Does that make art-making , a skill-less endeavor or does this only
apply to painting.
On Mar 11, 2010, at 3:34 PM, William Conger wrote:
There are no unique skills necessary to any art. Because there is
no art but only a practice imagined as being art or producing art,
and because the activity and product aim to embody what has not yet
been termed art, unknown skills need to be found and employed.
This may mean in a particular instance, that painting as a skill is
irrelevant, and the skill needed is one that results from
deskilling traditional painting. An example would be Pollock's
"deskilling" of traditional painting skills and his employing the
new skill of pouring and dripping paint. Prior to Pollock,
dripping and pouring paint were not regarded as painting skills.
Now they are common, available to any artist. No one can paint
without being aware that the use of a brush to apply paint is
deskilled. In fact, today, all art processes and skills, and
practices are deskilled (having been rejected without ending art)
and thus one can question whether or not they can embody any
meaning except through irony.
wc
----- Original Message ----
From: armando baeza <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Cc: armando baeza <[email protected]>
Sent: Thu, March 11, 2010 12:13:10 PM
Subject: Re: Physician, heal thyself
I tend to agree with your summation.
mando
On Mar 11, 2010, at 9:47 AM, [email protected] wrote:
It's not obvious to me why "knowing" a number of "arts" would hurt a
creator (except, perhaps, by spreading his time too thin). I can't
cite
anything
I've learned about other genres that I'm aware has hurt my
progress in my
genre.
But has it helped? At this point I need, in passing, to assert
that alleged
genres do not have mind-independent hard perimeters -- "This is the
painter's turf, this is the dancer's turf..." For example, would
you call
acting
an "art"? And would you call playwrighting another "art"? But
there's reason
to believe that having been an actor helps a playwright at work.
Would you call sculpture a different "art" from painting? From my
distance,
it would seem that some of the skills acquire in one of those
pursuits
might then be helpful in the other pursuit. (Just to reconcile
this posting
with
some things I've said in the past, I point out that I avoid asking
"IS
sculpture a different 'art' from painting?" Or, "IS poetry a
different art
from
playwriting?" Philosophers constantly astound me with the
basically stupid
questions they tend to ask themselves.)
Broadly speaking, I have doubts that painters and playwrights
could acquire
SKILLS from each other's pursuit, but I think they pick up
attitudinal
stuff, perhaps a readiness to be more experimental, or a comfort
in observing
that one is not alone with certain experiences -- e.g. the other
day Kate told
how she had to change a certain portion of a work because, good in
itself
though it was, it in effect distracted from the intended whole-
work effect.
To playwrights, novelists and even poets, this is a very
recognizable moment.
In sum, first thought whispers that someone who "knows" all the
"arts" is
marginally more likely to be better at his work than the creator
confined to
one. But the evidence of history gives little support to this
idea. Most of
the multi-"art" guys tend to be at least a notch below the greatest
creators. And many great creators have seemed to confine all
their effort
and
attention to one "art".
In a message dated 3/10/10 2:36:48 PM, [email protected] writes:
Actually, with your clarification, i'm comparing the lifetime a,e,
skills of one
individual with the normal related knowledge of one of the arts, to
the a,e,
lifetime skills of another individual with the normal related
knowledge in all
the arts. The question i'm proposing, or trying to reason is,which
group of
individuals might, potentially produce the best & unique a,e,
quality
work?
mando
