Omaha Shuffle
Jonathan Askew
religion the opiate of the people, he meant to write " Haddam and Askew go
at it on RAM"......
JaneHadd wrote:
>
> > >Certainly, one might say that _some_ mystery novels reach the
> > level of
> > >art and,
> >
> > Well, I agree with you, but I don't think Adorno would have,
> > because part
> > of his point had to do with resolution and ambiguity. At the end of a
> > mystery
> > novel you have closure--the world is put right again, the killer is
> > identified
> > if not immediately caught and imprisoned. And that's just the kind of
> > thing he
> > called an opiate, because it makes us comfortable (supposedly) rather
> > than
> > uncomfortable and therefore ready for change.>>
>
> I think the error here is mixing Adorno on "The Culture Industry"
> and Adorno on aesthetics(art): there are dramatic distinctions between
> his thinking on the "Culture Industry" and what he thought art was
> about.
> The sort of mysteries you describe would meet Adorno's
> description of a standard product of the culture industry and they
> certainly would not be art which is made and lives outside the "culture
> industry".
> "In the products of the culture industry human beings get into
> trouble only so they can be rescued unharmed, usually by representatives
> of a benovolent collective; and, then, in empty harmony they are
> reconciled with the general, whose demands they had experienced at the
> outset as irreconcilable with their interests.... It impedes the
> development of autonomous, independent individuals who judge and decide
> consciously for themselves. These, however, would be the precondition
> for a democratic society which needs adults who have come of age in
> order to sustain itself and develop."
> "Culture Industry Reconsidered" Theodor Adorno in _The Culture
> Industry Reconsidered: Selected Essays on Mass Culture", 1991.
> It would be more accurate to say that Adorno thought the "Culture
> Industry" products soothed and smoothed over the injustices of society
> while art was where freedom from society as lived is found.
> He did think the encounter in the making and
> viewing of real art did stir individuals to judge consciously as
> individuals how their existence differs from the possibilitiy within
> art. Art, For Adorno, if it is art, can never be merely a reflection
> of reality and certainly not a set of exhortions in some Stalinist
> mural depicitng the glory of the harvest. For Adorno, art reveals a
> dream- an alternative reality, if you will-rather than the reality of
> life. Art cannot be contained within the "Culture Industry". The
> reality of existence is radically different from what art is and, I
> think, one can be safe in saying that for Adorno, art is not about
> depicting social and economic relationships. Because it is not about
> that, art functions _outside_ those constraints. There, Adorno found
> freedom and, I think, believed others could as well. But, he was not
> talking about art bringing about the people's revolution by inspiration
> or exhortion.
>
> >
> > I think Adorno thought that anything "cultural production" that
> > was not
> > difficult was not art.>>
>
> Nah- " The Culture Industy" Adorno describes(with
> chilling accuracy when he discusses film,radio and television
> production) isn't about _art_: it's about entertainment which soothes
> and smooths over conflicts. Art, for Adorno, is quite a different
> kettle of fish.
>
> >
> >
> > >Adorno went into exile in 1933
> >
> > Where did he go? The critical biographical essay I have on him
> > does not
> > mention his leaving Germany.>>
>
> To ignore him leaving seems a gap in any biography and one
> wonders why a biographer would leave it out.
> He left in 1934-went to Oxford and, in 1938 when the Institute
> moved from its first haven in Switzerland to the US. He returned to
> Frankfurt in 1953.
>
> >
> > What I said was that Adorno, and a lot of other people, on this
> > side of the
> > Atlantic as well as that side, needed very much to believe that the
> > German
> > people didn't REALLY support the Nazis.>>
>
> They weren't looking to excuse the Nazis--quite the
> contrary.
>
> >
> > They were looking for an explanation of human behavior that would
> > accommodate the fact that a lot of people in Germany very much seemed
> > to
> > support the Nazis while they were in power, without having to say that
> > that's
> > really what people wanted with their full conscious minds.
> >
> > What I said was that they were trying to explain how the Nazis
> > came to
> > power without having to say "this was what the people actually
> > wanted.">>
>
> The question was why and, more importantly, why did they go
> join and embrace a system which became increasingly more vile. It's one
> thing to say that one can find the roots of the extermination camps in
> _Mein Kamp_ and historical German anti-semitism: it's another thing to
> set up a system- beliefs and apparatus- and organize the camps.
>
> >
> >
> > But I think an honest answer uncomplicated by emotion would
> > have
> > started by accepting the fact that people DID support the Nazis, lots
> > of them
> > did, plain ordinary people in the street. Even the ones who didn't
> > join the
> > party.>>
>
> I agree. But, that fact or set of facts had to be resolved by
> serious inquiry after the war. And, it took some time to get those facts
> and reach the unhappy conclusion that education and progress in
> science, the arts, etc was not immunizing against evil. People in
> Western democracies believed that-even after the horrors of the Great
> War.
> While people of our generation, born after the Holocaust and
> Hiroshima, accept the idea that educated people--people like us--- can
> perpetrate hideous evil that truth was not self-evident to people born
> and educated in a time when the idea of human progress and
> education-science, arts, music, etc- as humanising and civilizing was
> still believable.
>
> >
> >
> > And Adorno's critical philosophy was based on the assumption that
> > when
> > people make choices, they're not necessarily REALLY making choices.
> > They can
> > be tricked/manipulated/opiated/whatever into seeming to "choose"
> > things they
> > don't really want.>>
>
> That's a gross simplification of Adorno. More importantly,
> I think it's misleading to pretend that people choose anything
> uninfluenced by the real conditions of their lives. Given the efforts
> to persuade the German people into choosing the Nazi path-- it was after
> all a system which tried to involve everyone from children to
> Grandmothers in a complete culture- it's a stretch to think that the
> Germans chose National Socialism as acts of individual "free will"
> somehow unencumbered by the social, economic,religious and political
> milieu in which they lived.
> Similarly, those who chose to resist had something in
> their lives which gave them the opportunity to say no. It is
> significant, for example, that one finds in France that the people who
> hid Jews from the Nazis were from communities where they had a
> collective experience of oppression. Roman Catholics in largely
> Protestant areas, were more likely to hide Jews than Protestants and
> vice versa.
>
> >
> >
> > I think the very first thing we have to accept about other people
> > is that
> > when they choose something, they are, in fact, actually choosing it,
> > even if
> > that choice is one that disgusts you and me.>>
>
> When they choose something, they are indeed choosing.
> What I am interested in is why and how they choose it. And, like Adorno,
> I maintain that those choices are rooted in the social and economic
> conditions of their lives. That's not excuse-making or trying to
> convince one's self that the Germans were unwilling participants: that's
> looking for an explanation.
> And, for the likes of me, original sin as explanation for evil
> is insufficient.
>
> cheers,
> Mary
JaneHadd
>> description of a standard product of the culture industry and they
>> certainly would not be art which is made and lives outside the "culture
>> industry".
Virtually all mysteries are "the sort of mysteries [I] describe[d], because
virtually all mysteries have the bad guy caught at the end. In fact, most
people would say that the POINT of a mystery is for the detective-hero (-ine,
anti-, etc.) to catch the bad guy. Even very, very good mysteries and
thrillers--P.D. James, LeCarre, Eric Ambler--do this, and it is this
requirement for closure that defines the genre.
I HAVE read a mystery or two where nobody is sure who did it at the end,
but they haven't been art, they haven't been very good, and they've sunk
without a trace within weeks of publication.
(Actually, I can think of one murder mystery where the murderer is neither
caught nor punished at the end--and the wrong man is imprisoned for the murder,
too--and that's The Brothers Karamazov, but I'm practically the only person on
the planet who calls it a murder mystery.)
> I think Adorno thought that anything "cultural production" that
>> > was not
>> > difficult was not art.>>
>>
>> Nah- " The Culture Industy" Adorno describes(with
>> chilling accuracy when he discusses film,radio and television
>> production) isn't about _art_:
No--you misunderstood my point.
My point was that if a work was produced that was not difficult, Adorno
would have judged it not to be art--
I only used "cultural production" because I didn't want to say something
like "Adorno thought art that wasn't difficult wasn't really art."
But I can think of a lot of work that is not difficult but is indeed
art--most of Wordsworth and Coleridge, for instance, and surely most of Jane
Austen. All of Vermeer. The Kreutzer Sonata--Beethoven's music, not Tolstoy's
story. The Brandenburg Concertos.
The adulation of "difficulty" is a modern invention--modern from about
the Romantic period, and not fully established until the 20th century.
I tend to like difficult work, too, because the easy stuff makes me bored,
but I'm not ready to throw Kubla Kahn out of the canon because it's easy to
understand.
Jane Haddam
JaneHadd
>> > have
>> > started by accepting the fact that people DID support the Nazis, lots
>> > of them
>> > did, plain ordinary people in the street. Even the ones who didn't
>> > join the
>> > party.>>
> I agree. But, that fact or set of facts had to be resolved by
>> serious inquiry after the war.
My complaint is that that is just what the "serious inquiry" after the
war DIDN'T do. Rather, each theorist--not only Adorno but a dozen people or
more--came up with a theory that basically said, "people THOUGHT this was what
they wanted, but they really didn't."
>That's a gross simplification of Adorno. More importantly,
>> I think it's misleading to pretend that people choose anything
>> uninfluenced by the real conditions of their lives
I'm not saying they do.
I'm saying there's a difference between saying "Joe Blow was attracted to
these things because he was influenced by the realy conditions of his life" and
saying, "Joe Blow THOUGHT he was attracted to these things, but he really
wasn't. He was fooled and manipulated so that he didn't know his own mind."
The second is what Adorno--and not just Adorno, but all the rest of the
left theorists after the war--did.
People only THINK they like sitcoms, but that's because they're being
manipulated by the culture industry. If they weren't being so manipulated,
their REAL tastes would come out and they would realize they can't stand
sitcoms at all.
> What I am interested in is why and how they choose it.
Me, too.
But I DON'T think it can be explained by saying they were culturally
duped and didn't know what they really wanted.
>And, like Adorno,
>> I maintain that those choices are rooted in the social and economic
>> conditions of their lives.
I don't think that that's what Adorno was maintaining.
I totally agree--choices are rooted in the social and economic conditions
of our lives, plus our genetic foundations, plus our histories, plus a lot of
other things.
But when we like something, it's what we LIKE--we DO know our own minds.
If Joe likes sitcoms, he LIKES sitcoms, he isn't just fooled into thinking he
likes it by a manipulative "culture industry."
And when Joe likes Hitler, he LIKES Hitler, he isn't just deceived into
thinking he likes Hitler by a manipulative poltical machine.
What I object to is the inference in Adorno's work that the ordinary
television sitcom watcher--and by extention, all the rest of us--has no idea
what he really likes.
Jane Haddam
JaneHadd
>> is insufficient.
I didn't say that original sin was a sufficient explanation of evil for
me, I said it didn't bother me in the way it does a lot of liberals.
I don't think it is possible to erect a perfect society in which men and
women will never do evil--I don't think evil is a cultural construct or a
cultural product, but that the impetus for it (which is essentially solipsism
taken to its radical extreme) in born in us and can never be entirely
eradicated.
Jane Haddam
ell...@webtv.net
neither caught nor punished at the end--and the wrong man is imprisoned
for the murder, too--and that's The Brothers Karamazov, but I'm
practically the only person on the planet who calls it a murder
mystery.)>>
Darn it, Jane, haven't you learned by now to use a spoiler space?
Ellen 2
ra...@idx.com.au
JaneHadd wrote:
>
Kubla Kahn out of the canon because it's easy to
> understand.
Is Kubla Kahn any relation to Genghis Cohen?
Razz
ra...@idx.com.au
Who was it that said 'the banality of evil'?
Razz
JaneHadd
>
>Razz
Hannah Arendt, in a long essay for the New Yorker later published as a
book, on the Eichmann (sp?) trial, called Eichmann in Jerusalem.
But she didn't mean by it that all of us has evil inside us.
