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Is It True that “the Whole Point of Art Is to Be Provocative”
[The above quoted phrase came from Fred Cole’s post on “The Interview,” which is otherwise excellent.]
Isn’t that the stupid excuse that leftists use in producing bad (or good) art that is strictly political in nature?
The whole point of art is to express — to express one’s heart, an insight, an epiphany (especially) — and to create. The best use of art is to ennoble and to add to mankind’s collection of many and varied interpretations of what life on this earthly plane is.
If in the process of artistic expression the final result happens to provoke, then the modern thinking (sometimes rightly) advises that one proceed even against furious opposition. If there is a societal value around art I think that the ennobling impulse should be given precedence over simple provocation.
Can we drop all the left-wing perversions of our culture and our values. Art shouldn’t be used in a decent society to destroy, to wreck. If it is then it shouldn’t be supported simply because it’s art. This is nihilism.
Published in General
Cretins.
They are not dead. Not if you know where to look. Indeed, it’s now easier than ever to become classically trained in an art form, and many people are doing it. If they’re not noticed, it’s not because they aren’t there, but because we don’t prioritize noticing them as much anymore (or at least we don’t notice them as much as we like to think the ancients did).
In other words, if they’ve ceased to spark our imaginations and conversations, our imaginations and conversations are more to blame than a paucity of talent.
Take music, for example. Composing well-crafted common-practice-period-style music is something music majors all over the country – as well as non-music majors who are just curious – are still learning to do. In fact, with sufficient discipline, persistence, and modesty (not tackling ambitious forms like symphonies if simply writing a well-crafted prelude is already a tax on your existing skills), it’s something many intelligent young people continue to do – and do much better than you pessimistic conservatives probably suspect!
Why don’t we hear much about this young talents? Well, a lot of them ultimately go on to do other things – computer programming, econophysics… You know, jobs where they can actually make a living. (Ricochet’s resident opera star is now a nurse.) Or, if they do make a career in music, they do it writing film and television scores.
Some of these young talents will in time become master composers, writing genuinely beautiful music that is well-respected in its field, even if they’re never household names. Terry Teachout once described Morten Lauridsen as “the best composer you’ve never heard of” – and Lauridsen is very much alive!
Lauridsen, a master of both long-form and short-form compositions, both music that’s accessible to the untrained ear as well as more dissonant, exotic works that take some sophistication to appreciate, doesn’t not exist simply because you’ve never heard of him. And there are plenty more like him out there – or at least composers capable of writing individual pieces that rival his, even if their lifetime output couldn’t.
Other currently-living composers that spring to mind include Tavener, Pärt, Whitacre… Whitacre in particular has a social-media presence (and great hair) that makes him a “rock star” in the choral world – he may in fact be better at marketing himself than he is at composing music; nonetheless, he has written some stunning pieces.
I don’t think our imaginations are to blame.
Back in the day, only a few very talented people could afford to be “artists”. Today, every trust-fund baby who wants to “express themselves” can be an “artist”.
With an over-abundance of “artists”, mostly talent-less hacks…the ability of the “good ones” to discern themselves from the pack has diminished. There’s only so much attention span, and museum floor space available.
So if we want good artists, we need to make a lot fewer of them.’
I have friends who are in music school getting PhDs and whatnot. The high-paying jobs are out there: starting salaries at the Houston symphony for example are in the 6 figures.
The problem is…very few of them are good enough to make it. That’s why Occupy Wall Street was almost exclusively composed of failed art-majors…because they were told by mammy and daddy that they were going to change the world with their art, and they ended up sharing a closet-sized apartment with 6 other “artists” instead.
Well, another problem is that, musical tastes have moved on.
Sorry, but they have. Sure, the really good classics are still appreciated like always. But 99.99% of the “old” stuff is pretty boring and uninspiring by today’s standards.
So is most of the classical pieces composed today.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I have no ear for music, but I’ve been forced to sit through my fair share of performances at our music school (cause as I said, I have friends who perform there, so you have to go!)…and frankly…YAWN!
