Pain ting is better than no ting
________________________________ From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, November 8, 2010 3:11:24 PM Subject: Re: "Great Art Is About Doing Nothing" (recent article) The piece was 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The chosen instrument was not played. Whatever sounds were heard during that ti ew was the music. The specific sounds were not chosen but were random. They were something, not nothing. There is no 'nothing' in a pain ting. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: ARMANDO BAEZA <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, November 8, 2010 3:52:25 PM Subject: Re: "Great Art Is About Doing Nothing" (recent article) If the painting( your choice ) has only a red dot (your choice) in an ambience of white ( your choice) is the same as.... Cage's choice of length of silence between his Choice of sounds. All I am referring to, is the potential aesthetic power of Nothing next to Something (your choice) mando ________________________________ From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, November 8, 2010 1:05:42 PM Subject: Re: "Great Art Is About Doing Nothing" (recent article) How big is the painting? What is the size of the red dot and where is it placed? What is the saturation of the dot? How clear is its shape? Is it a circle or just a happenstance dot. Ans what about the surrounding space/area? What description fits that? In a painting there are no ambient parts. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: ARMANDO BAEZA <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, November 8, 2010 2:55:33 PM Subject: Re: "Great Art Is About Doing Nothing" (recent article) In a painting, where all it has is a red dot, how much ambience is the proper amount, and where should it be? ________________________________ From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, November 8, 2010 6:42:09 AM Subject: Re: "Great Art Is About Doing Nothing" (recent article) All of these quotations and comments have one concept in common and that is the concept of distancing or thinking aside which is the key concept in many theories of aesthetics. But it is important to note that the quotations find refuge in the allusive poetry of metaphor and do not strike at declarative or descriptive truth. For instance, to say that Cage's quiet moments were the loudest does refer to the silence of the musical instrument and turn attention to the 'musical' contribution of ambient sounds but it says nothing about the aesthetic nature of the ambient sounds. Here the word 'loudest' supposedly functions as both a measure of sound and a measure of aesthetic worth. While it may be the case that the ambient sounds are indeed the loudest in Cage's performance of 4'33" it does not follow that the word loudest also embodies aesthetic value. The point is that whenever we use an analogical or metaphorical phrase to stand in for a description of something we either evade the difficulty of 'proving' art or we create a substitution for it. Descartes learned this lesson but couldn't apply it. Since then science eschews analogy and metaphor in proving reality but always employs them when describing the proofs. In art, the scientific proofs are impossible and thus its analogical and metaphorical descriptions have no bounds---and remain immeasurable. So, say what you will about art; describe the "sausage" as you please, but pay attention to the delight of your analogies and metaphors because they may parallel the art but never prove it. If we can equal the power of 'art' in our poetic descriptions of it then we have explained it as well as possible. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, November 8, 2010 3:57:43 AM Subject: Re: "Great Art Is About Doing Nothing" (recent article) On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 8:45 PM, ARMANDO BAEZA <[email protected]> wrote: > In John Cage composition's quiet moments, to me, were the loudest. > > - The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides! Artur Schnabel
