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She painted in such a way that I could see how each stroke had been applied with a kind of
perfected, even unearthly skill.


In reply to:

To me, art should go beyond that.


And to me, too. The point I make about O'Keefe's work is her art included great technical skill.

I heard a competition of young violinists once. Some played with heart; a few with skill. The winner played poorly, but performed a work by far more difficult than the other contestants'. He managed the technique and intonation in a few sections, but the work was well beyond his level. I think the judges gave him first prize just because he could labor through the work. And I thought there was a poor lesson there. He played poorly. He played out-of-tune most of the time. Forget spirit. He was laboring too hard to get through the movement. And one cellist who played well, but more simply, moved me, at least, with his performance. He showed a lot of potential and the technical elements were in place. He just wasn't show-boating.

And what I'm getting at here is in the arts, when I look for great art, I do want to have the chance to be impressed by technical skill. No, I don't want it to "hit me in the face" so that the technique obliterates the message. The message is the thing of heart or mind that is the point of creativity. And it's wonderful when Pound's edict to "make it new" occurs. But I love being overcome in how the whole work unfolds. The organic unity of the work and also the complexity of a great work. I like thinking, "I cannot do this. I cannot reproduce this. This experience is overwhelming. Even if I could technically do what is being done here, I can't pull off the elements that cause my emotional reaction."

It has something to do with form and function. It has something to do with mind and heart. And to be great, it has to have both the intellectual and the emotional or spiritual. I can be amused and delighted by balloons of color shot out at a blank canvas and seeing the serendipitous results there. But I don't think my level of delight will begin to approach that of sensing I'm in the presence of greatness. I can become excited to hear Faldage's room of banging musicians playing out of great spirit, but I won't ever put that happening on the same level as hearing Jessica Lee in recital at Curtis and hearing her Beethoven sonata that caused me to cry the next day to remember, so strong was her spirit, so great was her skill.

Aren't we, finally, spiritual beings? But isn't it spirit informed by intelligence? And can't we tell, really, when the Emperor is wearing no clothes?

I'd like to break that light bulb--at least where it resides in my brain--and say: "Accept this bulb turning on and off as great art? Well, step into this pit of darkness I just created with it."


#86421 11/13/02 05:04 PM
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We need a definition of "Art", here, I think.

How 'bout this?

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new. - Samuel Johnson

("author" here being taken to mean "creator")

The "problem" with art and its definition, is that everyone, but EVERYONE, gets something different out of what they see.

I remember discussing Voice of Fire with an instructor I worked with. Can't remember the name of the artist at the moment but the work is HUGE - I don't remember the dimensions but it's nearly floor-to-ceiling in Canada's National Gallery in Ottawa. And what is it? A vertical blue stripe. A vertical orange stripe. Another vertical blue stripe. The National Gallery paid something like $1.2 million for it. (That's about fifty cents US these days. ) Great public outcry; someone painted the same thing on his barn door; just about every Regular Joe was incensed by it.

I asked this instructor, an artist some of whose work is also owned by the National Gallery (but they didn't pay him $1.2 mil. for it!), what he thought of Voice of Fire (Barnett Newman was the artist, I think). Not having seen it, he said he thought it was an important work in that artist's development and that it was fine that the Nat. Gal. spent that much on it.

I spoke with him again, when working for him on a subsequent occasion, when he'd seen Voice of Fire. He seemed to have changed his mind. I asked him about it and he said, unhappily, "Well, I always like to say that art is a mansion that has many rooms." (Crib from the Bible!)

Well, if art is a mansion that has many rooms, all I can say is, I've been in the toilet and the broom cupboard more often than I care to remember.

In the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, I saw a room with about a dozen long, narrow sticks in it. Each stick had a hinge at one end. Most of the time they lay on the floor, but every now and then, one or more of them would rise up from the hinge and then fall to the floor again. The piece was called "Slapstick." That's not art - that's a pun.

In Sydney's Modern Art Gallery (can't remember its official name, sorry), there was a room filled with smog/smoke/dry ice - not sure how they created the effect. On a wall near the room, and separate from it, was a cash register receipt taped to the wall. And there was a platform in another room, onto which you climbed. You lay flat on your back and a security guard strapped you down and rolled you out the window to look up the building. That was a point-of-view thing.

In Canberra, at Australia's National Gallery, I saw a large canvas with two types of paint on it: a band of matte black and a band of slighty glossy black. I got discussing it with a security guard, who told me that some people found it very powerful and absolutely loved it.

