Modernism, Postmodernism and the Novel
Peter Kendell
apparent exception to the generalisation and invite comment.
It's this. That many branches of the arts became inaccessible to the general
public in the 20th Century, approximately coincidentally with a movement we
might call 'modernism'.
For example:
Oil painting (particularly non-representational)
Sculpture (ditto)
Poetry
Architecture
Music (It was a discussion in rec.music.classical that prompted
this, particulary after Roger Lustig said that he considered
the canon to be extinct. He mentioned oil painting as well.)
Dance
In each of these categories it's possible to find exceptions where
'modernist' pieces have gained general acceptance. More likely not,
however.
BTW, post-modernism in the various art-forms I've mentioned above strikes me
more often than not to mean lots of bits of pre-modern that have nostalgic
associations for the general public lashed together to make something that
sells.
But, and this is the thing that has struck me, there appears to be an
exception to all this; the novel. Not that there haven't been 'modern'
novels that have been inaccessible to the general reader. But this mythical
person is quite likely to say that he or she doesn't like modern
architecture, poetry that doesn't rhyme, dance that's not on pointe, music
that's not tonal. He or she is unlikely to object to 'modern' novels for
being "too hard to read" or "something my five-year-old could have done."
Does the collective net.wisdom agree? And if so, why so? What have
novelists got that other creative artists haven't?
Peter
Jim Mann
writes:
>
> But, and this is the thing that has struck me, there appears to be an
> exception to all this; the novel. Not that there haven't been 'modern'
> novels that have been inaccessible to the general reader. But this mythical
> person is quite likely to say that he or she doesn't like modern
> architecture, poetry that doesn't rhyme, dance that's not on pointe, music
> that's not tonal. He or she is unlikely to object to 'modern' novels for
> being "too hard to read" or "something my five-year-old could have done."
In one sense I disagree. I have heard a number of people who object to many
20th century works as too hard to read or two obscure. However, there does
seem to a big difference between literature and most of the other arts.
The modern novel has remained a braod enough field to encompass Bellow and
Pynchon, Joyce and Hemingway, etc. This does not seem to be the case
in the other arts, or at least in those parts of these arts which
the academics and critics focus on as the "important" works. Modern music has
become inaccessible (and thus unimportant) to the general public at large, and
even to the educated parts of the general public. In literature however, while
many readers may avoid those writers they find obscure (a number of otherwise
widely read people never make it through Pynchon, for example) there are many
other writers who they DO read.
Jim Mann jm...@vineland.pubs.stratus.com
Stratus Computer
Jeanne Dusseault
> I'd like to make a general observation about the arts, and then mention an
> apparent exception to the generalisation and invite comment.
>
> It's this. That many branches of the arts became inaccessible to
> the general public in the 20th Century, approximately
> coincidentally with a movement we might call 'modernism'.
> Peter
It is not that contemporary art is inaccessible per se, it is the
viewer who rejects it (and many veiwers don't seek-out dialectical
criticism.)
Modern art is wholly dependent on the three members of its essential
triad: artist, viewer, and critic. The vast majority of the population
cannot endure the challenge to conventional value structures and
existing social order represented by the statements of contemporary
artists. Since people have so much to lose by facing up to such
challenge, they will not do so. Thus today the critic is as essential
to the development and identification of art as the artist. [Note:
Unfortunatly many of the mainstream (art magizine) critics are
producing puffery, or advertisement for dealers and not serving the
viewer. Important dialectical criticism can be found in the writings
of Lucy Lippard, Lawerence Alloway, Dore Ashton, Susan Sontag, to name
just a few.]
The art of our time is produced in a society of rapid flux -- the
world has altered almost out of recognition in less than a lifetime.
This art can be violent and obscure, and often blurred in origin,
content, and direction. Most people, unable or unwilling to cope with
this rapidly changing present, still respond to the dictates of an
earlier age. Thus the artist, and his interperator the critic, are perhaps
among the few people who can be relied on for some sort of intuitive
understanding of our contemporary situation.
Jeanne
jea...@mica.berkeley.edu
Roger Lustig
>apparent exception to the generalisation and invite comment.
>It's this. That many branches of the arts became inaccessible to the general
>public in the 20th Century, approximately coincidentally with a movement we
>might call 'modernism'.
>For example:
>
Oil painting (particularly non-representational)
> Sculpture (ditto)
> Poetry
> Architecture
> Music (It was a discussion in rec.music.classical that prompted
> this, particulary after Roger Lustig said that he considered
> the canon to be extinct. He mentioned oil painting as well.)
OK, hold it right there. I did NOT say that. The canon is very much
with us, and very much alive. It's just that we're not composing works
and putting them in it anymore. There are smaller, subsidiary canons,
some relating to new music, but they tend to seem pretty temporary to me
me for the most part.
I was, in fact, musing on the EXPLICIT nature of the CLOSURE of the
canon that was created only recently (1840-1910 or so); that we consider
a certain set (Bach to Mahler) central to our lives, even though it
keeps growing older and more distant in real time. Metaphysically
speaking, it ISN'T growing older -- and we're not putting new works in
it, either. (We seem to be adding some OLD ones...)
> Dance
Huh? Dance has exploded as an independent medium in this century. Its
canon IS the only set of Modernist music that's really gotten accepted.
Modern dance is, in a way, an exception to the isolation of Modernism.
>In each of these categories it's possible to find exceptions where
>'modernist' pieces have gained general acceptance. More likely not,
>however.
It also depends on your definition of Modernism. Do you go back to
Baudelaire? Is Wilde a modernist?
>BTW, post-modernism in the various art-forms I've mentioned above strikes me
>more often than not to mean lots of bits of pre-modern that have nostalgic
>associations for the general public lashed together to make something that
>sells.
That's what it FEELS like. I htink the idea behind it is at least
partially the abandonment of the old-fashioned Modernist (!) ideas on
art, Classicism, posterity, uniqueness, etc.
>But, and this is the thing that has struck me, there appears to be an
>exception to all this; the novel. Not that there haven't been 'modern'
>novels that have been inaccessible to the general reader. But this mythical
>person is quite likely to say that he or she doesn't like modern
>architecture, poetry that doesn't rhyme, dance that's not on pointe, music
>that's not tonal. He or she is unlikely to object to 'modern' novels for
>being "too hard to read" or "something my five-year-old could have done."
Depends on how you define "modern." Is Hemingway a Modern? Or is it
just that the mainstream novel never got marginalized? That the things
CONCOMITANT to modernism never happened to it?
>Does the collective net.wisdom agree? And if so, why so? What have
>novelists got that other creative artists haven't?
They're still where they were a century ago, in the eyes of the public.
People talk about radio and recordings doing in music; I suspect it was
actually the movies.
Movies, and even TV, didn't displace the FUNCTION of the novel, though
they may have affected sales and some reader behavior. Novels aren't
movies, nor are they TV. Movies are actually a lot more like symphonies
or operas...
But reading is still the only one you do over time and at your own pace.
No, VCRs don't count; put your hands down. Novels can do time
distortion and detailed focus the way movies have a hard time doing.
Oh, and movies HAVE had their hard-core modernists; Hitchcock is one, at
least in some movies. Anyone see the NYTimes obit of David Lean the
other days? They said he was "perhaps the greatest British director."
I nearly gagged.
What IS modernism in a movie? In a novel? In music?
Roger
Jim Mann
> It is not that contemporary art is inaccessible per se, it is the
> viewer who rejects it (and many veiwers don't seek-out dialectical
> criticism.)
>
it? They reject it, by and large, because to them it is inaccessible.
> Modern art is wholly dependent on the three members of its essential
> triad: artist, viewer, and critic. The vast majority of the population
Something is really out of wack in the art world if critics are "essential."
Critics can be helpful. Good critics should be able to enhance your
appreciation of a work. But essential???
> cannot endure the challenge to conventional value structures and
> existing social order represented by the statements of contemporary
> artists. Since people have so much to lose by facing up to such
> challenge, they will not do so. Thus today the critic is as essential
> to the development and identification of art as the artist. [Note:
> Unfortunatly many of the mainstream (art magizine) critics are
> producing puffery, or advertisement for dealers and not serving the
> viewer. Important dialectical criticism can be found in the writings
> of Lucy Lippard, Lawerence Alloway, Dore Ashton, Susan Sontag, to name
> just a few.]
>
Ah, the critics help identify art. We wouldn't know it was art if they
didn't??? I also don't buy this stuff about people not liking much
modern art because it challenges their conventional value structures and
existing social order, etc. Many great artists did this over the years.
Dickens did. Dostoyevski did. They weren't rejected. In the popular culture
many people listen to popular music that challenges parts of the social
order. (I don't much, but I don't think this comes from it challenging
the social order but because most of it isn't very good.)
> The art of our time is produced in a society of rapid flux -- the
> world has altered almost out of recognition in less than a lifetime.
> This art can be violent and obscure, and often blurred in origin,
> content, and direction. Most people, unable or unwilling to cope with
> this rapidly changing present, still respond to the dictates of an
> earlier age. Thus the artist, and his interperator the critic, are perhaps
> among the few people who can be relied on for some sort of intuitive
> understanding of our contemporary situation.
>
And perhaps the people who reject this art have a much better understanding
of what is important that the artist does.
Also, what do you mean by "dictates of an earlier age"? Somehow, in this
age of cultural relativism, the cultural relativists have replaced absolutism
in place with an absolutism in time. The modern aesthetic values are the best.
Those who would write in the style of Dickens or compose in the style of
Mozart are behind the times. They are following outmoded forms, etc. (This, of
course, is not a new thing. Voltaire explains how the French playwrights of his
time were far superior to the Greek playwrights.)
Liz Broadwell
> What IS modernism in a movie? In a novel? In music?
I can't resist putting my two cents into this discussion, despite the fact that
I'm a medievalist. For me, modernism -- at least in literature -- is
characterized primarily by the desire to be difficult. That is, modernist
writers perceive as tremendously complex things which their 19th century
predecessors often (not inevitably -- I don't want to generalize too broadly,
having just completed a paper on Lewis Carroll) do not, and attempt to present
that difficulty to the reader on a formal as well as a thematic level. Formal
difficulty, in fact, is for me the touchstone of modernism: Beckett, Woolf,
Joyce, Kafka, Eliot, and Stein jump to mind.
Or, as a colleague once put it, "Modernists mess with your mind, man."
************************************************************************
* Liz Broadwell (broa...@penndrls.upenn.edu) * *
* Department of English * Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam *
* The University of Pennsylvania * *
************************************************************************
* "Vielleicht hoeren Sie endlich auf, Computerchinesisch zu sprechen, *
* und erklaeren mir einfach, was los ist?" : W & H Hohlbein, _Greif_ *
************************************************************************
Roger Lustig
> > I'd like to make a general observation about the arts, and then mention an
> > apparent exception to the generalisation and invite comment.
