NationStates Jolt Archive

I find it annoying when people pull deep philosophic things out of art. (If they're there, that's cool.) Or, alternatively, when they put them in too much. I was reading an interview with Dweezil Zappa and Steve Vai, about Frank Zappa's music. They said at one point that people who'd only heard his hits couldn't appreciate the length and breadth of Zappa's work. However, they also seemed to be trying to pull something deep out of it. In my spare time, I rarely read books for philosophy, but more for personal entertainment (I like James Bond, the Saint, Forrest Gump), and I listen to music because it sounds good (old British heavy metal for me). I think that this is why my mom has a tendency to denigrate my reading choices, because it's not literature. (She prides herself on her English and literature education)

What do you think? Do you find this annoying, do you enjoy it, or are you in the middle of those two?

I dislike vapid artists who produce vapid nonsense not worth creating. If I wanted something that sounded good, I'd go listen to birds. And art is philosophical by nature. If it isn't expressing a point, it's just craft.

It depends upon what I seek from a particular book or film. I concede I cannot simply perceive as an article of aesthetic beauty; a fine art GCSE, and interest in critical analysis leads me to analyse art beyond a simple "oooh, ain't it pretty".

In regard to literature, I do read real literature; Dickens, Shakespeare, Wilde, Jerome, Fitzgerald, Ishiguro and the like, an awful lot, both due to the enjoyment a well written book provides, and the intellectual stimulus they provide. Even so, I enjoy books beyond the canon to an equal extent; Terry Pratchett should be considered the best author since Orwell, and yet, despite this criminal lack of esteem, I enoy his books greatly.

I meant art that's overly philosophic and bludgeons you over the head with theme and meaning, in a sort of pretentious way. But, I guess I'm too plebeian to be in tune with the artistic mind.

I meant art that's overly philosophic and bludgeons you over the head with theme and meaning, in a sort of pretentious way. But, I guess I'm too plebeian to be in tune with the artistic mind.

Ah. You mean that art is bad and you like craft. Okay.

I meant art that's overly philosophic and bludgeons you over the head with theme and meaning, in a sort of pretentious way. But, I guess I'm too plebeian to be in tune with the artistic mind.

Anything that requires more than a cursory glance to gain full appreciation is pretentious?

Incidentally, don't play at being the simple minded pleb; the humility is transparently cynical.

Ah. You mean that art is bad and you like craft. Okay.

Don't get me wrong, I do occassionally analyze beyoned "Oooh, purty" but I don't do it all the time. Note to self: Don't ever try serious discussion threads again.

I read certain books for entertainment, and certain ones to explore philosophically/see how I can better my life.

Same thing with music. Some songs I listen to for the sound/melody/beat, and some I listen to for the lyrics.

I don't tend to drag any deeper meaning out of visual art though.

I find it annoying when people pull deep philosophic things out of art. (If they're there, that's cool.) Or, alternatively, when they put them in too much. I was reading an interview with Dweezil Zappa and Steve Vai, about Frank Zappa's music. They said at one point that people who'd only heard his hits couldn't appreciate the length and breadth of Zappa's work. However, they also seemed to be trying to pull something deep out of it. In my spare time, I rarely read books for philosophy, but more for personal entertainment (I like James Bond, the Saint, Forrest Gump), and I listen to music because it sounds good (old British heavy metal for me). I think that this is why my mom has a tendency to denigrate my reading choices, because it's not literature. (She prides herself on her English and literature education)

What do you think? Do you find this annoying, do you enjoy it, or are you in the middle of those two?

That's like saying you find it annoying when cooks try to put vegetables in your dinner, or water in your soda (as opposed to just corn syrup, gas and food coloring.)

The way I see it, the Air Force has a saying. "If it looks good, it will fly good." It means that even without a degree in engineering, experienced pilots can intuitively tell which aircrafts are aerodynamically sound and this intuition is attuned to their aesthetic sensibilities.

A more well known version in intellectual circles is "Beauty is truth, and truth, beauty."

If you are a mature, sophisticated individual you will find things entertaining and appealing when they represent some truth in the real world. Like how fighter pilots recognize beauty in sound aerodynamics, most people find signs of good health in members of the opposite sex to be beautiful, and rotten, or unripe fruit looks unappealing and has less nutrition in it.

By contrast, women who have a poor sense of self-esteem find weak-looking men more attractive because they feel that's what they deserve. Impatient, superficial thinkers prefer mindless action films to those with a real story, and immature women prefer sentimental romances to films with real character development.

