The Emperor's New Clothes

[SteveShaw]

On the one hand, life's short, work's long--if we go, in our limited open time, to art that speaks to us immediately, that deals in what we already recognize and value, no blame there. On the other, spending some time with work that requires some re-thinking, a different way of seeing or of organizing language can have a liberating effect, after the initial frustration. I don't know that I'd want to exclude that possiblility for fear that I might be fooled.

I think all art should speak to us immediately on at least some level, even if it's only to say "open the door and come in - but what you find inside might be hard..." Don't get me wrong when I say this, as I don't want to propose for one minute staying coccooned in our own art comfort-zones, but I find infinite prompts to rethink every time I revisit a work that I thought I knew well...could be that I'm in a different emotional state to the last time I approached it, or it's being interpreted in a different way by a different performer (thinking of music here obviously).

Joseph Kerman, writing about the late quartets of Beethoven, said "...the common listener (to adapt a term from Virginia Woolf) has found a special place for [them] in his essential musical experience." Wow, music of that calibre, for the common listener. Who'd have thought it! The products of the highest flights of the human mind, yet not at all "unapproachable."

Steve

[SteveShaw]

The great Art in 4' 33" is in how Cage forces us to face up to and try to deal with our fear of silence in a crowded room. The majority of people cannot deal with sitting still and remaining silent in the close proximity of others.
Cages genius is that he captures us and forces us to be silent and still. In our attempt to deal with this we must face up to our fear and discomfort.
This is Art that lives, breathes and shakes us by the throat until we are weak and begging for release.

Slan,
D.

I don't want art to force me to do anything. I don't know John Cage and he doesn't know me and I instinctively resist such didacticism (I mean what right has he...?). I want art to help me to articulate things that I struggle with, to open me up, to edify. The only thing that would happen to me during enforced stillness and silence would be that I'd be reminded that my haemorrhoids were itching again and my tinnitus was kicking in. I think he's taking the piss, so there.

Steve

[GaryKelly]

I wonder if Cage has a copyright on 4'33"? If so, does that mean the RIAA will kick the doors in if they don't hear any music being played at a concert??

[SteveShaw]

I wonder if Cage has a copyright on 4'33"? If so, does that mean the RIAA will kick the doors in if they don't hear any music being played at a concert??

Someone asked Cage that but so far he's remained silent.

Steve

[ErikT]

Is this true: "Modernity is to Post-modernity as Graduate is to Post-graduate"?

[NancyF]

What's the point of aggressively declining to teach or learn analytical and critical skills?

Because once you eliminate both, all contests come down to a matter of who's louder.

Reminds me of the discussion in another thread about argument from faith...

nancy

[Wormdiet]

Give me the elephant any day.

For me, good art is like ρσяиσפядρђψ (only in the following sense!) "I can't define it, but I know it whe I see it."

[scottielvr]

....Imagine .... 4' 33" begins...
The great Art in 4' 33" is in how Cage forces us to face up to and try to deal with our fear of silence in a crowded room. The majority of people cannot deal with sitting still and remaining silent in the close proximity of others.
Cages genius is that he captures us and forces us to be silent and still. In our attempt to deal with this we must face up to our fear and discomfort.
This is Art that lives, breathes and shakes us by the throat until we are weak and begging for release. Absolute genius.

D., your description is so very lyrical that it makes me want to agree...but. Well. While I'm not sure either you or Steve S. is entirely on point with the notion that the audience are being "forced” toward some reaction or another (that gives the artist’s intent too much weight, I think), I do think the way Steve describes his reactions makes an important point: Discussions of the artist's intent are quite intellectually fascinating, but only part of the story, and perhaps the least important part. I feel’s all about “where the rubber meets the road,” the interaction between the two minds, artist and audience. You contend that Cage wanted to force us to face/deal with a fear... I question this on two levels:

First, is it not perhaps more likely that he didn’t mean to explore any kind of fear, but rather, to explore the nature of sound and/or the absence of sound? (I think this might be borne out by Cage’s own comments)...the paradox of the silent musician on stage being meant to suggest that the audience ignore him and instead listen to any sounds, or the silence around them in the hall, and focus on that as the “composition” unfolded?

Second, assuming your view of his intent is correct, I question the value of it: the level, the depth, if you will, of any meaning there might be. I have many deep and primal fears that I’d no doubt be the better for confronting, but can’t say that squeamishness about remaining silent and still in a crowded room is one of them. I can’t say it’s an issue I will ever feel driven to seek therapy for (through either professional services or Art). So...whether confronting audiences with such a, well, less-than-compelling fear rises to the level of “genius,” I have to doubt.

That said, your definition: “ Art....lives, breathes and shakes us by the throat until we are weak and begging for release...” I can wholeheartedly agree with.

[jim stone]

I think the underlying dynamic is this:

the main art forms of the past have tended to become
exhausted. After a hundred years or so of the Baroque,
classical music needed to move on. The vein had been
mined by genuises; not much point in writing more fugues.
The same thing happened with romantic music. And what
do you do for an encoure after Mozart, Beethoven, et al?

Similarly with representational painting--one couldn't go
on doing the same thing, too many great masters.

So then
one got modern art, modern music, which rebelled against
the old forms and was initially extraordinarily vital. But
after that initial vitality there was nowhere to go where
a wide audience could follow. Painting and music became cerebral and introspective,
the painting became it's own subject, not anything in
the world; these forms became an experiment in composition for
its own sake. And they lost their audience.

