May 4, 2003 - West Palm Beach, Florida - set list
Bill Pagel
West Palm Beach, Florida
SunFest 2003
Washington Mutual Stage
May 4, 2003
1.Maggie's Farm
2.Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power)
3.Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
4.Lay, Lady, Lay
5.Things Have Changed
6.Drifter's Escape
7.It Ain't Me, Babe (acoustic)
8.Cold Irons Bound
9.Just Like A Woman
10.Love Sick
11.You Ain't Goin' Nowhere
12.Honest With Me
13.Bye And Bye
14.Summer Days
(encore)
15.Like A Rolling Stone
16.All Along The Watchtower
********************************************************
Thanks to Todd for the phone call .
Set lists, reviews, and information on
upcoming concerts can be found on the Bob Links
Tour Infomation page located at:
http://www.boblinks.org
or http://my.execpc.com/~billp61/dates.html
Song's Performed in 2003 at:
http://my.execpc.com/~billp61/song2003.html
Bob Links Main Page:
http://my.execpc.com/~billp61/boblink.html
2003 Spring Tour set lists (combined on a single page)
http://my.execpc.com/~billp61/2003s2.html
musicaner
are on for july in sunrise fl.
"Bill Pagel" <bil...@execpc.com> wrote in message
news:90490991BB7214F6.36CA2C49...@lp.airnews.net...
Ken Wilson
It used to be that you had to apologize for watching TV instead of the
latest Bergman. Now it's the opposite
By Peter Plagens
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
When I'm told that museum visitors outnumber pro-sports spectators, I always
ask, "Yeah, but how many of them stay for the fourth quarter?" (Here's a
test: run a contest for a free trip to New York and a guided tour of MoMA's
hit show, "Matisse/Picasso," and see if you get one tenth of the entries
that a basketball Final Four sweepstakes enjoys.) Newspaper after newspaper,
and magazine after magazine retires the art critic or classical-music writer
and replaces that hidebound elitist with nimbler, less specialized people
who can flit among the gallery scene, fashion runways, rock clubs and
hangouts of callow movie stars with equally distributed aplomb. A reading
audience big enough to justify retaining specialists in ballet, serious
theater from Shakespeare to Joe Orton, or-ye gads!-poetry, just ain't there.
The real numbers are the ones telling you that state after state and city
after city is going after the public arts budget with a vengeful meat ax
(all while they still cut tax breaks for sports stadiums and movie companies
filming on their streets). And they tell the bigger story: "high art" is, if
not an outrightly endangered species of human enterprise, is at least a
comparatively forlorn one.
Any defense of high art first has to define what high art is and, next,
point to exactly what its problem is (other than being forlorn compared to,
say, videogames). Neither of these is easy. Maybe they're both impossible.
But I'll take a shot. High art includes sculpture, painting, modern dance,
poetry, ballet, opera, classical music, some jazz and certain heavyweight
novels which are intended to be: un-sugar-coated, perhaps a little difficult
for the uninitiated, seriously contemplated after the fun of the first
encounter is over, and of some accrual value in strengthening and refining
one's esthetic sensibilities. There are lots of holes in that definition,
for sure, and if pressed, I'd probably have to fall back on Judge Potter
Stewart's famous remark about pornography-that he couldn't define it, but he
sure knew it when he saw it.
As for high art's problem, it's simple, but with complex fallout. High art
is elitist. Only a relatively few people have the educated taste for it, the
patience to enjoy it and, frankly, the ability to get it. We live, however,
in a passionately egalitarian society, most of whose members absolutely
resent the idea that Mr. Fairfax Van Richbuckets has, when he goes to the
opera, a better esthetic experience than Mr. Harry Twelvepack does when he
springs for a couple of Bon Jovi tickets. (Of course, Harry doesn't have
much regard for his kid sister's taste for Justin Timberlake, and she can't
understand her younger cousin's jones for that new Hilary Duff movie.
Hierarchies are everywhere.) Connoisseurship on any but a micro level ("Man,
that's a great Clint Black T-shirt-must be six colors in the silkscreen for
it") is practically a dirty word these days, and I'd be surprised if the
word "vulgar" is uttered pejoratively more than twice a year in the United
States outside of a Tipper Gore tea party.
The complex fallout includes some frequently inconvenient truths. We are not
a society bereft of "art" in the broad sense. Theater (in TV dramas), music
(on the radio), poetry (in rap and advertising slogans) and visual art (on
billboards) are showered upon us in abundance. Pop culture produces some
great things that just might hold up as long as Mozart and Melville have:
Credence, "Do the Right Thing," Elmore Leonard, "Thriller" and Ralph Kramden
to name but a few. The Duchampian strain of modern art-which holds that art
is concept not craft, attitude not form-gave us Andy Warhol (whom the critic
Barbara Rose brilliantly calls the Mary Magdalene of art history). Warhol
convinced museums to accept popcult banality as an extension of the same
avant-garde thrust that produced Cezanne and Jackson Pollock. And young art
historians, frustrated by the fact that the only remaining unclaimed
traditional territory for doctoral dissertations seems to be the hangnail
that Raphael might have suffered on Feb. 16, 1505, have forced themselves to
see book-length profundity (and career opportunity) in the dross of "visual
culture" as a whole-matchbook covers, mattress warning labels, the Home
Shopping Network, etc. High art, in other words, has lost the high ground.
Which is partly well and good. High art used to be a bully ("You watch
television and haven't seen the new Bergman film? Oh, how sad!"), and we all
like to see the worm turn on a bully. But size of the popcult worm now makes
the invertebrate in "Tremors" look like bait on Huck Finn's fishing hook. It
's become a cyborg cyberworm to boot. These days, the bulk of popular
culture seems like a cold, calculated, faux-sexy industrial product. Is
Britney Spears an actual human being? Or is she just a digital bellybutton
with vinyl blonde hair and a boiler-room headset, manufactured like a Bratz
fashion doll by some publicly traded entertainment conglomerate to be the
subject of "feature" stories produced by some publicly traded media
conglomerate? Is "Matrix Reloaded" a movie in the same sense that "Talk To
Her" is a movie? Or is it a gargantuan videogame whose steroidal special
effects have shrunk its, um, soul to the size of a pea? Of course, I can't
prove anything, but I suspect the second alternative in both cases.
High art versus pop culture is no longer a matter-let me switch metaphors
here-of fancy French restaurant cuisine versus mom's home cookin' or a juicy
cheeseburger at the corner diner. High art's opponent is the equivalent of
10 billion tons of ersatz potato chips made from a petroleum derivative,
flavored with a green "sour cream and jalapeno" dust manufactured in the
same vat as the latest hair regrower, and served in little silver bags
through which not one molecule of air will penetrate until 2084.
So let me have a nice hand-painted abstract painting, struggled over by a
solitary artist, to look at. Let me have an unamplified group of musicians
playing one of Beethoven's late quartets to listen to. Let me have a nice
hardbound copy of "The Magic Mountain" or some A. M. Homes stories to read,
the occasional Dia Foundation dance recital, and even a Matthew Barney
"Cremaster" flick. I don't want government subsidies for my faves (high art
ought to live within the means its paying audience provides), other than
providing elementary-school pupils some early exposure before they're
bludgeoned into goth zombiehood by cyberindustrial pop culture. I just want
a little tenderness extended toward the increasingly precarious province of
high art. You know, high art really isn't as bad-or boring-as it looks or
sounds. Trust me on that.
J Buck
statement. Fwiw,
I don't think gov't subsidies shouldn't support pro sports either. Both
are a waste of tax dollars.
Debra Lind
Ken Wilson
> It took 7 paragraphs (fairly long ones, at that) to make a rational
> statement.
Irrational statements, were they to be found in that article, would
have been easy to refute.
> I don't want government subsidies for my faves (high art ought to live
> within the means its paying audience provides)>
Do any of your favorites need subsidy? High art is often very
expensive. Government subsidy can make possible otherwise unaffordable
productions, and/or bring down ticket prices so that more people can
afford them. What city or town of any size doesn't shell out tax
dollars for "popular" entertainment? High art is at least as worthy of
support. And if more children were taught to appreciate it in school,
it wouldn't need as much subsidy.
Ken
Delia
In the Renaissance, the government (the Medicis and the Borgias) supported high art.
--
Delia
Don't Tread On Me
high art.
To the benefit of all citizens I'm sure. I'm glad a huge number of European
peasants toiled so the Medicis and today's museum goers could see great
works of high art.
--
"Looking for the right kind of live free or die" - Jay Farrar
laissez-faire, laissez-passer, le monde va de lui-même
--
Hamp Nettles
frinjdwelr
"J Buck" <jbu...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:8021-3EB...@storefull-2174.public.lawson.webtv.net...
What I found not rational, was how this statement turns his entire article
into the rather pointless rant of a snob.
He thinks "high art" is endangered, but still doesn't want it to get too
much support, notice or reviewing by anyone but a chosen few. Because of
course all the rest of us "Harry Sixpacks" are incapable of "getting" it,
and would just muck it up.
His comparing support of "high art" with the popularity of sports is just
stupid. And of course simplistically confining as he does all culture and
art into either high or low would put Bob Dylan with Justine Timberlake,
Clint Black T shirt art and artificially flavored potato chips. What I
found "vulgar" was his mean, patronizing stereotypes of anyone who's tastes
are "beneath" his. It's insulting attitudes like his that keep people away
from exploring the "high" arts. But then that's really how he wants it, so
he can feel superior and write rants about how neglected his "faves" are.
Howard Mirowitz
> In Defense of High Art
>
> It used to be that you had to apologize for watching TV instead of the
> latest Bergman. Now it's the opposite
>
> By Peter Plagens
> NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
<snip>
> The real numbers are the ones telling you that state after state and city
> after city is going after the public arts budget with a vengeful meat ax
> (all while they still cut tax breaks for sports stadiums and movie companies
> filming on their streets). And they tell the bigger story: "high art" is, if
> not an outrightly endangered species of human enterprise, is at least a
> comparatively forlorn one.
<snip>
> High art versus pop culture is no longer a matter-let me switch metaphors
> here-of fancy French restaurant cuisine versus mom's home cookin' or a juicy
> cheeseburger at the corner diner. High art's opponent is the equivalent of
> 10 billion tons of ersatz potato chips made from a petroleum derivative,
> flavored with a green "sour cream and jalapeno" dust manufactured in the
> same vat as the latest hair regrower, and served in little silver bags
> through which not one molecule of air will penetrate until 2084.
High art's opponent is apathy, and the distrust of most Americans for elites and
anything that smacks of elitism, as the writer says. But it seems to me that if
we want to enrich all our lives and raise the general level of aesthetic
awareness in America above "Britney's digital belly button," we can't just trust
to trickle-down culturenomics. Some policy leadership, some example-setting is
required here.
> So let me have a nice hand-painted abstract painting, struggled over by a
> solitary artist, to look at. Let me have an unamplified group of musicians
> playing one of Beethoven's late quartets to listen to. Let me have a nice
> hardbound copy of "The Magic Mountain" or some A. M. Homes stories to read,
> the occasional Dia Foundation dance recital, and even a Matthew Barney
> "Cremaster" flick. I don't want government subsidies for my faves (high art
> ought to live within the means its paying audience provides), other than
> providing elementary-school pupils some early exposure before they're
> bludgeoned into goth zombiehood by cyberindustrial pop culture. I just want
> a little tenderness extended toward the increasingly precarious province of
> high art. You know, high art really isn't as bad-or boring-as it looks or
> sounds. Trust me on that.
Ken, if you're posting this article because you are decrying the artistic
dumbing-down of America, I applaud your sentiments heartily -- but I feel
compelled to remind you that the folks I believe you voted for are setting the
example here for the entire nation. Or maybe they're just very shrewd
politicians who are following the example the nation is setting for them.
Either way, they certainly aren't doing much to show any leadership here.
And I think the reason is pretty simple; most artistic and creative people seem
to be liberals and if they vote, they tend to vote for Democrats.
As far as I know, Bob's never received any government subsidies, but Woody sure
did, and he surely wouldn't have if the Republicans had been running the
government during the Depression. But as the writer says above, subsidies are
not the issue, really. Here's the real issue: I sure can't imagine President
Bush or Vice President Cheney or Secretary Rumsfeld attending a Picasso opening
or a concert of the New York Philharmonic or a performance by Pilobolus or the
American Ballet Theater. Can you?
H.
robertandrews
>To the benefit of all citizens I'm sure.
To some extent, that's true -- the grander works were intended for public
consumption & appreciation.
Ken Wilson
> Ken, if you're posting this article because you are decrying the artistic
> dumbing-down of America, I applaud your sentiments heartily -- but I feel
> compelled to remind you that the folks I believe you voted for are setting
the
> example here for the entire nation.
Yikes! I feel compelled to tell you I didn't vote for them.
Or maybe they're just very shrewd
> politicians who are following the example the nation is setting for them.
> Either way, they certainly aren't doing much to show any leadership here.
>
> And I think the reason is pretty simple; most artistic and creative people
seem
> to be liberals and if they vote, they tend to vote for Democrats.
True, it seems, with some very notable exceptions, like, from not too long
ago, George Balanchine.
> As far as I know, Bob's never received any government subsidies, but Woody
sure
> did, and he surely wouldn't have if the Republicans had been running the
> government during the Depression. But as the writer says above, subsidies
are
> not the issue, really. Here's the real issue: I sure can't imagine
President
> Bush or Vice President Cheney or Secretary Rumsfeld attending a Picasso
opening
> or a concert of the New York Philharmonic or a performance by Pilobolus or
the
> American Ballet Theater. Can you?
No, neither is Jackie Kennedy. ;-) I can't think of a President who's been
known to attend such events. JFK, if I'm not mistaken (and my average hasn't
been so good recently), had to be dragged. I'd love to see cultured people
in power, but I'm a skeptical about how much of an impact it would make. But
then I'm one who thinks Clinton's hijinks set an example, so perhaps you're
right.
Ken
Ken Wilson
> > <I don't want government subsidies for my faves (high art ought to live
> > within the means its paying audience provides)>
> >
>
> What I found not rational, was how this statement turns his entire
article into the rather pointless rant of a snob.
> He thinks "high art" is endangered, but still doesn't want it to get too
> much support, notice or reviewing by anyone but a chosen few. Because of
> course all the rest of us "Harry Sixpacks" are incapable of "getting" it,
> and would just muck it up.
My hat's off to you for your Dylanalysis, but you have Plagens all wrong. He
doesn't say he wants to keep high art from the masses, or that the Harry
Twelvepack's are the ones who won't get it. He implicitly suggests otherwise
in several places. He writes that he wants government subsidies for
"elementary-school pupils . . . before they're bludgeoned into goth
zombiehood by cyberindustrial pop culture." The highbrows and economic
elites will take their kids to hear and see high art, and will give them
music or ballet lessons. They don't need the schools to do it. The Harry
Twelvepack's do. That's an important point. One of the New York City
Ballet's most exciting principal dancers nowadays is the daughter of an auto
mechanic. The Twelvepack's can "get it," but most won't if they aren't
encouraged to try.
Plagens also writes that "Pop culture produces some great things that just
might hold up as long as Mozart and Melville have." It's hard to think of
higher praise from a lover of high art. He also writes that it's partly well
and good that high art has lost the high ground, because it used to be a
bully. But yes, he does insist on qualitative distinctions. If that alone
makes him a snob . . .
I've been wondering if immersion in pop culture might explain the awful
director's choices I saw Saturday night in a performance of Gluck's opera
"Orpheus and Eurydice." Substituting insanity for death and a mental
hospital straight out of a sitcom for the underworld trivialized the
beautiful story and made nonsense of its most dramatic and moving moments,
when Orpheus struggles to obey the command not to look back at Eurydice as
he leads her out. What other mindset would feel the need to substitute the
banal for the mysterious, and think that trading on hoary clichés about
heartless mental health nurses and crazy people with hearts of gold would
help the audience "rediscover truths hidden in the myth"?
