A Soprano's Scratchpad: What is "Art?"

Saturday, October 07, 2006

What is "Art?"

Interesting excerpts from an article entitled, "Classical music: Why bother?" by Joshua Fineberg:

"Art is not about giving people what they want. It's about giving them something they don't know they want. "

"Real art cannot be an act of manipulation or marketing, but only an act of faith. Faith that great art is something remarkable. Faith that someone, somewhere, sometime might make the effort to understand what an artist has to offer -- and not merely seek what is already known.

It requires a tremendous leap of faith to surrender control of our perception to someone else, on the off chance that they may offer us something we never knew we wanted but now would not want to be without. If we don't really believe in this possibility anymore -- in the inherent importance and transformative potential of art -- then why would anyone in their right mind take the risk?"

The full article:
http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/music/feature/2002/10/02/classical/index.html?pn=1

Labels: philosophy

11 Comments:

At 10/08/2006 10:26 PM, Anonymous said…

Hmmmmm. Why WOULD average people risk trusting the artistic elite?

Perhaps because the art establishment is made up of a bunch of bullies who demand obedience and awe while returning contempt and poo-slinging. Perhaps because they're taunted and browbeaten into not admitting negative their negative opinions of modern art for fear of being labeled a knuckle-dragging cretin. Perhaps because they're fed constant platitudes of how life-changing art is and then forced to pay for repulsive, rusting eyesores and offensive aesthetic crimes.

"Art is not about giving people what they want. It's about giving them something they don't know they want. " That's flakey conceit with a creamy self-important center.

I'm a professional, non-starving artist and I enjoy viewing art. Well. Some art. It's really sad, but the artists with "we know what's good for you" attitudes produce art that is figuratively, and sometimes literally, krep. The silly concept-art that academy artists dream up to "challenge" people are really for the benefit of other academy artists. They're creating "art" for each other. It's art for self-absorbed establishment artists who pat each other on the back while acting like they did us a favor when they put a giant pubic hair in front of the Denver Conference center. The opinion of the average-joe means less to them than what's on the bottom of their shoes.

Bad art is easy to recognize. It's art that doesn't speak to a non-artist and has to be explained. It's art that mocks it's viewers and treats them like ignoramuses who don't have the acculturation to appreciate how good avant-garde krep is for them. It's art that tears down and spits on traditional standards of beauty and talent and replaces it with anything-goes-as-long-as-it's-something-different. Honestly, if "avante-garde" refers to art that is novel, then in this day and age, it's anything that the general public likes, and everything that the artistically superior hates.

If the art world wants to truly be important they should:
1. Quit asserting that rusty metal is important, educational, or worth a community money to display it in front of public buildings.
2. Can the political attacks and angst. Only other bigots who hate Christians will appreciate it, and nobody who doesn't know you cares that your girlfriend overdosed sniffing hair-spray. It doesn't inspire great works of art that people will choose to see or listen to again and again. It's not uplifting or memorable. If you need an example of something uplifting or inspiring listen to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" or visit the Louvre to see "Victory at Somothrace"
3. End forced support. If art is truly important people can be persuaded to voluntarily support it. If people can't be voluntarily persuaded then perhaps your art isn't as important to society as you think it is.
4. And most important; quit tearing down traditional standards of art and beauty. There's a reason that people have loved these for centuries. They're examples of what good art is. If you can't match it, improve on it, or build on it, perhaps you're skills aren't developed enough to create a masterpiece.
At 10/08/2006 11:56 PM, DenverSop said…

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At 10/09/2006 12:50 AM, DenverSop said…

Well, there's certainly no accounting for taste. I'm not a fan of scrap-metal sculptures either, nor am I especially fond of most of the music we studied in my 20th-century music theory/history classes. It doesn't appeal to my senses. But I don't really feel like anyone is trying to cram it down my throat or make me like it. I don't even feel stupid among musicians for not liking it.

In the article that I referenced in the original post, the author plainly states that, "most art is crap." He says that you have to do a lot of sifting through crappy art to find that stuff that is truly artistic, and it's probably too early to know what, if anything, of today's music will pass the test of time which seems to define the quality of music. After all, not all classical music survived the years. A good deal of it has disappeared because it wasn't very good. What's left is supposed to be the creme de la creme.

