Boy this was frustrating to listen to. It's clear that a full academic training in art history isn't sufficient. Knowledge of the facts of art history is impoverished if there's no philosophy behind it. It really is reduced to irrelevance. I'm amazed that when you asked about transcendence she barely understood the question. The rigid compartmentalisation of modern education is shocking and produces very bad results. Every time you asked about the meaning behind it she was left unable to answer.
It's far too common to find people without the ability to understand or grasp meaning and uncomfortable to talk about transcendence.
I suppose it's a sign of just how far we have to go to overturn centuries of conditioning where we see ourselves as machines and governors of a neutral, liberal world.
And I have to say I barked in outrage when she cited Vasari as proof that people back in the day didn't like Gothic architecture! Vasari?! Vasari was a paid propagandist for a philosophical revolution; he was the one who named it "Gothic" to begin with and meant it as a slur. He was the author of the idea that medieval culture was passe and primitive and superstitious. Jeepers! I thought art historians were supposed to be past all that.
I'd had a hunch about Vasari, having read his biography on Michelangelo, but didn't feel particularly well placed to challenge. I also realise in hindsight, I didn't raise an objection to how (North American) academia has driven the erasure of the Anglo-Saxon period and replaced it with 'early English' instead...
Looking forward to you hearing you set the record straight.
Cosimo di Medici was the Bill Gates of his day: he wanted to use his wealth and influence to irrevocably change not only Christian civilisation - replacing its metaphysics - but even our ideas about Christian civilisation, forever. He hired Vasari to write a book about how great Florentine painters were. Vasari obliged by creating a propaganda piece and inventing the idea that (what we were later to call) the Renaissance was the goal to which all cultural and civilisational roads led. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Whigs and various stripes of secularist revolutionaries picked it up and ran with it because it was, in essence, a denunciation and condemnation of Christian culture and by extension Christian/Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics.
"academia has driven the erasure of the Anglo-Saxon period and replaced it with 'early English' instead."
Yes, I picked up on that too. The problem that a lot of academics have is that they are not aware of the philosophical implications of the direction being taken by their fields, the politicisation of the humanities. So they tend to be very ... credulous and uncritical when such changes happen. On the outside of the bubble, with some awareness of the nature of the cultural struggle we're in, it's an obvious bit of woke revisionism.
It's not that one shouldn't be objective when approaching a subject like this for the facts. Academic work requires the ability to step back personally. But when the structure you're in systematically disavows and precludes interior engagement, you're left with only a fraction of the picture. You become one of the blind philosophers describing an elephant as being like a rope.
Boy this was frustrating to listen to. It's clear that a full academic training in art history isn't sufficient. Knowledge of the facts of art history is impoverished if there's no philosophy behind it. It really is reduced to irrelevance. I'm amazed that when you asked about transcendence she barely understood the question. The rigid compartmentalisation of modern education is shocking and produces very bad results. Every time you asked about the meaning behind it she was left unable to answer.
The water in which we swim, eh?
It's far too common to find people without the ability to understand or grasp meaning and uncomfortable to talk about transcendence.
I suppose it's a sign of just how far we have to go to overturn centuries of conditioning where we see ourselves as machines and governors of a neutral, liberal world.
And I have to say I barked in outrage when she cited Vasari as proof that people back in the day didn't like Gothic architecture! Vasari?! Vasari was a paid propagandist for a philosophical revolution; he was the one who named it "Gothic" to begin with and meant it as a slur. He was the author of the idea that medieval culture was passe and primitive and superstitious. Jeepers! I thought art historians were supposed to be past all that.
And, teehee, "barked in outrage".
I'd had a hunch about Vasari, having read his biography on Michelangelo, but didn't feel particularly well placed to challenge. I also realise in hindsight, I didn't raise an objection to how (North American) academia has driven the erasure of the Anglo-Saxon period and replaced it with 'early English' instead...
Looking forward to you hearing you set the record straight.
you can read all about it here:
https://hilarywhite.substack.com/p/no-the-renaissance-man-is-not-the
Cosimo di Medici was the Bill Gates of his day: he wanted to use his wealth and influence to irrevocably change not only Christian civilisation - replacing its metaphysics - but even our ideas about Christian civilisation, forever. He hired Vasari to write a book about how great Florentine painters were. Vasari obliged by creating a propaganda piece and inventing the idea that (what we were later to call) the Renaissance was the goal to which all cultural and civilisational roads led. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Whigs and various stripes of secularist revolutionaries picked it up and ran with it because it was, in essence, a denunciation and condemnation of Christian culture and by extension Christian/Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics.
"academia has driven the erasure of the Anglo-Saxon period and replaced it with 'early English' instead."
Yes, I picked up on that too. The problem that a lot of academics have is that they are not aware of the philosophical implications of the direction being taken by their fields, the politicisation of the humanities. So they tend to be very ... credulous and uncritical when such changes happen. On the outside of the bubble, with some awareness of the nature of the cultural struggle we're in, it's an obvious bit of woke revisionism.
It's not that one shouldn't be objective when approaching a subject like this for the facts. Academic work requires the ability to step back personally. But when the structure you're in systematically disavows and precludes interior engagement, you're left with only a fraction of the picture. You become one of the blind philosophers describing an elephant as being like a rope.
I'm sure you'll be rather well-versed in talking transcendence when we meet on Tuesday!
I hope I don't disappoint. I certainly don't have a degree in art history.