> > It's this. That many branches of the arts became inaccessible to
> > the general public in the 20th Century, approximately
> > coincidentally with a movement we might call 'modernism'.
>It is not that contemporary art is inaccessible per se, it is the
>viewer who rejects it (and many veiwers don't seek-out dialectical
>criticism.)
Hmmm. Is ANYTHING "inaccessible per se?" Is the idea of "inaccessible
per se" even a useful one in esthetics?
I'm not so sure it is. Exactly how do we perceive this audience? As
infinitely malleable beings who have been culturally conditioned,
manipulated, etc.? Who, once properly exposed to dialectical criticism
(some definitions and examples would be useful, btw -- are you talking
about Adorno? Foucault? Benjamin?), can suddenly grok the works they'd
otherwise reject, and are therefore better people for it?
Moreover, isn't there a good deal of art that actually goes out of its
way to reject a large portion of its potential viewers (by anticipating
its own rejection)?
>Modern art is wholly dependent on the three members of its essential
>triad: artist, viewer, and critic. The vast majority of the population
>cannot endure the challenge to conventional value structures and
>existing social order represented by the statements of contemporary
>artists.
By "cannot endure" you begin to make a value judgment. Are people
SUPPOSED to be able to endure any given work of art? Are there works
which it is PROPER for them to endure?
Also, how do you know that "contemporary artists" are in fact making a
"challenge to contemporary value structures and existing social order?"
Or are you defining "contemporary artist" as one who does, and any other
artist as something other than "contemporary?"
How can one TELL that an artist is actually challenging these things? I
seem to recall there being some pretty impressive disagreements on just
this point. For a book-length classic, try Cornelius Cardew's
"Stockhausen Serves Imperialism."
>Since people have so much to lose by facing up to such
>challenge, they will not do so.
Therefore you DEFINE the criteria of rejection of modern art as
unwillingness to lose one's values or something. Ths is a very
convenient position for an artist to take, I might point out: either you
like my work or you're politically, socially, or emotionally naive or
insecure or otherwise lacking in proper consciousness.
Kinda takes any OTHER criteria out of judgment of art, doesn't it? In
fact, why do we call it by the outmoded term of "art" anymore? Seems to
me that art didn't USE to have this function, this mode of operation.
>Thus today the critic is as essential
>to the development and identification of art as the artist. [Note:
>Unfortunatly many of the mainstream (art magizine) critics are
>producing puffery, or advertisement for dealers and not serving the
>viewer. Important dialectical criticism can be found in the writings
>of Lucy Lippard, Lawerence Alloway, Dore Ashton, Susan Sontag, to name
>just a few.]
Ah. Now how do we separate reading the critics from looking at the art?
More to the point, do we need to look at the art at all anymore? Not by
this model, it seems to me.
>world has altered almost out of recognition in less than a lifetime.
>This art can be violent and obscure, and often blurred in origin,
>content, and direction. Most people, unable or unwilling to cope with
>this rapidly changing present, still respond to the dictates of an
>earlier age.
How can one tell this? How can one determine that someone is in fact
coping with the present in a proper manner? What does "coping with the
present" actually mean? Which parts of the present are we talking
about?
And how do we determine that the dictates of an earlier age, if they
actually ARE dicatates, are necessarily no longer respondable-to in a
proper way? All this sounds good, but it tends to end up with the same
conclusion: if you don't dig this art (i.e., this criticism of that
art), you're doing something wrong and need XYZ to show you the light.
>Thus the artist, and his interperator the critic, are perhaps
>among the few people who can be relied on for some sort of intuitive
>understanding of our contemporary situation.
AHA! A *definition* of artist! Someone who can be relied upon for some
sort of intutitive understanding of our contemporary situation. OK,
some others can be relied upon; but we know we can ask an artist. If we
know how to ask.
Well, this assumes that there IS a common "situation." It also assumes
that we have a way of determining who's an artist! Again, there's
plenty of debate on this very point, and your definitions (or lack
thereof) make it clear that you've got a good idea of what's right.
Now, I know where you're coming from; I've read a lot of things like
this before, and quite frankly, the polemical tone of your posting made
me wonder at first whether you'd scanned the above or actually typed it
in. But then I realized that this wasn't the problem.
The problem is that you didn't actually address the QUESTION!
The question is: how did we get that way? What HAPPENED to art? What
did Modernism do to change the terms of art?
I note that you avoided the term "modern," and also "new."
"Contemporary," which in its naive meaning really won't do for your type
of argument, is what you seem to prefer.
And rightly so, esp. wrt "modern." Modernism really DIDN'T have the
background you describe; but it did have some elements, including
social-critical ones, that are worth thinking about.
Now, your approach to "art" does lead to a method: determine what the
issues are, determine the relationship of a work of art to the issues,
and bingo! criticism ermerges. Unfortunately, this involves a fully
worked-out view of how the world works, and what the "current situation"
IS, which doesn't leave room for the art to TELL us much about it, even
if we DO know we've gotten the world situation just right.
Finally, your insistence on contemporary art and its difference from
old-fashioned art leads to a nagging question: when DID art function
right in society? Did it ever? Could it ever? Is that what art
ASPIRES, or ever ASPIRED to do? WILL it ever? Bloch would say, yes,
when we arrive at the point we're striving for; Adorno would say we had
it for a moment with Goethe and Beethoven.
But ultimately neither of these viewpoints gets us very far in
confronting art, nor does your view of the essential role of criticism
to art. For you are taking for granted that art -- some art at least --
IS in fact essential to consciousness of the right sort, and that this
art can be identified.
Roger
Lisa S Chabot
>In article <JEANNE.91A...@remarque.berkeley.edu>
>> to the development and identification of art as the artist.
>didn't???
Yeah, you know--like the chorus commenting on the plot
lest the audience miss the playwright's point.
In these troubled times, don't you want someone to tell you
what speaks to you?
But who can believe artists, anyway? All those people, operating
without government regulation--who do they think they are! Now,
what I think we need is a branch of OSHA to handle critics and
their certification. And specify average book length, all that stuff.
And how many prepositions can dance on the head of a journalist.
--
It is dreadful to think that other people's grandchildren may
one day rise up and call one amiable.
sometimes a Wombat
>In article <2...@sneezy.tcom.stc.co.uk>
> pe...@tcom.stc.co.uk (Peter Kendell) writes:
>
> > It's this. That many branches of the arts became inaccessible to
> > the general public in the 20th Century, approximately
> > coincidentally with a movement we might call 'modernism'.
>
>viewer who rejects it (and many veiwers don't seek-out dialectical
>criticism.)
>
>Modern art is wholly dependent on the three members of its essential
>triad: artist, viewer, and critic.
> Thus today the critic is as essential
>to the development and identification of art as the artist.
> Thus the artist, and his interperator the critic, are perhaps
>among the few people who can be relied on for some sort of intuitive
>understanding of our contemporary situation.
My problem with this: I question just how good art is if it
requires an interpreter between the artist and the viewer.
Leaving aside whether it is artisticly good to do so, it strikes
me as bad craft. Very bad craft.
It's certainly bad strategy, to not clearly present ones ideas that
veiwers on their own cannot work thru for themselves a message.
(Can you tell I'm Protestant? Can you tell I strongly sympathise with
the Pre-Joycean Fellowship? I hold the private theory that any message
that one might want to put into a piece of fiction can be written in a book
of not over 250 pages of simple declaritive sentences of who did and said
what, with all the effectiveness any other style/method/tricks could
bring.)
Returning the original posting, one can draw intreaging parallels between
the arts and the sciences. Like between the society of the Weimar Republic
and the formation of quantum physics.
Larry "Or modernism and the increasing abstract mathematics"
Hammer
--
________________________________________________________________________________
Reply to Larry Hammer at \ "Damn it, Jim, I'm a bartender, not a doctor!"
L...@albert.physics.arizona.edu \ "When in panic or in doubt,
The insane don't need disclaimers \ Run in circles, scream and shout."
Michael Turner
>public in the 20th Century, approximately coincidentally with a movement we
>might call 'modernism'.
[You left out drama.]
>But, and this is the thing that has struck me, there appears to be an
>exception to all this; the novel. Not that there haven't been 'modern'
>novels that have been inaccessible to the general reader. But this mythical
>person is quite likely to say that he or she doesn't like modern
>architecture, poetry that doesn't rhyme, dance that's not on pointe, music
>that's not tonal. He or she is unlikely to object to 'modern' novels for
>being "too hard to read" or "something my five-year-old could have done."
>
>Does the collective net.wisdom agree? And if so, why so? What have
>novelists got that other creative artists haven't?
The novel is narrative.
The novel is mass produced, for mass consumption.
Has there been a "modernist" movement in fiction? The foundations of
modernism has been a ripping away at foundations. (A good idea, some-
times, don't get me wrong.) Rip away narrative from the novel and you
no longer have a mass-producible product. Not because it's "inaccessible",
but because there's no reason why one page should follow another, much
less why they should all be bundled together. The plastic arts admit
of much more abstraction because the unity is in the resulting object.
If "hard to read" is some index of "modernism" in the novel, what about
Joyce, Celine, Robbe-Grillet, Burroughs? If "something my five-year-old
could have done" is another index, then it's an index that misses the
point. Jackson Pollock came back to a five-year-old's spontaneity
after much training. People who can't see this are people who don't
understand enough about being five years old, despite having a person
of that age around the house--which makes you wonder why they bothered
to have children in the first place.
---
Michael Turner
tur...@tis.llnl.gov
Antonio Leal
>
> Returning the original posting, one can draw intreaging parallels between
> the arts and the sciences. Like between the society of the Weimar Republic
> and the formation of quantum physics.
> Larry "Or modernism and the increasing abstract mathematics" Hammer
"As everyman possesses a physiognomy by which you can provisionally
judge him, so every age also possesses one that is no less characteristic.
For the Zeitgeist of every age is like a sharp east wind which blows
through everything. You can find traces of it in all that is done,
thought and written, in music and painting, in the flourishing of this
or that art: it leaves its mark on everything and everyone, so that,
e.g., an age of phrases without meaning must also be one of music without
melody and form without aim or object." -- Schopenhauer
I've been on a Schopenhauer binge - the Essays and Aphorisms volume
published by Penguin Classics. Through a glass, clearly - and searing
like a laser. This is writing. Don't worry about it being labeled
philosophy (German philosophy, to boot): it is, but it is also highly
readable and even witty at times. Nothing resembling the muddled
thoughts that come out of Hegel's writing to suffocate the reader in
a blanket of nonsense.
--
Antonio B. Leal Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Bell: [412] 268-2937 Carnegie Mellon University
Net: a...@ece.cmu.edu Pittsburgh, PA. 15213 U.S.A.
