Rothko
st90...@pip.cc.brandeis.edu
totally agree with them. The part I do agree with is the price that
the painting sold for--like Van Gogh's Water Lillies that was sold at
Sotherby's for a ridiculous price [something like sixty million], I
think the price is appalling. the artists never made anything near that
much in their lives--many were far closer to poverty than wealth--hence, the
term "starving artist" The other problem with so much money being
spent on the work is that the atterntion focuses on the financial
worth of the painting: people start talking about how mcu the painting is
really worth versus the astronomical price that is paid for it. An
object of art--something ith enormous aesthetic value --is turned
into an object where the only value is the money that one can get for
it. The artistic value gets ignored. However, I do think that
Rothko's painting, while it may not be worth the huge sum of money
that was paid for it [probably enough to feed several starving countries
for several years] is an incredible work of art. for a long time, I
thought Rothko's work was the result of an untalented artist wtih
with a good press agent. However, while I was in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in NYC last month, I changed my mind. Here's why"
: I first saw the Havermyer collection, which had a lot of the "master
european paintings+--such as Degas' pastel fig˙ure drawings, Cezanne's
landscapes and portraits, Courbet's figure paintings, rembrant's
etchings and Corot's portraits. While I thought most of the work
was wonderful to see, by the end of the show, I started to feel
constrained. all of the work, as incredible as it was, seemed
very "academic" one could tell that in order to get the precision of
the figure, that measurements were taken. i could sense that extreme
care and caution was taken to decide where to put the highlights in
the faces, in what colors to use to represent skin tone, in what colors
to use to paint rocks, in which colors should be combined to get the
apperance of grey. However, I then went into an exhibit of modern art
next door and felt liberated. [Rothko was included] Instead of being
confronted with comparitivly small, dark, paintings that had a lot
of dark tones in them [like Cezanne's self portrait] there were large
explosions of color. the sheer size of the painting made
a marked difference as well. Not only did the size result in my awe, but
the size redefined the space around the painting--because of the size of
the painting, the walls and celing were huge and
physically overpowered the viewer. Another reason the painting was liberatingis that the emphaisis was not on linear qualities, such as Rembrant's
etchings [do not get me wring, I love rembrant
s work and have really enjoyed studying it] but Rotko 's painting
formed an typed of line , not by drawing a line, but by juxtaposing
two colors next to each other. the jagged edge between the color
fields resulted in a line that vibrated with energy.
Rothko was by no means an untalented artist, as some of the recent
postings may have suggested. first, none of us would have conceived
of the idea of large color fields before Rothko--his idea
was original. And it had power. Rothko was emphasizing the idea
that paintings are about color. [in that way, he was no different from
Cezanne, who juxtaposed smaller patches of color next to each other in
his landscapes--for example he may have put a patch of green next to
a patch of red on a rock so that the contrast would be noticed and would
liven up the jpainting] Rothko was expreimenting with color theory--
he was playing with the effects of what happens when certain colors are
put next to other colors. a lot of color theory is built on
how one color will look vastly different depending on what color
it is put next to.
I don't think Rothko can be judged by the same standards that more
"traditional" artwork can be judged by. I think that some artwork is
not about how skillfully one can draw a still life of flowers and a
wine botttle on top of a table with a cloth drapery; all artwork
is not about pure representation. But just because someone
chooses to focus on something besides representation does not meant that
they are devoid of an equal, but different, talent. I think that
the fact that Rothko's work is able to provoke a mood or feelinng
in other people is incredible. the fact that one person's abstract
brushstroke's can communicate an emotion to the viewer is a poweful
notion. i realize that not everyone responds to rothko this way, but
I think that even if his work can reach out to some people, than it
still is a powerful peice. HW Janson [not my favorite art historian, but
I think that he was correct in this case] wrote "Not every beholder
responds to the work of this withdrawn, introspective artist [rothko]
but for those who do, the experience is akto a trancelike
rapture"
--Sarah
st90...@pip.cc.brandeis.edu
Vance Maverick
> [praise of Rothko]
I agree with you, and I'm glad I've been able to see a few Rothkos in
the flesh. Still, even with art that many people like, there's a
question whether a government ought to spend the public's money on it.
How many people *ever* go to a museum? 5-10% of the population?
Even art which scientists can tell is skilled :) is still a minority
taste, and it's not clear to me how a democratic government can support
an elite taste on the public's money.
Glad they do it anyway,
Vance
gary l. schroeder
>totally agree with them.
Bravo. Neither do I.
>for a long time, I
>thought Rothko's work was the result of an untalented artist wtih
>with a good press agent. However, while I was in the Metropolitan
>Museum of Art in NYC last month, I changed my mind. Here's why"
>: I first saw the Havermyer collection, which had a lot of the "master
>european paintings+--such as Degas' pastel fig˙ure drawings, Cezanne's
>landscapes and portraits, Courbet's figure paintings, rembrant's
>etchings and Corot's portraits. While I thought most of the work
>was wonderful to see, by the end of the show, I started to feel
>constrained. all of the work, as incredible as it was, seemed
>very "academic" one could tell that in order to get the precision of
>the figure, that measurements were taken.
I saw Rothko's "No. 10" 'in the flesh' at the Kansas City Museum of Art
after going through most of the "traditional" painters first. At first,
it appeared to be nothing more than a six foot tall, black block. Not
very interesting. Then, I got closer. I found in the subdued light of
the museum that it was actually many small blocks of very very dark
purple. The shades of purple were so close to each other that they were
almost indistinguishable, but if you looked closely, you could
differentiate.
I watched some people walk past and laugh, shaking their heads. I sat
in front of it and became absorbed for a few minutes. I'm not saying
that just because I didn't laugh and walk away dismissingly that its
great art...I'm saying that it was great to _me_. And in the end,
that's all that counts.
It was a simple painting, and yet complex on another level when you
stopped to look at it. Now, I don't usually buy avant garde mumbo-
jumbo and long winded explainations of why a piece of wire strung
between two nails is great art, but I thought it was complex and
compelling.
So, my experience was very similar to yours. I had spent the day
looking at traditional realists whose ultimte goal was to be
representational...and a lot of it left me cold. Suddenly, I see a
Rothko painting and I say "hey, now this is different and it brings
forth an emotional response. What more can you ask of art?"
>Not only did the size result in my awe, but
>the size redefined the space around the painting--because of the size of
>the painting, the walls and celing were huge and
>physically overpowered the viewer.
I also felt the same thing with "No. 10".
>first, none of us would have conceived
>of the idea of large color fields before Rothko--his idea
>was original. And it had power. Rothko was emphasizing the idea
>that paintings are about color.
It's true. As I always used to say to a friend of mine when looking at
art that I hated, "I could've done that!". To which he would reply
"but you didn't, and he/she _did_!" He was right.
--
--------------
Gary Schroeder
schr...@bnlux1.bnl.gov
Brookhaven National Laboratory
br...@quake.sylmar.ca.us
>I have just read 5 or 6 condemnations of Mark Rothko and I do not
>totally agree with them. The part I do agree with is the price that
>the painting sold for--like Van Gogh's Water Lillies that was sold at
>Sotherby's for a ridiculous price [something like sixty million], I
>think the price is appalling.
for them, they wouldn't be so expensive.
>the artists never made anything near that
>much in their lives--many were far closer to poverty than wealth--hence, the
>term "starving artist"
artistic content of the work in the first place, so the only value is
speculative and historical. It should come as no surprise that such
"value" does not arise until after time has passed.
>An
>object of art--something ith enormous aesthetic value
>--is turned
>into an object where the only value is the money that one can get for
>it. The artistic value gets ignored.
>However, I do think that
>Rothko's painting, while it may not be worth the huge sum of money
>that was paid for it [probably enough to feed several starving countries
>for several years] is an incredible work of art.
I suppose I might be willing to pay $25 for one so I could put it out of
our misery by burning it, but I doubt my bid would be the highest. ;-)
>for a long time, I
>thought Rothko's work was the result of an untalented artist wtih
>with a good press agent.
>However, while I was in the Metropolitan
>Museum of Art in NYC last month, I changed my mind. Here's why"
>: I first saw the Havermyer collection, which had a lot of the "master
>landscapes and portraits, Courbet's figure paintings, rembrant's
>etchings and Corot's portraits. While I thought most of the work
>was wonderful to see, by the end of the show, I started to feel
>constrained. all of the work, as incredible as it was, seemed
>very "academic" one could tell that in order to get the precision of
>the figure, that measurements were taken. i could sense that extreme
>care and caution was taken to decide where to put the highlights in
>the faces, in what colors to use to represent skin tone, in what colors
>to use to paint rocks, in which colors should be combined to get the
>apperance of grey. However, I then went into an exhibit of modern art
>next door and felt liberated.
The need to choose a purpose? The need to think? Liberation indeed.
>[Rothko was included] Instead of being
>confronted with comparitivly small, dark, paintings that had a lot
>of dark tones in them [like Cezanne's self portrait] there were large
>explosions of color. the sheer size of the painting made
>a marked difference as well. Not only did the size result in my awe, but
>the size redefined the space around the painting--because of the size of
>the painting, the walls and celing were huge and
>physically overpowered the viewer.
What did these paintings tell you? "Paintings can be big!" or "This is
RED!" or "Look Ma! No frame!". This is artistic babytalk compared to
the potential for meaning in the other kind of paintings you were looking
at.
>Another reason the painting was liberatingis
>that the emphaisis was not on linear qualities,
Are you just overjoyed that there is no obvious referents which you have to
look at and perhaps think about? I don't know what could be more "linear"
in another sense than a Rothko 2-tone painting. It is all just a line and some
color. Big deal. It is as inspiring as watching TV when the station is off the
air.
>such as Rembrant's
>etchings [do not get me wring, I love rembrant
>s work and have really enjoyed studying it] but Rotko 's painting
>formed an typed of line , not by drawing a line, but by juxtaposing
>two colors next to each other. the jagged edge between the color
>fields resulted in a line that vibrated with energy.
energy". How liberating.
>Rothko was by no means an untalented artist, as some of the recent
>postings may have suggested. first, none of us would have conceived
>of the idea of large color fields before Rothko--his idea
>was original.
probably did too. What an original idea. Even if you were right
and the idea of putting big fields of color on the canvas was "original
and new", so what? I'll make a similar "important advance": I'll
invent big circles with little squares inside. My aren't I the brilliant
artist.
>And it had power. Rothko was emphasizing the idea
>that paintings are about color.
about people, and ideas. That is what painting (and art in general) is
FOR! To abandon any purpose for art beyond "color" is to abandon
any value in art.
>[in that way, he was no different from
>Cezanne, who juxtaposed smaller patches of color next to each other in
>his landscapes--for example he may have put a patch of green next to
>a patch of red on a rock so that the contrast would be noticed and would
>liven up the jpainting] Rothko was expreimenting with color theory--
>he was playing with the effects of what happens when certain colors are
>put next to other colors. a lot of color theory is built on
>how one color will look vastly different depending on what color
>it is put next to.
paintings or calibrating cameras, that's fine, but it is not more art than
the color bars on TV are.
>I don't think Rothko can be judged by the same standards that more
>"traditional" artwork can be judged by. I think that some artwork is
>not about how skillfully one can draw a still life of flowers and a
>wine botttle on top of a table with a cloth drapery; all artwork
>is not about pure representation.
Art has the potential to communicate ideas like "This is what
joy is like." or "This is what motherhood is like." or "This is
what rejection is like." or "This is what man's place in nature is.".
Artists can do a great deal if they face issues and address them
with their art. Rothko's paintings are like mute lecturers (wearing
gunney sacks).
>But just because someone
>chooses to focus on something besides representation does not meant that
>they are devoid of an equal, but different, talent. I think that
>the fact that Rothko's work is able to provoke a mood or feelinng
>in other people is incredible.
had in mind?
>the fact that one person's abstract
>brushstroke's can communicate an emotion to the viewer is a poweful
>notion.
>i realize that not everyone responds to rothko this way, but
>I think that even if his work can reach out to some people, than it
>still is a powerful peice.
this has any substance. What is he reaching with? Why is he doing it?
If he is so unclear that only the "chosen few" can see ho great he is,
how good a job did he do a "reaching out"? Vermeer reaches out, Parrish
reaches out, Rembrant reaches out. Rothko is in a fetal position reaching
nowhere with nothing, polluting the walls he hangs on.
