I have to ask Jake sine you believe that science and art will merge that you believe that there is nothing that “pure science” can’t say about the human condition?
I’m wondering what you mean by art needing to be clear?
If you ever study American “New Criticism” words like paradox, contradiction and ambiguity are used to describe the difference between ordinary communicative writing and “literary” writing. In other words, it is how certain elements of language are used by a writer to be unclear that makes language artistic.
If anyone has read anything by Henry James, or Faulkner’s “The Sound and Furry” or Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake” clarity is very hard to find in any of these works.
Of course there are also writers like Hemingway who write like a Jackhammer and try to be as direct and clear as possible.
that should be:
I have to ask Jake since you believe that science and art will merge. [ B]If** you believe that there is anything that “pure science” can’t expain about the human condition?
Ok…if I am understanding you correctly (and correct me if I don’t), abandoning belief in a higher morality creates a danger at creating a morality based on a strictly pragmatic or utilitarian basis. “Don’t kill because it’s wrong” becomes “don’t kill because right now it’s not in your best interests to do so…but it could be and that would be ok because killing is a biological imperative”.
I don’t know if I necessarily believe that. The “human condition” is more than just cost/benefit analysis and response to stimuli. We can make value judgements based not just on facts and figures (science) but of the emotional effect it has on others (art).
Let me give you an example. 1000 deaths in some hypothetical war on paper in some situation report sounds like no big deal. Does it seem like no big deal looking at it through a war correspondants documenting photographs?
People are emotional and often do not relate to cold hard facts. A single image can convey more than an entire encyclopedia of facts and figures ever will.
Because they might express it at you…possibly while you are sleeping.
you seem to be implying that art must communicate an idea that already exists outside of the art itself. if you look at instrumental music, jazz for example, you don’t necessarily find that the soloists are trying to express emotions or concepts. more often than not, they’re probably trying to express purely musical ideas that can only be expressed musically. this can be as simple as a sax line or a drum fill. but in their elemental essence, these are things that can’t be articulated with words or images.
in this sense, when you say “if it fails to manage this, it fails as art no matter how good,” that seems like a contradiction because i don’t feel that art can be good if it isn’t communicating anything in the first place. if art is pretty and communicates a unique idea of prettiness, then it’s not failing at all. a simple arrangement of colors, if done tactfully, can be as moving as any painting of a death scene or something like that.
Some of you come from the Thomas Kincaid school of art appreciation. As I fancy myself as some sort of an artist, I will let you in on what I believe art should do. This may not be your opinion and that is fine.
1: Art doesn’t have to have a purpose. It may have no purpose now but might have had purpose earlier or might gain purpose later. Stop thinking that the current age is the end all beat all.
2: All art must convey emotion. Some of you are hip to this. It is not analysis but the pure emotion of what is being depicted or the response it receives.
3: Art, to some degree, must be Avant Garde. It must be original or what is it? Some times a style of art can be resurrected because the time for it has risen again. This is still art.
4: Art should be a reaction to what is popular now. It should zig when everyone else zags. It should seek to bring something into the world which is relevant and new to the human experience. In this it should entertain and fascinate.
Art itself doesn’t have to serve a real purpose but all art is made with a purpose. In that the artist seeks to impress others with his work. When working there is this ‘Just wait until they see this piece.’
Yes you can have fun doodling but often that too is to find your own style and improve your skill, it’s practice.
I find this too vague to be meaningful. Everything conveys emotion.
The emotion ‘what sloppy junk’ is hopefully not what you’re looking for as an artist
Hmm, but then only the first item would be Avant garde the ones following the first become ‘a style’. How long is a style original?
If I make something in an outdated (non-popular) style it’s not art?
And where does that leave the existing stuff that is no longer new, the old paintings, the Greek vases , the Roman mosaics they are no longer art?
