A friend of mine just pointed out that 4’33"=6’9". I don’t know if that actually sheds any light on the question, but I thought it was an insightful observation.
[Mae West] You keep the 6’; I’ll take the 9" [/Mae West]
I sent an email to a friend of mine who won the Van Cliburn Amateur Competition.
My question: “Do you think Cage’s 4’33” is “music”?”
His response: “Of course not.”
If there is a question, there is a right answer, or it isn’t a question.
Sometimes, of course, the answer is to punch the guy who asked it square in the nose, and then laugh at him as he rolls on the ground clutching his bloody schnozz.
When I talked about “expressing ideas”, I was talking about pieces such as a blank canvas. I mean, there is no other objective content there beyond a pure idea, so what else can be said about it (as opposed to what’s going on inside your own head)?
Maybe the point of some art is to “structure an experience”–I can buy that. But I think it misses the mark with a lot of classical art. I would say that the objective aesthetics of the piece (per, for example, Aristotle) were an end in and of themselves. In other words, art has shifted from an emphasis on the objective qualities of the piece to the subjective experience of the individual. And I think art is poorer for it.
I disagree. Aristotle’s understanding of aesthetics was cramped by the narrow range of examples available to him. (Not really his fault, of course. We moderns have thousands of years of artistic production from the entire world community at our fingertips. He didn’t.)
Art, even in Aristotle’s time, has always been about the subjective experience of individuals. Pieces only APPEAR to have objective worth when all the individuals looking at them come from the same “interpretive community” (ala Stanley Fish). All art is originally intended for consumption by a particular community – usually the artist and his patrons. Some pieces wind up being more “timeless” or “placeless” than others, but this isn’t a particularly good indicator of artistic worth. For example, Hollywood action films are designed to appeal to a very broad international audience, but that doesn’t mean that they’re objectively better cinema than a well-done character piece that appeals to a narrower demographic.
Any large, well-drawn cat? Wow - you’re thinking waaaaay outside the box here, son.
I found the perfect vocals to go with 4’33".
Enjoy!
Are they? I mean, by this, are they somehow being recontextualised - put in a box frame, mounted as a collection, etc. If so, then yes, (although the intent and hence the art is in the recontextualisation, not the original manufacture, although even that can be art if using nice calligraphy etc.) If not, then no.
Definitely yes.
Here’s where your point falls apart - there is a non-trivial amount of people who would enjoy looking at someone’s shit.
So your point is that everything should only and ever have one name, and fit into one category? That’s stupid. Something can be a party AND art. And something can definitely be both music and meditation. *4:33 *is hardly original there.
Ye of little faith. Humanity is infinitely creative, and has infinite capacity to create meaning. The invention of nihilism wasn’t the end of human thought, and the invention of conceptual art is certainly not the end of art. What we tear down, we then rebuild, tear apart, reconfigure, re-imagine, and pull things we never imagined out of the ether. Yes, you’ve hit the tail end of a very minimalist trends. But what will follow is probably something you can’t even conceive of because it hasn’t been thought of yet. Just when you think everything that could be invented has been invented, the artists come in and invent something visionary. That’s why they are artists, that’s what artists did.
Funnily enough, Cage has been there and done that too. (Check out the last entry under “Ground Floor”).
I was there - not in the dinner party ensemble but in another chorus elsewhere. The atmosphere was surreal and bizarre, with random chunks of music and noise starting and stopping and blending and coming at you from all directions. Was it earthshattering? No.l Was it interesting and fun? Yes. Was it art? Ayup. Was it good art? That’s up to you.
You may be an exception. You should continue to look at art and find what you like. At least you know that the “art world” is not monolithic. There is no snooty detached professor declaring what is and is not good art.
And then you go off again acting as if there is some monolith of “art lovers”. There isn’t. In the 40’s some people enacted to then modern art the same way you do now. You presume to understand what others see in some art, but you don’t. There is no gate keeper on what is and isn’t art, not even you.
They have hooks on the back for mounting on a wall. I can’t imagine that they’d be repurposed for anything other than to be enjoyed as a decoration of sorts.
You’re missing the point.
First, from your link, we see “Suizen is a Zen practice consisting of playing the shakuhachi bamboo flute”, so there is actual music that is part of that meditation
Second, I didn’t say that you can never have something that falls into two categories (e.g. music and meditation). It’s just that when that thing fails to include one category, no reason to keep calling it that.
Something can be both a thirst quencher and a cup of juice, but if we create a beverage that has no traces of juice in it and is simply a cup of water, yes, we can still call it a thirst quencher but not a cup of juice.
Well, there was some performance, so yes it was art.
That is different to inviting everyone to a place where the exhibit is nothing but the visitors themselves.
Honestly, if some of you in this thread who are in the art world are able to pull off this feat, I’d be great to read about it.
Say whatever you please, someone who would pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a can of human excrement, because he’s been told it’s fine art, is pretty much on the same level as the trailer park yahoo who gives his welfare check to a TV preacher. When some hack takes advantage of the ignorance and gullibility of others to gain prestige and money, he’s corrupt. The difference between Michelangelo and the shit can dude is the same difference between Thomas Aquinas and Oral Roberts.
There’s good art, there’s bad art, and there’s corrupt art.
What if I pay that because I (a) have been told it’s fine art, and so (b) hope to re-sell the can for yet more tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars?
No, I’m disagreeing that your point was valid, that’s not the same thing.
And you’ve had several actual music academics tell you in this thread that 4:33 is music. Or even “actual”[weasel] music. So same difference.
No, that’s why I didn’t say you said that, I said that was your point. Because taken to the extreme, and given the subjective nature of art, that’s the implication - there’s always someone who can say “I don’t see how this is art”
“When *I *fail to see how it includes one category” =/= “fails to include one category”.