Anyhow, Dylan may be lumped with pop culture, but with his musical roots and
his spontaneity he stands in the folk tradition. And LAT's range of literary
references might be called high.
Ken
warehouse-eyes
You can take your money, but I don't know how
You'll spend it in the tomb." -Dylan
Should even one penny go to the arts? Half a penny? We never have
trouble finding billions of dollars for bombs, but it sure drives some
folks crazy when a poet gets a free pot of ink. Our lives are
enriched by music, poetry, painting…and when it's good, it does more
than merely entertain us. It celebrates our humanity.
E.L. Doctorow, the American writer, addressed the issue of funding
for the arts most eloquently while testifying before a subcommittee of
the House Appropriations Committee when Ronald Reagan was planning
cuts for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). It could have
been written today, and still rings true.
"I cannot avoid the feeling that it is senseless for me to testify
here today. People everywhere have been put in the position of
fighting piecemeal for this or that program while the assault against
all of them proceeds across a broad front. The truth is, if you're
going to take away the lunches of schoolchildren, the pensions of
miners who've contracted black lung, the storefront legal services of
the poor who are otherwise stunned into insensibility by the magnitude
of their troubles, you might as well get rid of poets, artists, and
musicians. If you're planning to scrap medical care for the indigent,
scholarships for students, day-care centers for children of working
mothers, transportation for the elderly and handicapped – if you're
going to eliminate people's public service training jobs and then
reduce their unemployment benefits after you've put them on the
unemployment rolls, taking away their foodstamps in the bargain, then
I say the loss of a few poems or arias cannot matter. If you're going
to close down the mental therapy centers for the veterans of Vietnam,
what does it matter if our theatres go dark or our libraries close
their doors?
"And so in my testimony for this small social program I am aware of
the larger picture and, really, it stuns me. What I see in this
picture is a kind of sovietizing of American life, guns before butter,
the plating of the nation with armaments, the sacrifice of everything
in our search for ultimate security. We shall become an immense
armory. But inside this armory there will be nothing, not a people
but emptiness; we shall be an armory around nothingness, and our true
strength and security and the envy of the world – the passion and
independent striving of a busy working and dreaming population
committed to fair play and struggle for some sort of real justice and
community –will be no more. If this happens, maybe in the vast
repository of bombs, deep in the subterranean chambers of our missile
fields, someone in that cavernous silence will remember a poem and
recite it. Maybe a young soldier will hum a tune, maybe another will
be able to speak the language well enough to tell a story, maybe two
people will get up and dance to the rhythm of the doomsday clock
clicking us all to extinction."
Jack Lazariuk
anything to prevent how one posts to a newsgroup to ever be considered
art.
The one obstacle which persists in my thinking is that there is no way
for the artist to charge for his or her work.
Jack
robertandrews
>Anyhow, Dylan may be lumped with pop culture, but with his musical roots
and his spontaneity he stands in the folk tradition.
In the traditional sense, folk art is low art.
>And LAT's range of literary references might be called high.
Except that none of these "high art - low art" distinctions hold up under
scrutiny. Pop culture is something else entirely.
Stephen
> "[...] if you're
> going to eliminate people's public service training jobs and then
> reduce their unemployment benefits after you've put them on the
> unemployment rolls, taking away their foodstamps in the bargain, then
> I say the loss of a few poems or arias cannot matter. If you're going
> to close down the mental therapy centers for the veterans of Vietnam,
> what does it matter if our theatres go dark or our libraries close
> their doors?
> "And so in my testimony for this small social program I am aware of
> the larger picture and, really, it stuns me. What I see in this
> picture is a kind of sovietizing of American life, guns before butter,
> the plating of the nation with armaments, the sacrifice of everything
> in our search for ultimate security. We shall become an immense
> armory. But inside this armory there will be nothing, not a people
Thanks for posting this.
Your Pal Brian
> Should even one penny go to the arts? Half a penny? We never have
> trouble finding billions of dollars for bombs, but it sure drives some
> folks crazy when a poet gets a free pot of ink. Our lives are
> enriched by music, poetry, painting…and when it's good, it does more
> than merely entertain us. It celebrates our humanity.
True enough, but those who call for subsidies often assume we'd simply get
more of the same, while ignoring the possibility that free govt. cash
would affect artists' behavior. Some unintended consequences:
1. Subsidies tend to attract a certain personality type; more Salieris
than Mozarts, let alone Beethovens. Cash goes to those who can play the
system, so we get more shysterism and less art.
2. Since the line between art and non-art is not a clear one, and between
good and bad art even less so, we must select some and leave out others.
In the private market there are heterogeneous criteria, but with
government there's a one-size-fits-all party line, an official style.
They're not going to give money to the chancier forms of innovation, but
to that which is proven, accepted, old hat. So we have the French Academy
subsidizing nothing but cheeze while Van Gogh starves. Innovation is
stifled, outsiders left out, insiders coddled. Could Christopher
Alexander finagle cash from fans of Frank Gehry?
3. Since the audience - and hence source of funds - is now the
establishment and not the heterogeneous and vigorous people, we get a type
of effete inbreeding. Compare Dylan with any academic journal-poet
today. It's like Shakespeare vs. John Lily, and for the same reasons. In
fact the whole High -Low divide is largely a result of this kind of
official sanction. Look at India's film industry, vulgar Bollywood avoids
art while highbrow Calcutta avoids commerce, and both suffer for their
isolation.
4. It'd be run by committee. Private patrons are rewarded for risks;
seek out and encourage the new and exciting and you may become the talk of
the town. Committees meanwhile are punished for failures, and will avoid
risk. They also dare not offend. Again we have a move towards
conservatism of the bad sort.
The argument against Piss Christ, the Elephant Crap Mary, Maplethorpe,
etc. is not that they offend conservative values, but that they embody
them. A dull sameness, a predictable epater le bourgeoisie party line, a
stifling mediocrity, a hidebound paradigm that hasn't shifted in decades.
Subsidies are the enemy of art.
(5. There's also the populist rights argument: Why should some working
stiff from Boise be forced to pony up in order to subsidize the
gallery-going lifestyle of some Manhattan Margaret Dumont type,
particularly if those gallery folk have essentially declared war on him
and his kind? Smacks of ancien regime.)
Brian
warehouse-eyes
this may be woefully true (God knows there ARE more Salieris than
Mozarts, however they are supported) I'm sure you're aware that Mozart
accepted official subsidies at every turn from Salzburg to Munich to
Vienna, and even accepted the court post of Kammermusicus. He
composed three string quartets for the King of Prussia, and no music
scholars I'm aware of have criticized these quartets for being
particularly Prussian, or influenced in any adverse way because Mozart
accepted the King's money.
As for Beethoven, he nearly had to leave Vienna for a secure post
in Germany but was fortunately bailed out when three Viennese noblemen
banded together to provide him with a steady income so that he could
stay put and continue to create his fiery, passionate masterpieces.
You say that "in the private market there are heterogeneous
criteria [for funding art]" and suggest government funding would
inevitably promote it's own narrow favorites, party-line hacks and
lesser artists. It could end up subsidizing "nothing but cheese while
Van Gogh starves."
Van Gogh is a bad example--for you. Remember that he was a
brilliant artist who did NOT survive in the private marketplace of his
day. That marketplace—with all its freedom and
heterogeneity—completely overlooked his genius and failed to buy a
single one of his paintings, and it is PRECISELY for this reason we do
NOT want to leave arts funding to the so-called free marketplace.
There are some areas where policy shouldn't be dictated by the
marketplace – we agree that it would be disastrous to run the fire
department, the emergency room, and public transportation solely on a
for-profit basis. Even the harshest capitalists would have to admit
that some things should be supported for the common good, some things
help create a better, moral, healthy society. Art is such a thing,
and it benefits us all to keep our public libraries open, our art and
music teachers in supplies, and our poets and painters creating works
that provide us with vision and insight.
If we are genuinely concerned about the ill effects of money
promoting "cheese," bad art, hackwork, unimaginative and just plain
commercial crap, we need to recognize that these are also ill effects
of a heartless free market.
Your Pal Brian <brian...@iFreedom.com> wrote in message news:<3EB94F65...@iFreedom.com>...
> warehouse-eyes wrote:
>
> > Should even one penny go to the arts? Half a penny? We never have
> > trouble finding billions of dollars for bombs, but it sure drives some
> > folks crazy when a poet gets a free pot of ink. Our lives are
> > enriched by music, poetry, painting?and when it's good, it does more
MittensOnFire
Howard Mirowitz
>
> Howard Mirowitz wrote:
> > Ken, if you're posting this article because you are decrying the artistic
> > dumbing-down of America, I applaud your sentiments heartily -- but I feel
> > compelled to remind you that the folks I believe you voted for are setting
> > the example here for the entire nation.
>
> Yikes! I feel compelled to tell you I didn't vote for them.
>
Hmmm. You did vote, didn't you? For some politicians?
Or are you like me and only vote against politicians but never for them? ;-)
H.
Ken Wilson
> >Anyhow, Dylan may be lumped with pop culture, but with his musical roots
> and his spontaneity he stands in the folk tradition.
>
> In the traditional sense, folk art is low art.
Yes, but pop art is what the writer opposed to high art. Pop is the problem,
because so much of it is of poor quality, because by its pervasiveness it
trains mass taste, and because, with people being taught that taste is
merely subjective and that insistence on the validity of qualitative
distinctions is elitist, they lack a powerful incentive to look for
alternatives.
Ken
robertandrews
>Yes, but pop art is what the writer opposed to high art.
More like pop culture vs. high art. But popular culture encompasses high
art.
>Pop is the problem, because so much of it is of poor quality,
Neither pop art nor pop culture are problems for me.
>because by its pervasiveness it trains mass taste,
Britney Spears "trains mass taste" but Picasso does not? How about Warhol?
Dylan?
>and because, with people being taught that taste is merely subjective and
that insistence on the validity of qualitative distinctions is elitist, they
lack a powerful incentive to look for alternatives.
People make qualitative distinctions all the time.
Ken Wilson
> > Yikes! I feel compelled to tell you I didn't vote for them.
> >
>
> Hmmm. You did vote, didn't you? For some politicians?
>
> Or are you like me and only vote against politicians but never for them? ;-)
Aren't we all like that these days? :-)
Ken
Ken Wilson
> Britney Spears "trains mass taste" but Picasso does not? How about
Warhol?
> Dylan?
Warhol isn't much better than Spears for my money. And the writer's choice
of Spears wasn't the best, since she's for kids, and kids will grow past
her. But your questions misses the point -- better to ask, for example, how
well a work sharpens perceptions, preparing its audience for other (good)
work. Mario Naves writes in the latest issue of The New Criterion -- "the
manner in which crowds move through an art exhibit can be a fairly reliable
indicator of the quality of work on view. Visitors to the Guggenheim drift
past [Matthew] Barney's spectacle as if they instinctively know that it isn'
t worth bothering with in the first place. Visitors to the National Gallery,
in contrast, take their time and get up close to Titian's paintings."
Substitute "Warhol" for "Barney."
> >and because, with people being taught that taste is merely subjective and
> that insistence on the validity of qualitative distinctions is elitist,
they
> lack a powerful incentive to look for alternatives.
>
> People make qualitative distinctions all the time.
Exactly. But challenge them, and many will still fall back on the popular
claim that one person's taste is as good as another. Their behavior
contradicts what they've been taught to believe.
Ken
Nate Smith
>>Or are you like me and only vote against politicians but never for them? ;-)
> Aren't we all like that these days? :-)
>
> Ken
>
vote AGAINST me!
vote AGAINST me!
vote AGAINST me!
vote AGAINST me!
- nate
robertandrews
>Exactly. But challenge them, and many will still fall back on the popular
claim that one person's taste is as good as another. Their behavior
contradicts what they've been taught to believe.
Your own view of Warhol, as expressed here, is simply personal taste:
"Warhol isn't much better than Spears," i.e., "I don't like Warhol" "Warhol
sucks" etc. Substitute Picasso or Beethoven for Warhol, it's the same type
of opinion. The one criteria you mentioned -- "sharpening perceptions" --
is an area where Warhol exceeds tremendously, in the estimation of many
artists (of various genres) & many students of art. Further, it seems that
Warhol has sharpened the perceptions of a fair amount of modern society.
Ken Wilson
> Your own view of Warhol, as expressed here, is simply personal taste:
> "Warhol isn't much better than Spears," i.e., "I don't like Warhol"
"Warhol
> sucks" etc. Substitute Picasso or Beethoven for Warhol, it's the same
type
> of opinion. The one criteria you mentioned -- "sharpening perceptions" --
> is an area where Warhol exceeds tremendously, in the estimation of many
> artists (of various genres) & many students of art. Further, it seems
that
> Warhol has sharpened the perceptions of a fair amount of modern society.
All taste is necessarily personal. That isn't to say it can't be good or
bad. The perceptions which Warhol sharpens are the kind you can get from
reading a book. I was talking about aesthetic perceptions. In that area,
Warhol is like John Cage. Yes, every "noise" is interesting. Yes,
mass-produced articles can reward our attention. It's a quick and simple
lesson.
Ken
robertandrews
>All taste is necessarily personal. That isn't to say it can't be good or
bad.
My point (perhaps unclearly made) is that your evaluation of Warhol here
doesn't amount to much more than saying "I don't like
Warhol." Whether good taste or bad, we need more than that to run a museum
or conduct an art class.
>The perceptions which Warhol sharpens are the kind you can get from reading
a book.
The Bible?
>I was talking about aesthetic perceptions. In that area, Warhol is like
John Cage.
How so? Warhol's images are everywhere, while Cage's music is very obscure.
>Yes, every "noise" is interesting.
Bad description, since Warhol often employs aesthetically pleasing images,
carefully constructed. "Noise" might better apply to Pollack.
>Yes, mass-produced articles can reward our attention.
e.g. The Bible
>It's a quick and simple lesson.
Deceptively simple. And food for thought.
Ken Wilson
> >All taste is necessarily personal. That isn't to say it can't be good or
> bad.
>
> My point (perhaps unclearly made) is that your evaluation of Warhol here
> doesn't amount to much more than saying "I don't like
> Warhol." Whether good taste or bad, we need more than that to run a
museum
> or conduct an art class.
I'll turn the question around -- what Warhol products do you consider high
art? His movies? His Kennedy assassination scenes? His Marilyn's? What
Warhol leaves you touched or exhilarated, ... what? He's a "star," that's
why people go. A few thoughts before I go see that *ex*-Warhol print owner,
Bob Dylan --
Warhol's stuff -- I won't call it work -- is about celebrity, scandal,
fashion and the banality of commercial products. What does it add up to?
Cultivated media buzz. It's cynical, vacuous, spiritually shallow (and I
don't mean because it isn't Christian -- just look at the Factory and the
scene that surrounded him), and pretentious. Far from being deeply engaged
with his medium and with creating works of art, he apparently let his
assistants knock off a lot of those silkscreens, choosing colors themselves.
Look also at the "artists" who admire his work. Then look at, say, the
modernists who revered Old Masters. What you get from Warhol and certain
others of his generation, besides a reliance on shock to stir up media
interest, is the predominance of the idea over the actual object -- we see
this today in conceptual art, installation art, a lot of current minimalism
. . . it's all over the place. I like some of this stuff alright. I like
some Pop. But it isn't Cezanne, and it takes itself so seriousleee.
> >Yes, every "noise" is interesting.
>
> Bad description, since Warhol often employs aesthetically pleasing images,
> carefully constructed. "Noise" might better apply to Pollack.
Cage is the one who loved noise. I drew a parallel. Brillo boxes aren't
usually thought of as aesthetic objects, and for good reason. But the
question isn't whether or not the object is aesthetically pleasing, or is
aesthetically pleasing on the surface. I'm not arguing for pretty images.
Ken
robertandrews
>I'll turn the question around -- what Warhol products do you consider high
art?
The Brillo boxes nearest to the ceiling.
