Re: recognition of skill

[armando baeza]

Well said William,
That is exactly how Iv'e always felt. You express it much better.
mando

On Nov 16, 2008, at 10:37 PM, William Conger wrote:

I can't respond to your questions or assertions because you present odd situations. Again, and I can't keep on repeating this forever, the subjective experience cannot be expressed. Period. Once expressed it becomes something objective, a metaphor that likens the subjective experience to something it isn't for the sake of making it public. Thus it matters not at all what the concert goers said as relating subjective experiences. Why? Because once expressed, they are no longer subjective but objective re-creations of the subjective.

All your comments about how an artist's work is misunderstood are beside the point. I don't believe any artwork can be misunderstood since any reading at all is relevant if it's evoked by the work. Any work of art can be relevant in multiple ways, as many different ways as there are experiencers of it. There is no wrong way to encounter art. But some ways are better than others with respect to the public appraisal and historic significance of the work.

I don't even believe that the artist fully understands his or her work in terms of how it can be experienced because no artist can have another's experience. And the artist doesn't experience the work the same way from moment to moment. The best one can hope for is magnitudes of ambiguity, of possible experiental "meanings". I never worry about or anticipate how anyone will experience my work. Whatever the experience is it is authentic to the experiencer. I have been interviewed many times about my work. I never try to say how it should be experienced. I can say what I thought about or what notions came to mind, but these are not necessary to anyone's subjective experience. Art is a gift of some mystery, both to the artist and the audience. The better the work the more unfathomable its meaning as experience.

I am never sad about how art is experienced. I am often annoyed by how it is interpreted re its value and art historical/artworld importance, use, roles.

Now I've been far too redundant in the past few posts. Please try to see how I separate subjective experience from public objective analysis and judgment. The fact that Chartres Cathedral has been judged a great work of art over centuries has nothing to do with your appreciating an experience with it or not. As a matter of fact, no matter how many times you've been in Chartres, you have only a partial experience of the whole. So your analysis of your own experience will likely rest on judgments you cannot make yourself but accept or not from the public record. Same for all artworks.

WC


--- On Sun, 11/16/08, GEOFF CREALOCK <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

From: GEOFF CREALOCK <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: recognition of skill
To: aesthetics-l@mh.databack.com
Date: Sunday, November 16, 2008, 9:02 PM
William: Let me get this straight. You are claiming that,
for example,
coming out of a Chicago Symphony performance behind
someone, you overhear a
complete discussion of the evening, indicating that the
overwhelming
experience someone derived from the works performed had to
do with the
movements of a/the perfomer(s), you would find nothing
either remarkable or
sad about that information. Yes, it's wonderful that
the individual had what
MIGHT be termed an ae. But, assuming the presentation
consisted of works by
your favourite composers, you would find no aesthetic
miscarriage in that
reaction, no sadness in yourself that such art evoked no
response (even
outrage) in at least one listener?

My sadness wouldn't be for the listener but rather for
the composer, or
aesthetics, as magnificent works would be for nothing (for
that person).

If a tree falls in the forest ... if no one appreciates a
wonderful work....
I am not advocating tears if someone decides that
Matisse' work is trash.
That would constitute a missed opportunity and opportunity
is missed all
over the place and we cannot grieve every failed
conception. In any case, I
think that it's ... unfortunate that more people
don't share your tastes,
though there's nothing to be done about this.
Yes, different folks necessarily have different ae's.
That is not the
question.

If it's quite satisfactory to the playwright, sculptor,
or composer that no
one cares about his/her work, I might agree with you. I am
not claiming the
point of the work is to receive recognition or caring. Once
it's done (which
can be a tough question for a playwright) I assume that
part or all of the
point has been reached. I retain the belief that some part
of most artists
is pleased to have a work be recognized and valued, if it
happens.
Geoff C

From: William Conger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: aesthetics-l@mh.databack.com
To: aesthetics-l@mh.databack.com
Subject: Re: recognition of skill
Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:19:51 -0800 (PST)

No, I don't agree.  Again, how can I judge

another's subjective experience?

 Can I logically say, "No, you didn't

experience such and such the right

way, or your experience is lacking."?  No, I can

only judge the expression

or (necessarily faulty) recollection that person gives

of his subjective

experience against the publicly validated or common

sense judgments,

preferably based on quantitative analysis. To wit:

Such and such a piano

performance fails to render the full range and timing

of the composer's

score as it is written and as others have said it has

been performed, etc.,

etc.  Thus giving recoverable reasons for the judgment.

 All of this is

separate from the experience one has of the artwork or

performance, etc.

I had no discernable emotional reaction the evening a

thug pointed his gun

at me, my wife, and daughter, then ran away without

harming us further.

Both my wife and daughter were were physically ill for

days afterward.  So,

we had experienced the same historical event but we had

very different

experiences.

I can't budge on this one.  I do champion

evaluative judgments of aesthetic

experiences once they are placed against quantitative

information, but then

the experience has been morphed into an objective

remaking and the

subjective has been eliminated.  For instance,

Matisse's painting can (note

conditional) provide a powerful aesthetic experience

because.....answer

with logical, observable, art historical, reception

theory reasons.  And

admit that those reasons, while perhaps easily

understood, cannot guarantee

the subjective aesthetic experience.

No one can tell another how they ought to experience

feeling.  You can only

describe the fullest dimensions of something that might

be the agent of

feeling.  That's as far as we can go in judging art