To assert a fact based solely on experience is to plea for
agreement when nothing objective is offered as proof. The only
proof we can offer is objective. Otherwise it is opinion. And
maybe all is opinion, ultimately, since nothing can be said to be
objective without also being experienced.
So I can say something, Miller can deny it; Boris can say
something, Mando can deny it. Ad infinitum. Sooner or later we
need to agree that our claims and examples for objectivity will
trump our subjective experiences, at least for the sake of finding
common ground. If we each prefer to assert experience over
objectivity, then we have our own opinions and nothing else. Or we
can argue over whose experiences are superior, and thus closer to
objectivity, than others. In that line claim first place. Who
will push me out? Miller? Cheerskep? Mando? Boris? Others?
Michael? Maybe Michael.
wc
________________________________
From: Boris Shoshensky <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 7:40:55 PM
Subject: Re: Rational Discussion and aesthetic quality
" 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."
Surprising statement by William?!
Danto never demonstrated that well enough, nor did Duchamp.
I think we can properly compare the domain of music with the domain
of visual
art regardless of the media difference.
Visual arts require as much skills as music.
Boris Shoshensky
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Rational Discussion and aesthetic quality
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:54:53 -0700 (PDT)
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