Good art for mature audiences should be life-affirming and educating. That's educating in the classical sense of "bring out of." That quality you're complaining about. It should elicit some sort of insight out of the viewer (or listener). Even if the artist didn't intend for that insight to be in the work to begin with.

When art fails to get in touch with any sort of deeper truth it will invariably become boring, and even annoying, to the mature viewer once the novelty wears off. This is probably what annoys me most about John Carpenter and Quentin Tarentino films. They put their childhood issues on celluloid and then charge the rest of us to look at it. That's probably why whenever I watch them (with few exceptions) I end up rooting for the villains. It always seems to be a vilification of some noble standard that the filmmaker himself has failed to realize and now must defile to satisfy his own ego. It's the cinematic equivalent of taking a dump on the table and expecting your dinner guests to eat it.

Another example would be those Hong Kong Wire-fu films. Back when they were mostly from Hong Kong the heroes were champions against oppression. But these days they're all just Chinese Communist Party propaganda (as opposed to communist propaganda, these films have no economic agenda).

Did you see Jet-Li's fearless? Compare it to Kiss of the Dragon. Fearless, intended for a Chinese audience glorifies Wushu in the late 19th century. It was invented in the 50's to replace the cultural vacuum left by the Shaolin monks who were driven into exile for not supporting the Communist revolution. Notice how when Shaolin do appear in contemporary Kung-fu films they do so as corrupt versions of their once noble selves?

KoD on the other hand, intended for Western audiences, shows Jet Li being everything a man should be. Honoring his duty, but flexible enough to show charity, and even take risks, to defend those who can't do it themselves, even if it means standing up against authorities in a superior position.

Any movie with Jet-Li in it is going to have great action sequences. But the ones intended for Chinese audiences (not necessarily all those made in China) are going to have shitty stories, because they're all controlled by the Chinese bureaucrats, almost by definition men with a limited understanding of human nature. Once you notice that, a lot of Jet-Li's movies become really annoying. But a lot of other movies become really moving, an yes, entertaining.

When I first saw Ravenous, it bored the shit out of me. But when I learned to see it as a classically framed tragedy in which a society's inability to accommodate feminine values left it blind and self-destructive... Well, it became a lot more interesting.

When I saw Roll Bounce as a tale of a young man coming to terms with the changing challenges that oncoming adulthood would bring, and his finding the ability to meet those challenges, rather than as a disco movie in which yet another talentless rapper found someone dumb enough to stick him in a movie, I found it an enjoyable diversion, where I would have found it an annoying pain in the ass.

This seems to have come out a bit long winded, so I'll summarize thusly:
Grow Up.

Ah. You mean that art is bad and you like craft. Okay.

Art is eternal and speaks to the human spirit. Crafts have handles, so they're easy to pick up.

-snip-
I agree with some of your points, and blatantly disagree with others (For instance, I think Tarentino is a genius.) I've also made it my point to find meaning in things many would try to consider meaningless.

yeh, i often think people over-analyse art and forget the aesthetics. i think art is about beauty first and meaning second, but then i'm quite shallow so what do i know?

I think there's 2 means of appreciating art.

One if it's subjective and often isolated to a certain piece of art. Art you like, art you don't like.

The other is in understanding where that art has come from - renaissance art may not be so compelling to us now but it was a revolution at the time, if you follow the trend through cubism, surrealism , altering the way we view something, to abstract expressionism - Pollock - art for art's sake, to modern art, post-modern then there's a different type of appreciation.

So in music, you may or may not like heavy metal, but if you're viewing it from the perspective of how it's grown from blues, the times it was formed in, the progression from what it was and beyond then, again, there's a different appreciation. To see how one guitarist has influenced a generation in terms of technique, to see how another guitarist has inverted or improved on that technique and how that changes things once again - it's a different appreciation.

You can understand the cultural values, symbolism and significance of that art.

I think the problem with people's view on art is where opinions on the former merge with the latter - and people therefore subjectively say, this art is shite, without having an appreciation of the history and 'why it's important in art terms' of it all.

Is it pretentious to say 'well you just don't understand it'? Possibly, but when people decry heavy metal, couldn't you say the same?

I agree with some of your points, and blatantly disagree with others (For instance, I think Tarentino is a genius.) I've also made it my point to find meaning in things many would try to consider meaningless.

Well, that post is rather meaningless unless you say what it is that you think is so ingenious about Tarentino. Literally meaningless, as in 'full of undefined variables."

Even Tarentino himself says that when he, for example, has Uma Thurman slash a room full of people to bits, he's just working through his own psychological crap. Uma Thurman is every woman he's ever wanted. And by having her murder a room full of people he's creating a world in which it's OK that he didn't get her, because no one can approach her.

