Very provoking. I have a lot to write on this issue, but I'll try to keep it brief. As I see it, the goal of art is to produce more art, but the initial piece can't be achieved unless it brings delight to the artist. Then it becomes an act of faith that what brings delight to the artist will also bring delight to, at the very least, one other person.
This is a great reflection on artistry, but it is also a very difficult topic. With the ghettoization of philosophy post-World War II, aesthetics is no longer considered a key part of education, and as such the topic has completely collapsed. What we tend to get now is not engagement with the topic at all, but merely 'border skirmishes' about what is-or-isn't art.
My own book, Imaginary Games, is expressly framed around the incident where Roger Ebert declared that videogames could not be art. I took another tack: all art involves imaginative engagement that is, all art is a game. This, however, doesn't change the fact that most artworks - in every media (most certainly including videogames) are dross.
You mention Joyce's unreadable Finnegan's Wake (concur, by the way), but his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man still contains a skeleton key I find helpful: the distinction between didactic art, which aims to force a viewpoint (AKA contemporary Hollywood), pornographic art which provokes desires (AKA the vast bulk contemporary videogames), and esthetic art, which aims to arrest the mind and transcend desire and loathing. It's also worth noting, Joyce doesn't say pornography is not art. It is merely 'improper art'.
The musical artist borders on the pornographic when they merely play the hits. I don't know what to call it when they refuse to play the hits... music in the key of a-hole? I'm not sure this issue touches on art at all, probably because I don't think entertainment and art are disjunct. Art gestures at truth. It is perfectly possible for this to be entertaining, and that a lot of entertainment skews pornographic in Joyce's sense (provoking desire, not necessarily just sexual desire) says nothing important about the relationship between art and the capacity to entertain.
You mention the writing that you wrote for yourself and that nobody seems to 'get'. For myself, it was my game project Silk, which aimed to pay tribute to the British 8-bit programmer Mike Singleton, whose work touched upon genius, not least for what he was able to achieve under incredible limitations. It may well have been artistic to make a game in the style of a dead genre (the 8-bit square-based explorer), but it was commercially costly for me to pursue this project, because I effectively burned goodwill with my consultancy to make it. Be thankful, if you can, that your artworks may not have gained you what you desired, but they only cost you the time you spent making them. There are greater sacrifices, and I think that you have not had to pay them yet, and hope you never will.
Well, enough from me. Seek art, but do not preclude finding it within entertainment.
"only cost you the time".... there's (almost) nothing more valuable.
That having been said, I find Joyce's notion of kinetic art useful and teach it as a distinction not just between art and pornography but art and any sort of "improper art" that tries to get you to do something. Advertising, for example, can be artistic but is not (proper) art, in that view.
My view is that art is not so much to "make you think" or "arrest the mind" or transcend desire but that art is a way of sharing one human's internal experience with others in a way that is entertaining, beautiful, and meaningful (i.e. illuminates some valuable truth). In my way of seeing things, great art does all three, though in varying degrees.
Some art leans so heavily on meaning, it ceases to be beautiful or entertaining, and to me, that is a loss, if not a failure. Likewise, some art leans so heavily on entertainment as to lose touch with meaning, and then it is shallow.
A concert is interesting because it is both a showcase for art that has already been experienced and is itself a work of art. So, I could see how performing "just the hits" could feel pornographic, though, when I saw the Eagles recently, I didn't experience it that way at all, despite, as Sherman Alexie says, they are the Eagles' greatest cover band. Because they were artistically repackaging their art, I suppose. And yet still, they may have leaned too heavily into audience pandering at the cost of transforming their hits into a newer, deeper experience.
The thing is, also, about music, is that it often requires repetition to hit the audience. We've all had the experience of not liking a song until we've heard it a few times (and then getting sick of it after too many).
So, if a musician only plays songs his audience doesn't know, he's kind of robbing them of a certain experience that I would consider art. He is primarily entertaining himself at the cost of his captive audience.
BTW, I took an aesthetics course in college, long after WWII ;-) but maybe you mean nothing new has been offered since then on the topic?
You say a lot of great things here that I agree with, especially about live concerts as art experiences. I have just two small objections.
"...there's (almost) nothing more valuable."
