Last week’s episode of the Retrotopia narrative ended up launching, rather to my surprise, an extensive discussion about the nature of art. The spark that set off this unexpected blaze was a passing comment on the part of the story’s protagonist, who described the abstract paintings on the walls of the Atlantic Republic embassy in Toledo in somewhat rude language. That was meant as a throwaway line, one more display of the way the protagonist’s views had changed during his visit to my imaginary Lakeland Republic—but it fielded me a minor flurry of denunciation from people who couldn’t stand the fact that a character of mine had expressed a lack of appreciation for one variety of modern art.
Those of my readers who’ve come in for bullying from the art crowd know exactly what sort of thing those tirades included. Those who’ve evaded that experience so far—well, I was told that I had no right to have an opinion on the subject, that I don’t know anything about art, that I obviously prefer Norman Rockwell, that I’m offended by intellectual challenges, that I’m offended by new techniques and media, that I feel threatened by modern art, that I’m in favor of censorship, and that I’d change my mind if I just stood in front of an abstract expressionist canvas and tried to understand my reactions.
It’s worth noting that none of these claims happens to be true, but let’s set that aside for a moment and take a look at what happened. I had a character in a story express an opinion about art—an opinion, by the way, that was relevant to the story and also to the character—and that was enough to send some of my readers into a fair imitation of a Donald Duck splutterfest. This isn’t the first time, or the hundred and first time, that I’ve watched that same sequence unfold. Across the spectrum of contemporary art, if you display a lack of enthusiasm for anything produced by someone whose claim to the status of “artist” is accepted by the art scene, you can expect to field something of the kind.
That can be highly entertaining—I certainly found the latest round of it a source of wry amusement—but it’s also relevant to the subject of the current series of posts on education for the deindustrial era. One of the core things you should expect to get from any education worth the name is the ability to sort out gold from garbage: to recognize, in the fields of learning and creativity, the differences between genuine insight, recycled cliché, and pretentious noise. To get that ability, it’s crucial to recognize that there are two kinds of bad practice in the arts, sciences, and scholarship.
The first of them can be called, without too much distortion, lowbrow trash. What defines lowbrow trash is that it rehashes the overfamiliar. It deploys stereotyped effects in stereotyped ways to evoke stereotyped sentiment. It tends to be popular among the poor, because people who have to bear the brutal insecurities every complex society inflicts on its more vulnerable members desperately need the reassurance of the familiar, and if black velvet paintings of dogs playing poker are what’s available to meet that need, then that’s what will go on their walls. (There are better options, but these days those generally aren’t available to the poor.) The apotheosis of lowbrow trash is kitsch, which wallows so enthusiastically in rehashed sentiment that it achieves unintentional self-parody.
There is also, as it happens, lowbrow trash in scholarship and science. Here you find the histories that regurgitate every currently accepted stereotype about this or that corner of the past, the scientific papers that “prove” some bit of conventional wisdom by excluding contradictory data—this is easy to do if you know your way around experimental design—and so on. These also have their own forms of kitsch, though you often need a little more specialized education to catch the unintentional self-parody.
That said, lowbrow trash is only one side of the picture. There’s another side, and since this entire discussion started with a bit of fiction, I don’t think it’s out of line to ask my readers to gather around old Father Goose for a few minutes and listen to a story called “The Emperor’s New Art.”
This all happened right after the events of “The Emperor’s New Clothes;” any of my readers who don’t happen to know that tale can find a pleasant online version here. The two fraudulent tailors who’d sold the emperor a suit of nonexistent clothes were marched to the nearest border and thrown out of the empire with a warning never to return. They had very little money and knew better to try the same scam on the ruler of the next empire over, since even in those days, news traveled fast. So there they sat on a stone fence, trying to figure out what they were going to do.
“I know,” said the taller of the two. “The emperor of this land is an art lover. We can become painters.”
“But neither of us knows the first thing about painting!” the shorter tailor replied.
“Neither of us knows the first thing about making clothing, either,” the taller one reminded him. “Let’s see if we have enough money between us to buy some art supplies.”
Now since this is a fairy tale, there was an art supply store waiting just down the road, and the two found they had just enough money between them to buy a canvas, some brushes, a set of paints in flimsy tubes, and a spray bottle of fixative. That didn’t leave them enough money to rent a studio, or even a room for the night, and the day was almost over, so they found a dry place under some trees and went to sleep with their art supplies safe, as they thought, between them.
Late that night a stray dog came trotting by. He was not too bright, and to him, the tubes of paint looked like puppy treats. He sneaked up between the two tailors and gobbled up the paint tubes in three quick gulps, breaking them open with his teeth in the process. Before he could trot away, though, the first mouthful of paint hit his stomach and made it lurch. The second mouthful made it lurch again, and the third—well, to make a long and somewhat anatomical story short, he proceeded to throw up the paint, along with everything else he’d eaten that evening, right onto the canvas. He then backed away, and ran off to find some tasty grass to settle his stomach.
“Nonsense,” said the taller one. “You never did have enough imagination.” He carefully dried the canvas in the sun and sprayed fixative over it. “Here is our first masterpiece.”
So they proceeded to the palace of the emperor. On the way they grew beards and let their hair get long, and they stole an assortment of ill-fitting clothing from clotheslines along the way so they could look eccentric and bohemian. So attired, they presented themselves to the imperial art committee and said, “We are great artists, so brilliant, so avant-garde, and so tormented by our talent that our work can only be understood by the truly sophisticated. Ordinary people—well! Ordinary people look at our paintings and say, ‘That looks like dog barf,’ but that simply shows how pedestrian their tastes are, how little they understand the true sublimity of which art is capable. But you, ladies and gentlemen, you are persons of refined taste and deep aesthetic sensitivity. We know that you will appreciate—” He held up the canvas on which the dog had thrown up. “—the first great work of the Borborygmist school of art!”
Now of course the first thought of every member of the imperial art committee was, “That looks like dog barf.” As soon as that thought entered their minds, though, every one of them thought, “Oh, no! Does that mean that my tastes are pedestrian and I don’t understand the true sublimity of which art is capable?” So none of them said anything at first. Then one, who felt a little more insecure than the others and felt he had to prove that he didn’t have pedestrian tastes, said, “This is indeed a great work of art.” All the others thought, “He must have refined taste and deep aesthetic sensitivity.” So they all began to praise the painting, and the more they looked at it, the more they succeeded in convincing themselves that it couldn’t be what it obviously was, that is, a canvas on which a dog had thrown up.
So the two artists sold the painting to the Emperor for a tidy sum. The Emperor didn’t actually think much of it—his first thought on seeing it was, “That looks like dog barf”—but since all the members of the imperial art committee insisted that it was a great masterpiece and only people with pedestrian tastes thought it looked like dog barf, he kept his mouth shut and tried to convince himself that it really was a masterpiece. One day, though, when the painting had been put on display for the public, and the artists and the members of the art committee and the Emperor himself were standing there beaming, a little child came up, took one look at the painting, and said, “That looks like dog barf.”
The artists, the committee members, and the Emperor all looked down their noses at the child and said, “Child, you obviously know nothing about art.” So the child went away, and the artists lived happily ever after—and that, my children, is most of what you need to know about the history of modern art.
That is to say, lowbrow trash is not the only kind of trash that needs to be recognized as such by the educated person. There is also highbrow trash. Where lowbrow trash communicates overfamiliar sentiments in overfamiliar ways, highbrow trash avoids communication by saying nothing that can be interpreted outside of a narrow circle of cognoscenti. It’s meant to exclude, so that its purveyors and connoisseurs can feel superior to those who those who don’t get it. As lowbrow trash appeals to the poor, who need the comforts of familiarity in an insecure world, highbrow trash appeals to the affluent, who tend to be sheltered from adversity and so get bored easily, and who also tend to flock to anything that will allow them to parade their supposed superiority to the poor.
There’s plenty of highbrow trash in the realms of scholarship and the sciences, just as there’s plenty of lowbrow trash there. As with lowbrow trash, too, there’s a far end to the spectrum, a point at which it achieves self-parody and becomes unintentionally funny. There is unfortunately no common word for this latter, no equivalent word to kitsch, so one needs to be coined; the term I have in mind is “warhol.”
This is not to express any lack of respect for Andy Warhol, whose name provides that label. Quite the contrary, I admire the man immensely. He was arguably the twentieth century’s greatest satirist, a comic genius so versatile and so subtle that some of the butts of his humor haven’t yet realized that the joke was on them. This was the man who meticulously copied a supermarket box of Brillo pads and sold that as a work of art. No less a philosopher than Arthur Danto spent a good fraction of his career trying to come up with an aesthetic philosophy and a definition of art that would allow Warhol’s Brillo box to keep its status as an artwork, and never seems to have gotten the joke.
There is, as it happens, precisely one theory of art that justifies the claim that Warhol’s Brillo box is art. It’s the theory that there are certain very, very special people called “artists” who are so tremendously creative, so overwhelmingly sensitive, so dripping with sheer aesthetic oomph, that anything they treat as art is, ipse dixit, art. If an eight-year-old boy hangs a urinal on a nail on the wall for people to see, that’s a prank, but if Marcel Duchamp does it, it’s a great work of art. Why? Because art oozes out of every pore of his body, that’s why, and there's a puddle of it on the urinal to this day. It’s understandable that artists should find this way of defining art congenial to their egos, but it’s just as understandable that Andy Warhol’s wicked sense of humor would zero in on so comically arrogant a claim, and push it past its logical extreme into rank absurdity.
Let us please get real: a urinal does not become a work of art because an artist sticks it on a wall, nor does a Brillo box become a work of art because Andy Warhol decides to pull the art world’s collective leg. Plenty of other examples could be added—there’s no shortage of highbrow trash these days, and no shortage of warhol, either—and an important part of education is developing a strong enough personal sense of aesthetic and intellectual taste that when a couple of former tailors come along with dog barf on a canvas and insist that this is the first great masterpiece of the Borborygmist school of art, the educated person is confident enough to say, “No, that’s dog barf.”
How do you develop that kind of personal sense? There’s a very simple, straightforward way; it’s been standard practice in every literate society for thousands of years, and the current intellectual climate in today’s United States treats it as three steps lower than evil incarnate.
That is to say, you have a canon.
That is to say, you have a canon.
A canon is a set of works in any given field that are generally accepted as masterpieces. In a healthy culture, pretty much every educated person has encountered and studied the works that belong to the canon of that culture. The word “canon” literally means “measure,” and that’s what a canon does: it gives you something to measure other works of the same kind. Let’s take literature as an example. There are, in every literature and every branch of literature, certain works that stand head and shoulders above the rest, and an important part of education consists of reading those works, thinking about them, studying them, figuring out what makes them great (and also where they stumble), and developing a personal sense of literary taste by exposure to them. Is the canon the only thing you read? Of course not—what’s the use of a means of measuring if you don’t use it to measure something other than itself?
A canon, by the way, is always contested, it’s always in flux, and it’s always unfair. Different works rise up into the canon and drift back out of it in response to the vagaries of taste. There have been times when Shakespeare’s plays were cast out from the canon as too vulgar, and novels most people now find insufferably stuffy were considered marvels of literary genius. That’s inevitable, because a canon is always and only a summary of the collective aesthetic and intellectual taste of an age, and inevitably suffers from the blind spots of the age. If there’s some kind of absolute ideal of beauty or sublimity out there, of the sort Plato imagined, it’s not accessible to mere human beings. All we have to work with is our own, hopefully more or less educated reactions to works of art, science, and scholarship.
So each culture in each age, with rare exceptions, adapts the canon of arts, sciences, and scholarship that it considers important, adding some works and deleting others, on the basis of its own inevitably flawed perceptions, and proceeds to use that as a basis for education. The exceptions are periods like the present, when the schism in society anatomized by Arnold Toynbee in A Study of History shatters the sense of shared values that binds a society together, and you end up with a polarized mess in which the dominant minority and the internal proletariat glare at each other across a wasteland of smoking ruins. At such times, the dominant minority plunges with gusto into highbrow trash, the internal proletariat plunges with equal verve into lowbrow trash, and both sides pretend that those are the only two possible options—that those who don’t like abstract expressionism must therefore love Norman Rockwell, and vice versa.
That’s not good for art, or for that matter science or scholarship. One of the things that individuals who care about any of these things can contribute to their welfare is to cast aside the dubious enticements of both kinds of trash, try to construct some approximation of a canon in the fields that matter to them, and educate themselves in the time-honored method of repeated exposure to, and reflection on, really first-rate works. It’s from such efforts, once the schism in society completes its trajectory, that a new canon emerges, and the heritage of the past gets handed on to guide the creative minds of the future.
A couple of additional notes may be useful here. First, just because you’ve identified something as trash, highbrow or lowbrow, doesn’t mean you have to avoid it. Trash can be fun. I inherit from my misspent youth, for example, an amused delight in really bad fantasy fiction, the kind of thing that Poul Anderson anatomized brilliantly in his essay “On Thud and Blunder,” and there are books I keep on hand when I want to wallow in that sort of thing. For all I know, there are people who have a similar reaction to abstract expressionist paintings, though I admit I’ve never met one.
Second, just because you know it’s good doesn’t mean you have to like it. I don’t happen to like Italian opera, for example. I know that it contains a good selection of world-class masterpieces, but they’re not to my taste, and so I leave them to those who delight in them. I have a similar reaction to rap music, and to a variety of other art genres. My wife has a BFA in art history, and we routinely visit art museums when we travel, but our tastes differ somewhat—she’s gaga for the Impressionists, who I find pleasant but not the overwhelming experience they are for her; our roles reverse when it comes to the French Symbolists; by mutual consent, we avoid the modern art wing altogether and make a beeline for the Japanese gallery and the medieval and Renaissance European collections. Meanwhile, other people are making their own choices, and so should you.
Finally, laughter is an appropriate response to art. It’s an even more appropriate response to highbrow or lowbrow trash, and of course it’s all but inescapable when you encounter kitsch or warhol. If the reaction you have when you stand in front of a canvas covered with dog barf is hysterical giggling, by all means giggle. It’s a salutary corrective to the cult of humorlessness that so often obsesses the purveyors and connoisseurs of highbrow trash.
With that in mind, we can proceed to...
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Homework Assignment #3As previously noted, since this sequence of posts is on education, there’s going to be homework. Your homework for the next month or so is to find three works in one field of art, science, or scholarship. One should be a work of lowbrow trash, one should be a work of highbrow trash, and the third should be a classic. All of them should be in the same genre—for example, you might choose three science fiction novels, or three paintings, or three operas, or three historical essays, or three books on physics.
The highbrow trash will probably be hardest to find, as this goes into and out of style in various genres, while lowbrow trash is eternal. If you happen to choose science fiction, for example, most of the over-the-top highbrow trash appeared in the New Wave era of the 1970s, when a good many writers decided to prove that SF was High Literature, and got pompous, humorless, and dull in the usual way. Lowbrow trash? Any bookstore or public library will have it by the yard; look for clichés that were already dated when the original Star Trek premiered. Classics? By and large, old Hugo Award winners qualify.
Put some time into all three works. Notice the difference in your responses to them. Also notice the objective differences in them. Don’t hesitate to laugh where appropriate.
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Finally, I'm pleased to say that sales of the limited edition of the first of my Weird of Hali novels, Innsmouth, are going well. One implication is that if you want a complete set of the hardback edition, you have a limited amount of time left...and the second and third novels in the series, Kingsport and Chorazin, are already written. Copies can be purchased here.
398 comments:
8/10/16, 2:32 PM
Nestorian said...
You write as follows:
"One of the core things you should expect to get from any education worth the name is the ability to sort out gold from garbage: to recognize, in the fields of learning and creativity, the differences between genuine insight, recycled cliché, and pretentious noise."
Does this language not make you a value-objectivist when it comes to art?
Not that that would be a bad thing - I would be in full agreement!
8/10/16, 2:59 PM
whomever said...
I believe I confessed in a previous opera-related comment thread that I actually do like Philip Glass, even though I'm well aware he's a niche taste and you probably feel he firmly belongs in highbrow trash (and you'd probably be right). Then I had a hilarious exchange with someone at work discussing 20th century opera who nervously said "well, I've got music friends who think he's too poppy because he also writes movie music". I mean, commercially successful movie music does have to be at least SOMEWHAT accessible; no one outside the arthouse is going to sit through a movie that used Schoenberg as the score. Yet merely trying to make something at least basically accessible alone made them ultimately tainted in their eyes (or to put it another way, in what Universe is Philip Glass poppy???). Speaking of Schoenberg, my wife who was a professional opera singer thinks exactly what you just said about 12-tone, that it's just a bunch of people trying to be extra-obscure and unlistenable so they could feel superior. So I'd almost pick that for my homework but then I'd have to sit through it.
On a sort of tangent, if you are not already familiar with them you might be interested in Komer and Melamid (http://awp.diaart.org/km/). These guys polled a bunch of countries about what people most and least wanted to see in art and hear in music and then tried to produce paintings and songs based on that, and lets just say the results are very very relevant to this post. The least wanted song particular is an amazing creation featuring 22 minutes of an Operatic Soprano rapping country and western lyrics intertwined with atonal and strident political messages.
8/10/16, 3:00 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
8/10/16, 3:14 PM
zerowastemillennial said...
I'm well aware of all the talk about the CIA funding the US art scene during the Cold War, but as someone who occasionally flirts with ecstatic animist religious traditions, and who is a polytheist devotee to a pair of mad art gods, I'd be lying if I said that it didn't seem to me that some abstract expressionists weren't perhaps unwittingly moved by some spirit or another.
In fact, I wrote a whole essay on how animists might reclaim the vestiges of the Modern (not Contemporary!) art traditions.
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A few notes: I do hope your jab at Duchamp was meta in some way? The toilet thing was not, by most accounts, actually a deliberate attempt to be avant-garde; I thought that it's pretty darn well understood that he was, to use contemporary lingo, "trolling" if not the gallery, then somebody else. (And if it wasn't his "work", then it was probably submitted for a Dadaist friend. Dadaism being art trolling made formal.)
Another thing that most non-painters don't know is that making a well-composed abstract piece is ridiculously difficult. And no no, I'm not talking about your Pollocks or your Malevichs; to do what Mondrian does with trees or Matisse does with paper takes a not insignificant amount of skill.
"For all I know, there are people who have a similar reaction to abstract expressionist paintings, though I admit I’ve never met one."
Most students and faculty who aren't in the fine arts department of art colleges feel similarly. I never actually understood who the elite is that's supposed to like this stuff, because I've never met an art instructor who did, nor have I met another working artist who does. It's a artificially inflated market like many others, but all art suffers from that problem - it's the nature of the gallery scene. People buy the more blandly dense stuff as investments that sit in storage rooms for a few years, not because they actually like it, and I thought that this was reasonably well-understood?
At any rate, it's always amusing to me when someone says that only the elites appreciate abstract expressionism - I've never met an elite who did. Or anybody else for that matter.
8/10/16, 3:19 PM
Unknown said...
We here in Australia were treated to a full scale demonstration of the failure of "progress" on Tuesday evening.
It was Census night and our overpaid bureau of statistics had decided that they would do the census online. The system crashed, and the BOS was very quick to blame hackers for a Denial of Service attack. The tech world very kindly pointed out that it wasn't and provided the proof. The Minister, doubtless getting very annoyed, back the tech heads.
Because I live out in banjo country my internet speed is not the best and I was given a paper version to fill in, which I have done, and it is now in the post where it will take between two and ten days to get to where ever it goes.
The blame game continues, and I imagine the prime minister, a former owner of a start up internet company, will spend the next few weeks scrubbing furiously to remove the egg from his face, given his enthusiastic promotion of the "modern, efficient" way of doing the census.
On education, my observation is that the use of canons would be far more effective if the students were told explicitly what was going on. Yours is the first explanation of the method I have seen, ever, and I was raised by a teacher, as was my father. We had a great home library and my great aunt who lived with us ran the local library and both were full of canons and all the other stuff. Had I understood the process better I think I would have got more out of the reading of the cannons.
best regards
eagle eye
eagle eye
8/10/16, 3:29 PM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
Seems frankly Orwellian, that speaking an opinion can be construed as support of censorship, doesn't it? It's also a scarily common thing though....
8/10/16, 3:33 PM
Avery said...
For fun, here's what I would offer for the homework assignment in my home field of religious studies:
Lowbrow trash: The Da Vinci Code (2003); Zeitgeist Part I (2007) and its source material, Acharya S, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold (1999). Note that these products are far more interested in appealing to a desirable narrative than providing logical rigor. Their world-upending melodrama makes them more popular with the general public than the highbrow trash.
Highbrow trash: The works of Bart Ehrman, such as Misquoting Jesus (2005). These are more rigorous books, but consider how they are meant to affect your interpretation of Christianity and your beliefs about the Christians who live around you, and refer again to JMG's definition of "highbrow trash". Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens might be classified as either highbrow or lowbrow trash -- I would lean towards highbrow.
Classics: Zhuangzi; Plotinus; Nagarjuna; "On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers" by Friedrich Schleiermacher (1799); "The Bugbear of Literacy" by Ananda Coomaraswamy (1944); Alone with the Alone by Henry Corbin (1969). I'm choosing just a few ancient and modern examples, in order to appeal to what I think JMG means by a "classic" and to contribute to the discussion.
8/10/16, 3:33 PM
Dudley Dawson said...
I graduated from an MFA program a while back. Thinking back on it, I was naïve in a lot of ways. After writing on my own for several years, it seemed logical to get involved in a more intense program that would push me beyond my limits. Thing is, MFA programs don’t really push people that much. There were some exceptions, but it seemed like many of the students thought of the degree as a badge-holding position among the Art Police. This put me at odds with some of my schoolmates, many of whom seemed more interested in being told what was art rather than learning how to identify art. It’s an important distinction.
I’m a traditional storyteller. I value deep characters, humor, settings, things most book-nerds probably appreciate. That didn’t sit well with some of my colleagues. If I wasn’t at the edges of the notional space, I was relying too much on “the trappings of genre,” (their words, not mine). Storytelling didn’t appear to matter much; in fact, if a person accidentally had a moment of pleasure while reading one of my stories, people seemed to view it as a strike against me. It got a little disheartening after a while.
That’s saying something. I’ve always been my own harshest critic, yet I’ve managed to survive my own slings and arrows and keep at this for years and years, (happily, even! I come to the blank page with a smile on my face, every day!) yet these people were getting me down. Fortunately, toward the end of the program it started to sink in that I was witnessing exactly the phenomenon you describe in this article: a pack of self-proclaimed creative elites protecting the ring that they’d peed in the snow.
I’m graduated now, back on my own outside the pee circle. Life is good out here. I’m reading whatever I want again, still hacking away at the writing, and getting ever closer to having my first good novel (I think) after three prior attempts.
This is all not to say that the criticisms given to me weren’t correct or valid. Many were. Many were valuable and helpful, too. I’m not perfect. I may not even be good. But when the criticism is more about what you’re doing rather than how you’re doing it, some skepticism might be a good thing. Especially when it’s clear that the criticizer is framing the issue in terms of the art they approve of versus the art they don’t.
Thanks for writing this. A lot of us scribblers-in-obscurity read your blog and I hope we all take what you’ve said to heart. I know I did.
Great assignment, by the way!
8/10/16, 3:36 PM
dfr2010 said...
The live action Batman series was campy to the extreme, likely fits your definition of kitsch to the tee, and even included "POW!" and "BAM!" in between the punches during fit scenes. We kids loved it - and so did our fathers.
On another note, thank you! for the moratorium. I confess I've stopped reading comments on the Retrotopia posts whenever I hit the first one on the election here. That means I missed last week's histrionics, as the only one I read was congratulating you on the clever imagery you used.
Does H.P. Lovecraft count as a warhol? "Herbert West: Reanimator" struck me as parody, although "The Silver Key" seemed to be beautiful and oddly out of place in the short story anthology I first read. Or maybe Lovecraft copied his literary idol (Poe) and did both.
8/10/16, 3:40 PM
Esn said...
http://nonsite.org/article/formalism-fair-and-foul
The CIA, by the way, secretly funded highbrow formalism (modern art) in order to stick it to the Soviets. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html
"Lowbrow trash" (examples being Hollywood summer blockbuster movies, pulp fiction, modern pop music) mechanically and crudely uses lowest-common-denominator techniques that the public is known to like, and doesn't try to go any further. "Highbrow trash" (seen in avant-garde painting, music, sculpture, dance, performance art, the animated shorts in many modern animation festivals) focuses on new unusual techniques, and again doesn't care much about MEANING, being content to "experiment" without bothering to say anything.
In a "lowbrow" blockbuster movie the viewer is meant to be wowed by the special effects and explosions. In a "highbrow" avant-garde film the viewer is meant to be wowed by the unusual cinematic language. In both cases, form takes precedence over meaning.
Personally, I sometimes like watching both, and experience them in about the same way - is it really so different to be wowed by a good explosion and action sequence vs. unusual camera techniques and lighting? Sometimes it can be pretty hard to tell whether a "formalist" artwork is highbrow or lowbrow, anyway (example: Richard Williams' unfinished animated feature "The Thief and the Cobbler". A great example of both the appeal and the danger of formalism - he was so focused on making beautiful animation that he let story and characters fall to pieces).
I think that also explains why the Western "highbrow" art movement has been so interested in appropriating commercial "kitsch" into their art in the past century. Both are formalist. There's a natural affinity.
Non-formalist art, by contrast, COMMUNICATES MEANING (not necessarily in words, of course!). It can use either "lowbrow" or "highbrow" artistic language, but it uses them appropriately, to communicate something more than just the technique itself.
By the way, Andy Warhol's equivalent in music is John Cage (and my professors in the music department were equally gaga over him as I imagine art professors are over Andy Warhol). He was just as much of a practical joker, as one can clearly see watching his televised performance of "Water Walk": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSulycqZH-U
8/10/16, 3:45 PM
Leo Knight said...
I remember a visit with my aunt and uncle to an art museum next to the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles. The modern wing made quite an impression on me.
One display looked like large cardboard shipping cartons scattered on the floor. My uncle and I touched one, until warned by the guard. They were made of metal. Warhol?
Another consisted of urethane foam impaled on lengths of rebar, looking like day-glow bugs. I will call it "dog barf on sticks." The artist was there. A viewer asked, "What's it supposed to be?" He answered, "It's not supposed to be anything." Ah, clarity. Highbrow trash?
Two pieces I liked. One was a tall prism, about ten feet tall, situated in a semicircular bay window so sunlight made rainbows across the floor. Another was a small gable roofed shed, clad inside and out with mirrors. Viewers were invited to take off their shoes and walk inside along a short, s-shaped passage, and view the ever changing reflections inside. I would call them both playful, even though art critics have overused that word for years.
8/10/16, 3:47 PM
Daniel Najib said...
I missed out on the comments last week (so many to read, such little time) but this post reminds me of an art class I had to take a couple of years ago for undergrad. It was a mandatory art class, but we were lucky enough to have an instructor that liked and preferred abstract modern art, but also had an immense respect for more classical art styles as well. I never really did like art until I went to art museums and did research projects, and started to appreciate the history behind the pieces.
This will be a fun homework assignment! I have no idea yet what the highbrow and lowbrow trash pieces are going to be, but I do know what the classic will be: "Regulus", by Turner: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-regulus-n00519
The painting (and the amazing history behind it) are really something: "Regulus was a Roman general who was captured by the Carthaginians. They sent him back to Rome to negotiate the release of Carthaginian prisoners. When he returned to Carthage, having failed his mission, he was punished by having his eyelids removed. Turner’s blinding, light-filled canvas makes manifest Regulus’s plight."
8/10/16, 3:49 PM
G3 McK said...
Harold Bloom of Yale University is one of the keepers of the canon of English Literature. He gets to say what's great and what's not, and you don't. One of his pronouncements concerned Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It was published in the Wall Street Journal in 2000, and can be found at https://www.scribd.com/document/30840333/Bloom-on-Harry-Potter-2000 and probably elsewhere.
Personally, I don't believe in canons. My father was a Professor of The Humanities, and he and I had extended arguments about "what is art?", which we never resolved. I finally concluded that it cannot be resolved, but that there is a related response, namely that the Mission of the Artist is to produce work that causes his or her audience to say "this is great stuff, I want more", using any means possible. Beyond that, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and both the Emperor and the child are correct.
Also, if you don't think that abstract art can have a sense of humor, you need to look more closely at the work of Ellsworth Kelly.
8/10/16, 3:56 PM
Cassiodorus said...
For details and future meeting announcements, please see the forum posts at www.greenwizards.org.
8/10/16, 3:57 PM
Space Seeder said...
As to what point of view I think the author was writing from: I think both he and I had the same problem. We both wanted to believe in the whole caves-to-stars thing, but all we had as a way to convince ourselves that the dream was true was to repeat to ourselves insistently, "IT IS! IT IS! IT IS!" He tried to firm that up by writing and publishing his vaporware list. Probably everyone who picked it up was like me: falling back in the 'it is, it is, it is' method, but looking for a better one, and being disappointed by the book.
So, did I get the point of the assignment, or was that whistling sound I just heard the point going right by me?
"Donald Duck splutterfest": 'like!'
8/10/16, 4:09 PM
Eric Backos said...
We in Northeast Ohio are following Melbourne’s example by holding well-advertised monthly meetings.
The monthly joint meeting of the Green Wizards’ Benevolent and Protective Association, Tower Number 440, and Ruinmen’s Guild, Local 440 will be held at 11:30 AM on Saturday, September 24, 2016. Our location is Ruko’s Family Restaurant, 9385 Mentor Avenue, Mentor, Ohio 44060, (440) 974-1914. Shining the Green Light! Public Welcome! Tables for Failed Scholars. Look for the table topper with the Green Wizard Hat.
Many thanks to John for the posting space on his blog.
8/10/16, 4:19 PM
Jay Moses said...
one of the best ways to see this phenomenon in action is to see what english grad students are writing their dissertations about. you may or may not be surprised to find out that phd's are being awarded for studies of comic books, sit coms, pop music and soap operas. it's not terribly surprising really; the members of the canon, however defined, have been squeezed dry. there just are no dissertations left from the likes of shakespeare, milton, marlowe or donne; or from toni morrison, walter moseley, richard wright or sherman alexie for that matter. what's a phd candidate to do if not find a way to legitimize trash, high or low?
funny anecdote: when my grandparents died some years ago their estate included numerous paintings by a new york artist named iver rose. my grandparents, long time habitues of the new york art scene, were sure that rose paintings would gain in value over the years. at the same time they were buying iver rose paintings in new york galleries in the 1950's works by twombley, rauschenberg and kline were on offer for similar prices. rose's works today fetch a few hundred dollars while the works of twombly et al sell for bazillions. a triumph of artistic excellence or clever marketing? oh well, wealth continues to elude me.
8/10/16, 4:31 PM
James M. Jensen II said...
I mean, if you're going to revel in a blood and guts and sex and perversity, just revel in it. Try to have fun with it. Drive your enemies before you and enjoy hearing the lamentations of their women. Don't try to pretend you're "dealing with mature issues" in a way that happens to be indistinguishable from reveling in blood and guts and sex and perversity. Ugh. [OK, getting off my soapbox.]
Switching genres, I know you didn't call them out directly, but did you have the postmodernists in mind for "highbrow trash" and even "warhol" in the realm of science and philosophy? I'm especially thinking of Foucault for the ordinary kind of highbrow trash and Derrida and Boudrillard as some of the finer examples of warhol. Then there was Feyerabend, whose Against Method outright defies the classification scheme by arguably fitting all the possibilities (lowbrow trash, highbrow trash, kitsch, warhol, masterpiece) simultaneously.
I had a postmodernist phase a while back as a way of dealing with some personal issues, but now that I'm past it I can see just how silly it was. It does look quite appealing when your main alternatives are a strangling rationalism or strangling dogmatism, though.
8/10/16, 4:32 PM
Jo said...
Since I quit religion as a young adult, I have also fought to resist turning other aspects of life into a religion - and that is what any of the Arts can so easily turn into. And being a religion it requires an Elect, and also a whole host of Infidel Unbelievers upon which scorn can be heaped, and secret smugness, because they are destined for the fires of Hell anyway.. maybe my attitude to religion is a trifle cynical here, but bear with me, I am not talking about faith or belief, but religion as an institution. So, to extend the metaphor, the most important aspect of religion is that the Elect are right, otherwise the whole edifice crumbles. Even if the Elect begins to suspect they have been taken in, they cannot falter for a moment, because then they will turn out to have been wrong, and everything they have lived for becomes null and void. Once you have power and money and career invested in a certain trajectory, well, belief must be sustained, or a whole industry turns to dust. Thus we get giant yellow teddy bears being brained by desk lamps as public art.
Which is where I find the ending of your Emperor's New Art fable so perfect - of course nobody can possibly admit that they have been taken in. They have so much invested in being right.
8/10/16, 4:33 PM
Eric Backos said...
In a similar vein to this week’s ADR, some of the Wizardren are passing around a newspaper article complaining that the hipster look of vintage, formerly important shopfronts furnished with reprocessed wood and reconditioned industrial lighting are becoming banal worldwide. The article complains of the homogeneity of the look, not the coffee shops replacing important businesses like department stores and machine shops…
Being in Ohio, we have plenty of businesses that use reprocessed wood and reconditioned electrical lighting… BUT we have lots of empty buildings suited to that look. Prior to reading aforementioned article, I had no idea anyone was exporting post-industrial irony around the world and coddling it like a hothouse orchid. So – what looks entirely practical here is hipster kitsch elsewhere?
And then I went to an indoor shopping mall. The trendy clothing stores are offering a weird amalgam of work, industrial, and military surplus all in one “look.” Faux industrial spaces populated by patrons wearing faux work clothes (a situation used in a 1981 short story by William Gibson titled “Burning Chrome”… kitschy or classic?)
Hip kids are paying a premium to dress like me when I work in the yard while they stand in spaces that look like my shed to drink overpriced coffee. I had no idea one of the perks of being a poor Ruinman was being mistaken for a trendy urbanite.
8/10/16, 4:48 PM
Angus Wallace said...
I think you make some good points, but there's a couple of things missing (IMO)
The first is money and the bureaucratization of art funding which is a major contributor to what you've described.
The second is simply that modern art is contemporary and the personality effect of the artist remains very powerful. I'd wager that there is lots of "bad" art made in every age, but over time the "bad" stuff gets forgotten. This is yet to happen with modern art: give it a century or two ;-)
I love (some) modern art, but was rather bemused at the strident and shrill comments that appeared last week. As the saying goes: 99% of everything is crap ;-)
ps. if you don't know it, Kate Fox's wonderful book "Watching the English" talks a lot about people perceptions of low-brow and high-brow, and the status implications (with many other insights). I highly recommend it.
Cheers, Angus
8/10/16, 4:54 PM
James M. Jensen II said...
I didn't mean to imply that Tolkien was lowbrow trash! Conan, yes, but not Tolkien. Surely The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings deserve to be in the "masterpiece" categories. I had simply slightly changed lines of thought in my second sentence.
8/10/16, 5:01 PM
Talon Talonicus said...
For me this behavior by the art community gives a couple of "tells".
Firstly, this is another attempt by humans to form a pyramidal social hierarchy, in the same way that bees form hives. The further up the hierarchy you go, the more status and power and wealth. Much effort is expended by individuals to improve their place in the social hierarchy (a nil sum game), either by putting themselves up or others down, in the same way that horses will kick and bite each other for hours in preference to enjoying the lush grass all around them.
The same attempts to form and manipulate the pyramidal social hierarchy can be seen in consumerism, politics, religion (but I repeat myself), science, etc. I get some wry amusement to see the same political pyramidal social hierarchy called by different names - capitalism, communism, socialism, monarchy, etc - which are essentially the same human biological community wherein a pampered elite sits on top of a struggling proletariat, the distance between them growing until the hive ruptures.
Secondly, in the humanities including the arts, it's very much about vanity. The emphasis is always on doing something new and different - hopefully to much personal acclaim and the benefits that consequently flow from the social hierarchy - as distinct from doing something intrinsically worthwhile. We would generally scorn writing more baroque music, or more sonnets in the style of Shakespeare - to do so would not allow us to advertise our own genius. In this way, art has left beauty mostly behind.
In contrast, a baker bakes bread. He didn't discover bread, he's not trying to put a new "twist" on the bread - the bread is just intrinsically worthwhile. When you need to make a sandwich, you reach for this old kind of bread.
Seeing the art community behave as it does tells me a lot about where real value lies.
8/10/16, 5:05 PM
Ozymandius said...
8/10/16, 5:10 PM
Samwich said...
A friend of mine recently opined that modern art was clearly some sort of criminal racket, with art dealers selling what is obviously a few dollar's worth of paint sloshed on a canvas to wealthy dupes who don't realise that it's all garbage. I suggested to him that the artists must be in on the scam as well, since they surely cannot truly believe that a few strokes with a paintbrush make a piece of cloth worth $600,000.
In light of this week's parable, I can see that what we were expressing was your recognition of the falsity of it all- the circular logic that states "intelligent and sophisticated people enjoy modern art- why is it art? Because we are intelligent and sophisticated and we say it is art. Why are we intelligent and sophisticated? Because we like this art!
The racket is just another form of gatekeeping. Modern art is very expensive- only the affluent can purchase it and 'enjoy' it. It is bewildering and ugly and stupid because it completely lacks meaning- why else do artist have to have manifestos? If your painting comes with an interpretive manual, something has gone wrong. I am sure that many artists completely believe the complex philosophical circumlocutions that they spout about how the urinal they nailed to wall represents something, but surely this is a great market for a couple of barnums? A little basic aptitude with a brush and a gift for fabricating fancy-sounding malarkey could net someone a tidy profit. Clearly the art crowd is so sophisticated that they can hardly wait to throw their money away. I wish that they'd throw it at me.
8/10/16, 5:11 PM
Pinku-Sensei said...
As for highbrow trash, I reserve that for my interest in drum and bugle corps. Yes, even marching music has its own version of highbrow trash, which the older audience who prefers lowbrow trash and kitsch despises. Speaking of which, this week is the North American drum corps championship. There will be lots of performances of highbrow trash to impress the judges. With luck, the audience will find enough lowbrow trash to entertain them and the judges and other insiders will find something from the pretentious shows to elevate into the canon. I guess I know what art I'll be examining for my homework assignment!
On another note, you were mentioned at last weekend's Board of Directors retreat for the Coffee Party. Two of our members are ministers and one of them mentioned "Climate Change Activism: A Post-Mortem" as a cautionary tale. Another was looking for an example of the Dreaded Drama Triangle in politics, so I steered her toward "American Narratives: The Rescue Game." I hope she finds that instructive.
8/10/16, 5:12 PM
Dylan said...
And though the uncomfortable, mind-stretching views I don't agree with are definitely in there, I was pleasantly surprised to find that important parts of the book struck me as daringly truthful and insightful. I am certainly looking at the world differently thanks to Rand. I'm also having to articulate for myself where and why I disagree with her, rather than writing her off because my friends told me to, as I did before.
As for highbrow and lowbrow trash, I love Ursula K. Le Guin's summing up in her essay 'Dreams Must Explain Themselves': "Kids will devour vast amounts of garbage (and it is good for them) but they are not like adults: they have not yet learned to eat plastic."
8/10/16, 5:12 PM
patriciaormsby said...
One movie came out after its completion, in which one fellow lost in Tokyo's maze of streets called in to his destination from a booth and was told, "Can you see a huge golden turd from there? Yes? Okay, come towards that until you reach the gas station, then turn right..."
I suppose this might count as a highbrow atrocity, in which case I ought to look into other examples of architecture for the assignment, though it is really not my field of expertise.
