'Art' is just a scam to take idiots money. Next topic!

I went to see a production of "The Miracle Worker" at my old high school last night (because...well, I met the folks *I* used to perform with there and we met with our younger friends...it's really a family feeling when we reuinte, so we oldies generally go even if we don't like the play, as was the case here, "The Miracle Worker" is NOT my theatrical cup of tea, I think it's a play that has a limited premise, slow pace, stilted language at times and just isn't very good, but I will say our old friends did a GREAT job with it, and judges for the California competition came that night, and they look like they have a shot at winning their division, so kudos there) and afterwards, as per tradition, we made the midnight celebratory run over to Dennys.

I then got into a rather intense debate with a couple of those friends over what amounts to that example in the title description, the no painting/painting example.

Also, and the example that really sparked us for the evening, was this:

Apparently there is a recording called "Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds."

My friends tells me that there are no musical notes played, and that the sheet music is blank, that the entire thing is four minutes and thirty-three seconds of listening to ambient sounds that are NOT in the musical score.

HE believes this to be a composition, and that it has meaning.

I do NOT--just as I would hold that a sentence without words or letters is an absurdity I would additionally hold that a MUSICAL COMPOSITITION--not merely jsut the sounds, a musical composition, with all the rules that go with that--MUST contain notes to be considered as such, otherwise it is merely a blank sheet of paper and any "ambient sounds" are just that, it's sound that is NOT the product of the composer/performer, and as such cannot be called part of his "composition" or credited as such.

I would additionally claim that art MUST contain within it effort, that is the artist must extert effort within the text/score, ie, write a letter or musical note in SOME way, OTHERWISE it is merely ambient sound or "art" that may perhaps be attributed to the laws of physics and anture, but to no composer or artist.]

I wish to make one additional thing clear as I end this (before you all respond, at least) and that is that I am NOT attacking the idea of abstract art, at least not per se, but merely suggesting that there must be some fundamental law that governs an art, something so basic it would be a contradiction to disallow--again, "A sentence must have words, or at least letters," to have a sentence without any words, letters, punctuation marks or anything is to go against the concpet of a sentence--and these must be observed BEFORE the subjective phase of art is undertaken.

Finally, I don't usually make recommendations to videos or anthing beyond formal academia--ie, recommending Nietzsche or Hume or Shakespeare or Samuel Beckett--but I WOULD recommend what I feel to be an EXCELLENT video on the subject, the Internet critic Confused Matthew's review (and consequent defense of that review) of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which he presents the argument--quite rightly, I believe--that 2001 is not good or bad, but rather is NOT A FILM, as it lacks the necessary qualities of a film.

A link here, for anyone interested: http://www.confusedmatthew.com/2001%3A-A-Space-Odyssey.php

First, anyone who says 2001 isn't a film clearly lacks vision. It has a story and it has drama. The fact that a simpleton can't understand it does not mean it is lacking that which they are unable to comprehend.

Now for the painting (or lack there of). Intent is the key here. Did the artist intend to leave it blank? Is the artist making a claim to what it is to represent? If so, it is art. Again, the fact that someone else doesn't get it is an indication of their limits, not a flaw in the art itself.

First 2001, Daugnar, then art here:

-I would argue--as does Mr. Confused Matthew--that 2001 lacks a story FREE of fan speculation and interpretation, ie, there is plenty of imagery there that CAN be interpreted ONE WAY to give you a story, and yet interpreted completely differently to give an equally-valid account; a story can (and I think should and ultimately must) be subject to interpretation, but there must be some lines along which the interpretations must be based, or to put it another way, albeit a more dangerous way, there must be interpretations that we can reject as being false or wrong OBJECTIVEL and not SUBJECTIVELY. To give an example from one of my favorite films, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kan, you can certainly make a legitimate argument that Khan represents/alludes to many aspects of the three books he has on his bookshelf--Paradise Lost, King Lear, and most notably, Moby Dick--and that there are definite themes of age and death adn rebirth in the film...

But if your interpretation of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan is "Kirk symbolizes a Turkey Sandwhich on Rye and Khan a Supersized Big Mac, and so their struggle is really a reflection of the war between healthy foods and fast foods today" then OBJECTIVELY YOU ARE WRONG. :) That's all I mean when I say "objectively wrong," I'm not being a film Nazi, jsut suggesting that not EVERY interpretation can apply, that's what makes interpretation meaningful, that you aren't guaranteed success in finding a workable meaning, and so if you do it is something of an academic or even mental or spiritual accomplishment.

