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Zorn List Digest         Sunday, June 4 2000         Volume 02 : Number 954



In this issue:
-
       Re: artists and self-estimation
       RE: artists and self-estimation
       Re: artists and self-estimation
       Re: Joe Gallivan/Rainforest Project at the Knit TONITE
       RE: artists and self-estimation
       Re: artists and self-estimation
       Re: artists and self-estimation
       Re: artists and self-estimation
       Re: artists and self-estimation

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2000 15:37:36 GMT
From: "Bill Ashline" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: artists and self-estimation

>From: Brian Olewnick <[e-mail]>
>Reply-To: [e-mail]
>
>We've had this argument several times before, but I still wonder at the
>insistence on the suspension of judgment with regards to certain human
>activities like music (or art in general) but not others. I take it the
>same folk walk into voting booths and randomly pull levers, pick lovers
>arbitrarily from a crowd and stick with them no matter what and
>uncomplainingly tolerate crappily made shoes two sizes too small. Humans
>are judgmental beings, human actions are open for judgment. Now, there's
>certainly a difference between making one's pronouncements with near
>religious certainty and simply offering them as one's (hopefully
>well-grounded) opinions but, he says judgmentally, some humans are
>jerks.


Fair question Brian.  But I think even the most strident aestheticist would
argue that making "decisions" about matters as diverse as voting or choosing
lovers and friends are in no way on the same ontological level as making
"judgments" about art, which is not to say that such critical judgments are
more important than the former.  In fact, I'd say the opposite.  Political
decisions in a polling booth have a lot more to do with issues of
responsibility while decisions about friends and lovers are very often even
more arbitrary or mysterious than choices about music; in fact they often
involve no judgment at all.  The fact that people make judgments certainly
belongs to the category of "is's" (plural), but when we make judgments,
we're invoking the category of "oughts," which suggests an alternative way
of being or seeing.  We have some intuition or thought about what's good and
we wish that a particular art object comported more with this quality we
expect.

But of course these aren't the days of Mozart and Beethoven.  We have a
plurality of musical forms surrounding us and an equally diverse set of
approaches.  The media are highly varied in terms of categories:  rock,
jazz, electronic, experimental, ethnic and the various hybrids and
departures.  What we need is a better vocabulary to deal with all these
approaches, without resorting glib dismissals of categories or
specificities--"ambient is crap," "minimalism is wallpaper" etc.--or blind
elations.  That's why I would encourage a "post-judgmental" critical
standpoint where one does something like "descriptive analytics" of what
goes on in a musical work.  (It would take some time to spell out what this
would look like).  What would then be interesting in terms of blurbs by a
lister would be a self-inquiry as to the personal history and experience
that permits the particular "cathectation" with a work or what doesn't
permit it in a different instance and why.  This would be a more
"phenomenological" approach in the latter case rather than a prototypical
aesthetic approach, which might help to pull us out of some of our
ingrained, habituated reactions.

Sorry for the length here, but there are no sound-bites or aphorisms for
this kind of stuff.

>
>Ingres once said, "A well-made shoe is more beautiful than a poorly-made
>painting". I just don't see why what we call "art" is somehow to be
>removed from the same judgments we make about everything else.

It's a bit unfortunate to invoke Ingres and the category of the "beautiful"
once again, but since it's been done, let me invert it:  "A poorly made shoe
with a compelling history in terms of where it's been and who it has
accompanied is just as moving as a well-executed masterpiece of painting
that lives on only as an abstract manifestation of the "good."  Ingres gives
away his aestheticism in not allowing, by implication, the well-made shoe to
at least equal the well-made painting.

And now Jean-Francois Lyotard in paraphrase:
"On the wall of an ancient cave, a man draws a figure that appears to
resemble a real object.  Is it language or is it art?  It is neither.  The
distinction shall come later."
________________________________________________________________________
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- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 11:44:36 -0400
From: "Ljova" <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: artists and self-estimation