I agree with your moratorium on discussing the election, and ought to extend that to the rest of my life as well. Moreover, after reading about election scandals or the other increasingly shocking events of the world's slide into collapse, I really ought to go over to my altar and recite the Ohharae no Kotoba (that is a real, true classic!) or other suitably vigorous, yet refreshing, reassuring prayer. I've asked our eldest priestess to provide me the Kannon Sutra (a good long Buddhist prayer of the Goddess of Mercy), that I intend to memorize next.
It is natural that people are going to want to talk about things like this that disturb them, and you have provided a sympathetic ear, but sometimes it just gets us nowhere.
8/10/16, 5:13 PM
Owen said...
https://youtu.be/hoxqtnI4I4c?t=8m55s
8/10/16, 5:14 PM
Dennis Mitchell said...
8/10/16, 5:16 PM
AA said...
8/10/16, 5:18 PM
NomadsSoul said...
8/10/16, 5:23 PM
Carl said...
8/10/16, 5:23 PM
William Church said...
I think Ronnie Van Zant's whiskey laced voice was incredible. I believe Gimme Shelter was the greatest rock song of all time. And I believe Dean Martin was the best singer my country has produced. I guess I am just a hillbilly.
One dabbling in the arts I feel comfortable with: literature. I feel like my readings of Aurelius and Plutarch, Teddy Roosevelt and Jefferson, even old school popular writers like Haggard and Doyle have made me a better man AND given me hours of enjoyment.
Maybe in another life I'll explore the arts more. Perhaps they could polish off a few of my more rough edges.
Will
8/10/16, 5:51 PM
David, by the lake said...
I don't believe that I was a part of the circular argument portion, but to the extent that my comments contributed to the hijacking, my apologies to all.
Re SF and high/low/canon...where would you place Dune (the original, not the remainder of the series)? I've always considered it something of THE sci-fi novel, thus canon in terms of this week's discussion, but I wonder of others might see it as highbrow trash?
Again apologizing for straying OT (not election related!), but I wanted to follow up on one of my comments from two (?) weeks ago, re transportation and the environmental movement, etc. As I mentioned in that comment, I had looked into using our smaller public transit system for commuting to work. This week, I commenced that experiment. Not being in a major metro area, the public buses are almost exclusively used by those who have no other means of transportation. Needless to say, I rather stand out in the sparsely populated buses with my business-casual attire. Aside from the discomforting awareness of my own class, and the obviousness of that class, it has been a pleasant experience, including a few interesting conversations with some of the other passengers. Not related to "trash" per se, but another high/low divide... Some intentional mingling would do everyone some good, even if it is uncomfortable to begin with.
8/10/16, 5:53 PM
Steven said...
As for the homework assignment-for the lowbrow trash, we'll got with "Dogs Playing Poker", which hung quite proudly in my family's living room for some years before moving to my father's office
http://www.dogsplayingpoker.org/gallery/coolidge/a_bold_bluff.html
To me, this painting (actually a series) will always occasion a smile and a good laugh. But technically, its a quite good painting-other than the subjects being humanized dogs, its surprisingly realistic, and you can tell the painter knew what he was doing.
As for the highbrow trash, I think this "abstract" painting of card players will do.
http://g01.a.alicdn.com/kf/HTB16WjXJVXXXXb1XpXXq6xXFXXXM/Abstract-handmade-painting-card-players-on-oil-painting-canvas-for-home-decor-and-font-b-school.jpg
The whole out-of-proportioness of it...what's this thing with trying to make your painting look like it was done by a three year old? The composition is somewhat good, and indeed I would say this artist had at least some idea of what he was doing-and puts up a rather impressive effort to convince the viewer otherwise. The sheer, intentional ugliness...if the essence of hipsterism could be distilled into one painting, I think this would be it.
And as for the classic, lets go with Cezanne's The Card Players.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Card_Players#/media/File:Paul_C%C3%A9zanne_222.jpg
I just love looking at this painting...I really enjoy the way it just draws the viewer in. I especally like how he did the facial expressions and used color to establish the atmosphere of a dim, smokey bar. I get the sense one could spend time staring at it and studying it, much more than one could with the other two. I could imagine hanging it in my living room, simply for its beauty. "Dogs Playing Poker" would be an unintentionally funny "conversation piece", and the abstract card players...gah, maybe if I needed to impress a professor or something. The Cezanne, on the other hand, I would simply enjoy seeing every day, which to my mind is the essence of good art.
8/10/16, 6:02 PM
Steve Morgan said...
Q. How many hipsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. (with a gleefully sarcastic tone) You mean you don't know?
--
Recently my wife and I had the opportunity to visit the Chicago Institute of Art during a train layover. We visited many areas in our three hour tour, finding crowds thick or thin depending on how many famous works were nearby. In most areas we'd see a few people with the pre-recorded tour gadgets listening to more detail than the paintings or plaques presented. The special exhibit - art from the US during the Depression years - was particularly packed with interested patrons of all sorts.
We visited the modern wing briefly, and there we saw something unique. Amid a very thin crowd of mostly teenage art-selfie browsers, there was a tight cluster of well-to-do people following around a very pretentious man in a tailored pinstripe suit that was made to look old-fashioned. They'd stop in front of some absurdly abstract or dog-vomit-like painting, and he would lecture the well-heeled gaggle about why this particular piece was worth a lot of money - I mean, why it was "artistic".
It reminded me of nothing so much as your description of phatic communication from years ago. The highbrow tribe in the modern wing follows the art hipster who tells them how to criticize people who look at dog vomit and call it dog vomit - after all, it's what separates "us" from "them." Meanwhile, the bourgeois mill around the rest of the museum looking at the art that's at least recognizable at a glance, satisfied to be seen in such a cultural setting. The poor, of course, are not in the museum at all.
8/10/16, 6:11 PM
JimK said...
A key experience for me was learning to hear the jazz of Miles Davis on albums like Bitches Brew and Big Fun. The first dozen or so listenings it sounded like noise to me! By now I hear those as pinnacle achievements. So I know that just because something doesn't make sense to me immediately, that doesn't mean there is no sense in it. These are delicate puzzles!
8/10/16, 6:14 PM
Chris Balow said...
Though I had several reasons for abandoning my childhood dream of being a novelist, you've highlighted one of them. The few people today who are still reading novels either prefer low brow trash (e.g. Twilight, 50 Shades of Gray) or high brow trash (e.g. Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo). Those who can make a living as a novelist must pander to one of those two crowds.
Oh well, there's no shortage of interesting and important roles to be played in the future that this failing empire has made for itself.
8/10/16, 6:14 PM
Posted before but not want Google+ said...
He also wrote 'Tricks of the Trade,' which had a couple of quick wisdoms. An excellent question: "are things better or worse now than they were" is open-ended and provokes detailed response. The Machine Trick, where you assume a situation is actually functioning perfectly, and then figure out what the machine is for. And "There's never nothing going on."
8/10/16, 6:31 PM
Mon Seul Desir said...
Here are my candidates:
In Philosophy-----
Low brow trash: Ayn Rand, Frantz Fanon
High brow trash: Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt
Classic: Plato, Aristotle
In energy production technology-----
Low brow trash: Rossi's E-Cat
High brow trash: ITER ( very expensive trash )
Classic: James Watt steam engine
Paintings-----
Low brow trash: Grant Wood's American Gothic [ but so well done that it quickly became a classic of kitsch ]
High brow trash: Mark Rothko's Voice of Fire [ the National Art Gallery of Canada paid $1.8 millions for... Three vertical strips of color... the museum curators were dumbfounded at the public uproar over this use of public money... ]
Classic: William Bouguereau's Nymphs and Satyrs [ I visited the Clark Institute because that painting was there. Standing close, there wasn't a single brush stoke visible on a 12 foot tall canvas! ]
8/10/16, 6:45 PM
Jeanne Labonte said...
8/10/16, 6:49 PM
Travis Marshall said...
8/10/16, 6:55 PM
Rita said...
By some round about thought process this leads me to the market in fake collectables--i.e. the limited edition plates, figurines, specially bound editions of classics, spoons for each state, medallions of each president (in a handsome cabinet), etc. which is the very exploitive process of marketing low brow art as though it were going to increase in value like high brow art does. Usually marketed in women's magazines--at least those are the ones I see, there may be some equivalent marketed in hunting magazines, sports magazines or other more typically male markets. My question for you international readers; is this an American phenomenon, or are there equivalents in Europe, Australia or Asia?
8/10/16, 7:02 PM
Tidlösa said...
http://www.modernamuseet.se/stockholm/en/2016/07/28/monogram-pa-turne/
I admit that I like Rauschenberg´s "Monogram", but perhaps for mostly Warholian reasons, ha ha. Besides, I call it The Goat With the Tire, which, of course, is exactly what it is...
8/10/16, 7:05 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
I'm quite familiar with dog vomit, although to be fair, the little rotters are usually vomiting up interesting specimens that they have found in their journeys and decided unwisely to ingest. Our canine friends experience the world through the medium of their guts (and all of the associated passages into that dark place).
We have a colloquial description of Warhol's hidden but deliberate humour: "Taking the piss". Oh how he must have laughed!
Architects pull the same trick too. In one of the oldest suburbs of Melbourne which has generally Victorian era (and some earlier Georgian) housing stock, an apartment block was built which was dubbed in the media as the: Cheese grater building. Apparently, according to a quote on the architects Wikipedia page the "project won (planning) approval at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT). This was largely as a result of Rijavec establishing the project’s contextual relevance in an unprecedented appraisal of Fitzroy’s urban character that reinterpreted it as Urban Jazz."
I must be a fool because I don't even understand what that last sentence means. ;-)!
Oh yeah, we've had our share of artists laughing at the public, usually at the public’s purse and expense. There was one memorable sculpture which used to be located in the middle of a round-about and honestly both my wife and I could not shake the feeling that the sculptor had fashioned two mirror imaged: oversized concrete foetuses with erections. I dare anyone to look at that art horror which was foisted onto the public at possibly great expense and not see that? I'm certainly open to other interpretations... The only thing I can think of saying when I saw that concrete thing was: WTF?
Then there was the public outrage over the hugely expensive: Yellow Peril.
Oh my, Mr John-Michael, you shall (as we all will) certainly be enjoying some fascinating comments this week! Well done you for receiving such vitriolic comments as supplied by “Repent” in the comment above. ;-)!
I'm still giggling and laughing about the dog barf story! That is hysterical. You have a definite flair for comedy.
Cheers
Chris
8/10/16, 7:07 PM
Lucretia Heart said...
My reaction to the character in the story declaring the modern art ugly was to give an enthusiastic nod of agreement. Though I've found a few fun "warholy" (heh! "war" "holy") modern art pieces enjoyable, by and large my personal reaction to most of it is mental nausea. By that, I mean that instead of being inspiring or interesting or thought-provoking or meaningfully symbolic of the human experience-- its just crass and ugly, and obviously so!
I have friends who are talented artists who can barely sell their amazing creations. I also know people who learned the jargon and modern philosophy of... well... the "scam" for lack of a better word, to part rich people (or taxpayers thru federal funding) from their money. The modern art world today is an industry that works through rules that are all about pretension to a finer ideal aesthetic.
But when something is an obvious turn off (as most of it is) no amount of superior posturing is going to convince me some ugly trash is treasure I'm just too limited to appreciate!
THANK YOU for this post. Despite the loud protestations by the art industry, most people by far and away agree that, yes-- its just ugly and ultimately worthless. I think future generations will be completely baffled by the chaotic "original" seemingly random things we've left all over in our parks and museums... If you need a special education to "get it"-- then you DON'T get it at all!
8/10/16, 7:07 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Generally speaking, folks, I end up having to delete up to half a dozen good comments each week because somebody can't stand not using the words George Carlin made famous. If your comment doesn't appear, check for that -- it may well be the reason...
'Nuf said. On to responses -- well, on to a couple of other things, and then on to responses.
8/10/16, 7:08 PM
Tidlösa said...
Reminds me of a modern anti-rococo parody painting (I forgot the name of the artist) who was much more beautiful than most modern art, since in order to parody the rococo it had to mimic the rococo! While the rococo isn´t my favorite, it´s a big step up compared to most modern trash...
OK, enough lowbrow art criticism for today! ;-)
8/10/16, 7:16 PM
Hawkcreek said...
To me this is the yardstick I have used for years. If the only emotion I feel is amazement at the price tag, I consider it only decoration. Decoration can be nice, but it doesn't pull any strings.
This seems to work no matter if I am enjoying music, paintings, architecture, or photography.
8/10/16, 7:21 PM
Anthony DuClare said...
Perhaps the merging of warhol and kitsch into one work is a reflection of our current obsession with putting on egalitarian airs.
8/10/16, 7:25 PM
Owen said...
8/10/16, 7:27 PM
pygmycory said...
I really didn't like the sneering attitude of the abstract-enthusiast teachers. I suspected they couldn't actually draw, since they never demonstrated the skill, and were sneering at me to hide the fact. Quite possibly I was totally wrong there, but even so. It sure didn't help me learn anything, other than to avoid abstractionists.
8/10/16, 7:28 PM
Repent said...
As an aside, the Chinese language link I sent you, if you run it through google translate was from the Chinese "Abnormal human research center" Which had reposted an article that you wrote about Druid culture and history, in the Chinese language.
8/10/16, 7:43 PM
Five8Charlie said...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus
Your comment about not using any of Carlin's seven word stops me from saying anything further about that high-brow dreck.
8/10/16, 7:43 PM
Jason Fligger said...
8/10/16, 7:51 PM
Bob Patterson said...
was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it art?”
(Barrack Room Ballads)
Also included by Orson Welles in the film "F for Fake"
8/10/16, 7:59 PM
Tom Schmidt said...
This is, in fact, the conflict at the heart of Die Meistersinger Von Nürnberg. If the people and the elite don't agree it's art, it isn't.
As to Abstract Expressionism, I always liked Pollock. It turns out that he WASN'T just dripping paint on the canvas. His work is highly self-similar and fractal, hard to duplicate, and in fact the easiest way to create a Pollock is to have paint dripped from the branches of a wind-blown tree. Pollock was capturing the hidden symmetry in nature that Mandelbrot would later explain mathematically, and ought to be the AE mascot of TAR.
8/10/16, 8:00 PM
Marie K said...
8/10/16, 8:02 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
I'm quite familiar with dog vomit, although to be fair, the little rotters are usually vomiting up interesting specimens that they have found in their journeys and decided unwisely to ingest. Our canine friends experience the world through the medium of their guts (and all of the associated passages into that dark place).
We have a colloquial description of Warhol's hidden but deliberate humour which is possibly not family friendly so I won’t repeat here. Oh how he must have laughed!
Architects pull the same trick too. In one of the oldest suburbs of Melbourne which has generally Victorian era (and some earlier Georgian) housing stock, an apartment block was built which was dubbed in the media as the: Cheese grater building. Apparently, according to a quote on the architects Wikipedia page the "project won (planning) approval at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT). This was largely as a result of Rijavec establishing the project’s contextual relevance in an unprecedented appraisal of Fitzroy’s urban character that reinterpreted it as Urban Jazz."
I must be a fool because I don't even understand what that last sentence means. ;-)!
Oh yeah, we've had our share of artists laughing at the public, usually at the public’s purse and expense. There was one memorable sculpture which used to be located in the middle of a round-about and honestly both my wife and I could not shake the feeling that the sculptor had fashioned two mirror imaged: oversized concrete foetuses. I dare anyone to look at that art horror which was foisted onto the public at possibly great expense and not see that? I'm certainly open to other interpretations... The only thing I can think of saying when I saw that concrete thing was probably not repeatable here!
Then there was the public outrage over the hugely expensive: Yellow Peril.
Oh my, Mr John-Michael, you shall (as we all will) certainly be enjoying some fascinating comments this week! Well done you for receiving such vitriolic comments as supplied by “Repent” in the comment above. ;-)!
I'm still giggling and laughing about the dog barf story! That is hysterical. You have a definite flair for comedy.
Cheers
Chris
8/10/16, 8:05 PM
Allan Stromfeldt Christensen said...
And there's no need for fairy tales or parables when you can just cite the real deal:
******
In February 1964, four paintings by a previously unknown avant-garde French artist named Pierre Brassau were exhibited at an art show in Göteborg, Sweden. Also at the show were works by artists from England, Denmark, Austria, Italy, and Sweden, but it was the works of the French artist that attracted all the attention.
Art critics, journalists, and students, glasses of wine in hand, silently contemplated Brassau's creations. Their praise was almost unanimous. Rolf Anderberg of the morning Posten later wrote that most of the works at the show were "ponderous," but not those of Brassau:
"Pierre Brassau paints with powerful strokes, but also with clear determination. His brush strokes twist with furious fastidiousness. Pierre is an artist who performs with the delicacy of a ballet dancer."
One lone critic panned Brassau's work, declaring, "Only an ape could have done this." As it turned out, this critic was correct. Pierre Brassau was, in fact, an ape. Specifically, he was a four-year-old West African chimpanzee named Peter from Sweden's Boras zoo.
******
The article (with pictures) continues here:
http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/pierre_brassau_monkey_artist
8/10/16, 8:08 PM
Matthew Smallwood said...
Low Brow : Karl Marx
High Brow: Zizek & Foucault (Michael)
Classic : Simone Weil
I know you've spoken your peace on Plato, and condemned him to the reification-fallacy hell, but isn't it possible that Plato experienced the Ideal Forms because humanity was spiritually less devolved and more concentrated during the time period he lived? (At least for that reason, perhaps others). I believe you mentioned this possibility on the Well of Galabes in relation to Greek art: that they actually experienced the world more flattened and with the strange bulges or curves. Jaynes gets into this with his analysis of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey & the "wine dark sea". We assume that human nature is static, and if we don't experience it, it just isn't (and wasn't) there?
8/10/16, 9:08 PM
Matthew Smallwood said...
8/10/16, 9:12 PM
LewisLucanBooks said...
Your commenter AA mentioned it, but Timberg also explores a maybe, no longer extant class that he calls "middlebrow." He states: "Much of what John Cage and Jean Luc Godard and Robert Venturi and Andy Warhol produced was powerful and thrilling. But the net effect of this revolution was to destroy the middlebrow consensus - the sense that there was a shared body of artistic and intellectual touchstones that educated middle-class people should no about, that "serious" fare was somehow good for you, and that these works were to be passed down through education, journalistic coverage, and family rituals. It was the spirit that put John Cheever or George Balanchine on the cover of Time magazine, that had Leonard Bernstein on television, that made Rachel Carson famous, that provoked Playboy to commission profiles of Duke Ellington or Lester Young. And, like the liberal consensus it largely overlapped with, the middlebrow consensus was attacked from both sides. It became collateral damage of the New Right's anger and the left's postmodern push, respectively."
There are just so many interesting and thoughtful ideas in this book. On the current state of teaching literature. "What happens when a significant proportion of those who guide students' relationship to books see them merely as "texts" to be interrogated, and tell you that anyone who loves, say, Rainer Maria Rilke or Virginia Woolf for their aesthetic qualities is a dinosaur? "If anything, literary enthusiasm can be a detriment if your job is to prosecute books for their ideological crimes," Laura Miller wrote of the shifting of critical priorities. "When even English professors won't stand up for literature, is it any wonder it's failing?" Lew
8/10/16, 9:17 PM
Ozark Chinquapin said...
Would you say that the main factor in what gets counted toward this canon in the skill needed to produce it? I remember an experience I had when I went to a modern art gallery when I was 18 or so. I thought some of the works were interesting, most of them just didn't do anything for me, but the whole thing seemed strange to me in a way that took me a while to realize. Later, I realized that it was because the majority of the works in the gallery were ones that I, someone of very modest artistic talent and experience, could reproduce pretty easily given the materials. It's juat strange to have a whole gallery full of mostly things that don't take much talent to make.
Another question, I'm interested in your thoughts on Kurt Vonnegut, where he falls on the spectrum you've laid out? There was a time in my life when I has a bunch of people recommending him to me, so Iread "Slaughterhouse Five" the book that I had heard the most. TO me it was practically unreadable, I forced myself to finish it thinking there must be something good in there that made it so popular, but to me the world and the characters he created were completely lacking in anything interesting. I told that to a couple of people who gave me just the attitude you describe with regard to modern art. A year or so later, I was convinced to read another Vonnegut book, this time "The Sirens of Titan", with a friend insisting that I'd like that one. Well, I didn't think it was quite as bad as "Slaughterhouse Five", at least this one had a real plot, but it still was pretty dull to me and to this day I don't understand what people see in his writing that got him so popular. By contrast, I have enjoyed a few Heinlein and Clarke novels even though I don't share their worldview. They make a story compelling enough that gives me some understanding of those who do think that way, but I can't say that at all about Vonnegut. I'm left wondering if there's a genius at work that I'm unable to comprehend or if it could be considered highbrow trash.
8/10/16, 9:26 PM
Karen said...
In your post last week, you stated how your preferred paintings were able to enthrall you for a good long time. I was curious, if you looked for or were aware of those artists using sacred geometry implicitly or explicitly. The use of sacred geometry to manipulate the viewer’s experience was commonly known and taught in earlier times. Now, not so much
Lastly, I encourage those interested to check out Art Prize, http://www.artprize.org/ which started in 2009 as a huge open art show in Grand Rapids, MI, whereby the public voted for their favorite piece of art and the winner received $250,000. The following year, the elites couldn’t handle it and had to set up their own parallel juror system. It is fun to compare the winners of the public vote to the winners selected by the elite jury. Interestingly, Ran Ortner, the first year’s winning artist is also now represented by a very “elite” New York contemporary art gallery.
8/10/16, 9:31 PM
LewisLucanBooks said...
Then there was the phenomenon of picking a collector niche, stock pilling loads of the stuff, publishing a book on the particular niche with an inflated price guide. Let the market simmer gently for a few months (and, maybe do an article or two in the collectible press) and then dump you stuff on the market, hopefully making a killing.
What has happened is that the internet has made a lot of the antiques and collectibles racket, more .... transparent. It turns out that things that were thought to be rare or scarce ... are not. A great example is the board game, Monopoly. The man who originally invented it was a Philadelphia Quaker. The first versions of the game were not actually "board", but a rollable canvas playing surface. When E-Bay was first getting off the ground, one of these early Monopoly games surfaced ... and, sold for an astronomical amount of money. There was media attention. Two more of the games surfaced. The price declined. More early copies of the game appeared and the price again fell. You're also dealing with a small market ... people who are interested in early board games.
Hope this partially answers your curiosity about collectibles. Lew
8/10/16, 9:32 PM
WwoofBum said...
8/10/16, 9:34 PM
Jo said...
This is the first mainstream novel by a well-regarded mainstream author that I have read which has as its subject a believable and imminent decline in the American way of life. And it is not pretty. If anyone has been wondering what life is like back in the Atlantic Republic, this might be your window in. By 2029 the US is already experiencing some climate and resource-overuse difficulties. New York is perpetually chilly due to the collapse of the Gulfstream, and suffers frequent 'dry-outs' when the taps stop running, as the aquifers deplete. The gulf between the haves and have nots has widened. This story follows the family fortunes of several branches of the Mandible clan. Some are just getting by, others are very well-off – one sibling has left to live a prepper lifestyle on an up-state farm.
Then, the US government makes some very stupid political decisions which leaves it stranded outside the world trade economy. Overnight the banking system collapses, as does the stock exchange. The vast majority of the wealthy US elite lose all their assets which aren't actually nailed down. The US treasury then confiscates all the gold in the country, which strips the wealthy even further. The whole fabric of society begins to fray until the US begins to resemble a third-world country. As we follow the fortunes of the Mandible clan it becomes clear that there are winners and losers in a collapsing economy, and that 'economist in academia' is not a bullet-proof choice of profession.
About halfway through this book I sank into a profound depression. I think I am fairly clear-eyed about the future, thanks to years of reading ADR, but to see a middleclass family falling apart like this really hits home. Because hey, that could be my family.. mind you, there are some moments where I just want to smack some of these characters up the side of the head for the stupid choices they have made, but then that's the point of the novel. Most of us are just not prepared to live any life outside our middle-class cocoon. To be honest, the life lived by the Mandibles is being lived in many countries and by many families right now. But again, not my family. That is what makes this novel so eerie.
(cont..)
8/10/16, 10:02 PM
Jo said...
Now, to avoid spoilers, I won't discuss the ending. But to readers of Retrotopia, the novel goes in a very interesting direction... actually, it goes in a very disturbing direction first. But hang in there..
I won't say that there aren't things that grate a little in the novel – Shriver said in an author interview that she had studied up on economics before writing the novel – it shows. Characters are endlessly discussing economic theory, which gets a bit old. And somehow, throughout the entire span of the novel, the internet continues to be available even to quite cash-strapped characters. The novel ends in a way I don't find entirely satisfying.. but overall, I found it a fascinating read, mostly because it explores such a taboo topic. The failure of the Great American Dream. Or, for the rest of us, the failure of the Great Privileged Middle-Class Project (fellow Australians, don't think we are let off the hook. In 2047 we are invaded by Indonesia. To see how that pans out, read the excellent young-adult series Tomorrow When the War Began by John Marsden).
However, for anyone I know who is interested in where I think the future could be heading, I could do worse than hand them a copy of The Mandibles, then just as they start to slide into deep depression, slip them a copy of Retrotopia:)
One of the big takeaways though, is the idea which JMG continually hammers away at: collapse now. Anyone who had done that in the future discussed in The Mandibles would have had much better outcomes. Not necessarily in the sense that less bad things would happen to them, but in the sense that anyone who can cook with lentils and beans and grow a potato and knows the trick to living a dignified life with very little water, power or stuff is going to get on so much better no matter what situation they find themselves in.
8/10/16, 10:09 PM
Max Osman said...
Have you read Voltaire's bastards by John Ralston Saul yet or read any of Randall Collins new sociological theories yet?
8/10/16, 10:14 PM
jbucks said...
I compose music in my free time, and I've been studying the canon of the classical music to find a way to make music that is artistically sound (which doesn't fall into either the high brow trash or low brow trash categories) and which communicates to people regardless of whether they have an education in the arts or not. As in politics, in the arts there is a sharp divide between the elites and the rest of the population, and I think it's a pretty urgent task for artists to try to bridge that gap and find a middle way. That's why I've been studying the canon.
By the way, I went to art school, and a lot of what you wrote and what your readers have commented rings very true to me based on personal experience. I'm following along with great interest!
@Esn: that definition from Taruskin for formalism seems bang on to me! That's very useful, thank you.
8/10/16, 10:17 PM
Sheila Grace said...
sheila
8/10/16, 10:29 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Whomever, on the few occasions I feel a pull to listen to Philip Glass, I listen to PDQ Bach's "Einstein on the Fritz" instead and get the same experience, plus giggles. The whole notion that art has to be ugly and unpleasant in order to be serious is blasphemy against the Muses, who respond by condemning the blasphemer to listen to the same piece of Schoenberg's "music" for all eternity.
Patricia, I think that overstates it a bit. Opera was the Hollywood of its day, and like Hollywood, it produced some genuine art, some lowbrow trash, and some glorious kitsch in its time. It's a pity nobody performs Meyerbeer operas any more -- they're practically on the poker playing dogs level of kitsch, and hilarious.
Zerowastemillennial, of course it's challenging to put blobs of paint in a harmonious pattern. It's even more challenging to put representational images in one, but representational painters who are any good do it all the time; it's called "composition." I sometimes think the point of modern art is to cut back sharply on the number of difficulties artists have to contend with. As for the urinal, all I know is that when I was in college, taking art history classes, it was presented as a very serious work of art.
Unknown Eagle, remember my comments last week about how every upgrade is worse than what it replaces? I rest my case. ;-)
WB, I've had people accuse me of supporting censorship because I didn't agree that everybody with an MFA ought to be publicly supported, so they can create whatever art they happen to want to create!
Avery, I don't consider Ehrman highbrow trash, because his books attempt to communicate -- they're polemic, and rather trashy polemic in places, but they don't have the defining feature of highbrow trash, which is that if you aren't an insider you have no idea what they're talking about. I don't follow theology closely enough to be able to suggest some highbrow trash for your consideration; maybe some of my Christian readers can help here.
Dudley, the best advice I ever got concerning learning to write came from science fiction editor George Scithers, who warned a room full of would-be SF authors that going to a university writing program was the last thing they should do. I've seen way too many people come out of such programs literally incapable of crafting a story that anybody would voluntarily read; I'm glad to hear that you escaped with your talent intact. Keep on writing, and I look forward to seeing your name on the back spine of a lot of good books.
Dfr2010, Lovecraft loathed the Herbert West stories; he considered them his one dip into lowbrow trash. Some of his other pieces (I'm thinking here of "The Hound" especially) stray very close to warhol territory, but he was genuinely interested in communicating with his readers; uneven as his work is, I see him as a genuine literary artist.
Esn, formalism is one part of it; of course Soviet socialist-realism artists went to the opposite extreme and made propaganda posters under the delusion that the meaning was all that mattered.
Leo, the two pieces you liked strike me as the kind of thing you'd want to have in a children's playspace; fun, but art? The rest, of course, was typical dog barf.
Daniel, Turner's certainly a good choice as a classic. Now you get the fun of finding a pair of trash pieces to pair it with.
8/10/16, 10:35 PM
Meg Tapley said...
It's interesting to study how socioeconomic status can affect people's artistic tastes - but Sturgeon's Law applies across the board. As noted by other commenters, even kitsch has its classics, and plenty of people do enjoy the music of Miles Davis and Phillip Glass.
I admit that I've never heard of anyone listening to Schoenberg for fun. Maybe someone does, but his work is mostly remembered for being a failed experiment - an innovative approach to composition that generally doesn't produce results anyone wants to listen to. Other fields surely have parallels.
8/10/16, 10:35 PM
Ynnothir Coll said...
"What defines lowbrow trash is that it rehashes the overfamiliar. It deploys stereotyped effects in stereotyped ways to evoke stereotyped sentiment."
I follow the curriculum of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, which you and the other Archdruids decided to provide free of charge on the AODA website. (Thank you.) Part of that curriculum calls for reading nine books on my local ecology. I made it through seven, at which point I found it necessary to find other ways to fulfill the spirit of the edict.
I could have stopped at two, really. My thought at the time was that every single book on the subject, in every local library, read like it was written for the approval of a single college professor. Your definition above cuts to the heart of it very succinctly.
Yes, the forests and wetlands of northern Indiana were destroyed long ago. Every book goes on and on about that, rehashing the overfamiliar, deploying a stereotyped effect in stereotyped ways to evoke stereotyped sentiment. Little mention is made of the fact that extensive swamps and marshes, and vast tracts of extremely mature hardwood forests, are unfit for human habitation.
By all means, let's make an effort to coexist wisely with our ecosystems, but these authors are all calling for a restoration of Indiana's original state, either explicitly or implicitly. Do they not understand what "restoration" means?
I'm happy that Indiana's conservation movement has, like me, survived this long from its birth in the '60s. In practice, good things are being done; former trash dumps are now wildlife sanctuaries (give 'em time), a lot of municipalities have composting programs, and many plots of private land are exempt from taxes provided they're left alone.
But, man, we could use some new books.
8/10/16, 10:39 PM
Karen said...
Also, keep in mind that you likely see only one or a few pieces of artwork from an artist or period. As someone who pretty much detests all sports, I don’t follow them if I can avoid it. Therefore I believe my commenting on a video of the merit of an athlete’s world breaking performance is a decent analogy. By your standards, I should be able to make really uninformed comments about how I don’t understand what the big deal is with winning 20+ Olympic medals or whatever and expect perfect equanimity from whoever hears me say that. Yet, if I walked into any sports bar in town right now, I would be told to keep my mouth shut because I didn’t know what I was talking about, or worse. How is that example different than people who spend very little time, making, looking at, thinking about or studying art feeling like they have equal insight to those of us who have literally spent our entire remembering lives being artists? Art is a very, very, old human endeavor. It has a context and a continuum, and it is not being elitist or Orwellian to point out that if you are going to criticize something of which you have little or no interest, then once in a while you will run across someone who is interested and they are going to ask you to explain yourself further. If you are thoughtful and not just reflexive in your answer, it likely will be appreciated and better yet, helpful.
8/10/16, 10:43 PM
John D. Wheeler said...
8/10/16, 10:46 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Cassiodorus, congrats!
Space Seeder, if you paid attention to the sources of your own dislike of the book, and learned something about the strategy the author was using, you got one of the many possible points of the exercise.
Jay, good -- you've touched on another crucial issue, which is the self-defeating cult of originality in scholarship. I'll be talking about that down the road in a future post.
James, Tolkien isn't lowbrow trash, but one of the reasons he's so popular is that his tastes are relatively low of brow. Conan -- I don't think of Robert E. Howard as trash, either, though again, very low of brow. (If authors were whiskeys, Robert E Howard would be one of those old-fashioned bourbons that kicks your teeth out on the way down your throat.) Both authors were very good at what they did. There are many, many, many other fantasy authors who are much trashier. (Have you read the Brak the Barbarian stories of John Jakes? Oog.) As for "grimdark," that just means that modern fantasy has finally gotten around to wallowing in cheap sensationalism, the way literary fiction did in the 1960s. Yawn.
With regard to the postmodernists, yep. I've seen the tools of postmodernism used constructively a few times, but most of it's highbrow trash on the grand scale, and quite a bit of it is warhol.
Jo, exactly. Exactly.
Eric, funny. If you see any of the hipsters who are trying to dress like you, look down your nose at them and say, "You paid way too much for those clothes, and it shows. Tacky, really tacky." Then walk away. The results will be entertaining.
Angus, of course there are things missing -- this is a blog post, not a book. I'm going to challenge your first point, though. Bureaucratization is only an issue because bureaucrats pay big money for dog barf. Why? I covered that.
James, I used to think of Tolkien's books as masterpieces. At this point I'd put The Lord of the Rings in the same category as Gone With The Wind, a work that got its reputation because it expresses certain very popular sentiments in a way that harmonizes with certain very popular prejudices. I could be wrong, but it'll probably be for the future to decide on the status of both works.
Talon, excellent! Exactly; because the bread is good, the baker doesn't need to get a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to pay for it -- he simply sells it to people who like it.
Ozymandius, only because one of my other readers posted a comment on it. It does sound like a world-class flustered cluck.
8/10/16, 10:59 PM
Mike said...
The parable of abstract expressionists as con artists: There's a great tradition of cartoonists poking fun at modern art with this basic idea. Traditionally – up until the mid-20th century anyway – cartoonists largely spoke from and to the working class. So, to many of them, it was natural to see “modern art” as a con, and to portray modern artists as pulling wool over the eyes of upper-class rubes. Is it thus in real life? Sure seems like it sometimes! On the other hand, none of the abstract artists I’ve known personally thought of themselves as con artists.
Sometimes to appreciate art, it helps to know the historical, social, cultural (and sometimes, biographical) context. Even if it seems empty to you, then you can understand why it moved other people.
In experiencing art, the viewer/reader brings a lot. Whatever forms and ideas are present in the art interact with ideas, feelings, experiences in the viewer's mind. The experience is different for each person; the viewer adds meaning. As a writer, I'm sure you know this: the reader adds background details, scenes that happen off-stage between the written scenes, backstory, etc. So, when you say there's no "there" there in abstract expressionist painting, that's true for you, but someone else may still get a lot out of it. What you get out of art depends partly on what you bring to it. When your readers urge you to stand in front of a Rothko painting and listen for your deep feelings, they're saying that because they did it and it worked for them – they felt something profound. You didn't – but that only means you didn't get anything from the painting; it doesn't mean that it's not possible to get something from it. Humans have an amazing capacity to find patterns, and meaning, where they aren't obvious.
8/10/16, 11:04 PM
Mike said...
What gets included in canons is partly random and arbitrary – a matter of what happens to catch on early with a group. There was an experiment where several separate groups of young people were exposed to the same set of songs and rated them , then re-rated them after seeing how each song was assessed by their peers in the group (each group unaware of the other groups). Different songs became highly-rated in each group, depending on how they happened to do early on in that group. So much of this kind of thing is contingent.
Not all alleged trash, low or high, is really trash. If it has meaning to you, it’s not trash to you. Don’t be reluctant to value it (and not just as a silly diversion) just because someone else considers it trash; if it's meaningful and rewarding for you, provokes real feelings or interesting thoughts in your mind, has depths you see that others don't, then it's real art for you. Have that opinion, and express it freely! Don't be afraid or ashamed to appreciate and value art just because someone insists it's trash (lowbrow or highbrow). There may be meaning there that others are missing (some, you’re bringing to the table yourself). And conversely, if something looks like silly "emperor's clothes" to you, say so! Even if it's something the high-status opinion-leaders love.
8/10/16, 11:05 PM
Robert Honeybourne said...
I have been to modern art galleries where the (modern) building has been more beautiful than the art...
If you take the view that a work of art is a thing that reflects the culture back to society so that it can be seen, I think you have to take a rather different view of abstract and modern art - especially the animals in tanks or piles of bricks. I think they truly do reflect back to us where we are!
Myself, I like French impressionists, and Renoir in particular - it's being 'drawn in' as though the space between you and the scene disappears that I like. It doesn't happen often, but it is lovely to be captivated or entranced
8/10/16, 11:27 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Pinku-Sensei, how fascinating. I know precisely nothing about drum and bugle corps (corpses? How do you pluralize that?) as an art form, and it's intriguing to learn that the same patterns play out there, too.
Dylan, good. One of the important steps in developing a personal sense of taste is realizing that there can be good points in very bad works, and bad points in very good ones. Another is realizing that you do need to find your own reasons for what you like and dislike, rather than just nodding and agreeing with your friends!
Patricia, funny! I have a copy (and translation) of the Oharae no Kotoba in a book of Shinto prayers and devotions; I'll reread it.
Owen, why not study them and make your own decisions?
Dennis, no, there aren't many comfortable log chairs in the world, and if you've built one, you've accomplished something.
AA, hmm! That's an interesting point, and I think a case can be made for middlebrow trash. I'll consider adding it to the analysis.
NomadsSoul, that's certainly a workable analysis, for that matter.
Carl, oh, I do love art. That's one of the reasons I detest framed dog barf.
Will, keep your rough edges. They're worth having!
David, Dune's a classic. It pushed the boundaries of the genre in a highbrow direction, but the genre responded by moving with it, to the extent that the sort of intellectual content you find in Dune was all over SF in the 1970s. That's one of the hallmarks of a classic -- it's one of the books that defines or redefines its genre, the way that Jane Eyre redefined the romance or Dracula completely transformed the Gothic-horror genre into modern supernatural horror.
As for being willing to get on a bus with -- gasp! -- poor people, excellent! That in some ways is the most important thing an aspiring politician can do right now, because those people on the bus are the silenced ones in American public life today, the people who have been excluded from our collective dialogue and whose interests no one speaks up for. Listen to them, learn from them, figure out how to appeal to them, and I'll look forward to attending your gubernatorial inauguration not too many years down the road!
8/10/16, 11:31 PM
Candace said...
A painting or decoration is something you can choose to do with out, but clothing is't optional. Even trying to make your own clothes can be a challenge be cause the fabrics n fashion can be so ugly too.
Used clothes can be a challenge because people only give stuff they like away when it's worn out. Otherwise you can tell why someone gave away particular items of clothing. I exaggerate occasionally I'm the beneficiary of someone actually losing weight I a diet and they decided to give away their fat wardrobe. :-)
8/10/16, 11:35 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Steve, both of the times I've visited the Chicago Art Institute were also during train layovers -- I make a beeline there when I have the chance -- and that's one of the places where I simply avoid the whole modern art wing. What a splendid collection of non-dog barf pieces they have!
JimK, of course. The challenge is in learning to appreciate the new without being decoyed by dog barf. That's one of the virtues of a canon, as it gives you a basis for making such judgments. As far as I can tell, btw, Derrida is pure warhol.
