[MD] ART versus NONART

[Mike Craghead]

Hi Marsha!

Allow me to (once again) recommend Tom Wolfe's "The Painted Word," 1975.
It's far less expensive (and probably less profound), but it's great fun 
to read, another spin on the "what is art" question, arguing that art is 
becoming (or has become) literature.
Here's a related excerpt from a previous post of mine:

"Shouldn't work have inherent Quality woven into it's fabric, that any 
viewer can perceive, not just the folks who know the artist's life story 
or the history of the movement they're a part of? Those facts  may 
sometimes convince us that a work has higher Static Quality than we 
would have thought otherwise, but should those facts be crucial to 
enjoying the piece? The cliche, "I don't know much about art, but I know 
what I like," is far more valuable than the art critics would have us 
believe: it's Dynamic Quality... only reaches us (as audience members) 
when the artist balances it with Static Quality. Leaving all of the... 
Quality bottled up in words (the descriptions, expositions, histories, 
etc), is, in my view, a cop-out (for more airing of this particular pet 
peeve, see Tom Wolfe's "The Painted Word," 1975). But I digress...

Mike Craghead
humboldtmusic.com
humboldtmusic.com/mc
humboldtmusic.com/sarimike
 

MarshaV wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> Re:  Art versus Nonart: Art out of Mind (Contemporary Artists and 
> their Critics) (Hardcover)
> by Tsion Avital, John G. Harries (Translator)
>
> Thanks for the recommendation Ham!
>
> I am only through the first chapter, but I'm finding this an 
> extremely interesting and challenging book: Art is as dead as that 
> small teal (duck) in ZMM.  I've included a quote below, chosen only 
> because it uses a water analogy.  But I'm really upset that this book 
> should cost $90.  It seems to me this book should be published in 
> monthly installments in People magazine or as a comic book.  How can 
> anyone blame society when they're fed crap and the elites restrict 
> access to the good stuff?
>
> The Interlibrary Loan system is great, but I might need to have this 
> book as a reference with marginalia and it's too expensive.  Damn!!!
>
> m
>
>
>
> Quote:
>
>     "The problem of demarcation created for the first time a 
> situation in which everything, including nothing, may be accepted as 
> a work of art.  But then there is not differentiation between the 
> class of entities that belong to the category of art and those that 
> do not belong to that category.  The significance of this fact is 
> that in these conditions there is no art, nor can there be 
> any.  Similarly, if everything is water, and there is nothing that is 
> not water, then there is no meaning to water, for there is no way of 
> distinguishing a duality or difference between water and 
> nonwater.  That is to say, if any thing can be art, than there is no art.
>     This conclusion follows from a basic and most important attribute 
> of symbols of every kind.  Every symbol, whether verbal or pictorial, 
> connects all entities that have a certain common denominator and at 
> the same time separates them from all others entities in the 
> world.  This attribute is what makes symbols of all kinds a means of 
> classification and ordering.  (ART versus NONART,pp56-57)
>
>
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