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Thursday, August 28, 2008

Nostalgia Is Good

posted by on August 28 at 9:27 AM

Yesterday, Ed Schad, the author of the really great blog I Call It Oranges (and also curator at the private Broad Foundation in LA), wrote a post in response to my Currently Hanging post about an Alec Soth photograph that reminded me of my parents’ failed marriage.

After I described my personal connection to the image in the post, I backtracked. Schad calls me on my insecurity, explains why I didn’t need to backtrack, and talks about his own family and August Sander.

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1

nostalgia is a conservative value

Posted by Bellevue Ave | August 28, 2008 9:30 AM
2

What did you learn?

Posted by Oe, Poe: soe boering. | August 28, 2008 9:37 AM
3

I guess Ed basically convinced me (this is something I'm coming to slowly, in various ways) that art critics don't have to be all art history and theory. That completely ignoring personal experience has a cost. I mean, I don't want to put my life story into everything I think and write about art--that would be silly. But I do think that critics in general try not to be personal at all, and maybe we don't need to do that quite so much.

Posted by Jen Graves | August 28, 2008 9:51 AM
4

It was not appropriate in the article, but I would add that many of our greatest engagements with history and art at least started with a nostalgic impulse (though maybe the initial impulse was ultimately abandoned). Camera Lucida began with Roland Barthes' attempt to find his mother in an old photograph. W.G. Sebald's books always start with a welling up of the heart and a tear in the eye but then get very critical and analytic. Toni Morrison began writing her book Jazz by finding an old trunk of clothing in an attic, overcome by a longing to understand the jazz age. These three are very serious writers that openly admit they are not only emotional but at times, downright sentimental. No one I know would call these writers conservative.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate it.

Posted by Ed Schad | August 28, 2008 11:17 AM
5

It was not appropriate in the article, but I would add that many of our greatest engagements with history and art at least started with a nostalgic impulse (though maybe the initial impulse was ultimately abandoned). Camera Lucida began with Roland Barthes' attempt to find his mother in an old photograph. W.G. Sebald's books always start with a welling up of the heart and a tear in the eye but then get very critical and analytic. Toni Morrison began writing her book Jazz by finding an old trunk of clothing in an attic, overcome by a longing to understand the jazz age. These three are very serious writers that openly admit they are not only emotional but at times, downright sentimental. No one I know would call these writers conservative.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate it.

Posted by Ed Schad | August 28, 2008 11:22 AM
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