Brother Alphabet's interesting comments
spino...@msn.com
>Subject: No Skill, No Problem?
>From: Brother Alphabet <ja...@isis.msstate.edu>
>In reply to the reply of: spinoza1111 -
>> ...while art can include skill and craft, it
>> does not have to, and there is no unity to the concept of skill and
>> craft.
>"Fine Art" *does* require skill/craft and talent.
>"Bad Art", I suppose, can display whatever useless attribute the moron
>making it possesses.
>> Cave paintings are acknowledged by many to be art, but they do not
>> manifest skill.
>How can you qualify this statement? Were you alive at the dawn of
>humankind? How do you know that the cave paintings do not manifest skill?
>It is quite possible that the cave images are the best example of artistic
>ability of that time. It is known that only certain people were allowed to
>make the paintings. These people were known to be the religious leaders
>of the tribes. It could be the case that those with artistic talent
>were seen as 'holy' figures. Early Islamic sects, such as the Moors,
>granted such status to their artists.
In some primitive societies, all people are considered artists in their
own way. Furthermore, it is a bit of a stretch to think that early
people thought in terms of "talent." Shamanism, yes. But I think they'd
have difficulty thinking like we do now, especially with our notion that
there are people out there who deliberately spend their time making bad
objects. They would, I believe, have a problem with our idea that having
"talent" is a prerequisite for making art. To think that they believed
in "talent" and "skill" as those words have been culturally constructed
is absurd.
Furthermore, the notion of skill and talent does not account for
collective works of art such as the Golden Gate Bridge. A recent history
of same emphasizes that no one name can be associated with it. If the
organization had to manifest "skill and talent" to build the bridge, I
suggest the concept is so broad and general as to be a uselessly broad
concept, and because it is used so nastily and perniciously, we're better
off without it.
>> The improvised music of a bluesman may not manifest the
>> skill of the classical musician in playing notes on a page, but it's art.
>Who says it's art? The best musicians, whether jazz, blues, rock or
>classical all have one thing in common: They know how to play their
>instruments.
....but a player in an improvisational tradition does not have to "know"
in the way Rudolf Serkin "knows"...
>A good free-jazz player knows the rudiments better than some
>straight players. Likewise with art, the best abstractionists have the
>basics covered.
But one of the best post-impressionists, Paul Cezanne, may be a
counterexample to this notion that it's alright to depart from the canon
IF, like Picasso (who aced his exams in Madrid) you have mastered that
tradition. Cezanne never, it is evident from his academic drawings,
learned how to draw and paint in the academic style, and during his early
years (prior to his association with Camille Pisarro) Cezanne labored
desparately for academic acceptance. Nonetheless, Cezanne's later work,
and his early work when viewed in the context of his later work, is of
high artistic quality. Cezanne's integration of color and form is of a
high order because it breaks down the boundary between color and form,
resulting in a "formColor" that structures his pictures. This happens to
be a profoundly intellectual breakthrough, distinct from a scientific
breakthrough, that only Poussin dimly foresaw, and Cezanne did so in an
artistic culture influenced by Ingres' sharp disciplinary separation of
color and form.
>You've got a long row to hoe if you think you're going to
>convince a hard-core musician that he doesn't need to know the scales.
In music, this notion that musicians have to know "the scales", by which
is meant only one Western way of arranging tones, is well-ingrained but
false. Indian music (from India) is based on different scales: the music
of China on another scheme. I am not suggesting that the artist does not
have to subject himself to some sort of material (as in the case of the
twelve-tone scheme of Schonberg.) I am saying that Mani's language of
reified skill and craft is worse than useless, because although it allows
itself to be expanded, for example, from classical music to the blues, it
still carries the message that one scheme is better than another.
>> Saying in either case that these artists have a skill of a different
>> order ultimately reduces to tautologically saying that they created
>> something that we think Art, in other words saying uninformatively that
>> x=x.
>I don't dispute that it takes skill and talent to be good at 'X'.
>Those without skill and talent are BAD at 'X'. Isn't that the point of
>what I said in the first place?
The language of one-to-one correspondence of good/bad artist with good/bad
art (1) neglects collective efforts and (2) blinds us to the more useful
language of participation in the art PROCESS. In this the viewer is not
a passive audience but takes part in some way in the creation of art.
>> And the skill of a textile weaver has little in common with that of the
>> painter.
>Right. I see. So, color theory, composition, texture, etc have nothing to
>do with 'Fine' Textiles (Or, 'Fiber Arts', as I've heard them referred
>to.) Interesting how Picasso was able to apply painterly principles to
>textiles. Perhaps your vision is too narrow. Perhaps you should ponder
>that maybe while a 'weaver' (or craftsperson) has no need for artistic
>ability, an ARTIST on the other hand can master any medium and apply
>refined techniques to them all.
Of course, that's not what I am saying. I'm saying that oversimplified
language makes abstract entities of concrete skills.
>> The concept of "skill" may be subject to Wittgenstein's
>> deconstruction, in Philosophical Investigations, of the concept "game",
>> wherein Wittgenstein showed that no one element could be said to be
>> common to all games. "Game" for Wittgenstein was a form of life with no
>> common core: likewise "skill."
>No one element, for example 'ball', could be common to all games. However,
>that element 'ball' is quite necessary in many games. And, the element
>'strategy' is needed to win most games, as well as the element 'luck' or
>'chance'. In many cases, the element 'participant' is required to have an
>actual event to discuss in the first place, and if that 'participant'
>element possesses the attribute 'skill', all the better for 'participant'.
The element "strategy" is not needed in ALL games. For example, it is
not necessary to have a strategy in most arm-wrestling contests. Two
computers can play chess but if by "participant" is meant "human" then
there is no participant.
>In any case, while many 'games' require any of a wide variety of elements,
>your philosopher has not eliminated the necessity of the 'skill' element
>from the game of art. It is more likely true that you just wanted to try
>to impress people by muddling your argument with references to
>philosophical filler.
No, I was trying to draw attention to the fact that contrary to the
notion that everyday people don't get involved with the "muddled"
arguments of the philosophers, they are far more likely to unconsciously
use and apply muddled philosophical concepts inherited from the culture
at large. One might consciously read philosophy to reduce rather than
enlarge the "muddle." The appearance of muddle in the activity may be
deceptive and the real muddle may be in the common sense language of
everyday.
Bourgeois reification (making a thing out of) is one example. The
bourgeois art viewer inherits an ontology that upon examination is seen
so broad as to be useless.
The concepts we apply today are inherited from the 19th century, in which
"good" music meant precisely music that restricted itself to "beautiful"
Western tones and in which "good" painting restricted itself to
3-dimensional naratively based representations of "appropriate" subjects.
Today, because we like Matisse and the blues, we try merely to generalize
the old concepts but maintain the social and property relations intact.
