a friend recently suggested i revisit this:
and our subsequent conversations reminded me of this opening paragraph from Feldman’s “After Modernism” essay in Give My Regards to Eighth St.:
“What if I met Pissarro in his own time–say, when he was fifty, a man of unique talent and with a unique position in the art world? What if I watched him slowly growing older, slowly falling under the influence of the younger men? Would I understand better how an idea takes over in the world of art–be in a better position to see the profound irony of idea as opposed to life? In Pissarro’s century it was discovered that Nature is not a fixed ideal, but a thing to be reconstructed according to the personal vision of the artist. with this thought begins modernity. And with this thought modernity ends. Where the premodernists had pursued nature in terms of its omniscience (i.e., that to become one with nature one had to paint like a god), modernity found its omniscient metaphor in process.”
3 Minor Waifs 