aesthesis

Google and the Meaning of Everything (v1.2)

I'm re-posting this earlier entry so that it’s current on Aesthesis for a follow-up article. It also gives me the chance to correct a couple of typos. Be forewarned, I have not altered any of the web links. They are the same as when I originally published the article (2004-04-30 11:10:10) so they may or may not work.

Objectives, solutions, criticisms, and discernments are impossible without definitions. You can’t create a car if you don’t know what a car is. You can’t evaluate which car is better if you don’t have a good definition of what cars are.

Christians are called upon to discern (Heb. 5:14) and to approve (Phil 1:10) the things we find to be excellent. This command is not limited to spiritual matters so we can assume that it includes art. It is impossible to know which art works are excellent without a good definition of what excellent art is.

Christian or not, everyone is responsible to make the best use they can of their brains.

For any future definition to have value it must address the issues of the past by affirmation, synthesis, or contradiction. Theorists of the past have made assertions about art that conflicted with one another. Two mutually exclusive definitions of art cannot coexist and equal truths. Instead the assertions of the past have to be weighed against one another. Truths must be sifted from among error. Subjectivity must be burned away to reveal a workable definition. In this way, the potentially confusion of past contradiction becomes a launch pad for relevant meaning.

Just to get and idea of how art has been defined I turned as I often do to Google.

The beauty of Google isn’t accuracy. The information it finds might be out of date, misleading or poorly worded. The beauty of Google is volume. Based on the volume of hits you get on a given topic, you can make some fairly reliable generalizations about the common perception of a given topic.

It could be argued that, since only a minority of the world adds content to the web, you cannot use a Google search to generalize about what a majority of people are thinking. I think it is safe however to say that Google at least gives a good idea of what internet users think on a given topic.

With this idea in mind I used Google’s reference tools using the “definitions” and “thesaurus” functions. These reference tools approximate an accepted academic definition. On the second layer I put results from pages created by individuals or non academic institutions – kind of a public opinion survey.

The search “define: art” yielded accepted definitions from mostly-reputable sources like Princeton, Oregon State as well as from questionable sources like www..com. (I know very little about angelicinspirations but based on their definition of art, I doubt I will use my time to find out more about them.)

Already difficulties appear in the definition process. While many of the entries were interesting and valuable, several were based on acronyms. epregnancy.com for instance defined art as “All treatments or procedures that involve the handling of human eggs and sperm for the purpose of establishing a pregnancy. Types of ART include IVF, GIFT, ZIFT, embryo cryopreservation, egg or embryo donation, and surrogate birth.” Cisco defined art like this. “1. audible ringing tone. A signal sent back to the calling party to indicate the called number is ringing. 2. administrative reporting tool. A web-based application for Cisco CallManager that generates reports on performance and service details. See also CDR and CMR.”

Others defined the word based on its use in a specific vocational field. In printing for instance art can be “Any photograph, map or illustration used in preparing a job for printing.” (imcprint.com) or “All illustrations used in preparing a job for printing” (nap.edu). In book collecting “art is the trade abbreviation for artificial and is used to describe certain book binding materials” (Collectbooks.about.com)

Other definitions are specific to a genre or movement in art. If you’ve been asking yourself “What is Critical Postmodern Art” then look no further, milforded.org has an answer for you.

Once these off-the-track definitions have been weeded out we are left with two basic scholastic definitions.

Most definitions focused on either the process or the physical object of art. Princeton divided their definition into three components that summarize fairly well the basic definition of Art.

the products of human creativity; works of art collectively; "an art exhibition"; "a fine collection of art" (Here)

the creation of beautiful or significant things; "art does not need to be innovative to be good"; "I was never any good at art"; "he said that architecture is the art of wasting space beautifully" (Here)

a superior skill that you can learn by study and practice and observation; "the art of conversation"; "it's quite an art" (Here)

Princeton’s definition brings out the difference between the noun and verb forms of the word art.

How useful is their definition? How supportable? It may not matter.

Another definition reads

[art] divides into psychological (personal) and visionary (collective). Art can never be reduced to psychopathology because visionary art is greater than its creator and draws on primordial images and forces. It stands on its own merits. It compensates for the one-sidedness of an era. Rather than a symptom or something secondary, it's a true symbolic expression, a reorganization of the conditions to which a causalistic explanation reduces it. (Here)

This second definition minimizes both process and product of art and focuses on the social purpose of art.

Google is great at telling what people have thought about a topic. The googler (is that a word yet?) can see that process, product, and purpose have all been issues that past art-theorists have had to grapple with. Whatever happened in the past, future art theorists must come to grips with these three issues.

Google is not authoritative on the meaning of any topic, but it can help you to see what other’s think about it. If Google isn’t a vast mine of data to be processed it is a least a shovel to dig into the internet. It may not tell you the meaning of everything but it can atlas past thinking about it. Don’t take it’s answers for granted but listen to them as you would to any individual. The answers it gives, after all, are the collected answers of individuals everywhere.

