Replying to LO28970 --
Dear Organlearners,
Andrew Campbell < ACampnona@aol.com > writes upon my provocative remark:
>>Search for any organisation in which there is
>>profound and profuse passion for learning and
>>you will have found the Learning Organisation.
>
>So to return to impressionism ... At, Leo, Barry
>and Ray, do you think that Courbet and the other
>earlier schools like the Barbizon painters working
>from and IN the landscape were examples of LO's?
Greetings dear Andrew,
Believe it or not, but i spent several hours rethinking this claim after
having jotted it down. Should i delete it, reformulate it to be less
provocative or just leave it as it became jotted down? Suddenly the
insight came that I have articulated my personal tacit knowing. I began to
wonder how many other fellow learners do have the same tacit knowing. So i
decided to leave the claim just as it is and wait for others to respond to
it, either recognising in it their own tacit knowing or finding it
incomprehensive.
Your swift response indicates that it had been at least provocative. Just
the following to inform fellow learners:-
The Barbizon School was a group of naturalist landscape painters who
worked in the vicinity of Barbizon, a village on the outskirts of the
Forest of Fontainebleu, southeast of Paris, in the 1840s and 1850s.
Theodore Rousseau (1812-67) was the founder of the group. They had a
passion for nature (and humans interacting with nature) They tried to
present this passion in their paintings by painting almost a replica of
what ought to be seen, but stressing certain features like light, colour
and composition to tell what in nature fuel their passion. Their approach
initiated an art movement which eventually led to both Realism and
Impressionism.
Andrew, i consider the Barbizon School as a continuation of the great
masters two centuries earlier, but having adapted to a new era in which
information began to dominate society. So they took the liberty to guide
the senses by stressing certain aspects of that information. In today's
complexity hype i would say that in an entropy landscape which was fast
becoming flat they tried to give back some of its ruggedness. Evidently it
did not work because the levels of stress, abstraction and illusion just
became intenser like in the cubists and surrealists. But what did work,
was their passion which served as example to others like Renoir, Monet and
Matisse who took their explorations further to the edge.
Many people think of Vincent van Gogh as an impressionist, a mile stone of
necessity along the path paved originally by the Barbizon School. I do not
think of him as an impressionist at all, but rather as a "phenomenologist"
for the lack of having any better word to use. What i mean by it that Van
Gogh was intensely aware of what was essential to humane living. His
sadness for people who became dehumanised by shearing these essentials
away from them knew no bounds. Later on he would often say that this
sadness will last forever. When he discovered that he could communicate
these essentials by painting, his passion for art took fire. His paintings
are for me artistic studies in the essentials of the human(e) condition.
Thus he occupies for me a unique position among all painters similar to
the position which Beethoven occupies among all composers.
Dear Andrew, no, i do not think the Barbizon School was a LO. What we have
to watch for, is a passion for learning itself in that organisation. A
passion for nature or a passion for living among caring people like them
is just not the same as a passion for learning.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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