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Flyover Country, Episode 66 – All the Lonely People
For our first podcast of the new year, episode 66, we are joined by Ricochet member Titus Techera, who has also written for National Review Online and The Federalist. Titus is a Romanian, who has recently spent time in the US, and our discussion revolves around the American psyche and our particular current brand of politics.
[note: I apologize for the terrible audio, which makes Ryan appear significantly louder than Terry and Titus. We will be sure to fix this before our next podcast!]
Published in General
Hey Flyover guys: I think Christo is being silly, but I totally dig his art.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/arts/design/christos-newest-project-walking-on-water.html
Well, I’ll admit that that one looks cool… But I hesitate to call it art.
We may be uniquely situated, which may in turn lead to fairly unique manifestations of what is really a universal and timeless human nature. From my perspective, the American and the Romanian look different, but they bear the same relation to God, and they suffer from the same human condition.
Our politics are unique, but our humanity is not.
I have tended to avoid social media as a general rule, however, I did participate for some time in a private discussion group whose main area of interest was gun culture and the politics surrounding it. As we moved through the primary season and Trump was gaining ascendency I found that group taking a definite turn toward what I think of as the Alt-right. The discussions became more and more heated, and my comfort level declined accordingly. Finally, I simply left the group, erased the link to it from my list of favorites, and spent the time usually spent there on Ricochet.
There were a few writers on Ricochet who would likely fit in quite well with my previous group, but by and large I found the tone and content to be far more reasonable and self-aware. I also noticed that my own mood took a decided upturn no matter the direction of the political scene. The tendency to predict the end of the world as we know it is far less often found among Ricochetti. The overall mood is one of positivity, and attempts, conscious or unconscious, to drive it into negative territory are quickly overwhelmed by the generally optimistic thinking of the majority.
In my own case, being retired, much of my exposure to the world and its direction comes from the time I spend on the internet. Finding a place like Ricochet is a true God-send. Titus made excellent sense.
Oh, sure. But before we have to meet our maker, things are plenty different. Human nature includes lots of possibilities, many which Americans cannot imagine. But circumstances & politics put limits on that!
Why hesitate?
I prefer lake Garda. Catullus was there. Ezra Pound was there. A friend & I talked about Ezra Pound’s poem The study in aesthetics.
Next, I think the old coot is selling transcendence on the cheap.
Finally, art involves a mind. This does not really do that. I supposed things have changed in our times. It’s hard to convince people in our times that mind means anything but scientific stuff; or whatever they themselves want. But that’s foolish. Artists who think amazement is art are no better than artists who think humiliation or suffering is art. They’re forever trying to breach the self-containment of the bourgeois. That’s too needy. Art ultimately depends on the interest we have in the limits of our humanity…
I’m not clear what you are saying. Are you saying you prefer Lake Garda to Christo’s installation on Lake Iseo?
If so, should your preferences alone dictate what is art?
The old coot seems to have very cleverly found a way to make breathtaking if sometime a bit silly art around the world, gaining media attention and most importantly to an artist, money. I applaud him.
The lake was not kept in its altered state — the art was temporary and did not damage the natural setting — a dialogue between man and nature, that was beautiful and interactive in a whimsical and joyful way. ?
Can you explain this further?
In the old days, there were two kinds of storytelling above all, before Christ. There was tragedy, about crashing against human limits; & comedy, about figuring out how to work within those limits, when once they’re figured out. In that sense, tragedy is prior, if not necessarily superior.
Things have changed some. But it still is the case that art requires both mind & a care for human things.
I don’t have anything against people amusing themselves the way this old coot wants them to–it’s just foolish to think about art that way. Some kid reading Rilke gets something such people do not, even if they feel free by engaging in this sort of tomfoolery. Democracy & the market are with them; but art is with him.
Well, we know why Titus hesitates, I guess. Now we’ll have to hear from Ryan.
I’ve done art. But I don’t know if I require more out of what’s called “art” than, is it beautiful and did it take careful composition and craftsmanship? In which case stuff by Christo and Goldsworthy fits in, even if it’s not the usual drawing, painting, sculpting, composing, or performing.
Hmm… I had not thought of art as not doing this. Or of doing it, either. But witnessing beautiful, carefully-arranged things could cause a sense of transcendence on the cheap. That would seem more a hazard of art, though, than a failure to be art.
What about what’s not just amazement, but wonder?
You are tantalizingly unclear to me: think about it what way? That it is ok to have fun art that amuses? That to think that is foolish?
I think it would be an error to take it too seriously, but it seems to me that you are saying that Christo’s work is not art at all. Is that correct?