She meant instead that when you meet evil face to face, he's not one of
Hegel's "world-historical individuals." He's a tenth rate bureaucrat with
fussy manners whose only concern in the midst of mass murder is to make sure
his books balance and his production schedules are operating exactly according
to the rules.
Jane Haddam
ell...@webtv.net
Razz >>
<< Hannah Arendt, in a long essay for the New Yorker later published
as a book, on the Eichmann (sp?) trial, called Eichmann in Jerusalem.>>
And Ed McBain.
Ellen 2
ell...@webtv.net
religion the opiate of the people, he meant to write " Haddam and Askew
go at it on RAM"......>>
Not me. I'm wide awake and on my third bowl of popcorn.
Ellen 2
Greenbanks
>thrillers--P.D. James, LeCarre, Eric Ambler--do this, and it is this
>requirement for closure that defines the genre.
Gosh.... for just a moment, this thread was totally On Topic!!!
That's scary...
M'Lou
ra...@idx.com.au
I'd believe in a conspiracy of bureaucrats. I've worked in the Public
Service and totally believe in 'the banality of evil'.
Razz
ra...@idx.com.au
That's probably where I read it.
Razz
JaneHadd
>> as a book, on the Eichmann (sp?) trial, called Eichmann in Jerusalem.>>
>>
>> And Ed McBain.
Yeah, but Hannah Arendt said it first.
And Eichmann in Jerusalem is one of the scariest books I've ever read.
Jane Haddam
Mark Alan Miller
<ra...@idx.com.au> wrote in message news:3B94E722...@idx.com.au...
> I'd believe in a conspiracy of bureaucrats. I've worked in the Public
> Service and totally believe in 'the banality of evil'.
>
> Razz
I've also worked in the public sector for many years, and don't believe in
conspiracies at all. Evil in the public sector, as in the private sector,
usually comes from a single mind, or maybe a couple, and it grows because a
bunch of other people are too busy, stupid, bored, or lazy to confront it.
These people are no more conspirators than the guy serving your burger at
McDonald's is a conspirator attempting to ruin your health with saturated
fat.
Mark Alan Miller
Jonathan Askew
JaneHadd wrote:
>
> Virtually all mysteries are "the sort of mysteries [I] describe[d], because
> virtually all mysteries have the bad guy caught at the end. In fact, most
> people would say that the POINT of a mystery is for the detective-hero (-ine,
> anti-, etc.) to catch the bad guy. Even very, very good mysteries and
> thrillers--P.D. James, LeCarre, Eric Ambler--do this, and it is this
> requirement for closure that defines the genre.>>
In the mysteries which reach the level of art/literature, the
closure you describe as "defining the genre" is questioned and held up for
examination. See the works of of Jane Haddam, France Fyfield and Ian Rankin for
examples where the villain being caught fails to satisfy the hero and notions about
the existence or possibility of perfect or complete justice within Western legal
systems are undermined.
Working within the formal structures of a genre, whether one is
writing a mystery or composing a sonata or painting a landscape does not require
that the maker assure or the reader/listener/viewer accept that we live in the best
of all possible worlds. Adorno is adamant that art takes structures and makes
something new thus making a work of art a place where another possiblity/ reality
exists.
> I think Adorno thought that anything "cultural production" that
> >> > was not
> >> > difficult was not art.>>
> >>
> >> Nah- " The Culture Industy" Adorno describes(with
> >> chilling accuracy when he discusses film,radio and television
> >> production) isn't about _art_:
>
> No--you misunderstood my point.
>
> My point was that if a work was produced that was not difficult, Adorno
> would have judged it not to be art-->>
And, you would be wrong in your judgement of Adorno. You are transposing the
difficulty of reading Adorno into the idea that Adorno thought art was difficult: a
common error provoked I think by the complexity of Adorno's philosophical language.
Much more accurate to say that Adorno thought art emerged from formal
structures(genres) and made something new: something not seen or heard in the
material world before the artist made it.
Inpenetrability or inaccessibility of a work is not fundamental to Adorno's
aesthetics. The idea that a work of _art_makes a new world unto itself is. That
very newness is a criticism of that which is. The social context for the viewer-
the place from whence encountering a work of art causes the viewer to think- is
that the _art_ makes him think. The _thinking_ is what makes art subversive. It is
the _thinking_ the viewer does, the possibility of thinking made available to
him, which makes art a source for criticism of the world in which the viewer lives.
cheers,
Mary
JaneHadd
>writing a mystery or composing a sonata or painting a landscape does not
>require
>that the maker assure or the reader/listener/viewer accept that we live in
>the best
>of all possible worlds.
But I didn't say we did.
I said that at the end of the mystery novel, you virtually always know who
the killer is. Even when he can't be immediately arrested and imprisoned, the
implication is there that he will be.
>nd, you would be wrong in your judgement of Adorno. You are transposing the
>difficulty of reading Adorno into the idea that Adorno thought art was
>difficult: a
>common error provoked I think by the complexity of Adorno's philosophical
>language.
No, I'm not. Adorno thinks art "challenges" us. Art is difficult, and in
being difficult helps us grow.
But if this is what art does, then what do you call something--a work of
the imagination, let's call it-that does NOT challenge us and is NOT difficult
and does NOT help us to grow?
You call it not art--if you DO call it art, then what's the point of the
original definition?
>Adorno thought art emerged from formal
>structures(genres) and made something new: something not seen or heard in the
>material world before the artist made it.
Again--he makes a point of saying that art is difficult and he makes a
further point of saying art is challenging.
And I saw that there is a lot of art out there that is neither.
> Inpenetrability or inaccessibility of a work is not fundamental to Adorno's
>aesthetics.
I didn't say it was--don't transpose what I DO say into what you want me
to have said.
I said that Adorno makes a point of dividing art from non-art on the
basis of difficulty and "challengingness," which isn't a word but I can't think
of how else to put it.
>The idea that a work of _art_makes a new world unto itself is. That
>very newness is a criticism of that which is. The social context for the
>viewer-
>the place from whence encountering a work of art causes the viewer to think-
>is
>that the _art_ makes him think.
Right. And--one more time--most art, real art, does nothing of the kind.
Wordsworth's poetry, Beethoven's sonatas, the hyperrealism of the
postreformation Dutch painters--the point of NONE of that was to make anybody
think, nor does any of it necessarily make anybody think.
Wordsworth, for instance, was far more interested in bypassing thought
entirely and providing an avenue for the release of deep emotion.
>The _thinking_ is what makes art subversive. It is
>the _thinking_ the viewer does, the possibility of thinking made available
>to
>him, which makes art a source for criticism of the world in which the viewer
>lives.
>
See above.
Not all art makes people think, nor was all art intended to make people
think, nor does all art provide "a source for criticism of the world in which
the viewer live."
In fact, prior to the 18th century, MOST art was a celebration of that
world, not a criticism of it--a statement of and affirmation of a culture's
ideals.
Jane Haddam
carlwally
> Virtually all mysteries are "the sort of mysteries [I] describe[d], because
> virtually all mysteries have the bad guy caught at the end. In fact, most
> people would say that the POINT of a mystery is for the detective-hero (-ine,
> anti-, etc.) to catch the bad guy. Even very, very good mysteries and
> thrillers--P.D. James, LeCarre, Eric Ambler--do this, and it is this
> requirement for closure that defines the genre.
>
> I HAVE read a mystery or two where nobody is sure who did it at the end,
> but they haven't been art, they haven't been very good, and they've sunk
> without a trace within weeks of publication.
>
> (Actually, I can think of one murder mystery where the murderer is neither
> caught nor punished at the end--and the wrong man is imprisoned for the murder,
> too--and that's The Brothers Karamazov, but I'm practically the only person on
> the planet who calls it a murder mystery.)
>
> Jane Haddam
I agree, about the Brothers K. However, there are a number of good mysteries in
which the actual killer is punished while the instigator, or the puppet master
slides back behind the dark curtain, unsuccessful but unpunished.
--
Carl Brookins
carl...@qwest.net
INNER PASSAGES
Minnesota Crime Wave
Jonathan Askew
JaneHadd wrote:
> I'm not saying they do.
>
> I'm saying there's a difference between saying "Joe Blow was attracted to
> these things because he was influenced by the realy conditions of his life" and
> saying, "Joe Blow THOUGHT he was attracted to these things, but he really
> wasn't. He was fooled and manipulated so that he didn't know his own mind."
>
> The second is what Adorno--and not just Adorno, but all the rest of the
> left theorists after the war--did.>.
Since the Left despised Adorno this seems an extraordinary conclusion to
reach. And, it's not what Adorno said. It is what some people who wanted to soothe
said. One might actually find support for that explanation of Joe Blow's willing
complicity in "The Reader's Digest" endless popularization and vulgarization of the
likes of Vance Packard and Erich Fromm.
Come to think of it, the idea that Joe Blow was an manipulated innocent
was,indeed, a theory vigorously embraced by the Reader's Digest right-wing
theorists after WWII.
cheers,
Mary
Jonathan Askew
JaneHadd wrote:
>
> Not all art makes people think, nor was all art intended to make people
> think, nor does all art provide "a source for criticism of the world in which
> the viewer live."
>
> In fact, prior to the 18th century, MOST art was a celebration of that
> world, not a criticism of it--a statement of and affirmation of a culture's
> ideals.
>
>
Only if you accept that Jansen is canonical and has said everything there
is to say....
That may be what the patrons who paid for it thought. But, just maybe, it
wasn't what Michelangelo thought or did. And, it wasn't necessarily what the
viewers experienced. Perhaps a better word for what _art_ does is subversion. See
Huinziga.
cheers,
Mary
BLIND 321
KS
JaneHadd
> Since the Left despised Adorno this seems an extraordinary
>conclusion to
>reach.
And you would call Adorno right wing? There isn't an organization called
"the left," and Adorno's was definitely a left critique, not a right one.
>And, it's not what Adorno said.
It's what what he said implies.
>Come to think of it, the idea that Joe Blow was an manipulated innocent
>was,indeed, a theory vigorously embraced by the Reader's Digest right-wing
>theorists after WWII.
But I never said that Adorno thought that Joe Blow was "an innocent," only
that he refused to accept as an explanation that Joe Blow actually likes what
he likes.
Jane Haddam
JaneHadd
>is to say....
Hardly.
> That may be what the patrons who paid for it thought. But, just maybe, it
>wasn't what Michelangelo thought or did. And, it wasn't necessarily what the
>viewers experienced. Perhaps a better word for what _art_ does is subversion.
>See
>Huinziga.
Yes, I know the theory. I think it's claptrap.
Art is one of a number of things, done perfectly--some of it is
"subversive," some of it isn't, but telling ourselves that the POINT of art is
being subversive doesn't make it so.
Jane Austen was not "subversive." She didn't cause her readers to question
their society, and she didn't make them think very hard. Neither did
Wordsworth. Neither did Beethoven. What those artists--and Michelangelo and
da Vinci especially, in dozens of extant notebooks and occassional
writings--did was to celebrate their cultures, not "critique" them and what
their viewers and listeners and readers went to them for was to experience that
celebration.
The modernist fashion for declaring art an "adversary culture" and artworks
"subversive" is a form of intellectual preening--it is the theorizing of people
who secretly don't think art is very important at all, and who therefore have
to give it something else to do besides simply BE art.
But art is just art--it is narrative done perfectly, painting done
perfectly, composition done perfectly--even if it has no other purpose but to
BE an example of the form done perfectly, and it remains art no matter if it is
"difficult" or easy, left or right, critical or celebratory.
On the other hand, I can think of dozens of works of the imagination that
fit your definition but that are not art--and yes, Ayn Rand is surely one of
them.
Jane Haddam
Mark Alan Miller
"JaneHadd" <jane...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010905133656...@mb-fy.aol.com...
>
> > That may be what the patrons who paid for it thought. But, just maybe,
it
> >wasn't what Michelangelo thought or did. And, it wasn't necessarily what
the
> >viewers experienced. Perhaps a better word for what _art_ does is
subversion.
> >See
> >Huinziga.
>
> Yes, I know the theory. I think it's claptrap.
