# Art and life...discussion...



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I'm interested in opening up a debate about art and life. What do you see as the boundaries between them? Some people say that there are little or no boundaries between them.

I personally think it depends on what specific piece of art we are talking about. I try to avoid building false dichotomies or one size fits all types of thinking.

I'd like to focus the discussion on music, as it's the area we are all mainly interested in on this forum.

To start off, here are some relevant quotes as springboards. John Cage more on the side that art is or equals life, Gyorgy Ligeti saying they're separate, and Marcel Duchamp equating art to emotions - eg. they just exist. I'm interested in how he sees art as something that's real regardless of how we judge it, as he says, like an emotion.

*John Cage said *-

"Formerly, one was accustomed to thinking of art as something better organized than life that could be used as an escape from life. The changes that have taken place in this century, however, are such that art is not an escape from life, but rather an introduction to it." 
Source - Conversing with Cage by R. Kostelanetz

"I think modern art has turned life into art, and now I think it's time for life (by life I mean such things as government, the social rules and all those things) to turn the environment and everything into art." 
Source - John Cage in a New Key by N. Crohn Scmitt

*Gyorgy Ligeti said *-

"At the end of the '50s and the beginning of the '60s came the happening movement from America. I was interested in an ambiguous way. I made some happenings--you know my piece for 100 metromonomes?--but I had the feeling I am not a happening person. You know the Fluxus group? I am not belonging there. After a time I had the feeling they take their job too seriously. And I am not serious like people like LaMonte Young and Geroge Brecht or even Cage. I will tell you exactly what is between me and these happening people. They believe that life is art and art is life. I appreciate very much Cage and many people, but my artistic credo is that art--every art--is not life. It is something artificial. And for me all the happenings are too dilletante. You see, I want, if I am the audience, to see a perfect music, or a perfect painting. I don't want to take part in it. I don't want that this fence between the piece and the audience be abolished. I don't want to get involved. It's the feeling of distance. I am not saying that my opinion is for everybody." 
Source - artonart.com

*Marcel Duchamp said -*

"Art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way as a bad emotion is still an emotion." 
Source HERE


----------



## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

My views are not very popular here, so no one will probably take me seriously. But anyway . . .

Both words "art" and "life", outside of quasi-poetic gibberish, are of no actual value or use whatsoever. I guess you could say I belong to the "no boundaries" group since I don't think there's any meaning behind these words in the first place.


----------



## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

If you had a quote from Andy Warhol there you would have hit every person whose opinions on art I don't really need.

Art is the reason for life for human beings. It's one of the main things that sets us apart from animals (animal made music notwithstanding).


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

bigshot said:


> If you had a quote from Andy Warhol there you would have hit every person whose opinions on art I don't really need...


Those quotes I just put there to start discussion, and to give two contrasting views on this issue - those of Cage and Ligeti. As for Duchamp, it's just kind of a left-field opinion I put in for the sake of I finding what he said to be interesting & maybe a bit provocative too.



> Art is the reason for life for human beings...


It is important to me but I know plenty of people who don't really care for art of any kind, at least not what some call "high art."



> ...It's one of the main things that sets us apart from animals (animal made music notwithstanding).


I think it's just a form of communication, that's what it kind of boils down to. Art, I mean. So animal made music like birdsong is their "art" - & that's been part of humanity's music for time immemorial. Messiaen being the main one closer to our own time, but there were many others...


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Dodecaplex said:


> ...
> 
> Both words "art" and "life", outside of quasi-poetic gibberish, are of no actual value or use whatsoever. I guess you could say I belong to the "no boundaries" group since I don't think there's any meaning behind these words in the first place.


I agree that I don't like "gibberish" or gobbledigook, but I think it's okay to have a discussion on these things.

I find Ligeti's way of speaking more natural than CAge's, who gets a bit too academic for me at times.

