# Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen



## Winterreisender

"Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen." This is the title of a book by David Stubbs. I haven't read the book yet (apparently it is disappointing), but the title alone really got me thinking. Here is an extract from the blurb:



> Modern art is a mass phenomenon. The Tate Modern is the most popular tourist attraction in Europe. Conceptual artists like Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst enjoy celebrity status. Works by 20th century abstract artists like Mark Rothko are selling for record breaking sums at auction, while the millions commanded by works by Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon make headline news. However, while the general public has no trouble embracing avant garde and experimental art, there is, by contrast, mass resistance to avant garde and experimental music, although both were born at the same time under similar circumstances - and despite the fact that from Schoenberg and Kandinsky onwards, musicians and artists have made repeated efforts to establish a 'synaesthesia' between their two media. This book examines the parallel histories of modern art and modern music and examines why one is embraced and understood and the other ignored, derided or regarded with bewilderment, as noisy, random nonsense perpetrated by, and listened to by the inexplicably crazed.


Granted, the last sentence is a bit harsh! But why do tourists flock to the Tate Modern in their millions to see Rothko paintings and other works of avant-garde visual art, whilst avant-garde music remains a comparatively tiny niche?

One explanation for this interesting phenomenon perhaps concerns audiences' attention spans. If you go to a gallery, you can look at a painting for 10 seconds and then move on to the next one if you don't like it. But if you go to a concert and dislike the piece, you are trapped!

I plan on checking out the book itself to see what Mr. Stubbs thinks, but first I thought I would see if anyone here has some ideas. 

Thanks in advance for any replies.


----------



## Jobis

Most people I know hate the modern plastic arts, perhaps more so than they would modern music by the likes of Stockhausen. I think he is making assumptions based on the way art critics think which is very different from the general public.


----------



## hreichgott

I think I'd want to see some data showing whether these audiences are truly different in size. Surely there are also many people who like looking at the Mona Lisa but not Rothko.


----------



## Cosmos

Maybe because it's easier to "enjoy" a work of visual art rather than music? I'm thinking more about how I enjoyed going through the Joan Miro gallery in Barcelona, but I would probably not be in the mood to attend a concert playing Xenakis. Looking up Rothko paintings on google, they all look very serene, easy on the eyes, just blocks of colors that complement each other so well. They're aesthetically pleasing to look at. Can one say the same for 20th century avant-garde music? Probably not; it takes a lot more effort to enjoy or appreciate such music. Rarely does someone love such a work at first listen. I think Schoenberg would agree with me when I say that we've been spoiled by tonality


----------



## shangoyal

I don't know about others, but to me, the reason seems to be that people don't really get Rothko the way they get Stockhausen. I have tried listening to Stockhausen and it sounds daunting for sure - perhaps because music envelops you in a way visual art cannot. Music communicates more in a few minutes than several paintings can. I don't know why I think this is true - but I guess it's because aural perception is more single channeled and unambiguous - it can affect your mood with a strong immediacy.


----------



## Blancrocher

If people could hang Stockhausen's "Stimmung" on their wall to impress strangers with their expensive and refined taste, I'm sure the composer would be more popular.


----------



## Mahlerian

Blancrocher said:


> If people could hang Stockhausen's "Stimmung" on their wall to impress strangers with their expensive and refined taste, I'm sure the composer would be more popular.


He's probably on a lot of people's walls already...


----------



## Crudblud

Some time ago I explained that I thought the lack of interest in modern/contemporary/avant garde music (and classical music in general) was directly related to changes in technology since the industrial revolution. The thread I made the relevant post in would require probably some serious digging to find again — probably a good thing as it was a bit of a monstrosity and not one of my finest moments in the prose department — but the essence of it was essentially as follows.

Thanks to otherwise good inventions like the phonograph record and the internet, the amount of effort associated with listening to music has been steadily decreased over the past century to a negligible sum. I think it is no wonder, then, that any kind of work that requires the attention and concentration of its audience in order to be meaningfully experienced is shunned by the masses, nor that our popular culture is attuned to a kind of manufactured music that generally plays second fiddle to words and images, and is very often intended as interchangeable soundtracks to social situations described therein. After all, who wants to listen to something that might be interesting enough to distract from the "real" when there's so much readily available product that you can simply drive, shop, drink, dance to?


----------



## brianvds

I'm an equal opportunity philistine - I don't get Rothko either.


----------



## brotagonist

I think that art, for many (the astronomical sums offered would seem to corroborate my point), is an investment opportunity. It has cachet and status, to be someone who can invest in fine art and make a lot of money at it, much more so than the stock market. They are rolled over regularly, sold at even higher prices, and the higher the prices go, the higher is driven the frenzy and desire of even greedier investors. The museums and galleries, too, feed in the frenzy. They, too, revel in the status of displaying and owning fine art and command huge followings of visitors annually.

I doubt that the majority of buyers are viewing these pieces as beautiful works of art to hang on the living room wall. And even if they do, for a while until the next auction, what's a picture? You see it as you pass by. Music demands your time.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Part of this has to do with the difference in the experience of visual art and that of music. If I while walking through a gallery or museum I come upon a painting or installation work that I truly dislike, I can simply turn away and not look any longer. It is not as easy to do this when sitting at a concert and finding oneself assaulted by a particularly egregious work of music.

Secondly, you need to look at the audience for visual art vs music. Because music... and literature for that matter... can be mass produced and disseminated a great many of the artists in those genre... as well as those who finance or sell those works... pay more attention to the larger "popular" audience than they do to any "elite" audience. This is quite different in the traditional visual art forms such as painting. A good many paintings take weeks, even months to complete. The artist must put forth a sizable investment in materials and studio space (you can't paint a decent-sized painting in a corner office space). As a result, original paintings by "serious" artists often sell for thousands of dollars... and much more once the artist makes a name and gains a following and a demand for his or her work. This ultimately means that collecting paintings or sculpture is largely limited to an "elite" wealthy audience. As a result, many artists give very little thought to the wants or desires of the larger popular audience for the simple reason that they know who pays.

Thirdly I would suggest that a great many visitors to the Tate... or to exhibitions by Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons, etc... are in it for the entertainment value. On one level, its like the car wreck that we can't turn away from. At the same time, it offers many in the audience a chance to laugh at those crazy artists... and moreso... a chance to laugh at the wealthy idiots who paid millions for a urinal, a can of artist's sh**, a blob of lard, a bed strewn with cigarettes and used condoms, or a stack of bricks.

Honestly, I find that the audience is rather limited for Rothko, Motherwell, and Pollock... so say nothing of the more _avant garde_ works by contemporary artists (Abstract Expressionism is now 70+ years old). This is as true among many self-proclaimed artists as it is among the larger audience.

But lets put this all in perspective: In 1992 the Museum of Modern Art, New York staged a major exhibition of Matisse, taking over the majority of the Museum's wall space. The exhibition was one of the greatest of Modern art... and one of the most popular art exhibitions of all time.










The estimated audience was 750,000 for an exhibition that ran for 4 months. By way of comparison, the audience for the last Super Bowl was 108.4 Million; _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_ sold 107 million copies, and Star Wars (only the first film) sold 194 million tickets in the US alone.

Once again, popularity is no measure of artistic merit... either for or against.


----------



## GreenMamba

Blancrocher said:


> If people could hang Stockhausen's "Stimmung" on their wall to impress strangers with their expensive and refined taste, I'm sure the composer would be more popular.


This is the correct answer. Also, if we could point to a performance of Stimmung and say "$1 million", crowds would line up to take a look.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

I think that art, for many (the astronomical sums offered would seem to corroborate my point), is an investment opportunity.

Art is a rather shaky investment. You have to be quite lucky to purchase works by the right artist before they become famous. After that... only the super-wealthy can afford to take chances on purchasing a Van Gogh or Monet for $50 Million US with the plan to sell the work a decade or so later for a sizable profit... and again, there is no guarantee.

It has cachet and status...

This is one of the primary reasons the wealthy purchase art. It conveys a certain status... a sense up superior taste and discernment... upon the buyer.

(Investors) make a lot of money at it, much more so than the stock market. (Art works) are rolled over regularly, sold at even higher prices...

Actually, this is rather rare. Although there are exceptions, I have seldom read of a collector purchasing a Picasso or Monet or Matisse for X-million dollars and then rolling it over a few years later. Over the past year the art market, according to internet sources, has kept just slightly above pace with the S&P 500. Add to this the fact that the purchase of art by famous artists is limited to the truly wealthy... add to this the reality that the art market is the second largest unregulated market in the world (after only illegal drugs) and laden with far more instances of fraud and other illegalities than the stock market, and the very real possibility that an art star of today will be nothing more than a has-been tomorrow, and you have an investment that can be rather shaky.

The museums and galleries, too, feed in the frenzy.

Of course the galleries feed the frenzy for ever higher prices. They are the ones marketing and profiting from the sale of art. The museums, on the other hand, are largely out of the game. Most can't really compete financially with the wealthiest collectors.

They, too, revel in the status of displaying and owning fine art and command huge followings of visitors annually.

I don't think I would speak of museums "reveling" in their collections of fine art. That is the _raison d'etre_ of the art museums: the conservation, preservation, and promotion of those works of art that are recognized as being important to our culture.

I doubt that the majority of buyers are viewing these pieces as beautiful works of art to hang on the living room wall.

You would be wrong about a great many collectors. Yes, there are those who purchase art as investment, and others purely for status... but a great many art collectors are as well informed and passionate about art as anyone here is about music.

What's a picture? You see it as you pass by. Music demands your time.

That may be your experience of art. Many others have a far different experience.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

_If people could hang Stockhausen's "Stimmung" on their wall to impress strangers with their expensive and refined taste, I'm sure the composer would be more popular._

This is the correct answer.

Is it? How many people have access to seeing the Rothko hung on the wall of a Billionaire collector? Certainly, the Billionaire Collectors may influence museums through their financial clout, promises of future donations of art, and positions on the board of trustees. The Billionaire Collectors and moreso the larger dealers may also influence critical responses in the major art periodicals as a result of their advertising in the same. But how great is their impact upon the opinions of the larger art audience? You don't see book shelves teeming with coffee-table retrospectives on Rothko, Kline, Motherwell, or most of the contemporary _avant garde_. Monet, Degas, Renoir, Dali, Da Vinci on the other hand...


----------



## Mahlerian

StlukesguildOhio said:


> That may be your experience of art. Many others have a far different experience.


Talking with artists and art majors over the years, I have come to realize that I really don't know the first thing about art. The way I experience a painting or sculpture is far more limited and superficial, and I can't begin to recognize the subtleties of technique that they could. For this reason, I will always decline to make pronouncements about it.


----------



## KenOC

Talking about how much people will pay for a Rothko, or a whatever -- that's for the "original" of course. How much for a print? Probably not much.

In music there are no "originals," only copies.


----------



## Guest

Apart from Beethoven's improvisations!


----------



## KenOC

TalkingHead said:


> Apart from Beethoven's improvisations!


Well yes, but I wouldn't part with my recordings of Beethoven's improvisations at any price!


----------



## Bulldog

With little exception, visual art doesn't make any sound. For that reason alone, I'd much rather look at a modernist painting that listen to modernist music.


----------



## norman bates

Cosmos said:


> Maybe because it's easier to "enjoy" a work of visual art rather than music? I'm thinking more about how I enjoyed going through the Joan Miro gallery in Barcelona, but I would probably not be in the mood to attend a concert playing Xenakis. Looking up Rothko paintings on google, they all look very serene, easy on the eyes, just blocks of colors that complement each other so well. They're aesthetically pleasing to look at. Can one say the same for 20th century avant-garde music? Probably not; it takes a lot more effort to enjoy or appreciate such music. Rarely does someone love such a work at first listen.


yes, there's a part of truth. Actually even many modern painters like Mirò, Klee, Delaunay, Kandinsky and many other major artists produce art that could be easily considered pretty without any problem, while in modern music prettiness is seen as a capital sin.


----------



## DavidA

People flock to Tate Modern because they haven't realised the emperor has no clothes!

Either that or they like looking at unmade beds. Thankfully I have no need to go as I have a similar work of high art in my house to view each morning!


----------



## Mahlerian

norman bates said:


> yes, there's a part of truth. Actually even many modern painters like Mirò, Klee, Delaunay, Kandinsky and many other major artists produce art that could be easily considered pretty without any problem, while *in modern music prettiness is seen as a capital sin.*


Quotes and citations from actual composers within the style, please!


----------



## dgee

Possibly off topic, but I enjoyed this very much:

http://www.visualnews.com/2014/02/28/painted-childrens-book-perfect-satire-modern-art/


----------



## norman bates

Mahlerian said:


> Quotes and citations from actual composers within the style, please!


why? I'm not reporting any composer in particular, as I can't think of any modern painter saying that he wanted to do something pretty, but I agree with Cosmos that there's a difference considering that aspect.


----------



## dgee

DavidA said:


> People flock to Tate Modern because they haven't realised the emperor has no clothes!
> 
> Either that or they like looking at unmade beds. Thankfully I have no need to go as I have a similar work of high art in my house to view each morning!