>HW Janson [not my favorite art historian, but
>I think that he was correct in this case] wrote "Not every beholder
>responds to the work of this withdrawn, introspective artist [rothko]
>but for those who do, the experience is akto a trancelike
>rapture"
--Brian
st90...@pip.cc.brandeis.edu
argument. I am used to people nt agreeing with some things I say, but
usually others respect my opinions and agree that they may have some
validity. I don't want to start an angry flame war but it
is hard to discuss when anything that I wrote was laughed at by you
or not seen to have the slightest bit of credibility. anyway,
here is my response to your responce:
you wrote:So? In the case of guys like Rothko, there is no value in the
artistic content of the work in the first place, so the only value is
speculative and historical. It should come as no surprise that such
"value" does not arise until after time has passed
this is not to say that every painting ever produced was a masterpeice,
however, have you ever had the experience of bieng in front of a
rothko for a long period of time? What I was trying to convy when
I described my experience of being at a museum and seeing very academic
paintings and then seeing some modern art was a personal experiece.
so if you don't like rothko, you can at least respect another
person's experience. this experience was not something I was conditioned
by some art critics to feel, but it was mine. and i am not the only
one to be am azed by rothko.
you also wrote:
I'll
invent big circles with little squares inside. My aren't I the brilliant
artist."
not.
you also wrote"But they AREN'T about color! They are about reality, about the mind,
about people, and ideas. That is what painting (and art in general) is
FOR! To abandon any purpose for art beyond "color" is to abandon
any value in art."[this was when you were talking about the paintings of
rothko]
One aspect of the painting is about color. look at the painting...
you don't see black and white, there is color--lots of it. around
the time rothko painted, there was a school of thought that was
experimenting with what happens when different colors are
juxtaposed on different colors. for example a grey square
placed on a red background will look blue and a grey square on
a larger blue square will look red. i have had several instructors
tell me that a major part of painting is about color. the choice
of what colors to mix to get a skin tone, for example, is a complex
process. also, the decision of what color to place next to another
color[for example what type of yellow to paint a lemon and what type of
red to paint the tomatoe next to it] is crucial. the wrong mix can
destroy a painting. just try painting a portrait some time or
a still life and you will see that painting and color do relate.
i think your definition of the paintings is confusing. what do
you mean by "reality..mind..people..ideas" that seems a little bit
vague to me. do you really think all of art is about those four
words you used to describe it--isn't that a tad limiting?
if you still think that color and art do not exist in the same
universe, try reading "The art of color" by joseph Itten--one
of the standard books on color theory
after i wrote the following paragraph, you asked some questions.
my paragraph was:
>However, while I was in the Metropolitan
>Museum of Art in NYC last month, I changed my mind. Here's why"
>: I first saw the Havermyer collection, which had a lot of the "master
>european paintings+--such as Degas' pastel figure drawings, Cezanne's
>landscapes and portraits, Courbet's figure paintings, rembrant's
>etchings and Corot's portraits. While I thought most of the work
>was wonderful to see, by the end of the show, I started to feel
>constrained. all of the work, as incredible as it was, seemed
>very "academic" one could tell that in order to get the precision of
>the figure, that measurements were taken. i could sense that extreme
>care and caution was taken to decide where to put the highlights in
>the faces, in what colors to use to represent skin tone, in what colors
>to use to paint rocks, in which colors should be combined to get the
>apperance of grey. However, I then went into an exhibit of modern art
>next door and felt liberated.
your questions were:
Liberated from what? The need to make sense? The need to look good?
The need to choose a purpose? The need to think? Liberation indeed.
I reply now: are you implying that you are to be the judge of
what makes sense and looks good and has a purpose? is art really just
about looking good? can't a purpose be put in an abstract format?
does everthing have to have a singluar purpose? the art also conveys
emotion--is a feeling of deep emotion not important simply because
it isn't causing rational thinking.
when i talk about liberation, I am talking about a feeling--an emotion.
I am not talking about the logic proceses that you were implying are
the singular reason for liking are. while i was in the old masters
room of art, i saw dark paintings that required intense concentration and
heavy analysis of how each component of the painting fit to make a
full painting. for example, how cezanne used several different colors to
make skin tone and how the light on a face was juxtaposed by the darkness
of a background. but in the modern art room, if felt a sense of lightness.
i felt an instinctual need to see work that allowed my eyes to roam
all over a large canvass. i wanted to see large explosions of color
instead of constraining small bits of color. it was as if these modern
artists were conveying the need that they also had to liberate themselves
from previous types of artwork. pretend you are in a dark box with walls
that give you two or three feet to walk around in and a ceiling that is
a foot above your head. you only have great classic novels to read..
homer, chaucer, etc. now pretend that the box is lifted and you are
surrounded by beautiful mountains and rainbows. that's how i felt. i
really loved the old masters rooms [as i love chaucer] but i felt
a need to break from it's restrictive quality.
you also wrote:
Art has the potential to communicate ideas like "This is what
joy is like." or "This is what motherhood is like." or "This is
what rejection is like." or "This is what man's place in nature is.".
Artists can do a great deal if they face issues and address them
with their art.
i now reply: are you implying that artists must take only one concept
such as joy, motherhood or man's [and women's] place in nature and
somehow express it? isn't art more than that? how about texture,
style of stroke, expression, dispersion of light, juxtaposing
lights and darknesses, color, materials used? must all of these
technical qualities be used only to express one specific meaning?
what do you define as issues? does a beautifully done portrait have
to express man's place in nature to have value?
do you have to approve of any work for it to have value in the universe?
does the fact that you didn't respond to rothko make it an invalid
peice of artwork? we aren't expected to like every book we read,
same goes for art.
you wrote: "If he is so unclear that only the "chosen few" can see ho great he is,
how good a job did he do a "reaching out"? i would say yes. i know very
few people that truly love listening to Wagner's music. but the fact
that one person's artwork [music or graphic] can produce an emotion
in another person --without direct contact between artist and viewer [or
listener] --is incredible. the fact that the artist can communicate
wtih other human beings , regardless of number, who live in a different place,speak a different language, are of a different ethnicity and social status,
who live maybe during another time period is a powerful concept.
it is as if the artist understands someone else's private thoughts without
ever meeting them.
you write about a quote i took from a history book about rothko
"Dumbstruck by the nonsense"
your blatant disregard for somebody else's view point is not appreciated
that much.
i understand that you don't think the govt should pay almoust 2 million
$$$s for the work. and you are certainly not the only person to
be put off by rothko. but other people's amazement at his work doesn't
spring from nowhere and is not always influened by art critics.
but just because you don't appreciate it does not mean that it fails
to make a profound statement.
--sarah
Gordon Fitch
abstract expressionism the way my parents did in 1950. Are
those of you who are so excited about it aware that you can
now buy abstract-expressionistic works at malls and in flea
markets? That's right, the _people_ are buying the stuff.
They don't know what it means, any more than they know what
a vase of flowers means or a tall ship -- but it looks nice
over the couch.
Meanwhile, we have all these people wrinkling up their brows
in the most earnest lower-middle-class manner and saying,
"But it's got to _mean_ something! It's got to be of some
_use_." In other words, everything has to come with a text
justifying its existence. It can't just be something that
makes you feel good. (Or whatever way you want to feel.)
I guess it's the money. Someone who sells hardware or
writes computer programs is likely to say, "Sheesh, almost
two million, and my kid could do it." _Money_ means
something; untextualized feelings don't -- evidently.
The ironic thing about the brow-wrinkling is that there
_are_ texts in the case of the high-priced stuff -- endless
texts. People can give you all kinds of reasons why Rothko
paintings are of some use -- in fact, why you should fall
down on your face in front of them. But this has nothing
to do with their being abstract. It applies a huge body
of art, only some of which is abstract. So if you really
want your feelings relieved about text, crack the books;
it's there waiting for you.
--
)*( Gordon Fitch )*( g...@panix.com )*(
Brian K. Yoder
>I think it's pretty funny to see people carrying on about
>abstract expressionism the way my parents did in 1950. Are
>those of you who are so excited about it aware that you can
>now buy abstract-expressionistic works at malls and in flea
>markets?
Yes I am aware of this. So what? It was not only the elite snobs who
lied in the fable of the Emperor's new clothes.
>That's right, the _people_ are buying the stuff.
>They don't know what it means, any more than they know what
>a vase of flowers means or a tall ship -- but it looks nice
>over the couch.
No, they hear lots of people going on and on about how sophisticated it
is to have meaningless "art" around. It shows that one is so sophisticated
one can see something in there.
>Meanwhile, we have all these people wrinkling up their brows
>in the most earnest lower-middle-class manner and saying,
>"But it's got to _mean_ something!
Well, if it doesn't mean something what good is it? Why do you
say that this is such a "lower-middle-class" outlook? Of course
there are lewer pretentious snobs in the lower middle class than
in the upper class, but few of the upper class folks I know
actually like meaningless art. (Athough one of the richest people
I know buys LOTS of it (Peter Norton) and my opinion regarding why he does
so is not particularly favorable.)
>It's got to be of some
>_use_."
OF course! For anything to have any value it must be associated with
some goal and it must advance that goal in some way. Rather than just
looking down your nose at such attitudes, perhaps you can offer some
kind of substantive argument against it. Appeals to the social class
of those with this idea simply won't do.
>In other words, everything has to come with a text
>justifying its existence.
Absolutely not! In fact, part of the complaint about meaningless "art"
is that it tells you nothing in and of itself. You need to read a book
to tell you what it is supposed to mean (and then when you don't see that
it means that, you can be cowed into saying it is great lest you appear
unsophisticated). I am not saying that a "text" can never cntribute to
the value of a work of art (I assume that by "text" you mean a plaque,
book, or title plate or something), but if it is necessary to get it at all,
the art is not doing its job.
>It can't just be something that
>makes you feel good. (Or whatever way you want to feel.)
But it DOESN'T make me feel good! It is meaningless smears and looking at
such nonsense being held up as "meaningful", "important", and "sophisticated"
makes me ANGRY, not good.
>I guess it's the money.
Certainly not! The only money cmoplaint I have is that the government
is using MY money to finance that kind of garbage against my will.
Your tendency to see everything as class warfare and financial interests
is showing through. Let's talk about the AESTHETIC issues rather than
your attempts to pass off complaints about meaningless "art" as
something else.
>Someone who sells hardware or
>writes computer programs is likely to say, "Sheesh, almost
>two million, and my kid could do it." _Money_ means
>something; untextualized feelings don't -- evidently.
Certainly not. The only reason the "my kids could do that" complaint
arises is that it concretizes the fact that no skill, plan, or
insight is involved, and for those of us who see value in skill,
planning, and insight, such "art" is a slap in the face. It is implicitly
an assertion that clarity, planning, skill, insight, and intelligence are
unsophisticated, unimportant, and pathetic.
>The ironic thing about the brow-wrinkling is that there
>_are_ texts in the case of the high-priced stuff -- endless
>texts.
You are really missing the boat here. Those of us who don't like this
stuff are NOT complaining that there are no writings which try to explain
why the stuff is so great. Such writings are just as bad as the "art" itself
since it tries to attribute meaning to the meaningless.
>People can give you all kinds of reasons why Rothko
>paintings are of some use -- in fact, why you should fall
>down on your face in front of them.
So I hear, and I think such assertions are just as trite and insulting
as Rothko's paintings themselves, actualy moreso. Given that you claim there
such great reasons we should all get down and worship Rothko paintings,
you should have no problem presenting just one of them.
>But this has nothing
>to do with their being abstract. It applies a huge body
>of art, only some of which is abstract. So if you really
>want your feelings relieved about text, crack the books;
>it's there waiting for you.
You are completely missing the point if you think that we who oppose
meaninglessness are complaining that there aren't enough books about it.
The point is that no amount of reading or staring can add meaning to
something which contains none.
--Brian
Gordon Fitch
some others, about three times, so I'm ready to stand
down. However, there's this --
g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
| >Meanwhile, we have all these people wrinkling up their brows
| >in the most earnest lower-middle-class manner and saying,
| >"But it's got to _mean_ something!
byo...@netcom.com (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
| Well, if it doesn't mean something what good is it? Why do you
| say that this is such a "lower-middle-class" outlook? ...
I've gone on at great length in alt.postmodern about the
use of art and art criticism in class war, which is where
the business about snobbery comes from. Let's skip that
one for now.
As to the other line: it depends what you mean by "meaning."
"Meaning" can mean "standing for something else" -- c-a-t has
the meaning of a small furry domestic animal for most English-
speakers -- but when one is speaking of art, life, the
universe, or everything, "meaning" is generally given the more
ambitious denotation "is part of a structure of signification
which the speaker thinks is valid." For instance, one's
life "means something" because one lives for a cause. A
picture "means something" because it makes one think noble
thoughts about God, etc. etc. etc. Somewhere at the end of
the chain there's supposed to be a reward, a charge, a hit,
a goodie.
But what if some people just enjoy looking at a work of art,
regardless of where it fits in in some larger picture? I
don't see why this enjoyment is invalid. So I don't see why
a work of art _has_ to mean anything. What if _it_ is the
goodie?
PAMELA CANTRELL
_______________________________________________________________________________
Pamela Cantrell // My Twain of thought is loosely bound
pam...@helios.nevada.edu // I guess it's time to Mark this down.
--J. Buffett
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
J.J. Kuslich
>I think I've answered everything in this thread, and
>some others, about three times, so I'm ready to stand
>down. However, there's this --
>
>g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>| >Meanwhile, we have all these people wrinkling up their brows
>| >in the most earnest lower-middle-class manner and saying,
>| >"But it's got to _mean_ something!