I know! I know! It’s impolite to say that you’re bored by classical music performances. It’s ignorant even. Or at least that’s the reason that 70% of the people who sit in the audience are afraid to say the same thing too. fortunately, I’m brave enough to say it! :)
Tastes move on. So I don’t think we need to measure “art” only in reference to “classical” stuff. Of course, that doesn’t mean that much of what passes for “art” today is any good either.
Let me side with Fred a moment here, even though “provocative” isn’t actually the first word that springs to my mind when I think of art:
Great art does poke you. Even when it’s mostly soothing, it’s not entirely so. It also calls forth or challenges (i.e, provokes) something within us in order to edify us.
Many of us can make a distinction between a woman who is merely conventionally pretty and one who is beautiful. Typically, a beautiful woman provokes something within us that a merely pretty woman does not – that’s why we call her beautiful rather than just pretty.
Is it art to render a rose without thorns? I doubt it. For example, music without dissonance is incredibly boring. Despite the layman’s association of “dissonance” with “unpleasant sounds”, music actually needs dissonance in order to be beautiful.
Take Laurisden’s “O Magnum Mysterium”. On the downbeat of measure 39, on the “ir” of “Beata Virgo”, there’s an intense dissonance of a minor second (G# against A) between the altos and sopranos (you can listen and see the score at the same time, cued to the relevant phrase, here).
Without that dissonance, Lauridsen’s piece would only be so much bland prettiness – and Lauridsen knew it: in an interview, he called that dissonance the moment of focus for the entire piece. That dissonance is painful – provocative. You can easily see the connection between that dissonance and Mary’s labor pangs, or her anguish at seeing her son die on the cross. And yes, that is the point.
The psalmist wrote that “deep calls to deep” – that the roar of watefalls, so deep that they trouble the very bedrock with their sound, called to something deep inside him. Called forth to it – provoked it. Art must be beautiful, yes. But beauty is provocative.
Well, that pretty much speaks for itself.
If you have no ear, you have no ear. Not everyone is going to have an ear, and that’s OK – life is too short to master everything ;-)
I wasn’t. I specifically mentioned film and television scores, for example, despite their reputation as popular and cr0wd-pleasing rather than “classical” or academic.
True. The point being, however, that if this going to appeal to people today, it is going to appeal to a small number of people compared to the past.
Because our tastes today are different than in the past, where all people…could…hear were the classical music pieces. Hence why it is an “under-appreciated” medium of art.
Well, that’s precisely the point. Film scores are appealing to the audience.
Most of what is done in music schools today…isn’t.
In the sense that, 300 years ago they would have been the “normal” music that most people would have had access to. Today, you have access to many different types of music, which relegates “classical music” to an academic pursuit, unappealing to the “masses”.
Is “art’s” purpose to be an academic pursuit? Probably not.
Now, of course, even with music we have a “degeneration” into the “shocking” at some points. I recall sitting through performances at the Eastman School of Music of original pieces by professors there and thinking to myself that most of the stuff I heard would not be out of place as the background music for some horror scene in a movie.
PS: Now of course, there are really great performances I have been to. But none that I can recall, involved anything written in the last 200 or so years. Unless they play some…film score…as you said, which is both appealing and “new”.
PPS: So as a conclusion, I would say that “art” needs not just talent, and doing something other’s can’t do in 5 minutes (like filling a jug with urine and putting stuff in it)…but it also needs to be appealing. So it can’t really be about “the artist”, but it has to be about the audience. Much of “art” today is all about “me me me”. Even in music schools.
I’ve noticed that, among undergraduates, many of the most absolutely talented composers are also skilled at something other than music. For example, they’re CS or physics majors, or some other STEM major, or they switched to music from such a major. They’re good at algorithmic thinking – not really a surprise, since composing satisfying music is a largely algorithmic activity.
Also not surprisingly, they often find their algorithmic thinking skills more in-demand in some field other than music and end up exiting the academic music scene. After all, there’s much more demand for mediocre programmers than there is for good composers. The result is that those who remain in the academic scene aren’t necessarily the most talented at composing, but mostly the ones who feel they have little to offer the world other than their music. And David Ricardo would approve, I think.
I know choral music is already a niche market, but as I mentioned, in that niche market, the composer Eric Whitacre is treated like a rock star (seriously, the man has screaming groupies).
