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Critic Cites Revenge of the Sith As "Generation's Greatest Work of Art
eldavojohn writes "Art critic and University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia Camille Paglia has written a book that not only claims George Lucas is the 'World's Greatest Living Artist' but also that 'Revenge of the Sith' is our generation's greatest work of art. That's right: Titian, Bernini, Monet, Picasso, Jackson Pollock and ... George Lucas. If you thought you understood art but you hated Episode III, it might be difficult to understand how her book 'Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars' ends with 'Revenge of the Sith.' There is a possibility that the art world remembers this generation by examining that movie."
And I thought my opinion of art critics couldn't get any lower.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
That or she's into some nasty nose candy.
Okay, I get it. Art is subjective. Sometimes someone's "best movie ever" is another's pukeorama. I know this.
But, no.
Just no.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
Slashdot trolled by feminist academic.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
There's the problem, none of them really "our generation".
Nonsense ! YouTube Charts tells me that Psy, Justin Bieber and Jennifer Lopez are the greatest artists !
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
If art critics and movie critics would just blindly follow the popular opinions, there would not be much point in having them around.
We can check what's in the IMDB Top 250 without needing their help.
Same with Picasso... I'd much rather look at a peaceful picture of mountains than his morbid creations. It takes a critic to like it.
Any so-called art critic and professor who wants to put George Lucas next to William Shakespeare needs to just drive off a cliff.
Yeah, the Star Wars universe is pretty awesome, but it's hardly a cultural masterpiece that stands alongside works of art hanging in the Louvre.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
From History of the World, Part I:
"Even in most primitive man, the need to create was part of his nature. This need, this talent clearly separated early man from animals, who would never know this gift. And here, in a cave about 2 million years ago, the first artist was born. [a drawing of a buffalo is shown, and a proud artist] And, of course, with the birth of the artist, came the inevitable afterbirth... the critic. [the critic urinates on the drawing]"
I am officially gone from
The Jar Jar Binks, The?
Entire Star Wars section added solely to gain publicity for the rest of the work.
Mission accomplished.
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
Srsly, how do I troll?
You post a long, superficially well reasoned argument that she's right.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Actually, you can know how good a work of art is in objective terms. Just look at how many people copy it. Take a painting from 1700's. The ones that were most heavily copied in their day were the most influential. The ones that were still being copied in the 1800's could be seen as great art.
How many people have copied ''Revenge of the Sith'. I know I saw it, but I don't even remember it. During Halloween you still see kids copying the first three movies. The 1977-1983 movies.
I submit Shigeru Miyamoto as the greatest living artist. His creations are at least as iconic and influential.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
And the worst art critic of our generation award goes to...Camille Paglia. Honorable mention goes to Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia for hiring this tool. Even Jar Jar Binks was quoted as saying, "Meesa thinks she's a nutcase."
This is the same idiot that describes herself as a "dissident feminist" (whatever that is). Perhaps she is also a dissident art critic. Let's call a duck a duck. She's a heretic.
Paglia has been trolling the feminist establishment for for years. Now she has broadened her trolling to sell more books. It's boring and this post is troll bait.
Jar jar is the character that defined a generation of Americans, not my generation mind you, but a generation. I suppose that Bella defines the current youth.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I never expected to agree with TFA. I mean, come on; if Revenge of the Sith is truly the greatest work of art produced in the last thirty years, then the artistic state of humanity has fallen far indeed. But then I went and read the thing, only to find that the critic is pretty much saying exactly this: that it is the greatest work of art produced in the last thirty years, because the artistic state of humanity has fallen so far.
No one who speaks german could possibly be evil!
To be fair, there are a couple really good scenes in Revenge of the Sith. As a whole the movie is indeed pretty lacking, but if the whole movie had more scenes like the following, it could have been something truly grand:
The best is the scene (sans dialog!) where (eh, am I really going to spoiler this?) there is one character looking across the city toward where another character is doing something atrocious. That is a brilliant scene, where there is actually a glimpse of emotion, conveyed not by dialog or effects, but simple imagery and the score.
