"In the Imagination of the Audience"

[Alexandra]

There was a very interesting article in the Washington Post yesterday about a new exhibit that opened at the Kennedy Center, Jamie Wyeth's photographs of Rudolf Nureyev. (And there's a controversy involving NUDITY -- maybe that will get you to read the whole article! It's at the very end.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...4-2002Feb6.html

The article is written by the Post's art critic, which made it the more interesting to me, because he's writing about a dancer from an art critic's point of view. One of the things he says is that (I'm paraphrasing and condensing) when you read that so and so "can't be captured on film" or "no film can do them justice" what that means is that the artist's power existed completely in the imagination of the audience.

I thought that was another way of getting at our perennial "is greatnest quantifiable" question, because one way to interpret that comment is that a dancer who has perfect placement or can jump 3 times his height or more pirouettes than anyone on the circuit that year, he or she is "greater" because those accomplishments can be captured on film. Pavlova's "Dying Swan," however, exists simply in the imagination of the audience.

What do you think?

[cargill]

Well, my first impression was that an art critic WOULD think that only art that can be seen is real, and that everything else is the audience's imagination.

[Alexandra]

That's a good point! But in painting, too, isn't much of the effect in one's imagination? The paint is real, but the effect it has is different on each person who views it because we each have different associations with images and colors.

[ February 08, 2002: Message edited by: alexandra ]

[Nanatchka]

Originally posted by alexandra:

[QB]The paint is real, but the effect ....

"The arabesque is real, the leg is not."

Arlene Croce

About once every ten years, I understand this...