The Top 500 Artists and Thinkers Who Made An Influence On... ME (Part One)
Jan 09 '03 (Updated Jan 18 '03)
The Bottom Line My UBER Web of Trust. These are the first half of 500 people who have made my life incalculably richer. The cream of the crop.
Everyone has their own, personal list of favorite artists. This list, usually kept somewhere floating in the mind, sometimes spills out in partial form-- say, when meeting someone new, or while building a friendship or romance over time, or while writing epinions... Indeed, one's collected top-rated reviews can begin to point to an idea of such a list. Obviously, such a list is protean-- it changes all the time: it expands when we learn about and investigate new artists, and changes shape as some individuals we once held in higher regard begin to lose their stock, or as others long since added to our list gain in our estimation.
Below is the first half of a list of my 500 favorite artists and thinkers. I call it my pantheon. I've been working on this list for a few years now. I have included two numbers after each name (alphabetically organized, under fields). The FIRST NUMBER is the PLATEAU number, and tells you the height I feel these artists attain, with the number 5 being highest. The plateau rating is the average of what I imagine someone’s standing might be according to a broad consensus and the level I feel they belong in my estimation. For example, Mozart would be a 5 by broad consensus, a 4 in my own regard, and therefore gets a plateau rating of 4.5. The SECOND NUMBER tells you the degree of INFLUENCE each individual has had on me, again 5 being the greatest.
Many things interest me about the enterprise of making such a list, and I was quite surprised when I did statistical analysis of all kinds upon my own lists, testing for nationality, decade of birth, and field of creation. One thing I learned is that no matter how informative I try to be, or how comprehensive, my true personality is nowhere to be found in the list. I think that between two strangers, one of them armed with my pantheon but who does not ever meet me, and the other who never reads it, but meets me for the space of half an hour, the second would "know" me better than the first. In other words, my list tells me crucial information about myself, but it is lifeless on the page as a guide to who I really am. You won't find that I am inexorably forced to dance wildly whenever I hear Flamenco, banjo, or Klezmer music. Or that I am a composer of ragtimes, "modern" music, Baroque style songs, quirky waltzes, and that I make music for dance, children's theater and film. Or that I am passionate about long distance unicycling, and so on. This realization works both ways: I figure that if I were to meet my favorite authors here at epinions, I would experience much deeper lasting impressions about their personalities than having read about their favorite things. AND YET: This is precisely the kind of list (I mean, something equivalent to the one below) that I always want to see from people. I mean, it DOES tell us something-- in my case, with the added plateau and degree of influence ratings, it could give you an idea of what I regard highly and of what and who mean the most to me. Certainly, that counts for something as in introduction to who I am. Still, it won't tell you I have brown eyes and eat ice cream to combat the blues.
Another thing that I have thought about is the extreme arbitrariness of many things about my pantheon members. Being from America, there is a predominance of American artists. If I had been from Sweden, there would have undoubtedly been a lot more Swedes here. Also, there are many artists I know would make it onto my list, but I have either not heard of them (an accident of education or ignorance) or I have not enough information to go on, yet. For example, I feel certain that had I merely studied them more, Salman Rushdie and Marcel Proust would be somewhere in my pantheon. Maybe they will be later. This raises another aspect of the arbitrary: in our lives, we are exposed to certain individuals whose influence is greater on us because of the formative stages in our lives we encounter them. Also, with only so much time in the day, we can't learn about everything and everyone. These are, at any rate, some of the factors that shape my list, and guarantees that FOR YOU (that is, according to your pantheon), I will have mentioned a great number of people you do not know or care for, and have omitted a great number of people you hold in highest regard.
One of the reasons I have submitted this list, apart from the fact that I think it poses a number of interesting questions about personality, philosophy of education, and influence, is that there may be some people on it you do not know of, and are interested in researching. Talk about Web of Trust: this is my Web of Trust squared. I hope someone out there discovers a new favorite of their own from this list; if I have helped you in this way, then I will be very pleased indeed! Also, if anyone wishes to ask me about a person or people on this list, I would be happy to point you in the best directions I know of to further your inquiry.
Two last notes: I have confined the list to creators and thinkers, though I could have just as well included actors, political theorists, journalists, and others who have had an influence on me. But, besides making this list unwieldy, it would dilute the main themes of the arts and humanities that dominate here. Also, there are 250 different names below, but some people, like Beckett, Blake, and Borges, excelled at more than one field; they have therefore been listed in multiple categories. My 5/5 members are in bold.
