John said to dmb: ...I'm just not the kind of person that gets upset over "losing". I don't take it seriously enough I suppose, which is more frustrating than appealing once you get to know me. Seriously.
dmb says: That's funny. You're funny. Seriously. John said: We'll leave aside the fact that Hitler hated certain kinds of art, and we'll focus on your criticism of Kitcsh. It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway that neither one of us wants to censor any artist or particular style. If we are arguing, it is over the main points of Scruton's, which is that the art world art - the kind that gets people notice and recognition and sponsorship - successful art, has been slanted toward a "dark" direction - Art meant to shock and upset values as opposed to art meant to soothe and promote homely values - which we'll term kitsch. Is that the heart of your point? Because I think it is in fact, a very serious subject. dmb says: I think we are talking about roughly the same thing and I think it's very important too. We probably disagree about whether or not Hitler's taste in art ought to be left aside, however. As I see it, his reaction to modern art is quite telling. And this view does not rely on the simple and fallacious logic that says, "Hitler liked kitsch. John likes kitsch. Therefore John is a fascist". Instead, I'm saying that the developments in the fine arts in the 20th century and the reactions against it, reflect the wider cultural and ideological conflicts of the 20th century. This battle between "dark" art and soothing art lines up quite nicely with the battle between social and intellectual values as it is depicted in Lila. This wider conflicted is also reflected in domains like morality and religion, politics and war, philosophy and literature. This notion can't be laid out with any kind of mathematical precision or hard and fast rules and there are going to be exceptions to any generalization but basically I'm saying these things are all of a piece. Once in a while you'll meet a guy who loves the cutting edge, non-representational type of art while he also loves old-time religion and conservative politics but that would defy what's usually the case. Usually, there is a particular constellation of attitudes and sensibilities, a total package of tastes and preferences that all go together. Art that soothes and promotes homely values, for example, is very likely going to appeal to those who also promote family values generally. You can probably intuitively grasp how this same sensibility might also be attracted to books about little red school houses, might tend to home-school their kids, might tend to be church-goers and Republicans too. It's all of a piece. Progressive art and progressive politics are a natural match in the same way. Basically, Picasso, Einstein and William James overturned art, physics and empiricism in the same year, 1910. This was just before WW I and the end of the Victorian era. I mean, the shift in art is part of a larger, evolutionary movement that effects all domains of culture, more or less equally. It is in this sense that one can have a fascist's taste in art, a reactionary's taste in art. I'm not saying that Norman Rockwell's idealized illustrations of family life will lead to genocide. I'm not even saying they're ugly. But they do fit the dictionary definition of kitsch. My computer's dictionary says it is, "art considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way". John said: Art, I believe, is hardly ever intended by its creator to reinforce values in a preachy imposing way. I know more than a few artists, even in my own family I know more than a few. Some successful financially, some not. But from what I've observed is that artists are usually motivated mainly by something inside themselves that they want to express. Doing art in a preachy "Ok, we'll just put a nice norman rockwell flourish on everything everywhere" way -- that won't work. You can't go there. I don't think that was Scruton's point. And if it was his point, well, he's wrong. dmb says: Yea, if art is preachy and imposing we should just dismiss it as propaganda. On the other hand the artist is always, in some sense, presenting her vision of the world, presenting a picture of things as the artist sees them. How could anyone do otherwise? You know, the sentimental guy is gonna like sentimental art and if he's an artist his art will be sentimental too. Usually, anyway. I mean, there is a striking parallel between the "dark" artists and the philosophers and other intellectuals in this period. Social criticism was and is the name of the game in both domains. The whole idea is to question traditional values. This attitude goes all the way back to the very birth of intellect, all the way back to Socratic doubt. But at the beginning of the 20th century these intellectual values really took off and began to dominate society. Art was a big part of that evolutionary shift. Some scholars make a case that the artists are always at the cutting edge of these things and I think this is especially true if people like Einstein, James and Picasso can all be counted equally as artists. John said: Art as communication of what values a society inflicts on its individuals, well there Scruton is making a very perceptive point. There is a lot wrong in a society that doesn't value kitsch at all. We just can't all be oh so sneeringly sophisticated in every way, peering down our educated noses at homely art and homely values. I'd say that's a problem. Because there is intrinsic value in stable homes and family. Value that if sneered at and discarded as boringly bourgeois, will come back to bite society in a big way. But then, I'm just a reactionary dmb says: Well, personally, I always thought the case in favor of family values was bizarre and insulting. Even apes value stable homes and family. I've been married for nearly 16 years and have a 9 year-old son as well as a home and dog. I really don't kitschy art or conservative politics to hold that together for me. It just comes natural. Other than the criminally insane, who doesn't value stable homes and family? I certainly don't know anyone who doesn't. Anyway, my taste is just what one might guess. Just like everybody else, it is somehow consistent with my taste in everything else; clothes, music, movies, religion, politics, and philosophy. I like cerebral stuff in general and that's how I like my art. But when I look at something like a Rockwell it just doesn't tickle my brain. It makes me yawn. Or maybe I'll feel a little nauseated because it's too sweet, so sweet that it's false or untruthful. I'm not a fan of the art snobs either, but there is something to the idea that many people who hate modern art tend to feel that way because they don't understand it. I was put off by a lot of it myself until I learned something about it. Then I began to appreciate what was going on relative to the history of art and relative to history in general. John said: Now on the other point, my four kids all did their elementary education in yer basic lil-red-school house. ... Even had the classic school house shape with the bell tower and everything. It was white though... From what I've observed first hand, it's a far superior way of teaching than the modified prussian system in use today. ... The fact of the matter is not degraded at all by being printed in the Wall Street Journal. Anymore than my affection for beer and dogs is degraded by the fact that Hitler liked those things as well. Seriously. dmb says: Well, obviously the benefits of the little schoolhouse stem from the student to teacher ratio and the amount of personal attention that comes from that. The fact that public schools are much larger everywhere now, except in rural areas, is simply a function of demographic pressure, population growth and the democratic impulse to make education available to everyone regardless of income. I'd agree that one of the biggest problems with schools today is classroom size. At the big State Universities people take classes in auditoriums with hundreds of other students. My wife is a teacher and is forever bitching that she and her co-workers all have too many students. I'm not sure what Prussia has to do with this but I think the main problem is that our schools have been set up on the industrial model. They're set up like factories and the students are treated like any other manufactured thing that's assembled from interchangable parts. They're put in neat rows, with those looking to get their Aristotelian "A"s sitting in the front rows, and each receives exactly the same lesson at exactly the same time. They move from grade to grade at the same time as if they were all being moved along the assembly line. The teacher job is to just plug in the right pieces of info at the right time as they pass by at a pre-determined rate. It's almost as if our education system was designed by Henry Ford. He thought people ought not be TOO educated. Just enough to follow instructions like a good factory worker should. He was pen pals with Hitler, by the way, and they admired each other greatly. He was real big on family values too, that Henry. Hated Jews with a passion but he sure loved his mother. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™ SkyDrive™: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_SD_25GB_062009 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