I've also looked through modern art books, and in one, there was a photograph of a room in a gallery and the floor sloped up at one end. The text accompanying the photo explained that the artist hid under the floor and he had a microphone there, the amplifier/speaker for which was above the floor in the room. The artist lay there and masturbated and told the visitors to the room about it. Sorry, that's not art - that's porn.

Now it irritates me that these are the things I remember, because I consider them foolish and stupid. To my mind, art is something that illuminates, reveals, makes new, and/or provokes thought - and is also something that not just anyone could do. Granted, not just anyone WOULD lie under a floor and wank and tell people about it, but anyone COULD do that. Puns aren't art. Porn isn't art. Some things that are very clever are, nevertheless, not art.

And yet, I also remember taking a course called Modern Poetry at university. I complained to the prof one day about how silly some of it seemed to me. He got down from the shelf in his office a box of poems. One was a sheet with two alternating symbols on it; I asked him, "What the hell is that?" and he said, triumphantly, "It's what print looks like to someone who doesn't know how to read." He pointed out to me that the word "poetry" comes from the Greek "poeos" (I probably spelled that wrong) and that it means, quite simply, "to make." Anything made is a poem (someone has already made that point/poem here!). At lunch that day I was telling a friend who was also in the Modern Poetry course, what our prof had said. I had an exceptionally large potato chip and I took it and put it on my side plate, made a fist and crushed it with one blow, and said, "According to Gordon, that's a poem."

Similarly, I remember my mother complaining to someone about a piece of "art" that consisted of a few rows of coloured squares. She said, "I could've done that." And the friend said, "Yes, but you didn't."

I think art should be way more than just that which we could have done, but didn't. But partly I think that because I'm pissed off at all these artists who get grant money and win substantial prizes for doing things any of us could have done. How do I get on that gravy train?!

But seriously - I can't agree with this: "Art" is the arrangement or re-arrangement of articles, natural or made, into a form that has no intrinsic use or purpose other than as decoration.

However we get to it, art MUST contain SOMETHING of meaning. Even "decoration" gives us pleasure (or, ideally it does, sez she, quickly qualifying).

Where the modern artists often fall down, is in creating "art" (or phart, which somehow seems a perfect term!) that is obscure and impenetrable to a vast proportion of their viewers. by's example of the tampon in a teacup is a perfect illustration of this. At this point, you start getting into that whole thorny issue of the artists' artist. I can't remember who said it, but someone once pointed out that self-referential art or art that only speaks to a very narrow segment of the population is pointless and might just as well not have been made (something to that effect), since it has no reference in most people's understanding and therefore is of no help to most people in terms of being an enlightening or even merely beautifying influence in their lives.

[/rant]


#86422 11/14/02 08:18 PM
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Good Morning Boys and Girls.

Katie bar the door and Frank close the windows. Those of you with short short-term memories get out your slate and chalk, and those of you with short long-term memories fetch a chisel and grab some granite because today, class, even the smallest of your pumpkin heads is going to fully understand the answer to the question that drove Socrates to drink and Nietzsche to dementia, which is...

What is Art?

And so, without further ado, here is the answer...

Art is communication between human beings without word/symbols, about mutually shared conditions of being alive.

OK, that's it, Katie go unbar the door, Frank go open the win...What? You don't understand? (Why me Lord?)...OK, sit back down and I'll explain...

When we use the term "Art", it has an essence. An essence akin to the Socratic belief that the purpose of, for example, a hammer, is in its function, that is, to hammer. The purpose of the word "Art" is to identify and delimit this sub-conscious to sub-conscious communication and therein lies the word's essence. All other applications of the word are really entirely different words but the english language has unhappily evolved such carefree confusions.

Now wait just one cotton picking minute, you might say, What about that certain knowing glance across a room between two lovers, no words are said, yet shared information passes...Excuse me...SIT BACK DOWN WO'N, STOP STARING AT ALL THE LADIES!...now where was I? Oh yes...No, that is not Art, that is merely a visual symbol of mutual understanding without words, like a handshake. Now I will take some of your questions...

Bright boy in the back: Uh, Mister Milum, is Art the object or is Art the sub-conscious communication? And what happens if the object doesn't provoke an unspoken and unspeakable feeling in me, is it Art?

Milum: No. It only becomes Art when it speaks to your sub-conscious. If the object evokes a feeling that can be put into words it is not Art. Art, as we all know, is very subjective. No example of Art can be said to be universal, at least none that we know of.

