[Tom Edgerton]

Carl--

Didn't mean to make anyone skittish enough to need an asbestos suit. My wife can tell you two salient things: a) I can be a pedantic old git and b) I've been known to ratchet up my verbiage just to keep a healthy debate going.

But if I overdid it, I can easily apologize up front, because squelching discussion is the last thing I'm about.

To clarify, my question "Why?" was less toward "Why discuss it?" than toward "What is to be gained from exalting a single period in art to the exclusion of others?" I agree it is to our advantage to point out "quality" or "maturity" of technical expertise to each other. But to Jim's point, there is not the paucity of information out there now than there was 40 years ago, thank God.

My fear is that if you embue a single period or style with too much adoration, it limits discussion and evolution rather than fostering it. Especially when there is so much richness in the 500+ years of Western art to draw from. And at its worst, such a discussion becomes rearward rather than forward looking. We see it now, as some contemporary Classical Realists slavishly set up compositions of Pre-Raphaelite maidens and lute players, instead of images from our time, as if 19th-century academic training and pictorial content carries the only stamp of legitimacy. Why not, as you counsel, take the best methods and tools of the past and make powerful art for the 21st Century instead?

I'm as guilty of it as the next guy. Why does our society commission portrait after portrait of its children in white dresses and sailor suits, and we don't question it more? Or encourage more creative solutions? Of course my creditors love me for it, but I wonder if it's not more than a little lazy on my part. And sometimes I wonder if our fixation on the 19th Century as being the pinnacle of all that was good in painting, and the final realization of what all previous Realism was struggling toward, doesn't limit our thinking rather than free it. Do we have to crank out lesser Sargents or Zorns or Ingreses or Bouguereaus to earn the accolades of our peers or the recognition of the public?

I honestly don't have the answers to these questions, even if sometimes I pretend to. I'll step back now, as I'm looking forward to everyone's opinions.

And I appreciate the feedback. I need to dial the rhetoric down.

Best as always to my creative compatriots--TE