Because this is so difficult, it increases social control to a
sado-masochistic level.
Classical music audiences don't in general need security firms to provide
crowd control although the emotions released and contained by the Eroica
are quite as powerful as those released and contained by Jumping Jack
Flash. This may be because the latter comes from a vernacular tradition
that demands more participation in the fashioning of a musical event, yet
corporate organization of rock and roll discourages this participation in
order to make a saleable entity out of the music of the Stones. The very
boundary between Mick Jagger and his fans has to be carefully maintained
by overt physical force precisely because Mick's music derives from
pre-WWII juke joints of the African-American south and urban north
wherein the audience took part in the creation of a unique musical event.
But once adopted by a large firm, this tradition has to make money for
shareholders and if every Stones concert degenerated into a Dionysian
celebration (either positive like Woodstock or negative like Altamont)
the resulting profit opportunity would disappear in a welter of lawsuits.
I think this is why we think in reified terms. We internalize
surveillance and control.
>Besides, what did Wittgenstein paint?
As a matter of fact, Wittgenstein was a part-time architect.
>> The most interesting thing about your story is its facile assumption
>> about a real production process.
>Art is a production process. Either a single individual produces an
>object, or, in the case of Warhol and others, an artist facilitates the
>production of art by providing only concepts.
The celebration of Warhol, an incompetent, shows how we internalize
economic relations. Warhol modeled his career on that of the successful
manager, and abused his followers (notably Valerie Solanis) in a loft
called the Firm. Although the final product fails to manifest artistic
interest on its own, Warhol was able through this means to gain respect
and visibility because in his time we had already been trained to
admire entrepreneurship and not see the labor on which entrepreneurship is
based. Meanwhile, truly interesting Pop artists including the late
Roy Lichtenstein, are invisible outside the art community.
>> In actuality, that is PRECISELY what
>> management in the building trades, and many other industries, would like
>> to see and where industry is evolving.
>I see. Bought a lot of houses lately? The industry's direction is
>determined not by management, but by consumers...consumers have the money
>that management wants. Most home-buyers, if they have brains in their
>heads, prefer to select their builders based upon reputation for quality
>and economy. Economy is also frequently of lesser importance to the
>competency of the builder. In this age, investment homes are common, and
>as you plainly don't realize, the greater the quality, the greater the
>resale value.
Here you assume that the quality of a modern house must have its origin
in skilled labor. But the quality has less to do with the vision of the
guys on the site and more to do with their following a set of clear
Taylorist rules laid down by the firm. I am not saying that people in
construction don't have to work hard, and indeed the human spirit is
such that the more imaginative of them often find extremely narrow
zones (of a narrowness undreamt-of by the most Apollonian artists)
of play and creativity. But what you think of as high quality (which
given the large expense of home purchasing is a sine qua non) is a
consistency of quality enforced by job rules.
Theodore Adorno, and my own grandfather (a German-American homebuilder)
would be amused by your belief that today's homes manifest high quality.
The former would say that what seems to be handicraft (for overt mass-
production of homes is restricted to trailers) is actually and
conceptually Taylorized mass production. The homes constructed today
that are laying to waste farmland of central Illinois, although large,
priced out of reach, and vulgar, do not manifest any sort of artistic
quality. Instead, tropes that the businessman-developer think to be of
high quality (such as the "lunette" style window) are stuck on more or
less randomly. The very smoothness and finish of these homes is a
symptom of lack of craftsmanship because the industrial finish results
from use of standardized components.
The artistic low quality of these homes jibes with the fact that unlike
the "ticky-tacky boxes" of the 1950s these homes are priced out of reach
of people who actually need them, and are (unjustly) supported by a
government handout in the form of the mortgage deduction, qualification
for which demands that the mortgage holder adhere to an extremely narrow
and conservative life-style dictated by both his bank and his community.
>> The skills of construction are
>> continually downsized and deskilled in order to force down labor costs,
>> and the ideology of its management proclaims that anyone off the streets
>> can replace the men and women on the job.
>I guess that's why I keep seeing 'minimum 3,5,7 years experience required'
>listed in the want ads. If you come in off the streets to work in the
>construction business with no experience, you'll be carting off rubble in
>a wheelbarrow for a long time.
As in the computer field, these demands for experience have to be read
carefully. Very few studies outside of business schools have been done
of the effectiveness and meaning of want ads. However, an independent
study done several years ago found that there was no relation between the
ads in a community and the availability of jobs, and it is actually the
case (as real job-seekers often find) that the company is merely
harvesting resumes for a later date.
I submit that construction firms are like computer firms in that they
place high qualifications on the job (while downgrading the qualifications
needed once the hire is final as a disciplinary move) less to attract the
best people and more to reduce the pressure of "unqualified" people. The
pressure of unqualified people results from the social need for a reserve
army of unemployed.
Scott Adams recently had a Dilbert cartoon in which an evil
personnel manager was demanding of Wally that he have ten years of Java
experience (when Java was invented only five years ago) to get a raise,
and people have seen ads demanding "twenty years of Visual Basic." The
purpose of the experience demand is to reduce the pool of applicants.
>Since you brought it up, management's ideology is, plain and simple:
>Make more money for the company. If they do things to please employees
>it is because they seek to improve morale which will make employees more
>productive which will: Make more money for the company. Companies do not
>exist to provide jobs for people. They exist to make money. The principle
>is called 'profit' and the system is called 'capitalism'.
I agree that companies have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to
make money, but this does not imply rational or humane behavior.
>> In business, the customer is always right. In art, the customer is
>> sometimes wrong because in art the audience includes the past and future.
>First of all, the customer is not always right. If the customer wishes to
>leave the premises without paying, the customer is not only wrong, he is a
>thief.
Of course. But the vernacular saying "the customer is always right"
implies a contract between the business and the customer in which the
business must meet its half of the bargain in any way it can, whereas
the PAYING customer has very few other restrictions. The fine artist,
*qua* fine artist, typically gets to ignore this demand of trade and I
believe its important to keep this distinction in mind.
Mani wants museums to treat commercial art on a par with fine art: a
typical Philistine demand. This is not even hard-headedly realistic: for
anyone who works in REAL business knows that...the customer is always
right, and the boss is his prophet. Whereas the fine artist pursues a
personal vision that may appeal to no one but himself.
>Secondly, dead people make regular appearances at your local galleries?
>How is the past an audience? And again, the future does not exist. You
>could make a painting one day and the next night it could be destroyed in
>a fire. You cannot count on maybes and apparitions. When dealing with the
>art business, visual or theoretical ideals do not readily apply.
>Consideration of the audience is different when comparing art-market to
>art-museum. Less ethical artists will tailor their work to their audiences
>in either instance. Others will work as they feel called and find or
>force a niche in the market.