It's too bad, really, that the rest of the movie is so full of cliche and noise.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
He comes out with some nonsense, but I quite like - and agree with - a lot of what Sewell says. A lot of people in the art world are so puffed up and do need puncturing, I don't see why Brian should have less right to do that than anyone else. I don't think the accusations of hypocrisy are fair - for example he's not just an art critic, he's an artist himself, and when asked why he didn't have any exhibitions he said something like "why would anyone want to see what I've done?". He probably wishes other artists had the same respect for others.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Yes. (I would site examples of the derivative nature of other great artist's works (Shakespeare, da Vinci), but I have to get back to work.)
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Here are what I consider the 5 qualities of great art:
Powerful – It has an affect on your mind and emotions and is compelling.
Accessible – The affect it has on you is worth the effort you put into appreciating it.
Elevating - When it moves you, it moves you toward personal growth.
Universal – It can move people from different cultures and different time periods.
Perennial - It has the same power the second and third time you experience it.
This link explains it in more detail:
http://www.kensken.com/archives/52
My ex and I used to argue over this point constantly. She was a "fine arts" major. What you and I call art, she claimed we confused with craftmanship. If it "evoked a feeling or response", it was art in her book.
Some of the junk she thought was art, created a "feeling" in me. I "felt" it was crap.
Surely they can't be talking about our gen-gen-generation?
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Need publicity much?
George Lucas isn't "my generation" - he's my dad's generation. Might actually explain the awkward sense of humour..
Don't tar "art critics" with the brush you use on Camille Paglia. I've been ignoring her as a bit of a sociological nutcase since the 1990s. She styles herself as kind of feminist libertarian, but as Gloria Steinem put it, "Her calling herself a feminist is sort of like a Nazi saying they're not anti-Semitic."
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
For the older farts among us, Akira Kurosawa and Stanley Kubrick are still relevant. Both of them WAY greater artists than George Lucas.
Even if you strictly limit the comparison to living artists, I'd rate Ridley Scott a bit higher. Sure he made some weak films too, but his better ones beat Star Wars IMHO.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Your generation is just fine. The generation before you is annoyed by you, you'll be annoyed by the generation after you, and so it goes. Change becomes more difficult to accommodate with age, I can honestly report.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Akira Kurosawa and Stanley Kubrick are still relevant. Both of them WAY greater artists than George Lucas.
Nope. You are thinking of the word "greater" in terms of quality, which is a pointless metric when talking about art because quality is entirely subjective.
In terms of impact on humanity, there's no question that Lucas has had far greater impact than Kubrick and Kurosawa combined. The reason is simple, it's because Lucas is getting to viewers at a much younger age, with a more widely distributed product. Lucas has altered the lives of more people than Kubrick ever will.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The brilliant and hilarious political writer Molly Ivins wrote the ultimate takedown of Camille Paglia's absurd intellectual methods (20 years ago!). Archive.org has a PDF of the original article from Mother Jones magazine.
If you plan to read it, ignore the rest of this comment, but if you're not going to follow the link, here's the final paragraph of the article:
Let's first see if this 'expert' is getting US tax dollars from the endowment for the Arts...and cut her funding immediately, and retroactively....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Hitler got into politics because his art was rejected. At least near the end he saw his reign in terms of art - namely, a classic tragedy. The culture of Nazi Germany was largely based on artistic choices and has ever since been an inexhaustible well for other artists. In fact, the very Star Wars itself draws a major source of inspiration from there, from the very concept of an evil empire worshipping the Dark Side to the aesthetics of space battles.
Hitler had a far greater effect on the art world than Lucas could ever even dream of. And with the generation that actually went through World War II, you just know he's on his way to become this.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
So the calibration pinnacle on your scale of cultural importance is Dr Seuss, Bugs Bunny, Walt Disney, and Norman Rockwell? I'm pretty sure that Kubrick and Kurosawa were important influences on both Spielberg and Lucas. By your metric, it's surprising we remember Newton at all.
I've grown to hate just about any idea with an immediacy transform embedded inside, because its so much a tool of the newly wealthy to forget that they ever stood on the shoulders of giants whatsoever. In the immortal words of Finding Nemo: "Mine." Seagull logic 101.
Lucas chose a curious path to illustrate the foreboding nature dark side of the force: by making the next five movies. When we were slow to catch on, he added Jar Jar. No wonder artists drink.