>His movies? His Kennedy assassination scenes? His Marilyn's? What Warhol
leaves you touched or exhilarated, ... what?
Elvis leaves me . . . breathless.
>He's a "star," that's why people go.
e.g. Dylan
>A few thoughts before I go see that *ex*-Warhol print owner, Bob Dylan --
Star worshipper!
>Warhol's stuff -- I won't call it work
I won't call this criticism
> -- is about celebrity, scandal, fashion and the banality of commercial
products.
All potentially good subjects for art.
>What does it add up to? Cultivated media buzz.
"Cultivated media" is precisely what Plagens bemoans the loss of.
>It's cynical, vacuous, spiritually shallow (and I don't mean because it
isn't Christian -- just look at the Factory and the scene that surrounded
him), and pretentious.
Sounds like Warhol got under your skin & inside your head -- the sign of a
good artist. Maybe those boxes of Brillo Pads are mirrors of your soul.
Maybe they illustrate the vacuity of the modern society. I'm not a Warhol
expert, but neither do I dismiss him. Compared to some of his
contemporaries, he's no one-trick artist.
>Far from being deeply engaged with his medium and with creating works of
art, he apparently let his assistants knock off a lot of those silkscreens,
choosing colors themselves.
Master > apprentice dates back to the Egyptians & Greeks, or earlier.
>Then look at, say, the modernists who revered Old Masters. What you get
from Warhol and certain others of his generation, besides a reliance on
shock to stir up media interest, is the predominance of the idea over the
actual object -- we see this today in conceptual art, installation art, a
lot of current minimalism . . . it's all over the place.
I guess people of all kinds relate to it. Not much "media interest,"
compared to cinema & video.
>I like some of this stuff alright. I like some Pop. But it isn't Cezanne,
and it takes itself so seriousleee.
Probably less so than Cezanne.
Ken Wilson
> >Far from being deeply engaged with his medium and with creating works of
> art, he apparently let his assistants knock off a lot of those
silkscreens,
> choosing colors themselves.
>
> Master > apprentice dates back to the Egyptians & Greeks, or earlier.
The tradition of masters teaching apprentices and apprentices helping
masters is ancient, yes, and many artists today employ assistants in their
work. Indifferently letting them choose the whole color scheme is another
matter.
Ken
Maya Allison
I have a footnote to contribute, regarding Warhol's "pop"ing of art.
The "Old Masters" were commissioned to make paintings, they weren't usually working with the kind of freedom we've come to associate with artistic expression. So they DIDN'T get to pick all the colors of things as often as you might think.
As structure of art patronage change, the persona of the artist changes.
On the topic of popular vs "high" art, Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" was commissioned for the patron's son on his 16th birthday -- a nude portrait of a famous courtesan. Yes, Botticelli might have made it with a much higher personal vision, while satisfying his patron's demands, but the fact remains that on some level, it's just a hot naked picture of a celebrity, commissioned for the titillation of a young man.
At the time, curtains were kept over the painting because it was considered to be racy. And while we may look at it and feel a noble high-art sensation, many people of his day looked at this painting and saw pornography and popular culture (the cult of this particular celebrity Courtesan).
Put the above information together and Warhol comes out looking not quite so far from Botticelli, it is just the form of patronage that has changed, and therefore, the persona of the "artist." The artist in the early 20th century had reached a kind of untouchable, divine status. Warhol was challenging this, or rather, goofing on it, by using popular images of popular icons, and by allowing his workers this kind of freedom.
On the one hand Warhol's factory was the precursor to some of the worst conceptual art out there; on the other, it was a necessary and radical challenge to the "divine master" status the art world was giving people like Picasso, Cezanne, and so on.
Not unlike Dylan refusing to play God to all the fans that would have him be one.
--
XS2Mail: Check your mail anywhere http://www.xs2mail.com/
Avylan
I wonder if the 'high art' that emerges from our time, in, say, 100 years,
will be largely composed of the popular art that survived that long simply
because it's good. The work of Dylan or Monty Python is not the work of
lesser mortals than Mozart or Keats (there, I've said it!) and will
undoutedly have a following in the far future. While many people resist the
comparison of a living artist with an artist who has secured his place in
the firmament, in 2103 it'll just be a comparison between two dead guys
(sorry).
"Maya Allison" <mayaa...@earthlink.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:200305130501...@s890.widexs.nl...
robertandrews
>Dylan's stance is unusual.
It's those boots of Spanish leather.
>We still look up to artists, which is why every Tom, Dick and Hannah with
an electric guitar talks about their "art," . . .
Talk is cheap, & doesn't buy one ounce of respect among musicians or
potential fans.
> . . . and visually unremarkable contemporary art can be a smart
investment.
If Warhol wasn't visually remarkable, we probably wouldn't be remarking on
his art.
>And patronage isn't the issue. Botticelli's work rewards close attention,
not just theorizing, and good commissioned work is still being produced.
Also, I'm glad you joined in the conversation, but I can't help but noticing
that while you've noted Warhol's instrumentality, you haven't actually made
any claims for his stuff as fine art.
I can't help noticing that "high art" has become "fine art." The issue you
raised was *indifferently* delegating color schemes, which implies inferior
results. I guess you prefer Warhol's choices to those made by his
assistants.
It's useful to ask whether our impressions of a piece owe too much to the
attached name. It's also useful to evaluate an artist's inferior work in
context with the better pieces. What I find useless is separating each
genre & artist like one separates the laundry: high art, low art; whites,
colors.
The Tide is high.
Maya Allison
>
> Dylan's stance is unusual.
Yep, maybe even somewhat inflected by his time in Warhol's factory???
> We still look up to artists, which is why every
> Tom, Dick and Hannah with an electric guitar talks about their "art," and
agreed. unfortunate.
> visually unremarkable contemporary art can be a smart investment. And
agreed again, unfortunate, again -- but not a smart investment in the long
run, I'd wager.
> patronage isn't the issue. Botticelli's work rewards close attention, not
> just theorizing, and good commissioned work is still being produced. Also,
> I'm glad you joined in the conversation, but I can't help but noticing that
> while you've noted Warhol's instrumentality, you haven't actually made any
> claims for his stuff as fine art.
I love Warhol. I love how his mind worked, as demonstrated in his working
style, and I love at least half of what I've seen, which is more than I can
say about Picasso. But like all of us, I'm subjective.
Also, his ideas and visual sensibility have totally pervaded visual culture
--high and low -- to the point that it is nearly impossible to see him for
the trees... And I suspect that this is the most brilliant move of all.
Because that's the sort of thing that gets people arguing about whether high
and low art even exist outside our minds.
And it gets people seeing EVERYTHING as possible art -- Campbell's soup cans
will always be beautiful to me. Elvis in holsters, be still my beating
heart...
Hurrah, art rocks!
I haven't read enough of this thread to be able to contribute more
substantially, and so I will leave it there.
>
> Ken
Nate Smith
> On the topic of popular vs "high" art, Botticelli's "Birth of Venus"
> was commissioned for the patron's son on his 16th birthday -- a nude
> portrait of a famous courtesan. Yes, Botticelli might have made it
> with a much higher personal vision, while satisfying his patron's
> demands, but the fact remains that on some level, it's just a hot
> naked picture of a celebrity, commissioned for the titillation of
> a young man.
LOL and joan baez answers bob in "Diamonds & Rust" after
Bob's "when I Paint My Masterpiece".
- nate
"gotta hurry on back to my hotel room!"
Maya Allison
>> patronage isn't the issue. Botticelli's work rewards close attention, not
>> just theorizing, and good commissioned work is still being produced.
Warhol's work rewards close attention (especially the films), but it does a
second thing, which is reward one's attentiveness to the world around you.
Warhol made work that is basically anti-connoisseurship, that's all. You
can't recognize his brush stroke, because it could be any factory member's.
But you can recognize a "Warholian" view of an object, person, or popular
image... in this way he's more like an author than a visual artist, he gets
into your imagination as you look at the world around you.
Ken Wilson
> >And patronage isn't the issue. Botticelli's work rewards close attention,
> not just theorizing, and good commissioned work is still being produced.
> Also, I'm glad you joined in the conversation, but I can't help but noticing
> that while you've noted Warhol's instrumentality, you haven't actually made
> any claims for his stuff as fine art.
>
> I can't help noticing that "high art" has become "fine art." The issue you
> raised was *indifferently* delegating color schemes, which implies inferior
> results. I guess you prefer Warhol's choices to those made by his
> assistants.
No, I prefer deeply felt choices, but of course they're no guarantee
of quality. And speaking of indifference, flip indifference appears to
characterize what I've snipped of your last couple of replies. I enjoy
reading your opinions, but prefer not to have to wade through such
silliness.
> It's useful to ask whether our impressions of a piece owe too much to the
> attached name. It's also useful to evaluate an artist's inferior work in
> context with the better pieces. What I find useless is separating each
> genre & artist like one separates the laundry: high art, low art; whites,
> colors.
I don't entirely disagree, but categorization isn't the real point.
It's just a useful tool sometimes. Specificity makes for a better
description. To think is to make distinctions. Under the banners of
egalitarianism and PoMo relativism we're erasing useful distinctions
-- which makes them, at the moment, all the more important
distinctions.
Ken
frinjdwelr
"Maya Allison" <mayaa...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:BAE69A59.DD99%mayaa...@earthlink.net...
exaactly. love him or not, his pervasive influence that continues to this
day, and the shift in perceptions he spawned is, as you noted, very similar
to one mr. dylan has been responsible for. Both demonstrate the irrelevence
of the simplistic "high" vs "low" split.
and I thank you for breaking down to actually add some content to this
thread because you saved it from being another empty, "I've got nothing left
to say but I'm going to keep answering anyway cause I got to prove my dick's
bigger than yours" type exchange.
Ken Wilson
> > patronage isn't the issue. Botticelli's work rewards close attention,
not
> > just theorizing, and good commissioned work is still being produced.
Also,
> > I'm glad you joined in the conversation, but I can't help but noticing
that
> > while you've noted Warhol's instrumentality, you haven't actually made
any
> > claims for his stuff as fine art.
>
> I love Warhol. I love how his mind worked, as demonstrated in his working
> style, and I love at least half of what I've seen, which is more than I
can
> say about Picasso. But like all of us, I'm subjective.
I'm glad we've located a real live Warhol fan. I'm not the world's biggest
Picasso fan either, but he has a lot going on visually as well as
intellectually.
> Also, his ideas and visual sensibility have totally pervaded visual
culture
> --high and low -- to the point that it is nearly impossible to see him for
> the trees... And I suspect that this is the most brilliant move of all.
> Because that's the sort of thing that gets people arguing about whether
high
> and low art even exist outside our minds.
I won't say the discussion isn't useful, because of course that kind of
examination is. But at the same time, doesn't the belief that they're merely
subjective erode the inquisitiveness and ambition that stimulate so many
people to engage with what has been considered high art? Doesn't it breed
complacency and thus, so ironically in this multi-cultural age,
provincialism? I love Meat Loaf, you love Stravinsky. Don't try telling me
your concerts are richer than mine.
> And it gets people seeing EVERYTHING as possible art -- Campbell's soup
cans
> will always be beautiful to me. Elvis in holsters, be still my beating
> heart...
Leaving aside the value of the Warholian view you mentioned, of course I
agree that increased openness to the beauty of everyday life is wonderful.
And it's what Cage gave me (perhaps to a lesser degree than what you've
experienced visually) in regards to sound. I think the problem comes when
that's confused with or substituted for great art.
Ken
Ken Wilson
> The work of Dylan or Monty Python is not the work of
lesser mortals than Mozart or Keats
Monty Python? They're a lot of fun but you'd place irreverence beside beauty
and humanism? I'd be interested in hearing why -- if, that is, you know and
love Keats and Mozart.
Ken
Bill Goldman
Wilson" <k...@ntelos.net> wrote:
> Maya Allison wrote:
>> Put the above information together and Warhol comes out looking not quite
> so far from Botticelli, it is just the form of patronage that has changed,
> and therefore, the persona of the "artist." The artist in the early 20th
> century had reached a kind of untouchable, divine status. Warhol was
> challenging this, or rather, goofing on it, by using popular images of
> popular icons, and by allowing his workers this kind of freedom.
>>
>> On the one hand Warhol's factory was the precursor to some of the worst
> conceptual art out there; on the other, it was a necessary and radical
> challenge to the "divine master" status the art world was giving people like
> Picasso, Cezanne, and so on.
>>
>> Not unlike Dylan refusing to play God to all the fans that would have him
> be one.
>
> Dylan's stance is unusual. We still look up to artists, which is why every
> Tom, Dick and Hannah with an electric guitar talks about their "art," and
> visually unremarkable contemporary art can be a smart investment. And
> patronage isn't the issue. Botticelli's work rewards close attention, not
> just theorizing, and good commissioned work is still being produced. Also,
> I'm glad you joined in the conversation, but I can't help but noticing that
> while you've noted Warhol's instrumentality, you haven't actually made any
> claims for his stuff as fine art.
>
> Ken
Surely Warhol was not so very much more than a commercial artist with some
wit and flair and ideas? This is fine, and I quite like him, but I don't see
that it serves a purpose to simply make him equal with great artists (not
that everyone would agree that Picasso was a great artist, but that's a
different question).
Dylan's stance is indeed unusual. It seems to be that of artist and
pop-singer at the same time. At his best, he's trying to bridge High Art and
low art, I would say. Or you could say he isn't a great artist, but that
there is "poetry in [and amongst] his chaos" as my mother put it. Part of me
wants to go with Christopher Ricks and say he's a great artist because in
some sense he's a great user of words - and also a great user of his voice.
But another part of me wants to ask, Well, if he's not a great poet - and if
he is, why doesn't he publish a book of poems so we can see? - nor a great
singer or musician, but merely ok at these things, in what does his great
art consist? What is it he does that puts him on a par with any great poet
or musician?
Bill
Bill Goldman
"Maya Allison" <mayaa...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Because that's the sort of thing that gets people arguing about whether high
> and low art even exist outside our minds.
>
Does anything exist outside our minds?
Bill
Bill Goldman
"Maya Allison" <mayaa...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> one more thing:
>
>>> patronage isn't the issue. Botticelli's work rewards close attention, not
>>> just theorizing, and good commissioned work is still being produced.
>
> Warhol's work rewards close attention (especially the films), but it does a
> second thing, which is reward one's attentiveness to the world around you.
> Warhol made work that is basically anti-connoisseurship, that's all. You
> can't recognize his brush stroke, because it could be any factory member's.
That's not anti-connoisseurship, that's basically anti-art - but done
knowingly, and I suppose openly. That is, he admits what he's doing isn't
really art, and people buy it - and unfortunately some people seem to think
there's no difference between what he does and art. (Of course in some sense
every human production contains "art", but I'm talking about so-called High
Art here, the expression of the artist's vision: how can "a factory" have a
vision?)
> But you can recognize a "Warholian" view of an object, person, or popular
> image... in this way he's more like an author than a visual artist, he gets
> into your imagination as you look at the world around you.
So does Pepsi-Cola, or Nike. Warhol played along the very fine line between
being a commercial artist and being ironic about commercial art, didn't he?
I can't see that he did anything that could make him a great artist though,
not much more than a knowing commercial one, surely?
>
Bill Goldman
Wilson" <k...@ntelos.net> wrote:
> Avylan wrote:
>> The work of Dylan or Monty Python is not the work of
> lesser mortals than Mozart or Keats
It's not a question of lesser mortals. It's a question of what is great art.
Were the Monty Python team producers of poetry? Is Dylan?
Bill Goldman
"frinjdwelr" <frinj...@charter.net> wrote:
>> But you can recognize a "Warholian" view of an object, person, or popular
>> image... in this way he's more like an author than a visual artist, he
> gets
>> into your imagination as you look at the world around you.
>>
>
> exaactly. love him or not, his pervasive influence that continues to this
> day, and the shift in perceptions he spawned is, as you noted, very similar
> to one mr. dylan has been responsible for. Both demonstrate the irrelevence
> of the simplistic "high" vs "low" split.