>
>byo...@netcom.com (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
>| Well, if it doesn't mean something what good is it? Why do you
>| say that this is such a "lower-middle-class" outlook? ...
>
>I've gone on at great length in alt.postmodern about the
>use of art and art criticism in class war, which is where
>the business about snobbery comes from. Let's skip that
>one for now.
>
>
>But what if some people just enjoy looking at a work of art,
>regardless of where it fits in in some larger picture? I
>don't see why this enjoyment is invalid. So I don't see why
>a work of art _has_ to mean anything. What if _it_ is the
>goodie?
Well, I'm no expert in the realm of aesthetics (sp?), but isn't
"meaning" one of the things that separates a plain old picture from "art."
I mean, by your definition, every creation is "art." But is a painting of
a bunch of squiggly lines made by someone using paint squirt guns really
art? Isn't it just a "painting" (I use this term loosely for the example I
gave).
I always thought "art" was something ... special or at the very
least, meaningful.
J>J>K>
==========================================================================
Right to the heart of the matter, right to the beautiful part.
Illusions are painfully shattered, right where discovery starts.
-- RUSH, "Emotion Detector"
==========================================================================
Gordon Fitch
| >| >Meanwhile, we have all these people wrinkling up their brows
| >| >in the most earnest lower-middle-class manner and saying,
| >| >"But it's got to _mean_ something!
byo...@netcom.com (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
| >| Well, if it doesn't mean something what good is it? ...
gcf:
| >...
| >But what if some people just enjoy looking at a work of art,
| >regardless of where it fits in in some larger picture? I
| >don't see why this enjoyment is invalid. So I don't see why
| >a work of art _has_ to mean anything. What if _it_ is the
| >goodie?
kus...@envmsa.eas.asu.edu (J.J. Kuslich) writes:
| Well, I'm no expert in the realm of aesthetics (sp?), but isn't
| "meaning" one of the things that separates a plain old picture from "art."
| I mean, by your definition, every creation is "art." But is a painting of
| a bunch of squiggly lines made by someone using paint squirt guns really
| art? Isn't it just a "painting" (I use this term loosely for the example I
| gave).
|
| I always thought "art" was something ... special or at the very
| least, meaningful.
First of all, a painting of a bunch of squiggly lines, etc.,
may mean something to somebody, which means it has meaning,
does it not? It could have meaning either way: it could
stand for something else, or it could be part of a structure
with which some viewers felt connected. There's no telling
what may have meaning for someone, especially when it comes
to non-representational work.
But beyond that, I don't see why one couldn't have some kind
of aesthetic experience without having meaning in either
sense I refer to above. What about the following:
- a beautiful sunset
- a beautiful sunrise which looks exactly like the sunset
- a beautiful new K-mart
- Van Gogh's "Irises"
- _The_Night_of_the_Living_Dead_
- The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, Prelude 1
- my houseplants
Do they all have meaning? If so, what?
Brian K. Yoder
No it does not. For a work of art to convey a meaning, there has to be some
connection between what the artist is trying to portray, the artwork itself,
and the viewer. That is what it means for an artist to create a work of
art which portrays something. I can't believe that you really don't
understand my position on this by now.
>It could have meaning either way: it could
>stand for something else, or it could be part of a structure
>with which some viewers felt connected. There's no telling
>what may have meaning for someone, especially when it comes
>to non-representational work.
If it is art, then the artist must have intended for the work to mean
something and THAT meaning should be the one people get from experiencing
the work. Now don't take that claim too far. I am not saying that there
is no place for subtleties of meaning, and I am not saying that it is the
sophistication of the public that defines whether something is are or not.
>But beyond that, I don't see why one couldn't have some kind
>of aesthetic experience without having meaning in either
>sense I refer to above. What about the following:
>- a beautiful sunset
It may well be beautiful and you may enjoy looking at it, but it isn't art.
It is not a human creation and it portrays nothing.
>- a beautiful sunrise which looks exactly like the sunset
Same thing.
>- a beautiful new K-mart
It is at least man-made, but it isn't trying to portray anything (other than
perhaps the trivial "I'm a K-Mart building." and that's not particularly
significant, nor is there much of an alternative).
>- Van Gogh's "Irises"
Sure, it's art, although not of a kind I'm particularly fond of either in
style or content.
>- _The_Night_of_the_Living_Dead_
Well, movies are a little different from the other arts because they are
so complex. They contain musical, literary, visual/photographic, and
other components to construct the final product. So, yes it is art, and
in fact it is a series of art works merged together in a particular way.
>- The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, Prelude 1
I am not particularly familiar with that work, but assuming it is what I think
it is (a baroque piece written for the clavier) it is certainy art.
>- my houseplants
Unless yur house plants are unusual (say, topiary or something) then they
aren't art, even though they may be wonderful to look at and you may like them
very much. There are lots of things which are beautiful and nice to look
at, but that doesn't make them art.
>Do they all have meaning? If so, what?
No they don't, at least not in the sense that art needs to have meaning in.
--Brian
mpr...@violet.berkeley.edu
>[...]For a work of art to convey a meaning, there has to be some
>connection between what the artist is trying to portray, the artwork itself,
>and the viewer. That is what it means for an artist to create a work of
>art which portrays something.
Gordon suggests for evaluation:
>>- The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, Prelude 1
And Brian responds:
>I am not particularly familiar with that work, but assuming it is what I think
>it is (a baroque piece written for the clavier) it is certainy art.
What does a piece of music mean? By the implied definition above, one
might suppose that the only meaningful "music" would be something like
a radio show, or maybe a sound effects record. Not that this hasn't been
tried. Oh, sure, there's opera, and tone poems, and "The Four Seasons", but
most (much of) instrumental music is pretty abstract. Rothko, or Mondrian,
or any of the modernists isn't doing anything much different.
(Yes, given a naive and easily-intimidated audience, there's an opportunity
for charlatans to pass off hackwork as Art. Caveat emptor.)
--Elliot Wilen
Gordon Fitch
| No it does not. For a work of art to convey a meaning, there has to be some
| connection between what the artist is trying to portray, the artwork itself,
| and the viewer. That is what it means for an artist to create a work of
| art which portrays something. I can't believe that you really don't
You haven't justified your position. A work of abstract
expressionism (or other non-representational art) could
easily satisfy the conditions you specify. And a
representational work might fail to do so -- in fact, as I
noted, Van Gogh's flower paintings do. Or Georgia
O'Keefe's. And that's just painting. As noted, most
music is non-representational, "meaningful" or not.
In order to exclude abstract expressionism, and yet not
throw out the Well-Tempered Clavier, you're going to have to
redraw the meaning of "meaning", and redraw it pretty
finely, too.
J.J. Kuslich
>
>But beyond that, I don't see why one couldn't have some kind
>of aesthetic experience without having meaning in either
>sense I refer to above. What about the following:
>
>- a beautiful sunset
But what I want to know is "is this art"? Just because something
may please the eye (like a big juicy steak waiting to be eaten) doesn't
mean it's art, does it? Your post seemed to stray quite a bit from this
point. Yes, the squiggly lines created by a "painter" with paint squirt
guns may have some meaning to him/her (though, I can't imagine what), but
is that art?
That's the real question here, and one of the factors seems to be
that for something to be considered "art" it should have meaning (hopefully
discernable) to the viewer/reader/whathaveyou.
Gordon Fitch
| I really don't understand why Abstract Expressionism is the focus of this
| discussion. There's nothing terribly difficult about A.E. ...
I think the discussion started in one of the Canadian
newsgroups because the Government of Canada, or some agency
thereof, had paid 1.8 million dollars for a Rothko,
producing a kind of outrage I thought had out down a
generation ago. I've noted that, here in the New York
City area, ab-ex is reasonably popular and taken for granted
-- people buy it and sell it in malls, and paint it on their
fingernails. As you note, other kinds of art are now the
contested territory. But apparently Canada is in a
different cultural space.
Andy Pearlman
>In article <249sd5$q...@panix.com> g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>>First of all, a painting of a bunch of squiggly lines, etc.,
>>may mean something to somebody, which means it has meaning,
>>does it not?
>
>No it does not. For a work of art to convey a meaning, there has to be some
>connection between what the artist is trying to portray, the artwork itself,
>and the viewer. That is what it means for an artist to create a work of
>art which portrays something. I can't believe that you really don't
>understand my position on this by now.
>If it is art, then the artist must have intended for the work to mean
>something and THAT meaning should be the one people get from experiencing
>the work. Now don't take that claim too far. I am not saying that there
>is no place for subtleties of meaning, and I am not saying that it is the
>sophistication of the public that defines whether something is are or not.
Now hold on a second: Many works by many artists have personal meanings that
were never shared. In many cases, we regard things as art that we don't
even know who the artist was, let alone 'intended meaning'. Greek statues,
cave paintings, Bottocelli(did he undergo religious conversion or was he just
afraid of Savronola?), Bosch(very pretty horror tales, but are they genuine
allusions or mocking the church?), Vivaldi('directly enjoyable', but lots of
obscure meanings in it), Gothic churches(monument to skill of builder or
to God?), etc... You just eliminated quite a few artworks there with that
definition.
Also, there are artworks where the context is meaningless or irrelevant. Quite
a few paintings more than a few centuries old just don't mean the same thing to
us that they would to the original viewers. We view paintings with the
knowledge of photographs. A realistic painting today shows a high level of
skill, but a technical virtuoso(with no feeling) would be acclaimed a major
artist centuries ago, whereas today, he would be considered someone who
needed passion(Raphael)
Andy Pearlman
Kate Lynes
>I think the discussion started in one of the Canadian
>newsgroups because the Government of Canada, or some agency
>thereof, had paid 1.8 million dollars for a Rothko,
>producing a kind of outrage I thought had out down a
>generation ago. I've noted that, here in the New York
>City area, ab-ex is reasonably popular and taken for granted
>-- people buy it and sell it in malls, and paint it on their
>fingernails. As you note, other kinds of art are now the
>contested territory. But apparently Canada is in a
>different cultural space.
>--
>
Strange that the US's largest state should be in a "different
cultural space" eh? ;-) Actually, I think Canadians are not
all that interested in the question of whether or not the
Rothko is art. (IMHO, "artness" is a status that is externally
conferred--usually by an elite of cultural mediators--not
a quality intrinsic to a given work.) The concern is, rather,
that $1.8 million was spent during a recession on a work that
most Canadians don't find enjoyable or otherwise valuable. The
issue is the elitist, non-democratic nature of arts funding and
administration; i.e., it's a political issue in Canada, not solely
or primarily aesthetic. (I realize the two are not entirely
separable--in fact, that's the point!)
As for the infamous no. 16, I think my cat could do better!
(NB ironically-challenged: this is a joke--my cat's colour-blind.)
Gordon Fitch
| >I think the discussion started in one of the Canadian
| >newsgroups because the Government of Canada, or some agency
| >thereof, had paid 1.8 million dollars for a Rothko,
| >producing a kind of outrage I thought had out down a
| >generation ago. I've noted that, here in the New York
| >City area, ab-ex is reasonably popular and taken for granted
| >-- people buy it and sell it in malls, and paint it on their
| >fingernails. As you note, other kinds of art are now the
| >contested territory. But apparently Canada is in a
| >different cultural space.
kly...@epas.utoronto.ca (Kate Lynes) writes:
| Strange that the US's largest state should be in a "different
| cultural space" eh?
That's California... no issue.
| ;-) Actually, I think Canadians are not
| all that interested in the question of whether or not the
| Rothko is art. (IMHO, "artness" is a status that is externally
| conferred--usually by an elite of cultural mediators--not
| a quality intrinsic to a given work.) The concern is, rather,
| that $1.8 million was spent during a recession on a work that
| most Canadians don't find enjoyable or otherwise valuable. The
| issue is the elitist, non-democratic nature of arts funding and
| administration; i.e., it's a political issue in Canada, not solely
| or primarily aesthetic. (I realize the two are not entirely
| separable--in fact, that's the point!) ...
I doubt if most Canadians, or most any other general
population, find the works of Giotto tremendously en-
joyable or valuable, but I would guess the outcry would
be non-existent had the money been spent on Giotto's
work. What do you think? If the objection is that the
painting is not popular enough to merit such an expendi-
ture, and that its selection is elitist and non-demo-
cratic, the same objection would apply to almost any-
thing the Canadian Government bought. But the objection
was specifically made to Rothko, and in terms which
certainly recall the disputes of the 1950s in the United
States. Which I think is an interesting development;
I'm wondering what (the conscious sector of) the
Canadian public generally thinks of as the canon of
valid art. I take it the post-Impressionists are
admissible; but how about, say, Max Ernst's stuff?
Ken Jopp
>
> But what I want to know is "is this art"? Just because something
>may please the eye (like a big juicy steak waiting to be eaten) doesn't
>mean it's art, does it? Your post seemed to stray quite a bit from this
>point. Yes, the squiggly lines created by a "painter" with paint squirt
>guns may have some meaning to him/her (though, I can't imagine what), but
>is that art?
