Replying to William
RE" why didn't you agree that my word magic is parallel to Malraux's "sacred"?" Not quite sure what you mean by 'parallel'. But certainly what Malraux means by 'sacred' is not what I took you to mean by 'magic'. You seemed to be suggesting - as far as I could tell - that 'magic' means 'superstitious beliefs' - which presumably means beliefs not in accord with scientific fact or something of the kind? That's not at all what Malraux has in mind. The sacred for him is a form of the absolute, and his carefully worked out notion of the absolute is quite different from that (though I am not going to attempt to explain it on the list). RE: 'Whatever leads you to align me with those shady "art historians" who look for timeless features of art? I wasn't aware of trying to do that. I was simply making the point that in my view too many art historians, particularly when they are talking about early art, are given to making easy assumptions about how human groups at that time thought. I think this is a serious error. It is important to be clear about what we know and what we do not know. That is part of good scholarship. RE: 'How does this square with your rabid antagonism for the old academic artists? Why not just be like Malraux and say that such things once were art unified with some social function.' 'Rabid antagonism' seems a bit over the top. I like to call (what I think) a spade a spade. I do not agree with the current tendency to say in effect that everything is art in some way etc. In my view there are works that are feeble, meretricious and vapid, and one should say so. So I say it. Of course others are perfectly entitled to disagree - and often do - but their opposition is no reason for me not to have, and express, my own views. Malraux by the way has the same low opinion of academic art I do. His account of its emergence is a particularly interesting part of his theory of art partly discussed in 'The Voices of Silence' but elaborated in more detail in the third volume of 'The Metamorphosis of the Gods' (not yet in English alas.) DA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ William Conger wrote Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:55:35 -0700 Malraux via Derek Why are you so dogmatic here and so reasonable in your writings on Malraux? As you explain his views they are very sensible and as far as I can determine, not really out of synch with current thinking. When you press me to define magic, etc, as I used the word, and explained my use, to describe the general function of early "art" why didn't you agree that my word magic is parallel to Malraux's "sacred"? Whatever leads you to align me with those shady "art historians" who look for timeless features of art? I quickly agree that our era has, as Malraux says, divorced function from means in artworks. In fact, I'd even say that it's crucial to new art. For instance, ordinary commercial images of the 1940s, can appear as artworks today because their contextual functions have dissolved. This forming and dissolving of function --with respect to anything -- is a constant, not limited to certain classes of things or practices. What's interesting and unresolved is why some things lose their function and become esteemed "artworks" (for how long?) and others just go the way of throw-away junk and still others acquire an afterglow as collectibles or curiosities, etc. And who could argue against the very plausible notion that future ways of determing art may differ from all others -- or may reunite means and function, or that the idea of art may vanish altogether? How does this square with your rabid antagonism for the old academic artists? Why not just be like Malraux and say that such things once were art unified with some social function. Perhaps now they are collectibles, curiosities, trash despite. The Malraux type transience of vision, of art identity or funtion, of sacredness, and much more, must be an irregular one, like a spreading of a puddle on uneven ground. In fact, I would like to be fully secure in saying that the modern museum context recognizes this and thus is a site where all supposed art objects or events are simply propositions, mindful of the ever-shifting notions of art, nonart, unart, artlessness, and whatever else can be added to the list. The art museum is a most neutral place where engagement with visuality and impulse for "aesthetic" can be commemorated. When you denounce the academics you seem to be impling that they have failed to match some permanent standards of art (the significant form standard, or maybe the gravitas standard or maybe the allusion to knowledge standard?) when you are otherwise a devotee of Malraux's organic view -- what was art is no longer art; what wasn't art is now art; what might be art may never be art; that art ideas may vanish altogether or may once again be fused with function, either material or sacred. The point is that people can reconstitute and contemplate ideas that no longer or never will match the functioning ideas of their own time. WC
