Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
>
> But why? The reason I ask is because of the compare/contrast
> questions that were being asked earlier in this thread about academic
> criticism and its relation to painting and movies. Painters were
> writing and thinking about their work long before we needed academic
> critics to tell us what they were doing. In the last 50 years visual
> art movements depend on criticism as part of their communication with
> the audience. That has never been true of movies and surely never
> will be. So I think there's more to this than Ford just not liking
> the suggestion that he was making art.
Movies have always imperfectly fit the conception of "The Artist" rooted in modern individualism. They no more have a single creator than did medieval architecture. I haven't followed movie criticism particularly, but isn't the notion of the "auteur" pretty much abandoned? The concept of "work of art" itself (beyond its initial meaning of a thing made, artificial, product of craft) is disputable.
Carrol