First number tells Plateau in Pantheon
Second number, Degree of Influence
(Highest = 5)
For the Plateau rating:
5 = Universal Great, 4 = Giant in One’s Field, 3 = Art Star, 2 = Exceptional, 1 = Special
Authors (Primarily Poetry)
Yehuda Amichai.........3/2
Cecco Angiolieri.......2/2
Charles Baudelaire.....3/2
Elizabeth Bishop.......4/3
William Blake..........5/4
Jorge Luis Borges......5/4
Geoffrey Chaucer.......5/3
e.e. cummings..........3/1
Dante Alighieri........5/4
Emily Dickinson........4/2
John Donne.............4/2
Russell Edson..........2/2
T.S. Eliot.............4/2
Eamon Grennan..........3/2
Hitomaro...............4/2
Homer..................5/3
Ho Xuân Hu’o’ng........3/1
Li-Young Lee...........3/3
Giacomo Leopardi.......4/2
Ferdinand Garcia Lorca.4/2
Guillaume de Machaut...4/3
Stephan Mallarmé.......3/2
Ono no Komachi.........4/3
Ovid...................4/3
Francesco Petrarca.....4/3
Edgar Allan Poe........4/3
Rainer Maria Rilke.....4/3
Rumi...................4/2
Izumi Shikibu........4.5/4
Christopher Smart......2/2
Wallace Stevens........4/4
Paul Verlaine..........3/1
Virgil...............4.5/3
Walt Whitman...........4/3
W. Carlos Williams.....4/2
William Butler Yeats...5/4
Authors (Primarily Prose)
Donald Barthelme.......3/1
Georges Bataille.......3/1
Samuel Beckett.........5/5
Thomas Bernhard........3/1
Giovanni Boccaccio.....4/3
Jorge Luis Borges......5/4
Italo Calvino..........4/3
Albert Camus...........3/3
Lewis Carroll..........4/3
Miguel de Cervantes....4/1
Christine de Pizan.....3/1
Osamu Dazai............3/2
Denis Diderot..........4/3
Marguerite Duras.......3/1
Gustave Flaubert.......4/3
Joris Karl Huysmans....3/4
James Joyce............5/4
Franz Kafka............5/4
Milan Kundera........3.5/3
Murasaki Shikibu.......4/1
Vladimir Nabokov.......4/4
Flann O'Brien..........3/2
Edgar Allan Poe........4/3
François Rabelais......4/3
Marquis de Sade........3/2
Sei Shonagon...........4/4
Terry Southern.........2/3
Laurence Sterne........4/3
Jonathan Swift.........4/4
Oscar Wilde............4/4
Cartoonists/Illustrators
Roz Chast..............4/4
Edward Gorey...........4/3
Matt Groening..........3.5/3
Chuck Jones............4/3
Saul Steinberg.........4/2
Choreographers
Ariane Anthony.........4/4
Georges Balanchine.....5/3
"Butoh-Sha Tenkei".....3/2
Merce Cunningham.......4/2
Isadora Duncan.........4/2
Composers/Musicians
Louis Armstrong........4/3
J.S. Bach .............5/5
Syd Barret.............2/3
Bela Bartok............4/3
The Beatles............4/5
Ludwig van Beethoven...5/5
Alban Berg.............3/2
Heinrich von Biber.....3/3
Johannes Brahms........4/4
Antoine Busnoys........3/2
William Byrd...........4/2
John Cage..............3/2
M.A. Charpentier.......4/2
Fréderic Chopin........4/4
François Couperin......4/2
Claude Debussy.........4/3
John Dowland...........4/3
Anton Dvorak...........3/2
Gabriel Fauré..........3/2
Girolamo Frescobaldi...3/2
George Gershwin........4/4
Carlo Gesualdo.........4/2
Philip Glass...........3/3
Glenn Gould............5/5
Francisco Guerrero.....3/2
George F. Handel.......4/2
Jimi Hendrix...........4/2
Hildegard von Bingen...3/2
Paul Hindemith.........4/2
Charles Ives...........4/3
Leos Janacek...........3/1
Clément Janequin.......4/2
Scott Joplin...........4/4
Giovanni Kapsberger....2/2
John Lennon............4/5
Guillaume de Machaut...4/3
Olivier Messiaen.......4/5
W. A. Mozart.........4.5/1
Conlon Nancarrow.......4/4
Randy Newman...........4/3
Harry Partch...........3/2
Cole Porter............4/2
Francis Poulenc........3/1
Serge Prokofiev........4/5
Henry Purcell..........4/3
Jean Philippe Rameau...4/3
Maurice Ravel..........3/3
Erik Satie.............4/5
Domenico Scarlatti.....4/3
Arnold Schoenberg......4/4
Franz Schubert.........4/2
Robert Schumann........4/3
Ravi Shankar...........4/3
“Simon/Garfunkel"......4/4
Bessie Smith...........4/2
Dmitri Shostakovich....4/4
Igor Stravinsky........4/5
Jan Sweelinck..........4/3
Art Tatum .............4/1
Christopher Tye........3/2
Antonio Vivaldi........4/2
Fats Waller............3/2
Kurt Weill.............3/2
Fess Williams..........3/1
Essayists/Philosophers
