# Why is Modern Art so Bad?



## Truckload

Just ran across this on YouTube. Everything he talks about can be applied to music.


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## MarkW

Well, it_ isn't_. .


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## Nereffid

Ah, Jesus. You can't generalise the whole damn thing to "bad", and even if you could, "bad" would be the wrong word, because of course by "bad" people mean "I don't like it".

Get over it.

(ETA: the graph at 1:54 is f***ing _hilarious_.)


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## Cosmos

Came across this video before. Basically an old guy yelling at the clouds, "Back in the GOOD old days..."

So yeah don't waste your time


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## Art Rock

"I don't like it. Therefore it must have no value."

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn.


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## TresPicos

Truckload said:


> Just ran across this on YouTube. Everything he talks about can be applied to music.


I don't know... I don't even think it can be applied to art.

I kind of hoped, for his sake, that this was just a joke, but it doesn't look that way. I can understand his frustration if his own works involve a lot of skill but all the attention goes to someone who just place an everyday item somewhere. But the art world has known for a century now, that art doesn't have to involve skill, or rather that the skill involved can be imagination.

As a work of art, though, this video is excellent!


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## norman bates

Cosmos said:


> Came across this video before. Basically an old guy yelling at the clouds, "Back in the GOOD old days..."
> 
> So yeah don't waste your time


it's easy to dismiss it like this but:


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## Morimur

Most modern art is bad because our culture is heading downward; our world has become so hedonistic and degenerate that most artists have nothing significant to say—they live for money and consumption; they live for themselves.


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## Blancrocher

I'm not sure I like his suggestion that artists keep getting better and better over time until the 20th century. The best of Hieronymus Bosch is a pretty high bar--even in the 19th century!


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## TurnaboutVox

Interesting. "Prager University" is in fact a website calling itself an "On-line College for Conservatives" set up by one Dennis Prager, a conservative author, columnist and talk-show host. (Apologies, he may be a familiar figure in the USA, but I haven't come across him before). 

I'm not sure why it would seek to represent itself as a university. It seems to exist to disseminate short video talks from noted conservatives on a variety of subjects.


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## isorhythm

Oh wow that guy! What a clown.

To his credit, though, the "university" doesn't appear to be hawking fake degrees at exorbitant cost, as such "universities" often do.


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## Blancrocher

Having been warned of this guy's dubious credentials, I intend to return to my usual reliance on anonymous forum participants.


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## Richannes Wrahms

Dadaism is long dead, it seems some people haven't realised.

Multidisciplinary new wave artist artists (Jack of all trades) are a load of mediocre products of a mediocre educational system. I don't think they even pretend to be high culture or have the aspiration to be part of (you know, that elitist patriarchal oppressive whatever...)

That such blandness makes it to the media does not mean there are no modern artists of the highest standards, which was after all a huge deal for the Second Viennese School and the Darmstat collective.


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## D Smith

What a load of rubbish. And 5 minutes of my life wasted watching it.


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## Truckload

TurnaboutVox said:


> Interesting. "Prager University" is in fact a website calling itself an "On-line College for Conservatives" set up by one Dennis Prager, a conservative author, columnist and talk-show host. (Apologies, he may be a familiar figure in the USA, but I haven't come across him before).
> 
> I'm not sure why it wold seek to represent itself as a university. It seems to exist to disseminate short video talks from noted conservatives on a variety of subjects.


I think you are correct on all counts, at least that is also what I assume. If it is the same Dennis Praeger who is a tralk radio pundit he takes a more intellectual approach than someone like Rush Limbaugh. He also, as a conservative jew, often discusses interesting religious topics. But I just thought the art thing was illuminating. I hope we don't start talking politics on this thread.


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## Cosmos

norman bates said:


> it's easy to dismiss it like this but:
> View attachment 80237
> 
> View attachment 80238


My opinion: That Michael Jackson statue is tacky. But the Hirst Shark is beautiful!


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## Dedalus

I've seen at least a dozen Praeger institute videos and they're all as vapid as this one. I watch a podcast that regularly lambasts these videos from time to time, whether they're about climate change denial, about the dangers of socialistic healthcare (Obamacare) and whatever else. Praeger is literally just a conservative talking point shill. Just look at their youtube channel, and you can pretty much see from the titles what kind of source this is. In short, for all his apparent education I think Mr. Praeger is kind of an idiot, but that's just my opinion.


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## DiesIraeCX

Dedalus said:


> I've seen at least a dozen Praeger institute videos and they're all as vapid as this one. I watch a podcast that regularly bombasts these videos from time to time, whether they're about climate change denial, about the dangers of socialistic healthcare (Obamacare) and whatever else. Just look at their youtube channel, and you can pretty much see from the titles what kind of source this is. In short, for all his apparent eductation I think Mr. Praeger is kind of an idiot, but that's just my opinion.


May I ask which podcast you're referring to? I also watch a podcast (streamed on YouTube) that attacks those Praeger institute videos from time to time, and I'm wondering if it's the same podcast/channel. You can private message me if you'd like.


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## starthrower

There's probably more bad poetry than art. A lot of it isn't even good prose.


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## Dedalus

DiesIraeCX said:


> May I ask which podcast you're referring to? I also watch a podcast (streamed on YouTube) that attacks those Praeger institute videos from time to time, and I'm wondering if it's the same podcast/channel.


It would be the Drunken Peasants podcast. It's not a very mature podcast, but i'm a 26 year old guy who has a taste for the immature. Immature as it may seem, they do confront real issues and are smart folks, but they try to keep it humorous for the most part. basically they mix in issues like evolution, atheism, politics, history, crackpot conspiracy theories, and tackle these issues in a humorous way. It may not be everybody's cup of tea, but I find it pretty entertaining. It's not a serious podcast by any means, but I think it's done quite well. Good production, good content, good jokes. They do a good job.


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## DiesIraeCX

Dedalus said:


> It would be the Drunken Peasants podcast. It's not a very mature podcast, but i'm a 26 year old guy who has a taste for the immature. Immature as it may seem, they do confront real issues and are smart folks, but they try to keep it humorous for the most part. basically they mix in issues like evolution, atheism, politics, history, crackpot conspiracy theories, and tackle these issues in a humorous way. It may not be everybody's cup of tea, but I find it pretty entertaining. It's not a serious podcast by any means, but I think it's done quite well. Good production, good content, good jokes. They do a good job.


Haha, awesome, that's them! Yeah, not very "mature", obviously, but like you said, there's a time and a place for it. They do mix real issues with humor and a lack seriousness that is pretty entertaining. I usually try to keep up with their shows, and for the record, I don't agree with exactly everything they say, but that's part of the fun! Who would have known, another DrunkenPeasants fan on TC. TJisGarbage :lol:


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## Truckload

I find the most fascinating part of the video was the bit about the students being asked to give reasons why the "Jackson Pollock" painting was so good, then it turns out to be the teachers apron. That was so awesome. I can see the same thing easily adaptable to "modernist" music.


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## TurnaboutVox

Truckload said:


> I hope we don't start talking politics on this thread.


No, that wasn't my intention either. I just wanted to get some context on the presenter of the video you posted, and since he identified himself with "Prager University" I looked that up in Wikipedia.


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## Fugue Meister

I don't know about music but I would absolutely agree that standards have fallen in other art forms (especially studio films). I can't comment much on the status of the painting and sculpture world but I doubt 100+ years ago, no one would pay astronomical for some of the detritus peddled by art museums today as paintings or sculptures. 

Music is a different kettle of fish and the greatest of art forms. After baroque and Classical eras, I have a tendency to skip the Romantic era in favor of 20th century and more contemporary absolute music so... Yeah I think the video makes a decent point but I disagree if you tie that point to music.


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## starthrower

Truckload said:


> I find the most fascinating part of the video was the bit about the students being asked to give reasons why the "Jackson Pollock" painting was so good, then it turns out to be the teachers apron. That was so awesome. I can see the same thing easily adaptable to "modernist" music.


I doubt that would fool any but the most ignorant, tone deaf listeners. Tossing a bunch of notes on a page and then playing it back is not going to sound very good to anybody.


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## isorhythm

Truckload said:


> That was so awesome. I can see the same thing easily adaptable to "modernist" music.


Which composers and works are you thinking of, specifically?


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## norman bates

Cosmos said:


> My opinion: That Michael Jackson statue is tacky. But the Hirst Shark is beautiful!


note to self: never ever accept a musical suggestion by Cosmos.
Seriously, I think that when I take a dump a produce art with more value than his entire production.


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## starthrower

isorhythm said:


> Which composers and works are you thinking of, specifically?


Don't get him started. There are enough modern music sucks threads in the coffers here.


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## Strange Magic

The novelist/essayist Tom Wolf (_Bonfire of the Vanities_) is associated with a group that titles itself the Derrière Garde. They are, to say the least, skeptical about much modern art. Read more here:https://reason.com/archives/1997/07/01/adieu-to-the-avant-garde


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## isorhythm

starthrower said:


> Don't get him started. There are enough modern music sucks threads in the coffers here.


Well, Ligeti (of whom I assume you're a fan!) actually said more or less the same thing about total serialist music at one point.

Specifically, he pointed out that 50s total serialist pieces and John Cage's purely random pieces sound pretty much the same. And he definitely thought that was a problem.

So I don't think it's a crazy criticism to make, depending on what music is being discussed.


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## Truckload

isorhythm said:


> Well, Ligeti (of whom I assume you're a fan!) actually said more or less the same thing about total serialist music at one point.
> 
> Specifically, he pointed out that 50s total serialist pieces and John Cage's purely random pieces sound pretty much the same. And he definitely thought that was a problem.
> 
> So I don't think it's a crazy criticism to make, depending on what music is being discussed.


Yes, I was specifically thinking about the self styled "random" music and its relations.


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## Cosmos

norman bates said:


> note to self: never ever accept a musical suggestion by Cosmos.
> Seriously, I think that when I take a dump a produce art with more value than his entire production.


Imagine how boring the world would be if we all had the same opinions


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## MarkW

Now that I've actually seen the video, I can't even begin to address all the fallacies he states as "fact." Yes, he has an opinion, and an agenda (and the titles of the other videos in the series pretty much denote where they're coming from), but I'd like to see if he modifies what he presents -- or how he presents it -- after he's taken a "real" art appreciation course at a real university. It's also possible to scoff at quantum mechanics if you haven't taken a real physics course -- but your computer still runs. The idea that I have to be vociferously against anything that violates the way I want the world to be, both gets very old and typifies today's discourse.


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## GreenMamba

Nereffid said:


> (ETA: the graph at 1:54 is f***ing _hilarious_.)


Gotta love how jaggedy it is on the way down, because if it were smooth we'd think he just made up the inputs (which, of course, he did).


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## norman bates

Cosmos said:


> Imagine how boring the world would be if we all had the same opinions


yes, and I'm for a certain relativism, but Hirst is the equivalent of Justin Bieber.


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## mmsbls

Nereffid said:


> (ETA: the graph at 1:54 is f***ing _hilarious_.)


I found the graph spectacular as well. If I had made it, I would have added error bars and made them get smaller with time. Just for fun after the graph feel to zero, I would have included one non-zero point where the error bars didn't reach zero.


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## Truckload

The video is by Robert Florczak, not Prager. Here is a brief quote from Wiki about Florczak -

"Growing up in Bound Brook, New Jersey and a student at Bound Brook High School.[1] After graduation Florczak attended the Cooper Union in New York City, studied painting under Will Barnet, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, was Artist-In-Residence at Widener University, and taught painting at The Art Institute of Philadelphia. As a professional artist, Florczak has enjoyed an active career that spans more than three decades, with extensive work in the fine art, advertising, entertainment, and publishing fields."

Also, his own website says he: "taught painting at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, the Laguna College Of Art and Design, and the San Francisco Academy of Art University"


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## Chordalrock

20th century is when drawing and painting started getting interesting, largely because they had to compete with photography. Intelligent people were no longer interested in art that simply looked real. (Van Gogh was already pushing boundaries in the 19th century, but not that much, and I personally find him boring.)

On the other hand, I doubt you'll find most of the best stuff in museums. How stuff becomes recognised in the art world can be wacko. But hard to find doesn't equal "doesn't exist". There's an incredible amount of talent and imagination in the contemporary art world. People just don't know about 99.99% of it, and it's the shocking or outrageous stuff that usually gets press.


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## GreenMamba

Truckload said:


> I find the most fascinating part of the video was the bit about the students being asked to give reasons why the "Jackson Pollock" painting was so good, then it turns out to be the teachers apron. That was so awesome. I can see the same thing easily adaptable to "modernist" music.


You should visit the Identifying Classical Music section of this forum. Same thing more or less happens with everyone.

Q: Can someone please identify the music playing in the background of this? Is it Mozart? My friend said he thinks it's Mozart.
A: Actually, it's not even Classical. It's stock music used for the video.

Some people can't even tell great composers from stock music. This says little about the music, or even about the questioner, other than they don't have much experience with CM.


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## norman bates

Chordalrock said:


> 20th century is when drawing and painting started getting interesting, largely because they had to compete with photography. Intelligent people were no longer interested in art that simply looked real. (Van Gogh was already pushing boundaries in the 19th century, but not that much, and I personally find him boring.)
> 
> On the other hand, I doubt you'll find most of the best stuff in museums. How stuff becomes recognised in the art world can be wacko. But hard to find doesn't equal "doesn't exist". There's an incredible amount of talent and imagination in the contemporary art world. People just don't know about 99.99% of it, and it's the shocking or outrageous stuff that usually gets press.


I agree with the second part, much less with the first, there's a lot of interesting art in the 20th century but there was a lot of amazing artists before too.


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## isorhythm

The video is even funnier than I thought it would be. (The graph!!)

The comparison of art to figure skating, a sport evaluated on a numerical scale by a panel of judges, pretty much gives the game away.


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## Nereffid

Truckload said:


> Yes, I was specifically thinking about the self styled "random" music and its relations.


I pretty much agree with you there, but how representative is such music of modern music generally?

The vast range of music being composed these days means I'm very suspicious when someone wishes to tar it all with the same brush.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

I actually liked the examples of the virgin mary and the squatting police-woman. They struck me off-guard and made me think.


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## Harold in Columbia

I watched just enough to confirm that this sad sack is making the usual effort to have his cake and eat it too - and yup, he dates the fall from grace to the Impressionist painters, not to the place it obviously happened if it happened anywhere, that being the advent of Romanticism.

I suspect that this is actually the cause of all really vehement attacks on modern art. People don't want to admit that all their favorite Romantic composers really are part of the way along a process that leads from Haydn and Mozart to Schönberg.

One interesting thing about the video - he thinks Albert Bierstadt is an old master! (That's the one statement of his that I'm entirely sure has no hidden agenda behind it at all.)


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## Truckload

Nereffid said:


> I pretty much agree with you there, but how representative is such music of modern music generally?
> 
> The vast range of music being composed these days means I'm very suspicious when someone wishes to tar it all with the same brush.


Good question, how representative is it? In the 70's the university composers were churning out a ton of serial music, random music, avant-guarde experimental stuff (lets play the piano strings instead of the keys and use a kitchen wisk to do so) but then we also had minimalism int eh 80's and the "new" minimalism in the 90's, and I have lost track since then.

There is probably some composer out there writing music with CPE harmony, clear form, and memorable themes. But I don't know who that might be. That is not a request for recommendations. With this crowd, someone will try to get me to listen to Boulez and say he is exactly like Bach.


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## isorhythm

Truckload said:


> Good question, how representative is it? In the 70's the university composers were churning out a ton of serial music, random music, avant-guarde experimental stuff (lets play the piano strings instead of the keys and use a kitchen wisk to do so) but then we also had minimalism int eh 80's and the "new" minimalism in the 90's, and I have lost track since then.
> 
> There is probably some composer out there writing music with CPE harmony, clear form, and memorable themes. But I don't know who that might be. That is not a request for recommendations. With this crowd, someone will try to get me to listen to Boulez and say he is exactly like Bach.


No gifted composer is going to be writing CPE harmony in 2016. (Unless it's postmodern irony, but I don't have much patience for that either.)


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## Blancrocher

Fwiw, I don't think university-level art students should be mistaking this guy's apron for a Jackson Pollock canvas, let alone being told by an authority figure that there's nothing worthwhile about Pollock before they've seen much/any of his work. A google image search reveals pretty conspicuous differences in terms of style.


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## SONNET CLV

Truckload said:


> Just ran across this on YouTube. Everything he talks about can be applied to music.


*Why is some YouTube dribble ("above link") so bad?*


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## Truckload

Harold in Columbia said:


> I watched just enough to confirm that this sad sack is making the usual effort to have his cake and eat it too - and yup, he dates the fall from grace to the Impressionist painters, not to the place it obviously happened if it happened anywhere, that being the advent of Romanticism.
> 
> I suspect that this is actually the cause of all really vehement attacks on modern art. People don't want to admit that all their favorite Romantic composers really are part of the way along a process that leads from Haydn and Mozart to Schönberg.
> 
> One interesting thing about the video - he thinks Albert Bierstadt is an old master! (That's the one statement of his that I'm entirely sure has no hidden agenda behind it at all.)


Did you look at some of the paintings by this "sad sack" on his website?

http://www.robertflorczak.com/

Also, I do not agree that romantic music can be blamed for serialism. Lots of people make that claim, but I see no evidence to support it.


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## Chordalrock

isorhythm said:


> No gifted composer is going to be writing CPE harmony in 2016. (Unless it's postmodern irony, but I don't have much patience for that either.)


The first movement of Krenek's fifth string quartet reminds me of late Beethoven at times. It's more chromatic I suppose, but the truth is it doesn't matter how closely a piece resembles another if you can listen to it on its own terms. Conversely, you need only to be strongly reminded of another composer to get a disgust reaction if you're prone to such reactions (try the Krenek and tell me what you think).

I think it's just people's hyper-sensitivity to established norms that make them think contemporary music written in old idioms isn't worthy or acceptable.

That said, someone thinking that late Bartok is too avant-garde is just sad. At that point it's safe to say it's not the music that has problems, it's the listener (and if you can listen to late Bartok with pleasure, you can listen to pretty much anything outside total serialism with pleasure if you give it some time I believe).


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## Stavrogin

Truckload said:


> Did you look at some of the paintings by this "sad sack" on his website?
> 
> http://www.robertflorczak.com/
> 
> Also, I do not agree that romantic music can be blamed for serialism. Lots of people make that claim, but I see no evidence to support it.


Damn, his art is possibly worse than his video.


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## Art Rock

I did. They are hilarious. Especially this one (can't link):

http://www.robertflorczak.com/sites/default/files/styles/slide_image/public/NIGHT OWLS.jpg

We are in Kincade quality territory here.


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## MarkW

Some music for prepared piano is breathtakingly beautiful. I'll make a generalization and say that most aleatory music is only as good as the individual performance (which may be the point). Serial music (in the words of a pharmaceutical ad) "may not be for everyone." But that doesn't mean it isn't for anyone. Not everything that seems popular now will last. Remember, Meyerbeer was considered a great composer in his day.


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## isorhythm

Chordalrock said:


> I think it's just people's hyper-sensitivity to established norms that make them think music written in old idioms isn't worthy or acceptable.


I would never say this - I like plenty of music written in older idioms.

I like the Krenek pieces I've heard. I'll listen to that quartet.


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## Chordalrock

isorhythm said:


> I would never say this - I like plenty of music written in older idioms.
> 
> I like the Krenek pieces I've heard. I'll listen to that quartet.


Sorry, I meant "_contemporary_ music written in old idioms..." I've edited my previous message accordingly.


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## isorhythm

Chordalrock said:


> Sorry, I meant "_contemporary_ music written in old idioms..." I've edited my previous message accordingly.


I understood, I meant that too - I like lots of 20th century/contemporary tonal music. But none of it is literally in a pure 19th century style.


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## Truckload

isorhythm said:


> No gifted composer is going to be writing CPE harmony in 2016. (Unless it's postmodern irony, but I don't have much patience for that either.)


You have just proven every point I have been trying to make in the last several days. If your attitude is pervasive, and I believe it is, then consider the ramifications.


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## Chordalrock

isorhythm said:


> I understood, I meant that too - I like lots of 20th century/contemporary tonal music. But none of it is literally in a pure 19th century style.


Well, I did mean literally old idioms, like Common Practice Period or Renaissance practices. I believe it's acceptable even to imitate a specific composer's style, regardless of era. I think the antipathy toward this sort of thing is ultimately irrational and can be transcended.


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## isorhythm

Truckload said:


> You have just proven every point I have been trying to make in the last several days. If your attitude is pervasive, and I believe it is, then consider the ramifications.


Well, classical music is roughly a thousand years old. In all that time, good composers have never just copied past styles. Been inspired by them and built on them, yes, and that's good. But good artists are always going to be driven to create something new.

As I said - I have nothing against modern composers using tonality and traditional forms, as long as they're also doing something new and interesting. Otherwise you're asking the thousand-year tradition to come to an end.


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## Bulldog

I like modern art very much, something I can't say about modern music. I suppose it's because I don't have to listen to modern art.


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## TurnaboutVox

Truckload said:


> Did you look at some of the paintings by this "sad sack" on his website?


Yes. What would you say if I said I thought them clichéd, and rather uninteresting?



truckload said:


> Also, I do not agree that romantic music can be blamed for serialism. Lots of people make that claim, but I see no evidence to support it.


I'm not sure what you mean, when you say you don't agree that romantic music can be "blamed". Music is inanimate. Do you mean, "romantic" composers? It's surely incontrovertible that Schoenberg, Webern and others started out composing in the late romantic Austro-German style and tradition and developed serial composition techniques. As I understand it, only the treatment of pitch was subject to serialist techniques, whilst other elements remained familiar to earlier "romantic" music, as will be apparent when listening to the later works of these composers.


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## Guest

Yes, a lot of modern art is rubbish. So, there are a few good points in the video. But most people are able to make the difference. Go visit a modern arts museum and you'll discover a whole new world beyond the "rock" statue.


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## Truckload

isorhythm said:


> Well, classical music is roughly a thousand years old. In all that time, good composers have never just copied past styles. Been inspired by them and built on them, yes, and that's good. But good artists are always going to be driven to create something new.
> 
> As I said - I have nothing against modern composers using tonality and traditional forms, as long as they're also doing something new and interesting. Otherwise you're asking the thousand-year tradition to come to an end.


Bach is widely believed to be a fairly OK composer. He invented no new harmonies, no new forms, and during his life was sometimes derided for his shocking lack of newness.

Mozart is sometimes believed by a few people to be a somewhat accomplished composer. No new forms, no new harmonies. His biggest innovation was probably trying to popularize serious opera sung in German.

Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Schumann . . .

An artist doesn't have to be doing something new to be doing something interesting and valid.

I think I will now go and write some music using CPE harmony, and try for a very catchy theme.


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## Blancrocher

Truckload said:


> Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Schumann . . .


Schumann isn't the best example, imo, since an argument could be made for his being a radical. Very few of his most popular piano pieces adhere to conventional forms in any meaningful way, a fact that caused him to do a lot of anxious revising for years after they were composed--and he had a penchant for written polemic. I'd almost say that he was the Pierre Boulez of his day!


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## brotagonist

I pretty much agree with all that he has said :tiphat: I also happen to like a fair bit of modern art. It is a dilemma, as where do I draw the line between public arts budgets being squandered on trashy statements and shock values and truly ingenious and original ideas?

I tend to lean a bit to the side of the gentleman in the video, while not wishing to discredit the other end of the spectrum of what is known as art. Perhaps we need to finally formulate a standard that differentiates between truly great art of lasting merit and that which intends to make a statement. I'm not sure what statement a squatting and urinating female police officer makes and I never bought in to John Cage, either, although I do understand what he was saying in 4'33", but is it music or is it just a statement? I would hang a Jackson Pollock on my wall (I love the pretty colours! :lol, but do I honestly think it's great art that surpasses Monet or da Vinci?


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## Chronochromie

Truckload said:


> Bach is widely believed to be a fairly OK composer. He invented no new harmonies, no new forms, and during his life was sometimes derided for his shocking lack of newness.
> 
> Mozart is sometimes believed by a few people to be a somewhat accomplished composer. No new forms, no new harmonies. His biggest innovation was probably trying to popularize serious opera sung in German.
> 
> Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Schumann . . .


With the possible exception of Bach, they weren't considered conservative during their lives (except maybe by the diehard Wagnerians), and none of them wrote exactly like people had written more than 100 years before them.


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## Truckload

TurnaboutVox said:


> Yes. What would you say if I said I thought them clichéd, and rather uninteresting? I'm not sure what you mean, when you say you don't agree that romantic music can be "blamed". Music is inanimate. Do you mean, "romantic" compposers? It's surely incontrovertible that Schoenberg, Webern and others started out composing in the late romantic Austro-German style and tradition and developed serial composition techniques. As I understand it, only the treatment of pitch was subject to serialist techniques, whilst other elements remained familiar to earlier "romantic" music, as will be apparent when listening to the later works of these composers.


Regarding the art, I say - - OK.

Regarding the blame for serialism, I do not agree that it is incontrovertible. Schoenberg and Webern writing in multiple styles does not prove that romanticism caused serialism, or led to seriallism. Please feel free to correct adjective, adverbs, verbs and nouns in any way which pleases you.

As so many on this forum love to point out, simply stating an opinion does not make it a fact. Lots of people repeating the same opinion, still does not make it a fact.


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## Mahlerian

Truckload said:


> Regarding the blame for serialism, I do not agree that it is incontrovertible. Schoenberg and Webern writing in multiple styles does not prove that romanticism caused serialism, or led to seriallism. Please feel free to correct adjective, adverbs, verbs and nouns in any way which pleases you.


Serialism, which you have disingenuously linked to random music, did come out of late romanticism.

If late romanticism had not pushed boundaries of chromaticism, then Schoenberg would not have needed a method for controlling chromatic harmony.


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## Headphone Hermit

I like art. I like lots and lots of different types of art from lots and lots of different eras and styles.

A visit to the Guggenheim in Bilbao in December was one of the cultural highlights of recent times for me - it was full of interesting and enjoyable works of art (there were some pieces that I didn't much care for, too) and I thoroughly enjoyed my visit. Yet, in the group I was with, the more typical reaction was one of confusion and distaste - but so what? They missed out on the enjoyment and I didn't.

I like (some .... quite a lot of) modern art


----------



## isorhythm

Truckload said:


> Bach is widely believed to be a fairly OK composer. He invented no new harmonies, no new forms, and during his life was sometimes derided for his shocking lack of newness.
> 
> Mozart is sometimes believed by a few people to be a somewhat accomplished composer. No new forms, no new harmonies. His biggest innovation was probably trying to popularize serious opera sung in German.
> 
> Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Schumann . . .
> 
> An artist doesn't have to be doing something new to be doing something interesting and valid.
> 
> I think I will now go and write some music using CPE harmony, and try for a very catchy theme.


None of those artists were writing in old styles. They were writing in the contemporary styles of their own time, and indeed helping to create those styles.

The inclusion of Schumann in your list is particularly bizarre, by the way. He was a radical by any possible criteria.


----------



## Truckload

Chronochromie said:


> With the possible exception of Bach, they weren't considered conservative during their lives (except maybe by the diehard Wagnerians), and none of them wrote exactly like people had written more than 100 years before them.


So is popular opinion our basis of deciding what is new and different? The point remains that most composers, including most of the very best, were not innovators.

And both Brahms and Dvorak, whom I have recently been reading about, were considered conservatives during their lives. I'm sure you know about Brahms. Dvorak had written some things similar to Wagner, then rejected that direction. Tchaikovsky was criticized for being critical of the new Russian nationalists and instead writing music in the tradition of the German masters.

So serialism is now more than 100 years old. Can we now safely say that no young composer who has any talent should be writing music using serialism? Is 100 years the cutoff point?


----------



## TurnaboutVox

^^^^ Truckload, what I wrote was:


> It's surely incontrovertible that Schoenberg, Webern and others started out composing in the late romantic Austro-German style and tradition and developed serial composition techniques.


I didn't say that romanticism caused serialism. I made the less radical claim that some composers who started out composing in the late romantic style developed what is now called 'serialism'. I don't think that is controvertible. I am convinced of the argument that late romanticism led to serialism via the medium of the work of Schoenberg and others, though.


----------



## Mahlerian

Truckload said:


> So serialism is now more than 100 years old. Can we now safely say that no young composer who has any talent should be writing music using serialism? Is 100 years the cutoff point?


Serialism is just a technique. You're not going to be able to tell, without examination of the score, whether a composer uses serialism or not.


----------



## isorhythm

Truckload said:


> So serialism is now more than 100 years old. Can we now safely say that no young composer who has any talent should be writing music using serialism? Is 100 years the cutoff point?


Schoenberg debuted his 12-tone method in 1923, so a little less than 100 years.

But yes - I'd say any young composer now writing in the style of Schoenberg would not be considered relevant.

Edit: I should expand on this. I'm not suggesting there is a grand tribunal somewhere decreeing what is and is not important music. I'm only observing the reality that the most gifted composers have never been drawn to copy old styles - that in fact an impulse toward originality cannot be separated from musical genius.


----------



## Truckload

isorhythm said:


> None of those artists were writing in old styles. They were writing in the contemporary styles of their own time, and indeed helping to create those styles.
> 
> The inclusion of Schumann in your list is particularly bizarre, by the way. He was a radical by any possible criteria.


OK, leave Schumann out if you wish. It is not worth arguing about any one composer as there are so many from which to pick. The point is that very few good composers were innovators, trying to write something new. And at this point, atonal music is 100 years old, so anyone writing atonal music is writing in an old style.


----------



## isorhythm

Truckload said:


> OK, leave Schumann out if you wish. It is not worth arguing about any one composer as there are so many from which to pick. The point is that very few good composers were innovators, trying to write something new. And at this point, atonal music is 100 years old, so anyone writing atonal music is writing in an old style.


What composers before Bach sounded just like Bach?

(Same question for everyone on your list.)


----------



## Mahlerian

isorhythm said:


> What composers before Bach sounded just like Bach?
> 
> (Same question for everyone on your list.)


I would add, which widely admired composers today sound just like Schoenberg?


----------



## KenOC

Truckload said:


> So serialism is now more than 100 years old. Can we now safely say that no young composer who has any talent should be writing music using serialism? Is 100 years the cutoff point?


Just for perspective: When young Beethoven was writing his first piano sonatas and piano quartets, old Bach had been dead only 35 years, and Handel 26 years. Haydn was born a year before Bach composed the Kyrie and Gloria that eventually ended up in his Mass in B minor.


----------



## isorhythm

Mahlerian said:


> I would add, which widely admired composers today sound just like Schoenberg?


I've heard it said that some Wuorinen pieces sound like Schoenberg. But he's considered really conservative!


----------



## isorhythm

KenOC said:


> Just for perspective: When young Beethoven was writing his first piano sonatas and piano quartets, old Bach had been dead only 35 years, and Handel 26 years.


I'm not sure which side you think this supports, Ken, but I think it supports mine.


----------



## Mahlerian

isorhythm said:


> I've heard it said that some Wuorinen pieces sound like Schoenberg. But he's considered really conservative!


But so much so that you would confuse the two? They sound quite different to me.

Roger Sessions' music was much more Schoenbergian, but then they were contemporaries for the early part of his career.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

Truckload said:


> The point is that very few good composers were innovators, trying to write something new.


I will agree that innovation *on its own* is not an indicator of quality in any form of art. Yes, some good artists did not noticeably move forward their genre .... but many of the greatest did just that - and that, combined with the quality of their work, is part of the reason why they are recognised as 'great'

From the top of my head, we might include the likes of Machaut, Dunstable, Monteverdi, Beethoven etc etc in such a category of composers who moved music forwards *and* composed wonderful music


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

KenOC said:


> Just for perspective: When young Beethoven was writing his first piano sonatas and piano quartets, old Bach had been dead only 35 years, and Handel 26 years.


Though Monteverdi had been dead for 127 years when Beethoven was born.


----------



## Blancrocher

While I don't agree with many of the points in the video in the OP, I do think there are reasons for thinking differently about transformations in art and music in the 20th century in comparison with earlier periods. Part of the reason is the sheer amount of work being produced, the rapidity of its transmission, and various kinds of technological change. The invention of photography couldn't help but have significant effects on artists' views and anxieties about representational art; the invention of recording technology couldn't help but speed up the drive to innovate among musicians. I wouldn't want to be too crude and reductive about such things, but I'm sure that some people--regardless of their opinions about modern art and/or music--could mention persuasive books handling such themes.


----------



## Guest

Modern art/music is bad: modern viewers/listeners are ignorant.


----------



## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> Serialism, which you have disingenuously linked to random music, did come out of late romanticism.
> 
> If late romanticism had not pushed boundaries of chromaticism, then Schoenberg would not have needed a method for controlling chromatic harmony.


Serialism did not "come out of" Romanticism. It was invented by a person with his own perspective on Romanticism, and for his own purposes. Chromatic harmony did not need serialism to control it. It was already under effective control by composers able to control it. If Schoenberg wasn't able to, that was his issue, not Romanticism's.


----------



## Truckload

TurnaboutVox said:


> ^^^^ Truckload, what I wrote was:
> 
> I didn't say that romanticism caused serialism. I made the less radical claim that some composers who started out composing in the late romantic style developed what is now called 'serialism'. I don't think that is controvertible. I am convinced of the argument that late romanticism led to serialism via the medium of the work of Schoenberg and others, though.


I understand your point of view. The specific wording is not an issue with me. Many people have made the argument connecting romantic composers, or romanticism in general, with the final breakdown of the CPE system of harmony and tonality. Someone is this very thread connected or "blamed" romanticism for modern art. It is a common argument, but I have never been convinced. I am still not convinced. I see no evidence to support the idea.

I do not need to controvert the argument. Generally it should be up to the poeple making the claim to offer some form of actual proof. Stating that something is incontrovertible does not offer any proof.


----------



## isorhythm

Have you ever watched Bernstein's Harvard lectures? They're all on youtube. He makes a good case for it.


----------



## Truckload

isorhythm said:


> What composers before Bach sounded just like Bach?
> 
> (Same question for everyone on your list.)


Now you are just being silly. While I have heard works "completed" for Beethoven from his notebooks and in his style as a sort of musicological curiosity you know I am not advocating copying another composers style. Although I suppose it could be fun to try.

CPE harmony and singable memorable themes are more than capable of supporting many different styles.

I am so glad that Prokofiev wrote his Classical Symphony, and Peter and the Wolf. And good grief, if you don't understand where I am coming from by now, I am wasting both your time and mine.


----------



## Mahlerian

Truckload said:


> I understand your point of view. The specific wording is not an issue with me. Many people have made the argument connecting romantic composers, or romanticism in general, with the final breakdown of the CPE system of harmony and tonality. Someone is this very thread connected or "blamed" romanticism for modern art. It is a common argument, but I have never been convinced. I am still not convinced. I see no evidence to support the idea.
> 
> I do not need to controvert the argument. Generally it should be up to the poeple making the claim to offer some form of actual proof. Stating that something is incontrovertible does not offer any proof.


What would constitute evidence for you in this case? Scores showing dissonant harmonic relationships being more frequent over time? A chart of composers whose styles moved fluidly between older and newer languages?

You have to be specific as to exactly what would constitute evidence, because otherwise you could just be rejecting any evidence that is offered by redefining your terms.


----------



## Truckload

isorhythm said:


> Have you ever watched Bernstein's Harvard lectures? They're all on youtube. He makes a good case for it.


Bernstein was not infallable. Have you seen his lecture where he attacks Beethoven?


----------



## isorhythm

Truckload said:


> Bernstein was not infallable. Have you seen his lecture where he attacks Beethoven?


I didn't say he was infallible, I said he made a good case.

I haven't seen the Beethoven one - what does he say?

I'm not sure we actually disagree that much. Prokofiev wrote tonal symphonies but did so in a new way. I've said from the beginning I think that's great.


----------



## Mahlerian

Truckload said:


> Bernstein was not infallable. Have you seen his lecture where he attacks Beethoven?


Ad hominem.

Whether or not he was right about Beethoven is not relevant to whether or not he was right about modern music developing out of older styles.


----------



## Mandryka

Truckload said:


> Bach is widely believed to be a fairly OK composer. He invented no new harmonies, no new forms, and during his life was sometimes derided for his shocking lack of newness.
> 
> Mozart is sometimes believed by a few people to be a somewhat accomplished composer. No new forms, no new harmonies. His biggest innovation was probably trying to popularize serious opera sung in German.
> 
> Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Schumann . . .
> 
> An artist doesn't have to be doing something new to be doing something interesting and valid.
> 
> I think I will now go and write some music using CPE harmony, and try for a very catchy theme.


I don't think people saw Bach as old fashioned, they just saw him as not following the latest trends. Forkel certainly saw him as an innovator:



> So long as the language of music has only melodious expressions, or only successive connection of musical tones, it is still to be called poor. By the adding of bass notes, by which its relation to the modes and the chords in them becomes rather less obscure, it gains not so much in richness as in precision. A melody accompanied in such a manner, even if not merely bass notes were struck, but, by means of middle parts, even the full chords, was still called by our forefathers, and with justice, homophony. Very different is the case when two melodies are so interwoven with each other that they, as it were, converse together, like two persons of the same rank and equally well informed. There the accompaniment was subordinate, and had only to serve the first or principal part. Here there is no such difference; and this kind of union of two melodies gives occasion to new combinations of tones and consequently to an increase of the store of musical expression. In proportion as more parts are added and interwoven with each other in the same free and independent manner, the store of musical expressions increases, and finally becomes inexhaustible when different time and the endless variety of rhythms are added. Harmony, therefore, is not to be considered as a mere accompaniment of a simple melody, but a real means of increasing the stock of the expressions of the art, or the riches of musical language. But to be this, it must consist not in mere accompaniment, but in the interweaving of several real melodies, each of which may be, and is, heard sometimes in the upper part, sometimes in the middle, and sometimes below.


----------



## Mandryka

isorhythm said:


> What composers before Bach sounded just like Bach?
> 
> (Same question for everyone on your list.)


Christoph Graupner.


----------



## isorhythm

Mandryka said:


> Christoph Graupner.


Absolutely not.

Edit - more importantly, he wasn't before Bach! (Had to look that up.)


----------



## Truckload

Woodduck said:


> Serialism did not "come out of" Romanticism. It was invented by a person with his own perspective on Romanticism, and for his own purposes. Chromatic harmony did not need serialism to control it. It was already under effective control by composers able to control it. If Schoenberg wasn't able to, that was his issue, not Romanticism's.


Very well put. I think we had a thread on this topic last week. Why do some (and that includes some composers, some musicologists and some audience members, not trying to single out TC members) continue to put this old idea forward as if it was proven.

One could just as easily suggest that the jazz idiom is the rightful successor to the romantic movement. The extended chromatic harmonies, emphasis on improvisation, etc.


----------



## Woodduck

The question: Why is modern art so bad?

How to evade the question: 1. say "you can't generalize"; 2. attack Prager U.; 3. laugh at Florczik's kitschy paintings.

So why would a museum pay $10,000,000 for a rock? And where does that $10,000,000 come from? Is the museum tax-subsidized? Are you, knowingly or unknowingly, "supporting culture"?

This is not an isolated instance. Art museums and galleries are full of stuff like this. These "art objects" tend to be large; they have to be, otherwise people would walk right past them without realizing they were missing out on high culture. How much does it cost to maintain a whole room containing one "installation"? How many real artists don't get their work hung because there isn't enough space - or because the culture dictators won't give them space?

Does the word "hoax" ring a bell? How about "emperor" or "new clothes"?

"Oh, but people aren't just pretending! They really do like art like this!"

I'm sure "people" do. People like, and do, all sorts of things, for all sorts of reasons.


----------



## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> "Oh, but people aren't just pretending! They really do like art like this!"
> 
> I'm sure "people" do. People like, and do, all sorts of things, for all sorts of reasons.


It is strange that plastic art is accessible. Tate Modern in London is a popular attraction, for Londoners and tourists. I don't know why.


----------



## Mandryka

isorhythm said:


> .
> 
> Edit - more importantly, he wasn't before Bach! (Had to look that up.)


Oh well, let's not let a mere fact get in the way of a good argument.


----------



## Truckload

isorhythm said:


> I didn't say he was infallible, I said he made a good case.
> 
> I haven't seen the Beethoven one - what does he say?
> 
> I'm not sure we actually disagree that much. Prokofiev wrote tonal symphonies but did so in a new way. I've said from the beginning I think that's great.


Basicly he said Beethoven couldn't write melody, harmony or counterpoint and that he was a bad orchestrator. See below starting at 6:10


----------



## GreenMamba

Truckload said:


> Basicly he said Beethoven couldn't write melody, harmony or counterpoint and that he was a bad orchestrator. See below starting at 6:10]


This again.

He said a lot more than that, and Bernstein clearly loves Beethoven.

Is Bernstein wrong to say Beethoven wasn't much of a melodist? Du-Du-Du-Dum?

I think Bernstein is exagerrating the negatives of LvB to draw attention to what he excels at. plus to make the point that there are many elements to music, not just catchy tunes or flashy orchestral sound.


----------



## MarkW

Truckload said:


> The point is that very few good composers were innovators, trying to write something new.


We may disagree, but I find that statement laughable.

Addendum: Monteverdi? Beethoven? Berlioz? Schumann? Chopin? Liszt? Mussorgsky? Debussy? Bartok? Stravinsky? . . .


----------



## Guest

Mandryka said:


> It is strange that plastic art is accessible. Tate Modern in London is a popular attraction, for Londoners and tourists. I don't know why.


Presumably because of a masochistic interest in modern (therefore bad) art. Or maybe the wet weather just drives them in. Or the food in the cafe.


----------



## Truckload

GreenMamba said:


> This again.
> 
> He said a lot more than that, and Bernstein clearly loves Beethoven.
> 
> Is Bernstein wrong to say Beethoven wasn't much of a melodist? Du-Du-Du-Dum?
> 
> I think Bernstein is exagerrating the negatives of LvB to draw attention to what he excels at. plus to make the point that there are many elements to music, not just catchy tunes or flashy orchestral sound.


Yes, I think Bernstein did really love Beethoven. Bernstein, like all good conductors, was first and foremost an opinionated egotist. No one could lead 100 professional musicians otherwise. And being who he was, he could be brilliant, and he could crash and burn with incredible stupidity, as he did in this video. Beethoven actually was great at harmony orchestration and melody. Not sure about counterpoint. I've seen another video somewhere that makes the case for all of these points, very well done.

Yes Beethoven was capable of writing flowing beautiful melody when he wanted to do so. To name a few, The Pathatique Sonata Op. 13 mvt 2, or fur Elise, or the Violin Conterto 3rd movement demonstrate very abundant melodic gifts.


----------



## Mahlerian

Truckload said:


> Very well put. I think we had a thread on this topic last week. Why do some (and that includes some composers, some musicologists and some audience members, not trying to single out TC members) continue to put this old idea forward as if it was proven.


Because it's true? I don't know. You can go against logic, established sources, and the fact of the matter if you so choose, but I don't know why you feel you can dismiss them in favor of fringe views.



Truckload said:


> One could just as easily suggest that the jazz idiom is the rightful successor to the romantic movement. The extended chromatic harmonies, emphasis on improvisation, etc.


Chromatic harmonies used in a way that no Romantic music had used them, and improvisation? What Romantic music emphasized improvisation? It is true that some Romantic composers were fine improvisers, such as Bruckner and Liszt, but this is not characteristic of the written music of the period.

Jazz music came out of popular music such as marches and dance bands. This is well-documented.


----------



## isorhythm

I'm not a scholar of jazz in any way but I suspect Romantic music had some influence on jazz harmony...not really on the way it works, but just on the general taste for lush chords with sevenths and ninths and added tones.


----------



## KenOC

GreenMamba said:


> Is Bernstein wrong to say Beethoven wasn't much of a melodist? Du-Du-Du-Dum?
> 
> I think Bernstein is exagerrating the negatives of LvB to draw attention to what he excels at. plus to make the point that there are many elements to music, not just catchy tunes or flashy orchestral sound.


I think that's clearly right. Nonetheless, there's a long YouTube clip where a music professor takes on Bernstein's claims point by point and totally demolishes them. When Bernstein himself later used this lecture as the basis for a written essay, he toned it down...a lot!


----------



## Mahlerian

isorhythm said:


> I'm not a scholar but I suspect Romantic music had some influence on jazz harmony...not really on the way it works, but just on the general taste for lush chords with sevenths and ninths and added tones.


Impressionism, perhaps, but that's modernist, not Romantic. Jazz artists have cited Debussy, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg as inspirations, I know.

Duke Ellington did do a version of the Nutcracker Suite, if I can recall.


----------



## violadude

Dedalus said:


> It would be the Drunken Peasants podcast. It's not a very mature podcast, but i'm a 26 year old guy who has a taste for the immature. Immature as it may seem, they do confront real issues and are smart folks, but they try to keep it humorous for the most part. basically they mix in issues like evolution, atheism, politics, history, crackpot conspiracy theories, and tackle these issues in a humorous way. It may not be everybody's cup of tea, but I find it pretty entertaining. It's not a serious podcast by any means, but I think it's done quite well. Good production, good content, good jokes. They do a good job.





DiesIraeCX said:


> Haha, awesome, that's them! Yeah, not very "mature", obviously, but like you said, there's a time and a place for it. They do mix real issues with humor and a lack seriousness that is pretty entertaining. I usually try to keep up with their shows, and for the record, I don't agree with exactly everything they say, but that's part of the fun! Who would have known, another DrunkenPeasants fan on TC. TJisGarbage :lol:


YAY! Fellow TC DP fans.

Ya, Praeger is garbage.


----------



## Orfeo

Morimur said:


> Most modern art is bad because our culture is heading downward; our world has become so hedonistic and degenerate that most artists have nothing significant to say-they live for money and consumption; they live for themselves.


I think modern art needs some clarification. Modern art has been around for about a century and many, many masterpieces (artwork, music, literature, cinematic, performing art, photography (recall Vivian Maier, Gordon Parks, Arbus), architecture) stemmed from that period. I think you mean contemporary art, and it is here where I see where you're coming from. One gets a pervasive sense that our golden age is long gone, that we lost meaning even in what we communicate and how.

But I would not paint modern art with this huge brush: there were plenty shining examples of elevated artistic accomplishments and their importance. And while I can't (and won't) think too highly of today's music, not all is lost. Performing arts is still much to marvel at and I still can enjoy good movies now and then. Television is another story, but I'll save my thoughts of it for a later time.


----------



## violadude

Woodduck said:


> The question: Why is modern art so bad?
> 
> How to evade the question: 1. say "you can't generalize"; 2. attack Prager U.; 3. laugh at Florczik's kitschy paintings.
> 
> So why would a museum pay $10,000,000 for a rock? And where does that $10,000,000 come from? Is the museum tax-subsidized? Are you, knowingly or unknowingly, "supporting culture"?
> 
> This is not an isolated instance. Art museums and galleries are full of stuff like this. These "art objects" tend to be large; they have to be, otherwise people would walk right past them without realizing they were missing out on high culture. How much does it cost to maintain a whole room containing one "installation"? How many real artists don't get their work hung because there isn't enough space - or because the culture dictators won't give them space?
> 
> Does the word "hoax" ring a bell? How about "emperor" or "new clothes"?
> 
> "Oh, but people aren't just pretending! They really do like art like this!"
> 
> I'm sure "people" do. People like, and do, all sorts of things, for all sorts of reasons.


If anything in the music industry has the artistic quality of a rock, it's stuff like "Stupid ***" by Niki Minaj. Not any of the music we discuss here on TC.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

violadude said:


> YAY! Fellow TC DP fans.


Some things are better left unabbreviated.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

Truckload said:


> One could just as easily suggest that the jazz idiom is the rightful successor to the romantic movement.


Sure, Schönberg is one successor to Romanticism, and jazz is another (sometimes more or less to the point of plagiarism, e.g. Chopin's prelude in E minor op. 28 and Gershwin's "Someone To Watch Over Me") (_"argle bargle Gershwin isn't jazz"_ yes he is).

Neither is as good as, let's say, Wagner, but that brings us again to things nobody wants to admit - in this case, that starting with Romanticism, all the arts seem to follow a so-far-unending trend of diminishing returns (Wagner probably isn't as good as Beethoven, and after Wagner, forget it).

Anyway, all of you talking about whether serialism "had" to come out of late Romanticism are missing the point - which is, it was Romanticism that made _not_ conforming to convention (whatever that happens to be at the moment) good for its own sake.



violadude said:


> If anything in the music industry has the artistic quality of a rock, it's stuff like "Stupid ***" by Niki Minaj. Not any of the music we discuss here on TC.


The musical equivalent to calling a rock art seems to me clearly to be conceptual pieces like those of John Cage and La Monte Young (whatever you think of the value of any of the above).

The equivalent to Nicki Minaj would be commercial visual entertainment like - well, for example, like a Nicki Minaj music video.


----------



## ArtMusic

The "listening market" decides on how "bad" the art is. If it is great, then naturally it will survive over time and be forever remembered. It's all very simple.


----------



## Torkelburger

Truckload said:


> Good question, how representative is it? In the 70's the university composers were churning out a ton of serial music, random music, avant-guarde experimental stuff (lets play the piano strings instead of the keys and use a kitchen wisk to do so) but then we also had minimalism int eh 80's and the "new" minimalism in the 90's, and I have lost track since then.
> 
> There is probably some composer out there writing music with CPE harmony, clear form, and memorable themes. But I don't know who that might be. That is not a request for recommendations. With this crowd, someone will try to get me to listen to Boulez and say he is exactly like Bach.


One celebrated university music professor in the 70's, George Rochberg from the University of Pennsylvania, wrote music with CPE harmony, clear form, and memorable themes, etc. during his middle period (in his early period he was a serialist but gave it up). His fifth string quartet is representative of this output:


----------



## Truckload

Harold in Columbia - well reasoned. Not a convert, but have to admire your logic.


----------



## Mahlerian

Truckload said:


> Harold in Columbia - well reasoned. Not a convert, but have to admire your logic.


What logic? It's a bunch of statements.


----------



## Truckload

Torkelburger - thanks, interesting.


----------



## arpeggio

Truckload said:


> Good question, how representative is it? In the 70's the university composers were churning out a ton of serial music, random music, avant-guarde experimental stuff (lets play the piano strings instead of the keys and use a kitchen wisk to do so) but then we also had minimalism int eh 80's and the "new" minimalism in the 90's, and I have lost track since then.
> 
> There is probably some composer out there writing music with CPE harmony, clear form, and memorable themes. But I don't know who that might be. That is not a request for recommendations. With this crowd, someone will try to get me to listen to Boulez and say he is exactly like Bach.


Good grief. I would expect such remarks from a newbie.

We have had discussions about this for years.

A few years ago we had a discussion about this with KenOC and many of us listed many prominent tonal composers who taught in the university systems back in the sixties and the seventies, like Rochberg who was mentioned by Torkelburger.

We have also had many threads where we have listed living composers who compose in a tonal medium. I have submitted many posts about Mark Camphouse, who is chairman of the composition department at George Mason University.

My problem is not that you dislike Boulez. I have stated before, I do not like Boulez either. My problem is that some members are oblivious to all of the great tonal music that is out there, in spite of the many fine posts and threads that have appeared in this forum.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

Mahlerian said:


> What logic? It's a bunch of statements.


The logic is implied by the statements. I'm an atonal poster.


----------



## Gaspard de la Nuit

I think the art professor in the video makes a big mistake. Beauty and greatness are not static. They change because what was once novel becomes familiar, and then it becomes *too* familiar. However, there is a dogma that XYZ composers are great and that this is beyond opinion. But when you listen to music enough you realize that the visceral effect of anything wanes after a certain point.


----------



## ArtMusic

I disagree - the "visceral" effect of truly great works remain and or grow based on my listening experience. It is one of the most distinguishing crtieria of assessing great works.


----------



## Truckload

arpeggio said:


> Good grief. I would expect such a remark from a newbie.
> 
> We have had discussions about this out for years.
> 
> A few years ago we had a discussion about this with KenOC and many of us listed many prominent tonal composers who taught in the university systems back in the sixties and the seventies.
> 
> We have also had many threads where we have listed living composers who compose in a tonal medium. I have submitted many posts about Mark Camphouse, who is chairman of the composition department at George Mason University.
> 
> My problem is not that you dislike Boulez. I have stated before, I do not like Boulez either. My problem is that some members are oblivious to all of the great tonal music that is out there, in spite of the many fine posts and threads that have appeared in this forum.


Please forgive my stupidity. I am forced to admit that I have not read every post of every thread on TC. Please don't tell anyone. I might be voted out in the next meeting. :lol:

But seriously, if you would like to point me to a thread, I will be delighted to read it.

However, if your view of tonality is in agreement with Mahlerian, please don't.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Most modern art is bad because our culture is heading downward; our world has become so hedonistic and degenerate that most artists have nothing significant to say-they live for money and consumption; they live for themselves.

For better or worse, the traditional visual art forms are almost wholly dependent upon the patronage of the very wealthy... who are in no way as sophisticated or educated as their aristocratic predecessors (The Medici, the catholic Church, etc...). Most depend upon the recommendations of art buyers and art dealers whose focus is upon the biggest sales.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

starthrower- I doubt that would fool any but the most ignorant, tone deaf listeners. Tossing a bunch of notes on a page and then playing it back is not going to sound very good to anybody.

One of my studio mates used to create huge abstract paintings in the tradition of Jackson Pollock. One day I was playing a CD of Eric Dolphy. Finally, he couldn't take it any more and yelled, "Turn that crap off!" I pointed out to him that just as he fould Eric Dolphy to be "crap" a great many would have the same response to his paintings.

I raise this issue because I find it interesting that a good many who love Modern/Contemporary Music/Art/Literature are quite close-minded when it comes to innovations in art forms beyond their own passion.

By the way... I quite like Pollock, DeKooning, Rothko, Motherwell, etc... yet that stuff is already "old school".


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Stavrogin- Damn, his art is possibly worse than his video.

By what standards?










This painting, for example, strikes me as quite fine. A beautiful image in the tradition of Maxfield Parrish. No, it is not overly innovative or Modern... but this would assume that innovation and/or Modernity are the ultimate measure of artistic merit... something that would have been quite incomprehensible to almost any artist prior to the Modern era... and an idea that has increasingly been challenged since Pop Art and Post-Modernism.


----------



## isorhythm

StlukesguildOhio said:


> This painting, for example, strikes me as quite fine. A beautiful image in the tradition of Maxfield Parrish. No, it is not overly innovative or Modern... but this would assume that innovation and/or Modernity are the ultimate measure of artistic merit... something that would have been quite incomprehensible to almost any artist prior to the Modern era... and an idea that has increasingly been challenged since Pop Art and Post-Modernism.


Hm. I think it's modern in a way. It looks like a video game. I don't know if that's intentional, but I don't like it. For comparison, Maxfield Parrish:









I like this American mid century illustration stuff, personally. It appeals to the part of me that likes sci fi.

But that guy from the youtube looks pretty poor by comparison.

(these pictures attached in a strange way for some reason, not sure how to fix. sorry.)


----------



## Pugg

isorhythm said:


> Hm. I think it's modern in a way. It looks like a video game. I don't know if that's intentional, but I don't like it. For comparison, Maxfield Parrish:
> 
> I like this American mid century illustration stuff, personally. It appeals to the part of me that likes sci fi.
> 
> But that guy from the youtube looks pretty poor by comparison.
> 
> (these pictures attached in a strange way for some reason, not sure how to fix. sorry.)


The last one ...Paradise with Adam and Eve?


----------



## Arsakes

To be honest I might tolerate a piece or two "insane" or "super-expressionist" art daily, but I usually listen to music that deals with these emotions: Pride, Anger, Sadness, Happiness, Love
From Beethoven to Sibelius mainly.
Even those like Haydn and Handel (pre-romantics) had done it properly... light emotions in academic works.

Not the emotions of insanity. Like someone is living under physical torture, is being attacked by evil ghosts, hates/hated (by) the world and is in total hysterical anxiety. The emotions of music in 2nd Vienna circle composers is like that. It kinda reminds me of Heavy Metal music which I don't like too!


----------



## Arsakes

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Stavrogin- Damn, his art is possibly worse than his video.
> 
> By what standards?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This painting, for example, strikes me as quite fine. A beautiful image in the tradition of Maxfield Parrish. No, it is not overly innovative or Modern... but this would assume that innovation and/or Modernity are the ultimate measure of artistic merit... something that would have been quite incomprehensible to almost any artist prior to the Modern era... and an idea that has increasingly been challenged since Pop Art and Post-Modernism.


Other than nudist painting, Picasso's genre and "throw colors on the wall" genre of painting I'm fine with most of its genres/styles. Even abstract and Van Gog's.


----------



## Arsakes

double---------------- post.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Toyin Odutola is pretty good.



















As is Jaime Hayon


----------



## Piwikiwi

ArtMusic said:


> The "listening market" decides on how "bad" the art is. If it is great, then naturally it will survive over time and be forever remembered. It's all very simple.


Rothko and Pollock are still very popular^^


----------



## Guest

Truckload said:


> Just ran across this on YouTube. Everything he talks about can be applied to music.


Yes, but would you want to?

An execrable presentation, that is almost as banal and reductionist as the 'modern' art it seeks to criticise. I particularly enjoyed the graph of the Decline of Artistic Standards!


----------



## SimonNZ

Just watched that video in the OP. That wasn't meant to be comedy? That was serious?

No fair comparing a few carefully cherry-picked artists and works from history to be placed alongside a few random knee-jerk getting modern works. There's been miles of rubbish from the past that has, happily, been swept into the dustbin of history. We now choose to remember only what was best. So too with the history of music.

The _average_ modern work in both art forms is, I feel, better than the _average_ works of the past.

I laughed out loud at him saying of the Impressionists "as with most revolutions the first generation produced work of genuine merit...". Yeah, revolutionaries like to ease you in gently...its that younger generation of revolutionaries who don't have any respect for their elders.

And that apron doesn't look anything like a Jackson Pollock. But putting that aside this guy is in a power relationship with his students as well as being in a position of trust and viewed as an educator. So if he tells them its a Jackson Pollock then they are obliged or inclined to believe him. Scoring easy points off their credulity just makes him a douche.

Truckload: you really thought this was an intelligent, well presented argument in the YT clip?


----------



## TurnaboutVox

SimonNZ said:


> Just watched that video in the OP. That wasn't meant to be comedy? That was serious?


I'm afraid I couldn't stop giggling all the way through. Surely it had to be a parody or spoof? But no, it _was_ serious.


----------



## dgee

Oh yes that video is quite something! The presenter and institution seem highly reputable as well. Pompous uncle after a few sherries...


----------



## Balthazar

The cognitive dissonance really kicked in when I went to the speaker's website and saw this painting of Michael Jackson proudly displayed in his portfolio.








_"Commissioned as a gift for the singer from his merchandising company, the original hung in his bedroom."_

What are these "universal standards" he's prating on about again? :lol:


----------



## Pugg

Balthazar said:


> The cognitive dissonance really kicked in when I went to the speaker's website and saw this painting of Michael Jackson proudly displayed in his portfolio.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _"Commissioned as a gift for the singer from his merchandising company, the original hung in his bedroom."_
> 
> What are these "universal standards" he's prating on about again? :lol:


Now that would be opening a tin can of worms


----------



## Guest

Balthazar said:


> The cognitive dissonance really kicked in when I went to the speaker's website and saw this painting of Michael Jackson proudly displayed in his portfolio.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _"Commissioned as a gift for the singer from his merchandising company, the original hung in his bedroom."_
> 
> What are these "universal standards" he's prating on about again? :lol:


I don't know what you're smirking at, it's a fine portrait. You can tell who it is, it's in proportion, he's got the right number of heads and eyes etc, not like in that modern nonsense.

I like it.


----------



## norman bates

SimonNZ said:


> And that apron doesn't look anything like a Jackson Pollock. But putting that aside this guy is in a power relationship with his students as well as being in a position of trust and viewed as an educator. So if he tells them its a Jackson Pollock then they are obliged or inclined to believe him. Scoring easy points off their credulity just makes him a douche.


You cannot believe me, but years ago I've seen a quite similar things happening, with a guy who said he was a huge fan of Pollock. There was a discussion on a forum, between the progressive guys and the conservatives, and this guy in this discussion was defending the greatness of his art, and to do so he posted this










like a great example of modern art. He put it seriously, it wasn't a joke (it's a picture made with a little program that is made to "paint in his style"... sort of). He just opened google typing "Pollock" and took the picture he preferred probably.
Like those important critics who believed that the Van Meegeren were real Vermeer, or like those important italian critics who believed that the fake Modigliani heads were real. 
So this does not demonstrate anything, but it's clear that the fact that those students took an apron for a Pollock does not have necessarily to do with the fact that they were students. Or, in a way, it's also possible to say that those who are fans of certain modern works (myself included) are bowing to the authority of the critics, so we aren't in a very dissimilar position.


----------



## Truckload

Norman Bates - I apologize in advance for drawing acrimony upon you by association since I am about to say something nice. 

I think your post is a really thoughtful example of why art is something to treasure. I don't understand the science behind it, or even if there is any science behind it, but one virtue of art is it's value to humanity in enabling people to uncover hidden truths within ourselves.

I also can find some pleasure at times in examination of a Pollock painting. I know it is just random, I know there is little to no real depth of skill involved, yet still I look for meaning even when I know intellectually there is none. Perhaps it is just a childlike reaction "oooo, look at the pretty colors". Perhaps KenOC can explain it psychologically.


----------



## mmsbls

SimonNZ said:


> The _average_ modern work in both art forms is, I feel, better than the _average_ works of the past.


I've always felt, naively, that there ought to be better composers today than ever before for several reasons. First, there are many more people. Second, there are more music schools teaching composition so presumably there are more opportunities to get a good composition education. Finally, the internet, inexpensive CDs, and music distribution capabilities make hearing and studying a very wide range of music vastly easier.

But even assuming the composers are somewhat better, I would guess that we listeners can be exposed to so much more contemporary music than earlier music such that the average contemporary music we hear might be worse than the average older music. That older music has survived only because it was deemed above a certain level of quality.

Are you basing you comment on music you've heard or what you expect to be the case?


----------



## Crudblud

Dear Truckload,

I'm not sure why we're comparing heavy and expensive rocks to painstakingly composed works of music, but I must say that I do not appreciate it. Composers today, even in the best of circumstances, are not making a whole lot of money from what they do, there are exceptions but they are few and far between, and certainly none of us can sell a blank waveform ─ to adapt the rock vs. sculpture metaphor from the video into sonic terms ─ for millions of dollars. We work hard and over long periods of time to complete our compositions, longer still to gain for ourselves a means for them to be performed and heard by others ─ I write for the computer, so this last does not apply to me specifically, but I nonetheless understand the difficulties faced in trying to find a place for one's work in the world's ever shrinking stage space for new music.

That you would insist on saying the two are comparable is a mean spirited and wholly unjustified mockery of our craft, the thing we spend our days and nights, if we are lucky, more likely just our free time honing so that we can produce the best work possible. Do not tell me our standards today are so low as to be non-existent, to say so would be to presume to know better than I about the hundreds upon hundreds, if not more minuscule details I spend months deliberating upon and altering so as to create the most precise and fully realised representation of my musical ideas possible. Do not tell me that we are snake oil salesmen pitching the fruits of our charlatanry to easy marks who are listening simply for affectation's sake, to say so is not only a gross insult to we who put so much time and effort into making sure that our music is the best it can be, but also to the people who listen to and genuinely enjoy it. 

I can understand if you don't enjoy our music, we all have our personal tastes and we are fairly incapable of making them into that which they do not wish to become, but I cannot understand why you or anyone else feels the need to mock and belittle it.

Sincerely,

A composer who has never told anyone else what music they can and cannot love.


----------



## Art Rock

Truckload said:


> I also can find some pleasure at times in examination of a Pollock painting. I *know *it is just random, I *know *there is little to no real depth of skill involved, yet still I look for meaning even when I *know *intellectually there is none.


"You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means."


----------



## Mahlerian

Arsakes said:


> Not the emotions of insanity. Like someone is living under physical torture, is being attacked by evil ghosts, hates/hated (by) the world and is in total hysterical anxiety. The emotions of music in 2nd Vienna circle composers is like that. It kinda reminds me of Heavy Metal music which I don't like too!


Not to me. There's a wide range of emotions in the music of the Second Viennese School. It's no darker than the popular symphonies of Shostakovich and, I would argue, in many cases not as dark. Sibelius's Fourth is more consistently gloomy than Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces.

I understand that it might make you feel that way, but it's not all the music is limited to.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

Truckload - I think you are using the phrase 'I know' in the sense of 'I think'. You are conflating your opinion with established, agreed 'fact'. In many cases, especially in the arts and humanities, few facts can be established with certainty (except things like "Your budget is $8 million").


----------



## Truckload

Crudblud said:


> A composer who has never told anyone else what music they can and cannot love.


While you wish to censor my speech, I have no desire to censor you compositions, or your ears.

Sincerely,

A music lover who has never tried to tell anyone else what they can or cannot say.


----------



## Truckload

TurnaboutVox said:


> Truckload - I think you are using the phrase 'I know' in the sense of 'I think'. You are conflating your opinion with established, agreed 'fact'. In many cases, especially in the arts and humanities, few facts can be established with certainty (except things like "Your budget is $8 million").


Thanks for trying to correct my speech. But you are mistaken in this instance. When I say I "know" that a Pollock painting requires no depth of skill I mean it is a fact. Whether that fact is agreed upon by others is immaterial.


----------



## millionrainbows

Truckload said:


> Just ran across this on YouTube. Everything he talks about can be applied to music.


And that would be a truckload of...what?


----------



## Art Rock

Fact can mean anything you want it to mean apparently. Good basis for discussion.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

norman bates said:


> You cannot believe me, but years ago I've seen a quite similar things happening, with a guy who said he was a huge fan of Pollock. There was a discussion on a forum, between the progressive guys and the conservatives, and this guy in this discussion was defending the greatness of his art, and to do so he posted this
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> like a great example of modern art. He put it seriously, it wasn't a joke (it's a picture made with a little program that is made to "paint in his style"... sort of). He just opened google typing "Pollock" and took the picture he preferred probably.
> .


That doesn't look anything like a 'real' Pollock to my eyes

I'm not just saying it .... it just doesn't have the essence of 'art' at all (.... and I can't explain why, apart from it being a 'gut' feeling like it is when I hear a piece of music composed for a period-drama that just isn't 'right').


----------



## Headphone Hermit

Truckload said:


> Thanks for trying to correct my speech. But you are mistaken in this instance. When I say I "know" that a Pollock painting requires no depth of skill I mean it is a fact. Whether that fact is agreed upon by others is immaterial.


so ... a 'fact' merely depends on you claiming it to be true.

Hmm ... 'interesting' opinion there .... sorry, its a 'fact' according to you, isn't it?


----------



## Blancrocher

Curiously, a mathematician from Harvard has attempted to prove that Jackson Pollock was a skilled artist.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/06/physics-of-jackson-pollocks-art


----------



## Guest

Only the Blanc could dig up such an article. _Chapeau_ !


----------



## Morimur

Blancrocher said:


> Curiously, a mathematician from Harvard has attempted to prove that Jackson Pollock was a skilled artist.
> 
> http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/06/physics-of-jackson-pollocks-art


Of course Pollock was a skilled artist. Who'd think otherwise?


----------



## Crudblud

Truckload said:


> While you wish to censor my speech, I have no desire to censor you compositions, or your ears.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> A music lover who has never tried to tell anyone else what they can or cannot say.


Well, I guess as long as you're content to attack strawmen instead of actually engaging my points, that's fine. You keep on fighting the good fight.


----------



## Truckload

Headphone Hermit said:


> so ... a 'fact' merely depends on you claiming it to be true.
> 
> Hmm ... 'interesting' opinion there .... sorry, its a 'fact' according to you, isn't it?


If you or Art Rock would like to challenge what I accept as fact with some form of reasoned argument, or believe you have information I do not which will cause me to change my paradigm of factual truth, please do so. Do you know for a fact that a Pollock painting does require depth of skill to create? Or is that just your opinion?


----------



## Sloe

norman bates said:


> You cannot believe me, but years ago I've seen a quite similar things happening, with a guy who said he was a huge fan of Pollock. There was a discussion on a forum, between the progressive guys and the conservatives, and this guy in this discussion was defending the greatness of his art, and to do so he posted this
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> like a great example of modern art. He put it seriously, it wasn't a joke (it's a picture made with a little program that is made to "paint in his style"... sort of). He just opened google typing "Pollock" and took the picture he preferred probably.
> Like those important critics who believed that the Van Meegeren were real Vermeer, or like those important italian critics who believed that the fake Modigliani heads were real.
> So this does not demonstrate anything, but it's clear that the fact that those students took an apron for a Pollock does not have necessarily to do with the fact that they were students. Or, in a way, it's also possible to say that those who are fans of certain modern works (myself included) are bowing to the authority of the critics, so we aren't in a very dissimilar position.


Here is the site:

http://jacksonpollock.org/

I must say I find it much easier to accept modern music than modern visual art.


----------



## Truckload

Blancrocher said:


> Curiously, a mathematician from Harvard has attempted to prove that Jackson Pollock was a skilled artist.
> 
> http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/06/physics-of-jackson-pollocks-art


I read the article. So he held his brush or trowel at various heights and relied upon some degree of luck to get the effects he desired. We already knew that. No new information in the article.


----------



## Art Rock

Try this one:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zqhgr82


----------



## Art Rock

Being married to a professional artist who can do "photography-like" oil painting portraits (which is just craft-like skill), but prefers expressionist and abstract works, I know that a lot of thought and sense for colours and shapes go into these abstract creations.


----------



## Art Rock

Oh, and we do frequently get the usual reaction "I could paint like that" - ignorance and arrogance are a very deadly combination.


----------



## Sloe

Art Rock said:


> Try this one:
> 
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zqhgr82


I picked the right one immediately.
The other ones had too bright colours.
Even if Pollock was skilled it is not the same as his art is good. I think it looks horrible. The same can be applied to music.


----------



## Art Rock

Of course, everyone has their own taste. I would never say that anybody has to like Pollock (or Monet, or Rembrandt), or Schoenberg (or Brahms or Bach). But that's quite a difference from categorically dismissing any of them as bad art/music.


----------



## Truckload

Art Rock - I did you the courtesy of following your link. But once again. If you read the material you know it is just a rehash of what we already know, coupled with some generalizations by the author that he does not offer as factual evidence.

Did you see the apron in the video that started this thread? Do you believe that apron is great art which required skill to produce? Can you honestly tell me you could tell the difference between the apron and a Pollock? I sort of enjoy Pollock for some crazy reason, and I am no art enthusiast, but I certainly would not have known it was not a Pollock.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

Truckload said:


> Thanks for trying to correct my speech. But you are mistaken in this instance. When I say I "know" that a Pollock painting requires no depth of skill I mean it is a fact. Whether that fact is agreed upon by others is immaterial.


Truckload - I am not trying to correct your speech, I'm sorry if, again, I gave you cause to think that I was.

I am actually trying to point out a fundamental difference in viewpoint between us, that I think has a direct bearing on the discussion in this thread.

From your point of view, you are in possession of the 'facts' about modern art and music, and you are 'right' about them.

From my point of view - I value being able to live in uncertainty, and doubt, and to be able to tolerate the resultant anxiety and psychological pain. In my world that is a sign that a mature part of the personality has the balance of influences, and that I am able to think and feel, rather than to 'know'.

When I insist that I know with certainty, and especially when I feel that I can dispense with any need for corroboration from external reality - that is a sign that a solipsistic part of my personality is in charge, having to deny and evacuate the experience of doubt and anxiety about an experience that, for instance, challenges my world view. I have learned to seek to recover from this position, which I regard as characteristic of a less mature and less reality-based part of myself.

I hope that helps to clarify how I see things.


----------



## Art Rock

I can honestly tell you that the moment the apron was shown in the video, my reaction was "that is not a Pollock". Just like I picked the four examples in the BBC link exactly as they were (Pollock, copy, computer, child).


----------



## isorhythm

Truckload said:


> I certainly would not have known it was not a Pollock.


Can you point us to some Pollock paintings that resemble the apron?


----------



## Truckload

Art Rock said:


> Oh, and we do frequently get the usual reaction "I could paint like that" - ignorance and arrogance are a very deadly combination.


I can certainly agree with that statement.


----------



## Mahlerian

Art Rock said:


> Oh, and we do frequently get the usual reaction "I could paint like that" - ignorance and arrogance are a very deadly combination.


I'm reminded of someone who came on here with a self-produced video parodying Schoenberg which, alongside a host of factual errors about his music, presented a "newly discovered" fragment which could only have sounded like Schoenberg to someone who knows absolutely nothing about how Schoenberg's music sounds.


----------



## Truckload

TurnaboutVox said:


> Truckload - I am not trying to correct your speech, I'm sorry if, again, I gave you cause to think that I was.
> 
> I am actually trying to point out a fundamental difference in viewpoint between us, that I think has a direct bearing on the discussion in this thread.
> 
> From your point of view, you are in possession of the 'facts' about modern art and music, and you are 'right' about them.
> 
> From my point of view - I value being able to live in uncertainty, and doubt, and to be able to tolerate the resultant anxiety and psychological pain. In my world that is a sign that a mature part of the personality has the balance of influences, and that I am able to think and feel, rather than to 'know'.
> 
> When I insist that I know with certainty, and especially when I feel that I can dispense with any need for corroboration from external reality - that is a sign that a solipsistic part of my personality is in charge, having to deny and evacuate the experience of doubt and anxiety about an experience that, for instance, challenges my world view. I have learned to seek to recover from this position, which I regard as characteristic of a less mature and less reality-based part of myself.
> 
> I hope that helps to clarify how I see things.


I hold no enmity towards you. I appreciate your willingness to share your perspective.


----------



## Truckload

Art Rock said:


> I can honestly tell you that the moment the apron was shown in the video, my reaction was "that is not a Pollock". Just like I picked the four examples in the BBC link exactly as they were (Pollock, copy, computer, child).


Congratulations. I will definitely seek your advice before I buy any fine art. Not that I will ever have enough money to buy any fine art.


----------



## Woodduck

Pollock. Yes. Get yourself a big room with pure white walls, throw a pure white shag carpet on the floor, buy a few pieces of chrome-and-black-leather furniture, stick a five-foot-tall lava lamp in the corner, and cover your walls with drip canvases (no frames please; you need to be able to see the tacks around the edges, as they are a statement that a painting is, indeed, a painting). Or, if you can't afford the originals,

http://www.spoonflower.com/tags/jackson pollock

Great art. The fabric of our lives.


----------



## Truckload

Crudblud said:


> Well, I guess as long as you're content to attack strawmen instead of actually engaging my points, that's fine. You keep on fighting the good fight.


I apologize for being flippant and defensive in response to you. As a composer (of sorts) myself I should have been more understanding towards you.

