The function of art
LES
a world of endless innovation, art never had so much to do as in the
past century. "Make it new" is a mere necessity of art today.
Marshall McLuhan
Anyone care to challenge this? Or, why is this not valid today? Or is
it?
L.
James Whitehead
<Lsh...@sheltonbbs.com> writes
who made Ultimate paintings - the last possible paintings that can be
made - we are living in a post-art age, and nothing can be new - new is
the past. So MM *was* probably correct from mans point of view if not
arts - but that that then.
If art has a function it becomes furniture...
--
James Whitehead
LES
James Whitehead wrote:
> In article <39634F95...@sheltonbbs.com>, LES
> <Lsh...@sheltonbbs.com> writes
> >...the function of art is to accommodate man to the changing present. In
> >a world of endless innovation, art never had so much to do as in the
> >past century. "Make it new" is a mere necessity of art today.
> >Marshall McLuhan
> >
> >Anyone care to challenge this? Or, why is this not valid today? Or is
> >it?
> >L.
> >
> OK... "Art is Art and everything else is everything else" Ad Reinhardt
> who made Ultimate paintings - the last possible paintings that can be
> made
Okay, Painting is used up.
> - we are living in a post-art age, and nothing can be new
Please support this.
> - new is
> the past. So MM *was* probably correct from mans point of view if not
> arts - but that that then.
I don't remember saying anything about painting. You are excluding art that
falls outside of painting, and I don't naem sculpture.
Granted painting is used up, but is art?
>
>
> If art has a function it becomes furniture...
Correct, it has a short shelf life and then art is a whatnot going to the
highest bidder. Conceptual artist proposed eliminating the object and with
little success and Duchamp said _there is no solution because there is no
problem._
MM said art should be taught in school but not as a subject.
>
> --
> James Whitehead
Carl A. Carlson
One might say more correctly, "... art serves the function of accom..." But here, we are looking at a modernist rational abstraction of art not at art itself. Modernism and its rational abstractions have been found narrow and unsatisfying. It's what we are trying to get away from.
mondrian
> ...the function of art is to accommodate man to the changing present. In
> a world of endless innovation, art never had so much to do as in the
> past century. "Make it new" is a mere necessity of art today.
> Marshall McLuhan
>
> Anyone care to challenge this? Or, why is this not valid today? Or is
> it?
> L.
Well, we can argue about MM's self-reflexivity, his modernism or post
modernism, abstraction and functionalism, etc.. But I think the core
issue is - soundinging a little note from Heidegger - Does "innovation" in
art actually accomodate anyone to the present, or is it just another
distancing artifact? And what's so great about accomodation anyway, some
might call it conformity. Perhaps the only art might then be, say
'anti-art art' (which is one way to characterize some of what is called
post modern art.) Like philosophy, it is certainly possible for "art" to
escape itself - to find authentic art or thinking everywhere but in what
is called art or philosophy.
LES
L.
"Carl A. Carlson" wrote:
> The trouble is the quote is a rationalization. Postmodern has got to mean postrational. What MM is doing is seeking a rational view (via his super-ego or supervisor) of what was created and exists without reason or a purpose. Art is a human expression and as such transcends reason. Reason is after the fact. Since reason has not been able to tell us what human consiousness is, how could reason possibly explain human expression? Any attempt to apply reason to art is after the fact of its creation or appreciation and is a delusion.
>
> One might say more correctly, "... art serves the function of accom..." But here, we are looking at a modernist rational abstraction of art not at art itself. Modernism and its rational abstractions have been found narrow and unsatisfying. It's what we are trying to get away from.
>
James Whitehead
<Lsh...@sheltonbbs.com> writes
>
>> - we are living in a post-art age, and nothing can be new
>
>Please support this.
(modernist term) peoples do not differentiate activities - or progress.
ART like literature began (or re-began) in the Renaissance - in which
Literature, science et al. came into being ... modernity...
>
>I don't remember saying anything about painting. You are excluding art that
>falls outside of painting, and I don't naem sculpture.
>Granted painting is used up, but is art?
gallery sometime in the late 60s/early 70s. You can put anything or
nothing back in - so there is nothing to do -> from the modernist view,
in PO-MO terms ART is just part of the modernist programme.
>> If art has a function it becomes furniture...
>
>Correct, it has a short shelf life and then art is a whatnot going to the
>highest bidder. Conceptual artist proposed eliminating the object and with
>little success and Duchamp said _there is no solution because there is no
>problem._
>MM said art should be taught in school but not as a subject.
--
James Whitehead
Carl A. Carlson
"Real" artist look down on decorative art, but if art wants to be relevant to the general public again, art that celebrates beauty and is displayed in homes might do. That's not a naive idea; it's a radical idea and one sure to be held in contempt by reactionary elements.
Joyce
>....the function of art is to accommodate man to the changing
present. In
>a world of endless innovation, art never had so much to do as
in the
>past century. "Make it new" is a mere necessity of art today.
>Marshall McLuhan
>
>Anyone care to challenge this? Or, why is this not valid today?
Or is
>it?
>L.
>
socio-cultural-political climate, the orthodox meaning of "art"
has lost its meaning. The modernists of the early 20th century
saw art as something redemptive, a teleological advancement
towards progress and prosperity, a form of individual expression
& self-improvement, etc etc etc.
But art is also related to institutions - cultural institutions
such as art galleries and museums, which are intrinsically
linked to the construction and regulation of taste,
appropriateness, and in the case of museums, the production of
national identities. From my interpretation of McLuhan's
comment, he appears to separate art from the rest of the
discourses, which seems problematic.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Got questions? Get answers over the phone at Keen.com.
Up to 100 minutes free!
http://www.keen.com
lael karen weis
> a world of endless innovation, art never had so much to do as in the
> past century.
it seems that the work of art -- and the aesthetic in general -- has a
more complicated relationship to social reality ("the changing
present") than to accommodate.
i like T. Eagleton's formulation of the aesthetic as sort of double-edged
: an effective mode of hegemony on the one hand, and socially subversive
on the other.
l.
: :: ::: :::: ::::: :::::: ::::::: ::::::: ::::::::
"what a waste it is to lose one's mind. or not to have a
mind is being very wasteful. how true that is."
-D. Quayle; Former V.P., U.S.A.
: :: ::: :::: ::::: :::::: ::::::: ::::::: ::::::::
Palatial
give us interesting people to wonder about... how good the art is doesn't
matter, it's the personality behind it that matters.
or something along that line...
G*rd*n
"Carl A. Carlson" <ca...@swfo.arizona.edu>:
| I don't know art. I do know some architecture and community planning.
| I suggest that neo-traditional planning be considered postmodern. It
| rejects the modern suburban subdivision as an instrument of isolation
| and alienation (an existential nightmare). People count, and bringing
| people together counts. Using architecture and planning to bring people
| together in a walkable diverse environment is an attempt to fill the
| void in modern life, the void documented by modern art. Architecture
| and planning are not art, but they are trying to fill the absense of the
| human dimension that all the modern expressions (modern art, modern
| literature, modern music, modern architecture, and modern feminism) have
| fostered.
|
| "Real" artist look down on decorative art, but if art wants to be
| relevant to the general public again, art that celebrates beauty and is
| displayed in homes might do. That's not a naive idea; it's a radical
| idea and one sure to be held in contempt by reactionary elements.
I don't see a lack of art in public culture; it's all over
the place. "Celebrating beauty", however, is problematical
because people have different concepts of beauty. For instance,
some people think a Mercedes-Benz SUV or a picture of Jesus
that blinks when one moves is beautiful, while others obviously
don't. Are modernist works by Rothko, Pollock or Picasso
beautiful? Repros are sold in malls to some people who think
they are. Modernism provides lots of decor; its lack of
representation turns out to ingratiate it with a great
variety of shapes of couch, colors of wall, states of mind,
styles of life. Its elegance and simplicity makes it cheap
and easy to supply. It's efficient.
Above you find suburban development -- housing tract, mall,
industrial park -- dehumanizing and repugnant, but in these
times of prosperity they can't build them fast enough;
millions are accepting crushing burdens of debt to live in
these deserts. Evidently isolation and alienation are much
to be desired, and "Hell is other people."
Naturally, the rich want to distance themselves from these
things, but that's not because they're bad, it's because
they're not distinctive. Any prosperous plumber might put
up a Rothko. The postmodern in art is the recognition of
the victory and ubiquity -- and therefore tiresomeness --
of Modernism.
Chuck Hlavac
certainly admire the problem"... (three dots for Vonnegut!)
I agree with Lael that art provides both hegemony/subversion in
it's original form (not repros-copies, etc.)...
The hegemony is in that "art", uses the usual/unusual materials,
is displayed, talked about, etc., a social reality.
Subversion in that art ("should"-said cautiously and quietly)
takes/leads/opens up the viewer/reader/listener to a "new"
experience of possibilities...in as much as art is an
exploration of it's medium and subject and artist and
culture...."exploration" is my key word here.....and "new" is
not meant in a modernist sense, but in the sense of, as Madonna
once sang, "for the very first time".....
And as g*rd*n says, there is a lot of "art as decoration" out
there, and anything goes, and no one pays attention..it fills a
space, it matches the color of the room, it's politically
correct, (what meta-narrative are interior decorators trained
in?), or it's Feng-shui'd into the northern corner, it's
basically kitsch....it is not intended to create discourse or
ask WHAT!....it's a no-brainer from day one....BUT, is it "ART"
or is that a "modernist" question?
Which brings me to philosophy (I wonder why?)....is it possible
that philosophy IS art, a conceptual art, an art of ideas and
their arrangement, and that whatever we say about art,
including "what is art?", also applies to philosophy.
Postmodernism, then, would be similar to what some others are
saying with reference to architecture, music, and literature...
And that PM is not only creating a "hegemony" but
the "subversive" at the same time? And as with art, there is
no "solution", because is there no problem? -if we view it
as "art"...there are only "schools of thought"...
--Chuck Hlavac
LES
saying parallels my own thinking.
But we need (artist need) a new delivery system. The gallery and the
current definitions don't work.
And the conceptual artist ( the original ones have given up) or to use
their word, they failed! They are
all now part of the status quo. Most are.
L.
LES
: :: ::: :::: ::::: :::::: ::::::: :::::::: ::::::::: ::::::::::
PotatoPotatoPotetoPotatoPotato
: :: ::: :::: ::::: :::::: ::::::: :::::::: ::::::::: ::::::::::
-D. Quayle V.P., U.S.A.
Marcin Tustin
chlavac...@hotmail.com.invalid says...
> As Larry Brilliant once said:" I don't have any solution- but I
> certainly admire the problem"... (three dots for Vonnegut!)
>
> I agree with Lael that art provides both hegemony/subversion in
> it's original form (not repros-copies, etc.)...
>
> The hegemony is in that "art", uses the usual/unusual materials,
> is displayed, talked about, etc., a social reality.
>
> Subversion in that art ("should"-said cautiously and quietly)
> takes/leads/opens up the viewer/reader/listener to a "new"
> experience of possibilities...in as much as art is an
> exploration of it's medium and subject and artist and
> culture...."exploration" is my key word here.....and "new" is
> not meant in a modernist sense, but in the sense of, as Madonna
> once sang, "for the very first time".....
Surely art can be subversive of Art simply by existing in a
way accessible to normal people, without being mediated by "taste-
makers" such as galleries and record labels, rather than by any
feature of it's contents. This is what might be referred to as
"folk-art". I do not however say that its contents are
unimportant.
> And as g*rd*n says, there is a lot of "art as decoration" out
> there, and anything goes, and no one pays attention..it fills a
> space, it matches the color of the room, it's politically
> correct, (what meta-narrative are interior decorators trained
> in?), or it's Feng-shui'd into the northern corner, it's
> basically kitsch....it is not intended to create discourse or
> ask WHAT!....it's a no-brainer from day one....BUT, is it "ART"
> or is that a "modernist" question?
Yes, it is. And yet it also isn't. I suspect that it may
not be art because it is not intended as such, and hence its
contents fail to evoke "art" to the receiver. That said, even if
it fails to evoke "art" is it still art if it is intended as such?
> Which brings me to philosophy (I wonder why?)....is it possible
> that philosophy IS art, a conceptual art, an art of ideas and
> their arrangement, and that whatever we say about art,
> including "what is art?", also applies to philosophy.
> Postmodernism, then, would be similar to what some others are
> saying with reference to architecture, music, and literature...
> And that PM is not only creating a "hegemony" but
> the "subversive" at the same time? And as with art, there is
> no "solution", because is there no problem? -if we view it
> as "art"...there are only "schools of thought"...
Well, we have to distinguish what we mean here. Postmodern
analysis to the extent to which it deals with actual data, and
explains that data, may claim to be a genuine branch of knowledge
about the world. Also, philosophy generally may be insisted to be
a genuine source of knowledge(as the positivists did), in which
case it shades of into discrete mathematics in no small part.
However, the extent to which it remains separate there is
ambiguity which admits of schools. So clearly, these schools are
capable of functioing to create hegemony even in the way in which
"conceptual art" may do so while caliming to be subversive.
I have to say though, that conceptual art,on the whole,
apart from the "concrete manifestaion" (including the responses it
evokes) are simply dull. No-one is particularly impressed by the
way it claims to challenge art as a concept. In a form that really
doesn't produce an object at all it may be nothing more than
recognising that a practical joke, or a wind-up is art. I probably
think this because I see enough strange stuff on the TV already.
--
Humanity will not be happy until the day when the
last bureaucrat has been hanged with the guts of
the last capitalist.
Marcin Tustin
PGP Key at http://www.anarchist99.freeserve.co.uk/marcintustin.txt
Mar...@mindless.REMOVEGOATS&OATS.com
Marcint@^^refreshmagazine.com.nomail <-- Do not use at this time
KeyID 0x86D72550
Fingerprint DDD9 FB07 4C2F 9A79 C860 C391 D672 364C 86D7 2550
G*rd*n
commodified art on the one hand and "serious" art on the
other, one is probably referring to a class system which
does not necessarily have much of anything to do with
content or artistic intentions (although these may be
advertised as validating given works, especially in the
second category).
It is a function of capitalism to constantly subvert and
change itself. In the famous words of the _Communist_
_Manifesto_:
Constant
revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social
conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the
bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen
relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and
opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before
they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is
profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his
real condition of life and his relations with his kind.
The bourgeoisie and those who think like them can be expected
to demand that art, like science and industry, constantly
change and improve itself. "Epater les bourgeois" is not an
attack, it's a submission, an accomodation. Controlled
subversion is both a commodity and a mode of production. Even
authentically subversive folk art, like graffiti and punk
rock, can be partially absorbed into the system as long as
the system's fundamental structure of domination is retained.
chlavac...@hotmail.com.invalid says...
| > As Larry Brilliant once said:" I don't have any solution- but I
| > certainly admire the problem"... (three dots for Vonnegut!)
| >
| > I agree with Lael that art provides both hegemony/subversion in
| > it's original form (not repros-copies, etc.)...
| >
| > The hegemony is in that "art", uses the usual/unusual materials,
| > is displayed, talked about, etc., a social reality.
| >
| > Subversion in that art ("should"-said cautiously and quietly)
| > takes/leads/opens up the viewer/reader/listener to a "new"
| > experience of possibilities...in as much as art is an
| > exploration of it's medium and subject and artist and
| > culture...."exploration" is my key word here.....and "new" is
| > not meant in a modernist sense, but in the sense of, as Madonna
| > once sang, "for the very first time".....
mar...@mindCUTless.com (Marcin Tustin):
| Surely art can be subversive of Art simply by existing in a
| way accessible to normal people, without being mediated by "taste-
| makers" such as galleries and record labels, rather than by any
| feature of it's contents. This is what might be referred to as
| "folk-art". I do not however say that its contents are
| unimportant.
chlavac...@hotmail.com.invalid says...
| > And as g*rd*n says, there is a lot of "art as decoration" out
| > there, and anything goes, and no one pays attention..it fills a
| > space, it matches the color of the room, it's politically
| > correct, (what meta-narrative are interior decorators trained
| > in?), or it's Feng-shui'd into the northern corner, it's
| > basically kitsch....it is not intended to create discourse or
| > ask WHAT!....it's a no-brainer from day one....BUT, is it "ART"
| > or is that a "modernist" question?
mar...@mindCUTless.com (Marcin Tustin):
| Yes, it is. And yet it also isn't. I suspect that it may
| not be art because it is not intended as such, and hence its
| contents fail to evoke "art" to the receiver. That said, even if
| it fails to evoke "art" is it still art if it is intended as such?
chlavac...@hotmail.com.invalid says...
| > Which brings me to philosophy (I wonder why?)....is it possible
| > that philosophy IS art, a conceptual art, an art of ideas and
| > their arrangement, and that whatever we say about art,
| > including "what is art?", also applies to philosophy.
| > Postmodernism, then, would be similar to what some others are
| > saying with reference to architecture, music, and literature...
| > And that PM is not only creating a "hegemony" but
| > the "subversive" at the same time? And as with art, there is
| > no "solution", because is there no problem? -if we view it
| > as "art"...there are only "schools of thought"...
mar...@mindCUTless.com (Marcin Tustin):
Joyce
>And as g*rd*n says, there is a lot of "art as decoration" out
>there, and anything goes, and no one pays attention..it fills a
>space, it matches the color of the room, it's politically
>correct, (what meta-narrative are interior decorators trained
>in?), or it's Feng-shui'd into the northern corner, it's
>basically kitsch....it is not intended to create discourse or
>ask WHAT!....it's a no-brainer from day one....BUT, is it "ART"
>or is that a "modernist" question?
Firstly, I concur with Les that you did a an excellent analysis
on the thread. As for the question of art... What is it? If we
look at urinals - okay, necessary apparatus for biological
purposes, but in the hands of Marcel Duchamp, it becomes "The
Fountain", something to be put on display (sorry, no demos
allowed :). So what is art apart from a system of definition and
regulation?
>
>Which brings me to philosophy (I wonder why?)....is it possible
>that philosophy IS art, a conceptual art, an art of ideas and
>their arrangement, and that whatever we say about art,
>including "what is art?", also applies to philosophy.
>Postmodernism, then, would be similar to what some others are
>saying with reference to architecture, music, and literature...
>And that PM is not only creating a "hegemony" but
>the "subversive" at the same time? And as with art, there is
>no "solution", because is there no problem? -if we view it
>as "art"...there are only "schools of thought"...
>
That's an interesting comparison, as both art and theories are,
in a sense, reactionary to the specific social contexts the
artist/theorists are in...
Marcin Tustin
> If one differentiates between folk, vernacular, popular and
> commodified art on the one hand and "serious" art on the
> other, one is probably referring to a class system which
> does not necessarily have much of anything to do with
> content or artistic intentions (although these may be
> advertised as validating given works, especially in the
> second category).
>
I meant "folk art" not in any class sense (or indeed in any
sense which anyone else may have used it), but rather to refer to
any art which is not being blessed by any media or "Cultural"
group or mechanism into the category of "Art" rather than art.
[snip stuff which I generally agree with]
fluffy_...@my-deja.com
perspective of what it should DO for the artist, the viewer, society at
large. Why is painting dead? Because it's all been done? Are there
any goals to painting that are still valid, that make it worth
continuing? I am a literary artist--poetry and plays--and I feel that
there's a lot to be done there artistically and that the artistic goals
serve other functions as well in liberating consciousness, modes of
thinking, etc. Many of the artistic revolutions that have been begun,
at least in literary arts, have been incomplete because everyone's too
busy chasing "the next big thing".
In article <03c017d4...@usw-ex0106-045.remarq.com>,
Chuck Hlavac <chlavac...@hotmail.com.invalid> wrote:
> As Larry Brilliant once said:" I don't have any solution- but I
> certainly admire the problem"... (three dots for Vonnegut!)
>
> I agree with Lael that art provides both hegemony/subversion in
> it's original form (not repros-copies, etc.)...