James Davis Nicoll
>
>If "hard to read" is some index of "modernism" in the novel, what about
>Joyce, Celine, Robbe-Grillet, Burroughs? If "something my five-year-old
>could have done" is another index, then it's an index that misses the
>point. Jackson Pollock came back to a five-year-old's spontaneity
>after much training. People who can't see this are people who don't
>understand enough about being five years old, despite having a person
>of that age around the house--which makes you wonder why they bothered
>to have children in the first place.
Kids are useful for labour (Try weeding an acre garden without
yard-apes to help), casual amusement ('What did Santa bring you? 400
ravenous Tarantulas! I'd warn you not to touch, but I see you've already
found that out') and simple behavior modification will render their
mental state one which is easily comprehendable to an adult. I have heard
that given time, they may become adults; I have never observed this,
but the references seem unimpeachable.
James Nicoll
This article should not be taken as a guide to my views on children,
nor as a guide on the correct protocals for dealing with children.
Roger Lustig
>In article <51...@lectroid.sw.stratus.com> jm...@vineland.pubs.stratus.com writes:
>>In article <JEANNE.91A...@remarque.berkeley.edu>
>>>Thus today the critic is as essential
>>> to the development and identification of art as the artist.
>>Ah, the critics help identify art. We wouldn't know it was art if they
>>didn't???
>Yeah, you know--like the chorus commenting on the plot
>lest the audience miss the playwright's point.
>In these troubled times, don't you want someone to tell you
>what speaks to you?
>But who can believe artists, anyway? All those people, operating
>without government regulation--who do they think they are! Now,
>what I think we need is a branch of OSHA to handle critics and
>their certification. And specify average book length, all that stuff.
>And how many prepositions can dance on the head of a journalist.
Look, for all Jeanne's strange-sounding dicta about what art is and
should be, and how it works in today's alienated times, and how the gulf
between artist and viewer represents a deficiency of consciousness on
the part of the latter (and, for that matter, for all my disagreeing
with her in a previous post!), she has a point.
Look at today's art world.
Look at the fabulous prices.
Look at the general public and how it responds to the art being sold for
gazillions.
Look at the weird stuff like Jenny Holzer and Jeff Koons; at the strange
posturing of a Julian Schnabel; etc.
Look how the Minimalists are in retreat, and how incredibly
old-fashioned Abstract Expressionism looks today. I get so nostalgic
looking at old de Koonings and Gorkys and...
What I'm getting at is partly that the critics, indeed, have an
amazingly large role in determining what gets sold and shown and
respected, and what the art is taken to mean.
And partly, art today more and more uses text and symbol to provide a
commentary on itself; in fact, much art today is more criticism than
old-fashioned art--it exercises the critical function wrt society that
Jeanne alludes to, but, far more, it criticizes itself!
Roger
Richard Caley
jd> Modern art is wholly dependent on the three members of its essential
jd> triad: artist, viewer, and critic.
Isn't `wholly dependent' a little strong? If all the critics were to
drop dead tomorrow and no one came forward to replace them would all
`modern' art (whatever that means now) judder to a halt? If the
critics job is to help the viewer, then the viewer could do that job
for themselves. If the critic's job is to provide feedback for the
artist then either viewer or other artists can do the job. While a
full time critic may be better able to produce criticism, they are not
essential. I certainly find art that provides perspective on other art
more interesting than criticism that does the same. Any reasonable
criticism will be half way to art in itself, do we need criticism
critics?
BTW, is `modern' here to be taken as meaning `contemporary' or
`modernist', (in as much as that has a meaning)?
jd> The vast majority of the population cannot endure the challenge to
jd> conventional value structures and existing social order
jd> represented by the statements of contemporary artists.
Another strange statement. Is challenge to the social order and values
essential to art? Is it esential to being labeled `modern'?
The vast majority of the population challenge the social order and
values of their time every day, otherwise we would still be in the
dark ages.
jd> Since people have so much to lose by facing up to such
jd> challenge, they will not do so. Thus today the critic is as essential
jd> to the development and identification of art as the artist.
To whom is the critic essential? To the viewer? If the public in
general are not willing to tackle contemporary art they are hardly
likely to sit down and read criticism of it. Those who are willing to
deal with the art may read the criticism, but that really makes your
`Thus' a little redundant since the critic's job is unrelated to those
who `do not do so'. To the artist? Seems more plausible, but again
`essential' seems too strong. To `Art'? Well, I don't believe in
capitalised essences.
jd> Thus the artist, and his interperator the critic, are perhaps
jd> among the few people who can be relied on for some sort of
jd> intuitive understanding of our contemporary situation.
I think (hope rather) that you underestimate the man on the Clapham
omnibus. The only support I can cite is the fact that book shops find
it profitable to stock paperbacks of Burroughs and Pynchion along with
Cartland and Archer and that Tippet and Riley share the shelves with
Madona and Vanilla Ice.
But what would I know, I just read for fun, Burroughs is fun Cartland
isn't.
--
r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk Just an ignorant computer scientist pretending
to be an ignorant linguist :-)
Mike Godwin
>actually the movies.
>
>Movies, and even TV, didn't displace the FUNCTION of the novel, though
>they may have affected sales and some reader behavior. Novels aren't
>movies, nor are they TV. Movies are actually a lot more like symphonies
>or operas...
>
>But reading is still the only one you do over time and at your own pace.
>No, VCRs don't count; put your hands down. Novels can do time
>distortion and detailed focus the way movies have a hard time doing.
In his introduction to THE PROUST SCREENPLAY, Harold Pinter makes the
argument that movies and novels are very similar in their functions
and capabilities as art forms--that, in fact, they're more alike than
either is like theater.
You may be interested in Pinter's THE PROUST SCREENPLAY if you haven't seen
it already.
--Mike
--
Mike Godwin, |"Most pernicious of French imports is the notion that
mnem...@eff.org | there is no person behind a text. Is there anything more
(617) 864-0665 | affected, aggressive, and relentlessly concrete than a
EFF, Cambridge, MA | Parisian intellectual behind his/her turgid text?"
Roger Lustig
>In article <JEANNE.91A...@remarque.berkeley.edu>, Jeanne Dusseault (jd) writes:
>jd> Modern art is wholly dependent on the three members of its essential
>jd> triad: artist, viewer, and critic.
>Isn't `wholly dependent' a little strong? If all the critics were to
>drop dead tomorrow and no one came forward to replace them would all
>`modern' art (whatever that means now) judder to a halt? If the
Yes. Who would promote the stuff? How many of us hit the galleries on
a regular basis? How many major salons are there for new works? Big
annual shows? Who goes to them?
>critics job is to help the viewer, then the viewer could do that job
>for themselves.
But they DON'T. That's the point. The viewer, without being told
what's hot about a new work, generally won't even look.
> If the critic's job is to provide feedback for the
>artist then either viewer or other artists can do the job. While a
What if the critic's job is to drive up prices by lending credibility to
the idea of the value of the work?
>full time critic may be better able to produce criticism, they are not
>essential. I certainly find art that provides perspective on other art
>more interesting than criticism that does the same. Any reasonable
>criticism will be half way to art in itself, do we need criticism
>critics?
Well, we've had a Day Without Art; wonder what a Day Without Crit would
be like!
You're quite right; crit is itself an art form, one that depends on and
completes the modern work. Much work is written TO BE criticized in a
certain way; and the "commentary on other art" aspect tends to get
before the public via -- well, not via word of mouth, that's for sure.
>BTW, is `modern' here to be taken as meaning `contemporary' or
>`modernist', (in as much as that has a meaning)?
Yes. 8-)
>jd> The vast majority of the population cannot endure the challenge to
>jd> conventional value structures and existing social order
>jd> represented by the statements of contemporary artists.
>Another strange statement. Is challenge to the social order and values
>essential to art? Is it esential to being labeled `modern'?
Nowadays, it would seem to be pretty close to the case. The most
successful art nowadays has (or is interpreted as having) some
social-critical function.
>The vast majority of the population challenge the social order and
>values of their time every day, otherwise we would still be in the
>dark ages.
Right, and everybody's a nonconformist, too. Care to tell me about this
challenging that goes on every day? Name some names?
>jd> Since people have so much to lose by facing up to such
>jd> challenge, they will not do so. Thus today the critic is as essential
>jd> to the development and identification of art as the artist.
>To whom is the critic essential? To the viewer? If the public in
>general are not willing to tackle contemporary art they are hardly
>likely to sit down and read criticism of it.
But, having read crit/publicity, they are armed to "appreciate" it, and
can understand its "themes," so when they see it, they can feel that
they have a relationship to it. Art, as far as the museums and
galleries and private owners go, is what critics SAY is art. This stuff
doesn't get voted in in general elections, you know. jd is right on the
um, money here.
>Those who are willing to
>deal with the art may read the criticism, but that really makes your
>`Thus' a little redundant since the critic's job is unrelated to those
>who `do not do so'. To the artist? Seems more plausible, but again
>`essential' seems too strong. To `Art'? Well, I don't believe in
>capitalised essences.
You capitalized it. Seriously, how DO we find art these days? Look at
all the people in the galleries, half of them reading the ever-wordier
labels, even for a Canaletto. Or hearing the plummy tones of Philippe
de Montebello through a headset. Art and crit go together as never
before.
>jd> Thus the artist, and his interperator the critic, are perhaps
>jd> among the few people who can be relied on for some sort of
>jd> intuitive understanding of our contemporary situation.
>I think (hope rather) that you underestimate the man on the Clapham
>omnibus. The only support I can cite is the fact that book shops find
>it profitable to stock paperbacks of Burroughs and Pynchion along with
>Cartland and Archer and that Tippet and Riley share the shelves with
>Madona and Vanilla Ice.
Hardly the point. jd is saying that artists are producing some kind of
Truth about society, a truth that must be mediated for the hoi polloi by
a critic. Now, this requires, of course, that the artist actually BE
someone who's got a handle on the way things are, and that the critic
gets it right, too. Which I'm not so sure of. Especially the part
about the critic having an "intuitive" understanding of the situation.
That's a little far-fetched.
>But what would I know, I just read for fun, Burroughs is fun Cartland
>isn't.
Not the case for about 95% of the reading public.
Roger
Roger Lustig
>In article <84...@idunno.Princeton.EDU> ro...@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
>>actually the movies.
>>Movies, and even TV, didn't displace the FUNCTION of the novel, though
>>they may have affected sales and some reader behavior. Novels aren't
>>movies, nor are they TV. Movies are actually a lot more like symphonies
>>or operas...
>>But reading is still the only one you do over time and at your own pace.
>>No, VCRs don't count; put your hands down. Novels can do time
>>distortion and detailed focus the way movies have a hard time doing.