I am old, and I have been involved in performing, composing and arranging for live performance off and on all of my life. Everyone seeks the approval of others. In the arts the need for approval is perhaps even greater than with most folks. Or perhaps people who have great need for the approval of others gravitate toward the arts. Not sure which is more accurate. Ironically, when we put ourselves into the spotlight, by composing or performing, we are also putting ourselves in jeopardy of negative criticism.

If you want your music to be heard by others you have to be prepared for some to have a negative reaction. That is just part of the implied bargain you make when you step into the spotlight. Only you can decide for yourself if the positive rewards of composition are worth the pain of the negativity you will also receive.

This applies not just to you personally, but to the genre you have chosen. Many people despise country music, but if you love and want to write country music, go for it. Plenty of people despise all classical music, tonal and atonal. But if you are drawn to write classical music, tonal or atonal, you have to be true to yourself. Otherwise you will never know what you might have achieved.

Of course you could be like Ives and write solely for yourself, without taking the risk of stepping into the spotlight. And it is possible that despite our best efforts, our work will still fade into obscurity and prove to be nothing of lasting value. Of course that is true for the majority of folks, and composers.

Speaking to you from my heart, I believe that ultimately you have to be true to yourself. If you are wavering about what you should compose, I hope you will choose to write tonal music. I try as hard as I can to make a case for that because that is being true to who I am. But if you have firmly committed yourself to composing serial music, or minimalism or whatever, then stay true to yourself and write the music you are compelled to write.


----------



## MarkW

Truckload said:


> I apologize for being flippant and defensive in response to you. As a composer (of sorts) myself I should have been more understanding towards you.
> 
> I am old, and I have been involved in performing, composing and arranging for live performance off and on all of my life. Everyone seeks the approval of others. In the arts the need for approval is perhaps even greater than with most folks. Or perhaps people who have great need for the approval of others gravitate toward the arts. Not sure which is more accurate. Ironically, when we put ourselves into the spotlight, by composing or performing, we are also putting ourselves in jeopardy of negative criticism.
> 
> If you want your music to be heard by others you have to be prepared for some to have a negative reaction. That is just part of the implied bargain you make when you step into the spotlight. Only you can decide for yourself if the positive rewards of composition are worth the pain of the negativity you will also receive.
> 
> This applies not just to you personally, but to the genre you have chosen. Many people despise country music, but if you love and want to write country music, go for it. Plenty of people despise all classical music, tonal and atonal. But if you are drawn to write classical music, tonal or atonal, you have to be true to yourself. Otherwise you will never know what you might have achieved.
> 
> Of course you could be like Ives and write solely for yourself, without taking the risk of stepping into the spotlight. And it is possible that despite our best efforts, our work will still fade into obscurity and prove to be nothing of lasting value. Of course that is true for the majority of folks, and composers.
> 
> Speaking to you from my heart, I believe that ultimately you have to be true to yourself. If you are wavering about what you should compose, I hope you will choose to write tonal music. I try as hard as I can to make a case for that because that is being true to who I am. But if you have firmly committed yourself to composing serial music, or minimalism or whatever, then stay true to yourself and write the music you are compelled to write.


Nicely stated. You and I may disagree about art (as do Woodduck and I), but there's no harm in discussing that as long as we don't try to dictate to each other what we _should like. No harm, no foul.
_
cheers --


----------



## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> Serialism, which you have disingenuously linked to random music, did come out of late romanticism.
> 
> If late romanticism had not pushed boundaries of chromaticism, then Schoenberg would not have needed a method for controlling chromatic harmony.


There are many ways of controlling chromatic harmony - nearly as many as there are major composers using chromatic harmony. All of them grow out of romanticism in the trivial sense you are invoking. Serialism was inevitable as well, in the sense that some joker was bound eventually to come up with it. The idea that serialism was _the_ direction toward which chromatic harmony was developing is arbitrary, narrow-minded, and unimaginative.


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## MarkW

Just a quick note on Jackson Pollack's "skill": Does he have it? It depends on how you define it. If skill means good brushwork, we'll never know. If it means ability to well depict real objects, ditto. If it means having a good eye for color and design, that's a different story -- and people can disagree -- but in general the art world says yes.


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> There are many ways of controlling chromatic harmony - nearly as many as there are major composers using chromatic harmony. All of them grow out of romanticism in the trivial sense you are invoking. Serialism was inevitable as well, in the sense that some joker was bound eventually to come up with it. The idea that serialism was _the_ direction toward which chromatic harmony was developing is arbitrary, narrow-minded, and unimaginative.


Are you going to engage with ideas I've presented, or just create more straw men? Nothing you're arguing against is in my post.


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## ArtMusic

Art Rock said:


> Of course, everyone has their own taste. I would never say that anybody has to like Pollock (or Monet, or Rembrandt), or Schoenberg (or Brahms or Bach). But that's quite a difference from categorically dismissing any of them as bad art/music.


Yes, it is categorically different to dismissing. "Bad art" is often just an opinion which the art consumer has every right to express so if she wishes, however. Of course, we would also like to know why / what basis / reason etc.


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## manyene

'Bad' vs 'Good' Art is a debate governed essentially by one's tastes and values. So far as 'art' is concerned, I feel that the commodification and commercialisation of art are much more worrying trends.


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## millionrainbows

MarkW said:


> Just a quick note on Jackson Pollack's "skill": Does he have it? It depends on how you define it. If skill means good brushwork, we'll never know. If it means ability to well depict real objects, ditto. If it means having a good eye for color and design, that's a different story -- and people can disagree -- but in general the art world says yes.


Brushwork? Ha ha ha!

Looking at one isolated painting? Ha ha ha!

Missing all the subtleties? That's only typical.

Since Jackson Pollock seems to being used as the extreme example of "bad art" or "modern art," *there are several points you must realize,* although this is casting pearls before swine. In fact, I will not go to the trouble until prompted by a member of the opposition. BTW, I love Jackson Pollock's art.

Too bad they botched the movie.


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## ArtMusic

The Jackson Pollack experiment in the video perfectly shows the flawed modernism approach in that type of art. There is simply no way that one could have objectively recognized it is art without an  erroneous prior perception (in this case a lecture conditioning his students) that it was art. And the students fell for it.


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## arpeggio

Deleted by author.


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## Morimur

*Is it Art?*










_Sadamasa Motonaga, Work, 1963, oil and gravel on canvas_


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## SixFootScowl

Morimur said:


> _Sadamasa Motonaga, Work, 1963, oil and gravel on canvas_


It is interesting, but not something I want hanging in my living room. What is art really depends on what definition of art we use. The cop peeing on the floor shown in the video (in original post) is not art by any but the wildest definition that essentially destroys the whole idea of even defining art since is makes it so that anything is art, including the rear bumper on my 1997 escort after it was run into at about 30 mile per hour by an inattentive driver.


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## andrewsmolich1

The speaker in the video sounds like someone in 1830 talking about the Grosse Fuge. It's unfortunate that people have a tendency to dismiss what is outside of their familiarity as having little value.


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## LHB

Why is it the most inane and pointless threads always seem to draw the most attention here?


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## isorhythm

LHB said:


> Why is it the most inane and pointless threads always seem to draw the most attention here?


This is, incidentally, exactly how the internet is destroying journalism.

Would you, an intelligent reader, pay a subscription fee for a publication that puts out inane, pointless content? Of course not.

But would you _click on_ the content when you see it on facebook? Every time!


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## Guest

LHB said:


> Why is it the most inane and pointless threads always seem to draw the most attention here?


Dunno. Works though, doesn't it!


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## Le Peel

Maybe it's a Marxist conspiracy to destroy Western Civilization? _You never know._


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## norman bates

this video is interesting:



__ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=507166462630473


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## EdwardBast

I can offer one possible theory for why modern art is so bad. It is for the same reason that all art is so bad: The 90% rule, which states that 90% of everything is crap, that 90% of the people involved in any movement are hangers on, and that 90% of creative artists are imitators without much in the way of original vision. (The percentage can be raised or lowered depending on the depth of ones cynicism  ) In an era in which tradition is venerated and artists learn by copying masters or through an apprentice system, like Netherlandish painters of the Renaissance or Baroque composers, the hangers on and unoriginal artists are still likely to produce finely crafted work that will satisfy many eyes, ears and minds because they stay within broadly accepted aesthetic boundaries. In an era like the 20thc, when a high premium was placed on innovation, there was a great incentive for mediocrities to push the limits or, at least, to imitate others who were pushing the limits. Without the cover of tradition and shared aesthetic values, mediocre work, or work by those who chose to imitate fools, has nowhere to hide. Of necessity, they dared greatly and failed greatly. The net effect is that the overall percentage of great work is the same as in any other era, but because the challenges accepted are more daunting for artists, critics, and audiences alike, the embarrassing failures are much more obvious all around. 

Disclaimer: Just cooked up this speculation today and I'm not sure how seriously one should take it, if at all.


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## Woodduck

LHB said:


> Why is it the most inane and pointless threads always seem to draw the most attention here?


Because people keep posting them.

Because the inane and pointless is the only thing we all understand.

Because going off topic doesn't matter when no one knows what the topic is.

Because we are tired of looking for tonal centers in music that lacks keys and functional harmony.


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## andrewsmolich1

Seeing as 'good' and 'bad' when it comes to art are completely subjective, I don't think anyone can call any piece of art 'bad'. All you can say is that you don't like it. Bad implies there's nothing there to like, which is obviously not the case with modern art seeing as many do like it. 

You might be able to make the argument that modern art is generally less structured, less regimented, takes fewer years of training to produce, etc etc, but none of this talk about being bad. I can easily imagine someone to whom Schoenberg speaks to much more profoundly than Bach does. Probably many people for whom that is true on this forum.


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## Morimur

andrewsmolich1 said:


> Seeing as 'good' and 'bad' when it comes to art are completely subjective, I don't think anyone can call any piece of art 'bad'. All you can say is that you don't like it. Bad implies there's nothing there to like, which is obviously not the case with modern art seeing as many do like it.
> 
> You might be able to make the argument that modern art is generally less structured, less regimented, takes fewer years of training to produce, etc etc, but none of this talk about being bad. I can easily imagine someone to whom Schoenberg speaks to much more profoundly than Bach does. Probably many people for whom that is true on this forum.


It is precisely this undisciplined, free-for-all attitude that makes bad art possible. You could easily do a google search and see that there are indeed standards for good art.


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## Woodduck

EdwardBast said:


> I can offer one possible theory for why modern art is so bad. It is for the same reason that all art is so bad: The 90% rule, which states that 90% of everything is crap, that 90% of the people involved in any movement are hangers on, and that 90% of creative artists are imitators without much in the way of original vision. (The percentage can be raised or lowered depending on the depth of ones cynicism  ) In an era in which tradition is venerated and artists learn by copying masters or through an apprentice system, like Netherlandish painters of the Renaissance or Baroque composers, the hangers on and unoriginal artists are still likely to produce finely crafted work that will satisfy many eyes, ears and minds because they stay within broadly accepted aesthetic boundaries. In an era like the 20thc, when a high premium was placed on innovation, there was a great incentive for mediocrities to push the limits or, at least, to imitate others who were pushing the limits. *Without the cover of tradition and shared aesthetic values, mediocre work, or work by those who chose to imitate fools, has nowhere to hide. Of necessity, they dared greatly and failed greatly.* The net effect is that the overall percentage of great work is the same as in any other era, but because the challenges accepted are more daunting for artists, critics, and audiences alike, the embarrassing failures are much more obvious all around.
> 
> Disclaimer: Just cooked up this speculation today and I'm not sure how seriously one should take it, if at all.


The flaw I see in this is in the sentence I've put in bold. Without shared aesthetic values, _there is by definition no crap:_ no mediocrity, no failure. Anything which is mediocre by any standard of value whatever does indeed have a place to hide: it can hide behind the absence of any shared standards. That's the real reason why the modern era has produced so much bad art - not just inferior or mediocre art, which is always common, but offensive garbage which no one dares call by its proper name. One can make any silly or hideous thing, the more outrageous the better, call it art, have it displayed in a gallery, have it written up in pretentious art journals and popular news media, sell it to the ignorant and suggestible and prestige-hungry, and sleep soundly, knowing that anyone who claims you're a shallow, incompetent fraud is hopelessly out of touch with the advanced thinking of our times and need not be taken seriously.


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## mstar

Morimur said:


> _Sadamasa Motonaga, Work, 1963, oil and gravel on canvas_


Not quite a masterpiece in my opinion, but, yes, I do find it very intriguing. 
In fact, I rather like it...


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## Blancrocher

According to Artnet, the 100 "most collectible" artists:

https://news.artnet.com/market/top-100-most-collectible-living-artists-for-march-2015-271800

No argument intended--just posting for those interested.


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## Richannes Wrahms

LHB said:


> Why is it the most inane and pointless threads always seem to draw the most attention here?





Tapkaara said:


> It's because this forum thrives on negativity and bitchiness.


..................................


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## ArtMusic

Blancrocher said:


> According to Artnet, the 100 "most collectible" artists:
> 
> https://news.artnet.com/market/top-100-most-collectible-living-artists-for-march-2015-271800
> 
> No argument intended--just posting for those interested.


I would love to own a Rembrandt as much as a score handwritten by Mozart.


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## Fugue Meister

Richannes Wrahms said:


> ..................................


I don't understand how this particular thread is inane or pointless, after all message boarding in the first place is somewhat trivial... Even the dullest of threads can cause tangents of inspired dialogues between members, after all if all things posted were astoundingly thought provoking or thoughts everyone agreed with what would we have to complain about or sharpen our debating skills with?

Now back to the nonsense, I mean discourse.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Just watched that video in the OP. That wasn't meant to be comedy? That was serious?

I've stumbled upon this video several times over on various art forums. I really don't think he raises any original questions. Really, most of his criticisms are tired cliches.

Lets look at a few ideas raised:

Universal Standards of Artistic Quality? What the hell are those? The standards of Persian/Islamic painting or Japanese painting/graphics are far different from those of Post Renaissance Europe. We might even look at European painting within a "narrow" time frame... the Renaissance... and find that there were major differences and disagreements between the artists of Florence and Rome and those of Venice... or Germany and the Netherlands.

The idea of a Universal Standard posits the false notion of a single period/style that stands as a flawless paradigm against which all art must be measured. The more a work deviates from this standard, the "worse" it is.

The usual argument against those who question such a Universal Standard is to suggest that the alternative can only be an absence of any standards in which we can not even think to compare one work of art from another from a different period/culture. This isn't so. We can certainly compare, shall we say Rembrandt with Matisse. The comparison, however, cannot be based upon the false notion that one of these two represents the ideal or standard. It is as fair to judge Matisse based upon the standards of Rembrandt's art as it is to judge Rembrandt based upon the standards of Matisse' art.

*****************************************************************************

Pollock and the studio apron. Really?! And he wants us to believe that grad students couldn't tell that this close-up of his painting apron was not a Pollock? I'm no huge fan of Pollock, but I certainly can tell that his apron isn't even the work of a third-rate Abstract Expressionist.

For those who imagine that Pollock just randomly threw paint around, I will note that almost no subsequent artist was able to master his technique. Having seen any number of his finest paintings in person (Lavender Mist, Autumn Rhythm, Cathedral, No. 1, etc...) I would gladly argue that these paintings are quite elegant seen in real life. Impressionism was thought ridiculous seen in black and white reproductions. Pollock, Rothko, and a good many other artists MUST be seen/experienced first hand to truly be appreciated.

*****************************************************************************

Who judges Art? Florczak is not wrong when he suggests it is the "experts" who judge Art. "Experts" are essentially those who have put forth the most time and effort in the study and appreciation of art. They are not limited to critics, art historians, curators, and other academics, but also include dealers, buyers, patrons, other artists... and even the well-versed art lovers. When we are speaking of Contemporary Art... the art of the last 50 years or so... there is a lot of disagreement... even among the experts. There are critics who wax poetic about the profundity of Tracey Emin's Bed or Jeff Koons... and there are those who feel Koons and Emin are two of the biggest charlatans and hacks in the current Art World. Its easy to simply suggest those who don't share our point of view are "ignorant" and clueless.

Florczak, however, is something closer to a reactionary. Not only does he question the extremes of Contemporary Art (while ignoring the wealth of Contemporary Artists employing styles and techniques rooted in the tradition of "realism" or the "old masters"), but he puts forth the suggestion that the decline began with Impressionism. He uses Abstract Expressionism and Contemporary Conceptual shock art to prove his points regarding the decline of Art, because these are artistic languages that most with little or no artistic experience will find leave them perplexed... if not outraged. But I suspect he has no more admiration for Picasso, Matisse, Paul Klee, or any others among the unquestioned masters of Modernism whose work is often more than a century old.
*******************************************************************************

Florczak argues that a great majority of Modern/Contemporary Art is merely about shock value. He grossly overstates the facts. There are more than a few works of Modern/Contemporary Art that is quite beautiful and skillful:














































>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


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## StlukesguildOhio

Every one of these painters is among the highest paid, represented by some of the biggest galleries with works in Museums around the world.

**********************************************************************************

I agree with Florczak's suggestion that some artists place theory and concept above visual beauty. Other, more Contemporary critics have suggested as much, noting that this is often the result of the current emphasis in Post-Secondary art education which stresses concepts and theory above visual splendour... in part because this is easier to teach.

**********************************************************************************

Florczak would have us cringe at the horror and trite silliness and vulgarity of so much Contemporary Art versus the nobility of the old masters... but is this true?





































Gotta love how a good flouncy hat makes nudity all the more blatant... whether with Donatello's "pretty boy" David or Cranach's "Graces".

In another context I'd have no problem posting any number of old master paintings delving into the scatological, violent and shocking, and even pornographic. The reality is that almost any subject will inspire some artist somewhere and it isn't the nobility of the subject, but rather the aesthetic beauty of what the artist achieves with this subject that matters. This is no different from the fact that what Mozart achieves with wit and grace and humor is in no way inferior to the music of Beethoven that suggests tragedy and drama.

***********************************************************************************
I burst out laughing when Florczak brought up the Art Renewal Center. Their web site is great for high quality reproductions of many old masters, but the site is also a bastion of Conservative/Reactionary extremists (politically as well as aesthetically). They argue that William Bouguereau (undoubtedly a skillful academic master) was the greatest painter of all time... and until some time recently, they largely dismissed not only the whole of Modernism starting with Picasso and Matisse, but even would have us believe that Monet, Degas, Manet... and even Courbet were aesthetic frauds or degenerates.

No fair comparing a few carefully cherry-picked artists and works from history to be placed alongside a few random knee-jerk getting modern works. There's been miles of rubbish from the past that has, happily, been swept into the dustbin of history. We now choose to remember only what was best.

I will point out that there were certainly many mediocre artists among the "old masters"... but very few true hacks. This is due to the clear standards of the time and the fact that no one who failed to meet these standards would have been given the needed training or awarded the patronage needed to afford to paint or sculpt.

The average modern work in both art forms is, I feel, better than the average works of the past.

I would disagree. You may prefer the style of Modern/Contemporary Art but the Art of the "Old Masters" is as brilliant as anything today. Indeed, I would suggest that within the last 50-75 years there has been a great effort to come to terms with and digest the innovations of High Modernism and while there have been many new -isms not only are there few (if any) living artists of whom I am aware that rival the finer work of the "Old Masters", but I would be hard-pressed to put forth many names who come anywhere near rivaling the finer works of High Modernism (Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, Beckmann, Bonnard, Klee, etc...)


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## Crudblud

Truckload said:


> I apologize for being flippant and defensive in response to you. As a composer (of sorts) myself I should have been more understanding towards you.
> 
> I am old, and I have been involved in performing, composing and arranging for live performance off and on all of my life. Everyone seeks the approval of others. In the arts the need for approval is perhaps even greater than with most folks. Or perhaps people who have great need for the approval of others gravitate toward the arts. Not sure which is more accurate. Ironically, when we put ourselves into the spotlight, by composing or performing, we are also putting ourselves in jeopardy of negative criticism.
> 
> If you want your music to be heard by others you have to be prepared for some to have a negative reaction. That is just part of the implied bargain you make when you step into the spotlight. Only you can decide for yourself if the positive rewards of composition are worth the pain of the negativity you will also receive.
> 
> This applies not just to you personally, but to the genre you have chosen. Many people despise country music, but if you love and want to write country music, go for it. Plenty of people despise all classical music, tonal and atonal. But if you are drawn to write classical music, tonal or atonal, you have to be true to yourself. Otherwise you will never know what you might have achieved.
> 
> Of course you could be like Ives and write solely for yourself, without taking the risk of stepping into the spotlight. And it is possible that despite our best efforts, our work will still fade into obscurity and prove to be nothing of lasting value. Of course that is true for the majority of folks, and composers.
> 
> Speaking to you from my heart, I believe that ultimately you have to be true to yourself. If you are wavering about what you should compose, I hope you will choose to write tonal music. I try as hard as I can to make a case for that because that is being true to who I am. But if you have firmly committed yourself to composing serial music, or minimalism or whatever, then stay true to yourself and write the music you are compelled to write.


Apology accepted. And thank you for this, we go further in a shorter amount of time if we each look at what the other has said and prepare considered responses rather than lashing out at insignificant details of phrasing. I believe we've all read enough of the current discussion of The Emperor's New Clothes to realise that there is a mutual distaste among us for absolute literality of interpretation.

It is not, nor has it ever been negative criticism that bothers me. I am perfectly happy for the listener to have whatever opinion of the music that they will, by all means they should say what they think, if they find it unpleasant or messy that is no source of offence for me ─ I am of course pleased when others enjoy my work, but I will not be personally offended if they don't. When someone tells me that I am lazy, a charlatan, a purveyor of uncarved rocks to rich idiots, I feel that the statement leaves the realm of opinion and enters into the realm of fact, the gap between the two I note as having been the subject of considerable discussion already. In the case we are discussing, the opinion: "modern composers have no standards" claims to be a fact, to occupy one pole of the axis of truth, yet it presumes to know too much, particularly to know on a deep level the work and working processes, the philosophy of music and the aesthetic values of thousands of individuals, all of this having been determined by the person making the claim on the one-dimensional basis that they simply do not find the music appealing. It is baselessness masquerading as self-evident truth, and statements of that kind should not, though all too often do hold weight in the many discussions we have concerning the artistic value of modern and contemporary music. It is pettifoggery.

My own music certainly could not be called tonal, but it is not clad in dogma either. There is no combination of notes, such as a major triad, that I struggle to avoid, indeed I employ triads frequently because I like the way they sound, I have a fondness for lyrical melodies, so I have employed those too in several of my pieces, but I also find the sound of twelve distinct pitches sounding at once to be pleasant, the sound of a 12-tone row played with each pitch sounded in a different register and by a different instrument from the last to be exhilarating. The distinction between tonal and atonal has no place in my music, for elements of both sit side by side, and all that matters is that they work together to my ear. I've left the dichotomy behind, my interests range from Luzzaschi madrigals and Froberger partitas to Webern string quartets and the electronic music of Varèse, Stockhausen et al., to say nothing of the exciting new music of our times, and I would be a far poorer composer if my ear had not roamed so widely and absorbed as much musical information as it could. I am only interested in creating music that fulfils two specific criteria, the first being that it must sound good to me, the second being that it must be something I have not heard before ─ all other concerns, be they of genre, form, posterity, whatever, are immaterial in my view.


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## Guest

StlukesguildOhio said:


> The reality is that almost any subject will inspire some artist somewhere and it isn't the nobility of the subject, but rather the aesthetic beauty of what the artist achieves with this subject that matters.


It is neither "the nobility of the subject" nor "the aesthetic beauty" *alone *that matters, although if people wish that art were solely about aesthetic beauty (in the narrow sense that I think that phrase implies) they are entitled to campaign for it as much as the people who want their art to be a visual representation of a concrete things (and not abstracts ideas or emotions) may campaign for their version of 'art'.

What was most objectionable about Florczak was first, that he made absurd generalisations about art and artists of both persuasions; second that while he wished us to delight in the skill, artistry, aesthetics and objective standards of painting, he himself used the crudities of statistics and argument, failing to meet any decent standard of argument that might compare to the works of the masters he worships; third, that he claims a spurious authority as if "Professor" from "Prager University" are automatic bywords for the truth.


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## Woodduck

"The nobility of the subject" has mattered to a great many artists, taking "nobility" in a broad sense of "embodying high or profound moral, philosophical, or spiritual values and ideas." Art (including music) may not _have_ to exhibit such nobility in order to achieve distinction or interest (at least to someone), but the truth is that much of what mankind has deemed its greatest art has been inspired by, or in some manner attempts to embody or express, such values and ideas. And to the extent that beauty itself is to be considered one such value, it can be said that the universal human pursuit of aesthetic beauty, which we find in all cultures and all ages, shows that not only the greatest art, but most of humanity's art, has concerned itself with something felt as being noble.

The "liberation" of art from the task of expressing, in aesthetic form, wider and higher values of life, in favor of being a mere subjective statement of an artist's personal fancies, feelings, or preoccupations, is predominantly a modern, Western development for which I can think of no equivalent in the history of the world's cultures.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> "The nobility of the subject" has mattered to a great many artists, taking "nobility" in a broad sense of "embodying high or profound moral, philosophical, or spiritual values and ideas." Art (including music) may not _have_ to exhibit such nobility in order to achieve distinction or interest (at least to someone), but the truth is that much of what mankind has deemed its greatest art has been inspired by, or in some manner attempts to embody or express, such values and ideas. And to the extent that beauty itself is to be considered one such value, it can be said that the universal human pursuit of aesthetic beauty, which we find in all cultures and all ages, shows that not only the greatest art, but most of humanity's art, has concerned itself with something felt as being noble.
> 
> The "liberation" of art from the task of expressing, in aesthetic form, wider and higher values of life, in favor of being a mere subjective statement of an artist's personal fancies, feelings, or preoccupations, is predominantly a modern, Western development for which I can think of no equivalent in the history of the world's cultures.


Please note my edit to my post #207. BTW, whose definition of "art" are we working to? Mine would not make use of terms such as 'noble/nobility', though I recognise that it might be a common term for others who wish their art to be noble contemplation of noble subjects.


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## science

Woodduck said:


> The flaw I see in this is in the sentence I've put in bold. Without shared aesthetic values, _there is by definition no crap:_ no mediocrity, no failure. Anything which is mediocre by any standard of value whatever does indeed have a place to hide: it can hide behind the absence of any shared standards.


So far, so good.



Woodduck said:


> That's the real reason why the modern era has produced so much bad art - not just inferior or mediocre art, which is always common, but offensive garbage which no one dares call by its proper name.


It looks like the conclusion has lost touch with the premise. Given the premise, I'd say a more objective explanation is that you do not share the standards or values with which that art is produced and enjoyed.

BTW, why exaggerate so sillily? Everyone "dares" call modernist art all the bad words you can think of. For example:



Woodduck said:


> One can make any silly or hideous thing, the more outrageous the better, call it art, have it displayed in a gallery, have it written up in pretentious art journals and popular news media, sell it to the ignorant and suggestible and prestige-hungry, and sleep soundly, knowing that anyone who claims you're a shallow, incompetent fraud is hopelessly out of touch with the advanced thinking of our times and need not be taken seriously.


Why so defensive? Why not relax and just say you don't share the values of those artists? Why all the anger when there's so obviously a less infuriating way too look at it?

I suspect it's because modernism succeeded at overthrowing an old canon of values, which were associated with particular social values, which were also overthrown, and you wish you could enforce those old social values again.

Well, at least you can enjoy a little schadenfreude: the modernists have lost too. No one cares anymore.

This little pro- and anti-modern debate that rages here at talkclassical is almost totally irrelevant in today's world, has almost no influence on the creation of anything you're going to hear at a concert or see in a gallery. This debate effectively ended about fifty years ago, when almost every creative person with access to so much as a public library simply stopped caring because they finally realized that no one expected anyone else to look up to their betters because no one believed in betters anymore.

Its persistence here is really very much like what goes on in theology discussion groups where people pit Calvin against Aquinas. I guess it's fun, but it's really too bad that people get worked up over it because the world has moved on.

Just don't like the art you don't like. No one who's worth a moment's consideration claims you're anything like a shallow, incompetent fraud over your tastes in art. The people who do think something like that - whether they are on your side or on the other side - are "hopelessly out of touch with the advanced thinking of our times and need not be taken seriously."

I mean really. I like Jackson Pollock but not Andy Warhol, John Cage but not Vaughan Williams. So what? Really! Who cares? No one who matters. No one who judges me for that kind of thing matters. Romanticism is dead, modernism is dead, this debate is dead.

Everyone outside of this archaic theological debate group is just doing what we want to do, enjoying what we enjoy.

If I create some kind of art, do you really think I'm going to care what Aquinas or Calvin would've thought about it, or where it stands in the dogmas of you or your enemies here?

Of course not. I'll judge it based on whether it affects my audience and me the way I'd hoped it would, as art used to be judged before all this ideological nonsense was attached to it. And I'll sleep soundly, knowing that both sides of this debate are "hopelessly out of touch with the advanced thinking of our times and need not be taken seriously."


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## SeptimalTritone

[nuked to oblivion]


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## joen_cph

Overall, there´s too much generalization about the extremely diversified concept of "Modern Art" going on here. It´s not a simple singularity, to say the least.

But some people here may not know the "*Museum of Bad Art*" in Boston, which I enjoyed discovering and which has an entertaining website and newsletters too:

http://museumofbadart.org/

The presented "artists" there seem to be amateurs that are not generally known, however.

(Sorry, am a little too lazy to check if it´s already been mentioned ...).


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## ArtMusic

StlukesguildOhio said:


> ... There are more than a few works of Modern/Contemporary Art that is quite beautiful and skillful:
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> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


Indeed these are beautiful modern art that you have shared with us. Why thank you sir. 

I would be more than happy to support these artists. Their works are uplifting and aspires to inherent beauty.


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## Woodduck

science said:


> Why so defensive? Why not relax and just say you don't share the values of those artists? Why all the anger when there's so obviously a less infuriating way too look at it?
> 
> I suspect it's because modernism succeeded at overthrowing an old canon of values, which were associated with particular social values, which were also overthrown, and you wish you could enforce those old social values again.
> 
> Well, at least you can enjoy a little schadenfreude: the modernists have lost too. No one cares anymore.
> 
> This little pro- and anti-modern debate that rages here at talkclassical is almost totally irrelevant in today's world, has almost no influence on the creation of anything you're going to hear at a concert or see in a gallery. This debate effectively ended about fifty years ago, when almost every creative person with access to so much as a public library simply stopped caring because they finally realized that no one expected anyone else to look up to their betters because no one believed in betters anymore.
> 
> Its persistence here is really very much like what goes on in theology discussion groups where people pit Calvin against Aquinas. I guess it's fun, but it's really too bad that people get worked up over it because the world has moved on.
> 
> Just don't like the art you don't like. No one who's worth a moment's consideration claims you're anything like a shallow, incompetent fraud over your tastes in art. The people who do think something like that - whether they are on your side or on the other side - are "hopelessly out of touch with the advanced thinking of our times and need not be taken seriously."
> 
> I mean really. I like Jackson Pollock but not Andy Warhol, John Cage but not Vaughan Williams. So what? Really! Who cares? No one who matters. No one who judges me for that kind of thing matters. Romanticism is dead, modernism is dead, this debate is dead.
> 
> Everyone outside of this archaic theological debate group is just doing what we want to do, enjoying what we enjoy.
> 
> If I create some kind of art, do you really think I'm going to care what Aquinas or Calvin would've thought about it, or where it stands in the dogmas of you or your enemies here?
> 
> Of course not. I'll judge it based on whether it affects my audience and me the way I'd hoped it would, as art used to be judged before all this ideological nonsense was attached to it. And I'll sleep soundly, knowing that both sides of this debate are "hopelessly out of touch with the advanced thinking of our times and need not be taken seriously."


The terse answer to you is that not everyone, in your words, "simply stopped caring because they finally realized that no one expected anyone else to look up to their betters because no one believed in betters anymore."

Some people in the modern world do actually retain a system of values which are not arbitrary social constructs (or whatever the latest anthropological jargon might be), do actually recognize certain men and cultures as having values superior to others, do think that a culture's values are revealed in its art, and do think that art, like all human endeavors, both can and should serve values which suggest the nobility of which we are capable.

I don't share your unwillingness or failure to make distinctions between superior values and frivolous or depraved ones, or to see mankind's artistic productions as a most important expression of these. I'm not "defensive," and there's no need to encourage me to relax. That's cheap psychologizing, and condescending as well. I simply don't recognize the defense of values as a "debate which is dead," and I don't give a fig whether or not my views seem relevant to your sense of things.

Speaking of dead things: isn't the sort of hedonistic, value-neutral relativism you're urging upon me - "it's all good, everybody's good, we're all just having fun, just relax and shut up and let the world **** itself without comment" - a little, well, tired by now? I think a lot of people are noticing that that philosophy hasn't made life more livable, and are finding that perennial ideas of good and bad are actually still applicable to human life. Maybe you still think they are too, but just don't see art as a very important part of life. Maybe you think art is sort of like - oh, I don't know, a bubble bath, or an ice cream cone, or a visit to a brothel. I like chocolate, you like vanilla. I like Praxiteles' Venus, you like sculptures of police women squatting over puddles of urine, or big hunks of rock costing $10 million.

I have always looked up to my betters - those people you don't believe in - and I look up to their art as well. If you haven't had, or don't want, that experience, that's your business, and I have no intention of telling you, or anyone, what to think or do. Your surmise that I wish I could "enforce" anything on anyone says more about your way of thinking than about mine. Do by all means "enjoy what you enjoy." Swim in sewers, if it strikes your fancy. It's a free country. I am no collectivist; I live and let live. But since this is a forum, I am free to say what I think about the sewage in which the "official" guardians of culture have been asking us to swim for the entire sixty-six years I've been on the planet.


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## Piwikiwi




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## Strange Magic

One of the reasons that there is such a vast universe of non-cinematic pictorial art, or "art", is that it can be dealt with--dismissed ( often thankfully)--so quickly and easily, unlike music, upon which one must expend actual and often large blocks of time. And we are in a probably long-term period of cultural stasis typified by a constant flux of trends and movements, each without attracting any lasting or large following. But those arts--music, literature, pictorial art--that wander too far and for too long from the bell curve of the grosser measures of probably inherent human "taste"--a fondness for melody, for intelligibility, for recognizable imagery--risk being transient, ephemeral footnotes in the long-term annals of human culture.


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## Blancrocher

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Gotta love how a good flouncy hat makes nudity all the more blatant... whether with Donatello's "pretty boy" David or Cranach's "Graces".


Anyone looking for a breezy, amusing read on this subject might like Kenneth Clark's "The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form." It's based on a series of lectures, and you can tell the places where he must have gotten a big laugh.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> I have always looked up to my betters - those people you don't believe in - and I look up to their art as well. If you haven't had, or don't want, that experience, that's your business, and I have no intention of telling you, or anyone, what to think or do. Your surmise that I wish I could "enforce" anything on anyone says more about your way of thinking than about mine. Do by all means "enjoy what you enjoy." Swim in sewers, if it strikes your fancy. It's a free country. I am no collectivist; I live and let live. But since this is a forum, I am free to say what I think about the sewage in which the "official" guardians of culture have been asking us to swim for the entire sixty-six years I've been on the planet.


This partly returns us to the thread about trusting authority, which a number of us, notably yourself, agreed we might do provisionally, pending further enquiries.

IMO, when we're dealing with adults (not children who need to be able to accept authority before questioning it) authority must establish its credibility before expecting that it will be acceded to. The age of unthinking, uncritical deference is long since past, and good riddance. However, I doubt anyone here advocates unthinking, uncritical hedonism or the brand of moral relativism which its detractors tend to claim means "anything goes". The same goes for "betters".

In the thread about Boulez, members offered insights into his worth (or lack of it) from articles by alleged "betters", which prompted some legitimate challenges (though not the dismissive ones about sources being either left or right wing rags!) It also showed that the betters here were prepared to go away and find out more - listening to the music, reading around the subject - instead of wallowing in their nescience.


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## Truckload

MacLeod said:


> However, I doubt anyone here advocates unthinking, uncritical hedonism or the brand of moral relativism which its detractors tend to claim means "anything goes".


Actually that is exactly what some here advocate.


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## Guest

Truckload said:


> Actually that is exactly what some here advocate.


Well I guess I overlooked those who've been advocating it...please point them out so I can remonstrate with them!


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## StlukesguildOhio

"The nobility of the subject" has mattered to a great many artists, taking "nobility" in a broad sense of "embodying high or profound moral, philosophical, or spiritual values and ideas."

The subject matter or rather content (which is not the same thing) of a work of art is of course of the greatest importance to the artist, and something that the audience considers when contemplating the work... but it does not assure aesthetic merit. For example, J.L. David...










... presents us with images of high noble intent... allegories for the then current political turmoil unfolding in France.

Francois Boucher, on the other hand, painted for the pleasure of a decadent aristocracy...



Personally, I prefer the decadence of Boucher to the piety of David. In making a critical value judgment (not merely stating a personal preference) one needs to look at how well the artist has employed the artistic language as a means to an end. If a profound and tragic subject was inherently more likely to result in a great work of art, artists would quickly catch on and paint only that which would assure them of the highest degree of respect. Unfortunately, not many can divorce the subject from the Art when making value judgments. How many comedies have been awarded the Academy Award for Best Picture vs Tragedies?

Art (including music) may not have to exhibit such nobility in order to achieve distinction or interest (at least to someone), but the truth is that much of what mankind has deemed its greatest art has been inspired by, or in some manner attempts to embody or express, such values and ideas. And to the extent that beauty itself is to be considered one such value, it can be said that the universal human pursuit of aesthetic beauty, which we find in all cultures and all ages, shows that not only the greatest art, but most of humanity's art, has concerned itself with something felt as being noble.

Yes... a great deal of art has focused upon noble themes. But then again... how many nudes are there in the history of art? How many landscapes? How many still-life? How many portraits? Some of these, undoubtedly, address "larger" issues... but in a good many instances these are first and foremost excuses to justify the artist's real interest... and a good many artist's first interest is upon the visual.

I've long agreed with William Gass' comment here on art:

"I think it is one of the artist's obligations to create as perfectly as he or she can, not regardless of all other consequences, but in full awareness, nevertheless, that in pursuing other values -- in championing Israel or fighting for the rights of women, or defending the faith, or exposing capitalism, supporting your sexual preferences, or speaking for your race -- you may simply be putting on a saving scientific, religious, political mask to disguise your failure as an artist. Neither the world's truth nor a god's goodness will win you beauty's prize."

A lot of artists today have swung toward the opposite view... focusing upon themes that they hope will ennoble their art: racism, gender issues, Israel, sexism, etc... but failing to give these a form that is aesthetically "beautiful" or engaging, these will be rapidly forgotten.

Admiration for the human body, the landscape, the play of light across a table-top, the human face, fashion, organizations of abstract patterns, lust, hate, anger, humor & comedy, satire, etc... all are of no less value as themes for art than the most noble themes.

I would point out that in many instances the content and the subject are quite different... or rather there is often a content quite divorced from the immediate subject. Michelangelo's Sistine paintings address huge themes of God, Creation, and Final Judgment... but they are also purely expressions of the artist's admiration for the visual beauty of the human body and his homosexual longings.

We might also need to consider that in most instances... prior to Romanticism... perhaps even Impressionism... artists had limited choices as to what they were to paint or sculpt. Aristocratic and Church patrons... and often historians, theologians, and other academics in their employment... directed artists as to what subjects they were to paint.

Since then... well few would argue that Monet's Waterlilies or Degas Ballerinas are not among some of the greatest works of Western art... yet where is the nobility or profundity of those works? If it exists, it is more in what we bring to the work. Degas, when confronted with a critic seeking the profound meaning behind his obsession with the paintings of ballerinas replied that he merely liked painting beautiful girls in motion wearing pretty colorful costumes.

The "liberation" of art from the task of expressing, in aesthetic form, wider and higher values of life, in favor of being a mere subjective statement of an artist's personal fancies, feelings, or preoccupations, is predominantly a modern, Western development for which I can think of no equivalent in the history of the world's cultures.

This may be so... but is it inherently something negative? Since at least the Impressionists artists have been afforded far greater freedom to explore the broad array of subjects and themes of human existence. Some have certainly abused these freedoms and sought to wallow in silliness or scatological shock... but perhaps that is just the price to pay for such freedom.


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## SixFootScowl

Woodduck said:


> ...
> Some people in the modern world do actually retain a system of values which are not arbitrary social constructs (or whatever the latest anthropological jargon might be), do actually recognize certain men and cultures as having values superior to others, do think that a culture's values are revealed in its art, and do think that art, like all human endeavors, both can and should serve values which suggest the nobility of which we are capable.


Exactly. Junk art is a reflection of the junk values in society. Look at all the morally depraved crap on television and the junk music (much with morally depraved messages) that the masses seem attracted to like flies. Garbage in, garbage out.


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## Truckload

MacLeod said:


> Well I guess I overlooked those who've been advocating it...please point them out so I can remonstrate with them!


Perhaps I am missing something big here. I just looked up relativism again to be sure I wasn't sailing off a cliff into the void.

Relativism is the doctrine or philosophy that there is no absolute truth. All points of view are equally valid. All art is simply a matter of opinion. Perhaps you meant your statement in a different way.

I thought almost everyone on this forum thought there should not be an absolute standard of truth regarding what is good art or good music and that everything is only a matter of personal taste or personal opinion.


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## Guest

Truckload said:


> Perhaps I am missing something big here. I just looked up relativism again to be sure I wasn't sailing off a cliff into the void.
> 
> Relativism is the doctrine or philosophy that there is no absolute truth. All points of view are equally valid. All art is simply a matter of opinion. Perhaps you meant your statement in a different way.
> 
> I thought almost everyone on this forum thought there should not be an absolute standard of truth regarding what is good art or good music and that everything is only a matter of personal taste or personal opinion.


So you can't actually point to anyone advocating "anything goes"?

Your definition of relativism is insufficient. The "relativism" that I would advocate derives from the idea that there is no absolute authority to set absolute standards. But that does not entail allowing that anything goes.

Try this

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/


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## Truckload

StlukesguildOhio said:


> The "liberation" of art from the task of expressing, in aesthetic form, wider and higher values of life, in favor of being a mere subjective statement of an artist's personal fancies, feelings, or preoccupations, is predominantly a modern, Western development for which I can think of no equivalent in the history of the world's cultures.
> 
> This may be so... but is it inherently something negative? Since at least the Impressionists artists have been afforded far greater freedom to explore the broad array of subjects and themes of human existence. Some have certainly abused these freedoms and sought to wallow in silliness or scatological shock... but perhaps that is just the price to pay for such freedom.


I am really enjoying the paintings you have posted. I also enjoy your beautifully adept writing. While I do not advocate taking away anyone's freedom, I do believe that there are negative societal consequences to decadence in any field of human endeavor.

There is also the issue of survival of a culture. Can a culture survive without shared values? Perhaps Western Civilization does not deserve to survive. But it seems to me that while Western Civilization has been far from perfect, our culture has done far more net good than harm to humanity.


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## Truckload

MacLeod said:


> So you can't actually point to anyone advocating "anything goes"?
> 
> Your definition of relativism is insufficient. The "relativism" that I would advocate derives from the idea that there is no absolute authority to set absolute standards. But that does not entail allowing that anything goes.
> 
> Try this
> 
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/


Listing the screen names of all of the posters who continually claim that art is a matter of opinion and there are no absolute standards would be pointless. Just look above in this thread.

I am not going to follow your link. Please make your own points.

If your statement does not mean that anything goes, then it must mean anything DOES NOT go. Some things are out of bounds. There are limits, i.e. standards. So if you are advocating absolute standards that are not a matter of personal opinion, can we move towards agreement as to what those standards are or are not?


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## Guest

Truckload said:


> Listing the screen names of all of the posters who continually claim that art is a matter of opinion and there are no absolute standards would be pointless. Just look above in this thread.
> 
> I am not going to follow your link. Please make your own points.
> 
> If your statement does not mean that anything goes, then it must mean anything DOES NOT go. Some things are out of bounds. There are limits, i.e. standards. So if you are advocating absolute standards that are not a matter of personal opinion, can we move towards agreement as to what those standards are or are not?


If you choose not to back up your own assertions about what people post here, or to develop your understanding of what it is you criticise, then there seems little point in pursuing the discussion.


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## Truckload

MacLeod said:


> If you choose not to back up your own assertions about what people post here, or to develop your understanding of what it is you criticise, then there seems little point in pursuing the discussion.


So are you seriously claiming that posters do not continuously claim that what is good music is NOT a matter of opinion only? Is this a reasoned point of view or are you being swept along by ego and emotion and not really thinking about this?


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## arpeggio

ArtMusic said:


> I would love to own a Rembrandt as much as a score handwritten by Mozart.


So would I but that does not mean that I would burn a Pollack if I inherited one from my long lost rich uncle.


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## Petwhac

Truckload said:


> There is also the issue of survival of a culture. Can a culture survive without shared values? Perhaps Western Civilization does not deserve to survive. But it seems to me that while Western Civilization has been far from perfect, our culture has done far more net good than harm to humanity.


Values change. Cultures change. Civilisations come and go.
I'm sure a Chinese or Arabic or African person might consider their own culture(s) to have contributed net good too. No?


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## Blancrocher

arpeggio said:


> So would I but that does not mean that I would burn a Pollack if I inherited one from my long lost rich uncle.


I'd be too nervous to own either of them--I'd constantly fear I might accidentally squirt mustard on it or something (though having seen the video in the op I note that many would not notice in the case of the Pollock).


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## Truckload

Petwhac said:


> Values change. Cultures change. Civilisations come and go.
> I'm sure a Chinese or Arabic or African person might consider their own culture(s) to have contributed net good too. No?


Once again we are confronted with relativism. I am sure those folks in those cultures are proud of their culture. One can not make a positive claim for Western Civilization without immediately being tasked to assert that all cultures are equally valid.


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## Guest

science said:


> no one expected anyone else to look up to their betters because no one believed in betters anymore.
> 
> Its persistence here is really very much like what goes on in theology discussion groups where people pit Calvin against Aquinas. I guess it's fun, but it's really too bad that people get worked up over it because the world has moved on.





Woodduck said:


> Some people in the modern world do actually retain a system of values which are not arbitrary social constructs (or whatever the latest anthropological jargon might be), do actually recognize certain men and cultures as having values superior to others, do think that a culture's values are revealed in its art, and do think that art, like all human endeavors, both can and should serve values which suggest the nobility of which we are capable.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Do by all means "enjoy what you enjoy." Swim in sewers, if it strikes your fancy. It's a free country. I am no collectivist; I live and let live. But since this is a forum, I am free to say what I think about the sewage in which the "official" guardians of culture have been asking us to swim for the entire sixty-six years I've been on the planet.





Florestan said:


> Exactly. Junk art is a reflection of the junk values in society.


Three examples of how the conversation is this thread slips easily from standards in art to the wider values of society - including, presumably, moral values. My comments were more directed at the defence of the idea that relativism, including moral relativism, does not necessarily entail "anything goes" in all endeavours. Taste in art and music is another matter. Even Woodduck () advocates live and let live in that.

Whilst there are people here who have different tastes, that does not necessarily mean that they have no standards. It's just that their standards may derive from a different context than that established by, in music, CPT for example or, in art, the Renaissance Masters.


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## Guest

Truckload said:


> One can not make a positive claim for Western Civilization without immediately being tasked to assert that all cultures are equally valid.


I'm not sure I understand this. Is someone claiming that all cultures are equally valid?


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## isorhythm

I have no idea what it means for a culture to be "valid."

I'm afraid it might mean that the valid cultures get to drop bombs on the invalid ones.


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## Truckload

MacLeod said:


> I'm not sure I understand this. Is someone claiming that all cultures are equally valid?


Oh good, you asset that not all cultures are equally valid. Which culture or cultures would you assert are the most valid?


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## Petwhac

Truckload said:


> Once again we are confronted with relativism. I am sure those folks in those cultures are proud of their culture. One can not make a positive claim for Western Civilization without immediately being tasked to assert that all cultures are equally valid.


Actually I'm far from a relativist when it comes to many topics, especially art and music. However, I think you have chosen the wrong target when you talk of cultures or civilisations because there has been so much cross fertilisation throughout human history.


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## Guest

isorhythm said:


> I have no idea what it means for a culture to be "valid."
> 
> I'm afraid it might mean that the valid cultures get to drop bombs on the invalid ones.


I think I get his gist - though I'm sure Truckload can explain for himself. However, the notion of a "culture" is itself fraught with difficulty, since it seems to depend on a definition that each of us belongs to a recognisably discrete and distinct culture with an attached set of values and standards. That, in essence, we all think and behave in the same way within our culture. This is, of course, nonsense, but it suits the purists and absolutists to think that way, as it relieves them of the obligation to deal with the grey in life.


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## Guest

Truckload said:


> Oh good, you asset that not all cultures are equally valid. Which culture or cultures would you assert are the most valid?


You are the one setting out one assertion after another, yet offer no exemplification or amplification. Why should I answer your questions when you choose not to answer mine?

As for 'valid' cultures, see my post #234.


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## Truckload

isorhythm said:


> I have no idea what it means for a culture to be "valid."
> 
> I'm afraid it might mean that the valid cultures get to drop bombs on the invalid ones.


Not at all. I think some might mean that the valid cultures strap bombs to women and send them into crowds to murder innocent people.


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## Guest

Truckload said:


> Not at all. I think some might mean that the valid cultures strap bombs to women and send them into crowds of murder innocent people.


Which "culture" does this?


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## isorhythm

political digression, deleted


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## isorhythm

Back to art - I wonder if I'm not more of an absolutist than those of you arguing for "shared values."

It seems to me that "shared values" could be anything - like the rules of chess. They can, and do, vary across times and places.

Though I would find it very hard to articulate, I believe great art achieves something more universal.


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## Guest

Somehow, this thread (Why Is Modern Art So Bad?) seems to create in my mind uncomfortable resonances with similar specious arguments aired by unsavory types in the 1930s (more precisely in Munich in 1937).


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## Truckload

MacLeod said:


> You are the one setting out one assertion after another, yet offer no exemplification or amplification. Why should I answer your questions when you choose not to answer mine?
> 
> As for 'valid' cultures, see my post #234.


Then do not answer the question. It was rhetorical. Also, I had some degree of hope that you actually were advocating universal standards, but that was obviously not the case. Your later explanation of your position makes it clear that you do not advocate universal or cultural or genre specific standards.


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## Blancrocher

TalkingHead said:


> Somehow, this thread (Why Is Modern Art So Bad?) seems to create in my mind uncomfortable resonances with similar specious arguments aired by unsavory types in the 1930s (more precisely in Munich in 1937).


Don't worry, TH--we're talking about "culture," not "Kultur."


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## Guest

Blancrocher said:


> Don't worry, TH--we're talking about "culture," not "Kultur."


Fear not, I have just placed an order on Amazon.ukraine for a Luger.


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## Guest

Truckload said:


> you do not advocate universal or cultural or genre specific standards.


I couldn't tell you if I do or don't...I don't know what you mean by this.


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## Blancrocher

Fwiw, with many (though far from all) of my favorite artworks (or musical compositions), it's not at all easy to make inferences about the artist's cultural background. When I was doing google-image searches for unfamiliar names on the list of 100 best-selling artists I posted earlier, for example, I was noticing particular painters who were drawing conspicuously on particular cultural histories (from China, say), but those same artists sometimes had works that could just as easily have come from anywhere else. That said, even in more distinctive and culturally specific art it was sometimes easy for me to discern general standards of craft.

But this is all general: despite the tenor of the argument so far, it's hard for me to believe that anyone who goes to museums with any regularity can never find _any_ contemporary art that they like. It would probably be better for morale if we didn't allow a few notorious or controversial cases to stand for everything that's out there.


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## Truckload

TalkingHead said:


> Somehow, this thread (Why Is Modern Art So Bad?) seems to create in my mind uncomfortable resonances with similar specious arguments aired by unsavory types in the 1930s (more precisely in Munich in 1937).


Or Moscow, also in 1937. Or Bejing during the "cultural revolution"?

The difference is a question of freedom. I advocate higher standards, but do not advocate forcing anyone to agree. Let everyone continue to listen to rap or country or 1940's swing or whatever they want. And I will continue to plead for each individual to make a decision for higher values.


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## Guest

^ I'm with Blanc. I was at the Venice Biennale last summer (too fargin' hot to care about aesthetic differences of opinion given the heatwave) but I do remember coming away with the thought that the world of the plastic arts is alive and kicking.


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## isorhythm

Truckload said:


> I advocate higher standards, but do not advocate forcing anyone to agree.


You are very generous.


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## Truckload

isorhythm said:


> You are very generous.


How clever of you to notice.


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## Truckload

Petwhac said:


> Actually I'm far from a relativist when it comes to many topics, especially art and music. However, I think you have chosen the wrong target when you talk of cultures or civilisations because there has been so much cross fertilisation throughout human history.


Yes there has been a lot of cross fertilization. For example, some of the people in India valued very highly the influence on their culture of the British empire. Some people in India were very upset by the influence of the British empire on the language, the music, the literature, in short the culture of India. I believe that music is just one of the defining elements of a culture, but that does not make music an invalid expression of that culture. A culture can certainly adopt changing standards in music and still survive, for example Japan. However, there is a limit to how much change any culture can endure and still survive. This may or may not be a good thing depending on how critically you might regard that culture.


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## Guest

Truckload said:


> Yes there has been a lot of cross fertilization. For example, some of the people in India valued very highly the influence on their culture of the British empire. Some people in India were very upset by the influence of the British empire on the language, the music, the literature, in short the culture of India. I believe that music is just one of the defining elements of a culture, but that does not make music an invalid expression of that culture. A culture can certainly adopt changing standards in music and still survive, for example Japan. *However, there is a limit to how much change any culture can endure and still survive. This may or may not be a good thing depending on how critically you might regard that culture.*


The part I have highlighted in bold must be one of the "facts" you mentioned earlier in this thread. I am curious to know how you measure the delineations of the impact on any given culture that such supposed changes can have. You have given the example of the impact of the British empire on the indigenous Indian sub-continent's culture. What exactly has changed in Indian culture? What, according to your view, is the tipping point when one culture (that has existed for over 4000 years) ceases to survive?


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## Mahlerian

Truckload said:


> Yes there has been a lot of cross fertilization. For example, some of the people in India valued very highly the influence on their culture of the British empire. Some people in India were very upset by the influence of the British empire on the language, the music, the literature, in short the culture of India. I believe that music is just one of the defining elements of a culture, but that does not make music an invalid expression of that culture. A culture can certainly adopt changing standards in music and still survive, for example Japan. However, there is a limit to how much change any culture can endure and still survive. This may or may not be a good thing depending on how critically you might regard that culture.


Japan has actually held onto its traditional culture even while it has adopted (and modified!) the Western classical and popular traditions.

There are still groups that preserve traditions such as gagaku, an aristocratic/ceremonial notated music tradition that dates back many centuries:






There are even modern compositions using the ancient instruments in new ways:


----------



## aleazk

Mahlerian said:


> Japan has actually held onto its traditional culture even while it has adopted (and modified!) the Western classical and popular traditions.
> 
> There are still groups that preserve traditions such as gagaku, an aristocratic/ceremonial notated music tradition that dates back many centuries:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There are even modern compositions using the ancient instruments in new ways:


I didn't know that gagaku was notated! Do you have some links at hand? I would love so see some of those scores!

(I know I could make a google search, but I'm sure you have the good examples at hand )


----------



## Mahlerian

aleazk said:


> I didn't know that gagaku was notated! Do you have some links at hand? I would love so see some of those scores!
> 
> (I know I could make a google search, but I'm sure you have the good examples at hand )


Heh, I too had to pull up a Google search, but I can do it in Japanese, so more effective.

Gagaku music is notated in part book tableture, as music was in Western music before the Baroque or so.










This is a score for Etenraku, probably the best known piece in the repertoire.


----------



## isorhythm

WHOA. What instrument is playing that cloud of harmony?


----------



## MrTortoise

Mahlerian said:


> Heh, I too had to pull up a Google search, but I can do it in Japanese, so more effective.
> 
> Gagaku music is notated in part book tableture, as music was in Western music before the Baroque or so.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is a score for Etenraku, probably the best known piece in the repertoire.


I knew something good would come from this thread!


----------



## Mahlerian

isorhythm said:


> WHOA. What instrument is playing that cloud of harmony?


It's the shou, which is a descendant of the Chinese sheng.


----------



## aleazk

Mahlerian said:


> Heh, I too had to pull up a Google search, but I can do it in Japanese, so more effective.
> 
> Gagaku music is notated in part book tableture, as music was in Western music before the Baroque or so.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is a score for Etenraku, probably the best known piece in the repertoire.


Wow, beautiful, thank you!


----------



## Guest

TalkingHead said:


> The part I have highlighted in bold must be one of the "facts" you mentioned earlier in this thread. I am curious to know how you measure the delineations of the impact on any given culture that such supposed changes can have. You have given the example of the impact of the British empire on the indigenous Indian sub-continent's culture. What exactly has changed in Indian culture? What, according to your view, is the tipping point when one culture (that has existed for over 4000 years) ceases to survive?


Sorry to bump this post (in response to Truckload's post on the previous page), I am most curious to have a reply.


----------



## Truckload

TalkingHead said:


> The part I have highlighted in bold must be one of the "facts" you mentioned earlier in this thread. I am curious to know how you measure the delineations of the impact on any given culture that such supposed changes can have. You have given the example of the impact of the British empire on the indigenous Indian sub-continent's culture. What exactly has changed in Indian culture? What, according to your view, is the tipping point when one culture (that has existed for over 4000 years) ceases to survive?


While this thread is not an appropriate forum for a lengthy discussion of history, and the start of yet another argument, there are a few obvious examples of cross cultural fertilization in India, including the English language itself, democracy, a Parliamentary form of government and music. The British style brass band continues to be popular in India. And musical theater, now musical movies, are a very important part of Indian culture today.

I doubt if anyone knows the exact tipping point for any culture. But over the past 4,000 years, many cultures, actually most have died out, or been warped into something entirely unrecognizable. I am sure you know this to be true. One striking example is the cultural absorption by China of their Mongol conquerors.


----------



## isorhythm

It's almost as though the concept of "a culture" is inherently problematic!


----------



## CypressWillow

I'm reminded of the familiar quote: "I don't know much about Art, but I know what I like." 

I like certain music and have little interest in certain other music. Ditto for art, literature.

I like certain perfumes and don't like certain others. I wear certain colours and avoid certain others. 

Am I Right? Or am I Wrong? 

Or can that not be determined unless/until you know what my standards/criteria are? 

And does your then Informed Opinion matter to me?


----------



## Guest

Truckload said:


> While this thread is not an appropriate forum for a lengthy discussion of history, and the start of yet another argument, there are a few obvious examples of cross cultural fertilization in India, including the English language itself, democracy, a Parliamentary form of government and music. The British style brass band continues to be popular in India. And musical theater, now musical movies, are a very important part of Indian culture today.
> 
> I doubt if anyone knows the exact tipping point for any culture. But over the past 4,000 years, many cultures, actually most have died out, or been warped into something entirely unrecognizable. I am sure you know this to be true. One striking example is the cultural absorption by China of their Mongol conquerors.


You asserted in your previous post that "[...] *there is a limit to how much change any culture can endure and still survive*." I have asked you to specify at what point this limit is reached. You have failed to provide me with any convincing argument backing up this assertion.
I spent one full year living in India and at no point did I ever see any indication that the indigenous culture was in any way seriously compromised. To the contrary, it has happily absorbed and made its own these extraneous elements.
I fear my mouse finger is beginning to hover over the "Put on ignore" function provided by this forum's software in your case.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> The terse answer to you is that not everyone, in your words, "simply stopped caring because they finally realized that no one expected anyone else to look up to their betters because no one believed in betters anymore."
> 
> Some people in the modern world do actually retain a system of values which are not arbitrary social constructs (or whatever the latest anthropological jargon might be), do actually recognize certain men and cultures as having values superior to others, do think that a culture's values are revealed in its art, and do think that art, like all human endeavors, both can and should serve values which suggest the nobility of which we are capable.
> 
> I don't share your unwillingness or failure to make distinctions between superior values and frivolous or depraved ones, or to see mankind's artistic productions as a most important expression of these. I'm not "defensive," and there's no need to encourage me to relax. That's cheap psychologizing, and condescending as well. I simply don't recognize the defense of values as a "debate which is dead," and I don't give a fig whether or not my views seem relevant to your sense of things.
> 
> Speaking of dead things: isn't the sort of hedonistic, value-neutral relativism you're urging upon me - "it's all good, everybody's good, we're all just having fun, just relax and shut up and let the world **** itself without comment" - a little, well, tired by now? I think a lot of people are noticing that that philosophy hasn't made life more livable, and are finding that perennial ideas of good and bad are actually still applicable to human life. Maybe you still think they are too, but just don't see art as a very important part of life. Maybe you think art is sort of like - oh, I don't know, a bubble bath, or an ice cream cone, or a visit to a brothel. I like chocolate, you like vanilla. I like Praxiteles' Venus, you like sculptures of police women squatting over puddles of urine, or big hunks of rock costing $10 million.
> 
> I have always looked up to my betters - those people you don't believe in - and I look up to their art as well. If you haven't had, or don't want, that experience, that's your business, and I have no intention of telling you, or anyone, what to think or do. Your surmise that I wish I could "enforce" anything on anyone says more about your way of thinking than about mine. Do by all means "enjoy what you enjoy." Swim in sewers, if it strikes your fancy. It's a free country. I am no collectivist; I live and let live. But since this is a forum, I am free to say what I think about the sewage in which the "official" guardians of culture have been asking us to swim for the entire sixty-six years I've been on the planet.


You used "betters" in a different sense than I did. In the sense of "people who know about something," sure, that's great. But doing this little switcheroo was a dodge rather than a response.

The issue remains, as it has always been, how do I know that you're right that these values of yours are absolute truths? Before I surrender my own judgement or encourage others to do so, I need proof that you're right. In the absence of that proof, you're really just insulting people who like art that you don't, however clever those insults are. (Interesting that your post got so many "likes.")

The sewage is all this scorn you spray around. Morally, you and the modernists are throwing exactly the same goo at each other.

I know it sucks, but guess what, jomomo? Until you prove otherwise, my tastes are just as valid as yours. So....


----------



## Truckload

TalkingHead said:


> You asserted in your previous post that "[...] *there is a limit to how much change any culture can endure and still survive*." I have asked you to specify at what point this limit is reached. You have failed to provide me with any convincing argument backing up this assertion.
> I spent one full year living in India and at no point did I ever see any indication that the indigenous culture was in any way seriously compromised. To the contrary, it has happily absorbed and made its own these extraneous elements.
> I fear my mouse finger is beginning to hover over the "Put on ignore" function provided by this forum's software in your case.


Please re-read my post. I gave India as an example of some in that culture welcoming cultural change and some opposing cultural change. You seem to be asking me to prove an assertion which I never made, namely that the culture of India ceased to exist.

At the same time, most cultures in history do eventual cease to exist. If you have studied history at all then you know this to be true. Eventually the culture dies or changes so much it becomes something different.

I will not be offended or diminished in any manner if you "put on ignore". I have no idea why you put that in your post as if it would somehow influence my views.


----------



## science

CypressWillow said:


> I'm reminded of the familiar quote: "I don't know much about Art, but I know what I like."
> 
> I like certain music and have little interest in certain other music. Ditto for art, literature.
> 
> I like certain perfumes and don't like certain others. I wear certain colours and avoid certain others.
> 
> Am I Right? Or am I Wrong?
> 
> Or can that not be determined unless/until you know what my standards/criteria are?
> 
> And does your then Informed Opinion matter to me?


In my opinion, the short version is:



science said:


> If it's a technical matter, I trust anyone who apparently knows more than I do, and trust them more depending on how much they seem to know. But if it's a matter of taste, everyone is equal and I feel free to disagree with anyone.


----------



## CypressWillow

But I don't disagree with your tastes. You're entitled, of course. I simply vote with my feet, or my wallet. Or the good old Ignore button.
If I have a negative opinion about your tastes, I will generally keep it to myself. 
Unless, of course, you ask for my opinion.
And if I suspect that your request for my opinion is simply to start an argument in order to prove how Wrong I am, then I shan't give you my opinion. 
Can we all just go home now?


----------



## science

Truckload said:


> Just ran across this on YouTube. Everything he talks about can be applied to music.


That was hilarious. Poor dude. Hopefully he'll be able to get a time machine, and when he uses it, hopefully he'll find himself among the class that set the standards rather than the classes that served them.


----------



## Truckload

CypressWillow said:


> But I don't disagree with your tastes. You're entitled, of course. I simply vote with my feet, or my wallet. Or the good old Ignore button.
> If I have a negative opinion about your tastes, I will generally keep it to myself.
> Unless, of course, you ask for my opinion.
> And if I suspect that your request for my opinion is simply to start an argument in order to prove how Wrong I am, then I shan't give you my opinion.
> Can we all just go home now?


I like the quotes in your signature. I also liked your line above about a request being "simply to start an argument". I feel like I have been getting a lot of that lately. I also like your last line. Yes, time to go home now and rest.


----------



## Woodduck

The subject matter or rather content (which is not the same thing) of a work of art is of course of the greatest importance to the artist, and something that the audience considers when contemplating the work... but it does not assure aesthetic merit. 

True.

Personally, I prefer the decadence of Boucher to the piety of David.


So do I - but I don't see either piety or decadence when I look at those paintings. I see arid stiffness in the David and relaxed sensuality in the Boucher.

Unfortunately, not many can divorce the subject from the Art when making value judgments.

Undoubtedly true. But "subject" is not a simple matter of depicting objects and ideas. In music those may not apply at all. Art conveys meaning through its aesthetic qualities, and the relationship of these with overt subject matter is infinitely complex and subtle. The overt subject matter, if there is any, needs to be evaluated in terms of its treatment, but not completely separated from it. It's in the relationship between them that the greatest power of art lies, and thus its greatest value to humanity. Art is originally, and finally, something more than a sensual indulgence.

A lot of artists today have swung toward the opposite view... focusing upon themes that they hope will ennoble their art: racism, gender issues, Israel, sexism, etc... but failing to give these a form that is aesthetically "beautiful" or engaging, these will be rapidly forgotten.

Art need not be didactic to embody high values, and there are dangers in trying to make it so. An artist whose purposes are didactic can easily be seduced by the inherent emotional charge of his his own images into feeling that his art is expressing those emotions aesthetically when all it's doing is signaling ideas. Of course this is not an argument against art including a didactic element, which modernist views have often taken it to be. It's merely a caution to the artist and the viewer of art.

Admiration for the human body, the landscape, the play of light across a table-top, the human face, fashion, organizations of abstract patterns, lust, hate, anger, humor & comedy, satire, etc... all are of no less value as themes for art than the most noble themes.

Absolutely, and the treatment of all of these themes may be noble indeed - or it may not.

...few would argue that Monet's Waterlilies or Degas Ballerinas are not among some of the greatest works of Western art... yet where is the nobility or profundity of those works? If it exists, it is more in what we bring to the work.

No, the artist himself has brought a beautiful treatment to beautiful objects. What I bring to it is admiration for beauty - a noble thing, yes?

Since at least the Impressionists artists have been afforded far greater freedom to explore the broad array of subjects and themes of human existence. Some have certainly abused these freedoms and sought to wallow in silliness or scatological shock... but perhaps that is just the price to pay for such freedom.

No objection here to the freedom of the artist from authoritarian social dicta. "Some," though, hardly encompasses the scale of the triviality, cynicism, and depravity which we've seen in the age of "modern" art. For example, I've spent some considerable time on the opera forum discussing "regietheater," that modern cult of the director by virtue of which great operas by the masters of the form are now routinely rendered almost unrecognizable in theaters all over the world, and opera lovers who may have had little opportunity to experience these works as originally conceived are more than likely to be subjected without warning to the absurd whims of directors who are more infatuated with themselves and their own puerile and trendy "reinterpretations" than desirous of serving the composer.

I don't recognize such casual, worldwide vandalization of art as the inevitable price of freedom. I see it more as a symptom of decadence - of a tired, corrupt, floundering culture in which any rot or foolishness is accepted, indeed welcomed, in the name of art by those who ought to know better. Of course there is still a great variety of good art being made by talented artists who still understand and respect timeless values. We'll never know how many geniuses are struggling in the provinces; some are even making a living. But in our "postmodern" age (a term of dubious validity, really just a modernist's confession of impotence) diversity seems not so much the expression of a recognition that beauty takes many forms as an indifference to, or outright contempt for, beauty, whether physical, moral, or spiritual.

I remember many earnest discussions I had with music-loving friends as a very young person (in the '60s and '70s) about the state of music and the arts generally. We wondered whether we would live to see our culture produce another composer of works of superb craftsmanship, towering inspiration, rich human significance, and enduring power over the human imagination. Half a century later I no longer expect an answer in the affirmative, having heard nothing at all composed in that time which would remotely justify it. Maybe the next generation will have its Bach, Beethoven, or Wagner...


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> I remember many earnest discussions I had with music-loving friends as a very young person (in the '60s and '70s) about the state of music and the arts generally. We wondered whether we would live to see our culture produce another composer of works of superb craftsmanship, towering inspiration, rich human significance, and enduring power over the human imagination. Half a century later I no longer expect an answer in the affirmative, having heard nothing at all composed in that time which would remotely justify it. Maybe the next generation will have its Bach, Beethoven, or Wagner...


Rzewski? Crumb? Dutilleux? Haas? Takemitsu? Piazzolla?

I'm supposed to take your values as objective truths and condemn those composers as sewage?


----------



## mmsbls

science said:


> Rzewski? Crumb? Dutilleux? Haas? Takemitsu? Piazzolla?
> 
> I'm supposed to take your values as objective truths and condemn those composers as sewage?


In all honesty, isn't believing there is no modern composer of works of superb craftsmanship, towering inspiration, rich human significance, and enduring power over the human imagination a bit different than believing that all modern composers are sewage?

I believe TC has had a few threads asking which modern composers are the equivalent of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc.. There may be modern composers who are "in the running", but I think it would be very hard to know if "society" will view them that way until some time has passed.


----------



## amfortas

Woodduck said:


> No objection here to the freedom of the artist from authoritarian social dicta. "Some," though, hardly encompasses the scale of the triviality, cynicism, and depravity which we've seen in the age of "modern" art. For example, *I've spent some considerable time on the opera forum discussing "regietheater," *that modern cult of the director by virtue of which great operas by the masters of the form are now routinely rendered almost unrecognizable in theaters all over the world, and opera lovers who may have had little opportunity to experience these works as originally conceived are more than likely to be subjected without warning to the absurd whims of directors who are more infatuated with themselves and their own puerile and trendy "reinterpretations" than desirous of serving the composer.


Most recently in a thread which, like this one, presents some significant differences of opinion.


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> Rzewski? Crumb? Dutilleux? Haas? Takemitsu? Piazzolla?
> 
> I'm supposed to take your values as objective truths and condemn those composers as sewage?


You aren't supposed to do anything.

And who said those composers were sewage? Read more carefully.


----------



## Woodduck

amfortas said:


> Most recently in a thread which, like this one, presents some significant differences of opinion.


A thread in which, like this one, some people cannot grasp fine (or even great) distinctions, and respond to their own crude and oversimplified versions of what one has said. (Not you.)


----------



## Woodduck

mmsbls said:


> In all honesty, isn't believing there is no modern composer of works of superb craftsmanship, towering inspiration, rich human significance, and enduring power over the human imagination a bit different than believing that all modern composers are sewage?
> 
> I believe TC has had a few threads asking which modern composers are the equivalent of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc.. There may be modern composers who are "in the running", but I think it would be very hard to know if "society" will view them that way until some time has passed.


Again, I never said that all modern composers are sewage. Doesn't anyone read what I actually write, or is everyone just reading what everyone else is saying?

I'd be happy to apply the test of time to contemporary composers. Alas, my time runs short.


----------



## mmsbls

Woodduck said:


> Again, I never said that all modern composers are sewage. Doesn't anyone read what I actually write, or is everyone just reading what everyone else is saying?
> 
> I'd be happy to apply the test of time to contemporary composers. Alas, my time runs short.


Apparently you did not read what I wrote since I was defending you.


----------



## isorhythm

Woodduck said:


> I'd be happy to apply the test of time to contemporary composers. Alas, my time runs short.


Ligeti and Messiaen will be in the pantheon - I promise. To the extent they aren't already.

I say this as someone who shares your belief in universal artistic standards.


----------



## science

mmsbls said:


> In all honesty, isn't believing there is no modern composer of works of superb craftsmanship, towering inspiration, rich human significance, and enduring power over the human imagination a bit different than believing that all modern composers are sewage?


In principle, sure, but he's already condemned modern art as sewage just a few posts ago.



Woodduck said:


> A thread in which, like this one, some people cannot grasp fine (or even great) distinctions and respond to their own crude and oversimplified versions of what one has said. (Not you.)


Then explain yourself better.

Why are your tastes objectively correct?



Woodduck said:


> You aren't supposed to do anything.
> 
> And who said those composers were sewage? Read more carefully.


You did of course.



Woodduck said:


> One can make any silly or hideous thing, the more outrageous the better, call it art, have it displayed in a gallery, have it written up in pretentious art journals and popular news media, sell it to the ignorant and suggestible and prestige-hungry, and sleep soundly, knowing that anyone who claims you're a shallow, incompetent fraud is hopelessly out of touch with the advanced thinking of our times and need not be taken seriously.


Elaborating on that:



Woodduck said:


> Do by all means "enjoy what you enjoy." Swim in sewers, if it strikes your fancy. It's a free country. I am no collectivist; I live and let live. But since this is a forum, I am free to say what I think about the sewage in which the "official" guardians of culture have been asking us to swim for the entire sixty-six years I've been on the planet.


You explicitly and intentionally called the art that I enjoy sewage.


----------



## Woodduck

mmsbls said:


> Apparently you did not read what I wrote since I was defending you.


Sorry, Marshall! I'm under seige here! (Your opening question does read like a challenge, though). :tiphat:


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> You explicitly and intentionally called the art that I enjoy sewage.


No I didn't. I don't even _know_ what art you enjoy. I made statements about what is now allowed to pass for art. But if you are defending modern art _as such_ - even though I am not condemning modern art _as such_, but only the state of the culture and the abuses it encourages - I would not attempt to dissuade you from enjoying even the worst of it, _if _- I used the word _"if"_ - that is your inclination.


----------



## Woodduck

isorhythm said:


> Ligeti and Messiaen will be in the pantheon - I promise. To the extent they aren't already.
> 
> I say this as someone who shares your belief in universal artistic standards.


Messiaen was a fine, innovative, interesting composer, one of the major composers of the last century, certainly, some of whose work I enjoy (which I say as proof of nothing, merely to reassure you that I'm not just being a contrarian and that I'm not "against modern music"). He certainly has staying power. But he's a pretty old dude by now - 108, and currently decomposing.

Ligeti I can't comment on.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

Woodduck said:


> I made statements about what is *now* allowed to pass for art. .


perhaps one of the most notorious 'art' works was Duchamp's 1917 work _Fountain_ ..... *its almost 100 years old *- so much for 'modern'!