I agree that the boundaries between "art" and "life" can be nonexistant and irrelevant to some or many people. A musician learning a piece to play in a concert, that becomes part of his life for example. Musicians think about works they are learning to perform all the time. Of course, it's their job to do that. Marc-Andre Hamelin, the pianist, was asked in an interview how much he practices per day. Without hesitation he replied "24 hours." That's what I mean, for these guys, music is basically inseperable from their life.

But of course there will be different perspectives, there isn't one solution or view that's right or set in stone.

This has potential to be an interesting discussion, but I think that approaching it with too many hard absolutes is not a way I do it, I think of this as depending on the piece of art at hand. So yes, in this way if people give examples or anecdotes about music or musicians, or themselves as listeners or creators of music, that would be better than the jargon and psychobabble...


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

my idea is very simple: art is something that with beauty enriches our lives. I don't think of beauty like it's something superficial or just "escape from life", but a very important value. Not as important as food maybe, but absolutely fundamental. 
I really like the idea of partecipation in art, but i suppose that partecipation involves responsability. Jazz music could be a good example in that sense.



> John Cage said -
> 
> "Formerly, one was accustomed to thinking of art as something better organized than life that could be used as an escape from life. The changes that have taken place in this century, however, are such that art is not an escape from life, but rather an introduction to it."


i wonder what this really means. Because it's very generic (an invite to anarchy?), but in a sense i think it's a fortune that Cage was a musician and not an architect or a surgeon.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

in a sense, i believe that art involves always some form of control over the form.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

norman bates said:


> ...
> I really like the idea of partecipation in art, but i suppose that partecipation involve responsability. Jazz music could be a good example in that sense...


I agree with the gist of that. I think music to be somehow generally effective needs to have something to hold it together. It's hard to define that, though.

Eg. in terms of Cage, some of his music I like, some I don't. I tend to like his works with at least some elements of more traditional notation retained. Or at least some form of thing "set down" on the page. Such works are _Credo in Us _(a favourite),_ In A Landscape, Imaginary Landscape #1 _are three I can think of. His _Concert for Piano and Orchestra _does not work for me as enjoyable music, it is too random, and a bit tedious listening for 20 minutes. It is a very innovative piece, in which case I agree with Schoenberg, who called CAge "not a composer but an inventor of genius." That work, though I don't like it much, provided the spark for many composers incorporating his innovations & bringing them more into the mainstream - eg. Lutoslawski, Hovhaness, Penderecki, Sculthorpe, etc.



> i wonder what this really means. Because it's very generic (an invite to anarchy?), but in a sense i think it's a fortune that Cage was a musician and not an architect or a surgeon.


As I said, I find it hard to decode what Cage means often as well...


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Sid James said:


> I agree with the gist of that. I think music to be somehow generally effective needs to have something to hold it together. It's hard to define that, though.


To make an example, this for me is a wrong idea of partecipation.






Area was an italian group, who was deeply inspired by John Cage. In this piece there were wires connected to a synthetizer, and the audience touching the wires determined the pitch of the note. To me this is "wrong" because the partecipation is not real and does not involve any sense of responsabily, because there is no scope and the result is completely random.


----------



## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Another art and life thread, which can be fun with a healthy snack/drink on the side while responding/reading.



Sid James said:


> *John Cage said *-
> 
> "Formerly, one was accustomed to thinking of art as something better organized than life that could be used as an escape from life. The changes that have taken place in this century, however, are such that art is not an escape from life, but rather an introduction to it."
> 
> "I think modern art has turned life into art, and now I think it's time for life (by life I mean such things as government, the social rules and all those things) to turn the environment and everything into art."


His first sentence above I find more agreeable than the second, suggesting that art can be an introduction to life these days implying some link between the two, and with an awareness of art history and the contrast with past aesthetics. But I disagree how he inferred that with his second sentence; regardless, I find his second sentence nonsense, which I read as saying everything in life equals art. So what - this thread, for example is art? A luxury cruise ship capsizing off an Italian coast killing folks due to negligence of the captain is also art? I think this is more about him as a personality, which I find more interesting than his philosophical views and music overall, that there are agreeable thoughts and also that of his music, as well as utter crap. (Indeed, it is a good thing that he was not a surgeon, or especially a politician - he would send the stock markets into a depression everytime he opened his mouth).