This isn't anybody's fault--the old successful forms consumed themselves
and there was no way to continue that folks
could readily relate to without having a lot of
sophistication in art and music. There still is good work done,
sometimes the public is still moved. But painting and poetry,
which, when I was young were immensely exciting (we all
were arguing about Pound, Eliot and so on) have fallen
off the map of even highly educated people. I cannot think
of a major poet writing today (except for JS and Dale Wisely).
Nor can i think of a major painter or a major composer--
maybe Philip Glass, whom I've heard maybe twice.

The solution isn't to return to what was before ZZZZZZZZZZ.
It's to create new art forms. Note that the cinema is the
one art form that is vital, that grips us all, that we talk
about and discuss and disagree over and read reviews
about. Surely there will be newer art forms arising in
the coming century.

In short, I don't think the old forms have gone phoney;
it's that they are largely over. Probably they will continue
to exist as vestiges or maybe something more, but with
a much smaller place in people's lives (except for the old
great stuff, which will endure and delight indefinitely).

As Yeats wrote:

Everything that man esteems
Endures a moment or a day.
Love's pleasure drives his love away.
The painter's brush consumes his dreams.
The herald's cry,
The soldier's tread,
Exhausts his glory with his might.
Whatever flames upon the night
Man's own resinous heart has fed.

[dubhlinn]

Delightful post there scottielvr,

I was in a fierce hurry when I banged my post out and had not got the time I needed to develop it any further.

In mitigation I will say that maybe you have been listening to a different version of 4' 33" than I have.There is a huge difference between the studio version and the live version from Carnegie Hall which of course features a full orchestra.

That kind of silence is really scary

Slan,
D.

[scottielvr]

There is a huge difference between the studio version and the live version from Carnegie Hall which of course features a full orchestra.

[Wormdiet]

I think Scottie's puts his finger on why Thomas Kinkade's "work" holds absolutely no appeal to me: It's been done already by the Romantics, and before them, by van Eyck and Hans Memling. Kinkade merely recycles earlier themes with great marketing and a mammoth-load of sugar.

[SteveShaw]

I think the underlying dynamic is this:

the main art forms of the past have tended to become
exhausted. After a hundred years or so of the Baroque,
classical music needed to move on. The vein had been
mined by genuises; not much point in writing more fugues.
The same thing happened with romantic music. And what
do you do for an encoure after Mozart, Beethoven, et al?
<snip>
In short, I don't think the old forms have gone phoney;
it's that they are largely over. Probably they will continue
to exist as vestiges or maybe something more, but with
a much smaller place in people's lives (except for the old
great stuff, which will endure and delight indefinitely).

The old forms only got exhausted in the two senses that they were hard acts to follow, as you say, within the same veins, and that (for reasons I don't think any of us can understand fully) the old masters' works represented pinnacles of achievement that have never since been regained. I don't think they are exhausted in the sense of their longevity. I can only write with any confidence about classical music, such is my lack of self-education in other spheres. I think that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven will endure for thousands of years to come. Their greatest works are inexhaustible in their interpretive possibilities. Just look at the way that modern playing techniques and closer studies of the composers' true intentions - not to speak of the trend toward authenticity of instrumentation and orchestral forces - have revolutionised performances. When you listen to Klemperer or Bohm conducting Beethoven now, they sound wonderful still, yet somehow "old hat" when put side-by-side with Bruggen or Gardiner. And I'm not sure about "vestiges:" a few months ago BBC Radio 3 spent a whole week playing the complete works of Beethoven, and as from Friday this week will be playing every note of Bach's surviving works - ten days of solid Bach! (I may have to miss a couple of one-day cricket internationals to listen to it - how dare the BBC engineer such a clash!). I shall be lobbying for complete Mozart, I can tell you! That would be an awful lot of vestiges just from those three chaps alone. Many of the great masters of painting are hundreds of years older than these three composers, yet appreciation of their works endures undiminished. And I've recently been exploring medieval vocal music from Spain and the works of the abbess Hildegarde of Bingen, nearly a thousand years old yet sounding almost incredibly "contemporary" in the hands of modern interpreters/aficionados. I think that great art will always wax, wane, and wax again in the public consciousness, but will never become extinct as mere fads and fashions do.

Steve

[Wormdiet]

And I've recently been exploring medieval vocal music from Spain and the works of the abbess Hildegarde of Bingen, nearly a thousand years old yet sounding almost incredibly "contemporary" in the hands of modern interpreters/aficionados. I think that great art will always wax, wane, and wax again in the public consciousness, but will never become extinct as mere fads and fashions do.

Steve

Perotin, Steve. You will love it. The Hilliard Ensemble's recording is incredible.

I find a lot of medieval-esque elements crop up in, of all things, heavy metal. Not merely superficial resemblance either.

[ErikT]

I think that great art will always wax, wane, and wax again in the public consciousness, but will never become extinct as mere fads and fashions do.

Steve

Steve, I think that you've hit it. The last thirty to fifty years of philosophy and art have largely felt to me like fads. Simply existing as a means to distinguish oneself from what came before, not in any way seeking that which is delightful (my training in Vetruvius and Ruskin showing through).