I can't say that I 'like' it as such .... but I know for certain that I cannot define 'art' either (nor do I know of any definition that holds water better than this item --- apologies for the awful pun!). If anyone is truly interested in finding out more, there's a nice little introduction at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)


----------



## Woodduck

Headphone Hermit said:


> perhaps one of the most notorious 'art' works was Duchamp's 1917 work _Fountain_ ..... *its almost 100 years old *- so much for 'modern'!
> 
> View attachment 80312
> 
> 
> I can't say that I 'like' it as such .... but I know for certain that I cannot define 'art' either (nor do I know of any definition that holds water better than this item --- apologies for the awful pun!). If anyone is truly interested in finding out more, there's a nice little introduction at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)


Excellent point, Hermit. 100 years ago, a urinal - and we're still looking at equivalent things being offered as "modern"! Maybe the difference is that they're no longer expected to shock (except by the young and naive), but are long since accepted as "genres" of art - business as usual.

Yawn.


----------



## Blancrocher

Headphone Hermit said:


> I can't say that I 'like' it as such .... but I know for certain that I cannot define 'art' either (nor do I know of any definition that holds water better than this item --- apologies for the awful pun!).


For the record, I revere Duchamp--there are some artworks of his that struck me instantly as masterworks and that I've continued to love over time. But if someone told me that his toilet was moved out of a museum space and into storage somewhere I wouldn't shed a tear.

A general problem with art as opposed to music: it's hard to move artworks out of a museum once they're in there, whereas musical compositions disappear from the performance repertoire all the time practically without anyone's noticing.

*p.s.* Though, come to think of it, I'm not sure which is more problematic :lol:


----------



## Guest

So is the Duchamp bad art? And if so, why?


----------



## Blancrocher

MacLeod said:


> So is the Duchamp bad art? And if so, why?


I think I'll go ahead and say that I think it's a bad work of art, though at the time it was made it was interesting as a statement about art and art institutions. Because, let's face it, it's just a urinal.

Don't say I've never done anything for you, Woodduck!


----------



## Woodduck

MacLeod said:


> So is the Duchamp bad art? And if so, why?


Before that question comes the question: is it art at all? Does any object placed on display and called art become art by being so displayed and so called?

How do we know this is a work of art? Because I'm an artist and I say it is. But how do we know you're an artist? Because I made this and it's a work of art.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

Woodduck said:


> Before that question comes the question: is it art at all? Does any object placed on display and called art become art by being so displayed and so called?


"The anonymous editorial (which is assumed to be written by Wood) accompanying the photograph, entitled "The Richard Mutt Case," made a claim that would prove to be important concerning certain works of art that would come after it:

Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view - created a new thought for that object." (from the Wiki piece I referenced above)


----------



## ArtMusic

MacLeod said:


> So is the Duchamp bad art? And if so, why?


My high school had many examples of these in the boys toilet, maybe not exact replicas but variations of a same design. You are referring to the _Fountain_, are you not? Now in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

I much rather gaze at pieces by the great and powerful Sir Joshua Reynolds.


----------



## ArtMusic

Florestan said:


> Exactly. Junk art is a reflection of the junk values in society. Look at all the morally depraved crap on television and the junk music (much with morally depraved messages) that the masses seem attracted to like flies. Garbage in, garbage out.


Pure and simple. I agree entirely.


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> Before that question comes the question: is it art at all? Does any object placed on display and called art become art by being so displayed and so called?
> 
> How do we know this is a work of art? Because I'm an artist and I say it is. But how do we know you're an artist? Because I made this and its a work of art.


So I'm ready to consider it art on the grounds that your conundrum has no easy answer. And that it is an object selected to present a concept.


----------



## Woodduck

MacLeod said:


> So I'm ready to consider it art on the grounds that your conundrum has no easy answer. And that it is an object selected to present a concept.


Well, consider it what you will, but...

Curious: up to now everyone's been demanding "proof" of _my_ assertions. Can we accept as art a piece of plumbing stuck in a museum if no one proves that it isn't? Must we prove negatives now?

Is there a good _reason_ to call "art" any object selected to present a concept? Or are we just accepting a precedent by now established in the "official" art world? How much deference do we owe the "authorities"?

We're in 4'33" territory here...


----------



## Blancrocher

Woodduck said:


> We're in 4'33" territory here...


Is this the first time this has been mentioned? I'd like to extend my heartfelt commendations to everyone who's participated in this thread for holding out until page 20. Must be some kind of record--the mods should make an announcement about this.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

Woodduck said:


> Can we accept as art a piece of plumbing stuck in a museum if no one proves that it isn't? Must we prove negatives now?


as I said .... "I know for certain that I cannot define 'art' either (nor do I know of any definition that holds water better than this item)"



Woodduck said:


> We're in 4'33" territory here...


Well spotted, sir! :tiphat: You are exactly right - defining art (or music ... or literature ... or ......) is rather difficult and it is very tricky to move beyond a consensus that 'art is what we say is art' .... yet such consensus doesn't seem to exist as numerous examples (such as the thread alluded to) illustrate.


----------



## mstar

Blancrocher said:


> I think I'll go ahead and say that I think it's a bad work of art, though at the time it was made it was interesting as a statement about art and art institutions. Because, let's face it, it's just a urinal.
> 
> Don't say I've never done anything for you, Woodduck!


Well, I completely agree with you concerning the urinal. But Duchamp has some great works, like "Nude Descending a Staircase":


----------



## Guest

So if no one's prepared to define art, what price the absolute and/or objective standards that some here insist on?


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> So if no one's prepared to define art, what price the absolute and/or objective standards that some here insist on?


If the OP had asked "What does art mean in 2016?" we could have cut straight to the chase.


----------



## Adam Weber

ArtMusic said:


> Pure and simple. I agree entirely.


You think our society is morally worse than it was in 1900, 1800, 1700, et cetera? _Really?_


----------



## Guest

isorhythm said:


> It's almost as though the concept of "a culture" is inherently problematic!


It is .


----------



## Headphone Hermit

Let's try another ....

is this art?









https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbells-soup-cans-1962

What is the dividing line between art and non-art?


----------



## Guest

Headphone Hermit said:


> Let's try another ....
> 
> is this art?
> 
> View attachment 80325
> 
> 
> https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbells-soup-cans-1962
> 
> What is the dividing line between art and non-art?


I don't think there is one.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

dogen said:


> I don't think there is one.


I can understand that position. I think it is very hard to come up with a clear distinction that can be defined and defended .... and yet ..... there *are* things that I think of as 'art' and other things that I would reject as 'art'. But I can't define them and I know that for me, the edges are very, very blurred


----------



## isorhythm

I don't see how drawing a line between art and non-art could in any way enrich my experience of art, so I don't bother with this.


----------



## Blancrocher

mstar said:


> Well, I completely agree with you concerning the urinal. But Duchamp has some great works, like "Nude Descending a Staircase":


One of many of his works that I love. Fwiw, Network of Stoppages is my favorite.


----------



## Guest

Headphone Hermit said:


> I can understand that position. I think it is very hard to come up with a clear distinction that can be defined and defended .... and yet ..... there *are* things that I think of as 'art' and other things that I would reject as 'art'. But I can't define them and I know that for me, the edges are very, very blurred


I agree with you about distinctions. In theory. But when you get into it, I think it moves out of our grasp. And I'm comfortable with that.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

isorhythm said:


> I don't see how drawing a line between art and non-art could in any way enrich my experience of art, so I don't bother with this.


Me too!

There is plenty in a gallery or museum to engage my attention and for me to enjoy .... so if I don't enjoy something, I just move on to something that I want to look at. Same with music.


----------



## Woodduck

Headphone Hermit said:


> Let's try another ....
> 
> is this art?
> 
> View attachment 80325
> 
> 
> https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbells-soup-cans-1962
> 
> What is the dividing line between art and non-art?


Since an instance of art involves a sequence of elements - intention, object, and perception, only the second of which is describable in objective terms - the status of the thing as art will depend on whether we think the other two factors can confer that status. I think they are too indefinite and, ultimately, meaningless to use as criteria. A creator or presenter can mean or intend anything he wants, and a perceiver can think or feel anything he wants, about anything whatsoever. If a concept like "art" is to have any use (and concepts are above all things to use in thinking), we have to look at the object and see what it is like and what it does independent of anyone's views of it. It seems to me that if we don't do this, we will be in the absurd position we're actually in culturally, that of accepting a mere intention or idea as art. "Conceptual art" is a sham: I could kick you in the shin and call it art, and an internet troll could call himself an artist.

Is that stack of soup cans art? Maybe...But I'd feel dirty calling the idiot who assembled it an artist.


----------



## Balthazar

MacLeod said:


> So if no one's prepared to define art, what price the absolute and/or objective standards that some here insist on?


This is the right question.

Could someone who believes in these universal aesthetic standards please enumerate them for us?

If they exist and are knowable, then presumably they can be described unambiguously and without recourse to Humpty-Dumpty concepts such as "beauty," "greatness," and "nobility."


----------



## isorhythm

I believe in things that are real but ineffable, including beauty.

I could do without "nobility," however.


----------



## amfortas

Woodduck said:


> Since an instance of art involves a sequence of elements - intention, object, and perception, only the second of which is describable in objective terms - the status of the thing as art will depend on whether we think the other two factors can confer that status. I think they are too indefinite and, ultimately, meaningless to use as criteria. A creator or presenter can mean or intend anything he wants, and a perceiver can think or feel anything he wants, about anything whatsoever. *If a concept like "art" is to have any use (and concepts are above all things to use in thinking), we have to look at the object and see what it is like and what it does independent of anyone's views of it.* It seems to me that if we don't do this, we will be in the absurd position we're actually in culturally, that of accepting a mere intention or idea as art. "Conceptual art" is a sham: I could kick you in the shin and call it art, and an internet troll could call himself an artist.
> 
> Is that stack of soup cans art? Maybe...


I'm not sure that's possible--looking at any object without the filter of our own perception and perspective. Such objectivity would seem even more elusive when trying to apply some kind of aesthetic standard.


----------



## Guest

isorhythm said:


> I believe in things that are real but ineffable, including beauty.
> 
> I could do without "nobility," however.


I could do without the "morality" nonsense too.


----------



## mstar

If anyone is interested, MoMA has a section of its website devoted to explaining modern art: What is Modern Art?

And I've always found this picture slightly amusing. It did help me remember some of the subcategories of modern art, though...


----------



## Guest

mstar said:


> If anyone is interested, MoMA has a section of its website devoted to explaining modern art: What is Modern Art?
> 
> And I've always found this picture slightly amusing. It did help me remember some of the subcategories of modern art, though...


10/10 for this!!!!


----------



## tdc

I'm amazed these threads continue to get so much traction here, because it really seems that the same exact points get brought up again and again (often by the same people). Its like I could find a near replica of this thread at any given time on TC. I just don't understand the motivation to keep 'spinning the wheels' so to speak. 

Like honestly how many times have we seen a post like number 301? Its total deja vu.


----------



## Biwa

tdc said:


> I'm amazed these threads continue to get so much traction here, because it really seems that the same exact points get brought up again and again (often by the same people). Its like I could find a near replica of this thread at any given time on TC. I just don't understand the motivation to keep 'spinning the wheels' so to speak.
> 
> Like honestly how many times have we seen a post like number 301? Its total deja vu.


Practice makes perfect... or somethin like that. :lol:


----------



## tdc

Biwa said:


> Practice makes perfect... or somethin like that. :lol:


Well, in fairness there are always a few new interesting things that come up here and there like in mstar's post 300. I wasn't aware of that nice Duchamp painting, thanks.


----------



## Woodduck

Balthazar said:


> Could someone who believes in these universal aesthetic standards please enumerate them for us?
> 
> If they exist and are knowable, then presumably they can be described unambiguously and without recourse to Humpty-Dumpty concepts such as "beauty," "greatness," and "nobility."


If you think that knowing things means being able to describe them "unambiguously," then you will never know anything but mathematics - pure quantity, without substance. All knowledge begins with perception - perception of qualities, not quantities. Qualities can be more or less definite, but never wholly so; their edges blur, and one quality bleeds into another. Red bleeds into orange on one side, and purple on the other - but that does not disprove the existence of red. Perception is the basis of knowledge, and without it explanations mean nothing.

Nowhere is perception more obviously fundamental than in matters of the "spirit" - or consciousness - including both aesthetics and ethics. To one who has no perception of "beauty," no amount of talk about it will mean anything. Beethoven, when he struggled day after day to find the note that had to come next, in the unshakable conviction that that note existed and could be found, knew when he had found it and smiled. That, an artist knows, is beauty. But neither Beethoven nor I could ever "describe unambiguously" what beauty is and why his music is beautiful. We could describe its features in great detail - but not explain its beauty to anyone who couldn't perceive it.

To ask for an enumeration of aesthetic standards while calling for the omission of a "Humpty-Dumpty" concept fundamental to aesthetics - in fact a virtual synonym for it - shows that you have no idea of what you're asking for.


----------



## arpeggio

tdc said:


> I'm amazed these threads continue to get so much traction here, because it really seems that the same exact points get brought up again and again (often by the same people). Its like I could find a near replica of this thread at any given time on TC. I just don't understand the motivation to keep 'spinning the wheels' so to speak.
> 
> Like honestly how many times have we seen a post like number 301? Its total deja vu.


If at first you do not succeed, try, try again.

One of the ironies of all of these debates is concerning my views of modern music. At one time I thought the likes of Boulez, Cage, Xenakis and others were frauds. All of the attacks that have been mounted against them has made me think that they may be better than I thought they were.


----------



## SimonNZ

mstar said:


> Well, I completely agree with you concerning the urinal. But Duchamp has some great works, like "Nude Descending a Staircase":


I was watching an art documentary just recently that covered the 1913 Armory show, and they said that that painting attracted the most and the loudest ridicule, and the most "are there no standards?" naked-empereror-hoax comments.


----------



## Adam Weber

Woodduck said:


> If you think that knowing things means being able to describe them "unambiguously," then you will never know anything but mathematics - pure quantity, without substance. All knowledge begins with perception - perception of qualities, not quantities. Qualities can be more or less definite, but never wholly so; their edges blur, and one quality bleeds into another. Red bleeds into orange on one side, and purple on the other - but that does not disprove the existence of red. Perception is the basis of knowledge, and without it explanations mean nothing.
> 
> Nowhere is perception more obviously fundamental than in matters of the "spirit" - or consciousness - including both aesthetics and ethics. To one who has no perception of "beauty," no amount of talk about it will mean anything. Beethoven, when he struggled day after day to find the note that had to come next, in the unshakable conviction that that note existed and could be found, knew when he had found it and smiled. That, an artist knows, is beauty. But neither Beethoven nor I could ever "describe unambiguously" what beauty is and why his music is beautiful. We could describe its features in great detail - but not explain its beauty to anyone who couldn't perceive it.
> 
> To ask for an enumeration of aesthetic standards while calling for the omission of a "Humpty-Dumpty" concept fundamental to aesthetics - in fact a virtual synonym for it - shows that you have no idea of what you're asking for.


In other words, "Beauty can't be defined, relies on qualia, and no two people see it the same way--but it's objective! Trust me!"

Did I get that right?


----------



## Fugue Meister

Adam Weber said:


> You think our society is morally worse than it was in 1900, 1800, 1700, et cetera? _Really?_


Absolutely it is. More's the pity the likes of you cannot or will not see that.


----------



## ArtMusic

Adam Weber said:


> You think our society is morally worse than it was in 1900, 1800, 1700, et cetera? _Really?_


Did I say morally worse? I think not. We can have a whole gallery full of Duchamp-inspired-urinals from around the world and call it art. But really, do you think tax payers, artists and the general public would entertain that? This is where it becomes a disgrace to the hard working artists and makes a mockery of those who put in the effort. And it is far easier to sit in front of a computer screen to type words and argue about definitions.


----------



## Adam Weber

Fugue Meister said:


> Absolutely it is. More's the pity the likes of you cannot or will not see that.


The "likes of me" are okay with that.


----------



## arpeggio

When I was in grad school we spent time studying aesthetics. Like Santayana's _The Sense of Beauty_ or Dewey's _Art as Experience_. I learned that even among professional scholars you could not get them to agree on anything. They were like President Truman's comments on economists. Put a hundred in a row and they will all point in a different direction.

Now many of us like to think that we are smarter than the average bear. I spite of our delusions of grandeur, we are all amateurs compared to the real pros. If they can not agree, what makes you think that the SPEOE's around here can come up with an answer (including myself)?


----------



## Adam Weber

ArtMusic said:


> Did I say morally worse?


You agreed with someone who did.

The person you agreed with wrote: "Junk art is a reflection of the junk values in society."

Then you said, "Pure and simple. I agree entirely."

Since you prefer older art, I assumed you preferred older values as well.

You have to admit that's not exactly moon logic.


----------



## Fugue Meister

Adam Weber said:


> The "likes of me" are okay with that.


Typical response, I wouldn't expect anything less from a heathen... :devil:


----------



## science

Adam Weber said:


> The "likes of me" are okay with that.


Amen, brother. Freedom is a precious thing! Not to mention indoor plumbing.


----------



## Adam Weber

Fugue Meister said:


> Typical response, I wouldn't expect anything less from a heathen... :devil:


The correct term is _godless, immoral heathen_. Get it right! :lol:


----------



## science

Adam Weber said:


> You agreed with someone who did.
> 
> The person you agreed with wrote: "Junk art is a reflection of the junk values in society."
> 
> Then you said, "Pure and simple. I agree entirely."
> 
> Since you prefer older art, I assumed you preferred older values as well.
> 
> You have to admit that's not exactly moon logic.


What you did there is you read one post without forgetting what had been written in previous posts. I don't know if that's supposed to happen anymore. We have to read like medieval mystics, unpacking a phrase here and a phrase there without paying attention to larger contexts.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Anyone looking for a breezy, amusing read on this subject might like Kenneth Clark's "The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form." It's based on a series of lectures, and you can tell the places where he must have gotten a big laugh.

Essential reading for the artist or art lover.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Truckload- I am really enjoying the paintings you have posted. I also enjoy your beautifully adept writing. While I do not advocate taking away anyone's freedom, I do believe that there are negative societal consequences to decadence in any field of human endeavor.

There is also the issue of survival of a culture. *Can a culture survive without shared values?* Perhaps Western Civilization does not deserve to survive. But it seems to me that while Western Civilization has been far from perfect, our culture has done far more net good than harm to humanity.

This (in bold) was a key concern expressed in T.S. Eliot's _Wasteland_. Eliot feared that he was witness to end of Western Civilization... rooted in a collective culture and shared narratives. What Eliot was witness to with the onset of Modernism was perhaps the biggest paradigm-shift since the Renaissance... if not the Collapse of the Roman Empire.

What Eliot failed to recognize... and undoubtedly would have despised... was that just as the Christianity led to replacing the Pagan Greco-Roman narratives and culture with new Christian narratives modeled upon the old, so the same was happening in the Modern world. As Popular/Populist culture became the dominant culture we find that while many no longer recognize the shared or collective narratives of the Bible or the Greco-Romans, there is still a shared culture. The characters and narratives from Alice in Wonderland, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Batman, etc... are the shared narratives of today, for better or worse. We might cringe... but do these narratives not often deal with the same themes? Is not Batman the Black Knight? Isn't Iron Man a shining Knight in Armor? How far removed are super-heroes from the comic books from the superhuman characters from Michelangelo, Rubens, etc??? Do they not share the incredible powers, bright colorful costumes, perfect bodies, etc... We may cringe at the notion... but while these narratives have yet to rise to the heights of the greatest Greco-Roman or Christian legends and narratives we are speaking of a rather nascent culture.

I earlier mentioned Picasso's argument that art was best created as a product of a merger of the High and Low cultures... or perhaps the Old and New Cultures? In this, Picasso just may have been one of the first Post-Modernists and well as the greatest Modernist. Most of the usual criticisms leveled at Modern/Contemporary Art are broad, sweeping generalities. This is especially true because of the fact that the Post-Modern/Contemporary art scene is far from having a single dominant aesthetic direction or style. Rather than there being a single dominant monolithic ART WORLD, there are many smaller art worlds... each with their own standards, values, goals, etc... Contemporary artists work in something akin to a smorgasbord... in which they can pick and choose ideas and elements from across the whole of art history and culture. The essential Modernist dictum that an artist needed to "MAKE IT NEW" has been called into question... especially as a result of Late Modernists painting themselves into a corner with Minimalism and Conceptualism.

In many ways I think this whirlwind or stew of disparate styles is simply the result of the world we live in. I drove to my studio today in a car that was but two years old. Listening to the radio I could quickly surf the channels from Classical to 1960s Pop/Rock to Jazz to Bluegrass. I sit in front of a computer that houses literally hundreds of thousands of images from across the vast spectrum of Art History. In contrast, Michelangelo, in spite of his brilliance and the finest education affordable was knowledgeable of the Art that he had access to in Florence and Rome: the work of his peers and predecessors, the Roman works he was able to see in the collections of the Medici and the Popes to which he was given access, and the few works from Venetian, German, and Netherlandish artists that may have found their way to Florence or Rome.


----------



## ArtMusic

Adam Weber said:


> You agreed with someone who did.
> 
> The person you agreed with wrote: "Junk art is a reflection of the junk values in society."
> 
> Then you said, "Pure and simple. I agree entirely."
> 
> Since you prefer older art, I assumed you preferred older values as well.
> 
> You have to admit that's not exactly moon logic.


"Reflection of junk values" is different to saying one period is morally worse than another. You can find 16th century art that reflect that too. Here is one by the great Bruegel, he was showing us all that was wrong then in one part of society.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...-_The_Dutch_Proverbs_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg


----------



## science

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Truckload- I am really enjoying the paintings you have posted. I also enjoy your beautifully adept writing. While I do not advocate taking away anyone's freedom, I do believe that there are negative societal consequences to decadence in any field of human endeavor.
> 
> There is also the issue of survival of a culture. *Can a culture survive without shared values?* Perhaps Western Civilization does not deserve to survive. But it seems to me that while Western Civilization has been far from perfect, our culture has done far more net good than harm to humanity.
> 
> This (in bold) was a key concern expressed in T.S. Eliot's _Wasteland_. Eliot feared that he was witness to end of Western Civilization... rooted in a collective culture and shared narratives. What Eliot was witness to with the onset of Modernism was perhaps the biggest paradigm-shift since the Renaissance... if not the Collapse of the Roman Empire.
> 
> What Eliot failed to recognize... and undoubtedly would have despised... was that just as the Christianity led to replacing the Pagan Greco-Roman narratives and culture with new Christian narratives modeled upon the old, so the same was happening in the Modern world. As Popular/Populist culture became the dominant culture we find that while many no longer recognize the shared or collective narratives of the Bible or the Greco-Romans, there is still a shared culture. The characters and narratives from Alice in Wonderland, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Batman, etc... are the shared narratives of today, for better or worse. We might cringe... but do these narratives not often deal with the same themes? Is not Batman the Black Knight? Isn't Iron Man a shining Knight in Armor? How far removed are super-heroes from the comic books from the superhuman characters from Michelangelo, Rubens, etc??? Do they not share the incredible powers, bright colorful costumes, perfect bodies, etc... We may cringe at the notion... but while these narratives have yet to rise to the heights of the greatest Greco-Roman or Christian legends and narratives we are speaking of a rather nascent culture.
> 
> I earlier mentioned Picasso's argument that art was best created as a product of a merger of the High and Low cultures... or perhaps the Old and New Cultures? In this, Picasso just may have been one of the first Post-Modernists and well as the greatest Modernist. Most of the usual criticisms leveled at Modern/Contemporary Art are broad, sweeping generalities. This is especially true because of the fact that the Post-Modern/Contemporary art scene is far from having a single dominant aesthetic direction or style. Rather than there being a single dominant monolithic ART WORLD, there are many smaller art worlds... each with their own standards, values, goals, etc... Contemporary artists work in something akin to a smorgasbord... in which they can pick and choose ideas and elements from across the whole of art history and culture. The essential Modernist dictum that an artist needed to "MAKE IT NEW" has been called into question... especially as a result of Late Modernists painting themselves into a corner with Minimalism and Conceptualism.
> 
> In many ways I think this whirlwind or stew of disparate styles is simply the result of the world we live in. I drove to my studio today in a car that was but two years old. Listening to the radio I could quickly surf the channels from Classical to 1960s Pop/Rock to Jazz to Bluegrass. I sit in front of a computer that houses literally hundreds of thousands of images from across the vast spectrum of Art History. In contrast, Michelangelo, in spite of his brilliance and the finest education affordable was knowledgeable of the Art that he had access to in Florence and Rome: the work of his peers and predecessors, the Roman works he was able to see in the collections of the Medici and the Popes to which he was given access, and the few works from Venetian, German, and Netherlandish artists that may have found their way to Florence or Rome.


This is one thing that I enjoy trying to tell my students about. We read literature in which characters go to libraries or book stores to search for hard-to-get texts, but my students have no familiarity with a world like that. It's hard for even us older people to realize what the world was like before you could just go to a library and find a book full of large color reproductions of works by Cezanne or Fragonard or whatever. I think the most interesting example to contemplate is what a world without recorded music was like - how special it would've been to hear a really great musician in that kind of world! That sort of romance is lost forever.


----------



## science

ArtMusic said:


> "Reflection of junk values" is different to saying one period is morally worse than another. You can find 16th century art that reflect that too. Here is one by the great Bruegel, he was showing us all that was wrong then in one part of society.
> 
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...-_The_Dutch_Proverbs_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg


So that work by Breughel is junk?


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

You asserted in your previous post that "[...] there is a limit to how much change any culture can endure and still survive." I have asked you to specify at what point this limit is reached.

I don't think we can offer some sort of answer as to just how much a culture can absorb before it changes into something unrecognizable.

Thinking on the question I would have you think of France in the late 1800s. The world was witness to the increase in the speed of travel and international trade. Suddenly a slew of Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints found their way into galleries in France and collections of many French artists. The impact of these works is clearly recognizable in the works of Degas, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Vuillard, Bonnard, Mucha, etc... In spite of this, their works remain plainly French.

In contrast, many Non-Western cultures struggled for long periods of time... some are still struggling... to come to terms with the impact of Western artistic ideas... especially those of Modernism... while remaining firmly within the Chinese or Japanese or Persian, etc... cultural artistic tradition. Japan really came into its own once again in the 1960s. Chinese Art, on the other hand, often seems but a sad imitation of American Pop and Post-Pop and Conceptualism.




























Or Western Academicism:










Of course there are exceptions, such as Zhang Daquien:










>>>>>>>>>


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Zhang's paintings have clearly absorbed elements of Western Modernism... especially Abstract Expressionism... yet they remain firmly within the Chinese landscape tradition.


----------



## Adam Weber

ArtMusic said:


> "Reflection of junk values" is different to saying one period is morally worse than another. You can find 16th century art that reflect that too. Here is one by the great Bruegel, he was showing us all that was wrong then in one part of society.
> 
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...-_The_Dutch_Proverbs_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg


"Reflection of junk values" isn't all you agreed to. You also agreed to a set of propositions that, taken together, implied you think there's a link between a society's values and the quality of its art. If you don't agree with that, then you shouldn't have endorsed that post. No one here can read your mind.


----------



## Adam Weber

science said:


> So that work by Breughel is junk?


Don't ask him to follow his own logic and agree with himself. That's just rude.


----------



## ArtMusic

Bruegel's work I showed is not junk, obviously. Yes, I agreed with "Reflection of junk values" but I never suggested that therefore one century's work was worse/better than another, which was why I showed Bruegel's work. That any century can has work that reflected junk values. (That doesn't mean the completed work is junk. And Bruegel was a master at that).


----------



## science

ArtMusic said:


> Bruegel's work I showed is not junk, obviously. Yes, I agreed with "Reflection of junk values" but I never suggested that therefore one century's work was worse/better than another, which was why I showed Bruegel's work. That any century can has work that reflected junk values. (That doesn't mean the completed work is junk. And Bruegel was a master at that).


It's junk but it isn't junk. Pure and Simple.


----------



## Woodduck

Adam Weber said:


> In other words, "Beauty can't be defined, relies on qualia, and no two people see it the same way--but it's objective! Trust me!"
> 
> Did I get that right?


No, you didn't get it right. I did not say or imply that no two people have perceptions in common, nor did I use the word "objective" to describe beauty, nor did I ask you to trust me.

You're batting a thousand.

Was that brief enough?


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> No, you didn't get it right. I did not say or imply that no two people have perceptions in common, nor did I use the word "objective" to describe beauty.
> 
> You're batting a thousand.
> 
> Was that brief enough?


Not the "word" objective.... Are you denying that you believe in objective aesthetic values which you perceive better than people who like the art you call sewage?


----------



## Woodduck

Define "objective." You know how loaded and ambiguous language can be.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> Define "objective." You know how loaded and ambiguous language can be.


Matters of fact and not opinion.


----------



## Adam Weber

Woodduck said:


> No, you didn't get it right. I did not say or imply that no two people have perceptions in common, nor did I use the word "objective" to describe beauty.
> 
> You're batting a thousand.
> 
> Was that brief enough?


I'll admit you never said that two people can't share perceptions (though the almost innumerable possibilities of thought discourages this sort of thinking except in the most general categories), but I think you did imply artistic objectivity, even if you didn't use that word specifically.

By saying that "neither Beethoven nor I could ever 'describe unambiguously' what beauty is and why his music is beautiful," you imply that people can be literally wrong if they don't perceive beauty in certain works.

This implies a _standard_ by which they can be wrong.

That standard would have to be objective* for that statement to make any sense (as Plato would say, you can't really be "wrong" about matters of opinion).

If you had said "neither Beethoven nor I could ever 'describe umambiguously' what beauty *means to us* and why his music *seems beautiful to us*," I wouldn't have taken umbrage with your statement.

But you used the word "is."

*By "objective", I mean "true whether we believe it or not," i.e. "Beethoven's music is beautiful whether you believe it is or not" or "the ocean is mostly composed of water whether you believe it is or not."


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Undoubtedly true. But "subject" is not a simple matter of depicting objects and ideas. In music those may not apply at all. Art conveys meaning through its aesthetic qualities, and the relationship of these with overt subject matter is infinitely complex and subtle. The overt subject matter, if there is any, needs to be evaluated in terms of its treatment, but not completely separated from it. It's in the relationship between them that the greatest power of art lies, and thus its greatest value to humanity. Art is originally, and finally, something more than a sensual indulgence.

There is an interesting question raised by the poet Randall Jarrell:

"Perhaps painting can do without the necessity of imitation, but can it do without the possibility of distortion?"

I find this a strong criticism of abstraction. It argues for the power of what you term the relationship between the form and the subject. (In perhaps a tangentially related way I suspect that this is why I have limited patience with atonality... but quite appreciate the expressive distortions of dissonance and bending tonality employed by baroque composers, Gesualdo and Monteverdi, Wagner and Richard Strauss).

Art need not be didactic to embody high values, and there are dangers in trying to make it so. An artist whose purposes are didactic can easily be seduced by the inherent emotional charge of his his own images into feeling that his art is expressing those emotions aesthetically when all it's doing is signaling ideas. Of course this is not an argument against art including a didactic element, which modernist views have often taken it to be. It's merely a caution to the artist and the viewer of art.

Agreed. Seek out Kara Walker's _Domino_.

_...few would argue that Monet's Waterlilies or Degas Ballerinas are not among some of the greatest works of Western art... yet where is the nobility or profundity of those works? If it exists, it is more in what we bring to the work._

No, the artist himself has brought a beautiful treatment to beautiful objects. What I bring to it is admiration for beauty - a noble thing, yes?

Many would question this. Indeed, many Contemporary artists still find the notion of "beauty" suspect. It has the power to overwhelm our senses and reason. It is overtly "feminine" and emotional rather than rigorously intellectual. According to many Marxist-tinged criticisms it is unearned, elitist, and speaks of privilege.

_Since at least the Impressionists artists have been afforded far greater freedom to explore the broad array of subjects and themes of human existence. Some have certainly abused these freedoms and sought to wallow in silliness or scatological shock... but perhaps that is just the price to pay for such freedom._

No objection here to the freedom of the artist from authoritarian social dicta. "Some," though, hardly encompasses the scale of the triviality, cynicism, and depravity which we've seen in the age of "modern" art. For example, I've spent some considerable time on the opera forum discussing "regietheater," that modern cult of the director by virtue of which great operas by the masters of the form are now routinely rendered almost unrecognizable in theaters all over the world, and opera lovers who may have had little opportunity to experience these works as originally conceived are more than likely to be subjected without warning to the absurd whims of directors who are more infatuated with themselves and their own puerile and trendy "reinterpretations" than desirous of serving the composer.

Unfortunately there are artists, curators, dealers, producers, etc... who imagine that easy shock... and especially the degradation of the past is the sign of a daring, new art. In actuality I find myself rolling my eyes at tired cliches which offer little beyond shock rather than being outraged. I suspect there is a good deal of such crap... but I also suspect that Museums and Dealers and Collectors... and the Media glom onto such work because they recognize that shock sells... like the accident on the highway that everyone stops to gawk at.

I don't recognize such casual, worldwide vandalization of art as the inevitable price of freedom. I see it more as a symptom of decadence - of a tired, corrupt, floundering culture in which any rot or foolishness is accepted, indeed welcomed, in the name of art by those who ought to know better.

Well, you need to remember that the vast majority of this stuff is being bought or patronized by the 1%... who are in no way culturally literate as they were in the past. Art schools and the art media and the dealers and large cultural institutions all pander to this 1% in the misguided belief that everyone... every artist can be the next art star. Grayson Perry mentioned in that posted radio broadcast that some artists... the "art stars"... can be incredibly successful in spite of the fact that there are but only a small number of super wealthy collectors who buy their work.

Again I agree with Picasso in that a marriage of "High" & "Low" (or Popular) is virtually a necessity to avoid the academicism, decadence, ossification, and general silliness of Art created without any real concern or contact with the larger population.

Of course there is still a great variety of good art being made by talented artists who still understand and respect timeless values. We'll never know how many geniuses are struggling in the provinces; some are even making a living. But in our "postmodern" age (a term of dubious validity, really just a modernist's confession of impotence) diversity seems not so much the expression of a recognition that beauty takes many forms as an indifference to, or outright contempt for, beauty, whether physical, moral, or spiritual.

I've long admired the closing paragraph of Italo Calvino's poetic novel, _Invisible Cities_:

"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: *seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." *

The final sentence says it all. There is a lot of crap in the art world. But there is a lot of beauty as well. One must labor to discover and recognize these artists:









-Aron Wiesenfeld









-Douglas Bourgeois









-Lu Cong









-Marlene Dumas









-Bo Bartlett

>>>>>


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## StlukesguildOhio

-Andrea Kowch









-Andrew Wyeth









-Avigdor Arikha









-Francine van Hove









-Paul Fenniak

>>>>>


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## StlukesguildOhio

-Jerome Witkin









-Martha Erlebacher









-John Nava












>>>>>


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## StlukesguildOhio

I focused almost exclusively on more traditional "realists" figurative painters... but there are any number of marvelous landscape artists...









-Boris Koller

Expressionists:









-Jimmy Wright

Pop Artists & Post-Pop (Pop Surrealists):










And there are marvelous artists working in an abstract or conceptual language:









-Yee Sook Yung

I remember many earnest discussions I had with music-loving friends as a very young person (in the '60s and '70s) about the state of music and the arts generally. We wondered whether we would live to see our culture produce another composer of works of superb craftsmanship, towering inspiration, rich human significance, and enduring power over the human imagination. Half a century later I no longer expect an answer in the affirmative, having heard nothing at all composed in that time which would remotely justify it. Maybe the next generation will have its Bach, Beethoven, or Wagner...

Lets face it... such towering figures are rare across the whole of Art History. The 20th century saw two painters who could stand along side Michelangelo, Titian, Rubens, and Rembrandt: Matisse and Picasso. As much as I admire the Rococo, I can think of no such painter from that era. Nor from the 100 years of Mannerism which came on the heels of the Renaissance. On the other hand... in my life time I have witnessed film-makers like Hitchcock & Scorcese and writers like J.L. Borges and Italo Calvino. The Rococo had no Rembrandt... but they did have Mozart!


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## StlukesguildOhio

So is the Duchamp bad art? And if so, why?

Well... you might start with the fact that the work... or rather the act of putting it in a gallery as a work of art wasn't even Duchamp's although he fraudulently laid claim to it years later.


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## Mahlerian

StlukesguildOhio said:


> (In perhaps a tangentially related way I suspect that this is why I have limited patience with atonality... but quite appreciate the expressive distortions of dissonance and bending tonality employed by baroque composers, Gesualdo and Monteverdi, Wagner and Richard Strauss).


Gesualdo's music isn't tonal in any sense I'd recognize. Certainly it's not tonal in any sense that admits the music usually called "atonal" as an antithesis.


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## Woodduck

science said:


> Matters of fact and not opinion.


All right, I'll go with that. I believe that aesthetic qualities exist whether or not any particular observer can perceive them. Objects exhibit certain qualities which, when perceived by the human mind, are considered aesthetically significant. Some people are more aesthetically perceptive than others, either in general or with respect to particular qualities. Differences in brains and in the experience of art are natural. Experience can awaken and refine aesthetic perceptiveness, as it can any cognitive skill. We can learn to see beauty, or an absence of it, in the way a work of art is made. This refinement of perception is a common experience. And the more developed our perceptiveness, the more our perceptions tend to converge with those of other people and be mutually intelligible, regardless of our differing tastes - that is, even if our enjoyment of what we perceive differs from that of others.

I don't mean to imply by this that all aesthetic values are or should be shared by all people. Art is always both objective and subjective. We find artistic values common across cultures and eras, as well as those peculiar to particular cultures and, of course, individuals. Neither commonalities nor differences should surprise us, but the latter are most meaningful when seen against the former. Not much is to be gained by looking at individuals - your tastes and my tastes - unless we do it in the context of the remarkable correspondences which give near-universality to basic features of art through the ages. Those correspondences should be a gateway to understanding more about human nature. They are the myriad manifestations of beauty, perceivable as such despite their diversity.

The question of whether beauty is itself an "objective" value to us, apart from our ability to perceive it, is a question for psychology and philosophy, and, beneath all that, biology. I believe that it is - that beauty is a need of the human organism which we are built to perceive, and in that sense is a subspecies of our general need for a coherent perception and understanding of the world. That's why I insist on not divorcing art from other human concerns and seeing it as a mere pleasurable indulgence, although pleasure-giving is a part of its essence. Art is not just something pleasant, to be understood and evaluated merely in terms of our "likes"or "dislikes." It's a representation and a microcosm of the world-as-perceived, and unique in its symbolic power. It makes palpable our implicit understandings and values, which are abstractions, and allows us to see or hear them concrete and vivid to the senses. There is nothing else able to fulfill that task, and that's why all human beings have art. It's also why an artist who understands art's power and wishes to serve higher values in life, will want to serve them through his art.


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## science

Woodduck said:


> All right, I'll go with that. I believe that aesthetic qualities exist whether or not any particular observer can perceive them. Objects exhibit certain qualities which, when perceived by the human mind, are considered aesthetically significant. Some people are more aesthetically perceptive than others, either in general or with respect to particular qualities. Differences in brains and in the experience of art are natural. Experience can awaken and refine aesthetic perceptiveness, as it can any cognitive skill. We can learn to see beauty, or an absence of it, in the way a work of art is made. This refinement of perception is a common experience. And the more developed our perceptiveness, the more our perceptions tend to converge with those of other people and be mutually intelligible, regardless of our differing tastes - that is, even if our enjoyment of what we perceive differs from that of others.
> 
> I don't mean to imply by this that all aesthetic values are or should be shared by all people. Art is always both objective and subjective. We find artistic values common across cultures and eras, as well as those peculiar to particular cultures and, of course, individuals. Neither commonalities nor differences should surprise us, but the latter are most meaningful when seen against the former. Not much is to be gained by looking at individuals - your tastes and my tastes - unless we do it in the context of the remarkable correspondences which give near-universality to basic features of art through the ages. Those correspondences should be a gateway to understanding more about human nature. They are the myriad manifestations of beauty, perceivable as such despite their diversity.
> 
> The question of whether beauty is itself an "objective" value to us, apart from our ability to perceive it, is a question for psychology and philosophy. I believe that it is - that beauty is a need of the human organism which we are built to perceive, and in that sense is a subspecies of our general need for a coherent perception and understanding of the world. That's why I insist on not divorcing art from other human concerns and seeing it as a mere pleasurable indulgence, although pleasure-giving is a part of its essence. Art is not just something pleasant, to be understood and evaluated merely in terms of our "likes"or "dislikes." It's a representation and a microcosm of the world-as-perceived, and unique in its symbolic power. It makes palpable our implicit understandings and values, which are abstractions, and allows us to see or hear them concrete and vivid. There is nothing else able to fulfill that task, and that's why all human beings have art. It's also why an artist who understands art's power and wishes to serve higher values in life, will want to serve them through his art.


In other words: yes, it's objective, and when I like a work of art that you regard as sewage, it's because you're a more perceptive person than I am.

Whatever, man. You're not worth it.

Every time I get in a discussion with you, I sympathize with the likes of "some guy," and every time I'm in a discussion with people like him, I sympathize with the likes of you. You are all impossible to describe accurately within the limits of the terms of service of this site. You deserve each other.

Fortunately, I never meet people like you in the real world. Calvin and Aquinas: the 30 Years' War is over.


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## Woodduck

science said:


> In other words: yes, it's objective, and when I like a work of art that you regard as sewage, it's because you're a more perceptive person than I am.
> 
> Whatever, man. You're not worth it.
> 
> Every time I get in a discussion with you, I sympathize with the likes of "some guy," and every time I'm in a discussion with people like him, I sympathize with the likes of you. You are all impossible to describe accurately within the limits of the terms of service of this site. You deserve each other.
> 
> Fortunately, I never meet people like you in the real world. Calvin and Aquinas: the 30 Years' War is over.


Well, it's good that you've finally reached an objective judgment about "people like us."

:tiphat:


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## science

Woodduck said:


> Well, it's good that you've finally reached an objective judgment about "people like us."
> 
> :tiphat:


It's very good, really, that my "judgment" of you has so much in common with your judgments of each other and with both of your judgments of people like me.

Thing is, go outside. We're winning. Everywhere. People are still decorating their homes and places of worship with stuff that they love regardless of what either of your sides think of it. People are still making and listening to the music that they love regardless of what either of your sides think of it. I am so thankful for it, too. Freedom forbid either of your sides ever get any power over us again.


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> we have to look at the object and see what it is like and what it does independent of anyone's views of it.


An interesting proposition, but "what it does" depends upon _someone's _views of it. If we take away both artist and viewer, we have something that is dumb, and I don't believe either wants that. An artist with no audience still has herself to satisfy.



mstar said:


> If anyone is interested, MoMA has a section of its website devoted to explaining modern art: What is Modern Art?
> 
> And I've always found this picture slightly amusing. It did help me remember some of the subcategories of modern art, though...


I love this...but it's a lesson in "Modern Art" not modern art...isn't it? Have we been discussing whether art from the historical period referred to as "Modern" is bad, or art in the present day?



tdc said:


> Like honestly how many times have we seen a post like number 301? Its total deja vu.


And in every such discussion, there's always someone who comes along and says they are amazed...etc. (btw, what would 'incomplete' deja vu look like?)

As arpeggio says, the constant approaching and reapproaching of a difficult subject ("try, try again") gives participants the chance to adjust their thinking. Besides, every time we come together over this, we're not the same. I might have listened to some new music; you might have fallen out with a friend; Woodduck has been to a modern art exhibition; science has got some new platforms...



Woodduck said:


> All right, I'll go with that. I believe that aesthetic qualities exist whether or not any particular observer can perceive them. Objects exhibit certain qualities which, when perceived by the human mind, are considered aesthetically significant.
> 
> I do too, but it's the value that some attach to those qualities that get's us all worked up. "Attributes" is a better term, I think. The easiest example is the good old urinal. For some reason, one of the basic truths about the human experience is considered off-limits; any art that attempts to explore it, or capitalise on society's tendency to disgust or embarrassment in using the images associated with it attracts criticism on grounds of taste, decency...aesthetic qualities.
> 
> Some people are more aesthetically perceptive than others, [...]
> 
> Yeah, people are different. That sounds like a poor justification that just because some people lack the required perception, the aesthetic qualities are still there. It's all too easy to say that if you can't see what I can see, your equipment must be faulty.
> 
> That's why I insist on not divorcing art from other human concerns and seeing it as a mere pleasurable indulgence, although pleasure-giving is a part of its essence. Art is not just something pleasant, to be understood and evaluated merely in terms of our "likes"or "dislikes."
> 
> And yet earlier you wanted to divorce the object from artist and viewer - now you insist the whole of culture past and present must be looking in!


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> It's very good, really, that my "judgment" of you has so much in common with your judgments of each other and with both of your judgments of people like me.
> 
> Thing is, go outside. We're winning. Everywhere. People are still decorating their homes and places of worship with stuff that they love regardless of what either of your sides think of it. People are still making and listening to the music that they love regardless of what either of your sides think of it. I am so thankful for it, too. Freedom forbid either of your sides ever get any power over us again.


I think a reality check is needed here. I don't have a "side," and I don't want power over anyone. I speak always and only for myself, saying what I believe and feel, expecting only that others do the same, asking no approval and certainly no obedience. That you can even think in such concepts as "power" and "sides" and "winning" baffles me. It truly makes me wonder what has happened to you in your life. What have "they" done to you? Who attacked and wounded you, that now you must feel yourself attacked and wounded by someone stating a philosophy of art that differs from your own? It isn't as if I'm the only person in the world who thinks as I do. I lay no claim to originality. What is so threatening about the idea that some - not all, even, but merely some - things about art transcend opinion and taste? Why must it be so personal?

You see, we could invert this. I could feel that _my_ values are under assault and that _I'm_ being judged because you don't acknowledge the possibility that Bach's _B-minor Mass_ and Wagner's _Parsifal_ are any more artistically valuable and worthy of esteem than Andy Warhol's _Campbell's Soup Cans_ or John Cage's _Water Walk_, and that my belief that they really and truly are is just an irrational bias. I could take that as an insult to my mind and values and therefore to me. But I wouldn't take it that way. I would just maintain my value system, perhaps argue for it on the forum when appropriate, disagree with you, and leave you to your own beliefs.

It seems that that attitude is not possible for you. I'm sorry about that. I thought that explaining my ideas a bit further might help mitigate your insistence on feeling rejected, oppressed, invalidated, or whatever best describes how you feel. But I guess that isn't possible.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> I think a reality check is needed here. I don't have a "side," and I don't want power over anyone. I speak always and only for myself, saying what I believe and feel, expecting only that others do the same, asking no approval and certainly no obedience. That you can even think in such concepts as "power" and "sides" and "winning" baffles me. It truly makes me wonder what has happened to you in your life. What have "they" done to you? Who attacked and wounded you, that now you must feel yourself attacked and wounded by someone stating a philosophy of art that differs from your own? It isn't as if I'm the only person in the world who thinks as I do. I lay no claim to originality. What is so threatening about the idea that some - not all, even, but merely some - things about art transcend opinion and taste? Why must it be so personal?
> 
> You see, we could invert this. I could feel that _my_ values are under assault and that _I'm_ being judged because you don't acknowledge the possibility that Bach's _B-minor Mass_ and Wagner's _Parsifal_ are any more artistically valuable and worthy of esteem than Andy Warhol's _Campbell's Soup Cans_ or John Cage's _Water Walk_, and that my belief that they really and truly are is just an irrational bias. I could take that as an insult to my mind and values and therefore to me. But I wouldn't take it that way. I would just maintain my value system, perhaps argue for it on the forum when appropriate, disagree with you, and leave you to your own beliefs.
> 
> It seems that that attitude is not possible for you. I'm sorry about that. I thought that explaining my ideas a bit further might help mitigate your insistence on feeling rejected, oppressed, invalidated, or whatever best describes how you feel. But I guess that isn't possible.


No, probably not. I'm pretty sure I understand you pretty well, and am not going to be fooled by some pretty words.

As for what I would say about your values: they're not an "irrational" bias. Just a bias. Just your taste. Rationality is not possible. They just are what they are, as mine are what mine are, and so is everyone else's.

This is the essence of the issue, the conclusion of the whole matter: If you weren't so concerned to push the superiority of your taste, *you wouldn't see an assertion of equality as an attack*.


----------



## Adam Weber

I'm just going to leave this here...



> When we say that man chooses himself, we do mean that every one of us must choose himself; but by that we also mean that in choosing for himself he chooses for all men. For in effect, of all the actions a man may take in order to create himself as he wills to be, there is not one which is not creative, at the same time, of an image of man such as he believes he ought to be. - Sartre


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> I'm pretty sure I understand you pretty well, and am not going to be fooled by some pretty words.
> 
> This is the essence of the issue, the conclusion of the whole matter: If you weren't so concerned to push the superiority of your taste, *you wouldn't see an assertion of equality as an attack*.
> 
> Rationality is not possible.


Being pretty sure you understand someone pretty well is pretty unimpressive, but if rationality is not possible it's probably the best we can expect.

I'm not concerned to "push" anything, only to state something. I have been challenged on my statements, and so I have elaborated upon them. That is not "pushing" - but those who wish to feel pushed will feel pushed. And you are quite wrong about what you call the "essence" of the issue: I wouldn't see an assertion of equality as an attack, merely as a disagreement. That's the point I was trying to make. You're the only self-declared victim here, and your attributing the perception of being attacked to me is pure projection.

I think the third of your statements is the key to our differences. My response is: speak for yourself.

Now, can you stop reproaching me for existing because I say out loud that Campbell's soup cans should be recycled in a landfill and not in an art museum?


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> Being pretty sure you understand someone pretty well is pretty unimpressive, but if rationality is not possible it's probably the best we can expect.
> 
> I'm not concerned to "push" anything, only to state something. I have been challenged on my statements, and so I have elaborated upon them. That is not "pushing" - but those who wish to feel pushed will feel pushed. And you are quite wrong about what you call the "essence" of the issue: I wouldn't see an assertion of equality as an attack, merely as a disagreement. That's the point I was trying to make. You're the only self-declared victim here, and your attributing the perception of being attacked to me is pure projection.
> 
> I think the third of your statements is the key to our differences. My response is: speak for yourself.
> 
> Now, can you stop reproaching me for existing because I say out loud that Campbell's soup cans should be recycled in a landfill and not in an art museum?


You don't feel attacked, but you say things like, "can you stop reproaching me for existing."

Your existence and tastes are as legitimate as everyone else's!


----------



## Headphone Hermit

Woodduck said:


> Now, can you stop reproaching me for existing because I say out loud that Campbell's soup cans should be recycled in a landfill and not in an art museum?


I doubt this will happen (either clause in the sentence :lol: )

You might enjoy this work by Peter Davies (I've only attaches a small part of this very large painting - click the link to go to the Walker Art Gallery's page for this and to read the text in the stars more clearly)









http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/...inners-exhibition/paintings/peter_davies.aspx


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> I say out loud that Campbell's soup cans should be recycled in a landfill and not in an art museum?


So if we can all step away from the duel between you and science, may I ask for an explanation of the above (before I infer more than I should about your view of this work by Warhol)?


----------



## Piwikiwi

I don't understand why people are so mad here and so quick to dismiss each other. Would it hurt to say that you prefer realistic art without automatically trying to dismiss abstract art?


----------



## science

Piwikiwi said:


> I don't understand why people are so mad here and so quick to dismiss each other. Would it hurt to say that you prefer realistic art without automatically trying to dismiss abstract art?


It can't just be a preference or something. It has to be an absolute truth which others are just too stupid to see. Otherwise we're not taking art seriously enough.


----------



## Mahlerian

science said:


> In other words: yes, it's objective, and when I like a work of art that you regard as sewage, it's because you're a more perceptive person than I am.
> 
> Whatever, man. You're not worth it.
> 
> Every time I get in a discussion with you, I sympathize with the likes of "some guy," and every time I'm in a discussion with people like him, I sympathize with the likes of you. You are all impossible to describe accurately within the limits of the terms of service of this site. You deserve each other.


Don't you realize that Some Guy agrees with you on this particular issue? He is one of the posters most open to the idea that there are no absolutes in art, only individual reactions.

Speaking personally, I can't accept art that fails to reach even a basic level of craft or insight as good, and thus I am forced into the other camp, but I don't believe that any of us has direct access to perfect perception, and our tastes certainly color the way we see or hear anything.


----------



## science

Mahlerian said:


> Don't you realize that Some Guy agrees with you on this particular issue? He is one of the posters most open to the idea that there are no absolutes in art, only individual reactions.


Maybe he gives lip service to things like that, but in practice he relentlessly insults everyone who doesn't like what he likes.


----------



## Mahlerian

science said:


> Maybe he gives lip service to things like that, but in practice he relentlessly insults everyone who doesn't like what he likes.


I assure you, he truly believes it.

When others find him insulting and arrogant, it's usually because he's tearing apart their absurd arguments against modernism.

There are many things that Some Guy enjoys that I don't, but it's never bothered either of us.


----------



## Woodduck

Headphone Hermit said:


> I doubt this will happen (either clause in the sentence :lol: )
> 
> You might enjoy this work by Peter Davies (I've only attaches a small part of this very large painting - click the link to go to the Walker Art Gallery's page for this and to read the text in the stars more clearly)
> 
> View attachment 80351
> 
> 
> http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/...inners-exhibition/paintings/peter_davies.aspx


Thank you. And we should all thank National Museums Liverpool for bringing us this brilliant and innovative work, about which the artist tells us, " I want to combine the sensuality and beauty of formalism with the humour and toughness of conceptualism."


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> You don't feel attacked, but you say things like, "can you stop reproaching me for existing."
> 
> Your existence and tastes are as legitimate as everyone else's!


Attacking a thing and attacking a person are not the same. I have criticized certain aspects of modern art, and you, taking it as a personal attack on you, have reproached me.

The difference is clear to me. I don't know how to make it clearer to you, so I'll leave it at that.


----------



## Woodduck

MacLeod said:


> So if we can all step away from the duel between you and science, may I ask for an explanation of the above (before I infer more than I should about your view of this work by Warhol)?


Honestly, MacLeod, I'm weary of this pseudo-discussion. I mean literally, physically weary. It appears that a forum like this is no place for the serious discussion of art. Apparently it isn't even a good place for adults to hang out - you know, grown-ups who can tolerate the fact that other people think differently than they do and are not insulting them and even trying to gain power over them by the mere fact of disagreeing.

I'd be happy for you to infer anything you'd like about my view of Warhol's soup cans, although I'd think my mention of a landfill speaks pretty clearly for itself. Maybe some people reading that will think,"Oh goodness me, Woodduck wants to send me and my fellow pop-art fans to a landfill!" That's about the level of comprehension I've come to find unsurprising around here. I hasten to add that I'm not talking about you. No, your question is perfectly legitimate, and in less trying times I'd be happy to address it, but I'm too tired now to want to deal with it. Sorry. I think I need to go over to the opera forum for a bit and see whether anyone's fighting about Maria Callas or looking for Hitler in _Die Meistersinger_.

:tiphat:


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> Attacking a thing and attacking a person are not the same. I have criticized certain aspects of modern art, and you, taking it as a personal attack on you, have reproached me.
> 
> The difference is clear to me. I don't know how to make it clearer to you, so I'll leave it at that.


No, the difference is make-believe. If you attack art that someone loves, you attack that person. Everyone knows this. If you didn't want to be insulting, you'd settle for saying that you don't like it. But that's not enough for you.


----------



## science

Mahlerian said:


> I assure you, he truly believes it.
> 
> When others find him insulting and arrogant, it's usually because he's tearing apart their absurd arguments against modernism.
> 
> There are many things that Some Guy enjoys that I don't, but it's never bothered either of us.


Yeah, he's torn apart my absurd arguments against modernism many times. Everyone knows how much I hate modernism. And believe me, I have the scars.


----------



## isorhythm

science said:


> No, the difference is make-believe. If you attack art that someone loves, you attack that person. Everyone knows this. If you didn't want to be insulting, you'd settle for saying that you don't like it. But that's not enough for you.


I'm going to write a post at some point responding to your quasi-manifesto in the other thread, which I found very interesting. But for now I have to say that, while your points about the social function of art are important and valid, I strongly disagree with this total relativist view.

More to the point - and I've had this argument with some guy in the past as well - I think no matter how sincerely you hold it, and how eloquently you argue for it, expecting a majority of other people to adopt it is an exercise in futility that can only end badly.

People have been talking about art, truth and beauty literally for thousands of years. There are whole branches of philosophy devoted to this. They are just not going to stop. It is unreasonable to expect them to stop. "I like it" and "I don't like it" do not convey what many people actually feel about art, what the stakes are to them.


----------



## Mahlerian

isorhythm said:


> I'm going to write a post at some point responding to your quasi-manifesto in the other thread, which I found very interesting. But for now I have to say that, while your points about the social function of art are important and valid, I strongly disagree with this total relativist view.
> 
> More to the point - and I've had this argument with some guy in the past as well - I think no matter how sincerely you hold it, and how eloquently you argue for it, expecting a majority of other people to adopt it is an exercise in futility that can only end badly.
> 
> People have been talking about art, truth and beauty literally for thousands of years. There are whole branches of philosophy devoted to this. They are just not going to stop. It is unreasonable to expect them to stop. "I like it" and "I don't like it" do not convey what many people actually feel about art, what the stakes are to them.


Although I disagree with Science and Some Guy about this, what bothers me more is the quasi-logical positivist view that's gained some currency on TC that when people make an aesthetic judgment about art, what they're _really_ saying is that they like or dislike it, and nothing about the work of art itself.

I would venture that this is not the way most people approach or think about aesthetic judgments, nor does it more accurately capture the reasoning or thought processes involved.


----------



## science

isorhythm said:


> I'm going to write a post at some point responding to your quasi-manifesto in the other thread, which I found very interesting. But for now I have to say that, while your points about the social function of art are important and valid, I strongly disagree with this total relativist view.
> 
> More to the point - and I've had this argument with some guy in the past as well - I think no matter how sincerely you hold it, and how eloquently you argue for it, expecting a majority of other people to adopt it is an exercise in futility that can only end badly.
> 
> People have been talking about art, truth and beauty literally for thousands of years. There are whole branches of philosophy devoted to this. They are just not going to stop. It is unreasonable to expect them to stop. "I like it" and "I don't like it" do not convey what many people actually feel about art, what the stakes are to them.


That's fine, but let's be honest about what happened here. This isn't a matter of some philosopher saying that good art has to have certain characteristics. Woodduck intentionally and viciously insulted a great deal of art. He didn't just give some explanation for why he thinks it's not good - he was intentionally insulting. He did it in terms that no lover of that art could fail to take personally. He set out to do that and he succeeded. There's no going back from that. You break the ice, it stays broken.

Edit: It really is the mirror image of what "some guy" does, viciously insulting people who don't like the art he likes. He could just say why he thinks it's good music or whatever, but that's not enough for him either.


----------



## isorhythm

science said:


> That's fine, but let's be honest about what happened here. This isn't a matter of some philosopher saying that good art has to have certain characteristics. Woodduck intentionally and viciously insulted a great deal of art. He didn't just give some explanation for why he thinks it's not good - he was intentionally insulting. He did it in terms that no lover of that art could fail to take personally. He set out to do that and he succeeded. There's no going back from that. You break the ice, it stays broken.
> 
> Edit: It really is the mirror image of what "some guy" does, viciously insulting people who don't like the art he likes. He could just say why he thinks it's good music or whatever, but that's not enough for him either.


I haven't read the last few pages and don't plan to - are you just referring to his comment that the Warhol soup cans should be thrown in a landfill? It looks like that was pretty far along, after the discussion already got (unfortunately, in my view) so heated.

What I find very aggravating on this forum is when people derail threads by barging in and saying how much they hate the thing being discussed (the thing is always modern music of some kind). But it's different for strong opinions to come out in the course of a probing discussion. I don't think there's any need for us all to adopt ultra-sanitized language all the time, as long as we aren't engaged in personal attacks.

I have a good friend who once told me point blank he thinks all classical music is boring and pointless in the modern world - in no way was this a personal attack.


----------



## DiesIraeCX

science said:


> That's fine, but let's be honest about what happened here. This isn't a matter of some philosopher saying that good art has to have certain characteristics. Woodduck intentionally and viciously insulted a great deal of art. He didn't just give some explanation for why he thinks it's not good - he was intentionally insulting. He did it in terms that no lover of that art could fail to take personally. He set out to do that and he succeeded. There's no going back from that. You break the ice, it stays broken.
> 
> Edit: It really is the mirror image of what "some guy" does, viciously insulting people who don't like the art he likes. He could just say why he thinks it's good music or whatever, but that's not enough for him either.


This level of victimhood, instigation, and hyperbolic rhetoric is too much.

Why does it need to be explained that harshly criticizing or even insulting art is _not_ a personal attack. Not on this planet, at least. Where are the "vicious insults" to people? I cannot find them. Unless you're still misconstruing strong/harsh criticism and insults to art as insults to people themselves. Was it the comment about the Warhol soup cans that made you decide that Woodduck is out to start World War III? Why must the rhetoric levels be unnecessarily cranked up to 100 out of 10?


----------



## Piwikiwi

DiesIraeCX said:


> This level of victimhood, instigation, and hyperbolic rhetoric is almost too much to take.
> 
> Why does it need to be explained that harshly criticizing or even insulting art is _not_ a personal attack. Not on this planet, at least. Where are the "vicious insults" to people? I cannot find them. Unless you're still misconstruing strong/harsh criticism and insults to art as insults to people themselves.


Being dismissive of things that other people like in such a way can be quite polarising. It is also a bit unnecessary in my opinion. What is wrong with just saying that you don't like something?


----------



## isorhythm

Piwikiwi said:


> Being dismissive of things that other people like in such a way can be quite polarising. It is also a bit unnecessary in my opinion. *What is wrong with just saying that you don't like something?*


aaarrrrrghhhhhh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics


----------



## Piwikiwi

isorhythm said:


> aaarrrrrghhhhhh
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics


What am I supposed to do with that?


----------



## isorhythm

Piwikiwi said:


> What am I supposed to do with that?


Acknowledge that maybe the huge number of people engaged with these questions across centuries and continents weren't all wasting their time?

You may think they were, but you must recognize that's an extreme position that most people won't casually adopt.


----------



## DiesIraeCX

Piwikiwi said:


> Being dismissive of things that other people like in such a way can be quite polarising. It is also a bit unnecessary in my opinion. What is wrong with just saying that you don't like something?


Sure, I don't disagree with that, it absolutely can be polarizing. My personal stance with regards to the topics under discussion, there is a lot of gray, I don't come down firmly on one side or the other. But I digress, I'm merely stating that science is making everything seem worse than it really is, things are being blown out of proportion. It always just _has_ to be some kind of "war" with imaginary "vicious attacks" on actual people. *Being polarizing and viciously attacking people are incredibly different* and I feel the distinction is worth being made. That's why I said that the levels of rhetoric are just being amped up for no reason, other than what seems to be instigation, starting a war when there isn't one. Had science merely stated that Woodduck and others were being polarizing, then I would have never made my initial statement because there wouldn't have been a need for it.


----------



## science

DiesIraeCX said:


> This level of victimhood, instigation, and hyperbolic rhetoric is too much.
> 
> Why does it need to be explained that harshly criticizing or even insulting art is _not_ a personal attack. Not on this planet, at least. Where are the "vicious insults" to people? I cannot find them. Unless you're still misconstruing strong/harsh criticism and insults to art as insults to people themselves. Was it the comment about the Warhol soup cans that made you decide that Woodduck is out to start World War III? Why must the rhetoric levels be unnecessarily cranked up to 100 out of 10?


Would you understand me being upset if he'd insulted my mother?


----------



## Piwikiwi

isorhythm said:


> Acknowledge that maybe the huge number of people engaged with these questions across centuries and continents weren't all wasting their time?
> 
> You may think they were, but you must recognize that's an extreme position that most people won't casually adopt.


I don't think they were(I am going to study art history next year after all). I also don't mind if this was a discussion but this mostly seems to be people shouting at each other. I think that there are people here who would benefit from if they would take themselves a little less seriously.


----------



## ArtMusic

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Or Western Academicism:


That is just beautiful. Why thank you sir. I really like the subject, the composition and the emotion it triggers. 

That is how modern art should be.


----------



## Piwikiwi

ArtMusic said:


> That is just beautiful. Why thank you sir. I really like the subject, the composition and the emotion it triggers.
> 
> That is how modern art should be.


It is alright. 5/7


----------



## Balthazar

Woodduck said:


> To ask for an enumeration of aesthetic standards while calling for the omission of a "Humpty-Dumpty" concept fundamental to aesthetics - in fact a virtual synonym for it - shows that you have no idea of what you're asking for.


I was trying to avoid a circular argument of the type:

A. Great art is that which possesses beauty
B. Beauty is that quality that makes art great

I was hoping someone might be able to provide a more meaningful elucidation of the matter.

From what I can piece together from your disjointed statements, the viewpoint you describe is ultimately reducible to either total relativism or, more likely, some sort of mystical religion.

----- Standards exist, but they can't be accurately described. 
----- Some people can see them, some can't. 
----- There's no way to determine who is in which category except by whether they claim to seem them or not.

It seems that in "*absolute aesthetic standards*" we have finally found a thoroughly appropriate analogue to "*the emperor's new clothes*."



Woodduck said:


> I am free to say what I think about the *sewage* in which the "official" guardians of culture have been asking us to swim for the entire sixty-six years I've been on the planet.





Woodduck said:


> Is that stack of soup cans art? Maybe...But I'd feel dirty calling the *idiot* who assembled it an artist.


I had rather hoped that the order of discourse on this forum was above calling things one doesn't like "sewage" and its creators "idiots." Particularly without any willingness to back up such assertions in a thoughtful and considered manner.

Milton Babbitt's quote comes to mind:

_"Why should the layman be other than bored and puzzled by what he is unable to understand, music or anything else? It is only the translation of this boredom and puzzlement into resentment and denunciation that seems to me indefensible."_


----------



## science

Piwikiwi said:


> I don't think they were(I am going to study art history next year after all). I also don't mind if this was a discussion but this mostly seems to be people shouting at each other. I think that there are people here who would benefit from if they would take themselves a little less seriously.


To be clear, the tread was intended to be this. People who've been on this forum for a month or so do not start a thread like this with any other intention.


----------



## DiesIraeCX

science said:


> Would you understand me being upset if he'd insulted my mother?


I sure would. That would constitute a literal verbal attack to an _actual person_, that being your mother in this hypothetical question.


----------



## science

DiesIraeCX said:


> I sure would. That would constitute a literal verbal attack to an _actual person_, that being your mother in this hypothetical question.


Would you understand me being upset if he insulted my religion?


----------



## DiesIraeCX

science said:


> Would you understand me being upset if he insulted my religion?


No, I would not. I very much support the right to attack and insult _ideas_ (i.e., philosophies, and religions). When someone like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens attacks (attacked in Hitchens' case) ideas in the bible or the quran, they are doing just that, attacking ideas, not people. If one cannot handle having his/her ideas being attacked, then one could have better ideas that are able to _withstand_ scrutiny, attack, and criticism.

Einstein had great ideas, one of them turned out to be the theory of general relativity. I urge people to attack that idea all they want, their attacks will not hold any water because the theory withstands those attacks.


----------



## science

DiesIraeCX said:


> No, I would not. I very much support the right to attack and insult _ideas_ (i.e., philosophies, and religions). When someone like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens attacks (attacked in Hitchens' case) ideas in the bible, they are doing just that, attacking ideas, not people. If one cannot handle having his/her ideas being attacked, then one could have better ideas that are able to _withstand_ scrutiny, attack, and criticism.
> 
> Einstein had great ideas, one of them turned out to be the theory of general relativity. I urge people to attack that idea all they want, their attacks will not hold any water because the theory withstands those attacks.


Religion isn't just an idea; it's an identity. Would you understand me being upset if he insulted my race or my country?


----------



## mmsbls

This can be a very interesting discussion, but it becomes so much less when people start to make negative comments about others. People's posting style is much less interesting than the aesthetics of art, and it's against the ToS. So can we get back to discussing art and how we interact with it?


----------



## violadude

I understand that people who criticize modern art don't mean it personally...but it truly is difficult, for those of us that partake in modern art, that put are blood, sweat and tears into our work, to not take these broad claims about modern art sucking personally. 

I truly fear a future situation, where in this relatively free market economy we have in the USA, I will be forced to repress my artistic sensibilities and scum to the tyranny of the masses, churning out work after work that I simply do not care about, or even worse, work that I absolutely despise. And to hear some of my fellow classical music lovers (and let's remember, every single one of our musical tastes are ultimately in the minority) say that I should or must do exactly that...it's sad and frustrating to hear.

I'm not aiming this at any one in particular, but I hope most of you will be able to understand, and maybe sympathize/empathize with, my position.


----------



## amfortas

science said:


> Religion isn't just an idea; it's an identity. Would you understand me being upset if he insulted my race or my country?


This thread is not about your mother, your religion, your race, or your country; it's about the merits (or otherwise) of modern art. Woodduck voiced some strong opinions on that topic. Perhaps, then, it's really the thread itself that upsets you.


----------



## science

mmsbls said:


> This can be a very interesting discussion, but it becomes so much less when people start to make negative comments about others. People's posting style is much less interesting than the aesthetics of art, and it's against the ToS. So can we get back to discussing art and how we interact with it?


Just in case this is about the posts that mentioned me, if it's ok with the mods, I'd like people to have a bit more freedom to bend the TOS when they post about me or my posting style. Let them tear me down, who cares? What I'd rather see is some cooling on the insults to the music and art that people here love - whether it's light classical, pops, modernism, whatever. I don't mean warnings or banning or anything punitive, just that I wish we would be more polite to each other. But hey, as long as people are going to have their knives out, I'll keep mine out too!


----------



## DiesIraeCX

science said:


> Religion isn't just an idea; it's an identity. Would you understand me being upset if he insulted my race or my country?


You're intentionally leading me down slope made up of false equivalencies.

Religion is an idea (many ideas). 
One's mother is not an idea, she's a human being made up flesh and bone.

You may consciously choose to take that book of ideas and make it your identity, but be ready to defend those ideas. Your race is an entirely different thing, you are born with it. We're not discussing ethnicity, mind you, but _race_. We're talking _biology_.

Insulting one's nationality or country is closer to attacking ideas, although not quite the same. I'm not too sure what point you're after here. So far, we have "one's mother", "one's race", "one's religion", and "one's country". I am not my country. I am my race, though. I have family in Italy that love to attack America all the time when I visit them! :lol: It's no sweat off my back, they're attacking American institutions and American ideals and American ways of life and American issues. They're not attacking _me_.


----------



## science

amfortas said:


> This thread is not about your mother, your religion, your race, or your identity; it's about the merits (or otherwise) of modern art. Woodduck voiced some strong opinions on that topic. Perhaps, then, it's really the thread itself that upsets you.


I guess you mean "strong opinions" as a euphemism for insults. The thing about my mother, religion, race, identity that matters is that I would reasonably be expected to *love* them. LOVE. That is why people get upset when you insult those things.

If we were all just indifferent to art and music, then we could all just insult it all the time and no one would care. But we're not indifferent, and we know it. Those insults are intended to hurt. "Sewage" isn't a meaningful analysis of why a particular work of art isn't good. It's a stab with a knife, it's intended to cut. Pure and simple.


----------



## science

DiesIraeCX said:


> You're intentionally leading me down slope made up of false equivalencies.
> 
> Religion is an idea (many ideas).
> One's mother is not an idea, she's a human being made up flesh and bone.
> 
> You may consciously choose to take that book of ideas and make it your identity, but be ready to defend those ideas. Your race is an entirely different thing, you are born with it. We're not discussing ethnicity, mind you, but _race_. We're talking _biology_.
> 
> Insulting one's nationality or country is closer to attacking ideas, although not quite the same. I'm not too sure what point you're after here. So far, we have "one's mother", "one's race", "one's religion", and "one's country". I am not my country. I am my race, though. I have family in Italy that love to attack America all the time when I visit them! :lol: It's no sweat off my back, they're attacking American institutions and American ideals and American ways of life and American issues. They're not attacking _me_.


Well, where I grew up, when you insult those things, you expect to get punched. If you really don't love anything enough to get upset when people insult it, obviously you're not going to understand.

Edit: Also, is your idea that religion is merely a collection of ideas based on a very wide study of religion? If so, go to the religion discussion board and be ready to defend it! I'd like to see you explain a lot of human religious behavior!


----------



## isorhythm

science said:


> Religion isn't just an idea; it's an identity. Would you understand me being upset if he insulted my race or my country?


If I said "All members of [religion] are stupid, bad people," that would indeed be an attack on their identity.

But criticizing the religious beliefs themselves has to be fair game.


----------



## PJaye

I feel that any artist needs to be looked at from an individual perspective first and foremost. Any time, group, or movement they may have been part of is just incidental to who they are, and can't define their art. Our individuality is the essence of our unique creative expression. A generalized term of description or critique is bound to be misleading and unsatisfying. Just look at the vast range of expression in the paintings that have been posted in this thread. Grouping things does allow for easier reference and a broader perspective for analysis. I know it's an essential frame of reference that's used in countless ways in everyday life, (historical periods, eras, and such as one) and I think it has many uses, but using it in critical analysis of a set of individual's work seems to muddy or homogenize things. It's unfair to the artists its being applied to. On another point, that painting by Francine Van Hove floored me. Wow. If there is bad modern art out there, there's also modern masterpieces around. I knew how I felt about it when I realized I had found myself looking away from the women at that table to the marvelous texture of the bread, and that jam... The jam in my fridge doesn't look that good.


----------



## science

isorhythm said:


> If I said "All members of [religion] are stupid, bad people," that would indeed be an attack on their identity.
> 
> But criticizing the religious beliefs themselves has to be fair game.


How about calling them "sewage?" Is that fair game?


----------



## amfortas

science said:


> I guess you mean "strong opinions" as a euphemism for insults. The thing about my mother, religion, race, identity that matters is that I would reasonably be expected to *love* them. LOVE. That is why people get upset when you insult those things.
> 
> If we were all just indifferent to art and music, then we could all just insult it all the time and no one would care. But we're not indifferent, and we know it. Those insults are intended to hurt. "Sewage" isn't a meaningful analysis of why a particular work of art isn't good. It's a stab with a knife, it's intended to cut. Pure and simple.


Again, given the thread title, you could reasonably expect to come across such pronouncements at some point in nearly thirty pages. It's the risk you run entering the discussion at all.

That said, I agree it wouldn't hurt if we made even more of an effort to support our aesthetic pronouncements with meaningful analysis; it could only raise the level of discussion.


----------



## isorhythm

science said:


> How about calling them "sewage?" Is that fair game?


I could imagine it being fair game, sure. There are some really vile religious beliefs.