I regularly get dragged to the local contemporary gallery by my small son who finds a lot to talk and think about there. Will he go to the big gallery with lots of lovely representational art? Not without a fight... "It's boring!"

Maybe one day he'll appreciate all that older art. If it's any consolation, he thinks the modern music I listen to is mostly rubbish


----------



## GioCar

Cosmos said:


> Maybe because it's easier to "enjoy" a work of visual art rather than music? I'm thinking more about how I enjoyed going through the Joan Miro gallery in Barcelona, but I would probably not be in the mood to attend a concert playing Xenakis. Looking up Rothko paintings on google, they all look very serene, easy on the eyes, just blocks of colors that complement each other so well. They're aesthetically pleasing to look at. Can one say the same for 20th century avant-garde music? Probably not; it takes a lot more effort to enjoy or appreciate such music. Rarely does someone love such a work at first listen. *I think Schoenberg would agree with me when I say that we've been spoiled by tonality*


Not only. We have been polluted by tonality. It's not possible to escape from tonality in everyday's life...

My thoughts are very similar to Cosmos' ones. In visual arts it's easier to "enjoy" works, at least because various means are often available to help you enjoying your experience when, for example, visiting a gallery or an exibition, from guide books to audioguides to guided tours...You almost don't need to be "trained" before...

On the contrary, in music you are often left alone with your music knowledge and "background" and experience... The real appreciation of music as an art does require at least a trained ear and some music understanding.
In my opinion this is the main reason why you may find very long queues for months to see a Rothko painting exibition (or a Van Gogh/Rembrandt/Leonardo da Vinci/etc. one) with thousands and thousands of visitors, but you seldom find a similar participation for a series of Stockhausen (or Beethoven/Bach/etc...) concerts.


----------



## Mahlerian

norman bates said:


> why? I'm not reporting any composer in particular, as I can't think of any modern painter saying that he wanted to do something pretty, but I agree with Cosmos that there's a difference considering that aspect.


If it is seen as a capital sin to be pretty, then surely the practitioners have declared this, frequently and loudly. Adorno barely counts because he's a failed composer who gave it up before declaring that other far more accomplished composers had thrown away beauty...

Many people find this pretty:









And believe wholeheartedly that the reason art critics dismiss it is *because* they fetishize the ugly and grotesque over the beautiful.

Likewise, many people think this is pretty:





And are sure that the reason critics can't stand it is *because* they prefer that infernal cacophony of Stravinsky, Stockhausen, Cage, Boulez, Adams, Higdon, or whomever.

It's a false dilemma at any rate.


----------



## norman bates

GioCar said:


> On the contrary, in music you are often left alone with your music knowledge and "background" and experience... The real appreciation of music as an art does require at least a trained ear and some music understanding.
> In my opinion this is the main reason why you may find very long queues for months to see a Rothko painting exibition (or a Van Gogh/Rembrandt/Leonardo da Vinci/etc. one) with thousands and thousands of visitors, but you seldom find a similar participation for a series of Stockhausen (or Beethoven/Bach/etc...) concerts.


I doubt that there are tons of Rothko fans (even if I don't think it's so difficult to "get" him, after all he does the same "mental landscape" over and over) but if I was an artist I would consider the fact of been understood only by people with former knowledge like a debacle.


----------



## Winterreisender

dgee said:


> I regularly get dragged to the local contemporary gallery by my small son who finds a lot to talk and think about there. Will he go to the big gallery with lots of lovely representational art? Not without a fight... "It's boring!"
> 
> Maybe one day he'll appreciate all that older art. If it's any consolation, he thinks the modern music I listen to is mostly rubbish


I think many people might agree with with your small son! When you look at Tracey Emin's tent, many people will take the view that it isn't art and that it is just a tent. But many people will see it as a deep piece of social commentary about the deglamorisation of sex, or something. Whichever side you are on, there is a debate to be had, and maybe that is part of the appeal of going to contemporary galleries.

The trouble with music is that it is abstract, so isn't really about anything. There is no social commentary to be had. You either like it or you don't. For that reason it can be notoriously difficult for the untrained to discuss contemporary music (or any music, for that matter) in any meaningful way, and perhaps that is why some people stay clear of it.


----------



## norman bates

Mahlerian said:


> If it is seen as a capital sin to be pretty, then surely the practitioners have declared this, frequently and loudly. Adorno barely counts because he's a failed composer who gave it up before declaring that other far more accomplished composers had thrown away beauty...
> 
> Many people find this pretty:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And believe wholeheartedly that the reason art critics dismiss it is *because* they fetishize the ugly and grotesque over the beautiful.
> 
> Likewise, many people think this is pretty:
> 
> And are sure that the reason critics can't stand it is *because* they prefer that infernal cacophony of Stravinsky, Stockhausen, Cage, Boulez, Adams, Higdon, or whomever.
> 
> It's a false dilemma at any rate.


Actually now I've remembered a composer saying something about it (guess who), but I don't want to even report it because it's not important. 
But first of all let me clarify that I don't think that I don't consider prettiness necessary. After that, I wasn't certainly talking of that kind of stuff you've posted, but of some of the most respected artists in the art world.








Mirò








kandinksy








Sonia Delaunay








Paul Klee (who was also an inspiration for many modern composers)








Chagall

I could go on forever with examples, while talking of the musical avantgarde it's much more difficult, especially considering the most respected composers and their most respected works.


----------



## Blancrocher

norman bates said:


> yes, there's a part of truth. Actually even many modern painters like Mirò, Klee, Delaunay, Kandinsky and many other major artists produce art that could be easily considered pretty without any problem, while in modern music prettiness is seen as a capital sin.


Speaking solely from my own anecdotal experience (which could of course be misleading), I've found "sentimentality" to be a much more common term of abuse than "prettiness." It's possible that it's become a more common criticism in the last half century or so, though I couldn't say for sure.

Thomas Ades gets nailed with this one quite regularly these days. But even modern artists probably need to avoid Rembrandt's habit of giving everyone puppy-dog eyes, to be fair.


----------



## Woodduck

Man is a vision-dominated animal. Vision is the sense that provides us with most of the information that we seek out and process consciously, and is therefore the one that in most people - people who are not musicians, and not visually impaired - is most well-developed and employed most constantly. It is the primary sense by which we perceive form and order in the world around us; the brain constantly seeks out patterns in visual stimuli in order to identify things and orient us in the world, whereas sounds tend to strike us individually and randomly rather than in organized patterns. We recognize organized sound as something out of the ordinary - as music, in fact! And music, most of us would attest, has the power to affect the "emotional centers" of the brain to a degree that patterns of visual stimuli cannot match. We can certainly be moved looking at paintings or sculptures, and the more so the more we are sensitive to aesthetic qualities, but the "aesthetic distance" is greater; the information-gathering function which is primary in visual perception inclines us toward a balance of subjective feeling and objective detachment which is quite different from the more direct affective experience of music, in which the units of perception - sounds and patterns of sound - generally have no ordinary informational significance and can for the most part, unless we consciously choose otherwise, bypass the screen of conceptual structures which are our everyday experience of the world and make a swift, direct connection with our emotions. 

Because of music's capacity to arouse feeling responses easily and even effortlessly, people generally seem to attach a deeper personal significance to it than they do to visual art. Why then do more people seem interested in contemporary visual art than in contemporary classical music? I think that if my description of the difference between the way music and visual art are experienced is basically correct, the answer is pretty clear. Most people listen to and play music for precisely the subjective feelings it arouses in them, no matter whether their feelings about the music are mild or intense, or whether they are listening attentively, playing an instrument, dancing, or merely having something on as background to dinner. Music has virtually no other function than to induce that feeling response. But visual art, consisting of physical objects, can be seen, touched, owned, bought, sold, hung in a museum or on the bathroom wall, flaunted as a symbol of social status or personal erudition, reproduced in books and posters, and given as frequent or infrequent attention as one might wish - and all without the fixed investment of time required to hear a work of music, or any necessary expectation that the work justify its existence by providing one with emotional gratification. In short, the things we expect from objects of visual art, the uses to which we put them, are more diverse than, and often different from, the things we expect from music. Nobody is apt to be deeply disappointed or resentful upon seeing a modern painting he dislikes hanging on the wall of a museum (unless the museum is filled with such paintings, in which case he will probably not visit the museum again); the most likely emotional reaction is simple indifference, possibly rising to mild annoyance. But a strong negative response is common when a listener may have paid a couple of hours' wages to sit through twenty minutes of "avant garde" music which has failed to induce sympathetic feelings but has instead left him feeling baffled or irritated. And the reason for the difference is in the different expectations we have of the different forms of art. Visual art that does not move us may still be interesting or pleasing to the eye or the conceptual mind, and may be just the thing to complete our collection of etchings or our dining room decor. But music that fails to move us has failed at the essential thing music is supposed to do.

Given that most people are not musicians or students of music, who may find the experiments of modern composers interesting and enjoyable from the perspective of their specialized knowledge, it doesn't surprise me in the least that most people, even people sophisticated in other cultural matters, choose not to take chances with contemporary classical music.


----------



## Mahlerian

norman bates said:


> I could go on forever with examples, while talking of the musical avantgarde it's much more difficult, especially considering the most respected composers and their most respected works.


*For whom???*

I have no problems finding beauty in modernist music. Not all of it, of course, but many composers and many works.





Hearing all of those little motifs and cells expand and contract and form into a rich harmonic/melodic fabric is very beautiful to me. (And no, I'm not talking about any sort of intellectual analysis. I've never analyzed the piece in any detail. I'm simply talking about what I _hear_.)





Boulez's _Pli selon pli_ was criticized by Stravinsky for sounding monotonously pretty, with its consistently rich fabric of sound.


----------



## norman bates

Mahlerian said:


> *For whom???*
> 
> I have no problems finding beauty in modernist music.


I'm not talking of beauty but also of prettiness. I doubt that there are many people considering Webern's music pretty. I could imagine a kindergarten using Mirò or Matisse on the walls, I can't imagine the same place with Boulez's music (like I could not imagine the kindergarten using Goya's late paintings for the same reason)


----------



## Mahlerian

norman bates said:


> I'm not talking of beauty but also of prettiness. I doubt that there are many people considering Webern's music pretty. I could imagine a kindergarten using Mirò or Matisse on the walls, I can't imagine the same place with Boulez's music (like I could not imagine the kindergarten using Goya's late paintings for the same reason)


I find the sheer sound of the above quite attractive.

I don't think that whether something works well as background or not is a good criterion for deciding its attractiveness. Besides, modernist music has at times been used as background for exhibitions and such. There are works by Stockhausen, Xenakis, and Varese written for that exact purpose.


----------



## Blancrocher

norman bates said:


> I'm not talking of beauty but also of prettiness. I doubt that there are many people considering Webern's music pretty. I could imagine a kindergarten using Mirò or Matisse on the walls, I can't imagine the same place with Boulez's music (like I could not imagine the kindergarten using Goya's late paintings for the same reason)


I'm curious if anyone could mention modern/contemporary works that seem to reflect a child's perspective--along the lines of Debussy's "Children's Corner"?

This is by the way and not at all for the purpose of argument--I'm just curious.


----------



## dgee

norman bates said:


> I'm not talking of beauty but also of prettiness. I doubt that there are many people considering Webern's music pretty. I could imagine a kindergarten using Mirò or Matisse on the walls, I can't imagine the same place with Boulez's music (like I could not imagine the kindergarten using Goya's late paintings for the same reason)


It's a bit of a stuck record Norm - find a highly subjective term and then say contemporary music can't do it. Along with some Boulez (Livre for strings perhaps as well as big chunks of Repons), works by Castiglioni, Haas, Hans Abrahamsen and Sciarrino really are very "pretty" to me

Or you could just say "I don't find that music pretty".

What do you find pretty, by the way? It would be interesting to know


----------



## Winterreisender

I think norman bates is right about prettiness. A lot of contemporary art is immediately eye-catching, e.g. these monstrosities from Jeff Koons:










But "pretty" can often imply superficial and, in the case of the above, somewhat kitsch and tacky. Perhaps these are characteristics that appeal to the average gallery visitor.

I don't think it is the case that contemporary music can't do "pretty," but rather that this aesthetic is best avoided.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

cosmos- maybe because it's easier to "enjoy" a work of visual art rather than music?

I'm not certain about that. Visual art and music both communicate through a sort of sensuality that can be immediately appreciated... yet both can employ forms and content that are very complex and demanding which require a degree of effort on the part of the audience.

I'm thinking more about how I enjoyed going through the Joan Miro gallery in Barcelona, but I would probably not be in the mood to attend a concert playing Xenakis.

When speaking of Miro you are talking about an early Modernist... someone who was more of a peer of composers such as Béla Bartók, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Gershwin, Vaughan-Williams, Richard Strauss, Berg, Bohuslav Martinů, Darius Milhaud, Ibert, Erich Korngold, Francis Poulenc, Aram Khachaturian, Shostakovitch, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland... as well as jazz which many artists of the period were profoundly influenced by. Xenakis would be a peer of the later Abstract Expressionists and one might certainly see a connection with artists such as Franz Kline:










or DeKooning:










Looking up Rothko paintings on google, they all look very serene, easy on the eyes, just blocks of colors that complement each other so well. They're aesthetically pleasing to look at. Can one say the same for 20th century avant-garde music? Probably not...