>
> Art is one of a number of things, done perfectly--some of it is
> "subversive," some of it isn't, but telling ourselves that the POINT of
art is
> being subversive doesn't make it so.
>
>
> The modernist fashion for declaring art an "adversary culture" and
artworks
> "subversive" is a form of intellectual preening--it is the theorizing of
people
> who secretly don't think art is very important at all, and who therefore
have
Exactly. There is enough going on in fine art already without loading it
down with all of this other crap. Experiencing art with a little voice in
your head expecting something subversive is a good way of not finding what
is really there in the art, which may not be in the least subversive.
Mark Alan Miller
Mark Alan Miller
"Jonathan Askew" <jas...@javanet.com> wrote in message
news:3B964EAE...@javanet.com...
It's what the patrons thought; it's how most viewers experienced it; in many
cases it's what the artist intended. That the content was in some way
subversive is a fine 20th century conceit. For most of history the arts
evolved so slowly that viewers were hardly aware of the differences from
what came before. Are we to call Brahms a non-artist because he worked in
forms that were already long established? Heavens, the Brahms first
symphony was consciously modeled on Beethoven symphonies that had been part
of the canon for decades, yet it is clearly a major work of art, even
without being especially novel. I haven't read Adorno (nor do I especially
want to after this thread), but saying that novelty (OK, call it newness) is
a prerequisite of great art is to ignore that for most of history visual
artists and musicians were essentially craftsmen, commissioned to create a
work to specification, and much of that output is unquestionably excellent
and important. Novelty was a good thing, but it was novelty within rather
strict bounds, so it's hard to argue that the resulting work did much to
alter the thinking of its consumers. This view of the artist as a demi-god
giving the world something entirely new is wonderfully Romantic, and seems
to have warped Ayn Rand's brain a bit, but it doesn't have much to do with
the function of the arts in earlier times. Science was much more likely to
be subversive than art was, as most art was devoted to reinforcing the power
of Christianity and glorifying the monarch. Expecting the arts to rearrange
the viewer's logical processes is putting a burden on the arts they don't
deserve and only rarely asked for.
Mark Alan Miller
JaneHadd
>reasons I often don't understand at all? Please?
>
>Mique
No.
Jane Haddam
No Doze and No Dozette
> I like lima beans!
>
> KS
That's quite odd.
Maybe i should'nt buy your book.
Jon
Bud Beckman
>
> Thank god for that. Now can I just go back to liking what I like for
> reasons I often don't understand at all? Please?
>
> Mique
Not until you learn how to string words together that mean absolutlely
nothing.
Bud
--
"I can picture a world without war, a world without hate.
And I can picture us attacking that world,
because they'd never expect it." -- Vijay Iyer
Jonathan Askew
Mark Alan Miller wrote:
>
> It's what the patrons thought; it's how most viewers experienced it; in many
> cases it's what the artist intended. >>
Ahem: three questions: 1) how do you know what the patrons
thought?
2) How do you know how "most viewers experienced it" ? 3)How do you know the
artist's intention?
It is one thing to expound theory: it's another to be able to show
evidence and for a big hunk of the history of western visual arts providing
evidence to support your theory is slight to non-existent.
> That the content was in some way
> subversive is a fine 20th century conceit.>>
That would be news to art critics writing in France between 1815-1900.
Having trekked through their writing, I can assure you that a majority reviled
a number of painters for just that. In particular, they foamed about attacks on
the hierarchy of the "arts" and the social order--the kind of subversion you and
Jane so much disapprove of was exactly what they found in the artists' work.
That said, I was using _subversive_ not in the "Commies under the bed" sense
which Jane has embraced but in the sense of altering the experience of the
viewer. But , that does not negate the historical evidence that subverting the
social
order remains a charge against art to our very day. Or do you think the wrath
of Jesse Helms et al is about Mapplethorpe's failure to solve formal problems
in his work? Was it sloppy composition which drove them nuts?
> For most of history the arts
> evolved so slowly that viewers were hardly aware of the differences from
> what came before.
How can we know what viewers perceived in those times?
> Are we to call Brahms a non-artist because he worked in
> forms that were already long established?>>
Nope. Formal structures, however manipulated, aren't the issue and do
not necessarily make the "newness" of which I have spoken. I think I said
somewhere here that working within a given structure is not antithetical to art.
Nor does novelty of form make something art in Adorno's thinking. He did seem to
think that novelty of form opened the process.
> I haven't read Adorno (nor do I especially
> want to after this thread), but saying that novelty (OK, call it newness) is
> a prerequisite of great art is to ignore that for most of history visual
> artists and musicians were essentially craftsmen, commissioned to create a
> work to specification, and much of that output is unquestionably excellent
> and important.>>
But, that's not what he said nor what I said. I blame Jane here,
for confusing you with her insistence upon "difficult". In Adorno's aesthetics,
the _newness_ does not lie in the novelty of structure within the art: it lies
in the
creation of a _new_ object/experience in the piece. That said, reading the
philosophy of aesthetics is difficult and many people get no fun from it at all.
There is no art without craft: making a distinction between artist
and craftsman is entirely a Romantic construct and one which I think is,well,
silly.
> This view of the artist as a demi-god giving the world something entirely new
> is wonderfully Romantic, and seems
> to have warped Ayn Rand's brain a bit, but it doesn't have much to do with
> the function of the arts in earlier times.>>
Two problems present here: does art have a _function_ ? And if so, how do
you know what was in "earlier times"? I mean, to what do you refer and when are
you talking about?
> . Expecting the arts to rearrange
> the viewer's logical processes is putting a burden on the arts they don't
> deserve and only rarely asked for.
Well, exactly what do you think "The Arts" burden is? What is "The Arts"
demand of the audience? Is the audience's burden to open its wallet; pay the
artists and admire with awe the artists' skill in solving formal problems?*
cheers,
Mary
* I'm ignoring the chorus of paint-stained wretches behind me yelling "Yeah!
That's it! She finally gets it!"
JaneHadd
>Jane so much disapprove of was exactly what they found in the artists' work.
But I don't disapprove of it. Some art does that. But lots of other art
does not, and I object to DEFINING art as being subversive.
> That said, I was using _subversive_ not in the "Commies under the bed"
>sense
>which Jane has embraced but in the sense of altering the experience of the
>viewer.
Again--you're putting words into my mouth.
I don't remember you being so relentless in fabricating ideas and
ascribing them to to other people.
I know exactly what you meant.
But "altering the experience of the viewer" can mean lots of things, and
one thing it can mean is that the viewer has all his prejudices, biases and
cultural myopia confirmed and celebrated--his experience is altered because he
feels fully what he at first merely accepted intellectually.
>But , that does not negate the historical evidence that subverting the
>social
>order remains a charge against art to our very day.
No--you've got it backwards.
Yes, in our own day, and since about the time of the Romantic period, this
has indeed been a charge against art.
But nobody ever accused Hildegarde von Bingen of subverting the social
order, nor did she attempt to subvert the social order. Nor did the vast
majority of artists BEFORE the Romantic period do any such thing or intend any
such thing, and in many cases we have their own writings about their own work
to prove it.
Michelangelo was not "subverting the social order." He was glorifying God
as that social order understood Him.
>Or do you think the wrath
>of Jesse Helms et al is about Mapplethorpe's failure to solve formal
>problems
>in his work? Was it sloppy composition which drove them nuts?
>
No--I simply think you're talking about a modernist phenomenon, that even
now applies to SOME art and not all art,and that in previous periods--and
especially in the Middle Ages--applied to no art.
Even now, art cannot be defined as something subversive of the social
order, or even as something that causes the viewer/reader/listener. Some art
does, some art doesn't. That is not what makes it art.
>How can we know what viewers perceived in those times?
We have quite a lot of written evidence from the middle ages of people who
wrote diaries, letters and other documents.
The middle ages in Europe are not a closed book and they do not lack for
documentation on every level.
> Two problems present here: does art have a _function_ ?
Yes. All art functions. Different kinds of art function in different
ways in different times in different societies, but all arts functions, because
if it didn't it wouldn't have an audience.
>And if so, how do
>you know what was in "earlier times"? I mean, to what do you refer and when
>are
>you talking about?
Again--let's talk about the middle ages, when most painting, for
instance, had a definite purpose: either to present the truths of Christianity
to an audience of people who, being mostly illiterate, had no other way of
learning them but from pictures and sermons; or to present accurate depictions
of the members of the nobility for their families, usually as items of
documentation of the history of the line.
Someday, you ought to get hold of the first volume of a series called A
Documentary History of Art, which includes writings of all kinds on art, by
artists and others, at various periods of history. The first volume covers the
middle ages.
You'll find an overwhelming concern with clarity--people should not be
confused, and ambiguity is bad--and with bringing the peasantry to God through
depicting his Son and His works.
The concerns of art and artist have NOT always been to be "subversive of
the social order," not even of getting the audience to think differently than
they did before or to see the world anew.
That is, again, a construct of the Romantic Period, a post-Enlightenment
rearrangement of the "purpose" of "art" and, as a consequence, about what we
are willing to call "art."
> Well, exactly what do you think "The Arts" burden is? What is "The Arts"
>demand of the audience? Is the audience's burden to open its wallet; pay the
>artists and admire with awe the artists' skill in solving formal problems?*
I think the purpose of the artist is to do what he does, because he loves
doing it, because he's a part of it.
Audiences bring many different things away from art--in our own era, I
think most American audiences are most concerned with art that helps them
construct an identity, and that is the art they admire and support.
But that doesn't mean that art is ABOUT constructing an identity.
Jane Haddam
Jonathan Askew
from the Middle Ages negates the essential subversion of art: that is, that the
effect of art upon the viewer is, if it is _art_, is to alter the _viewer's_
reality. A particular depiction of the agonies of Hell, for example, might have
been profoundly moving to an illiterate 11th century person who suspects that his
time upon the earth is coming rapidly to a close. It might move him to, say, a more
attentive piety. We can say, based upon documents that that was certainly one of
the hopes of those who commissioned the work. On the other hand, since our
theoretical viwer was illiterate, we don't _know_ directly what the illiterate
felt upon viewing the piece. He might have felt despair or boredom. We only know
what the literate people thought and reported about their own goals and the
illiterate's reaction and their reporting was conditioned by their own
aspirations.
It is important to remember that relying on the documents created by one
social group does not necessarily accurately report the experiences of another.
That said, what artists intend and what the audience experiences may be
radically different. And, I would argue, that which we call _art_-- especially when
we refer to _art_ made in a different time or culture from our own-- is experienced
within the boundaries of the audience's social condition which we cannot entirely
grasp. In our time, identifying a given object_ as _art_ reflects our social
condition, not necessarily that of the maker or his original audience.
Which is to say that you calling the music of Hildegard von Bingen "art"
when she and her audience most likely understood as _prayer_ is a gulf which
cannot be ignored. A 21st century athiest hears it as music and may, in the
Adornian (sic) sense, experience it as _art_. But, that 21st century athiest is
unlikely to embrace the Christianity it celebrates which, based on the documents,
we can agree might have been von Bingen's intention. But, he might have his view
of reality shaken, remade, transformed and thus confirm Adorno.
cheers,
Mary
Mark Alan Miller
>
>
> Mark Alan Miller wrote:
>
> >
> > It's what the patrons thought; it's how most viewers experienced it; in
many
> > cases it's what the artist intended. >>
>
> Ahem: three questions: 1) how do you know what the patrons
> thought?
> 2) How do you know how "most viewers experienced it" ? 3)How do you know
the
> artist's intention?
> It is one thing to expound theory: it's another to be able
to show
> evidence and for a big hunk of the history of western visual arts
providing
> evidence to support your theory is slight to non-existent.
Of course it's impossible to know exactly who was thinking what and when,
but the what evidence we do have does little to support the idea that the
artists were intending to be "subversive", that the patrons desired this, or
that the viewers felt it. The desires of patrons to have certain kinds of
art are often quite explicit. We know less about how viewers experienced
it, but the absence of evidence to suggest that viewers felt it was
subversive is suggestive. What critics/viewers often wrote was that the art
inspired religious fervor, greater appreciation of God's works, etc., at
least when the matter was religious art, and there is no doubt whatsoever
that that was precisely what was expected and desired by the patrons.