And the enlightened master who is actually an emotionally brittle, psychotically homicidal bully. Wizardly wise old men are supposed to be aware, compassionate and peaceful. Like Merlin, Prospero, Obi Wan. But because Tarentino is none of those things his efforts to portray a wise old man end up creating a mindless bully who ends up getting killed by his own blindness (murdered by a woman he mutilated in a fit of pique and did not recognize her resentment.)

He's not a genius. He's a child of the pulling-legs-off-flies stripe with a talent for making films that speak to the same facet of his audience.

Consider the line where David Carradine is leading up to describing a scene in which Pai Mei (I think that was the Kung fu master's name) kills a monastery full of monks because one of them didn't see him nod. He says that the guy was "walking around contemplating whatever it is that men of his infinite faculties contemplate, which is another way of saying 'who knows?'" (or something like that, I only saw Kill Bill once.)

Tarentino is all but saying that he himself has no idea what wisdom is, and thus is unable to portray it in film.

well... to me, the purpose of art (music, paintings, writing, whatever) is to move me. emotionally. to make me feel something i didn't before, or something i've never had experience with in my own life.

i, too, find it irritating when "deep meanings" are read into things. not necessarily because i disagree, but largely just because i find it pretentious. if there's supposed to be a meaning, fine. but analysing every little aspect of a piece of artwork to find its 'meaning' has always struck me as a waste of time, and also a shame to so often gloss over the way the piece actually moves you, personally.

i may be a prude but i can appreciate art, just in a different (and probably simpler) way than an "art lover" might. meh.



edit: oh yeah, i can't stand Tarentino. and going round the Van Gough museum in Amsterdam with my girlfriend was a hoot :p (i actually enjoyed it, could appreciate the talent that went into creating the pieces, was moved by a few, but found the blurbs written by the side of each painting to be hilarious ;))

Some people will try to find a philosphy in anything. I'd like to see them have a crack at the songs of AC/DC, Guns n Roses and KISS.

:p

That would be funny to watch.

yeh, i often think people over-analyse art and forget the aesthetics. i think art is about beauty first and meaning second, but then i'm quite shallow so what do i know?

The term is decadent.

And that was the whole point of my gigantic post above. If the meaning is confused, or just blatantly wrong, the beauty is going to suffer. A tragedy that unfolds because of the failure of the tragic hero to realize proper values, then that tragedy will be cathartic. If the hero does everything right, and fails, or does everything wrong and succeeds despite himself, then the work will be disturbing.

There will always be some who say that the disturbing nature of the piece is a statement itself, but virgin forest is beautiful. Worm-eaten roadkill is disturbing. There is very little room for crossover.

The term is decadent.

And that was the whole point of my gigantic post above. If the meaning is confused, or just blatantly wrong, the beauty is going to suffer. A tragedy that unfolds because of the failure of the tragic hero to realize proper values, then that tragedy will be cathartic. If the hero does everything right, and fails, or does everything wrong and succeeds despite himself, then the work will be disturbing.

There will always be some who say that the disturbing nature of the piece is a statement itself, but virgin forest is beautiful. Worm-eaten roadkill is disturbing. There is very little room for crossover.

Are you saying that it is "wrong" to find roadkill beautiful, either aesthetically or thematically (philisophically maybe)?

The term is decadent.

And that was the whole point of my gigantic post above. If the meaning is confused, or just blatantly wrong, the beauty is going to suffer. A tragedy that unfolds because of the failure of the tragic hero to realize proper values, then that tragedy will be cathartic. If the hero does everything right, and fails, or does everything wrong and succeeds despite himself, then the work will be disturbing.

There will always be some who say that the disturbing nature of the piece is a statement itself, but virgin forest is beautiful. Worm-eaten roadkill is disturbing. There is very little room for crossover.

art doesn't have to be pretty or nice to be beautiful though. some of the most beautiful works of art are deeply disturbing or incredibly melancholy.

Some people will try to find a philosphy in anything. I'd like to see them have a crack at the songs of AC/DC, Guns n Roses and KISS.

:p

That would be funny to watch.

Well true, AC/DC and KISS are totally devoid of ideas or anything worthwhile...