Well... Rothko's paintings function... in a sense... in quite the same way as a Japanese Zen garden:



Rothko's paintings are large, meditative paintings that slowly reveal themselves to the viewer after a period of meditative contemplation. They speak almost exclusively through color and the subtlety of the artist's touch... like a caress. These works are far removed from the more explosive aspects of some modern music... but certainly there are artists who are not far from Rothko in sensibilities:











Rothko is recognized in many ways as being a precursor to Minimalism:






Rarely does someone love such a work at first listen.

I loved all of the above works upon first hearing.


----------



## norman bates

Mahlerian said:


> I find the sheer sound of the above quite attractive.
> I don't think that whether something works well as background or not is a good criterion for deciding its attractiveness. Besides, modernist music has at times been used as background for exhibitions and such. There are works by Stockhausen, Xenakis, and Varese written for that exact purpose.


I don't certainly want to start a discussion on what "pretty" means, but I hope you realize that a lot of people don't find that kind of music pleasant as the view of a painting of Matisse or Edward Hopper.
And StlukesguildOhio put it perfectly: " If I while walking through a gallery or museum I come upon a painting or installation work that I truly dislike, I can simply turn away and not look any longer. It is not as easy to do this when sitting at a concert and finding oneself assaulted by a particularly egregious work of music." Music is something that impose itself, dominates the space, it requires attention often for a long span of time. So I don't think it's absurd to think that as other suggested that maybe modern visual art is perceived as a whole a bit more approachable, if not else in terms of time.


----------



## Cosmos

StlukesguildOhio, thanks for pointing out that Miro and Xenakis are from different eras, I'm not as knowledgeable of painting as much as music. Also I kinda agree that it's not as easy to enjoy the two paintings you presented (I like them, but many of my friends would probably dismiss it as "not real art").


----------



## Blancrocher

norman bates said:


> I don't certainly want to start a discussion on what "pretty" means, but I hope you realize that a lot of people don't find that kind of music pleasant as the view of a painting of Matisse or Edward Hopper.
> And StlukesguildOhio put it perfectly: " If I while walking through a gallery or museum I come upon a painting or installation work that I truly dislike, I can simply turn away and not look any longer. It is not as easy to do this when sitting at a concert and finding oneself assaulted by a particularly egregious work of music." Music is something that impose itself, dominates the space, it requires attention often for a long span of time. So I don't think it's absurd to think that as other suggested that maybe modern visual art is perceived as a whole a bit more approachable, if not else in terms of time.


Of course, people may approach and walk away from even the best art that they supposedly like all too quickly. How often do people even spend as much time looking at a Rothko picture as it takes to listen to listen to a pretty modern musical composition like Feldman's "Rothko Chapel"?

I'm always amazed by the way people speed through museums--it's like they go for exercise or something.


----------



## norman bates

Blancrocher said:


> I'm curious if anyone could mention modern/contemporary works that seem to reflect a child's perspective--along the lines of Debussy's "Children's Corner"?
> 
> This is by the way and not at all for the purpose of argument--I'm just curious.


I could mention without a doubt Alec Wilder, and not just he composed works thought for children (and I know that the idea of art for children is a bit questionable) like "Lullabies and night songs" but also because a large part of his music clearly shows his love of children. Anyway he was without a doubt a very original musician but I would not certainly put him in the avantgarde, at least not in the way we usually think of the avantgarde.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Actually even many modern painters like Mirò, Klee, Delaunay, Kandinsky and many other major artists produce art that could be easily considered pretty without any problem, while in modern music prettiness is seen as a capital sin.

"Beauty" became seen as somewhat problematic to certain artists and theorists... especially within the anti-bourgeois/anti-art camp of Dada following the horrors of the First World War. The reality, however, is that there are a good many works of art that might be deemed "ugly":



And many others (and these are all by well-recognized post-WWII era painters) that still create works of unquestioned beauty:


----------



## norman bates

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Actually even many modern painters like Mirò, Klee, Delaunay, Kandinsky and many other major artists produce art that could be easily considered pretty without any problem, while in modern music prettiness is seen as a capital sin.
> 
> "Beauty" became seen as somewhat problematic to certain artists and theorists... especially within the anti-bourgeois/anti-art camp of Dada following the horrors of the First World War. The reality, however, is that there are a good many works of art that might be deemed "ugly":


I know, but as I've said I was not talking of beauty. Anyway the comparison of Rothko and Feldman could show why the first is more approachable. Not because his paintings are simpler or better, but if I have to choose to look at some paintings or listen a string quartet that lasts six hours, well, it's certainly much more easier that I'd choose to look to the paintings.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

But even modern artists probably need to avoid Rembrandt's habit of giving everyone puppy-dog eyes, to be fair.

When did Rembrandt ever give anyone "puppy dog eyes"?



















Of course there was that Homer Simpson period...


----------



## Blancrocher

I knew I was going to get in trouble for that comment.


----------



## Mahlerian

Blancrocher said:


> I'm curious if anyone could mention modern/contemporary works that seem to reflect a child's perspective--along the lines of Debussy's "Children's Corner"?
> 
> This is by the way and not at all for the purpose of argument--I'm just curious.


Webern wrote a "Kinderstuck" for piano (unpublished). It sounds much like a trial run for his Piano Variations.





Takemitsu wrote Two Piano Pieces for Children, but they are certainly in a simplified harmonic language from his usual.





And what's up with the crowd in this video? Don't they know that other people are saying they hate what they've just listened to for the past hour? (Piece ends at 6:10)


----------



## Blancrocher

I just finished watching that sequence of Boulez videos myself, Mahlerian--great post.

And thanks for the mention of the Webern piece (which I hadn't heard) and the Takemitsu (which I have). I'm frankly delighted by works of art that are childlike but maintain a high degree of technical accomplishment, including works by the likes of Paul Klee or Debussy--or Hans Christian Andersen, for that matter.

*p.s.* Intriguing list of possible children's listening courtesy of Tom Service:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2009/nov/03/children-classical-music-radio-3


----------



## Mahlerian

Blancrocher said:


> I just finished watching that sequence of Boulez videos myself, Mahlerian--great post.
> 
> And thanks for the mention of the Webern piece (which I hadn't heard) and the Takemitsu (which I have). I'm frankly delighted by works of art that are childlike but maintain a high degree of technical accomplishment, including the likes of Paul Klee or Debussy--or Hans Christian Andersen, for that matter.


The funny thing about the Webern piece is that it _is_ simple enough for a child to do, only requiring one or two notes at a time (and mostly one with each hand). It's kind of like a 12-tone chopsticks or something.


----------



## hreichgott

In case any teachers are reading, Webern's Kinderstuck has been published, and appears in a couple of anthologies of easy piano pieces. I think one is Boosey & Hawkes.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Because of music's capacity to arouse feeling responses easily and even effortlessly, people generally seem to attach a deeper personal significance to it than they do to visual art.

A good part of this post falls into the Romantic cliche of imagining the _raison d'etre_ of music and our pleasure there-in as being limited to an expression of emotion... feelings. This is why we get those who cannot appreciate Mozart or Haydn because they don't wear their hearts on their sleeves... gushing with emotion. There are paintings, photographs, sculpture, and films that have had as profound an impact upon me and endless others as any work of music.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

I have real mixed feelings concerning Koons' "balloon" sculpture. On one level, the works are undeniably "beautiful" and I am an adherent to Oscar Wilde's assertion that:

_"The artist is the creator of beautiful things. 
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. 
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. 
This is a fault."_



I find these highly polished, commercially fabricated works "beautiful" in the same way that I might find these "beautiful":



But Wilde goes on to suggest:

_"All art is at once surface and symbol."_

In other words, a work of art is not merely a beautiful object or image, but it also conveys ideas, emotions, experiences...

Unlike the beautiful car, Koons sets out to communicate through his pretty balloons. While I find the vast majority of his work trite and banal... if not grossly tacky, the balloons strike me a bit differently. They are rather clever... witty, even. The artist plays with the contrast between the small, pliable balloons with a limited life-span and the huge, permanent, steel and chrome reproduction of these balloons. Artists in the past have presented heroic agrandizations of kings, wealthy merchants, and gods. Here Koons does the same... in a witty tongue-in-cheek manner... with the most trite of images/objects: a child's balloon.


----------



## KenOC

An interesting comparison. I find the cars far more effective and compelling as "art" than I do the Koons sculptures, though.


----------



## Morimur

Music (and literature, for that matter) is a far more complex medium than visual art. This makes the former much more difficult to appreciate.


----------



## ArtMusic

Winterreisender said:


> "Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen." This is the title of a book by David Stubbs. I haven't read the book yet (apparently it is disappointing), but the title alone really got me thinking. Here is an extract from the blurb:
> 
> Granted, the last sentence is a bit harsh! But why do tourists flock to the Tate Modern in their millions to see Rothko paintings and other works of avant-garde visual art, whilst avant-garde music remains a comparatively tiny niche?
> 
> One explanation for this interesting phenomenon perhaps concerns audiences' attention spans. If you go to a gallery, you can look at a painting for 10 seconds and then move on to the next one if you don't like it. But if you go to a concert and dislike the piece, you are trapped!
> 
> I plan on checking out the book itself to see what Mr. Stubbs thinks, but first I thought I would see if anyone here has some ideas.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any replies.


Nice thread. 

It has already been said - walk past a Rothko (which I don't think much of as a work of art) for 10 seconds versus sitting down and listening to noise-music stuff. Plus the fact that Rothko paintings have the "glamor" of commanding millions of dollars from some buyers (perhaps not very intelligent buyers in my opinion), whereas Stockhausen would never every have made a fraction of those monies for anything he wrote.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Music (and literature, for that matter) is a far more complex medium than visual art. This makes the former much more difficult to appreciate.

Oh please!


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

It has already been said - walk past a Rothko (which I don't think much of as a work of art) for 10 seconds versus sitting down and listening to noise-music stuff.

Actually, a good many art lovers, myself included, will spend a good period of time fixated by a particular work of art.

Plus the fact that Rothko paintings have the "glamor" of commanding millions of dollars from some buyers (perhaps not very intelligent buyers in my opinion), whereas Stockhausen would never every have made a fraction of those monies for anything he wrote.

Well... one needs to recognize that Rothko never commanded such prices himself.


----------



## Mahlerian

ArtMusic said:


> Plus the fact that Rothko paintings have the "glamor" of commanding millions of dollars from some buyers (perhaps not very intelligent buyers in my opinion), whereas Stockhausen would never every have made a fraction of those monies for anything he wrote.


Have you _*seen*_ the exorbitant prices he commands via his website (the only way to actually get his music, because he's kept an iron grip on the rights)? Someone's gotta be paying them.
http://www.stockhausencds.com/

Stockhausen concerts apparently sell out on a regular basis, too, and they're absurdly expensive to put on. Plenty of people are shelling out money for Stockhausen.


----------



## brianvds

Mahlerian said:


> Stockhausen concerts apparently sell out on a regular basis, too, and they're absurdly expensive to put on. Plenty of people are shelling out money for Stockhausen.


How much DOES it cost to keep four helicopters in the air for an hour anyway?


----------



## SimonNZ

The vintage Stockhausen vinyl is also among the most sought after lps and commands some of the highest prices.

edit: or at least they are out my way - looking on ebay they seem much more affordable. Grab 'em while you can.


----------



## Sid James

I'd just add that Rothko ties in with tradition in some ways at least. Compare one of his canvases to that of German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich:



















You got that sense of the epic, the sublime (remembering the size of Rothko's canvases, they overwhelm the viewer). You got those bands of colour (a number of Friedrich's paintings are layed out like this). You've also got the philosophies of Romantic art having parallels with Abstract Expressionism.

Having said that, which I read about years ago in a book on aesthetics, I am no fan of Abstract Expressionism (and much less so of conceptual art). It was basically a movement spearheaded by Clement Greenberg, who had these extreme views on the supremacy of abstract art over figurative art. He's akin to people like Adorno or Boulez during that mid 20th century period. The ideologies of that hard line type of Modernism haven't been resolved. So you get people belittled if they don't "get" Rothko, or Stockhausen, or whatever. Its based on a dichotomy - you've got freedom, as long as you believe what we believe.

Its also interesting that hard line Modernists have similar views to the hard line conservatives. Basically, that to really "get" any high art you need to be a cogniscenti, which is the Modern equivalent of the aristocracy of feudalism. Plebs can't "get" so called "real" art - be it "real" Modern art/music/whatever or "real" stuff of the canon - because they are caught up with the superficial stuff at the bottom, the so called "low art."

All these types of extreme views of course negate the middle ground of listeners of music, or consumers of art. They are the majority but in these ideological debates over the last two centuries, they where often sidelined and excluded. Modernism just made it worse. Post-Modernism just confuses the situation.

