On Friday, I attended the presentation of “High and Low: What is Excellence in the Arts” that featured Franklin Einspruch, who is an art writer, speaker, and cultural critic from Boston. Einspruch began by defining the word “excellence” as the act of excelling, surpassing, and outdoing. One of the issues he brought up is the question of what makes one piece of art superior over other pieces? Einspruch questioned whether it is a matter of objective quality or subjective perception. It can be a matter of opinion and taste and he said that it was somewhat of a conspiracy theory where people passively absorb notions of culture and society. As for the objective quality, he said that if people fail to see the beauty within a popular and well-received piece of art, they can be seen as blind, ignorant, or naïve. Einspruch revealed that excellence is not within the object or within us. It is dynamic, not subjective or objective.
I liked the point that he made about duplication. He showed a painting on the projection screen and then in the next slide, it was duplicated. He stated that it changes completely when an image is duplicated because we automatically start trying to make comparisons and figuring out the differences between the two of them. An individual painting will have a greater effect upon us. Another great point that was made was about how some artists create multiple copies of the same piece of art that have minor variations. The second one is usually not as good and with each additional piece, it begins to lose its initial quality. The first version was created out of inspiration and emotion, without anything to compare it to. Paradoxically, the only way to find out which qualities are worth keeping is to do something entirely different. There were elements of HUMN 2002 that he mentioned in his presentation such as the sublime. Einspruch stated that a high artist should keep the sublime in the back of his mind but should strive towards excellence and hope that the sublime will sneak into his artwork. He also mentioned economy of form, which made me relate back to Japan’s period concepts. Additionally, Einspruch showed the painting, “Luncheon on the Grass” by Monet and it was interesting to think that I would not have recognized it if we had not learned about it in HUMN 2002. All in all, I am glad I attended the presentation because I feel more informed about the critique of art. It provided a look into the complex elements involved in the many facets of art.
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