When I first saw Ravenous, it bored the shit out of me. But when I learned to see it as a classically framed tragedy in which a society's inability to accommodate feminine values left it blind and self-destructive... Well, it became a lot more interesting.
You had me up until about here, and then you started to lose me. When you said Ravenous, you did mean the 90's movie in which a couple of crazy frontiersmen discover that by eating human flesh they can gain super human strength, speed and regeneration, right?
When I saw Roll Bounce as a tale of a young man coming to terms with the changing challenges that oncoming adulthood would bring, and his finding the ability to meet those challenges, rather than as a disco movie in which yet another talentless rapper found someone dumb enough to stick him in a movie, I found it an enjoyable diversion, where I would have found it an annoying pain in the ass.
And this, this is where I think your train completely derailed.

Well true, AC/DC and KISS are totally devoid of ideas or anything worthwhile...

Hold on. I didn't say that KISS and AC/DC weren't good bands. I actually like them, I'm just making the point that almost all of their lyrics were about girls, sex and booze.

I dare someone to write a 1000 word analysis of the following songs:

Rock and roll all night and God gave rock and roll to ya - KISS
Big Balls, Highway to hell, What do you do for money honey and Rock and roll ain't noise pollution - AC/DC

I find it annoying when people pull deep philosophic things out of art. (If they're there, that's cool.) Or, alternatively, when they put them in too much. I was reading an interview with Dweezil Zappa and Steve Vai, about Frank Zappa's music. They said at one point that people who'd only heard his hits couldn't appreciate the length and breadth of Zappa's work. However, they also seemed to be trying to pull something deep out of it. In my spare time, I rarely read books for philosophy, but more for personal entertainment (I like James Bond, the Saint, Forrest Gump), and I listen to music because it sounds good (old British heavy metal for me). I think that this is why my mom has a tendency to denigrate my reading choices, because it's not literature. (She prides herself on her English and literature education)

What do you think? Do you find this annoying, do you enjoy it, or are you in the middle of those two?

I think it is inevitable in all art forms. All artists give something of themselves in the art they produce, and all consumers of art look for what this is.

I might write a song about a bad breakup, and even though I appear on TV saying it's all about a bad brake up, still my fans would be discusing the hidden depths of it.

That's art I guess

Are you saying that it is "wrong" to find roadkill beautiful, either aesthetically or thematically (philisophically maybe)?

Yes. Human attitudes towards beauty evolved in tandem with urges driving them towards that which promoted good health. That's why ripe fruit looks and smells appetizing and unripe, or rotten fruit looks and smells either unappealing or revolting.

Humans who had a taste for rotten food of no nutritional value, or could make you sick, were outbred by those who were naturally inclined to eat that which was healthy.

That's why we find very fat or very skinny people unattractive. They're unhealthy. It's why we find roadkill disgusting. It's unhealthy. To find roadkill appealing is just as wrong as being sexually aroused by someone killing and eating you. Not necessarily morally wrong, just not viable or congruous in this world. To those who are attuned to reality, rotten fruit, roadkill, and sexual cannibalism are incongruous, discordant, and ugly.

You had me up until about here, and then you started to lose me. When you said Ravenous, you did mean the 90's movie in which a couple of crazy frontiersmen discover that by eating human flesh they can gain super human strength, speed and regeneration, right?

And this, this is where I think your train completely derailed.

Ravenous is exactly the movie I was talking about.

I'm not saying that these movies had set out to be these things. I'm pretty sure that Ravenous was never supposed to be anything more than a grim horror movie and that Roll Bounce was supposed to be nothing more than a two-hour Pepsi/Time Life Music 70's commercial.

My point was that in order to make any semblance of a story certain elements have to be present. And they are going to have to speak to the human condition on some level.

Perhaps when Xavier's neighborhood roller rink shut down and he had to start going to a new one it was only intended to be a plot device to mark a beginning to the story. But when telling a story about adolescence a decent story teller will end up filling the story with symbolism of reaching towards adulthood. And that's what is represented by Xavier having to leave his comfortable and familiar home town to go to an area where everyone seems smarter, more sophisticated, and just plain better than he is. But he's determined to rise to the challenge. i.e. grow up.

As for Ravenous. Here's a few examples of what I'm talking about. In a classically framed tragedy a few elements are almost always present. One is a sequence of stages that goes from Temptation, triumph, frustration, nightmare, nostalgia, doom. The story doesn't always begin with temptation, but it should always explain what the previous stages were when it picks up in the middle.

Ravenous picks up in the frustration stage where the hero tells the story of how he went through temptation and triumph by drinking his captain's blood and then conquering an enemy fort single-handedly. But he has since fallen into frustration where he has grown resentful of the glory he feels he does not deserve and worries he will never live up to it.

Then comes the nightmare stage where the villain is introduced and kills his comrades, then masquerades as his new captain.