>In his introduction to THE PROUST SCREENPLAY, Harold Pinter makes the
>argument that movies and novels are very similar in their functions
>and capabilities as art forms--that, in fact, they're more alike than
>either is like theater.
Haven't seen it. Now, in terms of CAPABILITIES, you're right; the
ability to shape narrative, especially by instantaneously shifting
scene, is similar. The ability to intercut, tell many stories, give
many viewpoints -- the theatre can only do this fairly crudely.
But my concern was the RECEPTION of the forms. The social function of
much theatre and concert music has, to my mind, been taken over by the
movies.
In music and theatre and movie, you are taken for a ride in a certain
amount of time, and you get things in a certain order and spaced by a
certain interval. Reading is much freer wrt clock time and sequence.
And since we also read for so many other purposes, for work, for general
info, for our leisure pursuits, etc., the act of reading is quite
different, and much more resilient to changes in other art forms, than
the others. After all, where but at the movies do you exercise your
movie skills? TV, I guess, though MacLuhan etc. would argue that even
those skills are quite different.
Roger
Robert Firth
[critics and artists]
>Yeah, you know--like the chorus commenting on the plot
>lest the audience miss the playwright's point.
>In these troubled times, don't you want someone to tell you
>what speaks to you?
When Aristophanes, in a troubled time of rapid change,
wanted a chorus of frogs to comment on his art, he
wrote one into the play.
This should not be interpreted as giving all frogs,
past, present or future, the right to form their own
choruses.
mike.siemon
> This should not be interpreted as giving all frogs,
> past, present or future, the right to form their own
> choruses.
Do you mean to imply that the critics from a koaxial cabal?
--
Michael L. Siemon I say "You are gods, sons of the
m.si...@ATT.COM Most High, all of you; nevertheless
...!att!attunix!mls you shall die like men, and fall
standard disclaimer like any prince." Psalm 82:6-7
mike.siemon
In article <24...@as0c.sei.cmu.edu>, fi...@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) writes:
> This should not be interpreted as giving all frogs,
> past, present or future, the right to form their own
> choruses.
Do you mean to imply that the critics form a koaxial cabal?
Richard Caley
rl> What I'm getting at is partly that the critics, indeed, have an
rl> amazingly large role in determining what gets sold and shown and
rl> respected, and what the art is taken to mean.
The fact that they _do_ have a large roll does not make them
essential. In fact one could argue that it is essential to get rid of
them :-).
--
r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk _O_
|<
Richard Caley
In article <RJC.91Ap...@brodie.cstr.ed.ac.uk> r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) writes:
rjc> Isn't `wholly dependent' a little strong? If all the critics were to
rjc> drop dead tomorrow and no one came forward to replace them would all
rjc> `modern' art (whatever that means now) judder to a halt?
rl> Yes. Who would promote the stuff?
Promotion may be essential to the business of selling and showing art,
that hardly makes it essential for creating it. I think you have you
sarcasm knob up a little high.
rl> How many of us hit the galleries on a regular basis?
Dunno, I don't grok painting sculpture etc. If you want to ask about
music, dance and books I can only say that you have to get in early to
get tickets to many of the weirder things in the Edinburgh festival,
the bit of floor in front of the interesting CDs is hardly ever empty
and much the same can be said of bookshops, so someone is interested.
rjc> critics job is to help the viewer, then the viewer could do that job
rjc> for themselves.
rl> But they DON'T. That's the point. The viewer, without being told
rl> what's hot about a new work, generally won't even look.
Irrelevant. The fact that some pretended critics play a role in giving
works snob appeal doesn't change the fact that the people who are
interested can look for themselves. A full time talented critic may be
better at it, but hardly essential, which was the claim.
rl> What if the critic's job is to drive up prices by lending credibility to
rl> the idea of the value of the work?
Then your definition of a critic is different from mine and, I
suspect, JDs.
rjc> The vast majority of the population challenge the social order and
rjc> values of their time every day, otherwise we would still be in the
rjc> dark ages.
rl> Right, and everybody's a nonconformist, too.
Yup. The `average' person is a myth.
rl> Care to tell me about this challenging that goes on every day?
rl> Name some names?
You don't know any couples who were living together unmarried when
that was not the done thing? It wasn't the glorious vanguard of the
party that changed that expectation, it was people. Boring, ordinary
slobs in the street like thee and me. I even know someone who liked
Mrs Thatcher, where I come from that is slightly rarer than having
three heads :-).
rjc> To whom is the critic essential? To the viewer? If the public in
rjc> general are not willing to tackle contemporary art they are hardly
rjc> likely to sit down and read criticism of it.
rl> But, having read crit/publicity, they are armed to "appreciate" it, and
rl> can understand its "themes," so when they see it, they can feel that
rl> they have a relationship to it.
`That turns out not to be the case'...
The public in general don't read the publicity either. No matter how
hard the gallaries sell Jergun T. Purthwinkel, Mr and Mrs Smith will
buy a print of The Hay Wain.
rl> Art, as far as the museums and galleries and private owners go, is
rl> what critics SAY is art. This stuff doesn't get voted in in
rl> general elections, you know.
But `as far as the museums and galleries' are concerned is not
relevant to anything. The private owners are still buying the Hay
Wain. The investors are the ones guided by the pseudo critics and they
are irrelevant. Who cares whether the Japanese are buying up Picasso
to keep in safes, anyone who wants to can buy a print of it for a
fiver and laugh all the way to the bank.
rl> Seriously, how DO we find art these days?
Do you want the arty answer or the true one?
A)rty: I walk down the street an there it is.
B)elievable: Cues from friends, sometimes even from the
net. Sometimes I like the cover art or the name.
jd> Thus the artist, and his interperator the critic, are perhaps
jd> among the few people who can be relied on for some sort of
jd> intuitive understanding of our contemporary situation.
rjc> I think (hope rather) that you underestimate the man on the Clapham
rjc> omnibus. The only support I can cite is the fact that book shops find
rjc> it profitable to stock paperbacks of Burroughs and Pynchion along with
rjc> Cartland and Archer and that Tippet and Riley share the shelves with
rjc> Madona and Vanilla Ice.
rl> Hardly the point.
On the contrary, _precisely_ the point. People spend their beer money
on this stuff. That, to me, is an indication they get something from
it. Some of them no doubt just buy it for decoration, but a steady
trade in Finnigans Wake indicates to me a public for it.
rjc> But what would I know, I just read for fun, Burroughs is fun Cartland
rjc> isn't.
rl> Not the case for about 95% of the reading public.
Not even BC has that kind of readership :-).
--
r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk Paradise is exactly like where you are right now.
Only much, _much_ better!
- Laurie Anderson `Language is a Virus'
Peter Kendell
The transatlantic carrier pigeons were on strike over the weekend, so this
is a bit late...
In <84...@idunno.Princeton.EDU> ro...@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
>In article <2...@sneezy.tcom.stc.co.uk> pe...@tcom.stc.co.uk (Peter Kendell) writes:
>>It's this. That many branches of the arts became inaccessible to the general
>>public in the 20th Century, approximately coincidentally with a movement we
>>might call 'modernism'.
>>For example:
>>
> Oil painting (particularly non-representational)
>> Sculpture (ditto)
>> Poetry
>> Architecture
>> Music (It was a discussion in rec.music.classical that prompted
>> this, particulary after Roger Lustig said that he considered
>> the canon to be extinct. He mentioned oil painting as well.)
>OK, hold it right there. I did NOT say that. The canon is very much
>with us, and very much alive. It's just that we're not composing works
>and putting them in it anymore. There are smaller, subsidiary canons,
>some relating to new music, but they tend to seem pretty temporary to me
>me for the most part.
>I was, in fact, musing on the EXPLICIT nature of the CLOSURE of the
>canon that was created only recently (1840-1910 or so); that we consider
>a certain set (Bach to Mahler) central to our lives, even though it
>keeps growing older and more distant in real time. Metaphysically
>speaking, it ISN'T growing older -- and we're not putting new works in
>it, either. (We seem to be adding some OLD ones...)
OK, Roger, sorry if I misrepresented you. But I did want to credit you with
starting me off on this train of thought (in r.m.c.)
>> Dance
>Huh? Dance has exploded as an independent medium in this century. Its
>canon IS the only set of Modernist music that's really gotten accepted.
>Modern dance is, in a way, an exception to the isolation of Modernism.
Hmmm... The general public (whoever *s/he* is) still thinks, IMHO, that
proper dance == pointe shoes and tutus and the rest is just dirty dancing.
I don't think that the set of contemporary dance fans overlaps very greatly
with the balletomanes.
>>In each of these categories it's possible to find exceptions where
>>'modernist' pieces have gained general acceptance. More likely not,
>>however.
>It also depends on your definition of Modernism. Do you go back to
>Baudelaire? Is Wilde a modernist?
Is Joyce? Henry James?
>>BTW, post-modernism in the various art-forms I've mentioned above strikes me
>>more often than not to mean lots of bits of pre-modern that have nostalgic
>>associations for the general public lashed together to make something that
>>sells.
>That's what it FEELS like. I htink the idea behind it is at least
>partially the abandonment of the old-fashioned Modernist (!) ideas on
>art, Classicism, posterity, uniqueness, etc.
Well, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... Seriously, though, a
lot of so-called postmodernism is rather like a jeans commercial. Take one
pretty boy, add a '60s classic on the soundtrack and you've got a sale (also
a record re-release). Comfortably old, reassuringly recycled. Where's the
self-confidence that was such a characteristic feature of modernism gone
to? In the field of architecture, for example, why are fake wooden beams
(or Grecian columns, or simulated Georgian styles) considered witty details
in present-day buildings but a Tudorbethan suburban semi is held to be in
bourgeois bad taste (though extremely popular with the bourgeois)?
>>that's not tonal. He or she is unlikely to object to 'modern' novels for
>>being "too hard to read" or "something my five-year-old could have done."
>Depends on how you define "modern." Is Hemingway a Modern? Or is it
>just that the mainstream novel never got marginalized? That the things
>CONCOMITANT to modernism never happened to it?
So why didn't it get marginalised? Could it be that the physical
relationship of book and reader, the fact that you hold the object in your
hands in a way that is not duplicated in other art forms (from the POV of
the, for want of a better word, audience) affects the way we regard it?
>Movies, and even TV, didn't displace the FUNCTION of the novel, though
>they may have affected sales and some reader behavior. Novels aren't
>movies, nor are they TV. Movies are actually a lot more like symphonies
>or operas...
Good point.
>But reading is still the only one you do over time and at your own pace.
Depends on the book. Sometimes the darn things just take over! BTW, I
would say that you can usually take your own time over a picture or
sculpture, wouldn't you, even if you can't take it home?
>What IS modernism in a movie? In a novel? In music?
Now *this* is a good question. It's easier, I think, to answer by quoting
examples than by trying to define principles.
