another essay, again no reference as yet as to what i am writing in reaction too. i know bad form. will make amends soon. UPDATE: T. J. Clark, selection from introduction to Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973 (ISBN 0-691-03982-8 pbk): pp. 10-15.
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Clark silently delivers his message. Presumably a deliberate ploy as introduction and method. Who could begin a book stating one’s case explicitly?
His method is to leave details unwritten and prompt confusion. Clark writes that “it is easier to define what methods to avoid than propose a set of methods for system~tic use.” Clark removes the social history of art from systematic academic discourse because society is not a rational organism. It is prone to irrational behaviour, general attitudes, archetypes and stereotypes. Clark writes that it is im~ortant to discard those elements/methods w~ understand as conventional. Negation constructs the unwritten idea.
Clark is asking those who would seek to interpret the socially historical impact art to put their ears to the ground and listen to the public in its yarious manifestations. Social history might only be understood at ground zero away from the pie-chart Marxism.
Clark presents his thesis in three key areas of text, on pages 11/12/and 13. Thes ideas are corroborated then with evidence plucked from the 19thCentury, France. He focuses on Parisian intellectuals and their political thinKing with regard to the 1848 revolution. The avante-garde were estranged from popular revolutionart thinking because their aesthetic drive was entirely a PLAYTHING OF THE wealthy classes.
At the bottom of page 11 he notes the”hypocritical discourse” of artist and criti that precludes the public whose lack of education means they cannot enter the deb . He differentiates between public and audience, etymologically audience is close to author in structure and also intent. The public is quite different. This point is made clearer by the Freudian analogy which indicates something psychological that requires treatment. When the convention of criticism breaks down, when the artist gives something that does not present easy or clear interpretation this is the point at which the public can enter the discourse. On page 13 clark writes th the purpose of social history is to find the “general nature of structures,” that the artist encounters in a random fashion, and to “locate specific conditions of such meeting.”
What Clark does not say or write is that a social history of art requires the reaction of the public to the artwork in question. This reaction need not be prof und, no·r need it lead to the barricades. A social historical reckoning has to foc on society, its currency will be the interaction of art and life. Academics can analyse the origins and futures of society but Clark suggests that it takes socie to voice its opinions before we can be clear as to the social history of an artwo The artist works within a society, he/she is framed by their relation to their neighbours, therefore the issue of social hisotry is contained in a moebius strip that has no begining and therefore no end.
