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10/01/2013 08:12:22 AM · #1 |
Since it has been a few days since we have given up on pinning a definitive tail on that thing called "art" (-and worthy criticism of it) here is a passage,
probably quoted here before, but thought provoking nonetheless. From the preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray:
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.
-- OSCAR WILDE |
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10/01/2013 08:17:27 AM · #2 |
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10/01/2013 08:37:37 AM · #3 |
Originally posted by Tiny:
Go Away. |
No need for that!
I found the post a very interesting read. |
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10/01/2013 10:05:37 AM · #4 |
The reason it was written is half the story, and proof that a repeat of this conversation will continue to appear ever so often all over the world, in all media, about all art.
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10/01/2013 10:17:00 AM · #5 |
Originally posted by blindjustice:
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
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This is wonderful.
There is beauty all around us; it's just that so many fail to see the beauty that surrounds us. They see the "superficial". Rather than seeing the "story" behind something, such as a dilapidated building about to be demolished, the old rusty car in the overgrown field, or the man sitting on the roadside, tired and hungry.
People pass up these opportunities of BEAUTY and see ugliness instead.
So for those who can see the beauty in the "unbeautiful", there is hope. And it is art. :)
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10/01/2013 12:52:44 PM · #6 |
Originally posted by blindjustice:
All art is quite useless.
-- OSCAR WILDE |
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10/01/2013 02:50:21 PM · #7 |
Paul,
Is that a "T" tattooed to your forehead?!
Troublemaker!
;-) |
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10/01/2013 02:59:48 PM · #8 |
What a strange sentiment:
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it.
It's unusual, but I can't even figure out a way to read that such as it doesn't just offend me. The rest of it is questionable as well, but this? Total crap. (See "Clovis Point" and the subsequent several thousand years up to today)
..
As for the idea that:
"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty. "
Well, I say what sort of self-supporting crap is that? As a statement that's just fine, but put into practice, there's more opportunity for self-delusion than there is for self discovery. Aside from the fallacy that there are absolute in any of this - to speak of 'beautiful things' in that way is simply ludicrous - if only because beauty itself is so subjective.
..
It really does sound rather good as a statement, and such is the business of writers - it is the rest of us to whom it is left to worry about the mundane practicality of such matters.
I think that was a swing and a miss by Mr. Wilde.
Message edited by author 2013-10-01 15:00:56. |
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10/01/2013 03:25:55 PM · #9 |
I admire the useful things I make (and I wish I could think of some, apart from dinner).
Sometimes I wonder, however, what could be more useful than to get someone's goat. |
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10/01/2013 03:30:28 PM · #10 |
I guess that this really is a shot across the bow of critics.
On the art side of things, it is a bit tongue in cheek, meant to be provocative, so you can say what you will, you be best off putting in in context rather than attempting to argue.
Or perhaps, when done, we can listen to Beatle's and decide what they could have done better, or analyze M.Jordan's lay-ups. |
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10/01/2013 03:39:52 PM · #11 |
Originally posted by blindjustice:
I guess that this really is a shot across the bow of critics.
On the art side of things, it is a bit tongue in cheek, meant to be provocative, so you can say what you will, you be best off putting in in context rather than attempting to argue.
Or perhaps, when done, we can listen to Beatle's and decide what they could have done better, or analyze M.Jordan's lay-ups. |
Ahh. So, you are celebrity blind are you? Just because they're famous doesn't mean they were right all the time. |
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10/01/2013 03:40:03 PM · #12 |
"Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious."
"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
Oscar Wilde |
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10/01/2013 03:47:21 PM · #13 |
I guess the hardest thing to do is be for something, the easiest to attempt to chop it down.
- but seriously. why is it we can't say "this art for art's sake, and only for art's sake has value- more value than a finely crafted chair, for instance, or a super technical atomic level photo?
Message edited by author 2013-10-01 15:49:20. |
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10/01/2013 03:58:23 PM · #14 |
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10/01/2013 04:15:08 PM · #15 |
Originally posted by blindjustice:
I guess the hardest thing to do is be for something, the easiest to attempt to chop it down.
- but seriously. why is it we can't say "this art for art's sake, and only for art's sake has value- more value than a finely crafted chair, for instance, or a super technical atomic level photo? |
It is a weighty question, but IMHO art is a "value added" proposition most of the time.
A chair keeps you rear off the ground, and it is better if it is comfortable. But when Sam Maloof made a chair he did it so well that they were art. So well that many were put in museums and no one was allowed to sit in them any more.
A photograph is a document of what was in front of the photographer's lens. And if it is done well enough, it can be art, but that art sits above the document; It is an ephemeral quality that varies with each set of eyes that view the image. When a person sets out to create "art for art's sake" you assume that the ephemeral spark of the divine that is art, will be a constant, a commodity that justifies the creation. When an abstract wood sculpture fails to elicit joy in the viewer it has failed as art, and is very hard to sit on.
One of the failings of modern art in the last century is the separation of art and function. The average person fails to see the point of art. Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst speak to a very narrow segment of society and make clever comments on the hot house world of modern art and make fabulous profits, but their work is so detached from the everyday that it leaves those who do not subscribe to ARTnews with no idea what their point in making the piece was. If art can not speak directly to the viewer, and serves no other function, then what is it ? And why should a made thing that serves no practical purpose be held out to have more value than a funtcional item that is every bit as beautiful?
Message edited by author 2013-10-01 16:18:45. |
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10/01/2013 05:15:27 PM · #16 |
An artist is a vain, narcissistic child saying "look at what I did!"
That is why an artist should struggle to make good art, because otherwise s/he is just a burden on others. |
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10/01/2013 07:19:17 PM · #17 |
Originally posted by tnun:
how many goats? |
I've never counted ...  
Originally posted by tnun:
Sometimes I wonder, however, what could be more useful than to get someone's goat. |
!!! 
Some background on my Oscar Wilde picture (previously-posted) ... on his tour of the US in 1882 he ended up in a saloon in Leadville, Colorado,* where he observed a sign reading Please Do Not Shoot The Pianist ΓΆ€ΒΆ He Is Doing His Best, which he then referred to as the "only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across."**
* Leadville has been described as a place with "Ten months of Winter, and two months of mighty late in the Fall." It is now at risk of being swept away by accumulated water which has filled the abandoned mine shafts further up the mountain.
** I always figured this story was the inspiration for the title of Elton John's 1973 album Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player |
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