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In another thread, a quote was produced from a science journal. The quote was a scientist's report on astronomical observations and it concluded with this vivid imagery "the most extraordinary flare let rip". The flaring of that phrase in an otherwise droll scientific report was as startling as the celestial phenomenon the scientist was describing. In that other thread, someone described the phrase as " a bit pesante for a science journal". I would have thought that cogency in a scientfic journal was improved not devalued by poetic imagery. I wonder what others think? It happens that creative imagination has acquired a new cachet in business circles as a recent article in the Harvard Business Review attests. HBR says "a Master of Fine Arts has become the new MBA." See this review: " ... The Harvard Business Review, in its look at breakthrough business ideas for 2004, suggests that the MFA -- Masters of Fine Arts degree -- has become the new MBA, essential currency for a business career. U.S. corporate recruiters have begun visiting the arts grad schools such as the Rhode Island School of Design and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in search of talent. "Businesses are realizing that the only way to differentiate their goods and services in today's overstocked, materially abundant marketplace is to make their offerings transcendent -- physically beautiful and emotionally compelling," says author Daniel Pink." If business has suddenly discovered poetic imagination, is it time for science to discover poetic imagination? Is that such a radical idea, I wonder? After all, the business of science has become the business of all of us, so why shouldn't it become palatable to all of us? At least, accessible to all of us? Maybe if we had more scientists writing for real readers, we would have more readers, including students, becoming scientists.  Full article: http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040319/CASCAN19/TPBusiness/General
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Dear Grapho: An interesting idea, but I'll bet it will be
a rare CEO who pays any attention to his MFA. And I should
think only a fairly narrow range of companies could use one.
What would NASA do with one?
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What would NASA do with one?
I'm glad you asked.
NASA, in particular, needs a whole galaxy of MFA's, wwh.
They would put them to work lobbying elected representatives for badly needed funding, and crafting communications pieces to fire the imaginations of ordinary people who don't understand why tax dollars should be wasted on a mission to Mars.
An MFA is arguably worth far more to NASA than a dozen PHd's in astrophysics.
Without the necessary budget allocations, the Mars mission is nothing more than a pipe dream.
When McDonald's introduces a new hamburger, they sell the sizzle, not the meat. Maybe NASA has something to learn from Hamburg U.
If you want to lead, you need a vision to light the way. [At least, so it seems to me, wwh.]
It was a poet after all who originally pointed the way to the stars. Virgil, I believe*: Sic itur ad astra.
*Yes, it was Virgil.
Virgil wrote in _Aeneid_ Book 9:
Macte nova virtute, sic itur ad astra.
"Blessings on your young courage, boy; that's the way to the stars."
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Dear Grapho: if NASA had had an MFA, he would have put
works of art onto ablative tiles of Challenger, and gotten
blame for tile failure.
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"the most extraordinary flare let rip".actually, I think that's pretty boring poetry. I have no problems at all with imagic writing in science, but extraordinary? that's poetry? a flare let rip? poetry? maybe on a bathroom wall...
formerly known as etaoin...
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I have no problems at all with imagic writing in scienceWell, I guess we're on the same wavelength after all, Etaoin. You have to admit the phrase did stand out ... even if it isn't outstanding.
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if NASA had had an MFA, he would have put
works of art onto ablative tilesMore likely he would have put latin text onto ablative tiles, wwh.
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Dear Grapho: of course if the MFA had clout enough
to change tiles with new texxt after every flight,
he would have saved Challenger.
Per aspera ad astra.
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if the MFA had clout enough to change tiles with new text after every flight, he would have saved Challenger.Quite true, wwh. If an MFA inscribed a politician's name on every tile, you can be certain those tiles would never wear out. An MFA understands that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is true that imagination can take flight, but it takes hubris to keep it in orbit. And who has more of that than a politician? On 2nd thought, don't answer that, wwh.
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On 2nd thought, don't answer that, wwh.My wings have been clipped.