2001 is one part, as he says better than I can, "crap floating in space" and the other part images that are SHOT well, LOOK good...but ultimately are not defined or evenn hinted at their definition adequately enough in the confines of the film to allow for wrong interpretations, and so all interpretations have merit...and so if I wanted to make my Rye/Big Mac interpretation work for "2001," I COULD...there's no guidelines plotwise or character-wise or otherwise that prevent me from doing so, whereas with "Khan" we have defined story elements; I'm not looking for a big arrow to TELL ME what to read into a movie, or what I can and can't read in, but the film should have it's OWN idea of what things mean--ex. Khan's books giving an in-movie hint at how he was seen by the writers of the film, ie, as akin to Lucifer in Paradise Lost or King Lear iun his play or Captain Ahab in Moby Dick--and any interpretation we come up with must be working with or against that, but must act ON it somehow, and not be an interpretation in space with no textual or film evidence to prove you WRONG...again, if any interpretation is equally valid, even the absurd Rye/Big Mac interpretation, we seem to trivialize interpretation on the whole, which I don't condone.



-"Did the artist intend to leave it blank? ... If so, it is art."

I would say that is not true, as by the definition of the state of the canvas as has been given, the canvas was ALREADY blank...

And so INTENDING to leave it blank is no expressive action on his part, as there has been no change in the canvas...why, the person who MADE that canvas made it blank, we could then argue that some manufacturer, then, created this artistic representation of...something. What's more, let's say I have before me 100 blank pages...but I PROMISE YOU that I intended to leave them blank as a symbol of a FAR greater story than can be expressed through the human medium of speech.

Have I not, then, created the greatest novel ever written? After all, if intent is all I need, I had THAT...I Intend, Therefore I Am a great novelist?

Yes silence is a song. John Cage.

Cage's idea is that every performance of a concretized written piece of music is actually different. The guy who coughed in front of you, when the audience accidently clapped after a cadenza, the cricket who somehow made it into the concert hall - this is all part of the performance as well, and Cages 4:33 highlights that. I think it's brilliant. That DOES NOT mean it took talent for Cage to do it, but that's not what makes art. It's the idea it's conyeing that's brilliant

But I fail to see that he did ANYTHING.

If you admit to the fact that he WROTE nothing, and just allowed OTHER, ambient sounds into the picture, then it seems to me that THEY are to be praised, and not Cage.

What's more, let's take that idea, in your own words "every performance of a concretized written piece of music is actually different," and examine it.

Now, when PLAYED, is every rendition of Beethoven's 5th Symphony different?

Absolutely, and you and Cage gave the reasons why.

However, is the music AS COMPOSED any different?

No.

That cough in front of me is NOT part of the score, the score is what Beethoven put on paper, the actual written piece, and this concert is simply that, a *rendition* of that piece, but not the definitive piece itself, and, as such, noises in it that are not in the score--again, the cough--are a part ONLY of the rendition and not of the score. As such, when you or I discuss Beethoven's 5th we do so dismissing the cough as part of the actual MUSIC; it was soemthing that occured in the rendition, it is a part of that rendition, absolutely, but as a sentence is composed of words, so to is a score composed of notes, and so the cough, not being in the score, does not constitute a note and so is not part of the music, but merely part of your experience while you were listening to the music.

But what is damning in this case is that there IS NO SCORE. Cage has written NOTHING, and for the reasons already given, it is then not music.

Finally, I think Cage's 4:33 is all about the Rye sandwich vs. the big Mac, because we live in a day and age in which Big Macs are eaten more then Rye and they are ultimately, for all their meaty goodness, empty and meaningless, and yet still always different, of every drop of fat is different, and so THAT is what the emptiness and openess of 4:33 is about.

CLEARLY! ;)

After all, there is nothing in the score, nothing Cage has put down on that score as to his artistic intentions, ie, an actual musical score, the musical equivalent of a sentence and therefore a statement--hell, even "Numbah nine...Numbah nine..." is a musical sentence, albeit an...odd one and a LONG one--and so my point is as valid as yours, sir! :p



No score, no substance--REGARDLESS of intent...

As a musician, I agree with what you say obiwan. If there are no notes, it isn't music. Even jazz has chords written down. the rhythms and notes themselves are improvised, they are still based on the written framework the chords provide.

^
Yes, improv is all well and good, as you say, I totally agree; as someone who was pretty good at improv back in high school (and you could say today, with all the bulshitting college requires) it always still has to be rooted in something, a language or sentence or work or something...

You are still wrong obiwan. In Yoruba culture there is a god called Esu Elegbara who is the god of interpretation.

