Another reason why later Cezanne is better than early
I read this passage from Annie's Dillard's Living By Fiction , her exploration of what makes writing meaningful, and thought it could be applied to painting just as well:
We judge a work on its integrity. Often we examine a work's integrity (or at least I do) by asking what it makes for itself and what it attempts to borrow from the world. Sentimental art, for instance, attempts to force preexistent emotions upon us. Instead of creating characters and events which will elicit special feelings unique to the text, sentimental art merely gestures towards stock characters and events whose accompanying emotions come on tap. Bad poetry is almost always bad because it attempts to claim for itself the real power of whatever it describes in ten lines: a sky full of stars, first love, or Niagara Falls. An honest work generates its own power; a dishonest work tries to rob power from the cataracts of the given. That is why scenes of high drama--suicide, rape, murder, incest--or scenes of great beauty are so difficult to do well in genuine literature. We already have strong feelings about these things, and literature does not operate on borrowed feelings.
Posted by harry at June 27, 2009 8:14 AM
/ Art / Books / Quotes / TrackBack /
/ Share with Digg or
del.icio.us