinction (Bourdieu) important to maintain? For whom? Why? All of these issues in Art History are heating up due to recent shows of van Gogh's painting that cite letters to his mother and sister (primarily) in which he explains why he painted Bedroom in the Yellow House at Arles as one prominent example. van Gogh states the painting was inspired by his reading of George Eliot's Felix Holt the Radical and was vG's attempt to recreate these spartan surroundings of the novel's protagonist Felix Holt, yet to do so in bright colors.
Why have traveling shows often omitted van Gogh's Le Borinage paintings, esp. shows coming to the US? And another mystery, why is the work of Vincent van Gogh with the miners sometimes referred to as an unhappy early period that van Gogh more happily grew out of when he learned to paint better. What subjectivity holds these views and why are they the foregrounded view, at least in English-language studies of van Gogh at this time.
Will rhetorical analysis added to the standard formal approaches to painting aid in gaining a more parallax view of this painter and of art history in general?
Your comments are most welcome.
great question gloria.
i wish art academics, cliques and claques would leave art alone to be whatever the artist intends. why should a painting that has a narrative dimension be considered to be "less" than one that hasn't?
the logical outcome of devaluing narrative strands in art is abstraction - of course, one could say that jackson pollock's work has a narrative dimension, namely three budgerigars (or are they parrots?) fighting their way through a tangled mess they've made as they hunt for snacks.
Dear Colleague D. E. Morant,
Thank you for opening this discussion and for your remarks.
D.E. Morant Sometimes artists' intentions are significant, sometimes not. But as you suggest, de-narrativized abstraction has it own narratives; however, they are not the Rorschach-type narratives you suggest but rather the theoretical narratives described by Tom Wolf in The Painted Word, which can be downloaded for free here:
- https://instructure-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/account_18750000000000001/attachments/969593/Tom_Wolfe_Painted_Word.pdf?response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3D%22Tom_Wolfe_Painted_Word.pdf%22%3B%20filename%2A%3DUTF-8%27%27Tom%255FWolfe%255FPainted%255FWord.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAJDW777BLV26JM2MQ%2F20191226%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20191226T033537Z&X-Amz-Expires=86400&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=a26bfee7f85e8f58d252b7933b345e145d2c5a61f7f44abc2b5f435498c97d59, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwjAm-iLsdLmAhXYc30KHRh7BHUQFjAAegQIARAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcanvas.harvard.edu%2Ffiles%2F2619050%2Fdownload%3Fdownload_frd%3D1%26verifier%3D8RPfojBAGY40EJKhGg9aofetaxAFLVYveISwIGoQ&usg=AOvVaw0uzL8jxMjGeeFafEKl1kPn
I also have a new essay available here at RG, Karl. It is called Hardening of the Categories in the Arts.
I read that Tom Wolf essay many years ago, but will check it out again. Thanks!
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