Cute pert blonde in short skirt on the front row: Hello Mister Milum, first I'd like to say what a pleasure it is to have a man of your high reputation around here to help us learn about all these important things. Ahem...My question might be a little silly but I'd like to know if once an object becomes a work of Art by the transfer of non-verbal information, does it stay a work of Art or not? I'll sit down and listen to your answer.

Milum: Well I'll say this, I don't think your question was silly. I think it was a good question. No! It was a brilliant question. Thank you for your question. Ahem...Let me cite the Campbell Soup Can Pop Art of Andy Warhol as an example; In his pop screen prints he caused others to focus on the beauty and form of everyday manufactured objects around us. But once this was realized his silk screens and paintings have only worth as collector items, such as baseball cards, with maybe a minor value as artifacts for psychological historians of the future.

Class dismissed.

Milum.


#86423 11/15/02 12:01 AM
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In reply to:

Art is communication between human beings without word/symbols, about mutually shared conditions of being alive.


Well, Mr. Milum, what about literature? Literature ain't art or somethin'?

Or are we just talkin' about the visual arts here?

Best regards,
WordsWorth


#86424 11/15/02 09:44 AM
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Art is communication between human beings without word/symbols, about mutually shared conditions of being alive.

what about literature? Literature ain't art or somethin'?

- and what about theatre? Theatre ain't art, huh?

- and what are "words", anyway? Communication using sounds of a more or less conventional nature?

Music, other than singing, isn't exactly words, but it ain't far short of it, either. please don't say music isn't art - not while dub-dub is listening!


Mind you, milum, I agree with much of what you teach, and one person's art is another person's phart - or vice versa.
Isn't it strange that olfactory art has never really been developed, other than commercially.




#86425 11/15/02 10:43 AM
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well, there was Septimus Piesse:

The Odophone.—The most important element in the perfumer’s art is the blending of the odorous principles to form a mixture which gratifies the sense of smell. Experience is the only guide. It is impossible to foretell the odour of a mixture from the odours of its components. Septimus Piesse endeavoured to show that a certain scale or gamut existed amongst odours as amongst sounds, taking the sharp smells to correspond with h:gh notes and the heavy smells with low. He illustrated the idea by classifying some fifty odours in this manner, mal:ing each to correspond with a certain note, one-half in each clef, and extending above and below the lines. For example, treble clef note E (4th space) corresponds with Portugal (orange), note D (1st space below clef) with violet, note F (4th space above clef) with ambergris. It is readily noticed in practice that ambergris is much sharper in smell (higher) than violet, while Portugal is intermediate. He asserted that properly to constitute a bouquet the odours to be taken should correspond in the gamut like the notes of a musical chord—one false note among the odours as among the music destroying the harmony. Thus on his odophone, santa!, geranium, acacia, orange-flower, camphor, corresponding with C (bass 2nd line below), C (bass 2nd space), E (treble 1st line), G (treble 2nd line), C (treble 3rd space), constitute the bouquet of chord C.
from: http://6.1911encyclopedia.org/P/PE/PERGOLA.htm

and here:
http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/6/069.html



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#86426 11/22/02 01:21 AM
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You want Art? I'll show you Art. This is Art...

http://yoga.tripod.co.jp/flash/kikkomaso.swf

(turn up the sound for the full effect.)


#86427 11/22/02 08:08 AM
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"Show me"

"Show you"

...Kick, oh, man! i.e., Kikoman--far be it from me to mention a product name

What's with the fish head?

And what's with pouring sauce over the boy who didn't seem to mind having sauce poured over his head by the fish head?

And with the little girl the fish head took to bed?

And stealing Superman's cape and stockings?

And with the Pyramids?

This art tells us it's one of the Seven Wonders of Advertising?

Best part, however, in this truly amazing bit of Japanese borrowed creativity art was how my mind's eye immediately translated the tofu cubes into sugar cubes. I had to keep hitting myself on the shoulder and saying to myself, "Think Japan. Don't think pony barn."

Still, what's with the fish head? To obviousize: Is it nothing more than fish being a staple of the Japanese diet? If so, why not a rice head? Of course, a fish head is funnier, so I suppose the Japanese creative-borrower artists were attempting to get their audiences loosened up and laughing outrageously out-of-control.

Most important honorable question, ayleur-sans:

Is this art more thought-provoking and enlightening than a light bulb turning on and off at regular intervals?

Second most important honorable question:

Is this thread destined to become a food thread?

Third most important honorable question:

Don't we all know bits of apple are better for ponies than sugar cubes?


#86428 11/22/02 08:33 AM
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This is Art...

... but not as we know it.


#86429 11/22/02 10:22 AM
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and the cat hanging? what's up with that?



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