Peter
John McCarthy
thesis is that modern art reached a point where much of it
existed to illustrate theories of art. The point has some plausibility,
and the book is extremely funny - except perhaps to people to whom
the doctrines he makes fun of are sacred.
Michael Turner
A story about Andy Warhol that I heard in the late sixties: he went to an
art auction, dipped a scrap of wallpaper into a bucket of red paint, and
held it up for bids. The final figure (from memory): $7,000. A fair chunk
of change now, not to mention back then.
A vague memory from a documentary about the Rockefellers: Nelson, gesturing
at some hideous sculpture, commenting vaguely about how he liked that sort of
thing. Anyone who knows much about NR knows that his was a mind of rather
low caliber. Just what was it that he liked? The "theory of art" behind the
hideous sculpture? Unlikely.
I think the role of the critic is that of power broker between the artists
and the patrons. (The art *dealers* are only commodity brokers.) The very
rich are different from you and me--they have money, but sometimes not a
whole lot else upstairs. Maybe the one who generated the family fortune
was fairly sharp, but he certainly didn't waste the early years of his
life studying art. And his children, and their children, will be scattered
over the usual bell curve of abilities.
What does one do? One can't buy talent and install it in one's brain.
But one can buy the products of talent and install them in one's living
room(s), and in the plazas of one's buildings. But what to buy? How
do you know you're not buying junk (especially when so much of it looks
like junk)? This is where critics come in. They can tell you what is
pure art, and the purest (coolest, hippest) art is art about art by artists
for artists, as filtered for you through the trained and discerning tastes
of art critics, of course. Why waste your time and money on anything else?
Especially when you have so much money and so little time?
I haven't read Wolfe's book, but I suspect that this is the gist of it.
My girlfriend goes to a San Francisco art school, and gets whiffs of this
mentality all the time. I can only imagine how much more ridiculous it
is in New York.
---
Michael Turner
tur...@tis.llnl.gov
Daniel Read
Is this the same as saying that the book appeals to those lowbrows who
adhere to Wolfe's ideology?
daniel
Evelyn C. Leeper
> universities? How many in the general trade?
To put this in some sort of historical perspective (which seems like what we're
doing anyway), what percentage of the public ever supported "art" (whatever
that is)? What percentage of people in Spain bought DON QUIXOTE in a given
year in the Seventeenth or Eighteenth Centuries? (Or now, for that matter.)
What percentage of the public bought MOBY DICK? And those are much more
accessible than FINNEGANS WAKE.
Art has traditionally been supported by the few, not the many. The problem now
is that the few have abdicated their role as "patrons of the arts" and there's
no one left to support people trying to create art.
Just MHO, of course.
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or e...@mtgzy.att.com
--
"Why can't they have gay people in the army? Personally, I think they are
just afraid of a thousand gay guys with M16s going, "Who'd you call a faggot?"
--John Stewart
Roger Lustig
>In article <85...@idunno.Princeton.EDU>, Roger Lustig (rl) writes:
>In article <RJC.91Ap...@brodie.cstr.ed.ac.uk> r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) writes:
>rjc> Isn't `wholly dependent' a little strong? If all the critics were to
>rjc> drop dead tomorrow and no one came forward to replace them would all
>rjc> `modern' art (whatever that means now) judder to a halt?
>rl> Yes. Who would promote the stuff?
>Promotion may be essential to the business of selling and showing art,
>that hardly makes it essential for creating it. I think you have you
>sarcasm knob up a little high.
Au contraire! How many artists would put up with the life they lead if
there were no prospect of either fame OR fortune at the other end? I'nm
quite serious.
>rjc> critics job is to help the viewer, then the viewer could do that job
>rjc> for themselves.
>rl> But they DON'T. That's the point. The viewer, without being told
>rl> what's hot about a new work, generally won't even look.
>Irrelevant. The fact that some pretended critics play a role in giving
>works snob appeal doesn't change the fact that the people who are
>interested can look for themselves. A full time talented critic may be
>better at it, but hardly essential, which was the claim.
That they CAN look is not the point. They DON'T, in most cases.
And critics give more than snob appeal; don't YOU oversimplify. Much
art NEEDS a critic to complete it; it's that simple. Without a critique
of some sort, the work is somehow not sufficiently evocative or
expressive or whatever it takes.
A mellower way of looking at it is to say that critics are interpreters;
and that most people like pre-interpreted art. How much interpretation
of their own they add is a matter of debate.
>rl> What if the critic's job is to drive up prices by lending credibility to
>rl> the idea of the value of the work?
>Then your definition of a critic is different from mine and, I
>suspect, JDs.
Truer word was never spoke. I think this is indeed PART of the critic's
job.
>rjc> The vast majority of the population challenge the social order and
>rjc> values of their time every day, otherwise we would still be in the
>rjc> dark ages.
>rl> Right, and everybody's a nonconformist, too.
>Yup. The `average' person is a myth.
Not when it comes to appreciating fine art. The average person simply
DOESN'T look at new stuff, and many of those who do are driven by
critical response. The rest of the population is a tiny fragment.
The INTERESTING part, of course, since you and I are in it 8-), but a
tiny fragment.
>rl> Care to tell me about this challenging that goes on every day?
>rl> Name some names?
>You don't know any couples who were living together unmarried when
>that was not the done thing? It wasn't the glorious vanguard of the
>party that changed that expectation, it was people. Boring, ordinary
>slobs in the street like thee and me. I even know someone who liked
>Mrs Thatcher, where I come from that is slightly rarer than having
>three heads :-).
Hardly the point, now, is it? You do admit that there ARE "done things"
in a given society -- and how could there be if they weren't actually
DONE?
>rjc> To whom is the critic essential? To the viewer? If the public in
>rjc> general are not willing to tackle contemporary art they are hardly
>rjc> likely to sit down and read criticism of it.
>rl> But, having read crit/publicity, they are armed to "appreciate" it, and
>rl> can understand its "themes," so when they see it, they can feel that
>rl> they have a relationship to it.
>`That turns out not to be the case'...
>The public in general don't read the publicity either. No matter how
>hard the gallaries sell Jergun T. Purthwinkel, Mr and Mrs Smith will
>buy a print of The Hay Wain.
AH, but those who DO make it as far as the galleries, what will THEY buy
-- or even look at, or even buy a catalog of? We're talking about the
middle ground here, if not the middle class.
>rl> Art, as far as the museums and galleries and private owners go, is
>rl> what critics SAY is art. This stuff doesn't get voted in in
>rl> general elections, you know.
>But `as far as the museums and galleries' are concerned is not
>relevant to anything. The private owners are still buying the Hay
>Wain. The investors are the ones guided by the pseudo critics and they
>are irrelevant. Who cares whether the Japanese are buying up Picasso
>to keep in safes, anyone who wants to can buy a print of it for a
>fiver and laugh all the way to the bank.
OK: we've gotten to reproductions. This is a different topic, and NOT
anything to do with the topic of Modernism, of art in our century, etc.,
unless you care to defend the (plausible) arugment that reproduction of
the Hay Wain has CAUSED the crisis in modern painting.
Now, which reproductions of 20th C art do we buy? Yes, let's include
Christina's World.
And have you come around to the argument that 20th C art (the stuff
being made today) is utterly irrelevant to the public conception of art
as a whole? Now you're closer to where I was, but from a different
angle; but remember that it was NEW ART that we were talking about in
the first place; unless you're applying the argument about reproduction
to this, please be aware that you're off the topic. 8-)
>rl> Seriously, how DO we find art these days?
>Do you want the arty answer or the true one?
> A)rty: I walk down the street an there it is.
> B)elievable: Cues from friends, sometimes even from the
> net. Sometimes I like the cover art or the name.
I think the cover art on the net STINKS. 8-)
OK: revised question: how do we find NEW art? Which art happens to BE
down the street for us to find when we walk? Is there a reason for
this?
>jd> Thus the artist, and his interperator the critic, are perhaps
>jd> among the few people who can be relied on for some sort of
>jd> intuitive understanding of our contemporary situation.
>rjc> I think (hope rather) that you underestimate the man on the Clapham
>rjc> omnibus. The only support I can cite is the fact that book shops find
>rjc> it profitable to stock paperbacks of Burroughs and Pynchion along with
>rjc> Cartland and Archer and that Tippet and Riley share the shelves with
>rjc> Madona and Vanilla Ice.
>rl> Hardly the point.
>On the contrary, _precisely_ the point. People spend their beer money
>on this stuff. That, to me, is an indication they get something from
>it. Some of them no doubt just buy it for decoration, but a steady
>trade in Finnigans Wake indicates to me a public for it.
OK, how many copies of the Wake ARE sold each year? How many at
universities? How many in the general trade?
>rjc> But what would I know, I just read for fun, Burroughs is fun Cartland
>rjc> isn't.
>rl> Not the case for about 95% of the reading public.
>Not even BC has that kind of readership :-).
No, but most people would read one before the other...
Roger
Jim Mann
>
> To put this in some sort of historical perspective (which seems like what
we're
> doing anyway), what percentage of the public ever supported "art" (whatever
> that is)? What percentage of people in Spain bought DON QUIXOTE in a given
> year in the Seventeenth or Eighteenth Centuries? (Or now, for that matter.)
> What percentage of the public bought MOBY DICK? And those are much more
> accessible than FINNEGANS WAKE.
>
> Art has traditionally been supported by the few, not the many. The problem
now
> is that the few have abdicated their role as "patrons of the arts" and
there's
> no one left to support people trying to create art.
>
Two points.
First of all, I think the percentage of the READING public that read either
_Don Quixote_ or _Moby Dick_ was much higher than the percentage of the
reading public that reads most modernist literature. A large percentage
of the reading public (or even the 'literate reading public' to distinguish
those who really like reading literature and not just Robert Ludlum or
Danielle Steele) does not read much of modernist literature. I'd venture
to say that more people NOW read _Don Quixote_ than read _Gravity's Rainbow_.
Yes, the percentage of the public who read Dostoyevski when he was first
published was small since much of the public either couldn't read or
couldn't afford books and perhaps only read the Bible and the newspapers.
However, most of the reading, educated public DID read the major works of
their time. This is not true today.
Secondly, I don't think "the few" have abdicated their roles as patrons of
the arts. These same few in the past patronized Dostoyevski, Dickens, Tolstoy,
and so forth because the liked and were reached by what these artists
were doing. Much modernist literature does not reach "the few" today, and
thus they don't patronize them. I think it is the artists who have adbicated
THEIR roles, which was not to write (or compose or paint) whatever they
felt like at the moment, but to write things that would reach other people.
By the way, I don't think this is true of all modernists works, though
I think it is true for most of the recent ones. Joyce and Faulkner remain
powerful and readable. I think the problems really begin with their followers,
who copied their surface, who built on their stylistic techniques, without
having their heart. _Ulysses_ is a masterpiece not because (or not just
because) of Joyce's style and use of language, but because of its deep
insight into the human condition.