So to get back to this, I as a person who sees little need for these distinctions and dichotomies between so called "old" and "new," "retrograde" and "radical," "polyglot" and "original" am proudly ignorant. Just like most consumers of art are, apparently.

But seriously I just go with what I like, and yes I do put effort it when I see it as necessary. Its up to personal choice. It does help to look at the underlying histories and aesthetic of art, music, literature and so on. I don't know if it will help the consumer of the art to like something more, just appreciate it for what it is in its own time, context and place. The rest I think is up to taste and the direction you want to go.


----------



## Mahlerian

brianvds said:


> How much DOES it cost to keep four helicopters in the air for an hour anyway?


Quite a bit, of course. More if you want to have four sound technicians relaying the string quartet's performances back into the hall live.

And of course, mounting the entire Wednesday from Licht costs far more. One source claims £920,000.
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/27/entertainment/la-et-cm-stockhausen-mittwoch-review-20120828


----------



## PetrB

Several studies have been done about how much time the average art museum visitor spends in front of any given painting:
That average ~ Three Minutes.

Music of most any sort takes more time.

Next, since the middle of the century at least, tens of thousands, sometimes one hundred thousand, attend special museum exhibitions of contemporary art over the several weeks or one month the exhibit is up. That is not anywhere near the number of people who flock to a program of contemporary classical music. Plain and simple, the general populace is much more ready and willing to gaze at visual art from the impressionists to the most completely abstract works, including visual art made to this present day.

Some members here are rather consistent, they abhor visual art which is not representative, or too slightly abstracted representative. This conservative group _like pictures which may happen to also be "art."_

The general "average" classical music listener is far more conservative than the general "average" viewer of visual art.

I've yet to meet anyone who has gone to look at a Jasper Johns merely because the larger canvases now command millions. I don't think the monetary value of artworks has anything to do with it.

_*Since there is truly nothing wrong with their hearing, the general population or, "the average" classical music listener seem to wish to stay cozy within the realm of certain sentiments in older music to which they prefer to cling.*_ That is all.


----------



## KenOC

PetrB said:


> _*Since there is truly nothing wrong with their hearing, the general population or, "the average" classical music listener seem to wish to stay cozy within the realm of certain sentiments in older music to which they prefer to cling.*_ That is all.


A masterful comment, suggesting the aesthetic inferiority of the "average" listener (who is after all no more than average) without being too overtly patronizing. You've evidently had practice at this! Anyway, just to say, "well played."


----------



## Sid James

norman bates said:


> I doubt that there are tons of Rothko fans (even if I don't think it's so difficult to "get" him, after all he does the same "mental landscape" over and over) but *if I was an artist I would consider the fact of been understood only by people with former knowledge like a debacle*.


I think that speaks loads to this issue too. Let me give you two examples from my recent reading.

One I think I have already related on this forum recently. As part of his European travels which famously included Paris, Gershwin went to Vienna. There he met one of his musical idols, Berg. At this meeting, Berg arranged a performance of his string quartet for Gershwin. After that, Berg asked Gershwin to play some of his tunes at the piano. Gershwin was hesitant of playing mere show tunes for such a notable composer of serious music. But Berg just said to him something like "Mr. Gershwin, please play, music is music."

Another one was concerning Shostakovich's visit to London in the mid 1970's for a premiere of his Symphony #15. This was the final year of his life (I think either 1974 or 1975). Shostakovich asked to see the premiere production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar that had just opened. When he saw it, he told Julian Lloyd Webber that he would have been happy to have been able to put his name to such a piece. He went back to see another performance of it before leaving to go back home, as a matter of fact. This has similarities with Brahms' appreciation for the Blue Danube waltz of Johann Strauss II.

It is apparent to me that not all composers see, or have seen, the need to distinguish between enjoyment, engagement, understanding of different types of music (call it what you will, art works on so many levels). So too art. The ones who do tend to have some or other ideological agenda or axe to grind. A schism opened up between various facets of the arts at some point in recent music history. By recent I mean the last 200 years. Since then there has been too much concern about building walls to divide various types of music, and as such buffer these cliques which hold one or other trend or ideology as being supreme.

SO that is what I am saying, whether of one type or another, all music is just music. It is created with different purposes in mind, in various genres and with differing aesthetic concerns. The differences lie less in what is better or more "real" or "great" than another thing, but more in how well it carries forward the purpose for which it was created. Creativity is about diversity and grey areas rather than absolutes. Whenever we try to impose absolutes, we just impose our judgements and values. That's fine to a point, but not in terms of alienating others. That's totally anathema to how I see these things.


----------



## DavidA

PetrB said:


> _*Since there is truly nothing wrong with their hearing, the general population or, "the average" classical music listener seem to wish to stay cozy within the realm of certain sentiments in older music to which they prefer to cling.*_ That is all.


And why shouldn't we? Have we violated some law? Why shouldn't I listen to music I like rather than what appears to me some cacophonous din I do not like?


----------



## science

DavidA said:


> And why shouldn't we? Have we violated some law? Why shouldn't I listen to music I like rather than what appears to me some cacophonous din I do not like?


You listen to whatever you like but the chances are that I enjoy that "cacophonous din."


----------



## Guest

Bulldog said:


> With little exception, visual art doesn't make any sound. For that reason alone, I'd much rather look at a modernist painting that listen to modernist music.


Certainly, it's difficult to see how Rothko (or Kokoschka, whose work I find ugly) could be used as an instrument of torture, whereas any loud music could be.

I know I like the Rothko that I've seen. That doesn't mean I "get it", of course. But it seems to me that comparing art with music is of limited value.


----------



## science

KenOC said:


> A masterful comment, suggesting the aesthetic inferiority of the "average" listener (who is after all no more than average) without being too overtly patronizing. You've evidently had practice at this! Anyway, just to say, "well played."


It's not merely the average listener being put in their place, but the average classical music listener. We have to know our places too!


----------



## DavidA

science said:


> You listen to whatever you like but the chances are that I enjoy that "cacophonous din."


Fine! You have every right to listen and enjoy. As long as you don't expect me to!


----------



## DavidA

science said:


> It's not merely the average listener being put in their place, but the average classical music listener. We have to know our places too!


May I say I am quite happy to be thought of as 'average' if it means I don't have to listen to music I don't like in order to be considered above average.


----------



## science

DavidA said:


> Fine! You have every right to listen and enjoy. As long as you don't expect me to!


Maybe someone is guilty of that but I'm not.



DavidA said:


> May I say I am quite happy to be thought of as 'average' if it means I don't have to listen to music I don't like in order to be considered above average.


Ok, fine, whatever. PetrB and his friends might look down on you but you don't have to care:

Just as I don't care that you think I am only pretending to enjoy "that cacophonous din" in order to be thought of as above average.

Both sides of this just need to relax a bit. _It doesn't matter_.

_It doesn't matter_.

_It doesn't matter_.

_It doesn't matter_.


----------



## science

_It still doesn't matter_.


----------



## Guest

DavidA said:


> Fine! You have every right to listen and enjoy. As long as you don't expect me to!


Who is it that you think is imposing this expectation? And why are you so troubled by it (the expectation that is)?

http://www.talkclassical.com/32173-extremely-challenging-music-2.html#post663594


----------



## DavidA

science said:


> _It still doesn't matter_.


Did I say it did?


----------



## DavidA

MacLeod said:


> Who is it that you think is imposing this expectation? And why are you so troubled by it (the expectation that is)?
> 
> http://www.talkclassical.com/32173-extremely-challenging-music-2.html#post663594


I can assure you I am not troubled at all by it!


----------



## Crudblud

DavidA said:


> Did I say it did?


If you didn't care about it you wouldn't be posting about it.


----------



## DavidA

Crudblud said:


> If you didn't care about it you wouldn't be posting about it.


So to comment about something it has to be a major issue in my life? Strange!


----------



## Nereffid

MacLeod said:


> I know I like the Rothko that I've seen. That doesn't mean I "get it", of course.


I like Rothko too... I've never considered whether I "get it". OMG, what if I've been liking Rothko for the wrong reasons?! :lol:


----------



## Guest

DavidA said:


> So to comment about something it has to be a major issue in my life? Strange!


I don't think anyone was claiming that it's a major issue in your life, just that since you feel compelled to post this view more than once, it's not unreasonable to deduce that it's as important to you as it is to those who often post that they can't comprehend those who don't like Mozart.

I note that you didn't answer my first question.


----------



## Guest

Nereffid said:


> I like Rothko too... I've never considered whether I "get it". OMG, what if I've been liking Rothko for the wrong reasons?! :lol:


We may both need to sit in the corner with dunce's caps!


----------



## Svelte Silhouette

I don't like Rothko so take a knife to my shirt if that offends :lol:


----------



## DavidA

MacLeod said:


> I don't think anyone was claiming that it's a major issue in your life, just that since you feel compelled to post this view more than once, it's not unreasonable to deduce that it's as important to you as it is to those who often post that they can't comprehend those who don't like Mozart.
> 
> I note that you didn't answer my first question.


Sorry, mate, but it's you who are going on about it not me. Why should I be bothered about music I never listen to and so-called art I never view?

The only time it bothers me is if somesuch cacophony comes on the radio and I have to use the off button

I missed your. First question, btw.


----------



## Guest

DavidA said:


> I missed your. First question, btw.


You said, "_As long as you don't expect me to!"
_
I asked,

"Who is it that you think is imposing this expectation?"

I also cited a previous occasion where you said, with reference to challenging music,

"As long as I'm not obliged to listen as well!"


----------



## PetrB

KenOC said:


> A masterful comment, suggesting the aesthetic inferiority of the "average" listener (who is after all no more than average) without being too overtly patronizing. You've evidently had practice at this! Anyway, just to say, "well played."


You've mistaken something as implicit which was not there.

*The 'problem' (if there is one -- the OP supposes there is one is not "aesthetic inferiority."*

*The problem is anesthetic superiority*. i.e. since that 97% of the populace is asleep to contemporary classical (indeed, it seems they are asleep to almost all classical) and they probably are not prowling the corridors of TC, I don't think any of those mentioned will at all take the least slight to my comment. -- After all, "they"'re getting their visuals and symphonic music from television and movies, "they" are not reading a thing I've written on TC.


----------



## PetrB

Nereffid said:


> I like Rothko too... I've never considered whether I "get it". OMG, what if I've been liking Rothko for the wrong reasons?! :lol:


I'm sure there is some intellectual / critic group lurking in academia or some alternative basement coffee shop / ratskeller who will well take you to task on that


----------



## DavidA

MacLeod said:


> You said, "_As long as you don't expect me to!"
> _
> I asked,
> 
> "Who is it that you think is imposing this expectation?"
> 
> I also cited a previous occasion where you said, with reference to challenging music,
> 
> "As long as I'm not obliged to listen as well!"


For something that doesn't matter you are harping on a bit, I must say!

Let me repeat for your benefit: I have no problem with other people listening to this so-called challenging music as long as I am not expected to as well!


----------



## DavidA

PetrB said:


> You've mistaken something as implicit which was not there.
> 
> *The 'problem' (if there is one -- the OP supposes there is one is not "aesthetic inferiority."*
> 
> *The problem is anesthetic superiority*. i.e. since that 97% of the populace is asleep to contemporary classical (indeed, it seems they are asleep to almost all classical) and they probably are not prowling the corridors of TC, I don't think any of those mentioned will at all take the least slight to my comment. -- After all, "they"'re getting their visuals and symphonic music from television and movies, "they" are not reading a thing I've written on TC.


Friend, you can be as aesthetically superior as you like as far as I'm concerned! :tiphat:


----------



## Guest

DavidA said:


> as long as I am not expected to as well!


You're not .


----------



## DavidA

MacLeod said:


> You're not .


That's a relief!


----------



## Guest

DavidA said:


> That's a relief!


Why would it be a relief when this is of no signif...

Oh, never mind!


----------



## EddieRUKiddingVarese

Mahlerian said:


> He's probably on a lot of people's walls already...


Or alternatively


----------



## Winterreisender

Returning to the topic, slightly...

Perhaps another reason for contemporary visual art attracting larger audiences than contemporary music is the amount of competition. As is often the case in these sorts of discussions, popular music gets overlooked !!

In the world of music, the contemporary classical scene does of course have its devoted following, but this listener base probably accounts for less than 1% of all music consumers. Contemporary classical music has to compete with rock, jazz, new age and several other popular genres.

In the world of visual art, there doesn't seem to be this enormous degree of competition. (Arguably you have films, but that is more akin to drama/literature). Even the Pop Art movement has basically been amalgamated into just another branch of the avant-garde. So what's left of "popular" visual art today? Just the odd urban graffitist here and there, but nothing substantial that is diverting people away from the "high art" galleries. 

So the reason why modern music of the Stockhausen variety fails to attract large audiences is perhaps the enormous competition coming from other styles of music. With visual art, there is less competition; you seem to have galleries like the Tate Modern where all different styles are found under a single roof.