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Cage: disagree.
Ligeti: closer to my opinion, but I think it's good to be without barriers.
Duchamp: such an atrocious opinion that I won't bother discussing it.

Personally, I think that art needn't be placed on a pedestal, but it necessarily must be kept separate from life. What is life? Everything that happens under conscious human experience. Birth, death, peace, war, gluttony, defecation, boredom, work, strife, joy. Now, I can see the angle which some people might use to call those things art, but it involves a great deal of pretentious psycho-babble. Take the least art-worthy candidate, for example: taking a dump. Is that part of life art? Well, when you think about it, our digestive systems are pretty ****ing amazing! The fact that we know how it works is beautiful in itself. What an inspiring manifestation of human knowledge. Is it therefore art? No.

Art has to be something separate because it is something that, on occasion, helps us to look _beyond_ life. People often use the word "transcendent", which I'm not partial to myself, but I do think that one of the most important attributes of art is that extends our perspective, even just a little. It helps us forget that we are monkeys playing the game of life, and, as such, cannot be life itself.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Polednice said:


> It helps us forget that we are monkeys playing the game of life, and, as such, cannot be life itself.


i prefer to consider art something that improve the quality of life (and in this way absolutely necessary) more than something like just a drug.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

norman bates said:


> i prefer to consider art something that improve the quality of life (and in this way absolutely necessary) more than something like just a drug.


I think that's compatible with my point about it expanding our perspectives. Art has the ability to bring people together and help them ignore their petty drives towards conflict.


----------



## Oskaar (Mar 17, 2011)

I dont know enough to participate in the main discussion maby, but I have one clare point: People have the need to be creative! That is often forgotten by the education system. I am a potter myself, and find it very good as a therapy.

When I was studying (child-care-pedagocic) we went to france for a education trip back in 1990. They took art and creation activily into every aspect of their social work education, and also in the institutions we visited. One institution for young people with big psychological problems made a film about homers oddysse, another institution let the children mace duplicates of mona lisa and other famous works. Art had a big place in threatment, creativity had another big place in threatment. And we saw a joy an engagement from the children/young people.


----------



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I'm not sure what Ligeti means by "get involved"? To me art is the expression of creativity and truth through esthetics. It certainly is life affirming. It's obviously very threatening to some. Mainly thugs and tyrants, and certain fundamentalist religious types worried about blasphemous expressions.


----------



## Oskaar (Mar 17, 2011)

Art is also about challenging existent borders and norms. And be a mirror of sciety changes, mirrored by artistic and subjective mesurements. But modern art is also painting with a dead hand, and having sex with a corpse in the name of art. I think art then the art dont reflect life and society, only the eccentric of an artists soul.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

starthrower said:


> I'm not sure what Ligeti means by "get involved"? To me art is the expression of creativity and truth through esthetics. It certainly is life affirming. It's obviously very threatening to some. Mainly thugs and tyrants, and certain fundamentalist religious types worried about blasphemous expressions.


What do you mean by truth, and do you mean to say it's to be found in music as well as the other arts?


----------



## Oskaar (Mar 17, 2011)

But it says something about our life and communety when you have to go to such drastic measures to chock and get attention.


----------



## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Sid James said:


> It is important to me but I know plenty of people who don't really care for art of any kind, at least not what some call "high art."


There is no more high art. Commercial art is the closest we get to high art in the modern age. Our Rembrandts are illustrators and our Beethovens write film scores.


----------



## Oskaar (Mar 17, 2011)

Dodecaplex said:


> My views are not very popular here, so no one will probably take me seriously. But anyway . . .
> 
> Both words "art" and "life", outside of quasi-poetic gibberish, are of no actual value or use whatsoever. I guess you could say I belong to the "no boundaries" group since I don't think there's any meaning behind these words in the first place.


