Ancient Pros Vs Modern Pros

[Bantari]

I wouldn't want beer spilt over my kaya board nor my slate and clams

You take your kaya slate and clams to the club? Generous...

[daal]

There seriously went something wrong in the history of the arts when some avant-garde artists tried to blow up the art circus by quite consciously doing anti-art and upon realizing that even this anti-art has potential as a commodity kept doing the same thing without revolutionary pretence. The joke was always on the audience.

And yet, when an audience willingly gazes at an empty canvas, it isn't necessarily foolish, it just isn't interested in art.

Unlike the art market Go is intolerant to pretence, dishonesty, confidence tricks... you can't win during the review. I sincerely believe Go should be advertised like this. Brutal honesty in a dishonest world.

More to the topic: Study the masters old and new. Actually, I believe studying games with unfamiliar fuseki and old-fashioned joseki may be the best opening study. Without the superficial familiarity you are actually forced to attempt to figure out why they did, what they did. I study Takagawa Kaku, when I study at all, these days.

Now look at them yo-yo's that's the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain't workin' that's the way you do it
Money for nothin' and chicks for free

If what you're saying is that it's not possible to be a go-charlatan, but it is possible to be an art-charlatan then I'm sure you're right, but the argument does seem to overlook the fact that the skill sets for the two professions are vastly different. Whereas go professionals really don't need to do much besides sit and think, artists need constantly to find new ways to engage the paying and viewing public. Some of these may circumvent making good art, and yes, that is dishonest, but I would hardly call it the rule. Most professional artists (at least the ones I know) do indeed "study the masters old and new," and are interested not in pulling the wool over the eyes of their audience, but in making their contribution to art history and subsisting on it.

It is one of the nice things about go in contrast to art that skill is simple to prove, and that one can not reach the upper echelons without possessing it. This does not mean however that skill is somehow irrelevant to art.

Go players are fond of mentioning that there are more possible games of go than atoms in the universe, and yet all of these variations are essentially the same thing - a sequence of black and white stones struggling to dominate a 19 x 19 board. It has something of an imploding universe to it. This might bring about the honesty of go, because it exists in utter isolation, but other professions such as art do not have this luxury. Their universe, like ours is expanding in all directions, and while there is indeed something pleasant in the way go eliminates so many bothersome parameters, calling that "honest" does not acknowledges its unfair advantage.

[daal]

I would contend that Kobayashi and Yoda were not going back to the past for trivial reasons such as having easy access to collections. And certainly not for nostalgia. Rather they were going back to people who had already proven they were able to get to the top of the pile, and they were looking not at their josekis and fusekis but at the human qualities which led to their success. Only then did they look at specific moves that best illustrated those qualities. In short, they were not following any old recipe, but a recipe for success. Their own success was thus built on the shoulders of Sansa and Chitoku.

I think this is a wonderful point. For me personally, a weak amateur in both go and art, I like to look at the work of professionals, be they ancient or contemporary (are O Rissei and Cho Chikun not ancient by today's standards?), not so much to copy their moves (or brush strokes), but rather to see how they faced the challenges they encountered. Here is a game that I'd like to share that I like quite a bit. What I like about it, or rather what I take from it, is how both players tenaciously refuse to give up on their troubled stones. For me, this was an important lesson despite my inability to judge the correctness or quality of the moves.

[daal]

Unlike the art market Go is intolerant to pretence, dishonesty, confidence tricks... you can't win during the review. I sincerely believe Go should be advertised like this. Brutal honesty in a dishonest world.

I just read this:

"The second quarter of the 19th century was marked by a struggle among the four giants of the go world at that time for promotion to Meijin, Jowa, Senchi, Inoue Gennan Inseki and Hayashi Gembi (1778-1861), who were all 8-dan, vied secretly for the promotion, which carried with it the lucrative headship of the State Go Academy, Jowa's intrigues were the most successful and he was appointed Meijin in 1831, without playing a single game against the others."

-Shuzo Ohira 9-dan in Appreciating Famous Games

Not all is roses in the go world.

[oren]

are O Rissei and Cho Chikun not ancient by today's standards

Both are active tournament players, so I would say contemporary without a doubt.

[daal]

are O Rissei and Cho Chikun not ancient by today's standards

Both are active tournament players, so I would say contemporary without a doubt.

Yeah, I know - but they're both from my generation and I sure feel like an old go player