>
> The hegemony is in that "art", uses the usual/unusual materials,
> is displayed, talked about, etc., a social reality.
>
> Subversion in that art ("should"-said cautiously and quietly)
> takes/leads/opens up the viewer/reader/listener to a "new"
> experience of possibilities...in as much as art is an
> exploration of it's medium and subject and artist and
> culture...."exploration" is my key word here.....and "new" is
> not meant in a modernist sense, but in the sense of, as Madonna
> once sang, "for the very first time".....
>
> And as g*rd*n says, there is a lot of "art as decoration" out
> there, and anything goes, and no one pays attention..it fills a
> space, it matches the color of the room, it's politically
> correct, (what meta-narrative are interior decorators trained
> in?), or it's Feng-shui'd into the northern corner, it's
> basically kitsch....it is not intended to create discourse or
> ask WHAT!....it's a no-brainer from day one....BUT, is it "ART"
> or is that a "modernist" question?
>
> Which brings me to philosophy (I wonder why?)....is it possible
> that philosophy IS art, a conceptual art, an art of ideas and
> their arrangement, and that whatever we say about art,
> including "what is art?", also applies to philosophy.
> Postmodernism, then, would be similar to what some others are
> saying with reference to architecture, music, and literature...
> And that PM is not only creating a "hegemony" but
> the "subversive" at the same time? And as with art, there is
> no "solution", because is there no problem? -if we view it
> as "art"...there are only "schools of thought"...
>
> --Chuck Hlavac
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> Got questions? Get answers over the phone at Keen.com.
> Up to 100 minutes free!
> http://www.keen.com
>
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
James Whitehead
writes
>This makes me wonder if we should be talking about art from the
>perspective of what it should DO for the artist, the viewer, society at
>large. Why is painting dead? Because it's all been done? Are there
>any goals to painting that are still valid, that make it worth
>continuing? I am a literary artist--poetry and plays--and I feel that
>there's a lot to be done there artistically and that the artistic goals
>serve other functions as well in liberating consciousness, modes of
>thinking, etc. Many of the artistic revolutions that have been begun,
>at least in literary arts, have been incomplete because everyone's too
>busy chasing "the next big thing".
>
artists, tens of thousands produce water colours of a windmill near by -
or scenes of Fen and flying geese. Some dabble in more abstract forms -
colours lending an impression. This is all OK - but its not Modern Art.
In the sense of being part of the modernist programme: - which in the
case of Art reached its terminus. This is not to say its all been done -
but its more like Everest once climbed - all that left is to climb
lesser peaks - then dream up crazy stunts - like skiing down it...
The question then is - is the very concept of Art - a modernist concept-
like *History* or *Science* ? If it is then not only is modern art
complete - but art is also if one takes a certain post-modernist view.
Again with modernity there was a Goal - now there are as many goals as
you like - which invalidates the game. So the game becomes pointless -
but that doesn't mean you need stop playing it. Of course there is lots
to be done - this is a feature of PO-MO.
--
James Whitehead
G*rd*n
| >there, and anything goes, and no one pays attention..it fills a
| >space, it matches the color of the room, it's politically
| >correct, (what meta-narrative are interior decorators trained
| >in?), or it's Feng-shui'd into the northern corner, it's
| >basically kitsch....it is not intended to create discourse or
| >ask WHAT!....it's a no-brainer from day one....BUT, is it "ART"
| >or is that a "modernist" question?
Joyce <aleesas_at...@yahoo.com.invalid>:
| Firstly, I concur with Les that you did a an excellent analysis
| on the thread. As for the question of art... What is it? If we
| look at urinals - okay, necessary apparatus for biological
| purposes, but in the hands of Marcel Duchamp, it becomes "The
| Fountain", something to be put on display (sorry, no demos
| allowed :). So what is art apart from a system of definition and
| regulation?
Prior to institutionalization, it's the desire to do things
well (desirably) for their own sake, as opposed to doing them
for instrumental purposes. But if you go back very far in
history you don't have _art_ as a separate concern in most
cultures -- here's a pot, paint the gods on it so it'll look
good next to the couch -- a phase of utensil manufacture.
Duchamp's urinal could mean something only after a great
deal of institutionalization had taken place and art had
been, as you note, defined and regulated, especially as a
spiritual concern for the bourgeoisie and a commercial one
for the lower orders. The problem here is that, at least in
an industrial-capitalist social order, you can't spend a lot
of time doing something unless you can make money from doing
it -- but if people are going to be paid, they have to be paid
according to value delivered, so the value has to be established,
and in the case of the more imporant values, not by the market
but by authority. (As a contrast, go see Tarkovsky's _Andrei_
_Rublyov_ (should you be so fortunate as to get a chance.))
In such a context, art is ambiguous about subversion the way
sex is. On the one hand, they awaken in the person who
experiences them awareness and desire, which are subversive;
on the other, they assuage the very feelings that they awaken,
in what Marcuse called "repressive desublimation." The amount
of art or sex that the lower orders get is just enough to keep
them from rebelling or dropping out. "Le plus que je fais
l'amour, le plus que je veux faire la revolution," but one
gets tired before the revolution arrives. A concert of the
most revolutionary post-punk hardcore may do the same. In
the morning one wearily trudges back to school, office,
factory.... y' gotta eat.
So the only art I have found with truly unambiguously
revolutionary potential is cooking.
| >Which brings me to philosophy (I wonder why?)....is it possible
| >that philosophy IS art, a conceptual art, an art of ideas and
| >their arrangement, and that whatever we say about art,
| >including "what is art?", also applies to philosophy.
| >Postmodernism, then, would be similar to what some others are
| >saying with reference to architecture, music, and literature...
| >And that PM is not only creating a "hegemony" but
| >the "subversive" at the same time? And as with art, there is
| >no "solution", because is there no problem? -if we view it
| >as "art"...there are only "schools of thought"...
Joyce <aleesas_at...@yahoo.com.invalid>:
| That's an interesting comparison, as both art and theories are,
| in a sense, reactionary to the specific social contexts the
| artist/theorists are in...
Well, one of the roles of both is solace, practiced by
looking back at the grievous past and shaping it into
something happier than it was.
Joyce
>well (desirably) for their own sake, as opposed to doing them
>for instrumental purposes. But if you go back very far in
>history you don't have _art_ as a separate concern in most
>cultures -- here's a pot, paint the gods on it so it'll look
>good next to the couch -- a phase of utensil manufacture.
>
>Duchamp's urinal could mean something only after a great
>deal of institutionalization had taken place and art had
>been, as you note, defined and regulated, especially as a
>spiritual concern for the bourgeoisie and a commercial one
>for the lower orders. The problem here is that, at least in
>an industrial-capitalist social order, you can't spend a lot
>of time doing something unless you can make money from doing
>it -- but if people are going to be paid, they have to be paid
>according to value delivered, so the value has to be
established,
>and in the case of the more imporant values, not by the market
>but by authority. (As a contrast, go see Tarkovsky's _Andrei_
>_Rublyov_ (should you be so fortunate as to get a chance.))
Very true. Art has become a matter of production, reproduction
and circulation. Or as Walter Benjamin pointed out, the
mechanical reproduction has taken away the "aura" of authentic
artworks. Which is, according to him (and I also concur) not
exactly a bad thing. Certainly it erodes the high/low
distinction, as well as lovely camp revival of tacky psychedalic
print shirts and vintage clothing... speaking of the "fashion"
to wear second-hands, is it some form of nostalgia for the real,
the authentic relic of the past?
>
>In such a context, art is ambiguous about subversion the way
>sex is. On the one hand, they awaken in the person who
>experiences them awareness and desire, which are subversive;
>on the other, they assuage the very feelings that they awaken,
>in what Marcuse called "repressive desublimation." The amount
>of art or sex that the lower orders get is just enough to keep
>them from rebelling or dropping out. "Le plus que je fais
>l'amour, le plus que je veux faire la revolution," but one
>gets tired before the revolution arrives. A concert of the
>most revolutionary post-punk hardcore may do the same. In
>the morning one wearily trudges back to school, office,
>factory.... y' gotta eat.
Perhaps people participate in those mosh pit sessions to get
away from that Foucauldian notion of surveillance? In a concert,
as an audience, your individual identity is removed and becomes
part of the collective. I guess there is a sense of liberation
in the engagemet of collective actions... that is, until the
hangover gets the better of you...
>
>So the only art I have found with truly unambiguously
>revolutionary potential is cooking.
Please elaborate on your idea of cooking as possessing
unambiguously revolutionary potential.
>Well, one of the roles of both is solace, practiced by
>looking back at the grievous past and shaping it into
>something happier than it was.
>
I would have to disagree with that. Postmodernists seek to
deconstruct and undermine the metanarratives at hand. But that
is not to say we demonize the said narratives, but to critique
it from a theoretical and political perspective.
Ned Ludd
news:040daa08...@usw-ex0105-038.remarq.com...
Joyce <aleesas_at...@yahoo.com.invalid>:
| Firstly, I concur with Les that you did a an excellent analysis
| on the thread. As for the question of art... What is it? If we
| look at urinals - okay, necessary apparatus for biological
| purposes, but in the hands of Marcel Duchamp, it becomes "The
| Fountain", something to be put on display (sorry, no demos
| allowed :). So what is art apart from a system of definition and
| regulation?
Gordon:
> Prior to institutionalization, it's the desire to do things
> well (desirably) for their own sake, as opposed to doing them
> for instrumental purposes. But if you go back very far in
> history you don't have _art_ as a separate concern in most
> cultures -- here's a pot, paint the gods on it so it'll look
> good next to the couch -- a phase of utensil manufacture.
>
No, the Lascaux paintings are 30,000 years old.
> Duchamp's urinal could mean something only after a great
> deal of institutionalization had taken place and art had
> been, as you note, defined and regulated, especially as a
> spiritual concern for the bourgeoisie and a commercial one
> for the lower orders.
>
No, if you'd taken a urinal back 30,000 years to the Lascaux
painters, I'm sure they would have marveled at it as GREAT art.
(Visions of Kubrick's apes exalting and dancing around an
'American Standard' porcelain piss-pot.)
> The problem here is that, at least in
> an industrial-capitalist social order, you can't spend a lot
> of time doing something unless you can make money from doing
> it -- but if people are going to be paid, they have to be paid
> according to value delivered, so the value has to be established,
> and in the case of the more imporant values, not by the market
> but by authority. (As a contrast, go see Tarkovsky's _Andrei_
> _Rublyov_ (should you be so fortunate as to get a chance.))
>
Oh, I bet well over 95% of the art done in the world today is
not done for money. It's something that the furless biped does.
And has always done, I think.
> In such a context, art is ambiguous about subversion the way
> sex is. On the one hand, they awaken in the person who
> experiences them awareness and desire, which are subversive;
> on the other, they assuage the very feelings that they awaken,
> in what Marcuse called "repressive desublimation." The amount
> of art or sex that the lower orders get is just enough to keep
> them from rebelling or dropping out. "Le plus que je fais
> l'amour, le plus que je veux faire la revolution," but one
> gets tired before the revolution arrives. A concert of the
> most revolutionary post-punk hardcore may do the same. In
> the morning one wearily trudges back to school, office,
> factory.... y' gotta eat.
>
So you can paint in the evenings. Or write. Or make music.
Ned
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
>
> No, the Lascaux paintings are 30,000 years old.
>
the cave system- not the domestic parts - and of course would be
difficult to see - which if so makes them different to what modernists
call art.
>> deal of institutionalization had taken place and art had
>> been, as you note, defined and regulated, especially as a
>> spiritual concern for the bourgeoisie and a commercial one
>> for the lower orders.
>>
>
> No, if you'd taken a urinal back 30,000 years to the Lascaux
>painters, I'm sure they would have marveled at it as GREAT art.
>(Visions of Kubrick's apes exalting and dancing around an
>'American Standard' porcelain piss-pot.)
ago - this seems nothing to do with art?
> Oh, I bet well over 95% of the art done in the world today is
>not done for money. It's something that the furless biped does.
>And has always done, I think.
Depends on your definition here - 99% of adults do not do art in anyform
after finishing school. Unless art is considered as the choice of
clothes - decoration of the living room. But that misses the point of
the modernists art practice - this is directed at what art is... (or
ideas of truth...)
Again no different to doing science - when I boil water for tea I
wouldn't say I'm doing science. (but if you want to call it science then
I suppose science has been done for thousands of years... but its also
art!!!)
>
>
> So you can paint in the evenings. Or write. Or make music.
>
> Ned
Such activities would be strange in modernist terms, you can also
restore old cars - but that's not to say your an automotive designer.
(I'm now just looking out of the window at the rain - but I'm no
meteorologist - or have meteorologists have existed for millions of
years?)
--
James Whitehead
G*rd*n
| > No, the Lascaux paintings are 30,000 years old.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
| I think however that these paintings were in very inaccessible parts of
| the cave system- not the domestic parts - and of course would be
| difficult to see - which if so makes them different to what modernists
| call art.
We have no idea whether they were considered "art", but if
they were, then the community at Lascaux would have to have
institutionalized art as we do, which would be very odd in a
tribal society of primitive means.
G*rd*n:
|>> Duchamp's urinal could mean something only after a great
|>> deal of institutionalization had taken place and art had
|>> been, as you note, defined and regulated, especially as a
|>> spiritual concern for the bourgeoisie and a commercial one
|>> for the lower orders.
Ned Ludd:
| > No, if you'd taken a urinal back 30,000 years to the Lascaux
| >painters, I'm sure they would have marveled at it as GREAT art.
| >(Visions of Kubrick's apes exalting and dancing around an
| >'American Standard' porcelain piss-pot.)
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
| In much the same way as we now marvel at a stone axe from 30,000 years
| ago - this seems nothing to do with art?
I think they might well have appreciated its design and
function on an aesthetic level. But this would have been
quite different than the sort of controversy, and system of
meanings, which Duchamp provoked. (Where I said "mean
something" above I meant something like "what people mean
when they say something means something in an art gallery",
but it was all so reflexive I couldn't write it down.)
G*rd*n:
| > Oh, I bet well over 95% of the art done in the world today is
| >not done for money. It's something that the furless biped does.
| >And has always done, I think.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
| Depends on your definition here - 99% of adults do not do art in anyform
| after finishing school. Unless art is considered as the choice of
| clothes - decoration of the living room. But that misses the point of
| the modernists art practice - this is directed at what art is... (or
| ideas of truth...)
| Again no different to doing science - when I boil water for tea I
| wouldn't say I'm doing science. (but if you want to call it science then
| I suppose science has been done for thousands of years... but its also
| art!!!)
Waiting for the water to boil is vernacular technology. I
mentioned some modes of vernacular science, and there's lots
of vernacular art -- deciding what to put over the couch is
vernacular interior decoration. However, I think there's
some question as to how much of the last is construed to be
_art_ by its practitioners. My impression is that most
people think an activity is _art_ only when it imitates the
practices which have been institutionalized as such, which
is telling. That is, if they paint the wall blue it's not
art, but if they paint a picture to hang on the wall it is.
G*rd*n
| This makes me wonder if we should be talking about art from the
| perspective of what it should DO for the artist, the viewer, society at
| large. Why is painting dead? Because it's all been done? Are there
| any goals to painting that are still valid, that make it worth
| continuing? I am a literary artist--poetry and plays--and I feel that
| there's a lot to be done there artistically and that the artistic goals
| serve other functions as well in liberating consciousness, modes of
| thinking, etc. Many of the artistic revolutions that have been begun,
| at least in literary arts, have been incomplete because everyone's too
Painting isn't dead. It doesn't have the primacy it once
did, which isn't surprising given the wealth of materials
which our present prosperity offers. What I think is
surprising is that painting maintained its primacy so long
throughout the 19th and 20th centuries when these other
materials were becoming available. It would be interesting
to figure out why. Nevertheless, many, many people still feel
the urge to cover surfaces with pigments and some people value
the exercise of this urge enough to pay for new examples of
it in certain settings. As for language, it's constantly
changing, as are the things it represents, so there's always
something to write.
James Whitehead
>
>Waiting for the water to boil is vernacular technology. I
>mentioned some modes of vernacular science, and there's lots
>of vernacular art -- deciding what to put over the couch is
>vernacular interior decoration. However, I think there's
>some question as to how much of the last is construed to be
>_art_ by its practitioners. My impression is that most
>people think an activity is _art_ only when it imitates the
>practices which have been institutionalized as such, which
>is telling. That is, if they paint the wall blue it's not
>art, but if they paint a picture to hang on the wall it is.
>
century that artists became individuals and their work began to gain a
value in itself - i.e. as art - and not be valued for the amount of gold
or lapzi lazuli used. The painting going on in churches before that time
was anonymous (as still in the orthodox tradition) and the value of it
was in the religious properties of the object - not in some (abstract)
aesthetics. This idea of art in effect began with the *discovery* of the
individual - and with the industrialisation of the 19th Century began to
disappear. Buying a Pollock or Rothko print and hanging it on the wall
is not art. (or anymore is what is in the Tate Modern)
A bush man making a fire and drawing with a charcoal stick is not doing
art or science or vernacular whatever.. anymore than my walking down the
street is vernacular ballet :-)
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
>Painting isn't dead.
re art its is...
>It doesn't have the primacy it once
>did,
>which isn't surprising given the wealth of materials
>which our present prosperity offers. What I think is
>surprising is that painting maintained its primacy so long
>throughout the 19th and 20th centuries when these other
>materials were becoming available.
that's beside the point. When painting - as art - ended it was not
sculpture which the minimalists created - but even more autonomous
objects - objects as art and nothing else.
> It would be interesting
>to figure out why. Nevertheless, many, many people still feel
>the urge to cover surfaces with pigments and some people value
>the exercise of this urge enough to pay for new examples of
>it in certain settings.
meaning, may-pole dancing, attending church, christening babies...
in fact doing science is now much the same also - its no longer about
explaining the world... but a custom.
--
James Whitehead
Erik A. Mattila
> fluffy_...@my-deja.com:
> | This makes me wonder if we should be talking about art from the
> | perspective of what it should DO for the artist, the viewer, society at
> | large. Why is painting dead? Because it's all been done? Are there
> | any goals to painting that are still valid, that make it worth
> | continuing? I am a literary artist--poetry and plays--and I feel that
> | there's a lot to be done there artistically and that the artistic goals
> | serve other functions as well in liberating consciousness, modes of
> | thinking, etc. Many of the artistic revolutions that have been begun,
> | at least in literary arts, have been incomplete because everyone's too
> | busy chasing "the next big thing". ...
>
> Painting isn't dead. It doesn't have the primacy it once
> did, which isn't surprising given the wealth of materials
> which our present prosperity offers. What I think is
> surprising is that painting maintained its primacy so long
> throughout the 19th and 20th centuries when these other
> materials were becoming available. It would be interesting
> to figure out why.
I think it's likely that the 'institutionalization' you've mentioned
elsewhere in this thread gave painting a momentum that took a while to
flatten out, G*rd*n. When you're tackling the 'waddis art' question you
have to take in the whole potato, and consider patronage, markets, museums
and so forth. Incidentally, some of that old value criteria concerning
materials still exists. Oil on canvas still has the prestige of 'true art'
and the rest, such as acrylic or mud & beeswax are subs. Watercolor really
had a tough time in the art market -- being accepted as legitimate and
valuable.
Think about purchasing art and all that means. You're going to go out and
spend a lot of bucks for a piece of art, for any of several reasons, like
the ostentatious display of wealth or even the love a an aesthetic
encryptogram. You go to the gallery, talk to the dealer, meet the artist,
make the transaction, ship the painting and so on, all of which has a lot of
ritual value (and Benjamin said that art had shed 'ritual value' somewhere
along the line, between Lascaux and Giotto, I assume). Anyway, I'm just
proposing that this part of art, the consumer's share, had a lot to do with
the momentum that easel painting had in the early twentieth.