Then comes nostalgia where he forswears eating human flesh again. But then gets stabbed in the stomach and goes back to eating human flesh, binding him to the villain and leading them to kill each other.

Another common element is that there is not just the initial temptation. There are usually three points at which the hero is torn between the light choice and the dark. The hero drinks blood at the beginning. Eats some meat off the leg of his fallen, and more manly and heroic, comrade to get the strength to walk back to the fort after the villain knocks him off a cliff, then for the third and final time after the villain stabs him in the stomach.

I didn't say they were good movies. I said that I was only able to sit through them when I decided to try and analyze them like that. It's like an over-ripe piece of fruit that is not yet completely rotted. There's something in there that's worth eating. Quentin Tarentino movies on the other hand are like a beautifully decorated cake that looks as though it was made with days of great care and effort. Then when you try to cut into it you discover it is just a solid block of frosting.

I dislike vapid artists who produce vapid nonsense not worth creating. If I wanted something that sounded good, I'd go listen to birds.
Sometimes good sounding vapid music can be fun, though.

And whatever would we dance to without techno and hip-hop?

Hold on. I didn't say that KISS and AC/DC weren't good bands. I actually like them, I'm just making the point that almost all of their lyrics were about girls, sex and booze.

See, these two sentences are contradictory. You can't be a good band, if you only sing about stupid shit.

See, these two sentences are contradictory. You can't be a good band, if you only sing about stupid shit.
None of those things are necessarily stupid.

None of those things are necessarily stupid.

Sex, more sex, and drunken stupidity? Pointless, trite nonsense, unworthy of being immortalized in music.

*snip*
This seems to have come out a bit long winded, so I'll summarize thusly:
Grow Up.

You were golden until there. Condescension does not strengthen your position. It causes your vessel to leak.

Yes. Human attitudes towards beauty evolved in tandem with urges driving them towards that which promoted good health. That's why ripe fruit looks and smells appetizing and unripe, or rotten fruit looks and smells either unappealing or revolting.

Assumption. Some food rotting makes it better. Fermentation is, for all intents and purposes, a rotting process. Stay away from my cheese and beer, you fresh freak. Your point of evolution is shaky, too. Scavengers evolved quite nicely by sliding into the niche of eating rotten things. True, they didn't evolve to create art, but evolve, they did.

Humans who had a taste for rotten food of no nutritional value, or could make you sick, were outbred by those who were naturally inclined to eat that which was healthy.

No proof.

That's why we find very fat or very skinny people unattractive. They're unhealthy. It's why we find roadkill disgusting. It's unhealthy. To find roadkill appealing is just as wrong as being sexually aroused by someone killing and eating you. Not necessarily morally wrong, just not viable or congruous in this world. To those who are attuned to reality, rotten fruit, roadkill, and sexual cannibalism are incongruous, discordant, and ugly.

And yet legions of supermodel-obsessed and fat-admiring men would disagree quote loudly. You're making blanket statements about humanity in a vacuum, and they don't hold water. Now cannibalism, you've probably got a point there.

And you keep using "we" as though you speak for everyone. I admire your intellect. Your patronizing tone needs work.

Sex, more sex, and drunken stupidity? Pointless, trite nonsense, unworthy of being immortalized in music.

Riiiiiight. Ever see an opera? Read any composer biographies (notably Mozart, the Schumanns, Lizt, Schubert and others who were far from above sex and stupidity)?

One of the greatest works in choral literature, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana has sex all over it -- drunkenness, too. Best be sure of what you're talking about before you make so charged a statement.

I'm an artist. Our creations are automatically imbued with meaning simply because we're not two dimensional. Machine generated "art" has no meaning, because it was not created by a human, with thoughts, feelings and desires.

All creativity flows from these aspects of humanity, regardless of how well crafted the final outcome is. It may be bad art, it may even me mostly meaningless, but it'll still be art, provided the creator imbued meaning.

EDIT: Oh, and for those who think that art that's concerned only with sex etc as being not art, try looking up Mozart's "Lech Mich im Arsch" (Lick my Arse).

Sex, more sex, and drunken stupidity? Pointless, trite nonsense, unworthy of being immortalized in music.

I'd rather own a Hogarth than a Serrano.

Riiiiiight. Ever see an opera? Read any composer biographies (notably Mozart, the Schumanns, Lizt, Schubert and others who were far from above sex and stupidity)?

One of the greatest works in choral literature, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana has sex all over it -- drunkenness, too. Best be sure of what you're talking about before you make so charged a statement.

