Comments from DH in response to preceding posts:
The arts are not a simply a benign phenomenon that happens in the minds of the intellectually deserving.
The arts are merely a language.
The arts change whenever there’s a recession, not just because money runs out but because we need to discover new patterns of thought and behaviour.
Much of the anger and aggressiveness arises because of misrepresentations proclaimed by parasitic commentators, particularly because of their failure to differentiate satire and mud-slinging aimed at these Academics and Media journalists from sincere attempts to formulate the necessary questions of our times.
It’s the pressures and limitations of the market that make for generalisations.
The art world food chain contains money of those who want to influence society by introducing bias into our self image by manipulating fashions in taste.
One of the factors in of this public discussion about art is that there's a tendency to disregard with cruel scorn anything that seems tasteless, out of date or academically inadequate. One of the things I've thought about art, particularly the visual arts, is that it's about blindness, about identifying blind-spots and trying to puncture them. It's interesting that art does in this way reveal a human tendency cruelty.
…
… Stravinsky and Diaghilev may have felt a degree of scorn at public traditionalist tastes, but the work done in creating the ballet was done genuinely as an artistic venture, in other words done to produce something disturbingly powerful but which would be supported by its aesthetic. It’s the nature of people that we live in separate enclaves, unable to communicate due to lack of language, and it’s the function of art skills to focus efforts to communicate.
Better to recognise that there is a variety of breeds of audience. What these variously need to provide comfort, entertainment, and challenge in their lives is what they need, and there’s no point of railing against differences.
…
I do think it’s possible to devise art objects that penetrate and subvert popular views where necessary, but just as we are all localised in our cultural background so what we express is specific to a single place and time, even if it’s trying to say something about a wider view. The whole point of a work of art is to develop and refine a specific piece of communication. Sometimes, seeing a general need to improve society, to change the world, one comes up with a good idea, and where that involves a new medium there is no certainty of immediate mastery or effectiveness. It’s such failure that can give rise to annoyance, even aggression, that and the swarms of picnic wasps that claim advanced insight.
For a nation supposedly good at satire, it’s surprising how little today’s crop of aggressive art is recognised for its satirical intent.
…
The new perspective he [HP] refers to, seeing it awry, is surely a necessary aspect of artistic skill, the ability to stand back and devise context. It’s usual that after a while working away or going round a good exhibition one comes to see the fire extinguisher as a splendid piece of art. Regarding his other discussion, of definition, I agree it’s a fairly thankless task. As Samuel Beckett said, we try, we fail, we try again and fail better. The questions of art and culture revolve round the pursuit of abilities to penetrate the thick skin of our fellows, to introduce some alternative vision. Whether this is done with a concern for the well-being of the recipient or from within some scheme for social influence is a different question. The art is in the ability to penetrate, which relies on a refinement of the aesthetic which as the connecting principle within empathy allows us to recognise each other at a fundamental level.
I think there’s a biological aspect to the aesthetic experience, relating to recognition of the geometry of our communication structures. Starting from as clear an awareness of present time and place as possible, exploring whatever one’s personal condition allows, there is likely to be a concurrence with the interests of others.
I do think though that when you say “What makes interesting art and art interesting, in my opinion, is when it issues from analysis and investigation and stimulates analysis and investigation. Without that, art is reduced to decorative diversion, floating at the superficial level of consumerism.” [written in an e-mail response to DH’s first comments], this analysis and investigation can be undertaken in a language that is rather material than verbalised. One of the enjoyable things about our grasp of the arts is our ability to read at many levels at once. We can appreciate the intelligence in judgements of shape and the reasoning of relationships, and I think sometimes prefer work that manages to avoid the need to verbally articulated associations.
…
Probably to define sculpture and other art forms you have to consider such questions as why we want to communicate with these other people.
And that suggests the question - what are your favourite senses?