Chris, no, there I have to say you're quite wrong. Highbrow trash gets the literary awards and lowbrow trash makes the most money, but there are a lot of people who read neither one. I'm watching the new deindustrial-SF magazine Into the Ruins, which is mildly highbrow and not trash at all, attract an enthusiastic and steadily growing audience, for example. The trick is to realize that there are entire publishing worlds out there that don't get into the New York Review of Books or the supermarket book stands, that there are a lot of people who already inhabit those worlds -- and that they're eager for new writers willing to give them good interesting books. I encourage you to reconsider, and give it a try!
Posted, hmm! I'll put Becker on the get-to list.
Mon Seul Desir, we'll have to disagree about Bouguereau. I admit his technical proficiency, which was stunning, and his portraits are extraordinarily good -- have you seen any of those? Worth a trip. Let him loose on a mythological theme, though, and to my eye he looks kitschy. Still, it may just be a matter of personal taste.
Jeanne, exactly.
Rita, Nazi art was the apotheosis of lowbrow trash. In Weimar Germany, the same sort of schism we've got in American culture was all over the place, with the soi-disant sophisticates looking down their noses in absolute contempt at ordinary Germans and ordinary Germans returning the favor with gusto. The Nazi Party was the political equivalent of a velvet Elvis painting, for that matter, and once it took power lowbrow trash was the order of the day. It's precisely when the middle ground is abandoned and everything is either highbrow or lowbrow trash that the sort of catastrophe that happened in Germany after 1933 is most likely to happen.
Tidlösa, I think a dog threw up on that poor goat!
Cherokee, thank you. That sentence is a keeper; I may use it in a future post when I talk about the importance of clear writing as a way to clear thinking.
Lucretia, your friends who are talented artists are in a real bind, due in large part to the maldistribution of income in the US. All the people who have money are into dog barf, and the people who don't like dog barf don't have money for art. That's one of the many reasons why a large, thriving middle class is good for a society -- it provides a large market for unpretentious art.
Hawkcreek, good. That will certainly do for a first approximation.
8/11/16, 12:02 AM
Esn said...
""Art," of whatever stripe, has only ever existed through the support of capitalists, be they Kings, who get their money by screwing the pesantry, or the 1%, who get their money by screwing the other 99%."
You're wrong about this. Folk art, in whatever culture, has tended to be supported by the commoners, not the elites. Around the White Sea, Pomor fishermen used to take along someone who could sing/tell the old historical bylinas (ballads) out on their boats, and he'd get a share of the catch despite doing no other work. The klezmerim made a living by playing at weddings and other public gatherings. Many other examples. All that has historically been required is a society with surplus food to give. In many other cases, people have made art for their own benefit: for example, barge-haulers and sailors singing to keep a steady rhythm going, and make the journeys less tedious. Another example: in many parts of Russia, shepherds who knew how to play a shepherd's horn (which they used to communicate with the cows) were paid more than those who didn't. Besides the work-specific horn calls, they would also learn to play melodies for their own delight. When groups of them gathered together, they would form ensembles, and eventually a steady tradition of ensemble playing was created. It sounds like this, if anyone is curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kspI58CUpU
8/11/16, 12:07 AM
Alexandra said...
If I may offer my unsolicited literary review, regardless of one's own artistic preferences--which are irrelevant to Retrotopia anyway (!)--I thought the scene was well-crafted to convey a lot of mood and information in a brief passage. I could perfectly envision that office, with its tacky, banal art and all the beauty and feeling of an iProduct (which is to say, none), and how our hero's view of it had transformed.
For this month's homework, I am revisiting (in memory and internet) one of my favorite places to go as a child, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA. It was the site of my first experiences of highbrow trash, and where I realized that most contemporary art is a con job. Anyway my first highbrow trash encounter was a piece titled "Carolyn's Bag" in the contemporary art wing. It was just a small leather handbag with some books in it. My mom, whose name happened to be Carolyn, happened to have an identical bag at home, very possibly with a similar stack of books in it. I think we made some joke about how our money worries were over, now that we knew we had fine art at home. (Sadly I could not find a picture of the piece and I don't know the artist's name.)
The lowbrow trash: Any of Mel Ramos' really dated nudes lounging on junk food, let's say "Five Flavor Frieda" (http://www.sactownmag.com/June-July-2012/The-Naked-Eye/). I have some doubts here, I admit; Ramos' paintings seem to be masquerading as highbrow--I mean, they're in museums...but then again some were also in Playboy. I could always go for Thomas Kinkade here or Amy Brown, but those are so easy. I'm trying to make this a little more challenging by sticking to one venue. Still I realize that a museum is likely to be a bit light on the lowbrow examples, but lowbrow can get elevated to highbrow and passed off as "irony". Well, if nothing else there are some Norman Rockwells at the Crocker I believe.
Finally for the classic, I'm going to go out on a limb a bit and rather than suggesting a time-tested artwork from days of yore, I propose the works of David Ligare, e.g., "Penelope" (http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/arts-culture/article22925640.html). They are recognizably modern, but employ classic Impressionist themes and techniques and would make fine company for works by Cezanne or Caillebotte, for example. Yet there's a hint of the Symbolist and even the Expressionist there too. Will we be studying Ligare's paintings 500 years from now as we study Da Vincis today? Probably not. Yet I think "Penelope" can still sit comfortably within the extended family of canonical Western art.
Now I'm going to be attempting this exercise with other forms of art. It was fun, and trying to reason out why I put a piece in one category or the other is enlightening.
8/11/16, 12:09 AM
nuku said...
Re JMG’s post: Seems to me you are so much into riding your rocking horse named “objective value“ that you persist, against all textual evidence, in reading into/cherry picking anything however slight that might keep up the illusion that you are actually going anywhere with this tedious argument.
8/11/16, 12:13 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Owen, see my comment to your earlier bit.
Pygmycory, it's been my experience that a lot of people who gravitate to the really avant-garde stuff can't draw, or render a human figure in better than a five-year-old style, or do any of the other things that a competent artist used to be able to do as a matter of course. I respect Picasso because he learned the classical techniques and then chose, for his own reasons, to ignore them -- but there are too many well-paid artists these days who make ugly art because they can't do anything else.
Repent, you know the rules.
Five8Charlie, I won't argue, but my favorite example of sheer philosophical dog barf remains Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Schopenhauer insisted that it was deliberate fraud, a vast string of meaningless sentences marshalled to try to make Hegel look smarter than anyone else because nobody could understand it and everyone assumed he did, and I'm far from sure the old grouch of Frankfurt was wrong.
Jason, I'm not interested in a definition of art. I'm interested in encouraging individuals to develop a clear personal sense of aesthetic and intellectual taste.
Bob, good. Count on Kipling to have something relevant to say!
Tom, I'll take your word for it. I'm far from sure that in a double-blind test, anybody could actually tell the difference between a Jackson Pollock painting and a well-used studio dropcloth.
Marie, it's a marvelous definition, not least because it shows that Warhol was fully aware of the game he was playing!
Allan, and the thing is, the chimp paintings really were better than the others: less hackneyed, more original, more energetic and spirited. What that says about the quality of the other art on display -- well, I'll leave that to you to guess.
Matthew, that's the way the Neoplatonists interpreted him. Given his actual writings, though, I find that a stretch. I think he'd made the understandable but fatal mistake of confusing mental concepts with eternal realities -- a mistake that has been made enthusiastically many times since then.
Lew, interesting. I may need to read that.
Ozark, no, mere skill isn't enough to create a classic. There's a lot of technically accomplished kitsch out there. I'd say, though, that technical skill is the unavoidable foundation on which anything worthwhile has to be built. As for Vonnegut, I don't enjoy him at all, thus don't read him, and am therefore not the person to ask.
Karen, thank you for a thoughtful response. Yes, I'm quite familiar with the use of sacred geometry as a basic compositional principle in medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art and architecture. A facility with geometry, and a good solid grasp of its philosophical and mystical implications, was an essential part of an artist's training in those days. Are you familiar with Richard Padovan's book Proportion? Though I don't agree with some of his conclusions, it's a very good survey.
8/11/16, 12:28 AM
ed boyle said...
funtime
lowbrow trash- 'Like a Virgin'-Madonna
masterpiece-'dark side of the moon'
Highbrow trash(purposeful parody)white album-beatles
books-children's adventures
masterpiece-treasure island, peter pan
cooper-last of the mohicans-lowbrow trash
Alice in wonderland-highbrow/parody
scifi
Masterpiece-stranger in a strange land, heinlein, dune-herbert, solaris-lem
Religious lit.
masterpiece-job,mark, gita
High brow parody-revelations, gospel of john
low brow-fox's book of martyrs
plays
Hamlet, oedipus rex-masterpiece
Low brow trash-rocky horror picture show
High brow trash-waiting for godot,no exit
philosophy, self help
high brow trash-being and nothingness
low brow-making friends and influencing people
Masterpiece-schopenhauer, kant, spinoza
Novels
High brow-ulysses(joyce), metamorphosis, the castle(kafka)
Low brow-moll flanders, great gatsby
Materpiece-vanity fair
Paintings
Masterpiece-la gioconda
High brow-guernica(picasso),marilyn(warhol)
low brow-the scream- munch
8/11/16, 12:45 AM
Esn said...
"Soviet socialist-realism artists went to the opposite extreme and made propaganda posters under the delusion that the meaning was all that mattered"
The thing is, from what I gather, the anti-formalist sentiment and the emphasis on meaning (or at least, that good technique should always be put in the service of good meaning) was very much a popular view among the Soviet public, not simply a decree from on-high for propaganda purposes. Art that was both honest (realistic) and appealed to humanity's better nature - that was supposed to be the goal of socialist realism. Those ideals (not their faulty execution in Stalin's time, but the ideals themselves) seem to have been very broadly popular, and were embraced with renewed enthusiasm by the Soviet public after Stalin's death (and actually, even before, with the end of WW2). For example, here are a few quotes (translated from Russian by myself, for my thesis) from "Sredi nehozhennykh dorog, odna-moya", a collection of post-WW2 Soviet amateur "guitar poetry" songs (a roughly analogous phenomenon to Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, etc.):
"The aspiration to honesty, truthfulness, attention to the spiritual world of a person, which dominate [Soviet] amateur song, was formed precisely at that stage in the life of our society when the negative consequences of the cult of personality were revealed and started to be overcome - when a period of renewal came about, of quests and hopes, when the whole country became enveloped by an artistic uplift."
"But what makes a song live, why does it attract or not attract people? Must the music be good? Yes. The text? Yes. The performance? Yes. But then why is it not uncommon for songs that are seemingly straightforward in text and in melody to last for decades and centuries? The answer is that song represents the human soul laid bare (I am talking about real song), and it is with this quality that it attracts people. A person may show himself in a song to be manly, gentle, thoughtful, merry, sad, wrathful and so on, but must never show himself to be fake. Soulful insincerity and psychological falsehood kill a song. And neither an original melody, nor a refined text, nor a developed singing voice can then save it. How irritating are those other songs which are performed on the stage, on radio and television; those, which have not the smallest hint of true soulfulness!
During the evening meetings of the abovementioned club "Vostok," [a popular amateur song club] sociological surveys get carried out. For example: "what do you value in a song, what is it that you like in it?" It is characteristic that in the responses (and in the over two and a half decades of the club's existence several thousand of them have been collected) there is not one in which the song was loved "for the music" or "for the text". Those to whom the song is addressed tend to judge it as a synthetic work, primarily on the basis of what it carries, not how. This "how" is merely a means for carrying out the primary task."
As the author makes clear, more "officially-sanctioned" works could be seen by the public as being too "formalist"; masking their irrelevancy and dishonesty with good technique ("How irritating are those other songs which are performed on the stage, on radio and television"). Those surveys seem to indicate that antipathy to formalism was widespread among the public. So perhaps... it wasn't that Soviet socialist-realism artists went to any "extreme" under any "delusion" as you put it, but that the government adopted some genuinely publicly-popular ideas about art and used them as justification for their own goals whenever possible.
An analogous phenomenon existed in painting, too - I heartily recommend the book "Soviet Impressionist Painting" by Vern Swanson, which has plenty of examples.
8/11/16, 12:57 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Jo, I've heard interesting reviews of The Mandibles. Thank you for the comments on collapsing ahead of the rush -- that really does make a lot of difference!
Max, I mostly read books by dead people, so no, I haven't gotten to those yet.
Jbucks, of course! These days, artists in training get taught from day one that dog barf is good art, so it's by no means surprising that a lot of them do their best to come up with innovative, interesting dog barf. The point of the parable is the way that people suppress their own taste and common sense, and go along with the bullying and corrupt taste that dominates so much of the art world.
Sheila, I've long wondered what the people who provide goods and services to the absurdly rich think of the surroundings they work in. Thanks for confirming a guess.
Ynnothir Coll, interesting. That may be specific to your region; when I was doing the curriculum, in western Washington state, I had no problem finding a diversity of viewpoints. You might consider writing the book you want to read...
Karen, you're slipping into one of the bad habits that prevent artists from communicating with anyone outside the narrow confines of the art world: assuming that those who aren't full time artists are as uninterested and ignorant of art as you are of sports. That simply isn't the case, as a closer reading of the comments that irritated you will show. A large number of people in today's industrial nations care a great deal about art; they visit museums regularly, buy art books, and have original works and reproductions on their walls. (As you'll recall from our earlier exchange, my wife and I are two of these people, and we know quite a few others.) Such people resent the bullying they get from the art world when they express an opinion that doesn't involve the blind uncritical acceptance of whatever dog barf happens to be fashionable this week. If you and your fellow artists really do want to communicate with such people -- and in a healthy culture, they make up a significant fraction of the market for art, especially art produced by those who aren't superstars -- you need to remember that communication involves listening as well as talking, and be open to the possibility that what all these aesthetically and culturally literate people are saying might just be something that artists today need to hear.
John, good. Lowbrow trash instrumental music? My first suggestion would be to check out the more uninspired examples of TV show theme music, but that's just a guess.
Mike, if defamiliarization is art, then why do we need artists? We can just hire a seven-year-old to hang odd objects on walls, and get the same experience. In the same way, insisting that it's up to the individual viewer to bring to the work of art something that will make it meaningful is a copout. It used to be the job of the artist to evoke meaning, and a vast number of artists did that very, very well. Again, if it's all up to the viewer, we don't need artists; we can hire a chimp to splash paint across canvases, frame it, hang it on the wall, and project our own ideas of meaning onto it.
Robert, I don't agree that it's the mission of art to reflect our society back at us -- I think we all already know that the modern world is shoddy, overhyped, overpriced, and stunningly ugly. As for the canon, one basic rule is that if the artist is still alive, it's not canon. At least one generation needs to pass, and the immediate pressures of the moment give way to something else, before it becomes possible to judge whether a work of art is enduring or merely temporarily popular.
Candace, agreed! I have no idea why women put up with fashion.
8/11/16, 1:03 AM
jbucks said...
Do you know of other similar books that discuss proportion in terms of music? Thanks in advance!
8/11/16, 1:07 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Ed, okay, now go back, choose one set, and really explore the three works. Lists are easy; study is hard.
Esn, fascinating. I wonder if that's partly an echo of the importance of the ikon in Orthodox Christianity.
8/11/16, 1:10 AM
patriciaormsby said...
8/11/16, 1:26 AM
Esn said...
The thing that impressed me when browsing Vern Swanson's book was that many of the Soviet paintings in it, though somewhat boring in style, felt relatable, unpretentious and relevant (much like the "guitar poetry" also popular in those decades). Also, many of them were things that would not have been painted in the West at that time, particularly scenes of contemporary working lives. The artists tried to go out on in the field (sometimes on long expeditions) and paint the country around them, rather than sit in their studios working on their unique visions and styles, as was the tendency in the Western art departments at the time. They seemed to genuinely like doing it, too. It really was two very separate artistic worlds - and I'm not sure at all that the West picked the better side to support in that particular battle.
8/11/16, 1:29 AM
Ivan Lukic said...
8/11/16, 2:31 AM
nuku said...
Fake collectables are alive, and presumably doing their job of parting fools from their money, here in New Zealand. Since I don’t as a rule read women’s mags, I only know that the ads populate magazines aimed at “seniors“.
In the world of furniture, fake rustic and fake Scandinavian are also alive and well patronised on the low-brow trash side.
8/11/16, 2:32 AM
Bruno B. L. said...
8/11/16, 2:54 AM
Esn said...
I found this whole post of yours quite interesting, and it seems to me a good way of looking at things. Do you have a link to those studies you mentioned, though?
The idea of some group picking a deliberately ugly art to gather around so as to scare away outsiders - that seems to make a lot of sense, too.
Also, since a number of commenters here seem to have difficulty coming up with examples of lowbrow trash in music, might I recommend House? UNCE-UNCE-UNCE-UNCE-UNCE-UNCE-UNCE-UNCE-UNCE-UNCE-UNCE-UNCE... :)
http://explosm.net/comics/987/
8/11/16, 3:03 AM
Sébastien Louchart said...
You have a knack to express things and summarize them with colorful words!
I think I'll come with my own translations of lowbrow trash and highbrow trash when I talk with my friends :D
I also wanted to participate to the site's homework. I don't have any meaningful examples for all of you because, well, I'm not that of a reader or an art enthousiast. However, some examples come to my mind and are from my trade.
In the field of software engineering, when it comes to choose whatever programming language that does the trick, there is a lot of fashion and irrational thinking. What would be considered canon are languages like Java or Python or even PHP/Javascript, everybody agrees they are general-purpose, pratical, have relatively sound foundations, are well-spread and, basically, do the job. For the lowbrow thrash end of spectrum, we have Rapid Application Development environments such as Delphi, Windev or Powerbuilder, used by "poor" IT services companies to do routine and menial jobs of implementing cheap basic business software. We can add Excel and its macro-language to the list. Those tools are frown upon many professionals precisely for being used by second grade small companies. On the other end of the spectrum, we have all the "hipster" languages whose practioners consider as "art" like Haskell, Eml and a full load of the same batch. There are mostly functional languages that popped out theoritical computer science labs and made their way to hipster programmers thanks to a few practionners who promote them the worst way possible (think of your climate change scientist from that post of yours).
Now for a precise focus on three works, let's take Python (canon but used to be HiBT), Excel/VBA (LoBT) and Haskell (the equivalent of abstract expressionism in programming languages, really dog's barf in the form of lines of computer code)
Creating a business application with Excel and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is cheap, easy (don't need 5 years of training and a master in comp sci) and, most of time, does the job. It's kind of eternal. Well, after a career of 20 years in the trade, I still encounter such pieces of software and some new ones are still being written. It's considered a hell to maintain and is thought to increase technical debt which to my own experience may be true because such solutions cannot scale company-wise. What make them real lowbrow trash is that small business owners and IT guy (who should know better anyway) often want and claim them to be kept as tools and methods for new developments.
The Python language is a multi-purpose language with a clear syntax, a sound mathematical foundation, a long history and a good track record at being an excellent tool for both education in software programming and design of software applications. For all of these reasons, it's considered what you labelled as canon by the community. It has drawbacks and other canon languages may be used instead but still.
The Haskell language is a functional language you can't fully understand without specific notion of functional programming that are high-end theoretical computer science. Don't get me wrong here, it's not a bad language, as any functional language it can prove very useful in some situations like any better well-spread Lisp dialect (Lisp is considered canon by the way). However, some aspects of the language are really difficult and its proponents (whom I suspect don't often understand all of it) have a great deal of overcomplexifying things just for the sake of it.
By the way, the Retrotopia story has been a thrill to me for months and it get better and better with each episode. I feel like a reader of a XIXth century newspaper waiting for his weekly dose of Alexandre Dumas (which is btw considered lowbrow trash in classical french literature in France). Would you ever consider expanding the story and publishing a novel as you did with Twilight's Last Gleaming?
Cheers from the other side.
8/11/16, 3:58 AM
Eric Backos said...
@ JMG – In practice, a slightly embarrassed eyebrow raise is enough to communicate the tacky-tacky-tacky thought. I wonder about the iconography of workwear – fetish, kitsch, classic? Wishing for an economy that works is understandable, even if the manifestation is kitschy. The poem “To Be Of Use” by Marge Piercy might have been hippie kitsch in 1973, but seems relevant now. Conveniently, it is on poemhunter.com.
8/11/16, 4:41 AM
trippticket said...
https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2010/12/27/sir-ken-robinson-changes-the-paradigm/
Cheers, my friends.
Tripp out.
8/11/16, 5:13 AM
Shane W said...
8/11/16, 5:16 AM
DaShui said...
8/11/16, 5:32 AM
RCW - said...
It seems to me that anytime a judgment is made about any art form or anything else for that matter, that the mirror principle takes its place front and center. Simply put, this principle postulates that when we view an object and deem it to be good or bad, it is merely reflecting back what is deep inside us because the object itself just is.
For example, when we see "purple mountains majesty", they are reflecting our own inner majesty, beauty, tranquility, etc. Speaking only for myself (and what frightens me) is the other side of this double-edged sword rears its ugly head when I must see/hear Harridan MacBeth, the current red team nominee, and find despicable her avarice, mendacity, malevolence, etc, meaning her faults are reflecting my own deeply buried & sublimated ID the Beast.
8/11/16, 5:36 AM
WwoofBum said...
There was a time (long ago) when art was produced by individuals who felt a compulsion to spend their leisure time (time not required for the exercise of labor needed to extract the resources necessary to meet their needs) decorating their cave walls or carving their mastodon tusks with something that felt significant to them.
Then the "system" came along (call it "excessism" if you don't like "capitalism"). People, not surprisingly, felt they would feel more secure if they could have a bit of excess hidden away to carry them through the hard times. Then, they needed someone to guard their excesses from others who would take them by force instead of producing their own excess. Then the guards started to feel they "deserved" their positions, and insisted that they should not have to labor, along with their fellows, in order to produce the excess.
Then the guards looked at the pretty things produced by those who had the compulsion to do so, and decided that the pretty things were simply another resource to which they deserved access without putting in any of their own labor. So they started giving some of the excess resources they were guarding to the people who produced the pretty things so that they would use their labor to produce pretty things instead of producing excess resources to meet needs of the hard times.
And they have been doing it ever since. And the artists (for the most part) have collaborated with them (since it means they can spend their time producing pretty things instead of shovelling...). And the artists, over time, have responded to the "art market" by ever more esoteric definitions of art, in order that their own pretty things would have more "value," and therefore be more deserving of the excess resources produced by the shovellers that were being held by the guards.
At least, that is the way I see it.
8/11/16, 5:40 AM
RCW - said...
8/11/16, 5:54 AM
Owen said...
You could even film the cat barfing and call that art.
Or why subject the parts of the animal kingdom that seem to like us humans to our perverted pleasures? Why not just eat the coloring yourself and then put your own fingers down your own throat?
Or, if you're a crazy feminist woman - no need to do anything but go on your period and then stand over the canvas. Unfortunately, this has been done quite a few times already and is quickly on its way to becoming trite.
8/11/16, 6:05 AM
David, by the lake said...
Re your response to WB, folks accusing you of supporting censorship b/c you don't agree with the notion that all MFA graduates should be supported at public expense is akin to the assertions that you are a climate change denialist b/c you claim that the green technotopia isn't going to happen. Where do people even get this stuff?
Re your reply concerning politics and bus-riding. Yes, that thought had occurred to me. I've had a number of good conversations over these last few days, most recently regarding news that a major employer is shipping jobs over to PA. The slow grind of descent is getting evident here, if you know where to look and how to interpret what you see.
I will be making another run for city council in the spring, but I don't know about ever going above the county board level. I don't think that the state legislature would know what to do with me, even if I could get elected. And as for an executive office...well, I ain't no Fred Halliot ;)
8/11/16, 6:28 AM
Peter said...
To Avery, I would recommend John D Caputo for your highbrow trash, as he follows quite firmly in the postmodern footsteps of Derrida and seems unaware that he speaks only to a small circle of pseudo-religious academics. His smallest and most accessible work is a little book called "On Religion" in which he redefines religion into irrelevancy. One of his students, Peter Rollins, has some similar works, but they tend more to the middlebrow trash as they speak to aspiring-academics (and, IMHO, have more theological merit).
8/11/16, 6:41 AM
Caryn said...
I don't recall anyone last week saying you didn't have a right to your opinions or that you were afraid or intimidated by modern art, modern materials, etc. I must have read those differently. I'm just really surprised at your reaction, JMG!
Of course there is an "Academy", (as Karen says, there always has been in one form or another since the dawn of complicated societies) telling the population what is good, what is trash, what THEY like is what everyone should like. Almost every piece or movement of visual art that we now canonize were in their own times breaking away from the chains of those Doyens of taste. Modern art, however one defines it, is no different.
As to Abstract Expressionism - I guess it's worth restating that IMHO, It is a car close to the end of the train, filling up the last of the notional space in visual artists' exploration of the absolute mania over Sigmund Freud's ideas on the human Psyche and subconscious. The whole of the 20th Century was really changed and shaped by these ideas, the Art world no less. It's actually ironic, funny and infuriating that the whole point of Abstract Expressionism is to break away from any proscribed Academy and connect with a viewer in the most basic way. So that ANY human can connect with it without being told how to react. (whether or not it is successful is another story, I personally still think it was a worthwhile endeavor to have tried.) Their is no right or wrong answer - If you like it you like it, if you don't, you don't. So the irony is that like kudzu, the arbiters of taste have grown over and taken over this form as well, and used it's very openness as the velvet rope barring entry to anyone who "doesn't get it".
Using the barest, simplest tools in the artists box, (just color, shape, texture, line…) blobs of color together - WITHOUT a definite subject. The point of forgoing a subject, (It's not a picture of a house, a sea, a horse…) is that we all have preconceived prejudices over those things and well, pretty much everything else we know. We either like or dislike horses already - so we will 'react' with that prior knowledge and feeling. Again: the experiment of engaging in a reaction without those things, to see if you can connect on some more visceral, primal level - like my little students watching in rapture the colors swirling down the drain as they wash out their paint pallets and buckets.
As for the challenge: Yes, I find it much more challenging to do than representational art, (and frankly less gratifying) because there is no anchor. Representational art is dead-easy to work with in terms of balance, proportion, etc. because the subjects are like anchors - they tell you what and where things must go in relation to each other on a canvas. The blobs of color - if you try to make the red or blue blob the anchor - the painting looks stiff, forced and contrived. It doesn't have that free floating 'swirling' down the drain' fun feeling. If you just try to rely on a happy accident - it's very unlikely the proportion and balance will end up in a pleasing composition. In class, I would tend to have the kids do an abstract expressionist painting as a background, then the next week they would study and work on architectural draftings of a temple, boat or something very tight and orderly - then the 3rd week - collage them together. The older kids always found, (as did I) the abstract bit the hardest by far. I ended up using those Hubbel telescope photos of star nurseries to help us.
8/11/16, 6:47 AM
Donald Hargraves said...
• Lowbrow: Anything Early Kiss.
• Highbrow: Yes, Tales From Topographic Oceans
• Classic: ChangesBowieOne (Yes it's a "Greatest Hits" album, but it's the one Greatest Hits album that makes it onto lists and it's the one greatest hits album that sticks with me when all the others get/got sold back or consigned to recorded cassette status).
• Kitsch/Warhol: Anything from "Weird Al" Yankovich
8/11/16, 6:49 AM
Caryn said...
Please be clear: In this I am simply trying to explain the intent. If you or any reader still disregards the whole thing outright. That's perfectly fine.
Incidentally: I am a bit surprised you didn't use Conceptual Art or even graffiti, (Abstract Expressionism is really old hat, even today!) that fills galleries these days. Conceptual art IMHO really is the caboose of this train. The concept, the meaning ascribed to the piece by Art Theorists is the main point - not the artwork itself. So the Gatekeepers have pretty much discarded the need for the artists altogether. That's where you get the urinal on the wall (and not the Duchamp humorous trolling one), or a sloppy string of shabby Christmas lights drooping in a white room = ART!!
As for the homework: Yippy!
But Hey People! Why the hate for Norman Rockwell? I personally love him. He captures the humanity, the internal emotion of every character/figure he paints with gentle understanding. (So if he is low-brow, he is my choice.)
For the same reason, Leonardo Da Vinci's "Madonna Of The Rocks" is my Classical choice. That painting makes me weep with the soulfulness captured in the figures. Just sublime.
High-brow trash that I like. Wow. Too many to choose from, so maybe I'll go with the most Warholian - old Andy himself. The Brillo Pad boxes and Campbell soup cans, Marilyn, Liz and Elvis times-6. He was definitely trolling the high brows of the art world, but also the overbearingly ubiquitous commercialism that (again like kudzu) had grown over the art world and the whole society at the time. * A commercialism incidentally that was begat also with the advent of Sigmund Freud's ideas - brought to the world by his nephew, Edward Bernaise. I find these connections really interesting.
Cheers,
8/11/16, 6:56 AM
Avery said...
There are quite a few good books written on how technology has totally transformed our concepts of art and literature. On the invention of highbrow trash, there's Tom Wolfe's book The Printed Word. On the idea of what is lost through mass reproduction (in defense of the highbrow in general), there's Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. On what is gained through mass reproduction, there's Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy, which is notable for predicting the Internet in 1962. And of course, on the question of who makes art now that everything is available to everyone, there's José Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses. I recommend any of these books to anyone who is feeling less confident about their own artistic tastes as a result of this discussion :)
8/11/16, 6:56 AM
aaa said...
Start by accepting the classification into lowbrow trash, classics, and highbrow trash. Now consider that it is the ambition of artists to make progress in the world of art. Some may wish to do this through classics, but some may wish to invent new directions. Whether a genuinely new direction will be fruitful -- will develop over time into an "classic" aesthetic -- is not going to be known when it is first invented. This will come out to you as highbrow trash (and some of it really is).
Or I can make it even shorter, since some of JMG's characters seem to like jazz. There are people to whom *that* is highbrow trash, and others for whom it is lowbrow trash. (respectively, a lot of "ordinary people", and not a few classical musicians).
8/11/16, 7:01 AM
Farka said...
For linguistics, three examples that strike me as unproblematic are:
Lowbrow trash: Merritt Ruhlen
Highbrow trash: Jerry Fodor
Canon: Saussure
But a lot of the big names of the field (Chomsky, for one, along with his most vocal opponents) seem to be engaged in a double game - genuinely trying to advance understanding, but at the same time status-signalling to an extent that leads them to grossly overhype fairly flimsy hypotheses. Borderline cases like that seem more typical than full-fledged highbrow trash.
8/11/16, 7:01 AM
william fairchild said...
Well, I reckon you irritated most everyone, on both sides of the divide, with this essay. Good job!
My Dad, who raised 4 kids, two of whom turned out to be musicians, used to mutter to himself, "Musicians, damned musicians. Always walking around with their heads on cloud nine.", when he was particularly annoyed with my brothers. The same can be said for visual artists, I've raised three. From crayons, to pastels, to colored pencils, to graphite, to digital art tablets, the girls are always doodling something.
One of them is going through an anime phase, God help me.
I don't pretend to "know anything" about art. I just like what I like. I don't care for abstracts. The only one I did like was "Tear Out You Heart and Howl At The Moon" which my mother in law painted 20 plus years ago when she was going through a divorce. I still have that painting. In fact, both her, her sister, and my wife's cousin are all artists, as are my daughters. I think there is a bad gene on her side of the family. Probably Norweigian. I can say that confidently, since I have Swedish heritage. ;)
Again, I don't get too wound up about what is acceptable. I just like what I like, and to hell with the critics.
As to the homework, in dystopian fiction, one might check out either Hunger Games or Divergent as lowbrow, A Clockwork Orange as highbrow (I find it a totally unreadable mess) and Earth Abides as a classic. But that's just my two cents, I could be wrong.
Anthony Burgess fans, fling those arrows of outrage...
8/11/16, 7:04 AM
Patricia Mathews said...
(1) Science fiction high-brow trash is of two sorts. That written by sf writers trying to be highbrow, as in the New Wave stiff mentioned previously; and that written by lit-critters reinventing the wheel. For s/f fans, I suggest (re)reading Heinlein's REVOLT IN 2100 and following it with Margaret Atwood's THE HANDMAID'S TALE. If Atwood's novel were a bit less pretentiously written, it would be the perfect prequel to the Heinlein tale, written 40 years later. More amusing in a bitter sort of way was Atwood's earlier reactions to those who wanted to put her up for a Hugo. "It is NOT science fiction! There are no spaceships or robots in it!"
(2) There is a difference between low-brow trash, and fluff. Georgette Heyer's Regency comedies of manners are fluff. Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher mysteries, set in 1920s Australia, are fluff. You can tell the difference by watching the first two seasons of Miss Fisher's Mysteries on DVD - Phryne Fisher's world made acceptable to the Australian viewing audience. i.e. the overfamiliar, comfortable cliches of lowbrow trash. Hey, it's TV! Later, the writers realized who their following actually was, and went back to her thread of social criticism. But still kitsched up her love life!
(3) The "girl cooties" factor. Romance novels, especially. Lois Bujold has pointed out at length that the basic romance theme is actually quite important - that of getting the next generation born and raised - but the treatment of that theme has lent itself to a lot of lowbrow trash being written. But it's all lumped together because the theme is "trivial, fluffy grrrl stuff about loooove." Likewise the pejorative "chick lit," into which you can actually toss Jane Austen if you so desire. (Kipling knew better.)
(4) I never understood the appeal of poetry until I heard some of it set to music. Then it clicked. For Kipling fans, I recommend 2 CDs by Leslie Fish, which turned me onto poetry. Likewise, Shakespeare is marvelous when well staged or filmed, when on the printed page I'd have to dig for the gems.
Speaking of highbrow trash that isn't - the New York Times (a freebie at my local coffee shop) had a review of a "Troilus and Cressida" staged as a modern "quagmire" war - which the Siege of Troy was! - and Cressida, not as faithless and fickle, but in survival mode behind enemy lines. To me, that makes perfect sense: many of his plots are timeless. If the NYT likes is and it makes sense to the likes of me, is it highbrow trash? Or a really good interpretation?
8/11/16, 7:14 AM
Martin B said...
High brow: A pile of bricks on the floor of the Tate Gallery, hailed by the art critics; most other stuff in the Tate (this was in the 1970s)
Classic: I was in an art museum in Amsterdam admiring the Van Goghs and Rembrandts when I wandered into the modern section. One room had bare white walls with nothing on them. In the middle of the room was a low platform covered with a metal plate. At one end of the metal plate stood a mystery machine that looked like a pile of junk welded together, with cog wheels, cranks, chains, motors, and one big red button.
I looked around. No one about. I pushed the big red button.
The machine groaned into life and with much squeaking and grinding hauled its way painfully across the metal plate, thrashing the chains down loudly on the plate as it moved.
I of course was panic-stricken at making so much noise in an art museum. I pushed the red button repeatedly to make it stop. I looked for an off switch or a plug to pull out. No dice. The machine moved on, inexorable, only stopping when it reached the other side of the platform.
It was only half way when I ran out of the room so I wouldn't get apprehended for causing a commotion.
Then I stopped and realized that was the whole point. It was saying something about the museum experience. I snuck back and watched from a doorway as an American backpacker came in, looked around, and pushed the big red button. I'm pleased to say he ran away even quicker than I did.
8/11/16, 7:22 AM
PRiZM said...
Delta Airlines Outage
Southwest Airlines Outage
8/11/16, 7:25 AM
PRiZM said...
8/11/16, 7:30 AM
Johnny said...
I find some “dog barf “ painting interesting because it actually sometimes is like dog barf and I’ll connect to it as a process of nature. More typically I’ll get this feeling from nature itself in puddles and debris, but sometimes I find that sort of expression of simple forces beautiful. I don’t think it exists (or it’s creators) on some higher plane than other art though, I’m ok to place it on a very low spot but still find enjoyment in it some times.
I should say I am an artist of sorts, I taught myself to draw and went to an art college, but it was much more trade oriented (why I chose there over university – a decision I am still thankful for decades later) and so my teachers would actively discourage you from being impressionistic and I always focused on representation and improving that skill set. I have a lot of respect for proper painting and like you find myself captivated for long periods of time at some of the unbelievable works people painted and valued in the past.
I also agree with you about Warhol, I remember laughing out loud once watching an interview with him where they asked him why he had moved from painting to film, he said, “because it’s easier,” he liked how you just had to push one button. That feeling became sort of the kernel for a band I formed a few years ago as a joke that is similarly lazy and comedic. People really respond to us, which is strange, but there’s this funny interaction when I try to explain what we are doing (being intentionally awful) compared to what they think we are doing which is usually push music forward in some way. We don’t play often, maybe a couple times a year, but I keep it up because it doesn’t take any work, and performing it puts me in a really strange state that I enjoy, somewhere between being incredibly embarrassed and self aware, and an almost childish giddiness that I don’t really experience at any other time. It’s so overwhelming for me that I find it pushes all other thoughts out of my head and that alone is worth wasting an evening on for me. People keep wanting us to record the music, but we’ve always declined because it doesn’t make any sense to us.
I really enjoyed this post anyway!
8/11/16, 7:42 AM
Johnny said...
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/feb/18/ai-weiwei-han-urn-smash-miami-art
8/11/16, 7:43 AM
Karen said...
I do think that those who practice a discipline such as art, science, sports, whatever, have a much different relationship and understanding of that endeavor than those who don’t regardless of how interested the non-participants are. I can read every book on magic in the world but if I don’t do the “practice” I will not become a mage.
8/11/16, 8:01 AM
Dug said...
Sometimes (maybe always) avant garde experiments, warhols included, influence the creation of new masterpieces later on, if only by clearing space to allow a suspension of disbelief that was unthinkable before. You alluded to this in the scene at the opera and Carr's musings on notional space. He mentions as an example late-1950s jazz of Monk and Brubeck forming a moment beyond which jazz descended into pretentious doodling. But you see it is not so. Among their other contributions to the music, Monk opened space for small shaggy dissonances that to mainstream listeners of the time sounded like sloppiness but were eventually recognized as a virtuosic kind of playfulness, Brubeck opened space for hearing coherent lyrical almost danceable grooves in devilish odd time signatures. These features, along with further adventures of characters such as Ornette Coleman (whose Harmelodic approach to composition might be compared to Schoenberg's 12 tones in orchestral art music and to most ears is equally unintelligible) straight through to modern extremes such as John Zorn, are now part of the canon. As a result, I saw suburban blue-hairs sit rapt and smiling through performances of frenetic free-form chaos and on more than one occasion saw most of a hundred-seat room reduced to tears by a piano trio way out on the edge of space. Thus the canon moves.
As for coffee, it's a bean from a mountain bush that becomes an elixir when roasted with care and served with a human touch. We prided ourselves on serving world-class espresso drinks without the icy barista attitude and delighted in coaxing soccer moms away from all the sweet flavorings to get them excited about an honest cup of black coffee. Hipsters may be the poster children for both art forms but delivered in an inclusive open-hearted way the appeal can actually be universal.
Dug in KC
8/11/16, 8:04 AM
Dammerung said...
My girlfriend still likes it though - go figure. I'll admit there are a couple Jackson Pollocks that don't irritate me by sight alone. As for me, I'm a pragmatist. I know what I like and I like looking at naked ladies, so give me Renaissance era any day.
8/11/16, 8:13 AM
RPC said...
Lowbrow trash: La Gioconda. It's actually quite good, but it's loaded with just about every operatic stereotype you can imagine (except horned helmets).
Highbrow trash: Pendercki's Paradise Lost. I saw the world premiere decades ago, after which it deservedly sank without a trace.
Masterpieces: I choose La Boheme and Prodana Nevesta (The Bartered Bride). Both are notable in their lack of Heroes and Evil Opponents - I especially count the latter as opening my eyes to the idea that cleverness, not just out-and-out strength, can enable one to reach one's goals.
BTW, you may know this, but in musical circles the 12-tone school are frequently referred to as the "serial killers."