When a young composer asked him his advice on whether getting a PhD in music helps a composer write more satisfying music, he said, “No.” Harmony and counterpoint classes – classes which will equip those with even a modicum of talent to write more appealing music than they did previously – are undergraduate classes. Whitacre’s take was that whatever it is you’ve got to do to get a PhD in music is more likely to take time and energy away from your writing music that people actually enjoy listening to.
The argument that “art exists to make you feel uncomfortable” is addressed in a post by blogger Brian Mickelthwait and an article by novelist Mark Helprin, both of which I excerpted here:
Art, Discomfort, and Dehumanization
A revelation! Thanks, buddy.
Dime, you need a beret and an unfiltered Gauloises dangling from your toe – er – lip.
Art is meant to extend our conception of beauty. Beauty should not be underrated.
Lots of interesting ideas here. I learn a lot. Thanks.
Back to initial comment by Fred (and I do not understand why we are not having this conversation I that thread). It was about The Interview and art.
In my opinion The Interview is not art. It was probably not intended to be. It was intended to be a box-office money maker. Nothing wrong with that. But it is different than Bach’ mass in B minor.
On the movie itself. I am glad it provoked the norks even though it bored me. Go ahead and buy the movie to irk Kim Jung Un!
“. . . To Be Provocative?”
Yes, provocative: by all means let it be provocative, but those on the left have taken this as license for their ‘art’ to be offensive, antagonistic and even aggressive.
Rather ironic, given the fact that these are the same thin-skinned clowns who invented the concept of ‘microaggression’ to justify their acts of censorship.
Re : 73
It is ironic with that micro aggression thing in mind. Also ironic in light of their new emphasis on the importance of avoiding “triggering” fear, depression or anger in people. Wasn’t there a statue of a sleepwalking man that had to be removed from a campus for that reason?
We, we Mansure Percy. Berets muy Chick, we?
True: and the only reason to limit that truth to just “art” is–I assume–fidelity to OP.
Re: 73 and 74
I’m fascinated by the statue of the policewoman, in the garb of enforced control, squatting to pee. She’s like an animal, and like one of those ancient, brutal, fertility goddesses, creeping back, disguised in a false promise of peace and order. You look at her and think we should consider ourselves warned.
Yes, it’s amazing how movies has become the home of almost (almost!) all interesting orchestral music nowadays. Even the dreaded atonal stuff makes perfect sense as the scores for horror flicks. Atonality is so common there, it’s a cliche.
The so-called death of certain art forms is overstated. Take poetry for example. New poems are being written and enjoyed every day–but we don’t call them poems; we call them song lyrics. Audiences enjoy art of all kinds, but are spoiled and now demand multi-media extravaganzas. They won’t typically sit still for just a poem, or just an orchestral piece, or just a painting. They want all their senses stimulated together. Only in rare cases can a mere poem, unaccompanied by music and moving pictures, hold people’s attention. The only solution, I think, is for every artist to learn multiple media.
The only two “messages” I ever picked up from an Arthur Schoenberg piece were:
1) “My audiences are beneath my contempt.”
2) “I couldn’t carry a tune in a wheelbarrow.”
Schoenberg was a neighbor of George Gershwin at one point. They used to play tennis together. Anyone fairly fluent in 20th century music can manage to hum a bit of Gershwin. Nobody has ever hummed Schoenberg. Schoenberg is the revolutionary, though. He liberated atonality.
Somebody ought to lock it back up.
That comment sits waaaay up there among my year’s favorites :)
People actually enjoy listening to Whitacre? I though it was like most classical music, where people just pretend to like it in order to appear sophisticated.
I could listen to it…if I had trouble falling asleep. This would do the trick.
im not about to cough up a list of specific names, but its interesting to look up the wikis of various pop/rock musicians you admire and see where they got their education. A surprising amount of them have some kind of traditional musical training. Even Justin Bieber went to singing classes.
As for visual arts, I would say the skill and talent is there, the proper patronage is not. But the most persistent talents will find a way. Graphic Novels are a successful modern artform with solid roots in traditional drawing technique. You cant make a book that will sell without captivating images, and for that you need to know all the same formal principles that pre-modern generations adhered by: proportion, scale, composition, tone etc. You also must study anatomy (a painful exercise for many aspiring comic artists).