That means that any form of communication will be interepreted inevitably differently by the receiver, because we are all different people with different experiences.

This means that even when I sit down and read Beethoven's original score, I still get something different out of it than beethoven put into. This is the "gap" between he and I, and Esu Elegbara is the god of this "gap."

Cage was pointing this fact out with 4:33. I never said Cage should be praised for his "hard work" or anything. I am praising 4:33, not John Cage (though I am still a fan of his music.)

Also that confused matthew person has an extremely irritating tone of voice. Reminds me of my dick-face roommate. Ugh. He is also totally wrong. There is such a thing as atmosphere and underlying tone contributing to a movie, not just characters and dialogue. 2001 is not the only movie to do more with less.

Also he clearly does not understand that those "crap flying through space" scenes are in there:

A) to show the audience how advanced to species is and
B) as "special effects porn" for a 1960s audience who had never seen anything like that before.

For instance, the wide shots in LOTR don't add a thing to the story, but they do make it cool and evoke emotions in you. The landscapes at the beginning of 2001 evoke in me a sort of subdued sense of wonder and quietude, and the space scenes seem to evoke mastery at the beginning, and dread near the end.

I'm of the school that art is measured by what it evokes. No other measure is applicable. And yes there is such a thing as art which is supposed to evoke anger, apathy, or even boredom.

Or disgust for that matter.

Penderecki's Threnody is brilliant not because Penderecki put a lot of work into it, or because it's beautiful, but because it is terrifying.

Re 2001 - There is an original story it was based on by AC Clark. Then there is the novelization also written by Clark. Finally there is the sequel movie and 3 books. Interpretation can be said to be right or wrong in 2001. And the entire story line from Discovery's entering the Jupiter system until Dave Bowman goes out and enters the monolith has a very clear story to it regarding a conflicted computer and the two remaining astronauts attempts to fix it and the ship com systems.

Re: Art - Art doesn't require action unless it is performance art. Art is expression. This example is an expression. The artist chose a white canvas presumably, but he could have chosen a black one if he wanted to do one entitled "trapped underground".

I liken 2001 and this empty canvas to a novel. If you can't read, the novel is nothing to you and a waste, not art at all.

Re: Performances - There is several forms of art going on. In music you have the original composition, the specific arrangement, and the conductor/musicians interpretation at that moment. In theater you have the original source be it a book converted to a play or an original play, you have the artistic director's vision for the sets, you have the performance director's vision of how the actors work together as a troop, and you have the actors' interpretations of their roles. All of these are each works of art making each concert or performance a unique work of art in itself and not just a presentation of the original song or story.

See through the depths and open your mind to see art where all the artists intend it, whether it be the version of Hotel California on Hell Freezes Over ot the original album version. Whether it be your own reading of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet or Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (a musical based on R&J).

Art is about trying to convey something and a specific action is not required nor does the fact a work of art exists preclude performers or other artists from creating a new work of art with the previous as a basis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJagb7hL0E&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHnL7aS64Y&feature=related

you cant tell me youre not impressed

You want to understand what art is about? Watch the scene in Ferris Bueller where Cameron is studying the painting. The scene is art. The music used is art. The painting itself is art. And Cameron's interpretation and seeing himself in the boy is both art and an explanation of what art is about.

I believe you have taken what I said wrongly, Thucy, or at least not rcognized my point.

CERTAINLY when you sit down and read Beethoven's score you can get something entirely different out of it than what he put in, the same way I might get a totally different meaning from "The Merchant of Venice" than what Shakespeare, in his not-too-Jew-friendly day and age, might have put into it.

But regardless of interpretation the WORDS are still the same in Shakespeare's play, and the NOTES are still the same in Beethoven's symphony.

THAT IS THE GUIDELINE TO ALL INTERPRETATIONS.

but again, Cage gives us NO notes, and so I literally have nothing to interpret, and without getting into another philosophical debate over whether there is such a thing as nothingness (I'll say I believe the idea is a logical absurdity and leave it at that unless someone is really keen for a truly whacked-out debate, as the subject matter does boggle the mind even trying to thing about it) I CAN say that to interpret nothing is, well, pointless.

After all--it's nothing or, if you agree with my vantage point and wish to debunk the idea of nothingess, it is then without any defined form, and, again, without the tools of definition with which to interpret--words, notes, numbers, all symbols of a certain concept--then there is nothing to interpret, as no symbols are present, meaning no concepts are present, and without concepts there is no point in speculation or debate.

