Re: REHEATING THE "PALEOARTIST" DEBATE

["D.I.G." <dinosaur@dinosaur.org>]

My intention was to put the focus on the ARTWORK ITSELF, rather than on
what term you apply to the artist.

So, now, having said this, let me see if I understand this:

Norman Rockwell worked from photographs, so he was a hack.
Leonardo DaVinci made sketches from life models (there were no cameras)
so he is a hack.
James Bama is a hack.
Rembrandt's portraits painted from life are hack work because he didn't
imagine it in his brain before he painted it.

"Hack," as I understand it as a "term of art," is a pejorative and
emotional term reserved for creatures that are beneath contempt by those
in the "know." Ad hominum. Onc could, after all, call them "commercial
artists." 

No artists were mentioned by name either in Brian's original post, nor
in mine.

Nor was my intention to discuss "taste." This is another area of
confusion. This list has already gone through several "democaratic"
elections about the "greatest."

Over about six months there have been a series of posts arguing the
appropriateness of various "terms of art" such as "paleo-artist" and
"Paleo-life artist."

If we are to appreciate the genuine skills of folks like Mr. Franczyk or
Doug Henderson, it would seem to be useful to understand what, exactly,
it is that they do that differentiates them from artists who don't do
what they do.  Finding a consensual label, may or may not help to do
that.

Larry Dunn wrote
:
> 
> ---"D.I.G." <dinosaur@dinosaur.org> wrote:
> >
> > It strikes me that what is going on here is a form of "semantic
> reducio
> > ad absurdum" which misses what I have always understood to be the real
> > point which is: what scientific background does a given artist bring
> to
> > his/her paintings?
> 
> Not necessarily, as I think you've expanded the pool of artists we
> were discussing in the first place.  We need not make this
> distinction, as artists sitting down with a sculpture of a dinosaur
> and painting it for a cereal box are hacks.  We were only discussing
> artists who prepare life restorations of dinosaurs from their remains.
> 
> I think it's fruitful to be precise in language; if we all understand
> what what we mean by "paleoartist," that's fine, but there's no
> particular reason to avoid precision in our terminology.
> 
> > By, forgive me, bickering about what to call that, the emotional issue
> > is obscured.
> 
> This may be true if you see an emotional issue here in the first
> place, but I personally don't.
> 
> > We don't get quite so bent about drawings of Superman, do we? I
> mean...
> > they don't all have to look like Christopher Reeve do they? Would
> there
> > be a conversation about calling someone a "superartist?"
> 
> I suspect that comic book fans may disagree with
> this . . .
> 
> ==
> Larry
> http://members.tripod.com/~megalania/index.html
> 
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