ZPD

Last week I didn’t have time to post to aesthesis. I spent the week attending a training seminar on integrating the arts with other subjects in elementary and middle schools. The training is part of the Greenville school system’s arts integration project which, this year, is planning to place an artist in class at two area schools. Each artist will team up with the teachers for four to six weeks. They will teach several units that combine special arts instruction and activities with other core subjects like math, social studies, science, and others.

I found the atmosphere charged with excitement. The teachers were very positive about having an artist in their classroom (not always the case) and the artists ready to use their talents to support the teachers’ educational goals.

Shameless plug to other artists: Greenville artists! Quit complaining about how the current state of education that minimizes the arts. Do something about it! Get involved in this project and use your abilities to help meet the needs of the children in your community. I’m not sure what the bets way to get involved is but I know that if you contact the folks at the Metropolitan Arts Council. They can point you in the right direction.

One concept from the seminar that caught my attention was Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development. (There are lots of web site about this but THIS is one of them.)

Vygotsky believed that tasks could be divided into two basic categories (or zones).

The zone of actual development (ZAD) is full of tasks a person could to without help. Students come into the educational environment with the necessary skills to do certain tasks. They don’t need to be taught how to hear or see (thought they may need to be taught how to interpret their sense impressions). There are other tasks, however, that a person cannot accomplish on their own.

Vygotsky’s thinking about this second category is what he is known for. The zone of proximal development (ZPD) contains tasks that students cannot accomplish on their own. I might be able to read all the letters in a Latin epigram. I may even be able to pronounce the phonemes of the same epigram, but I would need the help of someone else to gain an understanding of the epigram. The help might take the form of another person—a master of Latin—who can translate the poem for me. Or I might get help from others through books they have written on Latin. In either case I have to have some outside help to accomplish the task of comprehension.

The concept of ZPD informs many situations other than those found in the classroom. Rugged individualism may be an attractive philosophy but it doesn’t play out well in life. I’ll refrain from using a trite expression about men and islands but it is none the less true that we cannot accomplish anything on our own. This concept is expressed in the New Testament in terms of the body. No single part of the body can accomplish its task alone. The eye cannot see without the cooperation of the muscles that raise the eyelid or the optical nerves that communicate with the brain.

How does art play into the ZPD model? (Why am I talking about it on a blog devoted to aesthetics?) Art is persuasive. Enticement is one of the principle uses of art. Enticement can be negative but it doesn’t have to be. In the case of education art can entice learners to step out of the ZAD into the ZPD. Art can be just the help a person needs to accomplish the task they couldn’t do on their own. Art can tempt us to change. Encourage us to think in a different way. Or it can guide us along a different path.

Vygotsky believed that teachers worked in the student’s ZPD connecting skills and concepts that the child had mastered with new skills and ideas that the student would not be able to master on their own. The artist’s role is similar. Art has to have some element that connects with what the viewer already knows. Only on this common ground can art pull the viewer into the ZPD and help them to an action or way of thinking they would not have come to on their own.

Art exists in the ZPD.

Concrete Collage

Why is it? I love poems that employ concrete imagery in more than a descriptive way? Hamlet’s rank un-weeded garden or a star sending out sometimes red and sometimes blue rays.

I don’t claim to understand music but when I hear some concrete audio reference I feel like my brain can get a handle on the work I’m listening too. Even if the reference is suggested by a third party who may or may not know any more than I do about the piece. If the music is in a film and connected to a character or a set of images it stays locked in my mind as a unity of audio-visual experience.

Why is it? I love poems that employ concrete imagery in more than a descriptive way? Hamlet’s rank un-weeded garden or a star sending out sometimes red and sometimes blue rays.

I don’t claim to understand music but when I hear some concrete audio reference I feel like my brain can get a handle on the work I’m listening too. Even if the reference is suggested by a third party who may or may not know any more than I do about the piece. If the music is in a film and connected to a character or a set of images it stays locked in my mind as a unity of audio-visual experience.

My goal in painting is to use images in this same concrete connectable way. I know that people attach meaning and force to images. “That’s the beauty of Collage and found object painting” I tell myself.

So why is it so easy to slip back into trotting out the same old clichéd, seemingly universal images? Advertising slogans and torn away bits of print media? Why is it that it’s so easy to make art about art instead of art about people and places and things?

The beauty of concrete imagery is the difference between “a” and “the.” It’s hard though not to overlook values in “the” and use the image only for it’s “a” qualities. The bowler hat becomes “a” reference to Magritte but the personal history of “the” hat—that particular bowler hat—is forgotten in the euphoric rush that comes with symbolic representation.

Collage has been developed to such an extent that there is a common visual vocabulary to it similar to the visual vocabulary of cubism. Earlier cubist came up with a vocabulary for themselves but followers replicated the beautiful vocabulary that they didn’t own. Schwitters started using ad-art in his collages in 1919 (link) and collage artists are still doing it today.