(And yes, Confused Matthew's voice IS rather whiny...but my voice gets annoying at times as well, so maybe I don't mind as much...but he isn;t arguing that there isn't atmosphere, but that a film needs a conflict, taken from the Drama 101 handbook, drama needs conflict to occur, and so, with the exception of the exceptional HAL, theer is o conflict in 2001, and as pretty and even groundbreaking as the cinematography may be, it's still just beautiful crap floating in beautifully-filmed space wioth no substance or meaning textually, again with the exception of HAL...atmosphere is a component of a story, but even someone like Poe, who tells stories which OOZE atmosphere, recognizes the need for a plot, or at least conflict, for a STORY, and CM defines a film as at the very least having some sort of conflict...whether or not that holds universally is debatable, but for the vast majority of works I'd say it's true, that conflict is involved.)

Music may be a different topic, but I'd like to respond to the balnk canvas. My take on this is that art implies artifice. It is closely related to artisan, artist, and artificial. The entire point of each of those words is that man has done something to change something from its natural state. I see two problems with Ivan Interpretation's claim that the blank canvas is art.

1) He has done nothing more than I when hiking through the woods, if I pointed out a rock and said "That looks like a whale". In the case of the rock, it was entirely the work of natural processes. I merely looked at it an reported my impression. That's not the role of the artist but the viewer instead.

2) Again the word art implies human action upon a source material. Ivan Interpretation has only interpreted a blank canvas he hasn't made it so. If the canvas is blank and Ivan sees art in it, then he's performing an act of theft if he claims the artwork for his own. It's the canvas maker who created the art and therefore it's his artwork not Ivan's.

@obi

Like the horrible Lady Gaga discussion we had a few months back, I think this is another great example of you trying to justified the type of art that *you* personally like by claiming it is more legitimate than other forms.

Do I personally like looking at blank canvases? No. But, I do love Jackson Pollock and I'm not sure I could really justify one over the other as "art." It really isn't worth discussing which is more valid, because anyone can come up with arbitrary criteria that at first glance seem to make sense but in reality include a lot of "garbage" and exclude a lot of "treasures." At the end of the day, it's the most popular works that define what most people consider "art."

There is a tradition in art in the Far East that is akin to Zen philosophy in whch only the impresson of nature is recorded on the canvas. A waterfall, for instance, is depicted with the trees immediately surrounding it. This is, as far as I'm aware, done deliberately so that the viewer may fill in the details for himself. The artist does not claim that the blank areas surrounding the image are his work, but merely allows his work to be part of the viewer's picture. If Ivan had made even one alteration to the canvas hen he could legitimately claim that he had created a work of art. The discussion then would be about whether his work of art had any merit. Without making any alteration to the canvas, however, Ivan can make no claim to having created anything. At best he's left another's work alone. If he takes flat white paint and repaints the canvas to look exactly the way it appears in it's natural state and he has some claim to have done something.



I'd say, admittedly without watching Confused Matthew's critique, that 2001 is a film. In that Stanley Kubrick and his crew set out to make a film and did so. The discussion is whether they made a good film. To say that a film needs a conflict isn't the same as saying that an artists needs to take some action upon his medium to create art. The creators of 2001 definitely did so actively. 2001 harkens back to a different school of cinematography. I see it as more like the works of Salvador Dali in "Andalusion Dog". He's putting a series of images up on the screen and its up to the viewer to make sense of them or not. It's confusing and even a little frustrating to watch but it's still film. FIlm doesn't imply storytelling the way art implies artifice.

@abgemacht:

"Like the horrible Lady Gaga discussion we had a few months back, I think this is another great example of you trying to justified the type of art that *you* personally like by claiming it is more legitimate than other forms."

Yes, it is...but of course I always try to justify my opinion in a debate, so how is that different than if I were giving my opinion on, say, The Problem of Evil?

How can I respond tpo this and not give my opinion?

As far as "arbitrary criteria," I don't thinks so...

Art is, at its core, expression, we're all agreed on that, and that various art FORMS are done through set symbols corresponding to a meaning or word or idea or sound...

Again, within the CONTEXT of an art form there are rules, the rules of those symbols--ie, a sentence must have words or at least letters--and so I'm merely saying that to call a blank canvas a painting when NO painting has been done, and by extension to then go ahead and call it "art" on those grounds, is an absurd claim by the laws of that art form.

"within the CONTEXT of an art form there are rules"

Why must there be rules?

So, how about a photographer like Ansel Adams? Would anyone here argue he isn't an artist? Yet all his art is captured images of nature. He didn't make the scene, he just took a picture of it.

