Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Charles Bukowski and the silliness of Brooks Jensen's "criteria"

Charles Bukowski was a wonderful poet. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRc6mHS9PjE
He's the Robert Frost of a different era.

I enjoyed (but disagreed) the talk on criteria that someone had posted by Brooks Jensen (http://www.lenswork.com/podcast/LW0639%20-%20Criteria%20Part%202.mp3), and also thought that it somewhat defines the argument on this forum. I thought it was very short-sighted in that the names he mentioned (Adams, Weston, Evans, Lange) all defined their own criteria and thumbed their nose at existing standards, just as Tina Barney and Charles Bukowski did. In fact, I sometimes look at history of art books with the idea that, as I turn the pages, each is doing something they weren't supposed to do. A curator from from MOMA once said, "Art should make you think and feel, and hopefully take you to a place you haven't been." Life is too short to be shown the same stuff over and over again. Let's break the molds.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am not certain about who said what, but I am pretty sure someone said something condescending and perhaps even fatuous. H.

Who's in the world?

Xiushan said, "What can you do about the world?" Dizang said, "What do you call the world?"