Hmm! My favorite artist is Samuel Palmer, but the Palmer works I like best include only a few of his paintings; it's drawings and etching by him that I particularly love. But you didn't ask who our favorite artist was, you asked about techniques that for us evoke poetic consciousness as experienced in all of the arts.

Ah, I could drive myself nuts with this. I'm just going to say Palmer anyway.

You can read a piece I wrote about him many years ago, here:

[www.touchstonemag.com]

Sawfish Wrote:
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> If you were to characterize your taste in *all* of
> the arts by selecting a single painter, whose
> works tend to utilize the techniques that most
> consistently appeal to your poetic consciousness,
> who would that painter be?
>
> I'll start.
>
> Caravaggio

A great, if controversial, painter. His painting of the feminine Bacchus youth is a masterpiece, with the worm-eaten apple and rotting fruit reminding us of the perishability of everything.

Dale Nelson Wrote:
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> Hmm! My favorite artist is Samuel Palmer, but the
> Palmer works I like best include only a few of his
> paintings; it's drawings and etching by him that I
> particularly love. ...
>

I have his painting of a shepherd dozing in the sunset, on the cover of my copy of John Keats' complete poems. I love that painting. It is about as poetic as it gets.

His close-up drawings of oak trees are fantastic.

Knygatin, if you can get your hands on David Cecil's Visionary and Dreamer or Geoffrey Grigson's Samuel Palmer: The Visionary Years, look them over. Palmer is the "visionary" in Cecil's book, while Edward Burne-Jones, the Pre-Raphaelite, is the "dreamer." There's a big thick book published by Yale by Vaughan called Samuel Palmer: Shadows on the Wall that may be the best source for reproductions of Palmer's art and for a survey of his whole life. I once wrote a story in which I took over quite a few details from the young Palmer and his friends the "Ancients." By the way, "extollager" in my email address comes from the life of Palmer. Rural folk seeing Palmer and his friends wandering around at night (for inspiration and subjects for art) called them "extollagers," which I suppose was a dialect form of "astrologers." Good to know you have seen that work. Pairing Palmer and Keats makes excellent sense.

Hmmmm....

There's a lot more subtlety to Palmer than I can easily appreciate.

I came to discover--here, most likely--that I have a sort of base, sensationalist streak to my aesthetic appreciation. I found out an interesting thing, while trying to learn to be a wine connoisseur, back in my late 20s/30s: I could not really detect, nor appreciate, fine gustatory distinctions. I had many varied discussions about this, and really, I don't possess the equipment for it.

Panzaic was the word made for me, I think.

I find that I prefer flashier expression in art, too. Really like Carmina Burana and Bolero, for example. Prefer Blue Velvet to Chariots of Fire.

So for me, I'm more of a Maxfield Parrish landscape guy, than a Palmer man. It's got to do with a lack of the ability to distinguish the aesthetically subtle.

So maybe I'd link Death of the Ball Turrent Gunner to Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes.

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 4 Sep 21 | 05:08PM by Sawfish.

Has anyone else here read Evelyn Waugh’s short novel A Handful of Dust? It could be argued that it deals, with rigorous irony, with the conflict between a decaying form of poetic consciousness (embodied in Tony Last) and a nascent sociological consciousness (seen in Brenda, Tony’s unfaithful wife, her lover, and her friends). I only thought of it this way for the first time a few minutes ago. I think this is probably Waugh’s masterpiece rather than his better known Brideshead Revisited.

Sawfish Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> So for me, I'm more of a Maxfield Parrish
> landscape guy, than a Palmer man. It's got to do
> with a lack of the ability to distinguish the
> aesthetically subtle.
>

I used to have a couple of Maxfield Parrish posters on my walls. Fantastic landscapes and trees. But his humans, utter cardboards! And speaking of Corben, ... the colors!! He was an inspiration for Corben.
His houses, always empty, and often with windows lined up to let you look right through the house. It really is spooky. He paints the magnificence of Nature contrasting the littleness of Man's world.

Thanks Dale. Archive.org has some works on Palmer as well.

For sheer drawing technique, Albrecht Dürer was master. Vincent van Gogh, if a little rougher, was also incredible at drawing, with great sense of angled form and contrast. For capturing the subtleties of human expression, I think none beats Rembrandt.