> That's the real question here, and one of the factors seems to be
>that for something to be considered "art" it should have meaning (hopefully
>discernable) to the viewer/reader/whathaveyou.
>
Meaning is not discernable; it is invented. [Visual] art is any
display for which you choose to play the role of art perceiver.
Art as a category is useless. As are journalism, politics, and
religion, art is becoming subsumed into a generic sociocultural
"stuff." The bounaries between the categories are losing their
legitimacy. This PoMo development is part of what Terence McKenna
calls the "Archaic Revival." The global village is one in which
the Western cultural categories convince fewer and fewer people
of their usefulness.
The poster who asked whether a sunset is art was on the right track.
Art aspires to become nature, in its complexity and evocativeness.
This is why art as a category falls away. Nature has already done it.
McLuhan was fond of quoting the Balinese: "We have no art. We do
ALL things as best we can."
Brian K. Yoder
>| I really don't understand why Abstract Expressionism is the focus of this
>| discussion. There's nothing terribly difficult about A.E. ...
>I think the discussion started in one of the Canadian
>newsgroups because the Government of Canada, or some agency
>thereof, had paid 1.8 million dollars for a Rothko,
>producing a kind of outrage I thought had out down a
>generation ago.
Not among the people who don't make their living creating "art".
>I've noted that, here in the New York
>City area, ab-ex is reasonably popular and taken for granted
>-- people buy it and sell it in malls, and paint it on their
>fingernails.
I hate to tell Mr. Fitch and other New Yorkers this, but the fact that
something is or is not popular in New York is not an indication of whether
it is popular or unpopular elsewhere in the US. In fact, in the case of most
cultural subjects, New York is one of the least typical places I can think
of in the country.
>As you note, other kinds of art are now the
>contested territory. But apparently Canada is in a
>different cultural space.
Ummm, I think you have a strange view of the general opinion Americans have
of abstract art, particularly people who like art. If we were to take a
poll of Americans in general (and no, I don't think this is the right way
to measure artistic value), the VAST majority would say that abstract
expressionist "art" is garbage.
USA != NYC.
--Brian
Brian K. Yoder
>g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>| >I think the discussion started in one of the Canadian
>| >newsgroups because the Government of Canada, or some agency
>| >thereof, had paid 1.8 million dollars for a Rothko,
>| >producing a kind of outrage I thought had out down a
>| >generation ago. I've noted that, here in the New York
>| >City area, ab-ex is reasonably popular and taken for granted
>| >-- people buy it and sell it in malls, and paint it on their
>| >fingernails. As you note, other kinds of art are now the
>| >contested territory. But apparently Canada is in a
>| >different cultural space.
>
>kly...@epas.utoronto.ca (Kate Lynes) writes:
>| Strange that the US's largest state should be in a "different
>| cultural space" eh?
>That's California... no issue.
New Yorkers only THINK they are the biggest (and most important) state.
As usual, the facts are different.
>| ;-) Actually, I think Canadians are not
>| all that interested in the question of whether or not the
>| Rothko is art. (IMHO, "artness" is a status that is externally
>| conferred--usually by an elite of cultural mediators--not
>| a quality intrinsic to a given work.) The concern is, rather,
>| that $1.8 million was spent during a recession on a work that
>| most Canadians don't find enjoyable or otherwise valuable. The
>| issue is the elitist, non-democratic nature of arts funding and
>| administration; i.e., it's a political issue in Canada, not solely
>| or primarily aesthetic. (I realize the two are not entirely
>| separable--in fact, that's the point!) ...
>I doubt if most Canadians, or most any other general
>population, find the works of Giotto tremendously en-
>joyable or valuable, but I would guess the outcry would
>be non-existent had the money been spent on Giotto's
>work. What do you think? If the objection is that the
>painting is not popular enough to merit such an expendi-
>ture, and that its selection is elitist and non-demo-
>cratic, the same objection would apply to almost any-
>thing the Canadian Government bought.
Of course not! People would not complain as much if the works being
collected were not garbage. Sure, some people would (rightly) complain
about being taxed for real art, but not nearly as many as when it
buys Rothkos. What does the popularity of the action have to do with the
issue of whether Rothko is garbage or not and whether it is art or not?
>But the objection
>was specifically made to Rothko, and in terms which
>certainly recall the disputes of the 1950s in the United
>States.
As if such issues had been completely resolved and nobody cares about
the issue anymore. Isn't this appeal to tradition just a little bit invalid
Gordon?
>Which I think is an interesting development;
>I'm wondering what (the conscious sector of) the
>Canadian public generally thinks of as the canon of
>valid art.
Sigh. Your concern for art astounds me. You really seem to think that
what art isw and what art is good is purely a matter of public opinion, and
apparently, that the more meaningless a work is, the more sophisticated
the person who likes it is. You certainly don't speak for me or any of the
prople I know who didn't have a voice in that 1950's argument over what art is,
and who prefer to see meaningful beautiful art rather than meaningless ugly
scrawls and smudges.
--Brian
Gordon Fitch
| >But the objection
| >was specifically made to Rothko, and in terms which
| >certainly recall the disputes of the 1950s in the United
| >States.
byo...@netcom.com (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
| As if such issues had been completely resolved and nobody cares about
| the issue anymore. Isn't this appeal to tradition just a little bit invalid
| Gordon? ...
I find the resurrection of the old objections to Modernism
interesting. As many readers will be aware, Postmodernism
also attacks Modernism. Supposedly. So it might be
amusing to get them all together, for contrasting flavors --
a sort of chocolate-chip ice cream of artistic theory.
Kate Lynes
I think the reason there is an outcry about the Rothko is
that there is currently a conservative MP in Ottawa who seems
to be waging a personal vendetta against non-representational
art. This particular MP made an equally loud and public fuss a
couple of years ago about the acquisition of Barnett Newman's
_Voice of Fire_. Otherwise, the purchases of the National Gallery
remain private, so we'll never know if Canadians would object to
spending $1.8 million or more on a Giotto or Ernst. In my view,
it's symptomatic of the elitism of the art world that very little
_public_ discussion of art (its nature, value or function) ever
takes place or has ever (to my knowledge) taken place in this
country. I don't know about the U.S. .... (Though the Mapplethorpe
[sp?] controversy comes to mind, but that's obviously a separate
issue.)
I don't presume to speak for Canadians, and certainly not for
conscious ones, but personally, I _would_ object to spending
millions on a Giotto or some other safely canonized piece. I
think we have to look at issues such as who pays for art museums
vs. who uses them. Also, in the "Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
why do we still feel the need to buy and then kneel down before
"original" art. If I like a piece of art, I buy a postcard of it
and stick it on my fridge. If I could get Barbara Kruger nailpolish
(a bit difficult I realize) I would. But I wouldn't fork out even
$50.00 (CAN) to horde an "original" of hers in my home.
--Kate (a Canadian of Philistine descent)
Brian K. Yoder
>> But what I want to know is "is this art"? Just because something
>>may please the eye (like a big juicy steak waiting to be eaten) doesn't
>>mean it's art, does it? Your post seemed to stray quite a bit from this
>>point. Yes, the squiggly lines created by a "painter" with paint squirt
>>guns may have some meaning to him/her (though, I can't imagine what), but
>>is that art?
>> That's the real question here, and one of the factors seems to be
>>that for something to be considered "art" it should have meaning (hopefully
>>discernable) to the viewer/reader/whathaveyou.
>Meaning is not discernable; it is invented. [Visual] art is any
>display for which you choose to play the role of art perceiver.
This is unadulterated nonsense. A definition which doesn't differentiate
its referents from other things is a useless definition. But, maybe I should
just accept it anyway and see where it takes me...
I am glad to see that you completely agree with everything I have said. When
I look at your post, I can see that in every respect you are telling me
quite clearly that you not only know that my aesthetic theories are correct,
but that you idolize me like a god.
>Art as a category is useless.
This attitude is why we art lovers despise those of you who want to define
art out of existence. If you really think so, then you ought to stop posting
here since there is clearly nothing of any value you could have to add
(other than to deny that there is such a thing as art).
>As are journalism, politics, and
>religion, art is becoming subsumed into a generic sociocultural
>"stuff." The bounaries between the categories are losing their
>legitimacy.
Among whom? Art snobs? Pseudo-intellectuals? Look, if you don't think
there is such a thing as art, journalism, or politics, then get out of
the way and lt those of us who know better take over the art, press, and
political institutions.
>This PoMo development is part of what Terence McKenna
>calls the "Archaic Revival." The global village is one in which
>the Western cultural categories convince fewer and fewer people
>of their usefulness.
Why in the world do you have any respect for McKenna? His claims are
pure fantasy, as you might expect for someone who spends his time
pickling his brain with every drug he can find. He makes no claim to
rational thinking or truth, he just denies that these are good or necessary
and goes on about his fantasies.
>The poster who asked whether a sunset is art was on the right track.
I thought you didn't believe that art was anything, so how can there be a right
or wrong track?
>Art aspires to become nature, in its complexity and evocativeness.
How can art aspire to do anything? I thought that you said art is nothing
in particular? You seem to be not only claiming that art is nothing, but that
it can have aspirations apart from the aspiratons of the creator. You
should just go back to pickling your brains with McKenna and leave the
defintion of concepts and thinking up to those of us who think it has
some use.
>This is why art as a category falls away. Nature has already done it.
>McLuhan was fond of quoting the Balinese: "We have no art. We do
>ALL things as best we can."
Perhaps it explains why so much great art has come frm Bali.
--Brian
Brian K. Yoder
Only if you have no interest in the truth. Since these theories are
contradictory, then they can't possibly be lumped together into a single
mishmash theory and be true. Of course, you have never shown any
particular interest in discovering the truth about anything.
--Brian
Gordon Fitch
| I think the reason there is an outcry about the Rothko is
| that there is currently a conservative MP in Ottawa who seems
| to be waging a personal vendetta against non-representational
| art.
All non-representational art, or just the contemporary
stuff? I would guess the latter.
| ... the purchases of the National Gallery
| remain private, so we'll never know if Canadians would object to
| spending $1.8 million or more on a Giotto or Ernst. In my view,
| it's symptomatic of the elitism of the art world that very little
| _public_ discussion of art (its nature, value or function) ever
| takes place or has ever (to my knowledge) taken place in this
| country. I don't know about the U.S. .... (Though the Mapplethorpe
| [sp?] controversy comes to mind, but that's obviously a separate
| issue.)
In the United States, there's a kind of pogrom against
homosexuals going on, so the big issue is whether or not a
work of art can somehow be connected with it. One might
be able to stir abstract expressionism into the bubbling
pot; I've noted public acceptance of it, but as someone
was careful to point out, I'm writing from the New York
City area. (The value of the trade in art -- "high" art --
is estimated at anywhere from 500 million to two billion
dollars a year, which probably creates a certain respect.)
I was going to fault the media for the lack of discussion
about the nature, value, or function of art; but on
reflection I think that most people are not interested in
such abstractions about art; they take a more personal
approach to it. In other words, they're experiencing it
while we're talking about it. Elites, on the other hand,
have to be concerned with these abstractions because they
have to know what everything is _worth_. It's part of
their social role.
| I don't presume to speak for Canadians, and certainly not for
| conscious ones, but personally, I _would_ object to spending
| millions on a Giotto or some other safely canonized piece. I
| think we have to look at issues such as who pays for art museums
| vs. who uses them. Also, in the "Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
| why do we still feel the need to buy and then kneel down before
| "original" art. If I like a piece of art, I buy a postcard of it
| and stick it on my fridge. If I could get Barbara Kruger nailpolish
| (a bit difficult I realize) I would. But I wouldn't fork out even
| $50.00 (CAN) to horde an "original" of hers in my home.
In a few years (if not already) it should be possible,
using holography and very-high-definition TV, to give a
completely accurate visual representation of a painting,
one which no human eye could distinguish from the real
thing. In fact, the view might be better than any
original, because you could adjust the "lighting" per
painting -- even per viewer. Could we then dispense
with the originals? After all, you're not allowed to
touch them.
Gordon Fitch
| >I find the resurrection of the old objections to Modernism
| >interesting. As many readers will be aware, Postmodernism
| >also attacks Modernism. Supposedly. So it might be
| >amusing to get them all together, for contrasting flavors --
| >a sort of chocolate-chip ice cream of artistic theory.
byo...@netcom.com (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
| Only if you have no interest in the truth. Since these theories are
| contradictory, then they can't possibly be lumped together into a single
| mishmash theory and be true. Of course, you have never shown any
| particular interest in discovering the truth about anything.
Now, now, Brian, I'm as interested in the truth as anyone
else. I just don't agree that it can be cast into language
in some final, conclusive, absolute way. You may disagree;
but that is a religious difference, and there is no use
having a religious war over it; it is part of my perception
of the truth, and a very persistent one.