Maybe that's why I feel that classical music is somehow "better" or "deeper" in general than most popular music. And I like popular music. But it isn't stimulating in the same way that "classical" music is. But we haven't sifted through all of the 20th century's "crap" yet to glean the masterpieces.

But there will always be a distinction between "art music" and "popular music," and to some extent popular music is popular because it isn't art music. Not everyone wants to think when they listen to music. Music was a commodity when Mozart and Beethoven were writing. You didn't just turn on the radio. So, music was functionally different then than it is now. Today's art music still filling the role that art music did in Mozart's day. But, if you wanted "popular music" in Mozart's time, you pretty much had to make it yourself. Popular music as we know it today is something that developed out of the gift of technology. People can enjoy popular music now without having to know how to make it, and to some degree that has changed the way people listen to "popular music."

But I stand by the first quote....that art gives people what they don't know they want. After all, we didn't know we liked boy bands until the Beatles convinced us we did.
At 10/09/2006 8:52 AM, Anonymous said…

There really isn't any accounting for taste because taste isn't measured by the artistic elites. It's all equally valid and good.

"I don't really feel like anyone is trying to cram it down my throat or make me like it. I don't even feel stupid among musicians for not liking it."

One way cramming occurs is from the unfair, unfree, and unjustified way which the arts are funded. It has damaged the fine arts as well as severing the connection that average people had to it. Instead of allowing artistic cream to rise to the top it has suppressed greatness while artisitic elitists have risen. Artistic elitists which pat each other on the back for their self-superioriority to average-joes.

For example, the Flight 93 Memorial. The artistic vision of the elitist designer was to piss on the graves of the victims with a giant red-crescent memorial. The effete "The Crescent of Embrace" was chosen by the Ahitists to memorialize one of 9/11s most unambiguous examples of American heroism. It drew applause form the artistically superior and outrage from the everyone else. And yet they're still working to create a crescent shaped memorial. Average people know what's good but artists aren't average people. They've turned themselves into art priests who worship their own art-gods while demanding offerings from people not allowed to be in the church.

Another way the cramming occurs is the constant platitudes which suggest that artists know what's good or that people don't know what they want any more than individuals themselves. "That art gives people what they don't know they want."

Other than artistic elitists, who wanted red crescent memorials, crucifixes floating in urine, Madonas of feces, pools of shiny buffed gut-hurl, and performance artists prancing about naked, smeared with chocolate while the skirling about the evils of patriachy? Fine art has been hijacked by conceptualists, experimentalists, and other ists. There's no shifting through crap to find diamonds. It's all presented by the elites as equally valid.

"After all, we didn't know we liked boy bands until the Beatles convinced us we did."
First, the Beatles don't count among the Ahtists because they sold out. Selling records to measure your success is something the elites frown on. Support should come in the form of government subsidy for art to truly be art, right? The answer is, "yes" if you're an artistic elitist.

Second, unlike the fine art provided by public endowments, the Beatles weren't "given" to us. People chose them while not choosing others. A free and fair exchange. The Beatles had to justify their popularity by getting people to voluntarily support them. Persuasion, not force was used to get people to trade their time and money for what the Beatles had to offer. And Beatles music continues to be popular. Well. Except for the artistic Indian silliness which continues to be not popular. People recognize what's good.
At 10/09/2006 11:36 AM, DenverSop said…

I respect your opinion, but I'm not sure I agree with it. I don't deny that what you're talking about does happen, but my experience is that it represents only a portion of the activity in the art world, and a portion that (fortunately) I don't often interact with. I think it's unfair to say that all, or even most, of the funded art on today's scene is being crammed down unwilling throats. People are still buying tickets to see things they genuinely want to see.

I also think there is plenty of elitism in the arts that doesn't even come close to cramming, but rather accepts that the world "isn't ready for" or simply doesn't like what they have to offer.

"It has damaged the fine arts as well as severing the connection that average people had to it. Instead of allowing artistic cream to rise to the top it has suppressed greatness while artisitic elitists have risen."

