Can this art work even be defaced?
"Couple mistakes $400,000 art work for participatory art project"
Question: If you can't tell where the "art work" ends and the "vandalism" begins, then how much creative value does the work have?
Should the "artist" and not the "vandals" be charged with a crime?
Should we just call it garbage and be done with it?
In an entirely different case, a petroglyph in Texas was crudely defaced recently. The figuring on the rock was apparently simple, 'pecked' into the surface.
I couldn't find a before/after photograph of the particular rock, but I gather from the article it looked something like this:
Are petroglyphs more archeological in value, or is this "art"? It doesn't seem like there is much art in this particular petroglyph. It seems like graffiti or "practice" maybe. The 21st century assholes weren't very talented either, though in 3,000 years, it may be considered significant.
New York Times:SEOUL — The couple saw brushes and paint cans in front of a paint-splattered canvas at a gallery in a Seoul shopping mall. So they added a few brush strokes, assuming it was a participatory mural.
Not quite: The painting was a finished work by an American artist whose abstract aesthetic riffs on street art. The piece is worth more than $400,000, according to the organizers of the exhibition that featured the painting.
Now it’s hard to tell where the artist’s work ends and the vandalism begins. “Graffitied graffiti,” a local newspaper headline said last week.
Question: If you can't tell where the "art work" ends and the "vandalism" begins, then how much creative value does the work have?
Should the "artist" and not the "vandals" be charged with a crime?
Should we just call it garbage and be done with it?
In an entirely different case, a petroglyph in Texas was crudely defaced recently. The figuring on the rock was apparently simple, 'pecked' into the surface.
I couldn't find a before/after photograph of the particular rock, but I gather from the article it looked something like this:
Are petroglyphs more archeological in value, or is this "art"? It doesn't seem like there is much art in this particular petroglyph. It seems like graffiti or "practice" maybe. The 21st century assholes weren't very talented either, though in 3,000 years, it may be considered significant.
Comments (329)
Seems like it aught to be worth more after the additions. It gives it additional authenticity.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Well, it is art by the @praxis criteria - It is presented with the intention that it be judged on an aesthetic basis.
It also meets my criteria - It is clearly presented to elicit an experience from viewers.
Also - I like it. The colors are pleasing and it has an interesting verticality. It clearly represents the journey and return of a soul - that orange blob in the middle - to a spiritual realm and then back.
Quoting T Clark
Exactly right.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I mean, it quite literally looks like he ripped off a mural and put it on a painting, even though he does maintain some sort of personal creativity. I'd say to have proof of that sentiment in the public is pretty flattering.
I don't know...Generally, to deface art is to go against the will of the creator, to denounce it in some form, but it's pretty hard to guess the intentions of the dude who first carved into the petroglyph. Maybe he wouldn't care much. I'd say for this particular case it's fine, but it might be in everyone's best interest if we refrain from doing so again.
No,no -- you totally missed the point of the piece: the green splotches represent the sacredness of commercial activity in capitalist economies, threatened by the insidious creep of socialism--performed by the red blotches. I don't know how you could have missed that -- it is so obvious.
It also conforms to Duchamp's criteria: If the brush holder calls it art, then it IS art. That leads to this:
Or, your crooked snowman is art if you so designate it. (You are required to publish the announcement in the official Art Register, however.) Without proper documentation, millions of snow art pieces are lost forever. Just fucking tragic.
You fucking Marxists are all the same. "Oppression of the proletariat" blah blah blah. "Workers revolution" blah blah blah.
Yes, you're right. I'm glad we could finally enlighten you. Commie Philistine.
The artist might care and maybe an avid fan, I don't think others would care much.
Not that it's ugly to me, I like colours, I just have trouble seeing what's artistic about this...
Opinion: That indeed looks like modern art, actually.
There's no F* You's, no "Killroy was here", no universal signs for cunt, or the typical graffiti. In fact where there seems to be something written is in the lower left corner where artists typically would put their name.
Far more telling is the graffiti that US soldiers leaved into ancient Babylon Iraq, fitting to the invasion they carried out in the start of this Milennium.
Occupying armies are, well, occupying armies. Perhaps it's fitting that they leave their marks on ancient heritage sites.
See. You were wrong. It's a very successful thread. I've had the opportunity to insult you not once, but twice.
Actually, I find the image pleasant enough to look at. There are many a dismal hallway and dreary tunnel that would benefit from the application of this sort of content. Decoration, however, isn't art, in my opinion.
Decoration - wall paint, wall paper, plaster moldings, wood, miscellaneous objects, floor coverings ceiling treatment, lighting fixtures and light color, furniture fabrics and shapes, murals such as this, and so on contribute to the comfort or discomfort we experience within inhabited spaces. They require craft to create and their use involves careful aesthetic judgement, but the elements are not "art works" in themselves.
Painting a wall color #F0EAD6, otherwise known as eggshell (type of bird not defined) is not art in any way, shape, manner or form. Putting navy blue carpet on the floor is not art. Furnishing the room with goods from IKEA (or Ethan Allen) is not art. The room may be splendid: attractive, comfortable, relaxing, etc. but it isn't art.
Hotels, hospitals, and clinics buy cheap reproductions of recognized art work to hang on the wall. They also buy framed photographs of trees and flowers, hills and mountains, water etc; truckloads of occasional furniture of various styles, even manufactured assemblages of bits and pieces that have a Duchampian 'found art' appearance, but are not. The overall effect is kind of neutral, not bothersome, sort of pleasant. Just not art. Interior designers (not artists) have found that guests, clinic and hospital patients and visitors find the stuff on the walls usefully distracting.
Someone stuck in an exam room will look at the bland photo or painting on the wall because that is the least anxiety-producing thing in the room. "Guernica" would not be good. Bosch either.
Duly noted. At least you haven't slung any more dang ding walla walla I Ching at me.
I understand the point you're making and I agree all the way up until I don't. Your standard of art is tougher than mine. I think you're making it more highfalutin than it needs to be. I think it makes sense to say that art is anything that someone presents for aesthetic judgement. Then we get to decide if it's good art or not. For me, that judgement is based on what I experience when I look at it. As you noted, the experience I get from the mural in question is a pleasant appreciation for the color and composition and not much else. Yes, it could qualify as decoration. Can decoration be art? I think it can. I think decoration can even be good art.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Perhaps not, but it might be if you painted it Cosmic Latte as @jorndoe explained last week:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/636858
Quoting Bitter Crank
Actually, I find this kind of decoration soul-deadening. Not neutral at all, especially in hospitals and nice hotels where they are supposed to care about us. This type of decoration provides little messages over and over every minute - You are not worth putting any effort into providing a comfortable, attractive place for you to stay. You mean nothing to us.
Raising the bar for what constitutes art, and what constitutes decoration (and they are both valuable) doesn't infringe on anybody's creative activity or enjoyment there of. The bar should be raised and artists should try harder to meet it. If they don't meet a higher bar, it isn't like they are going to be hanged till dead. Except Thomas Kinkaid: His gooey, treacly, cloying sentimental village scenes are a criminal aggravation of the diabetes epidemic.
BTW, @Jorndoe, @Tom Storm, and @T Clark Cosmic Latte starts out as a tiresome shade of pale and goes downhill from there. Yet another way the universe sucks.
Hrrumph. It would make some people unhappy when the answer is "No! Now go to your room and practice perspective drawing."
Agreed, but, since I put if forward for aesthetic judgement, it's art. The knowledge that it represents a representative color for the entire universe contributes to its significance and, thus, to my experience.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Agreed. He makes Norman Rockwell look like Salvador Dali.
I just looked him up. Fuck me dead with a lunchbox! I now have the aesthete's version of PTSD. This is a new category of extreme kitsch I was not aware of until now. How dare you!
These kinda "art" are precisely what art philosophers have been wondering about; the question "what is art?" remains unanswered. So long as that's the case, all bets are off - anything and everything could be art.
Oh you mean the former regime "occupying" the grounds of ancient Babylon? Well, the last regime there built a nice palace with great views of the ancient ruins just next to it for it's leader.
Just like in the neighboring country where the previous (not current) regime had a lavish 2500 year -jubilee held at the ruins of Persepolis for world leaders and monarchs. Those who view the ancient relics as part of their own culture don't vandalize them or piss on them. They just try desperately to show that there is a direct continuum from the marvelous past to the present.
Even if they are brutal to their own fellow men.
Or how much monetary value does it have? I'd say not $400,000. I of course recognize that the fine arts world exists almost as a cartel at this point, but it is funny that a work valued at almost half a million could be so easily defaced by it's very nature. I'm tickled. If you leave paint and paint brushes out in front of your "finished" work, who are you to say that no one is allowed to walk up to the work and keep on working? I would think you would need a large, lengthy paragraph affixed to the work stating in no uncertain terms that no one is to continue the painting. With maybe some legal jargon or whatnot. An "artist's statement"of sorts...which no one would bother reading anyway.
The hard part; the part that causes real dispute is the answer to the question, is it any good? Someone on the forum once said that aesthetics is meaningless if you are not an idealist. The Transcendentals, the truths by which one might assess art really depend on a metaphysics such as Plato's forms.
I guess it is also possible to develop a shared agreement of objective criteria within a likeminded community (like the Pre-Raphaelites did) and establish some key criteria that determine greatness. The question there might be why?
Quoting Agent Smith
Is there bad music? If so, how is this established.
I asked you first.
Oh, there's bad music! And how! And how is it established? Well, a standard has to maintained, despite the constantly changing musical landscape. And the standard has to be maintained by gate keepers who are smart enough to understand how music is changing. Which is often not at all the case.
:clap:
How about an artist who realizes this simple fact - panta rhea - and creates an artwork that also changes with the times? It's always art because it adapts to people's perception of art. Timeless art...almost like God!
How about 'em eh? I'm one. How about me, eh? :razz:
The Noble never go out of fashion although flesh to bones, bones to Dust, Dust to Dust! :joke:
wtf?
No, you did not ask me that. You asked is bad music bad? A very different question. You made an assertion that there is bad music. How did you make that assessment and can you provide an example?
Quoting Noble Dust
What you have done here is make some somewhat random assertions. Give us an example of bad music and why.
And then once this is established for certain we can then go to Agent Smith's second question as to whether it counts as music.
A poetic rhapsody on your handle.
All I'm saying is that people seem to conflate bad music with no music.
You seemed to be saying more than this. My mistake. Well, yes as I have said, people conflate bad art with non-art. But bad art must be also be a thing if there can be good art. Hence my question - how do we determine good from bad?
It appears that, given what I said, there's no such thing as good art, there's just art!
I could have put Taylor Swift or the Rolling Stones up there too, What's the difference? That's the key issue at stake here? Or are you suggesting there are Platonic forms we access intuitively and as a consequence we just know what is bad and good?
The difference is that Taylor and The Rolling Stones are decent examples of pop music, whereas Godmack is not.
Ah yes, my favorite past time. Making claims with no justification.
Is it? Do you not see my point? So far what you seem to have done is provide an example from personal taste using an appeal to self-evidence.
:rofl: No offense Tom Storm
Quoting Noble Dust
I sampled the codsmacked video. The visuals supported some sort of story, apparently. The instrumental part didn't interest me much, but it seemed competently performed, such as it is. The vocal parts were more often screamed than sung --presumably screaming is not singing, There were passages where the vocal parts were actually sung, and for this genre, sung well enough.
This isn't my cup of tea at all but I'd allow that it qualifies as "musical art"; probably not good--and certainly not great--musical art. What keeps it fro being "good"? extended effort, maybe. Pieces like this seem slapped together and the many edits make it more difficult to judge the visual part. In addition to being screamed, the text was inarticulate. I googled the text and decided that I hadn't missed anything; it doesn't add up to much,
There are so many good, very good, and great pieces of music art, all genres. What are some commonalities?
Performers are sufficiently articulate that they an be understood, (except in 'high art' opera or oratorio pieces where a vowel may be carried for sever bars up and down the scales)
Musicians perform professionally (high quality)
The content is complex, complete, adult (it's not bubblegum, like the Ohio Express's repulsive 1969 horror Yummy Yummy Yummy I got love in my tummy)
Quality and effort shows whether it's Mozart's Requiem or the latest chart topper, and so do a lack of quality.
(Lack of quality wouldn't prevent a piece from being popular among some group. The Ballad of Ethel Pump is disgraceful, but some people like it. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the buying public.
:rofl: Now you know.
Since art hasn't yet been defined, to talk about good/bad art is to put the cart before the horse.
We may not agree on the definition, but art has been defined and we have a working definition of it in our heads. Defining art again is a pleasant enough pass time, but it is not a requisite for most purposes. It might seem like a necessity to define the term before we can begin sorting out good from bad, but sortition (sorting out) contributes to the definition.
A lot of the ink spilled on the definition of art is actually in support of what we like and do not like, and why. THAT is what we quite properly care about.
I disagree. And firstly you'll have a devil of a job explaining what 'quality' and 'effort' mean and how you can tell when they are embodied in a work. Effort? Mozart wrote most of his pieces with almost no effort - he was a genius (let's not count his unfinished requiem, he was sick). My dad put a huge amount of effort into his painting and he still sucked. So effort means zilch.
Quality? What do you say to the music academic who says that all pop music is junk, a debased musical form? How is quality revealed in painting? There are many people who think Norman Rockwell is a better artist than Picasso - how do we establish if they are right or wrong?
I am content thinking that shoveling the snow off the sidewalk is not art and that Swan Lake is art. Granted, there is a fringy region between art and not art. Example: in 1968 I found a 90mm brass shell casing in the surf at Marconi Beach on Cape Cod. The shell had exploded, ripping the casing into a ragged 'V'. (The shell would date back to WWII.) The surf had smoothed the edges and given it a matte finish.
This found object could be mounted on a nice hunk of wood and be called a sculpture. I'm pretty sure it would pass muster as art for a fairly large number of people. I really like it, but I don't think it is art, any more than an interesting mollusk shell is art, beautiful though it may be. It's in that border zone where objects seem "artful" and are not.
From the other direction there are things that seem more like not-art objects, though they are claimed as art. Take Gunther von Hagens, known for his displays of preserved human corpses stripped of skin and dissected. They are 'plasticized' for preservation. Hey, very interesting! Not0-art, though.
I would say that the music academic probably doesn't like pop music and is a musical snob besides. I can relate to his dislike. Once upon a youthful time, I was something of a musical snob and looked down on the popular music of the 1950s and early '60s. There was a lot of popular music I missed out on, because I was paying attention to archive folk music and classical stuff, or gamelan music, or whatever.
As I got older, I payed more attention to the pop music I had formerly shunned and found it had a lot more merit than I had previously credited it with.
The question is how do we decide this is the case or if he is correct about pop's artistic merits?
Quoting Bitter Crank
On what basis are you saying it is not art - personal opinion?
They are not right or wrong about what they like, and what they like is probably what they judge to be better, more artistic. That's altogether understandable. Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post illustrations are part of my childhood, certainly; Picasso was not. Picasso and Rockwell aren't equivalent artists -- different times, different places, different environments, different sources of income, etc.
Picasso's imagination seems to have been much wider than Rockwell's, and he worked in several different forms. His "Mask" sculpture in Chicago is an example:
On the other hand, Grant Wood is underrated as a result of over-exposure and caricature. If this image were seen only in a museum, instead of a thousand cartoons...
Yes, but throughout this thread we have been discussing more than personal taste - potential objective criteria (you suggested effort and quality) by which to assess a work. It's even been suggested that bad art isn't worth calling 'art'.
I agree with you about Grant Wood. It's unfortunate when a work becomes over exposed and exploited. It is almost impossible to see properly.
I think the act of mounting it on a block of wood is what would make it art. It would be an announcement that it should be seen as more than just an object. The frame draws you to step back and think about it from an aesthetic point of view, which is one of the definitions of "art" I find most satisfying.
Rockwell is as much an illustrator as a painter. Even his paintings are really illustrations. Illustration is a different art than fine art painting, but it is worthy of respect. Different standards apply. I still vividly remember when my father read Verne's "The Mysterious Island" to my family. N.C. Wyeth's great illustrations were a big part of the experience. They still move me today. Put me right back lying on the floor as my father read.
Let's say, "personal judgement". How else would anyone decide?
