Is George Lucas the Greatest Artist of Our Time?

Most short lists of greatest living artists will have names such as David Hockney, Gerhard Richter, (BigThink.com’s own) Ai Weiwei, Cindy Sherman, Damien Hirst, or Jeff Koons. But who would put filmmaker George Lucas at the top of that list? Critic and cultural agent provocateur Camille Paglia does in her latest book, Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars. Part manifesto, part idiosyncratic beginner’s guide to art history, Glittering Images is, in Paglia’s words, “an attempt to reach a general audience for whom art is not a daily presence,” but for whom “[t]he only road to freedom is self-education in art.” In elevating Lucas to the top tier of artists, Paglia hopes to tap into “the force” that is popular culture and erase the culture boundaries that keep the elites in and the rest out. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is George Lucas the Greatest Artist of Our Time?"

[Image: Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker duel on Mustafar in George Lucas’ film Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). Image source.]

What Kind of Artistic Afterlife Will Thomas Kinkade Have?

The self-titled and legally trademarked “Painter of Light” has been extinguished. When the news spread on Saturday that painter Thomas Kinkade had suddenly passed away at the age of 54 of natural causes, it sent a tremor through not necessarily the art world, but more like the art critic world. Obituaries remained for the most part politely silent on Kinkade’s quality as a painter and his questionable business dealings, going by the “speak no ill of the dead” policy rather than dancing on his yet to be dug grave. I’m not much of a dancer and see no point in rehashing past sins, so, instead, I’ll think about Kinkade’s posthumous future. What kind of artistic afterlife will Thomas Kinkade have? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "What Kind of Artistic Afterlife Will Thomas Kinkade Have?"

[Image: Caspar David Friedrich. The Cross in the Mountains (detail), 1807.]

A Matter of Interpretation: Is All Art History Western Art History?

It’s human nature to try to understand something new by comparing it to something we already know. We always interpret the present based on past experience. But when we make that interpretation via comparison, are we being fair to the new experience, or the old one, for that matter? “Comparisons are like mercury,” writes art theorist James Elkins in his controversial new book, Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History, “the big blobs can be cut and divided into little droplets, but they can never be entirely dissolved away. Even the tiniest atomized droplets, which seem so isolated, can be virulent.” That virulence stems from each comparison containing “a microcosm of assumptions,” in this case about how we view Chinese art through the lens of Western art. In Elkins view, the use of Western examples to understand non-Western art, including Chinese art, does a disservice to both fields. Perhaps even worse, the very study of art history itself is incurably Western thanks to the infection of past practice. How then do we ever understand art beyond the Western tradition? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "A Matter of Interpretation."

[Image: Dong Qichang. Thatched Hall. 1597.]

[Many thanks to the University of Washington Press for providing me with a review copy of Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History by James Elkins, with a foreword by Jennifer Purtle.]