I think this statement is very quasi intellectual/ quasi- philosophical. It is like hearing a just graduated 20 years old, trying to impress on a party. The words LIFE and ART is words with a lot of content, and subjects with a lot of content. The connection between them is of utterly importance to people, historicly, nowadays, and will be in the future.


----------



## Oskaar (Mar 17, 2011)

I took you seriousely there, Dodecaplex, but I was in very doubt if I should.


----------



## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

oskaar said:


> The words LIFE and ART is words with a lot of content, and subjects with a lot of content. The connection between them is of utterly importance to people, historicly, nowadays, and will be in the future.


None of that is of any value either.


----------



## Oskaar (Mar 17, 2011)

Dodecaplex said:


> None of that is of any value either.


Ok, then you eather provocate in the name of provocation, or is trying to impress with a languge noone can understand. (like a 20 years old on a party after graduation)


----------



## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Sid James said:


> I agree that I don't like "gibberish" or gobbledigook, but I think it's okay to have a discussion on these things.


Yes, discussions are good.


Sid James said:


> I agree that the boundaries between "art" and "life" can be nonexistant and irrelevant to some or many people. A musician learning a piece to play in a concert, that becomes part of his life for example. Musicians think about works they are learning to perform all the time. Of course, it's their job to do that. Marc-Andre Hamelin, the pianist, was asked in an interview how much he practices per day. Without hesitation he replied "24 hours." That's what I mean, for these guys, music is basically inseperable from their life.But of course there will be different perspectives, there isn't one solution or view that's right or set in stone.


Yup. I agree here. Each lives in his own world. Mine is one where all of these perspectives are put side by side until the realization hits that each of them is exactly as important as all the others, which means none of them was ever important in the first place.



Sid James said:


> This has potential to be an interesting discussion, but I think that approaching it with too many hard absolutes is not a way I do it, I think of this as depending on the piece of art at hand. So yes, in this way if people give examples or anecdotes about music or musicians, or themselves as listeners or creators of music, that would be better than the jargon and psychobabble...


I somewhat disagree. But go on. Whatever floats your boat.


----------



## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

oskaar said:


> Ok, then you eather provocate in the name of provocation, or is trying to impress with a languge noone can understand. (like a 20 years old on a party after graduation)


I was merely expressing my views regarding this matter. Don't know why it bothers you so much.


----------



## Oskaar (Mar 17, 2011)

It does not bother me very much. Just reflections on your post.


----------



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Polednice said:


> What do you mean by truth, and do you mean to say it's to be found in music as well as the other arts?


In music I mean the artist is sincere and not posturing. You can always feel it when you listen to music. Other art forms like painting or photography can grip us with unpleasant truths we don't want to think about.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

oskaar said:


> I dont know enough to participate in the main discussion maby, but I have one clare point: People have the need to be creative!...


Your point is very clear to me, oskaar.

On the same page I linked in my OP, Duchamp said some things about creativity, the importance of it to him. Here's one of his statements on that -

"The creative act is not formed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act."

In my own words, that means that the person experiencing the artwork, the individual experience that person has with the artwork, is just as unique as the artwork itself. It's like a relationship between people, your relationship, experience, reaction with a piece of music, a film or a painting, etc...


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

norman bates said:


> To make an example, this for me is a wrong idea of partecipation.
> 
> ....
> 
> Area was an italian group, who was deeply inspired by John Cage. In this piece there were wires connected to a synthetizer, and the audience touching the wires determined the pitch of the note. To me this is "wrong" because the partecipation is not real and does not involve any sense of responsabily, because there is no scope and the result is completely random.


I am not really interested a great deal in things that kind of just copy John Cage and don't extend his ideas. More often than not, I think that I myself could have done that.