They may never find such a market niche: whether they do is contingent on
a number of factors including the health of the market. Federal arts
programs started during a period of severe market failure (the Great
Depression) when there were no opportunities for artists to support
themselves, either by selling their work to the rich, or working at a
"day" job. The ideology of these programs is that interesting and
important art can be produced outside the market. However, in an era of
declining funding, competition for Federal arts funds becomes a chaotic
and random game, decided unfairly. That's why it should probably be
eliminated.
There has been no adequate top-down or *dirigiste* support for the arts
since the aristos went to hell in 1789. The Salon of the 19th century
was an example of the vulgarity and injustice of public support for the
arts in a modern state, whereas in the age of the aristos a few
personalities such as Haydn's Count Esterhaz and Poussin's Felibien could
sponsor high quality art, independent as they were. Some rich men of
today fulfill their role, but very few, any more, are willing to take
risks. Artists therefore must be content with very little support.
>In art, the correctness of the customer is determined by the individual
>artist, or in most cases, the gallery director. If a customer tries to
>mandate how a piece should look, the artist has the option of saying 'Are
>you nuts?' or selling out and saying 'Sure, boss'.
Once he says the latter he is no longer a fine artist. My program here
is to evolve notions with a material base from before 1789 into notions
that can be used by the so-called ordinary person. This is the ability
to be a fully free Kantian subject in all spheres of life.
>> The artist may be creating a work not appreciated for a hundred years,
>> and his "customers" may live then.
>Keep that 'customers' in quotes. Dead artists have no rent to pay.
>Your above statement also negates one of your following statements which
>implies that a non-selling artist is not an artist at all. So, which is it
>to be? If the artist did not sell when he was alive, and was as a result
>not an artist, how could he then, over a century in the ground, transform
>himself into an artist?
I was not making the positive claim that an artist is one who sells in
the future or somehow gets dead people from the past to come to him with
cash (I ask you, really.) I was engaged in criticising the notion that
an artist is one who sells. Selling art, in our society, is the typical
way an artist comes into contact with his or her public. But I am
perfectly willing to maintain an extreme realist notion of fine art, such
that there may exist a work of fine art that nobody but the artist ever
sees. If somebody discovers a quartet of Beethoven he never let anybody
hear, it was a work of art both before and after the discovery.
>> Or, following T. S. Eliot part way,
>> we might add that an artist is free to decide that he has a
>> responsibility to the past: for example, Eliot worked in the conscious
>> presence of Metaphysical poets of the 17th century.
>Yeah. Right. I bet he stayed sober the whole time, too.
The dislike of figurative language on the part if Fascist art critics was
on display in Eva's post. I don't think you are a Fascist. But it grates
me that I cannot communicate using a deliberate metaphor, and must keep
my language that of the soldier male. So I won't.
>> Either way,
>> attention to the dead or not yet living makes art something quite
>> different from manufacture.
>So, a house builder can't be concerned with building a house that will
>last hundreds of years? An engineer needn't worry that his bridge might
>collapse after 10 years of traffic? Of course, I don't think I'd hire
>either if they claimed to be guided by voices, but let's just pretend you
>didn't really imply that ghosts show up at art shows.
In a figurative sense (and that sense to me is as important as the
literal) I hope that they do. Art is meaningless unless it becomes a
way of contacting grandfather spirits.
>> As to whether its necessary, I believe the question has to be answered
>> individually. For some, Beethoven may be out of date noise. For me, he
>> is a reminder of human potential at the Hegelian dawn of a modern
>> consciousness, so there.
>Er, why not argue for 'skill-less' music like that of Nirvana instead of
>blatantly brilliantly talented works from Beethoven? Remember, you are the
>one that doesn't think skill is necessary.
No, I claim instead that the language of skill is muddled, reifying and
oppressive. I don't know much about Nirvana but I like New Age, which
deliberately downplays "skill" in order to give the music a certain
serenity. This serenity is lacking in classical performances. Edward
Said has pointed out that these performances are sado-masochistic when
viewed in the context of musical history. In the 19th century, prior to
the advent of Tom Edison's phonograph, musical reproduction consisted in
a few friends gathering of an evening to, say, play the Ninth symphony on
the fortepiano, or perhaps the Archduke. I submit that this musical
public was more musically aware and less abused, although their
reproductions may not have had the quality of Midori.
And as Adorno has pointed-out, the phonograph promises a reified quality
which is unavailable precisely because of that reification. The promise
of the LP was realized, in material conditions, by perhaps only a few
thousand audio "buffs", and the sadistic promise of perfection of the
compact disk was followed by (1) criticisms of its harsh overbrilliance
and (2) frequent catastrophic digital CD failures...failures far less
graceful than the rumbling scratchiness of a dusty LP. The CD promises
the delivery of a reified "skill" and then fails to deliver.
>> I do know that a society drained of the arts
>> soon demonstrates ethical failings. Soviet Russia drained itself of the
>> arts, not by subsuming the arts to private material production, but by
>> subsuming the arts to state material production, and its physical and
>> moral collapse in 1989 has a lot to do with this.
>Er, no, it has to do with the faulty principles of communist economics and
>socialist government. The Russian art market is currently blossoming and
>competing heartily on the world scene...Now that they're Capitalists.
There was also a blossoming of the arts during the early Soviet Union,
so capitalism is not the only road.
>I would not mind seeing some sort of professional organization for working
>artists. Something above and beyond the many short-lived collectives that
>pop in and out. Something like the AMA or the ATLA...Something with
>political clout without political obligations.
The only reason, in a market-driven society, a professional organization
has clout is because of legal and professional obligations. I'm
a certified Windows 95 professional. Big deal.
>We are professional artists.
>We should be concerned with the preservation and protection of our field
>from unethical or fraudulent outsiders. An association could be very
>helpful, especially as the internet presence of artists increases. Many
>would find assistance with intellectual property law very useful. I think
>becoming an artist should be as rigorous and consuming as becoming a
>lawyer, where we would have to pass a 'bar' to be legitimate.
I do support the notion of having grassroots organizations of artists
with entry criteria, such as the Pallete and Chisel academy here in
Chicago.
>Skip all that 'bar exam' stuff, and pay attention just to the part about
>being concerned with the preservation and protection of our field. It is
>important that artists be in control of what art is. Not galleries and
>limp-wrists who think they can be artists because they FEEEL that they
>should be.
I find this offensive, because it implies that only REAL MEN can be
artists. Men seem to engage, almost unconsciously, and probably
unconsciously in your case (because you seem to have smarts), in this
sort of phallic overcompensation. I submit that FEEEEELINGS are the most
important part of art and that we neglect FEEEEELINGS at our peril.
Indeed, as Cezanne dismantled our mental boundary 'twixt color and form,
I'd say that the highest art dismantles our internalized boundary between
feeling and intellect.