This is probably not new. A great many of the "classical" composers and visual artists revered today were virtually unknown in their own day for much the same reason, or perhaps for that "the world was not ready" aspect. It's difficult to judge the art scene today knowing that history has yet to do the sifting. The things funded today may fall into obscurity tomorrow.

You're right, though, about the Beatles being a bad example. Try Beethoven... the world didn't know it liked Romantic music until he delivered it. Although he was widely criticized in some circles, the classical community has generally accepted Beethoven's music as "good art" without any "cramming."
At 10/10/2006 8:43 PM, Christianne said…

Wow! That is an amazing article. As a composer, I truly hope that society doesn't stop listening.

I believe that there are some composers out there who have "sold out", or are just writing music that they know will earn money (Morton Lauridson writing his O Magnum Mysterium over and over again in different forms). They have fallen into the marketing trap.

To the oposite point, many of the people who composed only serial music for decades really didn't care about the audience enjoying it, and openly said so. There are also people out there who are angry at society. Most of us don't like experiencing someone else's anger, so that art/ music is bound to be less appealing (unless we're angry, too!).

But most of us truly have something personal to say and only hope that we have the talent to say it as well as we feel it. My music is far from avant-gard, but it's still just beyond the comfort zones of many if not most listeners. It's not that I want to make my listeners upset, but it's my language, my expression of emotion.

I don't even try to make money from it! But I hope that someday someone will find it, and consider it worth publishing and performing.
At 10/10/2006 9:02 PM, Christianne said…

Another thought:

The beginning of the musicianship course that I took at music camp in high school started with the question: What is music?

Dutifully, the students list different characteristics: loud, soft, pitches, phrases, tempo... The teacher writes each word down in columns. Then the students have to determine what the unifying factor of each column is. Eventually, the class comes up with the definition of music as "sound organized in time."

Of course there is constantly "sound organized in time", as Cage pointed out with the traffic and his 4minutes and 33 seconnds of "silence". But as the author pointed out, there is sound organized in time that has qualities that make it more or less worthwhile, clever, profound etc.

It seems to me that the author is really pleading for people to listen; to take the time to asses what "sound organized in time" is of value and should be shared with more people who might identify with it more than they anticipated. And wishing that the audiences would trust those making the assesments that this music is something that they would benefit from spending a little energy on.

That something they didn't know they wanted and now can't live without.
At 10/12/2006 12:23 AM, Ward said…

Just as a, ya know, just an aside.
Joshua Fineberg was in my High School Class. Here's a bio...He did not participate in my orchestra, band, arts classes, so I had no clue about his talents, but this is the guy...and me think (since he's on the Harvard faculty now) he's the author.
Joshua Fineberg

Joshua Fineberg began his musical studies at the age of five; they have included, in addition to composition, violin, guitar, piano, harpsichord and conducting. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Peabody Conservatory with Morris Cotel; in 1991, he moved to Paris and studied with Tristan Murail. The following year he was selected by the IRCAM/Ensemble InterContemporain reading panel for the course in composition and musical technologies. In the Fall of 1997, he returned to the US to pursue a doctorate in musical composition at Columbia University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at Harvard University.

In 1992, his work for large orchestra “Origin” was selected by the international jury of the Gaudeamus Foundation as a finalist for the Gaudeamus Prize and was premiered by the Radio Symfonie Orkest of the N.O.S. during the 1992 Gaudeamus Music Week.

Mr. Fineberg has collaborated with IRCAM as a lecturer for seminars and as compositional coordinator for their 1996 four-week summer course. Besides his compositional and pedagogical activities, he has actively collaborated with computer scientists and music psychologists to help develop tools for computer-assisted composition and in music perception research. Finally, he has been deeply involved in working with performing ensembles as Artistic Director for recordings of many European ensembles and soloists, and during the 1999-2000 Season as a director of Speculum Musicae and the Columbia Sinfonietta. He is also the issue editor for two issues of The Contemporary Music Review on "Spectral Music" (release summer 2001). His works have been performed, commissioned and recorded by leading ensembles and soloists in Europe, Asia and the United States; they are published by Editions Max Eschig.
At 10/12/2006 9:37 AM, Anonymous said…

