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The End of Art
Really intriguing question posted by Sonny Moonie on a comment to a piece here:
I wonder if there are artists who would like to erase all paintings and drawings so they can start over fresh and maintain the role that artists have in developing forms of depiction, creating art history, and being rewarded and respected for that. The amount of recorded music seems to be an obstacle to musicians having the role of creating new styles to be the music of their times that is heard everywhere. There might be some filmmakers who would imagine a tremendous cultural opportunity in losing the canon of historical and influential films, which were made with old technologies and in irretreviable past settings, an opportunity to create a new set of cinematic references that speak for their times and can be used in their times. Certainly anyone aspiring to be a recognized composer of harmonious written music realizes the disadvantage of not living in the 18th to 19th centuries when the canon for harmonious music for the piano and strings was being built up.
Sonny’s comments come as a sort of defense of the philosophy of primitivism and the rejection of civilization, if I understand correctly. It raises a lot of interesting questions, such as: are those who create meaning those who benefit the most from the destruction of old meanings?
If you’re an artist or a musician or an author, what do you think of Sonny’s comments? If destroying human history meant that you could be the new Plato, the new Shakespeare, the new Beethoven, would you initiate or at least applaud that destruction?
Inherent in that question, of course (as well as in primitivism and conspiracy theory in general, I think) is a desire for power. You might like to dress this desire for power up in the linguistic disguises of “personal sovereignty” or “freedom” of course, but power is still power. When you are out there living your life as you see fit, how do you interact with others who are not living their lives as you see fit? Do you want to tell them what to do or what not to do? What about when their actions impinge on your ability to do as you see fit? Killing in self-defense is still an act of power, taking power over another, restricting the rights of another on account of a threat to your ability to act as you see fit. Self-defense is a moral judgement that your self is more important than the self of the other who threatens your self, your power.
Don’t tell me you just want to be free. Tell me what you really want. What do you want to have power over? What do you want to be remembered for? What do you want to be quoted for and loved and hated for? Would you initiate a break with human history in order to be that? Or is this thinking a delectable trap of the worst kind?
- I challenge you to a duel - and art duel, that is
- Smack! Art history… or something…
- True Art Has No Author
- The Occult Art of War
- Link exchange
- Prev: Fusion Branding
- Next: No Solution Without It
September 8th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Also from Sonny’s post:
Would this AI engineer really give up at the last minute like this or would he go through with it? Is there some way he could take both courses of action?
September 12th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Is this like the age old dream to go back in time knowing what you know about history, to trump the competition, and write “Ode to joy” first?
As far as ART goes, I take exception to the notion that artist’s are “rewarded annd respected for what they do” per se. Unless talent is combined with a canny business sense, few can earn a living wage solely on their talent. Sadly it’s become largely a commodity, whether music, visual, or writing/storytelling.
I accept the notion that “there’s nothing new under the sun,” IOW someone, somewhere, at some time has come up with the same things. Only times, styles and nuances change. I bet the ancient Egyptians rapped and break danced.
The greater challenge is to come up with a unique, fresh expression in your chosen media in the face of the cultural onslaught. This isn’t being slave to fashion, or trendspotting, but simply finding that enigmatiic perspective/style only each indiviidual is capable of. This may or may not include the integration of diverse streams of styles/genres to create the unfamiliar.
The key to the arguement may be whether one seeks total innovation, or accepts standing on the shoulders of giants. Is it the creative process one seeks to explore, or the prestige that may (or may not) result from it.
September 12th, 2006 at 11:12 am
Every great art movement starts out to build over the ruins of what came before. The fact that they only temporarily achieve it shows the power of the passage of time.
Whether its the Italian Futurists and theDadaists striving to eradicate boundaries, or late-70s punkers intent on destroying guitar solo wanking, the vanguard always sets out to erase their own history.
Ultimately, they become a part of that same history.
September 12th, 2006 at 11:21 am
I once read a parable/story about two “musically blessed” twins who were seperated at birth. One was raised in the heart of musical culture, becoming entirely immersed in all great works of all time. The other was raised in the forest, totally secluded from any outside influence. Both were trained in the musical fundamentals in order to bring their greatness into the world.