Originality is one way to impress the audience, another, often let out these past decennia, is skill. There’s too much emphasis on the ‘must be original’. Which just leaves sloppy and ugly work. Work that won’t last the test of time.
Yes, three huge rusty steel bars stuck on a hill, ruining the landscape in an original, avant garde shape, yes, must be Art…
To me art must not just be original but also done with great skill.
Art must contain a level of craftmanship, a ‘wow, I could never make that’ experience or a wonder ‘How did he make that bit there’
Art and science both are attempts to model some greater truths of reality and of our experience of it. But they are each attempting to understand different aspects of this reality and use different tactics - science is explicit in its communication, the scientist wants to be very sure that the user of his model understands exactly what he means; art is subtle and great art requires some personal creative involvement by the end-user which results in models that may be quite different than what the artist thought (s)he meant but not per se any less valid.
I’d like to comment on the idea that art communicates emotion. That’s not really true, with the possible exception of music. If an artist were to communicate emotion, he would just stand there and laugh, or cry, or smile, or scream, or stomp his feet. That would be communicating emotion.
But an artist doesn’t do that. Rather, he shows you something that triggers his emotion, with the expectation that it will trigger a similar emotion in you. A simple example would be a bouquet of sunflowers which makes the artist feel happy. Instead of communicating his own happiness to you, he shows you the flowers, and hopes that you respond with your own sense of happiness. Which is much more interesting, since you have to engage your own values in relation to the work of art; and for all the artist knows, you might have a morbid fear of sunflowers, and would respond with a very different emotion.
Or take Munch’s painting “The Scream.” Superficially, it seems to be communicating terror; you see a person screaming, and you respond by feeling a kind of second-hand terror yourself. But I think the really terror-provoking thing about the painting is that **you don’t know what the person is screaming at, what he sees that you don’t see. **He’s looking right past you, and screaming, and you’ve got that bone-chilling desire to look over your shoulder to see what horrible thing is right behind you. So the subject of the painting isn’t the person screaming, or even the screaming itself, but a monster that is unseen and unknown.
I always found ‘the Scream’ a bit overrated. It’s not that original
It’s just one of the quick pictures he made after seeing a Mayan mummy in the museum that looks exactly like that.
Well, I’m certainly not going to argue with that. Although I don’t see how it’s particularly germane, as outside of NAMBLA, I can’t imagine anyone who would argue with that. You did, originally, say that you see people using science to make value judgements “every day.” Unless you’ve got a very, very unpleasant social circle, I can’t imagine that this is an example of that.
I stand by my original statment, that it is far more often people who do not understand science who attempt to place value judgements upon its results.
I think of art is communication. Even if there is nothing to receive that communication like the squiggles drawn in the sand.
This helps show the distinction between art and science, since science is not communication but a consistent set of theories and measurements, often revised whenever the theory predicts a measurement that when made is shown to be false.
Think more that art can be poor or great, then you see that all comunication is art and art is all communication, this message is art, I have tried to craft the tools of language to make this understandable and meaningful. It’s poor art, for sure, but it is art I feel.
Great art is great communication, communication that speaks to the brain and the heart (and maybe even the soul).
Love the comments on that site
“this work can be seen to reflect Cattelan’s own feelings of entrapment by the pressures of consumption and distribution inherent to the gallery system.”
All whilst seeling prints in a set of 10 for about $60,000 each, I wish I could be entrapped in the pressures of consumption and distribution for that sort of money. Still the idea is fun and it communicates quite well the relationship between the art and the viewer.
As a musician, I can say that it’s not really true for that either, at least as far as I’m concerned. Like all art, music is capable of communicating emotion, but when I’m working, that’s far from the first thing on my mind. I’m more concerned with producing effects, phrases, and structures. As an orchestrator or conductor, the only thing I’m concerned with communicating is the composer’s intentions. And yet in doing so, I make thousands of artistic decisions.
Note that I while I consider these decisions value decisions, they’re not really morality decisions.