As I said, I'm more interested in composers that integrated his ideas and techniques into their own music. The guys I said above especially, Lutoslawski, etc. Another I'd add is Arvo Part, his _Tabula Rasa_, from the 1970's. I don't like his more recent things, but early on he did interesting things like that work, which has a prepared piano. Like the better things inspired by Cage, it sounds unique and not like rehash of him.

So I think Cage's innovations have entered the "mainstream," & that's what I find more exciting than people who just rehash him verbatim and kind of do these random things that don't have those certain (undefinable?) elements that makes a unique and creative work of art...


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

starthrower said:


> I'm not sure what Ligeti means by "get involved"?...


I think he's saying as an audience member listening to a piece of music, he doesn't want to get involved in making the artwork. Which is what the happenings of the 1960's were about. Or performance art as well. Eg. recently, someone told me here, a woman gave birth with people watching, an audience as if it was a concert or performance, and she said that was a performance piece (her giving birth). I wanted to restrict this discussion more to music, but it's hard now in 2012, with these types of things happening (no pun intended!). In terms of LIgeti's line of thinking, that would be pushing the art and life connection too far, or simply equating one with the other, with which he says he doesn't agree with.



> ...To me art is the expression of creativity and truth through esthetics. It certainly is life affirming. It's obviously very threatening to some. Mainly thugs and tyrants, and certain fundamentalist religious types worried about blasphemous expressions.


On the whole I agree with that view. & it reflects what the French painter Delacroix said, something to the effect that an artist risks his life on a daily basis simply by doing what he does. I read that in a book sometime ago but can't find online now...


----------



## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Sid James said:


> that means that the person experiencing the artwork, the individual experience that person has with the artwork, is just as unique as the artwork itself.


I like art and view a lot of very important pieces. Do you think that the Met would induct me into their permanent collection?


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

bigshot said:


> I like art and view a lot of very important pieces. Do you think that the Met would induct me into their permanent collection?


No the Met is old hat, outdated. That type of cutting-edge performance art sounds more along the lines of the Whitney Museum. Maybe you can apply for funding to do a live-in performance/instillation thing? 

But seriously, those Duchamp quotes are just to stimulate your thinking, that's why I put them up, don't take it too literally...


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Nice quotes in the OP.

My own very idiosyncratic take on this: Life is anything we do and experience. Art is anything we try to do _well_.

We all cook. If we try to cook well, it's art. If we succeed it's good art.

This goes for every part of life: decorating our houses, playing chess, driving, doing the dishes, shaving. If you're trying to do it well, it's art.

The most obvious criticism of my view is that people often assume art needs to be "creative," and there might not seem to be a lot of room for creativity in doing the dishes. But I am not sure that art does need to be creative, if what we mean by that is "original."

This might not help us craft a philosophy to motivate musical composition. But that is not my problem. My problem is figuring out life as well as I can, and this is the best I've done so far.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

No the Met is old hat, outdated. That type of cutting-edge performance art sounds more along the lines of the Whitney Museum. Maybe you can apply for funding to do a live-in performance/instillation thing?

When did you actually visit the Met? The Met has a Modern and Contemporary collection that rivals that of MoMA and they have been dueling with MoMA though advertising over the audience for Modern and Contemporary art for some time now. MoMA, unfortunately, is masterful at shooting itself in the foot. After spending some $1 billion US+ on renovations and expansions, many of their most iconic works remain in storage while the museums charges a ridiculous $25... it might be $30 per visit compared to the Met, which has a recommended donation... but as a donation it remains wholly voluntary. The Whitney's collection is even more pathetic. Their only real claim to any importance is in the form of the Biannual where like the Tate Modern, spectacle has replaced any real artistic vision and aesthetic merit for decades. Of course if we are speaking of the "truly new"... that which has yet to have gained the stamp of approval of the museums, there are the endless galleries of Manhattan with Gagosian being the largest (but the most devoted to "blue chip" museum artists). A lot of the most interesting stuff is happening in a context outside of the traditional New York gallery/museum scene among various galleries supporting the so-called "Lowbrow" art movement as well as the "New Old Masters" and the Neo-Pop work coming out of Asia.


