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.)

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

The Dadaists were, in fact, quite concerned with the public's response to their work. They were out to shock. Not to shock for shocking's sake, but to shake people out of their complacent acceptance of the status quo. They wanted to express how the war and the threat of more wars to come had and was undermining the idea of civilised society. To return to pre-war values was, to them, a pretense, an artifice, the foundations of which seemed to have disappeared leaving society a bit like a chicken without a head. It looked like the real thing but was essentially dying and chaotic. Dadaist theatre and art focuses on the idea of the chaotic, using the subconscious mind with it's uncontrolled impulsive instincts and irrationality (madness) as their tools - as the only values, they felt, that had any real relevance to their society at that time.

But back to the point, I agree with you - I have been talking more about famous paintings instead of great paintings, and of course there is a difference. I do like the Max Ernst work. I do think it stems from a great and noble idea. As a painting I think it stands out above many other paintings so I am going to stick my neck out and say yes, it may well be a great painting. Ernst seems to love his craft and is skilled at it as well as being highly intelligent and pursuant of what in his gut he felt was the truth. I think his ideas are not only expressed through the images he made but also through - in a much less describable sense - the marks he made. There is an inimitable style in his work, and a resonance which, to me, seems the embodiment of his philosophy: his philosophy that is not fully able to be expressed in words. It is assimilated, perhaps, into his whole (including his bodily) existence. His ideas, his art, was his life and his life was his art and his philosophy. Everything he did, I presume, from the mundane to the outstanding was connected to his ideas. I think that's what makes art great - the expression of a life-directing and life-encompassing passion.

All the best to you to, Tom.

[Steven Sweeney]

You start following links around this site, you find huge library of information. From an article by John Howard Sanden in the form of questions propounded to Philip Alexius de Laszlo, this exchange seemed destined for this thread:

Q: By way of summing up would you say what in your opinion entitles a portrait to be called great?

"The best summing up would be to repeat what I have just said, that confidence and sympathy between the artist and his sitter are essential, because the truly great portrait is the one in which this contact has been so close that it has spurred the artist to his highest achievement. Really, there is a collaboration in which the sitter and the artist both contribute something vital, the sitter a character and a personality which are inspiring and a right instinct, as well, for self-revelation in pose and gesture, the artist a special capacity to observe acutely and to record convincingly those subtleties of characterization which the sitter consciously or unconsciously gives him and, in addition a finely cultivated taste which enables him to make his picture harmonious in design and satisfying in its color scheme. The artist, it is true, can only record what he sees, but when the opportunity is afforded him to look into the mind and soul of his subject he can, if he is equal to his task, produce a portrait in which everyone will be able not only to recognize the physical features of the sitter, but to perceive also the deeper-lying qualities by which he is distinguished. That would be what I should call a great portrait."

[Grethe Angen]

Quote by David Leffel:

"A master painter requires patience and commitment because paintings is a rational pursuit"

...I think he has a good point here.