Doesn't *depth* of influence count for anything? Ok so now we all look at a
Campbell's Soup can "ironically", and "knowingly", or even "aesthetically"
perhaps - so Warhol succeeds in making us admit that commercial artists are
in fact, on their low level, artists. But that's the point, it is a low
level. Maya compares him to an author, but how does Warhol change my life
compared to Tolstoy, who engages me deeply with history on every level and
with those who make history, which is all of us as well as the individuals
thrown into fame by it?
>
> and I thank you for breaking down to actually add some content to this
> thread because you saved it from being another empty, "I've got nothing left
> to say but I'm going to keep answering anyway cause I got to prove my dick's
> bigger than yours" type exchange.
Kindly keep your privates out of my inbox, sir :-)
>
>
Ken Wilson
> Dylan's stance is indeed unusual. It seems to be that of artist and
> pop-singer at the same time. At his best, he's trying to bridge High Art and
> low art, I would say.
Somehow I very much doubt he conceives of it that way, but who knows
the Mind of Dylan?
> Or you could say he isn't a great artist, but that
> there is "poetry in [and amongst] his chaos" as my mother put it. Part of me
> wants to go with Christopher Ricks and say he's a great artist because in
> some sense he's a great user of words - and also a great user of his voice.
> But another part of me wants to ask, Well, if he's not a great poet - and if
> he is, why doesn't he publish a book of poems so we can see? - nor a great
> singer or musician, but merely ok at these things, in what does his great
> art consist? What is it he does that puts him on a par with any great poet
> or musician?
Merely an OK singer? Surely you jest, Bill. Billie Holiday had a lousy
voice at career's end, but she still moves us deeply. That's what
makes a great singer. And Bob's obviously an amazing songwriter too.
How many great poets, excepting Orpheus, can make those claims? Anyone
here ever catch Homer live?
Ken
Sydney Weidman
if it didn't, uh, would our minds, like, exist?
Bill Goldman
<anv...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Truer words...etc.
>
> I wonder if the 'high art' that emerges from our time, in, say, 100 years,
> will be largely composed of the popular art that survived that long simply
> because it's good. The work of Dylan or Monty Python is not the work of
> lesser mortals than Mozart or Keats (there, I've said it!) and will
> undoutedly have a following in the far future.
Since when is a comic TV show "art"?
>
> "Maya Allison" <mayaa...@earthlink.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:200305130501...@s890.widexs.nl...
>> I have a footnote to contribute, regarding Warhol's "pop"ing of art.
>>
>> The "Old Masters" were commissioned to make paintings, they weren't
> usually working with the kind of freedom we've come to associate with
> artistic expression.
> So they DIDN'T get to pick all the colors of things as
> often as you might think.
Neither do moderns. They are also "commissioned", by a different, more
capitalistic society. "Freedom" isn't the only criterion.
>>
>> As structure of art patronage change, the persona of the artist changes.
>>
>> On the topic of popular vs "high" art, Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" was
> commissioned for the patron's son on his 16th birthday -- a nude portrait of
> a famous courtesan. Yes, Botticelli might have made it with a much higher
> personal vision, while satisfying his patron's demands, but the fact remains
> that on some level, it's just a hot naked picture of a celebrity,
> commissioned for the titillation of a young man.
>>
>> At the time, curtains were kept over the painting because it was
> considered to be racy. And while we may look at it and feel a noble
> high-art sensation, many people of his day looked at this painting and saw
> pornography and popular culture (the cult of this particular celebrity
> Courtesan).
>>
>> Put the above information together and Warhol comes out looking not quite
> so far from Botticelli, it is just the form of patronage that has changed,
> and therefore, the persona of the "artist." The artist in the early 20th
> century had reached a kind of untouchable, divine status.
I don't know if the remarks about Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" are correct,
but if they are, that doesn't make the example somehow representative of
pre-20th Century art. Raphael and Michelangelo never had any such
commissions as that, nor sought such as far as I know. And it was
Michelangelo more than anyone who achieved for the artist the role of
prophetic creator (since you mention "divine status", Maya). I don't think,
either, that Picasso comes near Michelangelo in that respect. But then I
don't think you are using the word "divine" very seriously.
Moreover, I don't even see where a comparison between Botticelli and Warhol
comes in. Even in terms of the example you give, when did Warhol ever paint
an erotic or "pornographic" picture?
Also I think you assume too much. If it is true that Botticelli was
commissioned to paint it for someone's 16-year old son, does that prove it
therefore must have been intended or looked on as "pornography", just
because it has a naked woman or goddess (though I seem to remember her hair
covers her modesty or however the phrase goes)? Judging from Botticelli's
other works, I actually doubt this very much. He painted a series of
illustrations to the Divine Comedy, which are good though not as good as
Blake's later effort. He also came under the influence of the reforming monk
Savonarola in the Florence of the 1490s, so one does not feel he was the
type of painter who went in for titillation of the kind you suggest -
unlike, say, Titian, who painted a Venus d'Urbino who really looks like a
courtesan (unlike Botticelli's Venus - and we don't have to make any effort
to see her that way: when a painting is intended to appeal to the carnal
instincts it's pretty obvious, even several hundred years later; which is
again why I doubt the Botticelli is that.)
>Warhol was
> challenging this, or rather, goofing on it, by using popular images of
> popular icons, and by allowing his workers this kind of freedom.
Warhol in using his "factory", it could be said, was doing in a sense what
painters like Titian and Rubens did long ago, which was to keep a workshop
of apprentices who kept up the output of "Titians" and "Rubenses" so that
profits could be maximised. In this matter of commercial acumen, Warhol was
in a long line of money-makers, some of them supposedly "High" artists, some
not - and there was as I say nothing new in having other people paint your
pictures. I suppose Warhol was new inasmuch as he actually made this out to
be some sort of innovatory mode of art, instead of keeping quiet about it.
But it shows him to be so much less an artist, not more.
John Howells
<On 13/5/03 6:01 am, in article b9q1u3$6c9$04$1...@news.t-online.com, "Avylan"
<<anv...@yahoo.com> wrote:
<> Truer words...etc.
<>
<> I wonder if the 'high art' that emerges from our time, in, say, 100 years,
<> will be largely composed of the popular art that survived that long simply
<> because it's good. The work of Dylan or Monty Python is not the work of
<> lesser mortals than Mozart or Keats (there, I've said it!) and will
<> undoutedly have a following in the far future.
<Since when is a comic TV show "art"?
When it's Monty Python.
robertandrews
>How many great poets, excepting Orpheus, can make those claims? Anyone here
ever catch Homer live?
I spotted Homer at the supermarket today, buying some Campbell's soup. "How
can you eat that crap?" I asked.
"I'm just a poor poet," he answered. "I can't afford any real food. And to
think, Bob Dylan is eating lobster & steak."
"Not to mention the chicks, Homer."
"You said it, kid."
"It's such a tragedy, you almost have to laugh," said I.
"Tragedy is the stuff of great art," said Homer with a grin, & asked me to
direct him to the express checkout lane. I even held the door for him on
the way out.
Avylan
invalidates my opinion in your eyes. However, I think it's unnecessarily
dismissive to sum Monty Python up as 'irrreverent'. In fact they imparted a
lot of wisdom and insight, through a form which happened to be comedic. They
were original, intelligient and challenged their audiences.
On what plane is Mozart's work better than, say, the Beatles? Are the themes
more serious? It is perhaps more complex. Is that the difference? The more I
think about it, the more convinced I am that the pinnacle of today's popular
arts are what will become the 'classics' of our time.
"Ken Wilson" <k...@ntelos.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:00a601c319bf$bd496e60$3f4691d1@servant...
Bill
knew what Tragedy was, as a genre, too.
"robertandrews" <robert...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<nlSwa.171$%8...@nwrddc04.gnilink.net>...
Bill
> Bill Goldman wrote:
> > Dylan's stance is indeed unusual. It seems to be that of artist and
> > pop-singer at the same time. At his best, he's trying to bridge High Art and
> > low art, I would say.
>
> Somehow I very much doubt he conceives of it that way, but who knows
> the Mind of Dylan?
You really think Dylan doesn't consciously think he's mixing Poetry
with Rock? TS Eliot and Ramblin Jack?
"Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues, you can tell by the way she
smiles.."
>
> > Or you could say he isn't a great artist, but that
> > there is "poetry in [and amongst] his chaos" as my mother put it. Part of me
> > wants to go with Christopher Ricks and say he's a great artist because in
> > some sense he's a great user of words - and also a great user of his voice.
> > But another part of me wants to ask, Well, if he's not a great poet - and if
> > he is, why doesn't he publish a book of poems so we can see? - nor a great
> > singer or musician, but merely ok at these things, in what does his great
> > art consist? What is it he does that puts him on a par with any great poet
> > or musician?
>
> Merely an OK singer? Surely you jest, Bill. Billie Holiday had a lousy
> voice at career's end, but she still moves us deeply.
Some of us, Ken. Not everyone is moved by Dylan's singing. Many people
with fine sensibilities to music do not find him a moving singer.
Perhaps they do not find Billie Holiday one either.
>That's what
> makes a great singer.
Yes but as with all art, surely you have to show the objective
qualities that are praiseworthy while affirming the subjective ones
that are inextricably mingled with them? You have to have both.
Without the objective, it's just "I like this. You like that." Without
the subjective, it's just knowledge, not feeling. No?
>And Bob's obviously an amazing songwriter too.
Again, let's question this. Think of a song from Shakepeare: "Fear no
more the heat o' the sun", for instance, or that one that ends with
the lines "Then come kiss me sweet and twenty, Youth's a stuff will
not endure." Or Ariel's songs from The Tempest. Do any of Dylan's
songs even come anywhere near these? Maybe they do. But I think it's
worth asking the question honestly.
Do any of his ballads have the succinct compression of Sir Patrick
Spens? Or even the haunting, memorable music and magic of The Ancient
Mariner?
> How many great poets, excepting Orpheus, can make those claims? Anyone
> here ever catch Homer live?
There's a bootleg album apparently. Very hard to get hold of. Song
called Temporary Like Achilles features, I believe.
>
> Ken
Bill
are. Nothing has absolute reality outside of Mind. Nothing has a name
nor a relationship outside of Mind, nor any life...basically, it has
no existence.
Sydney Weidman <weid...@mts.net> wrote in message news:<PTywa.14515$NC4....@news1.mts.net>...
Ken Wilson
> I don't particularly hold Mozart or Keats in high esteem, so maybe that
invalidates my opinion in your eyes. <
If you can't at least recognize if not respond to what's been recognized as
greatness for centuries, what does that say about your judgment? You don't
hold them in
high esteem?? Do you really mean that? Perhaps not, because it seems a
remarkably arrogant thing to say.
> However, I think it's unnecessarily dismissive
See above. Are you being funny?
> to sum Monty Python up as 'irrreverent'. In fact they imparted a lot of
wisdom and insight, through a form which happened to be comedic. They were
original, intelligient and challenged their audiences.
Original and intelligent, I'll grant you. I don't know how they challenged
anyone except by offending some people, which isn't inherently a good thing.
As for wisdom, do you mean through irony? An age that mocks certainty and
rejects the possibility of moral authority puts irony in their place. But so
we've mocked everyone and poked holes in everything. What's left? What
wisdom did they impart? I enjoy them, but "wisdom"?
> On what plane is Mozart's work better than, say, the Beatles? Are the
themes more serious? It is perhaps more complex. Is that the difference? <
Complexity does provide more tools for expression. Musically, you find a far
greater number of ideas, and much more development. Mozart also had greater
range -- operas, symphonies, and chamber pieces. Comedy, drama, tragedy --
again, he did it all, and in forms that allow the development that little
pop songs don't. I grew up on The Beatles and still love them. But where is
their grandeur and sublimity? Where is their pathos? Where is their moral
instruction and uplift?
Take some of operas Mozart wrote the music for. Don Giovanni treats lust,
revenge, and divine judgment. In The Marriage of Figaro a servant girl
outwits and humbles his philandering aristocratic master. The latter
premiered in 1783. Both are comedies. In Fidelio a courageous woman shows
the meaning of faithfulness.
McCartney wrote a symphony and Warren Zevon wanted to write clasical music.
How many classical musicians go pop except to make money? Why is "he has a
background in classical music" shorthand for "he has great technique"?
> The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the pinnacle of
today's popular arts are what will become the 'classics' of our time.
No doubt the best will last. And because popular arts are so popular and
often pay better than the high arts, a lot of talented people choose them.
That isn't to say none of them could accomplish more in other forms. And
Frinjdwlr, popularity and influence alone aren't measures of artistic
greatness, anymore than the popularity of an idea is a measure of its worth.
That's circular reasoning.
Ken
Ken
Ken Wilson
> > > Dylan's stance is indeed unusual. It seems to be that of artist and
> > > pop-singer at the same time. At his best, he's trying to bridge High
> > > Art and low art, I would say.
> >
> > Somehow I very much doubt he conceives of it that way, but who knows
> > the Mind of Dylan?
>
> You really think Dylan doesn't consciously think he's mixing Poetry
> with Rock?
I'm sure he realizes he's doing it, although I believe he's claimed not to
be writing poetry. But that isn't the same thing as setting out to "bridge"
high and low for the sake of bridging high and low.
> > Merely an OK singer? Surely you jest, Bill. Billie Holiday had a lousy
> > voice at career's end, but she still moves us deeply.
>
> Some of us, Ken. Not everyone is moved by Dylan's singing. Many people
> with fine sensibilities to music do not find him a moving singer.
> Perhaps they do not find Billie Holiday one either.
We're finite beings. We probably all have deficiencies in our taste.
> >That's what
> > makes a great singer.
>
> Yes but as with all art, surely you have to show the objective
> qualities that are praiseworthy while affirming the subjective ones
> that are inextricably mingled with them?
Sure, but I took for granted that they'd be recognized on a Dylan newsgroup.
And I still do.
Ken
robertandrews
>We're finite beings. We probably all have deficiencies in our taste.
High vs. low isn't chocolate vs. vanilla. The Plagens article concerns
"high & low" art criteria, not what is strictly personal taste. Such
criteria deems Andy Warhol a low artist, & therefore inferior to high
artists such as Botticelli. Having found nothing deficient in Maya
Allison's personal admiration & appreciation of Warhol, you concluded that
Warhol, albeit of possible value, should never be viewed as a substitute for
"high" art.
Now we see that the same "high art" criteria that deems Warhol a low artist,
also applies to other low artists such as Billie Holiday & Bob Dylan. When
Bill Goldman alluded to such criteria, you fell back on personal taste -- as
if your taste was shared by nearly all cultivated souls, as if your taste
was compatible with "high art." That's hardly the case, Ken. In exactly
same way as you dismissed Warhol, we could say that Billie Holiday is a
substitute for Beethoven. Further, we could say that one's willingness to
substitute Holiday for Beethoven, or Dylan for Shakespeare, is the mark of
an inferior, complacent & immoral mind.
Either throw out your criteria, or acknowledge that you have low musical
taste.
Avylan
> Avylan wrote:
> > I don't particularly hold Mozart or Keats in high esteem, so maybe that
> invalidates my opinion in your eyes. <
>
> If you can't at least recognize if not respond to what's been recognized
as
> greatness for centuries, what does that say about your judgment? You don't
> hold them in
Ken, I can reconize, though not feel, your moral outrage. I do think though
that you've hit the nail on the head with 'what's been recognized for
centuries...'. That was the point I was trying but failed to get across. The
work of, lets say, thhe Beatles, is not going to change. If it survives for
centuries, then a future Ken will make just such a remark as you have made.
And as for complexity, the professors will have had a few hundred years to
discover that, well indeed, there are hugely complex undertones running
through 'Rubber Soul' that are thematically based in the folklore of early
8th century Saxon-English textured with distinctive patterns based upon 14th
century North African rhythms.
> high esteem?? Do you really mean that? Perhaps not, because it seems a
> remarkably arrogant thing to say.