I wasn't thinking, though, of concocting a single mishmash
theory, although that might be fun, and "mishmash" is a
neat word. A mishmash wouldn't have contrasting flavors.
Malgosia Askanas
Gordon Fitch says:
> on reflection I think that most people are not interested in
> such abstractions about art; they take a more personal
> approach to it. In other words, they're experiencing it
> while we're talking about it.
As a member of the One Person Self-Appointed Hit Squad Against
the Constant Self-Isolation on the Part of Intellectuals (usually
referred to simply as OPSAHSACSIPI) I feel it is my sacred
and grim duty to take exception to this statement. Do you
really believe that abstract thinking is less "personal" than its lack?
And that "talking" and "experiencing" are with each other
at the kinds of odds your statement suggests? (Of course, if
you don't, you are by this very fact manifesting a rift between
talking and experiencing, thus proving your point. But... scared duty!)
> Elites, on the other hand,
> have to be concerned with these abstractions because they
> have to know what everything is _worth_. It's part of
> their social role.
This thought I cannot take exception to. It is worth far too much.
Ken Jopp
>In article <1993Aug12.0...@hemlock.cray.com> k...@cray.com (Ken Jopp) writes:
>
>
>>Meaning is not discernable; it is invented. [Visual] art is any
>>display for which you choose to play the role of art perceiver.
>
>This is unadulterated nonsense. A definition which doesn't differentiate
>its referents from other things is a useless definition. But, maybe I should
>just accept it anyway and see where it takes me...
>
>>Art as a category is useless.
>
>This attitude is why we art lovers despise those of you who want to define
>art out of existence. If you really think so, then you ought to stop posting
>here since there is clearly nothing of any value you could have to add
>(other than to deny that there is such a thing as art).
>
Brian, the assessments of "art lovers" no more demonstrate the
existence of "art" than do the genuflections of religious zealots
demonstrate the existence of their various dieties. If you are
so devoted to conventional thinking, why not initiate
alt.modern.true.believer ?
>>As are journalism, politics, and
>>religion, art is becoming subsumed into a generic sociocultural
>>"stuff." The boundaries between the categories are losing their
>>legitimacy.
>
>Among whom? Art snobs? Pseudo-intellectuals? Look, if you don't think
>there is such a thing as art, journalism, or politics, then get out of
>the way and lt those of us who know better take over the art, press, and
>political institutions.
YOu can preserve outmoded vocabularies, but you'll end up with a
"Ptolmeic" philosophy, with increasingly complex conceptual epicycles.
BTW, is dropping a crucifix in a jar of urine a political or an artistic
act? Depends on who you ask. Ask Jesse Helms. Meaning is not discernable,
it is invented.
>
>>This PoMo development is part of what Terence McKenna
>>calls the "Archaic Revival." The global village is one in which
>>the Western cultural categories convince fewer and fewer people
>>of their usefulness.
>
>Why in the world do you have any respect for McKenna? His claims are
>pure fantasy, as you might expect for someone who spends his time
>pickling his brain with every drug he can find. He makes no claim to
>rational thinking or truth, he just denies that these are good or necessary
>and goes on about his fantasies.
Ad hominem arguments are SOOOOOOO convincing.
>
>>This is why art as a category falls away. Nature has already done it.
>>McLuhan was fond of quoting the Balinese: "We have no art. We do
>>ALL things as best we can."
>
>Perhaps it explains why so much great art has come frm Bali.
>
>--Brian
Probably not. But it explains why people like you panic when
when your mental filing system is threatened by a revolution
in categories.
Peace,
Ken
Brian K. Yoder
>| Only if you have no interest in the truth. Since these theories are
>| contradictory, then they can't possibly be lumped together into a single
>| mishmash theory and be true. Of course, you have never shown any
>| particular interest in discovering the truth about anything.
>Now, now, Brian, I'm as interested in the truth as anyone
>else.
Not if you see reason as a matter of religion and don't care whether
your theories contain elements which are contradictory.
>I just don't agree that it can be cast into language
>in some final, conclusive, absolute way. You may disagree;
I do. But I think that you should be consistent and admit that
if the truth of your claims can't be expressed in language, then
you should just stop posting since ultimately, you have nothing to say.
>but that is a religious difference,
The reasons for your beliefs may very well be religious (and therefore not
well founded) but mine are not. I suggest that you speak for yourself, and then
abide by your own claims. If you claim to be nothing more than an
irrational religious fanatic the truth of whose claims can't ever be
proven or even articulated then shouldn't you just keep quiet and go away?
>and there is no use
>having a religious war over it;
I was not advocating a war. I was merely pointout out just how hopeless and
irrational your position is. You above have essentially agreed with me.
I don't see why it is necessary to carry on our discussion any further
since I we agree about the validity of your claims. Our only difference is
that you wish to cling to ideas which you admit are groundless and
irrational, and I think that you shouldn't, but that is an issue that only
you can resolve, and that is best done either alone or with the help of a
therapist, and not on USENET.
>it is part of my perception
>of the truth, and a very persistent one.
Indeed.
--Brian
Charley Wingate
>And sometimes art is just about paint. That's all. Just paint.
When art is "just about paint", the LAST thing it is about is paint; the
first thing it is about is talking about art as "just paint".
Ask Sherwin-Williams...
--
C. Wingate + "The peace of God, it is no peace,
+ but strife closed in the sod.
man...@cs.umd.edu + Yet, brothers, pray for but one thing:
tove!mangoe + the marv'lous peace of God."
Gordon Fitch
byo...@netcom.com (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
| >| Only if you have no interest in the truth. Since these theories are
| >| contradictory, then they can't possibly be lumped together into a single
| >| mishmash theory and be true. Of course, you have never shown any
| >| particular interest in discovering the truth about anything.
gcf:
| >Now, now, Brian, I'm as interested in the truth as anyone
| >else.
byoder:
| Not if you see reason as a matter of religion and don't care whether
| your theories contain elements which are contradictory.
I believe contradiction is necessary to express the truth --
to _begin_ to express the truth. From the point of view of
human beings, the universe has many paradoxical or self-
contradictory elements. Not only that, it changes all the
time, even while one is saying something about it. At
least, those are the findings of physicists about the most
elementary levels of existence, and the situation becomes
only more difficult as we examine the structures built on
them.
If the universe is lively -- and it must be, if we are
really alive -- then the most we can hope for is a kind of
dialog with it. We can't _nail_it_down_. This is
especially true of art and aesthetic experiences.
gcf:
| >I just don't agree that it can be cast into language
| >in some final, conclusive, absolute way. You may disagree;
byoder:
| I do. But I think that you should be consistent and admit that
| if the truth of your claims can't be expressed in language, then
| you should just stop posting since ultimately, you have nothing to say.
But I don't "have nothing to say" just because I don't
believe I utter the absolute, final truth every time I
say something. It has been difficult, but I have come
to accept the fact that I am not God, at least, most
of the time.
gcf:
| >but that is a religious difference,
byoder:
| The reasons for your beliefs may very well be religious (and therefore not
| well founded) but mine are not. ...
Yes, they are. In order to start using reason you have to
believe in it pre-rationally, and you have to continue to
believe in it even when it casts doubt on itself. For
instance, the process of reason requires casting all that it
works on into language, a procedure which is bound to be
imperfect. Then, it is necessary to assume that following
certain rules about the combination of symbols will
invariably produce the truth -- but it is not written in the
sky, or anywhere else, that these rules will do so. It just
seems that they do, and some people choose to believe in
them. First, the belief; then, the procedure; finally, the
"truth."
Charley Wingate
>As noted, most music is non-representational, "meaningful" or not.
Hmmmmmmmmmm....... I think this isn't going to get you as far as it might.
To start right off with the worst offender, twelve-tone serialism, most
people react to it either by saying they don't understand it, or by
dismissing it as noise. Both of these carry with them the implication that
"real" music does contain some sort of intrinsic meaning. Furthermore,
conventional music theory would seem to provide a grammar for music (at
least as we hear it).
To take an extreme position: serial music fails the test of meaning because
ultimately it is not "about" the sounds themselves; it is about being
identified AS serialism. Indeed, it is often the case that the sequence of
sounds is entirely indifferent to the identity of the piece, implying that
one need only differentiate serial pieces from "conventional" music.
Andy Pearlman
>I was not advocating a war. I was merely pointout out just how hopeless and
>irrational your position is. You above have essentially agreed with me.
>I don't see why it is necessary to carry on our discussion any further
>since I we agree about the validity of your claims. Our only difference is
>that you wish to cling to ideas which you admit are groundless and
>irrational, and I think that you shouldn't, but that is an issue that only
>you can resolve, and that is best done either alone or with the help of a
>therapist, and not on USENET.
Okay Brian, you've got me curious. Exactly what major artists(even those
centuries old) do you like? What proof do you have that even a significant
portion of the population agrees with your definitions of art(not just the
noisy portion)?
Also, there is a difference between:
"I will believe in nothing without proof." and
"I don't believe in anything."
even if there is the unstated "and I'm not expecting any proof anytime soon."
If you are an atheist, you should know better.
Andy Pearlman
Kevin Brooks
[chomp... snip, snip]
>
>Sigh. Your concern for art astounds me. You really seem to think that
>what art isw and what art is good is purely a matter of public opinion, and
>apparently, that the more meaningless a work is, the more sophisticated
>the person who likes it is. You certainly don't speak for me or any of the
>prople I know who didn't have a voice in that 1950's argument over what art
is,
>and who prefer to see meaningful beautiful art rather than meaningless ugly
>scrawls and smudges.
>
>--Brian
>
just as you do not want gordon to speak for you and those you speak for
("or any of the prople [people] I know[...]"), i find that i do not
desire that you speak for what is "beautiful" or "ugly," as if these
terms were universals that can be trotted out anytime an aesthetic controversy
needs to be solved. from your mention of "scrawls and smudges" i
sense that you prefer what is known (commonly) as "realism." of
course, i could be mistaken -- but i sense that i am not. furthermore,
i sense that what you actually prefer is not painting at all, despite
references to 1950's a.e. and "scrawls and smudges," but distanced
photographic reproductions of what many believe painting is like.
thus, by referring to "meaningful beautiful art," i take it you mean
some smoothed-over normative form painted by someone that never bothered
to check out a rembrandt, a rubens, or any other "serious" art up close.
kevin
The child twists and turns his toy, scratches it, shakes it, bumps it against
the walls, throws it on the ground. [. . .] Its marvelous life comes to a
stop. The child, like the people besieging the Tuileries, makes a supreme
effort; at last he opens it up, he is the stronger. But where is the soul?
This is the beginning of melancholy and gloom.
-- Charles Baudelaire, "The Philosophy of Toys"
Kevin Brooks
> I
>think we have to look at issues such as who pays for art museums
>vs. who uses them. Also, in the "Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
>why do we still feel the need to buy and then kneel down before
>"original" art. If I like a piece of art, I buy a postcard of it
>and stick it on my fridge. If I could get Barbara Kruger nailpolish
>(a bit difficult I realize) I would. But I wouldn't fork out even
>$50.00 (CAN) to horde an "original" of hers in my home.
>
>--Kate (a Canadian of Philistine descent)
>
>
right! but, then, as walter benjamin would surely be quick to
analogize, why do we need a particular individual when we can
simply train any person to be a repoduction of the model
employee that high capitalism needs? the point is that although
reproduction displaces a certain idea of uniqueness, the latter
remains important as a marker of difference. benjamin oscillates
often between these two poles. the "postmodern" -- not necessarily
post-structuralist -- interpretation of benjamin on this point is
rather single minded and aggressive in forwarding what is believed
to be _the_ reproductive aesthetic, exemplified by kruger and co.
Gordon Fitch
>As noted, most music is non-representational, "meaningful" or not.
man...@cs.umd.edu (Charley Wingate) writes:
| Hmmmmmmmmmm....... I think this isn't going to get you as far as it might.
| To start right off with the worst offender, twelve-tone serialism, most
| people react to it either by saying they don't understand it, or by
| dismissing it as noise. Both of these carry with them the implication that
| "real" music does contain some sort of intrinsic meaning. Furthermore,
| conventional music theory would seem to provide a grammar for music (at
| least as we hear it).
I've given the music-is-abstract thing some thought since I
wrote that sentence and decided that music might be
representational -- not of sounds in nature, but of the
human voice. Of course, it's still abstract, and so
serialism wouldn't be excluded, but arrhythmic collections
of electronic sounds are probably over the line for most
people -- the rhythms of human speech vary, but they come
along pretty continuously. And, sure enough, this sort of
music isn't very popular -- but put a good beat under it,
and you can play it in a rock club.
I've read that the problem with serialism is that it
excludes too much information and consequently tends to
sound (a) alike and (b) uninteresting. As I wrote about
this awhile ago, and I'm sure everyone memorized my article,
I won't repeat it.
I don't think serialism was supposed to be about serialism,
and besides, some music is about music, even about itself,
_The_Art_of_the_Fugue_, for example.