Yes, I've seen, and played for the most famous drink-and-sex Opera (Don Giovanni, which, noteably, has a moral message). Yes, I'm fond of the opening and closing movements of Carmina Burana. Nevertheless, they were essentially instrumental music. The modern pop paradigm is primarily a lyrical form.

You were golden until there. Condescension does not strengthen your position. It causes your vessel to leak.

It was never intended to bolster the position. It was more a knock at myself for making so longwinded a post on such an informal forum than a serious slight against the OP.

Assumption. Some food rotting makes it better. Fermentation is, for all intents and purposes, a rotting process. Stay away from my cheese and beer, you fresh freak. Your point of evolution is shaky, too. Scavengers evolved quite nicely by sliding into the niche of eating rotten things. True, they didn't evolve to create art, but evolve, they did.

Scavengers, yes. But humans aren't scavengers and don't have a digestive system designed to kill off viable bacteria or break down toxins. And things like alcohol and cheese are something of an anomaly. Those races that have had a few millennea of agricultural diets have evolved a tolerance for alcohol and lactose that newcomers to the agricultural revolution don't have. Asians, Middle Easterners, and Europeans have about a 30% rate of lactose intolerance. Native Americans and Sub-saharan Africans have about a 70% lactose intolerance rate.

Fermentation is a controlled process. By cultivating brewer's yeast you foster the one kind of toxin to which some lineages have developed a tolerance, and even dependence. For thousands of years people brewed beer or wine because most water was too full of bacteria to drink safely. Brewing alcohol with it killed off the bacteria making it toxic in a much healthier fashion. Thousands of years of this gave us a taste for it to the point that people from neolithic agricultural roots that our health will suffer without a little alcohol even if we have abundant clean drinking water.

And by a stunning coincidence, most people find mild intoxication to be pleasant.

No proof.
And no viable rebuttal. Is there some flaw in my understanding of evolution that you'd care to point out?

Universal patterns in human behavior are being increasingly understood in terms of genetic predisposition. Including signs of health also being sexually attractive. I don't remember if it was Time or Newsweek (probably Newsweek, I read Time regularly) but there was a recent article in which disgust was discussed in evolutionary terms with revulsion at the sight of maggot eaten carrion serving as a paleolithic substitute for germ theory. My thesis is on firm footing and will take more than a casual dismissal to sweep aside.

And yet legions of supermodel-obsessed and fat-admiring men would disagree quote loudly. You're making blanket statements about humanity in a vacuum, and they don't hold water. Now cannibalism, you've probably got a point there.

The statement was intentionally generalized. "Chubby Chasers" are a niche group. Without a lot of the constraints that kill off the genetic sore thumbs that a lot of other species have, humanity is going to be a very mixed bag, as opposed to a gazelle that develops the inexplicable need for "me time," and then gets eaten by a leopard (without leopards there would eventually arise a breed of gazelle that did pursue "me time" and would have the evolutionary advantage of getting the first share of new food). Some fringe groups are going to be more common than others, and fashion brings some into the mainstream for a brief spell here and there, but there is a baseline to which people keep returning. And that baseline is going to be a combination of health and wealth.

e.g. tans were considered ugly when they were a sign that you were a poor farm hand who was working out in the sun all day. They became attractive when the mass of people began working indoors in factories and didn't get much time in the sun. Rich people had time to spend the day at the beach, or better yet, go to a resort town, and get a tan there. Then tans became beautiful. Now with knowledge of melanoma they are starting to fall out of fashion again.

As for supermodels. There is a world of difference between
Super-model skinny (http://www.tate.org.uk/40artists40days/artworks/mario_testino/Mario_Testino.jpg)
And the sort of emaciation that I'm talking about. (http://www.psychotherapyinharleystreet.co.uk/phdi/p1.nsf/imgpages/0961_skeletal.JPG/$file/skeletal.JPG)

And you keep using "we" as though you speak for everyone. I admire your intellect. Your patronizing tone needs work.

No. I keep saying "we" as though I'm talking about a group to which I belong. Humanity. And since I am not a trained parrot pecking at a keyboard, I'd say it's pretty appropriate.

And I work for the IRS. I take great professional pride in my patronizing tone. :)

Sex, more sex, and drunken stupidity? Pointless, trite nonsense, unworthy of being immortalized in music.

Do you know how many dirty jokes there are in A Midsummer Night's Dream?

This seems to have come out a bit long winded, so I'll summarize thusly:
Grow Up.

Ok.

I think there's 2 means of appreciating art.