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>>that's poetry?<<
Paraphrasing a recent headline in the Onion, 'Master of fine arts in writing, fails to become a master of writing.'
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Re: Onion commentary: 'Master of fine arts in writing, fails to become a master of writing.'
How true, inselpeter.
Mastery is a many layered thing. It requires more than a Masters and it is seldom mastered without a stern mistress.
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Hey, grapho: I just found the technical word for what the
"let rip" guy needed:
The general term for the effective quality of sense impressions or mental images and the resulting arousal of emotion is enargia (en-AR-jee-uh).
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general term for the effective quality of sense impressions or mental images and the resulting arousal of emotion is enargiaIf we had more qualia in our enargia around here, we wouldn't need an MFA. Of course, gnats don't give a drat about qualia. [They could put me on video tape delay for baring my breast, you know. ]
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If business has suddenly discovered poetic imagination, is it time for science to discover poetic imagination?
Jacob Bronowski? Loren Eiseley? C.P. Snow? Carl Sagan? David Brin? Robert Forward? Isaac Asimov? Richard Feynman? I think there was never a time when scientists have not held poetic imagination. The problem is getting people to listen to those imaginations. We are predisposed to thinking that those who attempt to understand the universe have a lesser appreciation for it.
But imagination is not the only thing in science. We need not only an imagination, but a filter. The filter is just as important as the imagination.
I'm reminded of a quote of Sagan's that I can't place exactly, "We accepted the products of science, but rejected it's methods."
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I think there was never a time when scientists have not held poetic imagination.How true, TFF. Thank you for recasting my proposition so graciously, and so persuasively. Your point [and Sagan's] explains how we get there, and "method" is the only means, I agree. But it all starts with imagination. Lord Francis Bacon (still recognized as "the father of modern science") said: "To enter the kingdom of knowledge, as into the kingdom of heaven, one must become as a little child."Little wonder, no thunder. If "method" is king Imagination is queen. We need to get them between the sheets to produce heirs. Method is the analyst Imagination the catalyst.
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While the phrase "prince of mathematics" is almost universally applied to a single individual, "father of science" is commonly applied to several individuals. Nonetheless, I do consider Bacon worthy of the title and what is more he is a further example and primogenitor in the line of Haldane, Asimov, et. al. in that he, too, was a writer of science fiction. I've never actually read his posthumous work New Atlantis, but I'm aware that it's along the vein of a piece of drivel I wrote as a HS freshman called "Terra Sapientiae."
My understanding of our current conversation is that there are two points of contention:
1. That the value of people with MFAs at NASA and the like is more important than a stack of PhDs. (This issue was raised in your original post.)
2. The role of imagination in the science. (I raised this in my post about the necessity of a filter in addition to imagination, and you have continued by insisting that imagination is more important.)
Let me dispatch with point 2, first, as it's the easier one, because I'm willing to concede the point. I'm aware that Einstein has said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." I always considered that he was largely being clever when he said this. When one is widely considered to be the smartest person ever to have lived, one almost certainly feels a strong pressure to say clever things. And there is no doubt that imagination IS a very important thing to human beings. I have my doubts that it is unique to humans, but it seems obvious enough that imagination has seen its greatest fruition among and has offered the greatest benefits to humanity. Imagination is necessary for abstract thinking. Viewing cave drawings of Neandertals or Cro-magnons is very nearly a religious experience - to look back into the incipient rise of what we feel makes us what we are, and what many feel makes us unique among existing fauna.
We humans have always had imagination. (That we are not directly descended from Neandertal, does not mean that we are unrelated.) We had imagination long before we had science, we had it possibly even before we became human. Even in the practical application of our knowledge, one must first have imagined an idea in order to make use of it.
I can concede that a serious case could be made that imagination is among the most important properties that we possess.
