City of Amnesia

I'm plodding through reams of modifiers and jargon. Somebody tell me, are Art History classes always this abstract? I can't keep reading paragraphs of:

Enconium, Positivism, Sublation, Formalism, Discursive, "pluralistic irrelevance", "paradoxicality," "Presentness," "empirico-transcendental analytic."

Art critics are lazy writers. They're word-poopers.

(http://forquignon.com/history/global/baroque_art/hals_laughingz_cavalier1624.jpg)

IMO nothing after Baroque (ok, rococo maybe) matters art-wise

That is indeed awesome.

Nice mustache. Ok, be grateful that your teacher isn't as boring as mine. I signed up to learn about the history of art, not to meaninglessly memorize every single painting in the chapter so i can forget it once it isn't on the freaking test. And she doesn't even explain the movements right. I cannot, for the life of me, tell you what she taught Romantic art to be. still doesn't make sense, even though i got that question right... *shakes head sadly* Hehe, i ranted...
Word-poopers is an interesting one, haven't heard that yet...

Too bad there isn't a whole thesaurus of dumbing down those words. Seriously empirico-transcendental analytic? I can't even begin to understand what that means.

But, that contradicts itself. I suspect that you DO know what the Romantics were all about.

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Yeah. A glossary would've been great! Well, at least there's Wikipedia and dictionary.com.

I guess I was unaccustomed to reading where half the time reading is spent learning how to read. Once I looked up all the -isms and obscurities, I actually found the readings did have something interesting to say.

Well, let's break it down!

Empirico: This sounds like a period to me, perhaps pertaining to the Roman or British Empires?

Transcendental: Obviously, this infers that the art is intended to convey ideas that transcend mortal or worldly thoughts.

Analytical: In my opinion, this sounds like the purpose the artwork; analyzing such works in order understand the greater workings of the Universe, namely God.

I'm probably way off, as I don't recall ever having taken an art history class, nor did I look up any of these words. Just pulling stuff out my ass, as it sounds like that's pretty much all these "art critics" do.

Have to say, that's an amazing painting.

Ha, right on. When I checked the date of all the articles, they were mostly written in the 60's and 70's. Big surprise.

I have to disagree with what you think "Empirico," means though. I think he meant "empirical" like "empirical evidence."

In the context, I think the critic was saying something about not being able to use history as a reference for analyzing a piece of artwork, like you have to approach every work fresh, assuming nothing. Being in tune with your most basic reactions and most raw creativity. That kind of thing. Makes me want to go to a gallery.

You call that a painting? That's not a painting. Now THIS is a painting:

(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a294/AtomicRobot/AlmaTedema.jpg)

And so is this:

(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a294/AtomicRobot/The_Roses_of_Heliogabalus.jpg)

Those petals are AMAZING.

Oh my God the first one is amazing!
Those statues look REAL!!! GAH!!!  :o That's just, ... wow...

I can imagine those petals were a realy pain in the neck to paint.

I can't believe hold old oild painting is!