A common practice in Delacroix's day, especially for young artists who were
breaking out, was to rent a building in a commercial district and put their
most recent painting on display. Delacroix did this with his salon piece,
'Dante and Virgil in Hell.' Gericault did the same with his, "The Raft of
the Medusa." They would charge passers by a quarter to go in and view it.
The whole thing was mounted like a carnival freak show, more or less. These
paintings were quite large and cumbersome, in contrast to the smaller easel
paintings that became popular by the end of the 19th Century. But in the
end, people, even the rank and file, got used to paying for art.
> Nevertheless, many, many people still feel
> the urge to cover surfaces with pigments and some people value
> the exercise of this urge enough to pay for new examples of
> it in certain settings. As for language, it's constantly
> changing, as are the things it represents, so there's always
> something to write.
Some paint as a nervous reaction to the environment. Not so much an 'urge'
as compensation.
Erik Mattila
Ned Ludd
news:6TWpyDAb...@jliat.demon.co.uk...
Gordon:
> Prior to institutionalization, it's the desire to do things
> well (desirably) for their own sake, as opposed to doing them
> for instrumental purposes. But if you go back very far in
> history you don't have _art_ as a separate concern in most
> cultures -- here's a pot, paint the gods on it so it'll look
> good next to the couch -- a phase of utensil manufacture.
Ned
> No, the Lascaux paintings are 30,000 years old.
James:
> I think however that these paintings were in very inaccessible
> parts of the cave system- not the domestic parts - and of course
> would be difficult to see - which if so makes them different to
> what modernists call art.
>
I'm sure the stuff they kept around the 'house' is long since
gone. And my point was in reply to Gordon's assertion that art
was not a separate concern of early cultures. I'm sure it
always was a separate concern.
Gordon:
>> Duchamp's urinal could mean something only after a great
>> deal of institutionalization had taken place and art had
>> been, as you note, defined and regulated, especially as a
>> spiritual concern for the bourgeoisie and a commercial one
>> for the lower orders.
>
Ned:
> No, if you'd taken a urinal back 30,000 years to the Lascaux
> painters, I'm sure they would have marveled at it as GREAT art.
> (Visions of Kubrick's apes exalting and dancing around an
> 'American Standard' porcelain piss-pot.)
James:
> In much the same way as we now marvel at a stone axe from 30,000
> years ago - this seems nothing to do with art?
>
Only if you say it isn't art. Shaker furniture is art. Many
people hang weapons on the wall as art. Some weapons (guns and
swords) are produced as art, and can't be fired or used as a
weapons, and are made solely to hang on the wall.
Ned:
> Oh, I bet well over 95% of the art done in the world today is
> not done for money. It's something that the furless biped does.
> And has always done, I think.
James:
> Depends on your definition here - 99% of adults do not do art in
> any form after finishing school. Unless art is considered as the
> choice of clothes - decoration of the living room. But that misses
> the point of the modernists art practice - this is directed at
> what art is... (or ideas of truth...)
>
No, I'd even allow a rigorous definition of art, ie. something
separate, special, non-utilitarian, put in a place of honor to
view as a treasured possession. Most art, almost all art, has
always been done without payment, just because people want to
do it.
> Again no different to doing science - when I boil water for tea I
> wouldn't say I'm doing science. (but if you want to call it science
> then I suppose science has been done for thousands of years... but
> its also art!!!)
>>
>> So you can paint in the evenings. Or write. Or make music.
>>
> Such activities would be strange in modernist terms, you can also
> restore old cars - but that's not to say your an automotive designer.
> (I'm now just looking out of the window at the rain - but I'm no
> meteorologist - or have meteorologists have existed for millions of
> years?)
>
You ARE a scientist for boiling water, and an auto designer for
for restoring an old car, and a meteorologist for determining if
it's going to rain.
Some very expensive art nowadays is the crayon and pencil drawings
of mentally disturbed street people. You probably don't call it art.
Dealers pay thousands of dollars for it, it has a market, people buy
it as an 'art investment', etc. etc. It is therefore art, whether
you say so or not.
Picky, picky.
Ned
Ned Ludd
Ned Ludd:
>> No, the Lascaux paintings are 30,000 years old.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
| I think however that these paintings were in very inaccessible parts
| of the cave system- not the domestic parts - and of course would be
| difficult to see - which if so makes them different to what modernists
| call art.
Gordon:
> We have no idea whether they were considered "art", but if
> they were, then the community at Lascaux would have to have
> institutionalized art as we do, which would be very odd in a
> tribal society of primitive means.
>
I'd like to add one little thing there. I get very tired of people
saying "we don't know WHAT the Lascaux people meant by their wall
paintings or if they considered it art".
This is crap. We have just a good an idea of why they did their art
as we do of why we do our art. Given that virtually all art in our
culture is created without payment, you can't say why we do art any
more than you can say why the Lascaux people did it.
Furthermore, anything you can assert about why the Lascaux people
may have done their art - religious ritual, mystical hunting rites,
puberty ceremonies, earning a living, making pretty things, etc. -
you can say about why we do art.
Ned
Joyce
> I'd like to add one little thing there. I get very tired of
people
>saying "we don't know WHAT the Lascaux people meant by their
wall
>paintings or if they considered it art".
But we don't unless some bright spark invented a _workable_ time
machine. Those paintings, pots, jars - whatever - they could
very well be the byproduct of something else. What we're left is
artifacts up for speculations.
>
> This is crap. We have just a good an idea of why they did
their art
>as we do of why we do our art. Given that virtually all art in
our
>culture is created without payment, you can't say why we do art
any
>more than you can say why the Lascaux people did it.
How do we know whether the Lascaux people share the same notion
of "art" as we do?
>
> Furthermore, anything you can assert about why the Lascaux
people
>may have done their art - religious ritual, mystical hunting
rites,
>puberty ceremonies, earning a living, making pretty things,
etc. -
>you can say about why we do art.
>
> Ned
>
That'd be assuming that essentially, human across the spatial,
historical and geographical divide all share the same system of
values and thoughts...
Joyce Wu
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
> I'd like to add one little thing there. I get very tired of people
>saying "we don't know WHAT the Lascaux people meant by their wall
>paintings or if they considered it art".
signed and I doubt if they had a dealer network etc.
> This is crap. We have just a good an idea of why they did their art
>as we do of why we do our art.
our watching television was a religion - or whatever they considered
their paintings to be...
>culture is created without payment, you can't say why we do art any
>more than you can say why the Lascaux people did it.
and religious artefacts... Art like the novel exists within a culture
and within a time frame - The bible is not a novel, the Bhagavad Gita is
not a political manifesto.. To assume the Lasaux people had art is to
assume they had charted accountants, pet beauticians and telephone
sanitisers.
> Furthermore, anything you can assert about why the Lascaux people
>may have done their art - religious ritual, mystical hunting rites,
>puberty ceremonies, earning a living, making pretty things, etc. -
>you can say about why we do art.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
>
> I'm sure the stuff they kept around the 'house' is long since
>gone. And my point was in reply to Gordon's assertion that art
>was not a separate concern of early cultures. I'm sure it
>always was a separate concern.
when they decorate their nests...
>James:
>> In much the same way as we now marvel at a stone axe from 30,000
>> years ago - this seems nothing to do with art?
>>
>
> Only if you say it isn't art. Shaker furniture is art.
made - but this is poor art as Duchamp beat you to it.
>people hang weapons on the wall as art.
or hang a clock on the wall...
> Some weapons (guns and
>swords) are produced as art, and can't be fired or used as a
>weapons, and are made solely to hang on the wall.
dolls etc. Again if you say they are art - you are the artist..
Just because I've hung a string of garlic on our kitchen wall doesn't
justify you to jump to the conclusion that I did this as an art
statement or as a device for keeping vampires away - though we don't
seem to get any... :->
>> Depends on your definition here - 99% of adults do not do art in
>> any form after finishing school. Unless art is considered as the
>> choice of clothes - decoration of the living room. But that misses
>> the point of the modernists art practice - this is directed at
>> what art is... (or ideas of truth...)
>>
>
> No, I'd even allow a rigorous definition of art, ie. something
>separate, special, non-utilitarian, put in a place of honor to
>view as a treasured possession. Most art, almost all art, has
>always been done without payment, just because people want to
>do it.
definition would include a family snap from Blackpool.. a poster of posh
spice ... even the American flag? What would it exclude?
>
> You ARE a scientist for boiling water
>, and an auto designer for
>for restoring an old car, and a meteorologist for determining if
>it's going to rain.
not a meteorologist, and not a doctor or psychoanalyst when I ask how do
you do? Or else then everyone is everything - this is the mire into
which we have slipped.
> Some very expensive art nowadays is the crayon and pencil drawings
>of mentally disturbed street people. You probably don't call it art.
>Dealers pay thousands of dollars for it, it has a market, people buy
>it as an 'art investment', etc. etc. It is therefore art, whether
>you say so or not.
>
> Picky, picky.
>
with the cubists adopting primitive figures as art and naive paintings
as art that it was brought into the domain of art. As anything and
everything was considered art in the last throws of modernity then you
can say this - but it says nothing, so you can say when I type on this
keyboard I'm doing science... we run out of any meaning.
--
James Whitehead
G*rd*n
| >> No, the Lascaux paintings are 30,000 years old.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
| | I think however that these paintings were in very inaccessible parts
| | of the cave system- not the domestic parts - and of course would be
| | difficult to see - which if so makes them different to what modernists
| | call art.
Gordon:
| > We have no idea whether they were considered "art", but if
| > they were, then the community at Lascaux would have to have
| > institutionalized art as we do, which would be very odd in a
| > tribal society of primitive means.
"Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com>:
| I'd like to add one little thing there. I get very tired of people
| saying "we don't know WHAT the Lascaux people meant by their wall
| paintings or if they considered it art".
|
| This is crap. We have just a good an idea of why they did their art
| as we do of why we do our art. Given that virtually all art in our
| culture is created without payment, you can't say why we do art any
| more than you can say why the Lascaux people did it.
|
| Furthermore, anything you can assert about why the Lascaux people
| may have done their art - religious ritual, mystical hunting rites,
| puberty ceremonies, earning a living, making pretty things, etc. -
| you can say about why we do art.
Fine -- they did the wall paintings for any old reason, as
we do, taking everybody on earth into consideration. What
we don't know is what social institutions and understandings
surrounded it, and the reason we don't know is because within
historical memory there have been such a great variety of such
things. I myself doubt that the painters of Lascaux were
thinking and acting much like Picasso or Warhol, but I'll be
the first to acknowledge they might have been almost identical.
Erik A. Mattila
G*rd*n wrote:
But art must have been institutionalized. The 'paleolithic' cave painting
period, judging by the oldest known, Chauvet, to the youngest, Altimira and
Lascaux, spans a twenty thousand year period. Within this range, there is a
very visible continuity of artistic conventions - which is really ramarkable
when you consider the life-span of historical art conventions. Themes
certainly went through a radical change. Chauvet is full of rhinocerus
drawings, while the bison takes the limelight in the more modern examples.
Cracked me up when I saw penguins in the middle, Soultrean, period (see links
below). While drawning conventions and styles did change, more slowly that
themes, still there is clear evidence of a continuity that is based on the
concept of a culture keeping a specific tradition going over this enourmous
time period. I think when you consider the time span and the area, it's
pretty amazing that there is not more diversity in artistic examples.
But the data is adding up, and I think some speculation can be made, on the
strength of the evidence. There was a very interesting thread on alt.
archeaology about 6 months ago, led by a couple of French archaeologists who
were in the caves daily (seeing all the 'closed to the public stuff.') One
of the problems is that from the art books and web sites we only get to see
the superb example that have a lot of popular interest--since they look like
'art' as we understand it. But according to these researchers, one of the
forms that predominates is the 'splayed animal' often rendered with exquisite
anatomical detail.
You can almost extrapolate that these renderings were instructional, meant as
a visual aid to instruct the novice how to butcher an animal. If anyone here
has ever done any butchering, they will know there are several problem that
one must learn, such as knowing how to cut out testicles, intestines and
bladder, as well as musk glands, to avoid tainting the meat.
Another thing I've considered is some modern examples of tribal people making
a great deal about hunting experiences. I saw a docu on a Brazilian group
recently, and after the hunt they all gathered around the fire to discuss the
days adventure. They used an oratorial form of speech, accompanied with a
set of formal gestures and voice inflections, and each hunter recounted his
experience. You got to the point of realizing that all these men had been
together and had the same experience, so why the need to formalize the
experience by this oratorial ritual? Obviously the answer is that it was
important - there was great economic value to these people in showcasing
hunting knowledge and passing it on from generation to generation in a
rhetorical form. The thing that interested me, however, was that it was not
at all religious or 'magic' in nature. It was very rational, just as we
understand the term 'rational.'
Besides the animal representations, either in profile or splayed, the other
two main art forms were theriomorphic figures (human/animal combos) and
abstract symbols. The animal/human figures are generally not drawn with the
aesthetic finesse of the animals, though. This could be explained by the
fact that 'magic' only needs the right parts represented, and it's sort of
pointless to make the magic figure look great. A bird claw, the eye of the
Newt, and a couple of other dead things just haphazardly thrown together will
do the trick, in terms of function.
So one argument for the masterful treatment of the animals could be that
anatomical explicitness and accuracy was necessary to the function of the
representation, especially if the image was intended to convey useful
knowledge about butchering and/or hunting.
Another convention that spanned this entire time period was the use of the
form of the cave wall to enhance the three dimensionality of the animal
form. This is really interesting to me. It means the artist (and I suspect
that art skills were common in these cultures) would have to have had the
ability to mentally visualize the representation as she/he contemplated the
wall. Much like Michaelangelo 'saw' 'David' in that block of marble in
Florence. So this gives us some evidence of very substancial cognitive
powers, and also reinforces that there was a standardized set of 'schemata'
in these cultures about drawing a certain animal.
Erik Mattila
Chauvet - Aurignacian - 31kya
http://www.culture.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/gvpda-d.htm
Cosquer - Soultrean - 27 - 19 kya [believe it or not, there are penguins
here]
http://www.culture.fr/culture/archeosm/imatges/archeosm/img0013.htm
Lascaux - Magdelenian - 17 - 13 kya
http://www-sor.inria.fr/~pierre/lascaux/
Erik A. Mattila
> But we don't unless some bright spark invented a _workable_ time
> machine. Those paintings, pots, jars - whatever - they could
> very well be the byproduct of something else. What we're left is
> artifacts up for speculations.
But I think we've learned to live with science's 'uncertainty principle'
and 'probability' so we might gain some insight into aspects of the
meaning and use of ancient art forms. The really nice aspect of an
'informed speculation' is, when someone comes along and proves you
wrong, that you can say "Yes, it was just my informed speculation,"
without too great a loss of face.
I guess I'm saying that we ought to keep speculating, even faced with
the impossibility of truth. As Gorbichev said "True communism is
unattainable, but we should never-the-less strive to achieve it."
> That'd be assuming that essentially, human across the spatial,
> historical and geographical divide all share the same system of
> values and thoughts...
At the same time there are common human experiences that could sneak
across hermeneutic frontiers (the illegal aliens of philosophy,
heheehe). Ten fingers and toes, for example, which may have had great
influence on arithmatic. There are a host of items that we can state
with certainty about paleolithic cave art, ranging from the fact that it
appears in caves, depicted animals (among other things), and was
important to the people who produced it. So you could really chart out
a 'certainty table' and get an idea to the degree of speculation that is
bening made as you delve deeper into the mysteries.
On the other hand, something that is more accessable to us is the study
of those who have studied this art, and made statements about it. I'm
particularly interested in debunking the idea of so-called 'primitive
art' being an magical exercise, for example. So we can inagurate a
study on the history of science, and find out where archaeolotist and
art historians got these ideas from, and proceed to bash away. It's
quite fun, I think.
Erik Mattila
James Whitehead
<emat...@tomatoweb.com> writes
>On the other hand, something that is more accessable to us is the study
>of those who have studied this art, and made statements about it. I'm
>particularly interested in debunking the idea of so-called 'primitive
>art' being an magical exercise, for example. So we can inagurate a
>study on the history of science, and find out where archaeolotist and
>art historians got these ideas from, and proceed to bash away. It's
>quite fun, I think.
that is from the observers not the artists position - in the first case.
If you look at the renaissance you see the of artists, playwrights,
poets, in their own terms. That is they considered themselves as
practising with a cultural structure and framework. If you look
elsewhere for similar products then your being the *artist* here.
--
James Whitehead
Erik A. Mattila
Sorry, James, your point went right by me without stopping in to say
hello. Do you care to restate it, I'm not exactly sure what you mean?
Thanks,
Erik Mattila
James Whitehead
One can consider Art (or any activity) from two (at least) positions -
from that of the practitioner and from that of the spectator. Art in the
world - or at least modern art consists in the main of gallery's with
objects arranged in them through which people walk... etc. The creation
of these objects is quite a different matter. What is significant in
Modern art is that the act of creation by the artist. In fact its what
is significant in Art. That is the intention of the artists is
significant and not the purpose for which the art is then put. In other
words in a modernist understanding of art its the activity of the artist
- the thought process, the way the artist integrates and develops art
which is significant. Compare this to orthodox religious painting where
there's not really an artist - the importance here is the use of the
object. It's not expected to express any new insight which its creator
may have had. Now we can get a hold of po-mo art where once again its
not the artists practice which is significant but the public display and
reaction. Now as I said art - like science and history - is a modernist
object - pre-modernist art isn't art, and neither is post-modern art,
art.
There is a very significant contract from the renaissance where it
stipulates (paraphrased)... "anything which michaelangelo paints..."
whereas before such contracts would stipulate the setting, the figures,
the amount of gold etc. Once the Artist and the artists free will to
explore art is considered valuable, the craftsman, mason whatever become
Artists. And the products are considered of worth not because of the
intrinsic value of the material, or its complexity but because of the
fact its an expression of an Artist. Technique and audience becoming
subsidiary to the act of creation- which turns the craftsman into an
artist.
So the mistake is to see (modern)Art in terms of what's on the wall. You
can take a 5 year olds painting - or one done by a chimp and put it on
the wall next to a de Kooning and say that all three works are art, but
they are not- the de Kooning is an abstract expressionist work of art
because de Kooning created it as Art. If the curator now wishes to say
the chimp picture is art - then the curator is raising the proposition
about the status of chimp pictures - so the curator -not the chimp- is
the artist. (The chimp being no more an artist than the tube of paint)
Now Damien Hirst's shark, sheep and cows are nothing to do with art, he
sticks them in the gallery and gets some reactions - that's po-mo art -
sensation. Because its no longer involved with art its therefore quite
legitimate to say it isn't art. You can call it art in the Duchamp sense
- its not any help - because that's still not offering anything new - or
different in terms of human insight. (again having (new) insight was
considered part of the artistic genius)
Surely all *Novels* post Joyce and Wolf are contradictions.
--
James Whitehead
Ned Ludd
Ned:
>> I'd like to add one little thing there. I get very tired of people
>> saying "we don't know WHAT the Lascaux people meant by their wall
>> paintings or if they considered it art".
James:
> I think its certain that they didn't consider it as art, they are not
> signed and I doubt if they had a dealer network etc.
>
The great cathedrals of medieval times are not signed, and they are
art. The Book of Kells is not signed and did not have a dealer network,
and it is art. If Lascaux is not art, then we don't have much to talk
about - you can discuss this "dealer network/signed work" thing of yours,
but please give it a specific name which is more descriptive of what it
is, than the generic name "art".
Ned:
> This is crap. We have just a good an idea of why they did their art
> as we do of why we do our art.
James:
> They didn't do art - we project that back onto them, as they could say
> our watching television was a religion - or whatever they considered
> their paintings to be...
>
Then you can say that the 95% of art done by people living today is
not art, it's something we project onto them. (And, btw, watching
television has ALL the marks of a religion - people memorize the
litany [scripts/dialog] and recite it during the ritual, they worship
the gods [celebrities], they make pilgrimages to the sacred places,
etc. etc.)