There’s nothing wrong with building on another artists ideas or taking inspiration from them. The challenge for every semi-ambitious artist is to develop their own set of visual words without loosing their audience. Not new for the sake of new but new because there’s little value in calling something new work if the ideas are all borrowed from art-historical sources.

This is the reason that artists have to develop their perceptive abilities. New images and visual vocabulary are all around us but we have to see and filter it.

The artist has to have something to say. If I’m too focused on stylistic concerns I’ll slip into the easy flow of meaningless visual babbling and eye candy—sweet and low for the soul. One way to make sure that I’m saying something is to evaluate my visual vocabulary to see if it is personal and concrete. Do I have a good reason for choosing the images I’m using or are they just an expected greeting to my viewers.

Artist: how are you?

Viewer: Fine. And you?

Artist: Fine.

Concrete images keep things exciting and fresh. Even older collages still impact us because the images relate to the work and not to all the historical examples of collage. They make the works interesting to regular folks not just other artists and art historians who know all the visual references. Visual allusions should bring a deeper layer of meaning to the work but if they are too much on the surface the work will be shallow, hollow men.

Planting Seeds

I believe that no work of art can be understood before some preparatory work has been done in the person doing the understanding.

Even as I say it I think to myself “That seems little extreme.” But before I thin the credo let me explain that…

In order to find a theory of art that encompasses more than one field you need to find out what similarities exist between the different art fields. The fields are diverse so there are a lot of possible answers. The only satisfactory connection I have found is communication. Every work of art that I could think of was an attempt by its creator to communicate—or possibly mis-communicate—something.

I believe that humans are linguistic by nature. We are not defined by the words we use but we find or create word to define our world. Further words are tools with which we build ideas.

The Judeo-Christian concept of man asserts that he was created in Gods image. God created everything by speaking it into existence—He created with words. No surprise then that man, in God’s image, cannot create or conceive of creation without words.

Communication is part of necessary adaptation. Adaptation occurs by one of two forces.

Force one is natural selection by which the defective or inadequate options are removed from the pool of possible options. In language this happens when we choose not to use some words or phrases that might get in the way of the message we want to communicate. We choose not to behave in certain ways because we see that those behaviors will not help us to achieve what we want. Natural selection alone is not adequate to solve the worlds riddle. If you have to tell your neighbor something you might eliminate a lot of unhelpful words but narrowing the pool of word doesn’t necessarily mean that you will find the word you need. Natural selection is a negative approach (it relies on restriction) and can only be relied upon when the pool of options contains all the necessary solutions. (Natural selection is the provable part of the evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory deals with this fundamental flaw by claiming that random mutations can add new solutions to the pool of genetic options. I’m an agnostic where this claim is concerned.)

Force two is creation. Creation is the process of generating new solutions. New solutions might be a combination of old ones but more often they reshape basic materials in a way that multiplies (as opposed to adding) their effectiveness.

Art attempts creative communication. The goal of the artist is to mold a new solution from basic concepts. This new solution is then encapsulated in the work of art and tossed into society.

Each work is like a bottled message bobbing on the ocean of society. When the bottle containing the message (in most cases the artwork contains the message in a cognitive bundle but the art work is not itself the message) plunks onto a strand of sand where you sit you won’t immediately get the message. Just looking at the container doesn’t convey the message.

You might open the bottle and look at the message in it and if you understand the language in which it is written you will be able to read the message. Here is where the seed concept comes in. The seed is the message encoded in the art. Language is the cultural soil that the seed must have in order to grow in your mind. Language prepares you to receive the message in the work of art. Without this soil construct you won’t get the message. You might look at the art but it won’t make sense to you.

The seed of art grows in proportion to this soil. Knowing how to speak a language means that when you listen to people speak in another language you can probably pick up on some emotional clues based on pitch and volume. The better you understand the language being spoken the more your get from the speech. Increased preparation before hand means increased comprehension.

Preparation comes in a lot of forms but it all enables comprehension. Without this preparation there is no comprehension. Solomon said that the simple person reading the proverbs would get some basic information, the wise man who reads it would be able to cultivate wisdom, but to the person whose heart had not been prepared with a fear of God the book would be puzzling or empty. Looking at art without the necessary preparation is trying to understand a blank sheet of paper.

A Three-fold Path

I believe that artists use one or more of three basic methods for making artistic decisions.

1. The way. When using “the way” the artist chooses one or more basic principles (usually abstract concepts) which guide and inform decisions in the art process. If the artist decides that they want to devote their art to the advancement of jelly beans for medicinal purposes this decision would impact every work they made. They would be following “the way of medicinal jelly beans” in a similar way that a Tang Soo Do student is following the way (or Do) of the Tang hand (Soo means hand but there is some disputation about the meaning of Tang in Tang Soo Do).

2. Principle (or judgment). Here the artist develops a set of basic rules for their work. When an artist is confronted with a choice of options they can return to these basic rules and make a specific decision based on the rules. Artists in the past have made rules such as: “traditional tools and techniques are the best,” “make art representational,” “paintings should be based on atmospheric impressions.” These rules could be helpful or not. Sometimes they focus an artist by limiting the range of options. Other times, they hut an artist by channeling his creative energy in worthless directions.

