Comments on: Art, life: Separate or unified – II

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:17:51 +0000

David:

At some point one’s anticipations would tend to drop to the level of Cage’s performances.

By: David

David — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 18:02:55 +0000

One of the interesting things about Cage, of course, is that the descriptions (and the resulting anticipations) of his musical pieces were probably more satisfying than the actual performances.

By: Steve Durbin

Steve Durbin — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:03:39 +0000

Jonathan,

I recently watched the movie “Match Point,” in which there is no resolution of a murder. It certainly leads you to consider the consequences for the murderer more deeply than if convention were followed.

“It was a learning experience” is perhaps most often used ironically, but the cliché suggests that the most powerful stimulus to change or development can be a disappointment of hopes or expectations. But is learning something new always the highest good? In this context, Cagean might mean upsettings norms to an extent that most will consider the experience quite negative. Though once one learns about Cage, of course, one should expect that…

By: jonathan Polkest

jonathan Polkest — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 10:53:09 +0000

I recently proposed that a colleague was better satisfied by experiencing absence after waiting in anticipation of a “scheduled” event that failed to happen, than he would have been at had the event proceeded. That absence is a richer experience than presence, to which he replied “Don’t be so Cagean” or rather “Stop being so Cagean”.
I ask for views on this retort, are there problems with the notion of a typical Cagean response.

By: Sunil Gangadharan

Sunil Gangadharan — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:03:03 +0000

This is a difficult question. In fact after I posted it my wife read this and she went away happy that she did not have to answer it (as she loves Caravaggio’s paintings).
Of course, here it does look like the consensus opinion tends towards ‘if-you-know-the-artist-is-immoral-you-tends-to-stay-away’ mode..
Personally I am not sure about answers to the question that I asked. I sometimes think that if you like the artwork without knowing the artists background and later on finding out that the artists was not the most becoming character, it is easy for one to reduce the height of the pedestal rolled out for the artist but it becomes much harder to take the art off the same pedestal.

Tree’s questions raise more issues for me that I will have to go away and ponder some more.

Jay,
If artists can parade ‘found’ paintings as art (see Shaw at PS1), then why can’t a forger’s work be art?

By: Karl Zipser

Karl Zipser — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:48:35 +0000

Sunil,

What a difficult question you are asking here.

One way to think about it is that if the people weren’t making what would normally be considered good art (if someone with a neutral background made it), they could have spent even more energy harming others. You could see each artwork as a symbol of people not harmed. Imagine Hitler had been more satisfied with painting.

By: Tree

Tree — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 16:17:46 +0000

I’ve seen them, Jay. They’re horrible, I’ve seen better works in motels.