----------



## Winterreisender

(By the way, if anyone is interested in David Stubbs' book, mentioned in the OP, I came across this short interview with the author: http://www.ttbook.org/book/david-stubbs-experimental-art-vs-experimental-music. It is reasonably interesting, except that the interviewer commits the TC cardinal sin of calling Schoenberg's music "random" )


----------



## Marschallin Blair

KenOC said:


> An interesting comparison. I find the cars far more effective and compelling as "art" than I do the Koons sculptures, though.


Cheers to vintage Detroit Iron. To Cudas, Chargers, and Roadrunners.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Sid James said:


> I'd just add that Rothko ties in with tradition in some ways at least. Compare one of his canvases to that of German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You got that sense of the epic, the sublime (remembering the size of Rothko's canvases, they overwhelm the viewer). You got those bands of colour (a number of Friedrich's paintings are layed out like this). You've also got the philosophies of Romantic art having parallels with Abstract Expressionism.
> 
> Having said that, which I read about years ago in a book on aesthetics, I am no fan of Abstract Expressionism (and much less so of conceptual art). It was basically a movement spearheaded by Clement Greenberg, who had these extreme views on the supremacy of abstract art over figurative art. He's akin to people like Adorno or Boulez during that mid 20th century period. The ideologies of that hard line type of Modernism haven't been resolved. So you get people belittled if they don't "get" Rothko, or Stockhausen, or whatever. Its based on a dichotomy - you've got freedom, as long as you believe what we believe.Its also interesting that hard line Modernists have similar views to the hard line conservatives. Basically, that to really "get" any high art you need to be a cogniscenti, which is the Modern equivalent of the aristocracy of feudalism. Plebs can't "get" so called "real" art - be it "real" Modern art/music/whatever or "real" stuff of the canon - because they are caught up with the superficial stuff at the bottom, the so called "low art."
> 
> All these types of extreme views of course negate the middle ground of listeners of music, or consumers of art. They are the majority but in these ideological debates over the last two centuries, they where often sidelined and excluded. Modernism just made it worse. Post-Modernism just confuses the situation.
> 
> So to get back to this, I as a person who sees little need for these distinctions and dichotomies between so called "old" and "new," "retrograde" and "radical," "polyglot" and "original" am proudly ignorant. Just like most consumers of art are, apparently.
> 
> But seriously I just go with what I like, and yes I do put effort it when I see it as necessary. Its up to personal choice. It does help to look at the underlying histories and aesthetic of art, music, literature and so on. I don't know if it will help the consumer of the art to like something more, just appreciate it for what it is in its own time, context and place. The rest I think is up to taste and the direction you want to go.


---
An absolute classic deflating the self-annointed nonsense of some modern art:

http://www.amazon.com/Painted-Word-...1401196317&sr=1-1&keywords=painted+word+wolfe


----------



## Rangstrom

Getting Stockhausen and wanting to listen to any of his works more than once are two very different concepts.


----------



## Blancrocher

Sid James said:


> Having said that, which I read about years ago in a book on aesthetics, I am no fan of Abstract Expressionism (and much less so of conceptual art). It was basically a movement spearheaded by Clement Greenberg, who had these extreme views on the supremacy of abstract art over figurative art. He's akin to people like Adorno or Boulez during that mid 20th century period. The ideologies of that hard line type of Modernism haven't been resolved. So you get people belittled if they don't "get" Rothko, or Stockhausen, or whatever. Its based on a dichotomy - you've got freedom, as long as you believe what we believe.
> 
> Its also interesting that hard line Modernists have similar views to the hard line conservatives. Basically, that to really "get" any high art you need to be a cogniscenti, which is the Modern equivalent of the aristocracy of feudalism. Plebs can't "get" so called "real" art - be it "real" Modern art/music/whatever or "real" stuff of the canon - because they are caught up with the superficial stuff at the bottom, the so called "low art."
> 
> All these types of extreme views of course negate the middle ground of listeners of music, or consumers of art. They are the majority but in these ideological debates over the last two centuries, they where often sidelined and excluded. Modernism just made it worse. Post-Modernism just confuses the situation.


Terrific post throughout.

I suppose I'd just add that the 60s was a political time--and not just about art :lol: A lot of the nastiness and negativity seems to have dropped away. Also, it must be said, a lot of the publicity: if 60s art/music was sometimes radically experimental, it also more often advertised itself as being so, and major/popular publications took notice.

Clement Greenberg, for all the abstruseness (to use an uncharitable term) of his theories, isn't as difficult to read as is often made out by people who for whatever reason think he shouldn't be read--especially by comparison with Adorno or Boulez, both of whom strike me as unnecessarily difficult much of the time. For anyone interested, some of his more famous essays are available free online: http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/default.html

I personally think he's a great critic of the things he likes (modernism) and don't worry too much about what he didn't. In fact, I hardly ever worry about critics' dislikes--especially when they encompass a whole period or style. Emperors' new clothes arguments are very dangerous if you care about good art: you don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.


----------



## Mahlerian

Winterreisender said:


> the interviewer commits the TC cardinal sin of calling Schoenberg's music "random" )


It's just false. Demonstrably and provably false. It gives me the same sensation to run into people who think Schoenberg is random as it does for any of us to meet someone who believes that the Earth is flat.


----------



## GGluek

When I was a student, a couple of friends and I would occasionally go to a museum like the Met, and though there were artists and schools that we each liked, there were also sections and galleries where we would dispatch one of us close enough to the wall to be able to read the label and report, so we'd know whether or not to "ooh" or "ahhh."


----------



## millionrainbows

Music is experienced as "being in time,' and art is 'frozen time.' It takes more commitment of your being to experience music. Plus, I think to really understand music, it takes more intelligence, since there are cognitive processes going on.

Art is like a 'sign,' and can be experienced in one instant; music takes place over a span of time, so it is more like listening to a language. Music scores are like 'writing,' with specific meanings. like written language. You don't learn a language overnight.


----------



## Blancrocher

Mahlerian said:


> someone who believes that the Earth is flat.


How ridiculous--even Clement Greenberg didn't go _that_ far.

*p.s.* Alas, zero likes--last time I risk a joke about Greenberg's aesthetics.


----------



## aleazk

Mahlerian said:


> It's just false. Demonstrably and provably false. It gives me the same sensation to run into people who think Schoenberg is random as it does for any of us to meet someone who believes that the Earth is flat.


It's really impossible to take seriously to someone trying to "analyse" this music... and their "conclusion" is that "it is random".


----------



## Marschallin Blair

> Blancrocher: Clement Greenberg, for all the abstruseness (to use an uncharitable term) of his theories, isn't as difficult to read as is often made out by people who for whatever reason think he shouldn't be read--especially by comparison with Adorno or Boulez, both of whom strike me as unnecessarily difficult much of the time. For anyone interested, some of his more famous essays are available free online: http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/default.html
> 
> I personally think he's a great critic of the things he likes (modernism) and don't worry too much about what he didn't. In fact, I hardly ever worry about critics' dislikes--especially when they encompass a whole period or style. Emperors' new clothes arguments are very dangerous if you care about good art: you don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater


Certainly. . . but then again, what do you do when the clothes have no Emperor?-- I can understand why Tom Wolfe turned to savaging satire.


----------



## norman bates

millionrainbows said:


> Music is experienced as "being in time,' and art is 'frozen time.' It takes more commitment of your being to experience music. Plus, I think to really understand music, it takes more intelligence, since there are cognitive processes going on.
> 
> Art is like a 'sign,' and can be experienced in one instant; music takes place over a span of time, so it is more like listening to a language. Music scores are like 'writing,' with specific meanings. like written language. You don't learn a language overnight.


I agree with everything except that "it takes more intelligence" that I don't know what it means. Do you think that every second rate composer is a better artist than Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Goya or Picasso?


----------



## Guest

millionrainbows said:


> Music is experienced as "being in time,' and art is 'frozen time.' It takes more commitment of your being to experience music. Plus, I think to really understand music, it takes more intelligence, since there are cognitive processes going on.
> 
> Art is like a 'sign,' and can be experienced in one instant; music takes place over a span of time, so it is more like listening to a language. Music scores are like 'writing,' with specific meanings. like written language. You don't learn a language overnight.


I was with you about the 'time' thing, but you lost me at the point you suggested that "there are cognitive processes going on" when understanding music, but not, apparently, when understanding art.


----------



## KenOC

Just out. The New York Review of Books has a longish article about Stockhausen: "But for the past thirty years, most of Stockhausen's music has been all but impossible to hear, and a generation or more has come of age without the slightest understanding of what he once meant to young composers and musicians..."

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/may/23/stockhausen-moment/


----------



## Blancrocher

Marschallin Blair said:


> Certainly. . . but then again, what do you do when the clothes have no Emperor?-- I can understand why Tom Wolfe turned to savaging satire.


I've never been in a room at a great museum where there wasn't one or two emperors, in my own judgment (though they weren't necessarily known as such by others)--or in a democracy, for that matter, though that's just by the way.


----------



## Mahlerian

Blancrocher said:


> How ridiculous--even Clement Greenberg didn't go _that_ far.


It's exaggeration, to be sure, but I want people to realize that there really is no question here to begin with.

Regardless of whether or not it _sounds_ random to a given listener, it certainly doesn't sound random to one steeped in the idiom, and it, incontrovertibly, is not random as a matter of fact.

It's not a question of quality or taste. I understand that these things are, _at all times_, up for debate. The question of whether or not Schoenberg's music is random, though, is not.


----------



## Morimur

I just finished listening to *'Stimmung'* and all I can say is that if one doesn't appreciate Stockhausen, one is missing out big time.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Blancrocher said:


> I've never been in a room at a great museum where there wasn't one or two emperors, in my own judgment (though they weren't necessarily known as such by others)--or in a democracy, for that matter, though that's just by the way.


I'm in deeply-moved agreement on both counts. _;D_


----------



## norman bates

Lope de Aguirre said:


> I just finished listening to *'Stimmung'* and all I can say is that if one doesn't appreciate Stockhausen, one is missing out big time.


I think is the "easiest" work I've listened of him.


----------



## Morimur

KenOC said:


> Just out. The New York Review of Books has a longish article about Stockhausen: "But for the past thirty years, most of Stockhausen's music has been all but impossible to hear, and a generation or more has come of age without the slightest understanding of what he once meant to young composers and musicians..."
> 
> http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/may/23/stockhausen-moment/


Thanks for sharing, KenOC. Great article.


----------



## DavidA

Lope de Aguirre said:


> I just finished listening to *'Stimmung'* and all I can say is that if one doesn't appreciate Stockhausen, one is missing out big time.


Well, I'm afraid I'll have to miss out.


----------



## PetrB

PetrB said:


> _*Since there is truly nothing wrong with their hearing, the general population or, "the average" classical music listener seem to wish to stay cozy within the realm of certain sentiments in older music to which they prefer to cling.*_ That is all.





DavidA said:


> And why shouldn't we?


You have every right. You also have every right to pronounce judgement on the musical constructs you call "cacophonous din" -- even though for a good number of people those constructs are not anything like a "cacophonous din."



DavidA said:


> Have we violated some law?


Nope.



DavidA said:


> Why shouldn't I listen to music I like rather than what appears to me some cacophonous din I do not like?


 Again, no good reason at all. You like what you like. The repeated comments in threads about the music not liked by those who don't like it are more than a bit tired and telling, though, and it gets rather boring to read repeated interjected statements of 'noise' 'din' etc. in threads in which the subject is about music and composers it seems the participant has absolutely no interest in at all. That is rather like dropping in on every thread on modern and contemporary art complaining it is not 'pictures' and repeatedly saying "Blobs 'n' Daubs."

But like the member who makes a slo-mo continuous stream of mono-thematic polls implicitly vilifying much modern and contemporary classical music, I suppose "everyone needs a hobby," and that hobby could be a heated anti-advocacy, I suppose.


----------



## PetrB

Blancrocher said:


> I've never been in a room at a great museum where there wasn't one or two emperors, in my own judgment (though they weren't necessarily known as such by others)--or in a democracy, for that matter, though that's just by the way.


Yes, indeedy, Emperors from every age and phase of art, the older and antique art having their fair share as much as any gallery of the newer art


----------



## KenOC

PetrB said:


> But like the member who makes a slo-mo continuous stream of mono-thematic polls implicitly vilifying much modern and contemporary classical music, I suppose "everyone needs a hobby"...


Perceptions are strange things. Perhaps the member in question is not interested in "vilifying" any music at all, but more in poking some fun at the snobbism exhibited by *some* proponents of certain types of music. :lol:


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

If I was an artist I would consider the fact of been understood only by people with former knowledge like a debacle.

The first question I would ask is how important is "understanding" to the appreciation of art? It seems to me that the appreciation of art has more to do with enjoying or taking pleasure in the actual experience than it does with "getting it".

Take a look at this painting:










To be "understood" this painting requires a good deal of prior knowledge... specifically related to 16th century Netherlandish parables and proverbs. Yet even lacking this, I suspect many can appreciate the painting.