> > That the content was in some way
> > subversive is a fine 20th century conceit.>>
>
> That would be news to art critics writing in France between
1815-1900.
> Having trekked through their writing, I can assure you that a majority
reviled
> a number of painters for just that. In particular, they foamed about
attacks on
> the hierarchy of the "arts" and the social order--the kind of subversion
you and
> Jane so much disapprove of was exactly what they found in the artists'
work.
True, 19th and 20th century would be more accurate. A view that grew up
along with the Romantic view of artists as godlike heroes.
> That said, I was using _subversive_ not in the "Commies under the bed"
sense
> which Jane has embraced but in the sense of altering the experience of
the
> viewer. But , that does not negate the historical evidence that subverting
the
> social
> order remains a charge against art to our very day.
It's been a charge against almost everything, including art, and no doubt
some of it does subvert the social order to some degree, but that isn't what
Jane and I are disputing. What I take exception to is the idea that all
great art acts to subvert the social order. It simply isn't so.
Or do you think the wrath
> of Jesse Helms et al is about Mapplethorpe's failure to solve formal
problems
> in his work? Was it sloppy composition which drove them nuts?
Of course not. But Mapplethorpe was being intentionally provocative. No
one would dispute that his work was subversive at some level.
> > For most of history the arts
> > evolved so slowly that viewers were hardly aware of the differences from
> > what came before.
>
> How can we know what viewers perceived in those times?
An absence of evidence to the contrary is sometimes as powerful as the
evidence itself. In eras in which there were massive changes, such as 19th
century France or postwar America, there was enormous controversy about the
quality of the new stuff and indeed whether it was art at all. Hard to find
similar tumult surrounding Giotto, and he was a fairly revolutionary figure.
>
> > Are we to call Brahms a non-artist because he worked in
> > forms that were already long established?>>
>
> Nope. Formal structures, however manipulated, aren't the issue and
do
> not necessarily make the "newness" of which I have spoken. I think I said
> somewhere here that working within a given structure is not antithetical
to art.
> Nor does novelty of form make something art in Adorno's thinking. He did
seem to
> think that novelty of form opened the process.
This is one of those awfully convenient arguments, saying essentially that
if we all agree it's great, then it must be subversive, because all great
art is subversive, and if it isn't subversive it isn't great art. The
Brahms symphonies did not raise a great many eyebrows in there time nor
provide new challenges to listeners familiar with what had come before.
It's hard to imagine any way they caused anyone to question the cultural
norms of the day just by their being previously unheard.
> But, that's not what he said nor what I said. I blame Jane
here,
> for confusing you with her insistence upon "difficult". In Adorno's
aesthetics,
> the _newness_ does not lie in the novelty of structure within the art: it
lies
> in the
> creation of a _new_ object/experience in the piece. That said, reading
the
> philosophy of aesthetics is difficult and many people get no fun from it
at all.
Perhaps because most of what has been written is fairly silly. I've never
known an artist (and I know and have known many) who thinks much of all this
theorizing.
> There is no art without craft: making a distinction between
artist
> and craftsman is entirely a Romantic construct and one which I think
is,well,
> silly.
I agree. The line between art and craft has always been a blurry one, with
almost all (but not all) work having aspects of both.
> > This view of the artist as a demi-god giving the world something
entirely new
> > is wonderfully Romantic, and seems
> > to have warped Ayn Rand's brain a bit, but it doesn't have much to do
with
> > the function of the arts in earlier times.>>
>
> Two problems present here: does art have a _function_ ? And if so,
how do
> you know what was in "earlier times"? I mean, to what do you refer and
when are
> you talking about?
Art has often had functions. Sometimes very specific ones. To glorify God.
To reinforce the power of the patron. To keep the rain out. To hold the
wine in. Which gets us back to the craft vs. art issue. Which is not to
say that the function is all it the art was or did. I was not attempting to
put a specific time period into the other statement, as it didn't need one.
This is not a dissertation.
> > . Expecting the arts to rearrange
> > the viewer's logical processes is putting a burden on the arts they
don't
> > deserve and only rarely asked for.
>
> Well, exactly what do you think "The Arts" burden is? What is "The
Arts"
> demand of the audience? Is the audience's burden to open its wallet; pay
the
> artists and admire with awe the artists' skill in solving formal
problems?*
Why do they have to have a burden at all? Sometimes simple entertainment is
all they aspire to. Sometimes subversion of some sort is intended.
Sometimes stimulation of a few neurons in some specific part of the brain is
enough (Ad Reinhardt). And sometimes providing financial support for the
artist is the only goal.
Mark Alan Miller
Mark Alan Miller
> I love "The Documentary History of Art". However, I don't think the
evidence
> from the Middle Ages negates the essential subversion of art: that is,
that the
> effect of art upon the viewer is, if it is _art_, is to alter the
_viewer's_
> reality.
Walking down the street alters my reality. So does eating a good meal.
Life alters my reality. But claiming that anything that alters my reality
is working to subvert my view of societal norms is meaningless and obvious.
Indeed, art is less likely to change my views than tripping over the trash
in the street.
On the other hand, since our
> theoretical viwer was illiterate, we don't _know_ directly what the
illiterate
> felt upon viewing the piece. He might have felt despair or boredom. We
only know
> what the literate people thought and reported about their own goals and
the
> illiterate's reaction and their reporting was conditioned by their own
> aspirations.
Of course. So what. We can only work with the evidence we have, and that
preponderance of that evidence is consistent.
> It is important to remember that relying on the documents
created by one
> social group does not necessarily accurately report the experiences of
another.
True enough, but there is nothing to suggest that their experiences were
different, either. Nor is there any reason to expect it would be
substantially different. The simple fact that art was used in this way for
thousands of years suggests that it was working the way it was intended, at
least to some degree. Of couse we never know precisely what anyone else was
thinking or feeling at any given time. I don't even "know" what I'm
thinking of feeling. Regardless, we have to look at what evidence there is
rather than stating as the truth premises that are entirely without
evidence. There isn't much to suggest people found art subversive until the
last couple of hundred years, and many of those claims were made by people
with vested interest attempting to discredit the competition. Pointing
fingers at art and calling it Communist, or degenerate, or not art at all is
an easy way to bash it.
Mark Alan Miller
Mark Alan Miller
JaneHadd
>I love "The Documentary History of Art". However, I don't think the evidence
>from the Middle Ages negates the essential subversion of art: that is, that
>the
>effect of art upon the viewer is, if it is _art_, is to alter the _viewer's_
>reality.
Again--a LOT of stuff "alters the viewer's reality." And in fact, BAD
art--what you and I would probably call not art at all--does it far better than
the good stuff does.
>A particular depiction of the agonies of Hell, for example, might have
>been profoundly moving to an illiterate 11th century person who suspects that
>his
>time upon the earth is coming rapidly to a close
It was supposed to be.
>It might move him to, say, a more
>attentive piety.
Right--in other words, it might move him to reaffirm the foundations on
which his society rests. My point exactly.
>We can say, based upon documents that that was certainly one of
>the hopes of those who commissioned the work
It was also the intention of the artists who composed the works.
>On the other hand, since our
>theoretical viwer was illiterate, we don't _know_ directly what the
>illiterate
>felt upon viewing the piece. He might have felt despair or boredom.
Right--but that doesn't get you very far.
>We only know
>what the literate people thought and reported about their own goals and the
>illiterate's reaction and their reporting was conditioned by their own
>aspirations.
Um...not quite.
Just because people are illiterate doesn't mean they haven't left a
record, and in the middle ages they left many.
In medieval England, especially, there were several peasants' movements,
most notably the one brought on by the publication of Wycliffe's Bible--
Peasant groups on several occasions got together to present petitions to
the nobility, even to the king himself. The documents were written by low
level clerks and clergy and read aloud in front of the petitioners, so we can
be pretty sure they said what the peasants wanted them to say.
These movements have a great deal in common: one, was that they affirmed
society as hierarchical and socially fixed; another was that they demanded that
the people on the rungs above them behave as that hierarchical society claimed
they should behave (priests should be poor, because God said so; nobles should
adhere to already established procedures for dispensing justice, etc).
On none of these occasions was the precipitating factor a work of art of
any kind, and in fact medieval people--nobles as well as peasants--would not
have understood "art" used the way you and I use it. Straight through to the
Renaissance, an "artist" was a craftsman, pure and simple, with no pretentions
to genius, or to social consequence. Until the Renaissance, artists were
either hired guns or noble amateurs who considered painting, composing and
writing verse one of the necessary accomplishments of all upper class people.
We consider quite a lot of their productions to be "real" art, including
the poetry of Sir Philip Sidney--and no peasant or illiterate member of the
populace at large ever heard a word of what they wrote. They wrote for and to
an audence of their peers.
> It is important to remember that relying on the documents created by one
>social group does not necessarily accurately report the experiences of
>another.
See above. They did, in fact, leave extensive records on issues that
concerned them. None of those records affirms your ideas about what makes
something "art," and nothing in the record indicates that anybody in the middle
ages--peasant, noble or cleric--would have understood what you were talking
about when you talked about "art."
>That said, what artists intend and what the audience experiences may be
>radically different.
Obviously. But that's true about the evening news, too.
> That said, what artists intend and what the audience experiences may be
>radically different. And, I would argue, that which we call _art_--
>especially when
>we refer to _art_ made in a different time or culture from our own-- is
>experienced
>within the boundaries of the
>audience's social condition which we cannot entirely
>grasp.
We can't entirely grasp it, maybe, but we CAN make a good stab at it,
and the Medieval world just LOVED to get things on the record.
>n our time, identifying a given object_ as _art_ reflects our social
>condition, not necessarily that of the maker or his original audience.
Absolutely.
That's what I've been saying all along--that Adorno's (and your, and the
deconstructionist's) definition of "art" is entirely time-bound to the modern
period and entirely class bound to a certain group of mostly academic
intellectuals.
> Which is to say that you calling the music of Hildegard von Bingen "art"
>when she and her audience most likely understood as _prayer_ is a gulf which
>cannot be ignored.
It's not a gulf--I call it 'art' because that's what we call great music
in the 21st century, but I'm far more aware than you are that there was no such
thing as "art" in the middle ages. What we now call 'art' existed for one of
three purposes: education, documentation, or entertainment.
>A 21st century athiest hears it as music and may, in the
>Adornian (sic) sense, experience it as _art_.
See above--you're making far too big a thing out of what is a matter of
semantics. I have to call that class of objects SOMETHING. It is conventional
in this era to call them "art."
> But, that 21st century athiest is
>unlikely to embrace the Christianity it celebrates which, based on the
>documents,
>we can agree might have been von Bingen's intention. But, he might have his
>view
>of reality shaken, remade, transformed and thus confirm
>Adorno
Again, hundreds of thousands of people seem to have had just that response
to the novels of Ayn Rand.
As a distinction, the above is worthless, because it applies to many
things that are not art, from Klan rallies to tent revivals.
And it does NOT apply to myriad things--including most of Wordsworth and
Coleridge, for almost any 21st century reader, atheist or otherwise--that most
certainly ARE art.
This is what I think the problem is:
First, twentieth and twenty-first century people don't really have much
respect for what art really IS, which is simply the free play of the human
imagination, executed well, meaning elegantly.
Second, these same people have a fundamental problem with art because to
recognize it for what it is is also to recognize it as being INHERENTLY
elitist. Most people can't do it, and most people won't understand it, either.
Art is, in that way, also an inherently CONSERVATIVE force, with conservative
used in the old (not the religious right) sense. Art, by being what it is,
reinforces social hierarchies. It doesn't subvert them.
Jane Haddam
Mark Alan Miller
>
> Again--a LOT of stuff "alters the viewer's reality." And in fact,
BAD
> art--what you and I would probably call not art at all--does it far better
than
> the good stuff does.
I suspect the cost of entry to MOMA does more to alter the viewer's reality
than anything contained therein, as does taking the subway to get there.