But I further observe that it is not sufficient by itself - in the same way one might argue that water is the most important molecule for human existence, but it is not sufficient. Either argument seems a little silly to me, but I can easily accept either for the sake of argument so long as we amend them with the proper proviso, namely "but not alone sufficient"
We struggled for millenia before formalizing the notion of and understanding the importance of The Filter. Bacon said this as well as anyone in the first paragraphs of his Novus Organon,
Those who have taken upon them to lay down the law of nature as a thing already searched out and understood, whether they have spoken in simple assurance or professional affectation, have therein done philosophy and the sciences great injury.
and then later
Now my method, though hard to practice, is easy to explain; and it is this. I propose to establish progressive stages of certainty. The evidence of the sense, helped and guarded by a certain process of correction, I retain.
This process of correction to which he so early alludes is the distinguishing character of modern science and it's exactly the thing I mean when I refer to The Filter. Using the filter is a winnowing process operating on the ideas generated from our imaginations to separate out the pure fancy from the things that appear to correspond to our perceptions, that is the things that seem to be false from the things that might just correspond to the facts.
Our imaginations provide us with potential patterns to explain our observations. But to determine whether a pattern actually describes the world (or a part of the world), we have to compare it TO the world. This is - or was - a radical idea, but not just for Bacon. The Greeks - some of them - presaged this idea at least as early as Aristotle.
What distinguishes astrology from astronomy, metallurgy from alchemy, medicine from thaumaturgy? In ancient times - and even through the middle ages - it was quite common for philosophers and thinkers to just think of a possible explanation or model for how the world worked. And they might ask some questions about this model or they might make some superficial attempt at comparing the model to the world, but for the most part, the questions were not even asked in useful ways. In general, inquiry was nebulous, unfocused, and uncritical. "Well, that's a great idea! It MUST BE TRUE!" They were great at logic. What they weren't great at was testing their ideas to determine whether they corresponded with reality.
But there was always this practical bent which offered the germ of this idea. The babylonians and egyptians BUILT things. You can attempt to build anything you wish, but eventually you come up against the laws of physics. These laws do not require you to believe in them, or even to be aware of them to experience their full effect. You try to make bridges - some of them collapse even before finished, and others stand for hundreds of years. What is the difference? Same thing for buildings (and for spaceships). Some things work and others fail. What did we do differently? What is the pattern? In this case The Filter *IS* Nature. It's not systematic, though. The idea of The Filter would not be codified for millenia.
Heron of Alexandria built lots of machines (including a vending machine to dispense holy water). I reckon he must have bumped up against reality on numerous occasions. This works. This doesn't. Does this happen because of this other thing? Same thing for da Vinci towards the end of the middle ages. He built things and must have bumped up against reality lots of times.
I'm not arguing that The Filter (which you have clearly guessed is Scientic Method) is more important than Imagination. I'm saying that Imagination, even if we accept that it is The Most Important Thing in the Universe, is not alone sufficient.
I'll address the other point at some later time.
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I'm saying that Imagination, even if we accept that it is The Most Important Thing in the Universe, is not alone sufficient.Wow! I'm glad I overstated the case for imagination because it has produced such a prodigy of insights. Thank you for taking the time to illuminate me, for I am certainly unschooled in science. The sweep of your science has eclipsed the sweep of my imagination. P.S. If your last post was "the easier" of your two replies to compose, because you are partially in agreement to begin with, then I am certainly in for a rare treat*. I don't mind being wrong if I am the better for it in the end. [I have probably left myself vulnerable to some punster by ending in this fashion, but, for once, this gnat is at a loss for words. ] *plus ultra ... for which I am thankful. http://www.cultureby.com/books/commot/bacongates.htm
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TEd
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hehehe ... "posthumously published"
thanks,
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1. That the value of people with MFAs at NASA and the like is more important than a stack of PhDs. (This issue was raised in your original post.)
Often my messages come across as nasty when that is not my intent. This could easily happen in this case, as it is a subject that is very close to me.
