Tuesday, 11 September 2012

The Lawson Question

The progressive mindset strikes again. Last night, in a moment of inattention, I found myself listening to Radio 4's Front Row, where Mark Lawson - radio's answer to Will Gompertz - was talking to a critic about the new Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at Tate Britain, the one that stresses the radicalism of the movement. Poor Mark was genuinely bewildered - How, he inquired plaintively, can a movement that looks back to the past be described as radical? Well, er, wasn't looking back to the past exactly what Victorian radicalism did - from Pugin's radical medievalism to the civilising fantasies of Ruskin and Carlyle (not to mention Wm Morris)? Even the giants of modernist literature - Eliot, Pound, Joyce - had their faces firmly set to the past. Picasso too, come to that, and Stravinsky... For art to be truly new - modern, if you like - it must always be deeply steeped in what went before. It was only in dead end movements like Futurism and, more widely, in architecture that a serious effort was made to uproot an art from its past - and little good came of that... Remember, the true progressivism is retroprogressivism - Back to the Future! Forward to the Past!

5 comments:

  1. Ironically modernism has become a sort of traditionalism. Duchamp and le Corbusier have been dead for nearly fifty years. Their ground-breaking works are the best past of a century old. Nobody who is their follower is being terribly contemporary. It's about as "radical" and "progressive" as being a disciple of Pugin in 1912. The "modern" design that is currently so trendy has been around for decades.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm more than happy to find this web site. I wanted to thank you for ones time for this particularly wonderful read!! I definitely loved every part of it and I have you book-marked to check out new things on your web site.
    Also visit my web-site : afkarachi.org

    ReplyDelete
  3. شركة نقل عفش بالرياض وجدة والدمام والخبر والجبيل اولقطيف والاحساء والرياض وجدة ومكة المدينة المنورة والخرج والطائف وخميس مشيط وبجدة افضل شركة نقل عفش بجدة نعرضها مجموعة الفا لنقل العفش بمكة والخرج والقصيم والطائف وتبوك وخميس مشيط ونجران وجيزان وبريدة والمدينة المنورة وينبع افضل شركات نقل الاثاث بالجبيل والطائف وخميس مشيط وبريدة وعنيزو وابها ونجران المدينة وينبع تبوك والقصيم الخرج حفر الباطن والظهران
    شركة نقل عفش بجدة
    شركة نقل عفش بالمدينة المنورة
    شركة نقل اثاث بالرياض
    شركة نقل عفش بالدمام
    شركة نقل عفش بالطائف
    شركة نقل عفش بمكة
    شركة نقل عفش بينبع
    شركة نقل عفش بالخرج

    ReplyDelete