One day, they finally met, and both were unable to understand the “deprived” experience of the other. The city-dweller could not imagine how his brother could find musical inspiration without hearing anything that had come before him. The forest-dweller felt the opposite — he wondered how anything truly original could ever emerge from such cultural saturation.
(Funnily enough, the ending to this story could be swapped — the city-dweller could envy his forest brother’s upbringing, and vice-versa).
I think there will always be limitations, and they will always be somewhat frustrating. We may look at our artistic inheritance and see far too much clutter or a blank slate — I think it all has to do with our personal viewpoint. Quentin Tarantino and Bob Dylan are two noteworthy artists in this regard. Both of them built their art off of taking what was already there (in songs and in movies) and bringing it to life in new and exciting ways. When it comes to art in general, I don’t know if I can say there is less of a “clean slate” now than there ever was.
September 12th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
there never has been a clean slate. our art is a representation of what we percieve. as an unabashed guitar wanker of the highest caliber i laugh when people frame punk music as a way of destroying the representation of musical technique. the technique is the medium that we have to transcend to transmit the message. you have to get in to get out.
do i want a clean slate to start over with? no. it is enough to be one of the performers. it is vital that the artist perform. it is the performance that matters. it is the process by which we heal. music, painting, dance, poetry, sculpture……..all take us away and allow the shift to begin. to destroy mozart and henry moore and plato and jimmy page is a childish act of resentment and a diminishing of our own talent.
September 12th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Hear Hear to Alistair. That’s like Gilluli and Harding breaking the competition’s leg to win. (bet u haven’t heard that reference in a while). Why on earth would I feel more accomplished if I could wipe out everyone else’s acheivement? It could only be for my own power and glory. I hate musicians who want power and glory. They generally suck. Ben Harper doesn’t want personal power and glory. He wants to be able to make his music and hopefully people will buy it so he doesn’t have to get a day job. I can tell that by listening, I don’t know the man. I am a musician in an original band. We don’t make any money, it’s a labour of love. Or an obsession of love. We strive to be original, but we cop from all kinds of stuff we’ve heard without consciously doing so. Would it be better music if there were nothing else as a precedent - NO. Assuming we aren’t musical geniuses who could start a whole history of building styles from scratch…It would just be easy for us to plink on the E string incessantly and no one would know that we are basically useless but no one had come up with anything better yet. Not much of a victory.
September 12th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
Interesting thread here. All of these notions of art/craft are things I’ve tried on and taken in what I can and left the rest. So, a couple of observations:
I want to be yet another Albany Shakespeare. Not “The” Albany Shakespeare, but another one. And while I’m at it, an Albany Beckett, an Albany Rilke, an Albany Fornes, an Albany Chekhov, an Albany Fassbinder and an Albany Ludlam, as well as expressing my own skewed views of the world through the wonderful limitations of theater as I come upon them. As you can tell by this statement, this playwright is all right with however people wish to understand the context of my craft.
That said, I DON’T want to be an Albany Ibsen, an Albany Wasserstein, an Albany Mamet-Korder, an Albany Rudnick, or an Albany Hackwrite in any way shape or form. There are some writers out there who are the theatrical equivalent of Coors-drenched Twinkies. Not worth the buzz. (Yes, I’m capable of scathing, and to continue the Nancy Kerrigan motif, both ice-scathing and roller-scathing and maybe even “cheap-scathing”-wakka wakka.)
At NYU, one of my prof’s said that staged readings had replaced Off-Off B’way, that Off-Off B’way had replaced Off-B’way, that Off-B’way had replaced B’way and that B’way became the Manhattan version of dinner theater. I think she was right on there. The Golden Age of American theater is in the history books. I’m happy for the Thornton Wilder, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams era, and that it is DONE. Edward Albee may be a bit sad, but he’s like 1,000 years old of bitterness i’n'tee?
Whatever is coming down the pike is going to be in resurgence of local voices that disregard the national andternational in favor of the local, the interlocal and the interregional. I used to resent that it took $15,000 to invest in a production in Manhattan to even contemplate getting buttsinseats. (And forget breaking even.) Today, I’m happy to have up and left the roach motel I called the Richard Storage Unit in E.Vil and to live in a more spacious area AND one where at last… I can fail! I need to be able to fail in my art, to feel that I can take risks and try things out and that I won’t have to go deeper into debt.