8/11/16, 8:21 AM
John Beasley said...
Fascinating article, as usual. I would like to add that as an artist (though a mediocre one), this has been a constant struggle for me, especially through college. The ability to praise a Jackson Pollock even though I honestly can't distinguish between his paintings and a well-used apron (or Anselm Keefer, whom I like, although his landscapes seem the equivalent of atmospheric background music, lacking a melody) was trained in me through repeated art-historical essay drills. I now often tell people that a picture is only worth a thousand words because art historians are verbose blatherers, while the artist can get at most a single sentence actually into his work.
Your mention of Duchamp's toilet reminds me of a few years ago when I emphatically argued with my fellow art students that it was not art, or at a minimum the designer of that particular urinal should be the one given credit for it. The art history majors all disagreed, but the studio artists mostly agreed with me.
I've been racking my brain for a while but I'm having a hard time coming up with any famous artwork (in the "pictures that go on walls" sense) work that doesn't fall into either 'trash' definitions (though I do unironically like Rockwell and his ilk). The one group I can think of that tends to produce 'good' art consistently are book illustrators - unless my taste is wrong, and artists like John Howe are actually kitsch.
8/11/16, 8:31 AM
Jonathan Meijer said...
Seems frankly Orwellian, that speaking an opinion can be construed as support of censorship, doesn't it? It's also a scarily common thing though....
I see you noticed it! It is eye-opening to see that when we individually do not fit in the false dichotomy of whatever subject is at hand, it is then very easy to feel lonely and unrepresented. But I guess this is what sets us ADR readers apart from much of the rest of society!
By the way, I saw your suggestion to start a local green wizards group in Ottawa/Gatineau. If you're still interested, get in touch with me and we can make it happen.
8/11/16, 8:31 AM
LewisLucanBooks said...
"Lucretia, your friends who are talented artists are in a real bind, due in large part to the maldistribution of income in the US. All the people who have money are into dog barf, and the people who don't like dog barf don't have money for art. That's one of the many reasons why a large, thriving middle class is good for a society -- it provides a large market for unpretentious art."
Timberg explores the same thing. In the face of an ever shrinking middle class, how can non elite art be supported? I also began to think about art, in general, in the face of decline. What will it look like? What forms will art take? Looking back, (I'm also an art history geek. Never got my degree, but have a lot of classes, books and exhibits under my belt) I think art will end up on more ... utilitarian items. A bit of decoration on pottery or an ax handle. To identify the owner or the maker. To make something more pleasing to the eye, but for perhaps a very small audience of one ... plus a few family and friends.
Finally, I was reminded of a comment an art teacher made to a friend of mine who was going for his MFA. That spending a lot of time on a project, even a lifetime on a projects, doesn't mean it's good. Lew
8/11/16, 8:40 AM
william fairchild said...
I have to mix media a bit with this one.
Lowbrow: Dawn of the Dead. World War Z (the movie) typical slasher, lots of gore. the good guys win. I might just drop The Walking Dead in there.
Highbrow: Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies. Definately done with a wink and a nod to the absurd. Like a Brillo box
Classic: Night of the Living Dead (Romero certainly makes a pointed statement about race) and World War Z (the book) Max Brooks is brilliant, using a Studs Terkel like voice to answer the question what would a real zombie war look like? It ain't pretty, and it ain't all glory. Actually, there are several themes there that resonate well with a de-industrial POV. Illegal immigrants and wage class folk actually rise to the top of social strata, as they have actual skills (gardening, turning wrenches on cars) that matter. Consultants and account executives fall to the bottom. Well worth the read, IMO. It is a suprisingly relevant book, even though the subject of zombies is kinda silly.
8/11/16, 8:41 AM
Patricia Mathews said...
8/11/16, 8:42 AM
Spanish fly said...
http://image2.casadellibro.com/a/l/t0/12/9788415174912.jpg
Of course, he was complaining against the big modern art fraud, although he liked (and likes nowadays) good abstract art...
8/11/16, 9:00 AM
Nastarana said...
Homework submission:
children's animated film
highbrow trash: Masters of the Universe, before it became a designation for Wall Street speculators, was a technofantasy recommended to parents as a way for their kids to learn about ethics. No kidding!
the classics: any film by Mayazaki. My favorites are Kiki's Delivery Service and Castle in the Sky. Honorable mention to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
boring lowbrow trash: Snow White
fun lowbrow trash: Scooby and Shaggy.
stained, or painted, glass, in other words, colored glass intended to be seen with light shining through it:
low or mid brow examples can be seen in any Hallmark or gifte store. Some is quite pretty.
For an example of the classic and the highbrow trash side by side, to google images of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Rheims, France. A good example of the classic would be the north rose window, which tells the story of the Creation. The appellation 'highbrow trash', IMHO, exactly describes the modern windows of Marc Chagall. I hasten to add, before the maters start flying, that I love some of Chagall's work in other contexts, but he should never have been allowed near a cathedral.
8/11/16, 9:03 AM
Jason B said...
8/11/16, 9:08 AM
Paddy P said...
8/11/16, 9:24 AM
Vader said...
So, they slipped a compliment into the middle of their tirade?
8/11/16, 9:46 AM
Wolfgang Brinck said...
For me, the measure of good art is that it has to move the viewer emotionally or if you will, spiritually. This is a rather subjective measure of what makes good art, and there is good art that does not move everyone. Good by my criteria is a statistical artifact expressed in percentage of the viewers moved. I like to think that great art has great power since the viewer is helpless in its presence. Conversely, bad art leaves the viewer unmoved or simply bored or even worse, annoyed at the artist's poor attempt to manipulate the viewer's emotions.
A good deal of art since the middle of the 20th century has abandoned any attempt to appeal to the great unwashed masses and instead become insider commentary on or a reaction to art history. To talk about this kind of art, you need exposure to art history. You need to know what the artist is reacting to or commenting on. If you are an insider, you get it, if you are not, you don't. One of the aspects of an art education is that you learn how to talk about art, which is difficult if the work of art has little visible content and elicits no emotional response. What you learn is to talk, not about the piece as a standalone work but rather its meaning in an art historical context. To the initiated, an all black canvas is a reaction to the tyranny of representationalism or even to the use of color by abstract expressionism. To the uninitiated, the black canvas is simply stupid because anyone with a bucket of black paint and a roller could have created that work. And so, the ability to understand this sort of art gives the viewer insider status. The person who simply sees black paint becomes an outsider.
A few years ago, we went to an art expo, a trade show for art galleries in Los Angeles. My impression overall was that the trend in painting was an intentional effort on the part of the painters to look unschooled. To point out that these paintings looked amateurish, required no skill to produce and could have been done by anyone automatically made you an outsider, someone who did not understand the criteria which had made these paintings worth exhibiting. Painting in effect had become part of the class war in which the galleries provide the wealthy with yet another tool by which to distinguish themselves from the poor or the wannabes. Painters had abandoned any attempt to move their viewers and instead were pandering to the intellectual games of the art marketplace. The reaction I have to this kind of art, who would hang this in their house, is the same I get when looking at fashion magazines, who would wear this? Art and fashion have become barometers of decadence, the ability of the rich to flaunt their ability to buy high priced commodities that are obviously in bad taste, to say to the unrich, look, I have so much money that I can spend thousands of dollars on tasteless trash while you have to settle for cheap kitsch.
8/11/16, 10:14 AM
Glenn said...
Well, I'm a carpenter, so I'll rate architecture.
Low brow trash; split level suburban ranch houses of the '50's and '60's and their modern equivalent, the double-wide pre-fab (not trailers, they're totally different).
High brow trash; almost any medium size, and a few large, churches built in the '60's and '70's, some of the most hideous building in town.
For canon? Most vernacular houses. Japanese farm houses, timber frame, Norwegian Loft-stuhe. My personal favourites being the works of Maybeck, Greene and Greene, Stickley or Julia Morgan; west coast Craftsman bungalows. I know little of stonework, and never intend to live east of I-5 again (i.e. I'll be staying in seismically _interesting_ territory), so perhaps a mason or a bricklayer can help here.
Glenn
in the Bramblepatch
Marrowstone Island
Salish Sea
Cascadia
8/11/16, 10:15 AM
Clay Dennis said...
Balinese Proverb: " We have no art. We do everything as well as we can."
Perhaps that can serve to guide us past the debate on good and bad art. Did the artist hone thier talents and knowledge then create something to the best of those abilities, or did they ( like the artists in JMG's emperor fable) just slap something together for money, or status.
8/11/16, 10:16 AM
Ron said...
I think it is most amazing and amusing to see how you always manage to tick off all those pompous characters and/or groups, who take themselves and their opinions wayyy too serious.
To me that seems like they lack real problems, so they create some to get worked up about.
Apart from your insights, which prompt some to think about things, regardless if one agrees or not, the afore mentioned is another quality I like in you.
8/11/16, 10:25 AM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
Excellent! For location, somewhere downtown would be best, ideally near bus routes (since I don't have a car). I see you're on the Gatineau side, so if we find somewhere that works for both of us, we have a location that works on both sides of the river.
I think for best attendance we need a weekend day, and once a month sounds like a reasonable amount, no? Even if it ends up just being the two of us to start, it's better than nothing! Plus, once we have something set up, it'll be easier to expand it.
Anyway, anyone else in the Ottawa/Gatineau area, or willing to come join us, please feel free to add your input!
8/11/16, 10:32 AM
william fairchild said...
Kudos on riding the bus. Some of my most interesting conversations were on the number 15 down E Colfax Ave., colloquially called the "zoo express". However I won't hold my breath for your inaugural gala. Bernie was right when he said "poor people don't vote." More specifically, they don't even register to vote. The politician who can crack that nut will go far. 40 years of promises, blah, blah, blah. Learning how to strip copper tubing and pipes from abandoned homes, or cooking meth, or working the byzantine welfare system to your advantage is much more productive.
Sorry to be such a cynic.
8/11/16, 10:51 AM
Karen said...
“The history of art was little more than the history of man’s attempts to represent the sacred, from the animals in the first cave paintings to the dolphin frescos at Knossos, from the medieval icons to the hyperrealist angels of the baroque, from Turner’s heavenly light to van Gogh’s rain-swept villages. Art elevates us by intensifying and densifying the world. Of course, this is true only of good art; the least trace of anything awkward or amateurish, and we remain in our unelevated state, our reality of blushing, stumbling, idiotic misunderstandings and blunders. That the artists of the past century have abandoned the search for the sacred does not change what came before; it only tells us that they no longer consider the sacred to be a significant subject of investigation, that the vertical axis has been replaced by the horizontal, so that art no longer lifts us up, but turns us in.”
And…Once, Knausgaard wrote on suddenly seeing a lake in Michigan, “My eyes teared up, not because the sight was so beautiful, but because the beauty was so sudden.”
8/11/16, 11:11 AM
Thomas Mazanec said...
8/11/16, 12:10 PM
Space Seeder said...
Rita: That's not still bothering you, I hope? I'm sure that Hitler and all the other nefarious villains of history believed that the sky is blue on a sunny day. I recently read a great summary of this point of logic: "A belief is not responsible for those who hold it."
WwoofBum: The assertion that working people have no time to make art is quite simply false. I have seen examples of this and been an example of this. As to art that arises from taxation and patronage, I disagree with the view that it's a bad thing in principle, although I support the notion that we've had enough taxpayer-funded dog barf, be it in actual painting, architecture, or whatever form.
I submit this as an example of art that I support having been publicly funded.
8/11/16, 12:32 PM
Spanish fly said...
-Lowbrow: Spielberg, JJ Abrams, Almodovar, Michael Bay, Uwe Boll...
-Highbrow: Antonioni, M. de Oliveira, sometimes D. Lynch, Lars von Trier, late Passolini...
-Classics: Robert Bresson, Ford, Peckinpah, Kurosawa, Kaurismaki (not all), Buñuel...
"There is 3 styles of cinema making: crappy industrial cinema, crappy auteur cinema and cinema" (apocryphal Kaurismaki).
8/11/16, 12:35 PM
SLClaire said...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinomarah/2016/08/11/delta-airlines-flying-is-too-cheap/#74daec835a71
8/11/16, 12:44 PM
Steven said...
Just curious, what exactly did you mean by this? Gone with the Wind was (aside from telling a wonderful soap-opera story) trying to do a specific thing, namely make the Confederacy and its ideals look good. I really can't find a similar agenda in Tolkien-indeed, Tolkien himself, in his forward, says he dislikes allegory and that his main purpose in writing LOTR was to tell an entertaining story. Sure, Tolkien was a conservative Catholic and it seeps into the story sometimes, but I don't think he was writing LOTR to promote conservative Catholicism or any other ideology. And, to me at least, what ideology is in LOTR is not intrusive-you have to read closely to find it.
Also, I'd add that having an agenda doesn't make a work not a masterpiece. Despite its message, I'd argue Gone with the Wind is part of any reasonable canon of American cinema, and the book would have the same status in any reasonable canon of Southern literature. I enjoy the story (though this is a matter of personal taste), and its message about the Civil War and the Confederacy is worth engaging with for all its un-PC-ness. Specifically, its a good pop-culture representation of how the South (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the US) viewed the Confederacy from the end of Reconstruction to around WWII. The deficiencies of that viewpoint are real and have been pointed out at length numerous times, but I personally don't think the demonization of the Confederacy that replaced it is necessarily any more helpful or accurate. But that's an arguement for another place.
8/11/16, 1:20 PM
BoysMom said...
Monster Hunter International, Larry Corriea, would be our lowbrow, or in the genre's terms, pulp.
If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love, Rachel Swirsky, would be our highbrow, or in the genre's terms, literary.
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells, or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne, for our classic. (Seems like they've been dead long enough, anyway!)
I do wonder why people can never separate a character's opinions from the author of the character's opinions. Obviously authors choose what to put in and what not to, though some seem to do it at a level below conscious thought, but do people really believe that the beliefs and opinions of the main character must be held by the author? What do they believe when authors write more than one series and have more than one main character?
8/11/16, 1:20 PM
Space Seeder said...
(I was gonna credit the writer who said that, but Google reveals it to be a common expression.)
Mr. Greer: Ok, good, but that's about all I got out of it. So what are some of the points I missed, or is that TBA?
Candace: Hear, hear! On the rare occasions that I've found myself watching a fashion runway, I've noticed that most of the looks don't make it out into the street, so I guess a lot more people than me agree with you.
Ok, outta time, off to the soup kitchen now. I look forward to taking this up again later. As a parting thought, it occurs to me that although I would never hang framed dog barf on my walls, I would certainly paint a black or navy blue background on them and then dog barf them up with miscellaneous paints myself, before furnishing and decorating. If I had walls, that is. I don't actually miss boring white boxes that much.
8/11/16, 1:29 PM
Dammerung said...
Lowbrow Sailor Moon; Cardcaptor Sakura; Rosario Vampire
Highbrow Gundam Wing; Serial Experiments Lain; Paprika; Ergo Proxy; Death Note
Classic Neon Genesis Evangelion; Ghost in the Shell; Puella Magi Madoka Magica
8/11/16, 1:35 PM
Bill Pulliam said...
Take the Broadway Musical "Book of Mormon." On its face it is ultimate lowbrow trash. Except that it is so cleverly and self-consciously derivative, and just so much fun to sit through, that it rapidly has joined the Canon. And of course it is a self-parodying satire of a piece of religious lowbrow trash (using your system,) the actual Book of Mormon which was definitely half-digested mangled New Testament mixed with bad archaeology regurgitated by a dog onto blank canvas.
8/11/16, 1:49 PM
Howard Skillington said...
If, instead of being sanctified as “art,” a piece were perforce identified simply as “dog barf on canvas,” the viewer would be free to consider how skillfully, beautifully, and interestingly the barf has been arranged, or even to conclude that dog barf as a medium is a deal-breaker which requires no further consideration.
8/11/16, 1:50 PM
Ed-M said...
Well I want to get this off my chest before this post is deluged by too many comments...
Here are some examples of some late Roman art. I was looking for a 4th century Roman "cubist" painting of competing chariot teams. Well I found these: the first appears to be the one I was looking for. The rest are lagniappe.
http://www.vroma.org/images/mcmanus_images/bassus_mosaic1.jpg
http://www.vroma.org/images/mcmanus_images/pa_greencharioteer2a.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/5a/2e/69/5a2e697164f19493378de21d3442bb9a.jpg
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gLJCdfaJXGU/V2bfh4oHFuI/AAAAAAAAEuw/Jr74ZJv4UEc2_Y2_cdsLFvmzGr9UkBBUACLcB/s1600/Sol%2Bancient%2BRoman%2Btiled%2Bfloor.jpg
http://www.vroma.org/images/mcmanus_images/charioteerpa.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Villa_del_Casale_-_char_echassiers.jpeg
8/11/16, 2:21 PM
MIckGspot said...
TY Michael! ;>)
8/11/16, 2:38 PM
aaa said...
The main article here reads like a response to the cliquey and judgmental social attunement of the group behavior of artists and their interactions with each other, their patrons, and the public. The frequent high-sensitivity to fashion in their work and relationships, etc, and the corresponding fashion-follower element in the audiences of the work, both the in-groups and the public. Not unique to late 20th c.
One has no obligation to like or dislike any particular style, least of all an experimentalist one. But to declare that the aesthetic shortcomings are a product of the group behavior described above, and to reduce entire genres to the category of ___brow trash -- is to invite the question: How is such a phenomenon unique to the generation in question? What if my "classics" are another person's or another time's ___brow trash? This is a fun one to answer.
8/11/16, 2:41 PM
avalterra said...
For the homework I am going to do something *completely* different.
Cuisine!
8/11/16, 2:41 PM
Tabatha Atwood said...
8/11/16, 2:42 PM
pygmycory said...
Highbrow junk: the Lord of the Rings medley one of the Calgary show bands was performing, in a manner involving large amounts of dancing around in extremely complicated patterns. This sounds like it was extremely difficult to do, and took a very long time to learn. But I bet in a year or two, no one will be doing that performance, and it will be totally forgotten. Or maybe it is just technically difficult lowbrow junk. Hard to tell.
lowbrow junk: simplified versions of pop songs intended for beginning bands.
Concert Band Music:
Classic: Gustav Holst, The Planets. Also First Suite in Eb for Military Band by Gustav Holst.
Low Brow Junk: Way too many arrangements of pop songs and christmas carols. Yawn.
High Brow Junk: A piece Fred Stride wrote for The North Vancouver Youth Band. It was difficult to play because it sounded wrong even when you played it right. There was no melody. We all hated it, and even the band master finally admitted, after we'd finally performed the dratted thing, that it was a big disappointment, and he didn't like it either! I don't think it was ever performed again.
8/11/16, 2:45 PM
pygmycory said...
Classics: Beethoven's Eroica symphony, also his 9th. Scherazade. Elgar's The Enigma Variations. Mozart's Flute and Harp Concerto. Plus many, many others.
Lowbrow junk: arrangements of the latest popsongs.
Highbrow junk: Benjamin Britten?
8/11/16, 2:54 PM
Adrian Ayres Fisher said...
Norman Rockwell was, I think, actually pretty subversive, and possibly a satirist. I came to this conclusion fairly recently after prolonged looking at some of his paintings. Reproductions don't quite catch it, for some reason. He was a good craftsman, as well.
The "Norman Rockwell decorative plates" and other things that used to be sold turned his output into lowbrow trash. When people "trash" Rockwell, they are, perhaps, making fun of the sorts of middle and working class folks that liked the Saturday Evening Post covers and bought the plates to adorn their walls. At that time everyone, including his detractors, maybe took him a little too literally. :)
Also, many thanks for the moratorium on discussion of US politics. There are, indeed, so many other worthwhile and important things to discuss. Now I feel free to join the conversation again and happy to read all the very interesting comments.
Now to get thinking on high- and low-brow trash and classics. So many good examples of each, and sometimes all three even by the same artist.
8/11/16, 2:59 PM
hokiangafarm said...
8/11/16, 2:59 PM
Shane W said...
that would properly be known as "boots and pants" music, and, yes, I was quite the aficionado back in the day. I love me a good house diva. Was quite the gay thing to do at one time...
8/11/16, 3:02 PM
pygmycory said...
I think the Lord of the Rings is a classic: it changed the face of Fantasy literature utterly.
8/11/16, 3:02 PM
Elizabeth Kennett said...
"a world-class flustered cluck"
Thank you. That one's a keep.
On the subject of keeping dog barf correctly identified and in the compost pile, where it could do some good, is there anyone in the general Salem, Oregon, area interested in starting a green wizard group? I can be reached at ekennett (at) my (dot) chemeketa (dot) edu.
On the subject of art, I make my own quilts. My only absolute requirement of them is that they work in the real world providing some warmth to the sleeper they cover. As far as visual esthetics, I notice my body of work does display my learning curve, and we'll stop there.
As always, thank you for the weekly dose of sanity.
Elizabeth Ann Kennett
8/11/16, 3:13 PM
Sylvia Rissell said...
My big observation about "Left Behind" is that the authors belief that the universe has a single, intelligent creator is mirrored by the idea that the economy has a single, intelligent controller. That is, that complex behavior created by a bunch of individual actors is not a possible explanation for whatever it is that is going on.
For this homework, I'm going to make a study of American banjo music. I'm not sure what will turn up, because the popularity of the banjo started with minstrel shows. Minstrel shows were by definition low class, as they were performed by (usually) white musicians in black face who sang songs about rural themes, in the (alleged) style of Southern enslaved musicians. Many songs that were created for minstrel performances are now cannon of a certain kind, but at the time it was the opposite of formal European music.
8/11/16, 3:32 PM
MawKernewek said...
Low brow trash: most of the mainstream media's reaction to scientific news, getting the complete wrong end of the stick, I'm mainly thinking of asteroid impact scares at the moment.
Highbrow trash: String theory, and multiverse theories that make no predictions testable within our own observable Universe.
Classics: Plenty of these, from but I would highlight the development of spectroscopy, and the various strands of work that led to measuring the size of the Universe. The French philosopher Auguste Comté declared that the composition of the stars would remain forever unknown, but spectroscopy changed that. In another development, work by Henrietta Leavitt and Hubble expanded the scale of the known Universe. For example the book Measuring the Universe by Stephen Webb surveys the various ways that the Universe is measured, ranging from parallax of nearby stars, to 'standard candles' of various kinds.
A couple of links that expand on the herd mentality of faux-artisanal style with the same kind of 'reclaimed' wood tables appearing in cafés the world over, and the spread of AirBnB, which is described as becoming what it was intended to disrupt:
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/06/hipster-aesthetic-taking-over-world
Welcome to Airspace
8/11/16, 3:34 PM
Sven Eriksen said...
So I figured I'd just share with you the Scandinavian method for dealing with this, in case it gets to much (courtesy of the boys from Tumbla):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5KjkwfYYBw
Eating the cheez burrito afterwards is optional, of course... ;-)
8/11/16, 4:47 PM
zach bender said...
to measure excellence with reference to a "canon" is tautological. what matters are the criteria for inclusion or exclusion.
someone linked a recent non sequitur comic, in which a guy buys a framed painting which looks a lot like the mona lisa -- in other words, clearly not an abstract expressionist or pop art piece -- then decides he would prefer to look at an actual tree, but through the frame, from which he has torn the painting out.
this gets to the premise which i think must be established before we can have a meaningful conversation here. what is art, and what is its function.
it seems to me we must begin by saying -- and this applies not only to visual art, but to music and literature as well -- an artwork is an artifact, something made by the artist, to which a viewer or listener or reader is invited to respond as subject.
that is just a starting point, and already we are confronted with "found object" art. in the non sequitur cartoon, the guy is somehow better able to contemplate the tree because he has placed it within a frame. so at some level we are accepting the idea that it is at least in part the act of the artist in designating the object as art that makes it art.
we can take the point that the artist's intention is significant. there is a very limited degree to which we can accept accident as art.
we have an artificer and an artifact and an audience. impliedly there is an act of communication. but this is a reciprocal arrangement. the artist works within or intentionally violates established conventions, and the audience applies those conventions in attempting to receive the communication.
here we might note that the idea of "art," in itself, may be a valid subject of discourse. the artist might wish to communicate something about the relationship between the artist and the audience, and/or about the economic ground on which the act of communication is occurring.
another consideration that sets "art" apart is that some element of the communication is occurring nonverbally, nonliterally, appealing to something other than the left brain. this is where we usually find what we call "beauty" in an artwork.
what, then, "should" be our criteria for "excellence."
[end of part one]
8/11/16, 5:36 PM
LewisLucanBooks said...
I pick up odds and ends of Japanese "stuff". Baskets. I have a half dozen Hakata Urasaki figures. E-Bay has quit a few, if you're unfamiliar with them. According to some things I've read, they were made expressly for GIs, in Japan, after WWII. They're usually occupational, and, often couples. They are most decidedly low brow, but I love them. Hard to find in good shape, as they are fragile. And, impossible to clean. In general, I don't pick up anything over $200. That's about my limit for something I might break.
Other things I like. Japanese prints. I've always thought Hokusai's "Great Wave" was a great metaphor for the decline of our civilization. I really like travelogues of Japan by Westerners, and have read quit a few of them. Japanese films. Particularly "Kwaidan" by Kobayashi. The tales of Lafcadio Hearn and biographies about him.
Sigh. I'm gushing like a fan boy. I just really like Japan. Lew
8/11/16, 5:36 PM
zach bender said...
my own area of interest is narrative fiction, in particular the novel.
the "canon" here would reach back to at least cervantes, and maybe forward to borges, at least. anyone might say bellow or lethem or didion has produced "excellent" work in this medium, but these may not yet be in a "canon." joyce is an interesting case, because his later work was increasingly experimental, and finnegan's wake is readable by only a handful of cognoscenti, not including me.
e.m. forster did a series of lectures a hundred years ago called "aspects of the novel," in which he examined what he then understood to be the elements constituting novel-length narrative fiction -- story, plot, "flat" and "rounded" characters, etc. an excellent starting point for looking at modernist and post-modernist (and post-post-modernist) experimental fiction.
if a writer decides to discard story, for example, does that mean we are no longer looking at "art"? it is certainly true that the readership for such work would be slim. but it may not be nonexistent.
so my argument would be, a work of art can be judged by roughly the following criteria:
- what was the artist attempting to communicate
- was that communication successful
- what tools did the artist employ -- in particular, what tools did s/he employ to attempt the nonliteral, nonverbal communication
- did s/he employ those tools skillfully
- if the artist intentionally violated an established convention, was this done with a "purpose" that coincides with the intended communication
- again, was that attempt successful, did s/he do this skillfully
the "canon" can be a useful benchmark against which to measure these criteria, but it is not in itself definitive of what does or does not constitute "excellence."
8/11/16, 5:37 PM
onething said...
8/11/16, 5:46 PM
Emmanuel Goldstein said...
Lowbrow trash: "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer --Book AND Movie! Yes, I admit to having read the book AND seen the movie. As much fun as Star Trek!
Canon: "The Civil War" A PBS series I thought was well-done. Also I liked the fiddle tune Ashokan Farewell..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGeCPv6gw_U
Highbrow trash: I tried searching "Abraham Lincoln" and "Feminist Deconstruction" to see what would come up. I got "Literary Criticisms of Law" by Guyora Binder, but was not permitted to even look at an abstract without full registration on the "Project Muse" website. Not sure if it dealt with Lincoln or not, but it sort of fulfills the idea of restricted access. If Thomas Pynchon ever writes a sequel to "Mason & Dixon" about Lincoln, that would probably qualify.
8/11/16, 6:25 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
Lowbrow trash: Velveeta
Highbrow trash: runny, stinky cheeses with hifalutin' names
Classic: Tillamook extra sharp cheddar.
You said the baker doesn't try to be cutting edge, but just turns out a good loaf.
Low-brow trash: Wonder Bread
Highbrow Trash: gluten-free, fat-free, organic, made with obscure imported seeds from the far corners of the world.
Classic: a good artisan sourdough. Or whole wheat (wholemeal for you Australians) or various ryes.
Lowbrow trash: Mexican food from a well-known mass market fast food chain who once had a Chihuahua advertising its products. (With many a gagster putting variations in the doggie's mouth such as "Yo guiero ... mas dinero!" (or "una perrita para mi amor." Or ruder versions thereof.) With lemonade made from a powdered mix
Classics: enchiladas, burritos, and huevos rancheros made with red or green chile sauces, pinto beans, and a good cheese - cheddar, Monterey jack, "Mexican mix" with rabbit food on top. With coffee or a Mexican beer.
Highbrow trash: pseudo-Norteno food made with black beans, whole wheat flour tortillas, chopped green chile, and any imported cheese other than queso. With a fine wine. Oops! I complained about that once before! Forgive me!
8/11/16, 6:25 PM
WwoofBum said...
8/11/16, 6:38 PM
Hubertus Hauger said...
I remember once a history film did mention roman oil-lamps. The sophisticated bronze one, its imitation made of earth ware with greenish enamel covering its surface and the common factory-lamp.
First I saw the bronze as the quality because its real, the enamel a highbrow because it pretends and the factory as lowbrow because its for the poor. But considering a more humble approach than the enamel changes for the quality, bronze for a pompous highbrow and the factory remains poor. Another twist again, seeing it from an environmentalist perspective the factory is the simplest so quality, the bronze is a waste to show up as highbrow and the enamel is pretentious kitsch.
So I see, it depends on my standpoint, where to place something into a canon of quality, highbrow or lowbrow. Its pure arbitrary.
8/11/16, 6:43 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Esn, fair enough -- I'll have to take the time to look into that as time permits. I admit most of my exposure to Socialist Realism was by way of retro-kitsch posters in Archie McPhee's Seattle store, back when they were still in Ballard.
Ivan, I therefore state that everything is art. Since everything is art, we no longer need artists. I wonder how the producers of Conceptual Art would like that...
Bruno, exactly. As one of my commenters sensibly pointed out last week, Rome in its final years saw all kinds of frantic contests to decide which of an assortment of nonentities would become the next Emperor of the West. None of it made a bit of difference.
Sébastien, as I know precisely nothing about any of the software you've mentioned, I'll smile and nod and pretend to know what you're talking about. Interesting, though, that the same trichotomy applies to software design. As for a book version of Retrotopia, why, yes, I've already got a publisher lined up and done initial edits to the earlier post. It should be out in time for Christmas.
Eric, that's totally fascinating -- of course it's about longing for an economy in which people actually produce goods and services, rather than manipulating abstractions. Hmm -- that has political implications, about which I will have to do some serious thinking.
Trippticket, thanks for the link!
Shane, no doubt I'll do other posts on the subject of the US presidential campaign, but I'll ask everyone to remember what's written above the comment box --
"Courteous, concise comments relevant to the topic of the current week's post are welcome" -- and leave commentary on the election to those posts, and to other forums.
DaShui, I have a hard time keeping track of what's where. I do a fair number of podcasts -- they're free publicity -- and if somebody wants to assemble a list and post it somewhere, I'll happily put up a link here.
RCW, the Chesterton quote is good. I'm less sure about your general claim -- of course the viewer brings something to the experience, but so does the experience...
WwoofBum, no, capitalism is specifically that form of economic organization in which the ownership of the means of production is mediated by market exchanges of shares of ownership and commoditized debt. It's distinct from mercantilism, feudalism, and other economic forms that are also based on private ownership of the means of production. As for art, there again, you're quite simply wrong; the extent to which art goes to the people you're calling the "guards" varies dramatically from one society to another; in societies as different as late feudal Japan and early modern Holland, for example, a very large amount of art was bought by the middle classes. If you're going to make claims about history, it really would help if you could get past the kind of simplistic generalization you've offered here, and grapple with some actual history!
Owen, well, it was just a parable, you know. If you want to film a cat barfing and call it art, by all means; get an MFA first, and surround it with a hedge of impenetrable jargon, and you may be able to make it work.
David, it's exactly because you're not a Fred Halliot that I look forward to attending your gubernatorial inauguration. ;-)
8/11/16, 6:49 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Caryn, I'd encourage you to go back and read last week's comments by Over The Hill and Karen. As for abstract expressionism, I get that it was a failed attempt to speak directly to the unconscious et al.; the point I was trying to raise had less to do with the art itself and more with the bullying and snobbery that anybody outside the art world can count on facing if they point out that (a) the attempt failed and (b) a great deal of it really does look like dog barf. As for Norman Rockwell, I admire his technical proficiency and find much of his subject matter stickily sentimental to the point of gagging: the mid-20th century Middle America notion of what Middle America was or at least ought to be, folded back on itself to an almost parodic degree.
Donald, I ain't arguing -- well, except for Weird Al. Conscious parody is its own thing, and he did it brilliantly.
Avery, of course new artists and new artistic modes have been funded by elites since the days of Sumer and Old Kingdom Egypt, if not before. The social function of the fine arts has always been the manufacture of collectibles for the well-to-do. I'm not at all sure how that's relevant to any of the points I've tried to make here.
AAA, I don't know many people who would consider, say, Louis Armstrong to be highbrow trash, though there's unquestionably a fair amount of more recent jazz that would qualify as highbrow trash by my definition. Still, the point I tried to make in my discussion of the evolution and function of a canon is precisely that these categories are specific to a given culture and a given age, and arise out of the collective taste of that culture and age. Put another way, they're part of a collective conversation about the nature of aesthetic experience. When one group of people -- let's say, artists -- stop talking to the rest, or express themselves only in an invented language that's specifically designed to keep anyone else from understanding them, something has gone wrong with the conversation. That's what I'm trying to say, you know.
Farka, of course! You get highbrow art that isn't trash, but always contains an element of status signalling, and lowbrow art that isn't trash, either, but always contains an appeal to the familiar and comfortable. There's a spectrum with kitsch on one end and warhol on the other, and as with most such spectrums, the ends circle around behind the stage and get up to various activities in the dark.
William, I'd pretty much agree with you about the dystopian fiction.
Patricia, good. Yes, there is also fluff. My wife is a fan of Georgette Heyer's novels -- they're an important part of her comfort reading -- and much of it is capable fluff. Fluff has its place and its value. A lot of genre fiction is fluff, and a very good thing to read at the end of a long day when you need something familiar and fun, with just enough of a twist to keep it from getting boring. As for "chick lit" et al., I look forward to the time when people can simply deal with the fact that, by and large, men and women tend to have somewhat different tastes, and one such taste isn't intrinsically better than the other. Full disclosure: I've read some of Georgette Heyer's Regency comedies of manners, and enjoyed them, without any discernible loss of masculinity!
Martin, funny. I'd have to have been there to decide whether I'd count the machine as first-class warhol -- when your work of art is making an ironic commentary on the framing of art, we're getting into levels of recursiveness that Andy would have adored -- but it must have been something to watch.
8/11/16, 7:21 PM
Jeanne Labonte said...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeRwBiu4wfQ
8/11/16, 7:24 PM
Karen said...
- what was the artist attempting to communicate
- was that communication successful
- what tools did the artist employ -- in particular, what tools did s/he employ to attempt the nonliteral, nonverbal communication
- did s/he employ those tools skillfully
- if the artist intentionally violated an established convention, was this done with a "purpose" that coincides with the intended communication”
This is excellent, it just got copied and pasted into my file of excellent art thoughts and printed out for my hardcopy notebook. It will be duly credited. Thank you.
@Bill Pulliam "Was my reaction to it one that I am glad I had." Sometimes those reactions are disturbing and unpleasant, but I might be glad to have experienced them. I sometimes do sit down and wonder why I feel that way, and why this work making me feel that way I found worthwhile while under other circumstances the same reaction to a different piece of work might have seemed a waste of time to me.”
Also added to my collection of excellent art thoughts.
I find writing very difficult, I communicate through the visual, so I really appreciate these and other gems as the appear.
8/11/16, 7:26 PM
Greg Reynolds @ Riverbend said...
8/11/16, 7:34 PM
roseredloon said...
8/11/16, 7:44 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Johnny, I hope you do decide to record your music someday, in exactly the same spirit as you perform -- making the most intentionally awful album you possibly can, with cover art et al. to match. I'd pay for a copy.
Karen, seems to me that you're still trying to channel the dialogue into directions that don't deal with the points that I, and quite a number of commenters here, are trying to raise. What you choose to paint isn't the issue -- for all I care, you can make dog barf paintings with certified organic dog barf; it's no skin off my back. The issue is that I had a fictional character make an offhand remark about abstract art, and you and Over The Hill took it upon yourselves to come charging on here to chastise me for daring to criticize something that the art world has sanctified as Art. From there, I went into a discussion of the role of groupthink, class prejudice, and snobbery in raising barriers between the art world and everyone else. That's not a new discussion; people -- countless thousands of people -- have been trying to have it with the art world for a century now, and they've been brushed aside with the kind of language you used toward me in your first comment last week. Until a significant number of people in the art world abandon that attitude, the barriers to communication are going to stay in place...because it's not the rest of us who raised them, you know.
Dug, I've never been to Kansas City and so haven't had the chance to hear any of the music your venue is playing. If I manage it, I hope you have something other than coffee available; it gives me migraines. In the Seattle scene, back when I lived there, avant-garde jazz was the butt of constant jokes, and earned it. You'd see half a dozen bunches of guys, mostly white proto-hipsters, playing pretentious doodling noises at busking spots during the Folklife Festival, and everyone hurrying past to get to something worth a listen. Do you have something different going on? Obviously, I'm in no position to say.
Dammerung, looking at naked people of your preferred gender is the oldest tradition in art -- the Venus of Willendorf, anyone? If you want to get highbrow about it, which is a pleasant change of pace, Kenneth Clark's The Nude is well worth reading -- accessible to those outside the art scene, but insightful and intelligent.
RPC, no, I didn't know that. Hah!
John, funny. Book illustration is a very demanding art form, and yes, some stunningly good work has been done there.
Lewis, then I'll definitely have to read Timberg as circumstances permit.
William, I'll take your word on it. Zombies bore me to death. ;-)
Patricia, thank you! The man was a master of the double- and triple-bind.
Spanish Fly, that's the funniest thing I've seen in weeks. Thank you.
Nastarana, fair enough.
8/11/16, 7:54 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Paddy, not so. The canon consists precisely of those works that do withstand the test of time, and I spent plenty of time trying to find magic in canvases full of dog barf back when I was still much less confident of my own tastes, and more vulnerable to the head games sketched out in my parable.
8/11/16, 7:54 PM
Bill Pulliam said...
So is this another category? Or is this actually what all works do, just sometimes more overtly and sometimes less so?
8/11/16, 8:06 PM
Emmanuel Goldstein said...
In German, the name 'Warhol' is derived from 'WARum HOL es' which means, "Why get it?" Ignoring the actual meaning of "Andrew" (gk; Manly), one can use literary deconstruction to break it down into 'and' & 'drew.'
Shoehorning it back together to meet my preconceived notions, one sees, 'And drew-why get it?,' which can be interpreted as 'Why get anything this guy drew?'
Clearly he was no 'Thomas Kinkaide, Painter of Light'...
8/11/16, 8:14 PM
Space Seeder said...
Bingo!! Bingo!! Bingo * 10 ** (googleplex)
I have two questions for you:
1) Do you say the same thing about exoplanets, and
2) Do you ever suspect that Stephen Hawking has been diverting colonic gas through his vocoder for his entire career? That is to say, he's in the business of peddling road apples and knows it? (Not that I blame him. "Fraudulent Physicist" is a better career than "Bedsore Collector".)
Regardless, we are not leaving this Earth, ever, and so any so-called "knowledge" we gain about other locations is not only unverifiable but utterly, utterly useless.
Same with cosmology: I once read a book by Lawrence Krauss, who is this puppy dog that follows Richard Dawkins aroun--I mean, an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist. In this book, he states that any intelligent civilization that appears more than about 2 trillion years hence will be unable to determine the nature and history of the universe, because vital clues like the cosmic background radiation will be gone by then.
