My greed is just to be able to continue to create till I can't anymore.
At this point greed a destructible force to humans
mando
On Sep 24, 2009, at 7:26 AM, Saul Ostrow wrote:
I'm in this moment less concerned with the inequalities engendered by
Capitalism than I am in its internal logics - which are organized
around the
belief that the base goals of greed in the name of individual
survival are
the best we can hope for as a species - and all other higher values
are merely
window dressing
On 9/24/09 10:04 AM, "William Conger" <[email protected]> wrote:
Yeah, and when Miller complains about those who question
capitalism, he
reveals his true nature, the underlying conviction that a monetary
system in
which capital gravitates to a center, pooling in vast amounts,
money attracts
money, is somehow ideal. Why? How has capitalism aided Miller?
The little
fellows, all of us, are left to splish-spash in tiny puddles that
soon enough
will drain off to the center. His rambles about validation remind
me of
Joshua Taylor's famous remark that modernism began when artists had
to find or
invent their own audiences. He put the emergence of that around 1750.
Saul's last sentence in his comment below is most pertinent.
wc
________________________________
From: Saul Ostrow <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>;
Chris
Miller <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 8:42:51 AM
Subject: Re: The propositional nature of art
Accompanying the institutional shift you reference here - their
were also the
shift in how artists thought about art - influenced by the move
toward self
expression and individualism, which was a result of the idea that
the artist
was not a type of crafts person, but rather an type of author/
producer -
this was a consequence of the newly created 16th century concept
of fine
art,
and the affects of the reformation and the counter reformation .
This shift
accompanied the rise of the merchant and middle classes (who were
destined
to become the bourgeoisie) whose attitude toward art was significantly
different than that of the old feudal nobility that they sought to
displace
and by the end of the 19th century did displace socially,
politically and
culturally. Art as a collective practice (the sum of all artistic
practices)
therefore (consciously and unconsciously) came to reflect in its
forms and
subjects the self- conflicted ideology of its patrons the bourgeois -
consequently the residual arguments and values of the 18th century
still
haunt
us culturally - yet like the scorpion and frog joke capitalism can
not help
itself but debase what it values = because its only acts according
to its
nautre and this is is reflected in its aesthetic practices
On 9/24/09 9:09 AM, "Chris Miller" <[email protected]> wrote:
According to Peter Kivy, the "standard account" tells us that
"Certain things
transpired in the eighteenth century to alter, in very important
ways, how we
think about and experience works of the fine arts"
And William is reflecting that change when he tells us that "Art is
not
measured by its utility", and then goes on to select examples from
the 19th
and 20th Centuries to prove his point about propaganda, whose
pejorative
sense, as superficial and misleading, is also a modern
construction.
Validation need not be propaganda.
So it's true that whatever makes Pontormo, and fellow Mannerists
good *for
us* , it's not in the validation it gave to institutions. But that
is not a
comment on its original function.
And that validation is what enabled the sale of indulgences (and the
collection of taxes) rather than the other way around.
Without a social validating function, art is all about self: self
expression
(Mando), personal enrichment (Boris) or personal validation (Wall
St.
billionaries buying Jeff Koons)
Or, art can provide invalidation. (or, at least that's the utterly
bizarre
left-wing strategy for attacking capitalism)
All of which has made high quality ever more problematic as we move
further
into the modern era.
Not impossible -- but ever more difficult to find and learn how to
achieve.
......................................................................
.......
.
...............................................................
Art is not measured by its utility. That's the function of
propaganda.
Although
art is often put into service as propaganda, that use is not the
measure of
its quality. Otherwise, I suppose Flagg's "Uncle Sam wants you" or
the
Statue
of Liberty---surely effective propaganda imagery -- would be among
the
world's
greatest art. But no one has ever seriously proposed that.
Whatever makes Pontormo, and fellow Mannerists good, it's not in the
validation it gave to institutions. Likewise, it's not today's
Wall Street
billionaires who determine the quality of Koons' or Hirst's art
even though
they seek validation for themselves by bidding it up to huge market
values
and
thereby ensuring that only they can acquire it.
I do agree that the quality of many goods is supposedly reflected
in their
prices -- like real estate -- but the aesthetic quality of
something can't be
measured by the supply-demand formula or by how it validates something
separate
from it. I also realize that there's a subtle subtext in this
because the
validation of other might be a subjective, individual,
consciousness, as when
I
say, "Pontormo's art validates my sense of aesthetic" But I am not an
institution. Since there are so many diverse things that may be
used to
validate anything at all, and each likely to contradict another, we
can't say
