#leo steinberg

[yourghost-again]

not to be controversial and brave but leo steinberg should have been a poet and not an art critic/pseudo historian

[lovewillbreakyourheartforever]

Mystical writers such as Margaret Porete, Eckhart, and John Gerson were suspicious generally of affectivity, in part because of its bodily pleasures. And male theologians warned repeatedly that women’s mystical strivings and visions might be merely sensual “ticklings.” Moreover, it may be that religious women were more likely than religious men to read as encounter with God bodily occurrences that we would attribute to sexual arousal. For physiological reasons, a woman’s erotic (particularly auto-erotic) responses are different from a man’s (and less obviously genital). Nonetheless it seems clear both that bodily stirrings frequently accompanied love of God in the later Middle Ages eand that bothered or delighted medieval people about such stirrings was not their exact physiological location, in genitals or heart, mouth or bowels. What worried medieval theorists was whether the sensations were inspired or demonic- that is, whether they were sent by God or by the devil.

Caroline Walker Bynum, “The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg”

[lovewillbreakyourheartforever]

...blood is what is emphasized- blood as covenant, in part, but primarily blood as suffering.

Caroline Walker Bynum, “The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg”

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Modern art always projects itself into a twilight zone where no values are fixed. It is always born in anxiety, at least since Cézanne. And Picasso once said that what matters most to us in Cézanne, more than his pictures, is his anxiety. It seems to me a function of modern art to transmit this anxiety to the spectator, so that his encounter with the work is - at least while the work is new - a genuine existential predicament.

Like Kierkegaard's God, the work molests us with its aggressive absurdity [...]. It demands a decision in which you discover something of your own quality; and this decision is always a "leap of faith," to use Kierkegaard's famous term.

And like Kierkegaard's God, who demands a sacrifice from Abraham in violation of every moral standard: like Kierkegaard's God, the picture seems arbitrary, cruel, irrational, demanding your faith, while it makes no promise of future rewards. In other words, it is in the nature of original contemporary art to present itself as a bad risk. And we the public, artists included, should be proud of being in this predicament, because nothing else would seem to us quite true to life; and art, after all, is supposed to be a mirror of life.

- Leo Steinberg, Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art

[adeshua]

Leo Steinberg by Pamela Blackwell, 1987

[johnluna47-blog1]

False Starts, Loose Ends

This talk was delivered at the College Art Association Conference, Philadelphia, February 21, 2002, at the session honoring Leo Steinberg as Distinguished Scholar. The speakers were introduced by David Rosand, Columbia University, followed by Samuel Y. Edgerton, Williams College; Rosalind Krauss, Columbia University; and Alexander Nagel, University of Toronto.

[hydeordie]

If you want the truth about a work of art, be sure always to get your data from the horse’s mouth, bearing in mind that the artist is the one selling the horse

Leo Steinberg

[resetagain]

This rapid domestication of the outrageous is the most characteristic feature of our artistic life, and the time lapse between shock received and thanks returned gets progressively shorter. [...] So then the shock value of any violently new contemporary style is quickly exhausted. Before long, the new looks familiar, then normal and handsome, finally authoritative. All is well, you may say. Our initial misjudgment has been corrected.

Leo Steinberg