One scourge of my current position is the class of person to whom I refer within the confines of my own skull as "the briefing slide genius." This is a guy who believes he understands "the big picture" sufficiently to develop an entire plan of study without any regard for what is feasible, practical, informative, necessary, or in the most irritating circumstances, physically possible. "Um ... uh ... did you talk this over with a so-and-so?" (So-and-so is a mathematician or an electrical engineer or what have you.) "No. But this is all very well understood stuff!" It wouldn't be so bad if the person were remotely interested in negative feedback.
(Not everyone is like this. I rejected a $100K/yr job offer from a PhD I had never met, but whose paper I had gutted. My current job was offered to me by a guy I had previously once threatened to hang up on. Some people can take criticism and others can't. In fact, some few people appreciate serious criticism even when it's quite severe.)
First, I believe, as I have asserted previously that scientists have always been imaginative and creative, and have even expressed their creativity at times in ways that even lay people (in which set I include myself) could appreciate. What has been lacking is not imagination, but often the salesmanship. Edison was a great inventor, but he was at least as great a self-promoter. It doesn't detract from his genius to note this. Some scientists have been remarkable at marketing their ideas and themselves - and others have not. T. H. Huxley was much better (not to mention much more eager) at marketing Darwinism that Charles Darwin was. Gould is better at marketing than Ernst Mayr (his teacher). Sagan was better than almost any of his contemporaries. In no case do I mean to undermine anyone's opinion of any of these remarkable men. It's important to note that this self-promotion is not always 100% successful. I can't help thinking a big part of Galileo's struggle with the Church occurred because because his bragging marked him as a prick (or at least a smart-ass). This could be a long, discursive diversion, but I'll keep it short - self-promotion sometimes has a price, but it does occur and it can be very useful for spreading ideas which otherwise might take decades or even centuries longer to disseminate.
Second, most of the people who go into the scientific disciplines want to discover things, or invent things, or build things. They want to understand how things work. The good ones could write novels if they wished (as some few of them have done) or they could be in bands (as one of them I know), but most of the really good ones are highly focused individuals. I can't imagine things would be much different for better scientists at NASA or JPL or anywhere else.
Aside: we had a temporary hire once who seemed to be slightly autistic. He routinely produced results within weeks that would take two advanced PhDs to do in about a year and a half. (No, this is not hyperbole.) Unfortunately noone could interpret his results and no one could understand his programs and few people could convince him to change anything once he had written it and no one could make any sense whatever of the little scraps that he wrote in lieu of documentation. I noted that it would be cost-effective to hire a PhD to babysit this fellow and was greeted with a "you can't be serious" stare. You see, people don't spend years in graduate school so they can be baby-sitters.
I suppose it's the same for writing. Most of these guys don't spend 8 to 10 years getting a PhD in physics so he can spend huge chunks of time writing watered-down science for people many of whom don't have the attention span to follow even a complicated argument. Some few do have the patience and aptitude to attempt this, however, and it's to our great benefit that this is the case.
I'm a little depressed when I go to a random bookstore and I see an entire rack for religion and an entire rack for each of the major religions and an entire rack for metaphysics and an entire rack for astrology and magic and rack upon rack of romance novels and self-helf books - and only one rack for science and one for math. I don't blame the bookstores. They're giving people what they want.
But while the volume may not be there, the thoughts are there in those racks. Who knows how many people might have come to pick up the latest Harlquin and come across some romance of a different sort in the pages of Broca's Brain or Contact?
Also, I note that there are many people outside of NASA who write about what they are doing quite ably. Some of these people are scientists themselves and some not. But I note the following: there's some stir from people who want to keep Hubble orbiting. Regardless of whether they succeed in this, the fact that there is serious discussion of this in the general public is a pretty strong evidence that scientists have been at least partially successful in persuading us to care about what they do.
Finally, I state without any hint of evidence (or sarcasm) that it is a lot easier for a person with a background in science to write congently and compellingly about his accomplishments than it is for a person with a background in writing to build a satellite or a martian rover.