>> Given that virtually all art in our
>> culture is created without payment, you can't say why we do art any
>> more than you can say why the Lascaux people did it.
>
> I think your confusing art with decoration, and decoration with totems,
> and religious artefacts... Art like the novel exists within a culture
> and within a time frame - The bible is not a novel, the Bhagavad Gita is
> not a political manifesto.. To assume the Lasaux people had art is to
> assume they had charted accountants, pet beauticians and telephone
> sanitisers.
>
I'm sorry I got into this discussion with you. We do not define "art"
anywhere near each other - not even in the same ball park.
>> Furthermore, anything you can assert about why the Lascaux people
>> may have done their art - religious ritual, mystical hunting rites,
>> puberty ceremonies, earning a living, making pretty things, etc. -
>> you can say about why we do art.
>
> That's not why Monet painted water lilies...
>
Oh by all means tell us why Monet painted water lilies.
Ned
Ned Ludd
>
Ned:
> Many people hang weapons on the wall as art...
>
James:
> As decoration, or put a Madonna on a shelf - to ward of evil spirits..
> or hang a clock on the wall...
>
>> ...Some weapons (guns and
>> swords) are produced as art, and can't be fired or used as
James:
> So a plastic kit of the Bismarck - is that art also...
>
Oh yes. Model airplanes, model boats, carved birds, etc. Go
back before Lascaux - People in the most ancient pre-historical
times made beads. Is bead-work art? Yes it is.
...
>James:
>> Depends on your definition here - 99% of adults do not do art in
>> any form after finishing school. Unless art is considered as the
>> choice of clothes - decoration of the living room. But that misses
>> the point of the modernists art practice - this is directed at
>> what art is... (or ideas of truth...)
Ned:
> No, I'd even allow a rigorous definition of art, ie. something
> separate, special, non-utilitarian, put in a place of honor to
> view as a treasured possession. Most art, almost all art, has
> always been done without payment, just because people want to
> do it.
James:
> What your doing above maybe once could be considered as art, but
> your definition would include a family snap from Blackpool.. a
> poster of posh spice ... even the American flag? What would it
> exclude?
>
Taking pictures is definitely art. Art is certainly more than
your definition of "Signed work/Dealer network". It encompasses
a vast range of human endeavor. It might even be difficult to
pick something that ABSOULTELY excludes the possibility of its
being art, because ultimately it depends on how you do it. Some
people said that the way Michael Jordan played basketball was an
art form. Maybe that pushes the definition. Maybe we could
agree that it has to be a "thing", but that would, of course,
exclude ballet, musical performance, performance ART (HA!). So,
you have to be very flexible in your approach to picking what
art is or isn't.
Ned:
> Some very expensive art nowadays is the crayon and pencil drawings
> of mentally disturbed street people. You probably don't call it art.
> Dealers pay thousands of dollars for it, it has a market, people buy
> it as an 'art investment', etc. etc. It is therefore art, whether
> you say so or not.
> Picky, picky.
James:
> They consider it art because the art world as appropriated it. It
> began with the cubists adopting primitive figures as art and naive
> paintings as art that it was brought into the domain of art. As
> anything and everything was considered art in the last throws of
> modernity then you can say this - but it says nothing, so you can
> say when I type on this keyboard I'm doing science... we run out
> of any meaning.
>
Poor James. Running out of meaning in a postmodern world. How
terribly shocking.
Ned
Ned Ludd
Ned:
> I'd like to add one little thing there. I get very tired of
> people saying "we don't know WHAT the Lascaux people meant by
> their wall paintings or if they considered it art".
Joyce:
> But we don't unless some bright spark invented a _workable_ time
> machine. Those paintings, pots, jars - whatever - they could
> very well be the byproduct of something else. What we're left is
> artifacts up for speculations.
>
YOU don't know why people who do un-paid art today do their art.
That's why your time machine isn't needed. You are just as much
in the dark about why most art is done today as you are about why
it was done 30,000 years ago.
Ned:
> This is crap. We have just a good an idea of why they did
> their art as we do of why we do our art. Given that virtually
> all art in our culture is created without payment, you can't say
> why we do art any more than you can say why the Lascaux people
> did it.
Joyce:
> How do we know whether the Lascaux people share the same notion
> of "art" as we do?
>
How do you know that the person who lives next door to you and
does art "shares the same notion of art" as you do? Read some of
the work of great composers or painters as to why they did a
certain work of theirs. Strauss (Richard) and Wagner had great
mathematical theories behind their choice of sometimes EVERY note
they put in their compositions. So they were using Mathematics
for their art. We don't call them mathematicians, do we? But we
do know that it was art.
Ned:
> Furthermore, anything you can assert about why the Lascaux
> people may have done their art - religious ritual, mystical
> hunting rites, puberty ceremonies, earning a living, making
> pretty things, etc. - you can say about why we do art.
Joyce:
> That'd be assuming that essentially, human across the spatial,
> historical and geographical divide all share the same system of
> values and thoughts...
>
I don't have to assume anything. I know art like you know art.
To claim you know art, and then say that the Lascaux paintings
AREN'T art, requires, imo, an enormous amount of self-deception
on your part. Lascaux is art. Tens of thousands of years before
that, the bead-work that aboriginal people did was art. If you
say it isn't, we don't have much to talk about.
Ned
Joyce
>But I think we've learned to live with science's 'uncertainty
principle'
>and 'probability' so we might gain some insight into aspects of
the
>meaning and use of ancient art forms. The really nice aspect
of an
>'informed speculation' is, when someone comes along and proves
you
>wrong, that you can say "Yes, it was just my informed
speculation,"
>without too great a loss of face.
<grin> Hey, that's a good one! I'll remember that.
>
>I guess I'm saying that we ought to keep speculating, even
faced with
>the impossibility of truth. As Gorbichev said "True communism
is
>unattainable, but we should never-the-less strive to achieve
it."
There is one issue I'm concerned with, and that is related to
the contestation of the speculations of truth/knowledge/fact.
The dominant hegemony gets the headstart, the minor voices
remain... minor.
>
>At the same time there are common human experiences that could
sneak
>across hermeneutic frontiers (the illegal aliens of philosophy,
>heheehe). Ten fingers and toes, for example, which may have
had great
>influence on arithmatic. There are a host of items that we can
state
>with certainty about paleolithic cave art, ranging from the
fact that it
>appears in caves, depicted animals (among other things), and was
>important to the people who produced it. So you could really
chart out
>a 'certainty table' and get an idea to the degree of
speculation that is
>bening made as you delve deeper into the mysteries.
Good point. Although I tend to see knowledge, culture and
practices to be memories collectivised and publicized into a
public social discourse and practice. In other words, we've dis-
membered the fragments in such a manner to fit into
an "acceptable" mode of remembering... do I make sense? Or is
that an anti-postmodernist question? ;-)
>
>On the other hand, something that is more accessable to us is
the study
>of those who have studied this art, and made statements about
it. I'm
>particularly interested in debunking the idea of so-
called 'primitive
>art' being an magical exercise, for example. So we can
inagurate a
>study on the history of science, and find out where
archaeolotist and
>art historians got these ideas from, and proceed to bash away.
It's
>quite fun, I think.
>
>Erik Mattila
>
Yes, to deconstruct the underlying discourses and to examine the
methodologies these cultural institutions had utilised instead
of holding them as the epitome of truth decoders...
Joyce
>Joyce:
>> But we don't unless some bright spark invented a _workable_
time
>> machine. Those paintings, pots, jars - whatever - they could
>> very well be the byproduct of something else. What we're left
is
>> artifacts up for speculations.
>>
>
> YOU don't know why people who do un-paid art today do their
art.
>That's why your time machine isn't needed. You are just as much
>in the dark about why most art is done today as you are about
why
>it was done 30,000 years ago.
It would be reductivistic to assume the slogan of "art of art's
sake" in this day and age when practice is consumption and our
social interactions are very much interlaced within a complex
matrix of power and discourse.
> How do you know that the person who lives next door to you and
>does art "shares the same notion of art" as you do? Read some
of
>the work of great composers or painters as to why they did a
>certain work of theirs. Strauss (Richard) and Wagner had great
>mathematical theories behind their choice of sometimes EVERY
note
>they put in their compositions. So they were using Mathematics
>for their art. We don't call them mathematicians, do we? But
we
>do know that it was art.
You are using a case study very much different from the Lascaux -
with the former, we know much more (or less ;-) of their
histories, methods and so on. With the latter, we have
less "tangible" evidence to base any kind of concrete theories.
In any case, whilst some might consider Wagner or Strauss to be
composers, others might simply think them as noise makers.
Definitions differ across different subjects. Please respect
that difference.
>
> I don't have to assume anything. I know art like you know
art.
>To claim you know art, and then say that the Lascaux paintings
>AREN'T art, requires, imo, an enormous amount of self-deception
>on your part. Lascaux is art. Tens of thousands of years
before
>that, the bead-work that aboriginal people did was art. If you
>say it isn't, we don't have much to talk about.
>
> Ned
>
I, I , I!!!!!..... Look Ned, relax. Have a break. Have a Kit
Kat. This is alt.postmodern, not alt.migraine. Nobody is out to
get you. I like entering into "rational" (for want of better
word) discussions with anyone, as I am sure you do, too.
Joyce
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
> The great cathedrals of medieval times are not signed, and they are
>art.
by the Victorians were left to rack-and-ruin.
> The Book of Kells is not signed and did not have a dealer network,
>and it is art. If Lascaux is not art, then we don't have much to talk
>about - you can discuss this "dealer network/signed work" thing of yours,
>but please give it a specific name which is more descriptive of what it
>is, than the generic name "art".
trait of modernity is the inability to see other times and cultures not
in their terms but as a reflection of - or having a latency of
modernity.
Your definition of art can be pushed until everything is art - which has
no meaning at all. This was a consequence again of modern art theory, on
the one hand less and less is art - on the other more and more is,
minimalism Vs pop. Ultimately they both equate to the same, zero and
infinity, from the artists point of view - and artists make art - you
either can do nothing or anything.
>not art, it's something we project onto them. (And, btw, watching
>television has ALL the marks of a religion - people memorize the
>litany [scripts/dialog] and recite it during the ritual, they worship
>the gods [celebrities], they make pilgrimages to the sacred places,
>etc. etc.)
isn't a fish - you can choose to call it a fish - as in anything that
swims in the sea is a fish, my criteria is one which I understand as
being part of western modernist tradition. I'm actually saying that 100%
of what is done today that's called art isn't art. And I'm saying why I
think this is so. The other alternative seems to be that 100% of what
100% of the population do is (or can be considered as) art.
>anywhere near each other - not even in the same ball park.
feelings about po-mo *art*, I couldn't *get it* which is due to my
mistake in thinking it to be art. You see in part the modernist paradigm
was truth and beauty.. (being the same thing), and an analytical method,
which arrived at the idea in the late 19 c of light being the
predominant feature of visual representation - as opposed to any
symbolic or physical properties, which is why Monet found the water
lilies so conducive to exploring the painting of light - which was in
arts terms more realistic than the attempt to create the illusion of
solid objects.
>>
>> That's not why Monet painted water lilies...
>>
>
> Oh by all means tell us why Monet painted water lilies.
>
> Ned
>
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
> Taking pictures is definitely art.
everywhere... and once caught can't wait to photograph their subjects.
Nassa are making artworks using the Hubble telescope and other very
expensive space probes - the CIA do art big time.
> Poor James. Running out of meaning in a postmodern world. How
>terribly shocking.
>
> Ned
I must admit that I find it hard at times to get my head around PO-MO
but then realise its not that game!
--
James Whitehead
Ned Ludd
Ned:
> I don't have to assume anything. I know art like you know
> art. To claim you know art, and then say that the Lascaux
> paintings AREN'T art, requires, imo, an enormous amount of
> self-deception on your part. Lascaux is art. Tens of
> thousands of years before that, the bead-work that aboriginal
> people did was art. If you say it isn't, we don't have much
> to talk about.
Joyce:
> I, I , I!!!!!..... Look Ned, relax. Have a break. Have a Kit
> Kat. This is alt.postmodern, not alt.migraine. Nobody is out
> to get you. I like entering into "rational" (for want of
> better word) discussions with anyone, as I am sure you do,
> too.
>
Ok, here's rational: If you know what art is, you can
evaluate whether or not the Lascaux paintings are art. If
you don't, you can't.
If you define art like James does, which goes (please correct
me if I'm wrong) something like this: "Art is a tangible creation
of an independent creator with a free mandate to create whatever
he/she wishes, unbound by specifications of setting, figures, and
materials, and who considers him/her self to be practicing within
a [presumably artistic] cultural structure and framework."
This leaves out, imo, an enormous amount of art. In addition
to being unable to evaluate the Lascaux paintings (because you
don't know if the artists considered themselves to be part of
the 'art industry'), it also rejects even earlier art, such as
bead-work, and relegates it to 'craft' or something. Well, when
I look at ancient bead-work, I see art. James apparently doesn't.
Fine. I think, however, that 'art' is a useful designator for
a broad range of things that include Lascaux paintings and ancient
bead-work. The more rigorous definition of James belongs, imo,
to a small subset of art, which should have a designator of its
own. Perhaps, using the elements of his definition, it might be
called, 'freely-inspired, marketed art'.
Ned
Ned Ludd
Ned:
>> The great cathedrals of medieval times are not signed, and they
>> are art.
James:
> Not when they were built - they were cathedrals - and until
> appropriated by the Victorians were left to rack-and-ruin.
>
I think you would have an impossible task convincing anyone
from then or now, that the gargoyles and stained glass of those
great cathedrals were not art.
>> The Book of Kells is not signed and did not have a dealer network,
>> and it is art. If Lascaux is not art, then we don't have much to
>> talk about - you can discuss this "dealer network/signed work"
>> thing of yours, but please give it a specific name which is more
>> descriptive of what it is, than the generic name "art".
>
> Elsewhere I've stated that art was a product of Modernism - and another
> trait of modernity is the inability to see other times and cultures not
> in their terms but as a reflection of - or having a latency of
> modernity.
>
Fine. But then you have to call all those things that I listed
previously as something other than art. And 'craft' does not cut it.
It's more than craft. It's inspired, very creative, very new and
different, very unique and very valued and treasured.
> Your definition of art can be pushed until everything is art - which
> has no meaning at all. This was a consequence again of modern art
> theory, on the one hand less and less is art - on the other more and
> more is, minimalism Vs pop. Ultimately they both equate to the same,
> zero and infinity, from the artists point of view - and artists make
> art - you either can do nothing or anything.
>
And your definition is so restrictive as to exclude much of what
people refer to, and have referred to throughout history, as art.
...
>> I'm sorry I got into this discussion with you. We do not define "art"
>> anywhere near each other - not even in the same ball park.
>
> I have enjoyed the discussion - in fact its helped me refine some
> feelings about po-mo *art*, I couldn't *get it* which is due to my
> mistake in thinking it to be art. You see in part the modernist
> paradigm was truth and beauty.. (being the same thing),
>
Truth is not beautiful; beauty is not true. (Does that help?)
> ...and an analytical method, which arrived at the idea in the late
> 19 c of light being the predominant feature of visual representation -
> as opposed to any symbolic or physical properties, which is why Monet
> found the water lilies so conducive to exploring the painting of
> light - which was in arts terms more realistic than the attempt to
> create the illusion of solid objects.
>
Well that's a nice stab in the dark. But maybe he painted water
lilies so he could hang out in the gazebo in Giverny and screw his
mistress, and just made up all that 'theory of light' business to
camouflage his black intent.
Ned
Joyce
> Ok, here's rational: If you know what art is, you can
>evaluate whether or not the Lascaux paintings are art. If
>you don't, you can't.
I only know the various definitions of art, which is worrying,
because it'd seem to me that to follow any one of them would be
to exclude others.
>
> If you define art like James does, which goes (please correct
>me if I'm wrong) something like this: "Art is a tangible
creation
>of an independent creator with a free mandate to create whatever
>he/she wishes, unbound by specifications of setting, figures,
and
>materials, and who considers him/her self to be practicing
within
>a [presumably artistic] cultural structure and framework."
>
> This leaves out, imo, an enormous amount of art. In addition
>to being unable to evaluate the Lascaux paintings (because you
>don't know if the artists considered themselves to be part of
>the 'art industry'), it also rejects even earlier art, such as
>bead-work, and relegates it to 'craft' or something. Well, when
>I look at ancient bead-work, I see art. James apparently
doesn't.
Ah, I think I see what you mean. You are taking an inclusive
stand, one which critiques against the dominant norms and ideals
of what constitutes "art".
>
> Fine. I think, however, that 'art' is a useful designator for
>a broad range of things that include Lascaux paintings and
ancient
>bead-work. The more rigorous definition of James belongs, imo,
>to a small subset of art, which should have a designator of its
>own. Perhaps, using the elements of his definition, it might be
>called, 'freely-inspired, marketed art'.
>
> Ned
>
I'll be abstract and try to link art with the notion
of "artifice" - we know that the 17-18th western philosophers
advocated a secular authority based on the human subjects - the
body politics - to be representative of God's power. Hence human
(or more specifically, the masculine body) as work of art, or
artifice. This I find problematic, since it excludes woman. Or
rather, women as foreign body, rejected on account of their
corporeal specificity. This goes along with "foreigners",
slaves, minors, and the subalterns.
To cut my story short, I see art as intrinsic with the modernist
politics and regulations, which is why I am ambivalent about it.
Joyce Wu
Ned Ludd
Ned:
>> Ok, here's rational: If you know what art is, you can
>> evaluate whether or not the Lascaux paintings are art. If
>> you don't, you can't.
Joyce:
> I only know the various definitions of art, which is worrying,
> because it'd seem to me that to follow any one of them would
> be to exclude others.
>
Sure. You just want to be sure to exclude what needs to be
excluded.
Ned:
>If you define art like James does, which goes (please correct
>me if I'm wrong) something like this: "Art is a tangible creation
>of an independent creator with a free mandate to create whatever
>he/she wishes, unbound by specifications of setting, figures, and
>materials, and who considers him/her self to be practicing within
>a [presumably artistic] cultural structure and framework."
>This leaves out, imo, an enormous amount of art. In addition
>to being unable to evaluate the Lascaux paintings (because you
>don't know if the artists considered themselves to be part of
>the 'art industry'), it also rejects even earlier art, such as
>bead-work, and relegates it to 'craft' or something. Well, when
>I look at ancient bead-work, I see art. James apparently doesn't.
Joyce:
> Ah, I think I see what you mean. You are taking an inclusive
> stand, one which critiques against the dominant norms and ideals
> of what constitutes "art".
>
I hope not. I merely want the word to communicate a commonly
shared set of preconceptions about the nature and attributes of art.
When someone says the Lascaux paintings aren't art because the
artists didn't see themselves as artists, then that excludes an
awful lot of what I consider to be art from being art.
Ned:
>Fine. I think, however, that 'art' is a useful designator for
>a broad range of things that include Lascaux paintings and ancient
>bead-work. The more rigorous definition of James belongs, imo,
>to a small subset of art, which should have a designator of its
>own. Perhaps, using the elements of his definition, it might be
>called, 'freely-inspired, marketed art'.
Joyce:
> I'll be abstract and try to link art with the notion
> of "artifice" - we know that the 17-18th western philosophers
> advocated a secular authority based on the human subjects - the
> body politics - to be representative of God's power. Hence human
> (or more specifically, the masculine body) as work of art, or
> artifice. This I find problematic, since it excludes woman.
>
What? You can't possibly mean the physical body? This is possibly
the most glorified artistic object in the greater history of humankind,
from the Willendorf Venus to the fundamental icon of all western
civilization nowadays, which is a skinny teen-age girl.
> Or rather, women as foreign body, rejected on account of their
> corporeal specificity. This goes along with "foreigners",
> slaves, minors, and the subalterns.
>
Sooo... how was the flight in from Mars?