One if it's subjective and often isolated to a certain piece of art. Art you like, art you don't like.

The other is in understanding where that art has come from - renaissance art may not be so compelling to us now but it was a revolution at the time, if you follow the trend through cubism, surrealism , altering the way we view something, to abstract expressionism - Pollock - art for art's sake, to modern art, post-modern then there's a different type of appreciation.

So in music, you may or may not like heavy metal, but if you're viewing it from the perspective of how it's grown from blues, the times it was formed in, the progression from what it was and beyond then, again, there's a different appreciation. To see how one guitarist has influenced a generation in terms of technique, to see how another guitarist has inverted or improved on that technique and how that changes things once again - it's a different appreciation.

You can understand the cultural values, symbolism and significance of that art.

I think the problem with people's view on art is where opinions on the former merge with the latter - and people therefore subjectively say, this art is shite, without having an appreciation of the history and 'why it's important in art terms' of it all.

Is it pretentious to say 'well you just don't understand it'? Possibly, but when people decry heavy metal, couldn't you say the same?

Mmm, true.

yeh, i often think people over-analyse art and forget the aesthetics. i think art is about beauty first and meaning second, but then i'm quite shallow so what do i know?

Finally, someone who agrees with me.

i, too, find it irritating when "deep meanings" are read into things. not necessarily because i disagree, but largely just because i find it pretentious. if there's supposed to be a meaning, fine. but analysing every little aspect of a piece of artwork to find its 'meaning' has always struck me as a waste of time, and also a shame to so often gloss over the way the piece actually moves you, personally.

i may be a prude but i can appreciate art, just in a different (and probably simpler) way than an "art lover" might. meh.

Yeah.

I meant art that's overly philosophic and bludgeons you over the head with theme and meaning, in a sort of pretentious way. But, I guess I'm too plebeian to be in tune with the artistic mind.

If it takes less time to look at the painting than it does to read the explanation, it's not worth it.

While I think good art has a personal meaning, that maybe only the artist can explain, and it is interesting to hear it. But great art should have an effect on people who have never even heard of the artist, too. Accessibility is not necessarily a sign of mediocrity, often it shows just how talented the artist or writer is.

Good art for mature audiences should be life-affirming and educating. That's educating in the classical sense of "bring out of." That quality you're complaining about. It should elicit some sort of insight out of the viewer (or listener). Even if the artist didn't intend for that insight to be in the work to begin with.

I don't think he's complaining about the inherent meaning of a piece of art, but rather trying to apply a meaning to a piece. If an audience is mature, as you say, it should be apparent just by looking at or hearing the piece.

I find it annoying when people pull deep philosophic things out of art. (If they're there, that's cool.) Or, alternatively, when they put them in too much. I was reading an interview with Dweezil Zappa and Steve Vai, about Frank Zappa's music. They said at one point that people who'd only heard his hits couldn't appreciate the length and breadth of Zappa's work. However, they also seemed to be trying to pull something deep out of it. In my spare time, I rarely read books for philosophy, but more for personal entertainment (I like James Bond, the Saint, Forrest Gump), and I listen to music because it sounds good (old British heavy metal for me). I think that this is why my mom has a tendency to denigrate my reading choices, because it's not literature. (She prides herself on her English and literature education)

What do you think? Do you find this annoying, do you enjoy it, or are you in the middle of those two?



Sometims it can be fun:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=1537844474

:)

Do you know how many dirty jokes there are in A Midsummer Night's Dream?


Yes. Then again, A Midsummer Night's Dream isn't a great work because of Shakespeare's dirty jokes, but rather because of his craftsmanship and development of concept. See, Shakespeare had a point. That is why Shakespeare is good drama, and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is mostly trite nonsense.

Well, that post is rather meaningless unless you say what it is that you think is so ingenious about Tarentino. Literally meaningless, as in 'full of undefined variables."

Even Tarentino himself says that when he, for example, has Uma Thurman slash a room full of people to bits, he's just working through his own psychological crap. Uma Thurman is every woman he's ever wanted. And by having her murder a room full of people he's creating a world in which it's OK that he didn't get her, because no one can approach her.

And the enlightened master who is actually an emotionally brittle, psychotically homicidal bully. Wizardly wise old men are supposed to be aware, compassionate and peaceful. Like Merlin, Prospero, Obi Wan. But because Tarentino is none of those things his efforts to portray a wise old man end up creating a mindless bully who ends up getting killed by his own blindness (murdered by a woman he mutilated in a fit of pique and did not recognize her resentment.)

He's not a genius. He's a child of the pulling-legs-off-flies stripe with a talent for making films that speak to the same facet of his audience.