The starting point for von Hagens' corpus (so to speak) are dead bodies, for which he can claim no credit. The rest is taxidermy for which he can claim credit. As such it is, as I said, interesting. It isn't art for the same reason that a seashell isn't art, even if it is mounted in a nice display case. The clam did the work, not the finder. That doesn't mean seashells shouldn't be collected and displayed; it just means they aren't a "work of art" in themselves.
had von Hagens started with clay and made a sculpture in the form of a skinless body, it would not be in the not-art zone. It would be art, period, like Alberto Giacometti's sculptures: "He didn't sculpt heroes on horseback; he depicted everyday humans — and animals — struggling to get through the day. below, his 1951 bronze sculpture Dog (Le chien)
Rockwell's work is representative, while much of Picasso's isn't. It's hard to compare. I like some non-representative work. I might even get it sometimes, but it always seems like a joke. Maybe a pun. A play on images instead of a play on words. When you see how good a representative painter Picasso can be, it puts a whole different light on his work. It's not that he can't paint purty, he chooses not to. I believe there's something there, but I often can't see it.
Then who cares what you or I think? And we can stop making judgements about what is art, except to ourselves.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I agree with @T Clark - an invitation to regard an object aesthetically makes it art. Duchamp made that point a century ago and modern artists are still doing it. It may be boring as fuck for the most part but it is still art in my view.
Quoting T Clark
Before my present career I worked briefly (in a lowly position) in antiquities and fine art - we liaised with places like Sotheby's and Christie's. One of the painting experts used to talk about people like Rockwell as 'a very fine draftsman' and then pause. The pause mean.. 'but sentimental pap'.
Quoting T Clark
Nail on the head. The choosing demonstrates a fidelity to the form, since we know Picasso has range.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I think it's important to keep the question of whether something is art separate from whether or not it is good, although Robert Pirsig wrote that art is "high quality endeavor" in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." I don't buy that. That's why I like simple definitions. The simplest - Art is anything that is presented by someone for aesthetic judgement. It's similar to saying that it's art if I say it is, but not exactly. It's a rule that's easy to apply.
I think the question of what is good is harder, at least for me. There are a lot of things I really like that I know aren't high quality and there are a lot of things I don't especially like that I know are.
Yes, I keep saying this. :up:
I don't think I buy this, but that brings us back to what is good and what isn't. There is a tendency for sophisticated people to see sentiment as overly sentimental. That's one of the raps against country music that I don't buy. Most rock and roll is unwilling or afraid to talk about mothers, fathers, children, friendships, families, communities. If I remember correctly, you're not a country fan. I am. Then again, there's good and there's bad.
Just a reminder that you started this thread as a joke, a throwaway. It's turned into an interesting discussion. 65 posts and three pages. That's a respectable showing and we're not even done yet.
Getting back to Mozart. Genius though he was, he still had to do the work, which he had to do under much more difficult circumstances than Haydn worked under. Professional musicians have commented that Mozart's scores are not polished in the way Haydn's are. Of course not: Mozart was a free agent working in the rough, open market; Haydn was a residential employee of the Esterhazy family.
Mozart's Don Giovanni and Adams' Dr. Atomic both demonstrate what effort and quality look like. So do many rock albums. So do great short stories and novels, movies, New Yorker covers, etc. Levendis, the main character in Harlan Ellison's short story, "The Man Who rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore", is a demon--an unlimited being in a sadly limited world. He is timeless. Anyway, great story. Levendis makes the observation that [I]"it is not surprising that there is a lot of bad art. "What is surprising is that there is so much good art -- everywhere"[/I]
On the day I was born there were more very, very good books than I could read in 100 lifetimes. Since then, there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of good books published each year. Every generation gets whatever they can create plus everything anyone else created all back through history. Same is true for music, visual art, sculpture, movies, TV, everything really.
And now, more than ever, it's all available to us in our homes. We don't even have to stand up. I can sit here in my easy chair and see just about the entire product of human culture for thousands of years.
I wasn't saying the art expert was right, merely that there may be distinction between excellent draftsmanship and artistic merit. Quite often people think virtuosic displays of skill imply excellence, just as the converse may also be held as true. I don't buy that.
I generally don't listen to pop, country, folk, rock or rap. I find the music ugly and unpleasant. Personal taste. I'm sure there is good and bad everything subject to some criteria, including porn. The point is apart from subjective taste, what do we have?
Quoting Bitter Crank
And we are yet to arrive at any foundation for what 'good art' might be. Just calling it good only does part of the job.
I do not know why some people think it is an upgrade to put a beautiful seashell in a case and hail it as art. Or, for that matter, to give the display case treatment to a dehydrated dog turd. Maybe because it's just easy to do that.
The entire visible universe is available for one's aesthetic judgement (see Van Gogh, Starry Night). The world is a beautiful place (often enough). It doesn't have to be art to be worthy of contemplation. There are many other things beautiful, awesome, ugly, horrifying... interesting objects can be. Folded, uplifted rock isn't made more amazing by being called "art". "Uplifted folded rock" is really amazing enough.
Aesthetic judgement doesn't kick in just because we are in a museum displaying art. It also kicks in when we see an interesting, almost cadmium yellow fungus. Beautiful! What's its name? What is the coloring composed of? Interesting how the yellow fades to brown over a week's time. How many shelf fungi start out as bright yellow? Et cetera.
The quality of porn is easy to measure.
"Does my butt look big in these pants?"
And that's art?!
Well if you use words like 'upgrade' no wonder. You seem to have a hierarchical frame for this discussion. The point is there is an invitation to consider the object aesthetically in a more formal sense. An invitation - that's all. You can then say, 'well I think that shell on display (let's call it 'Not a Fountain') is third rate art.' Now we have the start of something.
Do tell.
So, what are you going to do about this deficiency?
Culture, tradition, elites.
Cry my eyes out!
I think that's highlighted by the fact that Picasso could draw a nice pitcher when he wanted to but he was trying for something else.
I have often wondered about how skillful technique counts toward making good art. When I think of folk art, I think of people who's technique is not sophisticated, but who have artistic vision. In country music the cliche is "three chords and the truth." At the same time, it seems to me that overcoming difficulties in technique, finding a way to express yourself within constraining artistic conventions, is at the heart of art.
Quoting Tom Storm
This is something I've thought a lot about without coming to a satisfying conclusion.
I didn't say it is an upgrade. I said it is what makes it art. Art is not an upgrade from nature.
Quoting Bitter Crank
According to my definition, the entire universe is not art because it has not specifically been offered by someone for aesthetic judgement. "Starry Night," on the other hand, has been. If you don't agree with or accept my definition of art, I'm sure you don't find this distinction useful.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Agreed. Again, according to my definition, aesthetic judgement doesn't make it art, it is the act of presenting something for aesthetic judgement that does. It's a human act. Art is a human act.
The quality of porn is not easy to measure. Not by a long shot. There's already so many moral hoops and hurdles you have to go through to get to the real nitty gritty, and even then it's difficult.
Edit to Clarify: This isn't the case for everyone, the vanilla-ists have a fairly easy time sifting through the material. Same goes with those whose tastes are relatively reserved.
I'm asking you. You're the one making claims about merit that seem to hint at some kind objectivity. :wink:
I agree. Many technically astonishing artists have no depth or emotion in their work. It's all technique. But this starts to get alarmingly speculative. What does it mean to have 'depth' or 'feeling' in your art? I certainly know that in the classical tradition there are pianists and violinists who can hit all the notes with wonderous ability and yet is seems 'empty'. Fuck... are we heading towards qualia again?
I think generally it plays on the sentiment of being wide, strong, encompassing in some sorts. A piece that makes people plunge, I'd say that's what we're trying to illustrate when we say deep.
Maybe not art per se, but it is artsy fartsy :joke:
Quoting Tom Storm
I'll throw this in with little hope that it will resolve anything. I'd like to try it out though. I have another definition of art that applies to my personal experience - Art is something created by people that has no meaning beyond the experience elicited in the viewer/listener/reader. The only thing of value we can really say about a work of art is a description of our experience of it.
Given that definition, what can we say about the quality of art? How is one experience better than another? Is it universality? The more people who are moved by something the better it is. Is it depth of feeling? That's probably how I judge if something is good for myself - how deeply I am moved emotionally and intellectually; how much has my awareness of myself, my senses, or the world increased?
I think that's somewhere in the vicinity of a partial answer. I don't really know where to go from here.
I think this can work. Possibly it's heading towards a phenomenological approach.
Art is about expressing worldviews (scientific experiments for example). About criticizing society.
The painting obviously is not made by children or by just randomly throwing on paint.
Quoting baker
and others. What constitutes good art, good music, good literature, good landscaping, good architecture, good sculpture, good... whatever is determined by the votes of everyone interested in the matter. If you stand and look at a Pollard for 75 seconds, you are voting yes, even if you don't get it. It was significant enough to keep you looking for longer than 5 seconds. Some votes count for more than others, of course. If the Guggenheim or MOMA or Alabama State Museum of Spittoons includes a piece, then it has been deemed important, excellent (or influential). Same for music. Orchestras record and perform music they consider excellent. Museums and orchestras are gate keepers; arbiters; mavens; taste makers. What are the standards they use? Read the notes under the picture and in the concert program.
By participating in cultural events we absorb the collective idea of "what is worthy" and why. It isn't necessary that you like everything that is considered 'worthy'; it is enough to recognize that it has been so rated, and to have some idea of why.
The cash nexus also enters in to the picture. How many people will buy a ticket? How much can I get when I unload this thing at Sotheby's? Christies? (Somebody mentioned 'cartel'...)
There are market results. How many records were purchased, streamed, swiped, played on air, etc.? Who's in the top 10? Top 100? top 100,000? I would imagine that Godsmacked best recording may make it all the way up to solid lead.
That hasn't been my experience.
Huh! Lucky you...
Well, "art" is subjective after all. Maybe I'm just a picky eater.
This is not right. You can read some of the other posts in the thread if you want the real explanation.
Hmmm... and there I was thinking we were discussing how we might arrive at criteria for good or bad. If it's just personal opinion then I have no real interest in discussions because I don't really care what others think. Or are you suggesting with your term 'collective process' that there is an intersubjective agreement about what art can be considered good? If so, then we might still need to work out how we arrive at good or bad if we are going to communicate about art.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Goodness we do keep going around in circles - even when it comes to porn. I'm not sure personal experience matters. The fact that you can measure it (that sounds wrong in this context :gasp: ) doesn't mean anyone else shares your view of good or bad. Orson Welles once quipped that it is possible for there to be a masterpiece of pornography but it will only be a masterpiece in that genre. A masterpiece of porn. Sounds like a good tile for a bad novel.
So you are laying down some rules for what constitutes art. How did you arrive at those rules?
I say Art for arts sake.
I think that's an unsatisfactory answer. I'm not sure how much better I can do, but I'm going to try.
Quoting Tom Storm
There is something more than personal opinion and public acclaim that makes good art. There's artistic vision, truth, technical mastery, surprise, emotional insight, playfulness, complexity, narrative, simplicity, clarity, idiosyncrasy, depth, history, humor, community.... and on and on. I don't know how to put all that together.
Really? Not at all?
Quoting Tom Storm
Some important 'decisions' are made socially, collectively. For instance, how does a worker in a plant know he is working "hard enough"? The workers collectively define what "working hard enough" is, and discourage fellow workers from not working hard enough, or working too hard. Workers define what "good performance" is. Collectively, they define quality performance, and sub par performance, too.
We observe each other; observe many cues; look for positive and negative responses; adjust our behavior to fit what others are doing. The effort to fit is made more or less automatically -- because we are social animals.
Within our social milieus we determine what a proper cocktail party is; we determine what kind of public religious activity (including speech) is acceptable, and not. We determine what attractive landscaping is; what a nice house looks like; what 'well dressed' means; what kind of car is acceptable, and not.
We determine what music is popular among us (our milieu) and what is not; what novelists are 'good;, which are not. [Ayn Rand has been judged bad by many of the TPF milieu.]. We learn what kind of art is acceptable and what kind is not. There are certain films that won't be discussed at a proper dinner party. Certain jokes can be told, others can not.
There is nothing mysterious about how this process works: we are social animals and we do look for clues among our people, our milieu, about what is considered good and not good.
We may be inclined to consider WHY what our crowd, our milieu likes what we do, and why it is defined as good or not good. We'll remember that in a college class we used a text on criticism; [that class is now 55 years in the past. Sorry, don't remember.] some of the authors had ideas about what constituted "high quality art". We might do google searches, look for criticism books on Amazon. We might find exactly what we were looking for: a cookbook for thinking about art.
In the cookbook we would find chapters on the history of art forms and the value they were given. We would learn how to look at the structure of a painting, a piece of music, or a novel. We would be directed to evaluate the content, the symbols, the sources, the interplay of characters, and so on. Through reading the book, and applying it to paintings we look at, music we listen to, novels we read, and so forth we would find ways of supporting our preferences. Preference (personal opinion) might stay the same, but we would be better grounded.
You say you don't care what others think, but I think you are interested in what they think. You're willing to listen and be influenced. Taught maybe.
I think it is generally of more social value to have a more inclusive conception of what qualifies as art rather than a less inclusive one. In this light, @T Clark's definition, something along the lines of "whatever is presented (solely?) for the purpose of being judged aesthetically is art" is a decent one. There just isn't much value added to the world in creating a society that says definitively "This is not art! It doesn't meet the criteria", but there are certainly cautionary tales from history about being overly authoritarian on such matters.
The next question is far more interesting to me, and partly because I don't have a fully satisfying answer, but do have some thoughts on the matter.
While it's easy to just say "It's all a matter of taste" and leave it at that, I think that's letting oneself off the hook a little too easily. I would propose that an element that is common to good art, and that is still consistent with the notion that there can be differing tastes, is that good art offers us a specific experience that is similar to surprise. Good art creates expectations, and subverts them, sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously. This is interesting both because both cultural pressures and individual psychology can strongly effect how one's expectations are created and manipulated by a piece of art. It makes the world of aesthetics recursive, in that what is considered good art creates expectations that can only be subverted by "breaking the rules" of what qualifies as good.
There's an interesting phenomena that, so far as I can see has been going on since time immemorial. Every generation, what is considered good breaks the conventions set by previous traditions. The "old folks" (not always by age, but often) are derisive of the new art and often descry it is as "not art", while the new generation might see the old works as tired cliches, lacking creativity and uninteresting. Eventually the Sex Pistols become Blink 182 which becomes elevator music. I think this gives us some direction when we look at art, rather than wandering the wilds directionless, but it still leaves a lot on the table, which is probably not a bad thing.
Quoting Bitter Crank
:up:
Quoting Bitter Crank
Sure, you're not wrong, but in the context of a philosophy forum and arguments about a subject, we can do better, no? Our job here is to transcend the gravitational pull of enculturation and group mores.
This makes sense to me, but I don't think it's enough. Maybe necessary but not sufficient.
Quoting Reformed Nihilist
I've thought about this from the other direction - New music often goes to outside sources to find new musical language, e.g. African music has become part of popular music in the US and Europe. As the world homogenizes, will we eventually run out of fresh sources and end up with all culture the same everywhere?
Ok. That might be the case. So how would we know when something was sufficient? Sufficient for what purpose, or to what end?
Quoting T Clark
The socio-cultural world was highly local for any individual for most of human history, and we never seemed to run out of new art then, so I expect not.
Personal opinion and public acclaim do not make any art at all, any more than a stadium full of cheering fans make plays on the field.
Quoting T Clark
The artist puts all that together. IF he or she is successful in putting it all together really well, there will be individual and public acclaim for 'a great work of art'. Probably -- it might take quite some time to appear, but it usually does, eventually.
People like good art. That good art is better than bad art, just like good food is better than bad food, is just my personal opinion. You can prefer bad art and bad food if you like.
BTW, I do not feel inadequate, or that I am shirking my responsibilities by not posting THE definition of art, or a list of the elements of great art (or bad art). A) IF I were to post those things, there would still be disagreement. B) The question of what makes good art good has not been finally answered by many others.
Culture is changeable, and so does the definition of cultural products. Opinions are personal because we each experience the world (and art) individually. What meets the criteria of greatness today may not be on the list tomorrow. Johan Sebastian Bach was the IT composer, then he wasn't. A century later, he was revived. .