> To cut my story short, I see art as intrinsic with the modernist
> politics and regulations, which is why I am ambivalent about it.
>
Ok, Joyce, I'll read your "Chapter Four: The Internet and Modernity",
but I really think you got a lot of 'splaining to do!
Ned
Joyce
>excluded.
Yup, I'm a hardlined modernist highbrow who thinks the
venacularized version of art to be filthy acts of intellectual
defilement and should be banished into the eternal realm of Hell.
[I'm joking, by the way]
>
>Joyce:
>> Ah, I think I see what you mean. You are taking an inclusive
>> stand, one which critiques against the dominant norms and
ideals
>> of what constitutes "art".
>>
>
> I hope not. I merely want the word to communicate a commonly
>shared set of preconceptions about the nature and attributes of
art.
Ofcourse you're entitled to your beliefs, but I'd like to point
out that in the western context, art is/was a regulatory system
which governs the notion of taste and aesthetic appreciation.
People go to art galleries to reinforce the canonical
construction of the big gums - umm, I mean guns - anyway, as
well as the aura and myth of their artistic status.
>
> When someone says the Lascaux paintings aren't art because the
>artists didn't see themselves as artists, then that excludes an
>awful lot of what I consider to be art from being art.
>
I never said Lascaux paintings aren't art. I am saying that we
don't know what these people assume what art is. It could be
very different from our understanding. Remember
Manet's "Olympia"? At the time, some said it's a pornographic
trash, others extoll it to no end. In the end, everyone sat down
and agreed it's art - so I see art as arbitrairily decided.
>
> What? You can't possibly mean the physical body? This is
possibly
>the most glorified artistic object in the greater history of
humankind,
>from the Willendorf Venus to the fundamental icon of all western
>civilization nowadays, which is a skinny teen-age girl.
No, there is a distinction between the construction of the
masculine body of politics which underpins the notion of (male)
subjectivity, and the material, feminine body which is created
as binary opposition against the said male subjects.
>
> Sooo... how was the flight in from Mars?
>
A very smooth fligh, thank you. They showed us a document on the
various oddities of human behaviour and psychology, so we came
prepared.
At this point am I suppose to say: "Take me to your leader?"!?
>
> Ok, Joyce, I'll read your "Chapter Four: The Internet and
Modernity",
>but I really think you got a lot of 'splaining to do!
>
> Ned
I think that's Lev Lafayette's thesis you're talking about. I'm
still an undergrad.
Joyce
Erik A. Mattila
Thanks, James, it's clear to me now...
> I'll try to give it another go -
> One can consider Art (or any activity) from two (at least) positions -
> from that of the practitioner and from that of the spectator. Art in the
> world - or at least modern art consists in the main of gallery's with
> objects arranged in them through which people walk... etc. The creation
> of these objects is quite a different matter. What is significant in
> Modern art is that the act of creation by the artist. In fact its what
> is significant in Art. That is the intention of the artists is
> significant and not the purpose for which the art is then put. In other
> words in a modernist understanding of art its the activity of the artist
> - the thought process, the way the artist integrates and develops art
> which is significant. Compare this to orthodox religious painting where
> there's not really an artist - the importance here is the use of the
> object. It's not expected to express any new insight which its creator
> may have had. Now we can get a hold of po-mo art where once again its
> not the artists practice which is significant but the public display and
> reaction. Now as I said art - like science and history - is a modernist
> object - pre-modernist art isn't art, and neither is post-modern art,
> art.
Is it fair to say you're putting it in terms of "production and consumption."
Maybe someone here can help me with this - I've been trying to remember who
wrote the following phrase. It may have been Meyer Shapiro, but I'm not
sure. At any rate, here goes:
"Theories of modern art are theories of consumption disquised as theories of
production." But the idea behind it is that our ideas of the 'creative act'
could be thought of as, well, distorted. The idea is that an artist, or even
a 'modern artist' does not so much 'create' material as she/he recycles
material that already exists in culture. There are some advantages to this
point of view - it is easier to explain how art can 'state its message' and be
intelligible. The disadvantage may be that this sort of idea tends to subvert
the valorization of art and artists in our society. I say 'disadvantage'
because this valorization process may be very important to 'art' and to
culture.
I don't agree with you at all about the anomynity of artists prior to the
Early Modern era. What you're observing is that artists didn't sign their
works. Throughout the Medieval period, several artists were known entities
and sought after by variouss patrons. One very intriguing game of Art
Historians is to discover these individuals. In Greek and Roman art we have a
long list of art superstars, of course, but even on the more 'craft' front we
have examples of authorship of Greek Vases, and written records to back it
up. I guess we can go all the way back to the Architect Imhotep. Somewhere
around on my computer files I have a very lovely Aztec poem called "The
Artist" which is basically a commentary about how a true artist enhances
everything while the 'carrion artist' defrauds people. If it appeared in Art
Forum next month few would notice that it was written 700 years ago by a
people who are thought not to have had a concept of 'art.'
>
> There is a very significant contract from the renaissance where it
> stipulates (paraphrased)... "anything which michaelangelo paints..."
> whereas before such contracts would stipulate the setting, the figures,
> the amount of gold etc. Once the Artist and the artists free will to
> explore art is considered valuable, the craftsman, mason whatever become
> Artists. And the products are considered of worth not because of the
> intrinsic value of the material, or its complexity but because of the
> fact its an expression of an Artist. Technique and audience becoming
> subsidiary to the act of creation- which turns the craftsman into an
> artist.
I haven't seen any Bounarotti contracts, but I did read one between a church
group and Fra Lippo Lippi. It was very contentious, since both parties wanted
to use Lapis, but the patron wanted the cost to come out of Lippi's stipend.
But the point is that Lapis was very expensive in the 15th century, and there
were no competitors in the way of pigments. You either had a nice blue which
you paid through your teeth for, or you settled for some bluish pigment
(usually greenish, actually). But these negotiations or the use value of the
finished product had little to do with the creative life of Michaelangleo or
Lippi, just as it did not with pre-moderns like Giotto or .... well, just
consider this paragraph from Vasari:
--"The Gaddi and Buffalmacco
Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists
AMONG the old painters who were much alarmed by the praises so deservedly
bestowed upon Cimabue and Giotto was one Margaritone, a painter of Arezzo, who
having held a high rank among those who practised the art in that unhappy age
became aware that the works of these new men would almost entirely eclipse his
fame. He had been considered excellent by the other painters of his time who
worked in the old Greek style, and had painted many pictures in Arezzo, both
in tempera and fresco. For the church of S. Margherita he painted a work on
canvas stretched on a panel, in which are many pictures containing little
figures representing stories from the lives of our Lady and the saints; and
the picture is noteworthy not only because the little figures are painted so
well that they seem to be miniatures, but also because it is a marvel to see a
work on canvas that has been preserved three
hundred years He made a great number of pictures all over the city, and having
painted on wood a large crucifix in the Greek style, he sent it to Florence to
the famous citizen Farinata degli Uberti, because he had, among his other
great works, saved his country from danger and ruin. Afterwards he gave
himself to sculpture with so much application that he succeeded much better
than he had in painting. He died at the age of seventyseven, disgusted, it is
said, with life, because he had seen the age change so much and new artists
obtain honour. "--
> So the mistake is to see (modern)Art in terms of what's on the wall. You
> can take a 5 year olds painting - or one done by a chimp and put it on
> the wall next to a de Kooning and say that all three works are art, but
> they are not- the de Kooning is an abstract expressionist work of art
> because de Kooning created it as Art. If the curator now wishes to say
> the chimp picture is art - then the curator is raising the proposition
> about the status of chimp pictures - so the curator -not the chimp- is
> the artist. (The chimp being no more an artist than the tube of paint)
I can actually tell the difference between a Bonzo and a de Kooning, believe
it or not. I realize that there are people who cannot - but is this an
indictment of Modern Art or and indictment of the Public Education System?
> Now Damien Hirst's shark, sheep and cows are nothing to do with art, he
> sticks them in the gallery and gets some reactions - that's po-mo art -
> sensation. Because its no longer involved with art its therefore quite
> legitimate to say it isn't art. You can call it art in the Duchamp sense
> - its not any help - because that's still not offering anything new - or
> different in terms of human insight. (again having (new) insight was
> considered part of the artistic genius)
>
> Surely all *Novels* post Joyce and Wolf are contradictions.
> --
> James Whitehead
But seriously, I see your points. But I also see that the term 'art' is
whatever we might want it to mean, for any of a series of motives. Anyone who
has a very explicit definition for 'art' will naturally champion that cause,
and what can you say? Since it's such a vague term to begin with, there are
few grounds to challenge a particular individual's use of the term. For this
reason I don't even like to use the term in discussions of this nature, other
than understanding that it refers to a particular type of human activity in
broad, general terms. So I have no problem saying that Lascaux drawings are
'art' even though I know they were executed for reasons that are not the same
as a Ferdinand Leger drawing.
Erik Mattila
Erik A. Mattila
> I'm sorry I got into this discussion with you. We do not define "art"
> anywhere near each other - not even in the same ball park.
>
> >> Furthermore, anything you can assert about why the Lascaux people
> >> may have done their art - religious ritual, mystical hunting rites,
> >> puberty ceremonies, earning a living, making pretty things, etc. -
> >> you can say about why we do art.
> >
> > That's not why Monet painted water lilies...
> >
>
> Oh by all means tell us why Monet painted water lilies.
>
> Ned
Ned, the absolute best definition of 'art' that I've ever read was in Edward
Sapir's old book "Culture, Language and Personalty" published in the 50s. In
an essay called "Culture: Genuine and Spurrious" he used the term 'art' to
illustrate the problems with understanding the term 'culture.' He wrote
words to the effect that "the only thing that people agree about the meaning
of 'art' is that is something we like. So when we go to an art gallery and
see something we don't like, we don't say 'then I don't like art' but we say
'this isn't art.'"
I've always appreciated that observation.
A more technical treatement of the issue can be found in Plato's "Ion."
After much debate between Socrates and Ion, Socrates succeeds in
demonstrating that what we value about works of art is not 'part of art' at
all. Socates describes this as a metaphysical quality, an inspiration that
travels down a chain from heaven to the poet. "Art" is merely a matter of
fixing chariots well.
The thing about arguing whether Lascaux paintings are 'art' or not seems
pointless, in my opinion. If what we mean by 'art' is what happened since
the Italian Renaissance, we can say with confidence that Lascaux isn't art.
If we view 'art' as a long standing tradition with humans to make marks that
represent things that have been seen or thought of, 'visual culture' if you
will, then there's really no problem with regarding Alley Ooop and Pablo
Picasso in the same breath. Ernst Cassirer proposes 'art' as one of
humanity's major 'symbolic forms,' along with myth and language, so that in
itself suggests that the use of this form is extremely ancient.
Erik Mattila
Erik A. Mattila
> There is one issue I'm concerned with, and that is related to
> the contestation of the speculations of truth/knowledge/fact.
> The dominant hegemony gets the headstart, the minor voices
> remain... minor.
I concur. If were going to discuss art, or "Modern Art," leaving out
the authority of the art museum and capitalism guarantees a false view,
in my opinion. A few years back PBS showed a wonderful documentary --
"Bill Moyers goes to Florence." As you know, Florence is crawling with
a huge host of art historians at any given time -- it's sort of art
history's Mecca. As Moyers interviewed these people, just about all
went on and on about the 'magic' of the works of art, their intrinsic
properties that expressed the artists soul and genius, creativity and
all that. But Moyers also interview Umberto Eco. Eco said "Nonsene -
the only thing 'invented' during the Renaissance was money making."
When you study Italian Renaissance art, you inevitably encounter
knowledge about the huge attrition rate of art produced in this period.
Less than five percent has survived, and that which has survived did so
because it was in the collections of those who were wealthy enough to
preserve it. So what we have left to view reflects the taste and
interets of the rich and powerful, and that 'stands' for Italian
Renaissance. The truth of the matter was that most of the art produced
in this place and time would be regarded as Kitsch by our standards, but
this is the art that interested the rank and file Italians at the time.
It's important to see this, I think, because if you pick up any text
which purports to be "The Art of Mankind" and count the pages devoted to
each of the subcategories, you will find that the Italian Renaissance
occupys the lions share of attention, so, by extention, is presented to
be the standard by which all art is measured - all art in the world.
It's so hilarious. This art wasn't even the main art produced in this
period. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies!
> Good point. Although I tend to see knowledge, culture and
> practices to be memories collectivised and publicized into a
> public social discourse and practice. In other words, we've dis-
> membered the fragments in such a manner to fit into
> an "acceptable" mode of remembering... do I make sense? Or is
> that an anti-postmodernist question? ;-)
No, it makes sense to me. I may be misreading you though, but there's
an undertone to you statement that saying 'there's nothing to be done
about it' to me. Personally, I think that 'the resistance' has a bright
future.
In the context of this thread, then, I like to look at ancient art as
something that is discontinuous, or disjunct, from modern authority, or
hegemonic practices. So much of what we think 'looks good' in art is
just a matter of being used to seeing it, rather than some great
aesthetic epiphamy. I really enjoy looking at things that I don't think
'look good' long enough until they do 'look good.'
> Yes, to deconstruct the underlying discourses and to examine the
> methodologies these cultural institutions had utilised instead
> of holding them as the epitome of truth decoders...
>
> Joyce Wu
I came across a paper published in "Current Anthropology" in 1988, and
the author was arguing that Lascaux, Altimira etc. art was motivated by
'art for art's sake -- in contrast to the mystico-ritual phantasm of
anthropologists. Writer's of paleoindian art always cite the mysticism
of 'blood' when they encounter hematite. It seems idiotic to me. Why
can't cave man Indians just enjoy the color red like we do?
Erik Mattila
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
>Ned:
>>> The great cathedrals of medieval times are not signed, and they
>>> are art.
>
>James:
>> Not when they were built - they were cathedrals - and until
>> appropriated by the Victorians were left to rack-and-ruin.
>>
>
> I think you would have an impossible task convincing anyone
>from then or now, that the gargoyles and stained glass of those
>great cathedrals were not art.
- and these were never considered by their makers as art, or better pubs
(bars - US) often have polished shell cases. What's going on here is
the appropriation of something as art. The medievalists didn't think
landscape a worthy subject - that landscape became one was a result of
the rise in secular romanticism. Again a physical - not holy(other)
belief in what truth was. Empirical and scientific. Modernity is based
on the premise that physical reality is significant. (Medievealism
disdained the flesh.) The Lake District is now thought beautiful, you
can put this down to Wordsworth, before this it was thought ugly. Now
cities (beloved by Johnson) are thought ugly. An even clearer example,
at one time when common folk worked outside - and hence were tanned,
white skin was vogue, with industrialization the plebs were shut in
factories and down mines, so tanned skins became the sign of affluence -
and fashionable. I'm sure I said this elsewhere but I'm not saying the
cathedrals are not art - but that they were not built as such, the
creator of the Lake District's beauty was not the glaciers which built
it but the ideas in the heads of the English romantics. With late
modernity the consideration of what was or could be art grew ever
larger, - primitive art, naive art, folk art, industrial art, the art of
the motor car... until it engulfs everything. As Don Judd said - "If you
call it art its art". And as another conceptual artist said -"Everything
now, in the past and future..." was claimed as art.
>previously as something other than art. And 'craft' does not cut it.
>It's more than craft. It's inspired, very creative, very new and
>different, very unique and very valued and treasured.
something better - like pop stars calling themselves artists! From my
perspective though that's fine you can call yourself anything you want,
Prince? With the collapse of modernity came the collapse of any
legitimacy to say what is or isn't art.
>people refer to, and have referred to throughout history, as art.
in art schools. First year you drew Greek casts - then the life model
then were allowed to use colour. This (drawing based) idea was still
around in the 60s.
>
> Truth is not beautiful; beauty is not true. (Does that help?)
I think you mistake me - I'm offering the modernist aesthetic- as truth
to materials is beauty, from Michaelangelo to Carl Andre its been
realism that underpinned art- as it did science - history and
literature....
>
>> ...and an analytical method, which arrived at the idea in the late
>> 19 c of light being the predominant feature of visual representation -
>> as opposed to any symbolic or physical properties, which is why Monet
>> found the water lilies so conducive to exploring the painting of
>> light - which was in arts terms more realistic than the attempt to
>> create the illusion of solid objects.
>>
>
> Well that's a nice stab in the dark. But maybe he painted water
>lilies so he could hang out in the gazebo in Giverny and screw his
>mistress, and just made up all that 'theory of light' business to
>camouflage his black intent.
>
> Ned
"Why all our art treasures of today are only the dug-up commonplaces of
three or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is any real intrinsic
beauty in the old soup plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we
prize so now... and the pink shepherds and yellow shepherdesses that we
hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they
understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the
eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried.
Will it be the same in the future? Will rows of our willow-pattern
dinner-plates be ranged above chimney-pieces of the great in the years
2000 and odd? ...That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my
furnished lodgings... friends jeer at it and even my landlady herself
has no admiration for it....But in 200 years time it is more than
probable that that dog will be dug up from somewhere or other minus its
legs,...And people will pass it round and admire it. We shall be
referred to lovingly as 'those grand old artists that flourished in the
nineteenth century, and produced those china dogs'.
The 'sampler' that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of
as 'tapestry of the Victorian era', and be almost priceless. The blue-
and-white mugs of the present-day road-side inn will be hunted up, all
cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold... travellers
from Japan will buy up the 'Presents from Ramsgate', and Souvenirs of
Margate' that may have escaped destruction, and take then back to Jedo
as ancient English curios." Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a boat -to say
nothing of the dog!
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<emat...@tomatoweb.com> writes
>
>Is it fair to say you're putting it in terms of "production and consumption."
it was taught.
>wrote the following phrase. It may have been Meyer Shapiro, but I'm not
>sure. At any rate, here goes:
>
>"Theories of modern art are theories of consumption disquised as theories of
>production." But the idea behind it is that our ideas of the 'creative act'
>could be thought of as, well, distorted. The idea is that an artist, or even
>a 'modern artist' does not so much 'create' material as she/he recycles
>material that already exists in culture. There are some advantages to this
>point of view - it is easier to explain how art can 'state its message' and be
>intelligible. The disadvantage may be that this sort of idea tends to subvert
>the valorization of art and artists in our society. I say 'disadvantage'
>because this valorization process may be very important to 'art' and to
>culture.
>
>I don't agree with you at all about the anomynity of artists prior to the
>Early Modern era. What you're observing is that artists didn't sign their
>works. Throughout the Medieval period, several artists were known entities
>and sought after by variouss patrons. One very intriguing game of Art
>Historians is to discover these individuals.
different to skilled craftsman. This is where we differentiate art -
artist - in the same way as Scientists became differentiated from
Alchemists, and Astronomers from astrologers, primarily a belief in the
value of individual exploration of the physical world as a source of
truth which was of worth. This was a slow process which (re)-ermeges
with the renaissance - but took a few hundred years to develop. Newton
practised Alchemy, and Einstein thought God would not play dice...
> In Greek and Roman art we have a
>long list of art superstars,
> of course, but even on the more 'craft' front we
>have examples of authorship of Greek Vases, and written records to back it
>up. I guess we can go all the way back to the Architect Imhotep. Somewhere
>around on my computer files I have a very lovely Aztec poem called "The
>Artist" which is basically a commentary about how a true artist enhances
>everything while the 'carrion artist' defrauds people. If it appeared in Art
>Forum next month few would notice that it was written 700 years ago by a
>people who are thought not to have had a concept of 'art.'
>
[....]
>-
>
>> So the mistake is to see (modern)Art in terms of what's on the wall. You
>> can take a 5 year olds painting - or one done by a chimp and put it on
>> the wall next to a de Kooning and say that all three works are art, but
>> they are not- the de Kooning is an abstract expressionist work of art
>> because de Kooning created it as Art. If the curator now wishes to say
>> the chimp picture is art - then the curator is raising the proposition
>> about the status of chimp pictures - so the curator -not the chimp- is
>> the artist. (The chimp being no more an artist than the tube of paint)
>
>I can actually tell the difference between a Bonzo and a de Kooning, believe
>it or not. I realize that there are people who cannot - but is this an
>indictment of Modern Art or and indictment of the Public Education System?