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it is a lot easier for a person with a background in science to write congently and compellingly about his accomplishments than it is for a person with a background in writing to build a satellite or a martian rover.
Well, you've convinced me TFF. [You are neither as fallible nor as fiendish as your sobriquet proclaims.]
Perhaps you would agree, in return, that while many were the equal of Einstein in their mastery of "the method", none, not a single one, could hold a candle to the blaze of his imagination, at least during his most productive years.
I also suggest that Einstein's exaltation of imagination in the service of science was more than a conceit. I remember reading that Eistein's visual imagination led him to many of his most profound insights, in particular, his theory of relativity.
Einsten recounts, as I distantly recall, that he imagined a man falling off a roof and the ground rising up to meet him.
This was the "Eureka!" moment which fired and fuelled "the method".
It seems to me, the argument really turns on this single question:
If Einstein had turned his initial "Eureka!" insight over to the other leading masters of "the method" who were working in his field of mathematics/physics at the time, would any of them have come up with the final product as soon as Einstein did, or at all?
If others could have taken Einstein's original insight and produced his Theory in the same time, then we would have proof that imagination is a more valuable commodity [even a far more valuable commodity] than mastery of "the method" itself, wouldn't you say, TFF?
Then again maybe it took an Einsten to find "the method" to prove his 'madness'.
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P.S. re: salesmanship and self-promotion
I'm sure you're right about that as well.
Some say Andy Warhol's true genius wasn't art at all.
Edison is certainly a good example. His genius for producing inventions might have been eclipsed by his genius for producing a production plant for inventions, namely, Menlo Park.
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Perhaps you would agree, in return, that while many were the equal of Einstein in their mastery of "the method", none, not a single one, could hold a candle to the blaze of his imagination, at least during his most productive years.
I don't know. Marc Kac has a great discussion of this sort of genius in his book, "Enigmas of Chance." He says there is ordinary genius and magical genius. For ordinary genius, you think to yourself, "On my best day, I could have thought of that same thing." For magical genius, you think to yourself, even after the theory is explained to you over and over, "What in the heck made him think of this in the first place?"
Magical genius is a rare thing, but I suspect it has a lot to do with an abnormal ability to concentrate. There have been several people in history who manifested this sort of magical genius - Gauss, Archimedes, Newton. The book makes special mention of a particular magical genius - Richard Feynman, who died of cancer less than two decades ago. Feynman was a generation behind Einstein, but I suspect that were he not already aware of relativity, he might well be able to reproduce it. This is pure speculation, course. It's not as if I thought that genius were easily quantifiable (by me or by anyone else). Even if he were capable of doing it, there's no reason to whatever to think that he actually would have done so. What is it that causes a person to obsess so about problem? Why one problem and not another? There is no end of interesting questions that one might ask.
I suppose there must be people in other sciences - or even in disciplines as far removed as the fine arts - whose powers of concentration and insight might mark them as magical geniuses were they applied to similar fundamental problems. This is another factor that Kac brings up: Feynman, Einstein, and Godel were all fundamentalists; they were all concerned with the foundational aspects of their studies.
So my reading of Kac (and others) suggests there are at least two criteria such a magical genius might possess:
1. Abnormal power of concentration.
2. Obsessive interest in the fundamentals of a subject.
Maybe I can also add
3. Imagination
4. Intelligence (though I don't think these last two are orthogonal).
I don't disagree that Einstein was a great genius; I just don't think I'm qualified to judge it. Moreover, I'm not sure I would accept anyone else's judgment so far. I'm reminded of a some web pages I visited some time ago in which "some people," presumably experts (at something), reviewed the famous writings of history and assigned posthumous IQs to famous people of history based not on tests, of course, but on various proxies, namely the writings they have left behind. Miraculously, these people have determined that Hypatia must have been smarter than da Vinci or Pascal! Bertrand Russell was smarter than Einstein! And the different estimators disagree - for example, some have Bill Clinton at 180+ (about one person in a million) and other say he was only in the 130s. I saw one once that said Kant was smarter than Gauss. My jaw dropped. My first thought was: this is a joke, right? Then I noticed that these estimates seem to heavily bias in favor philosophers.