Sawfish Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Knygatin Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> >
> > I am guilty of that as well. But if someone
> asks
> > me for more details, I will do my best to
> provide
> > it.
>
> That part, extending an opinion, is just fine.eaphdhvb';bonpioc
> It's simple speculation among peers--stimulating.
>
> But if asked for more, you don't try to
> shuck'n'jive your way around it, like the problem
> I'm describing.
>
> It's a BIG difference, K.


Another example how the "socially conscious" behave with their deranged brains, is that they take some ridiculous example of conspiracy theory and use it as "proof" against every other circumstance. Saying for example that the Titanic couldn't possibly have been switched with another ship and therefore never have sunk, because it would have been impossible to hide it. And so, in their limited and dishonest intellectual capacity, they reject all conspiracy theories. They don't want to look deeper or have an honest debate, but simply look to get cheap pats on their backs from the rest of the rabble. And a few shallow laughs together. They thrive on social recognition from their buddies. They are afraid of seriousness and earnestness. And they always have full trust in the authorities and the state and the media.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 5 Sep 21 | 10:16AM by Knygatin.

Dale Nelson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Has anyone else here read Evelyn Waugh’s short
> novel A Handful of Dust?

Yes. It was assigned reading back in the spring of '68, at Sonoma State---possibly for Intro to Satire. not sure.

Can't remember anything, though.

> It could be argued that
> it deals, with rigorous irony, with the conflict
> between a decaying form of poetic consciousness
> (embodied in Tony Last) and a nascent sociological
> consciousness (seen in Brenda, Tony’s unfaithful
> wife, her lover, and her friends). I only thought
> of it this way for the first time a few minutes
> ago. I think this is probably Waugh’s
> masterpiece rather than his better known
> Brideshead Revisited.

In that same class, I think, there was a book in which the idea for pneumatic trousers spring into the head of the protagonist early on in the novel, while he was at a lengthy church service as I recall.

Maybe two classes are merged in my mind: we read Antic Hay, Decline and Fall, The Loved One, and quite a bit of other stuff by other authors. It was a semester system schedule back then.

Probably more than two classes. I was there only one semester, but it was where I read I Am a Camera, Miss Lonelyhearts and Day of the Locust, The Ginger Man.

A heck of a lot of reading that influenced me later just in that one semester.

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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I find it creepy.

Knygatin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I find it creepy.

The "socially conscious" that is. They are very creepy.

Knygatin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Knygatin Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I find it creepy.
>
> The "socially conscious" that is. They are very
> creepy.


Someone should write a horror novel about them, or make a movie. Well, there was Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, which was close enough; but these did not capture their constant mockery and hypocrisy that hide their deepest fears.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 5 Sep 21 | 10:39AM by Knygatin.

Knygatin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Knygatin Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I find it creepy.
>
> The "socially conscious" that is. They are very
> creepy.


Here's an important aspect, I think. I'm by no means sure of my direction, so I want to throw it out there for general discussion.

In most of our discussions we've mentioned those who practice sociological consciousness (SC) and those who practice poetic consciousness (PC) as different individuals. So you had "types" of people: SC and PC types.

I'd contend that SC and PC are employed at times by almost all fairly self-aware individuals, and in differing circumstances. It is only when the individual applies one or the other in situations for which they are grossly inappropriate that we see it as a problem.

E.g., providing decent rental housing to the public as a form of private investment is largely an SC domain, while listening to hip-hop is more in the realm of PC. Now, in this example, hip-hop may be found wanting in PC merit, but PC appreciation is appropriate to its aesthetic evaluation. The evaluation of its payload, or "message" is a separate, perhaps SC, operation, which means that cadence and emphasis are also PC, but not semantics.

But to broaden the example, let's strip out lyrics as a possible confounding factor--one might wish to argue that they are socially inflammatory and hence worthy of suppression--so consider Ornette Coleman on sax as opposed to Stan Getz. No lyrics here to muddle the issue, and I'd contend that the true realm for consideration is PC.

With Getz you don't have to work; you are transported elsewhere. Coleman is almost nonsensical to my ear, but others who pushed a bit on free jazz, e.g., later Coltrane, I can discern a sort of message. But it's all PC, to me.

Anyway, what say you to the idea of SC/PC coexisting within the same individual but being employed in differing situations, and that when inappropriately employed, that's where we object?

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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