Gordon Fitch
| > on reflection I think that most people are not interested in
| > such abstractions about art; they take a more personal
| > approach to it. In other words, they're experiencing it
| > while we're talking about it.
m...@dsd.camb.inmet.com (Malgosia Askanas) writes:
| As a member of the One Person Self-Appointed Hit Squad Against
| the Constant Self-Isolation on the Part of Intellectuals (usually
| referred to simply as OPSAHSACSIPI) I feel it is my sacred
| and grim duty to take exception to this statement. Do you
| really believe that abstract thinking is less "personal" than its lack?
| And that "talking" and "experiencing" are with each other
| at the kinds of odds your statement suggests? (Of course, if
| you don't, you are by this very fact manifesting a rift between
| talking and experiencing, thus proving your point. But... scared duty!)
^^^^^^
Scared duty, eh? C'mon, it's not that bad.
I suppose I'm abstracting my own personal experience and
projecting onto "most people." In most cases, it seems like
an obstruction. Not always -- understanding the mechanics
of fugal writing can add to the enjoyment of the music which
employs it, I suppose because the composers recognized and
worked with that particular kind of intellection as such.
But what are you going to say about, say, Van Gogh's "The
Mountains above Ste. Remy" that has anything to do with your
experience looking at it? Although this is a rhetorical
question, I suppose someone might answer it.
Of course, you can just record your feelings and thoughts as
best you can. "When I beheld the painting, I felt like
throwing myself down and beating my head on the floor.
Fortunately, the gentleman next to me was discoursing
energetically on 'values' and 'texture' while gesticulating
obscenely, and my desire to kill him enabled me to maintain
a demeanor appropriate to my station in life." I think this
sort of thing was more fashionable in the 18th century;
subsequently, critics tried to be "objective" (speak from
God's vest pocket) and this still has not quite worn off,
from what I read in the trade press. (The change in fashion
has to do with the increasing power and conservatism of the
bourgeoisie.)
My guess is that whatever people are seeking in art is more
primitive than language; after all, the flowers romance
lowly insects, who evidently apprehend beauty without
knowing much about it. How dreary, then, to nail it to a
cross of denotation. (Unless you're into that sort of
thing.) I guess the real issue is that of evaluation.
Intellection can add to our experience of the work as long
as it retains a prelapsarian innocence. Once we have to
start using it to judge and to quantify, and to judge and
quantify ourselves judging and quantifying, I think the
experience is being damaged -- if not being ground up
completely in the mills of economic procedure.
| > Elites, on the other hand,
| > have to be concerned with these abstractions because they
| > have to know what everything is _worth_. It's part of
| > their social role.
|
| This thought I cannot take exception to. It is worth far too much.
I find the politics of art easier to talk about than the art
itself. I don't know what to say about a painting other
than to give my immediate, intuitive, unpedigreed reactions
to it, which in the case of a Rothko are pretty mild. But
the politics are not only fascinating but verbalizable -- I
suppose because politics is mostly talk, until they decide
to kill somebody.
As this thread now has nothing specifically to do with
Canada, and is drawing the ire of many in rec.arts.fine, I'm
setting the followup line to alt.postmodern.
Richard L. Rosen
>Gordon Fitch writes:
>
>>As noted, most music is non-representational, "meaningful" or not.
>
>Hmmmmmmmmmm....... I think this isn't going to get you as far as it might.
>To start right off with the worst offender, twelve-tone serialism, most
>people react to it either by saying they don't understand it, or by
>dismissing it as noise. Both of these carry with them the implication that
>"real" music does contain some sort of intrinsic meaning. Furthermore,
>conventional music theory would seem to provide a grammar for music (at
>least as we hear it).
This is a common cultural chauvinism, that the way "we" listen to music
and thus the way music in our culture is constructed represents some
"intrinsic meaning", some natural state of affairs regarding musical reality.
NOT. Sure, we use harmonic overtones as a basis for certain relationships
between tones, but we build a sort of "mathematics of music" upon it that is
ultimately no less artificial than serialism, when you get down to it.
Conventional music theory describes A grammar describing the way composers in
OUR culture construct music, and like any grammar for any language it grows and
evolves. The "meaning" imputed in such music is one that is culturally learned
by exposure and association. Or do we have people here who would claim that--
as someone in I believe the late 19th-century attempted to "codify"--there are
intrinsic meanings for major chords, minor chords, diminished chords (ooh,
scary!), augmented chords, arpeggios, ostinatos, etc., that are NATURAL and
inherent in the music?
The point being that music can only be considered "representational" on its own
if you consider the things it seeks to "represent" as part of a learned
vocabulary of tonal reference points, a vocabulary that grows (or at least
grew) as composers added more things to it. Debussy, for example, one of my
personal favorites, deliberately incorporated tonal "clusters" that were not
used in the music of his time. Or, if they were used, it was not on their own
merit, they were more like leading points towards increasing chromatic
"tensions" as in the likes of Wagner, but in that case they were considered
"tensions" to be---or perhaps not to be--resolved. Debussy and others like him
retained the tonal roots and "feel" of their contributions to Western music,
while stretching the boundaries of what fit into the tonal vocabulary of the
musical culture. Stravinsky took it out even further, but people like
Schoenberg abandoned it entirely, for the sake of abandoning it entirely.
Much as narrative form was abandoned by some writers, and much as the "realist"
representationalist schools of painting and other visual art were similarly
abandoned by some artists.
But if the argument is being put forth that all art is necessarily inherently
representational, music does NOT fit that category, since any "meaning" in
music is based on a culturally learned vocabulary regarding what certain
harmonies, rhythms, and other musical constructs MEAN. Which puts
"conventional" Western tonality is the same boat as serialism. Do you know or
understand the vocabulary of serialism? Has it had time to permeate the
culture? Or, perhaps more importantly, does it have one at all, is its whole
purpose as an artistic movement an abandonment of the very notion of cultural
vocabulary as we know it? (I know, this brings forth the wrath of people who
don't buy into the notion of artists upsetting what is often called "cultural
tyranny"; these are mostly people who are themselves cultural tyrants, upset
with changes in culture and dogmatically asserting how deviations from the
canonical artistic cultural vocabulary are incompatible with "real art". "He
is a barbarian, he thinks the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature..."
Seems we have a lot of barbarians in attendance. :-)
--
echo "This is not a pipe." | cat - >/dev/tty Rich Rosen r...@panix.com
Ward Paul
>
>I believe contradiction is necessary to express the truth --
Cute. Care to describe this view to sci.logic?
--
Paul
Please do not read beyond this point.
Bryan Taylor
> Well, movies are a little different from the other arts because they are
> so complex. They contain musical, literary, visual/photographic, and
> other components to construct the final product. So, yes it is art, and
> in fact it is a series of art works merged together in a particular way.
>
> --Brian
>
Interesting, are you saying that each frame / collection of frames /
soundtracks are seperate and distinct works of art? I believe that the
entire constructed work is the art.
Sorry to be pedantic ;)
cheers
br...@brunswk.amigans.gen.nz | Stuff reality, find me a good illusion |
Gordon Fitch
| >| >I believe contradiction is necessary to express the truth --
wa...@agamit.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il (Ward Paul) writes:
| >| Cute. Care to describe this view to sci.logic?
k...@cray.com (Ken Jopp) writes:
| Gordon replies:
|
| OOOps, erased it. Something about "experiential truth."
I said that experiential truth was different from logical
truth.
| Gordo, I'm sympathetic to your position. But when you
| posit varieties of truth, you seem to retreat and
| hedge your bets. Most obvious objection: alcoholic
| hallucinations are experientially true to the perceiver
| but gimme a break. If truth is what is humanly apprehensible
| then it is a moving target. ...
Well, it is that, and a pursuit or intent rather than a
thing to be sequestered and possessed. But the idea of
logical truth is even more constrained than an idea of
some kind of "objective" truth. Logical truth is the
result of certain operations on symbols. Logic, itself,
deals with a particular set of symbols and only those
symbols; certainly not the physical universe. One may
imitate the other, but there are no connecting rods to
my knowledge. If there are, someone should tell us
about them right away.
As for alcoholic hallucinations, truth or reality
starts with consciousness and perception; these are
undeniable, at least to me. What may lie beyond them in
some kind of objective space is debatable, and therefore
less true and less real. This is not a radical novelty;
it's a pretty standard view in Buddhism, I believe. I
hesitate to ascribe any kind of meaning to Quantum
Mechanics, but it _seems_ as if physics is being dragged
slowly to the same conclusion.
I've set the follow-up to alt.posmodern.
JJ...@psuvm.psu.edu
says: > >In article <249sd5$q...@panix.com> g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
writes: >>g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes: >>| >| >Meanwhile, we have
all these lower-middle-class somethings! I always thought a painting a
bunch of squiggly lines, etc. means it not? No, it does not, for a work of
art has to be an artist trying to portray what it means for something. I
can't believe this something else felt connected! There's no telling,
especially then the artist must have intended meaning[should't take
subtleties of the public that defied it!] I don't see why one rants like a
federally employed museum guard (savvy on the meaty bits, boney in the
marrow) to say the following: > enjoy looking at p s man-made, but it isn't
trying to portray anything (other than >perhaps the trivial "I'm a K-Mart
building." and that's not particularly >significant, nor is there much of an
alternative). > >>- Van Gogh's "Irises" > >Sure, it's particularly fond, a
little different from the other arts because they are , literary,
visual/photographic, and product. So, yes, merged together in a particular
way The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, and noise from one what ain't
supposed to be here is what I think it is certainy art. - my houseplants
agree your plants are unusual in that they aren't art,even badly patched
syzygy.
Ain't my idea either of conversation. Is it art that I tagged it along?
Kevin Brooks
>
>br...@brunswk.amigans.gen.nz | Stuff reality, find me a good illusion |
reality must be a damn fine illusion if you are rejecting it in hope
of finding an illusion.
Gordon Fitch
| In article <byoderCB...@netcom.com>, byo...@netcom.com (Brian K. Yoder)
| says: > >In article <249sd5$q...@panix.com> g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
| writes: >>g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes: >>| >| >Meanwhile, we have
| all these lower-middle-class somethings! I always thought a painting a
The software is widely available and is now, I think,
distributed as part of Emacs. The use of this rather
aged joke is seldom considered particularly witty,
although one has learned to expect a certain
irrepressible freshness from PSU.
Charley Wingate
>I find the resurrection of the old objections to Modernism interesting. As
>many readers will be aware, Postmodernism also attacks Modernism. Supposedly.
"Supposedly" is the right word.
I find the "art appreciation" pieces in the _Smithsonian_ highly instructive
in this regard. If there is any body which represents the Art Establishment
better, it can only be MOMA and the Met in NYC. (We could throw in the
Whitney for good measure.) The art articles tend to be sales pitches either
for the NGA/Smithsonian special exhibits or for NYC exhibits. These are an
interesting mix now that the art establishment has expanded to the extent
that almost anything is anti-some-establishment. Let's take the Rembrandt
Peale exhibit of several months back. Back in the mid '80s the NGA spent
some $4M to purchase his famous portrait of his brother Rubens sitting with
a "geranium". Far be it from me to suggest that the money were better spent
on two Rothkos; the NGA is notoriously weak in both american and modern
works. Having the MMA, the Portrait Gallery, the Cocoran, and the Hirshhorn
is mitigating, I suppose, in both departments. Now the Smithsonian had
litle to say (and for that matter, had no need to say much) about the
paintings-- they spoke for themselves. They spent most of the article
deconstructing the artist's life, and thus constructing the myth of the
artist as an emotional deviant and monster. More recently, they were
pushing a-- modernist? post-modernist? -- painter whom I've never heard of,
probably because the works illustrated were determinedly ugly in extreme,
consisting of cartoon white outlines snarling and screaming on a dirty brown
or black background. Shostakovich's 8th symphony (written in Leningrad
during the seige) is a powerful work, but I wouldn't be able to take it
played 'round the clock. The magazine tried hard to sell this guy, though,
taking the M/PM tack that since this guy's life was ugly and monsterous, so
should his art be.
My reaction, after the initial repugnance, was "Ho hum-- another PM uglyist
artist. How tedious and boring." I don't think it is meaningful to dismiss
AE or M or PM art as "not art"; it is entirely valid to dismiss it as vapid
and dull.
Charley Wingate
>In my view, it's symptomatic of the elitism of the art world that very
>little _public_ discussion of art (its nature, value or function) ever takes
>place or has ever (to my knowledge) taken place in this country. I don't
>know about the U.S. .... (Though the Mapplethorpe [sp?] controversy comes
>to mind, but that's obviously a separate issue.)
The two controversies are basically similar in that they are about
differences in public vs. artistic elite tastes.
>I don't presume to speak for Canadians, and certainly not for conscious
>ones, but personally, I _would_ object to spending millions on a Giotto or
>some other safely canonized piece.
At least in this country, a Rothko is every bit as "canonized" as a Giotto.