So... What in the God Unblessed 7734 makes us think that we have all the clues now, and that our beliefs about cosmology aren't just an overflowing crockpot of mushy aromatic brown shale?? And even if they're not! Who cares??
Science: If it aint got directly to do with life on Earth, it shouldn't be funded. Unless it's self-funded. JMG has a great idea for this in his book "After Progress".
8/11/16, 8:21 PM
Shane W said...
about the last assignment. I read The End of Faith, by Sam Harris. I found it slow going at first, because every sentence I was refuting his logical fallacies. For example, he equated all religion with the Abrahamic faiths, and misunderstood the faiths by fixating on the passages where they supposedly violate reality. Even as a non-believer, I can certainly see where the basis of faith is your belief and relationship to God, Jesus, or Mohammad. Either the faith and its God and prophets speak to you and you "see the light" and believe, or it doesn't, and you don't believe. Jesus turning water into wine, or God parting the Red Sea, is secondary to that. After starting out laughing out loud at the logical fallacies, the misunderstandings of religion, the apocalyptic fear mongering if we don't slay faith in its tracks, I finally just got bored with it and just wanted to be done with it. I guess it was a good exercise in challenging my thinking, because I was constantly questioning the text, "Why is he equating Abrahamic beliefs with all religion? Why is he saying that the basis of Christianity is something other than a connection to Christ? Why is he exaggerating the threat of terrorism? How can we possibly get people to stop believing in their religion?, etc"
I'm wondering if this qualifies as highbrow trash. As an undergraduate psych major, I assisted a professor teaching a group theory/group dynamics class. She invited a group of us to this "experiential group weekend" at UCLA. It was very much a group about nothing--a metagroup. The group existed solely to navel gaze and be all about the itself, and the dynamics that arose out of the group. It was broken down into something like Plenaries in the auditorium, large group, and small group breakout sessions. As best I can recall, you were only supposed to focus on each other in the moment, and not bring in anything not related to the group (spouses, the commute, what you had for dinner, your past, etc.) Needless to say, this is the closest I've gotten to Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Study, and it ranks right up there with one of the most bizarre and disturbing things I've ever participated in. Now, me being the (shale)disturber that I am, I'll admit that I certainly lobbed a few grenades and appreciated the effects, but there was way more to it than that. I really think it demonstrated how bad people can get/be in a void without any structure. A nasty fault line appeared based on class between the wealthier UCLA students and us poor Cal State students from the South Bay.
(As an aside, putting my gift as a (shale)disturber to productive use is something I hope to get from the practice of magic.)
8/11/16, 8:29 PM
Eric Backos said...
Eric, that's totally fascinating -- of course it's about longing for an economy in which people actually produce goods and services, rather than manipulating abstractions. Hmm -- that has political implications, about which I will have to do some serious thinking.
I'd be pleased to discuss the matter with you and the Wizardren. My angle has been to examine what desires the manifested symbols represent... I'm emailable at my name, all lower case, one word at gmail-you-know-the-rest.
8/11/16, 8:31 PM
Shane W said...
8/11/16, 8:32 PM
Shane W said...
8/11/16, 8:41 PM
trippticket said...
I cut another round of zinnias at the cabin today that were intended for one of your tables!
Hope all is well.
8/11/16, 9:00 PM
Dug said...
Yes, there is serious, mind-bending and beautiful jazz being made today. Really, whatever part of the jazz spectrum you want to explore, someone's changing people's lives with it every night, not just talking about KC, but globally. In KC you get an exceptional slice of that. If you put off your visit until the middle of next year, I hope to be able by then to welcome you and everyone else and show you exactly what I mean.
That said, you're still right. Lots of avant garde jazz hurts and deserves to be the butt of better jokes. Even the best of it often requires an audience with a sense of humor.
8/11/16, 9:13 PM
nuku said...
Despite the general opinion that its a “difficult read” “too many characters” etc., I consider it to be a deep and engaging piece of work, well worth whatever effort it takes to follow all the stories and the threads of meaning. It was after all, Tolkein’s “life work“ started in 1914 while on hospital leave during WW1, and constantly revised, reworked, (and unfinished) until his death in 1973 at age 81.
I am especially moved by the opening Ainulindalë “Creation“ section in which the demi-gods literally sing the world into existence, and Melkor— “whom Ilúvatar had given the "greatest power and knowledge" of all the Ainur — broke from the harmony of the music to develop his own song. I find this creation myth so much more interesting than the one in the Christian Bible.
Other themes explored in other stories are Fate, Power, Pride, Loyalty, Vengence, Artiface, Immortality, and much more.
By casting these tales in a mythological setting, a whole created world, and being told in a kind of “high” language Tolkien has created a classic which belongs IMHO in the canon of modern English literature.
By contrast, The Lord OF The Rings, while a wonderful tale and much more accessible to all ages of readers, doesn’t have the depth and scope (after all its all set in a small time-span in The Third Age of Middle Earth).
I note also that Frank Herbert‘s “Dune“ gained much of its power as a story because Herbert, like Tolkien, created a whole world that stands “behind“ and informs the story.
8/11/16, 9:19 PM
LewisLucanBooks said...
It's kind of like my experience with sushi. Been there. Done that. It's ok. Same with snails. Had them twice. Once they were VERY bad and once they were VERY good. But in both cases, there are just so many other things I would rather eat. Same with books. So many books, so little time. My taste (if I can call it that) is so all over the place. I suppose I could call it "catholic" (in the worldly sense) or, eclectic. But I don't expect anyone to like, or dislike the same things I do.
But, to your question. In my very small corner of the book trade, when the Silmarillion came out, we always referred to it as the Silly-marillion. Maybe we were just fatigued by all the Tolkien hoop-la, or, that it was just a little precious. "Lost" manuscript found in Tolkien's garage after he died. I think, in general, the Hobbit and the trilogy are well thought of and of great value. The Silmarillion? Not so much. But still worth a read. Lew
8/11/16, 9:38 PM
Melissa M. said...
@ Wwoofbum, If, without rancor, you can swing by a nearby art festival and ask a few artists manning their booths about what it's like to be an artist, (or merely ask them what time they set up and break down their booth) I'd recommend it.
@ Karen, A good question! And one I will answer in perhaps, too much depth.
First, I want it to be technically proficient. I am not going to care about something that looks like a five year old did it, unless it was done by a five year old that I care about. Good balance, good composition, and whatever materials are used, well used.
Second, the artist has to actively be trying to communicate something to the audience. This doesn't even have to be deep. A lowbrow velvet painting of horsies might be saying, "hey, there are things in this world that are beautiful and free." On the other hand, one of Alexander Calder's mobiles might be saying, "Hey! This balances! Cool, huh?"
Third, art is traditionally easy on the eyes. Or at least, surviving art from virtually any time period is easy on the eyes. Maybe this is because the ugly art didn't survive, but there it is. So unless the artist has a very good reason like communicating an ugly concept, or wants to be an unfettered rebel applauded by an elite group of cutting edge trend setters, (wait a minute...) it should be easy on the eyes.
When all three aspects are combined, you have a skilled artist meeting their audience halfway with things that are pleasurable to run your eyes over. It's a gesture of respect to the audience, and people need very little education to pick up on this. It gives people the opportunity to connect if they're willing.
However, a lot of art these days fails on all three counts. When you step into a gallery, and see something that looks slapped together by a five-year-old, and the most polite and meaningful message you can charitably imagine the artist saying is, "yeah... I wanted to see what a badly painted blue wall would look like and am astonished that I got paid for it." then people have no reason to give a flying rats rear end.
Regarding the nuts and bolts of style, color, subject matter, etc, that's really up to the artist, depending on where their skill and desire lies.
And I'll break this into two posts, focusing on my general reflections to Mr. Greer's original post in my second.
8/11/16, 9:51 PM
Melissa M. said...
Lowbrow junk: Lazy boy recliner (in its defense, very comfortable)
Highbrow junk: Perillo lounge chair (in its defense, it looks functional, non-agonizing, and doesn't make me want to back away whimpering like so many of its modern 'cousins')
Classic: Windsor chair (Light, strong, massively overdone, but it's not merely for nostalgia that the form's been around more than 250 years. I've seen examples that left my heart pounding for all the right reasons.)
My own story of the art world: I have a 'would you like fries with that?' degree and took some classes offering basic introductions to different mediums. Then transferring to another college, I tried to get into their sculpture program, but not having a prerequisite that was offered in my timeframe, the teacher rejected me. I wish I could buy her a beer to thank her. She spared me having to unlearn so much.
After graduating, I tried to build a client base, take commissions, and go to art shows. And discovered that an uncomfortable number of people had this glazed, misty-eyed look at this entertaining oddity prancing about and making pretty things for their pleasure. They had a want, an entertaining story, a fantasy, a feather in their cap, and I had a need. Money. When wants meet needs, it does not lead to an even relationship. So when at a fair, well-to-do people attempted to bargain me down with cutesy smiles, clearly entertained by the 'game' of haggling with a real artist at a real festival and I was estimating that after overhead I was making fast food wages at best, I started to hate people.
Don't get me wrong, there were wonderful people too, (and I pray that if they read this and recognize me, they recognize themselves as well) but even their sheer awesomeness wasn't enough to counterbalance the soul sucking aspects that they had no control over.
Thankfully I backed out before I burned out, and now sell supplies at a specialty shop to grumpy contractors. Grumpy contractors are so, so easy to deal with. These days, I gently decline commissions (sympathetically abstaining from cracking out an ear-to-ear freedom-inspired grin when I do so) but still make things for my own pleasure, and occasionally to spoil a family member or close friend. My newest work is called 'Watering Can' which I'm fashioning out of copper sheet, annealed refrigeration pipe, and lead free solder. Given the hours and materials I couldn't sell it and profit for a dime under $200, but it'll look mighty nice sitting on my bathroom toilet tank, and it'll keep my plants hydrated. If my sister asks very nicely, she can have 'Watering Can II' for Christmas. But I do miss the art world a little. So if the SF MOMA wants one too, I'll break my 'no commission' rule, and even drill holes in the bottom for a small surcharge of $9800.
8/11/16, 9:56 PM
August Johnson said...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BavRrRNvz8g
8/11/16, 9:57 PM
jcummings said...
Your sneer at elitism is welcome, and again, feels true, but that's not why early Modern artists got into abstraction. Quite the opposite. Modern artists from the early part of the twentieth century were more generally working toward creating an art that was universally understandable. The idea that you could put anyone in front of a canvas and have a universally similar gut-level reaction was very seductive and popular. Kandinsky and synesthesia, Motherwell and war, Newman and existential angst. These guys were trying not for something that was elitist and exclusionary, but rather something universal. Andy Warhol's great contribution was to show how completely compromised that vision was because of the way Modern Art got coopted by the elite class - that in fact, commercial art did a much better job of being a universally understood artistic language.
You kind of land in the same place, but there is something important in not oversimplifying the path. The path is important, because lots and lots of thing suffer this same fate - beginning with something marvelous and true and aspirational. But you know, when you're an artist - it's not like you have much capital outside the world of people and institutions that can afford to support you, so you have gallery shows, hip after-parties at loft studios, you work to curry favor with taste-makers, and essentially, your living becomes dependent on those with money, and so your work becomes part of that exclusiveness. Warhol understood that better than anyone.
As a small farmer coming from the art world, we are very aware that the food we grow costs more than the commercial products you can find in the grocery, and so our livelihood is in danger of following a similar trajectory. It's very frustrating. Our food is definitely better, and I think worth it, but not getting swooped up in elitist cycles is hard when you want to do anything artisinal.
8/11/16, 10:12 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Wolfgang, that certainly reflects my experience.
Glenn, I could get behind that. For lowbrow trash, though, I'd give special mention to those houses designed to look very slightly like the architecture of an earlier period, via fake half-timber or the like -- it's definitely that flight to comfort that distinguishes that category.
Clay, and yet it's also possible to labor heroically on a project but, due to any of a number of reasons, turn out something comprehensively awful.
Ron, thank you!
William, I figure David might as well give it a try, since he's interested in politics and willing to ride the bus.
Thomas, where would you put him?
Spanish Fly, interesting that he drew exactly the same division!
SLClaire, no, I hadn't. Fascinating!
Steven, I didn't mean to reference the specific ideological slant of Gone With The Wind -- rather, its immense popularity among the reading public during a certain era of American history, which is paralleled by the immense popularity of Tolkien during a slightly later period. Tolkien, like Mitchell, marshalled a mass of common Anglo-American cultural tropes, some old, some very new -- consider the vibe that the phrase "the Enemy" had in the immediate wake of the Second World War! -- and used them to construct a morality play favoring a particular set of cultural politics: his were monarchist, reactionary, agrarian, hierarchical, and those pervade the plot, structure, and language of the book. That was hugely popular, especially in the US, where a lot of people have highly idealized notions about monarchy et al. Just as Gone With The Wind has nothing like the immense cultural cachet it had seventy years ago, I'm far from sure that The Lord of the Rings will have even its present clout -- much less what it had in the 1960s and 1970s! -- in another thirty or forty years. But we'll just have to see.
8/11/16, 10:50 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Space Seeder, we'll get there.
Bill, excellent! Yes, and that's a crucial point: aesthetic experience is not rational. It's not intellectual. It's generally very hard to verbalize, which is one of the reasons that art criticism is an art in itself. Again, when people say "I don't know art, but I know what I like," they're pointing to this reality: "Art" as a theoretical construct currently guarded against hoi polloi behind a fence of jargon is one thing; aesthetic experience is something else again, and you don't need a degree to have it.
Howard, probably true, but I'm afraid we're stuck with the word for the time being.
Ed-M, fascinating. Compare that to the fine mosaic work Roman culture achieved at its height, and yes, certain comparisons do come to mind.
MickGSpot, well, feel free to discuss Frank Frazetta art if you like!
AAA, the phenomenon's not unique, nor did I say it was. It's simply unusually visible due to certain details of the way art is produced and marketed these days. I'm sure that Baroque painters, say, were just as convinced of the ineffable superiority of their own understanding of art, but they had to produce things that appealed to their patrons, few of whom could be convinced to accept dog barf. In fact, I suspect a general rule can be proposed here: art flourishes when it has to take the tastes of non-artists into account, and it languishes in self-referential isolation when it does not have to do so.
Avalterra, I look forward to it!
Tabatha, if it works for you, it works.
Pygmycory, fair enough. Which set of three are you going to choose for sustained reflection and study?
Adrian, interesting. All I've ever seen of Rockwell is the endlessly reproduced reproductions, and if I have to look at the one of the doctor with his stethoscope on the doll one more time, I may have to quit writing and become an ax murderer or something. Gah.
Hokiangafarm, thank you. Fortunately thinking is one of those skills that most people can pick up, run with, and do their own things with; please don't hesitate to do so!
Pygmycory, where would you put it?
8/11/16, 11:05 PM
jbucks said...
8/11/16, 11:18 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Sylvia, excellent! I've noticed that habit in many monotheists, for what it's worth -- everything has to have one overarching whatsit behind it, even when that model clearly doesn't work well.
MawKernewek, works for me -- for several years now I've considered string theory a kind of postmodernist physics, which enmacts the abstract role of being a physical theory without doing the thing that physical theories are supposed to do, i.e., produce testable hypotheses.
Sven, that's funny, in a Conanesque sort of way. Thank you. The trolls, though, seem to be staying under their bridges and grumbling to each other.
Zach, obviously I disagree. I'd start by pointing out that aesthetic experience is nonrational, and so any set of criteria you come up with is by definition an intellectual model of a nonrational phenomenon -- thus it reflects only at secondhand the phenomenon it claims to express, and focusing on criteria takes you away from focusing on the art itself. I'd point out that formal criteria inevitably lend themselves to rule lawyering -- which of course was an important part of Andy Warhol's wicked stock in trade. I'd also point out that any given proposed set of criteria will be just as contested, just as much in flux, and just as unfair as the canon it's supposed to govern -- after all, it's not being handed down by God on high the way Nestorian would suggest, it's simply the expression of the infinitely fallible taste of a particular group of people, belonging to a particular culture, at a particular era.
I suggest, rather, that the canon comes first and any intellectualizing concerning it derives from the canon, not vice versa. How does the canon emerge? By an evolutionary process to which countless individual aesthetic judgments contribute. You mention Don Quixote; that's part of the canon, and deservedly so, because millions of readers down through the centuries have delighted in it, learned from it, and treasured it. Like evolution, that process is flawed and unfair; like evolution, it results in any number of oddities -- but it's all we have to go on, because there's no other source; any attempt to legislate a canon or to impose a specific set of criteria ultimately boils down to someone's inevitably partial and flawed aesthetic judgments.
So by all means come up with whatever set of criteria reflect your own aesthetic judgments, as you've done, but I'd encourage you not to fall into the trap of mistaking the derived criteria for the experience that creates them.
Onething, er, done what?
Emmanuel, you might try some of the other buzzwords. "Abraham Lincoln" plus "critical theory" might get you somewhere.
Patricia, you will not hear a whisper of disagreement from me. Your description of the classic Mexican meal made my mouth water, and I had a very good dinner!
Hubertus, that's a very simplistic rewriting of what I said, you know.
Jeanne, that's the kind of awful Wagner staging that I referred to parenthetically a couple of Retrotopia episodes ago. As Carr noted, there's room for one and only one gargantuan ego in a Wagnerian opera production, and it's Wagner's; add a second and it just gets goofy.
Greg, truly said. It astonishes me that nobody draws the obvious conclusion...
8/11/16, 11:41 PM
goedeck said...
8/11/16, 11:48 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Bill, that's a valid point, and it relates to a different dichotomy, the one between eras of exploration and eras of performance in art. To borrow Carr's terminology, the notional space of the slasher film is pretty much full up; there isn't much you can do with a straight slasher film that hasn't already been done, or close enough. That marks the end of the era of exploration and the beginning of the era of performance. Straight-up remakes are one kind of performance, but so are homages, pastiches, inversions, and the like. The sort of creative homage you've described is a great example of a constructive response to a situation in which everybody in the theater has already seen plenty of slasher films, and that becomes part of the raw material with which the artist works.
Emmanuel, I've seen serious deconstructive analyses in lit-crit that weren't all that far from what you've just done!
Shane, excellent. Yes, by the way, that's very nearly the apotheosis of highbrow academic trash, of which there is of course an ample supply. (One of my friends, who's a university professor, tells me that when she was in grad school the running joke was to reference a paper entitled "Derrida on the Body." There was so much warhol on that subject at that time that everyone would crack up.)
Dug, duly noted. I've literally never been in the middle of the country -- west coast, bits of the east coast, bits of the north coast, that's all -- so I'll keep you in mind; by all means post something here when the coffee shop and jazz venue reopens.
August, thank you! Now there's a blast from the past...
Jcummings, I don't doubt that at all. I did meet quite a few academics, when I was first in college, who claimed to adore abstract expressionism -- but maybe that was pure chance. (I suspect that many people who now claim not to like it started saying so the moment it dropped out of fashion, and raved about it fifteen minutes beforehand.) The takeaway point I hope readers will get from this is to trust their own aesthetic experience, and not allow pretentious purveyors of dog barf to talk them into trusting someone else's eyes instead. That plus attention to a canon, it seems to me, will help lay the foundation for the kind of aesthetic culture that will be needed when the current Borborygmist scene winds down, as it will.
Jbucks, thank you. I would like to have that quote fashioned into the business end of a branding iron so it can be applied to some very tender tissues.
8/12/16, 12:02 AM
Hubertus Hauger said...
So such a hearth of science in my view becomes more speculative augures. A scientific priesthood to be served in their high temples with our giving’s brought to them so they can continue their worship.
8/12/16, 12:11 AM
Morgenfrue said...
In general it was difficult to find places with honest, plain food in a setting with real furniture in which to eat, as opposed to furniture signifiers. For some reason it was easier in small towns.
8/12/16, 4:00 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
I look forward to seeing that quote used in your writing! :-)!
Hi onething,
Maybe, it is as good a suggestion as any other that I've heard.
Cheers
Chris
8/12/16, 4:16 AM
anioush said...
8/12/16, 5:12 AM
Sébastien Louchart said...
That's great news! Thanks!
8/12/16, 5:26 AM
Patricia Mathews said...
For an accessible and thought-provoking fictional view of ancient Greece from dawn to dusk, the three Mary Renault novels in my permanent collection. THE PRAISE SINGER (Simonides of Keos. "Go tell the Spartans, passers-by, that here, obedient to our word, we lie.") which STAR'S REACH reminds me of a bit. Beginnings of the Archaic Renaissance. THE LAST OF THE WINE - the great age of Socrates and Plato; Athens' short-lived empire self-destructs. And MASK OF APOLLO, in which, at the end, we meet a 14-year-old Macedonian prince and his lover, who will shake the world. Caveat: Renault has a crush on Alexander the Great, or why the only Alexander - period novel I kept was THE PERSIAN BOY. As told by said boy in later life; today he'd be considered Alexander's widow, and proud of it. Interesting. for the Persian viewpoint.
8/12/16, 5:34 AM
KKalbert said...
As a recovering MFA, I am loving this conversation, and I have another story about monkey art, to follow up a line of thought started by Alan S. Christenson:
Desmond Morris, a primatologist, wrote a book about apes making art, The Biology of Art, in 1963, at the height of the boom in Abstract Expressionist painting. People who took their sketchbooks to the zoo to draw the animals noticed that the chimps and gorillas seemed extremely interested in getting their hands on the art supplies. Morris looked into this, and ended up observing the artist careers of a number of individual apes. They did indeed make drawings and paintings, which had affinities to the current fashions in the art galleries of the moment.
Initially, the apes were avid to make their “art;” it was obviously a form of play that engaged them very deeply. They were fascinated by the process of making marks on paper and looking at the result. They had a clear sense of when a work was finished or not; they resented having a work taken out of their hands before they felt it was done; and they also resented being asked to continue working on something after they had decided it was finished. A development in their work could be observed, as they became familiar with the process.
As soon as the experimenters started rewarding the apes with food, to encourage them to produce artwork [maybe the market for it had become evident!], the apes began to dash off quick and desultory “works” in order to get the banana as quickly as possible. Eventually they all became disgusted, lost their interest in the activity, and refused to do it anymore.
I think this has a direct relevance to the art world in human civilization!
8/12/16, 6:00 AM
Phil Harris said...
It seems I was changed by some images and texts and theatre. I remember the time I saw for real from an English shopping arcade ‘Les Parapluies’ live on Main Street. The artist had given me the eyes to have the experience for myself. Umbrellas might be Art? - Hard to believe! Smile. And I saw an indoor version of Le Déjeuner. As it happens this was in a pub in Brighton on the English south coast.
And I remember almost running from the National Gallery in London after perhaps my first visit because I wanted to paint like some of the works I had seen. These are still friends of mine.
I once saw from marks on a grey stone, I think in the Beaverbrook museum in Fredericton NB, a person coming towards me out of thick snow. I am not well enough informed by personal experience, however, to properly absorb cave paintings, but I get hints.
I had the curious experience while acting in a Shakespeare play when I was 16 or 17 to find that I had internalised the whole text not merely my own brief part. Probably the same year I was lucky enough to see Pather Panchali a 1955 Indian Bengali-language drama film directed by Satyajit Ray. The sub-titles did not detract. Running through scenes from the film that night while going to sleep I could hear again the woman speaking and she was speaking in English.
One day I might go to Dublin and stand where Yeats stood in old age in front of the friends of his youth.
best
Phil H
8/12/16, 6:35 AM
Mean Mr Mustard said...
Still monitoring catabolic collapse in Venezuela. But this might not be possible for much longer, as their already woeful internet is failing. Comments from there (while still possible) mirror past discussions here.
"(he)...said that the UN made Internet access a human right".
"And maybe, without internet or cable, Venezuelan society will be able to get out of facebook and twitter and finally see its reality."
http://www.caracaschronicles.com/2016/08/11/shortage-mobile-data/#comments
cheers
Mustard
8/12/16, 6:42 AM
Esn said...
The first one I'd start with is "Quadrivium" by Wooden Books, which covers number, 2D & 3D spatial geometry, music and cosmology, and the links between all of those. It is a beautiful book packed with good information (and a great appendix). I will note that of the two parts on music, the first one is more about the fundamental reality, while the second is more about the way music theory is taught in Western academies, and may be less useful (in particular, it sticks to the 12 equally-tempered piano notes). The book doesn't cover everything there is (it leans on the Greek & Western traditions), but it has great diagrams and is a great introduction.
Next, a website:
Sacred Geometry, "Proportion in Musical Scales"
It starts simple enough, but gets more complex. This article relies heavily on Maria Renold's book "Intervals, Scales, Tones and the Concert Pitch c = 128 Hz" (a good book, but definitely for the dedicated knowledge-seeker), which itself relies heavily on Kathleen Schlesinger's 1939 book "The Greek Aulos".
To hear how these different proportions sound, I recommend using the Online Terpstra Keyboard. E.g., here are my settings for the Ancient Greek Aulos modes found by Schlesinger.
From a comment I left at the "Online Terpstra" link:
---
"Apparently, there were two competing tuning systems in Ancient Greece. The one most familiar to us is the “Pythagorean”, used by lyre players, and the basis of medieval European music theory. It was based on perfect fifths [this one is described in "Quadrivium"]. A rather different one was used by aulos players, which was forgotten in Western Europe but apparently survived in many other cultures. It was based on undertones (the Greek aulos had equidistant fingering holes).
There were 7 possible modes, depending on which low note you start with, moving up. Modes can contain either the 8/14 or 8/15 degree, but not both. If your mode starts on:
-8/8 or 8/9, you must skip 8/14 as you move up
-8/14, you must skip 8/15 as you move up
-any other note, you can choose EITHER 8/14 or 8/15 to skip as you move up
-(a scale cannot begin on 8/15)
The modes are associated with celestial objects, from bottom to top:
8/8 = Saturn (Hypodorian)
8/9 = Jupiter (Hypophrygian)
8/10 = Mars (Hypolydian)
8/11 = Sun (Dorian)
8/12 = Venus (Phrygian)
8/13 = Mercury (Lydian)
8/14 = Moon (Mixolydian)
(this is the also the order of how fast these celestial objects appear to move in the night sky. See p. 304 in “Quadrivium” by Wooden Books)
The Sun mode was most common. The link above has the fundamental 8/8 tuned at 176*4=704, which allows the 1st note of the Sun mode (8/11) to be tuned at 128Hz (a common tuning back then).
Note that the Sun mode (particularly if you use 8/14 instead of 8/15) sounds like the whole tone scale of Debussy, etc. The Saturn mode sounds like the scales used in a lot of Middle Eastern music. The Jupiter mode sounds like the Misheberakh/Hungarian/Ukrainian Dorian scales.
(cont...)
8/12/16, 6:43 AM
Shane W said...
Of course, then I come on over here and encounter magic--changing consciousness in accordance with the will, and it does seem so much more appealing than the psychology department at the university I attended :)
8/12/16, 7:01 AM
Esn said...
Other books:
Joseph Yasser's "The Theory of Evolving Tonality", which has many friendly diagrams, an interesting overview of historical musical evolutionary stages (great histories of Chinese, Thai & Celtic music), and a bold "theory of everything" which may not be right, but is an impressive attempt.
"Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale" by William A. Sethares, which, among other things, goes in detail into Bali gamelan tunings (very different from Western), and explains how you can make even octaves sound dissonant with particular timbres!
"The Spiritual Basis of Musical Harmony" by Graham H. Jackson, which I've just started reading. So far, it seems wide-ranging and thought-provoking, though perhaps over-ambitious.
"Musical Instrument Design" by Bart Hopkin. This book is wide-ranging and practical, and gives great (and often ingenious) tips for making your own musical instruments of many types with simple tools. Doing something yourself is the best way to understand sound.
Also, for those who want to delve really deeply into the subject: What Music Really Is by Bo Constantinsen (I don't know who this guy is, but he's dedicated).
Overall, "Quadrivium" is the one to start with. You can read part of it by going here and clicking on the "Harmonograph" book.
8/12/16, 7:07 AM
Unknown said...
Apparently you're not the only one. This was one of the results when I was educating myself about him.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-thrift-shop-jackson-pollock-masterpiece/
8/12/16, 7:33 AM
Howard Skillington said...
Undertaking a thoroughgoing Schenkerian analysis of a Beethoven symphony, for example, would be to having a rewarding listening experience, as conducting an archeological dig would be to apprehending the satisfying proportions of the Parthenon.
8/12/16, 7:36 AM
nrgmiserncaz said...
My son (aged 22) recently published his first poem. I read it excitedly but, sadly, I have no idea what it means or what he's trying to say. In fact, I can offer this assessment without guilt - I do not believe ANYONE has any idea what it means. There are lots of words but it's such a tangled mess that I don't know what to say to him. So far my comments have be to congratulate him...
8/12/16, 7:39 AM
Seth said...
While you might not need an "Academy" for a "Canon", the two ideas DO go together. The point is that a canon has to be socially constructed. The only difference between JMG's ideal canon and actually existing ones is whose opinion counts. JMG is asking for a more democratic/inclusive role for popular taste in defining a canon. But he can't get out of the circularity involved in matters of taste. There isn't an objectively True set of tastes, only what "we" can agree on. Or "what you can get away with" in Warhol's case.
8/12/16, 8:10 AM
Peter VE said...
@Jeanne Labonte: that Met version of the Ring Cycle was the subject of a fawning profile on PBS several years ago. The entire TV show was about the integrity of the artistic vision, and how difficult it was to build that rippling wall/horse/piano key thingy, done in a tone of reverence. No innocent children there to point out that the Valkyries look extremely silly rocking to and fro and finally sliding down the whatever-those-things-are To me they look like an abstract of a rocking horse, not exactly the image of fear the Valkyrie should evoke. The singing was tremendous, however, and I pity the poor singers forced to endure the director's “vision”.
8/12/16, 8:31 AM
Esn said...
You should know that there is a countervailing view: that the elite art of any nation has tended to merely be a more refined version of that nation's existing folk art. For example, see Roots of the Classical: The Popular Origins of Western Music by Peter Van der Merwe. Quoting from the abstract: "From the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, Western ‘art’ music has grown out of, and drawn on, popular models. [...] Again and again simple patterns have been refined and elaborated, eventually to the point of decadence, whereupon the search begins anew for further raw folk-stuff."
This has also been the prevailing view in Russian musicology (and other fields) from the late 19th century onwards (see footnote 3 on pp. 171-172 of my thesis)
I also think that you're overlooking the huge role that technology plays in the development of new art. At least in music. Simply put: when a new musical instrument is invented, new artistic forms follow. Look at the invention of the synthesizer in the last century and what that led to, the sequencer (videogame music), the vocoder (past decade). In an earlier era, the 19th century arrival of the harmonica greatly changed American folk music. The invention of valved brass instruments greatly changed military music. In Russia, the invention of the accordion in the early 1820s-1830s, with its standardized chords and single-line melody, in due time changed the dominant character and style of Russian folk music, replacing many traits of older traditions that used older musical instruments that now found themselves on the sidelines. Kathleen Schlesinger notes in "The Greek Aulos" how the physical characteristics of the double and single reed instruments used by Egyptians and Greeks were responsible for the scales they used in their music. For example, she believes that when double-reeds were used, an octave used two different tetrachords (four-note groups) based on the undertone series, but the switch from double to single reeds allowed any tetrachord to be repeated at the 3:2 interval above the lowest note by biting the reed and making the instrument go higher. This physical characteristic of the instruments led, in due time, to the structure of the Church modes and our major scale. Another example: equal-tempered tuning of pianos allowed jazz progressions through minor thirds (which would have sounded very ugly before), at the same time as older keyboard music (using different tunings) became less attractive.
I will also note, from personal experience as a composer: when I pick up a new instrument and try to create some new melody on it, the melodies that come naturally to different instruments vary considerably.
So, if you don't like the dominant music of your era - inventing a new popular instrument that easily plays the type of music you do like would be the quickest way to change things!
8/12/16, 8:31 AM
Esn said...
Most artists today have other sources for their primary income. Just as it's always been. Only the best, luckiest and most persistent survive on their art alone, only a few of those ever get rich or become part of "popular culture", and only a few are supported primarily by the elites. Do you actually know any professional and part-time artists? I also don't get where you're coming from, saying that art (for example, writing novels, as JMG here does) isn't work. If a welder, or a stockbroker, or a counselor, enjoys his work and does it well, does he cease to be a working man?
8/12/16, 8:37 AM
Peter VE said...
The current assignment falls right into an essay I have been contemplating for some time, on three public sculptures installed at Brown University. They don't exactly fit into your categories, but one can be both high and low brow.
The classic is the easiest: a copy of the statue of Marcus Aurelius (http://250.brown.edu/marcus-aurelius-statue). The original was on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, and served as an example of virtu in the ruler, far more honored in the absence through the centuries. When erected in 1908, I imagine a Brown education included reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. More importantly, I assume the statue was remind the students that they were being educated as the ruling class of the new Empire. This was also at a time when public sculpture still had a language which was understood by most people, a language which went back nearly three millennia.
The highbrow is next: the Slavery Memorial, by Martin Puryear (https://www.brown.edu/about/public-art/index.php?q=martin-puryear-slavery-memorial). It was installed after Brown went through a public self flagellation over the source of the wealth which caused the former Rhode Island College to change it's name to honor a major donor. The sculpture is a massive ball and chain, the ball mostly buried, and the chain cut through. The surfaces are rusted steel, except a highly polished surface where the chain is cut through. The message is obvious: “We have faced up to our past sins, and we erect this memorial to ensure we never sin again.” There is an additional message in the severed chain: Brown has freed itself from the sins of the past, and can now go forth unburdened into the future. I don't think Brown wants to recognize that second message.
The last is definitely in the Warhol canon: the Untitled (Lamp/Bear) by Urs Fischer (http://www.providencejournal.com/storyimage/PJ/20160703/NEWS/160709801/AR/0/AR-160709801.jpg&MaxW=650). It is on loan for 5 years from a hedge fund manager who also was suckered into buying Damien Hirst's shark in formaldehyde. The 20' high blue plush bear (actually bronze) is leaning against a desk lamp which slices through its head. The Brown Committee on Public Art states: 'Untitled (Lamp/Bear) is from a series of works that explore what the artist calls “the inner mechanics of duality.” '. My sense is that in the duality of the artist's intentions and the purchaser's wallet, the artist will find the wallet to plunder. The only message I get from the sculpture is that study will destroy your childhood.
On a final note, the Brown Committee on Public Art doesn't give any explanation for any sculpture on the campus installed earlier than a Henry Moore sculpture from 1963.
8/12/16, 8:58 AM
Ahavah said...
Looking around my office my stuff on the walls runs the gamut from a couple of prints that would fall into the motivational poster category, calendars cut up and the artwork side framed (great way to get prints of stuff you could never afford in real life...), some nicer things we got at the Woodland Arts Fair (Lexington) and the St James Art Fair (Louisville) which are both juried, a few pieces by local artists. The items that I have that are highbrow-ish I only got by accident, so to speak. The wife of one well known local photographer was a colleague of mine on the board of a non-profit. The other, Margorie Guyon (national and international recognition) gave me a large oil on canvas piece and several small prints at ridiculously low prices because I set up her bookkeeping for her and kept it straight for a couple of years.
I pick things because I like the colors, basically. That's it.
In the low brow arena: My boys enjoyed a steady diet of Mel Brooks, Monty Python and Weird Al growing up...which I don't think was a disservice at all. I think it gave them a good foundation, believe it or not. Of course, regarding music they also listened to a lot of Vivaldi, Handel et al, Celtic & folk, movie soundtracks, "new age" instrumentals, and ethnic music of all sorts from around tbe globe - especially middle eastern / Sephardic, and yes, klezmer.
They saw all the classic and popular sci-fi and fantasy movies, and we have an extensive library of classic children's books and adult non-fiction (Economics especially).
Speaking of soundtracks, go to Pandora online and search for "skyrim elder scrolls" and what you will get is a channel that plays movie soundtracks and video game theme music that is as good if not better than lots of the stuff played by modern composers at the local universities. It pays everything from kitchy Raiders if the Lost Ark and Legend of Zelda to cinematic Lord of the Rings type works. If you like techno music, try the Tron channel or the Daft Punk channel, and you'll hear things like classically trained violinist Lindsay Sterling playing with an electronica band... Nowhere near high brow but great to listen to while cleaning house. When I need something soothing so as not to consider bludgeoning clients who brings me a big mess to fix, Secret Garden or Enya works great. To hear my favorite soundtrack piece at the moment, go to https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xhJTMeytTWw
None of this other than the classical music is high brow of course. The Vivaldi channel plays Baroque era music of all sorts, and that is one of my favorite channels. I have numerous CDs as well for when the internet gets too expensive. I do wonder what will happen to music in general - the younger generation won't pay for it or buy CDs anymore. Not even cover charges at local pubs, as a friend of mine in a local band told me. And the bar owners don't want to pay the bands any reasonable fees, either. It does cost money to buy instruments, and time to come music and practice. Local bands are having a hard time here. The one big local venue, Thursday Night Live, only plays bands that do covers of popular music. They can mix in a few original pieces, but they have to be the same style as the covers. There is no venue, really, for non-rock/pop music at all except an Irish pub that sometimes played Celtic. The isn't even a jazz bar anymore! Even the local opera house had succumbed to showing mostly modern productions, not classics or anything in the classical style. It's a wasteland out here.
8/12/16, 9:17 AM
Karen said...
I know you are busy and you intended it as a throw away comment, but if for instance, you had added just a couple of more words of description as shown in parentheses-
“…with the kind of (uninspired, vacuous) abstract art on the walls that (often)looks like an overenthusiastic dog gobbled an artist’s paint tubes and then threw up…"
Something like that, and I would have sent you a comment thanking you for pointing out that the visual arts are also running out of notional space.
The serious artists I know are not trying to scam anyone, even those with MFAs, they are trying to capture that thing that resides in the ether one calls spirit, in whatever way they can. Most don’t succeed, and they know it.
It is not my intent to channel the dialogue in a particular direction. I’m not looking for instructions on how to make my art. I am just trying to lay out some basic points of departure to encourage any dialogue. Of course it isn’t a new discussion at large, but it is in this forum which has a unique perspective. That is what I’m going for. I actually have argued about art from your side of the fence far more often than you might expect.
Having said all this, I am thrilled that so many people are thinking about art, and I have an assignment for your “to do” pile. How about developing the Retrotopian canon for the performing, visual and literary arts? If it is a good idea for technology, it is a good idea for the arts.
As for why this topic is important in an important election year… Ars long, vita brevis. If Trump wins, we likely will be seeing 50 foot billboards depicting him as a latter day Il Duce. If Clinton wins, we’ll probably see more public funded dreck. In totalitarian regimes, the thinkers – artists, academics, scientists often suffer horribly, if their explorations runs afoul of the government’s agenda.
8/12/16, 9:19 AM
Jonathan Meijer said...
From my experience in politics, people are most available on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at about 7 pm, though I guess you can catch them earlier if you hold a dinner meeting downtown. I personally have limited availability for the next little while, so if you contact me via the means listed on my blog which shares my name, we can discuss the first meeting and publish it a week or two ahead.
(Many thanks to JMG for allowing us his comment platform to organize local green wizards!)
8/12/16, 9:35 AM
Hammer said...
But for some reason I was annoyed at that comment by the character, even though I don't particularly like that kind of 'modern' artwork. Maybe it's a product of the mindset of progress, and I'll agree with the character once all the brushed metal is gone and replaced by more simple decorations.
8/12/16, 10:02 AM
pg said...
8/12/16, 10:30 AM
Lynford1933 said...
8/12/16, 10:34 AM
Varun Bhaskar said...