St. Augustine..........4/2
Roland Barthes.........3/2
Boethius...............4/2
Jorge Luis Borges......5/4
Epicurus...............3/4
Sigmund Freud..........4/3
Martin Heidegger.......4/3
Heraclitus.............4/2
David Hume.............4/2
Martin Luther King, Jr.4/4
Lucretius..............4/2
Michel de Montaigne....4/2
Thomas More............4/3
Desmond Morris.........3/5
Friedrich Nietzsche....4/5
Blaise Pascal..........4/2
Francesco Petrarca.....4/3
Plato..................5/3
Jean-Paul Sartre.......3/4
Socrates...............5/3
Lao Tsu................4/2
Oscar Wilde............4/4
Ludwig Wittgenstein....4/1
Film Directors
Woody Allen............4/4
Pedro Almodóvar........3/2
Ingmar Bergman.........5/3
John Boorman...........1/2
Mel Brooks.............3/3
Luis Buñuel............4/4
Charlie Chaplin........4/3
Coen Brothers..........3/2
Maya Deren.............4/2
Atom Egoyan............2/1
Federico Fellini.......4/3
Milos Forman.........3/1.5
Terry Gilliam..........3/2
Jean-Luc Godard........4/2
Peter Greenaway........3/3
Hal Hartley............3/1
Alfred Hitchcock.......4/2
Hou Hsiao-Hsien........4/2
Derek Jarman...........3/2
Jim Jarmush............2/1
Buster Keaton..........4/4
Krystof Kiewslowski....4/2
Hirokazu Koreeda.......3/1
Grigor Kozinstev.......4/2
Stanley Kubrick........4/3
Akira Kurosawa.........4/2
Emir Kusturica.........3/3
David Lynch............4/3
Guy Maddin.............4/4
Hayao Miyazaki.........4/2
Nagisa Oshima..........4/4
Jacques Rivette........3/3
Martin Scorsese........4/3
Jan Svankmajer.........2/2
Lars von Trier.........3/2
François Truffaut......4/1
Liv Ullman.............2/2
Jean Vigo ..............3/3
Orson Welles...........4/2
Wim Wenders............3/2
Zhang Yimou............3/2
Humorists/Comedians
Graham Fellows.........2/3
Steve Martin...........3/3
Marx Brothers..........4/3
Monty Python...........4/5
Bill Murray............3/3
Mike Myers.............3/2
Jerry Seinfeld.........3/2
Inventors/Designers
Leonardo da Vinci......5/3
Charles and Ray Eames..4/1
Athanasius Kircher.....3/1
Frank Lloyd Wright.....4/1
Painters/Sculptors/Artists
Hans Bellmer...........2/1
Joseph Beuys...........3/1
William Blake..........5/4
Hieronymous Bosch......4/3
Sandro Botticelli......4/2
Peter Brueghel.........4/1
Alexander Calder.......3/2
Caravaggio.............4/2
Marc Chagall...........3/1
Leonardo da Vinci......5/3
Willem De Kooning......4/1
Marcel Duchamp.........3/1
Albrecht Dürer.........4/1
Max Ernst..............3/3
M.C. Escher............4/3
Arshile Gorky..........3/2
Edward Hopper..........3/2
Wasily Kandinsky.......3/2
Paul Klee..............4/3
Gustav Klimt...........3/3
Kathe Kollwitz.........3/2
Rene Magritte..........4/5
Henri Matisse..........4/2
Joan Miró..............4/2
Claude Monet...........4/2
Georgia O'Keefe........4/2
Yoko Ono...............3/2
Pablo Picasso..........5/5
Mark Rothko............4/2
Egon Schiele...........4/3
J.M.W. Turner..........4/2
Vincent Van Gogh.......4/2
Johannes Vermeer.......4/3
Yoshi’toshi............3/1
Playwrights
Samuel Beckett.........5/5
Ferdinand Garcia Lorca.4/2
David Mamet............3/3
Arthur Miller..........4/4
William Shakespeare....5/5
George Bernard Shaw....4/3
Tennessee Williams.....4/4
For the second half of my 500 'greats', please visit:
http://www.epinions.com/content_3066667140
Yes, some of these people are very famous ("canonical") while others are fairly obscure. I imagine that if anyone posted such a list, I would recognize about as many as you do in my list, while the others would have me scratching my head. One thing that interests me is, Who are your 5/5s? At any rate, the exercise is about honesty and self-searching-- not putting anyone on your list because you know that critics, or whomever, say they are "great."
I'm sure I left out a million people... I want to learn more, and perhaps you will convince me to track so-and-so down. I do hope so. Conversely, I hope you will be curious about my list, and go cavorting and gallivanting into new realms!
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Member: John Stone
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