The example Tarloff puts forward is extreme enough (apparently carrying with it the implication that Art may not be appreciated whilst “supine”) that the assertion it is there to support – “one need not grant it any abstract hierarchical superiority” (what on Earth is that mutant, waffling, tautologous noun phrase anyway? How can one have superiority without a hierarchy?) – immediately falls into question.

The algebra seems quite simple. Academic writers and arbiters of good taste (like Tarloff) are members in, and products of, a powerful class in society. It is in the interests and to the satisfaction of powerful classes to raise up walled gardens, differentiating themselves through a shared and exclusive set of indicators.

It is no coincidence that the Art favoured by this class tends to be quite “good” in some quasi-objective way. They’ve had hundreds of years to select the best bits for themselves and then arrange the system of education so it’s a bloody challenge for anyone to enjoy Art who doesn’t hail from the right neighbourhood.

Ask anyone who follows “indie” music (the label “indie” is a hell of a giveaway in this context) – the thing is to know about the best, most obscure bands, and then keep them obscure enough that they retain their cachet. If opera was really for the masses, do you think we would glorify its (often) facile plotlines and (all too frequently) quaint period-themed costumes to the same degree?

Sorry to stray into ranting a little, I haven’t time to collect and express my thoughts quite to the degree I’d like. Whatever category of thing Tarloff is talking about, it’s not useful to call that category Art.

Large companies put vast amounts of effort and skill into designing foods that will appeal to large numbers of consumers, and producing them in highly consistent, low-cost ways. If you have not gone to the effort of discovering how they do this process, you will not be able to fully appreciate the level of skill and talent involved. And some of this skill is undefinable, e.g. how do the taste-buds of a practised taster really operate? How do you design an effective marketing campaign?

So Monet is great because when I saw his work I understood what my art teachers were meaning when they waffled on about painting the light, not the colour. Shakespeare is great because he picks out and deliminates the opposing feelings of love. Unfortunately this definition meant I had to regard Colin McCahn as great since after I saw his works I saw New Zealand hills in a different way. Thinking Colin McCahn is great is depressing.

However, more dangerously, it then occurred to me that this means that who is great varies depending on which order you encounter artists. If I had seen Turner before Monet, would that mean that Turner was great and Monet wasn’t?

Public executions and Roman gladiatorial fights were a great popular entertainment, that is to say they gave aesthetic pleasure. What did Bentham have to say about the former, and was this consistent with his utilitarianism?

” ‘The aesthetic’ is the supporting structure of any argument, the manner that supports or as often or not contradicts the stated point.”

You don’t think you want a lawyer with a stammer and thirteen other nervous ticks to argue your case before a jury; you want an orator, an actor. Maybe the guy with the stutter can write the closing argument but you don’t want him up on the stage.
In language if not in numbers rhetoric counts. Socrates was an orator memorialized in the brilliant writing of his boy toy Plato.
Was he right, even once, in the sense that a mathematician can be right?
Sentience is an ambiguous state. I’m amazed at those who can say with a straight face that what is not concrete can not be judged at all. Plato was brilliant but Mozart: well, it’s all in the mind of the beholder in’t it?
But all brilliance is brilliance within an enclosed system
Was Salieri better than Mozart, Vivaldi better than Bach? Was Edward Everett’s the two hour spiel at Gettysburg better than this!!?

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

And by the way Mr Wimberly, mushroom clouds are beautiful, and I know no one who would argue otherwise.

” ‘The aesthetic’ is the supporting structure of any argument, the manner that supports or as often or not contradicts the stated point.”

You don’t think you want a lawyer with a stammer and thirteen other nervous ticks to argue your case before a jury; you want an orator, an actor. Maybe the guy with the stutter can write the closing argument but you don’t want him up on the stage.
In language if not in numbers rhetoric counts. Socrates was an orator memorialized in the brilliant writing of his boy toy Plato.
Was he right, even once, in the sense that a mathematician can be right?
Sentience is an ambiguous state. I’m amazed at those who can say with a straight face that what is not concrete can not be judged at all. Plato was brilliant but Mozart: well, it’s all in the mind of the beholder in’t it?
But all brilliance is brilliance within an enclosed system
Was Salieri better than Mozart, Vivaldi better than Bach? Was Edward Everett’s the two hour spiel at Gettysburg better than this!!?