[..]
>
>
>But seriously, I see your points. But I also see that the term 'art' is
>whatever we might want it to mean, for any of a series of motives.
Exactly! That's the rub...
> Anyone who
>has a very explicit definition for 'art' will naturally champion that cause,
>and what can you say? Since it's such a vague term to begin with, there are
>few grounds to challenge a particular individual's use of the term.
But at one time it wasn't, it was as clear as what is history or what
is science.
> For this
>reason I don't even like to use the term in discussions of this nature, other
>than understanding that it refers to a particular type of human activity in
>broad, general terms. So I have no problem saying that Lascaux drawings are
>'art' even though I know they were executed for reasons that are not the same
>as a Ferdinand Leger drawing.
Again this is fine from the observers point of view - but from the
practitioners you have no foundation from which to create art. Or you
have any foundation. This prevents you from getting going as an artist.
In the world of post-art-artists its a cultural position which validates
- not the activity, and not the object. Tracey Ermin is considered an
*artist* because of her cultural position - training - contacts etc.
What she produces is irrelevant, like the dead fish in the tank... its
saying nothing ... it means ... nothing.. and there's no intention
behind it to... [of significance] It was a mistake to say on looking at
a modernist work "well make of it what you will" ... but this is exactly
the case with post-modern work.
"Postmodern art - not just painting and sculpture but also architecture,
music, literature, drama etc. main features are a lack of depth and of
meaning. There is a diversity of forms and content. The art critic Suzy
Gablik gave a talk in Los Angeles where she spoke about the
multidimensional and slippery space of Postmodernism where anything
goes with anything, like a game without rules. Floating images maintain
no relationship with anything at all, and meaning becomes detachable
like the keys on a key ring. Dissociated and decontextualized, they
slide past one another failing to link up into a coherent sequence.
Their fluctuating but not reciprocal interactions are unable to fix
meaning.
Adverts and pop videos are good examples of postmodern art. Using
operatic arias to promote football matches, classical music to persuade
us to fly a particular airline, watching Pavarotti in the Park - there
is no longer a distinction between high and popular culture 'anything
goes with anything, like a game without rules'."
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
[..]
>
> Ok, here's rational: If you know what art is, you can
>evaluate whether or not the Lascaux paintings are art. If
>you don't, you can't.
>
>me if I'm wrong) something like this: "Art is a tangible creation
>of an independent creator with a free mandate to create whatever
>he/she wishes, unbound by specifications of setting, figures, and
>materials, and who considers him/her self to be practicing within
>a [presumably artistic] cultural structure and framework."
'anything goes'. Art was about coming to terms with reality which is
posited realist - therefore formalist terms. It was reality - a belief
in it - which is the hallmark of modernism. Art, Language, Science were
real, look at how metaphysics has crept back into science, and
philosophy has lost its desire for truth and meaning.
> This leaves out, imo, an enormous amount of art. In addition
>to being unable to evaluate the Lascaux paintings (because you
>don't know if the artists considered themselves to be part of
>the 'art industry'), it also rejects even earlier art, such as
>bead-work, and relegates it to 'craft' or something. Well, when
>I look at ancient bead-work, I see art. James apparently doesn't.
have I said? Nothing, or at best I like them? But I can imagine art
which I don't like. King Lear - its not a fun experience - but I suppose
should be considered art? If you come up with any definition which
excludes something as not being art then I (as did Duchamp) simply put
the thing in a gallery. That's the blow that the ready-made dealt to
artists, it stops you dead!
>
> Fine. I think, however, that 'art' is a useful designator for
>a broad range of things that include Lascaux paintings and ancient
>bead-work. The more rigorous definition of James belongs, imo,
>to a small subset of art, which should have a designator of its
>own. Perhaps, using the elements of his definition, it might be
>called, 'freely-inspired, marketed art'.
>
Your missing my point here - there's no workable definition... value has
become an act of faith - I can measure the value of sterling in terms of
the dollar, but there is no intrinsic value. I can trade in monetary
terms but cant see how to do that in value judgements about art?
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<aleesas_at...@yahoo.com.invalid> writes
>>
>I'll be abstract and try to link art with the notion
>of "artifice" - we know that the 17-18th western philosophers
>advocated a secular authority based on the human subjects - the
>body politics - to be representative of God's power. Hence human
>(or more specifically, the masculine body) as work of art, or
>rather, women as foreign body, rejected on account of their
>corporeal specificity. This goes along with "foreigners",
>slaves, minors, and the subalterns.
>
>politics and regulations, which is why I am ambivalent about it.
I think this is spot on - and when it includes it has to make the
foreigner become westernised - the first thing missionary's (of
modernity) do is put western clothes on the natives (symbolically as
well as in practice) and so begin the process of humiliation.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
> What? You can't possibly mean the physical body? This is possibly
>the most glorified artistic object in the greater history of humankind,
>from the Willendorf Venus to the fundamental icon of all western
>civilization nowadays, which is a skinny teen-age girl.
saxon) and re-read...
Its treating people as objects, and they might not like this?
--
James Whitehead
Ned Ludd
>
>> Sure. You just want to be sure to exclude what needs to be
>> excluded.
>
> Yup, I'm a hardlined modernist highbrow who thinks the
> venacularized version of art to be filthy acts of intellectual
> defilement and should be banished into the eternal realm of Hell.
> [I'm joking, by the way]
>
Our Art Museum ran an exhibit about three months ago called
"Nothing But Nudes". (They were remodeling the whole museum,
and essentially just raided their basement for anything showing
a nude, for a quick exhibit.) I had noticed that the ad for
the show in a local coffeeshop I patronize, which showed a photo
of three female torsos in profile, one black, one white, and one
brown, jammed together, butt to belly, often had OTHER ads pinned
over it, so as to cover up these gorgeous bodies - clearly, imo,
a case of ad-hoc local censorship. Anyway, at the exhibit,
amidst all these beautiful representations of the human form,
there was a large white box on four legs covered with plexiglass,
containing a poster of a classical nude (I think it was that
Titian with too many vertebrae in her spine) with a beast's head
superimposed on it, with the caption: "Only 5% of the artists
displayed here are women, but 85% of the nudes depicted are of
women's bodies." The poster was made by some feminist group
from New York. As I was studying the poster, the guard walked
by and said, "Don't believe it - that's bull!" So I said, "OK,
what are the correct numbers?" He laughed. I laughed.
>Joyce:
>> Ah, I think I see what you mean. You are taking an inclusive
>> stand, one which critiques against the dominant norms and
>> ideals of what constitutes "art".
>
Ned:
> I hope not. I merely want the word to communicate a commonly
> shared set of preconceptions about the nature and attributes of
> art.
Joyce:
> Of course you're entitled to your beliefs, but I'd like to point
> out that in the western context, art is/was a regulatory system
> which governs the notion of taste and aesthetic appreciation.
>
Only among a certain (small) set of people involved with a small
sub-set of art.
> People go to art galleries to reinforce the canonical
> construction of the big gums - umm, I mean guns - anyway, as
> well as the aura and myth of their artistic status.
>
Yeah, some do. And some go to see the pretty pictures.
Ned:
> When someone says the Lascaux paintings aren't art because the
> artists didn't see themselves as artists, then that excludes an
> awful lot of what I consider to be art from being art.
Joyce:
> I never said Lascaux paintings aren't art. I am saying that we
> don't know what these people assume what art is. It could be
> very different from our understanding. Remember Manet's "Olympia"?
> At the time, some said it's a pornographic trash, others extoll
> it to no end. In the end, everyone sat down and agreed it's art -
> so I see art as arbitrairily decided.
>
To some extent, but not to the point that Eric suggests, where,
when we don't like something, we say it isn't art. There's a huge
amount of crap on the wall nowadays pretending to be art, which
I'll concede is art, but which I don't like.
Ned:
> What? You can't possibly mean the physical body? This is
> possibly the most glorified artistic object in the greater
> history of humankind, from the Willendorf Venus to the
> fundamental icon of all western civilization nowadays, which
> is a skinny teen-age girl.
Joyce:
> No, there is a distinction between the construction of the
> masculine body of politics which underpins the notion of (male)
> subjectivity, and the material, feminine body which is created
> as binary opposition against the said male subjects.
>
Woman's body as object? Yeah, but there are times when the male
body has been exalted as an object, also. As I said in reply to
James, EVERYBODY likes to look at a women's body (men and women
alike), but not everybody likes to look at a man's body.
Ned
Ned Ludd
Ned:
> What? You can't possibly mean the physical body? This is
> possibly the most glorified artistic object in the greater
> history of humankind, from the Willendorf Venus to the
> fundamental icon of all western civilization nowadays,
> which is a skinny teen-age girl.
James:
> maybe replace "humankind" with mankind (even -white Protestant
> anglo saxon) and re-read...
> Its treating people as objects, and they might not like this?
>
No, women like to see women's bodies too. This is axiomatic in
advertising, the vast bulk of which, btw, is directed at women
(at least in America).
Ned
Ned Ludd
>> Ok, here's rational: If you know what art is, you can
>> evaluate whether or not the Lascaux paintings are art. If
>> you don't, you can't.
>> If you define art like James does, which goes (please correct
>> me if I'm wrong) something like this: "Art is a tangible creation
>> of an independent creator with a free mandate to create whatever
>> he/she wishes, unbound by specifications of setting, figures, and
>> materials, and who considers him/her self to be practicing within
>> a [presumably artistic] cultural structure and framework."
> What I'm trying to say was what was Art, I quite except the current
> 'anything goes'. Art was about coming to terms with reality which
> is posited realist - therefore formalist terms. It was reality - a
> belief in it - which is the hallmark of modernism. Art, Language,
> Science were real, look at how metaphysics has crept back into
> science, and philosophy has lost its desire for truth and meaning.
>
I think art even through ancient times often transcended reality.
Ancient African art depicts very unreal things. Aboriginal art,
Mayan art, etc. depict things that we don't have any clue what it
is, or can only guess at. Conversely Greek art of 800 BC shows
remarkably realistic portrayals of humans, animals, nature, etc.
And it's about time science and philosophy unhinged themselves
from truth and meaning. The artifice of Truth had gotten to be
a cangue and prison of arbitrariness. It didn't actually relate
to reality but only to some people's preconceptions about it.
>> This leaves out, imo, an enormous amount of art. In addition
>> to being unable to evaluate the Lascaux paintings (because you
>> don't know if the artists considered themselves to be part of
>> the 'art industry'), it also rejects even earlier art, such as
>> bead-work, and relegates it to 'craft' or something. Well, when
>> I look at ancient bead-work, I see art. James apparently doesn't.
>
> I see an arbitrary practice. If I say the Lascaux paintings are art
> what have I said? Nothing, or at best I like them? But I can imagine
> art which I don't like. King Lear - its not a fun experience - but
> I suppose should be considered art? If you come up with any
> definition which excludes something as not being art then I (as did
> Duchamp) simply put the thing in a gallery. That's the blow that
> the ready-made dealt to artists, it stops you dead!
>
Maybe it was actually a refusal to exclude beautiful things as NOT
being art. The industrialization that occurred with modernism brought
an amazing array of beautiful things that happened to be produced in
factories. That should not have necessarily precluded them from
being considered art. Duchamp merely recognized the obvious.
>> Fine. I think, however, that 'art' is a useful designator for
>> a broad range of things that include Lascaux paintings and ancient
>> bead-work. The more rigorous definition of James belongs, imo,
>> to a small subset of art, which should have a designator of its
>> own. Perhaps, using the elements of his definition, it might be
>> called, 'freely-inspired, marketed art'.
>>
> Your missing my point here - there's no workable definition... value
> has become an act of faith - I can measure the value of sterling in
> terms of the dollar, but there is no intrinsic value. I can trade
> in monetary terms but cant see how to do that in value judgements
> about art?
>
Value has always been a act of faith. Two hundred years ago in
Holland, people mortgaged and sold their homes to buy two tulip bulbs.
Your list (in another post) of a 19th century person's conjectures
about what would be considered art in the year 2000 is quite true.
We make reality as much as reality makes us.
Ned
Joyce
>When you study Italian Renaissance art, you inevitably encounter
>knowledge about the huge attrition rate of art produced in this
period.
>Less than five percent has survived, and that which has
survived did so
>because it was in the collections of those who were wealthy
enough to
>preserve it. So what we have left to view reflects the taste
and
>interets of the rich and powerful, and that 'stands' for Italian
>Renaissance. The truth of the matter was that most of the art
produced
>in this place and time would be regarded as Kitsch by our
standards, but
>this is the art that interested the rank and file Italians at
the time.
Well said. What we've left in our hands are only selected
fragments of the past, which cannot be used as summary of
previous cultures - and certainly not art. There's a lot of
elitism going on with art, even with postmodernism's erosion
between high and low culture, that theoretical stance is only
maintained through the reference of a previously existing notion
of what's cultivated and refined.
>
>It's important to see this, I think, because if you pick up any
text
>which purports to be "The Art of Mankind" and count the pages
devoted to
>each of the subcategories, you will find that the Italian
Renaissance
>occupys the lions share of attention, so, by extention, is
presented to
>be the standard by which all art is measured - all art in the
world.
>It's so hilarious. This art wasn't even the main art produced
in this
>period. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies!
Yes, for example, I've always thought ancient Chinese art
history was grossly ignored in comparison with our obsession of
the occident.
>No, it makes sense to me. I may be misreading you though, but
there's
>an undertone to you statement that saying 'there's nothing to
be done
>about it' to me. Personally, I think that 'the resistance' has
a bright
>future.
Yeah, I guess I still don't know just exactly what sort of
postmodern tactics of resistance to deploy without co-optation
and reiteration of modernist universalism... if we simply resist
for the sake of resistance, sort of plunging into the water
without taking a breath... not... good...
>
>In the context of this thread, then, I like to look at ancient
art as
>something that is discontinuous, or disjunct, from modern
authority, or
>hegemonic practices.
Another well put comment. To see art not as a
progressive "movement" or "evolution", but a disjointed series
of practices.
So much of what we think 'looks good' in art is
>just a matter of being used to seeing it, rather than some great
>aesthetic epiphamy. I really enjoy looking at things that I
don't think
>'look good' long enough until they do 'look good.'
Tell you a secret, I've never thought much of Mona Lisa, or Van
Gogh, or even Monet for that matter. They're pretty to look at,
yes, but so hyped beyond their proportion... with the latter, I
tend to associate them as having "innovative" value within the
historical timeframe - a move away from the religious,
formalised art works and bringing art into the domestic... but
that doesn't mean I'm going to deified them...
>
>I came across a paper published in "Current Anthropology" in
1988, and
>the author was arguing that Lascaux, Altimira etc. art was
motivated by
>'art for art's sake -- in contrast to the mystico-ritual
phantasm of
>anthropologists. Writer's of paleoindian art always cite the
mysticism
>of 'blood' when they encounter hematite. It seems idiotic to
me. Why
>can't cave man Indians just enjoy the color red like we do?
>
>Erik Mattila
>
Hey, spare a thought for these art crits! If they don't dredge
up some wacky theories, who's gonna pay next month's house rent?
Joyce Wu
Joyce
>I think this is spot on - and when it includes it has to make
the
>foreigner become westernised - the first thing missionary's (of
>modernity) do is put western clothes on the natives
(symbolically as
>well as in practice) and so begin the process of humiliation.
>--
>James Whitehead
>
perspective, I'd also point out that that process of
westernisation also serves the purpose of othering - the
native "other" will only ever be able to imitate, or mimic the
western "subject", which no doubt gives those missionaries a big
dose of ego boost...
Joyce
> Our Art Museum ran an exhibit about three months ago called
>"Nothing But Nudes". (They were remodeling the whole museum,
>and essentially just raided their basement for anything showing
>a nude, for a quick exhibit.) I had noticed that the ad for
>the show in a local coffeeshop I patronize, which showed a photo
>of three female torsos in profile, one black, one white, and one
>brown, jammed together, butt to belly, often had OTHER ads
pinned
>over it, so as to cover up these gorgeous bodies - clearly, imo,
>a case of ad-hoc local censorship. Anyway, at the exhibit,
>amidst all these beautiful representations of the human form,
>there was a large white box on four legs covered with
plexiglass,
>containing a poster of a classical nude (I think it was that
>Titian with too many vertebrae in her spine) with a beast's head
>superimposed on it, with the caption: "Only 5% of the artists
>displayed here are women, but 85% of the nudes depicted are of
>women's bodies." The poster was made by some feminist group
>from New York. As I was studying the poster, the guard walked
>by and said, "Don't believe it - that's bull!" So I said, "OK,
>what are the correct numbers?" He laughed. I laughed.
>
almost always representations of the female reproductive system:
breasts, genitals, ovaries and what not. This brings me to
another question: if the said "art" fragmentises women's bodies,
does that mean those pornographic magazines which show pictures
of isolated female bits are art as well?
>
> Only among a certain (small) set of people involved with a
small
>sub-set of art.
Who often happens to have control over the cultural institutions
such as galleries, museums and those art festivals.
> To some extent, but not to the point that Eric suggests,
where,
>when we don't like something, we say it isn't art. There's a
huge
>amount of crap on the wall nowadays pretending to be art, which
>I'll concede is art, but which I don't like.
>
Following your last sentence, wouldn't you say that art is a
subjective, arbitrary decision?
> Woman's body as object? Yeah, but there are times when the
male
>body has been exalted as an object, also. As I said in reply to
>James, EVERYBODY likes to look at a women's body (men and women
>alike), but not everybody likes to look at a man's body.
>
> Ned
>
Yes Ned, every morning I stand infront of the mirror and perve
on myself.... silly jokes aside, perhaps we need to ask the
question: do we inherently find women's bodies to be attractive,
or is that an attraction constructed by the same masculine body
politics I talked about in previous posts? And whose body do we
mean? Young, old, black, white, yellow, citrus, skinny,
voluptuous and all those other variations?
Ned Ludd
Ned:
>there was a large white box on four legs covered with plexiglass,
>containing a poster of a classical nude (I think it was that
>Titian with too many vertebrae in her spine) with a beast's head
>superimposed on it, with the caption: "Only 5% of the artists
>displayed here are women, but 85% of the nudes depicted are of
>women's bodies." The poster was made by some feminist group
>from New York. As I was studying the poster, the guard walked
>by and said, "Don't believe it - that's bull!" So I said, "OK,
>what are the correct numbers?" He laughed. I laughed.
Joyce:
> Yes, when it comes to the representation of human bodies, it's
> almost always representations of the female reproductive system:
> breasts, genitals, ovaries and what not.
>
No, I suspect you're wrong. This can be measured accurately,
and should. I bet the most frequently displayed organ of females
is the eyes.
> This brings me to another question: if the said "art" fragmentises
> women's bodies, does that mean those pornographic magazines which
> show pictures of isolated female bits are art as well?
>
Why wouldn't they be? Is it beautiful? Is it inspired? Is it
creative?
>> Only among a certain (small) set of people involved with a small
>> sub-set of art.
>
> Who often happens to have control over the cultural institutions
> such as galleries, museums and those art festivals.
>
Which they and their small slice of the population ogle over.
A lot of the postmodern complaint (of everything) concerns the
issues and problems of vast numbers of people that nobody gave
a damn about before - they were not even considered any part of
any equation of the society or culture for most of history.
>> To some extent, but not to the point that Erik suggests,
>> where, when we don't like something, we say it isn't art.
>> There's a huge amount of crap on the wall nowadays pretending
>> to be art, which I'll concede is art, but which I don't like.
>>
> Following your last sentence, wouldn't you say that art is a
> subjective, arbitrary decision?