As we go through all the weird changes taking place around us, I’m trying to turn my focus to what will be useful for others. I’m thinking a lot about writing “adult children’s theater” as it were, for all of us whose development has been stunted and clearcut so that we’ll be good, domestic pets to those higher up on the oodly-foodle-food chain. Fairy Tales for the Upfucked, as it were. I’m also thinking about Jean Gebser’s different observations on the aperspectival and the time-free in the arts. He held up Thornton Wilder as one theatrical exemplar of this style of writing. All those different structures–the archaic, the magic, the mythic, the mental and the integral–these are also aspects for artists to start to address in the post-national, pre-galactic age of the early-mid-nineties (as Hedwig might say…)!
September 12th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
Er that should have been “aughties” not nineties. Sorry.
September 12th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
I actually want to think this over and give you a good response, so I’ll be back, because this is a good question. But speaking of erasing art… don’t hate me Tim… but I think I accidentally ate your magazine.
September 12th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
I agree with alistair/substanceM. Every artist built on what came before them, all the way back to the first self-aware human. When I write, I am glad i have a few thousand years of other people doing it before me, so I’m not shooting in the dark. THAT would be bad. And even for “new” mediums like cinimetography, they took stuff prom the old mediums and addapted it. Same with photography from painting. “I am only great because I stand on the shoulders of giants.”
Even so, their are new mediums today, like blogging /video blogging, that people can blaze new trails through.
September 12th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
What a great discussion. I’ll read it again when I’m sober. As a producer/composer I’m always trying to wrap my head around these sort of things. The only thing I’m sure about it is that inspiration/creative flow (whatever it is) makes all the difference.
“…erase all paintings and drawings so they can start over fresh”
The idea of starting over fresh is meaningless, a chicken vs. egg situation. Doesn’t *any* act of creation imply novelty? But at the same time, as whatacharacter said, there is nothing new under the sun. It’s all just a really long remix, like life itself. Before music, we had our heartbeats and the rustling of leaves. “Before that”, the buzzing of cell receptors, and even the subtle hum of electrons and planets.
“Sadly it’s become largely a commodity, whether music, visual, or writing/storytelling.”
How do you define a commodity? I think that art plays the same roles today as it always has. It’s only the context that changes.
September 12th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
All great responses!
Even if we were unknowingly put into a situation where there was a clean slate before us — would we even realize it? I don’t think so.
“the genius of seeing that which is so evident as to be unseeable”
–Daniel Quinn
September 12th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
fuj - that’s really an important question: what makes art a commodity today? It’s true that it does play the same role in culture, but it’s largely controlled by the play-it-safe production/publishing houses, art galleries, recording companies, etc. Are they in it for the benefit to society? or to make a buck?
I think of Koons and Kincaid. Two vastly different types of visual artists who are rich, serving the dilletante factor, the former the avant garde upper crust, the latter anyone buying a Kincade air freshener. At least we still have the coffee shoppes to inspire us with grassroot creativity, but I doubt anything there will rock civilization, until the “proper channels” are approached.
Perhaps the internet can change this? OK Go is a great example of a band that may do well, due to their attention getting video ploys, bypassing the conventional path. Hopefully patrons with money and good taste can support via online some budding creative geniuses, for a wider cultural benefit (they may take note the link above to my website!) *snarf*
Hey ….anyone remember Rush’s 2112? Their concept of a destroyed culture and absent music ought to be made into a rock movie someday (but Geddy Lee should stay home).
September 12th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Personally, my whole approach to art is to be more childlike….
Children are free to create, their imagination’s are free- their work so often is interesting- they are not worried about greatness, fame, success, or comparison. Their works are simply intuitive and spontaneous. Of course as children get older their freedom to create becomes more restricted as they become more concerned about clothes, popularity, status, academics.. It people want to be free they need to go inside, put aside some of their restrictive conditionings and simply make something for the sake of making something….