Aldous Huxley pointed out that the reason why Beethoven is at the pinnacle
of a Western tradition starting with Monteverdi and terminating today
was his unification of feeling and thought, and that later 19th century
music is of lesser value because it turned up the emotion dial without
turning up the reason dial. But beyond Huxley, I'd say that there is
a point in Beethoven where the feeling and the reason are one entity.
>Being an artist is not a mere inclination.
>Being an artist is a calling, a forceful calling that will not let go of
>your mind, your spirit...If it leaves someone, it was never really there.
>The struggle for existence can be won by just breathing in and out. It is
>not hard to BE. The victory is temporary, though. The artist's struggle is
>to continue to BE after one has long since ceased to be.
I agree that there may be some people who sorta wanted to be thought of
as an artist because of defects of character, but I submit that owing
to the unpopularity and low status of the arts today, these people are
far fewer in number than, say, New York of the 1950s.
>> Yeah, there oughta be a law. Maybe you and Jesse Helms can inject new
>> life into the National Endowment for the Arts.
>I'm disappointed that you didn't try to compare me to Hitler.
>I prefer the elimination of the current NEA. It has no use in a heavily
>corporate world. More private dollars go to art causes than taxes will
>ever match.
You're probably right.
>Federal support of the arts should be oriented around gathering an
>accurate representation of the national culture. I would like to see the
>NEA replaced by a rotating system. Appointments to the NEA should work
>like jury duty. Each state should appoint a new council at random each
>year, and artists from each state should be awarded with a set
>amount of cash and supplies, and a small portfolio of their works should
>be added to the national collection.
Something like this was tried by the Works Progress Administration of the
New Deal, because "heartland" artists had the same resentments people in
the boonies have today of a fantasized "limp-wristed" elite. However,
the fact was and is that "birds of a feather flock together."
Production of fine art is a lonely and isolating endeavor, and from a
merely demographic viewpoint, the natural tendency of artists is to want
to knock off for a few brewskis and talk with other artists. This would
trivially concentrate more artmaking in urban centers.
>> Anybody who wants to make a work of art will have to apply for a license
>> to the local NEA office. This will obviously raise the tone of the arts
>> to a high degree.
>Nah. I think your idea is really kind of stupid...or were you trying to be
>ironically illustrative of the opinion you think I have although you're
>mistaken?
Doh...
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Brother Alphabet
Spinoza1111 said:
> In some primitive societies, all people are considered artists in their
> own way. Furthermore, it is a bit of a stretch to think that early
> people thought in terms of "talent."
I did not make the claim that the ancients defined 'talent' and 'skill'
per se, but that they recognized it differently, by granting special
social status to those in whom the abilities were manifest.
> To think that they believed
> in "talent" and "skill" as those words have been culturally constructed
> is absurd.
Yes, by those definitions it is, but there is textual evidence that proves
they saw such traits as 'gifts from the gods'...The very root origin of
the word 'talent'.
> Furthermore, the notion of skill and talent does not account for
> collective works of art such as the Golden Gate Bridge.
We needn't worry here. The Golden Gate Bridge is not a work of art. It is
a work of architecture and engineering. It is also possible to grant a
collective a trait, as well as to isolate the individual members of the
collective and grant each a trait. Each builder, more or less, was
skilled. Each architect and engineer, more or less, was skilled.
> A recent history
> of same emphasizes that no one name can be associated with it. If the
> organization had to manifest "skill and talent" to build the bridge, I
> suggest the concept is so broad and general as to be a uselessly broad
> concept, and because it is used so nastily and perniciously, we're better
> off without it.
Much better that the golden gate bridge collapsed into the bay.
Still, we're talking about a bridge, which isnt art regardless of what
recent popular coffeetable books indicate.
> ....but a player in an improvisational tradition does not have to "know"
> in the way Rudolf Serkin "knows"...
Blues is not an improvisational tradition. It has a structure.
I suggest you meet more free-jazz players. When you meet the tell them you
think it's neat how they don't have to know any music to play. Better
still tell them that you could play it as well as they could, and say
something like "it's just playing notes at random, right?" You'll have a
fun evening.
> But one of the best post-impressionists, Paul Cezanne
I don't see Cezanne as one of the best post-impressionists.
In fact, I dispute many of the credits attributed him, mainly that of his
supposed influence upon the origins of cubism. There is no direct link,
vuisualy or otherwise.
Van Gogh and Lautrec are most significant from that school. But, this is
an issue for another topic of discussion...
> may be a
> counterexample to this notion that it's alright to depart from the canon
OK, so you're saying that Cezanne's presumed lack of ability is proof that
it's best to stcik to the canon? (I'm not saying that I agree that Cezanne
lacked ability, I just find his work boring.)
> IF, like Picasso (who aced his exams in Madrid)
I guess that was before he was kicked out of school. Picasso was given
scholarships and awards, but always hated school and did not complete a
traditional education.
> you have mastered that
> tradition. Cezanne never, it is evident from his academic drawings,
> learned how to draw and paint in the academic style
If he had, he would have had better luck with his rendering of
perspective, I imagine. In the works the eggheads always praise, it is
obvious he intended to portray a realistic scene, but his lack of ability
prevented him from accurately interpreting the perspectives involved.
> and during his early
> years (prior to his association with Camille Pisarro) Cezanne labored
> desparately for academic acceptance.
Only for a short while, for he sooned joined his contemporaries in flying
in the faces of the academics.
> Nonetheless, Cezanne's later work,
> and his early work when viewed in the context of his later work, is of
> high artistic quality.
In that it sits in a frame on a wall in a museum?
Cezanne is important not because of the quality of his work, but because
what the eventual acceptance of his work allowed.
> Cezanne's integration of color and form is of a
> high order because it breaks down the boundary between color and form,
> resulting in a "formColor" that structures his pictures.
This was done by accident on the part of the artist, and was later
appropriated as a principle by future artists.
> This happens to
> be a profoundly intellectual breakthrough...
Not on the part of Cezanne. The intellectualism of the ideals came later
after his work was studied. It's kind of like this:
A janitor is cleaning a chemistry lab. He spills a container, then spills
another. The contents of that container mix on the floor and explode.
The scientists discover what caused the accident, study the chemicals and
begin to develop refined explosives from the knowledge gained.
> distinct from a scientific
> breakthrough, that only Poussin dimly foresaw...
What did Pussin dimly foresee? Are you quite sure it wasn't an absinthe
hallucination?
> and Cezanne did so in an
> artistic culture influenced by Ingres' sharp disciplinary separation of
> color and form.
Oh please...His environment was only partially influenced by Igres et al.
By his time, Manet, Monet and Renoir were also on the scene. Not to
mention his contemporaries, Van Gogh, Gaugin and Lautrec...Seurat...etc.
> In music, this notion that musicians have to know "the scales", by which
> is meant only one Western way of arranging tones...
Stop trying to cloud the truth with your multicultural balogna.
