Comments on: why bother with art? http://adswithoutproducts.com/2008/05/08/why-bother-with-art/ Sun, 06 Jul 2008 11:01:21 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=MU By: zunguzungu http://adswithoutproducts.com/2008/05/08/why-bother-with-art/#comment-723 zunguzungu Mon, 12 May 2008 16:22:20 +0000 http://adswithoutproducts.com/2008/05/08/why-bother-with-art/#comment-723 re: Adorno, count me in as now running for cover. I think part of the problem is that phrases like "the real work at hand" are as difficult to define in practice as art, and for the same reasons: while the use of one word allows us to imagine that they are one thing, they are, in terms of practical politics, very different and opposed things. The work done by TS Eliot's "Art" and the work done by Picasso or that of somebody like him are absolutely irreconcilable, but imagining them to be one thing is itself an act with political consequences; if we use a model of "art" as "high" then it can seem like Picasso is torquing our coneption of art to fit his political program, while Eliot is being true (whereas another model of art would just as easily suggest the reverse). To put it another way, there are so many different (and in some cases, irreconcilable) reasons to oppose the war in Iraq, but it's the same "work at hand." For some of those people, one kind of art is a useful supplement and for others, another kind is, so the question of whether Art matches politics is inevitably going to be adjudicated in very different terms: one political goal but very different (and irreconcilable) uses of art to get there. Reading Lolita in Tehran vs. Literature from the Axis of Evil, for example, and that's just within the liberal camp. From my perspective, the concepts of "literature" and "Art" in those books are already so Westernized (and secular) that it is almost completely incompatible with the most important critiques of American imperialism (which names it as such and "provincialize" its assumptions of universality). re: Adorno, count me in as now running for cover.

I think part of the problem is that phrases like “the real work at hand” are as difficult to define in practice as art, and for the same reasons: while the use of one word allows us to imagine that they are one thing, they are, in terms of practical politics, very different and opposed things. The work done by TS Eliot’s “Art” and the work done by Picasso or that of somebody like him are absolutely irreconcilable, but imagining them to be one thing is itself an act with political consequences; if we use a model of “art” as “high” then it can seem like Picasso is torquing our coneption of art to fit his political program, while Eliot is being true (whereas another model of art would just as easily suggest the reverse).

To put it another way, there are so many different (and in some cases, irreconcilable) reasons to oppose the war in Iraq, but it’s the same “work at hand.” For some of those people, one kind of art is a useful supplement and for others, another kind is, so the question of whether Art matches politics is inevitably going to be adjudicated in very different terms: one political goal but very different (and irreconcilable) uses of art to get there. Reading Lolita in Tehran vs. Literature from the Axis of Evil, for example, and that’s just within the liberal camp. From my perspective, the concepts of “literature” and “Art” in those books are already so Westernized (and secular) that it is almost completely incompatible with the most important critiques of American imperialism (which names it as such and “provincialize” its assumptions of universality).

]]> By: adswithoutproducts http://adswithoutproducts.com/2008/05/08/why-bother-with-art/#comment-722 adswithoutproducts Mon, 12 May 2008 01:30:27 +0000 http://adswithoutproducts.com/2008/05/08/why-bother-with-art/#comment-722 I agree with quite a bit of what you're saying here. I guess the easiest way to allude to the big caveat is to simply say "adorno" and run for cover. I definitely don't think it's enough to do that (I hope that's obvious), but his argument about the relationship between higher art and the popular is something that seems to need to be grappled with. Or, more particularly with Richards, perhaps it doesn't really matter, what you're saying. I think the statement as quoted above could be repurposed to include art as cultural production in general without loss of the issue. The question is whether or not makes sense to torque our sense of what is moral/ethical/politically just into making room for art. Should all consideration of art (whether construed as high art or popular, old forms or new ones) be seen as supplementary to the real work at hand, or should it be part and parcel? I agree with quite a bit of what you’re saying here. I guess the easiest way to allude to the big caveat is to simply say “adorno” and run for cover. I definitely don’t think it’s enough to do that (I hope that’s obvious), but his argument about the relationship between higher art and the popular is something that seems to need to be grappled with.

Or, more particularly with Richards, perhaps it doesn’t really matter, what you’re saying. I think the statement as quoted above could be repurposed to include art as cultural production in general without loss of the issue. The question is whether or not makes sense to torque our sense of what is moral/ethical/politically just into making room for art. Should all consideration of art (whether construed as high art or popular, old forms or new ones) be seen as supplementary to the real work at hand, or should it be part and parcel?

]]> By: zunguzungu http://adswithoutproducts.com/2008/05/08/why-bother-with-art/#comment-721 zunguzungu Sun, 11 May 2008 20:44:29 +0000 http://adswithoutproducts.com/2008/05/08/why-bother-with-art/#comment-721 Why do "the arts" need to be distinct from, broadly defined, physical cultural production ? After all, if you're an english professor, you might tend to define “the arts” as a kind of privileged space within human imaginitive creation, with all the eurocentric particularisms the discipline implies: paintings, novels, plays, yes; stories, music, social-networks, participatory rituals, etc, not so much. But this has everything to do with a very historically particular conception of “The Arts” that excludes the vast majority of stuff that anthropologists might call “culture.” For the “english professor” type perspective, changing moralities and social contexts do pose a threat to those historically particular forms: films and tv replace novels, for example, as the kind of social lubricant that makes “modern” living bearable. If you're an English professor with an investment in novels, then this might be a bad thing. But does it have to be for everybody? If we take “art” to be a more broadly understood function of social activities, then there's no reason why a new morality can't include new forms of art, which is to say, reconceptualizations of what art is. English departments tend to be really bad at thinking about the ways that a video game, for example, is as relevent a piece of art as a novel (probably much more), because the Arnoldian sense of high culture still jockeys for space alongside more historicist notions of cultural production, but, frankly, that's their problem. It's an institutional conundrum for people who would like to retain privileged status in the cultural economy (even as their currency is steadily devalued), but I don't see it as an intellectually inevitable problem. Why do “the arts” need to be distinct from, broadly defined, physical cultural production ? After all, if you’re an english professor, you might tend to define “the arts” as a kind of privileged space within human imaginitive creation, with all the eurocentric particularisms the discipline implies: paintings, novels, plays, yes; stories, music, social-networks, participatory rituals, etc, not so much. But this has everything to do with a very historically particular conception of “The Arts” that excludes the vast majority of stuff that anthropologists might call “culture.” For the “english professor” type perspective, changing moralities and social contexts do pose a threat to those historically particular forms: films and tv replace novels, for example, as the kind of social lubricant that makes “modern” living bearable. If you’re an English professor with an investment in novels, then this might be a bad thing. But does it have to be for everybody? If we take “art” to be a more broadly understood function of social activities, then there’s no reason why a new morality can’t include new forms of art, which is to say, reconceptualizations of what art is. English departments tend to be really bad at thinking about the ways that a video game, for example, is as relevent a piece of art as a novel (probably much more), because the Arnoldian sense of high culture still jockeys for space alongside more historicist notions of cultural production, but, frankly, that’s their problem. It’s an institutional conundrum for people who would like to retain privileged status in the cultural economy (even as their currency is steadily devalued), but I don’t see it as an intellectually inevitable problem.

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