> Brian wrote:
>
> Ingres once said, "A well-made shoe is more beautiful than a poorly-made
> painting". I just don't see why what we call "art" is somehow to be
> removed from the same judgments we make about everything else.
>
> imho, of course.
>
> Brian Olewnick
>
Samuel wrote:
> well spoken, and i agree to a certain extent.
> but i think the quality of a shoe is comparible somewhat to the
> quality of a
> recording. what i'm addressing, i think, is taste.  you can
> certainly judge
> on matters of taste, but like you say, when it comes to taste it
> has to be
> more of an opinion. the shoemaker has two jobs. making the shoe
> comfortable
> and have it last a long time.  but the shoemaker also has to take fashion
> into consideration.  as much as it's taboo to compare art to fashion, the
> fashion of a shoe, and richness of musical or artistic ideas, is
> a matter of
> taste.
> some could say that minimalism is, in Philip Glass's case, just a
> bunch of
> well orchestrated arpeggios, or, in Arvo Part's case, a bunch of pretty
> repetetive choir music travelling in fifths. "hey, what the hell! Indian
> classical music doesn't even modulate?  it must be less complex than OUR
> music." sorry, i don't mean to drive the point so hard.
> i guess i should stress that i don't mean people should suspend ALL
> judgement. i just think that when people have a negative judgement they
> perhaps could try to be less spiteful about it.  true, Kenny G and N'Sync
> are quite commercialized.  but for the most part i don't really
> think they
> are offending anyone's morality, so go ahead and dislike it, but
> don't state
> objectively how their music is just bad according to universal laws.
>   respectfully,
>    -Samuel
> PS
> what does imho mean? i forgot.
"in my humble opinion"

The aspect of taste doesn't come without some education.  Some people are
"born" with taste, but those are also the kind that accept mozart and reject
schoenberg  (or vice versa, for that matter).  Word-less music doesn't speak
directly to the heart (or the gutter) as does a song or a poem, and you need
some knowledge of (or a feeling for) compositional principles and machinery
to help "understand" better.   Eventually, when you're riding your
super-educated high, you may make silly comparisons of how Milton Babbitt's
stuff is just as expressive as Beethoven's.

The "problem" with Kenny G and N'sync is that they do not appeal to our
taste -- No, rather they appeal to our sense of decadence, and the worst
sort, the escapist sort. The harmonic scheme is simple and endlessly
repeated, and the beat is always there to comfort you, "I'll be there at the
next measure".  The way I understand it, harmony and rhythm are only the
basic ingredients, with which you may have to DO something. In Kenny G,
nothing ever happens, it's an endless of expanse of kitsch. That sounds
pretty offensive to me.

If music continues in the Kenny G or N'Sync sort of braindead idiocy, then
we're bound to have less and less musicians that think, and a tiny audience
of people that can truly listen.

(Actually, we've already reached that point. Now what.)


Regad's,

Ljova


- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2000 15:50:01 GMT
From: "Bill Ashline" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: artists and self-estimation

>From: "s~Z" <[e-mail]>
>
> >>>particularly in
>regard to what is considered "self-evident," the quote that refuses a
>narrative to account for it.<<<
>
>
>You believe the quote was in regard to what is considered "self-evident."
>
>Why? What is it that is self-evident?


It's an old political/aesthetic strategy, I believe--the silent narrative of
juxtaposition--your quote vis-a-vis Samuel's comment in order to render it
absurd without saying so.  Am I wrong again, Mr. SchwitterZ?
________________________________________________________________________
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- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 11:53:30 -0400
From: Rich Williams <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Joe Gallivan/Rainforest Project at the Knit TONITE

>If anybody goes to this I'd love to hear about it.....


    I'll start by saying what a thrill it was to finally get to
hear Messrs Dean, Gallivan and Austin play, after 25 years of
listening to their recordings(The Gallivan/Austin LP's on Spitball
Records being tops on my list of needed re-issues).
    The concert was essentially one piece of music, beginning
with some dancing/vocalizing in the Hawaiian tradition(pardon my
cultural ignorance if I'm off base here), against an
electronic(taped?) background of Rainforest sounds, by one of the 2
Hawaiian women of the group. she moved to a single drum and then was
joined by Gallivan and Mattos. When the horns gradually joined in, a
theme developed. Each of the horn players then were announced by the
other Hawaiian woman(whose function was as narrator)  and each would
play unaccompanied with the rest of the group eventually joining in
for sections of free blowing. The all-to-short concert ended as it
began with more of the traditional Hawaiian vocalizations.
    All-in-all a good show, but I was a bit disappointed that the
rest of the audience was apparently sated by the 40 minute
performance, and didn't seem to want an encore.

