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Re: The Value of Art
Posted:
Feb 22, 2005 10:07 PM
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Ann, your writing is thorough and precise. I hope I don't muddy the water with more remarks.
>"I'm not trying to be combative."
Actually I think I was being a little combative in my previous postings but only playfully combative because the ideas are interesting. My guess is that Robert Jensen and maybe Galenson are both trying to be helpful in some way; pointing out that "Successful artists, whether we like it or not, know how the game is played."
Yet, I find certain assumptions might be questioned. Beginning with:
>"Importance in art"
>"the primary source of genuine importance in art is innovation. Important artists are innovators whose work changes the practices of their successors."
I'm a busy man, lead me right to the IMPORTANT STUFF.
Yes, there are leading edges of innovation. But the leading edge of a wave would not exist without the collective wave or the ocean of all working artists, from out of which new work continually grows. By validating only a handful out an army of creative workers I fear that a significant creative force for the benefit of society is overlooked to society's detriment.
>"all art has not been rooted in sense and materiality."
Maybe not, but, for example, 'thinking about music' is qualitatively different from actually hearing music. You can remember a melody or a song but experiencing the actual physical sensation of soundwaves striking your eardrums... isn't that preferable?
>"there was no dream time when markets did not play a significant role in artistic activity."
>"one might even go so far as to say that our modern conception of art and of the identity of artists are inseparable from market forces."
My argument is that there is something intrinsic to art making that is incompatible with marketing concepts:
Art is not competitive.
Artists create because of an inner necessity to express themselves and they will keep creating in spite of a lack of attention or negative attention, and without economic motivation.
This is due to a desire to share something of themselves; an inherent generosity of spirit; It is exuberance an overflowing of energy.
Art is a rare type of endeavor wherein it's practitioners must often 'work' to support their (art)'work'.
The motivation to make art is not based on profitability. So how can it compete?
>"it is to the advantage of artists to see how their enterprise resembles that of other disciplines"
I would say that art and science are both interested in forms of truth. But where science is true to objective results and repeatable, verifiable observation, art is true to an inner directive based on feeling (verve) (which, I suppose, might be seen as romanticism).
Therefore, if an artist must contrive to make an art product appear to be "important" so that it is better positioned within some kind of market or gain recognition within a current fashionable coterie, it would be affectation; playing false to their own inner life.
A Paradox:
Look at our present social environment: A monstrous clanging uber-super-market with incessant demands for attention in every public and even private space. Unending barrages of audio/visual stimuli manufactured by highly skilled technicians, (some of whom went to art school) crafting finely tuned messages to persuade and manipulate our behavior or otherwise distract us and influence our own thoughts.....If there was an antidote; a new perspective; a respite from of all the shouting. How would you discover it? How could it disengage from the clamoring and yet clamor for itself? "HEY !, LOOK AT ME !!! ... I'M THE SUBTLEST OF THEM ALL !!!"
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