>
Only as arbitrary as physics or economics.
>>Woman's body as object? Yeah, but there are times when the male
>>body has been exalted as an object, also. As I said in reply to
>>James, EVERYBODY likes to look at a women's body (men and women
>>alike), but not everybody likes to look at a man's body.
>
> Yes Ned, every morning I stand infront of the mirror and perve
> on myself.... silly jokes aside, perhaps we need to ask the
> question: do we inherently find women's bodies to be attractive,
> or is that an attraction constructed by the same masculine body
> politics I talked about in previous posts?
>
How many likenesses similar to the Willendorf Venus can you
find throughout the last few tens of thousands of years? How many
representations of male bodies can you find? What's the ratio of
the two totals - a hundred to one? A thousand to one?
> And whose body do we mean? Young, old, black, white, yellow,
> citrus, skinny, voluptuous and all those other variations?
>
Currently it's skinny, young, and generally white. Voluptuous
hasn't been in since the 50's/60's (Marilyn, for example). If
producing representations of the male body gave people power, or
moved product, or got people's attention, it would be done. It
doesn't, and hasn't through most of history (there are certain
exceptions, at times).
Ned
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
> No, women like to see women's bodies too. This is axiomatic in
>advertising, the vast bulk of which, btw, is directed at women
>(at least in America).
Oh so if Americans do it - it must be ok!
--
James Whitehead
Ned Ludd
Ned:
>> No, women like to see women's bodies too. This is axiomatic in
>> advertising, the vast bulk of which, btw, is directed at women
>> (at least in America).
James:
> Oh so if Americans do it - it must be ok!
>
Hey, if you want to start a 'Trash America' thread, be my guest.
(I'll definitely help out.)
Ned
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
> Currently it's skinny, young, and generally white.
fashion designers who want their models to look like young boys.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
>Ancient African art depicts very unreal things. Aboriginal art,
>Mayan art, etc. depict things that we don't have any clue what it
>is, or can only guess at. Conversely Greek art of 800 BC shows
>remarkably realistic portrayals of humans, animals, nature, etc.
cultures without seeing how you break the meaning of the word.
Take your stroll through the galley of nudes - you perhaps - think this
is something to do with art - what about a stroll through a science or
natural history museum - or a visit to a strip show.
> And it's about time science and philosophy unhinged themselves
>from truth and meaning.
> The artifice of Truth had gotten to be
>a cangue and prison of arbitrariness. It didn't actually relate
>to reality but only to some people's preconceptions about it.
>
> Maybe it was actually a refusal to exclude beautiful things as NOT
>being art.
It was seeing truth as being beautiful - as opposed to artifice and
decoration. If your willing to abandon truth you will probably
substitute beauty with sensation- Vs Chapman Bros.
> The industrialization that occurred with modernism brought
>an amazing array of beautiful things that happened to be produced in
>factories. That should not have necessarily precluded them from
>being considered art. Duchamp merely recognized the obvious.
I think it was more of a joke that we took seriously
> We make reality as much as reality makes us.
... these days
--
James Whitehead
Ned Ludd
Ned:
> I think art even through ancient times often transcended reality.
> Ancient African art depicts very unreal things. Aboriginal art,
> Mayan art, etc. depict things that we don't have any clue what it
> is, or can only guess at. Conversely Greek art of 800 BC shows
> remarkably realistic portrayals of humans, animals, nature, etc.
James:
> You again are using a term "art" to categorise activities within
> other cultures without seeing how you break the meaning of the word.
> Take your stroll through the galley of nudes - you perhaps - think
> this is something to do with art - what about a stroll through a
> science or natural history museum - or a visit to a strip show.
>
As we discovered a few posts ago, you have an idea that 'art'
is something that did not exist before about the year 1500.
(When artists, and ONLY those artists who saw themselves as part
of an art industry, got contracts to create art of their own
choosing, free of specifications of subject, style and materials.)
This is ludicrous. It is a stupid child playing with his shit.
You can define green as purple for all I care, but you violate
the purpose and function of language by defining art that way.
Ned:
> And it's about time science and philosophy unhinged themselves
> from truth and meaning.
James:
> For a lover of knowledge this would be grounds for divorce!
>
A lover would be blinded by his love. A lover would probably
end up concluding something like "Truth is beauty, and beauty
is truth."
A statement like that is patently absurd on the face of it.
A lover of truth would probably end up building an edifice of
Truth, pure artifice, composed of his lusts and preconceptions,
and having little or no bearing on any impartially recognizable
aspect of reality.
Ned:
> Maybe it was actually a refusal to exclude beautiful things as
> NOT being art.
James:
> It was seeing truth as being beautiful - as opposed to artifice
> and decoration. If your willing to abandon truth you will probably
> substitute beauty with sensation- Vs Chapman Bros.
>
A poor trade, imo. Seeing things as they are is the most
difficult task a mind can undertake.
Ned:
> The industrialization that occurred with modernism brought an
> amazing array of beautiful things that happened to be produced
> in factories. That should not have necessarily precluded them
> from being considered art. Duchamp merely recognized the obvious.
James:
> I think it was more of a joke that we took seriously
>
Only as much of a joke as his Large Glass ("The Bride Stripped
Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.") If it's a joke, it is thematically
well-connected to his other works. Artists love to joke and
criticize. (There is a statue in San Jose, I believe, purchased
by the city, created by [I think] a native American artist, and
called "Quetzalcoatl" - it is, beyond any possibility of doubt, imo,
a representation of a pile of shit, ie. a well-crafted, accurately
displayed, huge statue of a curled-up pile of human feces.)
>> We make reality as much as reality makes us.
>
> ... these days
>
And a great time to be alive, heh?
Ned
Marcin Tustin
emat...@tomatoweb.com says...
> At the same time there are common human experiences that could sneak
> across hermeneutic frontiers (the illegal aliens of philosophy,
> heheehe). Ten fingers and toes, for example, which may have had great
> influence on arithmatic.
The arabic system is the only known decimal system. It
succeeded a)because a trading people used it b)it uses a place-
system, rather than any kind of tally. The babylonians used base
60.
--
Humanity will not be happy until the day when the
last bureaucrat has been hanged with the guts of
the last capitalist.
Marcin Tustin
PGP Key at http://www.anarchist99.freeserve.co.uk/marcintustin.txt
Mar...@mindless.REMOVEGOATS&OATS.com
Marcint@^^refreshmagazine.com.nomail <-- Do not use at this time
KeyID 0x86D72550
Fingerprint DDD9 FB07 4C2F 9A79 C860 C391 D672 364C 86D7 2550
Ned Ludd
news:396FB9BC...@tomatoweb.com...
>Ned Ludd wrote:
> Only as much of a joke as his Large Glass ("The Bride Stripped
> Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.") If it's a joke, it is thematically
> well-connected to his other works. Artists love to joke and
> criticize. (There is a statue in San Jose, I believe, purchased
> by the city, created by [I think] a native American artist, and
> called "Quetzalcoatl" - it is, beyond any possibility of doubt, imo,
> a representation of a pile of shit, ie. a well-crafted, accurately
> displayed, huge statue of a curled-up pile of human feces.)
Erik:
> Ned, that's Robert Graham, born 1938 in Mexico - his folks were from
> the US, I believe. He's Angelica Houston's husband, and a recoginzed
> sculptor of international renown. He operates out of Los Angeles ,
> the Venice area.
> But if you see a pile of shit in it, what does that say? Beauty is
> in the eye of the beholder, as they say. Do you also think that a
> Frosty Freeze Ice Cream Cone represents a pile of shit, or the
> whipped-cream on your pumpkin pie.
>
Quite frankly, Erik, whipped cream never occurred to me, nor
Frosty Freeze. By a wide margin.
> But I realize that this is not your original idea - if you read
> anything about the controversy surrounding the Quetzalcoatl
> sculpture, which was essentially a Christian fundamentalist attack
> on heathen iconology, the 'pile of shit' analogy is so overwrought
> that it has become a cliche.
>
No, I never read anything about it. A friend of mine on the net
lives in San Jose, and I looked up a web site (or he posted a pointer
to it) on San Jose and saw the sculpture, and its nature was quite
obvious.
> But here's an amusing story that suggests that European and
> Euro-American obsession with feces (anal retention?) is quite
> culture-bound. That form, which is classified as homo sapiens
> sapiens fecal, may be a Western sub-species of fecal forms.
>
Is there somewhere within those lines, an opinion that the artist
deliberately intended the sculpture to appear as shit in order to
criticize American descendents of Europeans?
> An old friend of mine set out to explore the world just out of High
> School in 1961. While visiting the Giza Plateau he had to take a
> dump, and he found an area amongst a pile of rocks which was
> obviously used for that purpose by the Egyptian workers in the area.
> As he squatted and extruded a good old American Quetzalcoatl, he
> noticed that the Egyptian turds laying about were more like rabbit
> droppings. As he left the area, he noticed that his turd had become
> a spectacle for the workers, who were gathering around it, pointing
> and laughing hysterically while discussion it's philosophical
> implications.
>
The study of shit (what would that be - coprology?) is big business
nowadays. Big doings as it were. We are what we eat, I guess.
> Graham's statue is a very 'one-on-one' representation of the many
> sculptures of the Plummed Serpent found in Mexico, a few which are on
> display in the famous Museum of Anthropology in the DF. Although
> stylized and conventionalized, these aboriginal forms are also a very
> good representation of several of the crotalus species, or Mexican
> Diamondbacks. Would you say that a coiled rattlesnake also represents
> Euroturds? (at least other 'critics' denigrated Graham's work as
> generically fecal, like a cow pie etc.)
>
Uh sure... a plumed serpent springs immediately to mind. I can just
see Mr. Graham presenting his model to the board of San Jose - "Yes,
ladies and gentlemen, can't you see the coiled power of the Mexican
Diamondback, curled on itself and ready to spring forth into its full
plumed splendor - look closely, you do see it, don't you...!?"
> Or perhaps you simply don't like the mesoamerican aesthetic, and you
> wish to valorize your personal taste by attempting to disquise it as
> meaningful art criticism?
>
Oh, the "mesoamerican aesthetic" is written all over that work -
from the first day a central American native met a newly-arrived
Spanish Conquistador, that aesthetic has been apparent, potent and
unwavering.
I just wonder, given the technology available to create sculptural
art from models, if the artist actually TOOK a dump, let it dry,
took a three-dimensional scan of it, and used the technology to
create the large work directly from it - a "life study" as it were?
Ned
Ned Ludd
>
> Firstly, I'd like to express my unceasing wonder at the amazing
> accuracy and frequency of how my ISP kicks up a histronic fit.
> It really is a marvel - one day the deja account would be
> inoperative, now it's remarq's turn... brilliant...
>
Yeah, and enjoy it while we got it, because I'm sure it's going to
be taken away from us, just as soon as someone can figure out how.
>> No, I suspect you're wrong. This can be measured accurately,
>> and should. I bet the most frequently displayed organ of females
>> is the eyes.
>
> Ned, I just went out to do laundry, and in between sneaked to the
> local magazine shop and did a body count - Australia Playstation -
> front page is a cleavage close-up, atleast 30 pics devoted to
> mammary glands. On to Ralph, a men's mag, similar thing - then
> there's a women's magazine with their bra fashion special coverage
> (puns intended) - even the respectable Time magazine has a pic of
> Rita Hayworth and her twin assets... conclusion of my field study:
> our culture is fascinated with breasts, the media is deleuged with
> breasts.
>
Well, jeez, Joyce, you found some breasts in skin magazines - not
exactly flash news. In the whole great history of art in all its
manifestations, what do you find? I still bet the eyes win out. And
the woman form has been worshipped as long as we have extant art to
measure it. By a wide margin.
>> Why wouldn't they be? Is it beautiful? Is it inspired? Is it
>> creative?
>
> The objectification of women's bodies and the subsequent implication
> of women as only corporeal beings... sure, I think it's wonderful.
> To put it crudely, I don't think the people who bought those
> pornographic magazines are looking for sublime inspiration over the
> transcendentary values of women's corporal materiality, but just to
> have a quick wank in between lunch breaks. Welcome to the instant-
> gratification generation.
>
With all due respect, I don't think wanking is a modern invention,
Joyce. (And furthermore, it IS an art - just try to take some dirty
pictures of yourself, and see how they stack up with even the crudest
of the pictures in those magazines you looked at.)
>> Which they and their small slice of the population ogle over.
>> A lot of the postmodern complaint (of everything) concerns the
>> issues and problems of vast numbers of people that nobody gave
>> a damn about before - they were not even considered any part of
>> any equation of the society or culture for most of history.
>
> What you consider issues of relatively meagre importance, I see
> them as attempts to challenge the dominant norms and assumptions.
>
Fine. I see it as power. The adulation of the woman form is an
unambiguous testament to the power women have with their bodies,
and have had through the entire measurable history of humanity.
>> Currently it's skinny, young, and generally white. Voluptuous
>> hasn't been in since the 50's/60's (Marilyn, for example). If
>> producing representations of the male body gave people power, or
>> moved product, or got people's attention, it would be done. It
>> doesn't, and hasn't through most of history (there are certain
>> exceptions, at times).
>
> That's exactly what I mean. The body politics dictates a corporeal
> specificity, a criteria to be met and measured. What we have is a
> monopolisation of representation of one specific body. And goddess
> knows how much damage it has done (hearing the retchings of young
> women into their toilet bowls)...
>
All types are worshipped. There is a current fixation on the
skinny-young, for whatever reasons (ask James - he has a theory of
gay fashion designers), but all types are worshipped. I'm sorry
about all the bulimic teenagers, but I'm sure they'll find out it's
just as easy to get laid with some meat on your bones as not (if
you're a woman).
Ned
Joyce
Fantasies"
>
>Vol. 1: Male Fantasies : Women, Floods, Bodies, History (Theory
and
>History of Literature, Vol 22)
>Univ of Minnesota Pr. 1987
>
>Vol. 2: Male Fantasies : Male Bodies : Psychoanalyzing the
White Terror
>(Theory and History of Literature, Vol 23)
>Univ of Minnesota Pr. 1989
>
>These are very intriguing books, in my opinion. Like many of
his
>generation in Germany, Theleweit is interesting in uncovering
the roots of
>fascism. His is a study of the writings of the German
Friekorps, those
>soldiers disbanded after WWI and remaining largely itinerent
throughout
>the 20s and 30s, and quite disgruntled. These are the men who
became
>Htiler's Brownshirts.
>
Hey thanks, Erik. They sound like the sort of books I'm
interested in. As for the Hitler's Brownshirts, I think it is
very symptomatic with the ideologies of nationalism - in the
sense that the nation becomes represented in the form of a
woman's body - the notion of motherland, and to "protect your
women" from "foreign contanimations". Also reinforces the
domestic and public spheres and the allocated gender roles
within them.
>One thing that really amazed me reading volume I was Theleweit's
>observation that in Freecorps writing, which includes
literature as well
>as correspondence and memoirs, that the women in these men's
lives were
>never named. They were referred to as "My mother, my wife, my
sister, my
>fiance, my girlfriend, the 'little woman' etc. but never by
their names.
>By contrast, a horse was always referred to by name. Well, you
may have
>already looked at these works.
>
>There's a fellow now who has a theory, by the way, about all
those
>so-called 'mother goddess' of paleolithic cultures, such as the
Venus of
>Wallendorf. He claims they are not representations of woman at
all, but
>rather representations of pyschoactive mushrooms. (only
personified as
>women, mind you). It's an interesting idea to consider. You
have to ask
>yourself what the thread is between psychodelic mushrooms and
women's
>parts (even greatly exagerated parts). My guess is that it
would have to
>do with the same kind of 'desiring structures' that informs
DuChamps
>Chocolate Bachelor construction. Quite a bit of this in
Deleuze and
>Guitarri, I think. And probably Theodore Reich should be
considered,
>especially in relation to Theleweit's work as well as Deleuze
and
>Guitarri.
>
>Erik
>
Deleuze and Guitarri - sorry, I'm a bit blurry with the two -
are you thinking about the deterritorialisation of the body - of
body-without-organs which will, theoretically, break free from
the restraints of a disciplined, socially constructed subject
state?
Now excuse me, I must go and take rude pictures of myself, as
Ned had suggested. [sigh] Why is it that some people cannot get
by an argument without making a gender related attack against
the opposing party, especially if they're of opposing gender?
Joyce
Joyce
> Well, jeez, Joyce, you found some breasts in skin magazines -
not
>exactly flash news. In the whole great history of art in all
its
>manifestations, what do you find? I still bet the eyes win
out. And
>the woman form has been worshipped as long as we have extant
art to
>measure it. By a wide margin.
This is no longer a question concerning solely the issue of art,
but in regards to power relations - who is representing who? Who
is looking/looked at? Who is the subject/object? There is a
great deal of power to be held by the looker, and if you still
don't believe me, take a look at those nude paintings of women
in the "older" days - they all have their eyes cast down - the
typical submissive to-be-looked-at pose. The controversial
aspect with "Olympia" partly had to do with the model looking
directly at the spectator, which disrupted the power dynamics.
Erik A. Mattila
> Only as much of a joke as his Large Glass ("The Bride Stripped
> Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.") If it's a joke, it is thematically
> well-connected to his other works. Artists love to joke and
> criticize. (There is a statue in San Jose, I believe, purchased
> by the city, created by [I think] a native American artist, and
> called "Quetzalcoatl" - it is, beyond any possibility of doubt, imo,
> a representation of a pile of shit, ie. a well-crafted, accurately
> displayed, huge statue of a curled-up pile of human feces.)
Ned, that's Robert Graham, born 1938 in Mexico - his folks were from the
US, I believe. He's Angelica Houston's husband, and a recoginzed
sculptor of international renown. He operates out of Los Angeles , the
Venice area.
But if you see a pile of shit in it, what does that say? Beauty is in
the eye of the beholder, as they say. Do you also think that a Frosty
Freeze Ice Cream Cone represents a pile of shit, or the whipped-cream on
your pumpkin pie. But I realize that this is not your original idea - if
you read anything about the controversy surrounding the Quetzalcoatl
sculpture, which was essentially a Christian fundamentalist attack on
heathen iconology, the 'pile of shit' analogy is so overwrought that it
has become a cliche.
But here's an amusing story that suggests that European and Euro-American
obsession with feces (anal retention?) is quite culture-bound. That
form, which is classified as homo sapiens sapiens fecal, may be a Western
sub-species of fecal forms. An old friend of mine set out to explore the
world just out of High School in 1961. While visiting the Giza Plateau
he had to take a dump, and he found an area amongst a pile of rocks which
was obviously used for that purpose by the Egyptian workers in the area.
As he squatted and extruded a good old American Quetzalcoatl, he noticed
that the Egyptian turds laying about were more like rabbit droppings. As
he left the area, he noticed that his turd had become a spectacle for the
workers, who were gathering around it, pointing and laughing hysterically
while discussion it's philosophical implications.
Graham's statue is a very 'one-on-one' representation of the many
sculptures of the Plummed Serpent found in Mexico, a few which are on
display in the famous Museum of Anthropology in the DF. Although
stylized and conventionalized, these aboriginal forms are also a very
good representation of several of the crotalus species, or Mexican
Diamondbacks. Would you say that a coiled rattlesnake also represents
Euroturds? (at least other 'critics' denigrated Graham's work as
generically fecal, like a cow pie etc.)
Or perhaps you simply don't like the mesoamerican aesthetic, and you wish
to valorize your personal taste by attempting to disquise it as
meaningful art criticism?
Erik Mattila
ale...@my-deja.com
accuracy and frequency of how my ISP kicks up a histronic fit. It
really is a marvel - one day the deja account would be inoperative, now
it's remarq's turn... brilliant...
>
> and should. I bet the most frequently displayed organ of females
> is the eyes.