I don't know if you've ever heard anyone say "it expands my mind," after viewing a dog barf level of art, but I've met an incredible number of people who use that tired old phrase. It really seems like the majority are unwilling to actually express their dislike for fear of becoming outcasts. We're a culture of pansies.
Regards,
Varun
8/12/16, 10:46 AM
zach bender said...
and that is, with whom is the artist trying to communicate? if only to the gatekeepers, then i would certainly agree the resulting work is likely to be of little interest except to academics.
which maybe brings us full circle to your response to my earlier comment.
8/12/16, 10:49 AM
LewisLucanBooks said...
"For all the ups and downs of culture and the creative class, an old classical idea, dressed in different vestments each century, persisted: that drama, poetry, music, and art were not just a way to pass the time, or advertise one's might, but a path to truth and enlightenment. At its best, this was what the middlebrow consensus promised. Middlebrow said that culture was accessible to a wide strata of society, that people needed some but not much training to appreciate it, that there was a canon worth knowing, that art was not the same as entertainment, that the study of the liberal arts deepens you, and that those who make, assess, and disseminate the arts were somehow valuable for our society regardless of their impact on the GDP. Today, every one of those statements goes against our post-industrial, technocratic grain."
Another book worth looking at for anyone in a "creative" position, budding or established, is JoAnneh Nagler's "How to Be an Artist Without Losing Your Mind, Your Shirt, or Your Creative Compass: A Practical Guide." (2016).
And, off topic, but you're always saying how reasonable the real estate prices are in your town (Cumberland, Maryland?). Well, I finally got around to taking a look. Oh, my gosh. Wonderful older homes for $20,000 or less. Property taxes of $25 or less? How do they do that? If I were younger and not as well established .... It looks like an ideal place to live, especially if you have some kind of independent source of income. Lew
8/12/16, 11:54 AM
DaShui said...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POiN-jptBbg
Its like a live high-fi stereophonic double album of the Archdruid Report and the Well of Gal.
Turn it up to 11!
8/12/16, 12:23 PM
unfrozencavemanguitarplayer said...
http://evonomics.com/what-unpopular-music-can-teach-us-about-the-future-of-economics/
As a musician myself, I kind of agree with the "hothouse" idea proposed here regarding the merits of highbrow art, i.e. the freedom to experiment unconstrained by popular tastes. Hoping you'll read it and share your thoughts.
8/12/16, 12:38 PM
pygmycory said...
That means that if you like writing fanfiction, it is a magnificent place to play. That's probably a large part of why it refuses to let go of my brain.
8/12/16, 12:43 PM
pygmycory said...
For the low-brow junk: playing various christmas medleys for band every year for six years running is ENOUGH.
And I will never forget the horrors of that particular Fred Stride monstrosity, which was written for the North Vancouver Youth Band's 60th anniversary. It was performed exactly once. It's a shame it was quite so bad, since his arrangements are usually fairly inoffensive and pedestrian. I'd stick most of those in the low-brow junk category, since they are very forgettable.
8/12/16, 12:53 PM
Space Seeder said...
To be an "artist," you must be given money for what you produce, else you would be out with the other schmucks, shovelling...manure...in order to make money and have no time for making "art."
However, I acknowledge that you later said this...
There was a time (long ago) when art was produced by individuals who felt a compulsion to spend their leisure time (time not required for the exercise of labor needed to extract the resources necessary to meet their needs) decorating their cave walls or carving their mastodon tusks with something that felt significant to them.
...which appears to be about a long gone time. I'm talking about the present, as you appeared to be in the comment I responded to. Do I misunderstand? If so, how?
Hubertus: Do dark matter and dark energy have the whiff of epicycles to you?
Shane W: In your opinion, is "borderline personality disorder" a real thing that can be fixed, or just a label for miscellaneous oddball behavior?
Unknown: I read the article you linked to. I really like that truck driver! My kind of people! You, I bet if some hoity-toity art world borehole had brought that thing in for appraisal, it would have been judged to be a Pollock.
(borehole, if the usage hasn't been coined already, is meant to be part of the set that includes "frack" and "shale")
Peter VE: Your comment about Hitler being a turgid and listless writer reminds me of a bit on "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" (which is sort of like 'The Onion News') about how they were being sued because they'd reported that Hitler had halitosis, and this irreparably ruined his reputation.
8/12/16, 1:05 PM
Ed-M said...
Yes, I have compared the two. The last of the best seemed to have been made in the 3rd Century. To the "cubist" representation, those were truly exquisite. But modern day art-critics would call the "cubist" version to be ex-qius-ite!
Now I have my own list of examples of highbrow rubbish, classic or canon, and lowbrow trash.
Sculpture:
Highbrow: Jala and Dinos Chapman, Great Deeds Against the Dead which trashes Goya's Heroic Feat! With Dead Men! utterly, by using department store dummies to represent his masterwork in three dimensions. And it has a sequel, which is completely gross.
Classic: Greek, Roman, Renaissance, baroque, Neoclassical and Victorian sculpture. Examples are: Julius Caesar, 1st C. bce, Michaelangelo's David, Donatello's David, etc.
Lowbrow: Those cheap plaster or plastic statuary that can only be found in mom-and-pop Italian restaurants (the good kind, not the pizza joints) in working class neighborhoods. Also the god-awful dreck in Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum and the like, and also in Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas. Are we sure it isn't TRUMP Caesar's palace???
Domestic Architecture:
Highbrow: Philip Johnston's glass house in Connecticut.
Classic: Monticello, Mt. Vernon, Beacon Hill town houses.
Lowbrow: Split-entry or raised ranch homes (what another commenter called split-level ranch houses), US urban row-houses built for the lower classes in the 19th Century and are now falling into ruin.
Town Planning:
Highbrow: Le Corbusier's Radiant City, Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City.
Classic: Welwyn Garden City, colonial Savannah, colonial Philadelphia, Washington DC, some New Urbanist towns that have thrived like Seaside, FL.
Lowbrow: The endless 19th C. US city grid, typical subdivisions with "ant trails" EVERYWHERE!
Pop Art
Highbrow: Richard Hamilton, Just What Is It That Makes Today's Houses So Different, So Appealing? It's a collage, really, from the 1950s but it hearalded the Pop Art that was to come in the '60s by its use of imagery from lowbrow pop culture.
Classic: Roy Lichtenstein, Crying Girl. It was Roy's work that essentially defined Pop Art.
Lowbrow: Early newspaper comics, comicbooks (before they became graphic novels!)
Propaganda/Advertising:
Highbrow: Wang Guangyi (Harbin 1957) Great Criticism - Coca Cola (green). Combines the iconic logo with Socialist Realism, ex., Soviet icons holding Mao's little book.
Classic: The Coca-Cola logo itself. 'Nuff said.
Lowbrow: Early Coca-Cola advertising. One ad features a female in a bar, holding a glass of coke aloft, whilst a hand with the cheque appears from beyond the left edge of the panel. Ghastly and poorly executed!
Phew!
8/12/16, 1:13 PM
Renaissance Man said...
I bathe in the masterworks of the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, & early 20th Centuries and then, after about 1910, most art degenerates into something visually ugly. Apparently wealth is no immunity from gullibility.
I decided when I was very young that modern art was crap and nothing since, not being 'educated', nor being exposed to lots of it, nor yet having it 'explained' to me, has caused me to change my opinion. Stephen Pinker's book "The Blank Slate" explained how this doctrine produced, amongst many other aspects of late 20th Century life, "...art without form or beauty, and architecture without decoration or human scale..."
I had some glee a couple of years back when it was revealed that the Tate and most modern galleries that pushed this crap into the world were secretly funded through proxies by the CIA as anti-soviet propaganda to demonstrate how 'free' we were in the west versus the 'controlled' (i.e. tasteful) art behind the iron curtain. That's where the money came from to pay outrageous sums for piles of tires in a public square. I giggled a lot over that.
Books and writers like Tom Wolfe's "The Painted Word" helped me conceive of why I appreciate the art and formulated my own, idiosyncratic idea of what qualifies as art.
Art requires three things: first, it requires knowledge - knowledge of the materials and medium should be evident in the work, what works, what produces a desired effect. Second, it requires discipline - the discipline to learn the craft, to learn to use the tools, to develop ability evident in the skillful use of the tools. As you say, anyone can throw a sponge of paint at a canvas and produce a splatter, but to apply paint with a brush to produce a particular effect requires the discipline and patience to learn how to do it well. Third, art requires some imagination and this is where the whole art-theory business gets bogged down and sinks into the morass of self-delusion that characterizes modern painting - smears of colour or paint-by-numbers canvases or 'found objects' glued to an old board - as "art." Just because it is imaginative does not make it art, art requires evidence of the other two pieces of the tripod.
8/12/16, 1:56 PM
Eric S. said...
8/12/16, 2:21 PM
Eric S. said...
One thing that’s giving me some difficulty with this week’s piece is a certain difficulty I’m having with labeling anything short of the tackiest of kitsch on one end, or well… something like this: (http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thisisthat/new-york-artist-creates-art-that-is-invisible-and-collectors-are-paying-millions-1.2847219), as trash.
I think in that sphere, the concept of notional space takes on a very important role in the trashy art discussion. Going back to the discussion on Wagner in Retrotopia a few weeks ago, you had Carr expressing the point of view that one of the great things about Wagner was that he experimented and pushed boundaries while there were still boundaries to push, and it worked. The more notional space gets filled within a cultural form, meanwhile, the more closely the likelihood of achieving success through experimentation resembles the likelihood of winning the lottery, so that you eventually go over the top into the sort of self-referential nonsense that we’re discussing: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG16ZjxJTMw.)
However, there’s a lot of grey space in the middle where there’s some room for personal taste (to continue on the opera thread, for instance, I’ve noticed that Phillip Glass is a polarizing figure with some people liking his work and others seeing it as falling well into the pretentious trash category). Meanwhile, I’m under the impression that within the fantasy genre, you’d probably classify Harry Potter as lowbrow trash, while other people see it as solid popular literature, and still others may regard it as a potential future classic that may one day stand alongside the Oz books. My impression is that most modern literature falls into this category, divided between the high art and the popular entertainments of a culture.
Within that, though, there’s a wide grey area between kitsch and Warhol, a lot of that trash may fall within that realm of on one hand entertainment that might never be high art, and might even be trashy to some people, but that’s still solid entertaining reading, and on the other hand a lot of work that might not be highbrow trash, but might nonetheless be something of an acquired taste that looks an awful lot like highbrow trash who those who aren’t interested. And the classics, and canon of a culture come out of both realms, mostly decided by the process of cultural selection that we call legacy. Perhaps I’m still thinking about the same sort of thing but just having something that is giving me a knee-jerk visceral reaction of calling anything trash unless it’s infamously bad, or falls into the categories of smut or hate speech. Final thought: it seems to me that the low-brow clichés also touch onto the level of consciousness that folklore comes out of, and is very close to the soul of the culture. Which means that it’s really the low-brow trash that sows the seeds of the future.
Anyway, as for my homework reading (I’m not sure I can bring myself to calling anything trash, but I will go with generic lowbrow pop literature, and high brow experimental literature), I think I’ll go with the sword and sorcery fantasy genre. My three books will be:
A Terry Brooks Shannara novel as my low brow
A Michael Moorcock Elric novel as my high brow
And Well at Worlds End, by William Morris as my classic.
I actually haven’t read any of those, despite one being the classic that kicked off fantasy literature as a genre, one being the series that created the generic pop fantasy genre (read: low brow trash), and one being the series that shook up generic fantasy fiction and kicked it in an experimental direction from the author who helped kick off the New Wave movement (read: high brow trash).
8/12/16, 2:26 PM
Jason Fligger said...
8/12/16, 2:27 PM
Jason Fligger said...
8/12/16, 2:34 PM
Jason Fligger said...
8/12/16, 2:35 PM
Candace said...
http://www.tampabay.com/things-to-do/visualarts/civil-rights-icon-ruby-bridges-hall-discusses-norman-rockwells-famous/2226397
We lived in Arkansas in the late 60's. Both of my parents would cry whenever they saw this work by Rockwell
8/12/16, 3:05 PM
zach bender said...
i think it is a mistake to class vonnegut as a science fiction writer. that is just a trope he was using. over time he did repeat himself, and i stopped reading, but some of his early work is quite worthwhile, if you are not coming at it with those particular expectations.
i know you have already been discouraged twice, and actually i might have recommended slaughterhouse five or breakfast of champions, both of which are still on my shelf after all these years.
but let me suggest that his best work may have been mother night and cat's cradle. while cat's cradle does employ some of the crazier antics that might have gotten in the way of your enjoying slaughterhouse five, mother night is essentially realistic. both are oblique meditations on some of the core issues afflicting humanity, but i would have said that about slaughterhouse five.
8/12/16, 4:18 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Cherokee, all in due time! ;-)
Anioush, one litmus test for highbrow trash in SF is whether the author, having written a science fiction novel (that is, a novel set in the future, in which the consequences of science and technology are central to the story), insists at the top of his or her lungs that it's not science fiction, and how dare you call it that. I seem to recall that Lessing did this with her whole Canopus in Argos series. Mind you, she also had one of them turned into a Philip Glass opera, which could be taken as another touchstone!
Sebastien, you're most welcome. It's in the works.
Patricia, I'll keep that in mind. I haven't tackled Renauit yet, and I probably should.
KKalbert, hmm! Yes, that does make sense, doesn't it?
Phil, the experiences are what it's all about. Opinions, analyses, criticism, categories -- that's all secondary, and should not be allowed to get in the way of the direct experience.
Mustard, that's what happens when you prop up a society with vast cash inflows from a nonrenewable resource. Saudi Arabia may get to witness similar scenes shortly.
Esn, thank you! I can second the recommendation of Quadrivium -- the little book on sacred geometry included in it, Sacred Geometry by Miranda Lundy, is the first thing I recommend to anyone interested in that art. I wonder if you've considered writing a good general book for the nonspecialist on proportion and the like in music -- place it with the right small-to-middling publisher, and I think it could do very well indeed.
Shane, it was a running joke when I was in college that everybody in the psych program desperately needed a shrink, and the professors needed straitjackets and a padded cell.
Unknown, funny. I really would like to see a double-blind controlled study to see if the experts really can tell a Pollock from a dropcloth when they don't know which is which. I have my suspicions...
Howard, so noted and thank you.
Nrgmiserncaz, where would you put it?
Peter, fair enough. Other than that, did you learn anything from the experience? As for the art analysis -- nicely done.
Ahavah, I've heard from a number of young people about paying for music. Some of them have a bad case of entitlement, and think that everything should be free because they want it. On the other hand, I've also had kids talk about how empty today's music is in comparison with that of previous decades -- "Why can't we have music as good as you did when you were growing up?" is something I've heard more than once. Here in Cumberland, the bands that draw the crowds are tribute bands. I see this as one more sign that the notional space is full up and performance, not exploration, is now the order of the day.
8/12/16, 4:37 PM
zach bender said...
in fairness to wwoof, what s/he said was "art as it is currently conceived."
which i understood to mean, as an aesthetic pursuit divorced from other human activity, serving an "art" market, etc.
in responding, you tore out the qualifier.
8/12/16, 4:40 PM
onething said...
"For example, when we see "purple mountains majesty", they are reflecting our own inner majesty, beauty, tranquility, etc. Speaking only for myself (and what frightens me) is the other side of this double-edged sword rears its ugly head when I must see/hear Harridan MacBeth, the current red team nominee, and find despicable her avarice, mendacity, malevolence, etc, meaning her faults are reflecting my own deeply buried & sublimated ID the Beast."
To be sure the concept of projection is fundamentally important, but it cannot possibly follow that anytime anyone anywhere for any reason calls a spade a spade, that it is naught but a projection. If so, it would mean that we are in a hopeless morass and can never improve, that no one ever can see things accurately and in fact that if we do not ourselves possess a fault we will therefore be blind to it, for if we see it we possess it. Thus a truly honest person can not admit that he abhors being robbed, for it just means he is deeply a robber himself, etc., etc.
8/12/16, 4:59 PM
John Michael Greer said...
With regard to a Retrotopian canon, you're right that I should develop that further in the direction of arts; I've focused on technology and the habits of everyday life, with a fair amount of attention to architecture and a nod or two to music. As I revise the posts into a book, I can certainly include more hints about the visual arts -- there will no doubt be paintings hanging on a variety of walls in Toledo and elsewhere, and those could unquestionably be used to sharpen the point of the book. Glancing back at the state of art in the Atlantic Republic might also be useful. You doubtless know the current art scene better than I do; can you suggest some soulless, ugly corporate art that would make a good starting point for the sort of thing I did with the Atlantic Republic Capitol?
Finally, I agree entirely that an election year is the best possible time to pay attention to things other than the political spasms du jour. Perspective is crucial, and art's a good way to get it.
Hammer, explore your annoyance. You may learn something from it.
Lynford, the human mind functions by means of simplification, reducing the complex curves of existence to a set of lines simple enough we can understand them. Them's the breaks. (Of course it's also relevant that these weekly posts are essays rather than books...)
Varun, no argument there. I think a lot of people use it because it allows them to avoid being sneered at.
Zach, and as long as criteria like yours are meant as a response to aesthetic experience rather than a replacement for it, I have no objection at all.
Lewis, I'll definitely get that book. As to how Cumberland has real estate prices so low, simple: it's got half the people it did in 1970, and supply and demand took it from there. The one caution I offer people who are thinking of moving here, or anywhere else in the small town regions of the Rust Belt: you have to bring your job with you. There are very, very few jobs here, and if you take one, a lot of locals will resent you for depriving someone local of an income.
DaShui, that was quite a marathon show! I'm glad you enjoy it.
UFCMGP, it strikes me as unconvincing. Revolutionary new artistic ventures happen whether or not there's an elite funding them -- if anything, they're more common outside that environment. Think of the birth of jazz: very much the hothouse environment, but it was a hothouse defined not by vast amounts of money, but by a politically and economically marginalized racial community pursuing its own musical idioms in the teeth of the mainstream. For that matter, I'm quite sure Schoenberg would have kept at it in his basement if he hadn't gotten elite funding, and maybe the need to find someone who wanted to listen to his music might have inspired him to put his undeniable talents to use in less sterile directions.
Pygmycory, in a sense, The Lord of the Rings is fan fiction based on the Silmarillion -- Tolkien was his own first and biggest fan, and the mythology of the Elder Days was something rather more important to him than a literary creation -- so I think you may be on to something. As for the band pieces, good -- will you consider doing the assignment with a different, and possibly less familiar artistic medium?
8/12/16, 5:27 PM
onething said...
"It's actually ironic, funny and infuriating that the whole point of Abstract Expressionism is to break away from any proscribed Academy and connect with a viewer in the most basic way. So that ANY human can connect with it without being told how to react."
I find the opposite to be the case. With representational art, no one needs to tell me anything at all (although my experience might be enriched by some context) but with abstract art, well, I more or less draw a blank. Perhaps with enough drugs, say psilosybn, now that might help out quite a bit. And there is really no shared meaning. Which makes me not want to read much into it because it's just an inkblot, a Rorschach test. One hates to kid oneself. I like shared meaning, since we all inhabit our own private hells anyway.
A couple of you have come here and reasonably and politely explained your view of modern art, but what do you make of the big teddy bear with the lamp in its head, or the yellow horror posted by Cherokee or the twin fetuses/lungs/potatoes or the pile of rusty scrap metal thrown into the middle of an otherwise respectable fountain?
8/12/16, 5:27 PM
zach bender said...
this has been done. check out jandek. untuned guitar, zero melody, incomprehensible lyrics. anonymous for years as a cult figure, not long ago toured with thurston moore of sonic youth.
not to disparage jandek. i do have one of his albums, and i am into "noise" music in various forms.
other stray comments.
very sorry to see gatsby listed as trash. lowbrow, yet. i don't think this is even a question of taste.
my defense of tales from topographic oceans would be considerably less forceful, but if a criterion for highbrow trash is inaccessibility, this does not fit. some of yes is difficult, verging on the purely technical, and the lyrical content is always vague but i would argue evocative, but this album is right up there with fragile and close to the edge as their best work, and it is if anything more accessible than the latter.
8/12/16, 5:30 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Renaissance, nicely done. Your threefold description works, to my mind.
Eric, of course there's a lot of variation and wiggle room -- as I noted in an earlier comment, since all we have to go on is the accumulation of individual aesthetic experience, one person's trash is another's masterpiece. I do think Harry Potter is going to end up being quietly forgotten, like so many other once-popular children's books, but time will tell; that's one of the reasons why a canon should consist entirely of the work of dead people. With regard to your fantasy trisection, though, you might want to pick up an Elric novel or two before redefining that end of Moorcock's oeuvre as highbrow trash. It's the pulpiest of pulp fantasy, gloriously trashy stuff -- he really should have been able to go back in time to get it serialized in Weird Tales with gaudy Margaret Brundage covers. I say this, by the way, with immense affection; the Elric saga, and even more so Moorcock's Swords trilogy, are among the books I mentioned in the post, the ones I go back to and read when I want to enjoy a good solid trashy fantasy. No, if you want highbrow trash from Moorcock, you have to go later on to his Jerry Cornelius novels, which are splendid examples of the genre in its florid decadence.
Jason, no, I'm not asking anyone to freeze their aesthetic perceptions; I'm asking my readers to enlarge their sense of what's already been done and develop richer and more sensitive aesthetic palates. If the only thing you see when you look at a Dutch master is a dead aristocrat, by the way, first of all, you haven't looked at a lot of Dutch masters; the majority of them were painted for a middle class market and include a wealth of really beautiful scenes from daily life. Second of all, if your politics have blinded your aesthetic sense to the point that that's all you see even if the subject of the painting does happen to be a dead aristocrat, then this discussion probably isn't going to make sense to you anyway.
As for your comments about the "natural state" of human beings, that's a cheap shot, as I think you're well aware. The natural state of human beings, of course, is to grow up in one culture and then to interact with many others; that's as true of hunter-gatherers as it is of today's Europeans, say. It's precisely in the interplay between a thoroughgoing grasp of the achievements of one's own culture and the unexpected insights and creations of others that we get some kind of sense of what it means to be human.
Candace, it's an exquisite piece. I wish he'd devoted more of his time to such things.
8/12/16, 5:36 PM
John Michael Greer said...
8/12/16, 5:39 PM
David, by the lake said...
I agree with your assessment re Dune. One one the more compelling aspects of the novel is the totality of the universe in which the story is set and the completeness with which it is described.
8/12/16, 6:08 PM
Eric S. said...
8/12/16, 6:10 PM
Kevin Warner said...
And then it hit me. Just as you have people that love slasher films, you also have people that love modern art. Not necessarily the same people of course but here is the difference. In the film world, film critics are not insisting that slasher films are the best that we have and that anybody that doesn't love slasher films is a philistine who 'just doesn't get it". Massive public subsidies are not given to slasher films to take pride of place in our culture with our 'elite' lining up to watch them. Just sayin'.
Art is one thing but I think a post on architecture would be something to really chew over. The sheer hideousness of building design and city outlay should provide a target-rich environment for all and sundry.
8/12/16, 6:18 PM
latheChuck said...
But context is always important. Perhaps I was "set up" to enjoy this particular staging, after viewing the Spanish opera in which the sopranos were toted around on the sort of industrial-maintenance platforms used to replace light bulbs in a ceiling, which I found ugly and absurd. (I cannot find the link.)
Speaking of context... about 20 years ago, my family visited the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.). One exhibition featured enormous canvases (5'x10'?) painted all in black, with a paint that had a very thick texture (think brush-on roofing tar, not rolled latex). We dutifully wound our way through the serpentine gallery, one black monolith after another. Hmm... My 8-year old son got a turn or two ahead of us. I found him standing wide-eyed and still, opposite yet another monolithic painting, but this one was intensely blue. "It just presses me against the wall, Dad!" I think he was having an aesthetic experience.
8/12/16, 6:33 PM
Jason Fligger said...
My own architectural aesthetic is rooted in my upbringing in time spent working on a family farm as a teenager. It is there that I developed a love for machines, old wood barns and antique agricultural structures. These vernacular structures readily express structure and function in their form.
8/12/16, 7:12 PM
Martin Rose said...
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/enjoyment-of-trash-films-linked-to-high-intelligence-study-finds-a7171436.html
I don't claim to think there's high intelligence linked to the consumption of trash entertainment -- I think that might be a desire on the part of the audience to validate their tastes through some other means than simply enjoying it for the sake of enjoying it, whether or not one believes themselves smart is immaterial IMHO -- hardly a requisite for liking something. But the enjoyment of this particular form of ironic viewing I found both amusing and relevant.
8/12/16, 7:36 PM
Karen said...
3 dimensional work/installation/video
For their edgy ick factor: Damien Hirst: any dead, sliced animals in formaldehyde; Tracey Emin: any of her soiled mattress installations(which don’t overtly show too many sexual bodily fluids)
For minimalism so sucked dry of life why bother: Donald Judd: stacked aluminum frames with colored plexiglass; Sol Lewitt: rectilinear geometric shapes made of square steel tubing painted black; Joel Shapiro: curvilinear twisted square tubes of metal painted black trying to look not too geometric;
For edgy minimalism that would require a Starchitect designed space to house it: Richard Serra: enormous, free standing, several meters long, curvilinear towering shapes of rusting metal that feel like they could fall and squish you at any time, even better if they block the natural pedestrian flow and irritate a lot of the workers.
For serious, somber rusting steel figurative sculpture: Antony Gormley
For edgy exasperating video: Marina Abramovic: any of her videos(bonus if they last longer than 5 hours and show her staring at someone staring at her)
Because painting has been declared dead for the past 10, 25, 50 or one hundred years I will submit it separately.
If you haven’t heard of it, Artsy.net is a website and good resource that is easily finds any kind of art quickly. You type in a name or genre and it gives you images of your search or similar examples.
8/12/16, 7:46 PM
Karen said...
lowbrow trash - sweet iced tea
highbrow trash - kombucha
classic - English Breakfast Tea
8/12/16, 7:48 PM
Jason Fligger said...
8/12/16, 7:56 PM
Karen said...
8/12/16, 8:06 PM
HalFiore said...
Anyone can give me a sugar pill, but is is likely to be more effective if I respect the opinion of the person giving it to me. For lowbrow art, the opinions of our peers might be enough to do the trick, in much the way that folk remedies might work. The more "sophisticated" might need the equivalent of a man in a white coat and the mirror thingy on his head.
It raises other questions regarding group thought, etc., too, but it's late.
8/12/16, 8:46 PM
Kyoto Motors said...
anyway, here is my long-winded response. I hope you have the time to read it and reply. I know after the 200+ mark that's rare, but here goes nothin'
I will first off, acknowledge that what you are touching on here is necessary, as the art world does indeed need a rethink. But before I get on board, I’d like to say that your parable of the two tailors/ would-be painters is a crass oversimplification of things, even if some of the criticism is warranted…
Unlike in your fairy tale, Abstract expressionism didn’t just come out of nowhere. Nor did it emerge from a disingenuous desire to pull the wool over the eyes of the public or simply make a quick buck. So I have to call foul: just not fair to dismiss a collective cultural exploration of the emergent, expressive and esthetic possibilities of painting as such.
Disclaimer: I am an artist. I am wholly invested in that identity, and make no apologies for it. I am accustomed to both praise and support, as well as scorn and derision. I have come to learn that my art is not for everyone, and that should not wish for it to be otherwise. But I do think that investing in the understanding of art history, and where these ideas (like Brillo boxes or “dog barf”) come from, will potentially expand one’s awareness and perception of things. That is at least my aspiration as an artist.
I guess what I’m saying is that there is an important distinction to be made between the pretenders and the genuine, sincere artist’s work – even if it happens to be indistinguishable at first glance.
But am getting ahead of myself.
I think the real problem in art today, as is the problem in many other spheres of life, is the industrialisation of those things that have a traditional foundation. It’s a real conceptual stretch to connect the dots between a fresco by Giotto of the early Renaissance and a “post-modern” sculpture by Jeff Koons. And yet, the art establishment likes to weave a narrative history that does exactly that.
Industrialising art has taken many forms, and started – as one would expect – early on during the industrial revolution. The best known early triumph was probably Impressionism, which emerged from a host of new observations about what painting could do – in part spurred on by the advent of the photograph. But another factor was the new industrial middle class, and the cascading effects of the new socio-economic order. Impressionism was scandalous from the perspective of the old-guard academy. But the artists were well schooled by that very academy, and proceeded, nonetheless, to dismantle the phobias, taboos and neurosis of the establishment. Only the most dogmatic of the old order were unconvinced.
And then, as waves upon a shore, the new generations emulated the paradigm established. And they received support from the emergent industrialists who embraced the innovation and the avant-gardism that reflected their own ideological biases.
more to come...
8/12/16, 9:08 PM
Dennis D said...
8/12/16, 10:09 PM
Dennis D said...
8/12/16, 10:30 PM
jbucks said...
Your post about notional space especially struck a chord, because for years I've felt that there seems to be so much art being created at the moment that there's no room for anything new. Even if the new art is good, it gets lost in the flood. It just seems inevitable that things have to go the other way, which is a bit depressing for someone who gets a lot of joy from writing new music. But maybe in every historical period there is a lot of new art, and time just filters out the best from the worst, and anyway I'll continue to write music because I simply like doing it.
Also, several commenters have recommended The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver - I went out yesterday and got a copy, and although I'm only 60 pages in, it connects very well with the ideas you post about, so consider this another recommendation!
@Esn: Thanks a lot! I will get a copy of Quadrivium to start with, and keep those other books in mind. Would it be correct to say that Quadrivium is the one most suited to applying the concepts in practice? Because I'm interested in experimenting with proportion while composing my own music.
One thing I noticed with many of the titles you suggested is that they seem to apply mainly to scales and 'vertical' proportion. I had a look for books that dealt with proportion in rhythm and large scale form (ie, proportion used in composing pieces 'horizontally') and I did find a book which analyzes Debussy's music to see how he followed natural proportion (Debussy in Proportion by Roy Howat). I will look for a copy of that, too.
@Howard: Thanks! Some of my theory books were written by Schenkerians, and on one hand, the idea seems useful, but I've seen Schenkerian analysis criticized because (say critics) it forces an abstract system on musical pieces that is hard to verify. None of my books however really go into detail about this kind of analysis directly, so I don't know if this is really the case or not?
8/12/16, 10:42 PM
patriciaormsby said...
Kyoto never allowed its skyline to be spoiled by such trash, and much of the city could be considered classic. Very famous examples are the Ryoanji http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3909.html and Kiyomizu temples http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3901.html
With its love of uniformity and ideal of a large happy middle class, Japan must be the world capital of kitsch. They gave us the wonderfully geometrical "Hello Kitty" and manga in which any supposedly handsome guy looks like a skinny version of Elvis Presley, as well as Pokemon, which actually cheered me when it first came out, as a demonstration of Japanese creativity which had been famously lacking for many years until then--they were focusing on performance.
Currently, every town in Japan has a mascot, which consists of an anthropomorphization of whatever the town wants to be known for, with the head as big as the body. Somebody noticed just how dull this was and in some contest, selected the single dullest of the bunch to highlight (some say "cutest") and chose "Funassy" a nashi pear from Funabashi: http://jpninfo.com/4579 . They got a decent actor to wear the tacky costume, though, and the result was that he is ironically quite endearing.
8/12/16, 10:50 PM
Synthase said...
But here's an example of a classic in molecular biology:
Singer SJ & Nicolson GL. (1972) The fluid mosaic model of the structure of cell membranes. Science 175:720-31 retrieved from: http://life.umd.edu/cbmg/Faculty/song/688D/Paperdiscussion/Singer%20and%20Nicolson%201972.pdf
It's well worth the read -- it's chock full of the reasoning and evidence behind something you'll see presented as just so in biology textbooks.
8/12/16, 11:31 PM
Unknown said...
This endeavor is tailor made for application to the realm of food. It is certainly an art form, with all levels of practitioners, from humble domestic cooks to self absorbed show ponies, and some absolute masters.
MacDonalds as low brow trash, any upmarket chain restaurant as highbrow trash, some of the more visual efforts that "deconstruct" one of the classics and fail to fill the plate as classic "dog puke" and there are any number of cannons from the great cuisines of the world, and of course, a roast leg of home grown, grass fed lamb with roast vegies, and mint sauce.
As for the cogniscenti crowd, check out the judges on any of the Australian cooking shows. Most need a board nailing to their shoes to prevent terminal inversion.
8/13/16, 12:17 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Kevin, that works!
LatheChuck, well, if it worked for you, it worked for you. It made me think of kids on teeter-totters, but maybe that's just me. On the other hand, it's far from the worst set of nonhorses the Valkyries have been forced to ride over the years!
Jason, thank you. With regard to the aesthetic of vernacular architecture, I hear you -- that's one of the things I was trying to catch in some of the scenes in Retrotopia, where Carr was looking at pleasant unpretentious farmhouses and barns and noticing how much more attractive the countryside was than on his side of the border.
Martin, it makes perfect sense to me. The ability to appreciate irony requires a certain level of reflective intelligence; lacking that, you just go "yuck!" and walk out of the theater.
Karen, thank you. I see I have a few hours of excruciating viewing ahead of me, to be followed by a great deal of fun engaging in parody. I suspect that why-bother minimalism is going to be common in Atlantic Republic banks and airports, and it will be amusing to see Carr reacting to a statue with surprise -- it isn't rusting metal, and it looks like something!
Jason, of course. I wanted, among other things, to counterbalance the assumption that all those who don't appreciate modern art as crass philistine hicks -- and to encourage my readers to make their own aesthetic judgments, rather than being pressured into accepting anyone else's viewpoint on faith. Mine, by the way, very much included!
Karen, I'm not at all sure what will have happened to those during the Second Civil War. We'll assume, for the sake of art fans everywhere, that they were taken to safety in Canada (along with the contents of the other important museums in the region) and stored there during the fighting, then returned once the fighting was over and the museums were rebuilt and restaffed.
Hal, fascinating! Yes, I could see that.
Kyoto, of course it's a crass oversimplification. Every parable is. My point, which I'm delighted to say has succeeded, is to encourage people to redefine the art spectrum in a ternary fashion, with trash on both ends and something worthwhile in the middle -- and since the concept of highbrow trash was not familiar to my readers, a parable was a good way to make the point. I'm also pleased to see that my post has launched a spirited discussion in which dissensus is the order of the day. Finally, your comments have raised a question that I'm going to want to explore in more detail, hopefully with the assistance of artists and the art-literate: to what extent is our old friend the religion of progress involved here? Do artists feel obligated to "progress," that is, to keep on going in the same broad direction that distinguished their predecessors from those even further back?
8/13/16, 12:18 AM
ed boyle said...
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/poes-short-stories/critical-essays/poes-critical-theories
Discussions of art without discussions of metastructure from preeminent critics is difficult, just opinion(like with beer example). Poe and Northrop Frye apparently among best theorists, any ideas anyone?
8/13/16, 12:29 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Jbucks, that's a massive question. How does an artist collapse now and avoid the rush? Of course one option, if you've got a steady income, is to do the same sort of cost-cutting and skill development as everyone else, but there's also the question of art media -- does your art require high technology to produce or display? What are its raw material requirements? Can you keep doing it as the economy slides? Those are major questions; I'm still contending with some of them in my own art as a writer, and I have no easy answers for other arts.
Patricia, funny. Japanese culture has a remarkable ability to borrow aesthetic ideas from other societies and take them further than anyone else, and so it doesn't surprise me at all that Japanese kitsch is kitschier than anybody else's kitsch will ever dream of being.
Synthase, no argument, that's a classic. For highbrow vs. lowbrow trash in research, though, I think a case can be made for the distinction. Lowbrow trash research is the sort of bottom-feeder stuff that proves some meaningless detail of something, purely for the sake of getting an article published. Highbrow trash is the sort of overblown stuff that's so busy being cutting-edge it forgets to engage in actual science -- I don't know if that's gotten into molecular biology yet; you might check out string theory in physics for a world-class example.
8/13/16, 12:29 AM
Scotlyn said...
Low brow trash: microwave...
High brow trash: sous-vide
Classic: cast ironware over a flame.
Note: First and second methods involve dependencies on providers
1. of ready made meals
2. plastic pouches
Whereas with
3. these tools will process anything you can grow or catch yourself...
8/13/16, 2:03 AM
Synthase said...
I'd take issue with your definition of low-brow trash research, "the sort of bottom-feeder stuff that proves some meaningless detail of something, purely for the sake of getting an article published" however. If it's done with rigour, that meaningless detail is likely to be a very small but important piece of someone else's puzzle, and likely took up five years of some sla-, er, PhD candidate's life. It might not be a gem, but it's the sort of diamond dust used to drill into the unknown. Not trash.
Trash research is where, purely for the sake of being published, an article with some serious methodological or statistical flaws (or worse) gets through.
That seems to lead to high-brow trash in the sciences being that which fails to be science due to excessive conjecture, and low-brow trash being that which fails to be science due to insufficient competence.
For my example of high-brow trash in biology, I won't cite any specific article but instead a trend towards in-silico studies which threaten to uncouple themselves from actual living systems.
For my example of low-brow trash in biology, I'll put forward this example of a retracted, yet famous and much politically abused article linking Roundup and GMO corn to tumors in rats:
Seralini et al. (2012) RETRACTED: Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize, Food and Chemical Toxicology 50:4221-4231 retrieved from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637
8/13/16, 3:54 AM
Esn said...
Thank you for the encouragement, but I'm afraid I don't feel as if I know enough yet! I know enough now to see the flaws in much of what I was taught, but not yet enough to have formed a new synthesis to replace it.
@jbucks
You're welcome!
"Would it be correct to say that Quadrivium is the one most suited to applying the concepts in practice?"
Depends what you mean by "in practice". "Quadrivium" is great for getting the ball rolling creatively, and it has some great diagrams that I often consult. If you're working with modern software at all, "Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale" would be my next pick. If you're more interested in acoustic instruments, pick up Hopkin's "Musical Instrument Design" (some instruments, e.g. kalimbas and harps, are easy to retune to different systems). Once you have a good grasp of the maths, play around with different tunings on the Online Terpstra Keyboard I linked to (e.g. on a tablet). Maybe buy an isomorphic keyboard like the former Axis-49, or build your own (the piano layout isn't great for experimenting with different pitch systems).
(cont...)
8/13/16, 4:24 AM
Unknown said...
Tracy Emin, wow. Just wow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Bed
"The idea for My Bed was inspired by a depressive phase in the artist's life when she had remained in bed for several days without eating or drinking anything but alcohol.[2] When she looked at the vile, repulsive mess that had accumulated in her room, she suddenly realised what she had created. Emin ardently defended My Bed against critics who treated it as a farce and claimed that anyone could exhibit an unmade bed. To these claims the artist retorted, "Well, they didn't, did they? No one had ever done that before." (AND been taken seriously!)
Reminds me of the classic example of the baby that proudly holds up his excrement to his parent in his hands, "Look what I just made!"
I'd like to add my own bodily fluids to that soiled mattress...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4lUcjUv37A
-Joel
8/13/16, 4:24 AM
Esn said...
@jbucks "One thing I noticed with many of the titles you suggested is that they seem to apply mainly to scales and 'vertical' proportion. I had a look for books that dealt with proportion in rhythm and large scale form (ie, proportion used in composing pieces 'horizontally') and I did find a book which analyzes Debussy's music to see how he followed natural proportion (Debussy in Proportion by Roy Howat)."
Well... after all, a musical note is just a rhythm that's too fast for us to hear as individual beats (faster than 16 beats/second or so). I can't think of anything really good about rhythm/musical structure off the top of my head, though the book you found seems interesting. A number of the composers at my university did talk about using the Golden Section as a structural principle.