I am sympathetic only in so far as if you buy into the universal economic mindset, then aye, time is 'your most valuable commodity'. But we should not buy into the universal economic mindset, because our lives are not a pile of resources, and neither is our time. In particular, time spent honing your writing craft is in no way wasted just because it didn't result in money! 🙂
However, I throw myself on my sword here because I wrote the terrible wording "cost you the time you spent making them", which was reprehensible of me. My point remains: I lost goodwill on my project, which if we buy into universal economics is far more 'valuable' than mere time and cannot always be regained.
Anyway, I am now going to step slowly away from having invoked the Dark Arts of economics in an otherwise interesting discussion about aesthetics. 😂
"BTW, I took an aesthetics course in college, long after WWII ;-) but maybe you mean nothing new has been offered since then on the topic?"
I probably rushed my point here. It is not that many universities do not offer you side courses in aesthetics, it is that aesthetics used to be a cornerstone of education - not just at university either. A good high school would teach aesthetics prior to WWII.
Many subjects are offered as university electives... I'm sure theology is too. But that doesn't change my claim that aesthetics (and theology) have been ghettoised.
Thought-provoking post! I think we tend to unconsciously downgrade art that is entertaining. It's why good comedy isn't respected nearly as much as it should be (or wasn't, until every no-talent stand-up decided he was "speaking truth to power"). I don't think we should have to choose. But then, I find *Hamlet* and *The Waste Land* entertaining as well as deep. Of course, Shakespeare almost certainly saw his poetry as his 'real' art and not his plays, which were not taken seriously as an art form in Elizabethan England, as you know.
It also reminds me a bit of my slight shock at your talking of "fan-service" in your *Odyssey* review. I happen to be very opposed to fan-service generally, particularly in *Doctor Who* (the only thing I'm a "real" fan of). I prefer the pristine purity of the early Doctor Who stories, before it developed a mythos and repeated tropes (joking not joking). I'm a kind of fandom Salafist, hearkening back to a mythical Golden Age (definitely joking).
love the phrase about artistic stupidity- one is always faced with the dilemma of how much one is willing to pander to his or her audience. (Unrelated to this point, I found movie about Neil Diamond rather boring. But maybe because I am not a fan.)
Very provoking. I have a lot to write on this issue, but I'll try to keep it brief. As I see it, the goal of art is to produce more art, but the initial piece can't be achieved unless it brings delight to the artist. Then it becomes an act of faith that what brings delight to the artist will also bring delight to, at the very least, one other person.
Dear Thomas,
This is a great reflection on artistry, but it is also a very difficult topic. With the ghettoization of philosophy post-World War II, aesthetics is no longer considered a key part of education, and as such the topic has completely collapsed. What we tend to get now is not engagement with the topic at all, but merely 'border skirmishes' about what is-or-isn't art.
My own book, Imaginary Games, is expressly framed around the incident where Roger Ebert declared that videogames could not be art. I took another tack: all art involves imaginative engagement that is, all art is a game. This, however, doesn't change the fact that most artworks - in every media (most certainly including videogames) are dross.
You mention Joyce's unreadable Finnegan's Wake (concur, by the way), but his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man still contains a skeleton key I find helpful: the distinction between didactic art, which aims to force a viewpoint (AKA contemporary Hollywood), pornographic art which provokes desires (AKA the vast bulk contemporary videogames), and esthetic art, which aims to arrest the mind and transcend desire and loathing. It's also worth noting, Joyce doesn't say pornography is not art. It is merely 'improper art'.
The musical artist borders on the pornographic when they merely play the hits. I don't know what to call it when they refuse to play the hits... music in the key of a-hole? I'm not sure this issue touches on art at all, probably because I don't think entertainment and art are disjunct. Art gestures at truth. It is perfectly possible for this to be entertaining, and that a lot of entertainment skews pornographic in Joyce's sense (provoking desire, not necessarily just sexual desire) says nothing important about the relationship between art and the capacity to entertain.
You mention the writing that you wrote for yourself and that nobody seems to 'get'. For myself, it was my game project Silk, which aimed to pay tribute to the British 8-bit programmer Mike Singleton, whose work touched upon genius, not least for what he was able to achieve under incredible limitations. It may well have been artistic to make a game in the style of a dead genre (the 8-bit square-based explorer), but it was commercially costly for me to pursue this project, because I effectively burned goodwill with my consultancy to make it. Be thankful, if you can, that your artworks may not have gained you what you desired, but they only cost you the time you spent making them. There are greater sacrifices, and I think that you have not had to pay them yet, and hope you never will.