3. Examples. Artists sometimes choose one or more artists that they appreciate and try to make works “like” that artist. Most artists have been impressed and inspired by historical works and other artist. Often artist learn more about technique and visual communication by looking at extent works than they do reading about those work without seeing them. The principle danger here is that an artist who paints “like Picasso” may never be known for anything more. It may not be valuable to the world to have another Picasso painting.

Certainly these three strands of thought are often braded to form a stronger cord. It’s notable that these three paths include a spectrum from inductive to deductive methods.

More on the fat of the land

The second thing that Capon’s The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection has caused me to think on is the instinctual need for an authoritative source. (look here for the previous thought on this subject)

Capons use of scripture to support his thoughts imply that he believe the Bible to have some authority. If the Bible says a thing is good then there must be something good about that thing. (I should clarify that this book is not written in an argumentative tone but rather, as the title suggests, in a reflective manner. Capon’s goal is to make the readers think for themselves not to supply them with a lot of readymade answers.)

Humans have a natural desire to base their thinking on something that they believe they can trust.

Aestheticians are constantly battling about the definition of the word art. Here’s a quick list of some positions that people take related to defining art. There are of course many other schools of thought but these are some that are still being supported. (Thanks to folks on Aesthetics-L for their informative debate on this topic.)

1. Institutional: institutions define what works should be called art.

2. Elitist: an elite group decides which works should be called art.

3. Populist: art is defined by what is popularly called art.

4. Lexical: the word art can be defined by common usage.

5. Idealist: There is an ideal art object (probably not physical) by which other works of art may be judged. The more they conform to the ideal the more worthy they are to be called art.

6. Objectivist: This is a broad category that includes many of the others. It just says that art should be judged based on objective attributes. Objective attributes can be experienced by one or more senses like color, line, or pitch.

7. Subjectivist: Another broad category that defines art based on subjective attributes. One definition of the word subjective is ‘taking place within the mind and modified by individual bias; "a subjective judgment"’ (www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn).

8. Naturalist: art is a reflection of nature and the closer it mirrors nature the better the art will be.

It’s not hard to see that none of these definitions seem to account for art as we know it today. The thing that interests me most is how each thought school relies on some source for authority.

John Dewey in Art as Experience bases his definition of art on evolution. Basically he says that art is a process which helps people adapt to their environment so just about anything can be called art. Dewey spends almost a whole chapter saying that we shouldn’t eliminate everyday occurrences such as supper from the category called art. The most authoritative source that Dewey trusted in was science. Whatever science said he believed and science said that all things—from maggots to men—are the product of chance and random processes.

The result is that Dewey spends a lot of time backpedaling from his false start. If evolution is the evaluative principle of art then there is no value difference between any two works that fall into his art category. It doesn’t matter how well a work was made, if it helps people to adapt to their environment it can be called art. Dewey realized that this wasn’t a tenable of useful definition so he spends the rest of his book putting additional requirements on art so that he can eliminate a bunch of stuff that no one wants to call art from the art category.

Other definitions like the institutional and elitist (often two heads of the same dragon) struggle with dependability. If you believe that an elite group of people define what is classified as art then you have to figure out which people get allowed into the inner sanctum of the elite.

If you think institutions define art, which institutions should be allowed to do so? Do all museums have the right to say what art is? What about governments, or a board of artistic governors?

Of further interest is the assertion that art cannot be defined. If you listen long enough to a person who asserts this their argument usually runs something like this. “As I look at the group of works that impress me as art I am unable to find an attribute common to all of them so there must not be a way to define what is art.” At its bottom this definition relies on the authority of the individual asserting it.

Everyone wants to believe that their definition of art is based on the most authoritative source possible. Whether it’s based on nature or logic, a definition is only as valuable as the authority that asserts it. Whatever the definition, figuring out what authority it depends on is the first step in evaluating the definition. When you formulate your own definition of art, consider what you have chosen as its central authority. No doubt that authority is defining more for you than art.

The fat of the land

I recently finished a book called The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection by Robert Farrar Capon. (you can find out more about it here). Capon and I don’t agree on every point but there is one thing that we are in full accord about.

Fat is not evil.

Capon and I however are fairly lonely in our opinion. I think it would be fair to say that most adults in the US believe that fat in food is to be avoided at all costs. You can get low or no fat substitutes for just about anything. Butter is seen as a spike in the culinary tree.

Capon and I turn to the same source to support our conclusion. God through Isaac promised Jacob “Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine:”. Fatness, if it were bad wouldn’t be part of a blessing. Rather, it would be used as a curse (“the fat of the land be upon you for this thing” evil, or the converse, “I will maintain the skinniness of your waist all your days” or “the carbs shall not collect upon thee neither shall the calories be stored up in your hips”).

There must be an aesthetic principle here somewhere. Although the aesthetics of food cannot be considered a major player in philosophic circles, it is gaining in interest (Google it and see for yourself). The issue of fat brings two ideas to mind.