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ordinary genius and magical genius Fascinating concept, k. But isn't 'ordinary genius' an oxymoron?
I agree that magical genius likely requires a strong power of concentration and imagination. (Not that I disagree with your other 2--I just haven't studied what you have.) What about Salvador Dali and his melting clocks? Or the (apocryphal, presumably) little boy who solved the problem that adults couldn't--that of getting the truck unstuck from the overpass, by letting some air out of the truck's tires? Would you say these two were magical genuises?
Also--would you say that creative thinking might be a requirement?
Hmm--in proofreading, my attention was caught by "little boy"; is it likely that more men have been/will be magical geniuses because men have a stronger focus on getting to a solution quickly than women do?
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... and let's not forget mad geniuses [genii for the sticklers] ...
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ordinary genius and magical genius Fascinating concept, k. But isn't 'ordinary genius' an oxymoron?
Perhaps, but I think it's an understandable one.
I agree that magical genius likely requires a strong power of concentration and imagination. (Not that I disagree with your other 2--I just haven't studied what you have.) What about Salvador Dali and his melting clocks? Or the (apocryphal, presumably) little boy who solved the problem that adults couldn't--that of getting the truck unstuck from the overpass, by letting some air out of the truck's tires? Would you say these two were magical genuises?
No in both cases, but that's my personal judgement. But let me make clear that I consider all of this loose talk.
Also--would you say that creative thinking might be a requirement?"
I think that imagination and creative thinking are so closely related that they should not be separate entries in our enumeration. I don't object to adding it to the list - I just don't think it's necessary.
Hmm--in proofreading, my attention was caught by "little boy"; is it likely that more men have been/will be magical geniuses because men have a stronger focus on getting to a solution quickly than women do?
I don't know. I've heard these kinds of arguments before. They're interesting to me, but not compelling. As you're aware, there have been and continue to be reasons why genius of any sort might go unnoticed in women. Getting to a solution quickly seems to be the emphasis of many mensans I know, and among those who are really into the IQ thing. Also, I don't know that the magical geniuses were all quick thinkers. Of the ones I listed, the only one known as a savante was Gauss. Feynman was tested at 125 in high school. (Some postulate that he was so brilliant and so contemptuous of the test, he just decided on what score he wanted and strove for it. I discount this as pure silly. The guy had no humility - if he had done something like that, it's absurd to think he would not have bragged about it in one of his books.) Einstein is reputed to have not spoken at all until he was 5 at which time he immediately began using complete sentences. I used to find this highly doubtful, but now only mildly doubtful - at least not completely ludicrous.
Just my opinion, of course, but I think what really separates them from their compatriots is the way they obsess with a single thing and worry it to death.
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re:Einstein is reputed to have not spoken at all until he was 5 at which time he immediately began using complete sentences. I used to find this highly doubtful, but now only mildly doubtful
while i am not going to make claims to being a genius, (but i do/did test (a rather complete, one on one test, with a psycologist) to a 165 iq in my teen years, my sister, (perhaps just as smart) did not speak till she was 3 (i was close to 5 at the time)
my mother worried she might be deaf when she didn't babble like normal babies, but the doctor did a crude test, (he gentle snapped his fingers behind G's head, and she turned to see what made the noise..)
when she did start to speak, she spoke in complete sentences. (her first words mortified my mother.. G repeated an oft heard phrase--"You god damn kids!" --my mother was upset because she thought her self moral, and she didn't realize how often she had taken the lords name in vain. (or course, its says something about my early childhood years, too, since i was one of damn kids she was always upset with!)
its not an uncommon pattern for children to not speak till they can speak in sentences. it is not a sign of genius, its just a normal pattern. some kids speak early, some late, some don't speak till they can speak in sentences.