You know full well what was meant by 'the scales'. That means 'the basic
skills' If Muddy Waters was chinese, I'd expect him to know the basic of
chinese music before he could credibly play the chinese blues.
> twelve-tone scheme of Schonberg.) I am saying that Mani's language of
> reified skill and craft is worse than useless, because although it allows
> itself to be expanded, for example, from classical music to the blues, it
> still carries the message that one scheme is better than another.
It is here that I have debate with M. de Li. I make room for the display
of talent and skill in many areas of artistic endeavor, most especially
different forms of representation. I only insist that these attributes be
present in an object before applying the label 'art'. Even a skilled
artist making a 'bad' work on purpose will show tell-tale evidence of
ability. Where as an unintentionaly bad piece cannot be seen as anything
but bad.
> The language of one-to-one correspondence of good/bad artist with good/bad
> art (1) neglects collective efforts and (2) blinds us to the more useful
> language of participation in the art PROCESS. In this the viewer is not
> a passive audience but takes part in some way in the creation of art.
Collective efforts can be duly credited. If more than one person writes a
book, more than one author's name can be printed on the sleeve.
There is no participation in the process to be considered. The artist
participates/creates, displays. The viewer sees/interprets/absorbs and
reacts/ignores. The viewer would not be the viewer if the viewer did more
than look.
> Of course, that's not what I am saying. I'm saying that oversimplified
> language makes abstract entities of concrete skills.
"Compositional Skill" is not an abstract concept. It encompasses every
aspect of any artistic process.
> The element "strategy" is not needed in ALL games. For example, it is
> not necessary to have a strategy in most arm-wrestling contests.
But, there IS an arm-wrestling strategy, as useless as that is.
> Two computers can play chess but if by "participant" is meant "human"
> then there is no participant.
Well, of course if you can place limitations and stipulations on all
parameters, then you can bend the stream of thought into a pretzel.
If, by 'game' you mean 'art', 'participant' must possess 'skill' and
'talent'.
How's that?
> No, I was trying to draw attention to the fact that contrary to the
> notion that everyday people don't get involved with the "muddled"
> arguments of the philosophers, they are far more likely to unconsciously
> use and apply muddled philosophical concepts inherited from the culture
> at large.
You have it backwards.
Philosophers are more likely to chronicle concepts observed in the culture
at large. Philosophy is not much more than a statement of the obvious
reinterpreted by someone with too much time on his or her hands.
> One might consciously read philosophy to reduce rather than
> enlarge the "muddle."
One might. What's your point?
> The appearance of muddle in the activity may be
> deceptive and the real muddle may be in the common sense language of
> everyday.
Heinie. Doorknob lefty schism.
If the artworld appears muddled, it is due to the common sense language of
everyday 'speakisms used to defend the incompetent and the bland.
> Bourgeois reification (making a thing out of) is one example. The
> bourgeois art viewer inherits an ontology that upon examination is seen
> so broad as to be useless.
"Anyone can be an artist. Everything is art"
Those are the two prime example of this. How will the 'bourgeois' ever
truly believe in a concrete 'art' if everything from their fork to their
lounge chair is art, and everyone from the old lady down the block to the
garbage man is an artist?
> The concepts we apply today are inherited from the 19th century...
I think they go back a bit further than that. Where did the people of the
19th century get their 'concepts'?
> "good" painting restricted itself to
> 3-dimensional naratively based representations of "appropriate" subjects.
It's a wonder impressionism ever was...
> Today, because we like Matisse and the blues, we try merely to generalize
> the old concepts but maintain the social and property relations intact.
I don't much like the blues, or matisse, actually. I see what you're
trying to say though.
> Because this is so difficult, it increases social control to a
> sado-masochistic level.
Ooh. Kinky.
> Classical music audiences don't in general need security firms to provide
> crowd control...
This is because horny naked women on drugs dont tend to want to rip the
clothes off of a 52-year-old floutist in a tux. Im not knocking classical
music, but I'm not inclined to lust after Midori. The performers are not
usually sex-symbols. Even the ones with media exposure.
> This may be because the latter comes from a vernacular tradition
> that demands more participation in the fashioning of a musical event...
Er, no. A musical 'event' is not really an 'event' without participants.
A concert with no attendees is called 'rehearsal' or 'box office flop'.
> yet
> corporate organization of rock and roll discourages this participation in
> order to make a saleable entity out of the music of the Stones.
Those 55 dollar tickets might disincline some people to participate, but
they still do pretty well, although i wish theyd retire.
> The very
> boundary between Mick Jagger and his fans has to be carefully maintained
> by overt physical force precisely because Mick's music derives from
> pre-WWII juke joints of the African-American south and urban north
> wherein the audience took part in the creation of a unique musical event.
You think way too much. There are security guards there because otherwise
groupies would swarm the stage. It has absolutely nothing to do with Juke
Joint traditions. Have you ever even been in a juke joint? People sit in
their chairs drinking and smoking and listening to music as an
afterthought. Now and then, there are some people dancing. No one is
swarming the stage...
> But once adopted by a large firm, this tradition has to make money for
> shareholders and if every Stones concert degenerated into a Dionysian
> celebration (either positive like Woodstock or negative like Altamont)
> the resulting profit opportunity would disappear in a welter of lawsuits.
In case you didnt catch the news, a guy was killed in a fall at a stones
concert within the last couple of weeks. This was a 'corporate' event with
security guards and everything. The fool was drunk and dancing on a rail
or something. Fell off, I think. Odds are good that a lawsuit will arise.
The corporate aspect of the music has nothing to do with lawsuits. It is
the greed of individuals you should address. People will sue if their
hairdo gets ruined by the wind in the parking lot of a large company.
> I think this is why we think in reified terms. We internalize
> surveillance and control.
Sometimes I feel sorry for anti-corporate paranoiacs like you, and
sometimes they make me laugh.
> As a matter of fact, Wittgenstein was a part-time architect.
Wow. So did that answer the question? No. Architects are not artists, they
are architects.
> The celebration of Warhol, an incompetent...
EH!? You DARE refer to someone as INCOMPETENT?!!
I thought ANYONE could be an artist! You've negated your entire position!
Oh my...
What criteria allows you to see Warhol as incompetent while seeing every
other piece of crap as valid?
> shows how we internalize
> economic relations. Warhol modeled his career on that of the successful
> manager, and abused his followers (notably Valerie Solanis) in a loft
> called the Firm.
It was called the 'factory' I believe, and his role was that of media
clown. He knew what he was doing: Making fools of the entire scene. He
would have people sit for portraits, have other artists in his factory do
the work, and then sign his name to it and charge them a ton of money!
Warhol also facilitated the careers of many artists who would have been
nothing without him (And for that, Warhol should burn in hell)...I hate
speaking positively about Warhol, because I share the view that he was
incompetent...Ive seen some of his watercolors...Ugh...