First, the historical context of fat as a symbol. It’s clear from the Biblical passage that the people of that time thought of fat as a good thing but fat today is an evil to be avoided.

If you made the same dish of mashed potatoes with a big melted lump of butter crowning the mound and served it to the average person today, they would likely shun it. The negative connotations of fat would cause them to judge the whole dish negatively. They reject good potatoes because they contain bad fat (or carbohydrates but that’s off topic).

This reaction is understandable in certain situations. We should all eat responsibly. For instance, if you know that there is arsenic mixed with the potatoes then you should reject the whole dish rather than try to eat around the bad parts. On the other hand, the fact that some contemporary painters insist on wasting their audience’s time by creating infantile works of art is not a good reason to write off the art world as a whole and call for a return to academic realism (This site calls for just that).

What is worth aesthetic interest here is how butter, the symbol of an invisible concept of fat) has become a negative factor despite the innate pleasure derived from it. People love to eat butter when they don’t know they are doing so. Cream sauces and croissants (good ones) are full of it and people gobble them down. But if you told most people, it’s the fat that make that croissant flaky and delicious they would likely slink away glumly.

Certain symbols are so powerful in a society that even a minor reduction in their presence is seen as good. Put “20% less fat” on a label (that’s 4 pats of butter instead of 5) and you are assured of monetary success. If a government official says 20% less money will be wasted he is hailed as a hero. The symbol of a-little-waste-averted gives a candidate a wholly positive aesthetic to the voting public. People still want the benefits of government spending just like they want the beneficial taste of butter but it makes them feel good to know that they are choosing a little less of what their favorite vice.

Some times an art work is received positively just because it reduces the amount of a negative philosophy compared to its contemporaries. Later, as a work is re-evaluated, that reduction doesn’t seem so important and opinion turns against the work. Some of G. B. Shaw’s plays are like this. He was a leader of the fight for women’s rights in his day but some of the ideas he posited in his plays are looked upon today as dated. His ideas about what women had the right to do was different from what activists today believe.

It’s wise to note that neither that essential value of butter nor of women’s liberty to act in society has changed. Only the definition that contemporary culture places on these terms has changed. The change in definition of butter from a tasty goodness to dangerous fat carrier hasn’t changed the butter itself. The effect of butter has not changed.

Only the appreciation of fat has changed with time. The appreciation has changed. Education affects appreciation but adjusting definitions. Cezanne’s work was not appreciated fully until the people were educated as to his definition of art. Once that definition was grasped the works came alive. The paints hadn’t changed, just the expectation.

Modified definitions however seldom precede the artworks that they encompass. The definition of art that helped people to appreciate Cezanne’s paintings could not have been formulated without his experimental works to guide it.

There is a circular bent to this argument. Possibly though, the aesthetic side of the definition of art (not the physical definition) is a handle by which we grasp art rather than a tool with which we make art. Few great dramatic theorists were also great playwrights.

Maybe art is two mental states connected by an action and an object. Foundational concept, experiment/experience, and altered perception based on impact. This would be the case for artist and audience. An artist couldn’t begin without a foundational concept, they could not proceed without eventually trying something, and they would not know they were done until their perception of the art object had been changed.

A viewer would have no chance of enjoying a work without a foundational concept that was somehow tangential to the art object they were to view, they could not compare the work and their concept with out experiencing the work, and depending on the nature of the comparison their perception of the object would change.

An artist might decide that a cream sauce would be the best way to express the joy of life that they feel. They might, then, begin to test their premise by constructing one (like this one) using butter et. al. As they got closer to finishing the sauce they might taste it to see if it getting across just the message they wanted to communicate before presenting it to whomever they wanted to communicate to.

People may immediately enjoy the flavor of butter or the vibrancy of Cezanne’s colors but once they have been prepared for the butter experience they might appreciate it more fully. It’s only after people see the gift that butter is that they get a hint at its value. Butter as the evidence of a fruitful earth brings with it more enjoyment than churned, salted milk fat.

Second, and even more interesting … well, maybe later.

Hope and Bad Art

Here are two well written articles about the current state of the art world.

The first is here but it points immediately here.

Both are worth a read even if you don’t agree with them.

A Vote for Art

Today is voting day in South Carolina.

As I voted I was reminded of an ongoing and highly emotional debate happening on Aesthetics-L. Some have argued that Thomas Kinkade’s work is art because a large group of people think of it as art.

What if we had art elections?

You could go into a small booth, flip through a booklet and poke a little pin through the hole marked Edward Hopper or Nick Bantok. This would make the work of the duly elected artist art and no one could argue against it.

Of course that would mean that, unlike the two page South Carolina butterfly ballot, there might be thousands of artists to check. That might be too difficult so maybe you could just vote for movements. You could vote a straight cubist ticket – or you could approve all the artists who call themselves deconstructionists. This would save a lot of time.