Most modern (small m) art functions in ways that make sense mainly in
reference to other art. We even make a point of putting paintings in
museums to give them context. A Pollock drip painting would have been
meaningless to someone in 18th century Switzerland, just as it's essentially
meaningless to your average Walmart clerk. It does nothing to alter the
reality of most people because they don't they don't have the special kind
of prepared "reality" susceptible to being altered by such a work. If
Pollock is culturally subversive, it is primarily to viewers who have
specific expectations about art, and the work serves mainly to subvert those
specific expectations. And those expectations largely are tied to a
specific time and place (say, New York in the 40's and 50's). People
offended by Pollock 50 years later are largely people who don't understand
art at any level beyond pretty calendars and people with specific,
reactionary political agendas (I hate your politics, so I attack your art).
> That's what I've been saying all along--that Adorno's (and your, and
the
> deconstructionist's) definition of "art" is entirely time-bound to the
modern
> period and entirely class bound to a certain group of mostly academic
> intellectuals.
And a rather elitist little group they are, their theories dripping with
condescension towards the common people who are being yanked around without
even knowing it, the poor dears.
> First, twentieth and twenty-first century people don't really have
much
> respect for what art really IS, which is simply the free play of the human
> imagination, executed well, meaning elegantly.
Or sometimes with deliberate inelegance, but those are the exceptions.
> Second, these same people have a fundamental problem with art because
to
> recognize it for what it is is also to recognize it as being INHERENTLY
> elitist. Most people can't do it, and most people won't understand it,
either.
Exactly. And this inability to understand it leads many people to deny that
it exists at all, in the same way people deny the reality of evolution or
the moon landing. Some art, especially great art, can be appreciated at a
rather basic level by almost everybody, but most of the great art of the
last hundred years has been made for a small, educated audience and can't be
fully appreciated without aptitude, education, and exposure.
> Art is, in that way, also an inherently CONSERVATIVE force, with
conservative
> used in the old (not the religious right) sense. Art, by being what it
is,
> reinforces social hierarchies. It doesn't subvert them.
Often. Actually, I've found this whole thread somewhat amusing in light of
Mary's defense a year or so ago of Andrew Wyeth, an artist I consider
untalented and unimportant. If Mary can find a blandly conservative painter
like Wyeth a significant artist, which according to her Adorno's definitions
makes him culturally subversive, she can clearly see subversion almost
anywhere, making the whole concept of subversion meaningless.
Mark Alan Miller
JaneHadd
>than anything contained therein, as does taking the subway to get there.
Actually, I was thinking that the work of art--now using the term in the
VERY broad sense--that has most changed its audience's understanding of life
and subverted the social order into which it was born, at least in the US,
is...Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Again, like Rand, rankly bad, and more effective in its badness--because
it was both more obvious and accessible to more people--than any work of high
art in any field than I can think of for the past 300 years.
Jane Haddam
ell...@webtv.net
<<People offended by Pollock 50 years later are largely people who don't
understand art at any level beyond pretty calendars and people with
specific, reactionary political agendas (I hate your politics, so I
attack your art).>>
Jane wrote: <<That's what I've been saying all along--that Adorno's
(and your, and the deconstructionist's) definition of "art" is entirely
time-bound to the modern period and entirely class bound to a certain
group of mostly academic intellectuals. >>
Mark wrote:
<<And a rather elitist little group they are, their theories dripping
with condescension towards the common people who are being yanked around
without even knowing it, the poor dears.>>
Mark, I am having a lot of trouble reconciling your two statements.
Ellen 2
Jonathan Askew
JaneHadd wrote:
(editing out what has become for the audience a really tedious academic exchange
between three people: when you're parodied, it's a clue...)
>
>
>
> This is what I think the problem is:
First, twentieth and twenty-first century people don't really have much respect for
what art really IS, which is the free play of the human imagination, executed well,
meaning elegantly.
> Second, these same people have a fundamental problem with art because to
> recognize it for what it is is also to recognize it as being INHERENTLY
> elitist. Most people can't do it, and most people won't understand it, either.>>
To the contrary, I think most people can understand art and more
people can make art than the "arts as the playground of the elite" faction wants
to admit. There is no shortage of talent. There is a shortage of venues where
talent can be encouraged and access to instruction in the arts is limited to a
lucky few whose material circumstances permit and encourage it.
There is an entire industry devoted to propagating the idea that art is
inaccessible to most of us; that most of us have no talent and, in a well-ordered
world, only the select few would have access to the arts. And, in that way, part
of the institutionalized arts industry functions in the USA to maintain a
hierarchy of privilege for economic elites. That it is not wholely successful is a
tribute to arts' capacity to shape human life. People who genuinely enjoy the arts
want others to do so.
However, the idea of arts as the sphere of the elite is why music as
part of the ordinary education of schoolchildren is continually defended on the
basis that music if it was composed a very long time ago helps improve study
skills. God forbid that children might just enjoy music! It's why school systems
which provide visual art instruction do so only for the "gifted and talented"(sic)
and have staff who purport to be able to identify whether a child has "talent".
They accomplish two things: they grant access to very few and they convince the
majority of students that they are without talent. Many, many teenagers are
assigned to vocational and technical high schools with English classes devoid of
Shakespeare and poetry. What they are being told is that _The Arts_ are not for
people like them.
Asking people to have "respect" for that which they are told they can
neither understand nor participate in is ludicrous.
cheers,
Mary
Jonathan Askew
Mark Alan Miller wrote:
> > Second, these same people have a fundamental problem with art because
> to
> > recognize it for what it is is also to recognize it as being INHERENTLY
> > elitist. Most people can't do it, and most people won't understand it,
> either.
>
> Exactly. And this inability to understand it leads many people to deny that
> it exists at all, in the same way people deny the reality of evolution or
> the moon landing. Some art, especially great art, can be appreciated at a
> rather basic level by almost everybody, but most of the great art of the
> last hundred years has been made for a small, educated audience and can't be
> fully appreciated without aptitude, education, and exposure.>>
And, he calls _me_ condescending......go figure.
>
>
> > Art is, in that way, also an inherently CONSERVATIVE force, with
> conservative
> > used in the old (not the religious right) sense. Art, by being what it
> is,
> > reinforces social hierarchies. It doesn't subvert them.
>
> Often. Actually, I've found this whole thread somewhat amusing in light of
> Mary's defense a year or so ago of Andrew Wyeth, an artist I consider
> untalented and unimportant.
Hate to upset your apple cart but Mary can defend Wyeth on purely formal
grounds: he's a marvelous abstract painter. Take a look at _North Point_ if you
ever get back East.
Mary is really fond of Josef Albers, Jenny Knaus, Carolyn Hollingsworth, Van
Gogh, Manet, Picasso, Lehmbruck, Frankenthaler,Holbein, Rembrandt, Degas, Scott
Prior, John Marin, Berthe Morisot, Edward Hopper, Antonakos and George Bellows.
Mary think Ad Rheinhardt's experiments are sort of boring.
cheers,
Mary
-
Jonathan Askew
JaneHadd wrote:
> Actually, I was thinking that the work of art--now using the term in the
> VERY broad sense--that has most changed its audience's understanding of life
> and subverted the social order into which it was born, at least in the US,
> is...Uncle Tom's Cabin.
>
> Again, like Rand, rankly bad, and more effective in its badness--because
> it was both more obvious and accessible to more people--than any work of high
> art in any field than I can think of for the past 300 years.
>
>
There's a wonderful chapter after the slaves were sold South
that is riveting- very vivid use of color to describe the landscape, as I recall.
cheers,
Mary
--
BLIND 321
exchange
between three people: when you're parodied, it's a clue... >>
YOU WOULD THINK SO!
KS
CarleenML
>
> cheers,
> Mary
Phew. Carleen thinks big black rectangles are big black rectangles.
ra...@idx.com.au
Jonathan Askew wrote:
> There is an entire industry devoted to propagating the idea that art is
> inaccessible to most of us; that most of us have no talent and, in a well-ordered
> world, only the select few would have access to the arts. And, in that way, part
> of the institutionalized arts industry functions in the USA to maintain a
> hierarchy of privilege for economic elites. That it is not wholely successful is a
> tribute to arts' capacity to shape human life. People who genuinely enjoy the arts
> want others to do so.
At our annual show I always make a point of looking at children's art.
There are some quite wonderful pictures done by children before they are
made aware of 'rules' and 'art'. Some are more telling and sophisticated
than the works of older established artists and could well grace gallery walls.
Razz
JaneHadd
I didn't say they couldn't.
I most certainly think most people CAN understand art--we're really talking
about high art here, so let's stick with that.
I also, however, think they DON'T, and you know they don't.
If they did, sales of classical music would rival sales of Brittney Spears,
and Henry James would outsell Ayn Rand (whose two major novels--Fountainhead
and Atlas Shrugged--sell a quarter of a million copies EACH every single year).
>and more
>people can make art than the "arts as the playground of the elite" faction
>wants
>to admit.
Well, I'd expect that depends on what you mean by this.
Do you really think ANYBODY could be, say, da Vinci? Beethoven?
Shakespeare?
And the answer, of course, is no, for the same reason that not all of us
can grow up to play basketball like Michael Jordan.
>There is no shortage of talent.
See above. There has always been, and there will always be, a shortage
of talent ON THAT LEVEL.
That most people can make "art" on SOME level depends on how you're
defining "art."
Every time you get cornered in this discussion you change your
definitions--now you seem to want to include as "art" all kinds of things that
don't fit the first definition you gave of it.
>There is a shortage of venues where
>talent can be encouraged and access to instruction in the arts is limited to
>a
>lucky few whose material circumstances permit and encourage it.
And in the second half of that statement above explains why art is and
always will be inherently elitist.
Yes, we can certainly build a society where there are lots of venues and
everybody has access to them, and where everybody has a change to be trained in
the arts.
What we CAN'T change is the fact that understanding art, really
understanding it, is work, and that most forms of it are an acquired, not a
natural taste.
The kid with the boom box doesn't need "instruction in the arts" to
understand Brittney Spears or the Backstreet Boys or even good rock. He DOES
need it to understand Beethoven, and he needs even more of it to understand (or
even be able to listen to) some of the moderns.
Let me tell you something true about human nature: if there is a path of
least resistance, MOST people will take it and if something takes effort and
doesn't seem to pay off in any practical way MOST people will try to avoid it.
> There is an entire industry devoted to propagating the idea that art is
>inaccessible to most of us; that most of us have no talent and, in a
>well-ordered
>world, only the select few would have access to the arts.
Really...where?
I've worked with local museums and festivals and I'm a fair contributor
to some larger museums and they seem to spend MOST of their time trying to
convince people that art is very accessible indeed, that they shouldn't be
afraid of it, that they should come right in and try it, they'll like it.
> And, in that way, part
>of the institutionalized arts industry functions in the USA to maintain a
>hierarchy of privilege for economic elites.
Again--I don't buy it, especially where museum art and classical music
are concerned, where there are dozens of organizations, including major
institutions like the Metropolitan in New York, who have whole departments
devoted to convincing people of just the opposite of this.
The wholesale drive for "anti-elitism" in the major museums has been
noted by several people and endlessly discussed in the NY Times.
>That it is not wholely successful is a
>tribute to arts' capacity to shape human life. People who genuinely enjoy the
>arts
>want others to do so.
See above. The reason it's "not wholly successful" is that by and large
it isn't hapenning.
Which doesn't mean that some art doesn't function as a status
marker--poetry, for instance, and modern painting, now serve virtually no other
function than to provide badges of intellectual superiority for small groups of
people who are not necessarily rich (in fact, often not at all rich), but very
well educated.
But that's the fault of the artists as well as the patrons and doesn't
require an "art industry" to keep people out.
>However, the idea of arts as the sphere of the elite is why music as
>part of the ordinary education of schoolchildren is continually defended on
>the
>basis that music if it was composed a very long time ago helps improve study
>skills.
I don't agree.
Our schools need "practical" reasons for teaching the arts for the same
reason you need art to be "subversive" and "critical of the social
order"--because most Americans are profoundly convinced that something without
PRACTICAL value has no value at all.