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

And by the way Mr Wemberly, mushroom clouds are beautiful, and I know no one who would argue otherwise.

And I say, “But our sources say Socrates was ugly. Was he not good?”

Whereupon, you say either, “But Socrates had a beauty that transcended the mere physical!” in which case I point out that rather than making a statement about the relationship of the two properties, “good” and “beautiful,” you are simply adjusting the meaning of “beautiful” to correspond to “good,” and thereby saying nothing at all . . .

OR, you say, “Yes, Socrates was very bad!” in which case I applaud your consistency but wonder what on earth you arre talking about . . .

My English teacher, whom I greatly admired, wanted us all to repudiate this passionately, but I never could find, for myself, a convincing refutation of this utilitarian argument.

I therefore – not immediately, but eventually – followed the advice suggested in #1 above and left the academic pursuit of “Art” (in this case in the form of literature) for that of history, which, although it may and should be written elegantly, does not demand aesthetic justification. I have spent the last 40 years enjoying all manner of art (including music and painting) without ever having to worry about whether or how I might justify it.

Apparently offered as self-evident, especially the opening salvo. Still, I agree. I feel that way about professional wrestling; the nation would be a far poorer place without it. It’s modern American ballet. (Ms. Tharp, take note! Back it with some Motörhead or Metallica, and it would be so bitchen.)

As with other public goods, it may be under-supplied and may merit a public subsidy.

Ah. “Public” means “government,” yes? The government is obliged to provide all desirable goods. Cool. I’m in desperate need of a backrub, I admit. Gov. Schwarzenegger, chop, chop, and don’t break any of my blood vessels. A chorus of “Du, Du Liegst Mir Im Herzen” or “Edelweiss” wouldn’t hurt, either.

More importantly, it doesn’t just emerge as a product of spontaneous order, in the way that market goods typically do.

It emerges too damn spontaneously hereabouts. I live in Los Angeles—-this place is lousy with artists, lemme tellya. I got cussed out in rhyme the other day. I definitely could get behind a government relocation program and share our embarrassment of riches. (I understand Montana is underserved in the one-woman show department. Works for me, a win-win.)

Seriously, I of course do support culture. I think the government should certainly fill the conservatory function (and this includes for folk art) for forms that aren’t commercially viable. Man should not lose the ability to play Beethoven, or hand-paint china.

And our public education system should indeed fulfill its purpose and teach the young all the art appreciation it can, ideally in an analytic fashion, even if the case is made why Tupac is superior to Whitman.

But I shudder at the art that has been created on my government dime, no more worthy that the odes to tractors that the Soviet age generated. I do not want the government anywhere near determining what is good art, or bad art, or art/not art at all.

Shakespeare was pop art, and even Beethoven had to make things sound good. And when the artist puts more in than entertainment requires, that is the soul of art. But it is its own reward.

I had to study why Van Halen moved (certain) people as much as the Beatles, but, folks, they did, in the same way Whitman did. “Hot For Teacher” is “Song of Myself” with crappier words but much better lead guitar.

And I trust the guy who spent the fruit of an hour’s labor at McDonald’s to buy their album more than any government arbiter who has nothing so real at stake. David Lee Roth celebrated himself and sung himself too.

Art is whatever feeds the human spirit, which is insatiable. When that need is addressed, man ponies up the dough, spontaneously.

It doesn’t matter how it got that way, or why.

more later (maybe)

eesh…

The self-proclaimed “Eye of the Storm” which will be overjoyed to show you why, objectively, Picasso completely sucks.

The shelves of many of us are chock full of “good bad novels” or ditto videos—the finest examples of their genres (in the same way that one of my english teachers once pegged Vonnegut as “a major minor writer”). And they are exactly the things that one would read or watch under particular circumstances. Those circumstances, however, have been decreed as inferior to the ones under which one would declaim Pound or stare, eyes bleeding, at van gogh’s wheatfield with crows…