Tradition
Related: convention - repetition - history
Definition
A tradition is a story or a custom that is memorized and passed down from generation to generation, originally without the need for a writing system. Tools to aid this process include poetic devices such as rhyme and alliteration. The stories thus preserved are also referred to as tradition, or as part of an oral tradition. For example, it is now a tradition to have a Christmas tree to celebrate Christmas.
Although traditions are often presumed to be ancient, unalterable, and deeply important, they are often much less "natural" than is often presumed. Many traditions have been deliberately invented for one reason or another, often to highlight or enhance the importance of a certain institution. Traditions are also frequently changed to suit the needs of the day, and the changes quickly become accepted as a part of the ancient tradition. A famous book on the subject is The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger.
Some examples include "the invention of tradition" in African and other colonial holdings by the occupying forces. Requiring legitimacy, the colonial power would often invent a "tradition" which they could use to legitimize their own position. For example, a certain succession to a chiefdom might be recognized by a colonial power as traditional in order to favour their own favourite candidates for the job. Often these inventions were based in some form of tradition, but were grossly exaggerated, distorted, or biased toward a particular interpretation.
Other traditions that have been altered through the years include various religious celebrations, for example Christmas. The actual date of Jesus' birth does not coincide with December 25 as in the Western Church. This was a convenient day for it to be held on so as to capitalize on the popularity of traditional solstice celebrations. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradition [Apr 2005]
The Tradition of the New (1959) - Harold Rosenberg
The Tradition of the New (1959) - Harold Rosenberg [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Golffing, Francis HAROLD ROSENBERG's reputation among the intelligentsia-hitherto based on his trenchant magazine articles only-may not need the support of this book, which presents the best of those same...
...His famous piece on the American action painters well illustrates the second failing...
...Its central theme is self-transformation and transformation of others, and these symbolic actions are set over against the numberless accommodation formulas devised by a society which insists, inexorably, on the individual's conformity to the status quo ante...
...large public issues they should be read, and responded to, by the public at large...
...all the same, the position is unsound, a queer compound, and consequent garbling, of Dewey and the Aristotelian notions of praxis and catharsis...
...It is good to hear him blurt out his discontents so passionately and, at the same time, so shrewdly, against the daily din set up by bland world-reformers, nervous status 1uo-ists, and brutal spokesmen for ideological repression...
...We should be grateful for possibilities such as this, even though what it represents is a Leerforma scheme without a content...
...stokes the fires, tirelessly, on behalf of a humanity which he conceives in terms of maximum breadth and discusses with a minimum of sloganizing or other political clap-trap...
...His literary method is a supple and in the main reliable vehicle for his ideas, though at times the two can be remarkably at odds: he will present a substantial notion in a brusque, rough-and-ready manner, or a highly dubious one with great precision of phrase and an exquisite sense of nuance, and think nothing of it...
...his piece, "Pop Culture: Kitsch Criticism," the first...
...All men dream," T. E. Lawrence once wrote, "but not equally...
...Rosenberg's case is entirely solid, but his writing-compared with, say, similar studies by T. W. Adorno seems sketchy, short of breath, even a trifle sloppy...
...more than a convenient credo provided by an expert in words for men excelling in a different branch of art...
...As a writer, Rosenberg is hard-hitting and acute rather than subtle, very good at seeing things contextually and synoptically, and (like all anti-ideological ideologists) as impatient of the purely factual as he is of the superstructures...
...Rosenberg has all the requisites of the first-rate pamphleteer: conviction, raw indignation, a cutting edge...
via http://www.commentarymagazine.com/Summaries/V27I6P92-1.htm [Sept 2005]
Harold Rosenberg
Harold Rosenberg (February 2, 1906, New York City - July 11, 1978, New York City) was a U.S. writer, educator, and philosopher and art critic. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Rosenberg [Sept 2005]
Synopsis
Harold Rosenberg was undoubtedly the most important American art critic of the twentieth century. It was he who first coined the term Action Painters to refer to the American Abstract Expressionists such as Pollock, Kline, and de Kooning. Rosenbergs seminal writings on this movement, as well as on other artists such as Newman and Rothko, appear in The Tradition of the New (1959), his first and most influential book; its effects on subsequent art criticism, and the practice of art itself, are still felt today. The essays in this book are not limited to the art world, however: He also discusses poetry, political and cultural theory, and popular culture. As wide-ranging, independent, and deeply probing as the essays of Walter Benjamin, Harold Rosenbergs The Tradition of the New is a true classic of twentieth-century criticism. via Amazon.co.uk
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