Well, enough from me. Seek art, but do not preclude finding it within entertainment.
Stay wonderful!
Chris.
"only cost you the time".... there's (almost) nothing more valuable.
That having been said, I find Joyce's notion of kinetic art useful and teach it as a distinction not just between art and pornography but art and any sort of "improper art" that tries to get you to do something. Advertising, for example, can be artistic but is not (proper) art, in that view.
My view is that art is not so much to "make you think" or "arrest the mind" or transcend desire but that art is a way of sharing one human's internal experience with others in a way that is entertaining, beautiful, and meaningful (i.e. illuminates some valuable truth). In my way of seeing things, great art does all three, though in varying degrees.
Some art leans so heavily on meaning, it ceases to be beautiful or entertaining, and to me, that is a loss, if not a failure. Likewise, some art leans so heavily on entertainment as to lose touch with meaning, and then it is shallow.
A concert is interesting because it is both a showcase for art that has already been experienced and is itself a work of art. So, I could see how performing "just the hits" could feel pornographic, though, when I saw the Eagles recently, I didn't experience it that way at all, despite, as Sherman Alexie says, they are the Eagles' greatest cover band. Because they were artistically repackaging their art, I suppose. And yet still, they may have leaned too heavily into audience pandering at the cost of transforming their hits into a newer, deeper experience.
The thing is, also, about music, is that it often requires repetition to hit the audience. We've all had the experience of not liking a song until we've heard it a few times (and then getting sick of it after too many).
So, if a musician only plays songs his audience doesn't know, he's kind of robbing them of a certain experience that I would consider art. He is primarily entertaining himself at the cost of his captive audience.
BTW, I took an aesthetics course in college, long after WWII ;-) but maybe you mean nothing new has been offered since then on the topic?
Thanks for extending our conversation, Thomas!
You say a lot of great things here that I agree with, especially about live concerts as art experiences. I have just two small objections.
"...there's (almost) nothing more valuable."
I am sympathetic only in so far as if you buy into the universal economic mindset, then aye, time is 'your most valuable commodity'. But we should not buy into the universal economic mindset, because our lives are not a pile of resources, and neither is our time. In particular, time spent honing your writing craft is in no way wasted just because it didn't result in money! 🙂
However, I throw myself on my sword here because I wrote the terrible wording "cost you the time you spent making them", which was reprehensible of me. My point remains: I lost goodwill on my project, which if we buy into universal economics is far more 'valuable' than mere time and cannot always be regained.
Anyway, I am now going to step slowly away from having invoked the Dark Arts of economics in an otherwise interesting discussion about aesthetics. 😂
"BTW, I took an aesthetics course in college, long after WWII ;-) but maybe you mean nothing new has been offered since then on the topic?"
I probably rushed my point here. It is not that many universities do not offer you side courses in aesthetics, it is that aesthetics used to be a cornerstone of education - not just at university either. A good high school would teach aesthetics prior to WWII.
Many subjects are offered as university electives... I'm sure theology is too. But that doesn't change my claim that aesthetics (and theology) have been ghettoised.
With unlimited love,
Chris.
Thought-provoking post! I think we tend to unconsciously downgrade art that is entertaining. It's why good comedy isn't respected nearly as much as it should be (or wasn't, until every no-talent stand-up decided he was "speaking truth to power"). I don't think we should have to choose. But then, I find *Hamlet* and *The Waste Land* entertaining as well as deep. Of course, Shakespeare almost certainly saw his poetry as his 'real' art and not his plays, which were not taken seriously as an art form in Elizabethan England, as you know.
It also reminds me a bit of my slight shock at your talking of "fan-service" in your *Odyssey* review. I happen to be very opposed to fan-service generally, particularly in *Doctor Who* (the only thing I'm a "real" fan of). I prefer the pristine purity of the early Doctor Who stories, before it developed a mythos and repeated tropes (joking not joking). I'm a kind of fandom Salafist, hearkening back to a mythical Golden Age (definitely joking).
love the phrase about artistic stupidity- one is always faced with the dilemma of how much one is willing to pander to his or her audience. (Unrelated to this point, I found movie about Neil Diamond rather boring. But maybe because I am not a fan.)
Ha. See my post on “no accounting for taste”😉
I read your post just now. My response isn’t meaningful. Maybe at some point, as I mentioned.
Honesty demands making art for yourself. How can you make art for an “intended audience”? It’s not real art.