----------



## TrazomGangflow (Sep 9, 2011)

For some art is life, for others life is art, and for others life is life and art is art. I find it difficult to group these two together or separate them apart. I like to intertwine art into my life so I guess I agree with there being no boundaries.


----------



## Oskaar (Mar 17, 2011)

Art is a included in th way of living.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

science said:


> Nice quotes in the OP...


Well I try to put some contrasting views of this debate.



> ...My own very idiosyncratic take on this: Life is anything we do and experience. Art is anything we try to do _well_.
> ...


I kind of agree. Eg. I saw an exhibition of children's art ages ago and it was on the same level as adult's art, basically. Of course different but there were some great pieces there. I think it was Picasso who said that he went to the art academy to draw like a professional artist, eg. photographically (which he could at a young age), and after that he had to kind of "go back" and re-learn things, to "draw like a child."



StlukesguildOhio said:


> ...
> When did you actually visit the Met? ...


It was a just a joke, not serious, what I was saying. I agree that there is a lot going on outside the major art galleries/venues. It's not a monopoly here either, there are many small galleries, some commercial, others run on more artist's cooperative lines. But I've been out of the art scene for ages.



TrazomGangflow said:


> For some art is life, for others life is art, and for others life is life and art is art. I find it difficult to group these two together or separate them apart. I like to intertwine art into my life so I guess I agree with there being no boundaries.


I think that it's up to the individual, how we approach art & life is all different. There is room for manouvre, of course composers are the same, that's why we value their diversity.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

It was a just a joke, not serious, what I was saying. I agree that there is a lot going on outside the major art galleries/venues. It's not a monopoly here either, there are many small galleries, some commercial, others run on more artist's cooperative lines. But I've been out of the art scene for ages.

Honestly, I think the Museums have an important role in promoting and preserving the finest examples of our artistic culture. Last year I attended the huge Francis Bacon Retrospective at which you could not help but be impressed by the freshness and audacity of his vision. Unfortunately, many museums have been abdicating their responsibilities. Members of the Board of Trustees who collect art themselves push for exhibitions of the most questionable new works as a means of lending credibility (and increased) prices for the very same artists that they have invested in. Does anyone see a conflict of interest here? The reality is that there is something absurd about an attempt to lend institutionalized support for the avant garde. Right now I see more challenges to the status quo of the art market... the dominance of a few large dealers, a few major museums, a few powerful collectors, and a few influential critics in defining what is the finest art of our time, than I have seen for some time.


----------



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Men may live more truly and fully in reading Plato and Shakespeare than at any other time, because then they are participating in essential being and are forgetting their accidental lives. The fact that this kind of humanity exists or existed, and that we can somehow still touch it with the tips of our outstretched fingers, makes our imperfect humanity, which we can no longer bear, tolerable. - Allan Bloom 

The period of nascent sensuality has always been used for submlimation, in the sense of making sublime, for attaching youthful inclinations and longings to music, pictures and stories that provide the transition to the fulfillment of the human duties and the enjoyment of the human pleasures. Lessing, speaking of Greek sculpture , said "beautiful men made beautiful statues, and the city had beautiful statues in part to thank for beautiful citizens." This formula encapsulates the fundamental principle of the esthetic education of man. Young men and women were attracted by the beauty of heroes whose very bodies expressed their nobility. The deeper understanding of the meaning of nobility comes later, but is prepared for by the sensuous experience and is actually contained in it. - Allan Bloom 

“It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, and I know of no substitute for the force and beauty of it's process.” 
― Henry James

All things considered, I could never have survived my youth without Wagnerian music. For I seemed condemned to the society of Germans. If a man wishes to rid himself of a feeling of unbearable oppression, he may have to take to hashish. Well, I had to take to Wagner... - Nietzsche 

Without music, life would be a mistake. - Nietzsche


----------