Well, it's a poor thread that doesn't accuse someone else of arrogance.
>
> > However, I think it's unnecessarily dismissive
>
> See above. Are you being funny?
Well, no!
Bill Goldman
<anv...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> "Ken Wilson" <k...@ntelos.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:006f01c31c18$10b33a40$3f4a91d1@servant...
>> Avylan wrote:
>>> I don't particularly hold Mozart or Keats in high esteem, so maybe that
>> invalidates my opinion in your eyes. <
>>
>> If you can't at least recognize if not respond to what's been recognized
> as
>> greatness for centuries, what does that say about your judgment? You don't
>> hold them in
>
> Ken, I can reconize, though not feel, your moral outrage. I do think though
> that you've hit the nail on the head with 'what's been recognized for
> centuries...'. That was the point I was trying but failed to get across. The
> work of, lets say, thhe Beatles, is not going to change. If it survives for
> centuries, then a future Ken will make just such a remark as you have made.
> And as for complexity, the professors will have had a few hundred years to
> discover that, well indeed, there are hugely complex undertones running
> through 'Rubber Soul' that are thematically based in the folklore of early
> 8th century Saxon-English textured with distinctive patterns based upon 14th
> century North African rhythms.
Sorry but that's all rubbish of course - compared to the Beatles' lyrics,
Keats's are self-evidently complex, which would have been recognised by
anyone at the time; that's why the Beatles were composers of pop songs, and
Keats a great poet. It's not a question of "discovering" "undertones" - I
can discover undertones in a crisp packet or bus timetable, but that doesn't
make them great art, does it?
>
>> high esteem?? Do you really mean that? Perhaps not, because it seems a
>> remarkably arrogant thing to say.
>
> Well, it's a poor thread that doesn't accuse someone else of arrogance.
It's arrogant to say that you, Mr Avylan, don't hold Keats in high esteem,
without giving the slightest indication that you have any kind of
qualification to evaluate Keats, or that you have even read him, or any
reason why anyone should value your opinion over that of Keats's posterity
for the last 180 years. Sorry to respond on your behalf, as it were, Ken,
but this sort of thing seems so timewasting and ridiculous.
Bill Goldman
has "low" taste, only that the fact that he likes something does not make it
"High Art" - ie. taste in that sense is something different, something you
can't objectively discuss, like whether you prefer strawberries or bananas.
Whether something is art/high art, by contrast, can fruitfully (no pun
intended) be discussed.
On 18/5/03 9:27 am, in article 5mIxa.39227$Ur1....@nwrddc03.gnilink.net,
Ken Wilson
> >We're finite beings. We probably all have deficiencies in our taste.
>
> "high & low" art criteria, not what is strictly personal taste. Such
> criteria deems Andy Warhol a low artist, & therefore inferior to high
> artists such as Botticelli.
I'd call Warhol a bad artist working in the high art field, and Plagens too
cites painting as one of the high arts. I was talking about comprehensive v.
limited taste.
> Having found nothing deficient in Maya
> Allison's personal admiration & appreciation of Warhol, you concluded that
> Warhol, albeit of possible value, should never be viewed as a substitute
for "high" art.
I'd already stated my views on the value Warhol's work, and when someone
says they love something I hesitate to say to their face, "it's bad." There
is a place for manners. As for Warhol's effect on Maya's imagination, many
things stir the imagination that we don't call art, and influence alone
doesn't make an artist good. All views of the world aren't of equal value,
and some are downright destructive. Maya called Warhol's stuff
"anti-connoiseurship." Indeed. It and what it's spawned are 90% concept.
Compare this to what it's supplanted.
> Now we see that the same "high art" criteria that deems arhol a low
> artist, also applies to other low artists such as Billie Holiday & Bob
Dylan.
Not true. Plagens too calls "some jazz" high art. I think a lot of pop
culture is godawful, but when I speak of high v. low art I'm not speaking of
good v. bad or even, necessarily, of high v. low value. By "high" I mean art
traditionally considered high and thus of great value, but now often
considered merely elitist. (Elitist, in modern usage, is another word that
begs to be unpacked, conflating as it does that which interests the elite
and a suggestion of a sort of gated community of taste. Plagens is actually
bemoaning self-segregation on the part of fans of the *popular* arts -- "In
"Defense of High Art"). I'm also speaking of work which, as Plagens nicely
puts it, has "some accrual value in strengthening and refining one's
esthetic sensibilities." Dylan's stuff certainly has this but high art has
it in spades, and because it's not only deep, but is often forbidding on the
surface, it makes the audience meet it halfway. That digging, that focusing,
educates the mind and sharpens the senses for a fuller experience of the
work.
> When Bill Goldman alluded to such criteria, you fell back on personal
> taste -- as if your taste was shared by nearly all cultivated souls, as if
your
> taste was compatible with "high art."
I didn't reference my personal taste, nor do I presume it's always good, nor
did I imply anything about "cultivated souls." I did note that Holiday is
recognized as a great singer (and not just by pop and jazz fans) and I took
for granted that Bill would recognize what he rightly calls "objective"
values in Dylan's work, such as extraordinarily fluid and responsive
phrasing, ability to reconceive songs time and again over the course of a
career, ability to alter their arrangements spontaneously in performance,
ability to write in a variety of musical forms and traditions and to combine
them successfully, lyrical brilliance (a whole topic in itself), etc.
> Either throw out your criteria, or acknowledge that you have low musical
> taste.
There is no contradiction in loving quality work in both high and low
categories, and the opera lover who looks down on Dylan is as mistaken and
self-impoverished as the Dylan fan who dismisses opera as elitist or
old-fashioned. Plagens himself praises examples of low art. And though, as I
said, high art is often not as approachable as low is, any art worthy of the
name can be appreciated on relatively superficial or profound levels. So a
taste for high art is not necessarily great taste. The problem is that
people are taught to settle for whatever happens to appeal to them, are
taught that high art is merely art by and for the elites, and are taught
that uneducated taste is as good as educated taste. That isn't true
egalitarianism or multi-culturalism. It's lazy, know-nothing provincialism.
Ken
Ken Wilson
> Ken, I can reconize, though not feel, your moral outrage.
When you can't rebut, caricature in order to dismiss. No outrage here,
plenty of amazement. Nor do I presume your views stem from your morality,
although morality will affect taste in some areas.
> I do think though that you've hit the nail on the head with 'what's been
recognized for centuries...'. That was the point I was trying but failed to
get across. The work of, lets say, thhe Beatles, is not going to change. If
it survives for centuries, then a future Ken will make just such a remark as
you have made. ,
Of course, "if" it survives. I expect it will, but you're begging the
question(s) of whether it will and how it will be thought of if it does.
Ken
Ken Wilson
> Excuse me, but I'd like to make it clear that I did not suggest that Ken
has "low" taste,
Darn it, Bill, quit ruining his fun.
> only that the fact that he likes something does not make it
"High Art"
Of course not.
> - ie. taste in that sense is something different, something you
can't objectively discuss, like whether you prefer strawberries or bananas.
I remember reading, in an article on the Stones' '81 American tour, that all
tour long Keith Richards' put something called H.P. Sauce (I've seen it,
never bought it) on everything he ate. Jagger, of course, is the guy who
orders the expensive wine. Do they have equally good culinary taste?
Ken
Bill Goldman
snobbery.
Bringing wine into it does bring in elitism and pretentiousness, which I
think we are agreed are not what art is about. Not that I am against
someone's appreciating a good wine, but I am against their pretending it's
High Art.
On 19/5/03 1:22 am, in article 00ba01c31da5$11bd8bf0$c23b0cd8@servant, "Ken
robertandrews
>Whether something is art/high art, by contrast, can fruitfully (no pun
intended) be discussed.
"Warhol he bad high artist" , "Dylan he good low artist"
"Shelley Good, Warhol Bad!" , "Soup Good, Fire Bad!"
"Warhol Mass Produced, No Good!" , "Bible Mass Produced, Word of God!"
"High Art Good For Aesthetic" "Warhol Good For Aesthetic, but no good
anyway"
Rotten fruit, Bill.
robertandrews
>I remember reading, in an article on the Stones' '81 American tour, that
all tour long Keith Richards' put something called H.P. Sauce (I've seen it,
never bought it) on everything he ate. Jagger, of course, is the guy who
orders the expensive wine. Do they have equally good culinary taste?
If Richards smothered HP all over a light piece of sole, I'd say that's
stupid, because he wouldn't even taste the fish. He could just as easily
order something he liked. But for all we know, Richards eats meat (suitable
for HP) every night, while Jagger orders expensive wine only to show off.
In that case, Richards has the better taste.
That "expensive" should equate with good taste, & good art, is yet another
falsity. Perhaps (to cite Wilde's famous phrase) you know the price of
everything & the value of nothing. At the very least, you're required to
taste something before you judge it as bad or inferior. You haven't done
that here.
Ken Wilson
> That "expensive" should equate with good taste, & good art, is yet another
> falsity. Perhaps (to cite Wilde's famous phrase) you know the price of
> everything & the value of nothing. At the very least, you're required to
> taste something before you judge it as bad or inferior. You haven't done
> that here.
OK, Robert, I'll try H.P. sauce. And cheap wine. You try rebutting my
argument instead of avoiding it with a painstakingly literal reading.
Ken
Ken Wilson
> Nah, Richards's is much better, 'cause it's genuine, whereas Jagger's is
> snobbery.
> Bringing wine into it does bring in elitism and pretentiousness, which I
> think we are agreed are not what art is about. Not that I am against
> someone's appreciating a good wine, but I am against their pretending it's
> High Art.
This sounds like reverse snobbery (you have no reason to presume
Jagger doesn't simply love good wine), plus a complete miss or dodge
of the point. It's easy to say that no one's taste is any better than
another's (which by extension would mean that there is no such thing
as good or bad art). But get down to examples and it's clear that
nobody really believes it.
Ken
Bill Goldman
"robertandrews" <robert...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Yes. Since that's all you appear to be offering, then, Robert, I won't offer
you any of my good fruit.
Actually the above isn't so much rotten fruit as a poor parody of a few
initial suggestions for discussion. If you can't engage in intelligent
discussion, Robert, why hang around pretending you can?
>
>
Bill Goldman
"robertandrews" <robert...@hotmail.com> wrote:
I think I may have missed something here. Did Ken say, or imply, that
"expensive" equates with good taste? Or that Jagger's taste was better? He
asked a question, and you fell into the trap of assuming, rather
judgementally, that he meant only one answer to be given - as I see it.
The equation of "expensive" with good taste, I was going to say is real
elitism, but it isn't even that, maybe, but mere vulgarity and philistinism.
Indeed it falls under Wilde's remark, but why you assume that's what ken
thinks I do not know, and it seems pretty uncharitable to me.
Correct me if I'm wrong Ken, and you do after all equate "expensive" with
good taste ;-)
I'm beginning to equate "Robert Andrews" with, er, something like, pointless
interlocutor :-)
>
Bill Goldman
cadf8336.03051...@posting.google.com, "Ken Wilson"
<kfw...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Well you've lost me now, Ken. I don't presume Jagger doesn't simply love
good wine, except I got a sort of picture in my head that this occurred in
the early days of the Stones' success, and therefore the feeling that
Richards wanted to keep his feet on the ground and not change all his good
old working class habits (such as eating HP Sauce) just because he was now
earning lots of money; whereas Jagger, not so much out of snobbery (hasty
word perhaps) but out of his urge to be a social climber, of course seizes
the opportunity to order the most expensive wines. I derive my view that
Jagger is a social climber from my observation of his life and behaviour -
such as that he put his son down for Eton - just in case you are inclined to
question it or judgmentally presume that I am being judgemental!
Second point: since you now refer to "good wine" interchangeably with
"expensive wine", one might infer that after all Robert had a point and you
really do equate "expensive" with good taste.
Thirdly, no I do not think Jagger, at least at that stage in his life,
"simply loved good wine". Until the Stones became successful, I think
Richards and he were living in some poverty. Ok maybe he "loved good wine"
in the sense that he'd been drinking cheap wine for so long he felt like
drinking better stuff. But that does not make him some sort of wine expert
or connoisseur or -lover, I'd have thought. And the implication of the
original statement was that he continually, more than once, kept ordering
the most expensive wines, which sounds a bit vulgar, at the least. Like
becoming a millionaire suddenly and buying a gold Rolls Royce, say.
Lastly, I honestly don't know what point you think I'm "missing" or
"dodging"; I really didn't know there was some serious point here. What is
it, then? Of course "no one's taste is better than anyone else's", when it's
merely "taste" (personal inclination) that's at issue. The real point is
that it rarely is, and your anecdote is not an example of its being so, as I
hope I've shown. If Jagger liked tomato sauce and Richards preferred HP,
that might well be an example of mere taste. Richards, however, did not sit
rolling the HP sauce around his tongue, and Jagger did not splosh the
Chateauneuf du Pape (or whatever) all over his burger and chips (sorry,
French fries). At least, that is my assumption, though it is indeed quite
possible that they did at some stage do these things; but you get my point.
And that is leaving out the question of the other factors - eg. that Jagger
may have been ordering the wine out of snobbery, etc. etc. You gave an
example which was not a good illustration of my point that taste is merely
taste, but that does not invalidate the point.
In your other post where you gave some "objective" reasons for thinking
highly of Dylan's voice, or singing, you were indeed on the point.
Bill
Bill Goldman
Wilson" <k...@ntelos.net> wrote:
Point is, you don't know whether culinary taste is all that comes into it.
Apart from Jaggers' motives, Richards's may not be so simple either. He may
be, as I implied in another post, trying to keep his feet on the ground by
not changing his working class lifelong habits - this would be nothing to do
with taste.
And anyway, it would be almost meaningless to say you "prefer" expensive
wine to HP Sauce or vice-versa, since they perform different culinary
purposes or roles, if one may put it like that. You are - are you not? -
assuming that someone who liked "expensive wine" would not also like HP
Sauce, and vice-versa. I would have thought, actually, that there *is* a
touch of snobbery in that: as indeed there has often been a great deal of
snobbery attached to wine "connoiseurship" - or any connoiseurship for that
matter; for it's quite possible to "like" great Art for entirely wrong
reasons, including snobbery or elitism or greed for money.
Now if Richards were to put his HP Sauce on the fish, as Robert says, he'd
have pretty poor taste as it would drown the taste of the fish. Jagger could
no doubt misuse the wine, too. And so on.
Robert I apologise for calling you a pointless interlocutor! Not all of what
you said was nonsense - at least (!)
dna fun
i just want to respond to the several luke-warm comments re: picasso -
while most of us have seen a picasso or 2, usually representative of a
period or 2 of his work. if anyone has been fortunate enuff to see a
retrospective such as the one at MOMA sometime ago you can't help but be
impressed by the variety of his expressiveness......i was had a tepid
opinion before i saw the MOMA show......what an amazing variety of
styles he painted in thru-out his long career.....all quite different
than the usual cubist face or painterly 2 lovers pictures most commonly
seen.....and he was often one of, if not the, originator of these ways
of seeing....
the variety of his ouput can be compared to dylan's variety of
styles....each new style, so different and still so skillful.....
as for warhol......i think his value was more that his work was a
commentary on art and art simultaneously......it was clever and
skilled.....perhaps a little too clever....but the comment was important
and revolutionary at the time and as did picasso and dylan opened up new
doors of perception......no small achievement
and now for something completely different......monty python too i feel
is more than just irreverant.....i think they made very pointed social
commentaries.....it's not easy to be that funny and try to take on that
much....i think they're talented social cultural critics...
Ken Wilson
> since you now refer to "good wine" interchangeably with
"expensive wine", one might infer that after all Robert had a point and you
really do equate "expensive" with good taste. <
The best wine is expensive. This is not a secret. :-)
Ken
Maya Allison
>From: Ken Wilson <k...@ntelos.net>
>Subject: Re: "In Defense of High Art" (NDC)
That smiley face means you're joking right?
