> I do recognize the position you and Mando have taken that > you are not > interested/willing to have your work altered. What did I > miss? > Geoff C
Your statement has an unintended condescending odor. I excuse it as the commonplace opinion to presume that artists are unable to compete in serious discourse. It implies that artists cannot think outside of their self-interest. Allow me to boldly announce my eagerness for a variety of intellectual exercises and am in fact wishing for a informed layman's discussion of psychology, evolutionary biology, neurology, the main philosophical problems related to art and aesthetics, and the history of art. I am also awaiting Cheerskep's take on Dickinson and Whitman regarding the mind-body problem. And for true adventure I'd be happy to explore ideas of aesthetics reflecting the American (now global) mass culture mythology of frontier, utopia, even Goshen and "puritanism". I think you miss the most important point in comparing the arts and it led you to use a misleading term in trying to identify the uniqueness of some artworks. Again, some artworks, for instance some paintings and some sculpture, are made by individuals who control most or all the whole production process. Some other artwork, like architecture and plays or movies, or large scale public art, are made by groups or investors in collaboration and all of them might affect the production. Neither of both categories of artworks may or may not be "sacred" both in the "hands off" sense you mean and in the more literal sense of holiness, secular or otherwise. The point is that while all artworks may share some attributes, even those that qualify them as artworks, they do not all share the same modes of production. And the mode of production is never a stand-alone qualifying feature of art. Your question regarding the "sacredness" assumes a false privileging of one mode of production that is not essential to art. However, there are more subtle ways by which artists are subject to others' affecting their work. In that regard, we might say the scale ranges from coercion to influence. A coercive effect would be when a person of power (control over production) urges the artist to change an artwork or create a specified image, etc. An influential effect would be one that causes the artist to become aware of some likely improvement to the artwork. Generally, artists resist coercion and accept influence whether or not they work collaboratively. In fact, most good artists are always open to influence and sometimes seek critical opinion. I have been influenced by many others and have sometimes deliberately changed my work in response -- and an artist's work is always evolving through influence of all sorts, a new idea or way of seeing. Edward Albee once came to my studio and suggested something I might do to a painting I was working on. I didn't follow his suggestion but his idea continued to work on me, partly because I respected his insight. Since then I have thought of his suggestion many times and it has probably affected me even if I never implemented it directly. I could say the same about hundreds of other incidents, from my viewing artwork in museums, other studios, to responding to intelligent criticism and to arguing with myself. I do most certainly believe that artmaking is a "sacred" activity because it is a process of urges and hunches, guessing and giving up self-interest for the sake of being one with something ineffable, incomprehensible, meaningless, and mysterious. Any true artist will understand that. Call it the aesthetic experience. It is shared through the artwork. WC