And so after high school a few years ago I went to School of Visual Arts, and I wanted to make absurd monster movies- I tried avoiding all the ’serious’ film students who created rather common place things. Instead of wanting to make something typical- it would be better to go into the imagination and vomit out bizareness– so all I made was a ridiculous video about a dead salesman who sells haunted houses. It was fun going into the imagination and not being taken seriously by anybody..
September 12th, 2006 at 8:14 pm
Why would you want to erase everything and start out afresh? Wouldn’t you just end up doing the same old thing, repeating that history over and over? I can’t help thinking if you are trying THAT hard to “be original,” you might be missing something.
I am a dancer. Every day I do the same movements, often in the same room with the same people who are also doing the same movements as the day before. Despite all this sameness, there is a well of creation to be had, lying in the freshness of our (as dancers) perspective in relation to the movement, the day, the new context. When choreographers create new or innovative work, they are joining a conversation that goes back thousands of years– through Balanchine, Catherine de Medici, African tribes, ancient cults of the goddess. Even when a company restages a work that has been done over and over again, like Swan Lake or Twyla Tharp’s “In the Upper Room,” the new context makes it an entirely different, and in some sense an entirely new, piece of art. Each performance describes the coming together of an infinite number of variables in space and time to create on specific statement, and that statement is always fresh if the art works (of course, sometimes it doesn’t, but that’s a different conversation.) History or no history, the creative impulse will be carried out– and that’s enough for me. But, since we have all these past works of art to converse with, the conversation can be even more fun.
September 13th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Would I want all art erased from history? No. It’s a rich and beautiful history, and like all history, you can learn a great deal from it. If I need to look away from it to clear my head, I always can. I can meditate. I can stop listening to music for awhile. There are ways to shake off some of the over-influencing. But it’s the forms of the current culture, if anything, that I find most difficult to detach from, not the influences of the past.
The idea of destroying the old so you can claim the credit for (re)creating it yourself is just stupid, and people who want to do that are stupid. I suppose I could see art from other periods (just as from other people, now) as my competition (if I was stupid), but even if it is, good. Competition = positive. It’s much better to welcome competition than try to eliminate it. Without competition you degrade into mediocrity. You create with lower standards just because you can. And then you suck.
The difference between envy and inspiration lies in how secure or insecure one is. What some choose to let hold them back or keep them down, others choose to climb onto and springboard off of.
Also, originality is overrated, and can’t ever truly exist in pure form, anyway. Then again, there can be no two exact copies, so there’s an element of originality in everything. You could start an art movement that was nothing but artists all doing their own interpretations of the exact same image. Something interesting would come out of it. Musicians used to cover each other’s songs all the time. Different actors will bring different qualities and nuances to the same role. It’s like viewing an object from many different angles. Each of us is an ‘angle’. The more angles we have access to (ie: those from previous generations), the more of a complete picture we’re building. That may have its down sides, but what doesn’t?
I’ve recently started listening obsessively to the podcasts of zac (thanks for bringing those to my attention by the way, Tim) and some of his ideas are bubbling up as I write this. For one - archetypes. They’re always influencing us, and it’s great to be able to look back and see them more and more clearly, by way of the patterns emerging out of history - art history, cultural, political, etc. - it’s all of value, if you choose to make good use of it.
The other idea is the developmental model zac keeps referring to. I think it’s valid, and it applies to art as much as anything else. If you set out to destroy everything that’s been established before you, thinking it clears the way for the complete dominance of your own, newer, better ‘way,’ well duh, everything’s going to crumble, including you and your ‘way,’ and whoops, look, now we’re all back to square one. Good job.
September 13th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
One more thought. Some might say it’s good to go back to square one at some point and start fresh, when we’ve exhausted all the potentials of this line of development. But I beg to differ.
Because to have that logic I’d have to assume a) that it’s even possible to exhaust a line of development - that there’s a limit to the infinite in any direction, and b) that if it gets boring, or you just want to try something different, that you can’t just shift peacefully sideways instead of destructively backwards, or maybe start combining the current line with other lines of development, bring in new elements - not destroying what exists but transforming it, alchemy-like, into something else entirely, gaining something new without losing (wasting) the gains of the old.