Why should we do that? Is that really our job, or is that just one option among several others?
I think everybody here lays down rules for art. That's my impression at least. Is it an art to create an optically realistic image? By applying the rules of perspective, inventing projection methods, or whatever? The scene gets artificial indeed, but as abstract as never before at the same time. Art is not about imitating. Everybody can imitate. Nothing arty about that. Realist art is in fact the most abstract art there is. Abstract though is as real as it is. Is art about creating aesthetically pleasing stuff? Not for me.
I'll put some precision on it. I think it behoves us to start by examining our uncultured views and the mores of our time. As per Socrates - 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' It's hard to imagine any life when so examined not changing or transcending some of its limitations.
Correctamundo! Hindsight is 20/20 and youth is wasted on the young! There's nuthin' we can do about it I'm afraid.
Don't you smell a conspiracy? Why does nature "contrive" to perfect your motor skills (walking, eating, etc.) faster than your (critical) thinking skills? It's as if nature wants you to make (silly) mistakes and suffer (regret/remorse) later for it? Something not quite right about that!
Yes... well...that's what we're trying to figure out here.
Quoting Reformed Nihilist
Things have changed, so I'm not sure you're right about that. I hope you are. Just look at stores throughout the US. Every town, every mall, has the same stores, the same restaurants. When we went to Europe in the 80s, one of the parts I liked best was figuring out how many French francs in a Dutch guilder. Now it's the Euro. The EU is trying to homogenize the economies of it's members. Corporations are trying to standardize our expectations and desires to fit into their business plan.
The US, the world, is becoming more and more like an airport or hotel lobby. As I find myself saying a lot these days, it's not my problem. I'll be long gone. But still...
Perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying in your previous post.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Two thoughts on that. First the good, which is better than the bad is bad - As I said before, there is so much good stuff out there that you'll never read, watch, listen to, or eat it all. And people will keep writing, composing, choreographing, filming, performing, and cooking more good things every day.
Now the bad - a lot of stuff and much of the new stuff out there is either crap or a thin veneer over hollowness. McDonalds (which I eat at once a month or so), TGI Fridays, Pottery Barn, expensive hotels and restaurants with plastic decor and plastic food, Lee Childs books, any Simpson's episode less than 15 years old. I love seafood. I've always gone to Legal Seafoods, a medium sized chain in the northeast. They make a fish chowder that is one of the best things I've ever eaten. Wonderful. Now the family business has been bought by a corporation with plans for expansion and they've streamlined/ corporatized the menu. No more fish chowder.
I chant the old coots motto - Hell in a handbasket I tells ya!
Quoting Bitter Crank
[joke]And yet you clearly are.[/joke]
Quoting Bitter Crank
That's true of everything we write on this forum. That doesn't mean it's not worthwhile to try. I find it worthwhile - it's important to me. Why should we treat art any differently?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Again, that's true of everything we write on this forum. I'll quote again from one of my favorite poems, which I quoted from just a day ago. "Black Cottage" by Robert Frost:
[i]For, dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.[/i]
Again, a link for those who are interested:
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-black-cottage/
God, I love that poem.
If you don't have anything by which to decide sufficiency, then how do you know that what I offered is insufficient? How do you play a game when you don't know what it means to win?
In a previous post, I listed some of the factors I think go into deciding whether or not a particular work of art is high quality:
Quoting T Clark
Your formulation doesn't address those elements. As I also noted:
Quoting T Clark
That's what we're here for. At least that's why I'm here.
Ok, but why must these things be accounted for? Or why don't we just take your list and say "That's it, let's call it a day"?
It seems to me that it's pointless to try to answer a question if we don't have any way of knowing what a satisfactory answer looks like. Don't mistake me, I'm not criticizing your attempts at answers in favor of mine, I'm criticizing the process.
In my judgement, those are some of the things worth considering when evaluating the quality of a work of art. Those are things that, to my mind, will have a positive effect on my experience. They're not the only things. I could make the list longer.
Quoting Reformed Nihilist
It doesn't seem pointless to me.
Quoting Reformed Nihilist
It's a process that's worked for me before when I try to figure something out.
How do you know? Honest question.
I don't understand the question.
Either you misunderstood something I said earlier or I misunderstood something you said. Either way, this seems like a fruitless direction for the discussion.
Yes, I think we are now heading somewhere. However these terms can also be recast as pejoratives. 'Simplicity' can be 'simplistic', depending upon your point of view. Think Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea. 'Idiosyncrasy' can be 'self-indulgent' depending on your point of view. Think movies directed by David Lynch. 'Mastery' can be 'empty technique' think the novels of John Barth.
The questions remains, how do we tell if 'depth' or 'history' or 'complexity' have been achieved in a aesthetically satisfying manner?
For myself, I generally look for two attributes in any given work and many additional qualities can fan out from these. These are vitality and surprise. But the fact remains that what people find surprising or vital is still a matter of subjective experience.
Quoting Tom Storm
I just tossed that list characteristics out off the top of my head based on the kind of things I value and that get my attention. I've thought of several more since I wrote that post. As for "how do we tell?" - I know it when I see it. Yes, I know...That gets us nowhere. Your question is the one we're trying to answer. For me, it's the whole point of this discussion and the one on interpretation we participated in before.
I've set myself a task. I'm going to spend some time looking back over things I thought were good recently - a couple of books, something I ate, maybe "Casablanca", my favorite Christmas tree ornament, some silver plate forks and spoons I love. Good things have hooks that grab my attention and pull me in. I think you and @Reformed Nihilist are right - surprise has something to do with it. I'm going to see if I can reexperience what it feels like to be hooked. I'll see what I can come up with.
Didn't know who to pick on so I chose a quote form the thread's creator. But this proposal is freely given for anyone to rip to shreds ... if warranted:
As to what is and is not art, I propose an equation for it consisting of three variables in multiplicative relation to each other, each of which could take on the values of either 0 or 1.
A = the creator’s intent in expressing X
B = creator’s skill in expressing X so that (A) is understood by audience (where “audience” minimally includes the creator)
C = audience’s capacity to understand (A) via (B) (where “audience” minimally includes the creator)
If any variable is assigned the value of 0, the result necessarily is 0 artworks. If the product of these three variables is 1, the result necessarily is 1 artwork.
For quality of an artwork, use the same three variables and prefix “the quality of” to each, then assign some value between 0 and 10 to each variable.
If any variable is assigned the value of 0, the result again necessarily is 0 artwork; otherwise, the product of the three variables can range between 1 and 1,000, thereby quantifying the overall quality of the artwork – within what is a respectable spectrum.
Yes, quantifying of quality with any semblance of precision is, and has always been, problematic. But then I would think that this is what comparative degrees of quality in regard to artwork entail. And yes, it's still all subjective, but these tentatively proposed equations intend to define the parameters of the subjectivity involved.
Also, I figure this can apply from everything like “rhetoric being a form of art” to the Mona Lisa … or whatever one happens to most exalt in terms of artistic manifestation.
… for emphasis: criticisms are welcomed, if not blatantly expected
I won't rip it to shreds. What struck me, as an engineer, is that this is a very engineering approach to art. Engineers like to have a rational basis for what we decide. Rational in this usage means there is an objective evaluation, often a calculation, that can be performed that will come up with a reproducible answer. This kind an exercise makes us feel all warm and fuzzy. If someone asks us how we made our decision, we can point to a piece of paper and say "see."
One thing engineers need to know is when to apply engineering standards and when not too. For me, art is one of the activities where that type of standard is not the right one.
:grin: I tend to agree with you on this one. But, then, how else resolve the questions addressed within this thread? Namely, what "is and is not art" and "what is good art". At any rate, I have a suspicion that there's something wrong with my three variables, but I can't figure out what. Just saying.
Some people like to make art things so they make art things.
Some people like to look at art things, so they look at art things.
The art things have to be in the right place, usually where other art things are..
Some of the people like some of the art things, and some don't.
People have been buying and selling art things ever since there was some extra money laying around.
One of the earliest art things was a white sea shell with a hole and some ochre coloring added. Found object, modified. Sorry, Marcel Duchamp: somebody beat you to the idea by 40,000 years.
There may be a consensus among 5% of the population about what the best art thing is, on down to art garbage. 50% of the population will follow the lead of the 5%. 45% don't give a rat's ass one way or the other.
When it comes to buying art, one either has to like it, or one has to think it will be worth more money in the future. Both schemes (art I like is good / art that will appreciate is good) are in operation.
My partner bought a painting of Hereford cows standing in snow on the prairie; there are a couple of dead cottonwood trunks in the foreground. So there is blue sky, white snow, a few mostly brown cows, and grey tree trunks. He liked it a lot; the artist was a neighbor in Worthington MN. I like it because he liked it. It doesn't matter what it is worth, or who who thinks it is good. It isn't highly realistic, but it manages to communicate the feel of the cold open space of SW Minnesota in winter.
I'm not sure what we'd find if we did a poll of the participants in this thread, but I at least have come to an understanding of what it means for me to call something "art." I have two partially overlapping definitions that I like:
I'm pretty sure you won't find them especially satisfying, but they work for me. Some of the other participants in the thread also thought they might be useful.
That leaves the question of what standards to apply to determine whether or not art is good. I have some ideas that I tried to lay out in the last few of my posts. They still need a lot of work.
Even so, I liked the general idea to them. :up:
Quoting T Clark
If you were to find the work 'Equivalent V111' by Carl Andre (basically 120 house bricks arranged in a pattern) dumped on a building site it would just be a pile of bricks. If you found a Rodin sculpture dumped in the same location it would still be art despite being context free. Does this add anything to our understanding of definitions?
Does your number 2 cover off on this?
Interesting question. First off, of course you're right. If I saw the Thinker at a construction site I would know it was art while I probably wouldn't even notice Andre's Pile-o-Bricks. Does that have a bearing on whether or not P-o-B is art? I don't think so. To me, it's the artificiality and the intent that makes something art.
I was thinking that the difference between the P-o-B and the Thinker is just a matter of quality, but that doesn't work either. I went and looked at Equivalent VIII on the web and I really liked it. In an earlier thread, "Beautiful Things," the first things I posted were these:
I think Machu Picu is just about the most beautiful thing ever created by people. Three years later I tripped across these while Google Earth exploring in the Shetland Islands in Scotland:
They are 5,000 years old for God's sake. These wonderful structures were made by stone age tribes people before Jesus. Before Aristotle or Lao Tzu. Before anyone whose name we know. Tell me those men and women didn't have souls.
Stone work does something to me. It touches me deeply. I don't know why, but I can feel the surface of the stones in the picture. Smell the dust. Taste the grit between my teeth. Feel what it's like to pick them up. Strangely enough, I can feel those same things with P-o-B, so it's probably not the right work to use as an example with me.
Just because something is aesthetically pleasing does not entail that it is art. A nice enough sunset, for one example, is not deemed by anyone to be an artwork. (Leaving possible monotheistic perspectives - where God is the creator the the sunset, kind of thing - out of this).
Point being, even if you find P-o-B to be aesthetic, this of itself doesn't constitute it as an artwork (from your pov).
Or does it? In which case, anything aesthetic - like a gorgeous tree - is discerned as artwork by you ... But then, where would the intent part fit in? (And I won't be satisfied by God-did-it like answers, personally at least.)
I never said that it did.
Quoting javra
Agreed.
Quoting javra
I never said that and I don't believe it's true.
Quoting T Clark
OK, I didn't get this statement then. If you don't recognize P-o-B as an intended artifact, then how would you discern it to be art? How would anybody for that matter?
P-o-B looks like a pile of bricks. If I saw it in a museum, the intent of the artist that it be considered as art would probably have been clear to me. At the job site, it probably wouldn't be. As @Tom Storm noted, if it were a sculpture of the human form, I probably would recognize that it was intended as art, even at the job site.
Don’t know if this will humor you but it humors me. In college I worked as a security guard at a relatively small modern art museum. A visitor had left their grocery bags inside by the front entrance upon entering the museum (I forget if it was raining or not). Long story short, soon enough some other visitors started asking who the artist of this artwork was (the visitor’s grocery bags, that is). It was quite the rave for a little while.
Might as well have been some pile of bricks that was momentarily left behind by some visitor ...
I know it’s elitist of me - bad me - but when the emperor has no clothes there are no clothes on the emperor, irrespective of what others might affirm. Saying this in relation to the overall theme of the thread, or of the OP at least … rather than being a reply to what you wrote.
But sure, I agree with the quote.
My philosophy tutor back in 1988 had a simple answer - "Aesthetics is a non-subject, it doesn't matter - it's just personal taste. Next." :groan:
I don't have an exact answer to this, but one rubric in evaluating an aesthetic work is a relatively high level of familiarity with the specific art form, genre, and maybe sub-genre. I was sort of getting at that with the Godsmack song I posted awhile back (I was a little tipsy and didn't follow up). There are standards that can be organically drawn from the songwriting tradition of the past ~100 years or so, give or take, which someone with an understanding of them can use as a rubric when evaluating a work. For instance, as someone with a pretty good grasp of this, I can lay out some standards that would be pretty well accepted by my peers as to why that's not a well written song. Edit: so, of course, that's all well and good within the music world at large, but perhaps not satisfying here. But, I don't particularly care about that.
There’s the saying that beauty, aesthetics, is in the eye of the beholder. I find this to be true. But then what differentiates the aesthetic from the unaesthetic for the given individual? And, then, for all individuals that can differentiate between the two? - this irrespective of their unique preferences. A very difficult question, asked now for millennia. But my hunch is that in this question’s answer lies the resolution to what aesthetics is, to unraveling its capacity for power, and hence to it value for us. This rather than in focusing in on any particular object’s appraisal. This latter approach I imagine being akin to trying to define what intelligence is by focusing in on a given equation and asking other’s what they see in it. It doesn’t address the question.
As for my playful jab at the situation in modern art, truth is there is much bias in it, a bias primarily rooted in a personal indignation on behalf of artists I’ve known and known of. I can greatly admire artists whose works I personally find unaesthetic. Virginia Woolf quickly comes to mind. Or Kandinsky. Examples however don’t matter, for these too are in the eye of the beholder. What matters to my biased appraisal is the toil that these artists incurred in bringing forth something they themselves deeply believed in: aesthetic truths that spoke to their heart. This so that their efforts and accomplishments are nowadays considered on par in worth to realizations such as that of “Pile of Bricks” – which conveys what to you, personally, if I might ask? To me, at best, it conveys the sterility of an art piece devoid of anything sacred to the artist: the expression of the meaningless to be found in a meaningless world. If you do find beauty in it, explain it so that I might expand my horizons - even if I don’t share your tastes. But if not, and one professes it to be aesthetic, that to me it is a bit like affirming the naked emperor to be clothed.
Whose to say? If not I, not you, not even the artist has a voice in the matter - each of us as a unique beholder - then in my all too indignant bias I can well see how some can say that art and the esthetics its supposed to contain indeed does not matter. But this perspective is not my cup of tea.
I think it's equally true that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", and that there are aesthetic standards within disciplines. They're not mutually exclusive. Going back to the Godsmack song as an example, plenty of people enjoy the song, and there's no reason to attack that enjoyment with a philosophical, aesthetic metric of some sort. Let them enjoy it.
On the other hand, as I mentioned above in response to Tom, there are more or less communally accepted standards about songwriting that govern how works are received within the music community (artists, critics, etc). Culture plays a huge role in this too. I'm sure some percentage of the people that stormed the capital in the US last year listen to Godsmack. That doesn't automatically make them aesthetically bad, but the cultural situation of their music influences how it's received in the larger music world.
:grin: Can you please repeat the question!
Yes, defining the standards is difficult (and it's not an actual concrete process of "defining"; see the "organically drawn" standards I mentioned). There is always disagreement even amongst those qualified to participate in this organic process. But inevitably, standards get set; some bits of milk rise to the top, and some get skimmed off. I'm of the believe that, in general, this process works pretty organically and well enough, but of course, some scum rises to the top, and some cream get's discarded.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. In answer to your question - it conveys little and I don't care for it. But I am not all that keen on art as art, or stunt/statement based art in general. I like antiquities (Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Etruscan, Pre-Columbian) and I appreciate craft most of all. Personal taste. I dislike most contemporary art I have seen. Mainly because I find it dull. But it is art.
