1. Like many people, I much taken with @aoscott's piece on Woody Allen in the #metoo
era, but I have a few thoughts to add (as does @Jo_Livingstone!) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/movies/woody-allen.html …
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3. For most of human history (and pre-history!), people didn't care about the biography of artists: they were avatars of the Muse or artisans. Particularities of personality irrelevant. Thus we know next to nothing about Shakespeare.
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4. It was with 19th century Romanticism, that the personality of the artist became important because art was supposedly original creation of individual genius
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5. One of the byproducts of Romanticism was triple-decker bios of artists, sacred texts or hagiographies to honor the God-like creator.
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6. And if there wasn't much known about a great artist, fictional lives were invented (the idea that Bacon or Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare's play is byproduct of romanticism).
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7. 20th century formalism (especially American New Criticism) was a revolt against romantic biography fetish: an attempt to re-focus on work of art & not life that produced it.
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8. The formalist attempt to deny that the historical origins of art are relevant was a useful fiction (it allowed criticism to focus on technique, not gossip) but ultimately an untenable one.
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9. With the rise of second wave feminism in 1960s, it was impossible to ignore that works of art weren't pure creations outside of culture but products of a patriarchal history.
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10. The feminist revolt was against both romanticism and formalism. The romantic original genius was almost often a man (often covertly supported by a wife or mistress). And formalism turned eyes from that fact.
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11. One thing I liked about
@aoscott's piece was way it placed the Woody Allen question in both autobiographical and historical context evoking period in 1970s when Allen was a cultural hero.Show this thread -
12. The 1970s cult of Allen was doomed to give way even if we had never learned about his private life, because belief in the Godlike auteur is at odds with collaborative nature of film (and all cultural production).
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13.
@Jo_Livingstone & I have more thoughts on all this here (with cameo by@terryteachout & Ballanchine):https://newrepublic.com/article/146876/woody-allen-metoo-separation-art-artist …Show this thread
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