Perhaps the problem is that lots of people think the only value in the
Rothko IS its canonization.
>I think we have to look at issues such as who pays for art museums
>vs. who uses them.
That's easy-- the Giotto wins every time. The NGA in DC has many times the
patronage of the Hirshhorn, mostly because the ordinary people who DO go to
these public galleries dont' like "modern" art.
>Also, in the "Age of Mechanical Reproduction" why do we still feel the need
>to buy and then kneel down before "original" art.
This is also easy. Get on a plane, fly to DC, and find the wall-sized
painting of "Mary Queen of Heaven" back in the Flemish stuff; now try to
imagine that compressed onto an 8 by 10 or worse, onto a halftone. It may
not matter for pop art, but it matters for Giotto, it matters for Whistler,
and it sure as heck matters for Rothko. Relying on reproduction is like
watching cinemascope on videotape.
Charley Wingate
>In the United States, there's a kind of pogrom against homosexuals going
>on, so the big issue is whether or not a work of art can somehow be
>connected with it.
Gordon, this is so much bullshit. It would be much more accurate to say
that there is a backlash against the "in your face" politics of a lot of gay
activists, and to rather snotty dismissal of the values of most of the
country.
In the case of Maplethorpe, it was not just homoseuxality. The signature
image of the controversy was good ole "Piss Christ", depicting the crucifix
soaking in a jar of urine. A lot of people, found this offensive, just
as the art establishment who put this display might have found a lauditory
display of Nazi progaganda art offensive.
>Elites, on the other hand, have to be concerned with these abstractions
>because they have to know what everything is _worth_. It's part of their
>social role.
More precisely, it is a part of their social _worth_.
Charley Wingate
>This is a common cultural chauvinism, that the way "we" listen to music
>and thus the way music in our culture is constructed represents some
>"intrinsic meaning", some natural state of affairs regarding musical reality.
You are being overly dichotomous. An appeal to gamelon music or to the koto
as an alien sound doesn't automatically show the degree of artificiality
that you wish to claim. Both of those, for instance, share with western
music some notion of what are proper intervals and what are not. One could
make a much better appeal to medieval as opposed to rennaisance music; the
alien sound of the former as compared to the latter is evidence of a major
shift in the way people heard music.
But the real problem is going to appear in the next sentence.
>Sure, we use harmonic overtones as a basis for certain relationships
>between tones, but we build a sort of "mathematics of music" upon it that is
>ultimately no less artificial than serialism, when you get down to it.
The fact is that there is a profound difference that hinges quite neatly on
artificiality. Ordinary music theory is a grammar in basically the same
sense that people write out english grammars; serialism's grammar is
constructed in the same sense that Algol has a grammar. Regardless of the
acculturational component of ordinary music, its grammar is constrained by
the need of the grammar to describe; the grammars of constructs such as
serialism are largely arbitrary.
>Or do we have people here who would claim that-- as someone in I believe the
>late 19th-century attempted to "codify"-- there are intrinsic meanings for
>major chords, minor chords, diminished chords (ooh, scary!), augmented
>chords, arpeggios, ostinatos, etc., that are NATURAL and inherent in
>the music?
Well, we have an interesting experiment along these lines going on in our
household; our 6 month old son's favorite lullabies are:
>Do you know or understand the vocabulary of serialism? Has it had time to
>permeate the culture? Or, perhaps more importantly, does it have one at
>all, is its whole purpose as an artistic movement an abandonment of the very
>notion of cultural vocabulary as we know it?
I think the answer to the latter question is quite clearly no, but we then
hit a snag about what this "culture" is. Let me take an example. Back in
the fall, we had the invariable commission piece for the NSO in DC, in this
case a piece titled "Air and Angels". Now, the program notes for the
concert went into considerable detail about how part of the piece was
constructed using a tone row based on the name "Mistislav Rostopovich".
What happened in reality is that the orchestra veered back and forth between
the hint of sublime music and great gouts of atonal, tooth-jarring
bellowing. To make a jarring noise, one can simply fall on the keyboard; it
seems that some cultural merit lies in knowing that this isn't just any old
tooth-jarring noise, but instead a carefully crafted tooth-jarring noise.
Roger Lustig
>In article <249sd5$q...@panix.com> g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>>g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>>| >| >in the most earnest lower-middle-class manner and saying,
>>| >| >"But it's got to _mean_ something!
>>byo...@netcom.com (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
>>| >| Well, if it doesn't mean something what good is it? ...
>>gcf:
>>| >...
>>| >But what if some people just enjoy looking at a work of art,
>>| >regardless of where it fits in in some larger picture? I
>>| >don't see why this enjoyment is invalid. So I don't see why
>>| >a work of art _has_ to mean anything. What if _it_ is the
>>| >goodie?
>>kus...@envmsa.eas.asu.edu (J.J. Kuslich) writes:
>>| Well, I'm no expert in the realm of aesthetics (sp?), but isn't
>>| "meaning" one of the things that separates a plain old picture from "art."
>>| I mean, by your definition, every creation is "art." But is a painting of
>>| a bunch of squiggly lines made by someone using paint squirt guns really
>>| art? Isn't it just a "painting" (I use this term loosely for the example I
>>| gave).
GENERAL COMMENT: We seem to have a great deal of slippage between
"means something" and "means something to *me*".
>>| I always thought "art" was something ... special or at the very
>>| least, meaningful.
>>First of all, a painting of a bunch of squiggly lines, etc.,
>>may mean something to somebody, which means it has meaning,
>>does it not?
>No it does not. For a work of art to convey a meaning, there has to be some
>connection between what the artist is trying to portray, the artwork itself,
>and the viewer.
a) Much art doesn't "portray" anything. Music is an example -- what does
a symphony portray? (I know, Brian, you're tired of my asking you this
question; but that doesn't make the question go away.)
b) Even if a work of art *does* portray something, what *is* that connection
you speak of?
c) How, in the general case, do we determine what the artist is "trying"
to portray? In most cases, we can't do that, if the artist isn't saying,
or died without saying or writing. Even when the artist *does* talk,
what's the relationship between words about one's art and the art oneself?
I know many great artists who were even better bullshitters.
>That is what it means for an artist to create a work of
>art which portrays something. I can't believe that you really don't
>understand my position on this by now.
We understand it, and we also understand its tenuousness. For one thing,
we know that people can have truly exalting esthetic experiences when
contemplating a work of art, and at the same time can miss the artist's
point almost entirely! That is to say, the viewer/listener applies
a *new* meaning to the work of art, one that is demonstrably at variance
with the original meaning.
If you'd like an example, I'll repost an article you posted to rec.music.
classical about a year ago.
>>It could have meaning either way: it could
>>stand for something else, or it could be part of a structure
>>with which some viewers felt connected. There's no telling
>>what may have meaning for someone, especially when it comes
>>to non-representational work.
>If it is art, then the artist must have intended for the work to mean
>something and THAT meaning should be the one people get from experiencing
>the work. Now don't take that claim too far. I am not saying that there
>is no place for subtleties of meaning, and I am not saying that it is the
>sophistication of the public that defines whether something is are or not.
And yet, the public must be able to "read" the art in some way.
But how can it? Especially with older art -- say, music more than 200
years old or ancient sculpture -- our ideas of how to communicate with
artistic materials, gestures, etc. are so different from those of people
back then that we are practically *guaranteed* to get things wrong.
Again, examples on tap -- no, not yours this time.
>>But beyond that, I don't see why one couldn't have some kind
>>of aesthetic experience without having meaning in either
>>sense I refer to above. What about the following:
>>- a beautiful sunset
>It may well be beautiful and you may enjoy looking at it, but it isn't art.
OK -- so how does a *painting* become art if it portrays a beautiful sunset?
>It is not a human creation and it portrays nothing.
What does a painting of it portray? A beautiful sunset. What does the
painting tell us? "That sunset looked like this. I, the painter, felt
like painting it." Not much else -- we don't know whether the painter
considered it merely beautiful, or quite unusual -- unlike most sunsets
back then and back there; we don't know whether the painter was using the
painting to comment on some other work of art that used a similar
composition.
This latter, I might add, is something that artists do, and have done, almost
continually throughout the history of art. Most works of art are, in
some sense, also about other works of art; and it is from *this* that
one is likely to draw meaning in a work of art.
>>- a beautiful sunrise which looks exactly like the sunset
>Same thing.
>
>>- a beautiful new K-mart
>
>It is at least man-made, but it isn't trying to portray anything (other than
>perhaps the trivial "I'm a K-Mart building." and that's not particularly
>significant, nor is there much of an alternative).
Nu? "This is a sunset" isn't all that different...
>>- Van Gogh's "Irises"
>Sure, it's art, although not of a kind I'm particularly fond of either in
>style or content.
What's the content? A field of flowers. What does it "mean"? "There they
are, those flowers." Frankly, I didn't need a painting to tell me that.
The value of art must lie somewhere else.
>>- _The_Night_of_the_Living_Dead_
>Well, movies are a little different from the other arts because they are
>so complex. They contain musical, literary, visual/photographic, and
>other components to construct the final product. So, yes it is art, and
>in fact it is a series of art works merged together in a particular way.
What did the director "mean" by it? How can we tell?
(And why do we disagree on thse things so often?)
>>- The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, Prelude 1
>I am not particularly familiar with that work, but assuming it is what I think
>it is (a baroque piece written for the clavier) it is certainy art.
What did the composer mean by it? How could we possibly determine that?
In what sense is it art? Your say-so alone isn't very convincing.
>>- my houseplants
>Unless yur house plants are unusual (say, topiary or something) then they
>aren't art, even though they may be wonderful to look at and you may like them
>very much. There are lots of things which are beautiful and nice to look
>at, but that doesn't make them art.
But they were planted on purpose, and arranged in a certain way, and esthetic
choices were made all up and down the line. And many people can view them and
note some esthetic things about them. How is this different from, say,
a painting of some houseplants that never actually existed?
>>Do they all have meaning? If so, what?
>No they don't, at least not in the sense that art needs to have meaning in.
Still waiting for the meaning of _Irises_ and WTC I i.
Roger
Roger Lustig
>>g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>>| >newsgroups because the Government of Canada, or some agency
>>| >thereof, had paid 1.8 million dollars for a Rothko,
>>| >producing a kind of outrage I thought had out down a
>>| >generation ago. I've noted that, here in the New York
>>| >City area, ab-ex is reasonably popular and taken for granted
>>| >-- people buy it and sell it in malls, and paint it on their
>>| >fingernails. As you note, other kinds of art are now the
>>| >contested territory. But apparently Canada is in a
>>| >different cultural space.
>>kly...@epas.utoronto.ca (Kate Lynes) writes:
>>| Strange that the US's largest state should be in a "different
>>| cultural space" eh?
>>That's California... no issue.
>New Yorkers only THINK they are the biggest (and most important) state.
>As usual, the facts are different.
INdeed. Texans and Alaskans will agree with you in a New York minute.
>>| ;-) Actually, I think Canadians are not
>>| all that interested in the question of whether or not the
>>| Rothko is art. (IMHO, "artness" is a status that is externally
>>| conferred--usually by an elite of cultural mediators--not
>>| a quality intrinsic to a given work.) The concern is, rather,
>>| that $1.8 million was spent during a recession on a work that
>>| most Canadians don't find enjoyable or otherwise valuable. The
>>| issue is the elitist, non-democratic nature of arts funding and
>>| administration; i.e., it's a political issue in Canada, not solely
>>| or primarily aesthetic. (I realize the two are not entirely
>>| separable--in fact, that's the point!) ...
>>I doubt if most Canadians, or most any other general
>>population, find the works of Giotto tremendously en-
>>joyable or valuable, but I would guess the outcry would
>>be non-existent had the money been spent on Giotto's
>>work. What do you think? If the objection is that the
>>painting is not popular enough to merit such an expendi-
>>ture, and that its selection is elitist and non-demo-
>>cratic, the same objection would apply to almost any-
>>thing the Canadian Government bought.
>Of course not! People would not complain as much if the works being
>collected were not garbage.
Funny, even in Canada few people have called this piece garbage.
Tell me, Brian, how do you know it's garbage? How do you know that
Beethoven's Seventh is *not* garbage?
>Sure, some people would (rightly) complain
>about being taxed for real art, but not nearly as many as when it
>buys Rothkos. What does the popularity of the action have to do with the
>issue of whether Rothko is garbage or not and whether it is art or not?
Popularity, of course. Lots of art that we like was called garbage in
its day. The Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto was said to "stink to the ear"
after its first performance.
What does that piece "mean"? What did the composer mean by it? What,
other than popularity, has brought it down to our time?
>>But the objection
>>was specifically made to Rothko, and in terms which
>>certainly recall the disputes of the 1950s in the United
>>States.
>As if such issues had been completely resolved and nobody cares about
>the issue anymore. Isn't this appeal to tradition just a little bit invalid
>Gordon?