Chuck Smythe
>However, most of the reading, educated public DID read the major works of
>their time. This is not true today.
I suspect that, a century or two ago, the "major works of their time" amounted
to a new book or two a year. These days, that many allegedly major works are
published every _day_.
Here is a perspective from one who doesn't read -say- Pynchon or Calvino: it
is not because I am uninterested. It is because it is physically impossible
to read more than a small fraction of major new works, and I am so interested
in seeing what McPhee, Gould, Tuchman, and their ilk have to say that I never
get around to the novelists. When _Moby Dick_ was published, it would have
been possible to do both.
Chuck Smythe
Richard Caley
rjc> Irrelevant. The fact that some pretended critics play a role in giving
rjc> works snob appeal doesn't change the fact that the people who are
rjc> interested can look for themselves.
rl> And critics give more than snob appeal; don't YOU oversimplify. Much
rl> art NEEDS a critic to complete it; it's that simple. Without a critique
rl> of some sort, the work is somehow not sufficiently evocative or
rl> expressive or whatever it takes.
You keep swapping between two ideas of what a critic does. (a) The guy
who writes the blurb in a galary catalogue or a newspaper column. (b)
the professional viewer, the person who gets payed for viewing and
interpreting works.
The first I would call a reviewer and there are many more of them and
it is inarguable that they are fairly central to the business of
marketing art. They are also incredably useful if you can find one
whose tastes reflect yours.
The second is the critic as the word is usually used. I think there is
an argument that if `Without a critique [...] the work is somehow not
sufficiently evocative' then the work is very poor, the pretended
artist is supplying nothing but inspiration for the `critic' who is
producing the actual art, disguised as critique.
rl> What if the critic's job is to drive up prices by lending credibility to
rl> the idea of the value of the work?
rjc> Then your definition of a critic is different from mine and, I
rjc> suspect, JDs.
Which is to say what you call a critic here is a
reviewer-come-investmant analyst.
rjc> The `average' person is a myth.
rl> Not when it comes to appreciating fine art.
Define `fine art' and I may take that statment seriously. If `fine
art' is simply `that which is not apreciated by the hoi-polloi[*]'
then your argument is circular.
rl> The average person simply DOESN'T look at new stuff, and many of
rl> those who do are driven by critical response.
As a reality check on this I have to point out that I know _very_ few
people who ever look at criticism (for `few' read, possibly none). I
know quite a few who buy at least reasonably contemporary art, so the
statment seems unlikely to me. Again, reviews are a different matter.
rjc> You don't know any couples who were living together unmarried when
rjc> that was not the done thing? It wasn't the glorious vanguard of the
rjc> party that changed that expectation, it was people.
rl> Hardly the point, now, is it? You do admit that there ARE "done things"
rl> in a given society -- and how could there be if they weren't actually
rl> DONE?
Circular again. Someone did it first, someone folowed, at some point
it becomes accepted. Given the huge intertia of societies, there are
vast numbers of people doing things which are notionally unacceptable
all the time.
rl> But, having read crit/publicity, they are armed to "appreciate" it, and
rl> can understand its "themes," so when they see it, they can feel that
rl> they have a relationship to it.
rjc> The public in general don't read the publicity either. No matter how
rjc> hard the gallaries sell Jergun T. Purthwinkel, Mr and Mrs Smith will
rjc> buy a print of The Hay Wain.
rl> AH, but those who DO make it as far as the galleries, what will THEY buy
rl> -- or even look at, or even buy a catalog of?
The Hay Wain... I saw an estimate of the number of prints of THW in
Britain once, I can't remember the number but it was truely
frightning, something like the statistics of the number of guns per
person in the US. You get the idea that you must have two or three
lying around unnoticed somewhere to make up the numbers. Just imagine
opening the wardrobe one day and coming accross a Coinstable. Shudder.
rl> We're talking about the middle ground here, if not the middle
rl> class.
The middle classes are the worst, its the middle classes who buy all
those Constable prints. Now, times change, maybe they are all buying
Van Gough now, or whatever is currently considered least common
denominator. The younger ones are probably on Warhol.
rjc> But `as far as the museums and galleries' are concerned is not
rjc> relevant to anything. [...] anyone who wants to can buy a print
rjc> of it for a fiver and laugh all the way to the bank.
rl> OK: we've gotten to reproductions. This is a different topic, and NOT
rl> anything to do with the topic of Modernism, of art in our century,
rl> etc.,
Ah, but it is. It's the art business that promotes the absurdity that
there is something special about the original which would not be
captured by an exact reproduction (obviously poor reproduction is the
rule, but only because people will not in general pay the price for a
good reproduction, which is weird). It is that art business which has
a stake in the kind of pseudo-critic you are saying is the real critic
and it is for _them_ that such `criticism' is essential. Just as
`Sudso washes whiter', `Jergun T. Purthwinkel reaches the depths of
the human psyche other painters can not reach'.
And in some mediums, reproduction is the norm. Books are printed by
the thousand, recordings are churned out endlessly, the Berlin Phil.
does the Emperor Concerto every other night (or so it seems). (notice
original/reproduction is independent of live/recorded).
rl> And have you come around to the argument that 20th C art (the stuff
rl> being made today) is utterly irrelevant to the public conception of art
rl> as a whole?
No, I have stayed (I think) on the argumnet that 20th C art is
`relevant' or not wholy independent of whether the critics all get
writers block. If you wish to argue whether it _is_ `relevant', you
may need someone else as I have never worked out what the word means.
rl> Now you're closer to where I was, but from a different angle; but
rl> remember that it was NEW ART that we were talking about in the
rl> first place;
No, the original statment was about `Modernism, Postmodernism and the
Novel' as the subject says. Modernism is hardly new, it wasn't close
to new when my mother was born.
rl> I think the cover art on the net STINKS. 8-)
Need the new Sudso Corp patented newsreader, ``plumbs the depths...
rl> OK: revised question: how do we find NEW art? Which art happens to BE
rl> down the street for us to find when we walk? Is there a reason for
rl> this?
Generally, a couple of guitarists, 10 guys who can't play the bagpipes
conning money out of tourists who think that's how they are supposed
to sound, a street preacher of some denomination or political party,
someone drawing on the pavement, a jazz band in a pub ...
Presumably the reason is that that is the sort of person who lives
down my street (ok, I stretch things, you have to get to Princes
Street to find the bagpipers). If I lived in Saltzburg I'd expect to
hear more Mozart, though I heard a piper in Antwerp (awful enough to
make me thing of Edinburgh...).
rjc> People spend their beer money on this stuff. That, to me, is an
rjc> indication they get something from it.
rl> OK, how many copies of the Wake ARE sold each year? How many at
rl> universities? How many in the general trade?
The question relevant to the point in hand is how many copies of FW re
sold for each copy of a critique of FW.
rjc> Burroughs is fun Cartland isn't.
rl> Not the case for about 95% of the reading public.
rjc> Not even BC has that kind of readership :-).
rl> No, but most people would read one before the other...
Most people would run a mile rather than read either.
[*] Classics pedants beware, that is an English phrase, any
resemblance to greek is irrelevant.
--
r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk Stepping out of the page into the sensual world.
- Kate Bush
Roger Lustig
>
>rjc> Irrelevant. The fact that some pretended critics play a role in giving
>rjc> works snob appeal doesn't change the fact that the people who are
>rjc> interested can look for themselves.
>rl> And critics give more than snob appeal; don't YOU oversimplify. Much
>rl> art NEEDS a critic to complete it; it's that simple. Without a critique
>rl> of some sort, the work is somehow not sufficiently evocative or
>rl> expressive or whatever it takes.
>You keep swapping between two ideas of what a critic does. (a) The guy
>who writes the blurb in a galary catalogue or a newspaper column. (b)
>the professional viewer, the person who gets payed for viewing and
>interpreting works.
I think they're part of the same process -- a process that has become an
integral part of the visual-art world. From the curator to the flack,
the critique of art has become part of the viewing process. (The most
blatant sector of this is, of course, the process of choosing works or
artists to promote and display; one thing I'm very sure of is that
people don't buy art by looking in the Yellow Pages under Artists and
going studio-hopping. The art goes through quite a process before it
reaches the galleries or the shows.
>The first I would call a reviewer and there are many more of them and
>it is inarguable that they are fairly central to the business of
>marketing art. They are also incredably useful if you can find one
>whose tastes reflect yours.
Hmmm... but the gallery catalogue stuff is written by pretty serious
folk, sometimes; we're talking historians and curators and the like. We
may be up to three or four different jobs by now.
>The second is the critic as the word is usually used. I think there is
>an argument that if `Without a critique [...] the work is somehow not
>sufficiently evocative' then the work is very poor, the pretended
>artist is supplying nothing but inspiration for the `critic' who is
>producing the actual art, disguised as critique.
Well, first of all, note that by now, critique is being accepted as an
art form of its own -- see, this discussion DOES have something to do
with literature, folks.
Critiques are texts, texts about something or other, either another text
or a pseudo-text like a painting or a sonata. Reading texts is a more
fundamental esthetic experience to us than ever before, it would seem;
this may have to do with the vast diversity of art and the lack of
unified cultural contexts/heritages in which we place "our" art from the
get-go.
Yes, one can make that argument, but it requires that one assume that
art has, or ought to have, the same place in our lives as it did a
hundred years ago, and also that we USE art for the same purposes as we
used to.
I think it isn't, it oughtn't, and we don't; my interest is in how we
actually DO go about using and thinking about art.
>rjc> The `average' person is a myth.
>rl> Not when it comes to appreciating fine art.
>Define `fine art' and I may take that statment seriously. If `fine
>art' is simply `that which is not apreciated by the hoi-polloi[*]'
>then your argument is circular.
Not my point at all. Much art is TARGETED at a set of "average
viewers," a set that is NOT congruent with "the man in the street."
There is often a GROUP of intended viewers whose interests are known to,
and considered by, artist and/or critic.
>rl> The average person simply DOESN'T look at new stuff, and many of
>rl> those who do are driven by critical response.
>As a reality check on this I have to point out that I know _very_ few
>people who ever look at criticism (for `few' read, possibly none). I
>know quite a few who buy at least reasonably contemporary art, so the
>statment seems unlikely to me. Again, reviews are a different matter.
But where do the reviewers (if they are not legit critics) get their
ideas from? Very often, they ARE the same people; other times, they are
the students of the critics, or avid readers of them. That one has
not read Adorno or Baudrillard or Leavis or Pater does not mean that
some of their ideas have not affected one's judgment, or become part of
their consciousness over time.