I will however highly recommend doing analysis yourself if you can. Find some pieces you like, find their scores (or listen to them, and make your own sketch), and analyze the structure. Analyze the elements that seem important to YOU (these will probably differ depending on the type of music you're studying). Compare different pieces (from the same tradition, or between different traditions) to see what's the same and what's different. I did that in my thesis (linked in my previous post), and have generally found it more productive and liberating than using someone else's analyses. It was also recommended to us by many of the professors, and for good reason. Sure, we were taught a number of "standard forms" used in classical music, but only by actually analyzing things yourself do you notice all the nuances.
In a lot of instrumental folk traditions, there isn't a structural form for the "whole piece" as such - rather, somebody may start playing something softly in a free rhythm, then get bolder and play a recognizable melody of fixed length in steady rhythm, then other musicians may join in as the same melody (or several) repeats over and over (but sounds a bit different each time, as different musicians vary different things), then the original musician may or may not call out "CHANGE!" and start a different melody, and eventually one of the repetitions will be the final one by some sort of signaled or unsignaled consent of all the musicians. If there are people dancing to the music, that will often determine how long the music goes on, based on the energy in the room (and the "CHANGE!" may start a different sequence of steps). In these cases, maths doesn't enter into it so much, rather the musical structure is organic and intimately tied to the environment (although there's a certain repetitive element at the heart for practical reasons, both for the musicians--some of whom may be learning melodies new to them as they're playing--and the dancers).
8/13/16, 4:27 AM
Darryl Kubian said...
8/13/16, 6:23 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
8/13/16, 6:25 AM
Pedro Campobelo said...
I've never thought that the early Duchamp "masterpieces" were supposed to be serious. The impression I got from reading the Dada magazines was that they were pretty openly like the con artists from your parable, at least in the early years. They were making fun of the art establishment and it looked like it was a competition to see he could make the stupidest or weirdest thing be considered art.
Many modernist movements, like surrealism, seemed to be sincerely trying to popularize new ways of engaging the world, it never seemed to me that being recognized by the affluent was in their agenda.
My own country's modernism interpreted the modernist revolt against tradition as revolt against what was felt as foreign, European tradition that could only be appreciated by the affluent. They were trying to create new forms that were adequate to the sounds, colors, landscapes and peoples of our country. Accordingly they delved deep in folklore, fauna, flora and history of the country. Much of what they have done is still popular today, though Academia's favorites are the ones that better emulated the nonsense coming out of Europe at the time.
I used to be a modern art enthusiast until I had to read Sophocles's Oedipus Rex for a philosophy course. That little book shook my tastes and worldview for good, I'm now very far from being a friend of modernism. I still think, however, that the general problems with modern art were not the ones presented in your article.
8/13/16, 7:01 AM
Robert Honeybourne said...
>So surely you shouldnt be making comments supporting works in the canon, and criticising modern art that won't have made it yet
I think Warhol will. I don't like it much. It seems established after quite a number of years. Maybe it is old enough but you get my point
There will be things out there that seem like rubbish that will turn out, looking back, to last
>I think we do do know that the modern world is as you describe, but I think if you look, a lot of the 'art' you don't like is indeed showing us what our society values most highly. You may not like that art is that, but it is! No one is making Mona Lisas. There's no call for it. Transgender bathrooms are news, not transgender self portraits. However pleasingly crafted
I don't know about art mind you. Like most people I like what I like - what has 'affect' as in effect on mood
8/13/16, 7:22 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
8/13/16, 7:51 AM
Patricia Mathews said...
I think we all agree that the thin, clinging, flimsy, low-necked, cotton/poly (at best) T-shirts made in China and sold in big box stores count as lowbrow trash.
Classic would be the sturdy all-cotton conventionally cut T-shirts - found all too often, alas, only in the Men's or Young Men's departments.
This item was on sale on a small garment rack at the back of a store I'll call Whole Paycheck. The design was similar to that of the big box trash tees, but so are many fashionable ones these days.
The tag assured us that 10% of the proceeds from the sale of this item went to a charity that resettled refugees as small farmers. The picture showed an African woman in a traditional gown and head-wrap on her hands and knees, happily grubbing in the dirt. What smug boho feel-goodery this was supposed to induce is clear; almost as clear is the Gone With The Wind sentimentality underlying it, intentional or not. Instant mental image of a Syrian middle-management techie confronted with this. Or an African one.
Printed inside the back neckline was "Made in China." The care tag, down near the hem, said "organic cotton and recycled polyester." Stop and gasp in admiration, all ye bohos - a *respectable* version of the big box T-shirt.
$12, 30% off - not as many suckers out there in Whole Paycheck Land as someone imagined.
8/13/16, 8:55 AM
Caryn said...
Thank You for your reply. I agree, as others here have noted, that visual art, like all art is a form of communication. I don't personally think it therefore HAS to be a collective experience. Some art is, some can be experienced alone. Sam Sheppard once described his plays as springing from his own "personal mythology". That description stuck with me because Yes! We do all have our own personal mythology - we bring our our past experiences and feelings to every new thing we encounter including works of art. While some are collective, a whole group of people have personal mythologies close enough to have the same reactions to a piece, and yeah, that's a great experience, Those are the works that will likely endure through time; However, IMHO that does not mean that a work that induces a solitary individuated reaction is totally worthless.
In terms of the meaning you get from a representational painting vs. the blank you get from abstract art, (I'm talking specifically about those blobs of color works), How do you feel when you see 'abstract-art' in nature? Some weird elaborate texture of lichen, or twisted tree bark, flowing colors of mineral deposits in a rock or white grey and pink clouds? For me, these little gems of beauty induce a similar reaction to a blobs of color-abstract art painting. They're just nature at work, not pretending to be anything, not requiring an explanation, yet they are fascinating, and do sometimes remind me of something else or induce a strong feeling or memory. I am free to take away from them whatever meaning hits me.
This is totally different, IMHO than a representational artwork of a giant teddy bear cleaved by a lampshade that purposefully evades understanding or meaning. I can certainly appreciate another art-troll or artist doing something playful, weird and whimsical, non-sequiter and random, but IMHO - that is not appropriate for Public Art. Public Art kind of needs to be a collective experience. That's the whole point. An expensively funded and permanent piece in a college square is not the place for just some weird whimsy or internal, navel-gazing experience, (much as I love navel-gazing experiences.) IOW: I don't get it, and I don't think we are meant to 'get' it. AND it is too specific to cop to the 'take-from-it-what-you-will' explanation. So this and your other examples are the finest examples of High-Brow Trash.
The pile of rusting metal junk in the fountain - The most charitable explanation I can come up with is that the artist was trying to recreate the natural artwork I talked about above - just glorying in the shapes, textures, lines…. Walking around an actual junk yard, I have definitely been utterly captivated by the random accidental sculptures of piles of twisted metal. Maybe that's where the abstract artists fell into a trap- it IS inherently fascinating when you come across natural or accidental weird beauty. It feels contrived and trollish when purposefully recreated. (?)
But it's also likely a genuine case of JMG's 2 tailors shilling dog barf.
8/13/16, 9:58 AM
wbricex said...
Okay, I’ll give this a try. I work for a California state agency, so…
Classic – US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Magna Carta
Highbrow Trash – Most of the regulations (we work in water quality) my fellow regulators and I are asked to implement. Some of it is decent highbrow trash, but there are sections of the very particular set of regulations I have to implement locally (for overseeing landfills) that are so highbrow that no one knows what they mean, seriously no one working for the state knows or has figured it out. We don’t know what to tell the regulated community. The jargon, the subject matter, the cross-referencing, and the format are virtually undecipherable. The guy who wrote it 20 years ago is the only person that knows and he has been retired for a decade, so we no longer have him as a reference.
OTOH, I will say the basic law and regulations that created (in the late 1960s) the agency I work for and its framework enforcement structure is actually a well-crafted set of rules. It is a bit highbrow, but I wouldn’t call it trash. (Maybe we need a fourth category for good art or products that are not quite classic or canon.) It works well to do what it was designed to do if people would leave it alone. Of course, politicians, special interests, and ivory-tower bureaucrats (in Sacramento) being what they are, things must be refined and “improved” and, let us not forget, “made more efficient.” Gods help us.
Also, we have a lot of the highbrow dog barf ballot propositions that are tossed up for popular vote every two to four years. Though, we have plenty of the lowbrow variety, too.
Lowbrow Trash – All of the measures designating some government structure or other in honor of someone or designating such and such day as (fill in your favorite celebrity) Day.
8/13/16, 10:54 AM
Space Seeder said...
I believe you confuse my frustration with the critical writing about the art as a defense of the art. Not so. Binary pronouncements of good/bad, like/dislike aren’t helpful to artists. Tell us what you like, want, etc. I mean the nuts and bolts: colors, subject matter, paint styles, whatever and why. Gives us some idea of where to start from, very few art schools are teaching that now days. We may not like it, but I promise we listen.
My own view of art that is 100% non-representational is that it doesn't give someone like me who is not educated in the arts anything like a starting point in determining what the meaning is. Sometimes the title helps, but usually I'm lost from there. It's not that I don't like flashy colors in and of themselves - I do. It's just that I think that particular style aspires to a meaning that it doesn't achieve.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that there has to be a strong representational element in order to achieve meaning. It doesn't have to be Rockwellian or anything close. I dreamed up a couple of examples this morning, and please forgive me if these already exist and I've unwittingly drawn them from my memory rather than my imagination. Want to say something about the objectification of women? Paint a picture of a frontally nude woman, neck-to-navel, with the breasts replaced by eyeballs and the collarbones shaded to suggest an angrily furrowed brow. Want to say that nature always wins in the end? Paint a picture of frightened robber barons sinking into a shrub-lined fissure in the earth, which on closer inspection appears to resemble a vagina. Want to say the opposite? Paint a picture of the blue-marble Earth on the floor, encircled with contemptuous robber barons ashing their cigars on it. You could call it "Climate Bukkake".
You might not like my particular examples, but anything in that form at least gives a place to communicate. Maybe the representational elements can be more subtle than that. My examples are pretty in-your-face with the message. Whatever. You're the artist - season to taste.
BTW, a few years ago I made three dog barf (I'll give that term a rest now) videos of a few minutes each and uploaded them to youtube. They didn't mean anything. I was just playing with the medium. I can't find them now, as I abandoned that account, but if I could have, I would have linked to them on here so I could have shared in the criticism.
Eric S: Anything in that book about how much retaliation is enough? We should stop what we're doing to them now and at least get that clock running.
8/13/16, 11:08 AM
Scotlyn said...
And yet the home I share with my husband, who left school at logarithms because the tables were awkward to work with after chores with only the tilly lamp to see them with, is full of paintings he has paid small amounts for over the years, always direct from a local artist because it was something he liked. He even commissioned (traded a woodstove he'd come by in a different trade) a painting of the now roofless and falling down cottage in which the logarithms put paid to his formal education.
My two sons, one not terribly artistic, one very much so, were excellently taught by a gifted art teacher who helped both to "stretch" beyond their comfort zones. Although the artistic fellow produced a ceramic piece I still find slightly disturbing...
Earlier today I got a lift home with a 60+ neighbour who loves building replica stone cottages, and has enrolled in a carpentry course this winter because, well, she's a maker.
Making is something I profoundly respect. And yet, I still think of myself as having no aesthetic sense at all...
8/13/16, 11:20 AM
Scotlyn said...
8/13/16, 11:34 AM
Kyoto Motors said...
On the darker side of things (in the market place) the “cutting edge” of artists are now reflecting not the ideology of progress (the old paradigm of capitalism), but the ideology of financialisation and fraud (the new paradigm of post-peak capitalism). So many people are in the art game for the money, even though only a handful can sustain a real income over the long haul…
8/13/16, 12:12 PM
Ed-M said...
And now a Family Guy version of the Emperor's New Art has popped into my head! The child who goes up to the painting is none other that Baby Stewie, who says it looks like dog vomit. The artists, the committee members, and the Emperor all looked down their noses at Stewie and said, "Child, you obviously know nothing about art."
So the child said, "Fine. I'll ask someone who does. He turns his head and calls out to Brian, the family dog, who walks up, holding a martini (they serve drinks at these functions as I'm sure you all know). Then Stewie pops the question: "Brian, could you give me an educated opinion about this contemporary painting?"
Brian looks at it, sniffs it, and says, rubbing his chin. "Hmmm... it's a fine exemplar of the Borborygmist School of expressionist painting." Then, with a very traumatized look on his face, exclaims, "Which means it's MY dog vomit!!" He snatches the painting away, and he and baby Stewie walk out of the exhibition with the rest of the family, carrying the objet d'art with them.
On their way out, Stewie asks, "Brian, how did you know the name for that school of painting?"
Brian replies, "Simple. Before Peter adopted me, my owners' last name was Borborygmi."
8/13/16, 12:24 PM
pygmycory said...
8/13/16, 2:11 PM
zach bender said...
and again, i do not see how something which carries its intentions so close to the surface can be called "highbrow trash" if a criterion is inaccessibility.
the comments are littered with dismissals of stuff i happen to like, which is to be expected, so this will be my last defense of a specific case.
oh, but i do want to add my voice to those recommending the quadrivium.
8/13/16, 4:30 PM
sgage said...
"One other thing. With a good meal, I reckon I can please ALL the senses - sight, smell, taste, touch (fingerlickin) and sound (shared silent enjoyment)... companionship, anticipation, satiation and contentment."
A good meal in good company seems to be in a category all its own. As someone who loves to prepare a good meal, and throw a good dinner party - maybe these are arts, maybe something more...
"It passes, but so does a sunset, a flower. Should aesthetic pleasure be frozen in time and space? into an object?"
As someone who has always derived the great majority of my aesthetic pleasure (joy, ecstasy, feelings of sometimes overwhelming beauty) from the natural world, an integral part of the experience is the beautiful bitter-sweetness of being well aware of the transient nature of the event.
'Art' can be taken as short for 'artifice', and though I do find an occasionally compelling painting or such, and I love music, and good literature, and am intrigued by the emotions they all can invoke, I could live with the Real World (vs. the Virtual World). So much of the Virtual World, or Culture, or what have you, smacks of control-freakery to me. Freezing an emotion, holding onto a feeling, controlling the experience, or maybe just assuaging boredom (though control-freakery practically guarantees boredom, ha ha). But...
You can't hoard sunsets, or thunderstorms (we just had a beauty!)(here comes another!), or those 5 minutes when the mist is coming up in the dripping forest with the sun gleaming and beaming through it, or the sparkles of color from the the sun playing through the tiny prisms of a fresh snowfall... sorry, you gotta keep going out to see, can't own it, can't buy and sell it... just like you can't say 'hrmmm, that was a great meal, guess I can stop eating now.\
OK, it's Saturday night and I'm rambling. I could ramble on, but I'm signing off and enjoying the rain and thunder...
8/13/16, 4:42 PM
pygmycory said...
Jewellery triad:
high-brow junk: I find it hard to understand why anyone would pay $25 million for this. Someone apparently decided that a watch where some of the diamonds have to be moved aside so you can tell the time is a good idea. http://www.naturallycolored.com/famous-diamonds/chopard-201-carat-watch
The reason for the expense is the number and size of colored diamonds involved.
Classic:http://www.ernestjones.co.uk/webstore/d/8929041/9ct+white+gold+blue+topaz+%26+diamond+pendant+necklace/
This manages to be beautiful rather than ridiculous or tacky.
low brow junk: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Fashion-Charm-Keychains-For-Lover-s-Gift-2Pcs-Set-Double-side-Emoji-Glass-Key-Chain/32700054608.html?spm=2114.40010708.4.80.PLru9h
It retails for $1.92 US, and is made of glass and silver-plated metal. The design is of an emoji, and yes, it's ugly to my eyes.
8/13/16, 5:06 PM
onething said...
"Er, done what?"
Stepped on some toes.
Spaceseeder,
"Shane W: In your opinion, is "borderline personality disorder" a real thing that can be fixed, or just a label for miscellaneous oddball behavior?"
Who ever suggested it could be fixed?
******
I do love Norman Rockwell. Perhaps be begins to seem lowbrow because he made so many paintings with a similar theme - the best of American life in approximately the 50s or 40s, and which contain a fair amount of nostalgia. Certainly, he was very skillful. Maybe he seems lowbrow because he was so good at what he did and has become so familiar. But at the time, it was quite fresh. Will his works stand the test of time? I predict they will.
8/13/16, 5:22 PM
Karen said...
8/13/16, 5:44 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
I'm both patient and have a level of curiosity at the same time.
All this talk about abstract art confuses me because it is an abstraction. The items themselves have no more value to me than the materials that they were placed upon – they’d make good kindling. What is considered good and what is considered bad is beyond my ken. I simply have no basis upon which to judge these items, other than: Does it offend me? If there was going to be a book on art it would have to include nature as I can just walk out the door and see nature and be immersed in it and it is beautiful.
The suburbs and townships are an artificial environment, so no wonder we expend so much mental and physical energy, not to mention the resources and creativity on such rubbish as abstract art. Just sayin...
Cheers
Chris
8/13/16, 6:02 PM
JoAnna said...
1.) As a professional violinist, I perform quite a bit of "new" music as well as the standard war-horses, and I heartily agree with most of the article. I also feel that the "artists" in your Emperor story have done a great deal of damage to culture by discouraging people from having their own opinions. By not allowing people to own their own appreciation or lack thereof for art, in some ways it destroys art's legitimacy and place in society. If everyone feels that they just don't "get" art, why should they go to a concert or art gallery? When it seems their opinion isn't informed enough to matter, they often chuck ALL of it in to the dustbin, and say they just "don't like classical music" or art galleries, or whatever. VERY frustrating for me, when honestly, there's just a lot of badly performed, badly presented (and particularly in the case of modern music, badly written) classical music out there. (I think with shrinking money and opportunities in the arts, especially here in the U.S., there's also something of a circling of the wagons effect -- we're all trying to band together and not disparage each other, since we know how tough it is out there.) There is a huge variety of styles and time periods to choose from, and just because someone hears a smattering of a Mozart symphony in a crowded train station and doesn't like it, doesn't mean they couldn't have a profound spiritual reaction to a vibrant, outstanding live performance of a Mahler Symphony or Brahms Requiem.
However, there's also the larger educational and contextual problems in our culture, as you've been pointing out in these posts. If people have no experience evaluating ideas, or lack the time and emotional ability to focus in on their own reactions to artwork, would a great performance of Brahms or Bach even make an impression on them? I go back and forth on that quite a bit.
2.) This also ties in with the issue of the "future" of artistic careers that another person brought up. Maybe the Western classical canon is just playing itself out (sadly) and the art of the next time-period will be something completely different and speak to people in another way. From a descent perspective, my husband and I often talk about folk music and chamber works being the most likely to survive and thrive in the music world. Plus, what makes something great "art" can be so many different things to different people! (The difficulty of your canon definition is that it requires an institution and a specific cultural framework to exist within, of course. My email signature is a quote from a 1967 documentary about Sister Corita Kent, "We have no art. We do everything as well as we can.” I think it's an idea from Balinese culture, but I cannot verify that at all.) I also teach violin privately on the side, and my colleagues and I have all discussed the moral dilemma of working with young people who may be considering making music their career. If I had children, I certainly wouldn't encourage them to consider the standard Symphonic or other "normal" performance career route as their future. They have to be aware of how the world is changing, and understand that it might be an even more challenging path than usual.
8/13/16, 6:15 PM
JoAnna said...
Highbrow trash: "Her" OR "Inception" OR "Blue is the Warmest Color."
Lowbrow trash: "The Davinci Code" (...ugh....)
Classic: "Metropolis" - since I've always been curious about it!
For homework assignment #2 last month, I forced my way through the special pleading of "The Reason for God," which was a challenge, but it was a very interesting assignment!
8/13/16, 6:15 PM
onething said...
"However, IMHO that does not mean that a work that induces a solitary individuated reaction is totally worthless."
No, of course not and we all do experience even very specified representation art individually to some extent. Well, we experience everything individually.
"In terms of the meaning you get from a representational painting vs. the blank you get from abstract art, (I'm talking specifically about those blobs of color works), How do you feel when you see 'abstract-art' in nature? Some weird elaborate texture of lichen, or twisted tree bark, flowing colors of mineral deposits in a rock or white grey and pink clouds? For me, these little gems of beauty induce a similar reaction to a blobs of color-abstract art painting. They're just nature at work, not pretending to be anything, not requiring an explanation, yet they are fascinating, and do sometimes remind me of something else or induce a strong feeling or memory."
Well now, that is different. Nature at work IS something, the processes are real and are always within their own natural context. Perhaps if you framed a piece of lichen or some splattered raindrops on a rock, it wouldn't hold much interest either. The beauty of it is what it is part of and that one can discern its place within a larger, active reality.
Thanks for your take on those 4 horrors. Very sensible.
8/13/16, 6:43 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Scotlyn, interesting. I wonder whether the same distinction -- trash involves dependence on complex outside inputs, while art does not -- might be applicable more generally.
Synthase, it may vary between different branches of science, then. When I was first at college, I took experimental design and statistics courses through the psych department, and I also knew some of the guys at the computer lab who helped the grad students commit research fraud -- the usual gimmick was to do some kind of more or less pointless experiment, run statistical tests on it until you found something that was statistically significant at the .05 level or better, and then write the paper as though that's what you were trying to prove. Since you can be sure of getting at least one apparently significant factor at that level by pure random chance if you run at least twenty different statistical analyses, a great deal of junk science got accepted that way. I also got to hear, though, of the more common gimmick in that department, which involved finding something sufficiently irrelevant that nobody had bothered to look into it, and making that the center of your career, running endless variations on the same basic experiment, and never quite conclusively proving anything: the claim was that tenure committees et al. paid attention to the number of publications, not their relevance. That's been my touchstone ever since for lowbrow trash science.
Esn, may I offer the advice of a somewhat experienced author? Nobody ever knows enough to write a book. The only excuse for writing is that you know a little more than the people who want to read it, and can communicate something to them that they want to know.
Darryl, thank you! The notion that something can't be genuinely good unless people don't like it strikes me as one of the most destructive beliefs in the contemporary arts scene -- and of course that includes all art, from music to architecture and beyond. If artists would start challenging that, I think a lot of the barrier that keeps art from receiving support from the public (and selling artworks to the public, thus enabling artists to support themselves) would go away in a hurry.
Bill, exactly. The Broadway musical was a very rich art form with a somewhat limited notional space, due to the constraints on what you can do in a Broadway theater with orchestra et al. At this point we're well into the performance era, and as you point out, the only really innovative things being done involve fusing the musical genre with other genres -- and how many times can you do even that before it gets stale?
Pedro, I certainly don't claim to know enough about the history of art in your country to claim that my narrative applies there. Here in the US, for that matter, there have been very serious and well-intentioned efforts in the modernist end of things -- but there has also been a vast amount of more or less deliberate charlatanism and fraud. I suppose it may simply be that since colonial times, the United States has been the happy hunting ground of the con artist, the snake oil salesman, and the sideshow fake!
8/13/16, 11:03 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Patricia, thank you. I needed a good laugh.
Wbricex, hmm! Thank you; it hadn't occurred to me that laws could be approached as an art form, but you make a good case.
Scotlyn, this notion that "art" is something that only the upper classes have, and the lower classes don't dare claim to have, I see as one of the great tragedies to unfold from the current insistence that art must be repellent and useless to be serious. I'd like to see people like you reaffirm their capacities to create beautiful things, and to value those things as art. As for aesthetic pleasure being frozen into a single enduring shape, not at all -- how about music, dance, theater, or the other performing arts? Should cooking and eating a meal be considered a performing art? I'd be in favor of it....
Kyoto, fair enough -- and I suspect that the financialization has a lot to do with the marketing of dog barf these days.
Ed-M, very funny, though I don't know what a "Family Guy version" might be -- is this a TV reference by any chance? One correction, btw -- "borborygmus" is the technical medical term for gurgling in your stomach, the sort of thing that you hear from a dog's belly before it throws up. ;-)
Zach, and your voice also counts. You enjoy things that others consider highbrow trash? Fair enough; that's your right, just as it's their right to loathe it. Full disclosure: I had a college housemate who had to read Shikasta for a class, and hated it so much that when the quarter was over she tore it up and burnt it page by page. This was a woman who normally loved books. My feelings aren't that strong, but honestly, I find them unreadable. Your mileage may vary.
Onething, I dance on toes. Mine, and occasionally others'. ;-)
Chris, well, there you are. I wonder if abstraction becomes more prominent as societies isolate themselves from the natural world.
JoAnna, exactly. I understand the circling the wagons effect, but when it's paired with the insistence that nobody has the right to dislike any artwork that has been endorsed as fine art within the arts world, the result is exactly the effect you describe -- people walk away from all of it and seek refuge in popular culture, however trashy, because there they're allowed to express their opinions freely and avoid things they don't enjoy.
With regard to the survival of the arts in the Long Descent, that's a huge issue, and one I'm still trying to suss out. Obviously some arts and some styles are much better suited to survive than others; if your violin students can change gears and play fiddle music in a popular style, they're much more likely to be able to put food on the table -- but what happens to the classical repertoire if country-western is the only thing anyone wants to hear? I don't have the answers yet; down the road, I plan on discussing that in much more detail, though.
8/13/16, 11:25 PM
jbucks said...
My guess about art in a future of long decline is that art-making becomes a hobby for most people (folk art), the few professional artists who remain will either make art for a much smaller upper class who still have some time to enjoy art and money to pay for it, or they will make lowbrow trash. As you wrote, if the audience for lowbrow trash are poorer people who desire the 'reassurance of the familiar', then in a world where more people are poor, then the audience for lowbrow trash will grow. On second thought, though, the poor by definition won't have the money to pay for lowbrow trash.
I wonder if there are historical precedents, I don't know what happened to artists as Rome went through its decline, for example.
By the way, to answer your questions as regards to my own art, I used to create electronic music until a few years ago. I was actually a pretty good 'synthesist' and user of music software, but I sold it all, and put all the money into piano and composition lessons. It didn't feel right to be making music using energy-intensive electronic music hardware and relying on machines to do the work for me. Now all I need is a piano, a pencil and some blank manuscript paper, although I do still use notation software for convenience.
@Esn: Thank you very much once again! I'll get a copy, that sounds worthwhile to explore.
8/13/16, 11:55 PM
Unknown said...
cheers
eagle eye
ps, i thought the comments on this subject would bore me to bits, but to my surprise I am enjoying and learning far more than I expected. Very well done, sir!
8/14/16, 12:10 AM
Yucca Glauca said...
I think Retrotopia has the perfect amount of art-related content already and doesn't need anything more.
I'm a millennial, and the majority of millennials I know more often frustrated by new technology than pleased by it. They're quite happy to point out all the ways old technology worked better and even complain about Progress in the abstract. The problem is that such insight is usually followed by a sigh and a resignation that we can't go back. I think that these crowds would be quite receptive to Retrotopia as it is, but I worry that they might turn off their brains and start snarling if you make art a more major part of the book.
Ironically, the crowds I have in mind usually swoon over older aesthetics and would happily nod along with Carr's comments. The thing is, the defense every millennial I know has developed against highbrow art snobs is to insist that, in fact, everything really is art and it's completely a matter of individual preference and if you try to tell them what they can and can't like then obviously you're the one who doesn't understand art.
Of course, you're not trying to dictate what they can and can't like, but I fear that too much of a focus on art might be interpreted that way. Peter's occasional comment about visual art and the specific genres of older music he likes strike me as just right to engage people who like retro fashion, but too much might make them suspicious of an art snob agenda on the part of the author.
8/14/16, 12:24 AM
BillTheSlink said...
8/14/16, 3:43 AM
Sven Eriksen said...
"[T]o what degree is our old friend the religion of progress involved here?"
I wonder if maybe one of the ways we can approach that is to compare it to the way we are conditioned to enact our lives as a kind of microcosm of the myth, because that is perhaps where the content and structure of the myth is on display in its crassest terms. When the devout undertakes his personal journey of progress, that is supposed to be a linear ascent towards more and more of two easily recogizable features: The first is the movement into increasingly larger quantities of dysfunctional abstractions and the manipulations thereof, and away from doing anything useful, valuable or productive. The justification for this is that the abstract structures one is creating is a kind of ultimate reality of which the real world is but an uneven and flawed reflection, and that this will allow the latter to be more effectively manipulated. Given that the flight to abstraction is really a form of nay-saying in the strictly nietschzean sense, the opposite is actually the case, and thus the abstract must be isolated and protected from the world it is supposed to represent, as that world will gladly clobber it and its creator given half a chance. This is supposed to be accomplished simply by insisting that said world (and the dwellers within) are stupid, really stupid, which is what the sneering directed towards those on the outside is about.
The second feature is that the flight away from doing things that are useful, valuable or productive must be rewarded with a steadily increasing ability to disproportionatly consume the fruits of the labours of those who are not engaging in that flight themselves. The justification for feature two is extrapolated from the last part of the justification for feature one and ends up circling back to mean that the dysfunctional abstractions and their manipulators are what enables anything useful, valuable etc. to occur in the first place. For a first rate example listen to economists try to explain why it is the existence of economists that enables the economy to function...
Officially appointed artists peddling dog puke for absurd amounts of money is just one more form of acting this pattern out, though in a perhaps slightly less obvious (and arguably less harmful) way.
Glad you liked the video. In these difficult times we need the occasional reminder to stay true to our barbarian selves ;-)
8/14/16, 3:44 AM
Alvin Leong said...
8/14/16, 4:33 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
That is definitely possible. I wonder if there was much in the way of abstract art in the Middle Ages or Dark Ages for example? That would tend to provide a good guide for the occurrence of the form.
Incidentally, I have original art work all over the house, not that it is worth a cent, but merely because I or my wife found it to be pleasing. Even in the bathroom, we have a delightful painting of a young lady in a free standing bathtub drinking a glass of red wine (or maybe a fortified wine?) and consuming chocolates, blowing bubbles, and generally looking as if she is having a good time. It is such a fun painting and it was titled: "Having a ball". Both my wife and I loved it when we first saw it and so we purchased it on the spot. The curator of the exhibition confided to me in a condescending tone: "I guess you could hang it in your bathroom". And I was quite taken aback by his tone and the unstated implication, so I simply replied: "Yeah". Art critics... I suspect they may one day receive a similar fate to that of the marketing department of the Cyrius Cybernetics Corporation! Hehe!!! :-)!
Cheers
Chris
8/14/16, 4:55 AM
Patricia Mathews said...
Oh, I don't know. My granddaughter Mikaela plays violin well enough to have been in the Albuquerque Youth Symphony for a season. While I don't dare suggest the fiddle music idea to her mother, I might to the girl herself when she comes out of her 16 year old hypermature earnestness. And I can easily see how a classically trained fiddler could treat his audience to one of the more accessible classical pieces done simply and unpretentiously, and the fiddle crowd would eat it up.
And of course, on the musical scene, the Border Ballads were lowbrow trash in their heyday. Almost on the level of slasher movies and true crime sensationalism.
8/14/16, 5:41 AM
David, by the lake said...
Interesting that you use C&W music as an example in your response to JoAnna. In David Webber's Honor Harrington series (admittedly space caring sci-fi, but with good characterization, I feel), C&W is the classical music of one of the worlds encountered by the protagonist, an experience she makes mention of having to get used to.
8/14/16, 7:31 AM
Paulcito said...
I'll just tackle the good part of the assignment. Classic? Anything Jethro Tull aka Ian Anderson. I actually think pretty much every bit of real wisdom relevant to the age that we live in that could be expressed, is lyrically expressed in some or another place amid the Tull musical catalog. Even the inevitable end of the Oil Age has been subject matter for the studious and perceptive Mr. Anderson (listen "Heavy Horses"). Not the greatest vocal pipes but IA certainly could and still can play a little bit of flute quite nicely. What else can you say about the old bugger?...ahh yes..to be Thick as a Brick - this 1972 work is definitely a Tull Highlight.
Cheers, Paul Paulcito
8/14/16, 8:06 AM
Juhana said...
BTW, last week I wrote here about tense atmosphere in Germany. Must say these news clips were no surprise for me. Germans are tired of rapefugees attacking their nation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd5TPWXgOFQ
8/14/16, 9:04 AM
Juhana said...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9rvjdB-VRc
Next summer is going to be hot in Europe in more than one way.
8/14/16, 9:15 AM
Alex Blaidd said...
8/14/16, 9:17 AM
JoAnna said...
I'm very happy to hear you'll be discussing art in the context of descent in the future! I'm definitely looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it. For myself, I see it as (potentially) a return to a situation similar to times before the Industrial revolution -- namely, patronage. Before the rise of the middle class through the Enlightenment/Industrial revolution etc., high art was created pretty much exclusively for the upper classes who had the leisure and resources to enjoy it. (Either via the Church or the imperial courts.) It was only in the 19th century that "classical" European music began to be available to more people, leading to the rise of performer-stars like Liszt and Paganini, and the ability of composers to write for larger ensembles in the increased capacity of the larger concert halls, built to accommodate new middle-class audiences.
All this is to say that as the middle class and the "leisure" time afforded by cheap energy goes away in western civilization, it makes sense to me that classical art (whatever it is by that time) will shrink back to serving smaller audiences again... For my students, that means far fewer opportunities (though I'm hoping not a complete lack of them!) and perhaps training more in the apprenticeship style of the old days, rather than the mass-produced musicianship of conservatories. Being in my 30's and happily supporting myself as a classical musician, it sadly feels I just "slipped in" before the bell as it were, as I've seen the freelance scene in the NY area dry up considerably in the last few years. From what I hear from my older friends, it's a completely different world from the heady days of gigging in the 70's, 80's, or even the 90's.
8/14/16, 9:52 AM
Nastarana said...
8/14/16, 10:36 AM
Dennis D said...
http://www.archdaily.com/32465/maseratis-garage-competition-winners
Pygmycory, my wife was started into the glass art world by buying a simple set of bead ear rings, and saying that she could do better. This led her to working with glass beads, then taking courses on how to make them herself. Her art teachers in elementary school had penalized any work that was not what they had told the student to create, so she thought she was not "artistic". For an introduction to this side of the art world, check out the (local) shops that sell the supplies you are interested in,avoid the chain stores craft suppliers though. One thing from my wife's experience, make stuff you personally like and you won't care so much if it doesn't sell at shows. Here is her facebook page to show you what she makes: https://www.facebook.com/creativespiritglassworks/
8/14/16, 10:58 AM
jeffinwa said...
Please excuse this totally off topic post but I thought you might appreciate it as a strong endorsement of the LESS principle we try to live by.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-13/breakdown-us-global-markets-explained-what-most-analysts-miss
The authors' stress at the end of the article on precious metals as a way to help survive the coming storm may not be our way (wealth in any form won't purchase what isn't there) but his "reading of the weather" seems pretty spot on.
As always my thanks for providing this sanctuary.
Jeff (back in WA)
8/14/16, 10:58 AM
Pinku-Sensei said...
As for the same patterns playing out in drum and bugle corps, that's definitely been the case since the 1970s, when the corps themselves wrested control of the activity from the veterans' organizations, who did their best to keep it lowbrow trash for wage-class youth. As soon as the directors, instructors, and judges got control of the activity, they did their best to make it more artistic, which meant that pretentious trash was the eventual result. They also converted into an activity for salary-class youth, which the wage-class alumni have resented. As you can see, more than one of the societal trends you've decried has occurred in the activity.
@Karen: As a resident of Michigan, I've been following Art Prize. I wasn't surprised at the institution of a separate juried prize from the popular vote, as the opinions of the masses generally do not coincide with the cognoscenti.
8/14/16, 11:10 AM
Nancy Sutton said...
This is probably OT, and will be deleted, but I believe (note believe) there is such a thing as 'mental masturbation', which is a perfectly fine form of entertainment (as is the physical variety), but to confuse it with an honest search for personal truth and wisdom may lead one in the wrong direction. Of course, I disagree with Descartes, too ;)
8/14/16, 12:38 PM
Shane W said...
JMG, what you are saying about research rings a bell! I remember slogging through research papers in journals, thinking how arcane and irrelevant most of it was. And the statistics are so byzantine now. I remember clearly one very opaque paper using "(something) varimax rotation" as part of its statistical proof. A lot of research is now a cancer, metastasizing out of control, w/ever more obscure and specialized journals breeding ever more obscure, irrelevant papers and work.
8/14/16, 1:05 PM
AT said...
First, belated congratulations, JMG, on the ten year anniversary of the ADR. I have been reading for eight years, but it took me a long time to figure out how to comment. (I discovered accidentally that one can comment if one has a gmail address—hope this may help someone else.) I very much appreciate the weekly dose of sanity and provocation and the tight control of the comments that make this an endlessly fascinating read.
On to art: I agree that art needs to communicate and would go further and say that it needs to communicate from spirit to spirit. Of course there are techniques of composition and materials usage that assist this process greatly, but I don’t think that they are the sole enabler of this type of communication. Paintings can be technically accomplished without saying much (Watteau, anyone?) I think that one of the main problems with modern, and especially contemporary art, is the emphasis on the intellect, on making a “statement”, which leads to the problem of the art being solely self-referential. I have been very fortunate to see a fair number of the west’s great art works as well as a fair amount of dreck. Here are a couple of examples of what I mean.
In an exhibit of contemporary works by new artists, there were two rather poorly made pottery plates mounted on a wall where they looked random and out of proportion. The card enthused that the plates could be hung in different positions for an infinite number of works of art. Oh, wow (not). The lack of proportion did not make me see the space in a new way; the plates did not communicate anything other than ugly plate-ness. In contrast, an exhibit at the Clark Institute showed contemporary works by an African artist made out of bottle caps wired together. These large, colorful, shimmering pieces were breath-taking. They said something about beauty from waste and ugliness, but they were also just plain beautiful, speaking to my spirit about nobility and resilience (and something beyond words). They were dimensional pieces, and a DVD playing in a side gallery showed the artist talking about his works, and especially about how he enjoys collaborating with curators about how the works are to be hung and shaped. He can see new things in his works through the curator’s eyes. Yet the pieces come out of his inner vision, his feelings about the society in which he lives, its heritage and current problems.
At another contemporary exhibition, an enormous pile of hard candy was heaped on the floor in a corner. I cautioned my (then) small child not to touch it. However, on reading the card it turned out that we were supposed to help ourselves to the candy. The artist would weigh what was left at the end of each day and top it up to the precise weight at which his partner had died of AIDS. I think this may have been 89 lbs. Now this is a horrifying weight for a grown man, but it is not a small weight of candy. The candy was just a large pile of candy. It communicated nothing to us about love or loss or the horror of an epidemic even after we had read the label. It obviously meant something to the artist, but something so private that he could not share it in any way that would touch another person. We could intellectualize at length about the symbolism of candy or of eating, but in the end, nothing of the artist’s experience or emotions was shared. Was it art? I’d say that it wasn’t.
8/14/16, 2:01 PM
AT said...
Of course art is best appreciated in person, as the discussion on the Sistine Chapel illustrates. I could have cared less about Van Gogh’s work until I saw it in person. Amazing! Absorbing! I consider prints of his “Sunflowers” to be ugly. The painting itself seems alive. A modern work at the art gallery at Princeton University is a canvas painted black. (Sorry I can’t remember the artist or find him on line.) Look across the gallery at it and it appears to be a high-priced scam. Up close, one can practically fall into the painting. It induces a kind of peaceful, meditative trance state. It more than passes the “could I have done it?” test. I most definitely could not have. Anything I painted black would look like the side of a (black) barn. The same museum is loaded with warhol, including several actual Warhols.
As for low-brow stuff, it usually communicates something—that’s why people like it. Take the much-maligned Norman Rockwell. He was clear that he did not consider himself an artist, but an illustrator. Nevertheless, his works are technically accomplished and cause folks to chuckle or heave a sentimental sigh, and what’s wrong with that? In the case of Elvis on velvet, it is probably the reminder of a favorite song sung in his gorgeous voice that makes people want him on their walls (post-ironic hipsters of course want the kitsch of it all).