----------



## DiesIraeCX

science said:


> Well, where I grew up, when you insult those things, you expect to get punched. If you really don't love anything enough to get upset when people insult it, obviously you're not going to understand.


This is another false equivalency, or rather an absolute statement that denies nuances.

I actually do love America, flawed as all hell as it is! I do love my country. When my family in Italy insults America, I don't take it as a *personal attack* because it is not. This is my point, who said I don't love anything enough? You did. I never did. You put those words in my mouth. I _just_ don't take it as a personal attack, this bears repeating.

If where you come from people got punched for attacking one's ideas, then the person who did the punching is in the wrong. That doesn't seem too controversial to say, I hope.

I love my mother enough.
I love my country enough.
I love my race enough.
I love my ideas enough.

Being able to distinguish between personal attacks and non-personal attacks has nothing to do with me loving anything enough to get upset. What that had to do with anything I don't know, and I find it a bit upsetting, if not mildly insulting.


----------



## science

Whatever. I got involved again, my bad. 

You all go on insulting each other and the art that you supposedly love all you want. That's what this forum is evidently supposed to be about now. 

Call it fair game or intellectual discussion or whatever you want, but it's sewage.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

It's actually just ego porn and lazyness.


----------



## Blancrocher

PJaye said:


> On another point, that painting by Francine Van Hove floored me.


I notice that according to Wikipedia all of her paintings are privately owned, which means we're unlikely to see them in museums except in the case of serendipitous loans.

I'm reminded of an amusing piece in the New Yorker about buyers and sellers in the most exclusive luxury art market: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/02/dealers-hand


----------



## hagridindminor

Heres a wild theory, please feel free to disagree with me, but state why you disagree:

There are three distinct categories within art.

The first type: There is a certain path in which divinity has direct influence over things. The "all seeing eye" focuses on a certain group of people, until it needs to move on and focus on something else, this is to ensure that the universe moves in a certain direction, nothing more, nothing less. Anything under the direct influence will naturally possess a far better quality than the rest.This does not mean the artist is better than the other, but rather that artist is being focused upon for the eye to continue its path. For example, if you were to look at rock performances during a period of time, you can clearly see its influence. The eye has moved on from rock and onto something else. where is it now? Who knows.

The second type: Indirect influence. This means being inspired by something which possesses or possessed direct influence. For example, if I were to read the lord of the rings and then get inspired to write a fantasy novel, this would be an act of indirect influence. If I were to listen to some Bach and then decide to become a composer, this would be indirect influence. I'm being influenced by a person which was at one point under direct influence.

The third type: The type of category in which the artist or person rejects the influence, tries to overthrow it, or tries to divert from such a force, this would all be placed in the third category. 

I think in regards to art, it follows in this order


----------



## mmsbls

science said:


> Just in case this is about the posts that mentioned me, if it's ok with the mods, I'd like people to have a bit more freedom to bend the TOS when they post about me or my posting style. Let them tear me down, who cares? What I'd rather see is some cooling on the insults to the music and art that people here love - whether it's light classical, pops, modernism, whatever. I don't mean warnings or banning or anything punitive, just that I wish we would be more polite to each other. But hey, as long as people are going to have their knives out, I'll keep mine out too!


I assume you realize that we can't do that. Although it would be somewhat amusing to modify the ToS to say:



> Do not post comments about other members person or »posting style« on the forum (unless said comments are unmistakably positive or unless that member is X, Y, or Z. For those members fire away )


I have a question for you. Presumably when X says Mozart's music is garbage, some infer that X also means that those who like Mozart's music have a lesser aesthetic sense (or something along those lines). And people feel insulted. But what about when X says Beethoven's 9th symphony is the greatest work ever written? Presumably, those who dislike the 9th should also feel insulted (i.e. X means that anyone who doesn't like the 9th has a lesser aesthetic sense). I understand that the two situations are slightly different, but if an insult is inferred for one it ought to be inferred for the other. What do you think?

When I see someone on TC saying X sucks/is garbage/is useless, I simply assume they dislike X. When X argues that Romantic music is innately better than modern music, I assume they believe that for a variety of reasons. X is either correct or incorrect, and maybe there could be an interesting discussion. Maybe it's actually true that human brains somehow do innately react more positively to tonal music in general. Who knows? I can still really like the Berg violin concerto or Schnittke.


----------



## violadude

hagridindminor said:


> Heres a wild theory, please feel free to disagree with me, but state why you disagree:
> 
> There are three distinct categories within art.
> 
> The first type: There is a certain path in which divinity has direct influence over things. The "all seeing eye" focuses on a certain group of people, until it needs to move on and focus on something else, this is to ensure that the universe moves in a certain direction, nothing more, nothing less. Anything under the direct influence will naturally possess a far better quality than the rest.This does not mean the artist is better than the other, but rather that artist is being focused upon for the eye to continue its path. For example, if you were to look at rock performances during a period of time, you can clearly see its influence. The eye has moved on from rock and onto something else. where is it now? Who knows.
> 
> The second type: Indirect influence. This means being inspired by something which possesses or possessed direct influence. For example, if I were to read the lord of the rings and then get inspired to write a fantasy novel, this would be an act of indirect influence. If I were to listen to some Bach and then decide to become a composer, this would be indirect influence. I'm being influenced by a person which was at one point under direct influence.
> 
> The third type: The type of category in which the artist or person rejects the influence, tries to overthrow it, or tries to divert from such a force, this would all be placed in the third category.
> 
> I think in regards to art, it follows in this order


Well, that IS a pretty wild idea...you got that right.


----------



## amfortas

hagridindminor said:


> Heres a wild theory, please feel free to disagree with me, but state why you disagree:


Before agreeing or disagreeing, I would point out your theory rests on at least one rather large, unsupported assumption.


----------



## violadude

isorhythm said:


> I could imagine it being fair game, sure. There are some really vile religious beliefs.


There's a difference though. People writing music you don't like doesn't harm anyone. People propagating harmful religious ideas can and does.

And then, there's those situations where people write music that also propagates harmful ideas (religious or non-religious). Most of the music people complain about on these forums is pretty much completely abstract, though.


----------



## Nereffid

mmsbls said:


> When I see someone on TC saying X sucks/is garbage/is useless, I simply assume they dislike X. When X argues that Romantic music is innately better than modern music, I assume they believe that for a variety of reasons. X is either correct or incorrect, and maybe there could be an interesting discussion. Maybe it's actually true that human brains somehow do innately react more positively to tonal music in general. Who knows? I can still really like the Berg violin concerto or Schnittke.


As I've thought further about my "brain = black box" idea (was it this thread or another one?) I realise that ultimately what's going on is simply that individuals differ in their exact configurations of neurons and neurotransmitter releases. Of course in the past we didn't know such things, but we do now; nevertheless, when faced with the prospect that other people like stuff we don't like, many of us still would rather not acknowledge these simple biological differences, and instead construct elaborate theories of aesthetics, or talk about the emperor's new clothes, or condemn "the masses", or despair about the degeneration of western civilisation, etc etc.
Cells, small molecules, and electrical impulses: that's really all it is, guys.


----------



## hagridindminor

amfortas said:


> Before agreeing or disagreeing, I would point out your theory rests on at least one rather large, unsupported assumption.


Which assumption is that?


----------



## SeptimalTritone

Nereffid said:


> As I've thought further about my "brain = black box" idea (was it this thread or another one?) I realise that ultimately what's going on is simply that individuals differ in their exact configurations of neurons and neurotransmitter releases. Of course in the past we didn't know such things, but we do now; nevertheless, when faced with the prospect that other people like stuff we don't like, many of us still would rather not acknowledge these simple biological differences, and instead construct elaborate theories of aesthetics, or talk about the emperor's new clothes, or condemn "the masses", or despair about the degeneration of western civilisation, etc etc.
> Cells, small molecules, and electrical impulses: that's really all it is, guys.


The problem is that when people say that Schoenberg has no melodies...



















It's not that their psychological makeup gives them different taste. They are literally _wrong_ and not paying attention. When so much reaction to Schoenberg isn't based on psychological taste, but literally not giving the music sufficient attention and alertness and respect: that's really all it is, guys.


----------



## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> Maybe it's actually true that human brains somehow do innately react more positively to tonal music in general. Who knows? I can still really like the Berg violin concerto or Schnittke.


Brains that grow up exclusively with tonal music seem to be more receptive to tonal music.

Brains that do not grow up with tonal music (or not just tonal music) are usually just as receptive to non-tonal music.

Pretty much nobody today grows up with tonal music exclusively, though, so you'll get all kinds of confusion based on people defining anything they're comfortable with as "tonal."


----------



## violadude

hagridindminor said:


> Which assumption is that?


That there's an all seeing force/power/being guiding humanity in a particular direction.


----------



## amfortas

violadude said:


> That there's an all seeing force/power/being guiding humanity in a particular direction.


^^^ Yeah, what he said.


----------



## mmsbls

SeptimalTritone said:


> The problem is that when people say that Schoenberg has no melodies...
> 
> It's not that their psychological makeup gives them different taste. They are literally _wrong_ and not paying attention. When so much reaction to Schoenberg isn't based on psychological taste, but literally not giving the music sufficient attention and alertness and respect: that's really all it is, guys.


Yes, they are wrong. Someone could show them some of Schoenberg's melodies, and then presumably the argument would change to melodies that are easily noticeable or memorable. Then people could argue about the concept of "easily noticeable or memorable" to whom. it actually could be a very interesting discussion if both sides were to work together to better understand both Schoenberg's music and the response of novices, but that rarely happens unfortunately.


----------



## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> Brains that grow up exclusively with tonal music seem to be more receptive to tonal music.
> 
> Brains that do not grow up with tonal music (or not just tonal music) are usually just as receptive to non-tonal music.
> 
> Pretty much nobody today grows up with tonal music exclusively, though, so you'll get all kinds of confusion based on people defining anything they're comfortable with as "tonal."


As far as I know, that simple assessment is correct, but I was really just saying people could discuss propositions about music and try to understand whether they are correct or not rather than take statements as attacks. And those discussions could actually be interesting.


----------



## SeptimalTritone

mmsbls said:


> Yes, they are wrong. Someone could show them some of Schoenberg's melodies, and then presumably the argument would change to melodies that are easily noticeable or memorable. Then people could argue about the concept of "easily noticeable or memorable" to whom. it actually could be a very interesting discussion if both sides were to work together to better understand both Schoenberg's music and the response of novices, but that rarely happens unfortunately.


All right. The problem is that they are extremely easily noticeable, and if you listen and get into the music as much as you would with, say, Brahms, memorable as well. In fact, Schoenberg would often designate clear main melodies with the word "Haupstimme", and sometimes secondary melodies in counterpoint with the word "Nebenstimme".

But seriously, go listen to the beginning few bars of the first and last movements of the 4th string quartet, which have ultra-obvious and noticeable melody + accompaniment patterns (and they return periodically). Or listen to the entirety of the wind quintet. Or listen to the concertos. It is easier to pick out a main leading melodic voice with greater ease in Schoenberg's chamber music than, say, Stravinsky's octet where there's is much more contrapuntal equality and much less obvious "Hauptstimme".

So, the "easily noticeable or memorable" theory is _wrong_.


----------



## science

mmsbls said:


> I assume you realize that we can't do that. Although it would be somewhat amusing to modify the ToS to say:
> 
> I have a question for you. Presumably when X says Mozart's music is garbage, some infer that X also means that those who like Mozart's music have a lesser aesthetic sense (or something along those lines). And people feel insulted. But what about when X says Beethoven's 9th symphony is the greatest work ever written? Presumably, those who dislike the 9th should also feel insulted (i.e. X means that anyone who doesn't like the 9th has a lesser aesthetic sense). I understand that the two situations are slightly different, but if an insult is inferred for one it ought to be inferred for the other. What do you think?
> 
> When I see someone on TC saying X sucks/is garbage/is useless, I simply assume they dislike X. When X argues that Romantic music is innately better than modern music, I assume they believe that for a variety of reasons. X is either correct or incorrect, and maybe there could be an interesting discussion. Maybe it's actually true that human brains somehow do innately react more positively to tonal music in general. Who knows? I can still really like the Berg violin concerto or Schnittke.


That's actually a very good question! My first thought was simply that no one can call something "garbage" without meaning to communicate offense to the people who like it, whereas praising something doesn't ordinarily communicate any disrespect.

But my second thought is that we actually _do_ have that affect on people when we praise something in the wrong way. (I'm using "wrong" here assuming that we do not intend to turn people off to classical music. I know that many members here do not share that value of mine!) I'll think about this more.

In my mind, it's related to the issue of intimidation. Many people seem to me to be intimidated by anything that gets a certain status - Beethoven, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, stuff like that. I suspect they don't enjoy it because they're tense: they don't _feel free_ to enjoy it because they don't feel free _not_ to enjoy it because to admit not enjoying it would be embarrassing. (Recursively, within the classical music community we can easily see that people feel a sense of shame and defensiveness about not enjoying certain music.) Of course there is something like a classist legacy behind all of this, and the way we praise something could remind people of that legacy, turning them off to the art itself. (As I've said many times before, I believe this is actually our intention much of the time, but in that I may be uncharitably overestimating the self-awareness of the people who do it. The most cynical interpretation is that I'm right on both counts - the intention and the overestimation - and I am a sucker for cynicism.)

So I suspect that the reason we don't see more objection to such praise in those terms is that shame.

I'll turn this over a bit more though. It really is an interesting twist!

Edit: On the moderation thing, just don't admit it! I've been an authority figure in certain contexts, I understand that justice sometimes transcends law.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

mmsbls said:


> I have a question for you. Presumably when X says Mozart's music is garbage, some infer that X also means that those who like Mozart's music have a lesser aesthetic sense (or something along those lines). And people feel insulted. But what about when X says Beethoven's 9th symphony is the greatest work ever written? Presumably, those who dislike the 9th should also feel insulted (i.e. X means that anyone who doesn't like the 9th has a lesser aesthetic sense). I understand that the two situations are slightly different, but if an insult is inferred for one it ought to be inferred for the other. What do you think?


I find this a difficult question to answer.

"when X says Mozart's music is garbage, some infer that X also means that those who like Mozart's music have a lesser aesthetic sense (or something along those lines). And people feel insulted."

Yes - I can see that

"But what about when X says Beethoven's 9th symphony is the greatest work ever written? Presumably, those who dislike the 9th should also feel insulted (i.e. X means that anyone who doesn't like the 9th has a lesser aesthetic sense)."

Yes - I can see that

But ..... sometimes the opinion (either that the music of X is garbage or that the music of Y is the best thing since sliced bread) is sustainable. The really difficult part of the question is ..... what qualifies Z to make the opinion in the first place? I have no difficulty in accepting that some people are better qualified than I am to pronounce on quality of art .... but similarly, there are some people who are much less qualified than I am to do so (although, regular readers will hopefully have noticed that I very seldom make such a pronouncement as if I am an 'expert').


----------



## mmsbls

SeptimalTritone said:


> All right. The problem is that they are extremely easily noticeable, and if you listen and get into the music as much as you would with, say, Brahms, memorable as well. In fact, Schoenberg would often designate clear main melodies with the word "Haupstimme", and sometimes secondary melodies in counterpoint with the word "Nebenstimme".
> 
> But seriously, go listen to the beginning few bars of the first and last movements of the 4th string quartet, which have ultra-obvious and noticeable melody + accompaniment patterns (and they return periodically). Or listen to the entirety of the wind quintet. Or listen to the concertos. It is easier to pick out a main leading melodic voice with greater ease in Schoenberg's chamber music than, say, Stravinsky's octet where there's is much more contrapuntal equality and much less obvious "Hauptstimme".
> 
> So, the "easily noticeable or memorable" theory is _wrong_.


I certainly don't disagree that Schoenberg's music contains melodies. But I wouldn't tell someone who said that his music does not contain melodies that those melodies are obvious. People unfamiliar with Schoenberg or similar music can get very confused listening. The music can appear chaotic or random. That last statement is a fact - not that the music _is_ chaotic or random, but that it can appear that way. When someone hears music that appears so different and odd, maybe hearing the melodies is much more difficult. Maybe they become confused by the sounds and nothing sticks. Maybe they wouldn't agree that a particular melody is truly a melody (i.e. they may feel melodies must sound a certain way). I can tell you that I did not hear melodies when I began listening to Schoenberg's music.

I'm not sure what the best way to demonstrate the melodies to someone who doesn't hear them, but I'm not sure the normal modern music discussions on TC are optimal for that.

Speaking of obvious things, this video shows a demonstration of what is blatantly obvious to some being completely oblivious to others. My understanding is that roughly 50% of people do not notice the bear, and I doubt anyone would say the bear is less obvious than a Schoenberg melody. It's not exactly the same, of course, but it illustrates how people's attention and state of mind can strong affect perception.


----------



## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> I certainly don't disagree that Schoenberg's music contains melodies. But I wouldn't tell someone who said that his music does not contain melodies that those melodies are obvious. People unfamiliar with Schoenberg or similar music can get very confused listening. The music can appear chaotic or random. That last statement is a fact - not that the music _is_ chaotic or random, but that it can appear that way. When someone hears music that appears so different and odd, maybe hearing the melodies is much more difficult. Maybe they become confused by the sounds and nothing sticks. Maybe they wouldn't agree that a particular melody is truly a melody (i.e. they may feel melodies must sound a certain way). I can tell you that I did not hear melodies when I began listening to Schoenberg's music.
> 
> I'm not sure what the best way to demonstrate the melodies to someone who doesn't hear them, but I'm not sure the normal modern music discussions on TC are optimal for that.
> 
> Speaking of obvious things, this video shows a demonstration of what is blatantly obvious to some being completely oblivious to others. My understanding is that roughly 50% of people do not notice the bear, and I doubt anyone would say the bear is less obvious than a Schoenberg melody. It's not exactly the same, of course, but it illustrates how people's attention and state of mind can strong affect perception.


Someone the other day was saying that they couldn't hear melody in the finale of Mozart's 39th Symphony. Many over the years have said that Wagner's music has no melodies. Brahms, Beethoven, Bruckner, Debussy, etc. etc. All of them have suffered the charge of lacking melodies over the years.

Yes, it is true that some cannot hear melodies in Schoenberg, but there is nothing about this that is special. People have a difficult time finding melodies in any music they are uncomfortable with. I am positive that any non-ad hoc definition of melody will include Schoenberg's as well.

I think that if the aura of inaccessibility around Schoenberg did not exist, listeners would find him more accessible. The idea of atonality is itself a barrier to understanding, as if there were something fundamentally different about the music that requires a different kind of listening. It's all lies.


----------



## science

Headphone Hermit said:


> I have no difficulty in accepting that some people are better qualified than I am to pronounce on quality of art .... but similarly, there are some people who are much less qualified than I am to do so.


Sorry for clipping up your post, but I think this is a thing we need to discuss.

Obviously some people know more about art than others, so their opinion about its quality can be better informed. For example, some listeners might be able to identify a certain chord as having been very unusual in its time, while other listeners may be unaware of that.

But whether that chord _sounds good_ or not can only be a matter of opinion. Whether using unusual chords _is a good thing_ or not can only be a matter of opinion.

Now that's a very particular example, but the opinion of a work as a whole must consist of a lot of very particular judgments like that. We'd have to be very educated listeners indeed in order to break down our feelings about a work in detail, and doing so might seem to legitimize our feelings, and I think that's a very valuable skill, and people who can do it should be respected very highly. But their feelings are still feelings rather than matters of fact.

Does that make sense to you? Or do you think I'm missing something?


----------



## SeptimalTritone

But...

what makes the opening baritone horn of Mahler's 7th symphony a "memorable melody",










and the opening flute of Schoenberg's wind quintet "chaotic and random"?










Are you so sure that the first example is obvious, whereas the second example is a gorilla hidden behind a bunch of people passing basketballs? Really?


----------



## Woodduck

SeptimalTritone said:


> All right. The problem is that they are extremely easily noticeable, and if you listen and get into the music as much as you would with, say, Brahms, memorable as well. In fact, Schoenberg would often designate clear main melodies with the word "Haupstimme", and sometimes secondary melodies in counterpoint with the word "Nebenstimme".
> 
> But seriously, go listen to the beginning few bars of the first and last movements of the 4th string quartet, which have ultra-obvious and noticeable melody + accompaniment patterns (and they return periodically). Or listen to the entirety of the wind quintet. Or listen to the concertos. It is easier to pick out a main leading melodic voice with greater ease in Schoenberg's chamber music than, say, Stravinsky's octet where there's is much more contrapuntal equality and much less obvious "Hauptstimme".
> 
> *So, the "easily noticeable or memorable" theory is wrong*.


No, it is _not _wrong (nor is it a theory, but let that pass).

What you're not considering is that the memorability of a melody depends partly, often largely, on its harmonic implications, whether or not those implications are written out in the music. A melody that seems to make no sense purely as a sequence of tones can become memorable when accompanied by certain harmonies; a melody with an easily remembered sequence of notes (symmetry, repetitions, etc.) might be harder to recall if the harmony accompanying it clashes with the melodic intervals of the melody itself. A melody which, unaccompanied, traces the outline of simple harmonies will, all else being equal, be more memorable than one which traces the outline of complex harmonies.

When we think of melodies and hear them in our heads, we ordinarily hear as well the harmonies they imply, which help us to remember them.

To say, as a general statement, that the melodies in atonal music are as memorable as those in clearly tonal music is to overlook the fact that tonal progressions are more memorable than atonal ones. The same principle would apply within tonal music to melodies in strongly diatonic contexts versus those in highly chromatic contexts. Verdi's melodies are, in general, easier to hear and remember than Wagner's.

There is no implication here that harder-to-remember melodies are "bad" melodies. I thought I'd better say that to stay out of trouble. One question, though: why would Schoenberg designate his main melodies with the word "Haupstimme", and his secondary melodies with the word "Nebenstimme," if he though they would easily be recognized?


----------



## SeptimalTritone

Woodduck said:


> No, it is _not _wrong (nor is it a theory, but let that pass).
> 
> What you're not considering is that the memorability of a melody depends partly, often largely, on its harmonic implications, whether or not those implications are written out in the music. A melody that seems to make no sense purely as a sequence of tones can become memorable when accompanied by certain harmonies; a melody with an easily remembered sequence of notes (symmetry, repetitions, etc.) might be harder to recall if the harmony accompanying it clashes with the melodic intervals of the melody itself. A melody which, unaccompanied, traces the outline of simple harmonies will, all else being equal, be more memorable than one which traces the outline of complex harmonies.
> 
> When we think of melodies and hear them in our heads, we ordinarily hear as well the harmonies they imply, which help us to remember them.
> 
> To say, as a general statement, that the melodies in atonal music are as memorable as those in clearly tonal music is to overlook the fact that tonal progressions are more memorable than atonal ones. The same principle would apply within tonal music to melodies in strongly diatonic contexts versus those in highly chromatic contexts. Verdi's melodies are, in general, easier to hear and remember than Wagner's.
> 
> There is no implication here that harder-to-remember melodies are "bad" melodies. I thought I'd better say that to stay out of trouble. One question, though: why would Schoenberg designate his main melodies with the word "Haupstimme", and his secondary melodies with the word "Nebenstimme," if he though they would easily be recognized?


OK fine. Tell me what the harmonic implications are of the Mahler 7th symphony example, or the opening (even first few measures) of Scriabin's 9th piano sonata.










Also, the H and N designations in Schoenberg are for the performers in the score to bring out their singing line rather than accompany in the background, obviously not flags for the audience in a concert hall. Extremely different from Stravinsky's Octet where it's basically all Nebenstimme, or Bartok's 4th quartet where all the strings are nearly entirely equal in a kind of dissonantly-crunched fugue.










Can you really easily tell the simple harmonic implications of the Scriabin and Bartok?


----------



## Mahlerian

SeptimalTritone said:


> Are you so sure that the first example is obvious, whereas the second example is a gorilla hidden behind a bunch of people passing basketballs? Really?


Because *ATONAL*.

There. I proved myself right. I don't need to validate my point or anything else now.


----------



## Mahlerian

SeptimalTritone said:


> OK fine. Tell me what the harmonic implications are of the Mahler 7th symphony example, or the opening (even first few measures) of Scriabin's 9th piano sonata.
> 
> Can you really easily tell the simple harmonic implications of the Scriabin and Bartok?


No need, because *ATONAL*.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

I think it's got a bit less to do with the harmony and little more to do with the rhythms.


----------



## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, it is true that some cannot hear melodies in Schoenberg, but there is nothing about this that is special. People have a difficult time finding melodies in any music they are uncomfortable with. I am positive that any non-ad hoc definition of melody will include Schoenberg's as well.


Yes, and maybe the best response to someone who says there are no melodies in atonal, modern, or Schoenberg's music is simply, "People have a difficult time finding melodies in any music they are uncomfortable with."



Mahlerian said:


> I think that if the aura of inaccessibility around Schoenberg did not exist, listeners would find him more accessible. The idea of atonality is itself a barrier to understanding, as if there were something fundamentally different about the music that requires a different kind of listening. It's all lies.


My daughter feels this way about much modern music. She believes that performers or conductors should never start performances with words about difficulty or anything else that can prime audiences into not liking a work.


----------



## Woodduck

SeptimalTritone said:


> OK fine. Tell me what the harmonic implications are of the Mahler 7th symphony example, or the opening (even first few measures) of Scriabin's 9th piano sonata.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Also, the H and N designations in Schoenberg are for the performers in the score to bring out their singing line rather than accompany in the background, obviously not flags for the audience in a concert hall. Extremely different from Stravinsky's Octet where it's basically all Nebenstimme, or Bartok's 4th quartet where all the strings are nearly entirely equal in a kind of dissonantly-crunched fugue.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Can you really easily tell the simple harmonic implications of the Scriabin and Bartok?


You're not really addressing my point. Do you disagree with it? Do you think harmony has nothing to do with memorability? What do you mean by "OK fine"?

Obviously melody has other features which determine memorability - rhythm and repetition primarily - but the importance of harmony is not negated by that fact. This isn't rocket science. It's just the way perception works. All aspects of the music interact to determine how we perceive the individual features of it. You hear a melody note against a certain harmonic background, and the meaning or function of that note is different than it would be otherwise. That function becomes part of the gestalt of the experience of that melody. Hence you remember it more easily.

I wasn't envisioning the _audience_ reading the word "Hauptstimme." I was asking why the musicians would need it. I can't imagine Bach writing that in a score. I suspect Schoenberg knew that the players of that time might find it difficult to understand how his music was put together and wanted to help them out. No big deal, really.


----------



## Blancrocher

mmsbls said:


> Yes, and maybe the best response to someone who says there are no melodies in atonal, modern, or Schoenberg's music is simply, "People have a difficult time finding melodies in any music they are uncomfortable with."


The best response for many would be to mention some favorite melodies or melodic passages, perhaps with video and an indicated timing. You may not convince the person you're speaking to--something that rarely happens on the Internet, btw--but one of the many interested bystanders in the thread might find some music of interest. There are always more people reading a thread than participating in it.


----------



## dgee

Woodduck said:


> You're not really addressing my point. Do you disagree with it? Do you think harmony has nothing to do with memorability? What do you mean by "OK fine"?
> 
> Obviously melody has other features which determine memorability - rhythm and repetition primarily - but the importance of harmony is not negated by that fact. This isn't rocket science. It's just the way perception works. All aspects of the music interact to determine how we perceive the individual features of it. You hear a melody note against a certain harmonic background, and the meaning of that note is different than it would be otherwise. That meaning becomes part of the gestalt of the experience of that melody. Hence you remember it more easily.
> 
> I wasn't envisioning the _audience_ reading the word "Hauptstimme." I was asking why the musicians would need it. I can't imagine Bach writing that in a score. I suspect Schoenberg knew that the players of that time might find it difficult to understand how his music was put together and wanted to help them out. No big deal, really.


You will notice "solo" very frequently in orchestral scores from Mozart (at the latest) onwards. Especially prevalent in opera scores! Shouldn't be a surprise to you - just whip out your collection of Verdi or Puccini in full score, it'll be everywhere. And even non-solo a bit later on. It looked like such a good gotcha too...

I have no doubt Verdi is more memorable to some than Wagner, but after playing ol Joe for many hundreds of hours (Trav, Rig, Otello, others probably) I can recall surprisingly few melodies expect for the nightmare piccolo tune at the start of Trav, which haunts my darkest moments.

I utterly agree with you about harmony, but I suspect you meant some sort of tonal harmony, or neglected the fact that Schoenberg has harmony...


----------



## SeptimalTritone

Of course harmony and memorability are intertwined.

The point is that Mahler, Scriabin, Debussy, Bartok, and Stravinsky had melodies that were just as harmonically complex and angular as Schoenberg, and therefore as hard to easily remember. Schoenberg's harmony has a logic, and so do the others, but in all cases it is quite dissonant and non common practice (except for Mahler and the others' younger works). I'm saying that the Scriabin and Bartok examples have no easy harmonic memorability, so it makes no sense to criticize Schoenberg for having harmonically obtuse melodies.

The H and N symbols can be thought of as complementing dynamics like f and p. Schoenberg used them because his music _has_ H and N. The Stravinsky and Bartok examples I was giving _don't have_ H and N even in principle.


----------



## mmsbls

SeptimalTritone said:


> But...
> 
> what makes the opening baritone horn of Mahler's 7th symphony a "memorable melody",
> 
> and the opening flute of Schoenberg's wind quintet "chaotic and random"?
> 
> Are you so sure that the first example is obvious, whereas the second example is a gorilla hidden behind a bunch of people passing basketballs? Really?


Interesting example. I just listened to the wind quintet a few hours ago. I can't tell you why some of us have/had so much trouble hearing what's happening in certain modern works. I'm more experienced now so things don't sound bizarre or chaotic to me, but I certainly have to work harder to hear melodies or any other aspects of much modern music compared to earlier music. Maybe it's familiarity with the general sounds or maybe it's harder for some other reason.

Many people seem to have more trouble with Mahler than with Haydn, Beethoven, Dvorak, etc. so maybe those people would not feel the quintet is much harder.

Personally I think people should just accept that people have the trouble they say they have listening to various works. If we don't understand, so be it, but that doesn't mean those personal accounts aren't real.


----------



## regenmusic

Art and photographs of the human female body shouldn't be equated. They both are beautiful, but one was created "readymade" and doesn't have anythin to do with the skill of a great painter. There is so much today that is being peddled as being brilliant and great that is really just an exercise in capitalism. Not that I'm against enlightened and ethically regulated capitalism....but when it extends into what is called great art,which it has since the days of Abstract Expressionism, then we are in trouble. That "we" are in trouble should be pretty obvious. This new "populist" paradigm people talk about replacing Christianity has been monstrous.


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## KenOC

regenmusic said:


> Art and photographs of the human female body shouldn't be equated. They both are beautiful, but one was created "readymade" and doesn't have anythin to do with the skill of a great painter.


??? Ansel Adams, Moonrise over Hernandez, 1941.


----------



## KenOC

More Ansel Adams.


----------



## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> Interesting example. I just listened to the wind quintet a few hours ago. I can't tell you why some of us have/had so much trouble hearing what's happening in certain modern works. I'm more experienced now so things don't sound bizarre or chaotic to me, but I certainly have to work harder to hear melodies or any other aspects of much modern music compared to earlier music. Maybe it's familiarity with the general sounds or maybe it's harder for some other reason.
> 
> Many people seem to have more trouble with Mahler than with Haydn, Beethoven, Dvorak, etc. so maybe those people would not feel the quintet is much harder.


With Schoenberg in particular and much modernism that followed him in general, the replacement of repetition with constant variation makes remembering the music difficult. In fact, Mahler was one of the precedents in doing this, as was Max Reger.

I personally have a harder time remembering melodies in pre-Baroque music than those in modernist music.


----------



## Woodduck

dgee said:


> You will notice "solo" very frequently in orchestral scores from Mozart (at the latest) onwards. Especially prevalent in opera scores! Shouldn't be a surprise to you - just whip out your collection of Verdi or Puccini in full score, it'll be everywhere. And even non-solo a bit later on. It looked like such a good gotcha too...
> 
> I have no doubt Verdi is more memorable to some than Wagner, but after playing ol Joe for many hundreds of hours (Trav, Rig, Otello, others probably) I can recall surprisingly few melodies expect for the nightmare piccolo tune at the start of Trav, which haunts my darkest moments.
> 
> *I utterly agree with you about harmony, but I suspect you meant some sort of tonal harmony, or neglected the fact that Schoenberg has harmony...*


Now why would you suspect such a thing? 

I was formulating a general principle, which would apply regardless of the style of harmony involved. I mentioned Schoenberg only with reference to the score markings SeptimalTritone pointed out, wondering why they were needed. His explanation still doesn't make sense to me. If they were just "like" dynamic markings, then why not write dynamic markings?

What you've said about not remembering Verdi's melodies even after playing them shocks me. Maybe you were too busy concentrating on your own part? Verdi had closed rehearsals before the premiere of _Rigoletto,_ because he knew that otherwise the tunes would be all over town before the first night curtain rose.


----------



## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> I personally have a harder time remembering melodies in pre-Baroque music than those in modernist music.


I can defnitely believe that, and I think I probably have as much trouble with pre-Baroque as modern as well.


----------



## dgee

Woodduck said:


> Now why would you suspect such a thing?
> 
> I was formulating a general principle, which would apply regardless of the style of harmony involved. I mentioned Schoenberg only with reference to the score markings SeptimalTritone pointed out, wondering why they were needed. His explanation still doesn't make sense to me. If they were just "like" dynamic markings, then why not write dynamic markings?
> 
> What you've said about not remembering Verdi's melodies even after playing them shocks me. Maybe you were too busy concentrating on your own part? Verdi had closed rehearsals before the premiere of _Rigoletto,_ because he knew that otherwise the tunes would be all over town before the first night curtain rose.


It's almost impossible for me to avoid ear-worms of music I've played. That sort of blandly tonal/modal contemporary music (Higdon is a good example, although I've never played her music) and vast swathes of 19th century theatre music (Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti, Adam, Minkus, Bellini, Sullivan especially etc) are kind of an exception for me in really making very little impression. This is not isolated to me, either. I know lots of musicians who find that 19th century theatre music of that ilk passes in one ear and out the other - it's just not musically engaging for a lot of people. By that's neither here nor there

Schoenberg (and others like Hindemith) used H and N in densely contrapuntal music as an aid to reading - seems simple enough to me. Other composers used different dynamic markings in different parts - there is often much discussion of varying dynamic levels and how the affect balance and expression in the romantic repertoire. Maybe Wagner could have made life simpler if only he'd had H and N?


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## Adam Weber

regenmusic said:


> Art and photographs of the human female body shouldn't be equated. They both are beautiful, but one was created "readymade" and doesn't have anythin to do with the skill of a great painter. There is so much today that is being peddled as being brilliant and great that is really just an exercise in capitalism. Not that I'm against enlightened and ethically regulated capitalism....but when it extends into what is called great art,which it has since the days of Abstract Expressionism, then we are in trouble. That "we" are in trouble should be pretty obvious. This new "populist" paradigm people talk about replacing Christianity has been monstrous.


I think you need to elaborate on that last statement.


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## Woodduck

dgee said:


> It's almost impossible for me to avoid ear-worms of music I've played. That sort of blandly tonal/modal contemporary music (Higdon is a good example, although I've never played her music) and vast swathes of 19th century theatre music (Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti, Adam, Minkus, Bellini, Sullivan especially etc) are kind of an exception for me in really making very little impression. This is not isolated to me, either. I know lots of musicians who find that 19th century theatre music of that ilk passes in one ear and out the other - it's just not musically engaging for a lot of people. By that's neither here nor there
> 
> Schoenberg (and others like Hindemith) used H and N in densely contrapuntal music as an aid to reading - seems simple enough to me


That's what I figured about H and N. I just couldn't get a clear affirmation of that.

I do know what you mean about about 19th century music of that sort. I think it's not that the melodies are hard to hear, but that they tend to be rather generic; often you can easily start with one and continue with a different one without noticing any incongruity. I wouldn't say that about _Rigoletto_ or _Traviata_, though, which are full of fresh and striking tunes. I'm sure we differ in what's memorable to us, as in anything else.


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## Autocrat

Naturally, a discussion about modern art becomes a discussion of how Schoenberg is/isn't crap. It wouldn't be TC without it.

For what it's worth, I've spent the last five weeks walking through parts of the UK and Europe looking at art contemporary, ancient and everything in between. A small list of the works I have viewed from a small distance could look like:


The entire contents on display in both Tate Britain and Tate Modern
The entire contents on display in the Uffizi Gallery.
The entire contents on display in the Palazzo Pitti in Firenze
The entire contents on display in the Vatican Museum in Rome
The entire contents on display in the Musee D'orsee in Paris
The entire contents on display in Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris
The Sistine Chapel (newly restored!)
Michelangelo's _Pieta_ in St Peter's Basilica.
Michelangelo's _Madonna and Child_ in the Notre Dame cathedral in Brugge.
Michelangelo's _David_ in the Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze
LdaV's _Mona Lisa_ in The Louvre, Paris
LdaV's _The Virgin and Child with St. Anne_ also in The Louvre, Paris (newly restored!)
Van Eycks' Gent Altarpiece

plus lots more. This is not said in any way to boast, millions of people have looked at artworks, but to lay some groundwork for the following observations:

1. If I never see another _Coronation of the Virgin_ it will be too soon. Likewise for the subject of Paris choosing the goddess with the nicest ar*e. Likewise for just about any other painting with Greek myths as the subject.

I don't care who painted them, how don't care how well executed/displayed/restored/cared-for they are, I just don't want to see them.

2. The Gent Altarpiece has been referred to as the most coveted work of art in history. I just thought it was weird, especially the sheep on the table.

3. The two standout works of art - for me - were the Bayeux Tapestry and the Marc Chagall windows at All Saints, Tudeley.

4. I prefer Cy Twombly's _Temeraire_ to Turner's. I prefer Modigliani's "Gentleman" to El Greco's. And yes, I saw them side by side.

5. Renoir really did do some clumsy things. I had thought that the people kicking up a ruckus about how bad his works are were just stirring, but I saw a painting at the Rouen Musee des Beaux Arts that could only be explained as a major stuff-up.

6. Michelangelo's marble sculptures are as utterly breathtaking up close as the publicity would have you believe. See them first hand if you can.

Naturally, all of that says much, much more about me than the works of art, or about anyone who has a view on the same works. But at least I've seen them _in situ_ so I think I am able to form a more complete view of them than people who see them in books or on the intertubes.

So, at last, I come to the point.

In 1973, Gough Whitlam approved the purchase by the Australian National Gallery of a Jackson Pollock work entitled "Number 11, 1952". It was controversial, not only because the gallery had bought a drip painting, but paid what was at the time a record price for a "modern" American artwork. More than a million dollars from memory. It's worth much more than that now of course, but to rely on that as an analysis of the painting would be simply begging the question. For me, being in the same room as the painting is an amazing, almost electric experience. Again, that's just me.

My question, then, is for those who say that Pollock "isn't art" or is "bad art" or he had no technique and such other criticisms I've read in the last 20 or so pages. Given that there are five generally accepted elements of art - Line, Form, Colour, Texture and Space, or variants thereof - which of these five doesn't the Pollock work in question display?

Answers on a postcard please, which can then be torn up and disposed of with care for the environment.


----------



## ArtMusic

Yes, but so what if Pollack's art have all those criteria? It's the fact that students have been pre-conditioned and then fooled by their professor that his art carry bag was a Pollack painting says it all.


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## Novelette

Another baiting phrase meant to short-circuit analytical reasoning. As if to name something with some random quality establishes affinity between the two.

Monteverdi was heavily criticized in his day for "destroying the contrapuntal principle"--soooooooo.


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## Richannes Wrahms

Wiki says Aristoxenus said

"...the nature of melody is best discovered by the perception of sense, and is retained by memory; and that there is no other way of arriving at the knowledge of music..."

Messiaen says


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## Autocrat

ArtMusic said:


> Yes, but so what if Pollack's art have all those criteria?


Implication is obvious I would have thought.



> It's the fact that students have been pre-conditioned and then fooled by their professor that his art carry bag was a Pollack painting says it all.


It says nothing about Pollock and lots about the art students. FFS, people see Jesus in a piece of toast.


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## Woodduck

Autocrat said:


> In 1973, Gough Whitlam approved the purchase by the Australian National Gallery of a Jackson Pollock work entitled "Number 11, 1952". It was controversial, not only because the gallery had bought a drip painting, but paid what was at the time a record price for a "modern" American artwork. More than a million dollars from memory. It's worth much more than that now of course, but to rely on that as an analysis of the painting would be simply begging the question. For me, being in the same room as the painting is an amazing, almost electric experience. Again, that's just me.
> 
> My question, then, is for those who say that Pollock "isn't art" or is "bad art" or he had no technique and such other criticisms I've read in the last 20 or so pages. Given that there are five generally accepted elements of art - Line, Form, Colour, Texture and Space, or variants thereof - which of these five doesn't the Pollock work in question display?
> 
> Answers on a postcard please, which can then be torn up and disposed of with care for the environment.


1. How do you expect anyone not looking at the painting to answer your question?

2. How is this inquiry different from asking which of the seven generally accepted elements of a house - foundation, floor, walls, ceiling, roof, door, and windows - a given house (not illustrated) possesses?

3. If we could determine the answer for either the painting or the house, would we then know whether the painting or the house was a good one?

4. Did I just fall for a prank?


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## isorhythm

Woodduck said:


> 1. How do you expect anyone not looking at the painting to answer your question?


Looking at a little jpeg is probably even less worthwhile for Pollock than for most painters, but Google can give you an idea....


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## StlukesguildOhio

Art and photographs of the human female body shouldn't be equated. They both are beautiful, but one was created "readymade" and doesn't have anythin to do with the skill of a great painter.

This is why artists and critics speak of the necessity of separating the subject from the form. Some subjects are inherently beautiful: the human body, cute little girls in their Sunday dresses, puppies, flowers, bucolic landscapes, sunsets, etc... The question when looking at such is whether it is the Art or the Subject... or Both... that you find beautiful.


----------



## ArtMusic

Autocrat said:


> Implication is obvious I would have thought.
> 
> It says nothing about Pollock and lots about the art students. FFS, people see Jesus in a piece of toast.


Correct, it certainly says a lot about the art students, in other words, people viewing the art.


----------



## Autocrat

Woodduck said:


> 1. How do you expect anyone not looking at the painting to answer your question?


Standing in front of it is probably best; it's really big in actuality, so printing out a life-sized copy isn't really an option, so go with Google as suggested. This all misses the point though. someone could well be standing in front of it with their best spectacles on and still not have a clue what any of the elements means in a technical sense.

I suspect that this wouldn't stop them from voicing an opinion.



> 2. How is this inquiry different from asking which of the seven generally accepted elements of a house - foundation, floor, walls, ceiling, roof, door, and windows - a given house (not illustrated) possesses?


It isn't. Ticking off the criteria merely tells you whether you have a house. Or art.



> 3. If we could determine the answer for either the painting or the house, would we then know whether the painting or the house was a good one?


No. First, define what a "good house" is.



> 4. Did I just fall for a prank?


Not yet


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## StlukesguildOhio

Given that there are five generally accepted elements of art - Line, Form, Colour, Texture and Space, or variants thereof - which of these five doesn't the Pollock work in question display?

Not to nit-pick... but there are 7 generally accepted Art Elements: Line, Shape, Form, Space, Value, Texture, & Color.


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## Jeffrey Smith

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Given that there are five generally accepted elements of art - Line, Form, Colour, Texture and Space, or variants thereof - which of these five doesn't the Pollock work in question display?
> 
> Not to nit-pick... but there are 7 generally accepted Art Elements: Line, Shape, Form, Space, Value, Texture, & Color.


Six of the seven seem obvious. But what is meant by Value in that context?


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## Autocrat

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Given that there are five generally accepted elements of art - Line, Form, Colour, Texture and Space, or variants thereof - which of these five doesn't the Pollock work in question display?
> 
> Not to nit-pick... but there are 7 generally accepted Art Elements: Line, Shape, Form, Space, Value, Texture, & Color.


I don't think value is generally accepted as having any...


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## StlukesguildOhio

Value refers to how light or dark something is.


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## Autocrat

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Value refers to how light or dark something is.


Makes sense, thanks.

Except...Shape and Form are now conflated, which means there are only six!!! Why can't people agree on anything?


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## science

We're wetting our toes in the philosophy of art, but it really looks like we're taking for granted that beauty is the highest ideal in art. 

But is it necessarily so? Could a particular legitimate work of art have a value other than beauty? For example, besides or in addition to or instead of solely aspiring to being beautiful, a work of art might aspire to being innovative, being impressive, being captivating, being popular, being surprising, being funny, being ironic, being passionate, revealing insight into a society or into human nature, having clever allegory, representing a religious belief, or even, I dare say, being ugly. 

Perhaps we are including all that under the generic label "beauty?" 

Speaking for myself, as an aspiring "artist" in a certain sense, "beauty" is never or at least very rarely on my mind. I value effectiveness, authenticity, accuracy, and being interesting more than I value being beautiful. (For the record, my talkclassical posts do not represent these values very well!)

I have another, separate concern. Are we too tightly restricting our idea of art to painting, sculpture, drawing, architecture, perhaps music, film, and literature? Are we implicitly or explicitly excluding dance, food, clothing, interior decoration, hairdressing...? For that matter, how about mathematics (anyone familiar with math as advanced as high school trig should probably be aware that some lines of argument strike people as more beautiful than others) or engineering (are people wrong to talk about a car sounding beautiful)? Even within the categories that we're explicitly considering, are we excluding the "wrong" sort of thing? Within painting, for example, are we excluding graffiti? Within music, are we excluding commercial jingles, childhood taunts (nanny nanny boo boo), the humming while doing laundry? 

To me, if we're just trying to philosophize about painting and a few other things that are usually recognized as "art" in the popular discourse of western culture, we're probably spinning our wheels. Maybe that's the goal, but if the goal is something like reaching a better understanding of human nature rather than just enjoying the mysteries of our own assumptions, we might need to question what we're implicitly and explicitly considering "art."

I'll lay my cards down on this issue. I believe that we should consider anything "art" if we could be aware of it being done more or less well. So for me, the question isn't defining beauty, but defining excellence in general.


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## Guest

Autocrat said:


> Naturally, a discussion about modern art becomes a discussion of how Schoenberg is/isn't crap. It wouldn't be TC without it. [...]
> Likewise for the subject of Paris choosing the goddess with the nicest ar*e.


Yes, I noticed that too. I ask questions about 'bad' art, and it gets swiftly passed over to talk about the usual. There's no helping some people.

And whilst I understand why you self-censure the word 'art' - we know how dirty it is - it doesn't have an 'e' on the end.


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## Piwikiwi

ArtMusic said:


> Correct, it certainly says a lot about the art students, in other words, people viewing the art.


Here in the Netherlands the exhibitions by Rothko and Pollock were one of the most visited last year. I guess it has a lot more mass appeal than people give credit for.


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## Guest

StlukesguildOhio said:


>


Hang on a minute...where's Beauty? And come to think of it, Concept is missing too...and Balance...and Nobility. What a rubbish list!


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## StlukesguildOhio

The Elements of Art refer to the Visual Elements from which every work of Visual Art is constructed. Balance is one of the Principles of Design (Pattern, Contrast, Emphasis, Balance, Proportion, Harmony/Unity, Movement/Rhythm, Variety) which refer to the primary means by which the Elements are organized. Concept refers to the idea or ideas behind a work of art that may or may not be visual. An artist may think of creating a painting employing a harmony of contrasting colors: red & green (visual concept) in which he or she creates an image confronting racism (non-visual concept). Nobility is an non-Art attribute that the audience sees or does not see in a given work.

The Elements of Art and Principles of Design are a means of teaching students how works of Art are composed and how to compose their own works of Art. Of course these just scrape the surface. Delving deeper we get into perspective (aerial or atmospheric, linear, curvilinear, one-point, two-point, three-point, etc...), hue, chroma, complimentary color, primary color, secondary color, tints & shades, earth tones, grays, anatomy & physiology, tessellations, and much more...


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## Guest

StlukesguildOhio said:


> The Elements of Art refer to the Visual Elements from which every work of Visual Art is constructed. Balance is one of the Principles of Design (Pattern, Contrast, Emphasis, Balance, Proportion, Harmony/Unity, Movement/Rhythm, Variety) which refer to the primary means by which the Elements are organized. Concept refers to the idea or ideas behind a work of art that may or may not be visual. An artist may think of creating a painting employing a harmony of contrasting colors: red & green (visual concept) in which he or she creates an image confronting racism (non-visual concept). Nobility is an non-Art attribute that the audience sees or does not see in a given work.
> 
> The Elements of Art and Principles of Design are a means of teaching students how works of Art are composed and how to compose their own works of Art. Of course these just scrape the surface. Delving deeper we get into perspective (aerial or atmospheric, linear, curvilinear, one-point, two-point, three-point, etc...), hue, chroma, complimentary color, primary color, secondary color, tints & shades, earth tones, grays, anatomy & physiology, tessellations, and much more...


Ooohh! I don't know...it's all very complicated, isn't it? I do like my art to be simple. :lol:


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## Piwikiwi

MacLeod said:


> Ooohh! I don't know...it's all very complicated, isn't it? I do like my art to be simple. :lol:


----------



## Guest

Piwikiwi said:


> [unnamed picture]


Thanks Pikiwiki, but I think that image has all the elements so far referred to...though I'm less clear about the Concept and the Nobility...so it's deceptively simple, isn't it?


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## StlukesguildOhio

We're wetting our toes in the philosophy of art, but it really looks like we're taking for granted that beauty is the highest ideal in art.

I would say that from the Renaissance until Modernism, "Beauty" would have been an unquestioned goal for most works of visual art. Prior to the Renaissance... the Medieval Period... placed greater emphasis upon visual story telling. Art was essentially a means of communicating the Biblical narratives to a largely illiterate audience. Art was also not thought of as we think of it today. The Medieval Artist was a craftsman. He (or she in such rare instances as Hildegard of Bingen) would not have dared to think of himself as an "Artist"... one who creates... for only God creates. Thinking otherwise was akin to heresy. The artist was but a craftsman... a tool... through which God spoke. As a result, most medieval works of Art are unsigned.

The Renaissance revived Greco-Roman ideas of Beauty... often rooted in elements such as balance & harmony and bsed upon mathematical structures. With the onset of Romanticism, the idea of "Beauty" was broadened. Edmund Burke posited a dichotomy between the "beautiful" and the "sublime". The "beautiful" was defined as that which inherently inspired pleasure. The "sublime" spoke of that which might inspire horror, fear, revulsion, and other negative responses... but ultimately led to pleasure... especially in works of art where the audience recognized that what he or she was witness to was but fiction. In other words, a bloody death scene in Shakespeare, or a frightening storm at sea painted by Turner were "sublime".

Many Modernist Artists, Philosophers, and Theorists rejected "beauty" or spoke of "aesthetic beauty"... or "formalism": the "beauty" of the artistic form but not necessarily the "beauty" of the image or subject.

But is it necessarily so? Could a particular legitimate work of art have a value other than beauty? For example, besides or in addition to or instead of solely aspiring to being beautiful, a work of art might aspire to being innovative, being impressive, being captivating, being popular, being surprising, being funny, being ironic, being passionate, revealing insight into a society or into human nature, having clever allegory, representing a religious belief, or even, I dare say, being ugly.

Obviously, being innovative... or NEW... became the central measure of quality for many Modernists. With Early and High Modernism (c. 1870-WWII) innovation is a means to an end, the goal being to give an appropriate form to the experience of living in a rapidly changing Modern world that was quite different in many ways from the past. With Late Modernism (c. WWII-1960... and beyond in individual instances) the push for innovation often became an end in and of itself. Ultimately, Modernism arrived at an End Game of sorts... as artists (to mix metaphors) painted themselves into a corner with Minimalism and Conceptual. Even with Modernism, artists, critics, philosophers, and theorists argued in favor of "Formalism"... essentially "Aesthetic Beauty"... which was largely rooted in the late 19th century concept of Art pour l'Art.

Post-Modernism... at its most basic... refers to that art... beginning with the Pop Artists... which turned its back upon the Modernist need to "Make it New". A good majority of artists in the Post-Modern era... Contemporary Artists... still embrace the notion that "Beauty" or "Aesthetic Beauty" is an essential aspect of good art. But there are those... Minimalists, Conceptual Artists, and many who place socio-political content above the form... who largely reject any such notions of "beauty" stressing the idea/concept/theory above all else. Some critics have referred to these as Post-Aesthetic Artists. The question then becomes whether or not their concepts of Art have moved so far afield as to essentially result in something altogether different... something that really isn't part of the long-held traditions of visual art? And is it not fair to ask whether some creative endeavors should be seen as part of a given Art form and artistic tradition when they reject the essential elements/values of that tradition? Perhaps Rubens might not have though much of Matisse as a painter... but he would still have recognized him as a painter/artist. Would Rubens... or even Matisse have recognized Manzoni's can of artist's poop as Art at all?

Of the other elements you put forth (being impressive, being captivating, being surprising, being funny, being ironic, revealing insight into a society or into human nature, having clever allegory, & representing a religious belief) I would ask whether these in and of themselves are enough to make a work of art successful? Robert Hughes famously stood before Danien Hirst's God-awful ugly sculpture, The Virgin Mother...










... and admitted that it was truly impressive what so much money and so little talent can produce. Is it enough for a work of art to merely be ironic, convey a good joke, express earnestly felt religious or socio-political views? And are these elements that do not exist in works of art that might be deemed "beautiful" (or aesthetically beautiful)... or "sublime"?


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## Piwikiwi

MacLeod said:


> Thanks Pikiwiki, but I think that image has all the elements so far referred to...though I'm less clear about the Concept and the Nobility...so it's deceptively simple, isn't it?


I am notoriously bad at articulating my thoughts on music, art and literature. I have seen this painting in person this summer and I thought it was striking but I don't really know why. I normally prefer early 20th century art but seeing something in person is always different from my experience.


----------



## Mal

science said:


> ... it really looks like we're taking for granted that beauty is the highest ideal in art.
> 
> But is it necessarily so? Could a particular legitimate work of art have a value other than beauty? For example, besides or in addition to or instead of solely aspiring to being beautiful, a work of art might aspire to being...


Mahler's sixth symphony is a case in point here. It's (mostly) not beautiful but it is innovative, impressive, captivating, surprising, passionate, and it reveals insights into a society and human nature, has clever allegory, and, dare I say it, is ugly. But it is a very great pleasure, even though it is very painful.


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## Fugue Meister

MacLeod said:


> Yes, I noticed that too. I ask questions about 'bad' art, and it gets swiftly passed over to talk about the usual. There's no helping some people.
> 
> And whilst I understand why you self-censure the word 'art' - we know how dirty it is - it doesn't have an 'e' on the end.


Are you sure he didn't mean something else... I think that * = s..


----------



## Blancrocher

Mal said:


> Mahler's sixth symphony is a case in point here. It's (mostly) not beautiful but it is innovative, impressive, captivating, surprising, passionate, and it reveals insights into a society and human nature, has clever allegory, and, dare I say it, is ugly. But it is a very great pleasure, even though it is very painful.


Agreed!--but I'll add that the Andante Moderato would probably pass many people's standard for beauty. By the way, one of my favorite things about Pettersson's 7th is the way he lets glimmers of idyllic beauty shine through occasionally in the midst of all the gloomy turmoil.

*p.s.* It's not quite the analog I'm looking for, but Anselm Kiefer is a master of depicting landscapes that seem simultaneously post-apocalyptic and beautiful.


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## Sloe

What is the musical equivalent of a statue depicting a peeing policewoman ?


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## Blancrocher

Sloe said:


> What is the musical equivalent of a statue depicting a peeing policewoman ?


My own recently composed piano sonata.


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## Fugue Meister

Sloe said:


> What is the musical equivalent of a statue depicting a peeing policewoman ?


My guess would be something by miley cyrus, taylor swift, lady gaga, kayne west, ect... It's all equally sewage.


----------



## Guest

Piwikiwi said:


> I am notoriously bad at articulating my thoughts on music, art and literature. I have seen this painting in person this summer and I thought it was striking but I don't really know why. I normally prefer early 20th century art but seeing something in person is always different from my experience.


So Size and/or Scale should be added to the list of elements! Anyone who thinks Rothko is _*only*_ about purple needs to see the canvases at the Tate. The scale makes a huge difference to their impact.



Fugue Meister said:


> Are you sure he didn't mean something else... I think that * = s..


Er, yes, I got that. Thanks.


----------



## Petwhac

Mal said:


> Mahler's sixth symphony is a case in point here. It's (mostly) not beautiful but it is innovative, impressive, captivating, surprising, passionate, and it reveals insights into a society and human nature, has clever allegory, and, dare I say it, is ugly. But it is a very great pleasure, even though it is very painful.


Huh? It's full of beauty! What about about that slow movement? Or the 'second subject' of the 1st movement? And countless other passages. At least they appeal to my own sense of beauty, maybe not yours.
...insights into society though? mmmmm, doubt it.


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> Are we too tightly restricting our idea of art to painting, sculpture, drawing, architecture, perhaps music, film, and literature? Are we implicitly or explicitly excluding dance, food, clothing, interior decoration, hairdressing...? For that matter, how about mathematics (anyone familiar with math as advanced as high school trig should probably be aware that some lines of argument strike people as more beautiful than others) or engineering (are people wrong to talk about a car sounding beautiful)? Even within the categories that we're explicitly considering, are we excluding the "wrong" sort of thing? Within painting, for example, are we excluding graffiti? Within music, are we excluding commercial jingles, childhood taunts (nanny nanny boo boo), the humming while doing laundry?
> 
> To me, if we're just trying to philosophize about painting and a few other things that are usually recognized as "art" in the popular discourse of western culture, we're probably spinning our wheels. Maybe that's the goal, but if the goal is something like reaching a better understanding of human nature rather than just enjoying the mysteries of our own assumptions, we might need to question what we're implicitly and explicitly considering "art."
> 
> I'll lay my cards down on this issue. I believe that we should consider anything "art" if we could be aware of it being done more or less well. So for me, the question isn't defining beauty, but defining excellence in general.


"Art" has always had a range of meanings. In a broad sense (the "art" of conversation or baking bread) the term is not unduly restrictive; anything can be "artfully" done. By the "art" of something we usually mean a grasp and application of the finer, more intangible aspects of doing something which allow us to go beyond mere mechanical efficiency, function with intuitive ease, and achieve an aesthetic quality in the result - a quality of beauty. At base, beauty is not different from excellence - we merely use the terms in different contexts - and neither is ultimately definable without resorting to tautologies. They are primary qualities, and we can only make them meaningful by observing excellent and beautiful things until we grasp what they have in common. The beauty of an equation, of a sculpture, of a relationship, have in common a fitness, a rightness, a harmony of their parts; the elements work together as they should, and the result satisfies. The "art" of anything is the achievement of such a result.

There need be no conflict between using "art" in this broad sense and in the more specific sense of "the arts." We make finer distinctions there: the fine arts, the performing arts, the practical arts. So long as we know in what sense we're using it, the word "art" seems to serve its purposes quite well. The task of defining the specific arts, and what is excellence or beauty in their particular spheres, remains, and our wheels will spin for as long as we have questions to answer. For those who take art seriously and want to understand why it means as much as it does, this is no bad thing.


----------



## Mal

Petwhac said:


> Huh? It's full of beauty! What about about that slow movement? Or the 'second subject' of the 1st movement? And countless other passages. At least they appeal to my own sense of beauty, maybe not yours.
> ...insights into society though? mmmmm, doubt it.


Maybe '(mostly) not beautiful' was a bit strong, but would you say the opening is beautiful? Is it beautiful in the same as the slow movement of Beethoven 6? Is everything that gives pleasure beautiful? Should you take pleasure in something that most critics suggest implies "Life is ****, then you die"? Personally I get a cathartic pleasure from it, but I'd hesitate to call it beautiful. I think it supports insights into society if you 'get with the programme':

'So see the Sixth as one of the great "human condition" works of the twentieth century, prepare to be rocked, and you will be on the right lines.

It has always seemed to me appropriate that the work's 1906 premiere took place in Essen, the cradle of German heavy industry. All those driving, relentless, militaristic rhythms, mechanistic percussion and harsh-edged contrasts that permeate so much of this work have always seemed, to me, to share kinship with the place where the work was first heard. Here were the foundries and factories that put the iron in The Iron Chancellor and built the guns that would spill the blood in his "blood and iron" when fired in World War One, the cultural pre-echo of whose cataclysm eight years later the work seems partly to illustrate. A case of Mahler the sensitive showing himself in tune with his times...' - Tony Duggen, http://www.musicweb-international.com/Mahler/Mahler6.htm

... and those times are not beautiful.


----------



## isorhythm

Is this beautiful?










Not rhetorical - I'm curious what people say.


----------



## Mahlerian

Mal said:


> Maybe '(mostly) not beautiful' was a bit strong, but would you say the opening is beautiful? Is it beautiful in the same as the slow movement of Beethoven 6? Is everything that gives pleasure beautiful? Should you take pleasure in something that most critics suggest implies *"Life is ****, then you die"?* Personally I get a cathartic pleasure from it, but I'd hesitate to call it beautiful. I think it supports insights into society if you 'get with the programme':


Most critics are wrong then. This is nothing like what Mahler ever believed. He was anything but a nihilist, and tragedy, as in the Greek theatrical sense, is more about setting idealism against the harsh realities of life or fate.

Now, after he had finished the symphony, Mahler did say to his wife (paraphrasing from memory) "I have written an evil work." But perhaps he meant the fact that this work, unlike any of his others, ends in destruction. If anything, the Sixth is not about death, but collapse.


----------



## Dim7

Mahlerian said:


> Most critics are wrong then. This is nothing like what Mahler ever believed. He was anything but a nihilist, and tragedy, as in the Greek theatrical sense, is more about setting idealism against the harsh realities of life or fate.
> 
> Now, after he had finished the symphony, Mahler did say to his wife (paraphrasing from memory) "I have written an evil work."


Lawful, netural or chaotic evil??


----------



## Woodduck

isorhythm said:


> Is this beautiful?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Not rhetorical - I'm curious what people say.


What it depicts is terrible - but it does it beautifully (as does Mahler's Sixth).


----------



## Blancrocher

isorhythm said:


> Not rhetorical - I'm curious what people say.


It's a bit too grotesque (and, frankly, humorous--the lamb gets me every time!) for me to think of it as beautiful in an exemplary sense, but I'll go ahead and contradict myself and say it's beautiful. I hope to get the chance to see that in person someday.


----------



## Fugue Meister

MacLeod said:


> Er, yes, I got that. Thanks.


I thought perhaps you were making a joke (especially since you hail from UK how could you miss it?) but I wasn't sure... that's what I get for reading posts in the first 15 minutes of being awake.


----------



## Bulldog

isorhythm said:


> Is this beautiful?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Not rhetorical - I'm curious what people say.


I don't see anything beautiful about it, finding it just another pathetic representation of Christ on the cross.


----------



## Simon Moon

isorhythm said:


> Is this beautiful?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Not rhetorical - I'm curious what people say.


Why does art have to be beautiful?

I would not consider the painting beautiful, but that says nothing about whether it is good art, or well executed.


----------



## ArtMusic

Bulldog said:


> I don't see anything beautiful about it, finding it just another pathetic representation of Christ on the cross.


This one is one of the greatest of all paintings of the scene, as a work of art, it is outstanding. It is the Beethoven symphony #9 in terms of influence. _Descent from the Cross_ by Roger van Weyden from 1435.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descent_from_the_Cross_(van_der_Weyden)


----------



## isorhythm

I'm not sure how I would answer the question of whether it's beautiful or even whether it depicts something terrible beautifully.

It juxtaposes some elements that are beautiful with others that are ugly and grotesque. The overall composition is conventionally beautiful, in a way.

But on the other hand, look at the way the subjects are illuminated against a dark background: it's not at all the same effect as in Rembrandt, for example. It's lurid and disturbing instead.

There may not be a clear answer.


----------



## SixFootScowl

isorhythm said:


> Is this beautiful?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Not rhetorical - I'm curious what people say.


It beautifully depicts the most significant event in human history.


----------



## Woodduck

isorhythm said:


> I'm not sure how I would answer the question of whether it's beautiful or even whether it depicts something terrible beautifully.
> 
> It juxtaposes some elements that are beautiful with others that are ugly and grotesque. The overall composition is conventionally beautiful, in a way.
> 
> But on the other hand, look at the way the subjects are illuminated against a dark background: it's not at all the same effect as in Rembrandt, for example. It's lurid and disturbing instead.
> 
> There may not be a clear answer.


Maybe "Is this painting beautiful?" is wrongly asked. The subject - the agony of Christ on the cross, the grief and horror of those who witness it, and the crisis of the universe on this darkest day - is not beautiful. But if Grunewald has found ways to express those feelings with precise and powerful gestures, and has created an image of a formal strength and coherence that seems to rest securely within itself and which impresses itself deeply on us, then he has achieved a kind of beauty. Remember too that the scene of the crucifixion is only the central image of the Isenheim Altarpiece, and was never meant to be viewed in isolation. That whole astonishing work of art is described here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isenheim_Altarpiece


----------



## Nereffid

I'm going to say no, it's not beautiful. It's magnificent, but the vividness of its depiction of a man who's been tortured to death rules it out of the beauty department for me.


----------



## Blancrocher

Woodduck said:


> Remember too that the scene of the crucifixion is only the central image of the Isenheim Altarpiece, and was never meant to be viewed in isolation. That whole astonishing work of art is described here:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isenheim_Altarpiece


With many images in this thread, it's hard to get a sense of the effect the physical artwork would have when viewed in person. The scale, the brightness of the colors, the texture--so much is lost.

It's like listening to music on lousy headphones :lol:


----------



## violadude

Florestan said:


> It beautifully depicts the most significant event in human history.


...according to some people


----------



## Sloe

isorhythm said:


> Is this beautiful?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Not rhetorical - I'm curious what people say.


No and that is not what it is supposed to be. It is made to show how Jesus suffered and died for our sins so that we can be saved.


----------



## amfortas

Sloe said:


> No and that is not what it is supposed to be. It is made to show how Jesus suffered and died for our sins so that we can be saved.


There have been countless artworks on that and related themes, many of them unambiguously beautiful. It doesn't have to be an either/or proposition.


----------



## EdwardBast

StlukesguildOhio said:


> I would ask whether these in and of themselves are enough to make a work of art successful? Robert Hughes famously stood before Danien Hirst's God-awful ugly sculpture, The Virgin Mother...




Thanks for posting the Hirst. It inspired me to look him up on Wikipedia, where I found this gem about the banning of one of his works:

"New York public health officials banned Two F--king and Two Watching featuring a rotting cow and bull, because of fears of "vomiting among the visitors".

Art that gets a visceral reaction, apparently.


----------



## Sloe

amfortas said:


> There have been countless artworks on that and related themes, many of them unambiguously beautiful. It doesn't have to be an either/or proposition.


I am just saying that not all art have to be beautiful but if it have to be something non beautiful it should be something better than a policewoman peeing. By the way I think Merzbow or something similar have the same repulsiveness as that. But that is just a small part of music while visual art is full of things like that therefore I find these similarities between art and music difficult to get.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

Bulldog said:


> I don't see anything beautiful about it, finding it just another *pathetic* representation of Christ on the cross.


The word 'pathetic' is commonly misused. It actually means 'leading to pity' but I presume you might mean it in a dismissive manner


----------



## Headphone Hermit

science said:


> Sorry for clipping up your post, but I think this is a thing we need to discuss.
> 
> Obviously some people know more about art than others, so their opinion about its quality can be better informed. For example, some listeners might be able to identify a certain chord as having been very unusual in its time, while other listeners may be unaware of that.
> 
> But whether that chord _sounds good_ or not can only be a matter of opinion. Whether using unusual chords _is a good thing_ or not can only be a matter of opinion.
> 
> Now that's a very particular example, but the opinion of a work as a whole must consist of a lot of very particular judgments like that. We'd have to be very educated listeners indeed in order to break down our feelings about a work in detail, and doing so might seem to legitimize our feelings, and I think that's a very valuable skill, and people who can do it should be respected very highly. But their feelings are still feelings rather than matters of fact.
> 
> Does that make sense to you? Or do you think I'm missing something?


apologies for the delay in responding. The question appears to be whether it is admissible that some people's judgement of 'quality' is more 'worthwhile' than others.
Well, I believe so. 
This is not the same as saying that some people have more (or less) right to say "I like (or dislike) this particular piece" but I do believe that some people's evaluation of 'quality' is more worthwhile (or less worthwhile) than other people's. As an instance, today I showed my students two pieces by van Gogh - one an early drawing and one a late painting. The consensus view of these students (not art students, by the way) was that the early drawing was 'better' than the late painting. I can accept that they preferred the early work (and it is their right to have that opinion respected) but the consensus of those who know and understand art appears to be that the later paintings are much greater masterpieces than the first drawings.
I know that it is unfashionable to acknowledge that expert opinion carries 'weight' but yup - I believe so.


----------



## Woodduck

Headphone Hermit said:


> apologies for the delay in responding. The question appears to be whether it is admissible that some people's judgement of 'quality' is more 'worthwhile' than others.
> Well, I believe so.
> This is not the same as saying that some people have more (or less) right to say "I like (or dislike) this particular piece" but I do believe that some people's evaluation of 'quality' is more worthwhile (or less worthwhile) than other people's. As an instance, today I showed my students two pieces by van Gogh - one an early drawing and one a late painting. The consensus view of these students (not art students, by the way) was that the early drawing was 'better' than the late painting. I can accept that they preferred the early work (and it is their right to have that opinion respected) but the consensus of those who know and understand art appears to be that the later paintings are much greater masterpieces than the first drawings.
> I know that it is unfashionable to acknowledge that expert opinion carries 'weight' but yup - I believe so.


You anecdote brings to mind a friend who was listening with me to a recording of the original, unrevised version of Sibelius's _5th Symphony._ He was listening from the next room and didn't know it was the original version, which has several conspicuous differences from the version we know and is generally regarded as distinctly less effective and very much in need of Sibelius's subsequent thoughts.

At the end my friend remarked that he thought it was the best Sibelius 5th he'd ever heard. Now he surely did enjoy it - but what was the basis of his judgment? Is the original version actually superior, as a work of art, to the final version? I can't imagine anyone thinking so, given the opportunity to compare them, but also given - and this is the point here - sufficient musical perceptiveness. Aesthetic perceptiveness - the ability to hear or see how well a work of art is put together, how well, as artists say, it "works" - is not a simple pleasure response, and it is not something we possess in equal abundance. It is however a thing that can be cultivated.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

^^^


----------



## KenOC

If I were an unsophisticated art lover (which I am) and preferred the earlier van Gogh, then I would much rather have that in my living room to look at. Why should I hang a picture someone else prefers, rather than what I prefer, regardless of how knowledgeable that person is?


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> If I were an unsophisticated art lover (which I am) and preferred the earlier van Gogh, then I would much rather have that in my living room to look at. Why should I hang a picture someone else prefers, rather than what I prefer, regardless of how knowledgeable that person is?


In case they call round for tea.


----------



## Woodduck

dogen said:


> In case they call round for tea.


:lol: ..............


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Since I was ca. 16 I often went to the local museum, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter. I collected postcards with modern art. For me it's modern art that is what I like. Not bad at all


----------



## science

Headphone Hermit said:


> apologies for the delay in responding. The question appears to be whether it is admissible that some people's judgement of 'quality' is more 'worthwhile' than others.
> Well, I believe so.
> This is not the same as saying that some people have more (or less) right to say "I like (or dislike) this particular piece" but I do believe that some people's evaluation of 'quality' is more worthwhile (or less worthwhile) than other people's. As an instance, today I showed my students two pieces by van Gogh - one an early drawing and one a late painting. The consensus view of these students (not art students, by the way) was that the early drawing was 'better' than the late painting. I can accept that they preferred the early work (and it is their right to have that opinion respected) but the consensus of those who know and understand art appears to be that the later paintings are much greater masterpieces than the first drawings.
> I know that it is unfashionable to acknowledge that expert opinion carries 'weight' but yup - I believe so.


This doesn't actually respond to the ideas in the post you quoted.


----------



## Jeffrey Smith

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Value refers to how light or dark something is.


Thank you. And a most apposite means of explanation.


----------



## arpeggio

*Diversity?*

I have lost track concerning what has been said.

Has anyone proposed the idea that one of the reasons modern art is so controversial is because of the diversity of styles?


----------



## Woodduck

arpeggio said:


> I have lost track concerning what has been said.
> 
> Has anyone proposed the idea that one of the reasons modern art is so controversial is because of the diversity of styles?


Does it range from the sublime to the ridiculous?

Yes. And there's much disagreement as to which is which.


----------



## arpeggio

Woodduck said:


> Does it range from the sublime to the ridiculous?
> 
> Yes. And there's much disagreement as to which is which.


I know that. I was just asking a simple question. I was asking has diversity been raised. The answer would be yes or no. I give up.


----------



## Woodduck

arpeggio said:


> I know that. I was just asking a simple question. I was asking has diversity been raised. The answer would be yes or no. I give up.


Well pardon my interest in your question. You asked a question, I made an observation. Is that forbidden? There seem to be many things people would like to forbid. Things like expressing opinions on the subject at hand. Remarkable.


----------



## amfortas

Woodduck said:


> Does it range from the sublime to the ridiculous?
> 
> Yes. And there's much disagreement as to which is which.


That seems a pretty limited notion of what "diversity" can mean in this context. We certainly see a wide array of influences, media, subject matter, styles, intentions, etc., much of it operating in ways for which neither "sublime" nor "ridiculous" may be all that pertinent.


----------



## dgee

Woodduck said:


> Well pardon my interest in your question. You asked a question, I made an observation. Is that forbidden? There seem to be many things people would like to forbid. Things like expressing opinions on the subject at hand. Remarkable.


Easy tiger! No one mentioned forbidden. The conservatives and their straw men - there always a modernist out there telling them what to do and looking down on them (hint: nope, there's actually not)


----------



## Woodduck

dgee said:


> Easy tiger! No one mentioned forbidden. The conservatives and their straw men - there always a modernist out there telling them what to do and looking down on them (hint: nope, there's actually not)


Arpeggio was rude. I had enough of that a couple of days ago with science, who just couldn't get over imagining himself under personal attack because someone had a low opinion of something he liked. I don't notice "conservatives" (whoever they are) whining that they're persecuted. Now I encounter someone getting huffy because he didn't get a simple yes or no?

What is this, a preschool?


----------



## Morimur

Woodduck said:


> What is this, a preschool?


Yep.
****
****
****


----------



## Adam Weber

Personally, I'm ready for some yes and no answers around here. There's a fine line between nuance and excessive complication.


----------



## Woodduck

amfortas said:


> That seems a pretty limited notion of what "diversity" can mean in this context. We certainly see a wide array of influences, media, subject matter, styles, intentions, etc., much of it operating in ways for which neither "sublime" nor "ridiculous" may be all that pertinent.


