No one can make a work of art on demand. Even if there are prescribed ways to make something that looks exactly like a recognized work of art there is no assurance that it will also be a work of art. I suspect Mando is thinking about the joy of discovery, the adventure of doing something that could be art or is proposed as art rather than something that is prescribed as art through following a set of rules. As we know, modernist aesthetics (in visual art) is often centered on what is proscribed as art. The more something does not look like art the more it might be art.
I don't think we can properly compare the domain of music with the domain of visual art. Because they are different domains they engage different media and thus different senses and their emotional contents. Further, any music, maybe even humming or tapping one's fingers, requires some skill as is certainly the case with any instrumental music. But in the visual arts, no specific skills of any kind (beyond being alive and conscious) are required. Danto, following Duchamp, has demonstrated well enough that the everyday as the everyday, even when unaltered, can be art as determined by its experience. Visual Art is in its reception or not at all and anything visual can be the medium whether or not it was ever intended as art. It's more complicated with music, for even John Cage provided a composition with his famous 4 minutes, 33 seconds piece. That's why visual artists are more suspect than musicians. Musicians, usually, have performative or instrumental skills that most people don't have. Many recognized visual artists, however, cannot demonstrate any skills beyond the banal and commonplace. wc ________________________________ From: Allan Sutherland <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, August 25, 2009 9:59:18 PM Subject: Re: Rational Discussion and aesthetic quality On 26/08/2009 10:10, "Michael Brady" <[email protected]> wrote: > On Aug 25, 2009, at 8:37 PM, Allan Sutherland wrote: > >>> To know what is art, is to eliminate the joy of doing it. >>> mando >> >> This sounds like absolute improvisation, making music without >> knowing how to play an instrument or make a sound. It is likely >> possible, it is likely it has been done, but is it adequate to >> enable a variety of arts to be produced, I don't think so. It is >> rather romantic or even mystical to think art is created without >> knowing or knowledge; making art entails knowledge and skills. . . > > I think you've over-construed Mando's comment. > Perhaps, but I think you have under-construed mine. I was not making the point that absolute improvisation was possible, if so I would probably have referred to free improvisation or non-idiomatic improvisation which has a clear history and some semblance of meaning. I was also making more or less the point you make below, that improvisation is the product of disciplined and skilled people. But, contrastingly too, Derek Bailey argues that anybody can improvise musically, they either do so with a low or extremely high level of sophistication. Thank you for your response. Toodle-pip, Allan. > To think about "what is art" while you are in the process of making a > work of art is to keep you eye on two things at once -- not easy to > do, and usually not successful for either. > > When I stand in the studio with a canvas on the easel and a paintbrush > in my hand, I know that whatever comes next "is art"--i.e., I intend > to make a work of art, all of what I do in the service of that end > during the next hours is part of the process of making a work of art, > and that all of my concentration will be on ... NOT making art, > because I've already set myself to that task ... but on painting > different specific parts on the canvas. Everything about painting for > me is enjoyable, as I assume it is for Mando, even the tedious parts > and the dull or repetitive or mere housekeeping parts. > > BTW, "absolute improvisation" is not "making music without *knowing > how to play* etc." What you describe is just banging the keys or > strumming the guitar. It's undiscipline. I expect in the music world > that "improvisation" denotes a way of producing music by trained and > disciplined performers who know what goes into music-making and how to > depart from a fixed point of reference. (Perhaps the point of the > anecdote was the fact that Lacy couldn't think of how to get to the > point of departing from the fixed score). Discipline is the basis of > freedom in making things, whether it's carpentry or music or painting > or writing. Just now, as I am typing this, my skills and discipline in > word usage, composition, logic, etc., allow me to compose quickly and > with a high degree of confidence that I'll form a cogent comment. > Those same skills and discipline enable me to produce the puns and > wordplay that I do almost effortlessly--a kind of improvisation with > language. > > Unskilled people cannot improvise: they just make odd noises in > public, or strange marks, or misshapen forms, or clumsy movements. > > Your reference to "romantic or even mystical" strikes me as a throw- > away dismissal of both of those mental stances as insubstantial. > Perhaps the vast majority of the people you've met of a romantic or > mystical persuasion have been rank amateurs (that is certainly my > experience), but the good Romantics (think of Wordsworth's Preface to > the "Lyrical Ballads") or mystics (Hildegard of Bingen, e.g., or > today's vogue for Rumi, and, of course, Thomas Aquinas) certainly rise > above vulgar fatuity. > > > > > | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | > Michael Brady > [email protected] > http://considerthepreposition.blogspot.com/ > > Subscribe: [email protected] > Unsubscribe: [email protected]