To follow up on the comments on Picasso, I think he is over-rated. “Guernica” is a work of breath-taking power. The rest of what I have seen—not so much. My father used to say that Picasso was just “having us on”, and IMHO at least some of it seems to be sly warhol.
8/14/16, 2:03 PM
Space Seeder said...
8/14/16, 2:23 PM
Jo said...
Surely pre-recording days there were far more live musicians making a living from music? Every middle-class home had a piano, every bar and hotel had musicians playing, there were tea dances, bush dances, hoe-downs, you name it, any social occasion demanded a musician as canned music wasn't available. So keep training up those young musicians, their time will come:)
8/14/16, 3:10 PM
latheChuck said...
8/14/16, 4:31 PM
latheChuck said...
8/14/16, 4:39 PM
zach bender said...
possibly the weakest of the series, but the most obviously allegorical to the history of this planet. sorry to hear of your friend's experience. i would have recommended ambien two, a/k/a the sirian experiments. really thoughtful exploration of the difficulties of diplomacy and bureacracy.
in any event, and again not to defend particular works that others apparently dislike, i will just say that a recurring theme i find distressing in these comments -- and actually, this is also central to your "parable" -- is the suggestion that a particular artist has not applied herself with diligence and seriousness of purpose to creating something that is in fact intended to communicate.
it may not be very difficult to identify specific cases in which the "artist," so-called, is pandering to an elite of tastemakers, and/or expressing contempt for the "common" person, but there are countless other instances in which this caricature unfairly discounts work that for whatever reason [you] did not readily understand.
8/14/16, 4:51 PM
David, by the lake said...
8/14/16, 5:13 PM
Monica said...
Lowbrow trash: this is rather painful. My response to this section is pretty much, "Mommy it hurts make it go away please". I was going to add to this list, anyone who calls herself/himself an astrologer and yet still proclaims there are 13 signs in the zodiac, or any astrologer who has not drawn a chart from scratch and understood the process, but then I realised this equally applies to highbrow trash as well. Is it possible for someone to straddle both worlds? (in the LB category, if I had to name just one off the top of my head, I'd go for Linda Goodman's Sun Signs).
Take a dude called "Kaypacha" who makes a handsome sum out of international tours sold out to his adoring (mostly female) fans. I came across him because my astrology teacher actually went on such a tour to Greece and wrote a succinct, severe review of the whole "fiasco". I watched a couple of his videos, and I can only say, what a bunch of new age mental farts, with the obligatory past lives fluff thrown in for extra padding. Borderline charlatanism in my opinion, to it did elicit a good laugh...
(for anyone interested in her review, you may find it here:
http://mythanthrope.blogspot.com.au/2016/08/letter-from-12th-house.html
As for the classics - in our times I'd go for Robert Hand, Stephen Arroyo and Liz Greene, though there are a few others that have enriched my bookshelf, such as Cornell's Encyclopaedia of Medical Astrology, Donna Cunningham, Deborah Houlding, Lee Lehman, Judith Hill, etc. Of course, classics in this field go much further than current authors, however my knowledge of the historical authors of astrology is rather limited at this time. If I had to look back in time, I'd do a bit of research on Kepler, W Lilly, and many, many others.
8/15/16, 3:01 AM
trippticket said...
Karen, are you suggesting that Kansas City is a Southern town? Or that there aren't distinct regional variations and preferences between KC and, say, Chattanooga or Savannah? As a Georgia native who's been to KC I'd have a hard time with that one...
8/15/16, 4:55 AM
Forever Becoming said...
I realise there is much more to it than this but I think, in spite of how far we have come, there is still a part of us that uses art in this way; or wants to use it in this way.
8/15/16, 5:51 AM
Violet Cabra said...
As I've aged I've thought less and less about art; most books I read are non-fiction, and while I'm clearly informed by aesthetics I've let that part of myself atrophy somewhat. I don't commonly listen to music or look at visual art either. This is in large part from being turned off by the aesthetic extremes of art that you anatomize. I began reflecting a bit on this more after reading Dostoyevsky's the brothers karamazov and being deeply moved on a deeper, symbolic level, that most art doesn't reach in me.
I have, however, put a great deal of time recently into studying herbalism, talking with folks about the herbs they use and feel that I can characterize different uses in the framework you describe.
Vernacular Herbalism (low-brow): the use of culinary herbs for healing minor ailments. Eating a clove of garlic for a cold, taking ginger tea with honey or drinking warm milk before bed are all time honored rituals that have important chemical effects. They are accesible and comforting. I do not consider them "trashy" but they are vernacular.
Kitsch: buying bagged tea which tells you how to use it. The yogi tea that says "smooth move" for constipation, "cough formula" "sleepy time" or what have you. The important part of this classification in the comfort that the tea provides (I say this with compassion and understanding - I drank endless cups of these teas microwaved as a child) and the minimal level of thinking that is needed on the part of the consumer.
Elite Herbalism (high-brow): the use of adaptogens that come in the form of capsules. People buy ashwagandha or holy basil or eluethero in capsules in combination with other herbs. The people who buy them are, in my experience come from class backgrounds which dispose them towards being high brow. The elements of cognoscenti are present here as well. So while the use of adaptogens is totally valid and I use them with gusto in my practice, I find that their use can often be correlated with elitism, and the sort of obfuscation that you mention as an important aspect of high brow trash.
Warhol: gemstone essences. I have great respect for homeopathy and flower essences. This includes the more spiritual aspects of healing with herbs as well. There is however, it appears to me, a level of warhol in the making of essences of gemstones, or tincturing coyote blood, or capturing the full moon in a bowl of water. While I want to acknowledge the spiritual power that using these sorts of preparations can have, there is a certain high brow absurdity that starts to come in, especially if this is the mainstay of someone's practice. Again, I see many good parts to herbal warhol and it works a lot, but as when perceived as an aesthetic statement, it starts to look silly to me.
Canon: Traditional herbal systems, especially with the practitioner crafting their own preparations. The sort of beauty of giving someone a tincture I made of reishi or a nettles vinegar is hard for me to convey. Gifting a little bottle of lemon balm tinctured in brandy likewise in an aesthetic experience of the highest degree. The materials, preparation and presentation are always taken into account, and especially with formulas, there is the dance of traditional forms giving rise to distinct and personalized meanings. Also, I agree with David Hoffman who writes that when you have a variety of herbs that are appropriate and indicated, why not choose the best tasting one?
8/15/16, 7:45 AM
ganv said...
8/15/16, 9:04 AM
Pinku-Sensei said...
8/15/16, 9:37 AM
Unknown said...
Classic: The thinker of Hamangia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamangia_culture)
High brow: Rodin's thinker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker)
Kitsch: I don't know who created it? (https://www.etsy.com/listing/245199420/vintage-60s-kitsch-wood-man-thinker)
To me it's maybe the most amazing way to represent an abstract thought. And the fact that people 7000 years ago created it it's humbling. What modern art will be understood or appreciated 100 years into the future, not 7000?
I will try to think about this more and come back.
Thanks JMG, for giving me the opportunity to have more than superficial thoughts today!
Thanks,
8/15/16, 9:55 AM
Arkady Dust said...
Would the children and peasants laugh any less if a few sages and nobles saw the ruler as clothed?
8/15/16, 12:11 PM
Chris Smith said...
18th and 19th century landscapes however ...
Which brings me to post 19th century philosophy (a subject I once taught). Here are my votes.
Lowbrow Trash: Ayn Rand, Ken Wilbur, and Richard Rorty
Highbrow Trash: Marty Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein (the "Tractatus" years)
The Classics: Jose Ortega y Gasset, Antonio Gramsci, and Alvin Goldman
8/15/16, 12:26 PM
Lisa said...
Since I don't particularly like Monet, but I'm assured he's good, I accept my limitations and have consigned most moderns to that category. If they are unpleasant to look at, well, folks also go see horror movies and things like that, to each his own.
Personally I paint pictures of my cat, say, fairly well done (i.e. realistic), but can't help feeling it's not really art. Which comes down to: the subject is too trivial (too lowbrow!); and that Real Art is whatever is done by Real Artists therefore what I do is not Real Art since I am in no way "cool" enough to be a Real Artist.
Back to the homework - I came across an old email on a permaculture list and am going to nominate that as highbrow trash, for as much as I believe in it, it seems to be stuck in an in-group of people telling each other that whatever they are doing is not really "permaculture"... with perhaps bring-on-the-roundup as the lowbrow version or gardening? Or is this pushing the metaphor too far?
8/15/16, 1:01 PM
Charles DeYoe said...
My interests vary wildly: the first two homework assignments consist of a large portion of what I read of my own devices, this time though... well, trying to pick apart what makes something "highbrow trash" is certainly posing a bit of a challenge. Most people I know aren't especially concerned with older works and so I feel like even a Marx Brothers comedy I'd hold up as a classic might come across as "highbrow trash" among people who think all black & white movies are inherently boring.
In terms of visual arts, I can understand the concept easily. I visited MoMA in New York City a while back for a Paul Gauguin exhibit (which I loved) and found 90% of the other works in the museum to be pure trash.
I suppose for literature, James Joyce would be an example of highbrow trash. Ulysses is a book that' I didn’t enjoy reading but has stayed with me. A lot of what might count as highbrow trash really resonates with me. I assume William S. Burroughs would be an easy example but when I've read (and re-read) his books, they always inspire me to gleefully cackle with a certain indescribable mania. I suppose Harlan Ellison (who famously walked out of an interview when they called him a science fiction author) is an example of highbrow trash in sci-fi... but the RAW EXPRESSION and SHEER MADNESS in his work is just something I find wonderful.
Thinking about movies... well, Last Year at Marienbad is a critical darling that I'd be hard pressed to imagine a normal human being actually *enjoying* or understanding, but it is a beautiful and evocative film nonetheless. I’m not sure I want to rewatch it for this homework though.
Looking at genres first, horror is one of my favorite but horror movies tend to be absolutely hated by critics; to the point when a horror movie that turns into a critical delight (Psycho, Jaws, Silence of the Lambs) gets labeled as "psychological thriller" so it doesn't have to come across as anything as trashy as a horror movie. But Psycho, Jaws, and Silence of the Lambs are also crowd-pleasing movies with mainstream-appeal. It’s tough to find a horror work that’s also a darling of critics.
Maybe I should look at comedies... are Woody Allen movies classic or highbrow trash? Even at his worst and most self-indulgent, I normally find his movies to be entertaining.
So I'll turn to comics because I read a lot of those: and I doubt there's a better example of highbrow trash than Neil Gaiman's run on The Sandman. Among comic fans, it's routinely held up as one of the greatest works of comic-dom (critics have argued that it's REALLY a "serialized graphic novel"). The story concerns a group of immortal "don't-call-them-gods" godlike-beings and draws upon mythology, dream-narratives, Shakespeare, G.K. Chesterton, and other highbrow literary influences. I personally consider it a meandering mess with nothing really original to say. But it has enough fans who would argue that it's really a classic, so maybe I'm just missing something about its supposed brilliance.
I'll declare it part of the fantasy/superhero genre, because it has a lot of those elements within it. Lowbrow trash in that genre is pretty much the default. Picking a genuine CLASSIC is something that would be controversial because creators have only been taking the medium seriously for a few decades and that's arguably not enough time to really separate the wheat from the chaff yet; I don't want to just project my own tastes onto these labels. So I'll avoid comics for this homework...
IN THE END, I'm still hemming and hawing over what's what. But it has my gears turning and I consider that to be a good thing!
(And I hope this long, meandering comment isn't too meaningless. Just want to share some of my thought-process.)
8/15/16, 2:09 PM
Jim in Alaska said...
8/15/16, 3:37 PM
trippticket said...
Great analysis! Another one my wife and I might nominate for high brow trash is the attending of herbal conferences in far off locales, with big name speakers. I can just hear all the clucking of the well-enough-to-do-to-afford-plane-fare-therefore-I'm-a-real-herbalist-and-you're-not-na-na-na-boo-boo types.
With just the right amount of holy basil.
8/15/16, 5:38 PM
Violet Cabra said...
8/15/16, 6:17 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
8/15/16, 6:53 PM
aaa said...
---
Highbrow: God Only Knows [tune that made McCartney jealous]
Lowbrow: Kokomo [cheezy but it sounds soo good]
Classic: Good Vibrations [Ah yes!]
[Brian-Wilson-writing-songs-while-on-acid bonus]: California Girls
---
Highbrow: Rocky Raccoon [hipster favorite, thus pretentious. awesome song]
Lowbrow: Imagine [direct to the point of being blunt. awesome song]
Classic: I'm only sleeping [straightforward, but... for me, sublime]
---
Exercise for the reader/youtube viewer. Depending on your generation, I'd say you might fill in the blanks differently!:
_____: That's Just The Way It Is, original by Bruce Hornsby and The Range
_____: That's Just The Way It Is, stringband version by Love Canon
_____: Changes [That's Just The Way It Is], rap version by Tupac Shakur
8/15/16, 8:23 PM
Chris Smith said...
I agree: Norman Rockwell paintings are good storytelling. I saw the Rockwell retrospective at the Corcoran years ago. IMHO, he does the "nostalgia for something that never quite was" thing very well. I get that "it really could be this way if we want it" vibe from his work. He is very underrated.
@ Charles DeYoe
Check out Grant Morrison's run on "Doom Patrol" if you like "Sandman". It's sheer madness. (Danny the Street, a transvestite city street, is one of my favorite characters of all time.)
8/15/16, 9:07 PM
James M. Jensen II said...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/montecookgames/invisible-sun
Wow. Just wow. This is now my prime candidate for highbrow trash in tabletop RPGs.
From the page:
Let’s be upfront, though. Invisible Sun is not a game for everyone. Not because it’s difficult, but because it’s involved. It’s not really designed for casual, fire-and-forget sorts of play. It is character-focused the way a good novel or television series is character-focused, with individual story arcs, deep development, complex motivations, nonlinear narratives, and asymmetrical play. If you’re the kind of player who enjoys musing over your character between sessions, thinking deeply about the setting and events in the game, and making interesting choices, then Invisible Sun is the game you’ve been waiting for all this time.
There's even an app (an app!) for playing side sessions of the game with individual players in your spare time.
Excuse me while I go pull out my Frank Mentzer D&D Basic Set books, roll up a level 1 Dwarf and go kill some people and take their stuff...
8/15/16, 9:52 PM
John Michael Greer said...
If the commentariat of this blog were somehow all to pull up stakes and move en masse to the same half-abandoned Rust Belt town, I'm convinced at this point that the sheer range of talents, interests, viewpoints, and just plain interesting conversations would launch a full-blown cultural renaissance in about a week. New York, San Francisco et al. would have no idea what hit them.
That is to say, I continue to be impressed with you folks -- those who agree with me and those who disagree as well. Thank you all.
8/16/16, 12:27 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Glad to hear about your transition to piano, btw! I'm in the process of doing the same thing -- I've been promised a secondhand piano from a home that needs to downsize. Up to now I've been playing a surplus electric parlor organ, the classic 1970s spinet variety with two offcenter keyboards and one octave of foot pedals; that's the standard instrument in Masonic lodges, and almost nobody knows how to play them any more, so I may be setting myself up for a long if not lucrative career as lodge musician. ;-) But I'd be happier playing something that didn't have to be plugged in.
Unknown Eagle, I've done that in the past with great results, and will do it again the next time I'm somewhere within a hundred miles of an Indian restaurant. Those are kind of few and far between in the north central Appalachians!
Yucca, so noted. Of course it will want to be handled with a light touch, and with a sense of many options -- it simply strikes me that there will be paintings on walls in various places we've visited, statues in public places, and the like, and I neglected that in the first-draft episodes.
Bill, that's *really* funny. Thank you.
Sven, good. A movement into abstraction doesn't have to be a Nay-saying, of course -- the Overman can dance with abstractions all night -- but the current form thereof, no question, it's a flight from life into a realm of artificialities. Definitely the sort of thing that needs to be clobbered with a very, very big hammer. (Or was that supposed to be a battle-ax?)
Alvin, you've got me -- I went looking for such a post on Galabes and couldn't find it, while here, there are currently 513 posts to search through and that's a bit much even for my recollections!
Cherokee, actually, there was -- the Dark Ages in particular saw a lot of abstract and semiabstract forms. Its excesses were somewhat constrained by the fact that barbarian warlords had definite tastes in such things. ;-) I'm glad to hear you have art on your walls -- and that it reflects your taste and your wife's, not what curators think you ought to enjoy!
Patricia, yes, and in a couple of generations the only classical music that survives is the stuff that can be played simply and unpretentiously to delight a casual audience. That's my point.
David, funny. A nice bit of worldbuilding byplay.
Paulcito, nah, you don't get credit for the assignment unless you also have trash of the same genre to compare it to.
Juhana, as far as I know, it's only available directly from the publisher as yet. Once the trade paper edition comes out, that may change.
Alex, thanks for the link!
JoAnna, don't forget the other side of the picture. The highbrow music was being composed and performed for rich patrons, but there were also dances being played at peasant weddings and wandering bards going from household to household, playing and singing old songs in exchange for a place to sleep and a couple of square meals. Here in the US, Appalachian folk used to have their own musical repertoire, played on cheap fiddles and mountain dulcimers, and those weren't nohow played for rich folks, no sirree. That's likely to come back as cheap electronic music fades into memory.
8/16/16, 1:08 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Jeff(back)inWa, thank you! Good to see some bits of common sense beginning to trickle through the online noise...
Pinku-sensei, duly noted. And of course it was driven by yet another transfer of things of value from the wage class to the salary class...
Nancy Sutton, why does this post make you sad? It's certainly not about telling you what you should or should not like; it's about encouraging you to like what you like and dislike what you dislike, without letting some self-proclaimed expert tell you that you have to like dog barf or you don't understand art. Does that upset you, and if so, why?
Shane, is that the collapse of Christianity, or the collapse of a particular kind of Puritan cultural hangover that's been mistaken for Christianity for too long?
AT, thank you. I agree that communication is an essential part of art; if art does not communicate it fails, and if it deliberately avoids communication -- why, then it's dog barf of the Borborygmist school, no question.
LatheChuck, in fact, you're exactly the kind of patron who got art through the last set of dark ages. It was churches, supported by the tithes of their parishioners, who provided very nearly the sole venue for most arts (everything but fabric arts, jewelry, poetry, and a few kinds of music) from the fall of Rome to the dawning of the High Middle Ages.
Zach, so noted. As I pointed out above, it was meant in large part as a counterweight to the very common caricature within the art world that portrays everybody outside that world as a flatulent philistine who hates art. It is also, I think, justified in just enough cases to make it useful as a challenge; in the case of this artwork, how do I know that it's not just dog barf with a pretentious title tacked onto it?
Monica, good! But you're missing the absolutely classic lowbrow trash in the field of astrology, the newspaper sun sign astrology column -- the Thomas Kincade of the science of the stars. (Though I grant Linda Goodman honorable mention.) In terms of classic writers, I'm personally partial to Llewellyn George and Alan Leo -- possibly worth a glance if you have the opportunity.
Forever Becoming, that's a completely different world, and yes, it follows very different patterns. One of the things Oswald Spengler points out is that tribal societies don't go through the great cycles that affect and afflict civilizations, and so they can keep on working with the same motifs and ideas for thousands of years and never run out of notional space. I suppose one way to think of it is that they reached the stage of performance early on, and never saw any reason to leave it.
Violet, excellent. Yes, that works.
Ganv, not everything lowbrow is trash, nor is everything highbrow necessarily trash; the trash label belongs to the extremes, with kitsch and warhol at the ultimate ends of the curve. Again, if you want scientific warhol, I really think the latest rounds of string theory are the place to look.
Pinku-Sensei, we were all waiting for you to do it. ;-)
Unknown, thank you! That's really an elegant application of the ternary.
Arkady, no, it would just mean the emperor was a different kind of fool, and didn't mind being seen in his underwear by most of his subjects.
8/16/16, 1:27 AM
Unknown said...
How do you know that your meaning of art equates to the purpose the originators had for the object under discussion?
Your approach seems to require an assumption that what we are seeing as art was produced as art, and not something more prosaic like a teaching aid or a memory prompt to keep a story line constant through generations.
As I understand it, an example of this is the NZ Maori carvings. Think more a language than an ornament. Nuku might like to comment on this.
to any other Tasmanian followers lurking out there, are you interested in a meet up on the NW coast? If so mention it in your comments and if there is enough interest I will organise something.
Cheers
eagle eye
8/16/16, 1:35 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Lisa, no, it's not pushing the metaphor too far. The secret to the metaphor is that it's based on social class, and the US is a profoundly caste-ridden society, where the greatest fear most people have is that of being mistaken for a different class. In such a society, "highbrow trash" (that is to say, trash marketed to the affluent) and "lowbrow trash" (that is to say, trash marketed to the masses) are going to be found everywhere.
Charles, if it gets your gears turning, then it's doing its job. For what it's worth, I didn't think much of Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics either. That said, I'm not really into the genre any more; I read a lot of Batman and even more Green Arrow when I was a kid, and among my vices when I went off to college was Wendi Pini's Elfquest -- I still have a set of the original black and white editions around here somewhere -- but a lot of what I've seen of late, when I've dipped into the field, seems pretentious, glossy, and rather dull. But that may just be me.
Jim, excellent! I see you've learned the great lesson of the Emperor's New Art...
AAA, I think you're missing the point, but if you're having fun, have at it.
James, sounds like a plan. I'll roll up a first level magic user, and some of the other members of the commentariat can provide the cleric, the elf archer, and a couple of guys with swords! ;-)
8/16/16, 1:37 AM
trippticket said...
I definitely don't mean to say that high-quality information can't be gleaned from such experiences, but I do want to emphasize the location factor. In order to be highbrow it absolutely MUST be far enough away from home to require plane fare, time off work, and of course some new boho duds!
Curiously, I experience the same thing with upstart mushroom hunters, who always want to drive to some remote and pristine site to hunt chanterelles. No matter where you live, mushrooms live there with you. Just walk outside and look around. No car required...
But that's so pedestrian! ;)
8/16/16, 5:06 AM
nuku said...
Movies are my favorite art form, so
For low-brow trash I nominate, among the hundreds of thousands of examples, 1976‘s “Rocky“ staring Slyvester Stallone. It had tremendous “feel-good” appeal to the working class being a classic “rags to riches” story set against the backdrop of the American Dream: perseverance, hard work, following your dream, a good woman who believes in you, and a bit of luck will get you success no matter what your class or ethnic background. An utterly predictable plot, and even the profession of the main character, boxing, is at the low-brow end of the world of Sport.
For high-brow trash I nominate the 1973‘s “The Holy Mountain” by Alejandro Jodorowsky. One possible description of the plot is: “A Christlike figure wanders through bizarre, grotesque scenarios filled with religious and sacrilegious imagery. He meets a mystical guide who introduces him to seven wealthy and powerful people, each representing a planet in the Solar system. These seven, along with the protagonist, the guide and the guide's assistant, divest themselves of their worldly goods and form a group of nine who will seek the Holy Mountain, in order to displace the gods who live there and become immortal“. I saw it at UC Berkeley when it first came out, and it was a real hit with the arty crowd who would project all sorts of personal meaning into it (a bit like abstract art!).
For classic I nominate 1957’s “12 Angry Men“ by Sidney Lumet staring Henry Fonda. This is a straightforward B&W film set in a single room on a hot day with a jury trying to decide the guilt or innocence of a young man accused of murdering his father. Its all about how the phrase “presumed innocent before proven guilty“ actually works out among 12 average men, each of whom brings their own prejudices and preconceptions to the deliberation. Its about Justice, fair play, the trial by jury system, and about how one man who acknowledges his own doubts can influence the other 11 to explore what starts out to be an “open and shut” case. Fantastic naturalistic acting, no gimmicks, and a solid logical tight script. Not preachy and not obvious how its going to end. To me its a classic both as a well crafted movie and as a brilliant piece of social commentary.
8/16/16, 5:14 AM
David, by the lake said...
My elven thief volunteers to take up the rearguard, right behind the dwarf carrying the bulk of the party's treasure :) (This actually occurred during one of our more interesting sessions back on the day. My pick pockets skill was in rare form that evening.)
8/16/16, 7:28 AM
Peter VE said...
8/16/16, 7:36 AM
pygmycory said...
But I'm not sure if I'll get really into this again, since I have too many hobbies already. I'd love to learn lapidary, but between the need for ventilation, the need for expensive equipment, and all the other things I want to do, I can't see that happening any time soon.
8/16/16, 9:42 AM
pygmycory said...
8/16/16, 9:43 AM
Matthias Gralle said...
Many other works of art I found very hard going, but glimpsed a little bit of beauty here and there, and that encouraged me to go on and struggle till I saw more and more of the beauty. The Divina Commedia, the Aeneid, Moby Dick... I can say it was sincere appreciation of bits of beauty, I was not simply brainwashed into liking the classics, because I did not like book V of the Aeneid at all and in the end skipped it, and I never appreciated Homer enough to read more than a few hundred lines, in spite of trying hard to like him.
The same thing in music. I loved the first madrigal by Monteverdi I heard in a music store (Sestina, from book VI), bought the CD and heard it dozens of times until I liked 13 of the 14 tracks, and then some more until I appreciated the 14th track, and then other Monteverdi CDs.
All I mean to say is, I think one needs a small opening into the work of art, otherwise there is no way to judge if it is worth it to spend the effort to go on. Some things will inevitably require effort, but it seems preposterous on the part of the artist to consciously block every sensuous entry and make everything grating on purpose. Your only reason to dedicate yourself to understanding a work of art would then be vanity - "getting it", "being part of the in crowd".
8/16/16, 10:26 AM
Sven Eriksen said...
Yes, it is true that it doesn't have to be like that, thankfully. Of course the Overman can engage in abstraction to his heart's content if he so chooses (he can do what he wants cuz he's the Overman), though he does so with awareness of exactly what he is doing, and when he does, he affirms life without resentment!
And I think that definitly was a hammer.
8/16/16, 10:37 AM
John Michael Greer said...
David, hah! The other players clearly didn't know that the thief always goes in front. That way he can sneak up on what's ahead, and he can also be fed to a wandering monster if he gets too obstreporous. (Listens for the rattle of a D6...)
Peter, that's a great story. Thank you.
Onething, heh heh heh. Congratulations on your new hobby.
Sven, when Nietzsche wrote about philosophizing with a hammer, I'm not sure that's quite what he had in mind!
8/16/16, 11:39 AM
Alvin Leong said...
I remember reading an article which dealt with that topic (a tripartite division of existence forgotten after Cartesian mind-body dualism and its relation to magic) and this is the only place I could think of where I might have read something like that. I have tried different search terms involving "descartes, cartesian, dualism" but with no luck so far.
I also tried Googling this topic, and it seems to me that almost all post-Cartesian Western philosophy follows the lines of this dichotomy -- either with a bias towards one of idealism or materialism, or just shrugging and taking its assumptions for granted. None of them actually posit a third aspect of existence distinct from mind and body.
In the Christian world, the tripartite division of body, soul and spirit is a clear version of the idea but even then I can't seem to find sources which discuss how Descartes dropped the idea of spirit completely. The sources which do discuss the Christian tripartite division don't seem interested in comparing it with Descartes or discussing its role in magic. I found a book titled "Magic, Body and the Self in Eighteenth-Century Sweden" on Google Books which seems to deal with non-Cartesian ideas of the self in Swedish folk magic but that's it.
For a Buddhist perspective, there is an interesting book called "Secret Map of the Body" by Gyalwa Yangonpa, translated by Elio Guarisco, which deals with this.
8/16/16, 12:04 PM
ed boyle said...
Women's rights get short shrift compared to modern but compared to forced marriage it looks pretty good. Helena could have gotten a divorce nowadays then war would have been superfluous and if hagen were tried for murder the bloodletting in niebelungenlied would have been avoided. Of course these were just romantic excuses for real lfe wars based on long built up tensions over political and trade interests but the hate shows through all the same. At any rate, deeper human suffering remains same over time. Human nature is universal, timeless. Antiheroes like hagen, flawed agamemnon are very interesting as opposed to perfect Siegfried for example. The European border being between greece and persia, egypt is shown in plays. Culture is different as now. I am pleased I can read and enjoy 2500 year old works so readily. Next spinoza.
Noted in text is that the plays won prizes, 'oscars' of the times. So best of best, like shakespeare and writing is quite good. No high or lowbrow trash here.
8/16/16, 12:47 PM
HalFiore said...
That got me thinking about the T-shirt as wearable, self-identifying art, and my attempt at the assignment took a very different direction than I had planned. So...
Highbrow trash: A shirt I have to admit I owned back in the 80s. Solid black, high quality cotton, slim-fit T with a single very small line over the left breast in a very plain, white text, "Life is hard, then you die." Bought in a trendy New Wave boutique in SF during the latter days of the punk scene there. Definitely trash, it's a T-shirt, after all, but with just enough pretentiousness to appeal to someone straddling the line between wanting social progress and a nihilist desire to burn it all down.
Lowbrow trash: A big, white, baggy shirt I saw some years later on someone I knew to be working class with garishly colored huge words splashed across the front, "Life's a BI*CH then you DIE!" Never mind the crudity of the language, which to be honest, never bothered me when it suited my purposes, but the actual message was not too subtly changed. The fact that something is hard does not mean that it is... unpleasant..., just something one must get through, and in the end, well, you're still going to die.
For classic, I'm going to have to go with the skin-tight black T's seen on European badguys and henchmen in James Bond films back in the 60s that first opened a lot of people's eyes to the idea that a T-shirt could be something beside underwear.
Now, can a T-shirt be something beside trash? I would say yes. I had a neighbor in SF in the 70s who hand screened shirts with beautiful, elegant designs from Asian art. I wish I had some of them now.
8/16/16, 1:32 PM
onething said...
It was sincere. My understanding is that personality disorders have little to no success in treatment, and certainly borderline personality. If you are suggesting that you have a borderline personality, I would be very surprised.
8/16/16, 3:32 PM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
Apologies for the wildly off topic comment, but it relates to the blog as a whole: is it fair to call our global empire, from a historical perspective, the Anglo-American Empire? In essence, how much really changed when the British Empire fell? I think it has relevance, because if the empire lived on in a different form, then the fall of the British Empire isn't really a valid source of information on what to expect, is it?
In any case, I expect things to be messier than the fall of the British Empire, for that reason, although please do correct me if I'm wrong.
8/16/16, 3:53 PM
Yellow Submarine said...
And in other news, we have more evidence the balance of power is shifting in the Middle East, with Russian Tu-22M3 heavy bombers and Su-34 tactical bombers operating out of Hamadan Tactical Air Base in Iran. Meanwhile, Turkish and
Iranian leaders are proposing a tripartite alliance between Russia, Turkey and Iran while US-Turkish relations are headed for the rocks in the wake of the failed coup in Turkey, which many Turkish leaders suspect was a botched "color revolution" of the sort we have seen from Honduras to Libya to Ukraine.
It's worth noting the last successful color revolution was the one engineered in Ukraine by Hillary Clinton's mini-me Victoria Nuland in 2014. Every other color revolution since then has failed miserably and many have backfired. One can only use the same playbook so many times before potential targets get wise and start taking appropriate countermeasures.
The decline and fall of the American Empire appears to be not only underway but accelerating...
8/16/16, 4:24 PM
Yellow Submarine said...
8/16/16, 4:38 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Ed, good. I did mention a canon...
HalFiore, of course a t-shirt can be something besides trash. A good practical garment only becomes trash if (a) it's made of trash material (falls apart fast, etc.) or it has trashy stuff printed on it.
WB, no, I'd differentiate between the two, just as the Macedonian empire differed from the Athenian empire despite linguistic and cultural connections. You're right, of course, that our fall is going to be much messier than Britain's; they had the common sense to give up their empire before it dragged them down, and we don't seem to have the brains to do that.
Submarine, no, I hadn't seen the bit on Musk -- thank you for that! As for Syria, you left out the biggest news of all; China has sent a senior military official to Damascus and agreed to provide, ahem, humanitarian aid and, ahem, training to the Syrian government forces. (All my readers who recall the Vietnam War know exactly what that means on the ground.) The 64 billion yuan question at this point is just how involved the Peoples Liberation Army is going to get; they've got to be envious as Russia's forces get some solid frontline experience -- and knowing what I do about Chinese strategic thinking, I would expect them to want to show off just what their military can do, as a way of warning the other nations with claims on the South China Sea what could be coming their way. As I recall, the proverbial Chinese phrase translates as "killing a chicken to frighten a monkey"...
8/16/16, 4:49 PM
Yellow Submarine said...
Did you get the post I just submitted about Chinese moves in the South China Sea? The Chinese have effectively secured control of the SCS without firing a shot and are now preparing to directly challenge the Dubyobama administration's latest "red line" in the South China Sea. At this point, there's very little the senile elites running the American government can do to stop them if the Chinese are determined to press their claims.
8/16/16, 5:00 PM
Robert C. Guy said...
Thank you for hosting such a reasonable conversation. I did not realize how under-explored my own sense of personal taste was.
8/16/16, 5:05 PM
Yellow Submarine said...
Among them are the YJ-100 and YJ-12 anti-ship cruise missiles, the ZBD/ZTD-05 amphibious assault vehicles and several new ship and submarine classes, including the Type-055 class guided missile cruiser. The Chinese have also announced their second aircraft carrier is under construction and they plan to build larger and more advanced carriers in the near future.
8/16/16, 5:42 PM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
In any case, I wonder how willing the British would've been to part with their empire had the Americans not been hovering over the corpse of their empire, and willing to offer quite good terms to them if they let the empire fall.
8/16/16, 7:10 PM
Shane W said...
8/16/16, 7:57 PM
jessi thompson said...
8/16/16, 11:09 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Robert, funny. Yes, that's about right.
WB, there were equivalent parallels between the Athenian and (early) Macedonian empires. Notice the very large differences: the British Empire was a matter of direct ownership of overseas real estate, the US empire a matter of client states subject mostly to economic control by private industry; the British Empire focused above all else on the control of sea lanes, the US is uninterested in those (even though they remain a paramount strategic factor); "the third world" is a big label, and the areas in which Britain had its most important holdings (south and east Africa, India, Malaya, Australasia) are not the areas where the US has historically exercised the most control (the Middle East, Latin America, western Africa), and so on. I really do think it's two different empires.
Shane, so? Lots of artists have died messy deaths.
8/17/16, 12:08 AM
John Michael Greer said...
8/17/16, 12:09 AM
Compound F said...
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Breland/misbehavior.htm
I always love reading the Druid for often pointing out the obvious.
the
8/17/16, 12:59 AM
jbucks said...
8/17/16, 1:00 AM
Alvin Leong said...
8/17/16, 4:11 AM
Chevaliermalfait said...
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/architecture/4-205-analysis-of-contemporary-architecture-fall-2009/readings/MIT4_205F09_Sullivan.pdf
would this be illustrative of 'canon'?
henry
8/17/16, 6:44 AM
Shane W said...
Is this a suggestion, JMG? Are you wanting us to establish "Greertopia" in Cumberland? ;-)
8/17/16, 7:05 AM
Shane W said...
very true. I guess we are seeing the death of a certain kind of Puritanism. LatheChuck, I'm just old enough to recall when Lutheranism, Episcopalianism, and Catholicism were regarded as highly suspect amongst a lot of evangelical Southerners. Lutheranism was particularly "foreign", Episcopalianism was regarded as wealthy decadence, and Catholicism was papal and Mary worship. I'm particularly comforted by young evangelicals under 30--they've gone a long way towards relieving my "evangephobia"--if they're the future of evangelical Christianity in America, the future will be good.
8/17/16, 8:05 AM
Dudley Dawson said...
No need to respond. I just want to say, as a fellow genre writer, hearing you say this makes me very happy. I LOL'd.
I've often whined to my wife about the future of writing and she takes a similar approach: "People want escape in hard times." I might call it fun or laughter, maybe even entertainment rather than escape, but I guess it's a horse apiece. Either way, I have a kind of frantic optimism that we might see a return to the days of ubiquitous and cheap pulp fiction. That'd be fine by me. When done well, it's pretty great stuff.
Thanks again for the great discussion this week.
8/17/16, 10:38 AM
Space Seeder said...
Anyway, I was here in the library last week in the mental health section, out of my daily allotment of internet time, and looking for a way to self-diagnose. I read this book about borderline personality, and most of the symptoms fit really well. The book outlined some possible treatments, and followed some case studies that seemed to be improving. I haven't got the title and author handy, but I'll look for it again and get back to you as soon as I've got it.
For myself, I've decided to take on my problem and fix it with as little professional help as possible. To the extent that I can, I'm going to deconstruct my own personality and rebuild a more effective one. The main reason for that is that when they're diagnosing you, among other things they're checking to see if you have any delusional beliefs. Well, I've been reading the peak oil blogosphere and related material for years now, I've accepted a lot of what I've read as likely to be true, and I think the whole society I'm part of is nuts anyway, so there's lots for them to find! I think I could get misdiagnosed because I believe crazy things that happen to be true!
I gather that your interest in this topic has mainly to do with helping your brother if you can, so if I learn anything that might help, I'll pass it on.
JMG: My family had one of those organs when I was a teenager, and just developing an interest in playing music. I discovered that if I held the Bb bass pedal as well as every other Bb I could reach, the whole house would vibrate.
jbucks: Thanks very much for bringing the work of Lionel Shriver up here. I don't usually read a whole lot of fiction, but right now I'm busy devouring as much of her catalog as I can get ahold of. The local copy of Mandibles is out, unfortunately.
I used to make music that was very dependent on electrical toys as well, particularly a computer. Now I'm gonna try and get as good at piano and acoustic guitar as I can. I don't have a guitar now, but there's something called "Keys to the Streets" which is public pianos in different places. It's a godsend!
8/17/16, 10:42 AM
Stacey Neanderthal said...
onething: Ok, got it. The book is "Borderline Personality Disorder: A guide for the newly diagnosed" by Alexander Chapman, so FWIW, that's who says it can be fixed.
8/17/16, 12:22 PM
zach bender said...
you say "in the case of this artwork, how do I know that it's not just d*g b*rf with a pretentious title tacked onto it?"
by applying the criteria i proposed upthread
8/17/16, 4:12 PM
Malcolm M said...
Highbrow trash is the over-bred miniature show dog. High strung and prone to disease, Doomed to a short life. Entirely dependent on its caregiver. Useless as a pet or a working dog, it only serves to impress judges who get down on all fours and examine it's rear end for proper pucker. These dogs are scarfs once meant to warm the neck, bred into silk ascots that get caught in machinery. It is the puffy shirt of dogs.
When it comes to highbrow, the term "crawling up their own *-holes" comes to mind.
The elitist insider nature of highbrow trash reminds me of what happens when a group of friends share movie quotes or inside jokes, eventually it devolves into shorthand, and the players can communicate entire references with grunts and hand gestures. It's like the joke about the numbered jokes, except the players all start throwing random numbers around and still act like it's funny.
Or, in the concept of simulacra, lowbrow is first-order simulacra that has become self-parody, and highbrow is fourth-order simulacra on steroids.
8/19/16, 7:01 AM
DoubtingThomas said...
Classic, lowbrow or highbrow doesn't work for me as a classification system.
Such things for me imply either accepting the imposition of someone else's classification system or imposing my own on others and fosters the creation of division, possibly snobbery while also providing ego-strokes.
I like what I like and have an aversion to 'names' / 'labels' of the emotive/judgemental variety.
(Whether that be in the form of populist "labels" on art / clothes / etc ..)
It was interesting that people felt threatened enough by a throw away line in a fictional story to attempt to aggressively "correct" you. That behaviour I find fascinating.
1/11/17, 6:05 AM