Still, you might like most neo-geo or minimalist paintings but you might not think much of their sculpture so perhaps you could also choose mediums. You could vote to allow all new-media installations into the artistic pantheon.

The difficulty comes when you look at the ballot and you see a lot of unfamiliar names like Yoshi Abe, Radu Aftenie, and Mark Beam. A few voters would carefully look up each artist , evaluate their work and message and they would make informed decisions about who should be considered and artist. Others would find someone whose opinion they trust to evaluate the artistic candidates for them. Most people would vote for the first guy on the list or whatever name they recognize. That’s the easiest way.

Some artists could get people to vote for them by using publicity to make their names familiar to the voters. Other artists who spend all their time working wouldn’t have the time and money to generate buzz so organizations of people who were sympathetic to their style could work for them. Of course previously recognized, incumbent artists would have an advantage over lesser known artists.

Artists whose message focused on serious problems in society would always be at a disadvantage. On the other hand, an artist who reinforced popular values would be a shoe-in for the artist position.

Why shouldn’t common people have the same say about what is or isn’t art as academics and theorists?

You tell me?

Maybe we should just skip Florida though.

(Jason now removes his tongue from his cheek)

The Dali’s Advocate

The following is my own answer to the puzzle of the waxed mustache.

My own view of art is a functional one. That is, I look at art from two perspectives based on my function related to art. On one side I see art from the artist’s perspective. On the other side I see with the educational (teacher/student) perspective. Both sides come to the same conclusion. Knowledge of the artists life is critical to forming a balanced view of their work.

As an artist …

I want to view a work like Singularities Which I found here. I want to take a long and primarily objective look at both physical and aesthetic technique.

As an artist I’m asking, how were the formal structures created or used. Did he use color in an effective way?. Did the composition help or hurt the image? Was the paint application appropriate to the work? Was there a sense that each part of the work was necessary or were some elements superfluous?

The base of all my questions as an artist is one of perspective. What impact will this work have on my own work? First, I want to know whether the work has enough critical acclaim to tint what I am doing personally. Whether an artist likes or dislikes Picasso’s work they cannot avoid the shadow of it on their own subsequent work. Even someone as cheesy as Thomas Kincade will effect the way future art viewers look at the impressionist techniques.

Second, how much of an impression has it made on me and does the work have any unique technical or ideological qualities. If the work had a great impact on me I might want emulate the feel of a positive effect or avoid the feel of a work with a negative effect. I might use a unique method of paint application or an unusual means of equating two seemingly dissimilar images.

The problem is that the artist work is mixed in with his own subjective cultural baggage. His message is shouted in his own cultural language. Even his technique is not based solely on his aesthetic choices. Since we can’t assume that the artist’s subjective baggage is the same as our own we have to filter it out to get a clear picture of what he has accomplished.

As a teacher …

or student my perspective is different. I have to understand all I can and I have two basic tools with which to build a model of the artistic universe. Understanding can be reached by analysis or by synthesis.

Looking with the analytical eye I pull each piece apart, examine them, and form conclusions about what makes them tick. Take the individual pieces of imagery - an ant or an angel- out of context and find out their historical meaning. Consider the use of one color at a time. Puzzle over the work’s title.

In the synthesis phase all the puzzle pieces are re-assembled and I try to form several perspective views of the piece.

I look at it from the art history view. Is this work of sufficient import to the art world to force my students to learn about it? How much time should it be given? Is it a primary example of a given idea (surrealism or realism) or just a minor instance to be mentioned? What have critics said about this work?

I also try to form an idea of the artist’s perspective on the work. How did they feel about this piece? Unless they are alive the only way to guess at this is to learn as much as possible about the artist as a person. This includes biographical information, personal writings and as complete a view of the cannon of their work as possible. Only by looking at the artist’s life work can you fully understand the subtleties of their personal symbolism.

In addition to understanding the work, a teacher has to help students contextualize the philosophic and cultural values of a given work. An artist’s work may be rooted in a self destructive philosophy and knowledge of the impact of that philosophy in their life may help steer students in a better direction. Too, often artists overstate their positions and seeing how they lived can temper this misleading message.

Understanding an artist’s life gives a clearer picture of their individual works by contextualizing philosophic messages in the work, illuminating personal symbolism, and filtering out subjective cultural baggage. This research (not just shallow surface scratching) usually leads to a richer understanding and sympathy for the work and artist. In the few cases where it doesn’t it may allow us a chuckle at the frockless emperor’s expense.

Two Galleries Modestly Proposed

I read two interesting headlines yesterday.

First…

THE PROPOSED NATIONAL GALLERY OF BRITISH ART IN DANGER.

Mr. Henry Tate. "NO, THANK YOU, MR. RED TAPE, I DON'T WANT MY GIFTS TO THE NATION TO BE TIED UP BY YOU, THEN PACKED AWAY, AND NEVER SEEN AGAIN!"

This was from “Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890, by Various, Edited by F. C. Burnand” and I found it here.

