Art, good and bad
Went to a concert last night, Oslo String Quartet. They started off with Grieg's F major quartet, written in 1891. Or rather, half written; he wrote only the first two movements, out of an intended four. According to the program notes, he had writer's block. The music was OK, but it didn't engage me. I can understand why he didn't finish it: he didn't have anything to communicate.
Next on the program was the obligatory work of contemporary music: the U.S. premiere of Arne Nordheim's "Five Stages," written in 2001. All dissonance. It's as though composers in the twentieth century decided that there was enough pretty music, and henceforth music had to be ugly. Needless to say, I didn't like it.
After intermission they played the Sibelius quartet called "Voces intimae," written in 1909, 18 years after the Grieg quartet. I was immediately engaged. There was a musical theme, musically developed. The composer had something to communicate, and did so.
Let's get serious. Art is communication. There are (at least) two phases (which may in fact overlap): inspiration and execution. In the inspiration phase, the artist gets an idea. It doesn't have to be an idea that can be put into words (if it could be written in words, the artist wouldn't have to paint it, or compose it, or whatever). It can be simple, but it mustn't be trivial. And then in the execution phase, the artist communicates it. Art is not the solitary expression of an artist's feelings, like laughing, screaming, or vomiting. It's the movement of feelings from the mind (heart, soul, whatever) of the artist to the artist's intended audience. The key requirement in this phase is craftsmanship. The artist must know the tools and techniques and painstakingly apply them to create the intended effect. Slapdash won't do.
I think Picasso is overrated. It's as though painters, like composers, decided in the twentieth century that there were enough pretty pictures and henceforth all pictures had to be ugly. But his "Guernica"
is successful, because the ugly picture communicates an ugly idea. The disconnected image fragments accurately represent the chaos of a village being bombed.
Not only art, but science, mathematics, and other activities also require inspiration to produce an idea and craftmanship to convey it. Darwin's "origin of species," and Einstein's paper on special relativity, both convey essentially simple ideas with meticulous craftsmanship. In politics, the Republicans understand the importance of inspiration and craftsmanship; the Democrats either don't understand it, or don't have what it takes to put it together.
Next on the program was the obligatory work of contemporary music: the U.S. premiere of Arne Nordheim's "Five Stages," written in 2001. All dissonance. It's as though composers in the twentieth century decided that there was enough pretty music, and henceforth music had to be ugly. Needless to say, I didn't like it.
After intermission they played the Sibelius quartet called "Voces intimae," written in 1909, 18 years after the Grieg quartet. I was immediately engaged. There was a musical theme, musically developed. The composer had something to communicate, and did so.
Let's get serious. Art is communication. There are (at least) two phases (which may in fact overlap): inspiration and execution. In the inspiration phase, the artist gets an idea. It doesn't have to be an idea that can be put into words (if it could be written in words, the artist wouldn't have to paint it, or compose it, or whatever). It can be simple, but it mustn't be trivial. And then in the execution phase, the artist communicates it. Art is not the solitary expression of an artist's feelings, like laughing, screaming, or vomiting. It's the movement of feelings from the mind (heart, soul, whatever) of the artist to the artist's intended audience. The key requirement in this phase is craftsmanship. The artist must know the tools and techniques and painstakingly apply them to create the intended effect. Slapdash won't do.
I think Picasso is overrated. It's as though painters, like composers, decided in the twentieth century that there were enough pretty pictures and henceforth all pictures had to be ugly. But his "Guernica"
is successful, because the ugly picture communicates an ugly idea. The disconnected image fragments accurately represent the chaos of a village being bombed.
Not only art, but science, mathematics, and other activities also require inspiration to produce an idea and craftmanship to convey it. Darwin's "origin of species," and Einstein's paper on special relativity, both convey essentially simple ideas with meticulous craftsmanship. In politics, the Republicans understand the importance of inspiration and craftsmanship; the Democrats either don't understand it, or don't have what it takes to put it together.
posted by GrumbleGrouch at 9:06 AM
3 Comments:
I was just visiting the comment section at Krismukkah and couldn't help but note your freudian like slip as you misquoted the blogger as saying "swoon with hate and nausea" when he actually said "swoon with shock and nausea". And for that matter, the only thing elegant about the neocon republican is that fact that they seem to be able to actively focus their hate. And their inspiration appears to derive from the ability to fool most of the people enough of the time. It seems to me that it was clear during this last election that many democrats were ready to reciprocate in kind if they could just find a candidate who would speak the truth instead of what would get them (not) elected.
In a comment that's irrelevant to this posting, R says I misquoted the Krismukkah blogger in my own comment on a post there. I'm a lazy old man, and as best I can remember, I "quoted" by cut-and-paste. I remind my readers that posts can be edited, and the post might easily have been altered in response to my comment.
Maybe if you took the time to go back to your comment on the Krismukka blog you'd see that you told the writer not to hate because that's what they "the white supremicists" do. So when I used it to preface my comment about the current neocon type of Republican that you and Bill Maher seem to admire so much, I thought you'd catch the relevance and not see it as just nit picking.
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