Quoting javra
Agree with much you say. I have similar reactions. I think there are works of genius by many artists but I still don't like them. John Barth's fiction is genius but I find it too technical and contrived and as such uninvolving.
What's wrong with subjectivity, personal opinions and taste? Isn't it what makes us individuals?
As is everything important in life would have an objective answer. :shade:
I think this has merit. And I think this is what a responsible, old school critic would do. Contextualise and assess work based on a tradition. But of course, we end up with canons and received wisdom that often rests on recursive value systems of infinite regress. If that makes sense.
When I briefly studied aesthetics at university, the school/approach was objectivism (Beardsley) and a critic's job was to determine what the artist was trying to convey (even if they were not sure what this was; the artist often being inarticulate, mistaken, silent, a drunk or dead). The goal was to assess to what extent the artist achieved their goals. Seems so old fashioned. In the post-modern world where the author's intention is moot, this approach is either long gone or awaiting a come back.
Nothing wrong with subjectivity - that is the common man's approach to most things. Some of my best friends are subjectivists...
But, if you are trying to assess art, catalogue and contextualize it, then we need more than just 'It's cool'.
I never said everything in life requires an objective answer - that would be a real leap. :wink:
When I say "songwriting tradition", I'm not referring to a tradition in the sense of something that's perceived as unchanging, or that "should not" change. Granted, this is specific to pop songwriting, but a basic verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus structure has existed since at least The Beatles (so not 100 years), and this structure has been endlessly used/abused/played upon/explored since then. Godsmack uses it. That's specifically what I'm referring to as a "tradition" here. Maybe that was misleading.
But yes, I think I get what you mean about "recursive value systems of infinite regress". I think that probably applies more heavily to fine arts and classical music...even jazz. So maybe I'm getting a little specific here with the pop music stuff, and maybe going a bit off topic.
Quoting Tom Storm
I think that notion is old fashioned in the sense that it neglects the reality that the audience represents a portion of the work itself. This is, probably, a "post-modern" concept, but essentially, it's helpful to simply realize that each individual audience member brings a lifetime's worth of experience, biases, fears, loves, phobias, etc., to their experience of a work of art, whether a Godsmack song or Guernica. So, whatever Godsmack or Picasso was trying to convey will be colored by the color of the glasses the audience member is viewing the work through (metaphorically). This is where "there's no accounting for taste" comes into play. Artists statements and the like also come into play here, in order to "color" the audience's experience. I made a whole thread about that a few years ago, but I'll leave that be. But, this "personal" nature to the experience of works of art exists separately from the idea that standards of criticism can be set. They still can.
When we write about great works of Western fiction (Dickens, Tolstoy, Eliot, Conrad) can we defend their greatness outside the context of a value system? Is Conrad no better than Dan Brown? I'm sure there are people who prefer Brown but we also know there are people who have limitations...
When we were cataloguing art for Sotheby's, we had to explain why a work was important. It is part of a tradition, a heritage and context and this can be understood to some extent and the work 'valued' accordingly. No one says this is ultimate truth but it may be part of an important system for human beings.
I think the bare minimum value of a tradition is it's ability to be questioned. Through questioning, it may be done away with, or it may grow stronger. I don't have strong leanings, philosophically, in either direction. It depends on the tradition.
Quoting Tom Storm
Can we defend their greatness outside the context of an educational system?
I personally would. And when they were written, they were loved by readers before they reached academe. It could be argued that the ended up being taught because in the first instance, they were the best of their kind. But I would never say something so old fashioned and hoary.
Isn't Dan Brown loved now? Assuming he hasn't reached academe yet. He very well may have. The "best of their kind" in the fiction world now are probably not best sellers, no. But I think this highlights another aspect of art and aesthetics which almost seems to be a taboo of sorts: art forms are born, they live, and they die. Poetry is dead. The novel is dying. Music is dying, actually. Shows (TV shows) are in their prime. This is just an aspect of the human experience and it's evolution. But not one that merits much acceptance in a world where we need the comfort of familiarity.
People have been saying this since the 1940's. I doubt it is true. In fact it's sometimes argued that there really ought to be an important literary prize for the person who doesn't write a novel.
Quoting Noble Dust
Could be. I have yet to discover any I can sit though even when they are well done.
Quoting Noble Dust
Maybe he got close a few years ago but was never loved by people who like fiction. :razz:
Quoting Noble Dust
As does everything else. But can't we still make a case for who is the greatest ancient Greek writer and why, even though their civilisation and tradition is extinct?
Yet there's the actual philosophical problem: we try in philosophy to give an objective answer... even when the matter is obviously subjective. As if we can somehow avoid the subjectivity, for example by observing people as a whole and their various subjective views as a collection of different opinions.
I love novels, so I hope you're right...but what you're referring to is a glut of novelists, which is what we have in the music industry; a glut of musical artists. This spells doom. When every other person is a novelist or a musical artist, we don't have any good novels or good songs. Or rather, the good is drowned out by the noise. And we start to lose the sense of the standards we had. So...yes, the novel is dying. And so is music. It's just the cycle of artistic forms, as much as I don't want to admit it, as a musician.
Quoting Tom Storm
But millions of people can and love to. Are seemingly addicted, even.
Quoting Tom Storm
Sure, why not? That doesn't take away from the fact that these artistic forms have lifespans, and that the artistic forms we love and hold dear in the here and now are often already going through their death throws, or will in a certain number of years. I'm not trying to be a defeatist, but I think there's levity in this realization. At least for me. Realizing that art forms are transitory is important, in my mind. I feel like it's something that isn't discussed much.
Not sure about that. We can and do establish communities of value which hold intersubjective agreements about matters assessed as important and key indicators can be established. We then have objective criteria we can understand and rate. But no one except religions and idealists are talking about transcendent truths.
Argumentum ad populum. It is not enough to be loved, one must be loved by the right people (and no, that is not one of Wilde's).
Quoting Noble Dust
Yes, but this doesn't change how good they are (or not). Or which ones survive the ravages of fashion and time.
I think this is a really good example. It's the reverse of the P-o-B at the construction site. The P-o-B is not seen as art because, in context, it is not clear that it is intended to be judged on an aesthetic basis. The bag of groceries is judged as art because, in context, it is mistakenly assumed it is intended to be judged on an aesthetic basis.
Quoting javra
Maybe so, or maybe you don't see something that others; just as perceptive, intelligent, and soulful as you; do because of your background or ignorance of the medium or style. I've always thought that Indian music sounds like screeching, but I believe that there is something of value there because people I respect experience it.
This work is clearly MUCH better than Pile of Bricks.
The lighted sign on the wall is apt: You have nothing.
argumentum unius.
Quoting Tom Storm
I fully agree.
Most understandable way to put it, Tom?
But again, when we have "objective criteria". And yet only religions and idealists assume transcendent truths.
Now I'm not trying to be here a sophist (hopefully), but I guess my point is just what lengths we go to force the matter into an objective viewpoint. Or perhaps to put in another way, just why did your philosophy tutor had that kind of dismissing attitude in the subject and say "Aesthetics is a non-subject, it doesn't matter - it's just personal taste. Next."?
What I think the problem isn't that Aesthetics is a non-subject, it's just that we don't have the similar methods to study it as let's say question in logic. And when we don't have an easy objective answer, then the whole thing is deemed unimportant.
It's like the economist who lost his key during the night looks for them only under the streetlight (as there he only can see clearly the ground).
I don't buy this. You say poetry is dead but that, if it's true, just means that there is a shortage of good new poetry. It doesn't mean that good poetry can't be written now or that old poetry doesn't still have the vision, passion, and power it had in the past. Maybe TV shows are in their prime, but that doesn't mean that "Fuller House" isn't crap.
Quoting Noble Dust
The comfort of familiarity and personal preference are fine, but that's different from quality.
I think it's piles of crushed bricks - PoCB.
Quoting Noble Dust
If the value and quality of art are a function of the viewers' experience of the art, which I think they are, then tradition, culture, heritage are important because they influence and create a frame for that experience, not because they set standards of quality.
It can be, but it's not in the zeitgeist any longer.
Quoting T Clark
To an extent it still does, but the problem with poetry specifically is it's obvious reliance on language as it's very medium. So as language changes and evolves, our ability to interface with older poetry changes. We have to rely on interpretation rather than immediate apprehension.
It definitely, absolutely, irrevocably, seriously, and objectively is a worse pain(t)ing than the projection of Warhol. The Nachtwacht is a dull 2d fixation of blown up egos and Rembrandt was the robot faithfully reproducing their outer appearance on a 2d plane. Vermeer used the camera obscura in producing his almost photo realistic images. Perspective drawing, the enlightenment technique used to render "reality" as faithfully as possible, was well applied by R. It's pretty easy to put on linen what you see from a fixed angle, but exactly this is given great value in assessing artistry. "It is exactly how it is in reality!" is so often heard. R. just made it a bit more dramatically, dark and locally enlightened. Big deal. He got too much credit for it. The people he froze alive belonged to an elite group of people only interested in propagating their own image in time, just like R himself. R sold his skills to the elite who used him as a camera only. R was rich and asked for. History made him famous because history needs famous figures. People need them. Put them in a museum or at Madame Tussauds. Big deal. Warhol just projected, and ironized this whole shebang of iconization. Thereby parking himself in the same lot but he at least told a story (and promised everyone 15 minutes of it).
Quoting T Clark
These are all contingent to art. Except the narrative. The narrative is the key ingredient. If the artists knows to tell a story, then he/she is an artist. Everyone has a vision. What's so special about the artistic one? Everybody can tell the truth. What is so special about truth in art? It's not art in itself. Technical mastery comes with practice. Surprise can be distracting. For emotional insight you can go to a shrink. Children exhibit playfulness. Complexity and simplicity, just take a walk or look at the smoke blown in the wind. Idiosyncrasy, being original? That's the kill for Japanes art. Depth? Depth in the literal sense is easily learnt and turns reality in a fixed abstraction which, is in reality a weird collection of shapes in 2d. Depth? Shallow stories can be just as interesting. Going deep distracts the view from the object you go deep in. History I can learn from books or listening to people. You can learn it from people too and by watching the Nightwatch you can learn the clothes worn by the elite or the stuff used by them, even that dogs looked the same back then. Humor and community I can find at all places but art these days seems the last place to find it. Though the balloon dog of Koons is a funny "little" pisser!
In a discussion recently, someone said that it is futile for modern English speakers to try to understand and experience the lessons and message of the Tao Te Ching. From personal experience, I know that's not true.
I didn't say that the elements in my list can't be found elsewhere too. I also didn't say that including one or more or all of those elements makes art good. What I said is those elements and others are the factors that influence our experience of art, which is the basis of quality.
Taking the discussion to ancient Chinese poetry (if it can be called that in the western sense) certainly takes things to a very specific place. I like the Tao Te Ching too, and I know you're an advocate. I won't make any comment about that specifically, but instead try to draw it back to the western Poetic tradition for ease of use. Do you agree or disagree when it comes to English poetry?
Indeed. Whoever told you that doesn't understand that all languages can be translated into one another. All languages are spoken by people and no language is an isolated entity without an overlap with other languages. Even mathematical language. Language separates, gives a means for identity but it doesn't isolate.
To clarify, what I was trying to say is that; if I can be deeply moved and informed by a 2,500 year old document written in a language I cannot write, speak, or even understand; my ability to judge the quality of a document or other artistic work that was written 10, 100, or 500 years ago in my native language shouldn't be surprising.
See my response to Noble Dust, above.
But you were deeply moved by someone's translation of that document from an ancient language bearing scant resemblances at best to English; not by the document itself.
The qualities you mention don't constitute a basis for the quality of art. They say if your qualities can be found in it. Or are they a base for good art?
I won't say that I am able to experience the Tao Te Ching as thoroughly as someone in China 2,500 years ago, but I am confident that Lao Tzu would recognize the connection between his experience of the phenomena described in the TTC and mine.
Says you.
Off course. But you say also. Why should a work with humor be bad (or good)?
That's fine. The difference here, that I feel should be made, is that you're interfacing with the Tao Te Ching in a religious sense. No need to get defensive or carried away. I'm a student of different religious texts, to various degrees, and for various reasons. But I think we're moving away from the OP topic. In this context, we were talking about whether poetry is still an art form that is part of the (western) zeitgeist. I was saying it isn't.
That's a significant point. I agree. :up:
Not true, although it's true that I don't interface with it as a work of art. I don't think that means that my experience of the TTC is not relevant to the issue we are discussing, i.e. judging the value and quality of a work from a different time, culture, and language.
Gotta go but I'll be back. :up:
Quoting T Clark
Quoting Raymond
Here are some examples of the kinds of things I have said in this thread about what art is and how to judge it's quality.
Quoting T Clark
Quoting T Clark
Quoting T Clark
I provide these as evidence that I've tried, and I think mostly succeeded, to be clear that my judgements are based on my personal experience of art. You, on the other hand, present your judgements as dogmatic truth
I don't think an interpretation of an artist's or subject's motivations tell us anything about whether the work is any good or not. :gasp: Some of my favourite artists were probably arseholes.
He liked to make flip and dismissive comments, so we didn't really take him seriously. But I know it's a view many people hold - perhaps the dominant view in our time - especially when it is so much easier to say this than to think deeply about the matter.
My point is that R doesn't know how to tell a story about reality. He just freezes a visible aspect of it, and implicitly tells us it was all about ego and money. The golden age ruled supreme. Warhol at least shows that reality explicitly. Maybe some more religious paintings of Rembrandt qualify as good art.
Notice the serifs in [math]ART[/math]; none in ART.
Calligraphy vs. Normal writing
Art is essentially supra-functional: compare vehicles of the 1900s (pure functionality) to those of 2000s (functionality + aesthetic). In that sense, to that degree, art has intrinsic value for it's, in a way, useless.
Art emerges when needs are fulfilled (Maslow's hierarchy of needs).
Is the Voyager 2 spacecraft art (beautiful)? Is Senator Padmé Amidala's (Star Wars) Naboo Royal Cruiser art (pretty to look at)?
Noise is not music.
A bunch of words is not a story.
Blabbering on a stage is not giving a talk.
Aesthetics is not art.
Quoting T Clark
I don't know whether to buy it, either; maybe I'll just rent it for. a while.
When did novels get sick enough to say they were dying? Maybe... by 1975? When I perused the shelves of The Hungry Mind in St. Paul, I starting finding new 'novels' bu authors who didn't seem to feel it was necessary to tell a coherent story with interesting characters. The sickness didn't spread to older novels, of course, but it did persuade me to look elsewhere in the store. There were science fiction titles that were better literature. Hell, Phil Andros' soft core gay books were better. (Phil Andros, aka Samuel Steward, was an English professor at Loyola in Chicago who was fired when the university discovered he was running a thriving tattoo business--way before tattoos went mainstream.) The Hungry Mind is long gone, by the way, avant garde novels and all.
The poetry section of bookstores aren't very big, usually. When I page through the collections on offer, I find very little of interest. I wasn't reading it in the 1960s, but the Beat poets are interesting to me now. There are some poets who claim "working class" status who write very down-to-earth poetry.
Too much poetry strikes me as just so much fancy word processing, but some of it is down to earth
Poetry has ran this gamut before. (gamma ut = Medieval Latin). John Skelton (1460–1529) wrote stuff that was "by turn lyric, passionate, vitriolic, learned, allusive, bewildering, scriptural, satiric, grotesque, and even obscene". In the Tunning of Eleanor Running, Skelton tells the story of an inn keeper whose barrel of ale was under a chicken roost, giving it a special flavor. Chaucer, of course. But then there is the epic Faerie Queene by Edmund Spencer (1590), and I can't tell you how glad I am I don't have to read it again.
Why did Spencer bother?
Chaucer, Skelton, Spencer, Ferlinghetti, Ogden Nash, and Allen Ginsberg (long list of others) wrote for interested audiences. If poetry is dying now, it's probably because the audience is dying--maybe literally, maybe not. Art needs a lively audience. Dead audience, dead art.
A great artist (any form?) can probably enliven a dead audience. maybe.
Joshua Bell, a very fine, famous violinist of our time tried playing in a Washington DC subway station. The response? Total indifference. The PBS (Pile of Boring Stuff) News Hour interviewed Bell about it (below).