Just scrapping the past and starting over - memory erased, history erased - still being in the same line, but kicked to the back - that’s more like a waste of time than a good idea for something to do. It’s one thing to spiral around and revisit things from higher perspectives, but we’re talking about erasing and starting with a clean slate, if I’m understanding correctly, which seems the opposite of that. In any case, that was more than one more thought.
ps: I forgot to make ‘zac‘ a link in the previous comment. How rude of me.
September 14th, 2006 at 2:00 am
Funny how no one’s comments (even my own earlier post) seem to be in favor of destroying the past and starting anew. It’s as if we’re all afraid of failing at it.
What’s wrong with thinking one can start anew? So what if someone takes the time to show how it is impossible? Since when did artists care about what is possible and impossible?
Naive? Sure. But it’s fun, and it’s breathtaking. Ever see the look on someone’s facve when you tell them with every ounce of seriousness that the “Mona Lisa” is crap? It’s priceless– it’s a work of art unto itself, if you ask me. And it’s more creative than me trying to paint my own “Mona Lisa” knowing fully well that Da Vinci did it first.
I pretend that everything I create is the first of its kind. Then I listen to what people have to say, but I take it with a grain of salt. And usually the ones who think they know where I got my notions from are wrong to begin with– if I ever took from an earlier source or borrowed or paid homage, most people won’t get it. They make their own connections, based on their own past experiences, which might be similar to mine but not really.
September 15th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
Why does being an artist relate to uniqueness and when did that start? One of the most interesting things I took away from art history courses in my brief stint at college was that in older cultures, it was normal to have all your artists working within the same style. You didn’t try to create a new unique style. You tried to master the traditional forms. Somewhere along modern times, we see all these artists trying to branch off on their own, creating styles, creating movements - essentially making their own personal world into the equivalent of what once was a cultural expression… There’s something important there but I haven’t totally unpacked it yet.
Again we have that enthronement of the individual cropping up. What was happening culturally and technologically at the time when modern art came onto the scene?
September 15th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Oh shit! I totally forgot about that! I’m gonna give that a listen right now!
September 15th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
Yeah! Where and when did that practice die out? It seems to have been going strong in the 60’s and 70’s and then kind of dropped off (at least in mainstream pop) maybe during the 80’s? I’m not sure exactly when but there’s something interesting and important there as well I think!
September 15th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Yeah, you’re right! Coming from what seems to be a huge group of iconoclasts, not one person here was like YEAH! FUCK IT! LET’S START ALL OVER!
How come? Are we scared? Are we not man enough to handle it?
September 16th, 2006 at 7:29 am
I never really wanted to start all over. It’s just a little daydream: What if there were another chance to be famous for creative artworks in a society that isn’t saturated with history and recordings? (If there ever was such a thing.) It’s like thinking of alternate histories or time travel. People who would use that as an excuse for burning other people’s books should be recognized as megalomaniacal criminals.
The comment I put in a week ago, I wrote extravagantly and posted self-indulgently because it was around my birthday and I was excited. I was afraid to check back at what the responses were. I’m surprised to see that you’ve gotten some conversational mileage out of it.
The comments here seem mostly right. I was wondering how to respond to so much. An intellectual thread quickly adds up to more than anyone can comprehend as one, a world of subtleties. If it lasts and limits itself to a heated argument, there might be some comments that are taken as more important, temporarily famous, for the purposes of the argument. New readers might find it difficult to jump into that and have their own voices recognized. So you start a new thread. Nothing wrong with that. It’s not like you’re starting a world war to erase everyone else’s threads. In Brooke’s phrase, “shift peacefully sideways instead of destructively backwards.”
October 30th, 2006 at 2:13 am
[…] Last month, Tim Boucher, in his post, The End of Art, raised some very interesting questions: “If destroying human history meant that you could be the new Plato, the new Shakespeare, the new Beethoven, would you initiate or at least applaud that destruction? … What do you want to have power over? What do you want to be remembered for? What do you want to be quoted for and loved and hated for? Would you initiate a break with human history in order to be that? Or is this thinking a delectable trap of the worst kind?” […]