Don't assume too much from that. "Ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous" doesn't preclude other qualities. It wasn't meant as a full discussion of anything, only an expression of the extremes to which modern art can go - and the lack of consensus on its meaning and value.


----------



## kartikeys

modern art, despite its symbolism and other isms, can be drawn well. 
if you claim that it's not drawn well because that, too, is art, then you draw comparisons to past masters who drew well, and spoke plainly.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

KenOC said:


> If I were an unsophisticated art lover (which I am) and preferred the earlier van Gogh, then I would much rather have that in my living room to look at. Why should I hang a picture someone else prefers, rather than what I prefer, regardless of how knowledgeable that person is?


You shouldn't.

I make it as clear as I can repeatedly - you (and everyone else) can like what you like. You can even hang a Vettriano print on the wall if you choose to


----------



## Headphone Hermit

science said:


> This doesn't actually respond to the ideas in the post you quoted.


Apologies, Science - I thought I had. Really - I did think I had explained my view of the point I thought you had queried


----------



## dgee

Headphone Hermit said:


> You shouldn't.
> 
> I make it as clear as I can repeatedly - you (and everyone else) can like what you like. You can even hang a Vettriano print on the wall if you choose to


Right now, I have this greeting my visitors in my foyer:


----------



## Headphone Hermit

dgee said:


> Right now, I have this greeting my visitors in my foyer:
> 
> View attachment 80421


Fearsome!


----------



## dgee

Headphone Hermit said:


> Fearsome!


If that doesn't get em, I've got the Stockhausen Klavierstucke on high rotate. I'm postmodern that way

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was joking: I really have been listening to a lot of Karlheinz lately but would never entertain Kinkade. And nor am I post-modern. I don't even know what it really means for a start, so I shouldn't take it vain!


----------



## Headphone Hermit

science said:


> Sorry for clipping up your post, but I think this is a thing we need to discuss.
> 
> Obviously some people know more about art than others, so their opinion about its quality can be better informed. For example, some listeners might be able to identify a certain chord as having been very unusual in its time, while other listeners may be unaware of that.
> 
> But whether that chord _sounds good_ or not can only be a matter of opinion. Whether using unusual chords _is a good thing_ or not can only be a matter of opinion.
> 
> Now that's a very particular example, but the opinion of a work as a whole must consist of a lot of very particular judgments like that. We'd have to be very educated listeners indeed in order to break down our feelings about a work in detail, and doing so might seem to legitimize our feelings, and I think that's a very valuable skill, and people who can do it should be respected very highly. But their feelings are still feelings rather than matters of fact.
> 
> Does that make sense to you? Or do you think I'm missing something?


so, I'll have another attempt

Maybe you are asking "does expert opinion carry authority that goes beyond simply being 'feelings'?"

Well, yes - in my opinion it does. In my view, an expert's judgement about the 'quality' of a piece of art (of whatever form) is much more likely to carry authority than a non-expert's opinion.

If you are then asking "should I like it because an expert says it is high quality?", then my answer is 'of course not - you should like what you like'

I hope this addresses what you want to ask me --- if not, I beg forgiveness and ask you to rephrase the question briefly and I'll try to answer you.


----------



## MarkW

Let's try a different tack. There is at least one group of anti-modernists whose primary concern is Absolutes -- representation of Beauty, Truth, the Good, fidelity to the thing represented, etc. Nothing wrong with that. The problem is that in the early 20th c., that kind of thinking went off the rails. Not because people stopped caring, but because various theories/schools of thought brought that into question. The major early 20 c. achievements in the hard sciences concerned what we _couldn't _know: large scale (Einstein), small scale (Bohr, Heisenberg), mathematically (Godel). The newly emerging field of anthropology brought cultural relativism onto the field of discussion. Philosophy, as usual, was all over the place. Things like simultaneity, absolute knowledge, systemic consistency, the ongoing struggle between Truth and Goodness . . . all messied up the table of intellectual discourse, and the arts followed suit. Cubism, abstract expressionism, theatre of the absurd, expressionistic theatre/film, surrealism, literary experimentation (stream of consciousness, etc.), impressionist, atonal, twelve-note music, modern non-narrative dance . . . To a certain extent all were affected by the scientific/philsophical upheaval and things haven't been the same since -- and may never be the same because it is uncertain whether the idea of Absolutes can be re-established. There's no problem with wistfully hoping so, and those who do aren't bad people. But that's discussion more worth having than wholesale condemnation/approval of the artistic exemplars that are struggling with the idea. Just a thought.


----------



## Guest

Other thoughts...

Art as a representing function ceased with the birth of photography.

Art as a religious communication function decreased as literacy in the general population increased. (and changes such as translations of religious texts into languages the proles could read!)


----------



## Guest

dogen said:


> Art as a representing function ceased with the birth of photography.


I don't think so - not 'mere' representation, but if one thinks of the word as meaning "re-presentation", it clearly still has that function.

But then whilst the artists of the past may well have been concerned to capture something lifelike, they were also concerned with distorting reality when it suited them for symbolic or commercial purposes.


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> I don't think so - not 'mere' representation, but if one thinks of the word as meaning "re-presentation", it clearly still has that function.
> 
> But then whilst the artists of the past may well have been concerned to capture something lifelike, they were also concerned with distorting reality when it suited them for symbolic or commercial purposes.


OK that's a bit more nuanced/accurate, but surely photography has somewhat eaten into the purpose of some artistic endeavours?


----------



## Guest

dogen said:


> OK that's a bit more nuanced/accurate, but surely photography has somewhat eaten into the purpose of some artistic endeavours?


I'd agree to some extent, but I suspect that the proportion of art that was only about achieving realistic representation was small in the first place. Thinking locally, there are still many artists who want to paint or draw in a 'realistic' manner, rather than simply resort to photography, because the processes are not the same. I wonder whether Stubbs would have been happy just to photograph horses?


----------



## Blancrocher

MarkW said:


> Let's try a different tack. There is at least one group of anti-modernists whose primary concern is Absolutes -- representation of Beauty, Truth, the Good, fidelity to the thing represented, etc.


I'm still not sure what "anti-modernists" are attacking, exactly -- or even if I might be one :lol: I've seen lots of snipes at conceptual art, found objects, campbell's soup cans, shock art, and the like. I like that sort of thing when it's new, but I'll admit that seeing it once is usually enough for me. I'm not in the least interested in a bunch of old Andy Warhol pictures and tend to walk by them quickly, though I remain interested in his and similar artists' historical influence.

But there are many uncompromising, idealistic artists from the 20th and 21st centuries, working with unusual idioms but with high standards of craft and an ambition to entrance the viewer. If people are saying there's nothing in Picasso, Giacometti, Kiefer, Richter, etc., etc., etc., I'd be quite surprised.

Are we just talking about certain notorious works of John Cage here, or are people also throwing out Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Berio, Birtwistle, and Unsuk Chin with the bathwater?


----------



## MarkW

When I say "some" anti-modernists, I mean just that. That seems to be a lot of what the guy in that original video was advocating.


----------



## Blancrocher

MarkW said:


> When I say "some" anti-modernists, I mean just that. That seems to be a lot of what the guy in that original video was advocating.


Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about that video. There's not much of interest in it, imo--though I could probably be persuaded that judges at figure skating contests are probably not as objective as they should be.


----------



## Woodduck

MarkW said:


> There is at least one group of anti-modernists whose primary concern is Absolutes -- representation of *Beauty, Truth, the Good, fidelity to the thing represented*, etc. [...] To a certain extent all were affected by the scientific/philsophical upheaval and things haven't been the same since -- and may never be the same because it is uncertain whether the idea of Absolutes can be re-established. There's no problem with wistfully hoping so, and those who do aren't bad people. But that's discussion more worth having than *wholesale condemnation/approval of the artistic exemplars that are struggling with the idea.* Just a thought.


What "antimodernists", aside from Aunt Clara in Kalamazoo, are you describing? No one here, I hope. As MacLeod points out in posts #538 and 540, art has rarely had as a "primary concern" fidelity to appearances. Art has sometimes served the purposes of documentation - portraiture being the obvious example - but, to quote MacLeod again, it has always been concerned not merely to _present_ reality, but to "re-present" it, and to do so in a manner that embodies the values of the artist and/or his culture. All visual art involves of necessity some kind of distortion of the way we actually, physically see; but hardly at any time in history, in any part of the world, has it been expected to do otherwise, despite what Aunt Clara may think. Not even Thomas Kincaide was faithful to appearances (and thank God for it; our electric bill - or candle budget - would be astronomical).

The philosophical fragmentation of the modern era is certain. Whether the purveyors of modern art are in any meaningful sense "exemplars struggling with the idea," however, needs to be evaluated on an individual basis. I don't think anyone is condemning the art of the modern era wholesale, much less on the basis that it has renounced a "fidelity to appearances" that art never had in the first place. Much of the real junk in modern art results not from a struggle with ideas, but from the misconception that art is primarily a purveyor of ideas, or even - at the extreme of "conceptual art" - that it consists of nothing but ideas. The irony is that much of it, in the absence of contorted and esoteric verbal explanations on the part of the artist or critics, consists of puerile gestures which in themselves convey no ideas at all, except the idea that the "artist" has not bothered to cultivate the kinds of awareness and skill which would enable him to master and utilize a genuine aesthetic language.


----------



## millionrainbows

Why not just take a photograph? There is a deeper meaning in this question.


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Brains that grow up exclusively with tonal music seem to be more receptive to tonal music.
> 
> Brains that do not grow up with tonal music (or not just tonal music) are usually just as receptive to *non-tonal *music.
> 
> Pretty much nobody today grows up with tonal music exclusively, though, so you'll get all kinds of confusion based on people defining anything they're comfortable with as "tonal."


You have never before acknowledged that there is such a thing as non-tonal music. Have you been trolling me all along?


----------



## Guest

Sloe said:


> What is the musical equivalent of a statue depicting a peeing policewoman ?


I don't know, but I'm prompted to ask why the 'peeing policewoman' attracts opprobrium? For some, the re-presentation of the scatological is, in itself, wrong: it's not a suitable subject for art. I'm not sure why, however. Society at large may decree this to be so, but what does society know? Why shouldn't an artist consider all aspects of human experience, including the taboo and the challenging?

I haven't seen the piece in question, and indeed, I might find it repulsive or shocking or "gross", but that in itself might be a legitimate and desired reaction to the work.


----------



## millionrainbows

Nobody here seems to understand that new technologies changed the function of art. This is what 'modernism' embodies, and we have witnessed art in the process of re-defining its function.

It's also ridiculous to take a Jackson Pollock (note spelling) painting out of the context of his total output and progression, and try to interpret it in a simplistic way. This is the most boring, uninformed discussion on art that I've seen.


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Nobody here seems to understand that new technologies changed the function of art. This is what 'modernism' embodies, and we have witnessed art in the process of re-defining its function.
> 
> It's also ridiculous to take a Jackson Pollock (note spelling) painting out of the context of his total output and progression, and try to interpret it in a simplistic way. This is the most boring, uninformed discussion on art that I've seen.


Nah. Only one function of art - documentation of what someone or something looks like - has been taken over by "new technologies" (what new technologies?). Otherwise art does what it's always done. "Art redefining its function" is just modernist cant; modernism is always yammering about "redefining" this and that. Art began as a way of embodying people's feelings and values in a concrete, sensory form, whether visual, musical, or through words that represent reality. That's what art is supposed to do, and it still does it.

"Taking a Jackson Pollock painting out of context" may mean nothing more than standing in front of it and looking at it, which is what we generally do with paintings. I suspect that when Mr. Pollock was dancing around his garage dripping paint, he was also "taking his painting out of context." You want context, you study art history or read Pollock's bio. Otherwise you just look at the painting, and it succeeds in saying something to you or it doesn't. That's what artists expect you to do with their work.


----------



## Blancrocher

millionrainbows said:


> Nobody here seems to understand that new technologies changed the function of art. This is what 'modernism' embodies, and we have witnessed art in the process of re-defining its function.


Well, StlukesguildOhio and others have established to my satisfaction that, at least in part as a result of the changing status and ubiquity of images resulting from technological change, expensive commodities in the modern art market less often have an expressly pornographic purpose than in the past.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> You have never before acknowledged that there is such a thing as non-tonal music. Have you been trolling me all along?


What I am against is the idea of atonality, primarily.

In the way that you and others understand tonal to include modal and folk music as well as diatonic non-common practice music, there is no such thing as non-tonal music.

In the sense, as here, where I am discussing a distinction between tonal, modal, and post-tonal music, obviously there is a distinction between tonal and non-tonal music, with the latter being the much larger category.

The confusion comes because people refuse to make a distinction between tonal and pre-tonal music, and lump them together as tonal, while excluding certain (but not all) post-tonal music as something different. This is completely untenable.


----------



## Ilarion

Attention everyone: From now on there will be no more fragging of Woodduck - He has endured more than his share of *grief*. Lets be cool with Woodduck. In re to Modern Art I will share a viewpoint that the *Puerile Junk* that I have sometimes seen at MOMA or Whitney Museum of Art in New York is at times way over the top. I remember the *Crucifix in a jar of poo* stunt a few years back - Totally tasteless! Now, here in Muscovy there is a Museum with the artworks of Ilya Glazunov, who is very much alive or I'll mention Malevich and Kandinsky whose works rival that which is cranked out in America and Western Europe.


----------



## science

Headphone Hermit said:


> Apologies, Science - I thought I had. Really - I did think I had explained my view of the point I thought you had queried


No, what I'm interested in is: in what sense, why, and how does expert opinion matter? If you read the post I was responding to, I didn't deny that it mattered, so asserting that it does doesn't relate to that.

On the other hand, if (contrary to what I wrote in that post) the idea is that expert opinion matters because experts have better insight into the universal, objective truths of aesthetics, that opens up a line of questioning that I cannot imagine answering satisfactorily: in what sense do those truths exist? How can we know them? If the answer to those questions is anything like "the people who know just know and the others just don't" then to me that's transparently nothing but a power play. I need something better than that.


----------



## Ilarion

science said:


> No, what I'm interested in is: in what sense, why, and how does expert opinion matter? If you read the post I was responding to, I didn't deny that it mattered, so asserting that it does doesn't relate to that.
> 
> On the other hand, if (contrary to what I wrote in that post) the idea is that expert opinion matters because experts have better insight into the universal, objective truths of aesthetics, that opens up a line of questioning that I cannot imagine answering satisfactorily: in what sense do those truths exist? How can we know them? If the answer to those questions is anything like "the people who know just know and the others just don't" then to me that's transparently nothing but a power play. I need something better than that.


Hi science,

Interesting thoughts you bring up - I'll be brief with my thought: If we spend time to really get to know the human whose work(s) are on display, what their lifestory is about and what went on with them when they conceived the work(s) on display methinks we can all come away with being an experience richer. None of us have to like every artwork that has been produced, besides, it probably would be impossible...In re to *experts*, I let them wallow in their own self-importance...


----------



## science

Ilarion said:


> Hi science,
> 
> Interesting thoughts you bring up - I'll be brief with my thought: If we spend time to really get to know the human whose work(s) are on display, what their lifestory is about and what went on with them when they conceived the work(s) on display methinks we can all come away with being an experience richer. None of us have to like every artwork that has been produced, besides, it probably would be impossible...In re to *experts*, I let them wallow in their own self-importance...


The experts are the people who know a lot about things like the humans whose works are on display. And for that kind of knowledge (as well as knowledge more tightly focused on the art itself) they should be respected. We should seek out their insights and allow them to affect our experience of the art.

However, what I still don't see is that there is some kind of universal, objective standard of aesthetics. Besides the problems I mentioned in that post (how can we prove its existence, how does it come into existence, what can we know about it, how can we know that the people who claim to have better insight into it than the rest of us aren't just lusting for power) there is the problem of explaining why, if there is some kind of objective truth of which the experts have greater knowledge than the rest of us, so many experts disagree among themselves.

It's too much. I can barely even imagine successful answers to those questions.


----------



## science

Ilarion said:


> Attention everyone: From now on there will be no more fragging of Woodduck - He has endured more than his share of *grief*. Lets be cool with Woodduck. In re to Modern Art I will share a viewpoint that the *Puerile Junk* that I have sometimes seen at MOMA or Whitney Museum of Art in New York is at times way over the top. I remember the *Crucifix in a jar of poo* stunt a few years back - Totally tasteless! Now, here in Muscovy there is a Museum with the artworks of Ilya Glazunov, who is very much alive or I'll mention Malevich and Kandinsky whose works rival that which is cranked out in America and Western Europe.


You might be talking about _**** Christ_, the controversy over which is really about who should get money. It's "the heartland" where all the virtues are located versus the evil cities, basically an updated version of the temperance movement. It's actually a fairly attractive photograph, and in fact it's a wonderful meditation on the Incarnation itself. I have no idea whether the artist meant for it to be those things or not (he says "it alludes to a perceived commercializing or cheapening of Christian icons in contemporary culture" which is another thought but not the same one), but I'm one of those idiots who thinks the artist's intention is not necessarily decisive.


----------



## hpowders

Why is modern art so bad?

Because you can fool all the people only some of the time before they finally catch on.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

science said:


> No, what I'm interested in is: in what sense, why, and how does expert opinion matter? If you read the post I was responding to, I didn't deny that it mattered, so asserting that it does doesn't relate to that.
> 
> On the other hand, if (contrary to what I wrote in that post) the idea is that expert opinion matters because experts have better insight into the universal, objective truths of aesthetics, that opens up a line of questioning that I cannot imagine answering satisfactorily: in what sense do those truths exist? How can we know them? If the answer to those questions is anything like "the people who know just know and the others just don't" then to me that's transparently nothing but a power play. I need something better than that.


Ah. OK - I understand your question

unfortunately, I feel unable to answer you off the top of my head. Maybe if we were chatting face to face, but not by posts like these.

Sorry for ducking the issue, but I genuinely don't feel I can answer satisfactorily


----------



## Headphone Hermit

science said:


> However, what I still don't see is that there is some kind of universal, objective standard of aesthetics.


aha - I understand your point better now.

No - nor do I. No, it isn't 'objective' in the way that a science works, but nonetheless, I feel that 'subjective' opinion from an expert can still carry weight. Clearly, that will not satisfy those rooted in a positivist tradition, but .... I believe that there are some things cannot be 'proven' in an 'objective' manner.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

hpowders said:


> Why is modern art so bad?
> 
> Because you can fool all the people only some of the time before they finally catch on.


Nice to see you back again, hp, but ....... surely you do not think *all* modern art is bad? Surely not?


----------



## hpowders

Headphone Hermit said:


> Nice to see you back again, hp, but ....... surely you do not think *all* modern art is bad? Surely not?


If I only knew that my first grade spastic, indesciphable finger painting efforts would now be heralded as masterpieces of modern art....

My psychiatrist says I may come back on a limited basis.


----------



## norman bates

dogen said:


> Other thoughts...
> 
> Art as a representing function ceased with the birth of photography.


not at all, because you can't do with a photography what Rembrandt did with his portraits, or Edward Hopper with his landscapes, or even painters like Klee or Picasso (who were still representing things).

ops... I've seen now that Macleod said basically the same.


----------



## Woodduck

Headphone Hermit said:


> aha - I understand your point better now.
> 
> No - nor do I. No, it isn't 'objective' in the way that a science works, but nonetheless, I feel that 'subjective' opinion from an expert can still carry weight. Clearly, that will not satisfy those rooted in a positivist tradition, but .... *I believe that there are some things cannot be 'proven' in an 'objective' manner.*


So do I, and so does everyone, whether they know it or not.

If everything had to be proved, nothing could be known, and "proof" would be nonexistent. "Proof" is a logical concept and applies only to propositions. The raw material for propositions is direct personal experience, un-"prove"-able to anyone else.

There must be things which are known directly ("subjectively") and cannot be proved in order for other things to be proved ("objectively"). There must also be things which are irreducible - primary phenomena, not explainable in terms of anything else - for anything else to be explained.

Direct personal experience - sensation, perception, feeling, emotion, intuition, empathy, the moral imperative, the sense of beauty, the logical sense, the knowledge that the world and oneself exist - is irreducible and cannot be "explained" or "proved" propositionally.

If a "human being" is an entity of a specific nature and human beings have a fundamental nature in common underlying their individual differences, then there are fundamental values which human beings have in common. Understanding fundamental values in _ethics_ is the task of moral philosophy, which will never "prove" that we shouldn't be murdering, raping and pillaging, but can show the benefits of refraining from those things and the prohibition of them by mankind's moral systems. Understanding fundamental values in _art_ is the task of aesthetic philosophy, which will never "prove" that perceptual order is aesthetically better than perceptual chaos, but can show that order is a basic need of human cognition and behavior and that human beings constantly seek it and enjoy creating and contemplating it.

Needless to say, this is only a little epistemological cobweb-clearing, and barely a beginning to a complex subject.


----------



## Guest

norman bates said:


> not at all, because you can't do with a photography what Rembrandt did with his portraits, or Edward Hopper with his landscapes, or even painters like Klee or Picasso (who were still representing things).
> 
> ops... I've seen now that Macleod said basically the same.


I entirely agree. I only meant where painting was used to provide a realistic record of some one or some thing.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

isorhythm said:


> Is this beautiful?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Not rhetorical - I'm curious what people say.


Well... I'll start out by suggesting that this particular reproduction is anything but "beautiful". Here's one a bit closer to the real thing... although even then, Christ looks a bit more greenish in the real painting:










Matthias Grünewald's Crucifixion from the Isenheim Altarpiece is one of the masterpieces of the Northern (German) Renaissance. Unlike the Italians, the Northern artists tended to stress the harsh reality. No, the image isn't "beautiful". It's horrific... harrowing. It's also incredibly expressive and provokes strong emotional responses. I would say that it fits into Burke's idea of the "Sublime"... but also the Late 19th Century/Modernist notion of "Aesthetic Beauty"... the "beauty" of the Art or the Form in spite of the subject.

The painting is actually quite simply (and "beautifully") composed/organized. In spite of the spiny trists and turns of the limbs and figures Grünewald structures the painting based upon an inverted triangle:



Artists often employ the simplest compositions to structure the most complex images (such as Bosch' _Garden of Earthly Delights_).

The artist also employs diagonals forming an "X" in leading from St. Matthew's Gesturing through Christ's face and one of his arms and leading from the Virgin's clasping fingers to Christ's other arm.

The painting is also "harmonized" through the use of a limited palette employing predominantly black & white, and orange-ish red & green... two Complimentary Colors.

There are several more means by which Grünewald has organized this picture... which in no way is just one more boring Crucifixion.

Having said that... is it beautiful in the sense that I would love to have it hanging on my bedroom wall where I might awake and see it every morning? I would have to say no.


----------



## science

Headphone Hermit said:


> aha - I understand your point better now.
> 
> No - nor do I. No, it isn't 'objective' in the way that a science works, but nonetheless, I feel that 'subjective' opinion from an expert can still carry weight. Clearly, that will not satisfy those rooted in a positivist tradition, but .... I believe that there are some things cannot be 'proven' in an 'objective' manner.


But some things can be proven, and such things are always relevant to our evaluation of a work of art



Woodduck said:


> So do I, and so does everyone, whether they know it or not.
> 
> If everything had to be proved, nothing could be known, and "proof" would be nonexistent. "Proof" is a logical concept and applies only to propositions. The raw material for propositions is direct personal experience, un-"prove"-able to anyone else.
> 
> There must be things which are known directly ("subjectively") and cannot be proved in order for other things to be proved ("objectively"). There must also be things which are irreducible - primary phenomena, not explainable in terms of anything else - for anything else to be explained.
> 
> Direct personal experience - sensation, perception, feeling, emotion, intuition, empathy, the moral imperative, the sense of beauty, the logical sense, the knowledge that the world and oneself exist - is is irreducible and cannot be "explained" or "proved" propositionally.
> 
> If a "human being" is an entity of a specific nature and human beings have a fundamental nature in common underlying their individual differences, then there are fundamental values which human beings have in common. Understanding fundamental values in _ethics_ is the task of moral philosophy, which will never "prove" that we shouldn't be murdering, raping and pillaging, but can show the benefits of refraining from those things and the prohibition of them by mankind's moral systems. Understanding fundamental values in _art_ is the task of aesthetic philosophy, which will never "prove" that perceptual order is aesthetically better than perceptual chaos, but can show that order is a basic need of human cognition and behavior and that human beings constantly seek it and enjoy creating and contemplating it.
> 
> Needless to say, this is only a little epistemological cobweb-clearing, and barely a beginning to a complex subject.


How about trying to proportion the confidence of our belief to the weight of evidence in favor of it? So, what is the evidence in favor of the existence of objective aesthetic laws?

If morality is to be taken as an analogy to aesthetics (I'd say there are limits to that), let's note that although self-governing peoples usually choose to prohibit many actions, we usually also choose to let each other have a lot of freedom in our behavior because we recognize the limits of the objectivity of our judgments. We recognize that we disagree and that we are free to disagree, and as a result we only prohibit or enforce behavior that we really feel strongly about.

Given that we recognize the limits of our objectivity in the realm of morality, how much more should we do that in the realm of aesthetics? How slow should we be to stick our rhetorical knives in each others' guts over paintings? If I love it and you don't, why should you proclaim me a lover of sewage, attributing a subhuman status to me?


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

I was joking: I really have been listening to a lot of Karlheinz lately but would never entertain Kinkade.

Thank God... you had me worried.

Talking of Kinkade, I am reminded of an essay by Arthur C. Danto. Danto argued that we were living in a world of Post-Aesthetic Art. It no longer mattered what a work of Art looked like... the Concept was everything. He then put forth the idea that one might take a collection of "kitsch" paintings... such as those of Kinkade, and placing them in the context of a "serious" gallery or museum with the clear intention of their being "ironic" (the element _de rigour_ of Post-Modernism) they might become "Great Art". :lol:


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Art as a representing function ceased with the birth of photography.

No... but the notion that the primary role of Art was to mimic... or document visual reality... was called into question. Photography became an aid for many artists in representing the visual world around them. In many ways it helped them to see the world afresh. It reinforced more daring approaches to color beginning with Impressionism, as color was not something photography did well until the mid-20th Century. Of course it also freed some artists from the necessity of striving toward visual realism. They could increasingly experiment with expressive distortions of line, form, space, etc...


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

millionrainbows said:


> Why not just take a photograph? There is a deeper meaning in this question.


Is there?.........................


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

This is the most boring, uninformed discussion on art that I've seen.


Thank God you arrived in time to enlighten us all.


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> If I love it and you don't, why should you proclaim me a lover of sewage, attributing a subhuman status to me?


Is victimhood really so enjoyable?

If you insist on objective proof of things, you should demonstrate objectively that I said somewhere that you are a lover of sewage and are subhuman. Objectively, now. _Objectively._ That, unlike the beauty of a Mozart aria, is subject to proof.

Until you can do that, you should have the minimal decency to stop claiming it.


----------



## Simon Moon

I am really annoyed at the title of this thread.

There is so much great modern art, the title is just silly. 

Yes, there is bad modern art. So what?

There was almost assuredly bad classical art, also. But the bad examples, did not last, it was lost, destroyed, painted over and canvases reused, etc.

For every Monet, Rembrandt, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Degas, etc there are thousands of bad artists of those periods, long forgotten.


----------



## Chordalrock

science said:


> But some things can be proven, and such things are always relevant to our evaluation of a work of art
> 
> How about trying to proportion the confidence of our belief to the weight of evidence in favor of it? So, what is the evidence in favor of the existence of objective aesthetic laws?
> 
> If morality is to be taken as an analogy to aesthetics (I'd say there are limits to that), let's note that although self-governing peoples usually choose to prohibit many actions, we usually also choose to let each other have a lot of freedom in our behavior because we recognize the limits of the objectivity of our judgments. We recognize that we disagree and that we are free to disagree, and as a result we only prohibit or enforce behavior that we really feel strongly about.
> 
> Given that we recognize the limits of our objectivity in the realm of morality, how much more should we do that in the realm of aesthetics? How slow should we be to stick our rhetorical knives in each others' guts over paintings? If I love it and you don't, why should you proclaim me a lover of sewage, attributing a subhuman status to me?


People like me who believe in works of music having innate value are the ones bringing the good news. Like the message of Christianity, the news is that, yes, you're imperfect (original sin) - however, you can do something about it (by grace of God): you can develop your listening skills, experience, and perception if you want, thus opening doors to new worlds of beauty.

As in everything, some people are less capable of doing that than some others. Many won't see the point. But in the vast majority of cases a proper musical culture, the valuing of great music, the teaching of music to people from an early age, would lead to a much richer life for most.

The amount of happiness or unhappiness that a cultural shift like this can create is of such magnitude that the topic isn't as inconsequential as you claim. It's probably more significant in those terms than the discussion about gun control.


----------



## isorhythm

^StlukesguildOhio, that is exactly what I was getting at with the Grunewald altarpiece - thanks for putting it better than I could (because I don't really know about art).


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> Is victimhood really so enjoyable?
> 
> If you insist on objective proof of things, you should demonstrate objectively that I said somewhere that you are a lover of sewage and are subhuman. Objectively, now. _Objectively._ That, unlike the beauty of a Mozart aria, is subject to proof.
> 
> Until you can do that, you should have the minimal decency to stop claiming it.


Let's consider a few such statements:



Woodduck said:


> That's the real reason why the modern era has produced so much bad art - not just inferior or mediocre art, which is always common, but offensive garbage which no one dares call by its proper name. One can make any silly or hideous thing, the more outrageous the better, call it art, have it displayed in a gallery, have it written up in pretentious art journals and popular news media, sell it to the ignorant and suggestible and prestige-hungry, and sleep soundly, knowing that anyone who claims you're a shallow, incompetent fraud is hopelessly out of touch with the advanced thinking of our times and need not be taken seriously.





Woodduck said:


> Swim in sewers, if it strikes your fancy... *the sewage in which the "official" guardians of culture have been asking us to swim for the entire sixty-six years I've been on the planet*.





Woodduck said:


> the triviality, cynicism, and depravity which we've seen in the age of "modern" art... the absurd whims of directors who are more infatuated with themselves and their own puerile and trendy "reinterpretations"... casual, worldwide vandalization of art ... as a symptom of decadence - of a tired, corrupt, floundering culture in which any rot or foolishness is accepted, indeed welcomed, in the name of art by those who ought to know better....
> 
> I remember many earnest discussions I had with music-loving friends as a very young person (in the '60s and '70s) about the state of music and the arts generally. We wondered whether we would live to see our culture produce another composer of works of superb craftsmanship, towering inspiration, rich human significance, and enduring power over the human imagination. Half a century later I no longer expect an answer in the affirmative, having heard *nothing at all composed in that time* which would remotely justify it.





Woodduck said:


> But I'd feel dirty calling the idiot who assembled it an artist.





Woodduck said:


> ...infer anything you'd like about my view of Warhol's soup cans, although I'd think my mention of a landfill speaks pretty clearly for itself.


That is from this thread alone, although it'd be a simple matter of time for me to go find similar things you've written many times.

Also, this does not include the times you've personally insulted me or other people who disagreed with you. You can put comments like the preschool one back where they belong.

The point is, you've been intentionally and viciously insulting not just to individual participants in the discussion but to the art that some of us love. (And now you simply deny it, assuming that I'm unwilling to waste my time looking through the thread to find it, assuming that someone is going to take your word for it.)

If you have a very good reason for being that insulting - if you can show that your insults really are demanded by some objective aesthetic reality - prove it.

Otherwise, it's just personal.


----------



## science

Chordalrock said:


> ... you can develop your listening skills, experience, and perception if you want, thus opening doors to new worlds of beauty... .


Do you really think that people who like modern art aren't interested in educating ourselves that way?


----------



## Chordalrock

science said:


> Do you really think that people who like modern art aren't interested in educating ourselves that way?


Some are, some aren't even aware of the extent to which it's possible (at least when it comes to music).

Some are even interested in educating others - which you seem to think they should not be doing, and which I think they should. (Perhaps you were confusing me with someone who didn't appreciate modern art & music. I was merely taking part in the objective vs. subjective aspect of the argument. It seems a too obvious point to make, but: not everyone who likes modern stuff is a relativist (just as not everyone who likes only traditional stuff believes in objective value.)


----------



## science

Chordalrock said:


> Some are even interested in educating others - which you seem to think they should not be doing


What gave you that idea?



science said:


> The experts are the people who know a lot about things like the humans whose works are on display. And for that kind of knowledge (as well as knowledge more tightly focused on the art itself) they should be respected. We should seek out their insights and allow them to affect our experience of the art.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

Woodduck said:


> I remember many earnest discussions I had with music-loving friends as a very young person (in the '60s and '70s) about the state of music and the arts generally. We wondered whether we would live to see our culture produce another composer of works of *superb craftsmanship, towering inspiration, rich human significance, and enduring power over the human imagination*.


There is from the '60s at least one towering cathedral known as 'Ligeti's Requiem' which fits all the criteria.


----------



## Woodduck

Richannes Wrahms said:


> There is from the '60s at least one towering cathedral known as 'Ligeti's Requiem' which fits all the criteria.


Thanks. I'll check it out.


----------



## arpeggio

Richannes Wrahms said:


> There is from the '60s at least one towering cathedral known as 'Ligeti's Requiem' which fits all the criteria.


I started a thread, which ended up being a dud, about "12-tone Music and Contemporary Tonal Music".

I stated that even though I like 12-tone music I still enjoy listening to contemporary tonal composers.

I provided a list of twenty-three contemporary tonal composers: http://www.talkclassical.com/41172-12-tone-music-contemporary.html?highlight=

To this list I can add the following female composers:

Cindy McTee. (Currently married to Leonard Slatkin)
Libby Larson
Jennifer Higdon (I hesitate to mention Ms. Higdon. She was crucified in another thread by a SPEOE.)

If modern music is so bad what is wrong with these composers?


----------



## science

I don't think anyone can take very seriously the idea that our time, unlike all previous times, is incapable of producing great art. But what our era has in common with previous ones is that there are people who (choose to) hate the great art of their own time.

But that opens the question, what is the great art of our time? Who is today's Bach, today's Mozart, today's Beethoven, today's Schubert, today's Wagner, today's Schoenberg, today's Cage, today's Ligeti, today's Stockhausen? 

By the nature of things, an answer has to be a guess, and I don't have the knowledge required to hazard a very respectable guess. But I am fortunate to enjoy, in my unfortunately limited way, the art of a great number of people who just might be the next such genius.


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> Also, this does not include the times you've personally insulted me or other people who disagreed with you. You can put comments like the preschool one back where they belong.
> 
> The point is, you've been intentionally and viciously insulting not just to individual participants in the discussion but to the art that some of us love. (And now you simply deny it, assuming that I'm unwilling to waste my time looking through the thread to find it, assuming that someone is going to take your word for it.)
> 
> If you have a very good reason for being that insulting - if you can show that your insults really are demanded by some objective aesthetic reality - prove it.
> 
> Otherwise, it's just personal.


This has gone way too far, science, and you need to cut it out.

You have accused me of calling the art you like "sewage" and of calling you "subhuman." I asked you to prove that I did those things. You haven't done it, and the reason is simple: you can't, because I never did either of those things.

You are now accusing me of "intentionally and viciously insulting individual participants in the discussion." Would you now like to try to show me these "intentional and vicious insults"? If you can find them, I would be happy to retract them. But you won't do it, because those intentional and vicious insults don't exist.

For you to pick out instances of strong rhetoric in criticism of the worst trends in modern art and call them personal insults is either deluded or dishonest. I don't know which it is; I just find it baffling. Whatever is motivating you to do it, I would just like to see it stop.

Look: don't you think that if I had been insulting people in this thread, a moderator would have stepped in? Mmsbls and Mahlerian have both been participating since early on. Neither of them has spoken out about such fancied "insults." Evidently my art criticism is acceptable to them, whether they agree with my opinions or not. Mmsbls actually defended a statement of mine against your misconception, in post #276.

I can't imagine that anyone wants to hear one more time about how insulted you feel that Woodduck doesn't like the art you like. Frankly, Woodduck doesn't _know_ what art you like, and couldn't comment on it if he wanted to - which he doesn't. I'm trying to write about art. I have opinions on the subject. They are not about any person on this forum. That we may not care for each other's style of writing is of no consequence.

I have nothing personal against you, except for this continual attempt to misrepresent me. Please stop it. Now.


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## mmsbls

Please refrain from personal comments. This thread really is interesting and people do not wish to read about one member's negative views of another. Use PMs if you want to talk directly to the other member or report posts if you feel someone has violated the ToS.


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## Balthazar

Just a few thoughts on the issue of experts raised above:

There are (at least) three rather distinct values at play in a work of art. They overlap a bit, but let's keep it simple.

*1. Monetary Value.* Based on market forces of supply and demand. This is the province of auction houses, galleries, appraisers, buyers, and sellers. Unless you're a player in this market (or want to be), this is pretty irrelevant except as entertainment.

*2.	Art Historical Value. *Does a specific work exhibit advances in technique, form, etc.? Does it reflect the times in which it was created in a unique way? Is it a particularly fine example of identifiable principles of balance, harmony or construction? Did it exert influence on other artists or thinkers? Does it exemplify the traits of a specific style or era? This is the province of academics, art critics, and museum curators.

*3.	Personal Value. *How much pleasure/utility does an individual get from a work. Do you think a specific work is beautiful, interesting, or important? This is the province of each individual alone.

Just because an art critic feels that a Jackson Pollock painting or Grünewald's altarpiece is significant from an art historical perspective does not at all mean that one should feel compelled to like it on a personal level. Conversely, it is absurd for someone who doesn't like one of the above to excoriate the critics without understanding their perspective and addressing their arguments for the works' significance.

To respond to KenOC's query about what to hang on his wall: Run away from any "expert" who tries to tell you what you should think is beautiful. If you love kittens and want a black velvet painting of kittens on your wall, go for it.

True experts can offer valuable education, technical insight, and historical perspective in their particular fields. What is ridiculous is individuals (over the age of 18 or so) who claim that they have superior magical insight (which can't be explained) into what is "truly" beautiful. Cue the emo music…


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## Richannes Wrahms

arpeggio said:


> I started a thread, which ended up being a dud, about "12-tone Music and Contemporary Tonal Music".
> 
> I stated that even though I like 12-tone music I still enjoy listening to contemporary tonal composers.
> 
> I provided a list of twenty-three contemporary tonal composers: http://www.talkclassical.com/41172-12-tone-music-contemporary.html?highlight=
> 
> To this list I can add the following female composers:
> 
> Cindy McTee. (Currently married to Leonard Slatkin)
> Libby Larson
> Jennifer Higdon (I hesitate to mention Ms. Higdon. She was crucified in another thread by a SPEOE.)
> 
> If modern music is so bad what is wrong with these composers?


Some would answer something like this:



wikipedia said:


> By the end of the nineteenth century, composers had used the diminished seventh so much that it became a cliché of musical expression and consequently lost much its power to shock and thrill. By the turn of the 20th century, many musicians were getting weary of it. In his Harmonielehre[23] (I911) Schoenberg wrote: "Whenever one wanted to express pain, excitement, anger, or some other strong feeling - there we ﬁnd, almost exclusively, the diminished seventh chord. So it is in the music of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, etc. Even in Wagner's early works it plays the same role. But soon the role was played out. This uncommon, restless, undependable guest, here today, gone tomorrow, settled down, became a citizen, was retired a philistine. The chord had lost that appeal of novelty, hence, it had lost its sharpness, but also its luster. It had nothing more in say to a new era. Thus, it fell from the higher sphere of art music to the lower of music for entertainment. There it remains, as a sentimental expression of sentimental concerns. It became banal and effeminate."


As a creative mind I find exploration into the vastness of unheard possibilties more appealing, provided that it's done with the same or higher standards of craft western masters have established.

Some elements I look into:

Consistency
StructuresEconomy of means
VarietyTransformations
Development (including lack of) 
SensualityColourExpression​


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## SeptimalTritone

science said:


> I don't think anyone can take very seriously the idea that our time, unlike all previous times, is incapable of producing great art. But what our era has in common with previous ones is that there are people who (choose to) hate the great art of their own time.
> 
> But that opens the question, what is the great art of our time? Who is today's Bach, today's Mozart, today's Beethoven, today's Schubert, today's Wagner, today's Schoenberg, today's Cage, today's Ligeti, today's Stockhausen?
> 
> By the nature of things, an answer has to be a guess, and I don't have the knowledge required to hazard a very respectable guess. But I am fortunate to enjoy, in my unfortunately limited way, the art of a great number of people who just might be the next such genius.


(I'm really taking a big risk here.) I'd say the big names today are Murail, Furrer, Andre, Chin, Lachenmann, Ferneyhough, Haas, Sciarrino, Dumitrescu and Avram, Fedele, Billone, Czernowin...

Or at the very least, if someone wanted a list of people who have perfected the revolutions of Cage, Ligeti, Stockhausen into the 21st century, I would start them with the above list. I'd love for people to add.


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## SeptimalTritone

Hey dude, Feldman has unity in variety, transformations of structures, and artistic expressivity and sensuality!


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## Richannes Wrahms

"half simpleton, half God"


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## science

SeptimalTritone said:


> (I'm really taking a big risk here.) I'd say the big names today are Murail, Furrer, Andre, Chin, Lachenmann, Ferneyhough, Haas, Sciarrino, Dumitrescu and Avram, Fedele, Billone, Czernowin...
> 
> Or at the very least, if someone wanted a list of people who have perfected the revolutions of Cage, Ligeti, Stockhausen into the 21st century, I would start them with the above list. I'd love for people to add.


In my mind, I was thinking the microtonalists would be the answer. But a lot of that stuff was a decade old two decades ago.... I didn't want to risk not being up-to-date enough, and if I would be up-to-date enough, would it be radical enough?

I've said many times that in my opinion the most important intellectual-artistic issue in our time is genre-blending, especially cross-culturally. That's happened a bit with classical music, but the guys coming primarily from the jazz tradition seem to me to be doing it more often. Something like Garbarek's _Ragas and Sagas_, _Bang on a Can Meets Kyaw Kyaw Naing_, or Charke's _Tundra Songs_; Takemitsu's _From Me Flows What You Call Time_ is from 1990, a little old to be considered "contemporary," but within the lifetimes of most of us here.

I realize most people here won't count most of that as "classical music." And it isn't... yet.... Meanwhile, so much worse for "classical music!" There is no law that says it has to be "classical music" that is the sharpest tooth of the cutting edge. It's going on at elite and popular levels, and everywhere in between.

Of course that kind of thing has been going on here and there since forever, but IMO it's the defining feature of intellectual music in the post-modern, especially the post-Cold War, world. As more and more of the world catches up to "the west" economically (and therefore in their ability to consume, produce, and influence culture), I think that this kind of thing is going to be both increasingly important and recognized as increasingly important. It is the music of the new globalized elite, of Davos Man - most of us here are either already or on our way to becoming Davos Man. To the degree that classical music is participating in creating the music of tomorrow's Davos People, I think that's what's going to be remembered as "monumental" and all that.

Edit: Let me add: I don't think most conservative listeners are going to enjoy the stuff that is going to attain the status of Beethoven et. al. for future listeners. The fact that most of us here are going to listen with dislike to most of the music I have in mind - some of us are going to point to the less radical stuff and say it's too pretty, others to the more radical stuff and say even less polite things about it - does not induce in me a great deal of skepticism about this idea. The only thing that'll cause me a great deal of doubt is if a huge new thing comes up, or if twenty years from now nothing like that is getting made.


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## dgee

SeptimalTritone said:


> (I'm really taking a big risk here.) I'd say the big names today are Murail, Furrer, Andre, Chin, Lachenmann, Ferneyhough, Haas, Sciarrino, Dumitrescu and Avram, Fedele, Billone, Czernowin...
> 
> Or at the very least, if someone wanted a list of people who have perfected the revolutions of Cage, Ligeti, Stockhausen into the 21st century, I would start them with the above list. I'd love for people to add.


Ballsy!  I'll take Murail, Furrer, Chin, Haas, Sciarrino - possibly Billone and Cernowin from that list. This is for the voice of today/now. Some of those others are old now - a little bit yesterday. Some up-and-comers I can think of include Simon Steen Andersen and Andrew Norman. Also, we may not have yet seen the best of George Benjamin who has promised so much. Could Lindberg again distinguish himself?

I will have forgotten many, and haven't covered the more tonal and minimalist (or electronic) - maybe others can. Fun though

And who knows if the current age is amenable to identifying a Moz, Bach and Beet. Who were the analogues in mid C19?


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## SeptimalTritone

science said:


> In my mind, I was thinking the microtonalists would be the answer. But a lot of that stuff was a decade old two decades ago.... I didn't want to risk not being up-to-date enough, and if I would be up-to-date enough, would it be radical enough?
> 
> I've said many times that in my opinion the most important intellectual-artistic issue in our time is genre-blending, especially cross-culturally. That's happened a bit with classical music, but the guys coming primarily from the jazz tradition seem to me to be doing it more often. Something like Garbarek's _Ragas and Sagas_, _Bang on a Can Meets Kyaw Kyaw Naing_, or Charke's _Tundra Songs_; Takemitsu's _From Me Flows What You Call Time_ is from 1990, a little old to be considered "contemporary," but within the lifetimes of most of us here.
> 
> I realize most people here won't count most of that as "classical music." And it isn't... yet.... Meanwhile, so much worse for "classical music!" There is no law that says it has to be "classical music" that is the sharpest tooth of the cutting edge. It's going on at elite and popular levels, and everywhere in between.
> 
> Of course that kind of thing has been going on here and there since forever, but IMO it's the defining feature of intellectual music in the post-modern, especially the post-Cold War, world. As more and more of the world catches up to "the west" economically (and therefore in their ability to consume, produce, and influence culture), I think that this kind of thing is going to be both increasingly important and recognized as increasingly important. It is the music of the new globalized elite, of Davos Man - most of us here are either already or on our way to becoming Davos Man. To the degree that classical music is participating in creating the music of tomorrow's Davos People, I think that's what's going to be remembered as "monumental" and all that.
> 
> Edit: Let me add: I don't think most conservative listeners are going to enjoy the stuff that is going to attain the status of Beethoven et. al. for future listeners. The fact that most of us here are going to listen with dislike to most of the music I have in mind - some of us are going to point to the less radical stuff and say it's too pretty, others to the more radical stuff and say even less polite things about it - does not induce in me a great deal of skepticism about this idea. The only thing that'll cause me a great deal of doubt is if a huge new thing comes up, or if twenty years from now nothing like that is getting made.


I'm quite partial to spectralism/microtonal/chamber music myself because that's what I tend to like, but you're right about the cross-genre work. Obviously, there's an overlap of classical with pure electronic and acousmatic music, although that seemed to be mostly fleshed out from Varese to Ferrari, Dhomont, Ferreyra, and Parmegiani. Although they are somewhat old also, as dgee mentioned.

As for the cross-cultural stuff, I've liked Bernhard Lang's combination of rap/jazz sound samples with (amplfied) orchestra. Albert7 even once made a thread about it soon after I recommended Bernhard Lang to him, and then everybody made fun of it. They said that classical rap = C R A P.  I also like Djuro Zivkovic with his Eastern/Buddhistic inspiration, and even made a composer guestbook thread, but PetrB thought he was too kitsch  Unsuk Chin perhaps does Eastern inspiration a lot better.

I think that the new innovation in the absolute cutting edge avant garde will be the combination of the billiant towering sounds of spectralism (with its extended techniques and microtonality) with the intense counterpoint of individual voices. Things have gotten a lot leaner and individual then the blurred towering mass of Gerard Grisey's Vortex Temporum. I.e. listen to Andrew Greenwald 



 , a PhD student at Stanford studying under Ferneyhough. Very learn and pared down, and somehow both "spectral" and "contrapuntal" with super interesting violin extended techniques that are both individually hearable and combine to produce a coherent whole. We might be going back to a "neoclassicism" of extended technique building blocks. And it's the right thing. Spectralism and acousmatic electronic music is, in my opinion, a bit too "homophonic" or "textural" without interesting contrapuntal-ish interaction. Some of the younger avant garde generation may be reviving it though.


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## Guest

How ironic that the OP has precipitated such interesting posts. Thanks guys for confirming the ongoing drain on my bank account.


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## dgee

SeptimalTritone said:


> I think that the new innovation in the absolute cutting edge avant garde will be the combination of the billiant towering sounds of spectralism (with its extended techniques and microtonality) with the intense counterpoint of individual voices. Things have gotten a lot leaner and individual then the blurred towering mass of Gerard Grisey's Vortex Temporum. I.e. listen to Andrew Greenwald
> 
> 
> 
> , a PhD student at Stanford studying under Ferneyhough. Very learn and pared down, and somehow both "spectral" and "contrapuntal" with super interesting violin extended techniques that are both individually hearable and combine to produce a coherent whole. We might be going back to a "neoclassicism" of extended technique building blocks. And it's the right thing. Spectralism and acousmatic electronic music is, in my opinion, a bit too "homophonic" or "textural" without interesting contrapuntal-ish interaction. Some of the younger avant garde generation may be reviving it though.


I really enjoyed that Andrew Greenwald link which did seem to bring a lot together - sounds from spectralism, Sciarrino, Lachenmann - in an interesting way. Nice

The "thing" from the last 20 yrs still seems to me to be incorporation of a minimalist aesthetic by composers from all over the world. I'm just not down with that, but Thorvaldsdottir and others might be doing it and it seems like there are a bunch of people who appreciate it


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## Richannes Wrahms

dogen said:


> How ironic that the OP has precipitated such interesting posts. Thanks guys for confirming the ongoing drain on my bank account.


Is is thus that the Grand Duke of Dogen declared Mr. Truckload to be the salt in our protein mixture. As immediate consequence the Royal Court of Talkclassical and associates has decided not to make use of the Inquisitorial Regiment for Forum Sanitation, whose members may then take vacations of their duties.


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## Headphone Hermit

science said:


> But some things can be proven, and such things are always relevant to our evaluation of a work of art


Ah, well .... we may have to shake hands and part company as friends on this one.

Yes, some things can be 'proven' but I don't think you can objectively 'prove' 'quality' in art - I think that is largely opinion (and yes, some opinions are more credible than others).

I really do not agree that you can objectively 'prove' that Richter was a better pianist than Liberace. Sure, it is possible to pull up figures about how many 'experts' vote for one rather than the other, *but* the judgements of the experts (credible as they are) are still just judgements and the categorisation of who is an 'expert' is still (at least partly) a subjective accreditation. (((And *if* it is possible to create an algorithm to calculate the best pianist, I would still argue that deciding what is contained within the algorithm, the measurement tools used and the weighting given to individual components is still a 'subjective' judgement - much to the horror of positivists!)))

I accept that you may disagree with me. We may have to agree to disagree. Epistemological differences may well win out here! :tiphat:


----------



## Guest

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Is is thus that the Grand Duke of Dogen declared Mr. Truckload to be the salt in our protein mixture. As immediate consequence the Royal Court of Talkclassical and associates has decided not to make use of the Inquisitorial Regiment for Forum Sanitation, whose members may then take vacations of their duties.


This duke has just listened to Djuro Zivkovic for the first time. Fabulous. Thanks!


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## Nereffid

science said:


> I've said many times that in my opinion the most important intellectual-artistic issue in our time is genre-blending, especially cross-culturally.
> ...
> I realize most people here won't count most of that as "classical music." And it isn't... yet.... Meanwhile, so much worse for "classical music!" There is no law that says it has to be "classical music" that is the sharpest tooth of the cutting edge. It's going on at elite and popular levels, and everywhere in between.
> ...
> I don't think most conservative listeners are going to enjoy the stuff that is going to attain the status of Beethoven et. al. for future listeners.


One fascinating album release last year was Sarah Kirkland Snider's _Unremembered_, "an hour-long, thirteen-part song cycle for seven voices, chamber orchestra, and electronics". It showed up on several classical best-of-the-year lists, but I wonder how many here would consider it "classical", let alone "best of" anything. I put it on a poll last week and 0 of 45 people said they liked it! 
How we think new music is being received really depends on the circles we move in, and also on how we feel about newness (must it be avant-garde, or simply _different_?). Individually none of us gets to decide what lasts and what doesn't, so it's gratifying if the music we like seems to be in the ascendant, and frustrating if it's not (or, worse, not being written any more!). Myself, I think these days we have such a great variety of music calling itself "classical" that as listeners we can choose what suits us and just sit back and enjoy the ride, regardless of whether we're being taken into the future.


----------



## science

Headphone Hermit said:


> Ah, well .... we may have to shake hands and part company as friends on this one.
> 
> Yes, some things can be 'proven' but I don't think you can objectively 'prove' 'quality' in art - I think that is largely opinion (and yes, some opinions are more credible than others).
> 
> I really do not agree that you can objectively 'prove' that Richter was a better pianist than Liberace. Sure, it is possible to pull up figures about how many 'experts' vote for one rather than the other, *but* the judgements of the experts (credible as they are) are still just judgements and the categorisation of who is an 'expert' is still (at least partly) a subjective accreditation. (((And *if* it is possible to create an algorithm to calculate the best pianist, I would still argue that deciding what is contained within the algorithm, the measurement tools used and the weighting given to individual components is still a 'subjective' judgement - much to the horror of positivists!)))
> 
> I accept that you may disagree with me. We may have to agree to disagree. Epistemological differences may well win out here! :tiphat:


I suspect we do agree, but it's hard to say given how misunderstood my ideas have been. The kind of thing that experts can prove isn't "quality in art" or anything like that. In fact, I think "quality in art" is probably much too large a hammer for the nails we're trying to hit.

An expert can have all kinds of insight into a score and the tradition of piano playing and so on. On that, they get deference. Presumably they can explain and defend their claims. But as soon as a judgment of "good" or "bad" comes in, their expertise is no longer an issue: they're just a human being. For example, even if every expert agrees that someone played the wrong note (in terms of the score or whatever), that doesn't settle the question of whether it sounded good; someone might actually believe it sounded good, and that'd be a matter of opinion regardless of expertise.

The algorithm is a good metaphor. Yes, the values would have to be put into it initially, values that can never be reduced to facts or proven to skeptics.


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## Woodduck

Balthazar said:


> Run away from any "expert" who tries to tell you what you should think is beautiful. If you love kittens and want a black velvet painting of kittens on your wall, go for it.
> 
> True experts can offer valuable education, technical insight, and historical perspective in their particular fields. What is ridiculous is individuals (over the age of 18 or so) who claim that they have superior magical insight (which can't be explained) into what is "truly" beautiful. _ Cue the emo music…_


What is actually ridiculous is to think that all we can understand about art, or learn from anyone, "expert" or not, is "technical insight" and "historical perspective."

People slaving away at their canvases or staff paper day after day are, I can assure you, learning infinitely more than that. They are learning the difference between what makes a painting or a musical composition bad or good, and how to make it better. Technique is only a means to that end. And it's only because they are doing this that the experts in technique and art history - and we who might gain from their knowledge if we don't run away from them too quickly - have anything worth talking about at all.

Is this the right color to use here? Should this shape be larger in order to balance that one? Does this line turn too abruptly to convey the necessary tension here? Do these elements recede too much spatially? Is the eye directed to the center of interest, or does it run off the edge of the picture? Is this theme sufficiently distinctive to serve as a subject? Is this transitional passage too long for the balance of the exposition? Is this the right moment for the return of the first subject? Do the first and second subjects contrast sufficiently? Does this work convey a consistent, memorable mood? How do I know that? How do I know anything? Why are my ideas so lousy this morning? Why was my early work so much more powerful than my recent work? Will I ever write anything good again? Oh my God! This is beautiful! How did I do that? Whew! I still have what it takes! Time for lunch.

As an artist considerably over the age of 18, I can assure you that the insights of the artistically knowledgeable are not magical. They may seem so to those who lack them - or refuse to acknowledge or acquire them on grounds that they cannot be "objectively proved" - and sometimes they seem so even to the artist himself. But they are in fact as natural as any other form of knowledge.


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## Ilarion

science said:


> The experts are the people who know a lot about things like the humans whose works are on display. And for that kind of knowledge (as well as knowledge more tightly focused on the art itself) they should be respected. We should seek out their insights and allow them to affect our experience of the art.
> 
> However, what I still don't see is that there is some kind of universal, objective standard of aesthetics. Besides the problems I mentioned in that post (how can we prove its existence, how does it come into existence, what can we know about it, how can we know that the people who claim to have better insight into it than the rest of us aren't just lusting for power) there is the problem of explaining why, if there is some kind of objective truth of which the experts have greater knowledge than the rest of us, so many experts disagree among themselves.
> 
> It's too much. I can barely even imagine successful answers to those questions.


*Universal, objective standard of aesthetics* - I perceive that such a standard does not exist. It is the responsibility of each and every *consumer, observer, and performer* of art to develop their own *weltanschauung* ergo worldview in re to a standard. There is no magic panacea for this.


----------



## Balthazar

Woodduck said:


> What is actually ridiculous is to think that all we can understand about art, or learn from anyone, "expert" or not, is "technical insight" and "historical perspective."
> 
> People slaving away at their canvases or staff paper day after day are, I can assure you, learning infinitely more than that. They are learning the difference between what makes a painting or a musical composition bad or good, and how to make it better. Technique is only a means to that end. And it's only because they are doing this that the experts in technique and art history - and we who might gain from their knowledge if we don't run away from them too quickly - have anything worth talking about at all.
> 
> Is this the right color to use here? Should this shape be larger in order to balance that one? Does this line turn too abruptly to convey the necessary tension here? Do these elements recede too much spatially? Is the eye directed to the center of interest, or does it run off he edge of the picture? Is this theme sufficiently distinctive to serve as a subject? Is this transitional passage too long for the balance of the exposition? Is this the right moment for the return of the first subject? Do the first and second subjects contrast sufficiently? Does this work convey a consistent, memorable mood? How do I know that? How do I know anything? Why are my ideas so lousy this morning? Why was my early work so much more powerful than my recent work? Will I ever write anything good again? Oh my God! This is beautiful! How did I do that? Whew! I still have what it takes! Time for lunch.
> 
> As an artist considerably over the age of 18, I can assure you that the insights of the artistically knowledgeable are not magical. They may seem so to those who lack them - or refuse to acknowledge or acquire them on grounds that they cannot be "objectively proved" - and sometimes they seem so even to the artist himself. But they are in fact as natural as any other form of knowledge.


I don't know whose ideas you think you're responding to but they are not mine.

You seem unable to grasp the difference between a work's creation by an artist and its assessment by an audience. It is the latter that I addressed in my post, and it is the latter that has been the topic of this entire thread.

Pardon my French, but no one gives a crap what sort of warm and fuzzy feelings the artist had when he created a work, save to the extent that it results in a work of art that is appealing. That Mozart could toss off pages of music seemingly effortlessly while Mahler labored endlessly does not make one_ ipso facto_ better than the other. The proof is in the work itself. This should be obvious. The world is filled with countless failed artists who no doubt felt rapturous feelings of inspiration while creating dreadfully mediocre work that no one wants. They are rightfully forgotten.

*But it's time to walk the walk. 
*
Given that you feel so much contemporary art is "sewage" produced by "idiots," perhaps you could share some of your own work with us. Then we can all see if we are aesthetically gifted enough to tell the difference.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> What is actually ridiculous is to think that all we can understand about art, or learn from anyone, "expert" or not, is "technical insight" and "historical perspective."
> 
> People slaving away at their canvases or staff paper day after day are, I can assure you, learning infinitely more than that. They are learning the difference between what makes a painting or a musical composition bad or good, and how to make it better. Technique is only a means to that end. And it's only because they are doing this that the experts in technique and art history - and we who might gain from their knowledge if we don't run away from them too quickly - have anything worth talking about at all.
> 
> Is this the right color to use here? Should this shape be larger in order to balance that one? Does this line turn too abruptly to convey the necessary tension here? Do these elements recede too much spatially? Is the eye directed to the center of interest, or does it run off the edge of the picture? Is this theme sufficiently distinctive to serve as a subject? Is this transitional passage too long for the balance of the exposition? Is this the right moment for the return of the first subject? Do the first and second subjects contrast sufficiently? Does this work convey a consistent, memorable mood? How do I know that? How do I know anything? Why are my ideas so lousy this morning? Why was my early work so much more powerful than my recent work? Will I ever write anything good again? Oh my God! This is beautiful! How did I do that? Whew! I still have what it takes! Time for lunch.
> 
> As an artist considerably over the age of 18, I can assure you that the insights of the artistically knowledgeable are not magical. They may seem so to those who lack them - or refuse to acknowledge or acquire them on grounds that they cannot be "objectively proved" - and sometimes they seem so even to the artist himself. But they are in fact as natural as any other form of knowledge.


Most of the things you gave examples of there are technical things: balance, tension, space, center of interest, etc. People who don't know to think about those things can learn from more knowledgeable people to think about them.

And still and ever, whether the whatever is "good" or not is a matter of opinion.

Let's take literature. Are mixed metaphors bad? Are meaningless details bad? Are flat, predictable characters bad? I'd say so, but millions of people like them. Maybe they aren't educated enough, but I know some of them who are educated enough and just don't care about such things as much as I do.

Regardless of what they know, and even if they know as much as I do, they have every right to care about different things than I do.


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## Headphone Hermit

science said:


> An expert can have all kinds of insight into a score and the tradition of piano playing and so on. On that, they get deference. Presumably they can explain and defend their claims. But as soon as a judgment of "good" or "bad" comes in, their expertise is no longer an issue: *they're just a human being*. For example, even if every expert agrees that someone played the wrong note (in terms of the score or whatever), that doesn't settle the question of whether it sounded good; someone might actually believe it sounded good, and *that'd be a matter of opinion regardless of expertise*.


Yes, 'expert opinion' is 'opinion of a human being'. No question about it, surely?

Can experts be flawed in their judgement? Yes - they are after all, human.

Is expert judgement more worthwhile than non-expert judgement? - yes, in my opinion.

Should we as individuals decide what to like on the basis of expert opinion? - no, we should like what we like

......surely we agree now? :tiphat:


----------



## science

Headphone Hermit said:


> Yes, 'expert opinion' is 'opinion of a human being'. No question about it, surely?
> 
> Can experts be flawed in their judgement? Yes - they are after all, human.
> 
> Is expert judgement more worthwhile than non-expert judgement? - yes, in my opinion.
> 
> Should we as individuals decide what to like on the basis of expert opinion? - no, we should like what we like
> 
> ......surely we agree now? :tiphat:


Sure, I think we can all agree with those answers.

The question is why all those answers are correct! I think you're including things under the topic of "judgement" that I'd like to separate into different categories. On one hand is all the insights that anyone can have about an art; on the other is our feelings about them. With regard to the former, we should submit ourselves to a meritocratic totalitarianism; with the latter, the purest democracy.


----------



## Oliver

Mediocre and poor works from the past have been forgotten, used as toilet paper, to light fires etc. Only the best stand the test of time (though not all). There is a lot of junk to filter through, the idea people will be listening to someone hitting random notes on a piano in 200 years is clearly ludicrous. No disrespect Boulez.


----------



## Mahlerian

Oliver said:


> Mediocre and poor works from the past have been forgotten, used as toilet paper, to light fires etc. Only the best stand the test of time (though not all). There is a lot of junk to filter through, the idea people will be listening to someone hitting random notes on a piano in 200 years is clearly ludicrous. No disrespect Boulez.


Well, I'm sure no disrespect will be taken, given that that doesn't describe anything Boulez ever wrote.


----------



## Woodduck

Balthazar said:


> *I don't know whose ideas you think you're responding to* but they are not mine.
> 
> *You seem unable to grasp* *the difference between a work's creation by an artist and its assessment by an audience.* It is the latter that I addressed in my post, and *it is the latter that has been the topic of this entire thread.*
> 
> *Pardon my French, but **no one gives a crap *what sort of *warm and fuzzy feelings* the artist had when he created a work, save to the extent that it results in a work of art that is appealing. That Mozart could toss off pages of music seemingly effortlessly while Mahler labored endlessly does not make one_ ipso facto_ better than the other. The proof is in the work itself. This should be obvious. The world is filled with countless failed artists who no doubt felt rapturous feelings of inspiration while creating dreadfully mediocre work that no one wants. They are rightfully forgotten.
> 
> *But it's time to walk the walk.
> *
> Given that *you feel so much contemporary art is "sewage" produced by "idiots," **perhaps you could share some of your own work with us. Then we can all see if we are aesthetically gifted enough to tell the difference.*


What is there in my post to justify such a hostile tone? Let's see whether I answered your last post effectively.

You said: _experts can offer valuable education, technical insight, and historical perspective in their particular fields. What is ridiculous is individuals (over the age of 18 or so) who claim that they have superior magical insight (which can't be explained) into what is "truly" beautiful. _

I made the point that "expertise" in art has to do with more than a knowledge of technique and history - that it has to do with understanding how a work of art is put together, that this understanding enables us to see whether a work is successful or - to use the aesthetic philosopher's term - beautiful. I gave a brief but typical list of specific questions an artist might ask himself in the process of creating a work in order to make it as successful - as beautiful - as possible:

_Is this the right color to use here? Should this shape be larger in order to balance that one? Does this line turn too abruptly to convey the necessary tension here? Do these elements recede too much spatially? Is the eye directed to the center of interest, or does it run off the edge of the picture? Is this theme sufficiently distinctive to serve as a subject? Is this transitional passage too long for the balance of the exposition? Is this the right moment for the return of the first subject? Do the first and second subjects contrast sufficiently?_

That list could have been much, much longer. Why did I offer it? Because the artist himself is the first "expert" in judging the success of what he has accomplished, but the principles and criteria which he brings to bear on his own work are essentially the same as those applied by an "expert" viewer or listener, who will be able to see or hear the answers to the artist's questions embodied in the product of his labors. The criteria of excellence an artist applies in the creation of a work, and the criteria applied by an "expert" (an artistically sensitive and knowledgeable person) are very largely the same, and with respect to the work's structural qualities, identical. The difference is that the artist, while working, measures his choices against a purpose which he holds in mind, partly consciously and partly not, while the viewer, not having access to that purpose, must see in the work's internal relationships whether a coherent purpose has been attained. If the artist was successful, he will have communicated something clear and specific enough for numerous "experts" to perceive much the same quality in the work. And indeed, with respect to great works of art, we see this substantial convergence of understanding.

It should go without saying that artists do not always make good choices, and that not all "experts" are equally perceptive. That doesn't alter any of the above.

Aesthetic judgments made by artists and their "expert" critics are not "magical," and they are not the product of "warm fuzzy feelings." They are substantial things, things absolutely fundamental to the nature of art - its production and its appreciation. It's in the distinction you want to make between the perceptions an artist has of his work as he makes it, and those an audience has when it listens to or views it, where "warm fuzzy feelings" come into play. No one denies that people respond to art emotionally in all sorts of ways, depending on everything from their culture and their genes to what they had for dinner before the concert. Speaking simply, we like different things, and the same things differently at different times. But "liking" tells us nothing about the nature of the art we like.

Since the (absurd) title of this thread is "Why is Modern art so Bad?", we've had to find actual subjects to discuss, and a most interesting one has been the question of how we know whether art is bad or good. Some people believe that there are in fact criteria of quality; some who do believe that are practicing artists or composers. Others think that "good art" is a meaningless concept apart from individual taste - that your "warm fuzzy feelings" are as far as the conversation need go. Obviously I'm in the former category. This does not imply that I or anyone here believes that anyone should or should not enjoy whatever they enjoy.

I don't see where any of this is irrelevant to the "entire topic of this thread." Do you?

As for your rather melodramatic conclusion: I do not walk any walk on command - and if I did, you would, by your own standards of quality, have no way of knowing whether my work was beautiful or not. You said in your last post: _What is ridiculous is individuals (over the age of 18 or so) who claim that they have superior magical insight (which can't be explained) into what is "truly" beautiful. If you love kittens and want a black velvet painting of kittens on your wall, go for it.
_
That is hardly encouragement for any artist to submit his work for your assessment. Kittens on velvet indeed.


----------



## science

Oliver said:


> Mediocre and poor works from the past have been forgotten, used as toilet paper, to light fires etc. Only the best stand the test of time (though not all). There is a lot of junk to filter through, the idea people will be listening to someone hitting random notes on a piano in 200 years is clearly ludicrous. No disrespect Boulez.


Sometimes the world is ludicrous. Sometimes, some of us love that about it.


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> Most of the things you gave examples of there are technical things: balance, tension, space, center of interest, etc. People who don't know to think about those things can learn from more knowledgeable people to think about them.
> 
> And still and ever, whether the whatever is "good" or not is a matter of opinion.
> 
> Let's take literature. Are mixed metaphors bad? Are meaningless details bad? Are flat, predictable characters bad? I'd say so, but millions of people like them. Maybe they aren't educated enough, but I know some of them who are educated enough and just don't care about such things as much as I do.
> 
> Regardless of what they know, and even if they know as much as I do, they have every right to care about different things than I do.


Your use of the word "technical" is not a painter's use. The technique of a painter concerns his materials and how skilfully he employs them. The qualities I mentioned are _aesthetic_ qualities, not technical ones.

As for those literary qualities you mention, a mixed metaphor may be effectively used for humor; whether a detail is meaningless depends on the context and style in which the detail is used; a flat, predictable character may serve a purpose as an element of a story.

Any element in art must be judged effective or not depending on its context and the overall purpose of the work. An element may be effectively employed, or it may be poorly employed, thus vitiating the effect of the work. Someone with a trained eye, ear, or mind may be able to tell the difference. People who can't tell the difference and don't care may like anything they like and for whatever reason. No one is stopping them. But neither is anyone calling them artistically perceptive. Or _is_ someone doing that?


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> Or _is_ someone doing that?


Why don't you just read what I actually wrote?


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> Why don't you just read what I actually wrote?


I did, of course. Why don't you just explain which part of what you wrote you don't think I responded to appropriately?


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> I did, of course. Why don't you just explain which part of what you wrote you don't think I responded to appropriately?


I didn't write that you responded to anything inappropriately. I know you understand what I've written, so I don't need to respond to nitpicky traps.


----------



## KenOC

Oliver said:


> Mediocre and poor works from the past have been forgotten, used as toilet paper, to light fires etc.


Likely some great works too! Didn't I read that Mrs. Haydn used to wrap fish with his scores? And what happened to the rest of Bach's music?


----------



## science

As though what I'm saying weren't pretty much normal thought these days, as though I were saying something original and difficult to understand, here's a post I once wrote saying the same things more patiently:



science said:


> Regarding excellence of taste - as far as I can see, there are two separate things we need to distinguish: awareness, and preference. Let's use literature because it's easier for me to illustrate the difference.
> 
> I do not enjoy _1984_, _Brave New World_, or _Fahrenheit 451_ very much because too many details are meaningless, too much of the dialogue is unnatural, no symbolism is extensively developed, the moral of the story is too obvious, there is not much intertextuality, and the wordplay is not clever. They all have a lot of insight into the modern world and effectively call attention to extremely important problems, but those aspects of the novels are not so important to me. A different person with a similar awareness of literary devices could enjoy them enormously, simply by having different preferences. For example, I'd guess that Isaac Asimov was at least as well aware as I am of the flaws of _The Mists of Avalon_, and that I'm roughly as familiar with its virtues as he was, but he enjoyed it and I didn't, because that work's particular set of virtues pushed his buttons and not mine, while its particular set of flaws pushed mine and not his.
> 
> As an example in the other direction, _The Lord of the Flies_ has a number of problems that I recognize - constant violations of the laws of nature - but I like it very much because it is loaded with extensively developed symbolism - even allegory! - constant allusions to Paradise Lost, relatively few insignificant details, and the moral of the story is easily missed unless you read fairly carefully. Readers who demand physical plausibility and moral clarity will not enjoy it as much as I do, even if they have exactly the same awareness.
> 
> So there are four really good, maybe even great works of literature. If someone is about as aware of such things as I am, we can disagree about the novels, enjoy them differentially, and have very rewarding conversations about them. I mention those four because I have had such conversations with people whose insight into literature is at least as penetrating as mine: we generally see the same stuff, but we feel differently about it. We have different tastes, but no one's tastes are superior or inferior. Great conversations, the world moves along swimmingly.
> 
> I can imagine a reader with a strong dislike of vulgar humor and moral ambiguity, who really loves stories about reasonable characters who overcome their emotions and behave rationally, or stories where an unambiguously good character defeats an unambiguously bad character; a reader indifferent to symbolism and puns, who doesn't enjoy comparing and contrasting scenes or characters to each other, or puzzling out political/religious implications of a story, or analyzing scenes from minor characters' points of view. Such a reader could understand Shakespeare as well as I do, and yet not enjoy his most famous works. I haven't met such a person yet, but I can imagine one. Her awareness could be equal to or greater than mine, but we'd have very different tastes.
> 
> But I've often talked to people who read _The Catcher in the Rye_ without being aware of, say, the fact that Holden losing the foils in the subway probably signifies something, or who like _Chronicle of a Death Foretold_ without being aware that the fallibility of memory is a major theme. It's not that they don't like the kind of thing that Salinger or Garcia Marquez are doing in the books; they're just unaware of them. They have a right to their opinion, and I won't try to convert them, but I'm not going to seek them out for conversations about literature, because I see that they don't have a lot to offer. (Of course if I somehow met my younger self, I wouldn't talk to him about literature either, unless he were in a mood to listen relatively quietly.) Even when they like the books, I suppose it's good that they got some pleasure, but clearly I enjoyed them at a deeper level.
> 
> Of course a lot of people who say things like "Shakespeare is great" and "Garcia Marquez is great" cannot actually understand what makes Shakespeare or Garcia Marquez great. When someone reads unaware of the kinds of things I've been discussing, we could be critical of that person's reading ability - though it wouldn't be polite conversation, and I wouldn't expect people to like me if I made a point of doing so.
> 
> So there can be greater and lesser insights into works of art, but matters of taste are a different issue.
> 
> All this translates fairly straightforwardly into music, although I don't have the knowledge to give such detailed examples.
> 
> Let's say six people listen to a work of music.
> 
> Two of them analyze the score in depth and they find many interesting elements to discuss. They agree about their analysis, listen to each other's insights with appreciation, but in the end one of them thinks it is a great work of music and the other thinks it's just ok. If they're online, they'll probably start insulting each other, but in real life they're able to go on being friends and they've probably had a really good time discussing it with each other. These guys are awesome.
> 
> Two other people listen to the work of music without the education necessary to do any analysis. One of them likes it for whatever reason, and one doesn't. That's also fine. They might even enjoy listening to the first two discuss the work, and perhaps they'll achieve a better understanding of what they liked or didn't like about the music, but their fundamental tastes probably aren't going to change. If they're online, they'll probably start insulting each other, but in real life they're able to go on being friends.
> 
> Finally, two more people listen to the work of music without the education necessary to do any analysis. One of them says he likes it because he thinks that's what he's supposed to say. Perhaps it's Dutilleux and he's right; perhaps it's Whitacre and he's wrong; whatever. One of them says she doesn't like it because she thinks that's what she's supposed to say. Perhaps it's Dutilleux and she's wrong; perhaps its Whitacre and she's right; whatever. If they're online, they'll probably start insulting each other, but in real life they're able to go on being friends. In a perfect world, we wouldn't even scorn these guys, and we'd realize that to some degree, the first four were doing the same thing, however unconsciously.


