In this thread I mention a situation where my young son pictured a Stars Wars scene when he heard a modern symphonic piece.
It reminded me of once taking a date to the Symphony. They were playing Dvorak, and she quickly found the dissonant, jumpy chords hard to parse out. She leaned over to me and said “how are you supposed to listen to this stuff?!” and I leaned back over and very quietly whispered (right when there was a particularly dissonant run down the piano) “shhhh - Bugs Bunny is falling down the stairs.” She stifled a burst of laughter and proceeded to love the rest of the concert.
How about you - how have you gotten past a work of art’s reputation and just seen, heard or read it for what it was?
That’s the only way I can enjoy it, without the pretense, pomp, and general bullshit that surrounds the world of art. If it looks good, I like it. If it sounds good, I like it. If neither condition is met, it sucks. I don’t need any art or music appreciation classes (actually, I do, because it’s a bullshit graduation requirement) with a snooty teacher telling me why everything I like is wrong. If liking what I like is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
I honestly think my 12-y-o son has developed an amazing ear for identifying pieces of music from Looney Tunes – and I think it’s great. We went to an outdoor concert where the Barber of Seville overture was on the program, and he leaned over to me and started singing, “Welcome to my shop! Let me cut your mop! Let me shave your crop…Daintily!”
One of his piano assignments was a (greatly simplified) version of the Pilgrim’s Chorus from Tannhauser. I drove him crazy by singing “Oh, Bwunhilda, you’re so wuhv-weee!” every time he came to that motif.
When I was in college, I saw an incredibly erotic dance piece performed to something by Mahler. Changed my opinion of Mahler in a hurry!
There are many different ways to appreciate art, and a lot of great art has many different levels on which to appreciate it. Some art can be appreciated viscerally, first try, first layer; gut appreciation. Some art can be appreciated better intellectually, for want of a better word. Appreciation of this kind of art is generally enhanced with a familiarity of context; i.e., education, again for want of a better word.
Who says that of the different ways to approach and appreciate art, one way is better than another? The snooty pretension that Doors perceives is largely in his imagination: if you feel “left out” from the type of art that benefits from education, that’s pretty much *your *problem. In other words, if you hear people who’ve devoted more energy to an arts-specific education than you have using a vocabulary, for example, that’s unfamiliar to you, they do so in order to communicate specifically and clearly with others who share the same vocabulary, not as part of a conspiracy to make you feel left out. Trust me, it’s not about you.
Make the effort or don’t, but don’t get pissy when the entire “art world”–for want of a better term–refuses to speak down to you because you *insist *that all art hit you on a gut level and bypass your brain. Some people enjoy being intellectually engaged/challenged/whatever by art; some don’t. Why can’t we all just get along?
Hold on, chief. Of course you are right - whenever folks go deep regarding a specific artform, specific jargon comes into play. In electric guitar circles, when it comes to tone, we guitar-geeks resort to “wine words” as we call them to get to the subtle points we want to make.
But I see where **Airman Doors ** is coming from, too - at some level, art must speak to you clearly and evoke emotion. Sure, a person can benefit from educating themselves about an artform and end up appreciating things that they might not have previously but the power of an immediate response is what really matters.
My point is that sometimes folks allow the reputation of art get in the way of relating to it in an immediate way. An obvious example is Shakespeare: if it is shoved down your throat in high school, just reading that “foreign language” is awkward and painful. But see one of his comedies well acted and all of sudden you realize how funny the writing truly is.
Same with my example - my date was no dummy, but had limited exposure to music. She didn’t know how to allow the music affect her; my silly comment about Bugs just opened a door she could walk through to a place where the music was accessible.
It’s all good - I am just looking for folks’ experiences where some block got removed and they could access art that previously felt inaccessible even though they knew it had a reputation as great art…
Hunh? For a person to appreciate art, mustn’t it reach them at an emotional level? It sounds like you think I am making a judgment - not my intent; isn’t that simply the definition of art? And why “art” is a subjective concept?
I can accept that something is art without my liking it. Minor key is almost a prerequisite for me to appreciate a piece of classical music (with some obvious exceptions like Beethoven’s Seventh and his violin concerto), but I can accept that a lot of the major key stuff is decent. Ditto for art that doesn’t click. However, I’m pretty quick to dismiss something like Philip Glass or Kandinsky as worthless crap.
Rabbit of Seville.* One of my all-time favorites. Bugs (in drag) singing “Whaaaaat do you want with a Waaaaaaaaabit? Iiiiiii, am something much much sweetah, Iiiiiiii’m, yore little senior Rita…”
(Yes, I know it’s “senorita” but for some reason that doesn’t look right)
No - I asked for examples where people got past their sense of intimidation about certain types of art and were able to respond to it on a purely artistic level - and found a semantic debate that’s neither relevant or interesting.
The discussion will go where it goes. If you don’t think a “semantic debate”–an attempt to reach a common understanding of what we’re talking about–has any place in regards to such a nebulous subject as* response to art*, you shouldn’t open such topics. If you can’t continue to participate in such a discussion unless you can control it as narrowly as you see fit, start a blog. Here, however, you’re likely to get a pretty free-ranging discussion.
ETA: It’s perfectly relevant (interesting is, of course, debatable) to point out that there is more than one way to respond to an art work. And attempting to define or describe some of those different ways is, again, perfectly–specifically–relevant to your OP.