This makes for a fascinating discussion, to say the least. Willf, as a political conservative myself, I sympathize with your positions, but, when I think about them more fully and extend them to their natural conclusions, I can't agree with them 100%. I'll agree in part one and respectfully disagree in parts two and three. I admit that I'm a musician, but I'm doing my best to look at it from the outside at points where doing so would be appropriate. Here's part one:

How do we define art and music? I agree with Christianne's definition of music; I'd better, after all, as I'm her husband! If music would be sounds organized in time, then art would be images organized in space. I draw a line in the sand, though. If the primary intention behind the art or music is not the organization itself but advancing an agenda, it's neither art nor music. It's advertising, especially if the intent is not to celebrate, as church music and well-spirited memorials do, but to divide or provoke. The fields are related but not 100% compatible. I feel museums and performers would do well to distinguish between art/music and advertising when they present works.

I do agree with you that the Flight 93 Memorial design you cited was unconscionable. It took what hopefully will be the greatest act of Christian selflessness of our
time and tried to cover it with a maple-leafed Islamic crescent that would be blazing red in Octobers. That's not art; that's advertising an anti-Christian and anti-American social agenda. As a Christian, I'd be all in favor of a red maple cross on the ground. That would at least celebrate the lives of those Christians. Some would not call it art by my definition, perhaps, but it could be a fitting memorial.

You clearly cited other examples; "Piss Christ" is perhaps the best known example. Again, by my definition, that's advertising. The NEA should be ashamed for funding such a provocative statement, and such funding is in clear violation of past court readings of the Constitution. If prayer can't be allowed in schools because religion and the state are separate, then the government shouldn't fund someone's religious statement, either. Even if it was anti-religious in attacking a religion, it was still a statement of religious belief.

What is common between these examples? Outraged response links them. With "Piss Christ," Christians and conservatives cried foul, threatened to pull funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, and boycotted the museum showing it until the work was pulled. With the Flight 93 memorial, the blogosphere rightly went ape, cried foul, and succeeded in getting the design withdrawn. These examples show the wisdom behind Oliver Wendell Holmes's words when he said in a Supreme Court ruling, "Your freedom ends where my nose begins." One has a right to say something or present something unless such a statement promotes danger. By intending to offend, in these examples, widely held religious beliefs and/or widely held patriotism, all of these advertising "artists" promoted danger. Perhaps their statements should have been preemptively censored, or perhaps they should have been held criminally or civilly liable for them. In lieu of those events, we also have freedom of speech and are entitled to repsond, again within that same limitation. Respond, we have.
At 10/12/2006 9:42 AM, Anonymous said…

I draw a huge distinction between provocation and nonunderstood scholasticism. Willf, I think you are combining the two, and I'll explain how I see the difference. Much "modern" art and music may be seen as crap in its modern time but come to be seen as commendable later. Time is the only unbiased judge there. To prove my point, I will give three examples of other times' trash that we call treasure today.

J.S. Bach was able only to secure the third best kapellmeister (church music director) position in Germany. His compositions were not liked; they were seen as unintelligible due to their complexity. One key contemporary, George Frederic Handel, recognized genius for what it was, but, except for him, Bach and his music were panned pretty viciously. Now he's considered by many to be the best composer ever.

Beethoven did not achieve much success in his time, and many of his works were similarly panned. He was also considered a crazy individual by his community; it is true that he likely suffered from bipolar disorder. Today, he is held in awe as the master of the symphony.

Igor Stravinsky, when our grandparents were young, wrote "The Rite of Spring," a ballet on ritual sacrifice. The audience at its premiere shouted down the work so loudly that the music could not be heard by any, and the audience literally threw things, too. Now, this work is considered a shining example of ballet.

These three composers were not understood in their times. They weren't trying to drive a specific political agenda and support it with sounds; they were trying to write good music. The only agendas they had were to further the field of music and to put food on their tables. Because their compositions did not fit the mold of what was conventional, they did not achieve deserved success until, sorry for the bad pun, they were decomposing.