If you go to orchestra concerts, choral performances, etc., you'll notice a lot of older people there, and not too many young. The writing on the wall is not hard to understand.
I’ll try to illustrate a point via near absurd extremes. Will a frog’s lack of aesthetic calling for a work of art we all hypothetically enjoy, call it art X, take away anything from the work’s value? Suppose the frog could talk and, in so doing, tells us that art X is worthless, nonsensical, instead pointing us to a fly resting on some branch saying, “now there is something worth giving your attention to, worth contemplating, something that truly attracts the deepest inner workings of your soul!”. We don’t deny the frog its own aesthetic truth, but are well enough aware that our own capacity for understanding is far greater than its and, in so knowing, we don’t earnestly compare apples and oranges in attempts to establish which of the two – art X or the fly on the branch – is most infused with aesthetic worth. Importantly, this for us rather than the frog. On the other extreme, lets momentarily fathom an artistic psyche that stands in the same relation to us that we stand to the frog: a deity of artistic manifestations, a Dionysus of sorts. This deity (with a small “d”) creates a work that is dear to it, whose truths its deems profound, sacred, appealing: call it art Z. We look at art Z and understand nothing of it; if not for our here knowing it was the creation of this deity, art Z to us would in fact be worthless, nonsensical. Would this in any way invalidate the reality of the aesthetic calling we ourselves find for art X (but not art Z)? If we were to be honest with ourselves, not in any way. Art X is what calls to us, pulling us nearer, magnetizing us - and not art Z.
This assumes a simple and straightforward cline regarding depth of understanding among beings. But things are never this simple. I may find song S aesthetic within this emotive context but not some other. My degree of depth of understanding doesn’t significantly change in me as an individual but, even so, my aesthetic attractions toward the same creation might change, change back, and change again.
This for me further illustrates that the objectivity of aesthetics – if it does in fact occur – cannot be found in anything palpable, such as within an object itself. It instead resides in that which makes aesthetics a common, if one wills, meta-experience within all of us: What the frog, us, and that deity of the arts all share in common in terms - not of tangible outcomes, but - of the calling toward of the soul in relation to something it deems as other. Simplifying aesthetics to this calling for ease of argument, the objectivity, impartiality, of aesthetic reality is to be found in the universality of this calling in and of itself. We might be drawn toward different things, but the calling in all of us remains the same when we are so drawn.
Aesthetics is not equivalent to art. But in terms of an art piece’s aesthetics: IMO, the ideal artwork needs to hold Goldilocks aesthetics, such that it speaks neither to the understanding of frogs nor to the understanding of deities, but to us. In my laconic appraisal of modern art, in its attempt to be ever more refined, to speak to deities of abstract understanding, it has become a joke, even to the vast majority of artists themselves. For it has in large part become nonsensical to most; and those few curators and such that are refined enough to catch glimpse of beauty here and there in what most take to be nonsensical have forgotten that the purpose, the power, of art is to communicate. Its not intended to be a secret language shared by an exclusive few, but to grab hold of as many as possible. Without this, our art becomes socially powerless.
As to the standards upheld by the gatekeepers of the artworld, you’re right: they’re intended to filter out, for example, that which is froggishly mediocre from that which is profoundly viable to society as is. I often blame the corporatization of these gatekeepers for their most often failing to do so nowadays (the music industry comes to mind as one example I find blatant), but this gets into a whole other branch of hot potatoes. Still, like the commonsense standards of decency, these often implicit standards of what makes art good can change with the interests of society. Toward the lowest common denominator, here lacking any profundity (e.g., Godsmak’s song “I stand alone”), or else toward a refinement so elevated that it turns around upon itself to become a joke to everyone (e.g., too many paintings consisting of white on white, if that much, called, “untitled”).
Anyway, a lot written. Simply wanting to exchange views as best I can. I think most of us sense that the standards for good art are nowadays more often than not missing in some way: thereby evidencing that there are such a thing as standards for good art to begin with. But I, personally, so far don’t know how to pinpoint them .. organically or otherwise.
Quoting Noble Dust
I agree with this as far as (imperfect) ideals go, but am dissatisfied with what is currently occurring in practice. I of course might well be a dinosaur, but I've talked to youngsters that share the same view.
Even if this is correct, I can't think of a better approach or theme for an artist.
For me a key question isn't merely whether the art is any good but what the consumers of that art are getting out it. Maybe mediocre art provides transcendence for mediocre people? :razz:
Yes; "exactly" I want to say. I’ll offer that in many ways good art parallels good food. We each have our own tastes – in part due to different needs for different nutrients, upbringing, so forth – but if someone where to tell me that some food tastes good when I in fact don’t find it so, I won’t enjoy eating it irrespective of how objectively good they tell me it is. To me, it’s not about an objective value that is somehow innate to the object – for I don’t think that any non-sentient object has an intrinsic impartial value in itself - but about what is innate within all of us as beings – what impartially exists in this sense – and which finds its diverse uniqueness by placing in relation the complexities of our psyches with items we become aware of. So good art, like good food, is always good in actuality only in relation to some living being(s). "Good" is good only in relation to whom it is good for. Yet degrees of commonality occur between us despite our diversities – and we tend to enjoy it when they do. As one example when it comes to food, all humans can agree that human excrements are not good tasting (well almost: in my comparative cultural studies I once did see a video showing certain humans eating human feces on fine dining plates as a delicacy. Not to be taken too seriously, but they do say that exceptions make the rule).
Quoting Tom Storm
:grin: :up: Without taking transcendence here literally, I for one certainly do uphold this. There’s no doubting that some humans have the capacity to grasp deeper meaning than others, with the profundity of aesthetic experience being intimately associated. Nor, for me, is there any doubting that none of us are endowed with the pinnacle of deep understanding relative to all beings that every were, are, and will ever be. I know myself to be of mediocre tastes by comparison to others – and in fact would hate the idea of it being otherwise, for then there would be nothing left to learn. There’s the willful, openminded enquiry into other’s taste to better comprehend what others aesthetically see, with this sometimes rubbing off on oneself in terms of aesthetic appreciations. And if not there’s still greater comprehension. But, also biasedly speaking, for me equally important is the courage to maintain one’s own authentic aesthetic as in fact being true, or real, relative to oneself, this in spite of what others might comment – for we humans often times take mirth in deriding each other’s affinities rather than accepting the diversity of experienced beauty that can be found in different persons.
Now, though I’ve taken my jab at modern art – as you previously called me out on – I don’t find myself to be hypocritical in so saying this now. Like a food that doesn’t taste good to me, I’ll be honest in my own aesthetic truths in regard to art pieces (without intending to demean others for their contrasting affinities; a live and let live mentality, at least as an ideal) … Otherwise nonauthenticity results (saying one sees something to be in a way one does not see it to be) - thereby leading to the emperor’s new clothes statements I previously gave in relation to much, but not all, of modern art.
And why is that, actually?
That it's something "old" that we can disregard, that is politically incorrect? Pop music or some other "not-western" music is profoundly better?
Well, if people are so critical of their own Western culture, what do you think will happen?
Let's get one thing straight: Classical music (and classical Western art) aren't goddam capitalist, it isn't something for only the rich for starters, so don't be against it! Why wouldn't we like the music of our own heritage?
I hear you. I generally hold the view that humans need to get to know things before they can appreciate them. Chilli for instance. Ditto art. Only by exposing yourself to new things and sticking with them and, perhaps reading about them, can one come to appreciate their subtleties or lack there of. This means sticking with things you are not drawn to and possibly dislike. Subjectivity is something we can overcome. I gradually 'discovered' a lot of music, novels and movies by doing this.
The challenge with an overly personal or subjective account of art is it tends to render Citizen Kane equivalent with an Adam Sandler movie (or insert piece of shit of your choice). I guess a criterion of value is usually established by a community of shared understanding. Which kind of leaves us to talk inside to our bubbles.
I'd really like to hear a few choice navigation points from a phenomenological approach to artistic value.
The primary reason is that a large percentage of younger people (under 50) have not had much exposure to music for orchestras and/or string/wind/brass ensembles, or choral music. They have not been exposed in school, or from public media. Many adults do not have experience with classical music to share with their children.
As a result, when they are out on their own, the cultural milieu of orchestra concerts doesn't appeal to them. The cost of orchestra concerts tends to be fairly high, and while there are less expensive but quality concerts by small ensembles and semiprofessional groups available, one has to actively seek them out.
There are efforts, here and there, to connect school students with classical music, by bringing it into the schools on an occasional basis. Some public radio groups are programming music with some sort of tie in for younger children and older teenagers. These efforts are all good, but there needs to be much more, IF we are going to interest American youth in formal music.
In the 1950s CBS Radio carried the New York Philharmonic concerts on Sunday afternoon on its A.M. network. Either NBC or CBS carried the Metropolitan Opera broadcast on Saturday afternoon. There was some "upmarket" religious music broadcast too, featuring trained choirs and professional musicians--not a lot, but some.
PBS carries a small amount of classical concert music; there is a loose network of classical music stations across the country -- lots of areas are out of their reach -- and the number of classical music stations is declining.
The majority of my age cohort and younger of parents have done a poor job of transmitting national / western cultural traditions to their children / grandchildren. I'm not exactly sure what is wrong with them. Maybe it has to do with everything that happened in the 1960s and 1970s, and then the slow decline of the working class. A lot of thinking back then was just sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Quoting ssu
Obviously pop music is not "better than" the store of Western Orchestral music. Pop music and classical music serve different needs. I spend much more time listening to classical music than any other kind, but I would feel a great loss if all popular music disappeared. (Well, rap could disappear without any suffering on my part).
Quoting ssu
I hear people nattering about the defects of western culture, using their recently acquired moral superiority to weigh the sins of the west, while (usually) overlooking the sins of the rest of the world.
I don't know what will happen to the nattering nabobs of negativity, or what influence they will have on future events.
Quoting ssu
My sentiments exactly.
History of the word ‘art’
[i]In order to clear up the ambiguities attaching to the word ‘art’, we must look to its history. The aesthetic sense of the word, the sense which here concerns us, is very recent in origin. Ars in ancient Latin, like ????? [techn?] in Greek, means something quite different. It means a craft or specialized form of skill, like carpentry carpentry or smithying or surgery. The Greeks and Romans had no conception of what we call art as something different from craft; what we call art they regarded merely as a group of crafts, such as the craft of poetry (???????? ?????, ars poetica), which they conceived, sometimes no doubt with misgivings, as in principle just like carpentry and the rest, and differing from any one of these only in the sort of way in which any one of them differs from any other.
It is difficult for us to realize this fact, and still more so to realize its implications. If people have no word for a certain kind of thing, it is because they are not aware of it as a distinct kind. Admiring as we do the art of the ancient Greeks, we naturally suppose that they admired it in the same kind of spirit as ourselves. But we admire it as a kind of art, where the word ‘art’ carries with it all the subtle and elaborate implications of the modern European aesthetic consciousness. We can be perfectly certain that the Greeks did not admire it in any such way. They approached it from a different point of view. What this was, we can perhaps discover by reading what people like Plato wrote about it; but not without great pains, because the first thing every modern reader does, when he reads what Plato has to say about poetry, is to assume that Plato is describing an aesthetic experience similar to our own. The second thing he does is to lose his temper because Plato describes it so badly. With most readers there is no third stage.
Ars in medieval Latin, like ‘art’ in the early modern English which borrowed both word and sense, meant any special form of book-learning, such as grammar or logic, magic or astrology. That is still its meaning in the time of Shakespeare: ‘lie there, my art’, says Prospero, putting off his magic gown. But the Renaissance, first in Italy and then elsewhere, re-established the old meaning; and the Renaissance artists, like those of the ancient world, did actually think of themselves as craftsmen. It was not until the seventeenth century that the problems and conceptions conceptions of aesthetic began to be disentangled from those of technic or the philosophy of craft. In the late eighteenth century the disentanglement had gone so far as to establish a distinction between the fine arts and the useful arts; where ‘fine’ arts meant, not delicate or highly skilled arts, but ‘beautiful’ arts (les beaux arts, le belle arti, die schöne Kunst). In the nineteenth century this phrase, abbreviated by leaving out the epithet and generalized by substituting the singular for the distributive plural, became ‘art’.[/i]
Quoting T Clark
Quoting Tom Storm
I'd like to take a swing at this in a way I think may be a bit self-indulgent. In a thread still active here on the forum - "A different style of interpretation: Conceptual Reconstructionism" - we discussed the difference between interpreting and reviewing of a work of art. I sometimes write reviews in Amazon for books that I think are especially good. I try to focus on the types of issues I discussed above, although in an informal way. I'm going to post a couple of those reviews to see what people think of the approach. First, my review of "One Day All This Will Be Yours" by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Clever, clever, clever, clever
[i]This book is so good, I almost gave it five stars. Well, actually, I did give it five stars, but that's because people give five stars for crap and I didn't want to bring the average down. Five stars is for great, wonderful books. This is just a really good book. Well written. Funny. Did I mention clever? In a fair world I'd give it four stars.
I always said that David Gerrold's "The Man Who Folded Himself" was my favorite time travel book, but now this is a contender. I always wondered - if there really could be time travel, how would you keep timelines from getting all tangled up to the point that you couldn't keep them straight anymore. How could you keep time from becoming complete chaos? Answer - You wouldn't. You couldn't.
Tchaikovsky describes how everything falls apart when nations develop time machines and play the game of mutually assured destruction, not of the world, but of all time. Everyone agrees that no one will ever use time weapons, but then no one could resist taking a chance to win all wars at once for now and forever. Events, if they can even be called events anymore, proceed in a way that is plausible, if anything can even be called plausible anymore. I said to myself - Yeah, that's how it would happen.
And the protagonist, not hero, sits at the end of time trying to hold the last strands together by murdering anyone who tries to get past him into the future. Clever, clever, clever. Good book. Clever title too.[/i]
What I didn't make explicit in this review are the factors I considered in evaluating this as "a really good book." Rereading the review now, I think those factors included technical mastery; narrative; humor; surprise; and especially intellectual stimulation. The last was not on my original list, so I'll add it now. Actually, saying these are the factors I considered is misleading. I didn't self-consciously and explicitly identify the factors in the review or in my mind while writing.
Wonderful, bleak, lovely, tedious, beautiful, unrelenting
[i]Six stars. Eleven stars. 432 stars. Tedious and bleak and beautiful. Funny and moving. Wonderfully written and very, very, very slow. Then suddenly, disorientingly sensual. Gormenghast the castle – miles long; dank, moldy, full of hundreds or thousands of unused rooms packed with useless and peculiar things. A tower where the death owls live. A giant dead tree with painted roots growing out the side of the castle. Lives ruled by inflexible, all-encompassing, oppressive, and unrelenting tradition. Gormenghast the land – always raining, too hot or too cold. Gormenghast the mountain – the peak always hidden by clouds.
The people - Lord Sepulchrave, 76th Earl of Groan, Countess Gertrude, the wonderful, pitiful twins Ladies Cora and Clarice Groan, Mr. Flay, Dr. and Irma Prunesquallor, Swelter, Nannie Slagg, Sourdust, Barquentine, Keda, Rottcodd, Pentecost, The Poet. The Grey Scrubbers. The Mud Dwellers who live outside the castle and spend all their time making beautiful carvings, most of which will be burned. The best of which will be placed in a museum that no one visits. And stuborn, 15-year-old, clumsy, and maybe doomed Lady Fuchia, whom I love with all my heart. And nasty, scheming, capable, admirable, and maybe evil Steerpike. And 1 1/2 year old Titus – 77th Earl of Groan. Everyone; almost everyone; odd, eccentric, and unhappy.
The plot doesn’t matter – for what it's worth, there is Titus' birth, scheming, betrayal, murder, suicide, a deadly knife fight, bodies eaten by owls, endless ceremonies, drunken revelry, and a toddler standing alone on a raft in the middle of a lake in the rain. The writing, the place, and the people do matter. The words grabbed me by the neck and forced me through the slowest, hardest sections. It felt like the hood of my jacket had gotten caught in a subway door and I was being dragged down the platform. I love this book.[/i]
I don't want to take this thread off-topic, but I just want to say that this is a beautiful review of one of my favourite books, though I totally disagree with the oft-heard view that the plot doesn't matter.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Do the reviews provide any support for my position that the standard by which the quality of art should be judged is based on the experience of the audience members?