--
XS2Mail: Check your mail anywhere http://www.xs2mail.com/
Bill Goldman
of Warhol probably. He presented commercial art to some extent as if it was
really art, in my opinion. One question about Dylan is whether he did not to
some extent do the same with pop music, ie. present it as if it is great
poetry or something. As he himself said, it's difficult to tell whether what
he's done means something "on the big stage" (ie. with the great artists).
I personally doubt very much that Warhol has that significance.
I saw the Picasso/Matisse exhibition here at Tate Modern in London last year
and enjoyed both artists greatly.
As for Monty Python, what you say may be true but there is no need for
anyone to pretend this is somehow "High Art"; surely all that does is to
take away what value it has, by pretending it has another value?
The greatest comic in the Monty Python vein must have been Groucho Marx -
the ancestors of that kind of humour were the Marx Bros., but even of them
it would be absurd to call their films Great Art, even though they certainly
have great value.
On 20/5/03 1:30 am, in article
7717-3EC...@storefull-2112.public.lawson.webtv.net, "dna fun"
Bill
then I'd say it's a cynic's pastime, and certainly not an art form on
any level.
How do you argue against, say, the view that a bottle of lemonade is a
better taste than any wine? Surely not on grounds of price? That's no
aesthetic argument.
k...@ntelos.net (Ken Wilson) wrote in message news:<002201c31e7b$23d68d60$734591d1@servant>...
Ken Wilson
> If it's true that in the area of wine quality simply equals price,
then I'd say it's a cynic's pastime, and certainly not an art form on
any level.
Give it up, Bill. With wine, as with most things, the best stuff tends to
cost the most. And that's about all "expensive" was supposed to connote --
Jagger has the capacity to appreciate the best stuff, and so much so that
he's willing to pay for it. And no one said it was an art form, for goodness
sake, although making fine wine takes skill. The comparison was an analogy.
Remember those? ;-)
> How do you argue against, say, the view that a bottle of lemonade is a
better taste than any wine? >
Better for what? Most of us would prefer lemonade for quenching a great
thirst, but the guy who prefers lemonade to wine (or perhaps a good beer)
with a 5-star meal is missing something. The complexity and subtlety of
good wine not only matches that of sophisticated cooking, it enhances it.
And the food enhances the wine. There is no such match with lemonade.
I asked you to compare a guy who tries to make everything taste pretty much
alike with one who enjoys something which is known for great its variety,
complexity and subtlety. (Granted Richards may enjoy it himself; granted
Jagger may be a snob -- never mind all such possibilities and try to get my
simple point). I'm not talking right or wrong and I'm not talking good v.
bad, but good v. better. Richards is a bit like a kid here. Kids have simple
tastes. They love candy for example, but you might as well give them a candy
cane as a chocolate bonbon with cinnamon and orange peel. If they don't
actually dislike the subtlety, they're unable to appreciate it. They're
unable to appreciate a lot of things that older people, with more educated
palates, love.
Here's the simple idea then -- the world is full of good things, and the
more of them you're able to appreciate and the more ways you're able
appreciate them and note their relations, the better. There is nothing wrong
per se with wanting all your food to taste alike. But Richards would have a
fuller and thus richer experience if his taste matched his budget.
Now please try translating that the art and aesthetics. The more good things
you can appreciate, and the more sophisticated your appreciation of them is,
the richer an experience you'll have. So in that sense there are such things
as good and relatively poor "personal" tastes, because they refer to ways of
comprehending the things we encounter, and comprehension can be minimal or
maximal, mature or immature, clear or flawed. So again, the guy who prefers
lemonade to wine is missing something. In that respect, his taste is
immature, although he may have an advanced appreciation of other goods, say
the beauty of mathematics. Ditto for the older guy who only listens to
"classic rock" or sneers at what he doesn't like from past eras.
Ken
J Buck
Howard Mirowitz
>
> The best wine is expensive. This is not a secret. :-)
>
Not necessarily. The best wine is the best wine. Whether it is expensive or
not depends on how many people know that, compared to how much of it there is
available for sale. There is definitely such a thing as an excellent but
reasonably priced wine. The reason you don't know about such wines is obviously
that the people who do know are keeping that knowledge to themselves!
At some point, most "high art" probably starts off as "low art", and then it
gets "discovered" by the initiates, the cognoscenti, the connoisseurs, the
avant-garde opinion-leaders, the elites, the snobs, the literati and gliterati
...
Would you like to make a side wager? 5 shows from my list says the Venus de
Milo probably was originally sculpted for some Hellenic plutocrat's favorite
hetaera's boudoir. And if I were to win that bet, would the Venus de Milo
suddenly no longer deserve its place in the Louvre?
I think the whole distinction between "low" and "high" art has no absolute
significance independent of the socioeconomic and cultural milieu prevalent at a
specific point in history. If there is some sort of constituency with the
proper credentials and credibility in a given era that holds something to be
"high art", then it is. If not, then it's "low art" ... until times change and
different constituencies gain the upper hand.
H.
robertandrews
>That smiley face means you're joking right?
"The old man drank too much wine"
~ Michael Corleone
robertandrews
>If it's true that in the area of wine quality simply equals price, then I'd
say it's a cynic's pastime, and certainly not an art form on
any level.
The most expensive wine is vinegar.
Ken Wilson
> >
>
> Not necessarily. The best wine is the best wine. Whether it is
expensive or not depends on how many people know that, compared to how much
of it there
is available for sale. There is definitely such a thing as an excellent
but
reasonably priced wine. The reason you don't know about such wines is
obviously that the people who do know are keeping that knowledge to
themselves!
OK, Howard, thanks for the economics lesson. Now how many shows do you want
for a bottle? :-)
> At some point, most "high art" probably starts off as "low art", and then
it gets "discovered" by the initiates, the cognoscenti, the connoisseurs,
the
avant-garde opinion-leaders, the elites, the snobs, the literati and
gliterati
Can you give an example? I recently heard Roberta Smith of the NY Times
praise the work of several mentally ill or mentally handicapped artists, one
of whom supposedly doesn't even know what high art is. But I would think
most high artists today are consciously working within, or working to
extend, traditions.
> Would you like to make a side wager? 5 shows from my list says the Venus
de Milo probably was originally sculpted for some Hellenic plutocrat's
favorite hetaera's boudoir. And if I were to win that bet, would the Venus
de Milo
suddenly no longer deserve its place in the Louvre?
I have no idea, but I'll bet for the fun of it. Why wouldn't it still
deserve that place? If to the first owner it was only an object of lust,
well, that was his loss. It's nonetheless an exquisitely well-made
representation of an ideal -- not just an idealized body (of course those
ideals vary to some extent depending on the age and the culture) but -- note
the face, and despite the less than ideal ancient Greek view of women -- an
ideal woman. By contrast, Warhol's Marilyns, which, for all their purported
value in mirroring back to us our own pathetic ideals (but all art mirrors)
trade on the glamor of a life marred by mere glamor.
> I think the whole distinction between "low" and "high" art has no absolute
significance independent of the socioeconomic and cultural milieu
prevalent at a specific point in history. If there is some sort of
constituency with the
proper credentials and credibility in a given era that holds something to
be "high art", then it is. If not, then it's "low art" ... until times
change and different constituencies gain the upper hand.
If the key word there is "absolute," I agree. It's certainly a manmade
distinction, and I don't know when it was originally made, but of course
much of what we consider high art today is art that has lasted, that has
intrigued and inspired and rewarded and transformed us for the better for
generations. Some artists and styles go in and out of favor, and Bach is
overlooked for 150 years or whatever it was. But the people with the
credibility are those with the credentials -- the education and the gifts --
and generally there is relative agreement about what objects and traditions
are of highest value. Or at least there was until recently when the
politicizers starting saying that politics is determinative in all aesthetic
judgments, and therefore I Love Lucy is worthy of study as Moliere.
Ken
Howard Mirowitz
>
> > At some point, most "high art" probably starts off as "low art", and then
> it gets "discovered" by the initiates, the cognoscenti, the connoisseurs,
> the
> avant-garde opinion-leaders, the elites, the snobs, the literati and
> gliterati
>
> Can you give an example? I recently heard Roberta Smith of the NY Times
> praise the work of several mentally ill or mentally handicapped artists, one
> of whom supposedly doesn't even know what high art is. But I would think
> most high artists today are consciously working within, or working to
> extend, traditions.
>
Well, you cite the example of Bach below ... that's a good one :-)
The Impressionist painters would be another. The Cubists, another. Ginsberg,
Corso and Ferlinghetti, another. Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg and Stella,
others. With specific regard to Warhol, whether you personally agree or not, I
don't think anyone can deny that the initiates, cognoscenti, connoisseurs,
elites, snobs, literati, gliterati etc. etc. today generally consider Warhol's
work to be "high art". To follow your wine metaphor, it's certainly priced
like "high art"!
>
> > I think the whole distinction between "low" and "high" art has no absolute
> significance independent of the socioeconomic and cultural milieu
> prevalent at a specific point in history. If there is some sort of
> constituency with the
> proper credentials and credibility in a given era that holds something to
> be "high art", then it is. If not, then it's "low art" ... until times
> change and different constituencies gain the upper hand.
>
> If the key word there is "absolute," I agree. It's certainly a manmade
> distinction, and I don't know when it was originally made, but of course
> much of what we consider high art today is art that has lasted, that has
> intrigued and inspired and rewarded and transformed us for the better for
> generations.
Yup, much is, but not all. Just as Bach, for example, was initially considered
not to be "high art" and was later promoted, so some of Bach's contemporaries --
Buxtehude, Telemann, Salieri -- are today considered mere decorative craftsmen
by many authorities, yet their work has lasted and is still performed. Other
works that we consider "high art" today are difficult to describe accurately as
"inspiring" or "rewarding" or "transforming"; I find it impossible to think of
most Surrealist paintings that way, for example, yet Dali, de Chirico and
Magritte are classed as "high art" by most art critics. Would you describe
William Burroughs' novels using those terms? I wouldn't, but if you visit your
local Borders or Barnes & Noble you'll find his books in the Literature section
next to Bunyan and Buchan and other canonical "high artists", rather than in the
"low art" Fiction section.
In fact, I would argue that one of the major discontinuities in Western culture
that occurred in the 20th Century is the critical acceptance and even
glorification of precisely those works of art that undercut previously accepted
norms and spotlighted the contradictions and paradoxes in the West's traditional
aesthetic conceptions of what actually inspires and rewards and transforms.
Artists began to use aesthetic practices formerly found mostly in "low art" --
satire, irony, caricature and shock -- to create works that were as much
critiques of traditional artistic canons and techniques as they were statements
of social or political criticism. Joyce wrote "Ulysses" with the conscious
purpose of destroying the novel as an art form; Duchamp and Picasso and the rest
of the Cubists, as well as the Surrealists, were engaged as much in overthrowing
representational visual art as a cultural norm as in making statements about the
subjects of their paintings; Pollock, de Kooning and the Abstract Expressionists
then revolted against the Cubists and Surrealists, destroying the very idea that
visual art conveys any meaning but its own design; and then the Pop Art movement
used the techniques of advertising imagery, with their direct power to convey
meanings and elicit behaviors, in a purely aesthetic context, deconstructing the
Abstract Expressionist position by posing enigmatic counterexamples.
In summary, 20th Century "high art" achieved its status as "high art" in large
part simply by using the aesthetic practices of "low art" to successfully revolt
against previously accepted "high art", and by that achievement, those very same
"low-art" practices themselves became institutionalized and canonical in one
field of art after another. Dylan himself is a prime example of this
phenomenon. Why this happened, and whether it will continue in the 21st
Century, is a subject for another thread, but as a result, today's "high art" is
an incredibly elitist, introspective, self-absorbed meta-art, almost totally
consumed in contemplating its own navel. And as a result, it has, in my
opinion, become so detached from what real people in the real world feel and
think and experience in their lives that it effectively no longer can intrigue
or inspire or reward or transform. Instead, we look today to "low art" --
popular music and Hollywood movies and TV shows, comic books and animated films,
and sports -- for intrigue, inspiration and transformation.
> Some artists and styles go in and out of favor, and Bach is
> overlooked for 150 years or whatever it was. But the people with the
> credibility are those with the credentials -- the education and the gifts --
> and generally there is relative agreement about what objects and traditions
> are of highest value. Or at least there was until recently when the
> politicizers starting saying that politics is determinative in all aesthetic
> judgments, and therefore I Love Lucy is worthy of study as Moliere.
>
See rant above.
H.
Bill Goldman
On 23/5/03 10:30 am, in article
IFEHLEEAINGHJIKAD...@mirowitz.com, "Howard Mirowitz"
<how...@mirowitz.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 22 May 2003 10:42:01 -0400 Ken Wilson <k...@ntelos.net> wrote:
>
>
>>
>>> At some point, most "high art" probably starts off as "low art", and then
>> it gets "discovered" by the initiates, the cognoscenti, the connoisseurs,
>> the
>> avant-garde opinion-leaders, the elites, the snobs, the literati and
>> gliterati
>>
>> Can you give an example? I recently heard Roberta Smith of the NY Times
>> praise the work of several mentally ill or mentally handicapped artists, one
>> of whom supposedly doesn't even know what high art is. But I would think
>> most high artists today are consciously working within, or working to
>> extend, traditions.
>>
>
> Well, you cite the example of Bach below ... that's a good one :-)
> The Impressionist painters would be another. The Cubists, another.
Sorry, but I doubt these started off as "low" art. Depending, of course, on
how you define "High" and "Low" - which is where the muddle comes from, I
think.
> Ginsberg,
> Corso and Ferlinghetti, another. Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg and
> Stella,
> others. With specific regard to Warhol, whether you personally agree or not,
> I
> don't think anyone can deny that the initiates, cognoscenti, connoisseurs,
> elites, snobs, literati, gliterati etc. etc. today generally consider Warhol's
> work to be "high art".
Who are these people you mention? Snobs and gliterati? They decide what art
is? Warhol is Pop art, in more than one sense.
Whereas Dickens, and perhaps Shakespeare, were "popular" art (as opposed to
elitist) but also great art, they were were never Low Art, and if we are
going to have "High Art" as a category, then yes they were it; Warhol is Pop
rather than popular (tho he is a bit popular too).
Ginsberg had something in common, not with commercial art (which was
Warhol's Pop) but with folk art, a different thing.
> To follow your wine metaphor, it's certainly priced
> like "high art"!
Well, if you want to follow the metaphor that way, you announce yourself to
be Wilde's cynic in matters of art, merely.
>
>>
>>> I think the whole distinction between "low" and "high" art has no absolute
>> significance independent of the socioeconomic and cultural milieu
>> prevalent at a specific point in history. If there is some sort of
>> constituency with the
>> proper credentials and credibility in a given era that holds something to
>> be "high art", then it is. If not, then it's "low art" ... until times
>> change and different constituencies gain the upper hand.
>>
>> If the key word there is "absolute," I agree. It's certainly a manmade
>> distinction, and I don't know when it was originally made, but of course
>> much of what we consider high art today is art that has lasted, that has
>> intrigued and inspired and rewarded and transformed us for the better for
>> generations.
>
> Yup, much is, but not all. Just as Bach, for example, was initially
> considered
> not to be "high art" and was later promoted, so some of Bach's contemporaries
> --
> Buxtehude, Telemann, Salieri -- are today considered mere decorative craftsmen
> by many authorities, yet their work has lasted and is still performed.
Well, now you're adopting a different definition of "High Art" and "Low
Art": the latter means "decorative craftsman". And I also doubt that Bach
was considered "Low Art" (whatever you mean by that?). Telemann himself
wrote an obituary saying Bach was unsurpassable (at least as a performing
musician). He composed for chapels, cathedrals and princes; who was it,
exactly, who considered his work "Low Art"? Not being widely recognised as
the great genius of music that we now recognise him as, does not mean his
work was thought of as Low Art, does it?