Rich

BTW....has anyone else noticed an increasing tendency for the staff,
hangers-on and even the musicians at the knit, to tromp around on the
balcony, slam doors, network and bullshit, DURING the performances?
One would think that the people who play and present music that
requires attentive listening to be a bit more respectful.....




- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 12:07:50 -0400
From: "Ljova" <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: artists and self-estimation

Bill Ashline, ladies and gentlemen, Bill Ashline:
> But of course these aren't the days of Mozart and Beethoven.  We have a
> plurality of musical forms surrounding us and an equally diverse set of
> approaches.  The media are highly varied in terms of categories:  rock,
> jazz, electronic, experimental, ethnic and the various hybrids and
> departures.  What we need is a better vocabulary to deal with all these
> approaches, without resorting glib dismissals of categories or
> specificities--"ambient is crap," "minimalism is wallpaper"
> etc.--or blind
> elations.  That's why I would encourage a "post-judgmental" critical
> standpoint where one does something like "descriptive analytics" of what
> goes on in a musical work.  (It would take some time to spell out
> what this
> would look like).  What would then be interesting in terms of blurbs by a
> lister would be a self-inquiry as to the personal history and experience
> that permits the particular "cathectation" with a work or what doesn't
> permit it in a different instance and why.  This would be a more
> "phenomenological" approach in the latter case rather than a prototypical
> aesthetic approach, which might help to pull us out of some of our
> ingrained, habituated reactions.

"Man desires a world where good and evil can be clearly distinguished, for
he has an innate and irrepressible desire to judge before he understands.
Religions and ideologies are founded on this desire. They can cope with the
novel only by translating its language of relativity and ambiguity into
their own apodictic and dogmatic discourse. They require that someone be
right: either Anna Karenina is the victim of a narrow-minded tyrant, or
Karenin is the victim of an immoral woman; either K. is an innocent man
crushed by an unjust Court, or the Court represents divine justice and K. is
guilty.
This "either-or" encapsulates an inability to tolerate the essential
relativity of things human, an inability to look squarely at the absence of
the Supreme Judge. This inability makes the novel's wisdom (the wisdom of
uncertainty) hard to accept and understand." (This passage, and the last
sentence in particular, refers to the plot of Cervantes' "Don Quixote".  But
I think it may also refer to anything that is novel  (i.e. new).)

and later,

"The Modern Era has nurtured a dream in which mankind, divided into its
separate civilizations, would someday come together in uity and everlasting
peace. Today, the history of the planet has finally become one indivisible
whole, but it is war, ambulant and everlasting war, that embodies and
guarantees this long-desired unity of mankind. Unity of mankind means: No
escape for anyone anywhere."

            -Milan Kundera, "The Depreciated Legacy of Cervantes" (an essay in "The
Art of the Novel")


Regad's,

Ljova


- --------
Lev "Ljova" Zhurbin
[e-mail]
http://Ljova.com/
Listen to my music:
http://mp3.com/LevZhurbin/ (compositions)
http://mp3.com/Ljova/ (improvisations)
http://mp3.com/FreeBach/ (Free Bach Project)

"Do not fear mistakes - there are none."
        -Miles Davis


- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 10:14:48 -0700
From: "s~Z" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: artists and self-estimation

>>>It's an old political/aesthetic strategy, I believe--the silent narrative
of
juxtaposition--your quote vis-a-vis Samuel's comment in order to render it
absurd without saying so.  Am I wrong again, Mr. SchwitterZ?<<<


Whether or not it renders the comment absurd depends on the reader's
presuppositions. Samuel may very well think the quote is an example of his
point. I put it out there more as a litmus test for readers' positions than
as a self-evident assertion. But, hell, I am making progress. I've gone from
'exhibiting stupidities' to the 'political/aesthetic strategy' of 'the
silent narrative of juxtaposition.' More personal growth than on most wasted
Sundays.

If anyone is interested, I have some collages on some land in Arizona for
sale at my website.


- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 10:20:22 -0700
From: "s~Z" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: artists and self-estimation

>>>so go ahead and dislike it, but don't state
objectively how their music is just bad according to universal laws.
  respectfully,
   -Samuel<<<


In what category does this assertion fall?

Is it an objective statement based on universal laws, or a matter of
taste/preference?


- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2000 13:34:28 -0400
From: Brian Olewnick <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: artists and self-estimation

Bill Ashline wrote:

> Fair question Brian.  But I think even the most strident aestheticist would
> argue that making "decisions" about matters as diverse as voting or choosing
> lovers and friends are in no way on the same ontological level as making
> "judgments" about art,

No strident aestheticist I, but I'm not so sure about that. I'm a bit
out of my league in so far as the particulars, but I'd imagine someone
like Edward O. Wilson, among others, might take a different point of
view.

> We have some intuition or thought about what's good and
> we wish that a particular art object comported more with this quality we
> expect.

But does that intuition have a more purely biological or societal basis?
I don't know (though I have my prejudicial leanings), just asking.

> What we need is a better vocabulary to deal with all these
> approaches, without resorting glib dismissals of categories or
> specificities--"ambient is crap," "minimalism is wallpaper" etc.--or blind
> elations.  That's why I would encourage a "post-judgmental" critical
> standpoint where one does something like "descriptive analytics" of what
> goes on in a musical work.  (It would take some time to spell out what this
> would look like).  What would then be interesting in terms of blurbs by a
> lister would be a self-inquiry as to the personal history and experience
> that permits the particular "cathectation" with a work or what doesn't
> permit it in a different instance and why.  This would be a more
> "phenomenological" approach in the latter case rather than a prototypical
> aesthetic approach, which might help to pull us out of some of our
> ingrained, habituated reactions.

I think that's a wonderful (if, in practice, unlikely) set of standards
to aspire to but, as complex and deep as those formulations are, I
wonder if the heart of the matter doesn't lie even deeper, down amongst
the genes.
>
> Sorry for the length here, but there are no sound-bites or aphorisms for
> this kind of stuff.

That's certainly the truth; no apologies needed.

> It's a bit unfortunate to invoke Ingres

Hey, it's _never_ unfortunate to invoke the great Ingres! ;-) Painters
today (eg, Close, Hockney, Freud) are still catching up to him!

> and the category of the "beautiful"
> once again, but since it's been done, let me invert it:  "A poorly made shoe
> with a compelling history in terms of where it's been and who it has
> accompanied is just as moving as a well-executed masterpiece of painting
> that lives on only as an abstract manifestation of the "good."  Ingres gives
> away his aestheticism in not allowing, by implication, the well-made shoe to
> at least equal the well-made painting.

You might be right about ol' JAD Ingres' opinion (though considering his
time and culture, it might be unreasonable to expect him to think
otherwise; perhaps today he'd reconsider) and I think your inversion is
right to the point, ie an assertion that "This poorly made shoe is more
moving than that fine painting" may only require further and deeper
explication to move it from the area of "preposterous sounding
statement" to something to seriously consider, with deeper still
probing...
>
> And now Jean-Francois Lyotard in paraphrase:
> "On the wall of an ancient cave, a man draws a figure that appears to
> resemble a real object.  Is it language or is it art?  It is neither.  The
> distinction shall come later."

Indeed. I'm just not so sure that the distinction, for all it may be
bandied about, is still really very clear or, in fact, can ever be.

Brian Olewnick

NP: John Fahey, The Dance of Death and other Plantation Favorites

- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 12:51:55 -0400
From: Joseph Zitt <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: artists and self-estimation

On Sun, Jun 04, 2000 at 11:44:36AM -0400, Ljova wrote:
> Eventually, when you're riding your
> super-educated high, you may make silly comparisons of how Milton Babbitt's
> stuff is just as expressive as Beethoven's.

"silly"?

> The "problem" with Kenny G and N'sync is that they do not appeal to our
> taste -- No, rather they appeal to our sense of decadence, and the worst
> sort, the escapist sort. The harmonic scheme is simple and endlessly
> repeated, and the beat is always there to comfort you, "I'll be there at the
> next measure".

Well, considering that Western "classical" and "jazz" musics are among
the only musics in which harmonic movement is a significant factor, and
that most musics of the world that have a pulse at all involve some sort
of rhythmic cycle, you've just called all music except for a tiny corner
of that which fits into those Western categories "escapist" and "decadent".

Can anyone, other than someone who has buried himself head-first into
academic and supposed high culture musics, conceivably believe that?

- --
|> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <|
| [e-mail]           http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt |
| Latest CD: Jerusaklyn                  http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt |
| Comma: Voices of New Music    Silence: the John Cage Discussion List |


- -

------------------------------

End of Zorn List Digest V2 #954
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