Amazement equals wonder here. Kids wonder at any number of things & are better dialecticians than that old coot. Doesn’t make’em artists–or him. This guy has nothing better to offer than a twelve-year-old. If the super-scientific-democratic-capitalist world cannot do better, maybe this guy is worthwhile. But it’s not art.
There are two problems with this kind of art. First, it proves, we’re all artists, if less contrived than the old coot. Secondly, it proves art’s not worth much, it’s just a whim.
So earlier today I watched The man who shot Liberty Valance again. I forget how many times I’ve seen that movie. That’s art. Excellence of craft & a thoughtful, sophisticate, but also natural way of thinking about the things that make America.
Ha ha! I think what you are saying is that you think this is bad art, even though you have said you think it is not art. Even you can’t help but speak of it as art!
It’s not art. It’s what Americans call entertainment. We’d call it what you would call a game or a madness.
It is of the essence of art that it speak to the human things in a thoughtful way. The used peasant shoes of van Gogh do that. This does not. Wonder is not essential to it, except in the sense that people come to sense their madness, & wonder that they miss so much of what’s really human.
Just like comedy is really people laughing at their own conventional minds–wonder is wondering at their own unnaturalness ultimately…
There are any number of tricks in this world. I personally recommend Ricky Jay’s card tricks. Wonderful, you might say. But that is not the art; the self-understanding of the conman is the art in that case…
People might think of the ticket as the price they pay for the entertainment. But in truth wonder is the price you pay for the art.
When I first encountered Christo as a student, in Art History 101-102, one of Williams College’s most valuable courses, I pretty much agreed with you.
But I am older, and I find that Christo’s art is not vapid, that it does speak to me in a thoughtful way, beyond entertainment.
So it is art.
We can agree to disagree?
Not so fast, Mama Toad! When you write the Rico-post explaining what’s so thoughtful–then we can agree to disagree. & I promise lots of disagreeing!
Titus disagrees with your ‘agreement to disagree agreement’ agreement.
I don’t see either proved. That I had classmates in textile design and engineering in our arts and architecture school might explain some of why I don’t think we could all do what this old coot did. My own successes and failures in building stuff out of textiles might also have helped.
Art sometimes starts on a whim, but to get a project of any quality takes considerable follow-through. Is your complaint that Christo has too many other folks helping him with the follow-through?
I’ll put that topic in the queue of Posts Requested by Titus.
You’re pushy. I like that…
Fine. Then we simply disagree!
The Lord hates a coward…
Oh, Mama T would have to do (or not-do) a lot more than that to be a coward.
You’re making me laugh but I am self confident (and old?) enough that I don’t need to take dares!
For a number of reasons. I think of it as not-art for similar reasons to why 3’33” is not music, if that makes any sense. A man who sits down at a piano and presses a stop-watch is a fool; a man who flawlessly plays the Hungarian Rhapsody is a musician.
Or, for another analogy, think about story-telling. Suppose you have a bad day. Anybody can describe the bad day. My children can tell me about a bad day. That is the mere recitation of facts. A story-teller will put you in the bad day, maybe even without ever explicitly telling you why, you’ll feel it. Today’s “art” is more of a declaration: “I had a bad day.” or “I hate XYZ.” They expect me to care because they’ve bought into this idea that they are somehow inherently special and therefore mere declaration is persuasive.
An artist, first and foremost, shows a skill. He may take a scene and bring something out of it. Being able to draw that scene flawlessly is the first step – but the further artistic choices will set him apart. Maybe the lighting and shadows, maybe what’s going on in the background, maybe subtle gestures.
A person who sets up a million umbrellas in central park is doing something that takes a lot of money (cont…)
(duplicate oops)
(…cont) and a lot of manpower, but he’s not creating art.
I suppose it is art, in the same way 3’33” is music, if you buy into the ridiculous notion that everything is art and everything is music (my opinion is simply that all you get is the flipside, there is no such thing as art and music at that point). Therefore, splatter-art and pictures of Jesus immersed in urine, rather than being considered temper-tantrums by idiots, is called art. Random screeches, or even pure silence is considered music.
But I disagree. Art begins with a carefully cultivated skill. Talent makes that skill special, artistry makes that skill uniquely art.
If art is simply something that makes you feel emotion, than virtually everything in the world is art. I feel emotion when I stub my toe. But I don’t call it art.
I will say that I am already imagining my prose though… describing the nylon billowing in the canyon wind…
the saffron flags juxtaposed against the white cityscape…
Yeah, neither of those are art.
Both of those are examples of how terrible “artists” can ruin perfectly beautiful scenes, in fact.
That, to me, is the opposite of art.
An artist is someone who can capture that beauty in such a way that you can feel it even though you’re not there.