In an anti-intellectual country in an anti-intellectual age, the idea that
we should learn to understand art because art is a really wonderful thing
people do and the ability to understand it is the mark of a trained intellect
sounds, well...elitist.
> God forbid that children might just enjoy music!
See above.
YOU don't want children to "just enjoy music."
You've said repeatedly that if it doesn't make you think, if it isn't
"subversive," it isn't art.
>It's why school systems
>which provide visual art instruction do so only for the "gifted and
>talented"(sic)
>and have staff who purport to be able to identify whether a child has
>"talent".
Mmmm, no.
The reason for the above is quite simple: as American schools
increasingly dumbed down their curricula, upscale parents increasingly insisted
on separate programs for "academically gifted" students that were not dumbed
down at all.
But singling out kids for being smarter just seemed so...so...elitist.
So "gifted and talented" programs expanded to include all kinds of
different "intelligences," and incidentally to erect a system where ANY
suitably agressive parent could make sure her child ended up in the "gifted and
talented" program.
>They accomplish two things: they grant access to very few and they convince
>the
>majority of students that they are without talent
See above.
They're responses to parental pressures to provide material that the
schools do NOT think is worthwhile, and the schools don't think it's worthwhile
because you'll never find a more anti-intellectual human being than the run of
the mill US public school administrator.
>Many, many teenagers are
>assigned to vocational and technical high schools with English classes devoid
>of
>Shakespeare and poetry.
Does Massachusetts still do this?
In Connecticut, nobody is "assigned" anywhere. Any student can take any
high school course, and our guidance counselors and administrators are enjoined
BY LAW from "tracking" high school kids into vocational courses if that's not
where they want to be.
>What they are being told is that _The Arts_ are not for
>people like them.
Well, you know, I've taught in a lot of places, and some of them have
been community colleges. Where you kids in the above generally end up.
And one of the things you find out soon enough, teaching lit in a
community college is that most kids are FURIOUS to be asked to actually work at
the meaning of a poem or a story. There will be one kid in the back of the
class who really loves it. The rest of them will be very vocal about how, when
they read, they want ENTERTAINMENT, they don't want to have to do a lot of
mental work and thinking (lots of people say that on this ng, too), and they
feel that way about painting, too. Why don't people just say what they mean
and paint what they see instead of making people go to all this TROUBLE.
>Asking people to have "respect" for that which they are told they can
>neither understand nor participate in is ludicrous.
But I haven't asked them to do any such thing.
I'm simply pointing out that in an egalitarian era, something--like high
art--that requires work and thought to understand, appreciate and do is going
to look suspect BECAUSE it takes work and thought to understand, appreciate and
do.
Jane Haddam
JaneHadd
>that is riveting- very vivid use of color to describe the landscape, as I
>recall.
>
> cheers,
> Mary
Yes...and?
I can find you riveting passages, with vivid uses of language, in Ayn
Rand, Margaret Mitchell, and John Grisham, too.
Uncle Tom's Cabin, however, was straightforwardly written as a political
tract--its entire purpose for existing was to create support for the
abolitionist cause.
If Ayn Rand is "not-art" because it's a "political tract," then most
assuredly UTC is too.
Jane Haddam
ra...@idx.com.au
Just to add to the debate: If art isn't 'subversive', why do repressive
regimes ban so much of it (ie Nazi Germany, Communist Russia and China)
and why is there such a cry to censor much of it? What are they afraid of?
Razz - subversively
JaneHadd
The question isn't whether SOME art is or isn't not subversive--of course
some of it is, and some of it is intended to be.
The question is whether subversiveness is NECESSARY to make something art,
and obviously it isn't, since much art down the ages hasn't been in the least
subversive.
Jane Haddam
Mark Alan Miller
<ell...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:28942-3B...@storefull-211.iap.bryant.webtv.net...
> Mark wrote:
>
> <<People offended by Pollock 50 years later are largely people who don't
> understand art at any level beyond pretty calendars and people with
> specific, reactionary political agendas (I hate your politics, so I
> attack your art).>>
>
> <<And a rather elitist little group they are, their theories dripping
> with condescension towards the common people who are being yanked around
> without even knowing it, the poor dears.>>
>
> Mark, I am having a lot of trouble reconciling your two statements.
There was an element of sarcasm in the statements that doesn't seem to have
come across very well. In the case of Pollock, I wasn't talking about
people who don't understand him, but people who are actively offended by
him, who deny that what he made was art at all, which is quite a different
thing. I don't understand spoon collecting or NASCAR, but I'm not offended
that others find these subjects fascinating. Indeed, I'm thrilled that
people with such diverse interests are to be found. All I was pointing out
that in many cases reactions to art have had more to do with the perceived
politics of the artists or their supporters than to the art itself,
especially when that art is not of of the sort presented constantly as
office decoration and is thus unfamiliar to many.
Mark Alan Miller
Mark Alan Miller
> > Exactly. And this inability to understand it leads many people to deny
that
> > it exists at all, in the same way people deny the reality of evolution
or
> > the moon landing. Some art, especially great art, can be appreciated at
a
> > rather basic level by almost everybody, but most of the great art of the
> > last hundred years has been made for a small, educated audience and
can't be
> > fully appreciated without aptitude, education, and exposure.>>
>
> And, he calls _me_ condescending......go figure.
You have a rather strange view of condescension. Do you understand quantum
mechanics? Do you understand intercellular messaging? How up are you on
microeconomics? I don't understand any of those things in any detail
either, but I don't feel I'm being condescended to when people who do
understand them tell me I don't. Much of the art of the last hundred years
has been quite deliberately made for an audience presumed to be
knowledgeable about what came before. It is highly conceptual and makes
little sense without a fair understanding of how those concepts came to be.
It was not designed to be art for the masses, and saying that the masses
don't understand it is no judgment on the masses. That's not to say that
the average person couldn't gain that experience and education, since many
do. I'm not convinced that all could, since there are people who just don't
think that way, just as there are people who can't be trained as
microbiologists.
> Hate to upset your apple cart but Mary can defend Wyeth on purely
formal
> grounds: he's a marvelous abstract painter. Take a look at _North Point_
if you
> ever get back East.
Phooey. I've seen plenty of Wyeth and think his work boringly derivative,
saved intermittently by clever surface effects, which he then repeats to
death. In no case is his work of sufficent newness or spectacular quality
to be in the least subversive. There are good reasons why he was latched
onto by reactionaries made uncomfortable by abstract expressionism, as his
work was so reassuringly obvious.
> Mary is really fond of Josef Albers, Jenny Knaus, Carolyn Hollingsworth,
Van
> Gogh, Manet, Picasso, Lehmbruck, Frankenthaler,Holbein, Rembrandt, Degas,
Scott
> Prior, John Marin, Berthe Morisot, Edward Hopper, Antonakos and George
Bellows.
> Mary think Ad Rheinhardt's experiments are sort of boring.
Well, if you prefer Albers to Reinhardt, you must be looking for other
things in art than I am. MOMA's Reinhardt show of some years back was one
of the most exciting I've seen, with the last room spooky in its intensity.
Reinhardt mined a rather narrow vein, but he did so with scary virtuosity.
One problem is that his work is impossible to reproduce and can't even be
adequately appreciated when you're being jostled by a bunch of other people.
It is very slow art.
Mark Alan Miller
Mark Alan Miller
"CarleenML" <carl...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010908215538...@mb-dd.aol.com...
Sure. They ARE big black rectangles. That's one of the things that makes
them so fascinating. One part of your brain wants to just see an unvaried
sea of black, while the other parts that process edges are busy trying to
decide if they are seeing something or not. Nothing happens while looking
at a late Reinhardt for at least a minute of so, then, if you're lucky,
fireworks start going off. The geometric shapes defined by those subtle
shades of black emerge in flickers and flashes until you can see the whole
thing. Then sometimes it all disappears again. It's the tension between
variation and uniformity that makes a late Reinhardt sing. One reason he's
not appreciated as much as he might be is because the work is effectively
impossible to reproduce, depending as it does on incredibly subtle
variations. It also needs to be big enough to get lost in. It's very
atmospheric art.
Mark Alan Miller
who learned a lot from Reinhardt, though never painting anything like him
MRFeathers
>grounds: he's a marvelous abstract painter. Take a look at _North Point_ if
>you
>ever get back East.
>Mary is really fond of Josef Albers, Jenny Knaus, Carolyn Hollingsworth, Van
>Gogh, Manet, Picasso, Lehmbruck, Frankenthaler,Holbein, Rembrandt, Degas,
>Scott
>Prior, John Marin, Berthe Morisot, Edward Hopper, Antonakos and George
>Bellows.
Hm. Nice list. You're making me want to to go the museum.
Mary (other)
CarleenML
>
>Sure. They ARE big black rectangles. That's one of the things that makes
>them so fascinating. One part of your brain wants to just see an unvaried
>sea of black, while the other parts that process edges are busy trying to
>decide if they are seeing something or not. Nothing happens while looking
>at a late Reinhardt for at least a minute of so, then, if you're lucky,
>fireworks start going off. The geometric shapes defined by those subtle
>shades of black emerge in flickers and flashes until you can see the whole
>thing. Then sometimes it all disappears again. It's the tension between
>variation and uniformity that makes a late Reinhardt sing. One reason he's
>not appreciated as much as he might be is because the work is effectively
>impossible to reproduce, depending as it does on incredibly subtle
>variations. It also needs to be big enough to get lost in. It's very
>atmospheric art.
>
>Mark Alan Miller
>who learned a lot from Reinhardt, though never painting anything like him
Sorry, Mark. I'm afraid only that first part of my brain you discussed is
working. But it's the same part that would see it with someone like you and be
fascinated by what that other person saw - and what was intended to be seen.
(and btw, I think you were quoting to a "T" a lecture from a professor about a
giant orange square at the MFA in Boston). Just wouldn't happen for me,
doesn't mean I can't appreciate what you say about it, which to me is really
beautiful.
At the same time, I think your argument with Mary over Wyeth is a bit
patronizing. (but I read it quick and already forgot it so if I'm wrong, I
apologize...!) There's such a fine line between "this is what I don't like and
why" and "this is what I don't like and why you shouldn't like it either."
ell...@webtv.net
<<It's the tension between variation and uniformity that makes a late
Reinhardt sing. One reason he's not appreciated as much as he might be
is because the work is effectively impossible to reproduce, depending as
it does on incredibly subtle variations. It also needs to be big enough
to get lost in. It's very atmospheric art.>>
Well, I have seen him in person, and I must admit . . . no fireworks. I
see the uniformity, but not the variation. (I mean, I DO see the
variation, but it doesn't affect me the way it does you.)
Maybe he's an "artist's artist?"
I agree with Carleen, though, that to me, your description of his effect
on you is more exciting than his paintings.
Ellen 2
ell...@webtv.net
<<Do you understand quantum mechanics? Do you understand intercellular
messaging? How up are you on microeconomics? I don't understand any of
those things in any detail either, but I don't feel I'm being
condescended to when people who do understand them tell me I don't.>>
No, of course not, because you're not expected to. They are not areas
presented as accessible to the average layman. There are not hundreds
of museums encouraging tourists and average joes to come and appreciate
their beauty. (Boston Science Museum excluded, of course)
<< Much of the art of the last hundred years has been quite deliberately
made for an audience presumed to be knowledgeable about what came
before. It is highly conceptual and makes little sense without a fair
understanding of how those concepts came to be. It was not designed to
be art for the masses>>
What about prior to the last hundred years?
<<In no case is his work of sufficent newness or spectacular quality to
be in the least subversive.>>
Are you saying that if it isn't subversive, it isn't "high quality" art?
Ellen 2
razz
JaneHadd wrote:
>
> >Just to add to the debate: If art isn't 'subversive', why do repressive
> >regimes ban so much of it (ie Nazi Germany, Communist Russia and China)
> >and why is there such a cry to censor much of it? What are they afraid of?