I think this is one line of thought that I can support if i understand it properly. For me the experience of audience members still needs to be parsed. What kind of audience? If you show a Fellini film to people who think Dirty Dancing is a masterpiece they will in all probability be like lost children.
I keep thinking that the audiences and critics I pay attention to are people who are well read and cultured and have something to bring to their subjectivity - if that makes sense. Christ, I sound like Frasier Crane...
At the town square, something similar happened lately. There was a public painting happening. Part of a town fair. It was meant for children only. So it appeared after I joined. I was friendly but urgently asked to put my brush down. I thought this to be ridiculous. The children and me were having fun. Even the police was called, to escort me safely home, for who knows what bad influence I could have.
Quoting Tom Storm
I am not sure what you mean.
The approach and theme being money and ego? Money is nice and in the modern world about the only way to free yourself from the system. So selling what you create is nice. You could make money the story. Nail a couple of 100 notes, jam a few dimes, a few burnt bucks, cut Washington (or is it Lincoln) free from his bill, and make a nice collage of them. "Ceçi, n'est pas de l'argent". I'm not sure people wanna stare at a self portrait of the ego, especially mine (though women might like it, as some men do).
What approach or theme do you have in mind?
Quoting Tom Storm
I can't really tell if R was an AH or not. He just floated along in the age of gold. He loved money and fame and would probably get off in his tomb when seeing the masses walking past the Nightwatch in awe, at a safe distance, to prevent them stabbing knives or throwing acid, as has happened before. Rembrandt could paint realistically and add dramatic light. There is a painting where he depicts a breathtaking scene along the Amstel river. Seems it were these scenes he put his heart into. He enjoyed walking along the river and it's in t
hese paintings he knows how to convey a story. At least, the story I like. He knows to tell the story of the nightwatchers too, that's clear. But the story is frozen in time. So are his views on nature and other paintings he made for himself (not ordered for). Here he depicts his feeling of wonder. Dark skies with bright sun. But is your ability to reproduce the visual and emotional art? Don't think so. That's only art in the sense of being able too. The ordered paintings also told a story. A frozen story with a personal touch.
I once saw the Nightwatch photographed with real people and another photograph showing "the other side", i.e, that what the nightwatch tries to keep out. That's a telling tale. How would R be valued if the camera was already there? He no doubt had a great technique. Does this qualify you as an artist? Don't know. Everybody can acquire technique. The myth of the gifted artists ìs alive still though. It's necessary maybe, though it's probably more difficult to paint like a child when are no child anymore, which is what is done or attempted manifold, and which can be very funny, tragic, or confronting when the scene is about grown up affairs.
Anyhow, the story told by R is a static one. One can learn of it. How people dressed, especially the elite. But nothing essential. Tell your own stories about it. R had the technique necessary but so had van Gogh (for his story). VG died poor but it feels he had a true madness towards the story of life. Both the stories of RHvR and vG are well. So both are artists and their work art. What if a drawing of the scene that R painted was discovered and it appeared to be drawn by a bastard son of his, hiding under a table? Would it become valued? Probably yes. Why is an aquarel by Hitler (and again he pops up) sold for 130 000 dollar but considered bad art? Would WW2 not have broken out had he been admitted to Good art has to be part of society (not isolated in musea), either by criticizing it, by expressing the ideas a society is based on, or just by throwing new stories in. Like the art of science and technology is nowadays an overrated part of it. Science can be considered an art just as well. Technology is the paint, and it's the most dominant form of art present, expressing the story of science.
@Tom Storm
I don't know if you looked at the post I put in on Collingwood's discussion of art vs. craft. If you did, I'd be interested in hearing your response. It opened my eyes a bit and forced me to back up and put our discussion in perspective, which I think was Collingwood's intent. I've often regurgitated my thoughts on the definitions of art I find useful. Maybe I need to add a new one - "Art," in the sense of fine art, is not a useful concept. I'll call this my "We don't need no stinking art" definition.
That way of seeing things actually helps deal with some issues that have bothered me. When I go to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, they have a section called "Decorative Arts," which Collinwood calls the "useful arts." That section generally includes useful items like furniture, china and porcelain, silverware, glassware, etc. I guess you could add architecture to that list. These are items that challenge my characterization of art as something that doesn't mean anything. It also makes me ask if usefulness is a kind of meaning. On first look, I think it may be.
Quoting T Clark
Ah. It's about my presentation. Why shouldn't I present them as dogmatic truth. I don't force anyone to follow my dogma. If people lay value in other dogmas it's up to them. You present your dogma as personal experience.
Those sculptures were clearly meant to represent the man's understanding and experience of his relationship to the Christian God. The pieces by themselves were interesting and moving, but when considered together they were much more. They presented a coherent vision, created over years and decades, of this man's inner religious life. The work was rough and unsophisticated, but I found it beautiful and inspiring.
Clearly, the man created this work only for himself as an expression of his feelings for his God. I don't think he ever intended for it to be seen by others and I doubt he had any thoughts of aesthetics.
It's not clear to me you understand what the word "dogma" means. The prevalence of inflexible, dogmatic assertions about disputed ideas is one of the reasons people find philosophy hard to take seriously.
It is not clear that I understand it properly. That's what I'm working on here.
I'll try to check it out.
Quoting T Clark
I have generally drawn a distinction between craft and art. Craft being useful items of daily living that often have a working class or tribal origin. And art as being non-useful objects, generally created for an aesthetic experience, not use. There may be some overlap between the two categories. I think a lot of the latter category - art - has some use in as much as it might be about a culture's dream life and the important stories it tells itself about meaning.
One of the reasons Collingwood's explanation struck me is that I remember you making that distinction in previous posts.
What I mean is that (like anyone) artists start from a point of view. The one you mentioned sounds perfectly fine. An artist's personality or motivations or background have no impact on whether or not they make great things. Some great art is made by despicable people. And sometimes great art is made from despicable subjects.
When I hear the word dogma the first thing that springs to my mind is the mother of a dog, then the movie, and then religion. It gives a feeling of something that is unmovable and thus unshakable. You can shake me! I just state what I think art is. Not how it should be.
Ah yes. Making art and getting money for it is very nice actually. And creating it at the wishes of people is great too. You can give an artistic form to their vision. When I look at art it doesn't really matter to me what character the artists has or had. If their story is well told, who cares? You can question what well told is or if you like the story or not, but for me the story is what counts. You can even ask if there is a real story told. A cartoon strip tells a story too. Are there more and less artistic strips? Dunno. I think every attempt to tell a story is already art. Not all attempts succeed though. I like the story of Dick Lundy's Donald Fauntleroy better than the Nachtwacht cartoon. They are both succeeded attempts. So it boils down eventually to: has the attempt succeeded and do I like the story told?
I think my early view has generally been that art communicates an emotion or idea for the purposes of sharing and transforming others (in some way) even if only in the moment. It seems to me that art is often about dramatizing/stylizing a worldview to influence the thinking of others, stopping just short (in most cases) from propaganda. Then big question here is what was the artist's conscious intent and how we could ever know we are right?
I've tried to cogitate over these themes without being too influenced by some 'proper' thinkers.
Cool. Glad I didn’t come off as too much of a jerk in saying what I said.
Quoting Tom Storm
Got to understand and appreciate traditional African artwork that way. More recently also contemporary minimalism, which I wanted nothing to do with before understanding what others saw in it as a genre. So, yea.
Quoting Tom Storm
Going back a bit to what I was saying about commonly shared tastes in relation to food and the exception of some humans somewhere finding human shit to be a delicacy: if what is shit (in terms of art out there) to the vast majority of us is deemed a sublime delicacy by some select few, this doesn’t change the fact that it doesn’t serve the vast majority’s affective appetites any. (I know. I'll try to fully stop my chastising of much of modern art with this last comment on it. :smile: ) But could we in any way address this and like issues outside of our intersubjective bubbles?
Quoting Tom Storm
As regards art's aesthetic rather than monetary value (the two often do not coincide) as a generalized topic for philosophy: I think any phenomenological approach would have to first find the universalizing principle to aesthetics in all of us, in all beings capable of the experience for that matter, this just as much as it does with the principle of aboutness. Then again, I'm not a phenomenologist, just have certain affinities to some of it.
You mentioned it on this thread previously. I also thought I remembered you writing about it in the thread we participated in on interpretation last week, but I couldn't find it.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, I'm just getting into "The Principles of Art." Collingwood seems to be headed toward defining art as an expression of the artists emotion. I'm not sure if I like that. We'll see as I get further in.
I've been pushing the definition of art as something without meaning beyond the viewer's experience. That leads to the same contradiction you're talking about above. How do I turn that personal, idiosyncratic standard into something a community can share? So far, the only answer I've come up with is unsatisfying - Quality of art is a measure of the extent to which a specific community consistently has positive experiences. Yeah... I don't like that much.
Think back to what we were all discussing in terms of differentiating art from non-art - this irrespective of its aesthetic standing. In order to be art some being must have intended it to be art and, in so intending, that being must have meant it to so be - thereby imparting it with this meaning. Hence, even in this basic facet of it, for X to be art it must have the minimal meaning of having been intended to so be by someone - and this fully independent of any viewer's experience of it.
Otherwise:
Quoting T Clark
Though taken a bit out of context here: That's the rub of it all, I think. Even in assuming that the prototypical artist intends to convey some affective state to other(s) - something I myself champion - the same question holds.
Quoting T Clark
I'd embellish this by saying that quality of art is a measure of the extent to which a specific community consistently is brought closer to eudemonia - to a flourishing of being - by said artwork (regardless of whether its pretty or morbidly grotesque, initially appealing or revolting, and so forth). How would that work?
I've been endorsing two meanings of the word "art." 1) Something artificial without meaning beyond the viewers experience and 2) Something offered for aesthetic judgement or, as you expressed it, intended by some being to be art. I think they both work and I don't think they contradict each other.
Quoting javra
Yes, this was the main point I was trying to make with my response to this comment of yours:
Quoting javra
I was agreeing with you and saying that it was a problem for my definitions.
I don't mean to pester but to better understand: How do you discern artificial from non-artificial in definition (1) if not by that which is artificial occurring (necessarily but not sufficiently) on account of a persons' (or cohort's commonly shared) intent that it occurs? In other words, if you can't discern whether it was intended to be by one or more persons, how can you discern it to be an artifact?
I ask because if intent is inherent to what artifacts are, then all artifacts would yet have a meaning in so being: they all signify being the outcome of some intent. And this again gets to the issue of how an artifact can be devoid of all meaning outside of the viewer's experience - if meaning of "being a creation" is innate to being an artifact.
In which case, some might not help but wonder why the creator(s) of the artifact bothered to create it - for it then is factual that it was the result of intentions - which again speaks to the intentions of those who produced it.
I'm probably missing something, but I'm not getting what that is. ... You're of an engineering background, so I'm thinking of buildings, which are functional artifacts. Can you find it possible that an engineer could design a building in manners perfectly devoid of aesthetic properties? I'm here thinking of the proverbial notion that form follows function: when this occurs, the end result would be aesthetic in the sense of elegant (or something to that effect).
This has been one of the most enjoyable discussions I've participated in in a long time. I came in with ideas that I know need to be tested about something I think is important. If I can't explain them to you and others, how can I say I understand them myself. All of which means your questioning my statements is not pestering. I'm trying to work this out for myself.
Quoting javra
All I mean by "artificial" is that it was made by human beings. I think that's consistent with what you are saying.
Quoting javra
I don't understand how the fact that something was made intentionally gives it meaning. I think we may be about to fall into the "What does 'meaning' mean" abyss."
Quoting javra
I addressed my uncertainty about this issue in a recent post addressed to @Tom Storm. I don't know if you saw it.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/642426
This is relevant to me for 2 reasons 1) I am fascinated by objects that start as one thing and end up as art. And 2) I am particularly keen on ethnographic art. I would rather have African and Oceanic sculpture in my home than a Rodin....
I think this is related to our craft discussion. I guess the Africans and Pre-Columbians who created the objects you are talking about were doing just what the Greek craftsmen Collingwood discussed were. They were making useful things and; because those things were a powerful, intimate part of their daily lives; they made them with care. Their beauty is a reflection of that care.
Quoting Tom Storm
I guess that explains why you dumped "The Thinker" at that construction site.
Damn right, it just reminded me of how thoughtless I am.
Saw it, and I've re-read it. Here's my own current take. All (created; human made) form follows function - with "function" being in this context a fancy word for "intent, purpose, hence, in this way, use (i.e. the purpose for which something is employed)". Maybe debatable but I'll uphold it. When it comes to fine art, the product, or artifact, as form is a result of the designer's/producer's functional/intentional usage of what is to become the artistic form as vehicle to express something more or less personal, if not idiosyncratic, so that a community might understand it. So all fine art as product is there because it was deemed useful in this sense: it, as form, is supposed to be a vehicle for conveying that which the artist intents to communicate.
Let me know the extent to which we might disagree on this.
Quoting T Clark
But then, any artifact as form follows function - its intended usage. So I figure that any artifact, by shear virtue of so being a form that is resultant of some function, or intended use, carries as part of it this very meaning to anyone who discerns it to be an artifact: an artifact, of itself, in part means "some thing that was intended to be for some usage, hence purpose, and thereby is".
You were saying it is possible for artifacts to have no meaning outside of a viewing audience - which I implicitly take to not be the artifact's creators. Yet artifacts as forms always are due to the intent, purpose, usage ascribed to them by those who create them. And so artifacts are always meaningful in so being artifacts in this sense which is intrinsic to our very notion of what an artifact is. Hence, they have meaning outside of the viewing audience's particular attribution of meaning to them: they always signify, minimally but then also necessarily, "a form that follows the function assigned to it by its creator(s)"; i.e., a person-caused, hence made, functional form.
Then, given that we recognize artifacts as "forms that follow the functions given to them by their creators" we can then assume they were given functions that they in fact were not. Thereby unintentionally forsaking their original intent, hence their original meaning*, and imbuing them with novel meanings based on the functionality we attribute to them.
Nevertheless, the task of distinguishing non-art from art and craft and fine-art is the task of figuring out if the object, firstly, occurs due to an intended usage and, if so, secondly, determining what its intended usage as object originally was.
At least that's what I'm currently entertaining.
* Footnote: as to meanings' meaning, it always pivots around intent, hence purpose, hence function - this either literally or metaphorically. Or so I'm thinking. E.g., A sign's significance, or meaning, is that which is intended by the sign. An example of it being metaphorical: when the sign is heavy clouds, the sign's significance is probable rain - heavy clouds can mean probable rain - in so far as heavy clouds (metaphorically) intend for there to be rain. But if this gets debatable, I understand what you mean by "the abyss".
I think I understand what you're saying, but I also think are using the term "useful" in a different sense than I am. I'm getting a bit overloaded with aesthetics, so let's leave it at that for now.
Quoting javra
I don't think art is intended to be for some usage or purpose. Or at least that's the position I am investigating.
Quoting javra
If I understand what you're saying, and it is very possible I don't, I disagree.
Quoting javra
Not a chance am I going over this waterfall right now.
As I noted before, I'm reading Collingwood's "Principles of Art" and I'm really enjoying it. Some of what he writes makes me think I am on the right track. Other things make me think I don't have a clue. One thing it does show is that I've done enough talking about this for a while and I've gotten a bit lost. I'm going to leave the discussion for now, finish the book, and think about other things for a while.
Fair enough. To try to clarify my meaning: “artifact” as word to us means/signifies the following concept: “an object that was made by some person(s) hand or labor intentionally (this rather than accidentally, or else not as a byproduct of some other process(es) the person engages in)” If this word “artifact” has real-life references, then that which the word references will be concrete instantiations of “an object that was intentionally made by persons' hands or labor”. Hence, all concrete instantiations of artifacts are discerned to so be because we find them to mean that somebody made them with intent by hand or labor. I might be going in circles, my bad if I am, so here’s an example: You’re in a desert and you come upon a watch on top of a rock. Naturally, the watch you deem to be an artifact; the rock you don’t. When you see the watch, your implicit thought is, “someone made this thing with intention (rather than accidentally or as a byproduct of some other activity) by hand or labor”. The rock you deem to not be made by anybody, intentionally or otherwise, irrespective of the means available to them. Therein lies the watch’s pivotal meaning to you as an artifact: it’s something that someone intentionally made by hand or labor. And even devoid of an audience, the artifact would have this same meaning to its creator(s). Devoid of this meaning it holds relative to us, no one would be able to discern it as an artifact. The watch would just be a more intricate rock.