The second (in the spirit of Punch) “New Gagosian in London: Whoop de doo” (Here)

You can read a more complete and decorous article on the same subject here. Gagosian To Open London's Biggest Gallery (here)

It’s interesting to note the difference between the two men’s thoughts about art. Henry Tate thought of the art as a gift to the nation. The works were treasures to be given.

Gagosian takes rather a different view.

Cristina Ruiz, editor of the Art Newspaper, said: "Everything you hear about Gagosian stresses that he loves to close a deal. He loves the art - but he is one of those dealers who absolutely loves to sell, and he is very successful at it. Yes, he employs aggressive selling techniques, but that's how dealers get stuff done." (From Guardian Unlimited, here)

For Gagosian art is a commodity—the power source for his lifestyle. He may actually care about art but his new gallery isn’t intended to promote art. The largest commercial gallery in London will promote art sales.

I’m in favor of art sales (particularly my own) but I sometimes wish that artists would label works that were created primarily for pecuniary purposes. The public has been told that to dislike a work of art is well nigh heretical. It would be nice if there were a convenient method for distinguishing between those works which an artist considers exemplary of his ideals and those works which an artist hopes will fit into your décor.

Just think how much easier this would make future scholarship. A young art historian could easily weed out those works that the artist created under the duress of their landlord and focus on those in which the artist tried to communicate something timely or timeless.

Haiku – Sumi-e – Nokia

Is there a musical equivalent to haiku?

Encyclopedia.com says…

(hī´koo) , an unrhymed Japanese poem recording the essence of a moment keenly perceived, in which nature is linked to human nature. It usually consists of 17 jion (Japanese symbol-sounds). The term is also used for foreign...

adaptations of the haiku, notably the poems of the imagists. (here)

The closest style in art is sumi-e painting from Japan. One web page say of sumi-e “Sumi-e means: Black Ink Painting. Black ink on white paper, simple, elegant and serene. Simplicity is the most outstanding characteristic of Sumi-e. An economy of brush strokes are used to communicate the essence of the subject.” (here)

In haiku the poet creates complex, recognizable images using just a few verbal sounds. Sumi-e painting creates recognizable images using just a few terse brush strokes. The Aesthetic of each art form is based on economy, simplicity, and the involvement of the audience.

My first musical response was minimalism. “[M]inimalist compositions tend to emphasize simplicity in melodic line and harmonic progression, to stress repetition and rhythmic patterns, and to reduce historical or expressive reference.” (here) Glass and other minimalist composers use repetition so that it’s difficult to keep your frame of reference for the experience.

Scroll down to to see a Haiku by Basho (“The greatest Japanese haiku writer.” Here) altered in accordance to the minimalist aesthetic.

The phoneme pieces of the minimalist version may form a cohesive whole and if interpreted correctly they may make sense but there isn’t the immediate image transfer that makes the original a treasure.

Minimalism in art is aesthetically different from haiku as well. Picture a large canvas covered entirely with one shade of red, or divided by a single black line, or filled with a composition that employs only to shapes. The economy is extreme but it doesn’t communicate a recognizable image to the viewer. The viewer is not allowed to penetrate the colored surface. Minimalist painting seems to say that a painting is not a picture, it’s just paint on a surface. Minimalist music seems to advance the theory that music isn’t a song, it’s just notes spread over the space time continuum.

So what is the musical equivalent to Haiku. I submit that cell phone ring tones are the closest musical counterpart to haiku.

Song based ring tones often boil a musical composition down to a melody line. Just one note at a time. In addition, ring tones often cut a small recognizable slice out of a larger composition. Further, the sound produced is synthesized rather than a recording of what a particular performance of the original sounded like.

Despite this major mutation of the original most people can still recognize the “Brandenburg Concerto” or “Fur Elise.” Our minds and memories can fill in the many musical gaps.

We can fill in the blanks in any given popular tune the same way that our brains transform meaningless flicks of sumi-e ink into mountains, horses, or what have you.

Further, your own connection with a particular song can be evoked even by the mediocre (or worse) copy of it. In the same way, it is your own experience with jar cracking cold that lets the first line in the Basho haiku communicate a whole winter of imagery.

For Haiku, sumi-e, or ring tones to fulfill their image carrying capability, the audience must be engaged. The notes, or ink, mean little on their own. The sounds of the poem are only meaningful as a connection between the artist and the audience.

Does the artist make the meaning? Or does the meaning come from the audience? Or is meaning in art only found when communication between artist and audience has occurred?

I guess ring tones are more of a genre than a style. And it’s doubtful that cell phone composers will ever earn Grammy awards for their contribution to the world of music. Still, the potential is there to trigger audience response even with most economical of compositions.

W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wa Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter ter j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar ar c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cr cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra cra ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck ck s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s:

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie ie a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke

Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th Th his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his his I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy cy n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t.

The poem reads…

Waterjar cracks:
I lie awake
This icy night.

(I found it here)

Samuel Beckett and the First Cause

What is a Beckett play? The question seems simple enough. A definition should be easy to come up with.