You really should get over your problem with corporations. You would not
like living with the alternative.
> Although the final product fails to manifest artistic
> interest on its own,
Some of the work is interesting...You must not have seen it all.
> Warhol was able through this means to gain respect
> and visibility because in his time we had already been trained to
> a dmire entrepreneurship and not see the labor on which entrepreneurship
> is based.
That's outright bullshit.
Warhol's fame came directly from his finesse with the media, which was the
underlying goal of Pop - To manipulate pop-culture with pop-culture.
Warhol was a media clown, a front page story - He did things to capture
the attention of the media, and the public then gave him worth by default.
Look at, Madonna for example. A cheese-pop should-have-been flash in the
pan who started acting like a deranged slut and made her fame from bad
press...Use anybody for example these days...
And in regard to business: You flat out do not know what you're talking
about. There is no 'labor' in the country. There are 'employees' and
'employers'. 'Labor' is what occurs in ignorant communist nations when the
government wants a road built. You do it or you go to jail. It's labor,
and it's mandatory. In this country you are perfectly free to sit on your
butt all day and do nothing. You only relinquish control of your self if
you commit crimes. The 'labor' used in Warhol's operation was perfectly
free to leave, and many did...Those who stayed knew what they were doing
and what they were in for. If not, they were morons and deserved it.
Actually, they were all morons who deserved it.
> Meanwhile, truly interesting Pop artists including the late
> Roy Lichtenstein, are invisible outside the art community.
So is most art. So are most artists. Most artists are invisible WITHIN the
art community. *I'M* not part of it...I have a few paintings in public, a
few for sale...That hardly puts me on NYC's most trendy list. Lichtenstein
is in every art appreciation book I've ever seen, and that's about as much
exposure the average person ever gets to fine art. That's something at
least, unless you can figure out a way to convert everyone to your brand
of reality and force them all to love art.
Freedom, unfortunately, allows for the freedom to be shallow and stupid.
> Here you assume that the quality of a modern house must have its origin
> in skilled labor.
It is not prerequisite, but a smart buyer won't hire just anyone.
> Taylorist rules laid down by the firm.....
Part of the skill in being a builder is knowing how to follow the friggin
blueprints, for cryin out loud!
> such that the more imaginative of them often find extremely narrow
> zones (of a narrowness undreamt-of by the most Apollonian artists)
> of play and creativity.
Thats just what every home-buyer dreams of...Builders who get creative and
play with their home design. When, oh when, will our society see the need
for freedom on the construction site? Let 'em build it as they know they
can in their hearts!
> But what you think of as high quality (which
> given the large expense of home purchasing is a sine qua non) is a
> consistency of quality enforced by job rules.
Heaven forbid! Rules!
And what would you call someone who couldn't follow the job rules? Unfit
for the job, perhaps? Incompetent? Unskilled? I'd say so.
> Theodore Adorno, and my own grandfather (a German-American homebuilder)
Say...what's the difference bewteen a German-American home and a regular
American home? Could he build regular American homes or French-Canadian
ones, or just German-American ones?
> would be amused by your belief that today's homes manifest high quality.
Granted, most people don't run plantations, and the cost of importing
marble from italy has gone up slightly, but most buyers buy as much
quality as they can afford.
> The former would say that what seems to be handicraft (for overt mass-
> production of homes is restricted to trailers)
'Manufactured Homes' as they are called 'round here...Tornado-Bait, I call
em.
> is actually and
> conceptually Taylorized mass production. The homes constructed today
> that are laying to waste farmland of central Illinois, although large,
> priced out of reach, and vulgar, do not manifest any sort of artistic
> quality.
That's the choice of the buyer. It's easy to pick a plan from a book, so
they do. It doesnt retract from either the skill of the builder or the
skill of the architect to make innovative designs. These services are
either o chosen, or too expensive for most.
Plus, if a house is being built, then it isnt priced out of reach.
More people have more money than you think. Only in your imagination is
everyone poor, underclassed, and crying for revolt.
> Instead, tropes that the businessman-developer think to be of
> high quality (such as the "lunette" style window) are stuck on more or
> less randomly. The very smoothness and finish of these homes is a
> symptom of lack of craftsmanship because the industrial finish results
> from use of standardized components.
It would kind of suck to have your pipes explode and flood your house then
have to wait while new pipes were forged at the foundry at which you
insisted they be custom made for you, right?
Standardization is what has allowed technology to develop to the point at
which you are now able to use your telephone to log on to the internet and
make heinously anticapitalist remarks.
> The artistic low quality of these homes...
Are you just unwilling to accept the fact that fine architecture has left
the residential sector. Guess who's supporting innovative
architecture...Go ahead...guess...
C.o.r.p.o.r.a.t.i.o.n.s. Shhhhh. Don't tell anybody.
Also the...dare I say it.....the...the...The ridiculously wealthy...
It's a shame that money has to come from rich people, isn't it?
Much better to give all the money to poor people...No, wait..then theyd be
the rich...hmmm...
> the "ticky-tacky boxes" of the 1950s these homes are priced out of reach
> of people who actually need them...
Pardon...but people in dire need of housing dont need 4 bedroom homes in
the suburbs, or plush mansions...they need something better than cardboard
boxes...Right? Why bemoan the financial ability of those who have earned
their money? Why punish people who are successful in their careers? Is it
their fault that Lula Mae got hooked on heroin and lives in the streets of
a city 3000 miles away? You're looking for solutions to problems that dont
exist.
Another note you seem to be unable to factor in:
The common folk have never built palaces. It has ALWAYS been either the
power structure or the very rich that have built homes or other structures
of architectural significance.
This is one of the perks of having huge amounts of dough, and this is also
why the rich are a vital part of our society.
> and are (unjustly) supported by a
> government handout in the form of the mortgage deduction
A handout is something for nothing.
Bums get handouts for living on the streets, being addicted to drugs.
Women get handouts for churning out kids when they dont even have a part
time job.
Farmers get paid NOT to grow things.
Mortgage deductions and tax breaks are incentives for enterprise.
These things spur housing starts, which boost many elements of the
economy. If your obviously uselss education had taught you anything
practical you'd know these things.
Because a person is poor does not entitle them to anything. In this
country you have to work to get ahead unless by some rare chance your
family is loaded and you inherit, or unless my some miracle you actually
win a lottery. Most average Joes have to work to achieve.
> qualification
> for which demands that the mortgage holder adhere to an extremely narrow
> and conservative life-style dictated by both his bank and his community.
That's also complete nonsense. All you need to get a mortgae is equity or
a previously established credit history with the lending institution. Even
some of your precious have-nots could qualify for and receive housing
loans. You are also not required to pay the money back at all. You just
won't remain the owner of the house for very long if you don't.