(my kids babbled, and started to talk about 9 to 10 months, (pretty normal) but my son didn't toddle or teeter. he crawled forever--and then one day, age 15 months or so, he started to walk. day one, he walked over 2 miles non stop, no falls.. Not the usual pattern for children learning to walk, but not unknown either.
i don't think einstien was 5.. but he might well have been over the age of 3 or even 4 before he spoke, and he might well have spoken, right from the start, in perfect, or almost perfect sentences. (from a grammatical point of view) it's just how some kids behave.
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What is it that causes a person to obsess so about problem? Why one problem and not another?
IMHO, the second question is more instrumental than we think in having made someone known as a genius. Marie Curie would probably not have achieved her fame if radioactivity were not such a "magical" phenomenon in itself, to this day. At the time, radium was immediately hailed as a miracle cure for all sorts of ailments.. Relativity too, is an example of a notion which surfaced exactly "at the right time", and was consequently misused in the most absurd arguments. On the other hand, the synthesis of ammonia, which was certainly of significance for a larger part of the world population (fertilizer..), is only present in the memory of specialists.
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Going back to your point about the relationship between genius and "salesmanship", TFF.
There was a piece in the paper the other day about Salvador Dali (born 100 years ago in May).
The Guardian art critic Robert Hughes wrote:
"No artist yet unborn will achieve the same kind of relation to the 21st century that he [Dali] did to the 20th. He was the apotheosis of the dandy, a now almost-extinct breed, and he grew famous through shock-effects and scandal, whose manifestations in painting no longer stir the shock-proof, media-glutted culture of our own time."
It's hard to make a break-through as an artist nowadays.
The artists who have gone before them, beginning with Dali, have trashed every code of respectable conduct there is.
I even read of an artist who painted a canvas with human feces. I assume his own because he was making his own statement. What artist would want to make a statement using someone else's feces?
In any case, no-one gave a s..t ... but I assume they made him clean up his own canvass.
If Dali were to do his famous clock again today, time wouldn't melt. It would probably defecate.
Oh, yes, and one other thing. The 'event' would probably be covered by gnats.
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This is an artistic rendering of "Time Pissing Away":
........... ... .. . .
of "Time in decay"
>>>> > #* << #!!## .... .<? .. ####\][\\F[]KK .. .
Every now and again there is a new flowering of art before we return to a new deflowering
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Is the next THING in art
A FART!
[Excrement deleted.]
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If Dali were to do his famous clock again today, time wouldn't melt. It would probably defecate.
"Who made shit a sacrament?"
In any case, I retract my black pebble for Dali as a magical genius and replace it with nothing (an abstention). I don't have any basis whatever for judging what kind of a genius he might have been.
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Re: Dali: "I don't have any basis whatever for judging what kind of a genius he might have been.The Guardian art critic Hughes went on to say that Dali held court at the St. Regis Hotel in New York and favored his visitors with "gusts of the worst foul breath" imaginable. I will dig up the actual quote from The Guardian and post it to give Hughes the credit he deserves*. It sounds like Dali brought a breath of fresh air to the art world, but gusts of foul breath to his fans.Only a fan could get past the master's breath to reach the master's vision, it would seem. *I don't know much about Dali myself except I own a limited edition pack of Tarot Cards he designed. The Tarot Cards are suitably dark and mysterious ... a Daliance with the devil?
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all that I've seen. They only have one of them in the national gallery, though. It's a modernistic crucifixion on one of the stair-cases. It's good to come upon the thing by surprise like that, but there's no place you can sit and enjoy it for several hours.
I can enjoy some art the way I can literature, but I don't consider myself competent to render judgement on any of it - other than to say "I like it" or "I don't like it."
k
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There's a lot of Dali that I like, and some that I don't, but whether or not his breath was foul has little to do with his art. He was also disfigured in later life by a fire. Perhaps that could be used as an esthetic criterion to judge his work. Maybe not.