If this doesn’t make my position clearer, bummer, but so be it. I get your intention to head off.
Quoting T Clark
Sounds good. Hope you enjoy it through to the end.
Now that sounds dogmatic: "THE principles of art".
That's a very sick pun.
What's art without beauty? What's beauty without women?
Like I wrote, you're a funny guy!
Next time, you find me funny, I'll have to charge you for it!
I can't help it! It just made me laugh. I couldn't hold it, like now! Damn you! I make a fair deposit! You deserve it.
Psychopathology turned into an artform. This artform affectively speaking only to … psychopaths. Not inscrutable by a long shot. Still, this gives no contribution to the thread's question of what art is, never mind good art.
Philosopaths perhaps? I think there might be quite a few here on the forum.
What is now called "classical music" (or in German: ernste Musik, 'serious music') used to be popular music back at the time when it was first composed and played. Composers and solo artists back then had the same type of status as music celebrities do nowadays. Note that the relatively few pieces that are now considered the canon of classical music (perhaps a thousand pieces) are actually the the-best-of a few hundred years.
So we cannot rightfully compare a piece from the classical canon and just any piece that is now played a lot on the radio or YT. The latter hasn't yet stood the test of time, while the former has.
Lady Gaga said that her aim has been to become a star. She consciously chose the genre of pop music to achieve this aim.
She is fluent in several genres, but she specifically chose pop music to perfect this form, for the purpose of her aim.
I think much pop music is subversive. Sometimes, musicians will openly admit to this, other times hint to it. One also needs to master the art of subversion to "enjoy" this music as a listener.
Quoting Bitter Crank
See, his pictures don't bother me at all. I view them the same way I view any art. I assume subversion. (After all, Kinkade was an alcoholic and died as a consequence of it.)
Quoting Tom Storm
Quoting Tom Storm
I think art is in the discourse about certain media products.
Art has to do with being social in a very specific way (of the "you know it when you see it" variety).
It's not simply about one's subjective experience or subjective opinion about a media product. It's about one's subjective experience or subjective opinion about a media product, while this subjective experience or subjective opinion is embedded in a particular social, cultural, economic context, and it is done so for real, with real stakes, in the sense that one having said subjective experience or subjective opinion functions in these contexts as a person; ie. as someone who has certain social, cultural, and economic needs, interests, concerns, roles, obligations, functions, prospective advantages and disadvantages.
Quoting Tom Storm
My assumption is that the gravitational pull of enculturation and group mores is actually all there is to art.
On their own, pictures are just shapes and colors; music is just sound frequencies of particular dynamics and duration; and so on.
We need to venture firmly into the mystical to be able to make claims such as "red is the color of anger, and when the painter painted the woman's dress in red, he wanted to thereby express the frustration that women feel at being treated as sex objects".
I don't know how much access the larger part of the population of Europe had access to Mozart's or Haydn's, Handel's or Beethoven's music, and in what form they heard it when they did have access. Later on, opera composers sometimes kept selected parts of a new opera under wraps until shortly before the premiere, in order to prevent musicians and opera house workers from taking the piece into the streets, spoiling the surprise for the paying audience. I don't know how fast Haydn's Piano sonata #35 (one of my favorites) published in 1780 diffused into the parlors of Europe and America.
18th and early 19th century Americans were eager to hear 'new music' from Europe. Benjamin Franklin recommended attending Moravian church services because the Moravians used small orchestras and choirs in their services (no organs) and regularly used fresh music from their homeland, composed in the latter 1700s. "The first known public performance in the US of an instrumental work by Mozart took place on December 14, 1786, in one of the Twelve City Concerts at the City Tavern in Philadelphia."
One way classical music diffused was through small amateur groups, cheaper sheet music, and later, cheaper pianos which "middle class" people could afford.
Quoting baker
No, there is no comparing The Magic Flute and rap. There's no comparing a Bergman film and a porno, even if we may prefer a porno to The Seventh Seal or Winter Light on a given occasion. There's no such thing as 24 hour Bergman coin operated video parlors--perish the thought!
The gods of art criticism are just!
'Too many notes, dear Mozart, too many notes' is what Emperor Joseph II supposedly said after the first performance of the Entfuhrung aus dem Serail [Escape from the Seraglio--harem] in Vienna's old Burgtheater. Mozart's reply was: 'Just as many as necessary, Your Majesty. Or, as in Amadeus,
"Just cut a few!"
"Which ones did you have in mind, your majesty?"
Just showing your old white guy prejudice.
We shouldn't, insofar as we don't belong to the socio-economic class in whose domain classical Western art is nowadays, ie. the elite.
You cannot just go to a classical concert if you don't have the appropriate socio-economic status for it. It can even happen that people will hiss behind your back, "What is she doing here?!" At least in Europe, people have a very sharp sense of socio-economic class and can recognize a person's class just by looking at them.
Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra once gave a performance here. It was a considerable media event with a lot of VIP's in the audience. The main piece of the evening was Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony. At the end, the audience didn't applaud. Gergiev looked at the audience with worry. Then, finally, someone started, a standing ovation ensued.
I put on my best clothes, but it was clear that I was gravely underdressed for the event. The ladies behind me commented on this or that woman, the importance of wearing fancy dresses and high heels (despite the damage they do to the knees and backbone, they said).
I know the Sixth by heart. I bought my ticket long in advance, with an empirically tested best seat in the hall. I felt entirely out of place, and I felt sorry for going.
(Although I didn't applaud for my own reason -- I was going through a funk at the time, where I couldn't quite figure out how there can be life after being in a state of the Sixth. Classical concerts can be good in a sense, because the formality of the affair can help one gain distance from the emotional-cognitive state of or induced by the music, so as to not become sentimental/pathetic.)
The order in which one becomes acculturated does make a difference to the way one experiences media products.
That which we have learned to do so, and to the extent or expanse which our learning permits.
Quoting Tom Storm
That's because you're not getting involved in it, you don't bother to empathize with it, and most of all, you see no problem with such non-involvement. Because you're still approaching art as a _consumer_ -- a term you used yourself.
Quoting Tom Storm
The Rodin is not context free, though, the viewer provides the context via his previous education/enculturation.
Yes, we can, because for those old texts, we know the rules for what counts as good and what doesn't.
In my youth, ending in let's say, 1968 at 22. I had not seen much in the way of serious films or serious dramatic or cinema art. I grew up in a very small town in rural Minnesota and attended a state college in a relatively small college town. "Art films" were few and far between. But about this time a boyfriend in Madison, Wisconsin introduced me to Bergman. Madison was then a much more radical left bohemian place than in recent years. Leonard was trying to educate me into being a more sophisticated boyfriend. I appreciated it.
The upper midwest, places like Minnesota and Wisconsin, are kind of Bergman territory -- chilly Scandinavian influence all over the place. Maybe that has something to do with it.
Fanny and Alexander and Secenth Seal are my favorites. But since the early 70s I've seen hundreds of film, most of which were not particularly Bergmanesque, and my tastes aren't the same now. Bergman got at a kind of gloomy religiosity which feels very familiar to me. Winter Light, as one theologian said, is the perfect depiction of a church so dead that not even God showed up.
Many think they do but the debate is irresolvable and acrimonious. No one (even 'experts') can agree on anything so the 'rules' are elusive if they exist at all.
I disagree. I have several friends who I adore who make make such art and i totally empathise with them and their projects. I still find it dull.
I love your line 'you see no problem with such non-involvement' at some point I'd like to explore this.
I find your ideas here very interesting.
I wonder if Kinkade drank out of self-hatred for his debased artworks... (sorry, that was just a cheap line). Lady Gaga is talented but I don't follow her work.
Why do you assume subversion?
I find it interesting that some art can only be understood as subversion or ironically for it to be 'enjoyed' by people. If they thought the artist was totally sincere the work would be hated. I think Warhol fits into this and so do some mid century singers like Dean Martin. The idea of art which is camp or kitsch has fascinated me for years. (setting aside what Susan Sontag wrote about this).
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/642270
Sorry, I haven't been following this thread. Brought here by:
The Short Story competition comments @jamalrob:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/643376
I have never learned the art of review. My read-a-long feedback to the stories is nowhere near a proper review. I felt uncomfortable with that description by some.
For me, it was just like being in a discussion. Relating and trying to understand the text. Asking questions of the author and self. Interacting with other readers. Viewing other perspectives.
Mostly, this led to greater understanding and appreciation of the writers' own process.
For me, the Short Story Competition was/is an inspirational learning experience.
It has its frustrations, yes. However, overall it proved to be most worthwhile.
Thanks to all who made it so :sparkle:
So, I missed reading this thread. Will rectify soon as...
Same happened to the Nachtwacht:
"On 6 April 1990, an escaped psychiatric patient sprayed acid onto the painting with a concealed pump bottle. Security guards intervened, stopping the man and quickly spraying water onto the canvas. Ultimately, the acid only penetrated the varnish layer of the painting, and it was fully restored."
Now why did he do that?
The painting, by the way, was stored for years "in the cellar". Van Rijn's work didn't satisfy the watchers. The place where it was stored is even visited by tourists! "Here stood the Nachtwacht".
Thank you.
Quoting Amity
I really like writing reviews if it's a book that really moved or influenced me. I almost always write positive reviews. I wrote the one for "Titus Groan" because it's a hard book to stick with and I wanted to give it people as a gift. I thought if I gave them that review it might inspire them to read it. I also write reviews to examine my own experience of reading. Why did I like this book so much? Just like the writing I do here on the forum, it is a way to become more intellectually self-aware.
@Bitter Crank says he started this thread as a joke. He, and I, are surprised how interesting and enlightening it has turned out to be. There are a few people here who seem really interested in the philosophy of art; including literature, poetry, music, architecture, visual arts, sculpture. There have been a couple of good threads recently. I'd like to see more.
Seems you don't go to classical concerts, I presume, when you write it like that. :snicker:
And just how many teenagers have the money to get tickets to a Rock concert of some "Superstar", especially with prime seats? The vast majority of people listen to music, not go to live concerts. And that kind of attitude "What is she doing here?!" is quite present in any kind of pop / trance / hip hop / whatever concert. If everybody is far younger than you, then obviously you will stick out like a sore thumb. And many people will have the feeling that they don't "belong" there.
That music would have "appropriate socio-economic status" is one way we build up these perceptions of others. Basically it's nonsense. I do admit that there might be differences by country, but that just shows how far the social classes are from another in a specific country. For example, the UK is extremely class conscious society compared to the Nordic countries. In the British society ALL social classes are hostile if someone from another class tries to "join them". However the differences aren't there as they were before. At least where I live and on the occasions when I've gone to classical concerts people look suspiciously if a person would be "overdressed". Ties aren't used, as people are on their spare time. Talk about rigid 'casual clothing'.
In fact it's an old stereotype, the rich and classical music, as trendy (rich) people are more for things like jazz. The old stereotype is something that was depicted in cartoons of Robert McManus of "Jiggs and Maggie" (or Bringing up Father), which was started in 1911:
People don't actually dress up for classical concerts as they did earlier, the slavish formality on proper clothing is what you see in heavy rock concerts and the like.
I'm glad I found your review, thanks to @jamalrob.
I now have the trilogy on my kindle.
Also found an audio version of 'Titus Groan' on YouTube:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/643484
Chapter 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llnS_w1bWXU&list=PLJhs8srQkUbL2ooUwsu4BT9MCZ7kFPYnG
For me, the narration is marvellous and saves my weary eyes.
So far, I've listened to 3 of the 40 chapters. I have no idea how I missed this delight until now...
The narrator, with his fantastic range of voice, brings the characters to life in their vivid, magical world.
It's a shame your review is hidden away here; I think more would enjoy this book.
I can understand how it inspired @jamalrob to write his winning story :cool:
Appreciate the generous sharing on TPF :sparkle:
Don't worry, the plot will get going in a couple of chapters. :lol:
Seriously though, I never even found it slow when I was reading it. Just totally absorbing.
:up:
Agree that the creative aspect of philosophy could be explored more. Encouraging to see an increase in interest. Thanks @Bitter Crank for starting this thread, even as a joke :sparkle:
Same here.
If I'm not around for the next few months, you'll know why...just dropped by to let you know :wink:
I loved "Titus Groan" but have been afraid to read "Gorhemgest." Yes, I know that's ridiculous. I started it once, but was daunted even though I knew what to expect. Maybe now I'll be inspired. You have me thinking about listening to it instead, although I usually would rather read.
Quoting Amity
I'm surprised by how much I've enjoyed it. I haven't paid attention to aesthetics as a serious philosophical subject before, but, if, as I believe, philosophy is about increasing self-awareness, understanding why we think things are beautiful is central to what makes us human.
For me, it's quite different. Growing up, we would watch three national televisions (in three languages; it used to be normal here), now it's two (the Austrian one is coded now). National televisions typically have a wide selection of programmes. Films from all languages, genres, and time periods. Every few years, they have a retrospective of films of big directors (where they show a director's entire opus within a couple of months), or a selection by theme or genre.
All in all, high art everywhere, and strict divides as to whois the proper audience for it and who isn't.
Frankly, Bergman seems downright mundane to me, so ordinary. Not to go into too much detail, but his films are about things I know personally, so they seem all too familiar. But I have a nagging feeling that this familiarity is misplaced. My art teachers would certainly frown upon my having any such feeling; for them, I am barred from being able to relate to high art.
By now, I know my place.
In the past, I would regularly go to the monthly concerts of the resident symphony orchestra, the chamber music groups, and the occasional fancier performances held by VIP guests or at VIP venues (like an organ concert at the cathedral).
Back then, I was quite naive and wasn't all that aware of the class issues. I actually stopped going to the concerts mainly because I saw myself becoming a snob and didn't have the money to justify it. For example, for a piano concerto, I would pick a seat in the front row right before the piano, so that I could focus on the piano best. Or I would collect and compare different interpretations of the same piece, and I would get a thrill out of watching out for how each interpretation handled a particular passage. I just don't have it in me to "sit down, relax, and enjoy" the music. I don't know how other people do it. For me, it has to involve some work, or I get bored quickly. Other than that, my ears eventually began to give in; the music was never loud enough, and gradually, it was too soon so loud as to be painful.
Absolutely.
So you really, genuinely believe that anyone, regardless of socioeconomic status, can be the appropriate audience for a classical music piece?
If yes, what is the basis of this belief of yours?
Because Kinkade had the formal education that enabled him to paint in a variety of styles, yet he chose as he did. I'm quite sure that he knew full well how severely his works would be judged by the world of high art.
If a person without a formal education in art would paint like that, nobody would bat an eyelid. If Kinkade would be "an ordinary good person" with no vices, nobody would question his work.
I don't think so. The general attitude toward naive art or folk art isn't hatred. Of course, the devotees of high art might snobbishly shrug their shoulders at naive art or folk art. It's classed as a different genre, and that pretty much settles the matter.
It's when a work of art, or an artist, in any way cross the boundaries of genre or class that they evoke mixed emotions. Of course, provided that the audience knows this.
How is it that, for example, Lady Gaga, who, given her education and musical experience, should know better, nevertheless makes such mediocre music?
On the other hand, one can feel betrayed when one discovers the background for some work that one had considered to be the work of true genius. For example, I used to absolutely adore Eco's The name of the rose. Later, when I learned that Eco studied the principles of detective novels and that he carefully pieced together The name of the rose based on those principles, I felt betrayed. A novel I used to consider so sincere, so genuine, so genius, now struck me as merely a matter of craft and lost all appeal.
Then hurry up, because I have less and less time for this forum.
I've never put much effort into art, even fiction, which is where I've spent my time. Now, I find myself working to deepen my experience in a way that sounds similar to how you talk about music here. So, I envy you your experience. I think that's why I've enjoyed the recent discussions of art so much.
I also put in a vote for Kindle and other electronic reading apps. While I'm reading, I can immediately find out the meaning of words I don't know, track down historic references, see examples of works of art, and using Google Earth to get a better idea of relevant geography.
Ok! I take my words back. I think it is you who got bored with the people...