I would wager that you grew up with either a hell of a lot of money and
are now guilty about it, or you grew up with only 2 pairs of pants and
hand-me-down shoes and you're bitter and jealous of others, or you grew up
averagely and have been ill-educated by an overly liberal school. Quite
possibly your parents were commies who brainwashed you to think like
this.
Whatever the case, class-envy is one of the most disgusting of all
personal characteristics. It makes no sense to be so envious of others
that you would be willing to evolve an entire philosophy of blame to
place upon them. Victimhood and martyrdom, over and over. It really is
pitiful.
You really should try to eliminate those traits from your otherwise
semi-logical arguments.
> As in the computer field, these demands for experience have to be read
> carefully.
OK. Annnnd I Quote from today's paper: "Must be bonded. 3 years experience
required. 5 years experience preferred." Seems quite easy to comprehend.
> Very few studies outside of business schools have been done
> of the effectiveness and meaning of want ads.
Do you really think someone needs to study that? What in hell is wrong
with you? Maybe if you whine just right, the government will grant some
money for a program at an area university somewhere, and you can be the
chair for researching the effectiveness of "For Sale: One tractor, used.
$500.00.Call Billybob"
> However, an independent
> study done several years ago found that there was no relation between the
> ads in a community and the availability of jobs, and it is actually the
> case (as real job-seekers often find) that the company is merely
> harvesting resumes for a later date.
By the way, I'd just like to mention that you are so far off the point
that it is now a mere speck on the horizon of this conversation.
That's not surprising. You might also like to know that accoding to eoe
laws, most large-scale employers are legally bound to publish listings of
all available positions. It is also illegal for anyone under the eoe laws
to lower or raise the qualification specs to facilitate or prevent hire.
Neither of these facts change the fact that 'experience required' is an
element of both of these solicitation methods in most cases. Even if a
company is not looking to do anything more than harvest resumes, why do
you think they specify experience levels?
> ...pressure of unqualified people results from the social need for a
> reserve army of unemployed.
Someone quote unemployment stats of late...i'm tired of making
corrections...
> Scott Adams recently had a Dilbert cartoon in which an evil
> personnel manager was demanding of Wally that he have ten years of Java
> experience (when Java was invented only five years ago) to get a raise,
While Scott Adams likes to claim to represent reality, its still a cartoon
designed to be funny, and he's been doing dilbert for quite a while
now...he aint corporately involved anymore...not like he was,
anyway...he's now a millionaire i'd imagine...
> and people have seen ads demanding "twenty years of Visual Basic." The
> purpose of the experience demand is to reduce the pool of applicants.
I dont really believe this can be done legally. If anyone was hired for a
job listed as requiring 10 years of java, or something else impossible,
that would be grounds for suit.
> I agree that companies have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to
> make money, but this does not imply rational or humane behavior.
So?
> the PAYING customer has very few other restrictions. The fine artist,
> *qua* fine artist, typically gets to ignore this demand of trade and I
> believe its important to keep this distinction in mind.
A carpet store is not obligated by the demand of a customer who wishes to
purchase a porsche. It doesnt matter that the word 'car' is in 'carpet'
nor that the customer had a fistful of dollars.
> Mani wants museums to treat commercial art on a par with fine art:
I don't see anything wrong with that, as long as the work in question is
of the appropriate caliber.
> a
> typical Philistine demand. This is not even hard-headedly realistic: for
> anyone who works in REAL business knows that...the customer is always
> right, and the boss is his prophet. Whereas the fine artist pursues a
> personal vision that may appeal to no one but himself.
If the artist chooses to please only himself, then odds are that said
artist is also not in the marketplace. Therefore, said artist has no
customers at all.
Van Gogh, as an example, set out to specifically emulate the commercial
success of his family's gallery clients. He failed in this, but in your
view Van Gogh was a commercial artist not worthy of museum inclusion.
> Federal arts
> programs started during a period of severe market failure (the Great
> Depression)
Aw dang, you're just so wrong.
Governmen support of the arts goes back to ancient egypt and rome.
> when there were no opportunities for artists to support
> themselves, either by selling their work to the rich, or working at a
> "day" job.
Yes, and you'll notice that the WPA was also a propaganda machine which
coersed artistic content for the good of American morale.
Sounds right up your alley! Don't you like government control?
The WPA was also designed to be temporary.
> The ideology of these programs is that interesting and
> important art can be produced outside the market.
The NEA, on paper, is good. The NEA, in practice, has proven itself to be
an unreliable source of natural culture.
> There has been no adequate top-down or *dirigiste* support for the arts
> since the aristos went to hell in 1789.
Art should deserve support just like any other industry. Patrons should
not be forced to support art they do not like or believe in.
> Some rich men of
> today fulfill their role, but very few, any more, are willing to take
> risks. Artists therefore must be content with very little support.
Even Madonna is a patron of the arts. She was featured in ArtNews not long
ago as having given a sizable donation to the MOMA.
There is plenty of private support...
If you're painting crapola, odds are good that you wont see it unless
youre lucky...Likewise, if youre painting non-traditional work of quality
it will not likely find much widespread financial support...mainl because
people buy work to match their houses...sad, but true.
> Once he says the latter he is no longer a fine artist. My program here
> is to evolve notions with a material base from before 1789 into notions
> that can be used by the so-called ordinary person. This is the ability
> to be a fully free Kantian subject in all spheres of life.
Thats not really true. Plenty of fine artists of previous centuries did
purely commercial work. Its a good source of income and can still be
treated as fine art by both artist and viewer.
> I was engaged in criticising the notion that
> an artist is one who sells.
So, now an artist is not one who sells and not one who doesnt sell...So
nobody's an artist.
The act of selling is not what makes one an artist, but selling is
obviously an option the artist has.
> Selling art, in our society, is the typical
> way an artist comes into contact with his or her public.
Exhibiting art is...or an open studio tour...It doesnt have to be for
sale..
> But I am perfectly willing to maintain an extreme realist notion of fine
> art, such that there may exist a work of fine art that nobody but the
> artist ever sees.
Yes, this is just as true as the existence of fine art that someone saw
and bought. What makes the work 'fine' art is not it's market or lack
thereof. It's creator, and more importanty, the ability of that creator
is what grants a work 'fine' status.
> If somebody discovers a quartet of
> Beethoven he never let anybody hear...
Not even himself...
> it was a work of art both
> before and after the discovery.
Yes, I agree with this, but previously you said that an artist who keeps
his work to himself was not an artist...So then, according to this, how
can a non-artist make fine art?
> The dislike of figurative language on the part if Fascist art critics was
> on display in Eva's post. I don't think you are a Fascist. But it grates
> me that I cannot communicate using a deliberate metaphor, and must keep
> my language that of the soldier male. So I won't.
Your deliberate metaphor was not unnoticed but ignored.