Consider the line where David Carradine is leading up to describing a scene in which Pai Mei (I think that was the Kung fu master's name) kills a monastery full of monks because one of them didn't see him nod. He says that the guy was "walking around contemplating whatever it is that men of his infinite faculties contemplate, which is another way of saying 'who knows?'" (or something like that, I only saw Kill Bill once.)

Tarentino is all but saying that he himself has no idea what wisdom is, and thus is unable to portray it in film.

Why do you assume he is unable, just because he chooses not to portray wisdom? Just because his works do not fit within your rather absolutist ideals is no reason to mock him so. Tarentino portrays an unidealistic world, and while that may or may not be the world we live in, it resonates. By making Tarentino out to be the child you've made of him, you forgo the argument, and place yourself in a position to look with contempt upon your opponents.

Art is not required to follow your patterns, or live up to your ideals, to be good art.

Yes. Then again, A Midsummer Night's Dream isn't a great work because of Shakespeare's dirty jokes, but rather because of his craftsmanship and development of concept. See, Shakespeare had a point. That is why Shakespeare is good drama, and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is mostly trite nonsense.

I gotta agree.

If it takes less time to look at the painting than it does to read the explanation, it's not worth it.

While I think good art has a personal meaning, that maybe only the artist can explain, and it is interesting to hear it. But great art should have an effect on people who have never even heard of the artist, too. Accessibility is not necessarily a sign of mediocrity, often it shows just how talented the artist or writer is.

Yeah. If the writer puts themselves into their art, it doesn't need philosophy.

Sometims it can be fun:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=1537844474

:)

Everything's better with Steve Martin.

I have difficulty seeing metaphors in art at times. This is especially true if there are no clues to what the hell the artist is talking about. My first rule of Artistic Metaphor is this: USE PEOPLE. PEOPLE CAN COMMUNICATE IDEAS VERY WELL. Consequently, I have trouble in particular with music and modern art (classical art is much easier, actually).

A great artist is not only capable of experimenting with techniques, but can use said techniques to get his message across easily. Picasso's piece on the Spanish Civil War? That is art. Very effective at communicating the horrors of war.

The metaphor prize, however, goes ultimately to science fiction, in which metaphors about current issues are common, and well-expressed. Take Star Trek. How many episodes dealt with stuff like racism and AIDS?

I won't claim that there is no bad art in any form, but art in any form is an expression of the artist, it's the window into his soul. When you see something that you consider as beautiful, you may be the only one in a large group that thinks that way, it doesn't mean it is bard art, all it means is that it doesn't appeal to the masses, but you saw something more beyond the surface or the first impression. I as an artist express a sentiment in my work, a sentiment that belongs to me, I don't do it to please the others because if I do, then I become a commercial artist. Then you use the psychological tools to attract the masses and you sell. Once you make a copy of the original you lose it's soul. I will not adapt my work to please others, that's why I consider myself an artist.

well i think there are "deep phylosophical things" that happen IN art. but to phychoanalize their creator on what we think we see in them is absurd.

how much is our own seeing?
how much was a 'fortunate accident' it's creator wasn't trying for, maybe hadn't even thought of?

all of these things are going on, when we view a visual creation, read a book, listen to music, or experience art in whatever other form.

story tellers MAY be trying to write pollemics, but most of the time, most of them, are just trying to spin a good yarn. one that will keep us turning pages and keep their publisher's residuals arriving in time to pay the rent and buy the groceries.

and while art CRITICS may evaluate creative efforts on the basis of their messing with out heads, i for one, do not find that a reasonable metric of their gratification. often very far, even at times a polar opposite, from it.

=^^=
.../\...

This is a bit of a different twist, but on the front of my copy of "Atlas Shrugged", there is a picture of this statue:

http://z.about.com/d/gonyc/1/0/N/H/IMG_0241.jpg

I suppose it's sort of apt. Anyways, I've decided that when I own a nice place, I'll have a copy of this statue sitting somewhere, just because in my head it makes the connection with the ultimate freedom embodied in the idea of Atlas shrugging his shoulders.

I'm getting into modernist architecture for some reason. The other day I was watching "The Incredibles", and I wanted to live in that little designer lady's house.

You can't be a good band, if you only sing about stupid shit.

Radiohead, Tool and The Mars Volta have written the book (or written the song, if you will) on how to be a shitty band.

Instead of pounding out good songs they fill their songs with soundscapes, ambient music and all that crap. And give them stupid names. Abrasions mount the timpani? Oh god.