I still contend art is in the intent, but will say, for the sake of argument (or non-argument) that a blank canvas represented as art could be classed as theft of the canvas makers art.

But to say 2001 isn't a film because it lacks conflict then try to say "except for the whole middle section of the movie with HAL 9000" is disingenuous at best. It doesn't have conflict except when it has conflict... And there is other conflict in the story. Early man learns to use tools by killing his fellow man with a jawbone. It's murder. Isn't that conflict?

But regardless of the conflict issue, it has story. After all, who is confused matthew to say a film has to have conflict? He's a nobody. Kubrick knew more about film than CM. I could say "to be a film, it has to have actors on screen (digital or real)". It wouldn't make it true. And it would negate every nature film ever produced. Hell, films don't even have to be fully scripted. Look to most nature films. The only scripting you get is the narrator's lines.

So CM has no right to say what we should view as film or not based on his preconcieved and uninformed opinions regarding what makes a film.

Finally, the idea that Drama=Conflict and Conflict=Drama is bull. Drama means "action" in Greek. I would say every major part of 2001 has action, from the first murder to the final voyage through the monolith. And the words "My God! It's full of stars!" still bring shivers to my spine. It has plenty of drama.

Draug +9000 for everything he said re: 2001.

""within the CONTEXT of an art form there are rules"

Why must there be rules?"

Abgemacht +1

@Obi - quit trying to put art in a box and tie it up with a pretty bow, declaring anyone who steps outside that box to be a fraud.

Abgemacht - nice use of HAL there. :-) 2001 is my #1 favorite film of all time. Even The Lord of the Rings trilogy can't knock it off the top spot. I doubt any move ever will. The closest to one ever doing it was Schindler's List, which is #2 on the list for me.

Obi I would say that the conflict in 2001 is between man and the universe and that the conflict is one of the most powerful and terrifying I've ever experienced.

I know the movie is very very slow, so I don't watch it lightly. But when I sit down and clear my mind and temporarily extend my attention span, I am never dissapointed. Even all the abstract lights at the end leave a certain effect on you.

It's like saying you shouldn't look at a painting because there are no people in it. That's ludicrous. Film is an art form and the artists are allowed to do what they will with it. Kubrick put this movie out, and I for one was left speechless. It is a masterpiece, boring or not to some viewers.

Regarding 4:33:

The point is that notes aren't all there is to music. That's the WHOLE IDEA of 4:33, to lay that fact plain for all to see. You could do the same thing with a silent play. OBVIOUSLY words and stage direction aren't all there is to a play, just as playing notes on an instrument isn't all there is to a concert. That's Cage's point, I think.

Did you watch the second YouTube vid I posted? Cage explains what he thinks about sound. That's what 4:33 is, a piece about sound. A piece about what the concert hall sounds like absent of music. That is its content. If that irks you, well I'm sorry. You don't have to listen to it.

Just what exactly is the point of asking if something is art? We should know by now that there is no answer. If one man thinks something is art, let it be art, and call it a day.

@Draug

I really enjoyed the book (although I liked Rendezvous with Rama much better). I wasn't a fan of the movie, but I watched it when I was really young, so I should probably give it another chance.

Favorite scenes from 2001 btw:

The scene where the monolith is at the end of Dave's bed at the end. After ALL THAT BUILDUP (it would not be the same AT ALL w/o the build up mind you), seeing that monolith as the man dies absolutely terrifies me. I convulse every time I see it (IN CONTEXT ONLY. For instance when I saw it w/o sound w/o build up in the review, it meant nothing to me.).

My other favorite is the shot where the flying bone become the spaceship. That is the best transition I have ever seen in my life. To me it intentionally draws a direct relationship between all tools as the key to modern human, whether a bone or a spaceship.

So fucking good. I love that damn movie. Also the opening sequence just cannot be ignored: it is legend.

@Abgemacht - definitely give it another try, then follow it up with the lesser (but still great) 2010: The Year We Made Contact. Also, read all four of the books. They are incredible.

And I have read all the Rama novels too. I wish they'd find a way to make RWR into a movie. Clarke is my favorite science fiction author followed closely by Robert A. Heinlein (I wish Starship Troopers had been a better movie), Ursula LeGuin (PBS production of The Lathe of Heaven - awesome interpretation for such a cereberal story), and Orson Scott Card (can't wait for someone to make a series of movies based on his Ender and Bean novels).

@Thucy - the opening sequence and the whole final transition... Not a word of dialogue yet some of the most powerful sequences ever put to film. They are also spine tinglers just thinking about them.