Sunday, January 05, 2025
ESSAY - LEEWAY OF POETS AND OTHER ARTISTS
I was reading an article in which the author (truth, it was a speech, ergo, the speaker) took the position that a poet had more leeway to produce his or her effect than a painter. Artist and Poet, Frida Kahlo
The point being that the painter had to capture and convey the essence of the subject in a single, static exposition.
In fact, making a poem longer, simply to get your point in, can be counterproductive to the intended production of art, and may be an admission of failure or defeat.
In my own personal opinion, paring the poem down to the essentials, of both the art, and the message, is a mark of the "professionalism" of the poet. Of course, like the practitioner of the visual arts, the temptation to use all the colors of the palette, is tempting, but, like them, knowing which ones to stick with and which ones to leave out, to create the "best" art, is part of the challenge... and the fun.
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Labels: art, discussion, donovan baldwin, essay, painter, poem, poet, poetry, the message
Saturday, December 30, 2023
MATTERS OF ORNAMENT - OR FURNISHING APARTMENTS - A THOUGHT
"The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labour employed in it, or the mental pleasure produced by it. As this principle is observed or neglected, our profession becomes either a liberal art or a mechanical trade. In the hands of one man it makes the highest pretensions, as it is addressed to the noblest faculties, In those of another it is reduced to a mere matter of ornament, and the painter has but the humble province of furnishing our apartments with elegance."
- Sir Joshua Reynolds, "Seven Discourses on Art" (1771)
Perhaps that's one way of looking at it, Sir Joshua, but, I like to think that even in matters of ornament, or the "humble province of furnishing our apartments with elegance", the craftsman, the mechanical tradesman (or woman), introduces us to, reminds us of, what may be an opening to those things "addressed to the noblest faculties".
Labels: art, discussion, donovan baldwin, Sir Joshua Reynolds