> >
> >Razz - subversively
>
> The question isn't whether SOME art is or isn't not subversive--of course
> some of it is, and some of it is intended to be.
What is subversive can be pretty broad in some cultures (ie Islam). The
problem is that practically all art can be seen as subversive in some
context or other. Some of the more conventional art was subversive in
the context of its time.
>
> The question is whether subversiveness is NECESSARY to make something art,
> and obviously it isn't, since much art down the ages hasn't been in the least
> subversive.
I agree it's not necessary, but I don't agree that 'much art' was
considered not subversive nor controversial in the context of art
history. I understand even perspective was subversive and controversial
when it first made its impact on art.
Razz
JaneHadd
>presented as accessible to the average layman. There are not hundreds
>of museums encouraging tourists and average joes to come and appreciate
>their beauty.
Mmmm...I think that you have this backwards.
I agree--the "average layman" thinks that scientific areas will require
education before they are accessible to him.
And I also agree that the "average layman" thinks that the humanities--not
just art, but everything from history to the philosophy of education--will NOT
require it.
But that attitude long preceded the push by museums to bring "the average
layman" in to see the collections.
Until very recently, museums didn't expect "the average layman" to come
visit--they thought of themselves as catering to a small, knowledgable and
dedicated audience and they thought of their mission as one of preserving art
more than of providing the public with the ability to see it.
Most European museums--outside a few in the UK--STILL see their mission
this way.
The interesting thing to me is why Americans so stubbornly insist that
nobody really needs any training at all to understand
art/literature/history/philosophy/whatever--
it's part and parcel of the American belief that "intellectuals" don't really
DO anything, and that their jobs could be done as well by the cabbie down the
street.
>What about prior to the last hundred years?
It depends on the kind of art.
Painting in the middle ages was indeed available to people on all levels
of society--most of it was hung in churches, where people went every day.
And your basic medieval peasant would have had no trouble identifying or
interpreting the visual symbolism of such art. He grew up with it. He knew
that the rose was Mary's flower and that Mary was the prototype of the Church,
so when he saw a picture of Christ sheltering a rose he knew the painter meant
to show that Christ cares for His Church.
YOU, on the other hand, are probably going to need a course in medieval art
to even begin to "get" all this.
(It's so complex that even people with doctorates in the field resort to
handbooks at least once in a while.)
But during this same period--and right up through the
Reformation--literacy was restricted to a very small group of people and
literature (except for plays) was written by and for these people.
Their work would not have been obscure to EACH OTHER--and it wasn't meant
to be--but it did assume that its audience had certain basic background in
training and knowledge, and BECAUSE of that anybody reading it today needs to
approximate that same training and knowledge.
Once you hit the Romantic period--which is, what, about 1800 or so?
Excuse my lack of precision. It's REALLY early in the morning--you start to
get artists, visual and literary, who DELIBERATELY produce works that are meant
to be difficult and beyond the competence of "ordinary" people.
>Are you saying that if it isn't subversive, it isn't "high quality" art?
No. He was saying that Mary A's favorite artist did not produce art that
fit Mary A's definition of art.
Since I know virtually nothing about Andrew Wyeth, I'll let them fight it
out on their own.
Jane Haddam
JaneHadd
>problem is that practically all art can be seen as subversive in some
>context or other. Some of the more conventional art was subversive in
>the context of its time.
But the question is not, again, whether "almost all art" COULD be seen as
"subversive"--there are paranoids everywhere.
The question is whether art is NECESSARILY subversive in order to be art.
And yes, some of what is now considered conventional in art was
"subversive" in the context of its time.
But a lot of it was not, and was not meant to be--witness, again, medieval
church painting and the poetry of Sir Philip Sidney.
>I agree it's not necessary, but I don't agree that 'much art' was
>considered not subversive nor controversial in the context of art
>history.
Right up to the beginning of the Renaissance--and then, after the first
push of the Renaissance, for the next 200 or so years--you would be wrong.
Your average medieval person--male or female, educated or illiterate,
clergy or lay--would have been completely dumbfounded to hear you say that art
was "subversive" in any way.
Subversiveness abounded in his world--he would have called it heresy--but
it came in the form of translations of the Bible and political tracts.
Art--painting, poetry, even music--was assumed to promote universal verities
and to be free of the evils of change.
>I understand even perspective was subversive and controversial
>when it first made its impact on art.
Well, you sort of have this backwards.
The "subversion" and the controversy preceded the change in art.
Specifically, it arose in theology, where Aquinas and several other people
succeeded in getting the Church to adopt the attitude that Greek
culture--meaning classical Greek culture--could be assimilated and embraced on
at least some levels by Christianity.
Aquinas wanted to use Aristotle, whose works had only recently begun to
circulate freely in the West, along with the works of several other writers
whose works had been completely lost until copies were obtained from Islamic
sources during the Crusades.
Until then, Christian theologians and philosophers used mostly Plato,
whose philosophy was considered "adaptable" to Christian purposes and put to
use drawing a strong line between the sacred and the profane.
Once Aristotle became acceptible, all Greek classical art and literature
became possible as inspiration and resource, and artists began to try to
immitate the realistic idealism of Greek and Roman sculpture.
It's interesting to look at a visual timeline of painting and sculpture
from about the year 400 to the year 1600--the high medieval art seems to be
almost isolated in terms of technique from what comes after it, and early
Renaissance church painting has a lot more in common with classical Greek and
Roman statuary than it does with the Christian church painting of the high
middle ages.
Luther, at al, did indeed react to all this by hating it and trying to
ban it--in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reasons Donald Wildmon
now tries to get gay-friendly television programs taken off the air and Corpus
Christi shut down in every theater that produces it--
But Luther, like Donald Wildmon, saw the art as a symptom, not as DIRECTLY
"subversive" but as representative of an ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED change in the
culture that they did not like.
Jane Haddam
razz
JaneHadd wrote:
> But Luther, like Donald Wildmon, saw the art as a symptom, not as DIRECTLY
> "subversive" but as representative of an ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED change in the
> culture that they did not like.
I think we're near the crux of the argument here. I suggest it was not
the art that was subversive, but rather the creativity, imagination and
free thinking that produced the art.
Artists tend to serve art rather than the state and I believe it was the
creativity, imagination and free thought producing art that various
regimes tried to quash. Art was just the physical manifestation of these conditions.
Razz
JaneHadd
>the art that was subversive, but rather the creativity, imagination and
>free thinking that produced the art.
Mmmm...have you ever seen Byzantine icons? Or Islamic mosaics?
Creativity, imagination and freethinking are highly prized in Western
Europe--at least since the Renaissance--but they haven't necessarily been
compliments, or part of art, in other places.
Byzantine icons, for instance, are created within a narrowly defined and
rigid set of conventions, from which little or no deviation is allowed. The
same is true of some Chinese and Japanese art forms, and some Islamic ones as
well.
But they're all still art.
>Artists tend to serve art rather than the state and I believe it was the
>creativity, imagination and free thought producing art that various
>regimes tried to quash. Art was just the physical manifestation of these
>conditions.
See above.
First, you're relying on a Western European, post-Renaissance definition
of an "artist," which would not have held true even for England in the high
middle ages. The artist as a law unto himself dedicated to art above all other
things is both Western and VERY modern, from no earlier than the 18th century.
Even Michelangelo, the wild man of the Italian Renaissance, wouldn't have
understood it. The idea that art should be in any way "original" is from about
the same era. Medieval painters didn't want to be "original"--they would have
considered it insulting to have been called such. Rather, they believed they
were working with ancient forms to produce works entirely outside the flux and
change of time.
Second, if you actually look at what "regimes" try to "quash," you tend as
well to find that the regimes are mostly modern (that is, from the 18th century
onwards) and that the art is mostly modern (see definition above) as well.
Jane Haddam
ell...@webtv.net
which provide visual art instruction do so only for the "gifted and
talented"(sic)
and have staff who purport to be able to identify whether a child has
"talent".>>
<< Mmmm, no.
The reason for the above is quite
simple: as American schools increasingly dumbed down their curricula,
upscale parents increasingly insisted on separate programs for
"academically gifted" students that were not dumbed down at all.>>
You're both wrong, in my opinion. The reason is, that music and art are
"frills." When schools aren't being funded sufficiently, they cut down
on the "frills." And schools aren't being funded suffiiciently. There
are many districts in NY where one art teacher is shared by all three
elementary schools in the district.
Whatever other agendas you suspect the schools of having, it's really
about the money.
Ellen 2
ell...@webtv.net
Spears, and Henry James would outsell Ayn Rand (whose two major
novels--Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged--sell a quarter of a million
copies EACH every single year).>>
The Henry James/Ayn Rand comparison isn't very apt. Ayn Rand is a rite
of passage, like "Catcher in the Rye." She wasn't aiming for literary
art, she was promoting a political and social philosphy.
You don't think "literary" when you read her. You think "ooh, new
ideas," and then, because you're probably in college, you discover that
there are lots of other new ideas.
Come to think of it, maybe Brittney Spears is a rite of passage too.
Ellen 2
JaneHadd
>"frills." When schools aren't being funded sufficiently, they cut down
>on the "frills." And schools aren't being funded suffiiciently.
Actually, in most places, the first thing to go when schools lack money is
programs for gifted children--somebody was once quoted in a Time article on
gifted children as saying "why should we spend a lot of extra money on
millionaires." Not meaning that all academically bright children have a lot of
money, but that people perceive them to be unfairly--the adjective is
important--privileged by virtue of being "smart."
That's part of the reason gifted programs in the US always have a fine
arts component, too. School administrators and even many teachers feel that
there's something just plain wrong about "privileging" intelligence.
Jane Haddam
JaneHadd
>of passage, like "Catcher in the Rye." She wasn't aiming for literary
>art, she was promoting a political and social philosphy.
That's not what Rand herself says.
Rand insisted that she was indeed aiming for literary art, and she wrote an
entire volume of aesthetics to back up her approach to fiction. She considered
herself to be in the literary tradition of, among others, Victor Hugo.
>You don't think "literary" when you read her.
No, because she's BAD.
But the contention was that "art" is "art" because it makes the viewer see
the world in a whole new way and is subversive of the prevailing social order.
Rand's work has done both for millions of people--and yet neither you nor
I nor Mary nor anybody with an ear for prose will ever "think 'literary'" when
we read her.
Henry James, on the other hand, who definitely managed to create art,
created work that was NEITHER subversive of the social order--in fact, the
opposite--nor life changing for much of anybody.
Jane Haddam
Cheryl L. Perkins
: You're both wrong, in my opinion. The reason is, that music and art are
: "frills." When schools aren't being funded sufficiently, they cut down
: on the "frills." And schools aren't being funded suffiiciently. There
: are many districts in NY where one art teacher is shared by all three
: elementary schools in the district.
: Whatever other agendas you suspect the schools of having, it's really
: about the money.
: Ellen 2
That's certainly the case here. It was the case in the small rural school
I went to. And although there was an increase in music and art instruction
and resources in schools since then, over the past 5-10 years, with
dropping enrolments and cutbacks, guess which subject areas were hit
first? Music and art; and then phys ed. Resource people at the board and
provincial level first (especially important to provide assistance to
non-specialist teachers, and to lobby for the subject), then full-time and
specialist teachers.
Cheryl
--
Cheryl Perkins
cper...@stemnet.nf.ca
Alison Hendon
>
>The Henry James/Ayn Rand comparison isn't very apt. Ayn Rand is a rite
>of passage, like "Catcher in the Rye." She wasn't aiming for literary
>art, she was promoting a political and social philosphy.
>You don't think "literary" when you read her. You think "ooh, new
>ideas," and then, because you're probably in college, you discover that
>there are lots of other new ideas.
>
reading Rand (I started with Atlas Shrugged, go figure) and reading
it, absolutely enthralled, in the campus coffehouse, so enthralled in
fact that I dripped cheeseburger juice all over it (a thing I NEVER
do) and I had to buy a new copy for the friend from whom I'd borrowed
it. And I found her (at the time) to be quite the storyteller too...
Alison
JaneHadd
>programs specifically for the gifted) here at the same time art and music,
>often weak to begin with, were reduced drastically.