Your front row experience make's me remember when I was a child, I was dragged to see ballets with my father and his cousins family. Actually I liked it, but we we're always at the cheapest seats high up many times on the last row sweating. Few years ago my wife bought tickets to a ballet with seats on the parquet actually close to the dance. And for the first time I saw that the dancers had expressions. The classic Swan lake was far more awesome to see the expressions of the dancers.
Quoting baker
If they genuinely like the music, why on Earth not?
So yes. Assuming the person doesn't mind the "what the hell is a person like that doing here??!!!"-looks from others and people will try to ignore you. You see, people won't be thrown out because of their socioeconomic status in any open event. A private club is a different matter.
And if we start arguing if a homeless guys that stinks horribly (for not taking a shower) for months will be thrown out or not let in or not, the conversation is a bit off the actual issue.
Goodness - I think the answer to this is obvious. Kinkade, Eco and Gaga made the artistic choices they did not to subvert anything but to make money. In case you haven't noticed, the biggest market on earth is for the mediocre and the kitsch.
I'm running to my timetable, not yours.
:grin:
This applies very well to my neighbor, that f...
Seats so far from the stage that it's the next best thing to not being there!
Part of the problem is the rectangular design of a lot of concert barns (halls). The wall opposite the stage will be distant. The side balconies close to the stage have partial views. 1/3 of the hall is cheap sats for a reason--people with enough cash won't sit there.
Concert halls don't have to be rectangular barns. Rounded designs can provide better sight lines and reduce distance from the performers. Smaller might be better.
I enjoy first-class orchestra concerts once in a while (too expensive to do often). However, the pleasure I have obtained from small concerts in more intimate settings like small churches with good acoustics, or even places that don't have great acoustics, has been just as good if not better. Semi-professional groups can deliver splendid performances. University orchestras can deliver great results, sometimes in free (!) concerts.
What is really fascinating in live music is that a lot of music that you wouldn't otherwise listen to and would immediately change the channel while listening to the radio while driving, suddenly feels great when you hear it played live. And naturally the smaller more intimate the music session is, you naturally focus even more.
However good our headphones and audio systems have become, there is so much more to a live performance. It just shows there's more to music than our ear sensoring the vibration of acoustic waves.
Considering this work: clearly yes.
Quoting Bitter Crank
None of both. Just old "killroy was here".
I had a Gary Oldman moment, like here, in The Professional, starting at 2.40.
I've always been fortunate enough to get good seats. The programme was published for the entire season in advance. I had the time to study the music pieces (with the help of the library mostly, there wasn't that much on the internet back then yet) and I knew the acoustics in each of the halls, so I bought the tickets for the seats most suitable for each piece.
I only need to remember my music teacher and my literature teacher from elementary school! And then some teachers from college, and the general attitude among the academics and the intelligents.
In their view, people like me are not able to "genuinely" like the music. I mean, there are essays and other texts written on how people from lesser socio-economic classes (ie. "peasants") can have only a shallow and sentimental understanding of art. One of my college professors convinced me to never go anywhere near a theatre again or to read a book by a notable author.
Of course. One can even sufficently externally blend in and "pass for" a suitable audience. But in one's mind, the severe judgment reverberates.
I don't listen to music while driving. I focus on the road, the traffic, the engine.
A recording is mastered for optimum sound. What you hear in an actual music hall depends a lot on where you sit. The overall sound quality is worse live than it is on a mastered recording. Live, sit a bit too far to the left, and the right side of the orchestra will be too quiet and the violins too overwhelming. Sit too close, and the sound will be off entirely (the front row is only for when you know exactly what you're doing).
But listening to a recording, it's easy to forget there are actually people playing this, making this music, so the music gets a surreal, mystically pure quality.
People typically try to earn a living by what they do. It's hardly an ignoble outlook.
As to how much they earn with their art, this is not within their control, or otherwise plannable.
So your objection strikes me as rather shallow.
Your paragraph perfectly captures the view of 'the elite'. I remember, with dismay, a professor at university (19th c. American lit) saying that literature was the business of an elite coterie, a clique. This statement seemed then (1967) to be discordant with the popular '60s mood.
Your concert hall experience tells me you have much better ears than I did, once upon a time. And you were diligent in your preparation to hear formal music -- something I never was.
"The peasants", like goats, need the hay put down where they can get at it, not locked up in art barns. My guess is that if you took small art shows to the local mall, staged concerts of formal music in neighborhood venues, sent acting companies on the road to small towns, etc. "the people" would be responsive audiences. This wouldn't happen over night. Someone raised on rap and nothing but won't be ready for the full court press of 'high' art. Give it time.
Sorry, I don't get it.
It's not an objection, it's just a statement trying to provide a more realistic account of how mainstream pop music and art works. It seems shallow to you probably because you don't understand the world of mainstream cultural product. As someone who has worked in media as a second career and met quite a few successful artists (including pop stars, actors and artists ) the market is one of the only topics of conversation. How to get a hit. Oh, and artists are often appalled by what sells - even if it is theirs.
Why? Isn't that what they want?
What people want is rarely what they want. :scream:
It's not hard to understand - many artists do mainstream, compromised work for the money and exposure. This often annoys and frustrates because anything they might want to do with a richer imaginative vision is simply a risk and unlikely to sell. Audiences are frustrating and this often breeds contempt for the stuff which sells.
But I should add that some artists are exactly as they appear - superficial, predictable and gravid with kitsch and cliché. They are all tip and no iceberg.
And yet the world is full of wonderful, beautiful music, visual art, poetry, literature, architecture....
What world do you live in? :razz:
But yes, I never argued that across time people have not also done (and still do) good things.
Well, if you wrap yourself around old social structures, you'll find awfully many instances of how it is said that the peasants/ the rednecks/ the white trash don't appreciate the higher things in life. Or understand them. You see, to uphold a class society in things like art, culture or sport, you not only have to have those that think it's their thing, you also have to have the others who think that it's not for them, but only for those other people who they don't belong to. At worst, the thinking goes, if someone likes for example the music of "the other class", they are just trying to be someone who they aren't. Phonies.
Basically it comes to this: if you cannot laugh at haughty people, it's more of a problem of yours. Because those people who say they can like "genuinely" more music than others are simply very silly, haughty people.
Liking music isn't the same as understanding everything about quantum mechanics or molecular biology.
Now you might disagree with me, fine, but please understand that I was brought up in a society that isn't so class conscious in every way as the US or UK are.
Who made the "defaced" painting?
I know you didn't, but sometimes I just want to say to people - "Stop with the hell in a handbasket/why, when I was a boy! The world is a wonderful place. We're lucky to be here."
"Either way, the piece, “Untitled,” by John Andrew Perello, the graffiti artist known as JonOne, is now a magnet for selfies. And on social media, South Koreans are debating what the vandalism illustrates about art, authorship and authenticity."
The piece was valued at $400,000. Don't now who determined its value.
In the film, the character played by Gary Oldman at first passionately listens to classical music.
In the scene I referred to, he says:
You don't like Beethoven. You don't know what you're missing. Overtures like that get my... juices flowing. So powerful. But after his openings, to be honest, he does tend to get a little fucking boring. That's why I stopped!
Not to be so crass, but I experience something similar: Classical music now mostly strikes me as pretty things that are ultimately vain and serve no wholesome purpose.
No doubt there are those who will say that I am missing something vital, that I don't have a properly developed taste for the aesthetic, that I am, simply, primitive.
I don't see it that way, and I don't see those people as "haughty". The elite have different cultural and practical predispositions than the lower class, so it only makes sense that they experience things differently.
Quoting Bitter Crank
If a person works in some lowly job for long hours for meagre pay, how can they possibly relate to classical music or high art in general?
And even when they do, it's classical music lite, like Vivaldi's Four Seasons and such. Not Stravinsky.
Moreover, these people will never become members of the music community, they will never meaningfully contribute to it, they don't have the socio-economic means for doing so. The most they can do is "enjoy" some piece in their dark corner. They can be consumers, and nothing more. A nameless, faceless mass.
In that case, those artists are confused, to say the least. They want to make money with their art (and a lot of money, at that), and they want it all on their terms. Hm. That's an enormous sense of entitlement. Nobody gets to make money that way, not even mobsters.
If all the classical music heaped up over the centuries serves "no wholesome purpose", what in God's name does? That many people find classical boring, I can understand. Some of it bores people who love classical music.
Stravinsky reportedly said, "Vivaldi didn't write 500 concertos; he wrote the same concerto 500 times."
The quip is established enough that a 1986 book—Bach, Beethoven, and the Boys by David W. Barber—riffed on it: “People who find [Vivaldi’s] music too repetitious are inclined to say that he wrote the same concerto 450 times. This is hardly fair: he wrote two concertos, 225 times each.”
Or
"Even someone as informed as pianist/musicologist Charles Rosen attributed the quote to him [Stravinsky] when asked which composer he found most overrated:
“I'm tired of [Vivaldi]. Stravinsky once said that Vivaldi wrote the same concerto 500 times. I disagree. Instead, I think he began 500 concertos and never achieved anything in them. So he kept trying over and over again without ever quite succeeding.”
—Charles Rosen to The New York Times, 1987
Quoting baker
It would be clinically interesting to know more about the source of such opinions as this that you expose to the right of day.
Money or influence doesn't make you hear things differently.
On the other hand, it's understandable that people don't have as a sport hobby polo as horses are expensive. But listening to classical music isn't.
There are 7 notes. Suppose I'm allowed only 7 notes per score. That gives me 7[sup]7[/sup] = 823, 543 unique pieces (combinatorics). After that, it's repetition. Vivaldi might've been trying to make a (secret) point. Too bad some didn't get it. If only music critics had paid attention in math class.
[quote=Wikipedia]During the Renaissance, together with the rest of mathematics and the sciences, combinatorics enjoyed a rebirth. Works of Pascal, Newton, Jacob Bernoulli and Euler became foundational in the emerging field.[/quote]
Music:
Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741)
Math:
Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)
Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727)
Jacob Bernoulli (1655 - 1705)
Leonhard Euler (1707 - 1783)
All contemporaries (thereabouts). Ideas might've been passed around.
Quoting ssu
Being born and raised into a life of money and influence can make one hear things differently.
If one has had the opportunity to listen to classical music all of one's life, from early on, with easy access to it, and has obtained some formal education in it (as used to be the norm for the elite), then it's only normal that one has a different predisposition for hearing classical music than someone who didn't have those advantages.
Quoting ssu
Sure. But I argue that it makes an important qualitative difference in one's experience of classical music whether one has had easy opportunity to listen to it from early on in life, has received formal education in it, and has had ample opportunity to discuss the music with other people who are more expert in classical music than oneself.
The relevant difference is between a naive, ad hoc, unsystematic, uneducated, unstructured listening to music and with it, a naive liking; and on the other hand, a systematic, educated, structured listening, which, arguably, provides a more meaningful and profound music experience.
If one doesn't know anything about movements, keys, themes, historical references of a music piece, and so on, listening to classical music is bound to be boring, or at the very least, idiosyncratic.
So let's listen to a nice little piece from the classical canon:
Is your life any better now? Have your existential fears disappeared? Are you now beyond sorrow?
Yes, it is slightly better now -- about 1% better. Short piece, small results.
Quoting baker
I don't have any existential fears just right now, thanks to 2 hours of Mozart.
Quoting baker
Probably not. Only the grave offers that solace.
What's wrong with "naive, ad hoc, unsystematic, uneducated" listening to music? How many know how to play an electronic guitar? How many know the history of pop-music or rock? How are those people who don't know all that about pop or rock music so different in their liking of the music from those who do?
Sorry, but it's really not a relevant difference. Yeah, if you know how to play the guitar, you might really appreciate more some virtuoso, yet is that really relevant?
I think more relevant is the hostility we take towards some music that isn't "for us". Hostility to classical music is actually quite similar to the hostility towards country music or the music "ordinary people" listen to. The music that the peasant, the redneck, the yokel, listens to in their shabby bars and gatherings. Why is that music so bad? Take away the social or class construct around it, a lot of music is quite interesting to listen to.
Quoting baker
Mmh...long time I heard that. :up:
So, what actually is that? It looks like it could be a galaxy.
It purports to be an image of electrical activity in the central galactic region. Or it's art. It's art on a galactic scale.
I think for an art work to be defaced, first it must have a face. Vegetarian people only buy abstract art, obviously and therefore.
One might argue that the surface of the canvas the painting is on, is the face of the painting. After all, you are facing it.
Paintings therefore (if you buy the one previous line) always get sold at face value.
Oh, drat. I almost bid on this, because I thought it was the abstract rendition of "Lenin Giving A Speech To The Workers of the Kolhozmanovszki Iron Works."
This is a very good rendition of it. Hungarians gerne play classical music, but they are schrecklich at it. The only thing they do schlechter als that in music is rock. The entire Hungarian post-Beatles music industry only managed to produce zwei Lieder that get to you in melody: "Gyöngyhajú lány" und "Emlék", both by Omega.
Abstract? Seems pretty concrete to me. Hyper realism, that's abstract.
To name just a few:
They get bored more easily by the music.
They miss out on important artistic elements.
They contribute to the culture of shallowness and the general decline of civilization into mere consumerism.
They don't meaningfully contribute to the artists who produced the art work.
And I don't mean to be offensive.
Relevant to whom?
To the guitar virtuoso -- probably not.
I think that a person who is approaching art in a consumerist, easy fashion is not making the best use of their time and resources. It's a bit like insisting on eating cold pizza.
Provided one has the time and resources to do so.
Seems likely that music evolved as a participatory activity. People didn't just listen to it, they danced to it and sang with it. People going to a dance club are probably using music in a more natural, human way than you and the others sitting in a concert hall listening to the music of guys who have been dead for two or three hundred years.
Actually, you made good points there.
Quoting baker
So some people put ice cubes into the best single malt whisky's there are. That's reality.
Yet I think that the distiller and the shopkeeper are still happy that the person bought the expensive bottle.
But ....I get your point. Still, even if the consumerist doesn't or cannot appreciate the fine touches, at least he or she gets hopefully something out of it that is positive. And that counts.
Classical music still is participatory, the mode of participation is specific. Ideally, one should be able to play the music piece on an instrument or sing it oneself, play or sing variations of the themes in the piece, analyze it, discuss it intelligently and critically with others.
BTW, you can rest, assured that people who have paid a hundred bucks to listen to a stage full of professionals play Beethoven are engaged with the music. They own comfortable chairs to sit in, and have many ways of being amused. They don't have to go to to Orchestra Hall for a good time.
Some music was intended to be the basis of group movement (dance) and some music was intended to be heard by people sitting still -- and this goes back centuries. Gregorio Allegri's Miserere Mei, written in (written in the early 1600s) is still a killer piece of music. The Vatican knew it had a platinum hit, and it didn't want to lose control of the piece. They were successful until a young Amadeus Mozart heard the music in one Good Friday in Rome, and went back to his motel and wrote it out from memory.
Some orchestral music calls for movement -- thinking of some pieces by the German Michael Praetorius' Terpsichore, for example, 1610.
Did Stone Age people always move to whatever music they produced? (Some ancient bone flutes have been found, about 66,000 years old. "Ok, shut up everybody, Glug is going to play something now."
I don't question the value of music played by orchestras in beautiful, acoustically designed halls. I only question @baker's smug arrogance in feeling contempt for those who don't share his level of involvement.
Oh, my virtual balls!
With me, what you read is absolutely, completely, exactly, precisely, indubitably what I am really like. But you knew that.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I always assumed it was something like that, although I was leaning more toward a dungeon than a monastery.
Virtuoso balls! (Snicker...)
Macy's also gave up on this downtown site. A developer converted the large 12 floors to high end office space and small shop retail. So far, the retail part has not gotten off the ground (thanks to Covid-19).
I doubt this commercial graphic was spontaneously created by artists, because it does not seem spontaneous to me. Were someone to spray paint two straight lines on the surface, it would look like a defacement. I don't think the 'piece' is beautiful or attractive. Rather, it looks "commercial" which is anything but spontaneously.
I came across a couple of other commercial pieces very much like this one yesterday, but for different locations, under different management. My guess is that they were created in the same shop.
For some reason it made me think of Ren and Stimpy.
No matter what is added to the piece, it remains an important piece of work.