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I can enjoy some art the way I can literature
Et moi aussi, TFF. But the comparison with literature extends even further. Some art needs to be "read" before it can be enjoyed.
I am no expert myself but I find that many things I passed over on my first encounter became absorbing when I became aware of the nuances or layers of meaning, or when I understood the artist's history.
These 'layers' make me think of a pun.
If you don't get the secondary meaning, the pun goes right over one's head.
But, again, I'm not trying to pass myself off as a discerning or knowledgeable art lover. I either "love" something or it leaves me cold.
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... but whether or not his breath was foul has little to do with his art. He was also disfigured in later life by a fire. Perhaps that could be used as an esthetic criterion to judge his work. Maybe not.
Yeah, jheem, like Frida Kahlo and others. Maybe we should start up a new thread on Artist's Intent (even if it has nothing to do with words)?
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whether or not his breath was foul has little to do with his artWe are all agreed, jheem and AnnaS, that Dali's breath has nothing to do with his art. The Guardian art critic Robert Hughes was not critiquing Dali's art when he critiqued Dali's breath. Dali's art has outlasted his breath. And I'm the happier for it. I bought those Tarot Cards because I enjoy his art. I didn't know anything about Dali's breath at the time except that he had drawn his last breath. [I thought that would make the Cards a better investment. ] BTW Van Gogh cut off his ear and that story is of interest to lovers of his art. That doesn't mean that Van Gogh had no ear for music.
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There's a fantastic museum of Dali's works in St Petersburg, Florida. I was a confirmed Magritte afficionada prior to my visit there, but upon seeing the breadth of his work, I developed a lot more affection for him. http://www.salvadordalimuseum.org/
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Re: "We are all agreed" ... huh?
Have I failed to give you proper credit for agreeing with jheem and myself and The Guardian art critic Robert Hughes [and The Fallible Fiend as well, I think] that Dali's breath has never had anything to do with his art, and, furthermore, it has even less to do with it today when he isn't drawing any.
If so, I apologize.
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upon seeing the breadth of his work, I developed a lot more affection for him
Yes, I see what you mean, Fibrebabe.
BTW here is The Guardian quote I promised earlier:
Robert Hughes, the Guardian art critic, writes:
"I knew Dali only slightly - he held court at the St. Regis in New York, where he favoured new acquaintances with foul gusts of the worst human breath I have ever smelt."
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Maybe we should start up a new thread on Artist's Intent (even if it has nothing to do with words)?
Intention has a lot to do with language, anyway. So does art. I'm sure we could shoehorn in language someplace. Fire when ready AnnaStrophic! It should be fun.
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Intention has a lot to do with languageWell said, jheem. We can't say much without putting it into words. Putting it into the right words, now that's the trick, I know you will agree. Sometimes our intentions are misunderstood. And sometimes we don't understand our intentions. I suspect an artist's intentions are no different than our own. Sometimes I think what an artist "intends" has about as much to do with their art as Dali's breath had to do with his paint. One minor qualification, of course: Dali's breath might curdle his paint, but an artist's "intentions" could screw up his painting as well. We cannot know
Where the paint will flow
If we do, we're really not painting.An artist starts with an idea and ends up with a canvas. If it's a great canvas, the artist will be as surprised as anyone. He might even begin to understand how the hell he did it, and what the heck it means. But that is work better left to critics. An artist is not his own Muse. Only an artist's Muse could stand before a work of genius and say: "That's just what I intended."
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You, sir, are hereby notified that I hold you responsible for the explosive expectoration of a large quantity of tea onto my keyboard, resulting in serious damage thereto. My solicitors will deal directly with yours.
TEd
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My solicitors will deal directly with yours.Your claim is a fig mint of your imagination, TEdRem. No Judge would give a fig for your damages.
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