What distinguishes the Great from the very technically accomplished?

[Tom Edgerton]

Which raises a lot of interesting tangential questions.

Those who see the work of the Dadaists, Futurists, et. al. as a soulless calculation to dupe the public miss exactly what you describe--that such expression was a real reaction to a horrible new level in our ability to knock each other off. The Dadaists couldn't have been less concerned with the public's acceptance or non-acceptance of what they produced.

But it wasn't the only art produced during that period. So I wonder (and I don't necessarily have the answers to these questions), are Art and Art History the same thing? Or is Art History just a shifting construct for our need to organize the past? What makes one type (or types) of art officially representative of its time? Or "great?" Who decides this, artists, art historians, the public?

I have a volume of "The History of Art" by HW Janson, thought at the time I was enrolled in a university art program forty years ago as the definitive Art History volume. There is no mention of Sargent at all, and most women artists who know the book have a definite opinion of its value based on a stupendous lack of recognition of their efforts. We are addressing some of these omissions in our canon now. So the content of the historical summary shifts over time.

I've always appreciated the visual inventiveness and playfulness of Dadaism and its cousins, but they feel somehow less powerful to me because they need an attached manifesto to have real weight and convince me of any long-term staying power. And again, lots of other styles of art were produced concurrently. Are Dadaism and other genres "great," or just historically intriguing for some of us at a particular point in time?

So again, is there some element or elements of artistic greatness that transcend a need for historical explanation?

(I'd still run in there even though Ernst would have disdained such sentimentality.)

Best as always--TE

(PS: I recommend reading "The Painted Word," by Tom Wolfe, to everyone. It recounts how a very small community of artists and critics in post WW II New York codified Abstract Expressionism into the "official" art of the time, in spite of public indifference, and stole the attention from Europe. It's a short, quick read, and hilarious.)