Samuel Beckett professed to believe in authorial intent. That is, Becket believed that his plays ought to be performed exactly as he wrote them with no alterations by actors or directors. In addition to the dialogue ...

(or lack thereof) Beckett wrote stage directions, specific movements, and notes about costumes in his plays.

Beckett was not the first playwright to rely on authorial notes to control the way a play was staged. Eugene O’Neil and George Bernard Shaw did the same. Shaw, for instance, wrote long essays to accompany the text of his plays sometimes explaining an ambiguous point in the text. Beckett however tries to control every nuance of a production – every intonation of every vowel and consonant spoken.

Beckett was concerned that meaning or non-meaning that he as the author had programmed into the script would not be lost or adulterated by overly creative actors and directors. His extreme views on this resulted in several humorous theatrical anecdotes. Several of these are recorded here by Fintan O’Toole in a review of the print release of some of Beckett’s production notebooks.

”In 1988, he and his publisher Jerome Lindon forced the Comédie Francaise in Paris to withdraw certain alterations of, and additions to, the prescribed setting and costumes from a production of Fin de partie by Gildas Bourdet, leading to Bourdet's own decision to take his name off the credits. In the same year, through the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Francais, Beckett took legal action to prevent a Dutch company, De Haarlemse Toneelschuur, from staging an all-woman Waiting for Godot. When he lost the case, he banned all productions of his plays in Holland.”

The problem in defining a Beckett play is that Beckett contradicts himself between notes and texts and even between different texts of the same play.

O’Toole questions whether Beckett’s notes about his plays should necessarily be considered authoritative on production values. He points out that Beckett created paradoxes between what he wrote and what he expected on the stage. It is unclear whether these puzzles were intentional or not.

Those who choose to consider themselves Christian’s don’t really suffer from the same dilemma. They, for the most part, accept the primacy of the Bible as a source of truth. They accept this on faith. It cannot be proven logically.

Additionally, Christianity assumes that whatever God comments on in his word can be considered authoritative. Beckett may have used his creatorial control over his work to muddy the waters of meaning. Beckett’s devotee’s rave about the wonderfully misleading works but Christian’s generally assume that God wants us to understand what he is saying.

Christianity assumes that God is the source of everything, the First Cause Wikipedia defines First cause in this way.

First Cause is used alternately to refer to the Cosmological argument for the existence of God, or as an alternate noun for God itself among individuals uncomfortable with the historical and religious meanings associated with the term. Using "First cause" in replacement of "God" may also indicate that the writer has a different concepetion of God than what the popular definition entails.

Christians also assume that the Bible is God’s written communication to man. They assume that if God is trustworthy, then his word is equally trustworthy.

There are two ways to develop a definition of art from the Christian viewpoint. You can either draw your definition from the macrocosm as God’s physical creation or you can cultivate a definition based on the Bible.

Any definition of art based on the physical creation has two major drawbacks. First, creation on its own is so complex that it may be impossible for men to encapsulate it into any useful verbal terms. It is difficult for men who are par of creation to get an objective view of it.

Second, if God’s word is to be taken as accurate, then the macrocosm has been tainted by sin. If it were in it prelapsarian state we could be more confident of any conclusions we raw from observation. Instead, to draw conclusions about God’s view of art based on the created world is like drawing conclusions about a painter’s views based on a painting coated with mud. We might get a few glimpses of the work beneath the mud but we couldn’t be certain whether what we saw was based on the artist’s work or the mud.

The world around us, filtered through the philosophical lens of God’s word can serve as a wonderful illustration of God’s art but it cannot stand alone.

The Bible is a more sure way to find out what God has to say about art. This must be accepted by faith. There is not an objective way to prove the reliability of the Bible. (The Bible does stand up to scrutiny that would discredit many other documents.)

O’Toole points out that even though Beckett held productions to the strict authority of his texts, he himself questioned what he had written as he worked on a production. So, while scholars wrangle over whether Becket’s notes or his published plays ought to be taken as the final received text, we can trust in the reliability of God’s word and start to develop an artistic definition based on the First Cause.

“Not for an age…”

Byzantine Art also illustrates how aesthetic definition impacts the way art is made.

The art of the Byzantine Empire is a timely topic. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently (through 7/4/2004) hosting it’s third exhibition of Byzantine art. You can read more about it here. Whether you agree with newyorkmetro.com’s definition of spirituality or not you cannot ignore the popular response to this unabashedly spiritual – even Judeo-Christian – art.

Here is what encyclopedia.com had to say about Byzantine Art.

"The entire church thus served as a tangible evocation of the celestial order; this conception was further enhanced by the stylized poses and gestures of the figures, their hieratic gaze, and the luminous shimmer of the gold backgrounds."

"The center of the dome was reserved for the representation of the Pantocrator, or Jesus as the ruler of the universe, whereas other sacred personages occupied lower spaces in descending order of importance."

Byzantine art was a celebration of the “Pantocrator”. The term comes from the Greek and means "He who reigns over all; almighty" ( Posted by jwaggone at 3:09 PM | Comments (0)