>rjc> You don't know any couples who were living together unmarried when
>rjc> that was not the done thing? It wasn't the glorious vanguard of the
>rjc> party that changed that expectation, it was people.
>rl> Hardly the point, now, is it? You do admit that there ARE "done things"
>rl> in a given society -- and how could there be if they weren't actually
>rl> DONE?
>Circular again. Someone did it first, someone folowed, at some point
>it becomes accepted. Given the huge intertia of societies, there are
>vast numbers of people doing things which are notionally unacceptable
>all the time.
You were arguing that almost everyone was doing the anti-"done" thing
every day. Sure, the "done thing" is an evolving concept, but ACTIVE
revolt against it isn't quite as common as you suggested before (in a
passage now deleted).
Besides, what are these inertia-laden "societies," if not the majority
of people?
Not circular, just evolving. One may be a follower within a smaller
group that itself is behaving in a "minority" way. This is far more
common than actually LEADING such a group, or influencing others to
follow one's original lead, don't you think?
>rl> But, having read crit/publicity, they are armed to "appreciate" it, and
>rl> can understand its "themes," so when they see it, they can feel that
>rl> they have a relationship to it.
>rjc> The public in general don't read the publicity either. No matter how
>rjc> hard the gallaries sell Jergun T. Purthwinkel, Mr and Mrs Smith will
>rjc> buy a print of The Hay Wain.
>rl> AH, but those who DO make it as far as the galleries, what will THEY buy
>rl> -- or even look at, or even buy a catalog of?
>The Hay Wain... I saw an estimate of the number of prints of THW in
>Britain once, I can't remember the number but it was truely
>frightning, something like the statistics of the number of guns per
>person in the US. You get the idea that you must have two or three
>lying around unnoticed somewhere to make up the numbers. Just imagine
>opening the wardrobe one day and coming accross a Coinstable. Shudder.
There, there, it'll be OK. On the other hand, you might htink twice
before visiting over here; most of us just know Constable as a good
painter!
>rl> We're talking about the middle ground here, if not the middle
>rl> class.
>The middle classes are the worst, its the middle classes who buy all
>those Constable prints. Now, times change, maybe they are all buying
>Van Gough now, or whatever is currently considered least common
>denominator. The younger ones are probably on Warhol.
Van Gough? The great Scottish painter? (8-) 8-) -- I'll stop now;
spelling flames aren't nice. I know.)
On the other hand, if you think the younger ones ANYWHERE are "on"
Warhol in any number, I have news for you.
(Which Warhol? Soup can? Taylor Mead's Ass? the SX-70 photos?
Conceivably a Marilyn print, but I know more 40-year-olds with those.)
>rjc> But `as far as the museums and galleries' are concerned is not
>rjc> relevant to anything. [...] anyone who wants to can buy a print
>rjc> of it for a fiver and laugh all the way to the bank.
>rl> OK: we've gotten to reproductions. This is a different topic, and NOT
>rl> anything to do with the topic of Modernism, of art in our century,
>rl> etc.,
>Ah, but it is. It's the art business that promotes the absurdity that
>there is something special about the original which would not be
>captured by an exact reproduction (obviously poor reproduction is the
>rule, but only because people will not in general pay the price for a
>good reproduction, which is weird).
Why is it weird? Most people believe, as you ALMOST do, that ANY
reproduction is "almost like being there!" The price differential does
not justify the extra value added to the viewing that will actually get
done, which (esp. in the case of the Hay Wain, etc.) is of a very low
level.
On the other hand, let's STOP RIGHT HERE. You mentioned van Gogh a
moment ago. What's an "Exact reproduction" of one of HIS paintings
like? I've certainly never seen one that could do impasto, or even get
all the colors right.
Next, do you REALLY BELIEVE that paintings are these timeless,
context-free objects that are the same no matter where you look at them?
That a van Eyck in your living room is like a van Eyck in a book of all
24 or so, is the same as a van Eyck in a museum showing of one or
several, is the same as seeing the Altar of the Mystic Lamb behind glass
in St. Bavon, is the same as seeing it in the choir of that church,
where it hasn't been for a century?
They do have something in common, but they also have a good deal of
difference. To me, a catalog is a souvenir, a memento of paintings I
saw; I always buy it after seeing a show -- if I buy it at all.
In most cases, with representational and non-rpresentational art, there
IS an environment for the painting. I wouldn't call one viewing right
and another wrong, but some viewings, by giving an environment of
history or other paintings or contrast or music or lighting or whatever,
are going to be quite different from others.
Now, in the music business (which is my home turf), the issue is much
clearer, as usual. (Eliot: a classic ewxample of your theorem that
esthetic problems in the other arts are often trivial when applied to
music.)
Reproduction so vastly changes the terms of reception that one CAN'T
pretend that live and Memorex are the same thing. Michael Flanders put
it most pithily in his "Song of Reproduction" when he asked, "Why would
I WANT an orchestra in my living room?"
Now, there are all kinds of old-fashioned bourgeois reasons why one
would want exactly that, or at least a daughter playing the piano, but
there IS a difference between going to the concert with a thousand
others and sitting at home. Not only the social difference, but the
fact that one has taken a performance, a one-time engagement iwth a
work, and preserved it as though in amber (we use other resins, but the
effect is the same). Time stops for this performance, as it were, and
we can return to the moment in time, not of the composition (impossible
anyway) but of the recording.
And, as long as performers have personalities, the reproduction is not
the "real thing." As soon as we get to vocal music, let alone opera,
the issues of gesture, etc. get entirely out of hand.
> It is that art business which has
>a stake in the kind of pseudo-critic you are saying is the real critic
>and it is for _them_ that such `criticism' is essential. Just as
>`Sudso washes whiter', `Jergun T. Purthwinkel reaches the depths of
>the human psyche other painters can not reach'.
Damn. I was going to use that slogan for my next paper, which is about
the music theorist Johann David Heinichen. 8-)
(Translation for non-Brits: Heineken beer used to (may still, for all I
know) run ads with the slogan: Heineken refreshes the parts other beers
cannot reach.)
But where does this evaluation of JTP come from? We've had that one for
centuries! The Grand tour every gentleman took involved SEEING all the
JTPs of Venice and Rome and Florence and Paris, and getting one's psyche
worked over in the proper way.
>And in some mediums, reproduction is the norm. Books are printed by
>the thousand, recordings are churned out endlessly, the Berlin Phil.
Books are a fairly old medium; but not THAT old. Our
reproduction-culture is based on books, of course; they are the norm for
our reception of other arts. We don't place much value on a specific
exemplar of a book; any one will do. Only scholars and a few collectors
really care beyond that.
And books are WRITTEN for reproduction. They are nothing without it.
Can you say that of the production of a Bach cantata, or a Petipa
ballet, or even a Constable? Did he paint the Hay Wain for eventual
reproduction, or for a fairly specific purpose?
Cervantes wrote Don Quixote for reproduction.
Note that we're finally back to the topic: the survival of the novel.
The means of production of novels hasn't changed much; and movies
haven't offered the sort of reproduced experience that books, for a long
time, have. The vcr and video shop offer a slight change to this, but
not much.
Records are churned out endlessly. What would even someone of 30 years
ago say to the prospect of carrying your Discman along for your
matutinal three-mile jog? Loaded with Chopin? What does Chopin have to
do with jogging?
>does the Emperor Concerto every other night (or so it seems). (notice
Yes, funny thing. That's where I came IN! Why DO they do a piece from
1809? And not one from 1909 or 1969 or 1989? Or 1609?
Could it be that reproduction and so on have something to DO with the
choice of what we listen to, and not just where and when?
>original/reproduction is independent of live/recorded).
In music, yes. All performances are "reproductions," or, if you will,
"productions." In some cases, as with pop songs and computer-composed
pieces, there IS no "original"; the reproduction is the only thing
available, or, rather, the recording is the original itself.
>rl> And have you come around to the argument that 20th C art (the stuff
>rl> being made today) is utterly irrelevant to the public conception of art
>rl> as a whole?
>No, I have stayed (I think) on the argumnet that 20th C art is
>`relevant' or not wholy independent of whether the critics all get
>writers block. If you wish to argue whether it _is_ `relevant', you
>may need someone else as I have never worked out what the word means.
Well, I seem to see you being at least a little bit aware that our
notions of art (in almost all cases) derive from "classics" which are
NOT of our time. The Emperor Concerto. Constable, Van Gogh, and other
painters. These folks still DEFINE painting and music.
>rl> Now you're closer to where I was, but from a different angle; but
>rl> remember that it was NEW ART that we were talking about in the
>rl> first place;
>No, the original statment was about `Modernism, Postmodernism and the
>Novel' as the subject says. Modernism is hardly new, it wasn't close
>to new when my mother was born.
But it still FEELS new. Too new for most people. In music, the
progression from old to new that most people feel is from Monteverdi
(already too old) to Mahler. Anything else is in some way too new.
(Exaggeration; but you can fill in your own composers.)
There is a definite rupture in painting and music around 1900, a rupture
that defines "new" even today."
And when TODAY'S art gets added to the whole picture, we note that even
the "modernist" canon, which a good many people do deal with, doesn't
relate to this stuff anymore, and that the engagement with modernism
that took place in our grandparents' day has no modern analogue.
>rl> I think the cover art on the net STINKS. 8-)
>Need the new Sudso Corp patented newsreader, ``plumbs the depths...
And..... It Washes Clothes. (Norbert Smith, anyone?)
>rjc> People spend their beer money on this stuff. That, to me, is an
>rjc> indication they get something from it.
>rl> OK, how many copies of the Wake ARE sold each year? How many at
>rl> universities? How many in the general trade?
>The question relevant to the point in hand is how many copies of FW re
>sold for each copy of a critique of FW.
Why go by sales? At the universities, critiques are dispensed in
lectures, at a rate of a hundred recipients or more at a pop. On the
other hand, the Wake is a poor example, because most people DO tend to
read it with a crib such as the Skeleton Key or Tindall's Reader's Guide
to FW. I bet the number of those sold is pretty close to the number of
Wakes actually read most of the way through.
Roger
Mike Godwin
is the ability to show us things, both good and bad, that we
might otherwise not have seen.
This is certainly enough justification for their existence to me.
Richard Caley
[On the critic/reviewer distinction, I can't do better than Mike and
Dan'l have already]
rl> Yes, one can make that argument, but it requires that one assume that
rl> art has, or ought to have, the same place in our lives as it did a
rl> hundred years ago, and also that we USE art for the same purposes as we
rl> used to.
I didn't think you were that old, I'm certainly not. :-)
rl> I think it isn't, it oughtn't, and we don't; my interest is in how we
rl> actually DO go about using and thinking about art.