Rereading that, I actually feel kind of proud of myself. I think I deserve a bit of bubbly.


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> I didn't write that you responded to anything inappropriately. I know you understand what I've written, so I don't need to respond to nitpicky traps.


What nitpicky traps? You said "Why don't you just read what I actually wrote?" The normal meaning of that is "you didn't get my point." So I asked you how my response was not appropriate to what you wrote - i.e., what didn't I understand? It's a reasonable question.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> What nitpicky traps? You said "Why don't you just read what I actually wrote?" The normal meaning of that is "you didn't get my point." So I asked you how my response was not appropriate to what you wrote - i.e., what didn't I understand? It's a reasonable question.


I'm sure you understood what I wrote.


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## Woodduck

_Chacun a son gout_, certainly. That's quite a nice discussion of the difference between insight into art and personal preference. Certainly two people can have a similar understanding of a work's attributes and yet not enjoy it equally. Do you think, though, that understanding plays no role in _determining_ taste? Do you think it really happens that we often find that coming to know something better results in our liking it better? Or does taste always originate at some level impervious to conscious appraisal, and operate regardless of knowledge?

The only thing in your essay that I don't think I understand is the last sentence. What is it that the first four were doing unconsciously? Saying that they liked things because they thought they were supposed to like them, or say that they liked them?


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## Woodduck

science said:


> I'm sure you understood what I wrote.


No. If I had, I wouldn't have said otherwise. I don't ask for explanations of things I understand.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> Do you think, though, that understanding plays no role in _determining_ taste? Do you think it really happens that we often find that coming to know something better results in our liking it better? Or does taste always originate at some level impervious to conscious appraisal, and operate regardless of knowledge?


The first two things obviously happen and fit well with the fact/value distinction. When you find new facts, your values can respond to them.

The answer to the final question is unknowable, but I wouldn't trust our intuitive sense of responding dispassionately to new information.



Woodduck said:


> The only thing in your essay that I don't think I understand is the last sentence. What is it that the first four were doing unconsciously? Saying that they liked things because they thought they were supposed to like them, or say that they liked them?


That isn't very important in this thread. Also, the first four weren't only saying that they liked things.


----------



## Mahlerian

science said:


> The first two things obviously happen and fit well with the fact/value distinction. When you find new facts, your values can respond to them.
> 
> The answer to the final question is unknowable, but I wouldn't trust our intuitive sense of responding dispassionately to new information.


It seems to me like you're trying to build an argument based on affirming the consequent.

If people choose music according to its social value, they will like or dislike things according to their tastes.
People like or dislike things according to their tastes.
_Therefore,_ they choose music according to its social value.

Regardless of what you may think of the conclusion, the premises being true does nothing to prove that it is true.


----------



## science

Mahlerian said:


> It seems to me like you're trying to build an argument based on affirming the consequent.
> 
> If people choose music according to its social value, they will like or dislike things according to their tastes.
> People like or dislike things according to their tastes.
> _Therefore,_ they choose music according to its social value.
> 
> Regardless of what you may think of the conclusion, the premises being true does nothing to prove that it is true.


Yeah, the evidence would have to come from psychology experiments.

For example, let's say a subject volunteers for a two-part study. On the first part, he or she goes into the lab, takes some some kind of quiz while some strange music plays over the loudspeaker. (The psych department could even commission it to support the university's music department.) On the way out, an attractive person comments on how great the music is. (In the control group, the attractive person would say something irrelevant.) A few days later, the subject returns, takes another test, and on the way out a different attractive person asks what he or she thinks of the music. Or maybe we could measure the person's apparent pleasure by having a computer analyze their facial expression when the music is playing. Or both.

Now I'll bet we'd find that the participants in the study group enjoys the music measurably less than participants in the group with attractive people liking the music.

The next question is how much we could generalize from those results to musical taste and pleasure as a whole. There'd have to be a lot more experiments to build a bigger picture. And even then someone could just stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that anything that takes place in a psychology experiment has anything to do with how their brains actually work.

In general, studies like this have been done with regard to things other than music, and found out that these kinds of social factors have a huge influence on our preferences - and that we have no conscious knowledge of it. That's why commercials work, and why everyone says commercials don't work.


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## Woodduck

science said:


> That isn't very important in this thread. Also, the first four weren't *only* saying that they liked things.


_What_ isn't important in this thread? I simply asked about something you just posted in this thread!

I'll guess and assume you mean that the first four people actually did like what they said they liked. So do you mean that they actually liked things but were unconscious of the influence of the expectations of others that they should have those particular likes? I'm guessing that based on the subsequent posts, but a clear and direct answer would be nice.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> _What_ isn't important in this thread? I simply asked about something you just posted in this thread!
> 
> I'll guess and assume you mean that the first four people actually did like what they said they liked. So do you mean that they actually liked things but were unconscious of the influence of the expectations of others that they should have those particular likes? I'm guessing that based on the subsequent posts, but a clear and direct answer would be nice.


Yeah, the questions about what is going on subconsciously when we feel pleasure isn't important in this thread. That's not where this thread was at the time, but with Mahlerian's question we've gone there. That'd be better in the other thread, though. The fact/value distinction is good enough for this one.

Edit: Re "a clear and direct answer would be nice": then restrict yourself to genuine questions.


----------



## Sloe

SeptimalTritone said:


> listen to Andrew Greenwald
> 
> 
> 
> , a PhD student at Stanford studying under Ferneyhough.


When they make string instruments sound like that it is beyond my tolerance for enjoyment. 
But Fedele was a nice discovery.


----------



## Blancrocher

I agree with others that both nature and nurture can contribute to listeners' preferences. I also believe in objective criteria for judging the value of both artistic and musical compositions. But I don't care to elaborate about this latter subject because it's a touchy subject--and I don't really know what they are :lol:


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## Arsakes

I can't even keep up with these topics! Maybe later.


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## Blancrocher

Arsakes said:


> I can't even keep up with these topics! Maybe later.


I believe we're still discussing Grünewald and Warhol--we've just become too lazy to post images.


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> Yeah, the questions about what is going on subconsciously when we feel pleasure* isn't important in this thread.* That's not where this thread was at the time, but with Mahlerian's question we've gone there. That'd be better in the other thread, though. The fact/value distinction is good enough for this one.
> 
> Edit: Re "a clear and direct answer would be nice": *then restrict yourself to genuine questions.*


When did any contributor get to decide what's important in a thread? The thread's originator may have the right to decide that, but clearly this thread has taken its own directions, since the title of it is more of a provocation than an actual inquiry.

If you put a statement into a thread, someone is likely to ask what you mean by it. That's the way this works.

My questions are always genuine.


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## dgee

Balthazar said:


> These comments of yours tell me everything I need to know about your level of sincerity and understanding regarding the topic at hand


And the exchange where the Ligeti Requiem was pointed out as a great work and the esteemed member promised to have a listen to it! And yet we continue to entertain their opinions on modern music...


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## Silver1

Morimur said:


> Most modern art is bad because our culture is heading downward; our world has become so hedonistic and degenerate that most artists have nothing significant to say-they live for money and consumption; they live for themselves.


What would you say is an example of good modern art?


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## Blancrocher

I will not dispute the fact that some modern art is sewage, but I'd like to add that even sewage can be artistic.









For further information: http://www.circleofblue.org/waterne...e-filtration-sewage-plant-opens-near-seattle/


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## Taggart

Please, as always, concentrate on the topic at hand. Do not discuss the style of the response or comment on other posters personalities. Although the topic may raise strong and conflicting views, please try and be polite.

This is merely re-iterating the terms of service that you all agreed to when you joined::



> Be polite to your fellow members. If you disagree with them, please state your opinion in a »civil« and respectful manner. This applies to all communication taking place on talkclassical.com, whether by means of posts, private messages, visitor messages, blogs and social groups.
> 
> Do not post comments about other members person or »posting style« on the forum (unless said comments are unmistakably positive). Argue opinions all you like but do not get personal and never resort to »ad homs«.


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## Morimur

Silver1 said:


> What would you say is an example of good modern art?


http://www.attilarichardlukacs.com/index.php
http://francis-bacon.com/
https://www.google.com/search?q=Yasuo+Kuniyoshi&es_sm=91&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMIgsKg_JymxwIVRZ6ACh2veACO&biw=1360&bih=768#tbm=isch&q=sadamasa+motonaga


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## arpeggio

^^^^^^^^ Taggart post

It never fails. Someone starts a topic like this, things get out of hand and it is closed down.

The problem is that to much of our feelings about music are contingent on our personalities.

My problem is that in the real world when I have these discussions like this with members of boards or other musicians. Their criticism are used as a platform to ban the programming of contemporary music.


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## Klassic

Modern art is bad because it departs from the image of God in man.


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## MarkW

Blancrocher said:


> I agree with others that both nature and nurture can contribute to listeners' preferences. I also believe in objective criteria for judging the value of both artistic and musical compositions. But I don't care to elaborate about this latter subject because it's a touchy subject--and I don't really know what they are :lol:


No problem. _Nobody _knows what they are.


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## mmsbls

We removed some posts that negatively commented on another member. This topic deserves to have people focus on the issues and not on others' insults, hostility, inability to answer questions, etc.. Let's make this a fresh start and have fun.


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## Harold in Columbia

Klassic said:


> Modern art is bad because it departs from the image of God in man.


No, that was the Renaissance.


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## KenOC

arpeggio said:


> The problem is that to much of our feelings about music are contingent on our personalities.


What do you think they should be contingent on?


----------



## KenOC

Klassic said:


> Modern art is bad because it departs from the image of God in man.


Well, I don't think God looks a lot like most of us. He's this elderly gent with a fantastic physique, a glint in his eye, and a beard that puts Mr. Natural's to shame. Perhaps modern art is simply more truthful?


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## StlukesguildOhio

I'm not so sure about Attila Richard Lucaks' Homoerotic Neo-Nazi paintings...










... but his more current landscapes are quite nice:










Francis Bacon is undeniably one of the real masters of the last 50 or so years.

I also quite like Sadamasa Motonaga's paintings. They are "eye candy" in the manner of many of the color field painters of the time: Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, etc...


----------



## hpowders

^^^Wow! Extraordinary! That bottom painting bears an uncanny resemblance to a throat MRI I had recently for reflux disease!!


----------



## PJaye

Modern art is bad because it departs from the image of God in man


Harold in Columbia said:


> No, that was the Renaissance.


How do you get that idea? "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!"- Shakespeare, Michaelangelo, Leonardo, Botticelli, Raphael, etc, didn't see the image of god in man? I'm sure there were some around then, as now, who didn't, but what of that? There was a godlike effort in those artists to do their very best at their art one can see in their work habits and devotion. Renaissance thought strived to open up the books of the past and study life from all perspectives. A pursuit of knowledge that Leonardo's notebooks can attest to. I think it depends on what kind of god we want. There are certainly a lot to choose from. I don't think what they produced is any more vital or important than what is being produced in art today. thought I'd add that. It's just reactionary to deny them the same status.


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## Blancrocher

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Francis Bacon is undeniably one of the real masters of the last 50 or so years.


I agree. Incidentally, I was therefore surprised when Jed Perl (a critic I tend to like) did a hatchet-job on him at the time of a major Bacon retrospective at the MET awhile back. He blamed the artist for participating in a "wrongheaded tradition."

Interesting article, at any rate: https://newrepublic.com/article/61935/slaughterhouse


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## isorhythm

Harold in Columbia said:


> No, that was the Renaissance.


Ha!

I visited the Sistine Chapel last summer and my first reaction was "How can Christianity be OK with this??"


----------



## Mahlerian

For reactionaries, there's always Charles Villiers Stanford's "Ode to Discord" (1908), which nobody has yet recorded, but someone may eventually feel the inclination...

http://javanese.imslp.info/files/im...2411-PMLP73765-Stanford_Ode_to_Discord_VS.pdf



British Music and Modernism said:


> Discord and anarchy are evoked in the Ode by instruments such as the hydrophone and wind machine, the use of whole-tone scales, augmented triads, consecutive fifths, diffuse rhythm and phrase structure, ambiguous harmony, large melodic intervals, unvaried repetition, extremes of instrumental register, and unusual instrumental combinations. The targets of the Ode appear to be Berlioz, Strauss, and Debussy, although Stanford may have had Elgar - whose First Symphony had recently been premiered and which Stanford disliked - in his sights too.


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## Balthazar

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Francis Bacon is undeniably one of the real masters of the last 50 or so years.
> 
> I also quite like Sadamasa Motonaga's paintings. They are "eye candy" in the manner of many of the color field painters of the time: Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, etc...


Great list! I've always liked the Color Field painters, especially Morris Louis.

Two less familiar artists of the era I very much enjoy are Sonia Delaunay with her joyous use of color...










... and one of the lone wolves of Abstract Expressionism, Richard Poussette-Dart. His paintings really must be seen in person, though. The multi-colored heavy impasto can be an inch thick -- they must weigh a ton!


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## Fugue Meister

I really wish there was a dislike option for posts sometimes. :devil:


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## Blancrocher

Fugue Meister said:


> I really wish there was a dislike option for posts sometimes. :devil:


Keep wishing, my friend, but I'm afraid it's probably not going to happen--the site's administrators won't even consider my quite reasonable requests for a tldr button.


----------



## Guest

Blancrocher said:


> Keep wishing, my friend, but I'm afraid it's probably not going to happen--the site's administrators won't even consider my quite reasonable requests for a tldr button.


Not to be confused with the French *ndlr* (_= note de la rédaction_ = editor's note).
Not a lot of people know that. Carry on.


----------



## Guest

So anyway, it seems that after reading through this thread people are perplexed as to the OP asking Why is Modern Art so Bad when clearly much of it is not.
Modern Art is alive and kicking and we will keep the arbiters of "good taste" at arm's (or rather at a 20m pole's) length.
We cannot help hearing echos in this thread of those earlier arbiters of "good taste" who exhibited a collection of so-called "degenerate art". We know where they ended up, don't we?


----------



## Blancrocher

What worries me most is the marked aesthetic decline of videos in which professors discuss modern art. Yeah yeah yeah I know that there are no objective standards and it's just my subjective opinion blah blah blah--but surely there's someone out there who agrees with me?!


----------



## Headphone Hermit

Fugue Meister said:


> I really wish there was a dislike option for posts sometimes. :devil:


'dislike' .... 'dislike' .... 'dislike' - see, it is easy :devil:


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## Headphone Hermit

Blancrocher said:


> surely there's someone out there who agrees with me?!


surely so - there are plenty of fish in the sea :devil:


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## Guest

Klassic said:


> Modern art is bad because it departs from the image of God in man.


Examples of how this is so? And how previous art depicted "the image of God in man"? I'm not sure I understand what you mean.


----------



## KenOC

TalkingHead said:


> We cannot help hearing echos in this thread of those earlier arbiters of "good taste" who exhibited a collection of so-called "degenerate art". We know where they ended up, don't we?


Godwin's law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

But perhaps I misunderstand.


----------



## Ilarion

TalkingHead said:


> So anyway, it seems that after reading through this thread people are perplexed as to the OP asking Why is Modern Art so Bad when clearly much of it is not.
> Modern Art is alive and kicking and we will keep the arbiters of "good taste" at arm's (or rather at a 20m pole's) length.
> We cannot help hearing echos in this thread of those earlier arbiters of "good taste" who exhibited a collection of so-called "degenerate art". We know where they ended up, don't we?


Ah yes, *Entartete Kunst*(degenerate art) - Good of you to bring it up...


----------



## SeptimalTritone

Mahlerian said:


> For reactionaries, there's always Charles Villiers Stanford's "Ode to Discord" (1908), which nobody has yet recorded, but someone may eventually feel the inclination...
> 
> http://javanese.imslp.info/files/im...2411-PMLP73765-Stanford_Ode_to_Discord_VS.pdf


Oh my Christ that made my night!


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## Strange Magic

Maybe one of the most compelling reasons that many people feel that much modern art is "bad", is that it is really, really true that 95% of everything is crap in the arts, very broadly speaking. Everyone has his/her own selection mechanism inside, constantly winnowing, judging, comparing. Given the instantly disposable/ignorable/forgettable nature of the non-cinematic pictorial arts, this phenomenon of a very high crap-to-quality (what I like, not what you like) ratio is therefore perfectly understandable. Here is one critic's analysis of a particular trend he abhors: Pre-emptive Kitsch. I don't care for it either.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30439633


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## Guest

Had I been able to visit the local and national galleries between, say, the 14th to 17th centuries, thus enabling a more direct comparison with today's 'modern' offering, I wonder how much 'crap' would have been on display?


----------



## amfortas

Strange Magic said:


> Here is one critic's analysis of a particular trend he abhors: Pre-emptive Kitsch. I don't care for it either.
> 
> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30439633


Scruton always strikes me as a bit of an irascible old curmudgeon. He seems oblivious to the playful, witty aspects of much contemporary art, too caught up in his outrage over the prices it fetches at auctions.


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## hpowders

KenOC said:


> Godwin's law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."
> 
> But perhaps I misunderstand.


I haven't. :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:


----------



## Harold in Columbia

amfortas said:


> He seems oblivious to the playful, witty aspects of much contemporary art, too caught up in his outrage over the prices it fetches at auctions.


So for how long, exactly, is being playful and witty an excuse for having no talent?


----------



## EdwardBast

amfortas said:


> Scruton always strikes me as a bit of an irascible old curmudgeon. He seems oblivious to the playful, witty aspects of much contemporary art, too caught up in his outrage over the prices it fetches at auctions.


He isn't oblivious. He simply doesn't find it humorous because it is too self-consciously kitsch.


----------



## Strange Magic

amfortas said:


> Scruton always strikes me as a bit of an irascible old curmudgeon. He seems oblivious to the playful, witty aspects of much contemporary art, too caught up in his outrage over the prices it fetches at auctions.


That's why I like him. We curmudgeons know what we like, and we stick together. For others, Anything Goes (is this a good song title?)


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## Strange Magic

More from the Curmudgeon-in-Chief.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30343083


----------



## Sloe

MacLeod said:


> Had I been able to visit the local and national galleries between, say, the 14th to 17th centuries, thus enabling a more direct comparison with today's 'modern' offering, I wonder how much 'crap' would have been on display?


There were at least no Jackson Pollock in the 14th to 17th century.


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## Blancrocher

Before it comes to this you might as well just put a shark in formaldehyde and call it a day.


----------



## isorhythm

I found myself agreeing quite a bit with both of those Scruton essays, but am not sure there's any connection to music.

I don't think either the urge to shock or preemptive kitsch has played a significant role in new music, certainly not recently.


----------



## Strange Magic

isorhythm said:


> I found myself agreeing quite a bit with both of those Scruton essays, but am not sure there's any connection to music.
> 
> I don't think either the urge to shock or preemptive kitsch has played a significant role in new music, certainly not recently.


I myself am not clear on the degree to which Scruton's analysis applies to music, but I think to some extent the fact that we must invest time, often substantial amounts of time--time which many of us hold to be quite valuable--to auditing music, is a factor that must play importantly in distinguishing one's expectations of music (and literature, also) from one's expectations of pictorial art.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

Sloe said:


> There were at least no Jackson Pollock in the 14th to 17th century.


Look, people, if we don't stop wasting time and effort denying that Pollock was pretty good, we're never going to get this Jeff Koons lynch mob off the ground.


----------



## Sloe

Harold in Columbia said:


> Look, people, if we don't stop wasting time and effort denying that Pollock was pretty good, we're never going to get this Jeff Koons lynch mob off the ground.


He was good at being Pollock that is not the same as he made paintings that are good and in good I mean paintings that are beautiful or at least interesting to see and not interesting in the meaning that they are unusual.


----------



## Art Rock

"I don't like it" does not equal "it's not good".


----------



## Sloe

Art Rock said:


> "I don't like it" does not equal "it's not good".


What is your definition of good then?
If it looks like a horrible mess it is bad.


----------



## Art Rock

IMO there is no suitable definition of "good" in art - which does not mean that it's a free for all type of word, to be used in any way you personally want. "Good/Bad" instead of "I like it/I don't like it" implies an objective rather than subjective value statement.


----------



## Art Rock

It looks TO YOU like a horrible mess. Others find interest and even beauty in it.


----------



## Art Rock

By the way, this is at the bottom of many of these fruitless discussions on this board, be it on modern art, pop music, contemporary classical or whatever. There are many people who apparently cannot imagine that what they do not like themselves can be liked by others. Hence the "I don't like it so it must be bad" attitude.


----------



## Blancrocher

As an aside, here's a list of post-WWII artworks in public spaces in England that have just been given legal protection by the government:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35352595


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## amfortas

Harold in Columbia said:


> So for how long, exactly, is being playful and witty an excuse for having no talent?


I'd say being playful and witty, and conveying it effectively through art, is itself a talent--and doesn't necessarily exclude having other kinds of talent as well.


----------



## amfortas

EdwardBast said:


> He isn't oblivious. He simply doesn't find it humorous because it is too self-consciously kitsch.


And what one does or doesn't find humorous, just as what one does or doesn't like, is very much a matter of individual taste.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

Sloe said:


> He was good at being Pollock that is not the same as he made paintings that are good and in good I mean paintings that are beautiful or at least interesting to see and not interesting in the meaning that they are unusual.


Pollock is interesting to see. By the way, "interesting" is a Modernist criterion.



amfortas said:


> I'd say being playful and witty, and conveying it effectively through art, is itself a talent--and doesn't necessarily exclude having other kinds of talent as well.


What you describe is not a talent. I can do it effectively. So can you. Just draw a smiley face. Doing it, say, _powerfully_ might be a talent. But that's the point: Being Playful and Witty is used as an excuse for lack of artistic strength.


----------



## arpeggio

Art Rock said:


> "I don't like it" does not equal "it's not good".


I have lost track on how many times we have said this.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

Likewise, however, "I like it" does not equal "it's not bad."


----------



## arpeggio

Harold in Columbia said:


> Likewise, however, "I like it" does not equal "it's not bad."


Of course. Many of us have stated this many times as well. We even have had threads here were we have acknowledge bad music that we like.


----------



## EdwardBast

amfortas said:


> And what one does or doesn't find humorous, just as what one does or doesn't like, is very much a matter of individual taste.


Of course, which is why you shouldn't assume Scruton doesn't "get it" just because he doesn't find it funny. He clearly understands why others find it funny.


----------



## Blancrocher

Even if one can present cogent arguments, for the sake of forum morale I don't think anyone should attack famous modern artists or defend Roger Scruton.


----------



## amfortas

Harold in Columbia said:


> What you describe is not a talent. I can do it effectively. So can you. Just draw a smiley face. Doing it, say, _powerfully_ might be a talent. But that's the point: Being Playful and Witty is used as an excuse for lack of artistic strength.


Effectively, powerfully, whatever. If you think your smiley face can pass muster as a piece of modern art, I'm not sure why you're bothering with this forum, rather than using your playfulness and wit to cover your lack of artistic strength and make you *lots* of money.


----------



## amfortas

EdwardBast said:


> Of course, which is why you shouldn't assume Scruton doesn't "get it" just because he doesn't find it funny. He clearly understands why others find it funny.


It's entirely possible he gets it, but it still doesn't do anything for him. Nothing wrong with that; I just don't see a need to let his reaction dictate mine.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

amfortas said:


> If you think your smiley face can pass muster as a piece of modern art


Not just my smiley face. Yours too!



amfortas said:


> I'm not sure why you're bothering with this forum, rather than using your playfulness and wit to cover your lack of artistic strength and make you *lots* of money.


In other words, "If you're so smart, how come you ain't rich?"


----------



## amfortas

Harold in Columbia said:


> In other words, "If you're so smart, how come you ain't rich?"


You did suggest there's no talent required to succeed as a modern artist. So . . . yeah.


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## Harold in Columbia

And you suggested that people with a high income are necessarily talented.


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## amfortas

Harold in Columbia said:


> And you suggested that people with a high income are necessarily talented.


I suggested it might not be as easy to get by without talent as you suppose. Certainly not impossible--we can all point to plenty of counter examples, in just about any field. But it seemed like you were arguing that, in the modern art world, lack of talent is the rule rather than the exception.

My apologies if I misunderstood.


----------



## Sloe

Harold in Columbia said:


> Pollock is interesting to see. By the way, "interesting" is a Modernist criterion.


With interesting I meant educating/informing as in fulfilling an interest.
For example a map is interesting because it tells us something about the World.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Scruton always strikes me as a bit of an irascible old curmudgeon. He seems oblivious to the playful, witty aspects of much contemporary art, too caught up in his outrage over the prices it fetches at auctions.

I'm not certain that there is anything approaching a wealth of wit involved in Contemporary Art. Perhaps a lot of it is "clever"... like the product of any number of Sophomore Art Students... but not really "witty". I also think there's a great deal of Contemporary Art that is ponderously pretentious and painfully "serious".


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## Blancrocher

Witty, clever, ponderously pretentious, or painfully serious?

Or all of the above? :lol:


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## mstar

^^ I actually find it a little sad and thought-provoking. It is either a mockery of the Thinker statue or a serious observation on fate.


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## StlukesguildOhio

amfortas- I'd say being playful and witty, and conveying it effectively through art, is itself a talent--and doesn't necessarily exclude having other kinds of talent as well.

Harold in Columbia- What you describe is not a talent. I can do it effectively. So can you. Just draw a smiley face. Doing it, say, powerfully might be a talent. But that's the point: Being Playful and Witty is used as an excuse for lack of artistic strength.

Wit and Playfulness are most certainly worthy artistic attributes.





























__
Sensitive content, not recommended for those under 18
Show Content



















***********


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## StlukesguildOhio

The art of the "old masters" was often laden with witty allusions, playful references, in-jokes, visual jokes, etc... Look to Literature and the examples of Jonathan Swift, Kafka, J.L. Borges, Lawrence Sterne, Cervantes, etc...

Great Art is not limited to tragedy and explosive drama. I love the power of Michelangelo and Rubens... but I also love the elegance and grace of Botticelli, the wit of Bronzino, the broad humor of Bruegel, the playfulness of Fragonard, and the poetry of Bonnard.


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## KenOC

mstar said:


> ^^ I actually find it a little sad and thought-provoking. It is either a mockery of the Thinker statue or a serious observation on fate.


I think it's somebody having a spot of fun. No crime there.


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## Richannes Wrahms

StlukesguildOhio said:


> The art of the "old masters" was often laden with witty allusions, playful references, in-jokes, visual jokes, etc... Look to Literature and the examples of Jonathan Swift, Kafka, J.L. Borges, Lawrence Sterne, Cervantes, etc...
> 
> Great Art is not limited to tragedy and explosive drama. I love the power of Michelangelo and Rubens... but I also love the elegance and grace of Botticelli, the wit of Bronzino, the broad humor of Bruegel, the playfulness of Fragonard, and the poetry of Bonnard.


I see butts of dead people.


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## Harold in Columbia

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Wit and Playfulness are most certainly worthy artistic attributes.


You missed the point.

Here's a more pertinent picture: http://tinyurl.com/hmlsuvw


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## Sloe

Blancrocher said:


> View attachment 80723
> 
> 
> Witty, clever, ponderously pretentious, or painfully serious?
> 
> Or all of the above? :lol:


I like hares and rabbits.
It depicts something and it is not disgusting.
Approved.


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## ArtMusic

Great art can of course be very non-conforming but equally important it strikes at the sensibility of the viewer. Botticelli's epic piece below is one such example, painted in 1482. Thoroughly pagan for its time (still is) but great from day one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primavera_(painting)#/media/File:Botticelli-primavera.jpg


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## Pugg

Richannes Wrahms said:


> I see butts of dead people.


Loads of them, but at least they being spoken of


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## Blancrocher

Sloe said:


> I like hares and rabbits.
> It depicts something and it is not disgusting.
> Approved.


By the way, this and several other interesting pieces can be seen in the sculpture garden outside the Hirshhorn Museum. For those who may not be aware, all of the museums on the National Mall are free of charge.


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## science

Not only this thread but quite a few other things I've read here lately have led me to suspect that modern art seems to many people to suck (or to be sewage or whatever) because basically they've got a romantic worldview. Art is supposed to them to be beautiful, music is supposed to be emotional, "good taste" is objective and classy, western tradition is superior to the rest of the world, the lower orders should know their place and respect the "high art" of their betters. 

Out in the world I just don't see this attitude much. People enjoy their kitsch without caring that I think it's kitsch, as they should. Knockoffs of the impressionists sell well regardless of what I think of them, as they should, people who want to play Dixieland do it regardless of what any jazz critic would say of them, as they should, and people who like musical theater don't care what we think about Lloyd Webber. Everything goes, from Leonard Cohen to Autechre to Common to Dar Williams to Sonic Youth to Robert Glasper to Johnny Cash to Loreena McKennitt, with a hundred thousand people imitating them in ten thousand happily disconnected cliques, and not a one of them caring what we who know better think of them. Yesterday I saw a guy singing some romantic Italian arias on a street corner, accompanied by a CD player, for tips from the kind of people who like that popera kind of stuff, and neither he nor his audience cared how inferior we judge their art, their tastes, or them. Even the professional classical musicians and educators that I know do not seem to care about the romantic or even the modernist standards we might judge them by. They're just making music that they love because they love it, and also working for a living because bills have to be paid, and not lamenting the decline of medieval values or anything like that.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

If people aren't lamenting the decline of something, it's because they're not very interested in it. Common fans lament the decline of "real hip hop"; Loreena McKennitt fans lament the decline of real country; Sonic Youth fans lament the death of rock; musical theater fans, who don't like Lloyd Webber, lament the inferiority of everybody who isn't Sondheim.


----------



## Blancrocher

Harold in Columbia said:


> If people aren't lamenting the decline of something, it's because they're not very interested in it. Common fans lament the decline of "real hip hop"; Loreena McKennitt fans lament the decline of real country; Sonic Youth fans lament the death of rock; musical theater fans, who don't like Lloyd Webber, lament the inferiority of everybody who isn't Sondheim.


I would add that many consider Campbell's soups to be sewage in comparison with what the company sold in its glory years.

Further: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/11/20/is-america-over-soup/


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## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> If people aren't lamenting the decline of something, it's because they're not very interested in it. Common fans lament the decline of "real hip hop"; Loreena McKennitt fans lament the decline of real country; Sonic Youth fans lament the death of rock; musical theater fans, who don't like Lloyd Webber, lament the inferiority of everybody who isn't Sondheim.


What is most interesting is the cliquishness of the lamentations. This post implies a plurality of aesthetic values! Or are all lamentations save one wrong? Do those cliques (once they've gotten out of adolescence) regularly assert anything like the illegitimacy of all other cliques? If so, then they're somewhat romantic-modern, but if they just do their own thing without much concern for what others do or think, then they're essentially postmodern.

I've lived with aspiring Broadway performers and I never heard them say anything bad about New Age or folk music or hip hop or opera; I have a friend who teaches piano at one of the most prestigious conservatories in the world, and I've never heard him - or any other professional classical musician I've known in real life - insult any sort of music or the people who like it. I've seen people with Ph.D.s in anthropology and philosophy enjoy bluegrass, hip hop, new wave, and Beethoven without feeling the need to condemn any genre as a whole, and very few of them felt a need to say anything stronger than "I don't like" about the music that they didn't like. The man who introduced me to Schoenberg and Crumb was a big fan of Johnny Cash, Black Sabbath, and Bach. I have even known jazz musicians who admired Celine Dion.

We all know (or should) that knockoff impressionism is terrible, but I've never heard anyone in real life actually say anything mean about it. The most literary and highly educated people that I know enjoy campy movies, comic books, _Game of Thrones_, and Billy Joel.

Perhaps I happen to have known only exceptional people, but I doubt it.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

It depends. Some musical theater fans still look down on hip hop and country (and sometimes on rock - this strain also tends to prefer Rodgers and Hart and/or Hammerstein to Sondheim), but I don't think I've ever encountered one whose feelings on classical music were anything worse than respectful lack of interest. On the other hand, some jazz fans look down on classical music (poor dears).

I think pretty much everybody thinks their preferred forms are better than _something_, though.


----------



## dgee

science said:


> What is most interesting is the cliquishness of the lamentations. This post implies a plurality of aesthetic values! Or are all lamentations save one wrong? Do those cliques (once they've gotten out of adolescence) regularly assert anything like the illegitimacy of all other cliques? If so, then they're somewhat romantic-modern, but if they just do their own thing without much concern for what others do or think, then they're essentially postmodern.
> 
> I've lived with aspiring Broadway performers and I never heard them say anything bad about New Age or folk music or hip hop or opera; I have a friend who teaches piano at one of the most prestigious conservatories in the world, and I've never heard him - or any other professional classical musician I've known in real life - insult any sort of music or the people who like it. I've seen people with Ph.D.s in anthropology and philosophy enjoy bluegrass, hip hop, new wave, and Beethoven without feeling the need to condemn any genre as a whole, and very few of them felt a need to say anything stronger than "I don't like" about the music that they didn't like. The man who introduced me to Schoenberg and Crumb was a big fan of Johnny Cash, Black Sabbath, and Bach. I have even known jazz musicians who admired Celine Dion.
> 
> We all know (or should) that knockoff impressionism is terrible, but I've never heard anyone in real life actually say anything mean about it. The most literary and highly educated people that I know enjoy campy movies, comic books, _Game of Thrones_, and Billy Joel.
> 
> Perhaps I happen to have known only exceptional people, but I doubt it.


I utterly agree on the romantic view and how the plurality and variety of taste is usually much greater that some express on here. But I think many, many people have stuff they don't like (and are prepared to bang on about they dislike it) - and this is definitely the case when it comes to the professional performers, composers, musicologists etc that I know. And that can cover atonal sewage, laboured identikit 19th century theatre music, boring sewing machine baroque, Dixie, certain sorts of pop etc etc

The difference might be that there is no moral judgement about not liking - it's simply seen as unenjoyable, or even bad, art rather than a cancer. The dislike is expressed in a more playful way than with fear and grandiose concerns


----------



## Guest

science said:


> Not only this thread but quite a few other things I've read here lately have led me to suspect that modern art seems to many people to suck (or to be sewage or whatever) because basically they've got a romantic worldview. Art is supposed to them to be beautiful, music is supposed to be emotional, "good taste" is objective and classy, western tradition is superior to the rest of the world, the lower orders should know their place and respect the "high art" of their betters.


Irritating, insulting, dehumanizing, and mind-boggling isn't it?


----------



## regenmusic

nathanb said:


> Irritating, insulting, dehumanizing, and mind-boggling isn't it?


Maybe people are looking at what was going on in earlier times with more favor than you do. 
If you tend to see families that stayed together longer, less crime, less inhumane television
(I could go on and on) as superior to what some perceive as the present, then you are apt to see
modern art as part of the same problem.

For instance, you can't go on youtube and look at old pop and rock song comments without seeing
hundreds of people, many of them very young, saying they wish they were around in the 1970s
when these songs were written. Things have a long "wake" like a boat causes a wake. Even Oscar
Wilde said "Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life." If we respect minds like that, why aren't
we alarmed at much that goes on today?

We shouldn't amplify what "Evil does." So much of art and even television tends to focus on the criminal, blocking out what the virtuous do.


----------



## amfortas

science said:


> I've lived with aspiring Broadway performers and I never heard them say anything bad about New Age or folk music or hip hop or opera; I have a friend who teaches piano at one of the most prestigious conservatories in the world, and I've never heard him - or any other professional classical musician I've known in real life - insult any sort of music or the people who like it. I've seen people with Ph.D.s in anthropology and philosophy enjoy bluegrass, hip hop, new wave, and Beethoven without feeling the need to condemn any genre as a whole, and very few of them felt a need to say anything stronger than "I don't like" about the music that they didn't like. The man who introduced me to Schoenberg and Crumb was a big fan of Johnny Cash, Black Sabbath, and Bach. I have even known jazz musicians who admired Celine Dion.


It's true, we live in a world of exhilarating, sometimes bewildering plurality, where there's widespread acceptance of just about every conceivable type of music.

But at least we can all agree about Justin Bieber.


----------



## science

dgee said:


> I utterly agree on the romantic view and how the plurality and variety of taste is usually much greater that some express on here. But I think many, many people have stuff they don't like (and are prepared to bang on about they dislike it) - and this is definitely the case when it comes to the professional performers, composers, musicologists etc that I know. And that can cover atonal sewage, laboured identikit 19th century theatre music, boring sewing machine baroque, Dixie, certain sorts of pop etc etc
> 
> The difference might be that there is no moral judgement about not liking - it's simply seen as unenjoyable, or even bad, art rather than a cancer. The dislike is expressed in a more playful way than with fear and grandiose concerns


Of course everyone doesn't like something - but in our times, most of us content ourselves with "not liking" or even not being able to "stand" it rather than declaring it garbage, condemning the people who do like it as inferior.

And when they do declare it garbage, or anything objectively horrible like that, they do so with self-conscious knowledge that the larger culture does not recognize their authority, for we recognize no authority in matters of taste (as opposed to knowledge).

The great exception -



amfortas said:


> It's true, we live in a world of exhilarating, sometimes bewildering plurality, where there's widespread acceptance of just about every conceivable type of music.
> 
> But at least we can all agree about Justin Bieber.


- is explicitly adolescent music, which most of us look down on as adolescent. That's not so much a class or race or any other sort of judgment as one of age. We assume most people are going to grow out of that, learning to appreciate it with a heavy dose of self-conscious irony.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

science said:


> Not only this thread but quite a few other things I've read here lately have led me to suspect that modern art seems to many people to suck (or to be sewage or whatever) because basically they've got a romantic worldview. Art is supposed to them to be beautiful, music is supposed to be emotional


Missed this previously. That's not "a romantic worldview." It starts out as what Modernists tell themselves the Romantic worldview was, to conceal how little they actually had to add to it (it was Romanticism that explicitly _rejected_ the notion that art is supposed to be beautiful - see Victor Hugo on the grotesque in the preface to _Cromwell_)...



science said:


> "good taste" is objective and classy, western tradition is superior to the rest of the world, the lower orders should know their place and respect the "high art" of their betters.


...and these last three items aren't even that, they're just things you don't like.


----------



## science

nathanb said:


> Irritating, insulting, dehumanizing, and mind-boggling isn't it?


One thing about the internet is that it affords places of refuge to marginalized communities: it abounds, for example, in safe spaces for conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, advocates for a gold standard, strippers, royalists, international budget adventure travelers, historical reenactors, ultimate frisbee players, and so on. Even fans of free jazz. They all have their own discussion boards, webrings, blogs, Facebook groups, whatever.

People who still cling to romantic or modernist philosophies of art, a closeted minority pretty much everywhere in our society, are less socially would like their own corner of the internet as well, from which they can rail against the postmodernity of our world, and talkclassical has almost become that. You can appreciate the difficulty the mods have keeping it safe for both the romantics and the modernists as well as for people who like André Rieu.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Missed this previously. That's not "a romantic worldview." It starts out as what Modernists tell themselves the Romantic worldview was, to conceal how little they actually had to add to it (it was Romanticism that explicitly _rejected_ the notion that art is supposed to be beautiful - see Victor Hugo on the grotesque in the preface to _Cromwell_)...
> 
> ...and these last three items aren't even that, they're just things you don't like.


Sorry, Harold in Columbia. We simply disagree.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

Well, we might disagree about the Earth revolving around the sun too.

Aside from "music is supposed to be emotional" - which by the way was first rejected by Modernists such as T. S. Eliot and Stravinsky in his Neoclassical phase, who really _were_ essentially xenophobic and elitist - why do you think any of the items on your list is _Romantic_?


----------



## dgee

lower case "r" vs upper case "R" on romantic? I don't know enough about all that technical art history stuff to use the latter with confidence!!


----------



## Harold in Columbia

science said:


> People who still cling to romantic or modernist philosophies of art, a closeted minority pretty much everywhere in our society, are less socially would like their own corner of the internet as well, from which they can rail against the postmodernity of our world


Leaving aside the question of what exactly "people" are "clinging" to - Postmodernism has been around for a while now. So those who despise it may be insignificant eccentrics of one kind or another. But those who are _willingly_ Postmodern may already be, not merely an establishment, but an establishment in its decadence.

Edit: Actually, forget that "may already be." Postmodernism is obviously in a decadent period. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean we'll be out of it any time soon.


----------



## Blancrocher

I'm somewhat curious about how much art in a museum, gallery, or whatever someone feels they need to like for it to have been worth the visit. For me it's a very small percentage--I consider one or two things that I want to look at for a long time to be a big success when visiting a new venue.


----------



## regenmusic

I think this sums it up better than I can. I read it on a YouTube comment of Tallis' Spem in Alium:

"Why was all the great music written hundreds of years before I was born? People have gotten simpleminded and lazy in this modern era. Listening to music like this is good for heart, mind and spirit!﻿"

As someone who started composing with synthesizers in his teen years, I know how easy it is to compose much
music that would be popular today. I couldn't get myself to write music like that, because of the thinking embodied
in the above quote. Doesn't matter if it's on synthesizer or on strings, the same "laziness" to fit into modern "sound as
art is music" to me isn't really being a composer of value.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

If you can't write it, it isn't easy.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Leaving aside the question of what exactly "people" are "clinging" to - Postmodernism has been around for a while now. So those who despise it may be insignificant eccentrics of one kind or another. But those who are _willingly_ Postmodern may already be, not merely an establishment, but an establishment in its decadence.
> 
> Edit: Actually, forget that "may already be." Postmodernism is obviously in a decadent period. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean we'll be out of it any time soon.


I don't know how "decadent" could apply to postmodernism, except from a romantic or modernist point of view - and from those points of view, postmodernism is many things much worse than decadent. Worst of all, it is free and self-consciously so. With so many people enjoying themselves so much, and with so many people making so much money as they do so, I don't know how you'll be able to reign it in, short of actual military force.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

science said:


> With so many people enjoying themselves so much, and with so many people making so much money


Is this still supposed to be an argument that postmodernism _isn't_ in a decadence?


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Well, we might disagree about the Earth revolving around the sun too.


Oh, my, I missed this zinger. One thing a line like this reveals is that I have no hope of actually conversing with you, in the sense of exchanging points of view in a respectful way. Still, others might be genuinely curious about questions like:



Harold in Columbia said:


> Aside from "music is supposed to be emotional" - which by the way was first rejected by Modernists such as T. S. Eliot and Stravinsky in his Neoclassical phase, who really _were_ essentially xenophobic and elitist - why do you think any of the items on your list is _Romantic_?


"Music is supposed to be emotional" wasn't actually obvious to most eras prior to the romantic period, or to most cultures in any period, or to our culture even right now. Very often its ritual purpose, in particular, has been more important than its emotional power. To other people, its intellectual virtues have mattered as much or more.

As for the other items: in an earlier post I listed a wide variety of things to which art might aspire besides beauty. Again, however, its ritual significance has often mattered much more than the kind of aesthetic experience that romantics value(d) - for which "sublimity" would be an even better word than "beauty."

Some of the other items on my "list:"

- That "good taste" is objective and classy and that the lower orders should know their place and respect the "high art" of their betters are basically the same thing. To be fair, this goes back to the late Baroque period in France (Louis XIV) and the Enlightenment period elsewhere, perhaps particularly England. As the religious legitimation of power lost persuasiveness to the cultural and intellectual elite (thanks to the wars of religion and the scientific revolution), one way of legitimizing power was to assert the cultural and/or moral superiority of the ruling classes. In the nineteenth century this was particularly popular with the upwardly mobile bourgeoisie, who found they could quite easily ape aristocratic taste. For several decades after the proletariat began to have some power as consumers, leading to the emergence of mass art - the reaction to which was modernism - the alliance of the upper bourgeois and the aristocrats were able to command widespread cultural assent as to the superiority of "high" art. By the 1960s, however, the masses no longer felt that inferiority. They declared full cultural independence and have for the most part taken their equality for granted ever since.

- That western tradition is superior to the rest of the world in a cultural rather than a religious sense was an attitude that really gained strength in the 18th century, as more and more became known about the cultures of "the Orient," the "Far East," Africa, and the Americas. It was most explicit during the height of "the new imperialism," which includes the period that saw the decline of romanticism and the rise of modernism. This attitude was rarely questioned (and never very effectively) until after WWII, when modernism began its slow transition to postmodernism. Now we live in a world in which people more or less take for granted the value of, for example, the polyphonic improvisations of Pygmy singers as soon as they become aware of its existence. Relegated to an almost voiceless minority are the sort of people who would take for granted that those singers should be regarded as primitive savages who for their own sake had better adopt Victorian social, artistic, moral, and political leadership as soon as possible.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Is this still supposed to be an argument that postmodernism _isn't_ in a decadence?


Funny that in order to ask that question you actually snipped the part of the post in which I wrote that from a romantic or modernist point of view it must be decadent and many worse things.

The postmodern response is: who cares? I don't. Neither does, for example, the woman in whose house I'm living right now, who does her own mosaics because she enjoys it regardless of what you or anyone else thinks of her work, who decorates her home with things she likes ranging from reproductions of modernist nudes to Mardi Gras beads to framed advertisements of museum exhibitions, who listens to zydeco and honky tonk and Dylan as eagerly as to Schubert and Brahms. All of your condescension means nothing to her, or to me, or to just about anyone else in the world at this point, outside of the minority who still "cling to" a romantic or modernist view. They're going to go on watching _Modern Family_, reading Sue Monk Kidd, eating canned pasta, or whatever else they want to do.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

science said:


> "Music is supposed to be emotional" wasn't actually obvious to most eras prior to the romantic period


That's a Modernist claim.



science said:


> That "good taste" is objective and classy and that the lower orders should know their place and respect the "high art" of their betters are basically the same thing. To be fair, this goes back to the late Baroque period in France (Louis XIV) and the Enlightenment period elsewhere, perhaps particularly England.


It goes back further than that and there's nothing particularly English about it, but at least you're not calling it Romantic any more.



science said:


> By the 1960s, however, the masses no longer felt that inferiority. They declared full cultural independence and have for the most part taken their equality for granted ever since.


The petite bourgeoisie declared independence in the '60s. Whether and when the masses will, or can, is an open question.



science said:


> That western tradition is superior to the rest of the world in a cultural rather than a religious sense was an attitude that really gained strength in the 18th century


Which is to say, culture partly replaced religion. Then religion finished dying, and culture died too, so now we've got no stake in claiming superiority for our version of either.

As for the things we do care about - for example, free markets, or gay rights - we still claim superiority for our version. We just do it by pretending that our version, whatever it happens to be, is a universal principle.



science said:


> The postmodern response is: who cares?


Postmodernism certainly cared back when it was strangling its parents. Now it's gotten lazy.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

You missed the point.

Here's a more pertinent picture:










What point did I miss? That Jeff Koons' balloon dog sculpture are eye candy? Its very good eye candy. Perhaps not my personal cup of tea... but your point was: "Being Playful and Witty is used as an excuse for lack of artistic strength."

Perhaps you missed the fact that this is a rather broad generalization... and not supported by examples from across the scope of art history.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Great art can of course be very non-conforming but equally important it strikes at the sensibility of the viewer. Botticelli's epic piece below is one such example, painted in 1482. Thoroughly pagan for its time (still is) but great from day one.

Certainly, Botticelli's _Primavera_ is a great work of Art... quite likely my single favorite painting...










But that doesn't negate the value of other... very different... works of Art.


----------



## arpeggio

Check this out: http://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/foodculture/this-photo-of-a-potato-sold-for-dollar1-million/ar-BBoKcUC?li=BBnbfcL


----------



## Harold in Columbia

StlukesguildOhio said:


> That Jeff Koons' balloon dog sculpture are eye candy? Its very good eye candy.


No, iPod advertisements are good eye candy. Jeff Koons' sculpture is a big balloon dog.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> That's a Modernist claim.
> 
> It goes back further than that and there's nothing particularly English about it, but at least you're not calling it Romantic any more.
> 
> The petite bourgeoisie declared independence in the '60s. Whether and when the masses will, or can, is an open question.
> 
> Which is to say, culture partly replaced religion. Then religion finished dying, and culture died too, so now we've got no stake in claiming superiority for our version of either.
> 
> As for the things we do care about - for example, free markets, or gay rights - we still claim superiority for our version. We just do it by pretending that our version, whatever it happens to be, is a universal principle.
> 
> Postmodernism certainly cared back when it was strangling its parents. Now it's gotten lazy.


All the wit in the world isn't really going to change things: we fundamentally disagree.

About "the things we do care about," you make a good point as to the ethical limits of a simpleminded postmodernism. As you can probably imagine, I could say a lot about that, but it's not very relevant for now; it's probably sufficient to note that most people (including me) think and feel about ethical values _somewhat_ differently than we think and feel about aesthetic values, and a lot can be unpacked out of that "somewhat."

To bring it back to arts/music, I doubt we'll ever (as a cultural whole) recover a sense that our particular aesthetic values (here, explicitly contrasted to ethical values) can be legitimately asserted as universal.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

science said:


> To bring it back to arts/music, I doubt we'll ever (as a cultural whole) recover a sense that our particular aesthetic values (here, explicitly contrasted to ethical values) can be legitimately asserted as universal.


We still do that too, actually - when we talk about aesthetics at all, which is rarely, because culture is dead. We don't claim superiority to less industrialized peoples, because, at least for the moment, that's become a taboo. (For the liberals among us, of course. The conservatives are less observant.) (Japan, industrialized but not western, has an ambiguous status here.) (Of course, if China, which doesn't care about any of this, becomes the dominant power, that's going to throw a wrench in the works.) But when it comes to peoples to whom the taboo doesn't apply - i.e. Europeans - then oh boy do we assert our particular (American) aesthetic values (or what we think they are) as universal.

The self-appointed guru of Postmodernism in musicology: "America is moving on. We are giving up the totalizing dream and are becoming engaged in a newer, truer integration of art and life."


----------



## Blancrocher

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Certainly, Botticelli's _Primavera_ is a great work of Art... quite likely my single favorite painting...


Interesting and very good choice!

By the way, does everybody know about the Google Art Project? There are particularly good websites now for viewing the contents of major galleries like the Uffizi in Florence. On this site, you can virtually walk through the hallways of the building, including through the breathtaking Botticelli Room. You can also do very good high-resolution zooms on individual paintings.

https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/collection/uffizi-gallery?projectId=art-project


----------



## DeepR

Sorry for stating the obvious but "good" or "bad" is of course nothing more than collective opinion, as much as I want to believe that it isn't.


----------



## ArtMusic

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Great art can of course be very non-conforming but equally important it strikes at the sensibility of the viewer. Botticelli's epic piece below is one such example, painted in 1482. Thoroughly pagan for its time (still is) but great from day one.
> 
> Certainly, Botticelli's _Primavera_ is a great work of Art... quite likely my single favorite painting...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But that doesn't negate the value of other... very different... works of Art.


_La Primavera_ was very unconventional for its time but equally connecting with those who commissioned it and hung it up. It is the connection between viewer and the piece that has made it great. It is also one of my very favorite paintings. Very modern in every sense, relating to all viewers even today, six hundred years or so later.


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> Not only this thread but quite a few other *things I've read here lately *have *led me to suspect* that *modern art* seems to *many people* to *suck* (or to be *sewage or whatever*) because basically they've got a *romantic worldview.* Art is supposed to them to be *beautiful,* music is supposed to be *emotional*, "good taste" is *objective* and classy, western tradition is *superior to the rest of the world*, the *lower orders *should *know their place* and respect the "high art" of their betters.
> 
> *Out in the world *I just don't see *this attitude* much. People enjoy their kitsch without caring that I think it's kitsch, as they should. Knockoffs of the impressionists sell well regardless of what I think of them, as they should, people who want to play Dixieland do it regardless of what any jazz critic would say of them, as they should, and people who like musical theater don't care what we think about Lloyd Webber. Everything goes, from Leonard Cohen to Autechre to Common to Dar Williams to Sonic Youth to Robert Glasper to Johnny Cash to Loreena McKennitt, with a hundred thousand people imitating them in ten thousand happily disconnected cliques, and not a one of them caring what we who know better think of them. Yesterday I saw a guy singing some romantic Italian arias on a street corner, accompanied by a CD player, for tips from the kind of people who like that popera kind of stuff, and neither he nor his audience cared how inferior we judge their art, their tastes, or them. Even the professional classical musicians and educators that I know do not seem to care about the romantic or even the modernist standards we might judge them by. They're just making music that they love because they love it, and also working for a living because bills have to be paid, and not lamenting the decline of medieval values or anything like that.


Whatever you may have been "led to suspect" by "things you've read here," the substance of your suspicions is anything but clear from this post. No term here is well-defined, but perhaps that's what's necessary in order to attribute these suspected traits and attitudes to whoever it is that's under suspicion.

What is a "romantic worldview"? How many people think that modern art _as such_ sucks or is sewage or whatever? What do these hypothetical people mean by "beautiful"? By "emotional"? By "objective"? What do _you_ mean by them? How do you know what they - these suspected individuals - think about the culture of the rest of the world? Is the concept of "lower orders" their concept, or are you making that up and attributing it to them? Who has asked whom to "know their place"? What "attitude" don't you see much out in the world? The attitude you've just failed to define clearly and demonstrate the existence of? And what "world" are you talking about? Yours? Everyone's? Does living on the same planet mean we inhabit the same "world"?

From what follows all that vagueness, I think I can gather that you don't see (in your world) many people who care about what other people think of the music they like. Good for them. I don't care either.

So what does it all mean? Does it have some implication for the people who are here talking about art, and for what, perhaps, you think they should or should not say about it?


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> But when it comes to peoples to whom the taboo doesn't apply - i.e. Europeans - then oh boy do we assert our particular (American) aesthetic values (or what we think they are) as universal.


I just don't see that happening. French and Italian fashion continues to dominate our markets, espresso drinks have become more popular than drip coffee, young American women still find "British accents" sexy and classy, we all listen to Sinead O'Connor or Bjork or Sting or Depeche Mode or Jean Michel Jarré or Rammstein or eRikm or Enigma, and every literate American reads books by authors like Saramago, Kundera, and Rowling.

For that matter, significant portions of "our" population enjoy Japanese comic books, Korean dramas, sushi and kimchi and tofu, without generally reflecting that they represent the culture of industrialized countries.

It's a postmodern world, culturally.


----------



## Guest

My accent is sexy and classy?! I thought it was just incomprehensible.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> Whatever you may have been "led to suspect" by "things you've read here," the substance of your suspicions is anything but clear from this post. No term here is well-defined, but perhaps that's what's necessary in order to attribute these suspected traits and attitudes to whoever it is that's under suspicion.
> 
> What is a "romantic worldview"? How many people think that modern art _as such_ sucks or is sewage or whatever? What do these hypothetical people mean by "beautiful"? By "emotional"? By "objective"? What do _you_ mean by them? How do you know what they - these suspected individuals - think about the culture of the rest of the world? Is the concept of "lower orders" their concept, or are you making that up and attributing it to them? Who has asked whom to "know their place"? What "attitude" don't you see much out in the world? The attitude you've just failed to define clearly and demonstrate the existence of? And what "world" are you talking about? Yours? Everyone's? Does living on the same planet mean we inhabit the same "world"?
> 
> From what follows all that vagueness, I think I can gather that you don't see (in your world) many people who care about what other people think of the music they like. Good for them. I don't care either.
> 
> So what does it all mean? Does it have some implication for the people who are here talking about art, and for what, perhaps, you think they should or should not say about it?


I really don't believe that getting into long debates about the definitions of those terms is going to significantly increase your understanding of my points there. I'm pretty sure you understand them as well as I do, but because you don't _like_ them you'd prefer to bog the conversation down in minutiae.

The main point continues to be obvious: although we live in a postmodern world, much of the discussion on talkclassical continues to advocate romantic and modernist values, which surprises me; but the long ongoing conflict between those two views here also frustrates me, not so much for being irrelevant to the real world as for being so often impolite, employing the full arsenal of human cleverness to evade explicit violations of the terms of service of this site, albeit not always successfully.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

science said:


> I just don't see that happening. French and Italian fashion continues to dominate our markets, espresso drinks have become more popular than drip coffee, young American women still find "British accents" sexy and classy, we all listen to Sinead O'Connor or Bjork or Sting or Depeche Mode or Jean Michel Jarré or Rammstein or eRikm or Enigma, and every literate American reads books by authors like Saramago, Kundera, and Rowling.


It's somewhat interesting - oh, there's that word again - to me that, after decades of being mocked for conceiving their utopia in terms of shopping and restaurant options, happy Postmodernists still haven't gotten the message.

Let's try putting it a different way: I assume you're liberal. Doesn't it bother you that you're basically paraphrasing David Brooks' _Bobos in Paradise_?

And what you're describing isn't even essentially Postmodern anyway. As a classical music fan - thus someone who should know something about, for example, the vogue for black American music and East Asian fashion and arts in general, in Europe and among white Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - you have less of an excuse than most for not noticing this.



science said:


> It's a postmodern world, culturally.


Is, or recently was. But that doesn't mean what you seem to think it does.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Doesn't it bother you that you're basically paraphrasing David Brooks' _Bobos in Paradise_?


No. Even if that's true, why would it bother me?



Harold in Columbia said:


> It's somewhat interesting - oh, there's that word again - to me that, after decades of being mocked for conceiving their utopia in terms of shopping and restaurant options, happy Postmodernists still haven't gotten the message.


That mockery is not very effective; it's produced, sold, and consumed as everything else.



Harold in Columbia said:


> And what you're describing isn't even essentially Postmodern anyway. As a classical music fan - thus someone who should know something about, for example, the vogue for black American music and East Asian fashion and arts in general, in Europe and among white Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - you have less of an excuse than most for not noticing this.


Obviously, what was once exceptional is now common. It's not like the world started anew in 1968.

By the way, let's talk about your condescension. I'm sure you know I "noticed" that history, and that people who happen not to know that history don't need "an excuse" for it. However much animosity you feel toward me, you should probably display it more carefully.



Harold in Columbia said:


> Is, or recently was, that's a fact. It just doesn't mean what you think it does.


Well, then, tell me what it means! Reinterpret all this for me in a new light! I'd love that! That's what I'm all about! Teach me something!


----------



## Harold in Columbia

science said:


> Obviously, what was once exceptional is now common.


Cosmopolitanism, which is what you're talking about, wasn't exceptional a hundred years ago, and never has been. It's the natural state of empires.



science said:


> Well, then, tell me what it means!


In practical terms, it means the elite - that's us - can only think in terms of finding oppressive structures and destroying them (how much it ever succeeds is another question), never in terms of building, and is therefore useless, at art as at politics.


----------



## Fugue Meister

science said:


> I just don't see that happening. French and Italian fashion continues to dominate our markets, espresso drinks have become more popular than drip coffee, young American women still find "British accents" sexy and classy, we all listen to Sinead O'Connor or Bjork or Sting or Depeche Mode or Jean Michel Jarré or Rammstein or eRikm or Enigma, and every literate American reads books by authors like Saramago, Kundera, and Rowling.
> 
> For that matter, significant portions of "our" population enjoy Japanese comic books, Korean dramas, sushi and kimchi and tofu, without generally reflecting that they represent the culture of industrialized countries.
> 
> It's a postmodern world, culturally.


When you say things like this it makes me feel as if your out of touch or out of place, I'll give you fashion and coffee because I know nothing about either of those things but everything else is not that way. Not that I'm trying to argue with you but the things you mention is that how you feel so your assuming thats how the rest of the world is right along side your views? Perhaps some of those artists are popular but not to the majority (with a possible exception of Rowling whom after I looked her up, I see that she wrote those frightfully awful children's fantasy books and quite honestly I don't know how popular she would have been if hollywood hadn't gotten hold of her nonsense, {yes I know it's my opinion})

Anyway I suppose what I'd like to know is, what is the point your trying make that it's a post modern world culturally? I was under the impression we were in a post-postmodern era something I've heard called meta-modernism. Everything continues to change and evolve, what makes you think culture is any different? You never know in another decade we could be looking at a neo-romantic culture or something entirely unheard of or new.


----------



## Blancrocher

DeepR said:


> Sorry for stating the obvious but "good" or "bad" is of course nothing more than collective opinion, as much as I want to believe that it isn't.


Maybe there are no objective aesthetic standards ... but you're still not going to convince me that Michel Foucault isn't better than Paul Feyerabend.


----------



## science

nathanb said:


> Careful, science. I got an infraction today for suggesting that the notion of objective superiority is a fundamentally flawed worldview. Nevermind the fact that such philosophies eventually lead to things like the Third Reich, YOU WOULDN'T WANT TO COMMENT ON ANY POSTING STYLES, WOULD YOU?!?!?!


Well, then, I guess mine is coming. Thanks for the heads up!


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Cosmopolitanism, which is what you're talking about, wasn't exceptional a hundred years ago, and never has been. It's the natural state of empires.
> 
> In practical terms, it means the elite - that's us - can only think in terms of finding oppressive structures and destroying them (how much it ever succeeds is another question), never in terms of building, and is therefore useless, at art as at politics.


I think we're talking about more than cosmopolitanism: we're talking about the disbelief in objective aesthetic judgments. Like this:



DeepR said:


> Sorry for stating the obvious but "good" or "bad" is of course nothing more than collective opinion, as much as I want to believe that it isn't.


To DeepR as to me and to most people in our society today, this is "obvious." And apparently no one who rejects this conventional wisdom here is eager to take up the challenge of demonstrating the existence of objective aesthetic values. We've had a few intimations that some intersubjective values might even be species-wide, but that's the nearest anyone has dared approach the challenge.

I suspect I do not understand the second paragraph of your post, because I just cannot imagine anyone believing what it seems to me that you're saying. I'm stumped! Of course some are traitors to their class, but the elite are ordinarily the people most responsible for constructing and maintaining oppressive structures. Have I misunderstood?


----------



## DiesIraeCX

nathanb said:


> Careful, science. I got an infraction today for suggesting that the notion of objective superiority is a fundamentally flawed worldview. Nevermind the fact that such philosophies eventually lead to things like the Third Reich, YOU WOULDN'T WANT TO COMMENT ON ANY POSTING STYLES, WOULD YOU?!?!?!


Dear nathanb,

I read your initial comment, I actually was writing a response to your post, then my internet went down and when I came back, your comment had been removed. I'm guessing that the infraction was given not only because you said he had a "fundamentally flawed worldview", but because you said that he believed and declared that "anything that was older was objectively better than anything newer".

I meant to ask, where did you get that from? Do you read all of his posts? Because that doesn't seem to be the case at all. Maybe you passed up this one? Post #354 (just one of many, actually) on page 24. In addition to him saying the opposite of what you accused him of; he even went on to list off modern and contemporary artists, complete with pictures of their art. Artists that he calls "marvelous". Modern and Contemporary Artists like: Douglas Bourgeois (born: 1951), Aron Wiesenfeld, Lu Cong, Marlene Dumas (born: 1953), Bo Bartlett, Andrea Kowch, Andrew Wyeth, Avigdor Arikha, Francine von Hove, Paul Fenniak, Jerome Witkin, John Nava, Martha Erlebacher,



StlukesguildOhio said:


> Lets face it... such towering figures are rare across the whole of Art History. The 20th century saw two painters who could stand along side Michelangelo, Titian, Rubens, and Rembrandt: Matisse and Picasso. As much as I admire the Rococo, I can think of no such painter from that era. Nor from the 100 years of Mannerism which came on the heels of the Renaissance. On the other hand... in my life time I have witnessed film-makers like Hitchcock & Scorcese and writers like J.L. Borges and Italo Calvino. The Rococo had no Rembrandt... but they did have Mozart!


Mods, if you'd like to delete this post because the deleted post in question has been deleted, that is absolutely fine with me.


----------



## Blancrocher

science said:


> To DeepR as to me and to most people in our society today, this is "obvious." And apparently no one who rejects this conventional wisdom here is eager to take up the challenge of demonstrating the existence of objective aesthetic values.


It's not obvious to me at all--quite the contrary. However, I don't think I'll take up the challenge to demonstrate my view, since I worry that my argument would be less aesthetically pleasing than that of whoever happens to oppose me.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

science said:


> I think we're talking about more than cosmopolitanism: we're talking about the disbelief in objective aesthetic judgments.


Revise that to: pretense of disbelief in objective judgments of any kind, plus indifference to aesthetics. That's Postmodernism. It's got nothing to do with consuming the products of foreign and subject peoples. That's a separate phenomenon.


----------



## Guest

DiesIraeCX said:


> Dear nathanb,
> 
> I read your initial comment, I actually was writing a response to your post, then my internet went down and when I came back, your comment had been removed. I'm guessing that the infraction was given not only because you said he had a "fundamentally flawed worldview", but because you said that he believed and declared that "anything that was older was objectively better than anything newer".
> 
> I meant to ask, where did you get that from? Do you read all of his posts? Because that doesn't seem to be the case at all. Maybe you passed up this one? Post #354 (just one of many, actually) on page 24. In addition to him saying the opposite of what you accused him of; he even went on to list off modern and contemporary artists, complete with pictures of their art. Artists that he calls "marvelous". Modern and Contemporary Artists like: Douglas Bourgeois (born: 1951), Aron Wiesenfeld, Lu Cong, Marlene Dumas (born: 1953), Bo Bartlett, Andrea Kowch, Andrew Wyeth, Avigdor Arikha, Francine von Hove, Paul Fenniak, Jerome Witkin, John Nava, Martha Erlebacher,
> 
> Mods, if you'd like to delete this post because the deleted post in question has been deleted, that is absolutely fine with me.





> One can argue about the positives and negatives of various world views, but to directly state that another member's world view is "fundamentally flawed" is a clear insult.


The quoted reason for the infraction. And I apologize if I insinuated that anyone was 100% against contemporary art as opposed to, say, 95% against it. It's not the percentage I take issue with. It's the objectivism shoved in my face.

I suspect this will all be deleted soon, perhaps rightly so.


----------



## Chordalrock

science said:


> To DeepR as to me and to most people in our society today, this [that "good" or "bad" is nothing more than collective opinion] is "obvious" ... Apparently no one who rejects this conventional wisdom here is eager to take up the challenge of demonstrating the existence of objective aesthetic values


That it hasn't been done to your satisfaction doesn't mean that it hasn't been done. I could similarly say - and mean it - that total aesthetic subjectivism has never been proven to my satisfaction. At any rate, the inability to prove something isn't the same as being wrong.

Aesthetic subjectivism denies that objects have important qualities that affect their potential value. This denial is, in my opinion absurd. And thus I can say with sincerity that aesthetic subjectivism seems obviously incorrect. What most people think about the topic is quite irrelevant.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Revise that to: pretense of disbelief in objective judgments of any kind, plus indifference to aesthetics. That's Postmodernism. It's got nothing to do with consuming the products of foreign and subject peoples. That's a separate phenomenon.


Pretense? Indifference? I don't accept your definition. As you've said:



Harold in Columbia said:


> That's a Modernist claim.


And/or a romantic one.


----------



## science

Chordalrock said:


> That it hasn't been done to your satisfaction doesn't mean that it hasn't been done. I could similarly say - and mean it - that total aesthetic subjectivism has never been proven to my satisfaction. At any rate, the inability to prove something isn't the same as being wrong.
> 
> Aesthetic subjectivism denies that objects have important qualities that affect their potential value. This denial is, in my opinion absurd. And thus I can say with sincerity that aesthetic subjectivism seems obviously incorrect. What most people think about the topic is quite irrelevant.


Well, the burden of proof lies on the person who asserts that something - in this case, objective aesthetic values - exists.

Does "aesthetic subjectivism" (a term that I'm not entirely comfortable with because it might mean something other than I intend to have supported) deny "that objects have important qualities that affect their potential value?" If all that means what I think it means, then the issue is how do we what an object's value is? I mean, where does the "value" of an object come from? Is it a thing that would exist independently of human minds? Or is it a thing human minds attribute to the object?

Let's take a specific example. You can suggest a different one if this doesn't elucidate your meaning, but I'll take a berry as an example. It has some qualities - how large it is, how sweet it is, its color (at least in the technical sense of how it interacts with light) - and these effect its value _to something_: to a certain kind of bird, it might be something good to eat; to some other animal, it might be poisonous; to a spider, it might be a useful surface to attach a strand of web; to the plant itself, presumably its value is that it might persuade an animal to deposit the plant's seeds some distance away amid some fertilizer; to a particular human being, it might be perfect for turning into jam; to another, it might be perfect for turning into liquor; to another, it might be perfect for photographing; and a fourth human might be disappointed by it not being very useful as a dye; a fifth might view it as a symbol of a spirit; and yet another person might be sentimentally reminded of her late mother's pies. The "value" of the qualities of the berry _depends on the kind of being that observes it_. And therefore, its value is subjective.

I think we can easily imagine how this will apply to music: the qualities of a particular sound will have value depending on the being that observes it.

Does that address the idea you have in mind, or have I missed the point?


----------



## Harold in Columbia

No it isn't. I'm not even sure what you mean: That aesthetics are Modernist or Romantic? They're not, in the west they go back the Renaissance and before that to Ancient Greece. That claims to objectivity are Romantic? They're not, any more than they are Baroque or Renaissance or Christian or Buddhist or Confucian or whatever. That claims to objectivity are Modernist? Okay, maybe to some extent, but that just serves to show Postmodernism's absolute (nominal) subjectivity for what is it: an excessive reaction to the excess of the previous era.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> No it isn't. I'm not even sure what you mean: That aesthetics are Modernist or Romantic? They're not, in the west they go back the Renaissance and before that to Ancient Greece. That claims to objectivity are Romantic? They're not, any more than they are Baroque or Renaissance or Christian or Buddhist or Confucian or whatever. That claims to objectivity are Modernist? Okay, maybe to some extent, but that just serves to show Postmodernism's absolute (nominal) subjectivity for what is it: an excessive reaction to the excess of the previous era.


Whether various philosophers or cultures have assumed that objective aesthetic values exist doesn't matter very much; the people who assert them here are usually doing so from a recognizably romantic or modernist point of view.

It would be very interesting to see (or even to imagine) what a person with no familiarity with the past three hundred years of western culture might say about these questions, but the minds of the people here are saturated by that culture.


----------



## Chordalrock

science said:


> Well, the burden of proof lies on the person who asserts that something - in this case, objective aesthetic values - exists.
> 
> Does "aesthetic subjectivism" (a term that I'm not entirely comfortable with because it might mean something other than I intend to have supported) deny "that objects have important qualities that affect their potential value?" If all that means what I think it means, then the issue is how do we what an object's value is? I mean, where does the "value" of an object come from? Is it a thing that would exist independently of human minds? Or is it a thing human minds attribute to the object?
> 
> Let's take a specific example. You can suggest a different one if this doesn't elucidate your meaning, but I'll take a berry as an example. It has some qualities - how large it is, how sweet it is, its color (at least in the technical sense of how it interacts with light) - and these effect its value _to something_: to a certain kind of bird, it might be something good to eat; to some other animal, it might be poisonous; to a spider, it might be a useful surface to attach a strand of web; to the plant itself, presumably its value is that it might persuade an animal to deposit the plant's seeds some distance away amid some fertilizer; to a particular human being, it might be perfect for turning into jam; to another, it might be perfect for turning into liquor; to another, it might be perfect for photographing; and a fourth human might be disappointed by it not being very useful as a dye; a fifth might view it as a symbol of a spirit; and yet another person might be sentimentally reminded of her late mother's pies. The "value" of the qualities of the berry _depends on the kind of being that observes it_. And therefore, its value is subjective.
> 
> I think we can easily imagine how this will apply to music: the qualities of a particular sound will have value depending on the being that observes it.
> 
> Does that address the idea you have in mind, or have I missed the point?


I think where you go amiss is in equating the aspect of "personal use" with "all that matters about the object" (i.e. "aesthetic value"), as though "personal use" could exist without the objective qualities of the object existing first.

It's those objective qualities that create the conditions where value can exist, and thus should be given their due in philosophical musings and forum rhetoric.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

science said:


> Whether various philosophers or cultures have assumed that objective aesthetic values exist doesn't matter very much; the people who assert them here are usually doing so from a recognizably romantic or modernist point of view.


Nobody here - nobody alive today - does anything from a Romantic point of view. The Romantics are utterly alien to us. What people call "Romantic" today isn't Romantic.

To put it in musical terms, when people today say "Romantic," they mean this: 




When in fact Romanticism sounded more like this: 




From a Modernist point of view? Well, maybe, but so what? It's a point of view like any other. We're supposed to despise it because it's out of date? You'll be out of date before you know it.


----------



## science

Chordalrock said:


> I think where you go amiss is in equating the aspect of "personal use" with "all that matters about the object" (i.e. "aesthetic value"), as though "personal use" could exist without the objective qualities of the object existing first.
> 
> It's those objective qualities that create the conditions where value can exist, and thus should be given their due in philosophical musings and forum rhetoric.


I think I'm still missing you, or you're missing me. I hope I didn't seem to imply that personal use or an aesthetic experience could happen without the objective qualities of the object. We can consider "objective" anything that we could reasonably presume to be true of an object regardless of what sort of being is observing it. But any qualities only certain beings feel and others don't must be subjective.

To return to earlier discussion, all those objective qualities are the legitimate realm of expertise. But any particular being's subjective experience of them is just that particular being's subjective experience.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Nobody here - nobody alive today - does anything from a Romantic point of view. The Romantics are utterly alien to us. What people call "Romantic" today isn't Romantic.
> 
> To put it in musical terms, when people today say "Romantic," they mean this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> When in fact Romanticism sounded more like this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From a Modernist point of view? Well, maybe, but so what? It's a point of view like any other. We're supposed to despise it because it's out of date? You'll be out of date before you know it.


I'm not too concerned just now with whether today's would-be romantics actually understand romanticism perfectly.

Also, I wouldn't deny anyone's right to be "out of date" or to hold any sort of unusual opinions, regardless of date. I have simply stated my surprise that so many here choose to adopt those old views, especially considering that they obviously cause so much stress. As I've said before: why not relax and enjoy the art and music and food and all the other culture that we love without fretting that other people are enjoying something that we don't?


----------



## Harold in Columbia

science said:


> I'm not too concerned just now with whether today's would-be romantics actually understand romanticism perfectly.


A vestigial Romantic (which doesn't exist any more) is a very different thing from a Postmodern person who thinks they would prefer to live in a Romantic world (they probably wouldn't, of course).



science said:


> I have simply stated my surprise that so many here choose to adopt those old views


What else do you expect? When the prevailing ideology fails to satisfy you, you can't invent a new one all by yourself. Calling for a return to the past is a perhaps naïve, but completely understandable and time honored response.



science said:


> As I've said before: why not relax


Maybe because they/we don't want to be decadent.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Maybe because they/we don't want to be decadent.


I don't see why not! It doesn't bother me in the least.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

That's partly because you're American (right?), the only country that doesn't (yet) know what the part that comes after the decadence feels like.

(I'm American too.)


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> That's partly because you're American (right?), the only country that doesn't (yet) know what the part that comes after the decadence feels like.
> 
> (I'm American too.)


Well, let's see what comes next!


