Why has one sense- hearing - been so amenable to artistic development -- while another sense , smell, never has been?
Or --- is a fine art of smells just waiting to be discovered? (as Larry Shiner and Yulia Kriskovets suggest in "The Aesthetics of Smelly Art") (BTW -- Larry Shriner's philosophy of art is almost completely the opposite of Dutton's -- so I'm going to order his recent book, "The Invention of Art: A Cultural History") Regarding smells, Dutton writes "In general, the impact of narrative, musical, and other temporal arts depends on an ability to discriminate elements and see how they are arranged in the imaginative experience of a work. Smell resists this kind of imaginative arrangement.... it seems impossible: we did not evolve to process olfactory information in the way we process the meaning of notes, words, or even colors in particular artistic contexts" --and-- "There is another problem with smell as an art medium: its failure to evoke or express emotions beyond those of personal association and nostalgia. Smells unlike colors do not have names of their own, they are always identified by what they are smells of". Or as Frank Sibley wrote, smells and flavors "are necessarily limited: unlike major arts, they have no expressive connections with emotions, love or hate, grief, terror, joy,,terror, suffering, yearning, pity, or sorrow" But then -- neither does "Fountain" -- the "most influential work of art in the 20th C." So, I would agree with Shriner that it's just a matter of time - and there's probably an MFA candidate at this very moment who is experimenting with odor.-- and if he really famous with it -- wouldn't you like to bring your nose to a concert hall? BTW -- according to Lady Murasaki's account of life in 10th C. Kyoto, an educated gentleman was expected to excel in the the art of perfumery, as well as poetry, music, dance, and and painting. Regarding sound - Dutton then questions why music "became one of the supreme art forms, universal across cultures and history .... despite the fact that the ability to perceive its medium, pitched sound - has almost no imaginable significance for survival in natural selection" Which even "Charles Darwin himself" considered as one of the "most mysterious" features of the human race. Although, given its obvious connection to both romance and language, it seems to fit rather easily into his theory of sexual selection. Dutton then notes two peculiarities of music: it tolerates repetition (indeed, it seems to revel in it) and it's quite congenial to the memory. "The immediate, spontaneous accessibility of music, its clear association with pleasure, and our memory for it should strike us as uncanny" (BTW -- it's apparent that Dutton is personally more involved with music than any other art form, as both performer, listener, and collector) But music doesn't to tolerate unpredictability and wide intervals in tone rows - as exemplified, world wide, only by Swiss yodeling and modern, atonal composers like Schoenberg. Which raises the ongoing conflict between musical modernists and concert audiences. Are the audiences too stupid, lazy, or naiive to appreciate atonality -- or are the composers failing to "draw from the wellsprings of musical pleasure in the mind"? Dutton confesses that he is especially attracted to "the emotionally staggering ways that music shifts harmonically" -- as in Beethoven's Ninth, Vaughan Williams "Fantasia on a them by Thomas Tallis" or the closing moments of Gotterdammerung -- a feature which he notes is quite modern in invention and whose positive effect "is another mystery of evolution" So, perhaps "the wellsprings of musical pleasure" are too deep to fathom? It certainly seems that way to me - in my unique position of being able to listen to the widest possible variety of music from an enormous collection all day long. There are some things I like because I heard them when I was 12 -- and some things with which I've gradually become familiar and found enjoyable -- and some things whose attraction still eludes and may, or may not, do so until I die. Structural unfamiliarity seems to be a barrier that can eventually be overcome -- but then other issues arise that seem much more important and more difficult to explain. ____________________________________________________________ Weight Loss Program Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/c?cp=PwXDZIVEqEsEkT4bxNNxJQAAJz6c l_zTaptgNR5c8Mer1v9kAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEUgAAAAA=