The major change that I can see is that many more people come into
contact with what the critics will call `art'. The distinction between
`art' and the general culture is much smaller. Certainly that is the
case in music, theatre and literature, I'm not so sure about the
visual arts. One can look at a spectrum from, say, Tippet at one end
to Maddona at the other and there is no place to put the line where
`real' art ends and folk art/craft begins. While not trivial, I think
it was easier 100 years ago. Which leads us to...
rjc> Define `fine art' and I may take that statment seriously. If `fine
rjc> art' is simply `that which is not apreciated by the hoi-polloi'
rjc> then your argument is circular.
rl> Not my point at all. Much art is TARGETED at a set of "average
rl> viewers," a set that is NOT congruent with "the man in the
rl> street."
But that _still_ only makes sense if you have a definition of `art' up
your sleeve. I'm not willing to accept `what the critics say is art'
because that just pushes the problem back a level, we have to decide
which critics to believe.
rl> The average person simply DOESN'T look at new stuff, and many of
rl> those who do are driven by critical response.
Ok, if I conceed that point (I don't believe it, but I think we have
reached an impasse and we may as well move on), that still does not
make the critic essential to the production or apreciation of art. The
critic or reviewer is a resource for the viewer. The critic may also
be a resource for the artist. The artist is essential, it seems
reasonable to say that the viewer is. The critic sems no more
essential than a biography of the artist (which might also help the
viewer get more from a piece).
rjc> Given the huge intertia of societies, there are vast numbers of
rjc> people doing things which are notionally unacceptable all the
rjc> time.
rl> You were arguing that almost everyone was doing the anti-"done" thing
rl> every day. Sure, the "done thing" is an evolving concept, but ACTIVE
rl> revolt against it isn't quite as common as you suggested before (in a
rl> passage now deleted).
I was suggesting that more or less everyone is doing _something_ which
is outside the norm for their society. Whether that is listening
to/reading/looking at some form of non-mainstream art or cooking
something weird or voting for the monster raving loonie party.
rl> There, there, it'll be OK. On the other hand, you might htink twice
rl> before visiting over here; most of us just know Constable as a good
rl> painter!
I always new the colonies were odd.
rl> Van Gough? The great Scottish painter? (8-) 8-) -- I'll stop now;
rl> spelling flames aren't nice. I know.)
People have been flaming my spelling since I learned to write
(assuming they think I have). Never made a difference yet.
rl> On the other hand, if you think the younger ones ANYWHERE are "on"
rl> Warhol in any number, I have news for you.
It was a guess, it's ages since I wandered through a university hall
of residence, so I can't tell who is the current wall filler with
the arty types (the science and engineering people are presumably
still on Rodney Mathews and whatsisname who draws top heavy women in
chainmail underwear).
rjc>Ah, but it is. It's the art business that promotes the absurdity that
rjc>there is something special about the original which would not be
rjc>captured by an exact reproduction (obviously poor reproduction is the
rjc>rule, but only because people will not in general pay the price for a
rjc>good reproduction, which is weird).
rl> Why is it weird? Most people believe, as you ALMOST do, that ANY
rl> reproduction is "almost like being there!" The price differential does
rl> not justify the extra value added to the viewing that will actually get
rl> done, which (esp. in the case of the Hay Wain, etc.) is of a very low
rl> level.
rl> On the other hand, let's STOP RIGHT HERE. You mentioned van Gogh a
rl> moment ago. What's an "Exact reproduction" of one of HIS paintings
rl> like? I've certainly never seen one that could do impasto, or even get
rl> all the colors right.
Would you be prepared to spen,say, $2000 on a reproduction? If not,
would you pay $2000 for an original vG (apart form the economic
incentive :-) )? $2000 is my guess for what it might cost to hire a
reasonably competant painter for the length of time necesary to
produce a good copy.
rl> Next, do you REALLY BELIEVE that paintings are these timeless,
rl> context-free objects that are the same no matter where you look at
rl> them?
You have me wrong here, it is the object I am saying can be
(realtively) easily reproduced, the context is obviosly different. Let
me change the example. If you had a choice of seeing the genuine
painting in a poor context or a good reproduction in a wonderful
setting, which would you choose? When someone pays funny money for a
Picasso they are presumably going to put it where they would have put
a reproduction if that were what they had.
rl. [on to music]
rl> And, as long as performers have personalities, the reproduction is not
rl> the "real thing." As soon as we get to vocal music, let alone opera,
rl> the issues of gesture, etc. get entirely out of hand.
Groan. At least I assume that was intensional. Otherwise it might be
best to seek surgery, accidental puns of that class may indicate some
kind of malignant sense of humour...
But in `classical' (for want of a better term) music, there _does_
seem to be an attempt to make different performances into
reproductions. They may not succeed, but they can come close. How many
times does the orchestra need to reherse a pice before they can do a
series of ten concerts all near enough the same to count as (perhaps
bad) reproductions?
rl> And books are WRITTEN for reproduction. They are nothing without it.
rl> Can you say that of the production of a Bach cantata, or a Petipa
rl> ballet, or even a Constable? Did he paint the Hay Wain for eventual
rl> reproduction, or for a fairly specific purpose?
You trying to trap me into the intentionalism debate? :-)
rl> Cervantes wrote Don Quixote for reproduction.
rl> Note that we're finally back to the topic: the survival of the novel.
rl> The means of production of novels hasn't changed much; and movies
rl> haven't offered the sort of reproduced experience that books, for a long
rl> time, have. The vcr and video shop offer a slight change to this, but
rl> not much.
Not suer about that. Films are produced for amss audiences. They are
produced to be shown identically to huge numbers of people all over
the world. They are produced to be seen by one person many times. With
a made-for-TV film, the distinction becomes even less certain.
rl> Records are churned out endlessly. What would even someone of 30 years
rl> ago say to the prospect of carrying your Discman along for your
rl> matutinal three-mile jog? Loaded with Chopin? What does Chopin have to
rl> do with jogging?
Both bore me silly :-)
rjc> does the Emperor Concerto every other night (or so it seems). (notice
rl> Yes, funny thing. That's where I came IN! Why DO they do a piece from
rl> 1809? And not one from 1909 or 1969 or 1989? Or 1609?
Hm, the date really isn't that important. The Four Seasons is just as
over done, so is Pomp and Circumstance. My flatmate brought in a
leaflet advertising a serise of concerts yesterday, we managed to name
more than half the pieces from the titles of the concerts. `A
Classical Spectacular`? Must have the 1812 and the firework music.
rl> Could it be that reproduction and so on have something to DO with the
rl> choice of what we listen to, and not just where and when?
In the case of the Emporer, I think there is a link to the price of
Picassos. The 19th C left us with an image of the noble artist
striving to perfect his (how many women composers/painters get treated
this way?) thingie. That gets us the magic of the piece of canvas _He_
actually touched and the importance of those pieces which have gotten
into the class of `great works'. It also means that works which
enable the virtuoso to show off have a bigger place in the list of
overplayed works than things where there is no `artist' on stage to be
the center of attension.
rl> In music, yes. All performances are "reproductions," or, if you will,
rl> "productions." In some cases, as with pop songs and computer-composed
rl> pieces, there IS no "original"; the reproduction is the only thing
rl> available, or, rather, the recording is the original itself.
I'm not sure what is the original in most cases in music. For instance
what is the original of `The Planets'? Is it the first performance
where Adrian Bolt and Holst couldn't swing enough money to have a
choir so bits got left out?
rjc> No, I have stayed (I think) on the argumnet that 20th C art is
rjc> `relevant' or not wholy independent of whether the critics all get
rjc> writers block. If you wish to argue whether it _is_ `relevant', you
rjc> may need someone else as I have never worked out what the word means.
rl> Well, I seem to see you being at least a little bit aware that our
rl> notions of art (in almost all cases) derive from "classics" which are
rl> NOT of our time. The Emperor Concerto. Constable, Van Gogh, and other
rl> painters. These folks still DEFINE painting and music.
No, _I_ define painting and music. Now to do that I do have to rely on
past experience and so there will be a cannon of work which defines my
idea of music, but I doubt that is the same as that for anybody else.
For instance, for me The Rite of Spring, The Well Tempred Clavier and
The Dreaming are important landmarks, The Emporer is just a vaguely
interesting byway. To me almost all art is new, apart from all the
Wagner which gets used on adverts I suppose. When someone played
Hildregard of Bingen(spelling optional) to me, that was as new as
Salome Dances for Peace.
rl> There is a definite rupture in painting and music around 1900, a rupture
rl> that defines "new" even today."
But is it bigger than the rupture that defines `romantic' or
`classical'? I'm not sure what you are saying here.
rl> And when TODAY'S art gets added to the whole picture, we note that even
rl> the "modernist" canon, which a good many people do deal with, doesn't
rl> relate to this stuff anymore, and that the engagement with modernism
rl> that took place in our grandparents' day has no modern analogue.
Are you sure. It seems to me that this is just an effect of the fact
that modernism is now old hat. It looks like the world engaged
modernism and can now deal with it because we have 20-20 hindsight.
Maybe 50 years from now the things which now seem to be passing the
world by unrecognised will be being used as film music and quoted in
adverts.
rjc> The question relevant to the point in hand is how many copies of FW are
rjc> sold for each copy of a critique of FW.
rl> Why go by sales? At the universities, critiques are dispensed in
rl> lectures, at a rate of a hundred recipients or more at a pop. On the
rl> other hand, the Wake is a poor example, because most people DO tend to
rl> read it with a crib such as the Skeleton Key or Tindall's Reader's Guide
rl> to FW. I bet the number of those sold is pretty close to the number of
rl> Wakes actually read most of the way through.
Yes, probably right. Maybe I should have used Sons and Lovers or The
Naked Lunch as the example. Perhaps most copies of these books are
sold to people who have taken courses on modern literature. I'm not in
a position to judge I did CS and British University courses don't tend
to have that kind of bredth.
However, consider r.a.b, here we have a nice slice of relatively
educated people (stop preening in the back row!). How many of them did
a disection of, say, 101 Years of Solitude during their schooling? Are
they the only ones likely to read it? The only ones likely to
understand it? SHould i give up and go back to reading Kernighan and
Ritchie?
--
r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk _O_
|<
Dan'l DanehyOakes
>It seems to me that the distinguishing feature of a good critic
>is the ability to show us things, both good and bad, that we
>might otherwise not have seen.
Bravo.
And the distinction between a critic and a reviewer is that the
[good] reviewer helps you decide what to read, while the [good]
critic helps you get more out of it when you do.
Ah has spoke!
-- Pansy Yokum
The Roach
Jim Mann
writes:
I agree with both these thoughs, and I don't think there has been much
disagreement about this in this thread. What the debate has centered on
was the statement by the first responder to the original post, who said
that critics are essential, that art cannot exist without them. I firmly
disagree with that assertion. Critics are helpful, they can make us appreciate
a work more, and so forth. They are NOT necessary.