What of this painting:



To fully "understand" this painting we need to have some grasp of the Biblical narratives and iconography... especially those related to the Crucifixion. Most of us born and raised in Western cultures bring a descent amount of prior knowledge of the Crucifixion to our experience of this and other such paintings.

But what of this...?



Most of us would have as little understanding of what narrative is being illustrated here as we might in understanding a lot of Modern or Contemporary art without being willing to put forth some degree of effort. Yet we could likely still appreciate and take pleasure in this painting.

Where I have a problem is with art that is so hermetic that even those with a solid grasp of Modern/Contemporary art as a whole struggle to grasp the work... and art that at the same time I find gives me little by way of the enjoyment or pleasure that might motivate me into putting forth the further effort to "understand" the artist's intentions.


----------



## ArtMusic

Rangstrom said:


> Getting Stockhausen and wanting to listen to any of his works more than once are two very different concepts.


Exactly, nearly non-existent to many listeners who have listened to Stockhausen pieces once. But it is far easier to revisit a Rothko more than once, which I rather do (even though I dislike Rothko pieces).


----------



## PetrB

Some people don't get Rothko, either


----------



## Sid James

Blancrocher said:


> Terrific post throughout.
> 
> I suppose I'd just add that the 60s was a political time--and not just about art :lol: A lot of the nastiness and negativity seems to have dropped away. Also, it must be said, a lot of the publicity: if 60s art/music was sometimes radically experimental, it also more often advertised itself as being so, and major/popular publications took notice.
> 
> Clement Greenberg, for all the abstruseness (to use an uncharitable term) of his theories, isn't as difficult to read as is often made out by people who for whatever reason think he shouldn't be read--especially by comparison with Adorno or Boulez, both of whom strike me as unnecessarily difficult much of the time. For anyone interested, some of his more famous essays are available free online: http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/default.html
> 
> I personally think he's a great critic of the things he likes (modernism) and don't worry too much about what he didn't. In fact, I hardly ever worry about critics' dislikes--especially when they encompass a whole period or style. Emperors' new clothes arguments are very dangerous if you care about good art: you don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.


I agree about it being good to read critics such as Greenberg, as well as the likes of Adorno and Lukacs, those theorists of Modernism. I'd also add that nothing much I said in that post is original, in terms of me being a child of Post-Modernism. No, I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but I wanted to be emphatic. Ultimately like any reader though I can choose what I do and don't agree with when reading any source on a movement in the arts.

My big issue with Post-Modernism is that it doesn't confront Modernism, it obsesses with sifting through it and critiquing it but it shrinks back from really challenging it. So two hundred years after the bunfights between the Classicist Ingres and the Romantic Delacroix (in early to mid 19th century France), a hundred years after the same thing happening between those who moved towards abstraction like Kandinsky and Mondrian in contrast to those who stuck with figuratism (albeit fragmented) like Picasso and Matisse, we are still arguing. Add to that the Abstract Expressionists, with Pollock and Rothko being accorded the vanguard status, which always seems to change in visual arts as it does in music.

I'm saying that we don't need anything but to accept pluralism. Of course that has its pitfalls as well, and my theory is that Post-Modernism isn't as emphatic as it should be regarding jettisoning Modernist ideology because it doesn't want to make the same mistake they did - if effect, throw the baby out with the bathwater.

But look, the art remains. Ideologies come and go, but that's there forever. That's ultimately what's the most important.

In terms of the book which is the topic of this thread, I would think it interesting to read. OF course, we who haven't read it are arguing by inference or just speaking to the topic generally. That's fine to a certain extent, but I am not attempting to critique this book in any way.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

So two hundred years after the bunfights between the Classicist Ingres and the Romantic Delacroix (in early to mid 19th century France), a hundred years after the same thing happening between those who moved towards abstraction like Kandinsky and Mondrian in contrast to those who stuck with figuratism (albeit fragmented) like Picasso and Matisse, we are still arguing. Add to that the Abstract Expressionists, with Pollock and Rothko being accorded the vanguard status, which always seems to change in visual arts as it does in music.

Among most artists working in traditional genre (painting, sculpture, print, etc...) there is little argument or debate along the lines of Abstract or Non-Objective vs Figurative art. Of course there are exceptions... most commonly among hard-core conservative reactionaries such as one might find at the ARC: http://www.artrenewal.org/

The real debate is between artists working in the Post-Dada/Post-Duchamp/Anti-Art manner of Conceptual Art/Installation Art... Post-Aesthetic Art and those who embrace the tradition of what Duchamp derided as "Retinal Art"... art that is aesthetically pleasing to the eye. This debate has broadened and become as much a battle between the dominant galleries in New York, London, Berlin, etc... and their audience of the 1%-ers and a greater pluralism... a recognition that there is no single dominant monolithic "Art World" but rather a slew of smaller "art worlds" each having their own values, standards, goals, and audience... and each having the same potential of turning out artists of real merit who will be recognized as "masters" by future generations.

This dispute of battle is not simply a petty argument over theory, but rather a battle for recognition... which means a battle for gallery representation, fame, and money... and ultimately, for survival.


----------



## millionrainbows

norman bates said:


> I agree with everything except that "it takes more intelligence" that I don't know what it means. Do you think that every second rate composer is a better artist than Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Goya or Picasso?


No, I did not intend for you to underestimate me and jump to that absurd conclusion. I used the term 'intelligence' as a convenience for 'cognition,' but also, I like the connotation, because it seems more people are befuddled by modern music than they are modern painting.



MacLeod said:


> I was with you about the 'time' thing, but you lost me at the point you suggested that "there are cognitive processes going on" when understanding music, but not, apparently, when understanding art.


In painting, the object is seen almost instantly by the eye. Contrastingly, music is not 'instant.' Music takes place over time, and to create relations, memory and cognition must be used.

Also, the mathematical and physical ideas which generate, embody, and underly even the simplest tonal music seem to be beyond the grasp of a lot of listeners. I doubt if ten percent of the members here could even understand what is meant by conceiving of intervals as ratios, or even what an interval is.


----------



## Blancrocher

Pretty tactless to discuss the superior importance of music vis a vis painting with respect to cognitive functioning on a music forum, millionrainbows. Still, I'm sometimes impressed by case studies from Oliver Sacks and his ilk about people repairing their mental life by--for example--taking up or resuming an instrument in their old age. 

That's not to say (as you say) that there aren't artists or even art critics who are supremely intelligent: they brought Erwin Panofsky to the Institute for Advanced Study along with Einstein, after all.


----------



## Sid James

Marschallin Blair said:


> ---
> An absolute classic deflating the self-annointed nonsense of some modern art:
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Painted-Word-...1401196317&sr=1-1&keywords=painted+word+wolfe


I enjoyed reading that, as well as Wolfe's similarly witty send up of what happened in architecture of the last century titled From Bauhaus to Our House.

But regarding the one you mention, I did a thread based on some of the things he bought up in that book, and I think its a thread that went very well considering the contentious topic. I worked hard on my opening post, I didn't want to alienate Modernists or anyone else, I just wanted people to give their opinions:

http://www.talkclassical.com/27175-can-mere-thought-idea.html


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Yes... Wolfe's _Painted Word_ is a clever send up of the worst aspects of the "art world". He's quite insightful at times... but then again, he can be quite close-minded. Even as a writer he has been known to be quite the reactionary... dismissing not just writers like Barthleme, John Barth, and Thomas Pynchon... but also J.L. Borges, James Joyce, and Kafka. I agree that it is essential to read someone like Wolfe to capture a full picture of the art world, but this needs to be counter-balanced with Greenberg, Donald Kuspit, Arthur C. Danto, John Ashbery, John Berger, David Sylvester, Robert Hughes, among others...


----------



## Marschallin Blair

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Yes... Wolfe's _Painted Word_ is a clever send up of the worst aspects of the "art world". He's quite insightful at times... but then again, he can be quite close-minded. Even as a writer he has been known to be quite the reactionary... dismissing not just writers like Barthleme, John Barth, and Thomas Pynchon... but also J.L. Borges, James Joyce, and Kafka. I agree that it is essential to read someone like Wolfe to capture a full picture of the art world, but this needs to be counter-balanced with Greenberg, Donald Kuspit, Arthur C. Danto, John Ashbery, John Berger, David Sylvester, Robert Hughes, among others...


Oh absolutely. The dialectic never ends. I certainly love_ most_ of Wolfe's just criticism though; and his _sprezzatura_ is more effortless than effortful; so unlike, say, the _New York Times Review of Books_ on the Left or the _New Criterio_n on the neoconservative Right.


----------



## dgee

Ugh - Tom Wolfe on ANYTHING is fairly awful - the occassional snazzy turn of phrase cannot hide his jaunty smugness and once over lightly approach. Anyone can be effortless when not putting in not much effort to writing what boil down to colourful opinion pieces

And to continue my whinging: why do people so need to keep up the ongoing snobbish dismissal of modernism (a diverse and vital movement) - which is always satisfied it is courageously speaking truth to power - as a monolithic bad thing that caused yucky music to happen, made some people be impolite to others and sucked out creativity because (clutch those skirts, people!) SERIALISM WAS A SYSTEM? Complete with spurious and half-baked "theorising"...

Does it jar that so many of the best and brightest over the last century have been attracted to the latest developments in music (and other arts) because of its vitality or intellectual and expressive concerns? Does it make you feel better to whisper dark nothings about modernist "ideologies", Darnstadt conspiracies and elitism? To poke fun at a one-dimensional caricature of modernism passed down lovingly from the most conservative pundits of 30, 50 or even 100 year ago?

It just all seems so _uncritical_

Rant over


----------



## KenOC

I thought it was Tom Wolfe, but no...it was Hunter S. Thompson. "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."


----------



## Marschallin Blair

dgee said:


> Ugh - Tom Wolfe on ANYTHING is fairly awful - the occassional snazzy turn of phrase cannot hide his jaunty smugness and once over lightly approach. Anyone can be effortless when not putting in not much effort to writing what boil down to colourful opinion pieces
> 
> And to continue my whinging: why do people so need to keep up the ongoing snobbish dismissal of modernism (a diverse and vital movement) - which is always satisfied it is courageously speaking truth to power - as a monolithic bad thing that caused yucky music to happen, made some people be impolite to others and sucked out creativity because (clutch those skirts, people!) SERIALISM WAS A SYSTEM? Complete with spurious and half-baked "theorising"...
> 
> Does it jar that so many of the best and brightest over the last century have been attracted to the latest developments in music (and other arts) because of its vitality or intellectual and expressive concerns? Does it make you feel better to whisper dark nothings about modernist "ideologies", Darnstadt conspiracies and elitism? To poke fun at a one-dimensional caricature of modernism passed down lovingly from the most conservative pundits of 30, 50 or even 100 year ago?
> 
> It just all seems so _uncritical_
> 
> Rant over


_Au contraire_, why does it seem to bother so many_ avant-gardists_ that people from an informed and contrarian aesthetic point of view, critically weigh and assay their works?-- and don't take their serialist or expressionist or minimalist narratives _ex cathedra_? For myself, its the aesthetic final product that matters; not its provenance; or time period; or compositionalist technique. I love innovation and experimentalism, certainly; but I feel the theory should serve the music and not the contrary. Sure break rules. Devise new ones. . . but in the service of music and not of shrill doctrinaire nonsense.

Amen.

Sermon over.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha._ ;D_


----------



## Sid James

Marschallin Blair said:


> *Au contraire, why does it seem to bother so many avant-gardists that people from an informed and contrarian aesthetic point of view, critically weigh and assay their works?-- *


Its a fundamental tenet of classic Modernism, to drive this wedge and alienate those possessing the middle ground. Eg. the majority. To argue that this didn't happen is not much more than historical revisionism. Its all there in the history, all the culture wars that occured throughout the history of music, painting, literature. But the issue is not to play the blame game and driving wedges game but to just acknowledge it was a mistake and move on. As Albert Einstein said, you don't fix today's problems with yesterday's solutions. Blame games have gotten us nowhere, its time to open things up and say there's many equally valid ways to do Modern/contemporary music, painting, writing, etc. So too, everyone can appreciate the great array of music that's on offer now, and from the last 100+ years of what's called the Modern era.


----------



## dgee

Sid, where do you get this stuff from? I've been interested in all sorts of modernism for ages and I've never heard of this stuff - is it just polemics? or something else here? Did modernists believe in something and that made others sad? So please tell me where to find out more - it's very politically correct at the moment for "modernism" to be seen as a big gross mistake and the arguments always seem very emotive and charged to me so something more concrete would be interesting. I think others would be interested too

And anyone tut-tutting over the sensitivities of the so-called avant-gardists would do well to remember the the Mawkish Verdi thread. There were plenty of hot, angry tears over that one


----------



## PetrB

dgee said:


> ...to continue my whinging: why do people so need to keep up the ongoing snobbish dismissal of modernism (a diverse and vital movement) - which is always satisfied it is courageously speaking truth to power - as a monolithic bad thing that caused yucky music to happen, made some people be impolite to others and sucked out creativity because (clutch those skirts, people!) SERIALISM WAS A SYSTEM? Complete with spurious and half-baked "theorising"...
> 
> Does it jar that so many of the best and brightest over the last century have been attracted to the latest developments in music (and other arts) because of its vitality or intellectual and expressive concerns? Does it make you feel better to whisper dark nothings about modernist "ideologies", Darnstadt conspiracies and elitism? To poke fun at a one-dimensional caricature of modernism passed down lovingly from the most conservative pundits of 30, 50 or even 100 year ago?
> 
> It just all seems so _uncritical_
> 
> Rant over


Yay 

b...b...b...but, what would become of one's pseudo-intellectual cache and general social status if one could not make all those supposedly credible but actually quite creaky anti-modernist arguments?