Instead, I chose to make light of the notion that T.S.Eliot talked to
ghosts, and the resulting implication that one of my artistic
responsibilities was to the dead.
Soldier male, soldier female, use whatever language fits your fancy.
> In a figurative sense (and that sense to me is as important as the
> literal) I hope that they do. Art is meaningless unless it becomes a
> way of contacting grandfather spirits.
You were not speaking figuratively, you were stating quite
matter-of-factly that T.S.Eliot communicated with dead authors.
If your statement was meant to be figurative, it was obviously
an underdeveloped one.
> No, I claim instead that the language of skill is muddled, reifying and
> oppressive.
Only to the unskilled, the daunted, the obtuse and the fraudulent.
I don't seem to have a problem with it. I don't know anyone who is any
good at making art who has a problem with it. The only ones I have ever
seen get angry about insisting upon skill are those whose work is flatly
terrible.
> I don't know much about Nirvana but I like New Age, which
> deliberately downplays "skill" in order to give the music a certain
> serenity.
New Age music downplays skill only in certain circumstances.
GOOD new age music is plain good MUSIC. What makes it 'new age' is not the
attitude, but the instruments used and the intent of the music. The best
'new age' music is as theoretically complex as good classical, etc.
On the other hand, as remarked by a commedian whose name I dont recall:
(While holding down a key on a synthesizer)
"Darn! One more minute, and I'd have had a Wondham Hill contract!"
> This serenity is lacking in classical performances.
Check out Phillip Glass or Gorecky.
> Edward
> Said has pointed out that these performances are sado-masochistic when
> viewed in the context of musical history.
OK. This is the second time you've mentioned Sado Masochism.
Maybe all your idealogues are a bit freaky, know what I mean?
> In the 19th century, prior to
> the advent of Tom Edison's phonograph...
Tom? Good friends, are ya? Learned something from T.S.E. I take it?
> musical reproduction consisted in
> a few friends gathering of an evening to, say, play the Ninth symphony on
> the fortepiano, or perhaps the Archduke.
What kind of instrument is an Archduke? Never heard of one of those.
> I submit that this musical
> public was more musically aware and less abused, although their
> reproductions may not have had the quality of Midori.
Hehe Midori.
I bet their jazz wasn't as good as Kenny G, either. They could only dream
of Midori, Bobby McFerrin and YoYo Ma.
> And as Adorno has pointed-out, the phonograph promises a reified quality
> which is unavailable precisely because of that reification.
I think you looked 'reification' up in a dictionary and it became your
catch-all buzzword.
> The promise
> of the LP was realized, in material conditions, by perhaps only a few
> thousand audio "buffs"...
I usually just transferred the promise of the LP to the convenience of the
cassette tape and 'jammed' it in the car.
> and the sadistic promise...
You seem to be on constantly on alert for sadism.
> of perfection of the
> compact disk was followed by (1) criticisms of its harsh overbrilliance
> and (2) frequent catastrophic digital CD failures...failures far less
> graceful than the rumbling scratchiness of a dusty LP. The CD promises
> the delivery of a reified "skill" and then fails to deliver.
Hehe. My CD's don't have that guarantee. For the most part, they promise
to contain the music I bought them for, and they encourage the hope that
they won't skip in my player, upon which event, I perceive no
catastrophes.
> There was also a blossoming of the arts during the early Soviet Union,
> so capitalism is not the only road.
Yes it is. That's obviously a fluke.
> The only reason, in a market-driven society, a professional organization
> has clout is because of legal and professional obligations. I'm
> a certified Windows 95 professional. Big deal.
Nah, it's money. If you were the Windows 95 professional named Bill Gates,
you'd have a bit of clout, don't you think?
> I do support the notion of having grassroots organizations of artists
> with entry criteria, such as the Pallete and Chisel academy here in
> Chicago.
Grassroots groups serve about as much national purpose as the actual roots
of grass. Keep things in one place even while thunderstorms rage.
> I find this offensive, because it implies that only REAL MEN can be
> artists. Men seem to engage, almost unconsciously, and probably
> unconsciously in your case (because you seem to have smarts), in this
> sort of phallic overcompensation.
Oh lord, here we go. This is the part I like in these discussions. Where I
get accused of being insecure about the size of my gonads. If I am of this
belief, why do I consider so many females to be 'real artists'?
When dealing with art, I have little regard for my genetalia, as it fails
to relate to my work, as does not my gender, as does not my sexuality.
Art that has to do with such things is instantly fraudulent.
> I submit that FEEEEELINGS are the most
> important part of art and that we neglect FEEEEELINGS at our peril.
I feel that you are missing the point.
It doesnt matter what you feel, if you cannot paint, you cannot call
yourself a painter. This is true of men, women and hermaphrodites alike.
> Indeed, as Cezanne dismantled our mental boundary 'twixt color and form,
> I'd say that the highest art dismantles our internalized boundary between
> feeling and intellect.
Feelings are controlled by homones.
Feelings are not intellectual processes.
The highest art CONJURES emotion while containing none.
> Aldous Huxley...
...was apparently mistaken.
To separate oneself from the superficial and egocentric ties of personal
emotion and to free one's mind of reference to the 'I' allows us to
harness the power of the collective unconscious mind. Fear, Love, and
other crass emotions force us to only perceive reality. Perceived
realities are only versions of truth, and most frequently they are utter
distortions of truth. To ignore these and ignore the frontal mind is the
only way to tap into the energies which allow true art to be created, art
which will truly strike at the core of any onlooker. The ancients knew
this ritual, and the most profound of all artists since creation knew this
ritual. Art is not how you feel today, how you feel about this or that, it
is the unblemished, unfiltered truth. Emotions are filtrations, and
therefore lies. Egoisms, statements of self, are also lies.
> I agree that there may be some people who sorta wanted to be thought of
> as an artist because of defects of character, but I submit that owing
> to the unpopularity and low status of the arts today, these people are
> far fewer in number than, say, New York of the 1950s.
The USA has poseurs-a-plenty. Chicago, I might add, has a particularly
large variety of garbage mixed in with its innovation. I'll dig up my list
of galleries and see if you have any opinions about their selection.
> Production of fine art is a lonely and isolating endeavor, and from a
> merely demographic viewpoint, the natural tendency of artists is to want
> to knock off for a few brewskis and talk with other artists. This would
> trivially concentrate more artmaking in urban centers.
I know a few drunks who think they're painters. They often end up having
more 'brewskis' than good ideas.
So, what have we resolved? Anything?
I don't think you adequately made your counterpoint, but what the heck, it
was interesting at least. It still seems to be open-ended, unless you
concede the skill/talent issue.
Hutto
-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-
"I paint what I think, not what I see..." - Pablo Picasso
"You're not the boss of me!..." - J. A. Hutto (Pre age 3)
http://www2.msstate.edu/~jah10 + ja...@ra.msstate.edu