"One ought to be able to hold in one's head simultaneously the two facts that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one does not invalidate or, in a sense, affect the other."
That was my point. The fact that it was Dali just brings it home, because Dali did some "very odd" stuff. We (all of us) seem to miss the point that one can do "very odd" stuff but still be able to benefit family/country/mankind (take your picks). This applies to all walks of life; art is not the exclusive sanctuary of people who do "odd stuff". The problem is one of justification, and in art especially, we go out of our way to justify, based on the fact that we "can't judge". I also do some painting and drawing, and if I want to judge others' works, I'll damn well do it. They (whoever they are) are also entitled to judge my works (if they feel like wasting their time). Mapplethorpe (I also do photography), in my opinion was an excellent photographer. His subject matter? Not to my taste; when you (I) take a picture of a child I get down to the child's level; I don't take a picture in a downward direction... I'm sure you get the point. So he seems to have been somewhat "bent" but if one likes his photography (irrespective of the "Mapplethorpe" label; and often the label is what sells it (would you believe!)) enough to put it on your walls, so be it. Not me. Neither Mapplethorpe nor various forms of corpses. Going on a bit (as usual), but I don't think that art HAS to make a statement. Art (including my own) is just another form of vanity. It's just pigment on paper or canvas, for goodness sake!!! It has as much spirituality in it (despite all the ooohs and aahhhhs) as does taking out the garbage... perhaps less... <end of long, boring dissertation> P. ----- Original Message ---- From: Jones Beene <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Sunday, September 7, 2008 10:49:39 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Science and faith ----- Original Message ---- From: PHILIP WINESTONE > Many years ago, George Orwell wrote a very powerful essay, entitled, "Benefit > of Clergy." It clarified - as only Orwell could - a similar type of situation. I couldn't find this essay on the web, but in common law - the "benefit of clergy" was a provision by which priests charged with crimes could claim that they were outside the jurisdiction of the secular courts. Later it was an elitist way to get a lighter sentence. I did find a review of the essay which is at the end of this post. It was Orwell's criticism of Salvadore Dali - and reminiscent of the controvery around artists Andres Searrano / Robert Mapplethorpe by the world famous "art expert" Jesse Helms. Curiously, this is one of the only issues where Helms made sense at all, to me - but that was not at all about "art" itself - simply about the funding of art with public money. A more fanciful version of this dicotomy between secular expert-opinion and science expert-opinion will be found in Neal Stephenson's forthcoming novel "Anathem" due out soon. From the reviews - this is about a parallel, role reversed Earth whose inhabitants are locked into conflict between scientific and religious institutions. The planet is like Earth in some ways, but differs in one major respect: the religious and scientific institutions are essentially reversed from the way many would view them. Monks called 'the avout' live ascetic lives studying science, while the so called "saecular" world is populated with wealthy 'Deolators' (god-worshipers) who are obsessed with religion., who apparently succeed against scinece with ESP and other forms of spiritual activity which science canot understand. Below is a non-professional review of "Benefit Of Clergy" - which is the title of a collection of essays that Orwell wrote about Salvador Dali : In this essay Orwell addresses what he perceived as the distinction between moral and artistic judgments, pointing at two distinct schools of thought among critics at the time. The first school of thought saw the subject matter of Dali's work (which at the time was very shocking, particularly to the homophobic Orwell) and instantly dismissed the artistic quality of the work. The other group perceived Dali as a great artist, and therefore (according to Orwell) dismissed claims that his work was immoral - (or possibly had different moral standards to Orwell, a possibility he failed to consider). The crux of his argument comes in the following section: One ought to be able to hold in one's head simultaneously the two facts that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one does not invalidate or, in a sense, affect the other. The first thing that we demand of a wall is that it shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall, and the question of what purpose it serves is separable from that. And yet even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp. In the same way it should be possible to say, "This is a good book or a good picture, and it ought to be burned by the public hangman". Unless one can say that, at least in imagination, one is shrinking the implications of the fact that an artist is also a citizen and a human being. Of course it should not be imagined that Orwell was arguing in favour of book burning - the next paragraph starts "Not, of course, that Dali's autobiography, or his pictures, ought to be suppressed. Short of the dirty post cards that used to be sold in Mediterranean seaport towns it is doubtful policy to suppress anything, and Dali's fantasies probably cast useful light on the decay of capitalist civilisation". Whether one agrees or disagrees with Orwell (and I agree on the general principle but not on the specific case of Dali, in so far as I know Dali's work at least) the essay makes fascinating reading, and is particularly relevant today in the light of 'BritArt', the Sensation and Ant Noises exhibitions, and most recently the exhibition of plastinated human corpses as artworks in London. Like all Orwell's nonfiction, it remains relevant today because the issues remain relevant, and because Orwell was a master both of the English language and of rhetoric, who knew better than any other essayist of his generation how to construct an argument.
