[TheForge] Re: Art, doncha know....

[Mike Spencer]

George Dixon wrote:

> You live in historic times.  I am not referring to the issues of
> climate, war or politics.....I am 'talking art' here.
>
>  [snip long rant]

Good rant, George!  In general, I agree with almost all you say.

But like most rants, including mine, it has sacrificed accuracy and
precision for the sake of rhetoric and so in detail, I have to agree
with almost everything that Ries has said in rebuttal.

Oy!

(Of course, if one attends to detail, strives for accuracy and a full
analysis, one ends up with a 600 page scholarly tome and a crick in
the neck instead of a satisfying rant.)

> ...it takes no skill to toss paint, bend bars, or stack fired clay
> sticks into pyramids....and then call it 'art'.  It does take clever
> titles (if it comes with an explanatory title then the imagery
> failed to work....it must be art)...

You really must read Tom Wolfe's longish essay, "The Painted Word".
Harper's Magazine, April 1975 (or now as a separate small book.)
There's just nothing I could say about your above-quoted paragraph and
the art of, say, 1940-1980 that's better than Wolfe's piece.

> The outline at a distance is all the satisfaction you are going to
> get.  Get closer and the basic flaws overwhelm whatever gross design
> was attempted.  Anyway, the walk over is a waste since there are no
> details to see when you get there.

Never mind that I've snipped the identity of what you're referring
to. This is a real problem.  In the instances I've seen personally, it
appears to have resulted when an architect (or whoever) sketches a
piece such as a gate, then passes the implementation to the lowest
bidder, the mayor's brother-in-law or the fabricator businessman who's
well connected.  There are some iconic gates in Halifax that suffer
from this very thing.  But this doesn't reflect the very predictable
lack of clue at the fab shop foolishly chosen to implement what might
have been art.  Rather, it reflects on the people -- more likely a
committee or chain of committees -- who commissioned the piece without
having sufficient clues.  If the clueless patrons enjoy undeserved
luck, they get, despite their best efforts, someone who will demand to
be allowed to make something good.  I can't say I'm a fan of Paley's
most recent work but the gates in the NY Legislature are stunning,
whether from a distance or close up. (And I don't know if NY was
represented by clueful people or was just lucky. :-)

> What we have now in our Silver Age is painfully obvious.  What got us  
> here was the both intellectual laziness and complacency in prior  
> generations (a by-product of instant gratification)....from which our  
> generations have drawn too accurate a lesson....and a philosophical  
> attitude that the past (pre 20th c) was dead and not to be reflected.  


Well, something like that.  But you've conflated the whole 20th
century -- its art, pop culture, industrial production, the birth of
the advertising industry, commercial and urban design, economics &
finance, pre-war and post-war notions of class, an enormous complexity
-- into one bald-faced assertion.  Because you try to generalize about
nearly everything at once, the assertion becomes almost meaningless.
To the extent that it means something, well, "what we have now" is
pretty much what we have had, off and on, all along.

    Americans are getting like a Ford car -- they have all the same
    parts, the same upholstery, and make exactly the same noises.
                             -- Will Rogers, _Autobiography_, 1949

The Ford car epitomized and, as it were, foretold the changes of the
20th century.  The really great works of the past in fine art, craft
and architecture we made mostly for the nobility or, after the 16th
c., for the very rich merchant class.

    It is very probable that most people are beginning now to
    associate the word 'crafts' with hairy cloth and gritty pots.  It
    is not quite realized perhaps that the modern equivalents of the
    multitude of other kinds of workmanship we see in museums could
    and should be made: nor how astronomically expensive many of them
    would be.
    ....
    Two of the fundamental considerations which will shape the future
    of the crafts are the time they must take over their work and the
    competition they must face.  The differential in price between a
    product of craft, of the best quality, and a product of
    manufacture varies, naturally, according to the trade; but its is
    always large and sometime huge.  It ought to be and must be.
    Unless it is, the craftsman has no hope of anything approaching a
    modest professional standard of living....

              --  David Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship, 1968

It's possible, without talent, insight and skill, to make a well paid
career of producing mediocrities or crap and calling it art and lots
of folks are doing it.  It's less stressful than securities trading.

It's possible to spend years acquiring insight and skill and than make
really fine stuff, sell it at a price that ordinary people can afford
and do without "anything approaching a modest standard of living."
It's better than mill work and quite agreeable if you like bean soup.
Lots of folks are doing that, too.

It's possible to make really great stuff for the people and corporate
entities that can afford it.  It's not easy, it requires many skills
in addition to the necessary craft skills and the clients/patrons are
often disagreeable in various ways.  And it isn't going to sweep the
country like hula hoops, frisbees and pet rocks: see "astronomically
expensive", supra.

Dang!  Now I've went and written a rant, too, which may be presumed to
be intrinsically as vulnerable as yours.  Well, have at it.

But read Wolfe's The Painted Word and Pye's Nature of Art and
Workmanship and get back to us with a followup, George.

Best,
- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^