> Other
> works that we consider "high art" today are difficult to describe accurately
> as
> "inspiring" or "rewarding" or "transforming"; I find it impossible to think of
> most Surrealist paintings that way, for example, yet Dali, de Chirico and
> Magritte are classed as "high art" by most art critics.
I think the term "High Art" has only a limited and relative usefulness. We
have to start talking about what particular art does, how well it does it,
whether it's worth doing, surely?
> Would you describe
> William Burroughs' novels using those terms? I wouldn't, but if you visit
> your
> local Borders or Barnes & Noble you'll find his books in the Literature
> section
> next to Bunyan and Buchan and other canonical "high artists", rather than in
> the
> "low art" Fiction section.
>
> In fact, I would argue that one of the major discontinuities in Western
> culture
> that occurred in the 20th Century is the critical acceptance and even
> glorification of precisely those works of art that undercut previously
> accepted
> norms and spotlighted the contradictions and paradoxes in the West's
> traditional
> aesthetic conceptions of what actually inspires and rewards and transforms.
> Artists began to use aesthetic practices formerly found mostly in "low art" --
> satire, irony, caricature and shock -- to create works that were as much
> critiques of traditional artistic canons and techniques as they were
> statements
> of social or political criticism.
The novel as a genre has always done this. See "Don Quixote". Nothing
peculiarly 20th century about this.
> Joyce wrote "Ulysses" with the conscious
> purpose of destroying the novel as an art form;
"Tristram Shandy" did something like this in the late 18th Century.
> Duchamp and Picasso and the
> rest
> of the Cubists, as well as the Surrealists, were engaged as much in
> overthrowing
> representational visual art as a cultural norm
I don't think Picasso was doing that. Duchamp maybe was, and is as such an
anti-artist, not an artist.
> as in making statements about
> the
> subjects of their paintings; Pollock, de Kooning and the Abstract
> Expressionists
> then revolted against the Cubists and Surrealists, destroying the very idea
> that
> visual art conveys any meaning but its own design;
Surely that's a meaningless statement, unless you mean by it that their
works were meant to be merely decorative? Or "ironically" or
anti-decorative? But great art was always about design. Actually the
abstract expressionists lacked design to a considerable extent,
unfortunately... Compared to Renaissance painters, say, or even Picasso. So
the rebellion must have been about something else?
> and then the Pop Art
> movement
> used the techniques of advertising imagery, with their direct power to convey
> meanings and elicit behaviors, in a purely aesthetic context, deconstructing
> the
> Abstract Expressionist position by posing enigmatic counterexamples.
>
> In summary, 20th Century "high art" achieved its status as "high art" in large
> part simply by using the aesthetic practices of "low art"
But that doesn't summarise what you've said!
You haven't shown that the techniques the Abstract Expressionists used - or
the Cubists before them - were the techniques of Low Art; though the
techniques used by Pop art were those of commercial "Art", to be sure.
>to successfully
> revolt
> against previously accepted "high art", and by that achievement, those very
> same
> "low-art" practices themselves became institutionalized and canonical in one
> field of art after another.
Warhol is not canonical in this sense, to this extent. No one of us can say
for certain whether he will prove to be so in time, but I doubt it.
>Dylan himself is a prime example of this
> phenomenon.
So you think he used the techniques of Low Art to rebel against previously
accepted norms of High Art?
> Why this happened, and whether it will continue in the 21st
> Century, is a subject for another thread, but as a result, today's "high art"
> is
> an incredibly elitist, introspective, self-absorbed meta-art, almost totally
> consumed in contemplating its own navel.
But I thought you just said that Dylan, and also Warhol, are High Art? You
also think he's "incredibly elitist, introspective, self-absorbed meta-art"?
Or do you now mean something different by "High Art"?
> And as a result, it has, in my
> opinion, become so detached from what real people in the real world feel and
> think and experience in their lives that it effectively no longer can intrigue
> or inspire or reward or transform. Instead, we look today to "low art" --
> popular music and Hollywood movies and TV shows, comic books and animated
> films,
> and sports -- for intrigue, inspiration and transformation.
People always looked to "low art", and the greatest High Art was never
elitist, just greater than mere "low art". If you want to restrict yourself
to tv shows and comic books, do what you want but there's no need to rant
against people wanting something more challenging and demanding than that.
Ken Wilson
> > > At some point, most "high art" probably starts off as "low art", and
then
> > it gets "discovered" by the initiates, the cognoscenti, the
connoisseurs,
> > the avant-garde opinion-leaders, the elites, the snobs, the literati and
> > gliterati
> >
> > Can you give an example? I recently heard Roberta Smith of the NY Times
> > praise the work of several mentally ill or mentally handicapped artists,
one
> > of whom supposedly doesn't even know what high art is. But I would think
> > most high artists today are consciously working within, or working to
> > extend, traditions.
> >
>
> Well, you cite the example of Bach below ... that's a good one :-)
Artists were seen as craftsmen then, so there was no high-low distinction.
But that isn't to say the distinction wouldn't have been made if they'd had
the cultural variety we have today. And posterity shows us they did value
some crafts over others -- who was the greatest shoemaker of the 17th
century?
> The Impressionist painters would be another. The Cubists, another.
Ginsberg,
> Corso and Ferlinghetti, another. Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg and
Stella,
> others.
I have to disagree with all of these. They were seen as bad artists but as
working in high art fields. That's why critics and others in the fields of
art and literature paid attention to them in the first place. It's true
their work departed from accepted norm, but I think we'd agree that
departures are not by definition good. Some are dead ends. "Make it new" is
not enough.
> With specific regard to Warhol, whether you personally agree or not, I
> don't think anyone can deny that the initiates, cognoscenti, connoisseurs,
> elites, snobs, literati, gliterati etc. etc. today generally consider
Warhol's
> work to be "high art". To follow your wine metaphor, it's certainly
priced
> like "high art"!
That wine metaphor sure has been turned around. ;-) And yes, most accept
their work, but a significant number of artists and painters reject it. I
just heard a wonderful talk by a color field painter, Jules Olitski
http://www.buwi.org/shows/2002/06/20020630.asp who calls Duchamp the Che and
Bougereau of modern art. And at the same link Robert Brustein compares the
current dynamic between pop to fine art to the Pac-Man game.
> Just as Bach, for example, was initially considered
> not to be "high art" and was later promoted, so some of Bach's
contemporaries --
> Buxtehude, Telemann, Salieri -- are today considered mere decorative
craftsmen
> by many authorities, yet their work has lasted and is still performed.
I've never heard a DJ say, "and now we'll hear a concerto by that genius,
Telemann." He worked in a high art tradition, as does the landscape painter
whose works are currently on exhibit at your local coffee shop. He/she works
in a time-honored form (judged high for centuries), but every such form has
practitioners who are essentially imitators.
> Other
> works that we consider "high art" today are difficult to describe
accurately as
> "inspiring" or "rewarding" or "transforming"; I find it impossible to
think of
> most Surrealist paintings that way, for example, yet Dali, de Chirico and
> Magritte are classed as "high art" by most art critics.
Good point. But while I'm not much for Magritte or Dali, all three could
really draw and paint. They didn't just give us something to think at, they
gave us something to contemplate visually. Who can say the same for Jenny
Holzer's signs?
> Would you describe
> William Burroughs' novels using those terms? I wouldn't, but if you visit
your
> local Borders or Barnes & Noble you'll find his books in the Literature
section
> next to Bunyan and Buchan and other canonical "high artists", rather than
in the
> "low art" Fiction section.
I'd say he was a highly overrated artist and a very sick soul working in the
high/serious Lit tradition. He had talent, so he perhaps he deserves to be
considered high. Whether his work is worthy to stand beside Bunyan is
another question. Wouldn't you agree that all ages don't produce art of the
same quality? That civilizations rise and fall? Will Burroughs be next to
Bunyan in 100 years?
> In fact, I would argue that one of the major discontinuities in Western
culture
> that occurred in the 20th Century is the critical acceptance and even
> glorification of precisely those works of art that undercut previously
accepted
> norms and spotlighted the contradictions and paradoxes in the West's
traditional
> aesthetic conceptions of what actually inspires and rewards and
transforms.
So far so good --- we get lazy intellectually, forms get used up, new ideas
are there to be expressed, etc.. But the urge to undercut and expand (and
gain notoriety and make a career) does not alone produce high art. And --
Oilitski is good on this -- what has the Warhol tradition, which he traces
to Duchamp's urinal, brought us to? Can you make a case for Gilbert and
George displaying their feces as art? What about the guy who drains the
fluids from dead bodies, pumps them full of plastic and displays them? In
one you can see a fetus. Olitski -- "Even Dante would have turned away. Not
so the NY Times, which published a photograph."
> Artists began to use aesthetic practices formerly found mostly in "low
art" --
> satire, irony, caricature and shock -- to create works that were as much
> critiques of traditional artistic canons and techniques as they were
statements
> of social or political criticism.
Yes, and I have no problem with critiques. Art has always been engaged with
and reflective of and/or critical of it times. But does the contemporary art
that relies on satire, irony, caricature and shock have anything else to
offer? We now have shock for shock's sake, and people line up to see Gilbert
and George's feces. What age group loves to shock the powers that be? This
stuff is adolescent. Olitski again, a rough quote -- such work "is motivated
by a hatred for the institutions that support our democracy, a hatred for
art itself, and a reflexive self-hate." That's a pretty broad assessment,
but I think he's at least in the right territory. Warhol and Co. haven't
exactly inspired a second, humanistic Renaissance.
> purpose of destroying the novel as an art form; Duchamp and Picasso and
the rest
> of the Cubists, as well as the Surrealists, were engaged as much in
overthrowing
> representational visual art as a cultural norm as in making statements
about the
> subjects of their paintings; Pollock, de Kooning and the Abstract
Expressionists
> then revolted against the Cubists and Surrealists, destroying the very
idea that
> visual art conveys any meaning but its own design; and then the Pop Art
movement
> used the techniques of advertising imagery, with their direct power to
convey
> meanings and elicit behaviors, in a purely aesthetic context,
deconstructing the
> Abstract Expressionist position by posing enigmatic counterexamples
Again, I have no problem with overthrowing norms and offering new visions
(if the visions are worthy), but, leaving aside Duchamp and Pop Art, I think
that's a one-dimensional picture. These people wanted in, and they thought
the older forms were exhausted. But most weren't saying the masterpieces
weren't masterpieces, they knew those masterpieces inside and out so they
could build on and/or depart from them intelligently, they had the basic
skills of painting and drawing and whatnot, and as time has proven, they did
have something to show us. Like the artists they challenged, they had lofty
and lovely subjects as well as mundane ones, they spent years working on
technical visual problems, and they luxuriated in their materials. Duchamp's
cynical everything-is-art leveling and multi-culturalism's
don't-be-a-classist/sexist/racist leveling are in large part responsible for
'I don't esteem Mozart and Keats' ignorance and complacency. Quality
judgments are now "privileged," and cheap irony and satire substitute for
depth, for love, for hope . . . for all the finer things. How many fans
would Dylan lose if he retired the sneer in his voice?
> In summary, 20th Century "high art" achieved its status as "high art" in
large
> part simply by using the aesthetic practices of "low art" to successfully
revolt
> against previously accepted "high art", and by that achievement, those
very same
> "low-art" practices themselves became institutionalized and canonical in
one
> field of art after another. Dylan himself is a prime example of this
> phenomenon.
Dylan revolted, if you will, not against ideas of what constituted high art,
but against being pigeonholed and against keeping folk untainted, so to
speak, by pop. But pop culture influence itself isn't the problem. (And as I
think I said earlier, I don't automatically rank all "high" over "pop." Not
by a long shot). George Balanchine drew on American pop culture -- Sousa,
Westerns, the Rockettes -- to make high art. Jazz musicians have taken
innocuous pop songs to a much higher level - Coltrane's version of "My
Favorite Things" is a good example. But Balanchine knew music and
literature. Miles had conservatory training. Why bother if rap has as much
potential as jazz and classical is just old European music?
> Why this happened, and whether it will continue in the 21st
> Century, is a subject for another thread, but as a result, today's "high
art" is
> an incredibly elitist, introspective, self-absorbed meta-art, almost
totally
> consumed in contemplating its own navel. And as a result, it has, in my
> opinion, become so detached from what real people in the real world feel
and
> think and experience in their lives that it effectively no longer can
intrigue
> or inspire or reward or transform. Instead, we look today to "low art" --
> popular music and Hollywood movies and TV shows, comic books and animated
films,
> and sports -- for intrigue, inspiration and transformation.
I agree that the best art will often draw on the larger culture, and there
is a lot to what you say about current high art, but you're the guy, if I
understand you, praising the revolutionaries as revolutionaries. :-) And
good work is still being done. We rent acousti-guides at museums and try to
understand the work on exhibition. We can seek out and study good current
work if we want to. And we can spend a lifetime discovering and exploring
the high art of past ages. Brustein speaks of a world where, with all good
intentions, everything is given equal opportunity except the greatest
glories of Western Civilization. Olitski quotes Arlene Croce -- "the
philistines have become the artists."
Ken
Bill Goldman
I would just like to try to say succinctly, that what truly great art
portrays, it seems to me, is the infinite spiritual potential of human
beings, the inner aspiration to the Divine, and the engagement of this inner
reality with the particular historical set of circumstances it finds itself
in.
Duchamp, I think I would argue, does not create art because his productions
do not honour or celebrate the human spirit but rather degrade and deride
it.
Warhol is on the borders, and I don't consider him wholly negative. But
then, I don't consider him wholly beyond mere commercial art, either.
As for Dylan, in his own way he does try to to portray or evoke this
Divinely human engagement with what is. There are, that is, certainly
elements of High Art, and good art, in his work. Whether it is coherent or
consistent enough for him to rank along with the great artists is a
different question.
Bill
On 24/5/03 3:03 am, in article 006c01c321a1$0a11b610$234691d1@servant, "Ken
robertandrews
>See rant above.
Good rant, Howard. We, the cheap wine drinkers of the world, salute you.
Buying expensive wine is like paying for a Heidi Fleiss hooker.
robertandrews
>If you want to restrict yourself to tv shows and comic books, do what you
want but there's no need to rant against people wanting something more
challenging and demanding than that.
"Restriction" implies a closed mind, which isn't evident at all by Howard's
post. Artists usually master only the skills they find useful: Robert
Johnson didn't play Bach fugues, he played blues. Robert Crumb didn't have
to study Michaelangelo's sculptures to draw & create comics.
Art has various uses & purposes, & ideally it enhances & enriches our lives.
But just because an artist is more complex doesn't mean he's worth our
attention. For example, Bach is a genius, but his music is often tedious, &
seems to speak to an earlier time. I don't think a modern musician loses
much in avoiding Bach, or for that matter, Scott Joplin. Artistically &
culturally, the study of either is a relatively esoteric & solitary pursuit.
I find re-runs of the Honeymooners more entertaining & enriching than
re-runs of Bach.
robertandrews
>Jazz musicians have taken innocuous pop songs to a much higher level -
Coltrane's version of "My Favorite Things" is a good example.
Terrible example, since the song is as good as the improv, & provides the
necessary foundation for it. More importantly, good musicians have a lot of
respect for songwriting -- they rarely, if ever, demean a song ("innocuous
pop") that they've chosen to play.
>But Balanchine knew music and literature. Miles had conservatory training.
The Charlie Parker conservatory, that is.
>Why bother if rap has as much potential as jazz and classical is just old
European music?
Hard to speculate on rap's potential, since much has already been done.
What we call "jazz" & "classical" -- as independent musical forms -- have no
potential to speak of.
Ken Wilson
> "Bill Goldman" <billg...@onetel.net.uk> wrote:
> >If you want to restrict yourself to tv shows and comic books, do what you
> want but there's no need to rant against people wanting something more
> challenging and demanding than that.
>
> "Restriction" implies a closed mind, which isn't evident at all by
Howard's post.
I agree.
> Artists usually master only the skills they find useful: Robert
Johnson didn't play Bach fugues, he played blues.