----------



## Marschallin Blair

> dgee: And anyone tut-tutting over the sensitivities of the so-called avant-gardists would do well to remember the the Mawkish Verdi thread. There were plenty of hot, angry tears over that one


I love the projection.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

> PetrB: b...b...b...but, what would become of one's pseudo-intellectual cache and general social status if one could not make all those supposedly credible but actually quite creaky anti-modernist arguments?


Ask a post-modernist. I'm sure you'll get an honest and intelligible answer.


----------



## Yardrax

dgee said:


> it's very politically correct at the moment for "modernism" to be seen as a big gross mistake and the arguments always seem very emotive and charged to me so something more concrete would be interesting. I think others would be interested too


If you're talking about contemporary antipathy towards modernism in academic circles, it's because since the 60's 'grand narratives' of progress have been going out of fashion in continental academia, and grand narratives about progress are, or are considered to be, a defining feature of modernism.

The other thing people don't seem to like about modernism is it's perceived adherence to aesthetic formalism. This contrasts towards the strong tendency in, say, film and literary criticism, to analyse works in terms of their social context through the lens of various ism's like feminism. Formalism is a lot more popular in analysis of music because of music's content being inherently nonrepresentational, hence why most music analysis courses will talk a lot more about Schenkerian analysis and set theory than they will about rape culture, but you can still see opposition in, for example, the effort to contextualise the Darmstadt school as a response to the aesthetic attitudes of the immediate post-WWII context, or scholarship which emphasises the 'lyrical' as opposed to 'structural' aspects of Webern's music.


----------



## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> Ask a post-modernist. I'm sure you'll get an honest and intelligible answer.


Thanks, but no.

I would not want to fuel a post-modernist's self-conceit that they are of any value or real use.


----------



## Blancrocher

dgee said:


> it's very politically correct at the moment for "modernism" to be seen as a big gross mistake


There's some modernist architecture I'd like to see torn down, but overall I think it was a good period for art, fwiw.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

So "value" and "usefulness" ended with the Modernists?


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

"Modernism" in the visual arts dates from Courbet and Manet c. 1860 through the Second World War. I have little doubt that the period saw the greatest paradigm shift in Western Art since the Renaissance. Along with the Renaissance it was also one of the most dynamic, diverse, and productive eras in the whole of the visual arts. Only the Renaissance rivals Modernism in the sheer wealth and variety of truly masterful artists.

Having said this, Modernism, like any other period, is not above criticism. This is especially true when directed at some of the more entrenched criticism and theory that rose during the period. To mention just one of the more extreme examples, Clement Greenberg famously rejected the paintings of the "realist", Edward Hopper...










... suggesting that he could not even see his paintings as "Art" but rather as some debased branch of literature.

In my opinion, one of the greatest contributions of Modernism was that it opened up the West to many possibilities long ignored... possibilities rooted in non-Western Art, non-objective imagery, the West's own pre-Renaissance traditions, the art of children, "outsiders", folk communities, and popular culture. One of the possibilities that some adherents of Modernism rejected or denied was the possibility of artists continuing to build upon the Western Post-Renaissance traditions and achieving art of real merit.


----------



## millionrainbows

I thought Americans hated all modern art, be it painting or music. If not outright hatred, then they wish it to fade into the background, as an embellishment of their fabulous lifestyle. That's why Warhol painted money.


----------



## Jobis

Which composers would be regarded as post-modernist?

Schnittke? Sciarrino? Through their ironic quoting of old pieces.


----------



## PetrB

StlukesguildOhio said:


> So "value" and "usefulness" ended with the Modernists?


Over-elaborate and deliberately precious and arcane jargon has always existed... "post-modernist" as a term is in itself so blandly _literal_ and non-committal that it is hardly 'sexy.' Anyway, I'm a simple guy (truly) when it comes to philosophy and music / lit / art crit, and the 'style' of language use which seems to grow up on and around them... like barnacles that slow down the ship.

...so write me off when it comes to much 'philosophy' about any kind of art, or the criticism and 'theories' which they seem to attract. Ditto when it makes too much of an inroad into the history of the subject as well.

You may have noticed I very rarely venture into any comments in those areas, because I have almost no regard for them. Some people revel in them and 'live there.' I am not one of them.


----------



## Blancrocher

millionrainbows said:


> I thought Americans hated all modern art, be it painting or music. If not outright hatred, then they wish it to fade into the background, as an embellishment of their fabulous lifestyle. That's why Warhol painted money.


Well, that and to *ahem* make money, perhaps.


----------



## Woodduck

PetrB said:


> Over-elaborate and deliberately precious and arcane jargon has always existed... "post-modernist" as a term is in itself so blandly _literal_ and non-committal that it is hardly 'sexy.' Anyway, I'm a simple guy (truly) when it comes to philosophy and music / lit / art crit, and the 'style' of language use which seems to grow up on and around them... like barnacles that slow down the ship.
> 
> ...so write me off when it comes to much 'philosophy' about any kind of art, or the criticism and 'theories' which they seem to attract. Ditto when it makes too much of an inroad into the history of the subject as well.
> 
> You may have noticed I very rarely venture into any comments in those areas, because I have almost no regard for them. Some people revel in them and 'live there.' I am not one of them.


I'm with you. I would only take partial exception to your first statement. Arcane jargon didn't really engulf the art world before modernism, and we don't need _The Painted Word_ to point that out. Just pick up and compare the style of writing in art journals in the early and later years of the 20th century. As a young painter in the '60s I would page through these journals and howl with laughter at the pretentious, convoluted, incomprehensible prose which pretended to reveal the deep meaning in the squiggles and blotches I was looking at. Of course, as Wolfe pointed out, the less there was to look at, the more, and more obscure, verbiage was needed to "explain" it. Unfortunately it wasn't long before artists themselves began believing the nonsense and expressing themselves in the same way, and so we ended up with the now common expectation that artists prove that they and their work are "serious" by telling us all what they mean by it - which, wishing to be taken seriously by the arbiters of taste and commerce, they all too often do. It would be far better if artists would just make art and keep quiet about what it "means" - or about what they think people want to be told that it "means." For all practical purposes a work of art means whatever it appears to mean, and if it appears meaningless, well...


----------



## PetrB

Jobis said:


> Which composers would be regarded as post-modernist?
> 
> Schnittke? Sciarrino? Through their ironic quoting of old pieces.


If the modern musical era is 1890-1975, then any music more in the mode(s) of noticeable change in style ca. 1975 and later are 'post modern.' These two era names are about as bland and literal as can be, and probably, once another noticeable shift has already happened, the "Modern" era and "Postmodern" era might just get renamed. Already, from my youth to now, Modern, i.e. the early 20th century composers were just that. Now they are referred to as "The Modernists," with an aesthetic agenda


----------



## PetrB

Woodduck said:


> I'm with you. I would only take partial exception to your first statement. Arcane jargon didn't really engulf the art world before modernism, and we don't need _The Painted Word_ to point that out. Just pick up and compare the style of writing in art journals in the early and later years of the 20th century. As a young painter in the '60s I would page through these journals and howl with laughter at the pretentious, convoluted, incomprehensible prose which pretended to reveal the deep meaning in the squiggles and blotches I was looking at. Of course, as Wolfe pointed out, the less there was to look at, the more, and more obscure, verbiage was needed to "explain" it. Unfortunately it wasn't long before artists themselves began believing the nonsense and expressing themselves in the same way, and so we ended up with the now common expectation that artists prove that they and their work are "serious" by telling us all what they mean by it - which, wishing to be taken seriously by the arbiters of taste and commerce, they all too often do. It would be far better if artists would just make art and keep quiet about what it "means" - or about what they think people want to be told that it "means." For all practical purposes a work of art means whatever it appears to mean, and if it appears meaningless, well...


The shift from "The artist's statement" as being an exercise in school for those in the non-verbal arts, that requirement to force the student to clarify their thoughts and intent about their work, sometime I think ca the 1970's, leaked out of schools and is now requisite in art galleries -- up on the wall adjacent to the paintings (ridiculous). It is also now in the concert programs explaining the meaning of the newer work as well as often going on far to much about 'the composer's process and inspirations.'

It is all part of what I consider a ghastly swerve into the death of creativity and imagination -- the global trend of "literalism."


----------



## PetrB

Blancrocher said:


> Well, that and to *ahem* make money, perhaps.


When I learned there was one cult in China that worshiped money, I thought at least those particular Chinese and Americans would get on like wildfire


----------



## Aramis

10 pages and you still didn't get it that it's because Simon Schama explained Rothko on BBC but he didn't explain Stockhausen


----------



## KenOC

PetrB said:


> When I learned there was one cult in China that worshiped money, I thought at least those particular Chinese and Americans would get on like wildfire


Never! They are apostates who worship the wrong denomination! (little joke there...) :tiphat:


----------



## Morimur

PetrB said:


> When I learned there was one cult in China that worshiped money, I thought at least those particular Chinese and Americans would get on like wildfire


That 'cult' is a world-wide religion more popular than Christianity.


----------



## Mahlerian

Lope de Aguirre said:


> That 'cult' is a world-wide religion more popular than Christianity.


The Beatles?

Filler, filler, filler...


----------



## Woodduck

PetrB said:


> The shift from "The artist's statement" as being an exercise in school for those in the non-verbal arts, that requirement to force the student to clarify their thoughts and intent about their work, sometime I think ca the 1970's, leaked out of schools and is now requisite in art galleries -- up on the wall adjacent to the paintings (ridiculous). It is also now in the concert programs explaining the meaning of the newer work as well as often going on far to much about 'the composer's process and inspirations.'


My God, are you ever right about about concert programs - and the esoteric gobbledegook in CD booklets accompanying new music, complete with diagrams, equations and koans? Don't get me started! I'm glad I took art courses before those dastardly 1970s. Our teacher never asked us to waste precious time "explaining" anything - except perhaps why we weren't busier actually producing art. Such an old-fashioned attitude: put up and shut up.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

I thought Americans hated all modern art, be it painting or music.

The Impressionists remain the most popular movement in the whole of art history. Post-Impressionists such as Gauguin, Van Gogh, Bonnard, Vuillard, etc... are almost equally beloved. Exhibitions of paintings by Matisse, Picasso, Miro, Dali, Klee, Kandinsky, Beckmann, etc... have been more than successful. Even recent exhibitions of work by "Late Modernists" such as Rothko, DeKooning, and Jasper Johns have drawn sizable audiences.

The real problem begins with certain _avant garde_ strains of Post-Modernism rooted in Duchamp and the anti-Art/anti-aesthetic works of Dada.


----------



## PetrB

Aramis said:


> 10 pages and you still didn't get it that it's because Simon Schama explained Rothko on BBC but he didn't explain Stockhausen


Am I culturally deprived because I haven't lived with a television in my home for the last ca. forty years? Do I make up points for having read, "An Embarrassment of Riches?"


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Over-elaborate and deliberately precious and arcane jargon has always existed...

True

"post-modernist" as a term is in itself so blandly literal and non-committal that it is hardly 'sexy.'

Where does that leave Post-Impressionism and Neo-Expressionism? Honestly, "Post-Modernism" is no more of a blanket term attempting to embrace an incredibly diverse and motley collection of artists and styles than was the term "Modernism".

Anyway, I'm a simple guy (truly) when it comes to philosophy and music / lit / art crit, and the 'style' of language use which seems to grow up on and around them... like barnacles that slow down the ship.

I'm not overly fond of the intentionally hermetic and arcane use of language that often seems geared to mask a lack of any real visual perception or discernment.

...so write me off when it comes to much 'philosophy' about any kind of art, or the criticism and 'theories' which they seem to attract.

As an artist it is somewhat expected that I be aware of these theories, although quite honestly I far prefer the thoughts of "artists" such as Baudelaire, Zola, Wilde, Gautier, Kandinsky, Max Beckmann, Paul Klee, Robert Motherwell, etc...


----------



## PetrB

Woodduck said:


> My God, are you ever right about about concert programs - and the esoteric gobbledegook in CD booklets accompanying new music, complete with diagrams, equations and koans? Don't get me started! I'm glad I took art courses before those dastardly 1970s. Our teacher never asked us to waste precious time "explaining" anything - except perhaps why we weren't busier actually producing art. Such an old-fashioned attitude: put up and shut up.


