Mike,
At the end of your message you wrote (of philosophy):
<<<<
Where it isn't ironic or at least some kind of reference to older art,
I surmise that visual art has tended to follow a path in the 20th
c. similar to that followed by philosophy. From my (notably
under-informed) perspective, philosophy in the last 100 or so years
has come to consist mostly of an analysis of language. The
metaphysics, epistemology etc. of canonical philosophy has been
deconstructed as linguistics. [3] The last time I hung out at an art
college, I couldn't go a whole day without barking my shins on the
word "semiotic" and similar words related to the study of language per
se.
Am I wandering insufferably far off topic here?
>>>>>
To your question, no, you are not wandering. As to your preceding
paragraph, I wish I had written it. You have expressed what I think
has happened to modern philosophy better than I could. What also
might be mentioned is that, a century ago, philosophy also took off
in the direction of Boolean Algebra in the hands of people like Russell and
Whitehead (Principia Mathematica [1910-13]).
However, neither the algebraic nor the linguistic branch was able to
lead their practitioners out of their own tight circles which
couldn't escape the definitions and axioms they started with. It was
only their successor, quantum physics, which has been able to connect
us (or appears to do so) with a 'further' reality outside our normal
perceptions. The irony is that we have no means of knowing (so far)
whether that reality is random or law-abiding.
Keith
At 16:45 20/11/2012, Mike Spencer wrote:
Keith wrote:
> All the arts were at their zenith around a century ago when they'd
> all become pretty fully developed technologies after centuries of
> brilliant endeavours by creative geniuses.
One might even say that most art since, oh, say, since Dada, has
constituted ironic references to all the art that has gone before.
Even the photorealist school might be seen as an ironic reference to
the centuries long pursuit by painters from the 16th c. (13th c.?)
onwards to capture on canvas the realism that photography mastered at
a stroke and offered straight out of the can.
I know next to nothing about opera [1]. What's the state of opera in
the last 100 years, Ray? The only newish one I've heard even part of
is Glass's Akhnaton.[2] How does that fit into the tradition of opera?
Creative? Ironic reference? Dada? Shingled off onto the fog?
> The only exception to all this is architecture, which is still
> developing, but here we have the continuing supply of brand-new
> materials with new structural properties.
3D printing is making some forms possible that were formerly undoable
or so time-consuming as to be practically undoable.
http://www.bathsheba.com/
Where it isn't ironic or at least some kind of reference to older art,
I surmise that visual art has tended to follow a path in the 20th
c. similar to that followed by philosophy. From my (notably
under-informed) perspective, philosophy in the last 100 or so years
has come to consist mostly of an analysis of language. The
metaphysics, epistemology etc. of canonical philosophy has been
deconstructed as linguistics. [3] The last time I hung out at an art
college, I couldn't go a whole day without barking my shins on the
word "semiotic" and similar words related to the study of language per
se.
Am I wandering insufferably far off topic here?
- Mike
[1] Pace REH. It may be a neural ideosyncrasy that, for the most part,
the trained voice grates on my ear, basses sometimes excepted.
[2] This caught my attention because of Immanuel Velikovsky. He had
originally come to North America to research ancient Egypt. His
Earth in Upheaval and Ages in Chaos were the result of a two
decade long digression. He finally got back to Egypt and wrote
Oedipus & Akhnaton, identifying the Oedipus myth in detail with
the people, events, art and archaeological remnants of Akhnaton's
reign. Facinating book.
Velikovsky obviously did a vry great deal of research. I doubt
that I have the patience and dedication to expand into book form
my short piece tracing the Winnie the Pooh myth back through Rome
and Akhnaton's Egypt to the Epic of Gilgamesh. Probably just as
well. :-)
[3] Which nay now be on the verge of being deconstructed by
neuroscience. Film at 11:00.
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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