Art and music are richer now because they wrote these works then. We have no idea who today's Bach, Beethoven, and Stravinsky are, but, for the sake of tomorrow, we have no business squelching them just because we don't like them today. Rather, I submit, we should ask them to help us understand their intentions better and give audiences only to those who do, if you're so inclined.
At 10/12/2006 9:52 AM, Anonymous said…

Now I come to my greater disagreement, one on the terms of funding. The NEA and many other governmental institutions exist to fund the arts in order to enrich our communities and make them accessible to more than just the urban wealthy. It's only been in the past couple of generations anyway that the arts have been accessible to most if not all in our nation, and this greater education and enjoyment is thanks to such endeavors.

I, jpl, perform in a band in Perth Amboy, NJ. Perth Amboy, though technically right across from Staten Island, is a world away from New York City. Its waterfront is lined with retirees, and its other neighborhoods are immigrant, struggling, and poor. Neither group of people can make the difficult and expensive trip to New York City to enjoy the arts. The arts, thanks to some government funding (and private donations), go to them. What is particularly amazing is that these two classes of people enjoy these performances side by side. I mention private donations; we have a nailbiting race to the finish line every year to get that 60% of our funding from a largely poor community, and the organizers who work themselves exhausted to get it don't keep a dime.

Denversop works with an opera company in Central City, CO. Central City is home to 715; that in itself will not support an opera. The outlying regions have more people, but, still, it's no population boom. Denver is over an hour away, a difficult trip. No worry; the arts, thanks to some funding, have come to these people, and their community enjoys the performances and is richer for them.

These opportunities for these communities exist because of available funding for them. Taking away this funding, as you suggest, would return the arts to the urban elite only. The loss for the arts, the communities, and the artists would all be overwhelming. As for the artists, well, killing the NEA would be like cutting major league baseball to 8 teams and closing altogether the minor leagues. The arts in the urban core would survive on the backs of the rich, but there would be no opportunities for denversop and jpl, whose works do not reach as many but still benefit and are enjoyed by large numbers. Ultimately, people would not choose careers in the arts because succcess, improbable enough already, would be next to impossible. Music and art would be no more viable college majors than baseball would be were it offered as such, and it wouldn't be studied extensively except by a rich few. Denversop and jpl would have to find work in different fields. After a generation, the quality of the best artists would plummet until this market could rebalance itself.

As a fiscal and social conservative, I'd be all for cutting off or proportionally by population cutting the funding of the artistic outlets of major metropolitan areas. How dare I say this, but I believe the funding they get allows them to not market and educate nearly as much as they should, and it allows them to participate in unnecessary social activism such as displaying "Piss Christ." The smaller markets don't have these advantages and really do require these funds for their survival to present anything. How dare I say that? I dare because they'd be able to bridge this gap and then some. All they'd have to do is, first, lose the snobby attitude of, "This is what it is and it must be appreciated for it, and if you don't like it, you suck." Then, instead of that attitude, they could make a more sincere effort to educate more openly by explaining in non-scholastic English what inspired and influenced the work being presented. Some orchestras hold chat hours or cocktail hours before the concert in which the conductor gives a presentation or explanation about the works to be presented. That's a start, but it would be much more effective if something like it, even on a smaller time scale, were done during the concert itself.

One clarification. I know that, as I have made it pretty clear that I live close to New York City, one who doesn't know me could read jealousy of New York City musicians into my writing and discard it on that belief. I swear I'm not trying to level the playing field with New York City musicians by saying these things; quite the contrary, I don't seek their jobs or their lifestyles at all. The Trenton, NJ metro area suits me much better, and I'm making a fine living doing what I do in it.

To conclude, yes, it is an outrage that some who call themselves artists seek only to divide and destroy with their work, and perhaps redefining the definitions of art and music to exclude negative agendizing would help. Cutting funding for the arts because of these bad apples, though, would be like cutting down the entire tree because the fruits of one of its branches is sour. I suggest, instead, that we have the freedom to speak out against the agendizers, and we also have the freedom to try to understand and appreciate the other works, to say our likes or dislikes, or to ignore those things altogether that haven't survived the test of time if you wish.

A Soprano's Scratchpad

Saturday, October 07, 2006

What is "Art?"

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