Points of Beauty #3
"...art is how the dead speak."
That's a thought worthy of further consideration.
My half-baked thought here is that Academic art reflects a sort of Apollonian pole in art, and that its total defeat by the Dionysian gave us a good couple of generations, but left us stuck with mostly sterile exhaustion these days.
You occasionally run into lesser pieces by Bouguereau at auction with a lot less kitsch to them, too: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/19th-century-european-paintings-sculpture/crucifixion ... and I'm still a little miffed at how far off the estimate was on this one, alas.
"...art is how the dead speak."
That's a thought worthy of further consideration.
My half-baked thought here is that Academic art reflects a sort of Apollonian pole in art, and that its total defeat by the Dionysian gave us a good couple of generations, but left us stuck with mostly sterile exhaustion these days.
You occasionally run into lesser pieces by Bouguereau at auction with a lot less kitsch to them, too: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/19th-century-european-paintings-sculpture/crucifixion ... and I'm still a little miffed at how far off the estimate was on this one, alas.