Ned, I just went out to do laundry, and in between sneaked to the local
magazine shop and did a body count - Australia Playstation - front page
is a cleavage close-up, atleast 30 pics devoted to mammary glands. On
to Ralph, a men's mag, similar thing - then there's a women's magazine
with their bra fashion special coverage (puns intended) - even the
respectable Time magazine has a pic of Rita Hayworth and her twin
assets... conclusion of my field study: our culture is fascinated with
breasts, the media is deleuged with breasts.
> Why wouldn't they be? Is it beautiful? Is it inspired? Is it
> creative?
The objectification of women's bodies and the subsequent implication of
women as only corporeal beings... sure, I think it's wonderful.
To put it crudely, I don't think the people who bought those
pornographic magazines are looking for sublime inspiration over the
transcendentary values of women's corporal materiality, but just to
have a quick wank in between lunch breaks. Welcome to the instant-
gratification generation.
>
> Which they and their small slice of the population ogle over.
> A lot of the postmodern complaint (of everything) concerns the
> issues and problems of vast numbers of people that nobody gave
> a damn about before - they were not even considered any part of
> any equation of the society or culture for most of history.
What you consider issues of relatively meagre importance, I see them as
attempts to challenge the dominant norms and assumptions.
>
> Currently it's skinny, young, and generally white. Voluptuous
> hasn't been in since the 50's/60's (Marilyn, for example). If
> producing representations of the male body gave people power, or
> moved product, or got people's attention, it would be done. It
> doesn't, and hasn't through most of history (there are certain
> exceptions, at times).
>
> Ned
That's exactly what I mean. The body politics dictates a corporeal
specificity, a criteria to be met and measured. What we have is a
monopolisation of representation of one specific body. And goddess
knows how much damage it has done (hearing the retchings of young women
into their toilet bowls)...
>
Joyce
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Erik A. Mattila
> That's exactly what I mean. The body politics dictates a corporeal
> specificity, a criteria to be met and measured. What we have is a
> monopolisation of representation of one specific body. And goddess
> knows how much damage it has done (hearing the retchings of young women
> into their toilet bowls)...
> >
> Joyce
Joyce, did you ever come across Klaus Theleweit 's "Male Fantasies"
Vol. 1: Male Fantasies : Women, Floods, Bodies, History (Theory and
History of Literature, Vol 22)
Univ of Minnesota Pr. 1987
Vol. 2: Male Fantasies : Male Bodies : Psychoanalyzing the White Terror
(Theory and History of Literature, Vol 23)
Univ of Minnesota Pr. 1989
These are very intriguing books, in my opinion. Like many of his
generation in Germany, Theleweit is interesting in uncovering the roots of
fascism. His is a study of the writings of the German Friekorps, those
soldiers disbanded after WWI and remaining largely itinerent throughout
the 20s and 30s, and quite disgruntled. These are the men who became
Htiler's Brownshirts.
One thing that really amazed me reading volume I was Theleweit's
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
>
>Ned:
>>> No, women like to see women's bodies too. This is axiomatic in
>>> advertising, the vast bulk of which, btw, is directed at women
>>> (at least in America).
>
>James:
>> Oh so if Americans do it - it must be ok!
>>
>
> Hey, if you want to start a 'Trash America' thread, be my guest.
>(I'll definitely help out.)
>
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mar...@mindCUTless.com> writes
>In article <396C10DD...@tomatoweb.com>,
>emat...@tomatoweb.com says...
>
>> At the same time there are common human experiences that could sneak
>> across hermeneutic frontiers (the illegal aliens of philosophy,
>> heheehe). Ten fingers and toes, for example, which may have had great
>> influence on arithmatic.
>
> The arabic system is the only known decimal system. It
>succeeded a)because a trading people used it b)it uses a place-
>system, rather than any kind of tally. The babylonians used base
>60.
>
The old UK currency used 12 and 21!
The Yoruna use base 20
Ancient Chinese used base 10 and used place value
The Greeks also used a decimal system
The Indians had several systems but came up with the idea of zero in a
placed based decimal system - though the Chinese might take some credit.
But in the film the decimal system was invented by Bell (a famous
American inventor- played by Tom Hanks)
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
>
> As we discovered a few posts ago, you have an idea that 'art'
>is something that did not exist before about the year 1500.
>(When artists, and ONLY those artists who saw themselves as part
>of an art industry, got contracts to create art of their own
>choosing, free of specifications of subject, style and materials.)
>
> This is ludicrous. It is a stupid child playing with his shit.
>You can define green as purple for all I care, but you violate
>the purpose and function of language by defining art that way.
of modernity to now cover any and everything. In a language game its
limiting a words meaning that gives it use, and in the art game its
limiting what is and isn't art that allows the practice a significance.
>
--
James Whitehead
Erik A. Mattila
As digital computation must have been invented by fingers and toes counters,
yes? In Bell's case, shoes led to mathematical impovrishment.
But add to the list the mesoamerican vegisimal base, such as Maya and
Zapotec (20). Who are the Yoruna, by the way? West African?
Erik Mattila
Erik A. Mattila
> Hey thanks, Erik. They sound like the sort of books I'm
> interested in. As for the Hitler's Brownshirts, I think it is
> very symptomatic with the ideologies of nationalism - in the
> sense that the nation becomes represented in the form of a
> woman's body - the notion of motherland, and to "protect your
> women" from "foreign contanimations". Also reinforces the
> domestic and public spheres and the allocated gender roles
> within them.
Or nationalism and uniforms are symptomatic of something else. But
didn't the Nazis call it the "Fatherland?"
>
> Deleuze and Guitarri - sorry, I'm a bit blurry with the two -
> are you thinking about the deterritorialisation of the body - of
> body-without-organs which will, theoretically, break free from
> the restraints of a disciplined, socially constructed subject
> state?
Anti-Oedipus : Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari [Univ of Minnesota Pr 1985]
also
A Thousand Plateaus : Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari [Univ of Minnesota Pr 1987]
(Gee, it looks like I"m plugging U Minnesota Press - just a coincidence)
I didn't read either of these tomes comprehensively - I selectively read
material on 'desiring strurctures' and views about the social roots of
fascism. So I can't say if they discuss the ideas you've written above.
And I misspoke [miswrit?] It's Wilhelm Reich, not Theodore.
Reich, Wilhelm. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. New York: Simon and
Schuster. 1970.
> Now excuse me, I must go and take rude pictures of myself, as
> Ned had suggested. [sigh] Why is it that some people cannot get
> by an argument without making a gender related attack against
> the opposing party, especially if they're of opposing gender?
>
> Joyce
If I look at in terms of newsgroup debates, it seems to be a tactic -
trivializing your opponent or something. Probably the voyeuristic
quality of newgroup communication encourages this sort of thing. I
mean, if one is going to be just 'straight arrow' you do it on
principle, rather than some sort of social pressure squeezing down on
you. The gender aspect may just be coincidental (albeit opportunistic)
but that doesn't mean you shouldn't jump someone if they are
dehumanizing you - coincidence or not.
Erik
Ned Ludd
Ned:
> As we discovered a few posts ago, you have an idea that 'art'
> is something that did not exist before about the year 1500.
> (When artists, and ONLY those artists who saw themselves as part
> of an art industry, got contracts to create art of their own
> choosing, free of specifications of subject, style and materials.)
> This is ludicrous. It is a stupid child playing with his shit.
> You can define green as purple for all I care, but you violate
> the purpose and function of language by defining art that way.
James:
> To be clear the use of art to describe objects has widened with the
> rise of modernity to now cover any and everything. In a language
> game its limiting a words meaning that gives it use, and in the art
> game its limiting what is and isn't art that allows the practice a
> significance.
>
Ok, one last time on this one for me, and then you can have the
last word, and then let's just agree to disagree:
If you, James, claimed to be an Art dealer and an Art expert (in
only those words: "Art dealer/Art expert", with no qualifiers on
the word 'Art'), and you were unable to explain how Picasso's
"Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" harkened back to the ancient African
art that it incorporated into the heads of the women in that work,
you would be considered incompetent (ie. not an 'Art expert').
Likewise, if you were discussing the 19th century paintings of
William Morris, particularly his works on Guinevere, and were unable
to relate them to the stained glass art of medieval cathedrals, you
would similarly be considered not an 'Art expert'.
And if you refused to accept as payment for some debt owed to you,
in which you were offered, say, a newly-found second version of the
original Book of Kells, because it "wasn't art" (being before 1500),
you would be considered mad.
"Limiting a word's meaning" can be useful in describing a sub-set
of the original word's scope, but you then cannot turn around and
apply some comment about the sub-set to the greater range of the
original word's meaning. Like saying, as you did, 'art was about
coming to terms with reality which is posited realist'. That may
have been true about art since the renaissance, but is not true
about the greater history of art, imo.
Ned
Ned Ludd
Ned:
> Well, jeez, Joyce, you found some breasts in skin magazines -
> not exactly flash news. In the whole great history of art
> in all its manifestations, what do you find? I still bet
> the eyes win out. And the woman form has been worshipped as
> long as we have extant art to measure it. By a wide margin.
Joyce:
> This is no longer a question concerning solely the issue of art,
> but in regards to power relations - who is representing who? Who
> is looking/looked at? Who is the subject/object? There is a
> great deal of power to be held by the looker, and if you still
> don't believe me, take a look at those nude paintings of women
> in the "older" days - they all have their eyes cast down - the
> typical submissive to-be-looked-at pose. The controversial
> aspect with "Olympia" partly had to do with the model looking
> directly at the spectator, which disrupted the power dynamics.
>
Botticelli's Venus is looking you dead in the eye. The Mona Lisa's
eyes follow you around the room. I have on my kitchen wall a print
of a painting by the Dutch master Gerrit Von Honthorst, called "Young
Woman Holding a Medallion" - a hooker whose bright eyes and smile are
drilling right through you. I don't think you have a leg to stand
on, Joyce.
Ned
Ned Ludd
>
> Now excuse me, I must go and take rude pictures of myself, as
> Ned had suggested. [sigh] Why is it that some people cannot get
> by an argument without making a gender related attack against
> the opposing party, especially if they're of opposing gender?
>
Just be sure to make them as good as the worst of the pictures
in those skin magazines.
Ned
(P.S. Everybody's a critic, until they have to create something
as good themselves. Then they discover how hard it really
is to create.)
James Whitehead
<emat...@tomatoweb.com> writes
>But add to the list the mesoamerican vegisimal base, such as Maya and
>Zapotec (20). Who are the Yoruna, by the way? West African?
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<ned...@ix.netcom.com> writes
>
> Ok, one last time on this one for me, and then you can have the
>last word, and then let's just agree to disagree:
>
> If you, James, claimed to be an Art dealer and an Art expert (in
>only those words: "Art dealer/Art expert", with no qualifiers on
>the word 'Art'), and you were unable to explain how Picasso's
>"Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" harkened back to the ancient African
>art that it incorporated into the heads of the women in that work,
>you would be considered incompetent (ie. not an 'Art expert').
second rate, that Vlaminck was handing around -) art is then perhaps
beside the point - interestingly it was then cast in bronze- which I
would argue was the physical act of appropriation as *real* art (real
sculptures being bronze) - which had they attempted intellectually.
Perhaps Picasso and chums couldn't quite alter the status of the mask
without transferring it into a medium recognisable as art.
> Likewise, if you were discussing the 19th century paintings of
>William Morris, particularly his works on Guinevere, and were unable
>to relate them to the stained glass art of medieval cathedrals, you
>would similarly be considered not an 'Art expert'.
the flight controls on the space shuttle. Visual representations
employing cutting edge technology to travel spiritually in the first and
physically in the second case. Morris's sentimentalism was more
indicative of other well intentioned but misguided ideas he and the PRB
had.
>
> And if you refused to accept as payment for some debt owed to you,
>in which you were offered, say, a newly-found second version of the
>original Book of Kells, because it "wasn't art" (being before 1500),
>you would be considered mad.
it art now - (an equal disservice to the work would be to call it a
comic book)
> "Limiting a word's meaning" can be useful in describing a sub-set
>of the original word's scope, but you then cannot turn around and
>apply some comment about the sub-set to the greater range of the
>original word's meaning. Like saying, as you did, 'art was about
>coming to terms with reality which is posited realist'. That may
>have been true about art since the renaissance, but is not true
>about the greater history of art, imo.
>
to widen - universalise it is part of colonisation of (destruction)
other cultures.
--
James Whitehead
Joyce
> Just be sure to make them as good as the worst of the pictures
>in those skin magazines.
Ned, I seriously think you're just a 13 year old kid.... that
sort of rhetoric belongs to a more juvenile category. Come up
with something better (as in, showing more maturity of the mind).
Joyce
>Or nationalism and uniforms are symptomatic of something else.
But
>didn't the Nazis call it the "Fatherland?"
[grumble] dammit, you've just undermined my nicely formed
theories! Go and take dirty pictures of yourself!
["Ned" mode off] Seriously though, you're right, Nazism takes it
even further than the paternal nationalism with the construction
of a rigid gendered hierarchy and social roles. Speaking of
corporeal representations and metaphors, have you ever seen
those WWI and WWII posters? Definitely with Britain, the nation
is sometimes represented as circa 1930-40s prototype of
cheerleader girl waving banners
>
>Anti-Oedipus : Capitalism and Schizophrenia
>Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari [Univ of Minnesota Pr 1985]
>also
>A Thousand Plateaus : Capitalism and Schizophrenia
>Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari [Univ of Minnesota Pr 1987]
>
>(Gee, it looks like I"m plugging U Minnesota Press - just a
coincidence)
I'll bet you work for them, and is trying to infiltrate into
pseudo-intellectual discussion groups such as alt.postmodern to
promote your merchandises ;-) Thanks a plenty for the reference
though.
>
Joyce
Joyce
>Its been appropriated as art - and assigned a value -as art,
I'll call
>it art now - (an equal disservice to the work would be to call
it a
>comic book)
Well said. There was an "artist" (or rather, cultural icon) in
Taiwan back in mid-80's who'd tie ribbons around trees, lock
himself inside a glass cage and defecate into a jam jar (well, I
guess I'll give him a gold star for putting up with the smell).
Anyway, his "work" yield significant influence and prestige
simply because he was already famous prior to those publicity
stunts, also Taiwan at the time was going through a cultural
nationalism revival, so naturally "artists" of native roots
would get bonus points. My point is, art is not simply about
aesthetic (itself being a construct), but also related to the
specific socio-political contexts, and as you've said, we apply
the subsequent "appropriate" values to them.
Joyce
>Neat example, Joyce. When I read tales like this it makes me
think how
>myopic we are about art - as if it only exists in New York,
Paris,
>London and Berlin. So right now there is a real
'mini-renaissance' of
>theatre going on in Mexico City - that we never hear about (so,
how did
>I hear about itf?) Anyway, it's focused on feminism, redefining
the
>status of women in Mexican culture. As you can imagine, it's
very
>subversive and controversial, but in the long run it will leave
its mark
>on culture. But I'm drifting -- the point is that our views on
art tend
>to be narrow, since art activity around the world, today, is
generally
>marginalized and we learn through mass media that there are
'important'
>movements and then, the rest. So your example attacks my
understanding
>of Taiwanese culture, which, at best, is composed of a string of
>pastische ideas and stereotypes. A performance artist just
doesn't fit
>in. It reminds me of Roland Barthes "Empire of Signs" -- the
>pseudo-Japan of the French imagination.
>
>Speaking of which, a life-long favorite of mine is Hokusai.
Talk about
>shattering stereotypes - i.e. the tidy, organized Japanese --
Hokusai
>lived in around a hundred houses in his 80 years. He would
simply move
>when his house got too dirty and chaotic - a perfect
proto-beatnik. One
>of his lovliest painting, "Autume Leaves" was made one day when
the
>chickens running around his house got so irritating that he
grabbed a
>Bantam rooster, dipped it's feathered feet into the ink, and
threw it on
>the paper.
>
>Erik
>
I feel very sorry for the chook... But hey, great examples of the
micro-levels of resistance. This makes me wonder about
postmodernism's theories and practices - on the one hand we get
to have grassroot level of resistance and differentiation, but on
the other, unless these informations about the resistance becomes
readily known, they remain obscure and... micro? What's your
opinion on this?
Ned Ludd
>
>> Just be sure to make them as good as the worst of the pictures
>> in those skin magazines.
>
> Ned, I seriously think you're just a 13 year old kid.... that
> sort of rhetoric belongs to a more juvenile category. Come up
> with something better (as in, showing more maturity of the mind).
>
Oh thank you thank you thank you, Joyce.
Ned
Joyce
>> in those skin magazines.
>
> Ned, I seriously think you're just a 13 year old kid.... that
> sort of rhetoric belongs to a more juvenile category. Come up
> with something better (as in, showing more maturity of the
mind).
>
Oh thank you thank you thank you, Joyce.
Ned
Kids these days....
BTW, with regards to your pointing out the various examples of
painted women, I'd like to know: Who is being intentionally made
as a spectacle, and who is the spectator?
Joyce
effect "The wars of the future will not be fought over
territory, but over access to information." (Postmodern
Condition). He goes on to describe a pretty grisley scenario
about 'access' being defined right now, and predicting that the
world's poverty populations will never have access.
A very good example: There's an interesting thread going on in
alt.native right now about Australian Aboriginal children being
taken from their parents and adopted out (of culture?) for their
own
protection. I just raised the question in a post "Why is there
no Aboriginal Voice being heard in this newsgroup on this
subject?" All the posts seem to be from non-Aboriginal
Australians. So I asked if there were any national programs in
Austrialia to make sure that poor Aboriginals have Internet
accesss?
Erik
Oh yes, the stolen generation issue... it was lost in a plethora
of outrage about how PM John Howard refuse to apologise.
Certainly an apology is needed, but like you, I agree that we
need much more active measures for the Aboriginal Australians.
This also reminds me of the cyberpunk fiction and culture of the
late 80's and onwards - such as the anarchistic activisms of
hackers and so one against the corporation and state censure of
information - but what I find interesting is that hacking
technologies and know-how's are again only known by the selected
few. Not everyone can sit down and crack into the American
Express... or Victoria's Secret for that matter. So even in the
war against the censoring of information, the means of agencies
are, ironically, not readily accessible for all.
Ever read _Art Objects: essays on ecstasy and effrontery_ by
Jeanette Winterson? I've a love-hate relationship to that book...
Erik A. Mattila
I'll have to look that one up, just out of curiosity. But since posting,
I remembered that several North American tribes used a decimal system - I
think what's at issue is whether or not they calculated or simply
counted. But in linguistic texts it's not uncomon to find a count to
ten, and then above this number there are combined terms such as our
"thirteen, fourteen, fifthteen etc."
But then, back to the thread subject, I was just using fingers and toes
as an example of a shared human trait that could offer some basis for
understanding the history of visual culture (notice I"m not saying
'art.') I read a pretty fascinating paper once by the Pawnee
Anthropologist Gene Weltfish on the origins of SA Indian art, and she
argued that it was the daily weaving of palmetto leaves into useful
objects. She showed how the popular designs of two or three tribes
evolved out of the limitations of about four weaving patterns. It was
pretty cool, I thought.
Thanks,
Erik
Erik A. Mattila
> >Its been appropriated as art - and assigned a value -as art,
> I'll call
> >it art now - (an equal disservice to the work would be to call
> it a
> >comic book)
>
> Well said. There was an "artist" (or rather, cultural icon) in
> Taiwan back in mid-80's who'd tie ribbons around trees, lock
> himself inside a glass cage and defecate into a jam jar (well, I
> guess I'll give him a gold star for putting up with the smell).
> Anyway, his "work" yield significant influence and prestige
> simply because he was already famous prior to those publicity
> stunts, also Taiwan at the time was going through a cultural
> nationalism revival, so naturally "artists" of native roots
> would get bonus points. My point is, art is not simply about
> aesthetic (itself being a construct), but also related to the
> specific socio-political contexts, and as you've said, we apply
> the subsequent "appropriate" values to them.
> >
> Joyce
Neat example, Joyce. When I read tales like this it makes me think how