----------



## Harold in Columbia

What comes next is either externally inflicted humiliation, which you don't want to see, whether you know it or not, or some kind of internal change, which you know you don't want to see, because there goes holy subjectivity.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> What comes next is either externally inflicted humiliation, which you don't want to see, whether you know it or not, or some kind of internal change, which you know you don't want to see, because there goes holy subjectivity.


Externally inflicted humiliation because we have what you and a few others consider bad taste in our cultural consumption?


----------



## Harold in Columbia

No, and smallpox doesn't kill you because it gives you spots. Trends in the arts are a symptom (maybe also one minor cause among many).


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> No, and smallpox doesn't kill you because it gives you spots. Trends in the arts are a symptom (maybe also one minor cause among many).


Well, in other news, the USA is still the world's largest economy, most of the other large economies - from Germany to Japan to India - are unlikely to do anything disastrous to sabotage that economy. We still have the largest military by an order of magnitude. We and most of our major allies are governed by fairly competent bureaucracies that most of the citizens view as basically legitimate and somewhat responsive to their will. We continue to brain-drain the world of its entrepreneurial, technological, and engineering talent. Most of the world still has a fairly favorable opinion of us compared to China, the only country likely to emerge as a serious rival in my lifetime.

Maybe some of that is overoptimistic, but at least on that front I don't think I'm going to feel guilty about believing that beauty (and other aesthetic values) is subjective.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

And we have zero real income growth for most people in over 40 years, worse inequality than 1929, a disintegrating infrastructure, a legislature with consistently something like 85% unpopularity (that's a rather optimistic definition of "view as basically legitimate"), and are one badly timed stock market crash away (if that) from having Donald Trump as president.

"We continue to brain-drain the world of its entrepreneurial, technological, and engineering talent." Yes, and we're still ruining the rest of the world too. Awesome!


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> And we have zero real income growth for most people in 40 years, worse inequality than 1929, a crumbling infrastructure, and are one badly timed stock market crash away (if that) from having Donald Trump as president.
> 
> "We continue to brain-drain the world of its entrepreneurial, technological, and engineering talent." Yes, and we're still ruining the rest of the world too. Awesome!


The world is getting better in most ways, and none of those problems strike me as impossible to solve. I still don't feel guilty.

In fact, I'm still _happy_ that all those Chinese people who were on the verge of starvation forty years ago are now able to enjoy McDonald's hamburgers and Psy's _Gangnam Style_. Or, if they choose, Furrer's _Nuun_ and cucumber sandwiches.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

They're all theoretically pretty easy to solve, your ideology is just totally incapable of solving them.

You should be unhappy about all the people in basically everywhere in the developing world except urban (not rural) China, who are still starving because of the slowdown in global growth after the 1960s.


----------



## KenOC

Harold in Columbia said:


> And we have zero real income growth for most people in over 40 years, worse inequality than 1929, a disintegrating infrastructure, a legislature with consistently something like 85% unpopularity (that's a rather optimistic definition of "view as basically legitimate"), and are one badly timed stock market crash away (if that) from having Donald Trump as president.


Real per capita disposable income has almost doubled in the last 40 years.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/A229RX0

Income (and more importantly wealth) equality is un an uptick, comparable to the late 1920s. By world standards, it is quite high. Nobody seems to care much so long as the tide is high in general.

Our "disintegrating" infrastructure is pretty much the envy of the world (some shrunken rust belt cities excluded). Maintained as well as we might or should? No. But we seem to prefer lower taxes and utility bills.

Our political bodies are, as always, highly unpopular -- except for our own congresspeople of course! This discrepancy is often noted.

Trump? If people want him, they'll vote for him. I won't lose any sleep.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

KenOC said:


> Real per capita disposable income has almost doubled in the last 40 years.
> 
> https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/A229RX0


Which is another way of saying, when inequality is high, per capita income is a meaningless measurement. Median household income: http://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci120a/immigration/Median Household Income.pdf (And this is, of course, at the same time that the proportion of households with two people working outside the home has shot up.)



KenOC said:


> Our political bodies are, as always, highly unpopular


Not "as always." It's never been this bad. http://www.gallup.com/poll/180113/2014-approval-congress-remains-near-time-low.aspx

----

I'll take this opportunity to apologize to Truckload, the moderators, and generally for the hijacking of this thread.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> They're all theoretically pretty easy to solve, your ideology is just totally incapable of solving them.
> 
> You should be unhappy about all the people in basically everywhere in the developing world except urban (not rural) China, who are still starving because of the slowdown in global growth after the 1960s.


I disagree with some of that too, but I just don't think it'd be appropriate (edit: wise) to discuss politics any further here.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

Something on topic: Postmodernism's absolute subjectivity conveniently allows it to avoid the fact that it can't even produce any art that stands up against the best of Modernism, never mind the best of what came before that.

Or maybe Postmodernism's denial of the existence of greatness is the reason why it can't achieve greatness.

Or both. Chicken and egg.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Something on topic: Postmodernism's absolute subjectivity conveniently allows it to avoid the fact that it can't even produce any art that stands up against the best of Modernism, never mind the best of what came before that.
> 
> Or maybe Postmodernism's denial of the existence of greatness is the reason why it can't achieve greatness.
> 
> Or both. Chicken and egg.


Of course its art has achieved greatness, from Warhol to Garcia Marquez, _The Simpsons_ to _Howl_, the Zubizuri Bridge to the design of an iPod classic, from kimchi burritos to _The Big Lebowski_, from Led Zeppelin to Takemitsu.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

Warhol, _Howl_, Led Zeppelin, and Takemitsu aren't Postmodern. _The Simpsons_ and _The Big Lebowski_ are well and good - better than any of the last four things - but not that good. The iPod is a craft object. The Zubizuri Bridge sucks. Garcia Marquez sucks and is also not Postmodern. I'm not dignifying the snack.


----------



## Adam Weber

I don't want to get involved again, but I just have to say one thing... 

GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ DOES NOT SUCK! 

:tiphat:


----------



## Harold in Columbia

He really does though.


----------



## Nereffid

Harold in Columbia said:


> I'm not dignifying the snack.


Smart move. If you dignify the snack, the postmodernists win! :lol:


----------



## Harold in Columbia

The question isn't whether they win but whether they take me with them when they lose.

Edit: We're of course all Postmodernists now (or post-Postmodernists), whether we like it or not. So, for "they" here, read Santiago Calatrava fiddling while Rome burns, as opposed to the _Simpsons_ team and the Coen brothers doing useful demolition work.


----------



## ArtMusic

DeepR said:


> Sorry for stating the obvious but "good" or "bad" is of course nothing more than collective opinion, as much as I want to believe that it isn't.


And there is of course nothing wrong in the collective opinion about what is good that is consistent *over time*. This is essentially the definition of "canon" or "classical" that has been accepted by history as good.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Warhol, _Howl_, Led Zeppelin, and Takemitsu aren't Postmodern. _The Simpsons_ and _The Big Lebowski_ are well and good - better than any of the last four things - but not that good. The iPod is a craft object. The Zubizuri Bridge sucks. Garcia Marquez sucks and is also not Postmodern. I'm not dignifying the snack.


I disagree with every single thing you wrote here. Therefore, and I'm sorry to say it: you're either objectively wrong, or it's just a matter of opinion.

"Adam Weber" is right: Gabriel Garcia Marquez does definitely not suck. (At least not within any value system I could have any sympathy with.)


----------



## science

Incidentally, "Harold in Columbia," what have you read by Garcia Marquez? Let's take this to Book Chat, baby.


----------



## Adam Weber

[deleted deleted deleted]


----------



## science

Adam Weber said:


> For what it's worth....


Oh, dude, delete this immediately. Even if it's not a violation of the TOS (I think it is), you should just be a tiny bit more careful on the internet. I know that Google and the FBI and Anonymous know who we all really are anyway, but you might as well make it just a bit harder for ordinary psychos. It's like leaving your car unlocked in a Walmart parking lot. Probably nothing is going to go wrong, but it's still an unnecessary risk.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

I'm objectively right about everything (always), but particularly about W, H, LZ, T, and GM not being Postmodern. They just aren't. So whether you think they're good or not, they're not relevant here. Koons, Language poetry, Talking Heads, Duckworth, and Pynchon are Postmodern.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> I'm objectively right about everything (always), but particularly about W, H, LZ, T, and GM not being Postmodern. They just aren't. So whether you think they're good or not, they're not relevant here. Koons, Language poetry, Talking Heads, Duckworth, and Pynchon are Postmodern.


Now we could open a really legitimate question here: what makes a particular idea, action, or object postmodern?

Unfortunately, even if I could persuade you adopt my own ideas about what postmodernism essentially is, we would still have a problem because I believe there's not a perfect boundary between modernism and postmodernism. If modernism were red and postmodernism were yellow, a lot of stuff between 1945 and maybe 1980 or so would be orange.


----------



## science

Incidentally, I created this: On Whether Gabriel Garcia Marquez sucks.

Feel free to strike me down with a decisive refutation of all I hold dear!


----------



## Harold in Columbia

Geeze, _1945_? The poor Modernists only got _started_ in about 1910 - you've got to leave them with _something_!

Of course there's never a perfect boundary, and to contradict myself, Warhol, Takemitsu, and Garcia Marquez are maybe borderline cases. But _Howl_ and Led Zeppelin, no way.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Geeze, _1945_? The poor Modernists only got _started_ in about 1910 - you've got to leave them with _something_!
> 
> Of course there's never a perfect boundary, and to contradict myself, Warhol, Takemitsu, and Garcia Marquez are maybe borderline cases. But _Howl_ and Led Zeppelin, no way.


I'd give the modernists as far back as the 1890s, and in a few radical cases maybe even a bit earlier. There, with modernism being red, romanticism/realism will have to be blue, and there is a lot of purple between 1890 and, oh, 1933 or so.

I intend 1945 to be about as early as we could possibly put anything arguably postmodern, not the date of its final triumph over modernism. To me, 1968 or so would be a better date for that.


----------



## Chordalrock

@science

What I'm saying is that the berry has the value that it can be turned into jam, and thus it has *potential value*. You are failing to consider potential value as being as significant somehow as subjective value, perhaps because you believe that *everything* has the same potential value while I don't think it does. Is this where we differ? That to you one note repeated for five minutes in simple rhythm has the same potential value as Beethoven's 9th symphony as a work of art?

I don't think you can make jam out of sand - to continue using your analogy (perhaps at this point you'll claim that it's not a valid analogy after all) - and in my opinion you can't see one note repeated for five minutes as a masterpiece. You can make jam out of berries and you can see Beethoven's 9th as a masterpiece.

Thus total subjectivism in aesthetics is - although superficially appealing - incorrect on closer inspection, as far as I can tell.


----------



## science

Chordalrock said:


> @science
> 
> What I'm saying is that the berry has the value that it can be turned into jam, and thus it has *potential value*. You are failing to consider potential value as being as significant somehow as subjective value, perhaps because you believe that *everything* has the same potential value while I don't think it does. Is this where we differ? That to you one note repeated for five minutes in simple rhythm has the same potential value as Beethoven's 9th symphony as a work of art?
> 
> I don't think you can make jam out of sand - to continue using your analogy (perhaps at this point you'll claim that it's not a valid analogy after all) - and in my opinion you can't see one note repeated for five minutes as a masterpiece. You can make jam out of berries and you can see Beethoven's 9th as a masterpiece.
> 
> Thus total subjectivism in aesthetics is - although superficially appealing - incorrect on closer inspection, as far as I can tell.


I really don't understand the difference between potential value and value.

The "one note for five minutes" is a great example. Perhaps it's true that _*I*_ can't see that as a masterpiece, but perhaps a different sort of mind could. Perhaps it's the mating call of some species of bird, and some individual does it "really well" in the experience of some other individual of that species; presumably those birds would be very unimpressed by the noise of an orchestra playing anything at all, even Beethoven's 9th. Would the birds be wrong, or just different?


----------



## KenOC

science said:


> I'd give the modernists as far back as the 1890s, and in a few radical cases maybe even a bit earlier...


MacDowell, Op. 10: First Modern Suite (1883). Liszt recommended it to B&H.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

science said:


> Incidentally, I created this: On Whether Gabriel Garcia Marquez sucks.


_It's already obvious that the fallibility of memory is a central theme, for which the flood damage to the investigator's report is a simple (and perfect) symbol. The narrator even calls the village "forgotten." One level deeper, the fallibility and pseudo-infallibility of texts is being considered as well._

Hey, it's like _Pale Fire_, if you deleted the satire on academic egomania and substituted obscurantist piety.

To answer your earlier question, I've read as many parts of The Book as I could without hating myself for using up too much of my limited lifespan in the activity. I haven't read "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," and am grateful to you for writing and sharing that piece, because now I can be pretty sure that I hate it without reading it.


----------



## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> _It's already obvious that the fallibility of memory is a central theme, for which the flood damage to the investigator's report is a simple (and perfect) symbol. The narrator even calls the village "forgotten." One level deeper, the fallibility and pseudo-infallibility of texts is being considered as well._
> 
> Hey, it's like _Pale Fire_, if you deleted the satire on academic egomania and substituted obscurantist piety.
> 
> To answer your earlier question, I've read The Book. I haven't read "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," and am grateful to you for writing and sharing that piece, because now I can be pretty sure that I hate it without reading it.


Oh, no. I'm starting to think we'd get along in real life. We could disagree so entertainingly. I'd actually buy you strong drinks just for the pleasure of being reminded about how right I am in so many ways. I imagine that you could enjoy something like that, too.

By the way, this discussion belongs in "Book Chat." Put it there, and I will parry your every riposte.


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## Harold in Columbia

That "Join Group" button is too scary.


----------



## Chordalrock

science said:


> I really don't understand the difference between potential value and value.
> 
> The "one note for five minutes" is a great example. Perhaps it's true that _*I*_ can't see that as a masterpiece, but perhaps a different sort of mind could. Perhaps it's the mating call of some species of bird, and some individual does it "really well" in the experience of some other individual of that species; presumably those birds would be very unimpressed by the noise of an orchestra playing anything at all, even Beethoven's 9th. Would the birds be wrong, or just different?


I think it would be reasonable to consider only intelligent beings that are capable of perceiving the music more or less as the composer intended. If you are perceiving Beethoven as "noise that doesn't make sense", then you aren't really perceiving it competently.

So let's say there's an intelligent species of extra-terrestrial aliens. Would they care about Beethoven at all? I think that if they learned to perceive his music properly, they would probably acknowledge the deep artistry and uniqueness of some of it, even if their subjective associations and subjective emotional reactions meant that they wouldn't be able to enjoy the music properly or at all. More likely, they would be able to enjoy some of it about as much as you or me - because the form matters - but perhaps instead of hearing something as melancholy or dramatic they would hear it as optimistic or violent (even this speculation might be stretching things a bit more towards subjectivism than reality is willing to go - there are no humans, regardless of where they evolved and in what culture they grew up, that perceive melancholy music as joyful or other way around - perhaps because form matters).

Anyway, perceiving music isn't all about deeply personal mental phenomena, a lot of it is also about grasping musical structure and getting a sensation that's exactly the same on a fundamental level as that of any other experienced and skillful listener. I think this fundamental sensation can have aesthetic value (uniqueness, competence, etc.) irrespective of what it brings to the listener's mind or how it makes them feel.


----------



## Nereffid

Chordalrock said:


> I don't think you can make jam out of sand - to continue using your analogy (perhaps at this point you'll claim that it's not a valid analogy after all) - and in my opinion *you* can't see one note repeated for five minutes as a masterpiece. You can make jam out of berries and *you* can see Beethoven's 9th as a masterpiece.
> 
> Thus total subjectivism in aesthetics is - although superficially appealing - incorrect on closer inspection, as far as I can tell.


But who _is_ this "you" of whom you speak?

Your point about jam and sand is completely different to the total-minimalism/Beethoven contrast. Sand can't make jam simply because of the fundamentals of chemistry; you're surely not saying there are _similarly fundamental_ laws governing what can or can't be seen as "a masterpiece"? (If you are saying that, you might as well stop reading now because there's no point in us having a discussion).

I guess you could call me a "total subjectivist", in as much as I don't think there's any way to have truly objective criteria for assessing any music. But I nevertheless believe in the idea of shared standards - widely-agreed ideas about what's "good". So by the current standards of Western classical music, there can be wide agreement that Beethoven's 9th is indeed a masterpiece. It seems that the closer we get to the present day, though, there's less agreement on such matters, because standards are less widely shared. Your "the same note for five minutes" example is an extreme one; perhaps such a piece has already been written, and perhaps there's someone out there who thinks it's a masterpiece; it's certainly not inconceivable. But certainly it can be said that among people who enjoy minimalist music, there are many works that might be called masterpieces - and among people who don't enjoy it, there are none. What masterpieces of the past hundred years would have been considered masterpieces by the standards of 1824?



Chordalrock said:


> So let's say there's an intelligent species of extra-terrestrial aliens. Would they care about Beethoven at all? I think that *if they learned to perceive his music properly*, they would probably acknowledge the deep artistry and uniqueness of some of it, even if their subjective associations and subjective emotional reactions meant that they wouldn't be able to enjoy the music properly or at all.


Well, that's the crux of it, isn't it? If we all learned to perceive your extreme single-note minimalism properly, we'd probably acknowledge the deep artistry and uniqueness of that, too.


----------



## science

Chordalrock said:


> I think it would be reasonable to consider only intelligent beings that are capable of perceiving the music more or less as the composer intended. If you are perceiving Beethoven as "noise that doesn't make sense", then you aren't really perceiving it competently.
> 
> So let's say there's an intelligent species of extra-terrestrial aliens. Would they care about Beethoven at all? I think that if they learned to perceive his music properly, they would probably acknowledge the deep artistry and uniqueness of some of it, even if their subjective associations and subjective emotional reactions meant that they wouldn't be able to enjoy the music properly or at all. More likely, they would be able to enjoy some of it about as much as you or me - because the form matters - but perhaps instead of hearing something as melancholy or dramatic they would hear it as optimistic or violent (even this speculation might be stretching things a bit more towards subjectivism than reality is willing to go - there are no humans, regardless of where they evolved and in what culture they grew up, that perceive melancholy music as joyful or other way around - perhaps because form matters).
> 
> Anyway, perceiving music isn't all about deeply personal mental phenomena, a lot of it is also about grasping musical structure and getting a sensation that's exactly the same on a fundamental level as that of any other experienced and skillful listener. I think this fundamental sensation can have aesthetic value (uniqueness, competence, etc.) irrespective of what it brings to the listener's mind or how it makes them feel.


I think we disagree about how differently intelligent minds might perceive a work of music. When I hear the Buddhist chant at a Korean funeral procession, I can't tell that it's sad music. We also seem to disagree on how important emotion is in music.

(Edit: I would add, is "intelligence" really the issue? Can humans really evaluate how well a particular bird sings? I bet we can figure out how _other birds_ make those judgments, and we can probably learn to analyze the song in ways the birds never would or would only do instinctively [~subconsciously], but we'll never _feel_ it the way the other birds feel it. There's an irreducible subjectivity there that is a separate issue from the intelligence.)

The structure issue is a good one. You can probably show me that a particular Haydn symphony has a very clever structure, but if I don't value cleverness in musical structures, that is never going to matter to me. I think this is one of the main reasons that some people enjoy Haydn more than others.

I don't teach music and I'm not anything like an authority on it, but I have taught classic literature a lot. I tell my students all the time, you don't have to like it, you just have to try to figure out why so many other people have liked it. If you can explain why other people have thought _Hamlet_ is great, if you can show that you can analyze that work or sections of that work about as well as others have, you've done your job as a student, even if you don't like _Hamlet_.

Was I wrong to tell them that? Should I have told them that until they learn to enjoy _Hamlet_, they're not finished? I can't imagine that. But I'll grant you, if they don't understand the work, then their opinion about it isn't worth much. On the other hand, someone might not like it, but have really great insights about it, and that person's opinion is worth a lot.

Turning it to music, I don't think it's the case that any educated listener of our time is going to be able to achieve "a sensation that's exactly the same on a fundamental level" of an educated listener of Palestrina's time. Of course we can learn about the structures and values that listeners of Palestrina's time had, and we can learn to analyze it in ways very similar to those an educated listener of Palestrina's time would have. But we're not going to feel it in the same way, because our minds have been conditioned by different inputs. We've never know how hearing the peasant songs or street vendor chants that Palestrina would have heard would affect our perception of music any more than he would understand how growing up surrounded by rock, hip hop, advertising jingles, and supermarket muzak would affect his perception.

So again, I bring us back to this analysis/perception (fact/value) distinction. It's a fact that the music does X, Y, and Z. How that feels to a listener depends on what sort of mind that listener has, not only what DNA has shaped it but what experiences have shaped it.

I think that behind this discussion, quite a few things that you regard as "perception" or "sensation" I regard as more objective facts. For example, whether a work is unique in some way is the kind of thing that we can agree on through empiricism. (If you say something like, "Most masses of the mid-16th century didn't do X, Y, and Z" then a sufficiently educated person will either point you to dozens of masses that do X, Y, and Z, or will agree with you. So its uniqueness or lack thereof with regard to X, Y, and Z is an empirical fact. The same would go for all kinds of things, from innovation to influence to how well a particular performance embodied the values of a certain tradition.) A less educated person might not perceive the uniqueness (or other objective aspect) of a work. But, this is the thing we just can't get around: two equally well educated people might disagree about whether its uniqueness is _good_ or not. There is just so much variety among the most highly educated people in the world.


----------



## science

Nereffid said:


> But I nevertheless believe in the idea of shared standards - widely-agreed ideas about what's "good". So by the current standards of Western classical music, there can be wide agreement that Beethoven's 9th is indeed a masterpiece.


This is a great point. I definitely don't want to deny that such widely-shared standards exist. It's just that I consider that a matter of intersubjectivity (the result of having similar minds shaped by similar experiences, including education) rather than actual objectivity.

I just don't know how anything can be objective unless it's either mathematical (logical) or empirical. That's not to deny that there are true mathematical sentences that can never be proven, or that there are objects in the universe that we'll never be able to observe. I just don't know any reason to think that aesthetic values are that kind of thing, rather than results of the interaction between minds of a certain sort and the world they perceive.


----------



## science

In the world that I see, I see that some people have all kinds of insights into recording technology and electrical musical instruments. Because of what these people have learned to listen for, they perceive excellence in certain electronic music that other people just don't hear. They don't enjoy traditional western classical music, Indian classical music, or traditional jazz as much, however: is it because they're less intelligent than people who enjoy those traditions, or because they have different values as a result of their background? 

Other people have all kinds of insights into jazz. Because of what these people have learned to listen for, they perceive excellence in certain jazz performances that other people just don't hear. They don't enjoy traditional western classical music, Indian classical music, or electronic music as much, however: is it because they're less intelligent than people who enjoy those traditions, or because they have different values as a result of their background? 

Other people have all kinds of insights into Indian classical music. Because of what these people have learned to listen for, they perceive excellence in certain performances of that tradition that other people just don't hear. They don't enjoy traditional western classical music, jazz, or electronic music as much, however: is it because they're less intelligent than people who enjoy those traditions, or because they have different values as a result of their background? 

This could be multiplied with more and more examples: Korean classical music, heavy metal, qawwali, gamelan, Mongolian throat singing, and on and on and on. Either one particular tradition is simply superior, and the people who produce and enjoy it are superior to the people who produce and enjoy other traditions, or there are approximately equal people all over the world who happen to have different traditions and thus different values.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

science said:


> Either one particular tradition is simply superior, and the people who produce and enjoy it are superior to the people who produce and enjoy other traditions, or there are approximately equal people all over the world who happen to have different traditions and thus different values.


This is a dichotomous argument - either 'x' is right or 'y' is right - but there are other possible ways of seeing the topic.

It is possible that there are *some* traditions that are 'superior' and in addition, there are people with different levels of expertise who also happen to have different tastes and preferences.

It is possible that there are many other ways of seeing the point you make about electronic music/jazz/Indian classical etc etc


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## science

Headphone Hermit said:


> This is a dichotomous argument - either 'x' is right or 'y' is right - but there are other possible ways of seeing the topic.
> 
> It is possible that there are *some* traditions that are 'superior' and in addition, there are people with different levels of expertise who also happen to have different tastes and preferences.
> 
> It is possible that there are many other ways of seeing the point you make about electronic music/jazz/Indian classical etc etc


That's a very good point. Adjusting for a level of added complexity, the question remains: out of all of the ways that people have of evaluating the music they hear, how do we know which people and ways are correct and which are wrong? Which are better and which are worse? How do we know?


----------



## Blancrocher

science said:


> That's a very good point. Adjusting for a level of added complexity, the question remains: out of all of the ways that people have of evaluating the music they hear, how do we know which people and ways are correct and which are wrong? Which are better and which are worse? How do we know?


There are plenty of ways that I employ that others may want to consider. I occasionally read program notes, articles, books, and TC posts to get a sense of some of the interesting things going on in a composition. I also seek out talented performers who have devoted considerable portions of their lives to learning to play them well, and cds that preserve performances in the best sound possible. Most importantly, I listen to music constantly. With repeated listening I get increased confidence in the superiority of certain works and recordings.

This is just the general method, of course--I wouldn't like to go into detail lest the conversation became contentious and heated.


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## Fugue Meister

Blancrocher said:


> There are plenty of ways that I employ that others may want to consider. I occasionally read program notes, articles, books, and TC posts to get a sense of some of the interesting things going on in a composition. I also seek out talented performers who have devoted considerable portions of their lives to learning to play them well, and cds that preserve performances in the best sound possible. Most importantly, I listen to music constantly. With repeated listening I get increased confidence in the superiority of certain works and recordings.
> 
> This is just the general method, of course--I wouldn't like to go into detail lest the conversation became contentious and heated.


Too late by far.. Although at this point both sides of the argument are droning into one spectacular mess, I'm sure that's why many contributors left the conversation pages ago.


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## science

Blancrocher said:


> There are plenty of ways that I employ that others may want to consider. I occasionally read program notes, articles, books, and TC posts to get a sense of some of the interesting things going on in a composition. I also seek out talented performers who have devoted considerable portions of their lives to learning to play them well, and cds that preserve performances in the best sound possible. Most importantly, I listen to music constantly. With repeated listening I get increased confidence in the superiority of certain works and recordings.
> 
> This is just the general method, of course--I wouldn't like to go into detail lest the conversation became contentious and heated.


What do you get from those things? I'm pretty sure you get a lot of things that with careful attention we could parse into facts or opinions. With regard to facts, you can only confirm or disconfirm what you read; with regard to opinions, you are (logically speaking at least) free to agree or disagree according to your own judgment at any particular time.

Well, that's what I think and what most people in my culture at this time seem to believe. However, if we're wrong, as some people here have been maintaining, then some people's opinions are objectively better than other people's opinions. The question I have is, how would that work? How can we know whose opinions are objectively better?


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## Blancrocher

Fugue Meister said:


> Too late by far.


Alas, it's really too bad. This often happens in conversations about modern art/music, I believe.


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## science

Blancrocher said:


> Alas, it's really too bad. This often happens in conversations about modern art/music, I believe.


On talkclassical much more than in the real world.


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## Blancrocher

science said:


> On talkclassical much more than in the real world.


To reply to both this and--in a limited and somewhat circuitous way--to your previous post, I would suggest that TalkClassical _is_ part of the real world, though like any other part of the world it has its own conventions and possibilities.

One of the things I like about modern art--including "conceptual" art and installations--is that it can give you a different sense of the spaces, institutions, and roles we inhabit, whether in person or "virtually." I recently attended an installation at a museum in which the artist had distributed numerous copies his recently published book--that were only available in that and other museum spaces around the world. You could go into this specially constructed room--which incorporated interesting sounds and "props" I won't elaborate on--in the museum and sit down and read the book silently with a restricted number of other people who had wandered in. The space suggested interesting things about the publishing business and the functions of the museum--and it was fun to gradually figure out what the whole thing was about after coming into the room unawares. It's not for everyone but I liked it. Is it better than Rembrandt? No--not for me. But it was a pleasant experience I'm glad I had--once.

A difficulty about discussing artworks or music compositions is that they're all different (if they're any good :lol. It makes me wonder why so much of this conversation is handled in general terms.


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## Chordalrock

science said:


> I think we disagree about how differently intelligent minds might perceive a work of music. When I hear the Buddhist chant at a Korean funeral procession, I can't tell that it's sad music. We also seem to disagree on how important emotion is in music.


Is the Buddhist chant supposed to sound sad? Even if it is, there can be a difference between learning to associate something with sadness and between a passage expressing clearly felt melancholy.

Re emotion, I don't need emotion to admire a piece of music or to enjoy it aesthetically (or to think of it as a masterpiece). This is just pure fact, if I am any authority on my inner states.



science said:


> The structure issue is a good one. You can probably show me that a particular Haydn symphony has a very clever structure, but if I don't value cleverness in musical structures, that is never going to matter to me. I think this is one of the main reasons that some people enjoy Haydn more than others.


Right, but cleverness can amuse or impress, while a poorly constructed mess in the same Haydn idiom would need some redeeming qualities to do so (such as stunning material). And let's say it clearly has no redeeming qualities, with extremely banal musical material and a sort of simple-minded motivic development combined with passages of chaotic major-scale music. If you can't imagine anybody admiring such music or even liking it, you may not just be imagining.

But I was actually trying to go further with my proposition: I think a piece of music has a certain shape to it that anyone can learn to perceive (if it's not too complex), and this shape sounds unique or masterful in a deeper sense than can be put into words or explained via musical or historical analysis.



science said:


> I don't teach music and I'm not anything like an authority on it, but I have taught classic literature a lot. I tell my students all the time, you don't have to like it, you just have to try to figure out why so many other people have liked it. If you can explain why other people have thought _Hamlet_ is great, if you can show that you can analyze that work or sections of that work about as well as others have, you've done your job as a student, even if you don't like _Hamlet_.
> 
> Was I wrong to tell them that? Should I have told them that until they learn to enjoy _Hamlet_, they're not finished? I can't imagine that. But I'll grant you, if they don't understand the work, then their opinion about it isn't worth much. On the other hand, someone might not like it, but have really great insights about it, and that person's opinion is worth a lot.


But this isn't about whether you like it, it's about whether you find value in it despite your personal like or dislike of it. It's about taking a bigger picture and saying, "Well, in different circumstances, I might love this stuff the way I would never love a phone book."



science said:


> Turning it to music, I don't think it's the case that any educated listener of our time is going to be able to achieve "a sensation that's exactly the same on a fundamental level" of an educated listener of Palestrina's time.


All I meant was that they would both hear the same notes and group them mentally in the same manner.

I believe there is aesthetic significance to such shapes in music that we can't put into words. I think you can see the effects of such objective value in the way that some composers - Beethoven, Bach - are admired across cultures and eras by almost everyone who cares about sophisticated music. I think this signifies something more than "similar minds having been shaped by similar experiences". First of all, what is a "different mind"? I think the human brain is very good at getting a rather clean, clear view of an object like a piece of music (after some practice). I think you're perhaps assuming that a lot more "subjective stuff" goes on in a brain than actually does, thus minimising the importance of the object itself in creating the kind of sense experience that a person has.



science said:


> I think that behind this discussion, quite a few things that you regard as "perception" or "sensation" I regard as more objective facts. For example, whether a work is unique in some way is the kind of thing that we can agree on through empiricism. (If you say something like, "Most masses of the mid-16th century didn't do X, Y, and Z" then a sufficiently educated person will either point you to dozens of masses that do X, Y, and Z, or will agree with you. So its uniqueness or lack thereof with regard to X, Y, and Z is an empirical fact. The same would go for all kinds of things, from innovation to influence to how well a particular performance embodied the values of a certain tradition.) A less educated person might not perceive the uniqueness (or other objective aspect) of a work. But, this is the thing we just can't get around: two equally well educated people might disagree about whether its uniqueness is _good_ or not. There is just so much variety among the most highly educated people in the world.


See above.


----------



## science

Chordalrock said:


> Is the Buddhist chant supposed to sound sad? Even if it is, there can be a difference between learning to associate something with sadness and between a passage expressing clearly felt melancholy.
> 
> Re emotion, I don't need emotion to admire a piece of music or to enjoy it aesthetically (or to think of it as a masterpiece). This is just pure fact, if I am any authority on my inner states.
> 
> Right, but cleverness can amuse or impress, while a poorly constructed mess in the same Haydn idiom would need some redeeming qualities to do so (such as stunning material). And let's say it clearly has no redeeming qualities, with extremely banal musical material and a sort of simple-minded motivic development combined with passages of chaotic major-scale music. If you can't imagine anybody admiring such music or even liking it, you may not just be imagining.
> 
> But I was actually trying to go further with my proposition: I think a piece of music has a certain shape to it that anyone can learn to perceive (if it's not too complex), and this shape sounds unique or masterful in a deeper sense than can be put into words or explained via musical or historical analysis.
> 
> But this isn't about whether you like it, it's about whether you find value in it despite your personal like or dislike of it. It's about taking a bigger picture and saying, "Well, in different circumstances, I might love this stuff the way I would never love a phone book."
> 
> All I meant was that they would both hear the same notes and group them mentally in the same manner.
> 
> I believe there is aesthetic significance to such shapes in music that we can't put into words. I think you can see the effects of such objective value in the way that some composers - Beethoven, Bach - are admired across cultures and eras by almost everyone who cares about sophisticated music. I think this signifies something more than "similar minds having been shaped by similar experiences". First of all, what is a "different mind"? I think the human brain is very good at getting a rather clean, clear view of an object like a piece of music (after some practice). I think you're perhaps assuming that a lot more "subjective stuff" goes on in a brain than actually does, thus minimising the importance of the object itself in creating the kind of sense experience that a person has.
> 
> See above.


How do you account for people who are experts liking different works of music, or different performance? Is one of them simply more insightful about the musical objects?


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## Blancrocher

There's often more unanimity of opinion about good and bad than one would necessarily expect. For example, I submit for everyone's perusal the "List of music considered the worst."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_considered_the_worst

I'd be interested if anyone disagrees with any of the selections.

*p.s.* I laughed aloud at the allusion to "an opera singer rapping."


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## Guest

Blancrocher said:


> There's often more unanimity of opinion about good and bad than one would necessarily expect. For example, I submit for everyone's perusal the "List of music considered the worst."
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_considered_the_worst
> 
> I'd be interested if anyone disagrees with any of the selections.
> 
> *p.s.* I laughed aloud at the allusion to "an opera singer rapping."


"We Built This City" appears on my workplace's corporate radio playlist, which means it's VERY popular.


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## Blancrocher

nathanb said:


> "We Built This City" appears on my workplace's corporate radio playlist, which means it's VERY popular.







Currently 46,626 thumbs up and 1,937 down.


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## Harold in Columbia

Fugue Meister said:


> Although at this point both sides of the argument are droning into one spectacular mess, I'm sure that's why many contributors left the conversation pages ago.


You've got it all wrong. We're just performing a tribute to show how much we all love La Monte Young.


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## Blancrocher

Harold in Columbia said:


> You've got it all wrong. We're just performing a tribute to show how much we all love La Monte Young.


Everyone who's sticking it out in this thread to this point has my respect and admiration.






Should we be discussing Hollywood cinema in a thread about artistic decline, btw?


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## DeepR

ArtMusic said:


> And there is of course nothing wrong in the collective opinion about what is good that is consistent *over time*. This is essentially the definition of "canon" or "classical" that has been accepted by history as good.


Yes, a persistent, favorable, collective opinion says a lot about the music, but it doesn't mean that it's objectively, inherently good art as there is no such thing. Aesthetics are subjective by nature. Morality and ethics are also subjective, no matter how true, just or logical something appears to be. "Natural law" versus the laws of nature. One exists only in the minds of man (subjective), the other exists outside, independently from us (objective) and can be tested and proven by scientific method.


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## Guest

DeepR said:


> Yes, a persistent, favorable, collective opinion says a lot about the music, but it doesn't mean that it's objectively, inherently good art as there is no such thing. Aesthetics are subjective by nature. Morality and ethics are also subjective, no matter how true, just or logical something appears to be. "Natural law" versus the laws of nature. One exists only in the minds of man (subjective), the other exists outside, independently from us (objective) and can be tested and proven by scientific method.


Apparently, if I told one of our members to jump off a bridge, they wouldn't do it... but if a number of people told said member over a number of years to jump off a bridge, they'd be all for it


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## Harold in Columbia

Well, obviously. There's probably something valuable down there.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Warhol, Howl, Led Zeppelin, and Takemitsu aren't Postmodern. The Simpsons and The Big Lebowski are well and good - better than any of the last four things - but not that good. The iPod is a craft object. The Zubizuri Bridge sucks. Garcia Marquez sucks and is also not Postmodern.

Do you actually have so much as a slight inkling as to just what Post-Modernism is with regard to the Arts? This post makes me doubt. Warhol most certainly was Post-Modern. Pop Art by most measures is seen as the real divide between Modernism and Post-Modernism. A rejection of Modernism's dictum to "Make it New!" An art rooted in popular culture. Appropriation of imagery. Post-Modern Irony? Warhol, like him or hate him, was one of the key figures in the development of Post-Modern Art. It is impossible to imagine Koons, Hirst and many of the other current Post-Modern "art stars" without Warhol.

As for Gabriel Garcia Marquez... he is considered in the literary world at least as central to Post-Modernism as Warhol. Along with Borges, Cortazar, Alejo Carpentier, Vargas Llosa, Italo Calvino, Saramago, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, and several others he is one of the leading figures of Post-Modern literature and one of the finest writers of the last 50-75 years.


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## Harold in Columbia

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Pop Art by most measures is seen as the real divide between Modernism and Post-Modernism.


This is deftly hedged, but still basically an admission that Pop Art isn't exactly Postmodern after all.



> An art rooted in popular culture.


Art rooted in popular culture is popular culture. Warhol is high art commenting on (and subsisting on) popular culture.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> Warhol, like him or hate him, was one of the key figures in the development of Post-Modern Art.


And Goethe and Beethoven were key figures in the development of Romanticism. Doesn't make them Romantics. (Or at least it doesn't make their status as such a settled question.)



StlukesguildOhio said:


> As for Gabriel Garcia Marquez... he is considered in the literary world at least as central to Post-Modernism as Warhol.


Yeah, but the literary world is kind of dumb, hence hazy, for example, on exactly how, if _100 Years of Solitude_ is Postmodern, Borges isn't.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> Along with Borges... he is one of the leading figures of Post-Modern literature


Ha - I didn't see this part until I wrote that last sentence! If Borges is Postmodern, then when is Modernism supposed to have happened?

What's happening here, of course, is that Postmodern art has so few distinguishing characteristics that critics attempting to define it end up mentioning a lot of things that are actually already fully present in Modernism - irony, eclecticism - and then are fooled by their own definition into identifying as Postmodern things that aren't.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Geeze, 1945? The poor Modernists only got started in about 1910 - you've got to leave them with something!

Ummm... wrong. _Les Demoiselles d'Avignon_... perhaps the central painting of High Modernism... dates from 1907.










Fauvism... also part of High Modernism... dates from 3 or 4 years prior.

Edvard Munch's _Scream_... most certainly a Modernist work... dates from 1893:










Impressionism... especially Manet's _Olympia_ and _Le dejeuner sur l'herbe_ (1863)...










... if not Courbet's _Studio_ (1855)...










... are considered within the realm of Art History as the starting points of Modernism.

Some would even argue that the key moment was with the development of the photograph (1826/7), although the photograph wouldn't become a really influential medium for another couple of decades.

As Science suggested with regard to literature, there is no clear starting point at which one historical movement can be seen as having come to a complete halt replaced by the subsequent era. Major elements and aspects of the Renaissance continued into the 1500s and 1600s... after the developments of Mannerism and the Baroque. There are artists active during the peak of Mannerism and even the Baroque whose works are really examples of late Renaissance. Today there are still artists whose works are really Modernist in style and philosophy. Hell, there are even artists whose work and thinking is locked within the pre-Modernist realm of Late/Post-Romanticism.

The development or progress of the Arts has always involved debate... and heated... even violent disagreements. Within this dispute, Reactionaries have almost always been irrelevant.


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## Blancrocher

Harold in Columbia said:


> What's happening here, of course, is that Postmodern art has so few distinguishing characteristics that critics attempting to define it end up mentioning a lot of things that are actually already fully present in Modernism - irony, eclecticism - and then are fooled by their own definition into identifying as Postmodern things that aren't.


Postmodernism seems particularly difficult to define. According to Wikipedia:



> Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, tends to resist definition or classification as a "movement". Indeed, the convergence of postmodern literature with various modes of critical theory, particularly reader-response and deconstructionist approaches, and the subversions of the implicit contract between author, text and reader by which its works are often characterised, have led to pre-modern fictions such as Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605,1615) and Laurence Sterne's eighteenth-century satire Tristram Shandy being retrospectively considered by some as early examples of postmodern literature.[2][3]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature

I can live with that, though. For my own part I don't expect that much from classifications and labels--they just help me organize information in my rapidly slowing mind.

By the way--what is El Greco? Expressionist or postmodern?


----------



## Harold in Columbia

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Geeze, 1945? The poor Modernists only got started in about 1910 - you've got to leave them with something!
> 
> Ummm... wrong. _Les Demoiselles d'Avignon_... perhaps the central painting of High Modernism... dates from 1907.


Ummm... 1907 is "about 1910." The choice of that particular year was an allusion to Virgina Woolf, by the way.

Your use of "High Modernism" is simply incorrect. High Modernism is the '50s and '60s.

Picasso's _The Young Women of Avignon_ may be the central painting of plain and simple Modernism, just as Stravinsky's _Rite of Spring_ may be the central composition, but in both cases, this is awkward, because it's not entirely clear that Picasso's African period and Stravinsky's Nationalist period even _count_ as strictly Modernist - the same problem we have with Beethoven's _Eroica_ symphony. Picasso's _Girl with a Mandolin_ and Stravinsky's octet for winds are unambiguously Modernist.

The same ambiguity applies to Fauvism and Expressionism, and Munch's _Scream_ isn't even clearly an example of Expressionism.

Nobody classifies Impressionism as Modernism.

Reactionaries are never irrelevant. Many (if not most) (if not all) innovations in the arts are as much reactionary as they are progressive, and some of the most important Modernists - T. S. Eliot, Stravinsky in his Neoclassical period - were _avowedly_ reactionary.

And "reactionary" is a dangerous word to use as a pejorative if you think our Postmodern brave new world is just hunky dory. Remember, you're not the insurgency any more. You're the establishment now. Today's conservative is tomorrow's reactionary, and what today's reactionary will turn out to be tomorrow is anybody's guess.


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## fluteman

Forgive me for not wading through this entire thread, but I nearly always have a question about these social/cultural critics who want to tell us what is good and what is bad: Who asked them? I didn't. And without wanting to be rude, I would ask the original poster the same question. Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps is now over a century old. Many thought it ugly and non-musical when it was first performed, just as many did on first hearing Tchaikovsky's violin concerto and Beethoven's fifth symphony. But Le sacre is embedded in our culture now. John Williams used it when he wrote the famous Theme in Jaws. Philip Glass and Arvo Part have also had a significant presence on television and in movies. True, great art in every era faithfully, even rigorously, adheres to specific rules and principles. But the greatest artists are developing those rules and principles themselves, often building on the past in an imaginative way but not prisoners to it. Their work and principles, when successful in communicating with us, eventually become part of the cultural context through which we see nearly everything. Above all, these principles are not set by some critic or the original poster, and certainly not by some pompous a$$ self-appointed conservative watchdog. The best art endures, the rest disappears, without their "help".


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## StlukesguildOhio

_SLG (quoted)- Pop Art by most measures is seen as the real divide between Modernism and Post-Modernism._

This is deftly hedged, but still basically an admission that Pop Art isn't exactly Postmodern after all.

There is no hedging involved. Caravaggio is commonly seen as the divide between Mannerism and the Late Renaissance and the Baroque. Caravaggio is most certainly a Baroque artist. Pop Art is most certainly Post-Modern. It involved a rejection... or outright ignorance... of all the central values of Modernism.

_An art rooted in popular culture._

Art rooted in popular culture is popular culture. Warhol is high art commenting on (and subsisting on) popular culture.

An Art rooted in popular culture is by no means inherently part of Popular Culture. In most instances it is far more sophisticated and critical of Popular Culture. Even if it were part of Popular Culture, what you fail to grasp is that the line between "High" and "Low" or Popular/Populist culture has been increasingly blurred over the last 100 years or more to such an extent that the divide has become quite meaningless.

_Warhol, like him or hate him, was one of the key figures in the development of Post-Modern Art._

And Goethe and Beethoven were key figures in the development of Romanticism. Doesn't make them Romantics. (Or at least it doesn't make their status as such a settled question.)

Labels such as "Romanticist" or "Classicist/Neo-Classicist" are not something tied to universally agreed upon cut-off dates. The Goethe who wrote _Werther_ was an early Romantic. Other works... many of the poems following his Italian Journey... are more "classical"

Warhol and Pop Art, however, are firmly set in opposition to most of the key values of Modernism.

_As for Gabriel Garcia Marquez... he is considered in the literary world at least as central to Post-Modernism as Warhol._

Yeah, but the literary world is kind of dumb, hence hazy, for example, on exactly how, if 100 Years of Solitude is Postmodern, Borges isn't.

Most critical assessments of Borges would argue that he is every bit as much of a Post-Modernist.

_Along with Borges... he is one of the leading figures of Post-Modern literature_

Ha - I didn't see this part until I wrote that last sentence! If Borges is Postmodern, then when is Modernism supposed to have happened?

You continually want some clean break where one artistic direction came to an end to be replaced by another. Things don't work that way. We still have reactionaries clinging onto Romanticism or even the then-reactionary manner of 19th century Academicism... to say nothing of Modernism. Duchamp's works... a good many of them... are far more Post-Modern than Modern.

J.L. Borges' _The Garden of Forking Paths_ dates from 1941 and Ficciones from 1944 (and first translated into English in 1962). The 1940s are a major divide with regard to Modernism for obvious reasons. Eduardo Paolozzi's nascent "Pop" paintings date c. the mid-1940s:










By the mid-1950s the British critic, Lawrence Alloway was already using the term "Pop Art" in spite of the fact that Abstract Expressionism... a Late-Modern movement... was then at its peak, and American Pop Artists such as Jaspar Johns and Robert Rauschenberg... to say nothing of Warhol... were still some years away.

What's happening here, of course, is that Postmodern art has so few distinguishing characteristics that critics attempting to define it end up mentioning a lot of things that are actually already fully present in Modernism - irony, eclecticism - and then are fooled by their own definition into identifying as Postmodern things that aren't.

Can you offer a clear definition of the distinguishing characteristics of Modernism that will embrace all the Art embraced by that movement?


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## Woodduck

Science:

_Not only this thread but quite a few other things I've read here lately have led me to suspect that modern art seems to many people to suck (or to be sewage or whatever) because basically they've got a romantic worldview. Art is supposed to them to be beautiful, music is supposed to be emotional, "good taste" is objective and classy, western tradition is superior to the rest of the world, the lower orders should know their place and respect the "high art" of their betters. 
_
Woodduck:

_What is a "romantic worldview"? How many people think that modern art as such sucks or is sewage or whatever? What do these hypothetical people mean by "beautiful"? By "emotional"? By "objective"? What do you mean by them? How do you know what they - these suspected individuals - think about the culture of the rest of the world? Is the concept of "lower orders" their concept, or are you making that up and attributing it to them? Who has asked whom to "know their place"? What "attitude" don't you see much out in the world? The attitude you've just failed to define clearly and demonstrate the existence of? And what "world" are you talking about? Yours? Everyone's? Does living on the same planet mean we inhabit the same "world"?_

Science:

_I really don't believe that getting into long debates about the definitions of those terms is going to significantly increase your understanding of my points there. I'm pretty sure you understand them as well as I do, but because you don't like them you'd prefer to bog the conversation down in minutiae.

The main point continues to be obvious: although we live in a postmodern world, much of the discussion on talkclassical continues to advocate romantic and modernist values. 
_

OK. You don't want to have to explain that "romantic worldview" you attribute to unnamed other members. But haven't you waxed indignant when people have offered judgments of art, because you think that judging art _implicitly_ judges people who like that particular art? How then can you _explicitly_ judge "many" other people? Those who judge art are doing just that: judging _art_. They may have no opinion whatever of the people who, for whatever reason, enjoy it (and most likely they enjoy a wide range of art themselves, some of which they judge inferior, and do not despise themselves when they feel like listening to Jane's Addiction occasionally rather than Bach, while having no illusion that the two are on the same artistic plane). But with comments like those above, you are judging _people_ - quite directly - and even manufacturing a category in which to place them. I'm not sure how anyone else would feel about being so pigeonholed, but I can assure you that I don't find it a good fit.

If you don't feel you need to clarify or justify your attributions, try this: 1.) There is no such thing as a "romantic worldview." Neither is there any such thing as a single "modernist" position on anything. These are gauzy buzzwords which no one in a serious discussion of art would accept without specificity, context, or explanation. "Romantic worldview" is not explained by such other vague terms as "beautiful" or "emotional." 2.) People who want art to be "beautiful" may range from my Aunt Edna in North Carolina who knows nothing about art but loves her Kincaide landscapes and Mantovani LPs to my friend John in Boston, a lifelong appreciator of the art and music of many eras and cultures, who has made the effort to understand what makes a work of art well-designed, well-executed, and humanly significant - i.e., beautiful. There's nothing "romantic" about self-cultivation and the refinement of judgment that results from it. 3.) "Emotional" is a highly subjective attribution; when people say music is emotional they usually mean that it moves them, and since most people in the world want music to move them (and not merely give their brain something to to do, like a crossword puzzle), we can hardly attribute the desire to find music "emotional" to a "romantic worldview." It seems more like a worldwide worldview. 4.) To say that "good taste" is "objective" is simply tautological; if we don't think there's any objective value to our tastes, we don't call them "good." To say that it's "classy" depends on one's sense of "class"; no particular class has a monopoly on any sort of taste. None of this has anything to do with being "romantic." 5.) Romanticism, no matter how defined, implies nothing about the superiority of Western culture to other cultures. Assuming the superiority of "us" over "them" is a primal human tendency and belongs to no particular culture or era. 6.) Ideas about "lower orders knowing their place" long predate any culture or movement known as "romantic" and have nothing to do with art at all. Notions of "high art" date back at least to the Renaissance, when the cultures of Greece and Rome were held up as models for educated people to emulate. Class -whether economic, political, or cultural - has existed wherever accumulations of wealth have made it possible. Again, not an invention of "romanticism." I certainly think it's rash to make loose attributions of "classism" to people who merely believe that the art of Bach is more worthy of admiration than that of Jane's Addiction.

It is not a sign of a sentimental, xenophobic, and classist "worldview" to say that the $200,000, twenty-foot tall unidentified flightless object made of rusty sheet metal and occupying the rotunda of city hall is an ugly piece of junk and a gross waste of taxpayers' money. Apparently, however, it's far more offensive in your mind to say that than to attribute to the person who says it such made-up identities as those dissected above.

That in itself indicates a very odd system of values - but, let us hope, not one for which you claim any objective validity.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Your use of "High Modernism" is simply incorrect. High Modernism is the '50s and '60s.

I'm sorry, but if you want to start debating with me concerning Art History, you are just going to end... badly. This may sound arrogant, but it is based in years of experience... as a working artist, as a student of Art History... as a teacher of Art and Art History... as someone who has worked with/for Art Historians.

Just as the term "High Renaissance" refers to that peak period most representative of the Renaissance (Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo) and not to the later-work when the Renaissance (post-Mannerism) was slipping into decadence (and decline), the same is applied to the term "Modernism". Modernism began to slip into decline with the rise of fascism and ultimately WWII. Abstract Expressionism (c. 1940s & 1950s) was a late Modernist movement... and something of the last hurrah. The Second Generation Abstract Expressionists and Color Field Painters of the 1960s into the 1970s were the true decadence of the movement. No one speaks of the 1950s... let alone the 1960s... as High Modernism or the Peak of Modernism. The 1960s brought Pop Art and subsequent photo-based Super-Realism/Hyper-Realism and the New Realism which were something Post-Modern altogether.

Picasso's The Young Women of Avignon may be the central painting of plain and simple Modernism, just as Stravinsky's Rite of Spring may be the central composition, but in both cases, this is awkward, because it's not entirely clear that Picasso's African period and Stravinsky's Nationalist period even count as strictly Modernist - the same problem we have with Beethoven's Eroica symphony. Picasso's Girl with a Mandolin and Stravinsky's octet for winds are unambiguously Modernist.

That's just sheer nonsense. Picasso's _Le Demoisselles d'Avignon_ was absolutely Modernist. It shocked even a Modernist like Matisse. Where it differs from Analytical Cubism is that it really is an Expressionist as opposed to a Classical work. It points toward Picasso's later Expressionist/Synthetic Cubist works such as _Guernica._ Working with the Classicist, Braque, Picasso fell under his sway... and that of Cezanne.

Le Demoisselle's d'Avignon, by the way, owes as much, if not more, to El Greco, Cezanne, Archaic Greek sculpture, and Medieval/Romanesque Spanish painting as it does to the impact of African sculpture.

The same ambiguity applies to Fauvism and Expressionism, and Munch's Scream isn't even clearly an example of Expressionism.

Now you are just making things up to suit your argument. Its like Ted Cruz.

Nobody classifies Impressionism as Modernism.

Yeah. 

_Reactionaries are never irrelevant. Many (if not most) (if not all) innovations in the arts are as much reactionary as they are progressive, and some of the most important Modernists - T. S. Eliot, Stravinsky in his Neoclassical period - were avowedly reactionary._

And "reactionary" is a dangerous word to use as a pejorative if you think our Postmodern brave new world is just hunky dory. Remember, you're not the insurgency any more. You're the establishment now. Today's conservative is tomorrow's reactionary, and what today's reactionary will turn out to be tomorrow is anybody's guess.

As an artist I give little thought to how critics and art historians might define me, yet I have little in common with the current art of the establishment or academia. What I do recognize is that the so-called "Art World" has grown increasingly irrelevant... outside the circle of extremely wealthy investors. What we see now is a collection of smaller "art worlds" each with their own values and standards... any one of which is equally capable of producing something of real lasting merit.


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## Blancrocher

Woodduck said:


> It is not a sign of a sentimental, xenophobic, and classist "worldview" to say that the $200,000, twenty-foot tall unidentified flightless object made of rusty sheet metal and occupying the rotunda of city hall is an ugly piece of junk and a gross waste of taxpayers' money.


This is neither here nor there, but I'm always regretful when I learn about how much an art object cost to purchase. I do my best not to find out.


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## Harold in Columbia

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Pop Art is most certainly Post-Modern. It involved a rejection... or outright ignorance... of all the central values of Modernism.


No it didn't. I notice you've prudently not stated what those values are.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> what you fail to grasp is that the line between "High" and "Low" or Popular/Populist culture has been increasingly blurred over the last 100 years or more to such an extent that the divide has become quite meaningless.


That's what we want to be true, not what is.

Actually the line is unusually rigid today. Mozart and Dickens were simultaneously high and popular. Today, we have popular artists who take ideas from high artists or comment on high art with their own work, and vise versa, but with the possible exception of film, we don't have anybody who really belongs to both worlds.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> You continually want some clean break where one artistic direction came to an end to be replaced by another.


Look who's talking. (_"It involved a rejection... or outright ignorance... of all the central values of Modernism."_)



StlukesguildOhio said:


> Duchamp's works... a good many of them... are far more Post-Modern than Modern.


I'm saying you've confused Modernism and Postmodernism, and you're saying Dada is Postmodern. You're making my case for me.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> Can you offer a clear definition of the distinguishing characteristics of Modernism that will embrace all the Art embraced by that movement?


Sure, insofar as that's possible for any movement. Modernism is the rejection of received tradition in favor of permanent and universal principles, and may manifest as an attempt to reinvent everything from first principles, or as ironic parody, where irony is a means for attaining (or trying to attain) objective detachment.


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## Harold in Columbia

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Your use of "High Modernism" is simply incorrect. High Modernism is the '50s and '60s.
> 
> I'm sorry, but if you want to start debating with me concerning Art History, you are just going to end... badly. This may sound arrogant, but it is based in years of experience... as a working artist, as a student of Art History... as a teacher of Art and Art History... as someone who has worked with/for Art Historians... No one speaks of the 1950s... let alone the 1960s... as High Modernism...


For Christ's sake, just Google "High Modernism" already: https://www.google.com/search?q=high+modernism



StlukesguildOhio said:


> Where it [Picasso's _Young Women of Avignon_] differs from Analytical Cubism is that it really is an *Expressionist *as opposed to a Classical work. [Boldface mine. -H]


This is either eccentric or a stab in the dark.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> Le Demoisselle's d'Avignon, by the way, owes as much, if not more, to El Greco, Cezanne, Archaic Greek sculpture, and Medieval/Romanesque Spanish painting as it does to the impact of African sculpture.


_The Young Women of Avignon_ doesn't owe El Greco, it's simply a parody of him. Cezanne, of course.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> What we see now is a collection of smaller "art worlds" each with their own values and standards... any one of which is equally capable of producing something of real lasting merit.


Yes, that's the current established opinion. Pay close attention, otherwise you might miss when a new establishment starts replacing you, and you'll be a reactionary without knowing it.


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## PJaye

I don’t want to have anything to do with a post-modernist view. I don’t believe we live in a post-modernist society. People have free minds and think as they choose, as they always have, not from an academic social construct of a given set of ideas, but from a combination of experiences, references, perspectives and such that have personal significance to them as an utterly unique individual. The idea of Post-modernism to me seems at best a very generalized descriptive term for some ideas and concepts that have been popular with some people. Besides, I don’t think many Post-modernist ideas are anything new whatsoever, such as personally chosen aesthetic values. People have always thought in those terms. Someone just happened to have coined the term post-modernism and included it as part of it. 
I find categorizing common experiences as being somehow representative of these constructed worldviews strange as others here have. Having a strong emotional emphasis, or reaction to something was and is a personal human experience that need not have any relation to romanticism. Finally, It seems post-modernism can suggest a kind of value judgement in itself as being more perceptive or advanced than the previous systems of thought that came before it. Life is a tapestry of ideas. Time is illusory. 500 years ago is really no more the past than yesterday. Take what you need from where you need, Ideas can be new or renewable and always worth revisiting. Just musing out loud a bit there. I’ll stop that now.


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## KenOC

PJaye said:


> ...Just musing out loud a bit there. I'll stop that now.


A good post, I think. Hey, it's music! All this theorization and hyper-intellectual categorization is quite beside the point. People will like it or they won't. Always been that way, always will.


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## Piwikiwi

PJaye said:


> I don't want to have anything to do with a post-modernist view. I don't believe we live in a post-modernist society. People have free minds and think as they choose, as they always have, not from an academic social construct of a given set of ideas, but from a combination of experiences, references, perspectives and such that have personal significance to them as an utterly unique individual. The idea of Post-modernism to me seems at best a very generalized descriptive term for some ideas and concepts that have been popular with some people. Besides, I don't think many Post-modernist ideas are anything new whatsoever, such as personally chosen aesthetic values. People have always thought in those terms. Someone just happened to have coined the term post-modernism and included it as part of it.
> I find categorizing common experiences as being somehow representative of these constructed worldviews strange as others here have. Having a strong emotional emphasis, or reaction to something was and is a personal human experience that need not have any relation to romanticism. Finally, It seems post-modernism can suggest a kind of value judgement in itself as being more perceptive or advanced than the previous systems of thought that came before it. Life is a tapestry of ideas. Time is illusory. 500 years ago is really no more the past than yesterday. Take what you need from where you need, Ideas can be new or renewable and always worth revisiting. Just musing out loud a bit there. I'll stop that now.


The fact that there is no single accepted style is postmodernist in itself. The pluralism of society and the mixing of low brow and high brow art are distinctly postmodern.


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## Piwikiwi

Harold in Columbia said:


> Ha - I didn't see this part until I wrote that last sentence! If Borges is Postmodern, then when is Modernism supposed to have happened?


1900-1930? With Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, William Faulkner?


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## Adam Weber

Piwikiwi said:


> 1900-1930? With Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, William Faulkner?


Maybe even 1890, with Hamsun's "Hunger."


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## dgee

Woodduck said:


> Science:
> 
> _Not only this thread but quite a few other things I've read here lately have led me to suspect that modern art seems to many people to suck (or to be sewage or whatever) because basically they've got a romantic worldview. Art is supposed to them to be beautiful, music is supposed to be emotional, "good taste" is objective and classy, western tradition is superior to the rest of the world, the lower orders should know their place and respect the "high art" of their betters.
> _
> Woodduck:
> 
> _What is a "romantic worldview"? How many people think that modern art as such sucks or is sewage or whatever? What do these hypothetical people mean by "beautiful"? By "emotional"? By "objective"? What do you mean by them? How do you know what they - these suspected individuals - think about the culture of the rest of the world? Is the concept of "lower orders" their concept, or are you making that up and attributing it to them? Who has asked whom to "know their place"? What "attitude" don't you see much out in the world? The attitude you've just failed to define clearly and demonstrate the existence of? And what "world" are you talking about? Yours? Everyone's? Does living on the same planet mean we inhabit the same "world"?_
> 
> Science:
> 
> _I really don't believe that getting into long debates about the definitions of those terms is going to significantly increase your understanding of my points there. I'm pretty sure you understand them as well as I do, but because you don't like them you'd prefer to bog the conversation down in minutiae.
> 
> The main point continues to be obvious: although we live in a postmodern world, much of the discussion on talkclassical continues to advocate romantic and modernist values.
> _
> 
> OK. You don't want to have to explain that "romantic worldview" you attribute to unnamed other members. But haven't you waxed indignant when people have offered judgments of art, because you think that judging art _implicitly_ judges people who like that particular art? How then can you _explicitly_ judge "many" other people? Those who judge art are doing just that: judging _art_. They may have no opinion whatever of the people who, for whatever reason, enjoy it (and most likely they enjoy a wide range of art themselves, some of which they judge inferior, and do not despise themselves when they feel like listening to Jane's Addiction occasionally rather than Bach, while having no illusion that the two are on the same artistic plane). But with comments like those above, you are judging _people_ - quite directly - and even manufacturing a category in which to place them. I'm not sure how anyone else would feel about being so pigeonholed, but I can assure you that I don't find it a good fit.
> 
> If you don't feel you need to clarify or justify your attributions, try this: 1.) There is no such thing as a "romantic worldview." Neither is there any such thing as a single "modernist" position on anything. These are gauzy buzzwords which no one in a serious discussion of art would accept without specificity, context, or explanation. "Romantic worldview" is not explained by such other vague terms as "beautiful" or "emotional." 2.) People who want art to be "beautiful" may range from my Aunt Edna in North Carolina who knows nothing about art but loves her Kincaide landscapes and Mantovani LPs to my friend John in Boston, a lifelong appreciator of the art and music of many eras and cultures, who has made the effort to understand what makes a work of art well-designed, well-executed, and humanly significant - i.e., beautiful. There's nothing "romantic" about self-cultivation and the refinement of judgment that results from it. 3.) "Emotional" is a highly subjective attribution; when people say music is emotional they usually mean that it moves them, and since most people in the world want music to move them (and not merely give their brain something to to do, like a crossword puzzle), we can hardly attribute the desire to find music "emotional" to a "romantic worldview." It seems more like a worldwide worldview. 4.) To say that "good taste" is "objective" is simply tautological; if we don't think there's any objective value to our tastes, we don't call them "good." To say that it's "classy" depends on one's sense of "class"; no particular class has a monopoly on any sort of taste. None of this has anything to do with being "romantic." 5.) Romanticism, no matter how defined, implies nothing about the superiority of Western culture to other cultures. Assuming the superiority of "us" over "them" is a primal human tendency and belongs to no particular culture or era. 6.) Ideas about "lower orders knowing their place" long predate any culture or movement known as "romantic" and have nothing to do with art at all. Notions of "high art" date back at least to the Renaissance, when the cultures of Greece and Rome were held up as models for educated people to emulate. Class -whether economic, political, or cultural - has existed wherever accumulations of wealth have made it possible. Again, not an invention of "romanticism." I certainly think it's rash to make loose attributions of "classism" to people who merely believe that the art of Bach is more worthy of admiration than that of Jane's Addiction.
> 
> It is not a sign of a sentimental, xenophobic, and classist "worldview" to say that the $200,000, twenty-foot tall unidentified flightless object made of rusty sheet metal and occupying the rotunda of city hall is an ugly piece of junk and a gross waste of taxpayers' money. Apparently, however, it's far more offensive in your mind to say that than to attribute to the person who says it such made-up identities as those dissected above.
> 
> That in itself indicates a very odd system of values - but, let us hope, not one for which you claim any objective validity.


Your friend in Boston. Jim, is it? The guy who invested all that time to "understand what makes a work of art well-designed, well-executed, and humanly significant - i.e., beautiful"? Ah, no, sorry - it's _John_. Well, did he work it out? Did he work what is beautiful? I'm worried, with all this talk and what-not, that I've been getting it wrong

He should also tell Aunt Edna - I'm pretty sure, y'know... sheesh, the Kinkade...

So, another thing.

My incredibly sincere and well informed admiration of Stockhausen's early work is worth more than some dilletante opera critic's love of the anvil chorus. Amiright? I've got money on this one...


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## Blancrocher

Adam Weber said:


> Maybe even 1890, with Hamsun's "Hunger."























By the way, the Knut Hamsun Center, designed by Steven Holl & co., seems quite attractive. The interiors look interesting as well.

Though in that scenically beautiful environment you could build a shack and I'd still want to see it--in the summer, anyway :lol:


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## Adam Weber

Blancrocher said:


> View attachment 80819
> View attachment 80820
> View attachment 80821
> 
> 
> By the way, the Knut Hamsun Center, designed by Steven Holl & co., seems quite attractive. The interiors look interesting as well.
> 
> Though in that scenically beautiful environment you could build a shack and I'd still want to see it--in the summer, anyway :lol:


Ja, Norge er et vakkert land.


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## M Palmer

PJaye said:


> I don't want to have anything to do with a post-modernist view. I don't believe we live in a post-modernist society. People have free minds and think as they choose, as they always have, not from an academic social construct of a given set of ideas, but from a combination of experiences, references, perspectives and such that have personal significance to them as an utterly unique individual. The idea of Post-modernism to me seems at best a very generalized descriptive term for some ideas and concepts that have been popular with some people. Besides, I don't think many Post-modernist ideas are anything new whatsoever, such as personally chosen aesthetic values. People have always thought in those terms. Someone just happened to have coined the term post-modernism and included it as part of it.
> I find categorizing common experiences as being somehow representative of these constructed worldviews strange as others here have. Having a strong emotional emphasis, or reaction to something was and is a personal human experience that need not have any relation to romanticism. Finally, It seems post-modernism can suggest a kind of value judgement in itself as being more perceptive or advanced than the previous systems of thought that came before it. Life is a tapestry of ideas. Time is illusory. 500 years ago is really no more the past than yesterday. Take what you need from where you need, Ideas can be new or renewable and always worth revisiting. Just musing out loud a bit there. I'll stop that now.


Sounds pretty darn postmodern to me!


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## Harold in Columbia

Piwikiwi said:


> 1900-1930? With Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, William Faulkner?


Well, first of all, no - the 1930s, '40s, '50s are supposed to be Postmodernist? Yeah, right. (Then again, some people want _Finnegan's Wake_ to be Postmodern.) - but that aside, notice that you're giving your Modernists 30 years and your "Postmodernists" 85 and counting.

At least StlukesguildOhio is consistent, placing _everything_ too early - Duchamp as "Postmodernist," Manet's _Luncheon on the Grass_ as "Modernist."


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## EdwardBast

Blancrocher said:


> View attachment 80819
> View attachment 80820
> View attachment 80821
> 
> 
> By the way, the Knut Hamsun Center, designed by Steven Holl & co., seems quite attractive. The interiors look interesting as well.
> 
> Though in that scenically beautiful environment you could build a shack and I'd still want to see it--in the summer, anyway :lol:


When I look at this architecture, for some reason the opening of Terry Gilliam's Brazil comes to mind, the scene in which a male spokesmodel asks, while indicating the merchandise cluttering the room about him: "Do your ducts look old fashioned?" Do the bathroom stalls overhang on the other side of the building?


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## Blancrocher

EdwardBast said:


> When I look at this architecture, for some reason the opening of Terry Gilliam's Brazil comes to mind, the scene in which a male spokesmodel asks, while indicating the merchandise cluttering the room about him: "Do your ducts look old fashioned?" Do the bathroom stalls overhang on the other side of the building?


lol--I saw that movie recently and had forgotten about that scene. I'm going to use that myself!


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## SixFootScowl

Blancrocher said:


> View attachment 80819
> View attachment 80820
> View attachment 80821
> 
> 
> By the way, the Knut Hamsun Center, designed by Steven Holl & co., seems quite attractive. The interiors look interesting as well.
> 
> Though in that scenically beautiful environment you could build a shack and I'd still want to see it--in the summer, anyway :lol:


I imagine the interior could be quite interesting, but frankly, I find the exterior ugly!


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## Itullian

Blancrocher said:


> View attachment 80819
> View attachment 80820
> View attachment 80821
> 
> 
> By the way, the Knut Hamsun Center, designed by Steven Holl & co., seems quite attractive. The interiors look interesting as well.
> 
> Though in that scenically beautiful environment you could build a shack and I'd still want to see it--in the summer, anyway :lol:


Stark, cold and imposing.........


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## StlukesguildOhio

Pop Art is most certainly Post-Modern. It involved a rejection... or outright ignorance... of all the central values of Modernism.

No it didn't. I notice you've prudently not stated what those values are.

I stated quite clearly some time back that key aspects of Modernism included the drive to "Make it New"... the aim toward the use innovative techniques and visual languages as a means of conveying the experience of living in an era in which technology, industry, and speed were increasingly influential. Modernism from Baudelaire and Impressionism onward dealt with the urban experience rather than the Romantic embrace of Nature... human invention/culture as opposed to Nature.

The Pop Artists... but also any number of the leading Abstract Expressionists including Guston, DeKooning, Pollock, and Diebenkorn turned back to figurative painting... rejecting the notion that Art needed to press ever onward. Pop Art drew increasingly from popular culture vs "high culture". The seriousness and emphasis upon "self-expression" was rejected for wit, irony, and visual games.

Again, no definition of Modernism or Post-Modernism is all-inclusive. There were artists active during the peak of Modernism whose work and artistic philosophies owed more to Romanticism... or pointed the way toward Post-Modernism. Hell, you can't even offer an all-inclusive definition of a smaller sub-movement like Impressionism that will embrace the work of all the artists who worked under that name.

_What you fail to grasp is that the line between "High" and "Low" or Popular/Populist culture has been increasingly blurred over the last 100 years or more to such an extent that the divide has become quite meaningless._

That's what we want to be true, not what is.

Actually the line is unusually rigid today. Mozart and Dickens were simultaneously high and popular.

Were they? How "popular" was Mozart? Was his music known among the wealthy elite and the working classes across Europe during his life time?

With the technologies of mechanical reproduction and mass production and dissemination, popular culture supplanted the dominance of "High" culture.

Today, we have popular artists who take ideas from high artists or comment on high art with their own work, and vise versa, but with the possible exception of film, we don't have anybody who really belongs to both worlds.

This may be true of the traditional visual arts due to the labor-intensive nature of these media which makes these works prohibitively expensive to a mass audience. Still, there are many artists currently working in more accessible media such as print, comic books, CGI, etc... Many artists also build from or even identify with both the so-called "High" and "Low" cultures. The very idea of a High Culture that is inherently superior to that embraced by the masses is pretentious and snobbish.

_You continually want some clean break where one artistic direction came to an end to be replaced by another._

Look who's talking. ("It involved a rejection... or outright ignorance... of all the central values of Modernism.")

Yet Pop Art and the shift away from Modernism was accompanied by those who continued to work in a Modern mindset and manner... and still do.

_Duchamp's works... a good many of them... are far more Post-Modern than Modern._

I'm saying you've confused Modernism and Postmodernism, and you're saying Dada is Postmodern. You're making my case for me.

Duchamp and Dada were largely irrelevant movements in their time. Surrealism was far more influential and productive. Duchamp, however, became something of the patron saint to Post-Modernists. He was a major influence upon Rauschenberg and Johns and the whole Black Mountain School with the emphasis upon Conceptual Art and Performance Art

_Can you offer a clear definition of the distinguishing characteristics of Modernism that will embrace all the Art embraced by that movement?_

Sure, insofar as that's possible for any movement. Modernism is the rejection of received tradition...

Is it? Picasso lived in the museums. The same was true of many other Modernists. The notion that Modernists sought to reject tradition and the art of the past was an idea grossly exaggerated. In many instances Modernists sought to expand the tradition and to embrace traditions long ignored such as those of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Middle-Ages, etc...

... in favor of permanent and universal principles...

This may have been true of those who embraced Formalism... but it was a rather naive and misguided idea.

... and may manifest as an attempt to reinvent everything from first principles, or as ironic parody, where irony is a means for attaining (or trying to attain) objective detachment.

Sounds a lot like a dictionary definition. How much irony and objective detachment is to be found in Guernica, Munch, German Expressionism, Fauvism, Bonnard, Abstract Expressionism, etc...?


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## StlukesguildOhio

For Christ's sake, just Google "High Modernism" already: https://www.google.com/search?q=high+modernism

I'm sorry, but my understanding of Art History is not limited to Wikipedia. Of course a quick perusal of Google will lead you to all sorts of definitions of High Modernism. Commonly the period c. 1910-1933 is spoken of as High Modernism... the period in which the peak and most typical products of Modernism came into being (Picasso and Matisse's most important works, Stravinsky and Richard Strauss, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, etc...

_Where it [Picasso's Young Women of Avignon] differs from Analytical Cubism is that it really is an Expressionist as opposed to a Classical work._

This is either eccentric or a stab in the dark.

And this is based upon your perusal of Wikipedia?

_Le Demoisselle's d'Avignon_, by the way, owes as much, if not more, to El Greco, Cezanne, Archaic Greek sculpture, and Medieval/Romanesque Spanish painting as it does to the impact of African sculpture.

The Young Women of Avignon doesn't owe El Greco, it's simply a parody of him. Cezanne, of course.










In 1901, Picasso's closest friend, with whom he was sharing a loft, committed suicide after proposing to the woman he loved and being laughed at. Picasso was wracked by grief and guilt... as he was having an affair with with the same woman. With Les Demoisseles... Picasso created an image of rage at women as temptresses or femme fatales (a common theme in late 19th/early 20th century art). In this instances the women are prostitutes from a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó (Avinyó Street) in Barcelona.

As an artist with a profound love and understanding of his Spanish artistic predecessors, Picasso set his temptresses in a stormy landscape clearly building upon El Greco's _View of Toledo_:










The painting also built upon Spanish Romanesque paintings...










Picasso would build upon these Medieval works to an even greater extent with Guernica:

Cezanne's _Large Bathers_ was influential upon the overall structure... and possibly even the theme:










The standing figure at the left was built upon archaic Greek koroi sculpture, which the artist would have seen in the Louvre:










Building upon Art History... yet in a fragmented or expressively distorted manner does not inherently mean that an artist is parodying the same.