I was thinking, actually, of elementary schools--but in this town, when the
crunch came the gifted program for elementary students went first and advanced
placement for high school students went next. Our three local elementary
schools still have vigorous art and music education programs, but no programs
for the academically gifted.
Jane Haddam
JaneHadd
>
>Alison
I agree--the woman had incredible narrative drive.
But it's like I said--SHE thought she was doing "literature," not just
presenting ideas in a fictional format but creating literary art.
Jane Haddam
Mark Alan Miller
<ell...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:2280-3B9...@storefull-211.iap.bryant.webtv.net...
> Mark wrote:
>
> <<In no case is his work of sufficent newness or spectacular quality to
> be in the least subversive.>>
>
> Are you saying that if it isn't subversive, it isn't "high quality" art?
Anything but. I was suggesting it didn't fit Mary's definition of art,
which is not mine. I don't think it's great for other reasons, namely that
it's derivative, unimaginative, spacially inept, badly drawn, and has
superficial subject matter.
Mark Alan Miller
Mark Alan Miller
>
> <<It's the tension between variation and uniformity that makes a late
> Reinhardt sing. One reason he's not appreciated as much as he might be
> is because the work is effectively impossible to reproduce, depending as
> it does on incredibly subtle variations. It also needs to be big enough
> to get lost in. It's very atmospheric art.>>
>
> Well, I have seen him in person, and I must admit . . . no fireworks. I
> see the uniformity, but not the variation. (I mean, I DO see the
> variation, but it doesn't affect me the way it does you.)
>
> Maybe he's an "artist's artist?"
It think that's largely true. He's well liked by many painters, but not
popular with the general public. He explored some very specific formal
problems that all painters face, and did so with amazing virtuosity, but
those formal issues appear not to be of great interest to most non-artists.
> I agree with Carleen, though, that to me, your description of his effect
> on you is more exciting than his paintings.
Glad I could provide a little excitement.
Mark Alan Miller
Mark Alan Miller
"JaneHadd" <jane...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010910045621...@mb-mb.aol.com...
> It's interesting to look at a visual timeline of painting and
sculpture
> from about the year 400 to the year 1600--the high medieval art seems to
be
> almost isolated in terms of technique from what comes after it, and early
> Renaissance church painting has a lot more in common with classical Greek
and
> Roman statuary than it does with the Christian church painting of the high
> middle ages.
Also of interest is that high medieval sculpture looked far more like
classical sculpture than high medieval painting did. For whatever reason,
sculpture that accurately reflected human form became the norm long before
"realistic" painting. You put the two side by side and its hard to believe
they came from the same era.
Mark Alan Miller
Mark Alan Miller
> First, you're relying on a Western European, post-Renaissance
definition
> of an "artist," which would not have held true even for England in the
high
> middle ages. The artist as a law unto himself dedicated to art above all
other
> things is both Western and VERY modern, from no earlier than the 18th
century.
> Even Michelangelo, the wild man of the Italian Renaissance, wouldn't have
> understood it. The idea that art should be in any way "original" is from
about
> the same era. Medieval painters didn't want to be "original"--they would
have
> considered it insulting to have been called such. Rather, they believed
they
> were working with ancient forms to produce works entirely outside the flux
and
> change of time.
Exactly right, as demonstrated by the many, many versions of certain
subjects produced by each artist. Innovation just didn't come into it very
often. Change occurred very, very slowly.
Mark Alan Miller
BLIND 321
shit?
KS
Andrew Barss
: There is no art without craft: making a distinction between artist
: and craftsman is entirely a Romantic construct and one which I think is,well,
: silly.
I disagree. I do woodworking and woodturning as a serious hobby, and there's
substantial discussion amongst both professional and amateur
woodworkers/turners about the art/craft distinction. No one can give a
good definition of what constitutes "art furniture" or "art woodturning"
(there's a very good, recent thread on this archived on Google in
the rec.crafts.woodturning newsgroup archives), but pretty much every working
woodworker believes there is such a distinction.
At one end of the range is work that's done to a high level of expertise
-- even perfection, to use Jane Haddam's term -- that's utterly functional,
and in many cases repetitions (sometimes to very exacting standards) of
previous work (consider balusters, or chair parts, for example).
A lot of craft, no art. Probably the best example of this is patternmaking,
which is the craft of devising wooden forms used in metal pouring. Objects
from a fire hydrant, to a car engine block, to a train, to a church bell
begin as a meticulously crafted wooden object; these people *really* do
a very high level of craftsmanship. No art there.
At the other end of the range is a lot of self-professed "studio furniture"
or "art furniture", which in many cases (not all) has quite pedestrian craftsmanship.
I believe the same is true of a lot of material in the "higher arts",
including painting, sculpture, installation art, performance art, X-art: a lot
of it has, frankly, cruddy workmanship. I suspect there's an important
distinction to be made within the "art" category between two types:
a) art with a high level of craft, reaching toward perfection both in terms of the
crafting of the piece and the aesthetic appeal of it; and
b) art with little attention paid to craft, which is deliberately difficult,
challenging, and/or confrontational.
I personally have very little use for (b), but it fills some of
the galleries and museums.
-- Andy Barss
Bridget
wrote:
Shamed admission: Couldn't stand David Hockney's work for years.
Ducking,
Bridget Hockney
Bridget
Gaul and His Wife- Roman copy after bronze original (225 B.C.)
I've heard conflicting stories as to what this was portraying.
Anyone else?
B.
Bridget
> I'm simply pointing out that in an egalitarian era, something--like high
>art--that requires work and thought to understand, appreciate and do is going
>to look suspect BECAUSE it takes work and thought to understand, appreciate and
>do.
>
> Jane Haddam
I believe, most of all, it takes exposure.
B.
JaneHadd
>I've heard conflicting stories as to what this was portraying.
>Anyone else?
>B.
>
That great, big El Greco crucifixion in, I think, the Louvre. It was a long
time ago when I saw it, but the thing seems to be about seven feet tall and
massive and it really gets across the idea that Christ was supposed to be in
pain.
Jane Haddam
A R Pickett
less moving, but still an enduring favorite - the rainy Paris street scene
which is on disply at Art Institute of Chicago Artist's name completely
escapes me at the moment.
Woodstock
Mystmoush
>time ago when I saw it, but the thing seems to be about seven feet tall and
>massive and it really gets across the idea that Christ was supposed to be in
>pain.
>
> Jane Haddam
>
>
Madrid.
Eileeeeen from OH
Alberto
'The Scream' by Edvard Munch
It is very very moving (to me anyhow).
Best Regards
Alberto -
'When I get depressed, I either read, re-read or read some more'
Iva
The Pieta. It's perfection. And I've only ever seen it on tv or
in pictures.
-Iva
JaneHadd
>Madrid.
>
>Eileeeeen from OH
Could be--I was in both museums in the same year, and that was the only year
I was ever in the Prado.
Jane Haddam
JaneHadd
Oh, I like that. Who is this guy?
Jane Haddam
JaneHadd
>was
>a big exhibition of her work in Washington DC fairly recently so she is
>getting
>more popular in the US. Inevitable comparisons to Frida Kahlo are made.
>
>
>Naomi D.
>
Okay, with this I can find her. Thanks. That's a very interesting piece.
Jane Haddam
JaneHadd
>stories
>i would write a bunch based on them.
>
>
>Naomi D.
>
Interestingly enough, I've recently become completely fascinated by
Spanish/Portuguese/South American art, literature, music, you name it.
I recommend Jose Saramago's Blindness to anybody looking for a non mystery
novel to read--Saramago is the first author I've run across in years where I've
just HAD to have everything he's ever done, one right after the other. I spent
all summer reading Saramago novels.
Jane Haddam
Rosa Ramos
someone will give it to me for my birthday because it costs 48$ (Canadian).
The name escapes me right now.
Being Portuguese I'm often on the lookout for anything on Portugal and have
found many writings quite patronizing or condescending. Any good
suggestions?
thanks,
rr
"JaneHadd" <jane...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20011014134816...@mb-fq.aol.com...
Rosa Ramos
As far as sculpture goes, I agree. Truly astonishing.
rr
"Iva" <bas...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:9Khy7.20992$Xj1.2...@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com...
JaneHadd
>
>
>Naomi D.
>
VERY intense. I liked The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, too.
Jane Haddam
JaneHadd
>someone will give it to me for my birthday because it costs 48$ (Canadian).
>The name escapes me right now.
>
>
Journey to Portugal, I have it. But I think it's next to last--the new book
that came out this past year was All the Names, another novel.
I'm looking for stuff on Portugal, too.
Jane Haddam
Bridget
How apropos as it was a statement of social realism and a manifesto
against the brutality of war.
As an aside, "Guernica" was inspired by the first air raid by the
German air force against the Basque town of Guernica. This 'barbaric
act' was incidental in General Franco's successful rebellion against
the legally elected government of the Spanish Republic. 2 days after
the news of the bombing reached Paris, Picasso, a loyalist, began this
work for the Spanish pavilion of the World's Fair of 1937.
Bridget
> That great, big El Greco crucifixion in, I think, the Louvre. It was a long
>time ago when I saw it, but the thing seems to be about seven feet tall and
>massive and it really gets across the idea that Christ was supposed to be in
>pain.
>
> Jane Haddam
I'm not familiar with this piece. His "Burial of Count Orgaz" is
interesting in that El Greco's 8 year old son was portrayed as an
attendant. The child is pointing to an engraved handkerchief where El
Greco wrote in Greek "Domenicos Theotocopolous made me. 1578" The date
was his son's birthdate and not the year of the painting as some have
thought.
I found a pic here:
http://www.eurekais.com/brock/orgazpic.htm
El Greco painted himself into the picture as a mourner.
Rosa Ramos
so little and am aware even less (except for this ng).
Are you looking for something specific i.e. history, art, geography or
whatever is available? I read mostly in Portuguese so I may not be able to
help you much, unless you read Portuguese.
have a great day,
rr
"JaneHadd" <jane...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20011014145218...@mb-cq.aol.com...
JaneHadd
>help you much, unless you read Portuguese.
No, I don't read Portuguese, although that's one of the languages taught at
the college I'm teaching at--we have a ton of Portuguese immigrants in this
area of the country, so it's a popular language to fulfill the language
requirement--and I was thinking of taking it next term. As faculty, albeit
part time, I get to do that for free.
So far, I've run through a whole bunch of Saramago and Pessoa, I've got a
copy of the Lusiads (sp?), and two books on Portuguese art, one classical and
one on art after 1974.
What I really wish I could get hold of is a good comprehensive history of
the country in English.
Jane Haddam
MRFeathers
>Picasso's Guernica - at the retrospective collection in NYC in 1980
Oh, yes.
>less moving, but still an enduring favorite - the rainy Paris street scene
>which is on disply at Art Institute of Chicago Artist's name completely
>escapes me at the moment.
>
>Woodstock
Gustave Caillebotte. I love that painting. It makes me want to walk right
down that Paris street in the rain.
Mary
Old Beeg
Beeg
Don't let the gray hair fool you!
Jonathan Askew
A pastel drawing "JaneAvril Leaving the Moulin Rouge" by
Toulouse Lautrec at the Wadsworth Athaeneum ( Hartford, Ct.) still for me the
best depiction of loneliness ever.
cheers,
Mary
ell...@webtv.net
Also, I don't know if it's part of the MOMA collection, or was just
there for the Magritte exhibition some years ago, but L'empire des
lumieres is, if not the most moving painting I've ever seen, but the one
that kept me in front of it, not moving, longer than any other work of
art except Guernica. And it's fairly small. But that light . . .
I am SO glad for this thread. I'd forgotten the title, and this
question being asked just as I learned that Google has image searches is
serendipitous.
You can see it here:
http://www.essentialart.com/mh/Rene_Magritte_L_Empire_des_Lumieres_1954.jpg
Ellen C
artyw
Rik Shepherd
Summertime (Hopper)
Second Story Sunlight (Hopper)
The Courtyard of a House in Delft (Pieter de Hooch)