Post WW2 we have also seen traces of high visual craft in movie posters, cartoons, t-shirt designs, album covers and advertising. I know trying to compare this to pre-industrial painters might invite scoffs. But what is religious art apart from an advertisement for the church? Every old master had a patron who called the shots on subject matter. And the subject matter was usually ‘paint gospel scenes for me so I can get into heaven” or “paint a picture of me – a bit thinner and more handsome than normal please – riding a horse after a glorious battle so my descendents can know what i looked like and how great I was” There’s a lot less virtue in traditional arts behind the scenes, there is a lot of vanity.
But our art will always reflect our values as a society. |If modern gallery art is rubbish because its patrons value rubbish. Maybe its worth holding on to a couple of pieces to tell the future what we were like.
Every artist has had some training. That’s not what I meant. All the bad ones have had the same training too ;)
I disagree.
The problem with “art” in general is that there’s only so much hours in a day.
People are limited in the amount of time and attention they can devote to “art”. Being limited in attention, people pay attention to things which appear more “salient” in their eyes.
Hence, ridiculous pieces are paid more attention to because they capture your attention more readily.
The patrons don’t necessarily value rubbish. They simply value their time.
Im afraid I disagree (but youve got my brain working:). if that were true then it would be Pollock or Rauschenburg that would always be on loan for blockbuster museum exhibitions and not the impressionists or earlier.
So the museum curators seem to be confident that the public want to see good representational painting.
Do you ever see what happens in a big museum when people move from the 19th century room to the 20th century room? What do you do? I start walking faster and looking less. There will also always be someone queitly muttering a sentence starting with “my two-year old…”
I think most spectators, if they could, would choose to spend an hour looking at 5 good paintings over 50 bad ones. They don’t get to choose what gets hung up though. There are genuinely painters today who paint quality work but struggle to find more than a niche audience. There’s a con at play really. Someone is telling ordinary people what 21st century painting they are supposed to like. Most will call BS and declare they hate art, A minority will be gullible and swallow ‘the artists statement’ whole and transmit it on to their enlightened friends, and so perpetuate the con.
Actually, I don’t listen to it much, because I find it unsophisticated. It’s nice, but a bit saccharine for my taste.
At art school (yes i admit it) I got taught this historical narrative:
Michaelangelo leads to Rubens leads to Delacroix leads to Monet leads to Pollock leads to Warhol. Hence, Warhol is the direct heir to Michaelangelo! They would be best friends if they were both alive today!
Thats the narrative every art student is taught. There’s something wrong with that narrative and it needs to be changed.
I think people are less inhibited now about describing their reactions to a painting or a sculpture than they were in the 1970s. They seem more interested in looking at old works of art, less interested in trying to like what seemingly sophisticated people like. Also, they seem less influenced than they once were by the opinions of people with degrees in, say, art history who offer an interpretation of a painting or sculpture without offering evidence for the validity of that interpretation.
Maybe Roger Scruton types have freed us without our knowing it . But whatever it is, much more than a few decades ago, people now are looking at old and new works of art without feeling any need to pretend to have any particular opinion or reaction. I think, right now, they’d be very open to the idea that Warhol isn’t the direct heir to Michaelangelo. For one thing, Michaelangelo doesn’t look so dated.
Oh there’s most definitely a con. Very few people can really look at some of this modern stuff and really think there’s anything there.
I once dated a girl (art major of course) who told me about her friend who was doing the most “amazing painting ever!!”. When I saw it, it was just a van-sized canvas with about 3 shades of blue splattered all over. Clearly…one would need to be high on acid to enjoy that.
But, I still think that given the same limitations of time and space, and the over-abundance of “art” available, be it paintings or music or film or literature or whatever…people will still pay attention more to whatever is more “salient”, than what is “good”.
Salient could also mean “famous”, so perhaps you’re right that the same can apply to more famous “older” pieces of art. But it’s still that “quick” reward that most people are after.
I want to say that in viewing great art we recognize truth seen through the eyes of the soul — that is, of the artist. It resonates with us because we too — at that moment when we appreciate that work of art — view it through the eyes of the soul.
Ray,
Thanks for the compliment. Your music ain’t bad either.