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## StlukesguildOhio

The fact that there is no single accepted style is postmodernist in itself. The pluralism of society and the mixing of low brow and high brow art are distinctly postmodern.

I was about to suggest the same. I wholly embrace the fact that I can drive in my car... while listening to Bach, Medieval Chant, Bluegrass, Miles Davis, or the Rolling Stones. As an artist I have a greater access to the whole of Art History than the greatest artists of the past through photographic reproductions, books, magazines, the internet... or relatively inexpensive travel. Modernism resulted in a great expansion of artistic possibilities building upon artistic traditions long ignored and as continual push to "Make it New". In our Post-Modern world the artist has a veritable smorgasbord from which to build his or her art.


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## StlukesguildOhio

My incredibly sincere and well informed admiration of Stockhausen's early work is worth more than some dilettante opera critic's love of the anvil chorus.

Worth more...? To whom? And what makes an other's "informed admiration" something that can be dismissed as mere dilettantism as opposed to your own?

Just askin'


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## Woodduck

_Quote Originally Posted by Blancrocher:

By the way, the Knut Hamsun Center, designed by Steven Holl & co., seems quite attractive. The interiors look interesting as well._



EdwardBast said:


> When I look at this architecture, for some reason the opening of Terry Gilliam's Brazil comes to mind, the scene in which a male spokesmodel asks, while indicating the merchandise cluttering the room about him: "Do your ducts look old fashioned?" *Do the bathroom stalls overhang on the other side of the building?*


If what you've decided to stick up on a rise overlooking a waterfront is a monstrous, drab gray box, you need to do something to relieve yourself - er, relieve the monotony.


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## Harold in Columbia

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Commonly the period c. 1910-1933 is spoken of as High Modernism


Saying it over and over again isn't going to make it so.

You seem confused about why "High" periods are called High. Somewhere you said that Abstract Expressionism isn't High Modernist because Color Field painting is decadent. But "High" refers to the period in a style's history _immediately preceding_ its decadence - therefore Michelangelo and Raphael are High Renaissance, and Handel and Bach are High Baroque.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> Building upon Art History... yet in a fragmented or expressively distorted manner does not inherently mean that an artist is parodying the same.


Indeed. Which is why Picasso can parody El Greco while engaging more deeply with Cezanne.


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## Adam Weber

Woodduck said:


> _Quote Originally Posted by Blancrocher:
> 
> By the way, the Knut Hamsun Center, designed by Steven Holl & co., seems quite attractive. The interiors look interesting as well._
> 
> If what you've decided to stick up on a rise overlooking a waterfront is a monstrous, drab gray box, you need to do something to relieve yourself - er, relieve the monotony.


If I like the monstrous box, does that make me monstrous by proxy?


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## ArtMusic

Harold in Columbia said:


> Saying it over and over again isn't going to make it so.
> 
> You seem confused about why "High" periods are called High. Somewhere you said that Abstract Expressionism isn't High Modernist because Color Field painting is decadent. But "High" refers to the period in a style's history _immediately preceding_ its decadence - therefore Michelangelo and Raphael are High Renaissance, and Handel and Bach are High Baroque.
> 
> Indeed. Which is why Picasso can parody El Greco while engaging more deeply with Cezanne.


"High" does refer to the peak of the period described. So "High Baroque" represents the very peak of the Baroque in all stylistic developments of the Baroque and showed the best examples of genres then.


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## Harold in Columbia

Code:







ArtMusic said:


> "High" does refer to the peak of the period described. So "High Baroque" represents the very peak of the Baroque in all stylistic developments of the Baroque and showed the best examples of genres then.


"Peak" and "best" are qualitative judgments. "High" refers to a period in a style's development - whether the best work in the style was done then is beside the point.

e.g. Schubert is certainly no longer "High" Classical, but many people would say his music is equally as great as Haydn's.


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## arpeggio

At one time I thought I knew what Post-Modernism was. As a result of participating in this forum I now have no idea what it is.


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## ArtMusic

Harold in Columbia said:


> Code:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Peak" and "best" are qualitative judgments. "High" refers to a period in a style's development - whether the best work in the style was done then is beside the point.
> 
> e.g. Schubert is certainly no longer "High" Classical, but many people would say his music is equally as great as Haydn's.


Yes, that's what I wrote "High" refers to the peak of the period's stylistic development. Bach and Handel brought Baroque music to its peak. It's a historical fact.


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## Harold in Columbia

Well, if that's what you mean by "peak" - that's easy to say, because, at least at this moment, people don't care much about what happened between Monteverdi and Vivaldi. But, for example, you can't do it with Renaissance music. Josquin can't have "brought Renaissance music to its peak," because then Palestrina happened. And Palestrina can't have brought Renaissance music to its peak, because Josquin already happened.

Same problem with Modernism. Boulez's _Le marteau sans maître_ and _Pli selon pli_ are certainly Modernist, not decadent or belated (and of course not early), but you can't exactly say they "brought Modernist music to its peak," because _The Rite of Spring_ already happened. Same with Modernist painting, literature, and architecture (Picasso ---> Pollock; Joyce ---> Beckett; Bauhaus ---> brutalism).


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## Richannes Wrahms

arpeggio said:


> At one time I thought I knew what Post-Modernism was. As a result of participating in this forum I now have no idea what it is.


There is only one thing to know about post-modernism and I don't even care


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## Harold in Columbia

Actually, disregard my last reply to ArtMusic. You can't even say it about the Baroque. Handel and Bach didn't "bring" Monteverdi's _L'Orfeo_, Vespers, 8th madrigal book, _The Return of Ulysses_, and _The Coronation of Poppea_ to their "peak." They represent a development of some of the elements present in middle and late Monteverdi - but of course they also represent the diminishing or abandonment of other elements.


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## Guest

Itullian said:


> Stark, cold and imposing.........


Which is exactly what will make it beautiful to some.


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## Guest

StlukesguildOhio said:


> As Science suggested with regard to literature, there is no clear starting point at which one historical movement can be seen as having come to a complete halt replaced by the subsequent era.


_Mr Turner_ seems to me to illustrate that quite well. In fact, whilst there is plenty of evidence of artists (writers, composers etc) feeding off each other and actively belonging to brotherhoods and societies, the notion that art is somehow a set of successive enclosed 'movements' is a nonsense, not least because it leaves out entirely the innate conservatism of the popular audience (but maybe they can be ignored!). The progression of the arts (and I mean only the notion of forward movement over time, not 'development') is a complex, organic thing whose shifts and turns can't be divined at the time those turns are taken by those who are either producing or consuming. Many historians will agree when they look back at pivotal moments that they are pivotal, but there is not unanimity, and there is not always agreement about what that 'pivotal moment' signifies.



> "High modernism" is accepted shorthand for the core phase of literary modernism in the 1920s, when Eliot, Joyce, Pound, Woolf, Mann, Kafka, Proust, Gide, and others published pivotal works. While there is consensus about the term's meaning, the value and significance of the works it designates are highly contested.


http://www.camden-house.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=14629

Or note the divergence of views about one "history" of poetry in these two online reviews.



> Curiously conservative and unmoving study that deals with very few poets much under age 50. Perkins has evidently read the material, but it is unclear how much of value he has gleaned from his effort.


https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-...history-of-modern-poetry-modernism-and-after/



> Perkins' own survey of modern and postmodern poetry is, quite simply, a great achievement


http://www.vqronline.org/high-modernism-postmodernism


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## Harold in Columbia

MacLeod said:


> the notion that art is somehow a set of successive enclosed 'movements' is a nonsense


Not really; and it's not just art, but culture in general. As somebody inadvertently demonstrated earlier in this thread, even people who hate Postmodernism can't help being Postmodern - which is simply to say, people today can't think the way people thought in the 1930s (or whenever).



MacLeod said:


> not least because it leaves out entirely the innate conservatism of the popular audience


The popular audience had less trouble with Mozart's operas than the connoisseurs did. And then there's something like rock music - just because it's simple doesn't mean it isn't radical, or that rejection of it isn't conservative.


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## Guest

Harold in Columbia said:


> Not really; and it's not just art, but culture in general. As somebody inadvertently demonstrated earlier in this thread, even people who hate Postmodernism can't help being Postmodern - which is simply to say, people today can't think the way people thought in the 1930s (or whenever).
> 
> The popular audience had less trouble with Mozart's operas than the connoisseurs did. And then there's something like rock music - just because it's simple doesn't mean it isn't radical, or that rejection of it isn't conservative.


"Not really"? Not really what? Not really nonsense? Are you saying that there is a set of readily discernible enclosed movements in art (culture)?

My use of the term 'popular audience' was to distinguish it from the artist audience. What Pound and Eliot thought about each other's work, or the Pre-Raphaelites thought is one thing; what the paying public thought is another. Both have a role to play in the progression of the arts.


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## Harold in Columbia

MacLeod said:


> Are you saying that there is a set of readily discernible enclosed movements in art (culture)?


Yes, because there are.



MacLeod said:


> My use of the term 'popular audience' was to distinguish it from the artist audience.


But the non-artist audience isn't inherently conservative, and the artist audience certainly isn't inherently _not_ conservative.


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## Guest

Harold in Columbia said:


> Yes, because there are.
> 
> But the non-artist audience isn't inherently conservative, and the artist audience certainly isn't inherently _not_ conservative.


Ah, I can see we're into 'tis/tisn't' territory, so I shall withdraw.


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## Harold in Columbia

Not really. We're in 'Harold made some arguments, MacLeod asked if he meant them, Harold said yes, MacLeod complained because Harold didn't say yes in a longer way' territory.


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## Guest

Harold in Columbia said:


> Not really. We're in 'Harold made some arguments, MacLeod asked if he meant them, Harold said yes, MacLeod complained because Harold didn't say yes in a longer way' territory.


No we're not !


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## PJaye

Piwikiwi said:


> The fact that there is no single accepted style is postmodernist in itself. The pluralism of society and the mixing of low brow and high brow art are distinctly postmodern.


But what does no single accepted style mean? I was suggesting that all styles still have relevance and potential to be pursued and worked within regardless of the passage of time. Is this what you meant? If so, does Post modernism encompass all styles that came before it within itself? Is it really that open minded? As one example, does that include someone who paints landscapes in an impressionist style -without a sense of irony, or a wink or nod that says 'It may look like this, but it's actually something else'? How would they not be part of that group of people debated earlier in this thread who have a style or world view from the past? I like a lot about post-modernism. It has inspiring and inclusive ideas. I just want to understand these difficulties. I am open to persuasion I think. Maybe these are open ended questions. If I accept post-modernism as something I can relate to, maybe I'll just have to accept that I see it differently than other people may.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Saying it over and over again isn't going to make it so.

You seem confused about why "High" periods are called High.

This will be my last comment on the subject... at least in response to you. It isn't worth my time to engage in a dispute with an amateur upon a subject that is my area of expertise and profession. Please carry on. :tiphat:


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## StlukesguildOhio

Ah, I can see we're into 'tis/tisn't' territory, so I shall withdraw.

An option I should have taken earlier. :lol:


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## Harold in Columbia

Pulling rank is the last refuge of those who don't have a good argument.

And if you are a professional scholar - leaving aside the question of whether you're any good at your job - then invoking your authority, while telling non-professionals that Manet is Modernist and Duchamp is Postmodernist, as if that were expert consensus, is an abuse of that authority.


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## Woodduck

Adam Weber said:


> If I like the monstrous box, does that make me monstrous by proxy?


It makes you someone who likes a monstrous box. The rest is up to you alone, and not something I need to think about.


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## Harold in Columbia

PJaye said:


> If so, does Post modernism encompass all styles that came before it within itself?


Except on a superficial level, it encompasses none of them, because it declares their assumptions - the reason why Raphael thought and felt he should paint the we he did, and not another way; why Dante wrote the way he did; why Mozart composed the way he did; and so on - to be invalid.

Of course, that goes for all styles. You're always the one who finally got it right, and everybody else was either just preparing the way for you or following a false path.


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## PJaye

Harold in Columbia said:


> Except on a superficial level, it encompasses none of them, because it declares their assumptions - the reason why Raphael thought and felt he should paint the we he did, and not another way; why Dante wrote the way he did; why Mozart composed the way he did; and so on - to be invalid.
> 
> Of course, that goes for all styles. You're always the one who finally got it right, and everybody else was either just preparing the way for you or following a false path.


I'm having a hard time getting what you're saying here. Invalid? How so? No longer of consequence? Flawed thinking? Been there done that? I have to ask. What do you know about the thoughts and reasons of Raphael, Dante, or Mozart for creating their art simply because you've experienced it? Talk about assumptions. Any movement that would declare its predecessors invalid is dogma. I realize this is only your opinion though, so I won't take it to heart. So no. I don't agree with your part at the end. Maybe someone with an excessively linear way of thinking, grandiose illusions, or just plain naïve lack of historical perspective may think that way.


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## Harold in Columbia

PJaye said:


> I'm having a hard time getting what you're saying here. Invalid? How so? No longer of consequence? Flawed thinking? Been there done that?


Yes, that's what invalid means.



PJaye said:


> Any movement that would declare its predecessors invalid is dogma.


Any movement that wouldn't isn't a movement.



PJaye said:


> Maybe someone with an excessively linear way of thinking, grandiose illusions, or just plain naïve lack of historical perspective may think that way.


On the contrary. It's only by willful lack of historical perspective that you can say two different ideas of what art should be are equally valid.


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## Guest

PJaye said:


> Any movement that would declare its predecessors invalid is dogma. [...] Maybe someone with an excessively linear way of thinking, grandiose illusions, or just plain naïve lack of historical perspective may think that way.


I'm sure there were movements that made such declarations. But as you say, only those with a linear way of thinking would believe that art had finally arrived with their product.

The fact that a line of progression can be extracted from the mass of artistic activity over the centuries does not mean that the development of the arts is merely linear, or even that there is such a thing as 'the development of the arts'. Contributors did not just think about the past and the future and whether they rejected or embraced it. Their work may be seen in relation to their contemporaries, actively working in collaboration with them, merely alongside them, in isolation from them, ignorant of them...

When I go to an art gallery now, I can see a wide range of styles on display. I'm no expert about what galleries were like in the last two centuries, but I doubt that they exhibited only the latest fad by the biggest names (or only the future fad by the as-yet-unknown). When Fry offered _Manet and the Post-Impressionists_ at the Grafton Galleries, it seems improbable that all the other galleries in London stopped whatever they were exhibiting and all the 'Impressionists' (and the rest of the art world) threw away their brushes!

[add]In the same year as the Fry exhibition, the National Gallery acquired the Salting Collection containing works by a range of artists - most of whom had died by the late 1870s, so nothing contemporary. 5 years later, they acquired the Lane collection which included works by Manet. A trustee wrote, _"I would as soon expect to hear of a Mormon service being conducted in St. Paul's Cathedral as to see the exhibition of the works of the modern French Art-rebels in the sacred precincts of Trafalgar Square"._


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## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Except on a superficial level, [postmodernism] encompasses none of [the prior styles of art], because it declares their assumptions - the reason why Raphael thought and felt he should paint the we he did, and not another way; why Dante wrote the way he did; why Mozart composed the way he did; and so on - to be invalid.


Does it? That sounds like modernism to me. Why would a postmodernist artist or person bother with that kind of thing?


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## Harold in Columbia

Why would a Postmodernist bother to deny that one set of beliefs is more valid than another? That seems self-explanatory to me.


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## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Why would a Postmodernist bother to deny that one set of beliefs is more valid than another? That seems self-explanatory to me.


"Postmodernism declares the assumptions of all prior styles of art to be invalid" isn't the same thing as "Postmodernism denies that some set of beliefs is more valid than some other set."


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## Woodduck

My sense of this is that Modernism declares: "That style was valid then, but this is valid now." Postmodernism declares that the whole idea of a style valid for our time is invalid - except for a style that doesn't believe in its own validity.


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## Harold in Columbia

Yes it is. Wagner thought his beliefs were more valid than Mozart's. Stravinsky thought his beliefs were more valid than Wagner's. Postmodernism says they're both wrong and the only valid belief, ever, is its lack of belief.


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## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> Yes it is. Wagner thought his beliefs were more valid than Mozart's. Stravinsky thought his beliefs were more valid than Wagner's. Postmodernism says they're both wrong and the only valid belief, ever, is its lack of belief.


Postmodernism says that none of them were wrong, that nothing has been valid or invalid.

Postmodernism _is_ interested in discovering how the "validities" (I guess) of the past and present were motivated in part by lusts for power, but that doesn't invalidate anything, for everything is and must be so motivated. It's just how the world is. We just have to see through it as far as we can, and naturally we will try to do our own thing without being manipulated by any ideologies disguising other people's lusts. No more validity or invalidity, it declares, there never has been anything to that. That's not invalidating anything, just seeing the world for what it is.

The heart wants what the heart wants, and always has.


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## Harold in Columbia

science said:


> Postmodernism says that none of them were wrong, that nothing has been valid


That's saying they were wrong.



science said:


> We just have to see through it as far as we can, and naturally we will try to do our own thing without being manipulated by any ideologies disguising other people's lusts.


That's the triumphalist version, which is to say, as always, the wrong version.


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## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> That's saying they were wrong.


Deleting the "or invalid" destroys the meaning. It's clever, perhaps, but that doesn't matter much.

This valid/invalid dichotomy you have, it's just a thing you have. It's not valid or invalid, saying so would just be part of that thing you have. There is a POV without that dichotomy. It's not valid or invalid either.

Art is just art.


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## Harold in Columbia

science said:


> Deleting the "or invalid" destroys the meaning.


No, it clarifies the meaning. Adding "or invalid" obfuscates it. If you're saying somebody's belief isn't right, you're saying it's wrong.


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## science

Harold in Columbia said:


> No, it clarifies the meaning. Adding "or invalid" obfuscates it. If you're saying somebody's belief isn't right, you're saying it's wrong.


We're talking about art, not science or math.

There is no postmodern science or math, and there never could be. There are postmodern philosophies of science, and I'd say they've contributed _something_ to our understanding of science, but we don't need to debate them here.

Edit: Also, adding "or invalid" doesn't obfuscate the meaning. It _changes_ it. I'm not meaning the kind of thing you seem to think I'm meaning. This is what I mean: [from a postmodern POV] art is never valid/invalid. That's just a dichotomy you insist on having because fundamentally you are not a postmodernist.


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## Woodduck

Only statements are valid or invalid. To speak of the "validity" of art is to import a concept inapplicable to it. I think we use it (too) loosely to mean "art or non-art" or "good or bad art." If we mean those things we should say them and not fuzzy them up with "validity."


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## Harold in Columbia

science said:


> [from a postmodern POV] art is never valid/invalid.


But the Postmodern POV is invalid.



science said:


> That's just a dichotomy you insist on having because fundamentally you are not a postmodernist.


Fundamentally we're all Postmodernists.


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## 20centrfuge

I think the magnitude of art that is valued primarily for it's shock value is decreasing. Centuries from now, this time of the 20th century (roughly speaking) will be seen as a time when the arts sought to push every conceivable boundary. It is now becoming cliche to go after shock value. In other words, it's no longer shocking. (Oh wow, you made a sculpture of <insert random deity> out of dildos - BRILLIANT! :roll eyes)

The argument of the presenter in the youtube clip is an old, tired argument. Artists, composers, and creators of today must come to terms with the ENORMOUS possibilities available to them (as a result of boundary pushing) but ALSO create something that can, in some way, be able to be compared with the work of previous centuries.

The one point that I think he makes that is a good one - is that museums and institutions can do more to champion the best that is being created nowadays. I'm sure some do a better job than others.

Anyhoo....


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## Guest

Sorry, but did somebody already post a definition of 'postmodern' and/or 'Postmodernism' that was generally agreed on here - or that came from a reliable source beyond wikipedia?

Thanks.

[add]

I quite like this one...



> Postmodernism: pseudo-intellectual Trojan Horse of tyrants everywhere in the western world. Began in Arts faculties in various universities under "thinkers" like Derrida, Baudrillard, Foucault and Irigaray, and spread like a cancer into at least the "soft" sciences, if not further afield.
> Works insidiously by establishing in the minds of the faithful that there are no ultimate truths in either a moral or a scientific sense, and dressing up ******** in flowery language. Postmodernism pretends to be a guarantor of pluralism (a concept far better served, btw, by rational debate), and is in love with concepts such as the "transgressive" and the "paradigm shift". Unfortunately these matters are brought up in the midst of reams and reams of tendentious twaddle which constitute a dreadful waste of perfectly good trees,


http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=postmodernism


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> Only statements are valid or invalid. To speak of the "validity" of art is to import a concept inapplicable to it. I think we use it (too) loosely to mean "art or non-art" or "good or bad art." If we mean those things we should say them and not fuzzy them up with "validity."


I think you're right. Doesn't the postmodernist believe that the concept of validity is invalid?


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## kartikeys

Validity is invalid and all thought is racist as it emanates from the primordial desire to be correct; this correctness should be erased out of human consciousness but which is to assume humans possess the quality to dehumanise, which is an arrogance that makes them incapable of correctly distinguishing between the valid and the invalid. 
Hence we are doomed.


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## quack

MacLeod said:


> I think you're right. Doesn't the postmodernist believe that the concept of validity is invalid?


The opposite really. All views are valid, they are right from the point of view from which they are expressed. "Beethoven is the pinnacle of music" vs. "Beethoven is boring old trash" are equally valid and they speak of the commentator rather than the art.


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## Nereffid

MacLeod said:


> Sorry, but did somebody already post a definition of 'postmodern' and/or 'Postmodernism' that was generally agreed on here - or that came from a reliable source beyond wikipedia?
> 
> Thanks.


Found this in a book called _Key Ideas in Human Thought_, ed. Kenneth McLeish, Bloomsbury, 1993:

Postmodernism, in the arts and design, is a phenomenon of the last 25 years, originating in the West but now spreading throughout the world. Whereas modernism consisted of dozens of individual 'movements', each with a rigorous artistic dogma and a programme for changing the world, postmodernism is individualistic and anarchic. We live today in a pluralist society, surrounded by images and artefacts from all periods and of all geographical and cultural locations. We are aware of the entire experience of the human race in ways that were not available to previous generations, and we have means and techniques of artistic creation which simultaneously include and beggar all those of the past. We are inheritors of the artistic and personal licence so energetically preached in the 1960s: philosophical, ethical and social libertarianism is the new orthodoxy.
In the arts, this has led to an unprecedented upsurge of eclecticism. Artists are as wary of 'isms' as their great-grandparents were eager to embrace them. 'Doing your own thing' is, for many artists, where creativity begins and boundaries between arts, and between different branches or hierarchic levels of the same art are nowadays of minimal relevance. Stylistic interpenetration is the norm, in particular between what used to be thought of as 'high' art and 'genre' art.
...
There is, in short, not a postmodernist movement but a continuum. There are no boundaries save our own individual competence; creator and spectator are locked together in a conspiracy against history, against geography and against specificity, which may be seen as liberating or destructive (the lunatics taking over the asylum), but which is entirely without precedent in the story of the arts.


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## arpeggio

^^^^^
This is close to what I thought it meant.

I am certain that many will say that the above is wrong.


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## Guest

Nereffid said:


> Found this in a book called _Key Ideas in Human Thought_, ed. Kenneth McLeish, Bloomsbury, 1993:
> 
> Postmodernism, in the arts and design, is a phenomenon of the last 25 years, originating in the West but now spreading throughout the world. Whereas modernism consisted of dozens of individual 'movements', each with a rigorous artistic dogma and a programme for changing the world, postmodernism is individualistic and anarchic. We live today in a pluralist society, surrounded by images and artefacts from all periods and of all geographical and cultural locations. We are aware of the entire experience of the human race in ways that were not available to previous generations, and we have means and techniques of artistic creation which simultaneously include and beggar all those of the past. We are inheritors of the artistic and personal licence so energetically preached in the 1960s: philosophical, ethical and social libertarianism is the new orthodoxy.
> In the arts, this has led to an unprecedented upsurge of eclecticism. Artists are as wary of 'isms' as their great-grandparents were eager to embrace them. 'Doing your own thing' is, for many artists, where creativity begins and boundaries between arts, and between different branches or hierarchic levels of the same art are nowadays of minimal relevance. Stylistic interpenetration is the norm, in particular between what used to be thought of as 'high' art and 'genre' art.
> ...
> There is, in short, not a postmodernist movement but a continuum. There are no boundaries save our own individual competence; creator and spectator are locked together in a conspiracy against history, against geography and against specificity, which may be seen as liberating or destructive (the lunatics taking over the asylum), but which is entirely without precedent in the story of the arts.


Well personally I can agree to that! Merci beaucoup.


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## Richannes Wrahms

Why has this thread reached 60 pages?


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## Fugue Meister

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Why has this thread reached 60 pages?


Post-modern conspiracy.


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## Stirling

In a larger sense, 19th century art was for a different group of people than 20th century individual art was. This is the place where said people can vent.


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## Harold in Columbia

Nereffid said:


> We are inheritors of the artistic and personal licence so energetically preached in the 1960s: philosophical, ethical and social libertarianism is the new orthodoxy.


Postmodernism likes to think of itself as the inheritor of the '60s, exactly as Romanticism liked to think of itself as the inheritor of the French Revolution, when in fact they're the despairing of the ideals of the same, respectively.

Or rather, the dumber Romantics and Postmodernists like to think that. The smarter ones - let's say, Byron and the Coen brothers - know better.



Richannes Wrahms said:


> Why has this thread reached 60 pages?


Modern art is just that bad.


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## Blancrocher

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Why has this thread reached 60 pages?


It could be because people are posting images--posts take up a lot of space even when there isn't much text.


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## Strange Magic

*Postmodernism: The New Stasis*



Nereffid said:


> Found this in a book called _Key Ideas in Human Thought_, ed. Kenneth McLeish, Bloomsbury, 1993:
> 
> Postmodernism, in the arts and design, is a phenomenon of the last 25 years, originating in the West but now spreading throughout the world. Whereas modernism consisted of dozens of individual 'movements', each with a rigorous artistic dogma and a programme for changing the world, postmodernism is individualistic and anarchic. We live today in a pluralist society, surrounded by images and artefacts from all periods and of all geographical and cultural locations. We are aware of the entire experience of the human race in ways that were not available to previous generations, and we have means and techniques of artistic creation which simultaneously include and beggar all those of the past. We are inheritors of the artistic and personal licence so energetically preached in the 1960s: philosophical, ethical and social libertarianism is the new orthodoxy.
> In the arts, this has led to an unprecedented upsurge of eclecticism. Artists are as wary of 'isms' as their great-grandparents were eager to embrace them. 'Doing your own thing' is, for many artists, where creativity begins and boundaries between arts, and between different branches or hierarchic levels of the same art are nowadays of minimal relevance. Stylistic interpenetration is the norm, in particular between what used to be thought of as 'high' art and 'genre' art.
> ...
> There is, in short, not a postmodernist movement but a continuum. There are no boundaries save our own individual competence; creator and spectator are locked together in a conspiracy against history, against geography and against specificity, which may be seen as liberating or destructive (the lunatics taking over the asylum), but which is entirely without precedent in the story of the arts.


This topic was discussed in considerable depth by Leonard Meyer in his groundbreaking book, _Music, The Arts, and Ideas_, 1967. Meyer looked about him and saw that, out of the buzzing, random, Brownian motion flux of directionless all-direction trends in the arts, a new stasis was emerging. But this is a stasis unlike previous and long periods of cultural stasis where a single or a few dominant artistic and cultural trends slowly, glacially "evolve" over centuries or even millennia, and change can barely be detected. The new stasis is typified instead by constant, unending change; each new pulse of short duration and limited number of adherents, and none long-lived or robust enough to break through the stasis and impose a new, dominant cultural direction. Again, I recommend Meyer's work on this subject, though much of it is densely written and can be heavy going.


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## Fugue Meister

Blancrocher said:


> It could be because people are posting images--posts take up a lot of space even when there isn't much text.


This doesn't have anything to do with it there are always 15 posts per page no matter how much text, images or videos are on a page. Even if it were so were closing in on a 1000 posts. All because modern art sucks but some feel the need to defend the nonsensical opinions of others... :devil:


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## Abraham Lincoln

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Why has this thread reached 60 pages?


I don't know but I will blame Alma Deutscher.


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## Headphone Hermit

arpeggio said:


> ^^^^^
> This is close to what I thought it meant.
> 
> I am certain that many will say that the above is wrong.


with respect .... post #898 doesn't really go beyond saying 'postmodernism is whatever you chose it to be'

Of course, that type of 'definition' can be typecast as a 'postmodern-type definition' but it lacks something .... despite the length of the quote :tiphat:


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## Blancrocher

I'm curious if anyone is interested in other intellectual trends since postmodernism. There's still a lot of discussion that could fairly be described as postmodern, but a lot of people now seem to be more interested in ideas with a more "technocratic" edge, if I can put it like that: systems theory, network theory, complexity, etc. The writings of Niklas Luhmann, for example, offer a theory of communication that contrasts very strongly with postmodern theory. The titles of a lot of recent art books suggest the importance of some of these different ways of looking at things.


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## science

Blancrocher said:


> I'm curious if anyone is interested in other intellectual trends since postmodernism. There's still a lot of discussion that could fairly be described as postmodern, but a lot of people now seem to be more interested in ideas with a more "technocratic" edge, if I can put it like that: systems theory, network theory, complexity, etc. The writings of Niklas Luhmann, for example, offer a theory of communication that contrasts very strongly with postmodern theory. The titles of a lot of recent art books suggest the importance of some of these different ways of looking at things.


I don't know about those things, but it sounds like you're talking about science or technology. Not many people would take a truly postmodern approach to science anymore. Modernism (or, perhaps better, _the Enlightenment_) has recovered, albeit informed by postmodern criticism, more careful about the social significance of its ideas or the way it expresses its ideas. The one really great exception to this - curiously, considering that postmodernism has been affiliated with the left - is the American extreme right. They really do have a postmodern approach to science and empirical truth generally.

Anyway, within the arts, as far as I can tell, postmodernism has become almost ubiquitous and almost invisible: it's so common we really only notice its absence.


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## Blancrocher

science said:


> I don't know about those things, but it sounds like you're talking about science or technology.


Not really, though systems theory, information theory, and the like obviously have applications within scientific disciplines as well. Luhmann wrote a book called Art as a Social System, for example. Luhmann's teacher, Talcott Parsons, more or less inaugurated social-systems theory in the 1950s, and he was primarily a sociologist (my impression is that systems theory seems relatively important in sociology; postmodernism within anthropology--and ethnomusicology). I've seen that such theories are used by analysts trying to explain, for example, how and why certain art-forms "travel" or have influence, and by artists trying to conceptualize the relation between a system and its environment--in an interactive installation, for example. There are overlaps with postmodernism, but the emphases seem different.

I'm not looking for anything in particular--just wondering if they're on anyone else's radar, and whether anyone's seen any cool stuff along these lines.


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## Guest

quack said:


> The opposite really. All views are valid, they are right from the point of view from which they are expressed. "Beethoven is the pinnacle of music" vs. "Beethoven is boring old trash" are equally valid and they speak of the commentator rather than the art.


If all views are equally valid, that seems rather to defeat the point of the concept of validity, which is that some things are more valid than another.



Nereffid said:


> Found this in a book called _Key Ideas in Human Thought_, ed. Kenneth McLeish, Bloomsbury, 1993:
> 
> Postmodernism, in the arts and design, is a phenomenon of the last 25 years, originating in the West but now spreading throughout the world. Whereas modernism consisted of dozens of individual 'movements', each with a rigorous artistic dogma and a programme for changing the world, postmodernism is individualistic and anarchic. [etc...]


Thanks. I also resorted to my trusted friend at Stanford...



> That postmodernism is indefinable is a truism. However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning.


I like the first sentence, but the rest requires so much unpacking (as my knowledge of philosophy is embryonic) that I could barely bring myself to read further.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/

What puzzles me is that I've seen claims that 'postmodernism' is a rejection of 'modernism', but that which is rejected did not look to me like modernism.

I wish I'd never asked!


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## StlukesguildOhio

Nereffid-_Postmodernism, in the arts and design, is a phenomenon of the last 25 years, originating in the West but now spreading throughout the world. Whereas modernism consisted of dozens of individual 'movements', each with a rigorous artistic dogma and a programme for changing the world, postmodernism is individualistic and anarchic. We live today in a pluralist society, surrounded by images and artefacts from all periods and of all geographical and cultural locations. We are aware of the entire experience of the human race in ways that were not available to previous generations, and we have means and techniques of artistic creation which simultaneously include and beggar all those of the past. We are inheritors of the artistic and personal licence so energetically preached in the 1960s: philosophical, ethical and social libertarianism is the new orthodoxy.
In the arts, this has led to an unprecedented upsurge of eclecticism. Artists are as wary of 'isms' as their great-grandparents were eager to embrace them. 'Doing your own thing' is, for many artists, where creativity begins and boundaries between arts, and between different branches or hierarchic levels of the same art are nowadays of minimal relevance. Stylistic interpenetration is the norm, in particular between what used to be thought of as 'high' art and 'genre' art.
...
There is, in short, not a postmodernist movement but a continuum. There are no boundaries save our own individual competence; creator and spectator are locked together in a conspiracy against history, against geography and against specificity, which may be seen as liberating or destructive (the lunatics taking over the asylum), but which is entirely without precedent in the story of the arts._

This is a rather solid definition.

*We live today in a pluralist society, surrounded by images and artefacts from all periods and of all geographical and cultural locations. We are aware of the entire experience of the human race in ways that were not available to previous generations, and we have means and techniques of artistic creation which simultaneously include and beggar all those of the past.*

This is an especially pertinent passage touching upon the realization of the world and history/tradition as experienced in the Post-Modern age and the recognition that there is no dominant style or movement but rather a smorgasbord of possibilities.

I would suggest that while Modernism certainly could boast of many more homogeneous movements, in reality it was nearly as individualistic as Post-Modernism. Many of the various movements (Cubism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Geometric Abstraction, etc...) could be broken down into sub-movements such as Der Blaue Reiter, Die Brücke, New Objectivity, French Expressionism, etc... under the larger movement of Expressionism. In many of these instances, the individual sub-movements and individual artists had quite opposing philosophies. Even if we look at Impressionism, which is often thought of as an easy to define style/movement, we have very different styles and artistic intentions/goals. Degas famously disliked Monet... and one can easily understand his view when you compare their works and their intentions.

We would also do well to understand that the various movements of Modernism did not form some sort of linear development. Monet and Degas were still working within the Impressionism manner into the 19-teens and twenties... after the development of Analytical Cubism, Fauvism, and even Surrealism.

Postmodernism likes to think of itself as the inheritor of the '60s...

Post-Modernism doesn't think anything. "Post-Modernism" is simply a blanket term employed by academics (and others) in an attempt to categorize artists and art works of the last 50 years or so, working in a period and with philosophies or artistic intentions that they see as fundamentally different from what went before: Modernism. Post-Modern Art is the product of a vast array of individual artists with vastly different visions and intentions... a good majority of whom couldn't give the least concern over how academics categorize them... whether they are Post-Modern, Neo-Geo, Minimalist, Hyper-realist, Photo-realist, New Subjectivity, Neo-Expressionist, Pattern Painters, Post-Pop, Pop-Surrealist, Lowbrow, "Kitsch" Art, etc...


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## Strange Magic

Returning like an old dog to a favorite, well-chewed bone, I (again) recommend Ortega y Gasset's seminal book, _The Revolt of the Masses_, wherein he describes the erosion, or overthrow, or decay of the aristocracies of taste that formerly dictated artistic standards and directions. De Tocqueville first noted the trend in the 1830s of average Americans to consider themselves to be arbiters of taste (or anything else) equal to anyone with pretensions of superiority. Ortega y Gasset saw this trend spreading everywhere around him: an assertive development and endorsement by the masses of mass tastes, and, by extension, of the primacy of individual tastes. As this "anything goes in culture and the arts" impulse spreads throughout societies, it simultaneously encountered a parallel rise in instantaneous, mass communication, so that brand-new ideas can be instantly known to everyone everywhere. In order for a truly new school or movement to arise, fully develop, strengthen, and then spread beyond its borders to influence a wider population, it must be allowed a period of relative isolation and obscurity hidden away from the outside din of competing ideas. The New Stasis reflects the fact that such isolation allowing the conditions for development of robust new cultural trends, is now virtually impossible. The New Stasis is the end state of the marriage of total cultural mass equality with total, instantaneous mass communication. Hard to determine how, or if ever when, the pattern will be broken.


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## Harold in Columbia

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Postmodernism likes to think of itself as the inheritor of the '60s...
> 
> Post-Modernism doesn't think anything.* "Post-Modernism" is simply a blanket term employed by academics (and others) in an attempt to categorize artists and art works of the last 50 years or so, working in a period and with philosophies or artistic intentions that they see as fundamentally different from what went before*: Modernism. Post-Modern Art is the product of a vast array of individual artists with vastly different visions and intentions... a good majority of whom couldn't give the least concern over how academics categorize them... whether they are Post-Modern, Neo-Geo, Minimalist, Hyper-realist, Photo-realist, New Subjectivity, Neo-Expressionist, Pattern Painters, Post-Pop, Pop-Surrealist, Lowbrow, "Kitsch" Art, etc...


Gee, if only I'd already said the same thing. Say, in the same post, immediately after the part you quoted. Oh, wait, I did.



Harold in Columbia said:


> Or rather, the dumber Romantics and Postmodernists like to think that. The smarter ones - let's say, Byron and the Coen brothers - know better.


-----



Blancrocher said:


> I'm curious if anyone is interested in other intellectual trends since postmodernism. There's still a lot of discussion that could fairly be described as postmodern, but a lot of people now seem to be more interested in ideas with a more "technocratic" edge, if I can put it like that: systems theory, network theory, complexity, etc. The writings of Niklas Luhmann, for example, offer a theory of communication that contrasts very strongly with postmodern theory. The titles of a lot of recent art books suggest the importance of some of these different ways of looking at things.


That's not other than (or since) Postmodernism, that's a Postmodern version of science-humanities crossover.

Judging by the art that most effectively irritates the comfortable today - e.g. the novels of Michel Houellebecq; I can't think of any classical music that accomplishes this - I would guess that, when something does replace Postmodernism, it will be closer to what we call nihilism. ("Ve vont de mohnee, Lebowski!" Which should maybe be understood in the same sense as Ibsen's _The Wild Duck_ - you pillory the people who are superficially going in the same direction as you, but doing it wrong.)

And when the new worldview does take over, it will probably be so horrible that it will make Postmodernism look better in retrospect than it ever actually was, just as Modernism did for Romanticism and Postmodernism is doing for Modernism.


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## Blancrocher

Harold in Columbia said:


> That's not other than (or since) Postmodernism, that's a Postmodern version of science-humanities crossover.
> 
> Judging by the art that most effectively irritates the comfortable today - e.g. the novels of Michel Houellebecq; I can't think of any classical music that accomplishes this - I would guess that, when something does replace Postmodernism, it will be closer to what we call nihilism. ("Ve vont de mohnee, Lebowski!" Which should maybe be understood in the same sense as Ibsen's _The Wild Duck_ - you pillory the people who are superficially going in the same direction as you, but doing it wrong.)
> 
> And when the new worldview does take over, it will probably be so horrible that it will make Postmodernism look better in retrospect than it ever actually was, just as Modernism did for Romanticism and Postmodernism is doing for Modernism.


Fair enough--and btw, fwiw I think the next big philosophical movement will be inaugurated by the machines that have enslaved us.

*p.s.* Houellebecq's "Map and the Territory" could be interesting to fans of modern art -- or perhaps to its enemies :lol:


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## Klassic

"Why is modern art so bad," you ask? I know the real answer to this question, because you're old. The idiots of the future are alive today.


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## Harold in Columbia

Blancrocher said:


> *p.s.* Houellebecq's "Map and the Territory" could be interesting to fans of modern art -- or perhaps to its enemies :lol:


He seems ambivalent in that book. On the one hand, he calls Le Corbusier a totalitarian. On the other, the murderer's cover-up fails because, in fact, _not_ just anybody can paint like Jackson Pollock.

Or maybe he just thinks there are good Modernists and bad Modernists.


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## arpeggio

Modern art is only bad if you dislike it.


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## Adair

Partly because the Modernist vision that originated with Baudelaire died out after WWII. Very little contemporary art is Modernist, in the sense that it offers a blueprint for a new form of life and creativity. Make no mistake: the early Modernists sought to change the world. They sought to fuse art and life. Post-modernity is too tired and too disillusioned for that. What was electrifying in Webern sounds second-hand and of second water in Boulez, and it only gets worse after the 1950s. So we end up with Capitalist neo-traditionalism, which explains the popular success of things like Andre Rieu or Bocelli or (under the guise of innovation) John Adams. It shall take massive societal change, perhaps of the most painful kind, for art in all media to experience a rebirth of intensity. I mean, look at the visual arts of Russia from 1913-1929. Our art hasn't even _begun_ to catch up with it, a hundred or so years later. The Schoenberg Second String Quartet from 1908 sounds so innovative and powerful that it actually _affronts_ our pacified contemporary souls _over a century_ later.


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## Harold in Columbia

Adair said:


> What was electrifying in Webern sounds second-hand and of second water in Boulez, and it only gets worse after the 1950s.


If you're listening for what was electrifying in Webern in Boulez, you're probably listening to at least one of them wrong. Boulez takes what was electrifying in Messiaen and gets rid of the kludges.


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## Adair

Harold in Columbia said:


> If you're listening for what was electrifying in Webern in Boulez, you're probably listening to at least one of them wrong. Boulez takes what was electrifying in Messiaen and gets rid of the kludges.


But it comes to the same thing: I love Boulez as a conductor, but I do not find his compositions anywhere nearly as electrifying as Messiaen's. And it might not even be Boulez's fault. He might have been born too late, when the power of Modernism itself was stifled by WWII.


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## Strange Magic

Adair said:


> It shall take massive societal change, perhaps of the most painful kind, for art in all media to experience a rebirth of intensity.


I believe that this is correct. The problem is, though, that the painful kind of massive societal change that Adair believes necessary for that rebirth of intensity, is totally unlikely to allow such a rebirth of intensity to occur: A) The most probable engines for such massive change are ugly and monstrous mass-psychosis phenomena such as ISIS or other religious fanaticisms, or a resurgent Fascism such as is being reconstituted in Russia, or similar such mobilizations of True Believers; and B) The current ability of information to be available everywhere instantaneously through mass communication would have to be severely curtailed. As I've noted before, the successful development of new schools and movements robust enough to break through the New Stasis and begin to influence large and growing audiences requires a necessary isolation from the din of the outside world. This is also not likely to occur. If the condition of both A and B are realized, and communication is controlled by a successful, all-conquering ideology, then we are in the world of Winston Smith and 1984. Better that we remain in the New Stasis.


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## Adair

Here's another scary thought: what if Modernism was _the last_ major period of human artistic expression? What if the Anthropocene thinkers are right and the human age as such is almost over? The dwindling power of art since WWII might be a telling sign. I am with Strange Magic that we are facing monstrous challenges. I fear that the New Stasis (which is not even new--I think that it began as early as 1950) is beginning to crack and that no rebirth will follow. Returns to the past will not help, nor exhausted academic avant-gardism. And popular culture feels just as spent.


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## Harold in Columbia

Adair said:


> Here's another scary thought: what if Modernism was _the last_ major period of human artistic expression?


The really scary thought is that Modernism (or Postmodernism or whatever) was (/is) the last period when people thought that human artistic expression had value - and that we're wrong and the people of the future are right: It never did.

Even Hesse didn't quite dare to go there.


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## Adair

Yet there we are, Harold in Columbia.


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## KenOC

Perhaps Great Art is merely a mass hallucination based on wishful thinking. God knows that people believe what they do mostly because it pleases them to do so, rarely from some better reason.


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## Adair

Or that science has outstripped art in its revelations of human and cosmic reality, relegating art to mere self-expression and bogus "creativity." 

The other problem is that Modernism, in its justifiable need to break with tradition, launched a war on art itself, little realizing that nothing would fill the void that was left once the battle was won. (Or that the enlightened society they envisioned, where art and life would be one, would not develop.) What begins as an invigorating creative destruction--e.g. Dada or Futurism--ends with CEO's enjoying Fluxus art "happenings" and clapping when some idiot destroys a piano. (Yes, I've seen this with my own eyes.) The Modernists just couldn't have foreseen that.


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## Guest

While the chattering classes blether on about what modernism and post-modernism means, and where Art is now, artists up and down the country - where I live, at any rate - get on with the business of painting, sculpture, embroidery, video etc.

In other words, the fact that it is difficult to divine the Purpose of Great Art does not prevent artists from getting on with the business of making things they enjoy making and sometimes selling it to people who enjoy buying it.

http://www.up-front.com/future_exhibitions.php


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## Harold in Columbia

That's a very Postmodern point of view (writing "the Purpose of Great Art" with sarcastic proper nouns).


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## Adair

Sure, there are plenty of artists at work. The death of art means more people can be artists. But how many of them can have the impact of a Schoenberg or Picasso, actually changing the way we experience music or painting and even the very ways we hear and see? And this new (since circa 1950) lack of a power to influence human thinking (unlike science) has ultimately relegated art to the sphere of enjoyment, self-expression, or social commentary. Many think this is a good, democratizing development, but some see it as a sign of an exhausted human species nearing its end.


----------



## DavidA

Adair said:


> Or that *science has outstripped art in its revelations of human and cosmic reality*, relegating art to mere self-expression and bogus "creativity."
> 
> The other problem is that Modernism, in its justifiable need to break with tradition, launched a war on art itself, little realizing that nothing would fill the void that was left once the battle was won. (Or that the enlightened society they envisioned, where art and life would be one, would not develop.) What begins as an invigorating creative destruction--e.g. Dada or Futurism--ends with CEO's enjoying Fluxus art "happenings" and clapping when some idiot destroys a piano. (Yes, I've seen this with my own eyes.) The Modernists just couldn't have foreseen that.


Nature has always outstripped human art. Just science now enables us to realise it!


----------



## Guest

Adair said:


> And this new (since circa 1950) lack of a power to influence human thinking (unlike science) has ultimately relegated art to the sphere of enjoyment, self-expression, or social commentary, but little else.


"Little else"? You mean there are things more important than "enjoyment, self-expression, or social commentary"??

Perhaps this "lack of power" has instead _promoted _art to an activity that anyone can enjoy without having to worry that it Must Say Something or play a larger role in society.

When you think of the millions of people round the world for whom mere survival is still a challenge, anyone who has the luxury of being able to make what they want to, to "say" what they want to - if they want to say something, that is - is already contributing to a better society.

It's only the self-important that want their Art to be Meaningful.


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## Harold in Columbia

MacLeod said:


> You mean there are things more important than "enjoyment, self-expression, or social commentary"??


Well, for example, there's self criticism.


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## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> It's only the self-important that want their Art to be Meaningful.


There was a time when many people thought that great art reflected their profoundest aspirations as human beings. Well, a pack of idiots perhaps?


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## Adair

It isn't about wanting to be "meaningful" in such an empty way, but to expand our knowledge of the human experience, and to expand human experience _itself._ Cubism, say, expanded human conceptions of space and time and thus the human experience _of_ space and time. That is what art does at its greatest. The Modernists were still able to do that, parallel to science. Picasso and Einstein were part of the same adventure. They expanded the knowable. Now, only the scientists take part in that adventure. True, artists, in their diminished state, now do not have to worry about such things. But the loss of worry is also the loss of participation in the adventure, an abdication, and I think less powerful art. The Modernists were the last to worry.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> There was a time when many people thought that great art reflected their profoundest aspirations as human beings. Well, a pack of idiots perhaps?


You'll note my use of (allegedly Post Modern) caps for 'Art' and 'Meaningful'. This is to distinguish that which is self-consciously offered for consumption by the self-consciously Artful from what just regular people get on and enjoy making, for whom I am sure their art can be just as profoundly aspirational.

Certainly, my life is profound, aspirational for me. The fact that is hasn't been discussed by the Twitterati or analysed by Brian Sewell or given a label by the art community in London or New York doesn't mean it has no profound meaning.

This

View attachment 81529


is just as 'important' as this

View attachment 81530


even if it won't get world recognition as such.


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## Harold in Columbia

Beethoven was very self-consciously artful and never a regular person.


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## Harold in Columbia

MacLeod said:


> This
> 
> View attachment 81529
> 
> 
> is just as 'important' as this
> 
> View attachment 81530
> 
> 
> even if it won't get world recognition as such.


Again: you make disdainful comments about people who debate what's Modernist versus what's Postmodernist - while at the same time validating them by being so stereotypically Postmodernist (and definitely not Modernist) that if somebody on the other side of the conversation duplicated this post, it would be indistinguishable from malicious parody.

You may not be interested in the dialectic, but etc.


----------



## Guest

Harold in Columbia said:


> Well, for example, there's self criticism.


Yes, well I'm sure we can compile a long list of the uses/purposes of Important Things in Art (and Life) but my exclamation was, of course, rhetorical. I wanted to draw attention to the mereness of adair's point.



Adair said:


> It isn't about wanting to be "meaningful" in such an empty way, but to expand our knowledge of the human experience, and to expand human experience _itself._ Cubism, say, expanded human conceptions of space and time and thus the human experience _of_ space and time. That is what art does at its greatest. The Modernists were still able to do that, parallel to science. Picasso and Einstein were part of the same adventure. They expanded the knowable. Now, only the scientists take part in that adventure. True, artists, in their diminished state, now do not have to worry about such things. But the loss of worry is also the loss of participation in the adventure, an abdication, and I think less powerful art. The Modernists were the last to worry.


I'm talking about the value of art to the individual, not to society.



Harold in Columbia said:


> Beethoven was very self-consciously artful and never a regular person.


Er...yes...and?


----------



## Harold in Columbia

Well, then, you seem to be saying Beethoven was an idiot (one of a pack of the same).


----------



## Guest

Harold in Columbia said:


> You may not be interested in the dialectic, but etc.


I am interested in the dialectic. Those who've idled their time here accumulating any sense of what I'm interested in (poor kind souls) will know that I'm a fan of Modernism (~1880 - 1930). I'm not interested in the belief that Art must have a wider purpose but belong only to those who can tell M from PM.


----------



## Guest

Harold in Columbia said:


> Well, then, you seem to be saying Beethoven was an idiot (one of a pack of the same).


I don't follow. Where do I seem to be saying that?


----------



## Harold in Columbia

If you're interested in the dialectic, then why make fun of people trying to define the thesis and antithesis?


----------



## Nereffid

MacLeod said:


> Certainly, my life is profound, aspirational for me. The fact that is hasn't been discussed by the Twitterati or *analysed by Brian Sewell* or given a label by the art community in London or New York doesn't mean it has no profound meaning.


What a terrifying idea - that's going to give me nightmares! :lol:


----------



## Adair

I can't agree, MacLeod. The Nightwatch is more important than the pendant, not just because it gets more recognition, but because, unlike the pendant, it does more; it has captured a moment in a community's history, a moment in time, and made it astonishing to humans beyond its time and community. We look at it and see the human body in significant movement and feel we understand something new about the body itself, about ourselves---the power and beauty of a gesture, of the human hand, for example. (Look how the light falls on that extended hand, right at the heart of the painting. The hand speaks, makes us human!) In contrast, the pendant is neither as well crafted as the painting---it cannot compete on the level of sheer workmanship---nor does it contain as much human knowledge. It might have vast value to you personally, of course. But I wouldn't weep if it were lost or destroyed, whereas the destruction of The Nightwatch would be a tragedy for me and for many throughout the world, a source of knowledge gone.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

re MacLeod's latest post (#944), relevant quotes compiled:



KenOC said:


> There was a time when many people thought that great art reflected their profoundest aspirations as human beings. Well, a pack of idiots perhaps?





MacLeod said:


> You'll note my use of (allegedly Post Modern) caps for 'Art' and 'Meaningful'. This is to distinguish that which is self-consciously offered for consumption by the self-consciously Artful from what just regular people get on and enjoy making, for whom I am sure their art can be just as profoundly aspirational.
> 
> Certainly, my life is profound, aspirational for me. The fact that is hasn't been discussed by the Twitterati or analysed by Brian Sewell or given a label by the art community in London or New York doesn't mean it has no profound meaning.





Harold in Columbia said:


> Beethoven was very self-consciously artful and never a regular person.





MacLeod said:


> Er...yes...and?


----------



## Guest

Adair said:


> I can't agree, MacLeod.


That's OK. You don't have to. But there's more to 'art' than what is achieved by the world renowned. The two images I posted were meant to stand for what they represent, not merely for their own qualities. One is a well known and beautiful picture which has a value beyond what the artist might have intended. The other has a value to the maker and the observer which is just as important.

Unless you think that the lives of only the great and the good are important.



Harold in Columbia said:


> re MacLeod's latest post (#944), relevant quotes compiled:


Thanks, but the compilation only proves your point if you think I was agreeing with KenOC's starting point. Which I don't.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

Well, you may not be calling them a pack of idiots. But you are saying they were wrong in thinking "that great art reflected their profoundest aspirations as human beings," because you're denying the existence of specifically *great* art.

But it occurs me that I'm arguing in 2016 as if it were still 1976. This war is already over and your side won. The question now is what's going to come after you.


----------



## Guest

Harold in Columbia said:


> Well, you may not be calling them a pack of idiots. But you are saying they were wrong in thinking "that great art reflected their profoundest aspirations as human beings," because you're denying the existence of specifically *great* art.


I'm doing nothing of the sort. So let's rewind, since you infer more from my posts (as a result of my posting style) than I intend.

It was the exchanges between posts #925 to #929 that set me wondering whether the only valuable "artistic expression" was that given by the great artists and/or that acknowledged by the art commenters. It seemed to me that the conversation had gone off the rails (I might well have been doing my own excess of inferring!) if, and I stress the 'if', what was being said was that the art produced by those much less well known is valueless (or at least inferior); that _only _the greats mattered.

I'm as much in favour of recognising the great artists (those commonly held to be great, that is, not those held up to be 'great' wrt some absolute and objective standards) as most other folk round here. I'm not in favour of ignoring the value of the everyday art to the artists and the locals who love it. I reject the idea that the only lives worth living - and therefore talking about, observing, writing about, painting about - are those lived by the 'Great and the Good'.

I am not an artist. I am not going to save the world. I am not going to offer profundities about human existence except to those closest to me who know that one of my views on life is that it's purposelessness is its only purpose, and that the oblivion that comes after death is the most horrifying aspect of existence (unless you have the misfortune to lead a horrific life as might be endured by the refugees fleeing Syria). In the meantime, I do what I can through my job to improve the education schools offer to their children, which is, IMO, of at least equal value to Beethoven's 5th and the works of Rembrandt.


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## violadude

This thread is getting a little cooky here...


----------



## Chordalrock

MacLeod said:


> I'm as much in favour of recognising the great artists (those commonly held to be great, that is, not those held up to be 'great' wrt some absolute and objective standards) as most other folk round here.


So, conformism and democracy in artistic evaluation is more important than actual insight into the quality of a work of art? You may be showing some amount of contemporary bias in your thinking there.

If there is art worth valuing other than that art which is commonly held to be great, it will be because this other art is good enough to be valuable and because the process of canonisation has FAILED to give it its due.



MacLeod said:


> one of my views on life is that it's purposelessness is its only purpose,


That's what dead matter would tell you. Do you think that dead matter is an authority on this issue? Do you listen to stones or do you listen to your own pain, suffering, joy, happiness, and so forth?

I've never yet met a nihilist who thought that having a tooth ache and not having a tooth ache were one and the same.



MacLeod said:


> and that the oblivion that comes after death is the most horrifying aspect of existence


You have that exactly backwards.


----------



## Pugg

violadude said:


> This thread is getting a little cooky here...


Coocky?
Kind of a understatement


----------



## Harold in Columbia

MacLeod said:


> It was the exchanges between posts #925 to #929 that set me wondering whether the only valuable "artistic expression" was that given by the great artists and/or that acknowledged by the art commenters. It seemed to me that the conversation had gone off the rails (I might well have been doing my own excess of inferring!) if, and I stress the 'if', what was being said was that the art produced by those much less well known is valueless (or at least inferior); that _only _the greats mattered.


If you're saying

1. that there is such a thing as great art, and therefore also such a thing as *not*-great art,

and

2. that *not*-great art is *not* inferior to great art

that seems incoherent to me.


----------



## Blancrocher

Harold in Columbia said:


> If you're saying
> 
> 1. that there is such a thing as great art, and therefore also such a thing as *not*-great art,
> 
> and
> 
> 2. that *not*-great art is *not* inferior to great art
> 
> that seems incoherent to me.


Not if he's talking about Ravel's Bolero.


----------



## hpowders

Define "bad". The inner city kids I taught considered "bad" to be really, really good.


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## hpowders

Harold in Columbia said:


> Well, then, you seem to be saying Beethoven was an idiot (one of a pack of the same).


If Beethoven was an "idiot", the word hasn't yet been invented to describe my lowly intelligence.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

MacLeod said:


> and that the oblivion that comes after death is the most horrifying aspect of existence





Chordalrock said:


> You have that exactly backwards.


To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Depending on how exactly we read "oblivion," he might be agreeing with both of you (and you might be violently agreeing with each other); but I'm pretty sure in any case that he's agreeing with at least one of you. And, see, this is the value of great art: We couldn't have said it that well (therefore, contra Pope, we couldn't have thought it that well).


----------



## Harold in Columbia

Harold in Columbia said:


> We couldn't have said it that well (therefore... we couldn't have thought it that well).


See, and now I'm the damn Postmodernist.


----------



## Strange Magic

For newcomers to this discussion of Whither the Arts in the Age of the New Stasis, I offer again something of a summary of Leonard Meyer's work in defining what characterizes the New Stasis, as follows:

Meyer notes that the history of the arts is marked by long periods of very little change-- periods of stasis. The art history of Ancient Egypt, much of Chinese history, Persia, many other examples, show that stasis typifies much the greater part of cultural history. This pattern was broken in the West with the advent of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the rise of science, the simultaneous weakening and multiplicity of religious doctrine, new philosophies, etc., such that for several centuries now, we think of successive movements in the arts-- let's say baroque, classicism, romanticism, modernism for example--as the normal paradigm; the New replacing the Old every 15 or 20 years. So stasis was replaced by change, growth, movement, "progress".

Meyer postulated, though, a return to stasis, but stasis of a completely different kind from the glacially slow reworking of a few themes that typified past cultures over centuries and even millennia. The new stasis is instead the cumulative result of a vast multiplicity of trends, movements, artists, styles, materials in constant creation and dissolution, but on a small scale and a short timeframe. The cultural signal-to-noise ratio drops to the point where no dominant artistic impulse can expand and mature enough to generate a viable tradition or school of large or lasting proportion. Here I quote:

".....change and variety are not incompatible with stasis. For stasis, as I intend the term, is not an absence of novelty and change-- a total quiescence--but rather the absence of ordered sequential change. Like molecules rushing about haphazardly in a Brownian movement, a culture bustling with activity and change may nevertheless be static. Indeed, insofar as an active, conscious search for new techniques, new forms and materials, and new modes of sensibility.....precludes the gradual accumulation of changes capable of producing a trend or a series of connected mutations, it tends to create a steady-state....."

So, Brownian motion. Or the snow on the screen of an old TV; the stasis of continuous, small-scale change. The arguments for Meyer's thesis are drawn from a wide range of disciplines, sources, authors, and cannot be summarized here, but they are cogent and fascinating, and I again encourage those interested enough in the subject to read Meyer for themselves. And Meyer's insight is given more credence, as I have indicated, by the advent of technology only dimly foreseen in 1967; technology that serves, via instant, global communication, to further particularize and yet homogenize any and all artistic experience.

Meyer did not state that the New Stasis was, in itself, a Bad Thing; rather, he observed that now everybody could get into the act, so to speak. Everyone is free to create art, enjoy it, share it as he/she sees fit--a realization of Andy Warhol's notion of 15 minutes of fame for everybody, if you will. Meyer's book _Music, the Arts, and Ideas_ can be heavy going at times--very heavy going--but it is one of the most thought-provoking that I have ever read about music and the arts, and their future.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

Strange Magic said:


> Meyer notes that the history of the arts is marked by long periods of very little change-- periods of stasis. The art history of Ancient Egypt, much of Chinese history, Persia, many other examples, show that stasis typifies much the greater part of cultural history. This pattern was broken in the West with the advent of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the rise of science, the simultaneous weakening and multiplicity of religious doctrine, new philosophies, etc., such that for several centuries now, we think of successive movements in the arts-- let's say baroque, classicism, romanticism, modernism for example--as the normal paradigm; the New replacing the Old every 15 or 20 years. So stasis was replaced by change, growth, movement, "progress".


The western European High Middle Ages weren't static at all, though. Neither were the early Middle Ages, if only because they were building up from mud and rubble.

And of course Ancient Greece and Rome, the Byzantine empire, and the periods of Persian and Chinese history that we actually know something about, weren't static either. I rather suspect that "stasis" is almost always, or just plain always, a lie that historians tell them(our)selves when the evidence is too fragmentary for us to see what was actually happening from one year to the next (or when the evidence is available and we're just too lazy to absorb it all).


----------



## Strange Magic

Harold in Columbia said:


> The western European High Middle Ages weren't static at all, though. Neither were the early Middle Ages, if only because they were building up from mud and rubble.
> 
> And of course Ancient Greece and Rome, the Byzantine empire, and the periods of Persian and Chinese history that we actually know something about, weren't static either. I rather suspect that "stasis" is almost always, or just plain always, a lie that historians tell them(our)selves when the evidence is too fragmentary for us to see what was actually happening from one year to the next (or when the evidence is available and we're just too lazy to absorb it all).


You may well be right, in the sense that, as archeological research allows us to see deeper into the culture of any given period, we can begin to make out trends that were previously hidden; we can see perhaps the underlying Brownian motion that lies beneath all human culture. The question is one of closeness of view--look telescopically at the Big Picture? or get out the magnifying glass and the microscope? It's the old debate between the splitters and the lumpers.


----------



## Nereffid

Strange Magic said:


> It's the old debate between the splitters and the lumpers.


And the bullsh!tters. Don't forget them.


----------



## arpeggio

I have lost track of the various currents of the above discussions. Many of the posts I really have trouble following. Even when it is sincere there is an awful lot of hot air up there.

The bottom line is this. If everything is true does it mean that music ensembles should never program Boulez?


----------



## Strange Magic

arpeggio said:


> I have lost track of the various currents of the above discussions. Many of the posts I really have trouble following. Even when it is sincere there is an awful lot of hot air up there.
> 
> The bottom line is this. If everything is true does it mean that music ensembles should never program Boulez?


It's all Brownian motion.


----------



## Guest

Chordalrock said:


> So, conformism and democracy in artistic evaluation is more important than actual insight into the quality of a work of art? You may be showing some amount of contemporary bias in your thinking there.
> [...]
> If there is art worth valuing other than that art which is commonly held to be great, it will be because this other art is good enough to be valuable and because the process of canonisation has FAILED to give it its due.
> [...]
> That's what dead matter would tell you. Do you think that dead matter is an authority on this issue? Do you listen to stones or do you listen to your own pain, suffering, joy, happiness, and so forth?
> 
> I've never yet met a nihilist who thought that having a tooth ache and not having a tooth ache were one and the same.
> [...]
> You have that exactly backwards.


Sorry...I think you've completely lost me. What I was saying was that "art" serves more than one purpose - it's not just about being an offering for the intelligentsia to value, rank and worship (or denigrate). It's an activity entered into by many people not seeking to become world famous, or hung in anyone's national gallery. It's ordinary folks leading ordinary lives, enjoying their painting or whatever, and that activity is as valid as what the greats want to do.

As for 'nihilist', I'm not. If you must categorise me, I'm more 'humanist'.



Harold in Columbia said:


> If you're saying
> 
> 1. that there is such a thing as great art, and therefore also such a thing as *not*-great art,
> 
> and
> 
> 2. that *not*-great art is *not* inferior to great art
> 
> that seems incoherent to me.


That's OK - I'm not saying that.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

How are you not saying that? Serious question. Here you seem to be denying that art *not* by "the greats" is inferior to art by the greats:



MacLeod said:


> It was the exchanges between posts #925 to #929 that set me wondering whether the only valuable "artistic expression" was that given by the great artists and/or that acknowledged by the art commenters. It seemed to me that the conversation had gone off the rails (I might well have been doing my own excess of inferring!) if, and I stress the 'if', what was being said was that the art produced by those much less well known is valueless (or at least inferior); that _only _the greats mattered.


So how are you not saying that?

Or maybe there's a simpler way to do this. Here's a statement: The Xuella Arnold necklace is inferior to _The Night Watch_. Do you agree or disagree?


----------



## Guest

Harold in Columbia said:


> Or maybe there's a simpler way to do this. Here's a statement: The Xuella Arnold necklace is inferior to _The Night Watch_. Do you agree or disagree?


Which is inferior, a soup spoon or a cement mixer?

Art produced by different people for different purposes in different times for different audiences. They cannot be compared in the way that you wish.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

MacLeod said:


> Which is inferior, a soup spoon or a cement mixer?


Depends on the quality of the spoon and the quality of the mixer.


----------



## Zhdanov

Truckload said:


> Why is Modern Art so Bad?


because the school is gone, since the mid 20th century or so, teachers have been losing authority.


----------



## Chordalrock

MacLeod said:


> Sorry...I think you've completely lost me. What I was saying was that "art" serves more than one purpose - it's not just about being an offering for the intelligentsia to value, rank and worship (or denigrate). It's an activity entered into by many people not seeking to become world famous, or hung in anyone's national gallery. It's ordinary folks leading ordinary lives, enjoying their painting or whatever, and that activity is as valid as what the greats want to do.


Sure, but you were trying to make that argument via some sort of aesthetic relativism, which is just nonsense. The fact that a parent has a nostalgic love for the childish drawings of their five-year-old kid doesn't make that drawing equal to great art.



MacLeod said:


> As for 'nihilist', I'm not. If you must categorise me, I'm more 'humanist'.


Well, if you're not a nihilist, then you can derive life's purpose from your ethical and aesthetic values. E.g. if you think suffering is bad, then inasmuch as there is suffering in the world that humans can do something about, one purpose of human life to that extent is to decrease suffering.


----------



## Sloe

MacLeod said:


> Which is inferior, a soup spoon or a cement mixer?
> 
> Art produced by different people for different purposes in different times for different audiences. They cannot be compared in the way that you wish.


I would take the soup spoon as my weapon.
I don´t think I can carry the cement mixer while I could fight with the soup spoon.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Sure, there are plenty of artists at work. The death of art means more people can be artists. But how many of them can have the impact of a Schoenberg or Picasso, actually changing the way we experience music or painting and even the very ways we hear and see?

How many artists in the whole of Art History achieved this? Modernism saw the greatest shift and innovations since the Renaissance. The Renaissance was followed by the period known as Mannerism. This period lasted 100 years (until Caravaggio and the Baroque). It produced any number of marvelous painters and sculptors... but are any of these names (Bronzino, Rosso Fiorentino, Parmigianino, Allori, Joachim Wtewael, Hendrick Goltzius, Caracci, Sodoma, Lucas van Leyden, Quentin Massys, etc...) thought of as equals to Renaissance masters such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Leonardo, Van Eyck, Bosch, etc...?

Like Mannerism, Post-Modern art is often "mannered" & self-conscious, and involves a rejection of many key elements of Modernism while struggling to come to terms with Modernism.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

And this new (since circa 1950) lack of a power to influence human thinking (unlike science) has ultimately relegated art to the sphere of enjoyment, self-expression, or social commentary, but little else.

Considering that historically Art has largely been owned and supported wholly by the Aristocracy and others of the ruling class, one has to ask how much impact has Art had upon human thinking?


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

There was a time when many people thought that great art reflected their profoundest aspirations as human beings. Well, a pack of idiots perhaps?

Which people? I'm far more in agreement with Oscar Wilde:

_The artist is the creator of beautiful things. 
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. 
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.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. 
For these there is hope. 
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty._


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Cubism, say, expanded human conceptions of space and time and thus the human experience of space and time.

Really? It seems to me, rather, that Cubism was the artist's response to the modern experiences of time and space.


----------



## Harold in Columbia

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Modernism saw the greatest shift and innovations since the Renaissance.


In Modernism's dreams it did. (Everybody wants to be the Renaissance.)

The great shift was, of course, the Enlightenment-Romanticism thesis-antithesis (that being itself a Romantic formulation, natch). A closer analogue to Modernism is the Neoclassicism of the late 17th century - a rigorous reaction to the welter of the Baroque, as Modernism was to Romanticism. Which can then be extended to a rather obvious analogy between Postmodernism and the Rococo.

Now, let's see: The Rococo flourished from the death of Louis XIV in 1715. Postmodernism flourished from about, let's say, 1975. Forty years on, that should make us today about equivalent to 1755 - no man's land between Rococo and the era of the American and French Revolutions. Seems plausible. But also the time of the philosophes, and if we've got a Rousseau, we're hiding her pretty well. I mean, I don't know, maybe you could make a case that the internet is our equivalent to Diderot's encyclopedia. But what do we believe in like Diderot believed in reason? In any case, a major difference is that in 1755 the west was already the most powerful part of the world and becoming more so, while today the exact opposite is happening.

And then another difference is the difference between the Baroque and Romanticism. Unlike the Baroque's distant descendants in the Enlightenment, we the distant descendants of Romanticism are still endowed/burdened with Romanticism's tortured self-consciousness.


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## Guest

Chordalrock said:


> Sure, but you were trying to make that argument via some sort of aesthetic relativism, which is just nonsense. The fact that a parent has a nostalgic love for the childish drawings of their five-year-old kid doesn't make that drawing equal to great art.


What argument? Aesthetic relativism? I think you're misunderstanding my posts. I have not been comparing the quality of the _output_, but the significance of the _activity _to the artist. To my wife, who is an artist, what is most important is that she makes things she wants to make. She's not interested in whether her output is equivalent to Rembrandt, or whether it will satisfy someone else's ideal of what a good Post Modernist (or even Post Post-Modernist) piece should be. Sure, she wants someone other than her husband to like her work and to see that it is 'saying something' - but we all want 'significance', if only we can live long enough to realise it.

If you think I'm arguing that everyone can be a Rembrandt, you missed my point. What I said was that the two pieces I used as examples were of equal _importance_, (most notably to the artist) not of equal aesthetic merit.



Chordalrock said:


> you can derive life's purpose from your ethical and aesthetic values.


Exactly. The purpose I find in life is mine, wholly, not anyone else's. That's what I mean when I say that life is purposeless - there isn't an objective purpose given to me by someone else, or hidden from view until I have a dawning revelation, or to go on a quest and discover.



Sloe said:


> I would take the soup spoon as my weapon.
> I don´t think I can carry the cement mixer while I could fight with the soup spoon.


But you'll be a long time mixing cement for your garden path with a soup spoon!


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## ArtMusic

Modernism relativism has that degree of artistic freedom that no previous generation of (much older) artists had. Anyone can be an artist of a particular work, of any artistic expression. This can be a good thing for art to some degree. But that doesn't mean all the works are going to be good (remember, anyone can be an artist of a piece of work).


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## Zhdanov

ArtMusic said:


> Modernism relativism has that degree of artistic freedom that no previous generation of (much older) artists had.


there cannot be freedom in relation to art or anything from human society.

man can be free only when alone in some far away place.

the idea of freedom has always been used to destroy the idea of personality and uniqueness of man.

one who is free - a person no more.


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## StlukesguildOhio

ArtMusic said:


> Modernism relativism has that degree of artistic freedom that no previous generation of (much older) artists had. Anyone can be an artist of a particular work, of any artistic expression. This can be a good thing for art to some degree. But that doesn't mean all the works are going to be good (remember, anyone can be an artist of a piece of work).


Certainly Modernism... beginning with the Impressionists... saw a degree of freedom in many ways previously unknown in the visual arts. The mass production of artist's materials... especially paint in tubes... meant that painters no longer need to be alchemists of a sort. Anyone could paint without needing to be experienced in binders, grinding pigments, and paint formulas. You also see a society with an increased free time and income able to take up hobbies... or passions outside their daily labors... such as painting. Then you have the fact that the academies and professional studios no longer control the entry into a career in art with self taught artists such as Degas and artist groups and collaboratives promoting art beyond that sanctioned by the academies.


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## Blancrocher

Anselm Kiefer is an interesting artist to consider in connection to the idea of freedom. He actually created a huge workshop spanning many acres at Barjac, France, where he was able to construct what is in effect a tiny art-city in virtual isolation; the whole studio is itself considered a work of art of impressive vision and ambition. As is often the case, one has to have a lot of money to have that much freedom, of course.

There is a documentary film, Over the Field Your Grass Will Grow, about the complex (though unfortunately I don't care for it--the director is frustratingly unfocused on the art around her).

The text and short video in the following is a good introduction for anyone interested: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/behind-the-scenes-anselm-kiefers

As an aside, it's interesting that the site is becoming a space for other artists.

I wish I could see it in person!


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## Harold in Columbia

Harold in Columbia said:


> Now, let's see: The Rococo flourished from the death of Louis XIV in 1715. Postmodernism flourished from about, let's say, 1975. Forty years on, that should make us today about equivalent to 1755 - no man's land between Rococo and the era of the American and French Revolutions. Seems plausible. But also the time of the philosophes, and if we've got a Rousseau, we're hiding her pretty well. I mean, I don't know, maybe you could make a case that the internet is our equivalent to Diderot's encyclopedia. But what do we believe in like Diderot believed in reason?


Actually, on reflection, maybe Postmodern deconstructionism/identity politics/"diversity" can be usefully understood as analogous to reason in the Enlightment. Same smug stupidity, same latent preference for enlightened autocracy, same comfort in practice with the douceur de vivre of the elite - which we now can ignore in the philosophes because we don't have to live with them.

And we've already got a respectable number of proto(?)-Montagnards ready and waiting to smash the whole rotten edifice: Sanders and Podemos on the left, Trump and Le Pen on the right.

Maybe even the political situation isn't all that different - China now is Russia then.

Hmm - maybe Alain de Benoist is our Rousseau.


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## Chordalrock

MacLeod said:


> Exactly. The purpose I find in life is mine, wholly, not anyone else's.


Now you're just contradicting yourself. There can't be purpose in your life and not be purpose in life at the same time. If you are able to sincerely come up with purpose in your life, then this means you have the power to create purpose, which means that what stones and dead things think about purposelessness doesn't matter anymore. It means there is purpose, objectively, even if its jurisdiction begins and ends with you. However:



MacLeod said:


> there isn't an objective purpose given to me by someone else, or hidden from view until I have a dawning revelation, or to go on a quest and discover.


You didn't discover that tooth ache is bad? You didn't discover that joy and happiness are good as such and suffering and pain are bad as such?

Sounds like you should either go on that quest of discovery or take some time to recollect what you've been up to in your younger days.


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