You don't know what Robert Johnson might have gained, musically and
otherwise, from a wider musical education. By all means, tell today's young
musicians not to stretch themselves to listen to anything that doesn't
immediately hit them. That's a real recipe for creativity.
> Bach is a genius, but his music is often tedious, &
> seems to speak to an earlier time. I don't think a modern musician loses
> much in avoiding Bach, or for that matter, Scott Joplin.
Bach speaks only to an earlier time if you haven't learned to really listen
to him, or you don't have it in your heart to really listen to him. Scores
of contemporary musicians and listeners and many generations of them before
us could tell you that. The tediousness is a measure of your incomplete
comprehension. Those who know him best speak instead of his inventiveness.
> Artistically & culturally, the study of either is
> a relatively esoteric & solitary pursuit.
Yeah, most study is solitary, and serious study doesn't leave a lot of time
for Wheel of Fortune. The communal part comes in rehearsal rooms and concert
halls.
> I find re-runs of the Honeymooners more entertaining & enriching than
> re-runs of Bach.
I could have guessed that long before this thread. You especially could
learn a lot from Bach.
Ken
Ken Wilson
> >Jazz musicians have taken innocuous pop songs to a much higher level -
> Coltrane's version of "My Favorite Things" is a good example.
>
> Terrible example, since the song is as good as the improv, & provides the
> necessary foundation for it.
Improvisation needs a foundation, obviously, unless you're playing
completely free, and that school burned out pretty quickly.
> More importantly, good musicians have a lot of
> respect for songwriting -- they rarely, if ever, demean a song ("innocuous
> pop") that they've chosen to play.
Trane's pianist, McCoy Tyner, says he didn't much care for the song when
they began working on it. The writer had craft, which deserves respect, yes.
He was probably only aiming at a light song.
> >But Balanchine knew music and literature. Miles had conservatory
training.
>
> The Charlie Parker conservatory, that is.
Julliard. And he credited it with helping his playing. Charlie Parker dug
Stravinsky. Mingus, Gil Evans, . . .a lot of those jazz cats had big ears.
And jazz in turn inspired some classical composers.
> What we call "jazz" & "classical" -- as independent musical forms -- have
no
> potential to speak of.
Oh, O.K. ;-)
Ken
robertandrews
>Improvisation needs a foundation, obviously, unless you're playing
completely free, and that school burned out pretty quickly.
Better to burn out than fade away. The issue isn't "free jazz," but your
claim that My Favorite Things lacks artistic merit ("innocuous pop"), as
compared to Coltrane's improv ("higher level"). Low art vs. high art.
>Trane's pianist, McCoy Tyner, says he didn't much care for the song when
they began working on it.
Even if true, that doesn't indicate an inferior song. Coltrane was inspired
by the song & chose to play it. Perhaps, after
a few weeks, Tyner learned to respect its genius.
>The writer had craft, which deserves respect, yes. He was probably only
aiming at a light song.
Brilliantly light. I Got Rhythm isn't Summertime, yet few jazz musicians
consider I Got Rhythm "innocuous pop." Your statements imply that some
forms are intrinsically "higher" than others: e.g. "almost free-jazz improv"
is higher than "the craft of writing light songs." Another high-art slinger
could just as easily reverse your formula, & consider expert song
composition higher than modern jazz improv. Therefore high/low art criteria
tells us nothing here. Same story for all your other examples, as I've
tediously pointed out.
>Julliard. And he credited it with helping his playing.
That's incorrect. Miles Davis enrolled in Julliard to get a ticket to NYC,
that's all. He barely attended.
>Charlie Parker dug Stravinsky. Mingus, Gil Evans, . . .a lot of those jazz
cats had big ears.
We were discussing Bach. Would you tell Robert Johnson, Miles Davis & Bob
Dylan to expand their horizons & study Bach? I wouldn't. Perhaps Johnson,
Davis & Dylan all sampled Bach, discarded him & went on their merry way. I
don't hear much Bach in their music, & I fail to see any artistic or
creative deficiency.
If you dig Bach, fine. If not, explore another musician or discover
something more enriching & enjoyable to do with your life. Music, like
love, is where you find it -- some find it in the song of the sparrow,
others in the cracked voice of an old blues singer. And some find it at the
Grand Canyon at sundown.
Dave Harrison
news:DnTza.2951$cC1....@nwrddc04.gnilink.net
Would you rather have a ten pound knee shaker behind King's Cross
station and admire the aesthetics?
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Ray Baldwin
Dave Harrison wrote:
> "robertandrews" <robert...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:DnTza.2951$cC1....@nwrddc04.gnilink.net
>
> > "Howard Mirowitz" <how...@mirowitz.com> wrote:
> > >See rant above.
> >
> > Good rant, Howard. We, the cheap wine drinkers of the world, salute you.
> >
> > Buying expensive wine is like paying for a Heidi Fleiss hooker.
>
> Would you rather have a ten pound knee shaker behind King's Cross
> station and admire the aesthetics?
Welcome back Dave - been missing those absorbing posts from over there. I
trust you've been well?
But to the matter in hand, so to speak, we all know expensive wines, like
knee shakers (anywhere) are best when they're free!
Ray.
Ken Wilson
> >Improvisation needs a foundation, obviously, unless you're playing
> completely free, and that school burned out pretty quickly.
> The issue isn't "free jazz," but your
> claim that My Favorite Things lacks artistic merit ("innocuous pop"), as
> compared to Coltrane's improv ("higher level"). Low art vs. high art.
The issue above was your implied claim that because one artistic product
forms the basis of another, the former is necessarily as great as the
latter. Without that nonsensical claim, the fact that the song provides the
necessary form for the improvisation tells us nothing about their relative
quality. It also seems to have escaped you that because the improvisation
begins after the song has been played straight, the jazz version includes
and then adds onto the part you consider great. I do have views on the
relative merits and purposes of some genres, but they're complex and would
be lost on someone who prefers constructing straw men to actually debating.
> >Trane's pianist, McCoy Tyner, says he didn't much care for the song when
> they began working on it.
>
> Even if true, that doesn't indicate an inferior song. Coltrane was
inspired by the song & chose to play it. Perhaps, after
> a few weeks, Tyner learned to respect its genius.
Yes, perhaps he really meant the opposite of what he said.
> I Got Rhythm isn't Summertime, yet few jazz musicians
> consider I Got Rhythm "innocuous pop." Your statements imply that some
> forms are intrinsically "higher" than others: e.g. "almost free-jazz
improv" is higher than "the craft of writing light songs." Another
high-art slinger could just as easily reverse your formula, &
consider expert song composition higher than modern jazz improv.
First of all, I didn't write or call Coltrane "almost free-jazz." Free is
what I said burned out. Coltrane's style at the time of that record was a
long way from free. Perhaps you've never heard the Coltrane recording or one
of the forms (free jazz) you're making claims about. Secondly, I referred to
innocuous pop songs, I didn't compare composition to improvisation, and it
doesn't follow that I think all the songs jazz has transformed were
innocuous. I've even said that I don't automatically rank high over pop.
Perhaps the Martians will invade tomorrow and tell us that the rest of
galaxy prefers the original song to Coltrane's version. In the meantime, if
you actually knew of an artist who loves both that form of pop and 60's
jazz, and who doesn't think jazz players have often done what I
said, you'd have quoted him.
> Miles Davis enrolled in Julliard to get a ticket to
NYC, that's all. He barely attended.
He attended for a year, and while he was young and more interested in what
he heard in the clubs, he said Julliard made him a better musician. And his
great records with Gil Evans would have been impossible without Evans'
classical training.
> We were discussing Bach. Would you tell Robert Johnson, Miles Davis & Bob
> Dylan to expand their horizons & study Bach? I wouldn't. Perhaps
Johnson, Davis & Dylan all sampled Bach, discarded him & went on their merry
way.
I don't hear much Bach in their music, & I fail to see any artistic or
> creative deficiency.
We were discussing whether it's wise for someone who loves art to dismiss as
unworthy of their time art that generation after generation before us have
agreed is deeply enriching. That is self-evidently foolish. Bach is not only
of value for how he might influence another musician's work. As to your
artificially narrow question, the history of music is in large part the
history of musical influence. If you want to make another artificial
distinction and speak only of blues, Bach probably doesn't influence many
blues players, at least when they're playing blues (see John Lewis of the
Modern Jazz Quartet), but when it comes to making good music, the existence
of genius hardly invalidates the general principle that education is better
than ignorance. And the proper question isn't whether or not Johnson's work
was "deficient," it's what wider musical knowledge might have added to it.
Dylan's folk songs weren't deficient, but he wouldn't have accomplished half
so much if he hadn't also listened to blues and country and gospel and read
the Bible, all things many pop lovers of the time ignored.
Dylan once noted that the fans who dig him aren't necessarily getting what
he got -- his sources. The comment is an implicit rebuke to your
one-thing-is-as-good-as-another, "music is where you find it" attitude. Many
of Dylan's more intelligent fans will, if they have time and don't already
love what Dylan loves, make it a point to explore his musical roots. And
because there is a lot to Keats' claim that beauty is truth and truth is
beauty, in experiencing new beauties these fans will have a richer aesthetic
experience - they'll deepen their understanding of the created world. In the
same way, many pop music lovers will explore the roots of Western music, and
they'll gain inordinately from it.
> If you dig Bach, fine. If not, explore another musician or discover
> something more enriching & enjoyable to do with your life. Music, like
> love, is where you find it -- some find it in the song of the sparrow,
> others in the cracked voice of an old blues singer. And some find it at
the Grand Canyon at sundown.
And some find it in nursery rhymes, but can't appreciate Dylan. These
however, will grow up. And then folks like you will tell them that Dylan,
with his deep and wide-ranging musical knowledge and his great feel for
words, is no more worthy of the youth's time than whatever his untutored
tastes fasten on. Perhaps then you'll also be consistent and tell him to not
to bother educating himself about anything else that doesn't already
interest him.
There are indeed many beautiful things to contemplate, and we each given
different gifts of comprehension. Everyone doesn't need to love Bach or any
other particular artist, and a guy who doesn't appreciate Bach may love
other beauties that are far beyond my understanding. That isn't to say any
old thing he loves is necessarily as beautiful or worthy of his time as
Bach, nor does it refute the age-old belief that Bach and Shakespeare and
many other artists whose work we now call high art have something important
to say to everyone is willing and able -- in their heart -- to hear.
To deny the possibility that Bach may be better than the Beatles is to imply
that we can't make qualitative distinctions (which you have made in the
past) or that human nature is not essentially the same from one generation
to the next. If you do acknowledge that some works of art in a particular
field are better than others, then it stands to reason that what previous
generations preserved and passed down to us is in large part among the best
work they knew. And if you acknowledge that we can make qualitative
distinctions, then it follows that what's done today probably varies greatly
in quality just as did work of previous ages, and that therefore today's
inferior stuff is unlikely to be as good as the art passed down to us, art
that is often labeled high art. It also stands to reason that what's true of
other fields is true of art, that we're too close to the art of our own age
to judge it reliably, and thus that if we want high quality, so-called high
art of the past is a safer bet than contemporary work. Also, if one
composition within a genre can, for a variety of reasons, be better than
another, it follows that one genre may, for a variety of reasons, be of
greater worth than another.
Now respond with another Neil Young line from left field. I'm done. :-),
Ken
robertandrews
<snipped for inaccuracy>
>The issue above was your implied claim that because one artistic product
forms the basis of another, the former is necessarily as great as the
latter.
I didn't imply "as great."
>the fact that the song provides the necessary form for the improvisation
tells us nothing about their relative quality.
It does indeed tell us something about quality. Jazz bandleaders like
Coltrane, once they're established, don't cover songs they consider
inferior. And a musician's choice of covers tells us far more than just
"quality."
>(Miles Davis) attended for a year, and while he was young and more
interested in what he heard in the clubs, he said Julliard made him a better
musician.
He enrolled, but barely attended. He came to NYC to play in clubs with the
big talents. I'd be very surprised to see evidence to the contrary.
>Coltrane's style at the time of that record was a long way from free.
Not such a long way at all.
>Perhaps the Martians will invade tomorrow and tell us that the rest of
galaxy prefers the original song to Coltrane's version.
Among humans, the song itself is considerably more popular than Coltrane's
version. The original from Sound of Music is likely the best loved. But
popularity is only one measure of artistic merit.
>In the meantime, if you actually knew of an artist who loves both that form
of pop and 60's jazz, and who doesn't think jazz players have often done
what I said, you'd have quoted him.
Faulty premises. Musicians (of all genres) would normally call My Favorite
Things a show tune or a standard. On the other hand, jazz players might
well call Mr. Tambourine Man a pop tune. "Innocuous pop" is an insult to
the music they've chosen. Jazz players have tremendous respect for
standards, & Rogers & Hammerstein wrote more than a few.
>We were discussing whether it's wise for someone who loves art to dismiss
as unworthy of their time art that generation after generation before us
have agreed is deeply enriching.
Too broad. I was discussing Bach.
>And the proper question isn't whether or not Johnson's work was
"deficient," it's what wider musical knowledge might have added to it.
That's essentially for the musician to decide -- hence the arrogance of
preaching Bach to Johnson, Davis & Dylan.
>Dylan's folk songs weren't deficient, but he wouldn't have accomplished
half so much if he hadn't also listened to blues and country and gospel and
read the Bible, all things many pop lovers of the time ignored.
Too muddled. Plenty of folk artists had a wide range of interests, but not
all were into Elvis, Buddy Holly & (later) the Beatles. And many pop
writers of the time were well versed in R&B & country. What Dylan might
have accomplished with different influences is speculation.
>Dylan once noted that the fans who dig him aren't necessarily getting what
he got -- his sources.
Nothing wrong with that, though I might say those "sources" come through in
his songs. Ironically, some fans who investigated his sources have
expressed strong negative reactions. Plagiarism, they say.
>The comment is an implicit rebuke to your one-thing-is-as-good-as-another,
. . .
Dylan's comment doesn't rebuke anything. And I don't consider all taste as
relative. For instance, I consider prejudiced & ignorant opinions as
worthless, artistically speaking. But unlike the "my God is best!" crowd, I
don't always feel the need to put one artist in competition with another,
especially when jumping eras & genres. Vintage wine vs. fresh lemonade.
>Many of Dylan's more intelligent fans will, if they have time and don't
already love what Dylan loves, make it a point to explore his musical roots.
You're confusing intelligence with specific interests.
>To deny the possibility that Bach may be better than the Beatles . . .
That's not my view, & I've never heard that said. Traditional "high art"
criteria argues the opposite: that the Beatles can't possibly be as good --
or as high -- as Bach. No defense for that.
Ken Wilson
> interested in what he heard in the clubs, he said Julliard made him a better
> musician.
>
> He enrolled, but barely attended. He came to NYC to play in clubs with the
> big talents. I'd be very surprised to see evidence to the contrary.
"After graduating from high school, in 1944, Miles met Charlie Parker
and Dizzy Gillespie in St. Louis and decided he wanted to become a
jazz musician and live in New York City. At the age of 18, Miles moved
to "The Big Apple" to study at the Juilliard School of Music, one of
the best music schools in the world. But at night, Miles ran the
streets, playing music with the greats of bebop like Charlie Parker,
Max Roach and Thelonious Monk. During the day, Miles studied classical
music at Juilliard and played jazz at night. This created a tension in
young Miles between learning European notated, classical music and
playing the more improvisational approaches of African-American jazz.
His answer was to combine the two, not favoring one over the other.
One day at Julliard, a white female teacher told the class that black
people played the blues because they "were poor and had to pick
cotton". Miles immediately raised his hand and said that he grew up
wealthy, never picked cotton and that he played the blues. Always
outspoken, Miles soon dropped out of Juilliard to devote himself to
playing jazz music full time. But he always admitted that the
classical training he received at Julliard helped him to better
understand music and become a better musician."
-- Quincy Trope, Miles' official biographer.