No. After all, these debates have arisen with regard to almost every
innovation in almost every type of art. These debates are themselves
tradition; just think of the Ancient/Modern and French/Italian debates
that kept Paris occupied for over a century.
>>Which I think is an interesting development;
>>I'm wondering what (the conscious sector of) the
>>Canadian public generally thinks of as the canon of
>>valid art.
>Sigh. Your concern for art astounds me. You really seem to think that
>what art isw and what art is good is purely a matter of public opinion, and
Well, it beats having to rely on *Yoder's* opinion, which is the
alternative you've offered us. You certainly haven't given us an
operational tool for determining things otherwise.
>apparently, that the more meaningless a work is, the more sophisticated
>the person who likes it is.
Absolutely. Most people don't care much for classical symphonies;
and most classical symphonies don't have as much tangible meaning as,
say, a popular song or a dance number.
>You certainly don't speak for me or any of the
>prople I know who didn't have a voice in that 1950's argument over what art is,
>and who prefer to see meaningful beautiful art rather than meaningless ugly
>scrawls and smudges.
Three things:
--Since when do *you* get to decide which works are beautiful or ugly?
Opinions vary wildly about such things over time and place.
--Can an artist not make a valid ("meaningful") point by using ugliness?
--What of the fourth category: beautiful but meaningless?
Roger
Roger Lustig
>In article <24fv0v$s...@panix.com> g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>>gcf:
>>byo...@netcom.com (Brian K. Yoder) writes:
>>| Only if you have no interest in the truth. Since these theories are
>>| contradictory, then they can't possibly be lumped together into a single
>>| mishmash theory and be true. Of course, you have never shown any
>>| particular interest in discovering the truth about anything.
>>Now, now, Brian, I'm as interested in the truth as anyone
>>else.
>Not if you see reason as a matter of religion and don't care whether
>your theories contain elements which are contradictory.
Funny you should talk.
As I recall, it was *you* who had absolute standards of "beautiful"
and "Art," though you couldn't show that even one other person on
the planet agrees with you.
As for contradictory elements, meaning-in-music is dogging you
as it has for a long time.
>>I just don't agree that it can be cast into language
>>in some final, conclusive, absolute way. You may disagree;
>I do. But I think that you should be consistent and admit that
>if the truth of your claims can't be expressed in language, then
>you should just stop posting since ultimately, you have nothing to say.
Perhaps the meaning of "Truth" in an esthetic debate is not what it is
in a scientific laboratory.
You yourself are an excellent example for this: you certainly have
no evidence to back up most of your claims; your assertions are based
on your own definitions and precious little else. YOUR standard of
truth is the furthest thing from science (or even reason) we could
imagine.
>>but that is a religious difference,
>The reasons for your beliefs may very well be religious (and therefore not
>well founded) but mine are not.
Easy for you to say. Why do so many people get jsut the opposite idea?
>I suggest that you speak for yourself, and then
>abide by your own claims. If you claim to be nothing more than an
>irrational religious fanatic the truth of whose claims can't ever be
>proven or even articulated then shouldn't you just keep quiet and go away?
No. You don't own this newsgroup. Moreover, you've *demonstrated* the
unprovability of your claims, all by yourself. Some, you've even
refuted. Others, we've helped you with.
>>and there is no use having a religious war over it;
>I was not advocating a war. I was merely pointout out just how hopeless and
>irrational your position is. You above have essentially agreed with me.
Wishing won't make it so. Your "Rational" position is devoid of anything
but bald assertion so far, and filled with more contradictions than a
first-year seminary student's paper on Augustine.
>I don't see why it is necessary to carry on our discussion any further
>since I we agree about the validity of your claims. Our only difference is
>that you wish to cling to ideas which you admit are groundless and
>irrational, and I think that you shouldn't, but that is an issue that only
>you can resolve, and that is best done either alone or with the help of a
>therapist, and not on USENET.
So ask your shrink about the meaning of the WTC.
>>it is part of my perception of the truth, and a very persistent one.
>Indeed.
Brian, the problem here is that you *refuse* to look at so much of the
evidence. Anything that contradicts your positions, you simply ignore.
This is philosophy? This is truth?
This is religion.
Roger
Roger Lustig
>>As noted, most music is non-representational, "meaningful" or not.
>Hmmmmmmmmmm....... I think this isn't going to get you as far as it might.
>To start right off with the worst offender, twelve-tone serialism, most
Offender against what?
(and why "twelve-tone serialism"? Won't other serialism do as well?)
>people react to it either by saying they don't understand it, or by
True of many kinds of music.
>dismissing it as noise. Both of these carry with them the implication that
>"real" music does contain some sort of intrinsic meaning. Furthermore,
No. People say they "understand" Beethoven's Seventh, and yet they cannot
generally articulate any partcular meaning they think it may have. Ditto
Bach's WTC.
>conventional music theory would seem to provide a grammar for music (at
It does no such thing. By *analogy* it is *like* a grammar, though
it generally focuses only on a few periods or repertoires of music;
no music theory has ever provided a grammar or anything like one.
>least as we hear it).
"As we hear it" begs two questions:
--Who's we? Does this change over time?
--What does "hear" mean? Much music demands multiple hearings. This
would seem to have nothing whatever to do with issues of grammar.
>To take an extreme position: serial music fails the test of meaning because
>ultimately it is not "about" the sounds themselves;
On the contrary -- it is *more* about the sounds than most o other music is.
>it is about being identified AS serialism.
Evidence for this view?
For that matter, it's been shown any number of times that people *can't* tell
serial pieces from non-serial, except in rare cases.
>Indeed, it is often the case that the sequence of
>sounds is entirely indifferent to the identity of the piece, implying that
>one need only differentiate serial pieces from "conventional" music.
Indeed, I have no idea what pieces you're talking about, and I've studied
hundreds of pieces such as you seem to be talkign about.
Roger
michael bruce mcdonald
>Gordon Fitch writes:
>
>>As noted, most music is non-representational, "meaningful" or not.
>
>Hmmmmmmmmmm....... I think this isn't going to get you as far as it might.
>To start right off with the worst offender, twelve-tone serialism, most
>people react to it either by saying they don't understand it, or by
>dismissing it as noise. Both of these carry with them the implication that
>"real" music does contain some sort of intrinsic meaning. Furthermore,
>conventional music theory would seem to provide a grammar for music (at
>least as we hear it).
>
>To take an extreme position: serial music fails the test of meaning because
>ultimately it is not "about" the sounds themselves; it is about being
>identified AS serialism. Indeed, it is often the case that the sequence of
>sounds is entirely indifferent to the identity of the piece, implying that
>one need only differentiate serial pieces from "conventional" music.
Did you get the above from some critic, or is this a considered response to
particular compositions? Have you listened to the serialism of Anton Webern,
for instance? His music is quite as expressive as, say, Beethoven's. Sure,
there are lots of dull serial compositions, just as the followers of Ludwig
churned out their share of evanescent dreck, but your confident dismissmal
of *any* music that might be categorized under the rubric of "serialism" is a
hasty gesture that has temporarily soured my evening. So it's back to *After
Hours* and some Saturday night jazz with me.
Yours toward an ever more carefully considered scholarship,
Michael Bruce McDonald
Roger Lustig
>Rich: long time no see!
>>This is a common cultural chauvinism, that the way "we" listen to music
>>and thus the way music in our culture is constructed represents some
>>"intrinsic meaning", some natural state of affairs regarding musical reality.
>You are being overly dichotomous. An appeal to gamelon music or to the koto
>as an alien sound doesn't automatically show the degree of artificiality
>that you wish to claim. Both of those, for instance, share with western
>music some notion of what are proper intervals and what are not. One could
No, they have *different* notions of this.
>make a much better appeal to medieval as opposed to rennaisance music; the
>alien sound of the former as compared to the latter is evidence of a major
>shift in the way people heard music.
Or a shift in *who* heard music and *why*.
>But the real problem is going to appear in the next sentence.
>>Sure, we use harmonic overtones as a basis for certain relationships
>>between tones, but we build a sort of "mathematics of music" upon it that is
>>ultimately no less artificial than serialism, when you get down to it.
>The fact is that there is a profound difference that hinges quite neatly on
>artificiality. Ordinary music theory is a grammar in basically the same
>sense that people write out english grammars;
This is flat-out wrong. Music theory is in no sense a grammar the way
linguists construct grammars. Music theory (except for Schenker's
attempt, which was mighty informal) cannot state in the general case
whether a piece of music is well-formed or not. It can perhaps refer
to the norms of this or that style, but it makes no (proper) claim
to generality.
>serialism's grammar is
>constructed in the same sense that Algol has a grammar.
Also wrong. Serialism, for one thing, doesn't have a grammar in
*any* sense.
>Regardless of the
>acculturational component of ordinary music, its grammar is constrained by
>the need of the grammar to describe; the grammars of constructs such as
>serialism are largely arbitrary.
Huh? Now *everything's* a grammar.
>>Or do we have people here who would claim that-- as someone in I believe the
>>late 19th-century attempted to "codify"-- there are intrinsic meanings for
>>major chords, minor chords, diminished chords (ooh, scary!), augmented
>>chords, arpeggios, ostinatos, etc., that are NATURAL and inherent in
>>the music?
>Well, we have an interesting experiment along these lines going on in our
>household; our 6 month old son's favorite lullabies are:
[missed this bit'
>>Do you know or understand the vocabulary of serialism? Has it had time to
>>permeate the culture? Or, perhaps more importantly, does it have one at
>>all, is its whole purpose as an artistic movement an abandonment of the very
>>notion of cultural vocabulary as we know it?
>I think the answer to the latter question is quite clearly no, but we then
>hit a snag about what this "culture" is. Let me take an example. Back in
>the fall, we had the invariable commission piece for the NSO in DC, in this
>case a piece titled "Air and Angels". Now, the program notes for the
>concert went into considerable detail about how part of the piece was
>constructed using a tone row based on the name "Mistislav Rostopovich".
>What happened in reality is that the orchestra veered back and forth between
>the hint of sublime music and great gouts of atonal, tooth-jarring
>bellowing. To make a jarring noise, one can simply fall on the keyboard; it
>seems that some cultural merit lies in knowing that this isn't just any old
>tooth-jarring noise, but instead a carefully crafted tooth-jarring noise.
Is this typical of serial music? And did everyone perceive it as you did?
Roger
Charley Wingate
>>Hmmmmmmmmmm....... I think this isn't going to get you as far as it might.
>>To start right off with the worst offender, twelve-tone serialism, most
>Offender against what?
Against "casual" listeners-- people without a social or intellectual
commitment for or gaginst the stuff. People who "just" listen.
>>people react to it either by saying they don't understand it, or by
>>dismissing it as noise. Both of these carry with them the implication that
>>"real" music does contain some sort of intrinsic meaning. Furthermore,
>No. People say they "understand" Beethoven's Seventh, and yet they cannot
>generally articulate any partcular meaning they think it may have. Ditto
>Bach's WTC.
That's proof only that music need not carry a *message* which can be
articulated.
>>conventional music theory would seem to provide a grammar for music (at
>It does no such thing. By *analogy* it is *like* a grammar, though
>it generally focuses only on a few periods or repertoires of music;
>no music theory has ever provided a grammar or anything like one.
This is about to degenerate into a philosophical argument about the meaning
of words. By analogy *anything* called a grammar is *like* a grammar, a
point which grammars for computer languages illustrate nicely. Music theory
does provide a syntactic description, of sorts, of ordinary western music;
it doesn't look exactly like a grammar for a natural language, but then,
music *isn't* a natural language. (The distance between Japanese and
English, though, mirrors the distance between Japanese and English music.)
>For that matter, it's been shown any number of times that people *can't* tell
>serial pieces from non-serial, except in rare cases.
This strains my credulity severely.
Jehu the Tourniquette
: In article <byoderCB...@netcom.com>, byo...@netcom.com (Brian K. Yoder)
this whole message was really cool. thought I would add my two cents.
"I'm a K-Mart building."
Gordon Fitch
| ...
| : supposed to be here is what I think it is certainy art. - my houseplants
| : agree your plants are unusual in that they aren't art,even badly patched
| : syzygy.
|
| : Ain't my idea either of conversation. Is it art that I tagged it along?
je...@hq.tbs.bc.ca (Jehu the Tourniquette) writes:
| this whole message was really cool. thought I would add my two cents.
|
| "I'm a K-Mart building."
It was probably produced by counting the frequencies of four- or
five-letter sequences and generating text at random using the
same frequencies. An interesting feature of the process is that
if it is carried out on even a few hundred words of a given
author, the output, though nonsensical, is often unmistakably in
that author's style, implying that literary style exists at a
fairly low layer of linguistic production. I believe recent
distributions of emacs contain a species of the program. Since
everyone can produce their own, it might not be necessary to
post them, but merely indicate succinctly that it ought to be
run for a given set of articles. This would be similar to
the way in which much of rec.humor could be distributed, e.g.
"#12, but with a cat! Ha, ha, ha!"