I went to conservatory to learn piano performance. I later went back to university music departments for more in-depth theory plus composition. I did not attend any of those to become a writer. Otherwise, I learned a hell of a lot; it was all useful to my desires and purposes, too


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

I'm with you. I would only take partial exception to your first statement. Arcane jargon didn't really engulf the art world before modernism, and we don't need The Painted Word to point that out. Just pick up and compare the style of writing in art journals in the early and later years of the 20th century.

I'm with you here. I have a number of much-prized older editions of _Art News_, _Art in America_, _Verve_, etc... in which one might find absolutely brilliant essays by E. H. Gombrich, Roger Fry, Clive Bell, André Malraux, Robert Motherwell, etc... whereas far too much later and contemporary criticism fell under the spell of German and French theorists and confused convoluted and hermetic writing with profundity of thought.

As a young painter in the '60s I would page through these journals and howl with laughter at the pretentious, convoluted, incomprehensible prose which pretended to reveal the deep meaning in the squiggles and blotches I was looking at. Of course, as Wolfe pointed out, the less there was to look at, the more, and more obscure, verbiage was needed to "explain" it.

There is some truth to this. It is always interesting to note the "poetic" and pretentious titles of many non-objective paintings ("The Liver is the Cock's Comb", "Lavender Mist", "Elegies to the Spanish Republic", "The Betrothal", "Stations of the Cross", "Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue?", "Vir-Heroicus-Sublimis I", "The Marriage of Reason and Squalor II", etc...) as opposed to the often mundane titles of a great majority of figurative paintings ("Nude", "Still Life", "Portrait of ______", etc... It is interesting to note that De Kooning was quoted as saying:

_"It is very interesting to notice that a lot of people who want to take the "narrative" out of painting do nothing else but talk about it."_

Personally, thinking of all the theories pushing forth the notion of the necessity of some profound (pretentious) meaning (concept) as the foundation of art, I also find myself in appreciation of another of De Kooning's quotes:

_"I think I'm painting a picture of two women, but it may turn out to be a landscape."_

Unfortunately it wasn't long before artists themselves began believing the nonsense and expressing themselves in the same way, and so we ended up with the now common expectation that artists prove that they and their work are "serious" by telling us all what they mean by it - which, wishing to be taken seriously by the arbiters of taste and commerce, they all too often do.

Much of this is the result of more contemporary approaches to art education at the university level which often stresses words, concepts, and theories over the mundane and difficult time spent alone in the studio.

It would be far better if artists would just make art and keep quiet about what it "means" - or about what they think people want to be told that it "means."

I wholly agree. Love Picasso's quote:

_"When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine."_


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

Mahlerian said:


> The Beatles?


America sounds a bit like Hindemith, modern and medieval.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Woodduck said:


> My God, are you ever right about about concert programs - and the esoteric gobbledegook in CD booklets accompanying new music, complete with diagrams, equations and koans? Don't get me started! I'm glad I took art courses before those dastardly 1970s. Our teacher never asked us to waste precious time "explaining" anything - except perhaps why we weren't busier actually producing art. Such an old-fashioned attitude: put up and shut up.


Certainly a hackneyed, trite, and banal bromide on my part-- an oldie but a goodie-- but it fits: Those who can do; those who can't teach.


----------



## KenOC

Marschallin Blair said:


> Certainly a hackneyed, trite, and banal bromide on my part-- an oldie but a goodie-- but it fits: Those who can do; those who can't teach.


And those who can't teach become critics.


----------



## Sid James

dgee said:


> Sid, where do you get this stuff from? I've been interested in all sorts of modernism for ages and I've never heard of this stuff - is it just polemics? or something else here? Did modernists believe in something and that made others sad? So please tell me where to find out more - it's very politically correct at the moment for "modernism" to be seen as a big gross mistake and the arguments always seem very emotive and charged to me so something more concrete would be interesting. I think others would be interested too
> 
> And anyone tut-tutting over the sensitivities of the so-called avant-gardists would do well to remember the the Mawkish Verdi thread. There were plenty of hot, angry tears over that one


I did mention Greenberg, Lukacs, Adorno. If you read them and those of that classic era of Modernist ideology, you will probably get enough. But if you go on and read more recent books - I mean of the last 30-40 years, you will get plenty of discussions of the flaws of Modernist ideology, from viewpoints of all the arts, and also more cross-cultural viewpoints. In that regard, you can also go into other areas like post-colonial studies, which essentially argues that Modernism as applied outside Western countries was just a new form or cultural imperialism. To give an example, the so-called International Style of architecture totally disregarded local context, and a classic example of this is Le Corbusier's Chandigrah project, which I have studied years back. It was basically fitting Western notions of what was apparently "universal" values but was nothing but.

As I said, I'm a child of Post-Modernism. In my discipline of study, I had lecturers who ranged from hard core Modernists to Post-Modernists to a few who said the whole thing was just serving one interest or the other. I did have misfortune to meet a small amount of extreme ideologues, but on the whole that was not the case. Even those who I disagreed with tended to at least listen, and accept alternative viewpoints. In terms of my life out there in the real world, I like to talk about many topics, and most people are fine with diversity of opinion on a range of matters. That's as long as the conversation remains friendly, open, accepting. That's not always easy to get in any context, especially where you are competing at study or work, but you know the saying that people don't remember what you said to them but how you said it?

In terms of popular culture, disillusionment with certain types or mainifestations of Modernism has been covered. If you've watched the early 1980's movie The Big Chill, that's a very good example. Some friends meet at a funeral of one of their college buddies, who was with them in the heady days of the 1960's when they all thought they could change the world. That movies' sophisticated dissection of a generation that went from saying **** the system to becoming part of the system, and the cynicism and opportunism that goes along with it has parallels of what went on in many areas, including music. Boulez is the best example, the once young radical firebrand segued towards a type of more plural Modernism at least (don't know if he'd like to be called Post-Modernist, but his ideological changes and more importantly changes in modus operandi occured around that time, late 1960's and 1970's).

But every generation of Modernism, even if we say it started over 200 years ago with the French Revolution, has had its challenges. It has had to change and adapt. The issue is about ideology. The catchwords of Modernism like progress and innovation, much of the time they where used to develop an us and them mentality. We are this, they are that.

I won't go on, but I did want to mention Edward Hopper who Greenberg was biased against. I remember reading something by Greenberg that said that figuration basically equals kitsch. So Hopper, who I think is easily amongst the most recognised painters of 20th century America, is equated with the likes of Norman Rockwell. Now we can see that kind of comparison is absurd in the first place, beyond apples and oranges. Apparently the Museum of Modern ARt in New York has very few Hoppers (and Wyeths) in comparison to a plethora of abstract and fragmented figurative art. Their curation policy is still influenced by ideas of those classic Modernists. Now if that's true, I think that shows that in some ways Po-Moism is still not exactly a reality in practice.

But all I'd say is just read widely, and you will be able to formulate critical thinking skills that cut beyond dogma. Its not hard, the problem is that in some respects, various trends - especially in the education systems implemented in Western countries in the 1960's and '70's, one bieng phasing out of explicit teaching of things like grammar - now that was extremely damaging. Its damage that lasts, we're still dealing with the fallout of Modernism in that way. And honestly that's more important to me than any esoteric discussions about art of music. That's the fabric of any society, educating its young. We don't take away, we have to impart knowledge. That's what gets me passionate about this, the other things are more rarified areas that are important but not essential as the basic building blocks of society.


----------



## Sid James

StlukesguildOhio said:


> ...
> Much of this is the result of more contemporary approaches to art education at the university level which often stresses words, concepts, and theories over the mundane and difficult time spent alone in the studio....


That's similar to what I said above about the watering down of teaching of grammar in schools during those heady post-war decades. But to get back to the topic on stricter terms, while I am dubious of the technical skills of the Abstract Expressionists and their many imitators in decades since, I am not so much of the likes of Stockhausen, or others like Boulez. At least in music schools they have kept teaching actual skills to generations since, which can't be said about some other areas of education. If anything, composers and musicians educated now are more skilled than they ever where.

I am not happy with this, whether it was deliberate white anting of the system or just reckless idealism. Its the educational equivalent of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I know there have been exerted attempts to address this, which is again not some rarified issue concerning just the universities but about basic things like literacy and numeracy. Where I am, we constantly come at the bottom of comparative international tables of such basic skills in education of our children. I think this is common now in Western countries (ironic how in Communist dictatorships like China and Cuba, literacy levels are very high). What did we do in the West? Why these basic mistakes? What can we do about it now? Now people are waking up about how these trendy ideologically driven approaches have failed, and endangered the young of today.

When I want to look at mistakes made by this ideology I don't have to look far beyond everyday life, in fact. Forget music or painting, look at what's going around you. Is it all good? Has it all worked? What about the mistakes?

But this is a wider topic.


----------



## dgee

Sid, you can also read a number of recent criticisms of post-modernism - and its general cosiness with vested interests and the status quo (along with the unpleasant aesthetic results - Memphis design, Philip Johnson anyone?) is the main criticism that I see resonating with people. But with your notes about revolutionaries etc I think you're also coming from a particular personal position

So we're probably just from a different generation on this one - I see a reassessment of modernism underway that is probably influenced by its connection with the post-war social democratic consensus, the confidence, striving and forward-looking hope of modernism at its best and dissatisfaction with neo-liberalism and global capitalism (ohh such marxism!). Also, there just seemed to be greater cultural literacy and daring during modernism's heydays. Pomo just seems middle-of-the-road and disengaged by comparison

And yes, there are many MANY failings of modernism - but there was also ambition, which seems to have dried up. The failings of modernism are rammed down everyone's throats these days, so it might even be possible to have learned from that history

Some specific points. The concern about Boulez becoming the establishment is confusing to me - y'know, he had a number of ideas which he fought for when young and others found it compelling enough to respect and revere him. He didn't exactly shut up shop after he became the so-called establishment either - he just got older and wiser. What should he have done? Found something else to complain about? It comes out time and again about young firebrands, but the prevalence of this argument against modernists I think shows a discomfort with how artists can challenge established power and then actually have power themselves. Much more comfortable to think a malcontent like the young Boulez can only sit outside the system

WRT Chandigarh I think you've underplayed the role of commissioning. If only they'd waited 10 years they could have had the choice of some fine 80s pomo beauties with lovely "vernacular" Indian touches ;-)

Also, I don't know about drawing a link between education and modernism - seems like a long bow to me and as I was educated after the period you're talking about I don't have a ready reference point. All I can offer is that my child's education is proceeding a darn site better and smarter than mine did

Also, if you want your fill of jargon pomo has it. Try the extraordinary Peter Eisenmann (hilarious!), remember the Sokal affair!

So, we're probably just coming from different positions on this one


----------



## KenOC

I admit to having no idea what post-modernism is, or modernism for that matter. Just words, I think, of use to people who like to file things.


----------



## science

Postmodernism had some ridiculous extremes, but IMO it also had some very good criticisms of modernism. 

For example, a person's worldview is generally related to some ideology that is in that person's interest. That's a good point. And it applies to a lot of modernist ideologies: social Darwinism, for example, was clearly constructed to serve the interest of the Western elite against the lower orders in their own societies and against other societies. And in part because of that interest, many scientists and social scientists who might've been able to come up with some criticisms of social Darwinism failed to do so. 

That's just an example, but there are many more, and some of them are increasingly important as we live in a time when the relationships between freedom and power change so quickly. 

To get back to music, I'd argue that all music unapologetically intended for a mass audience is implicitly postmodern. This doesn't include much "classical" music, which in general tries to be the music of a self-appointed cultural elite, and that is a modernist (in a broad sense) ideological project. Artists such as Rothko play the same game, just in a different medium - and therefore it'd be fair to say that the reason that "people" get Rothko but not Stockhausen is that Stockhausen has been more successful.


----------



## Sid James

@dgee, I can understand your arguments, ultimately I see Modernism in a less positive light. I did a long reply to you which I asked to be deleted. I think I have said enough on this thread, a lot of it outside the stricter confines of the topic. I think my first two posts on this thread where the strongest - esp. the comparison of paintings by Caspar David Friedrich and Rothko - after that I got too discursive and rambled on. So I'll put it to bed now, I have put my position (and then some). However thanks for your post.


----------



## PetrB

Richannes Wrahms said:


> America sounds a bit like Hindemith, modern and medieval.


I thought that comment was more frequently directed at England.


----------



## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> Certainly a hackneyed, trite, and banal bromide on my part-- an oldie but a goodie-- but it fits: Those who can do; those who can't teach.


More like those who can, do; those who can't theorize in a haze of masking obfuscation.


----------



## millionrainbows

KenOC said:


> I admit to having no idea what post-modernism is, or modernism for that matter. Just words, I think, of use to people who like to file things.


Post-modernism is when history exploded.


----------



## science

I've never gone for the "those who can, do; those who can't, teach" anti-intellectual thing, even in my right-wing days. There are different skills, and, rhetoric aside, that is all.

Edit: To make this clear: while David Hurwitz obviously couldn't do Dobrinka Tabakova's job very well, she probably couldn't do his very well either.


----------

