Distractions in a portrait

[GerrySiegel]

Fred, I think I understand your views and it defines what you value in art, a bit of daring, a prod to the conventions we often hide behind. And a push to look harder and think harder about something we may have missed in our everyday routine. That is probably the goal of high art or fine art.

 

To be cutting edge is a good worthy thought and I admire cutting edge when I sense it. One could argue that cutting edge is something so outside any conventional standards that only history can judge its lasting value. So be it.

 

I don't use the word tasteful or responsible even when I admire or study a photograph (although it is good to be able to share the experience with someone else who feels the same way about said piece). Yet I do not call most art that disturbs me as good,obviously and more so lately,nowadays.

 

I can try to explain my view with an example from cinema. I just watched a screening of the movie Oxbow Incident from 1943 with Henry Fonda. When Orson Welles left the original preview he was quoted as saying " These people (the preview audience) don't know what they have seen." Perceptive,because the movie has many layers and leaves a numbing but penetrating effect that is disturbing and applicable to the human condition-still art,sixty years later. So I guess I personally define art,and its "standards, in a different way than you-which is ok,VERY OK in fact or no discussion ensues,right?. I want to be "moved" but not insulted or demeaned.

 

I was moved by " A History of Violence." by David Kronenberg. I was unmoved by his film " Crash" and by his latest Russian mob movie with fine actors. And I can only define the difference as lacking in refinement and getting too much in my face and in my guts and too dark and black a view of the condition humane.

 

I don't need an autopsy to appreciate the human body. But an autopsy goes much deeper,doesn't it ? ( last is an overreach,but I hope it helps make my point) gs

[Norma Desmond]

GS--

 

I don't see where we disagree much at all. By the way, I, too, was moved by History of

Violence and thought Crash was highly overrated. I agree that Crash was in-your-face

much more for the sake of being in-your-face and History was more nuanced and refined.

I didn't mean to, and hope I didn't, imply that just cutting edge was enough for me. It's got

to be done well also.

 

Kirk--

 

I think it's ok for an artist to present something fearful and leave it at that. I don't think

s/he has any responsibility (although a responsibility to be true to his or herself is

admirable) to take it further. I think, if presented in a deep and thoughtful manner,

something fearful can be left at that and the audience can come away and have to deal

with it as they may.

 

One of my problems, for instance, with a lot of contemporary

American movies (Both Crash and Million Dollar Baby have won Academy Awards for Best

Picture and fall into this category) are that they are too morally easy and black and white.

Movies like this direct -- a stronger and probably more apt word would be "manipulate" --

our thinking and don't allow us a morally gray area in which to dwell for a while. I like to

come away from a film and be able to discuss with others whether a certain character did

the right thing or not, rather than being banged over the head with what I should think as

both Kronenberg and Eastwood did in the movies mentioned.

 

Take Brokeback Mountain which, notably, didn't win the Academy Award for best picture.

There is a whole lot more moral ambituity there and it leaves one needing to really search

their heart for what spin to put on the events of the movie. At the same time as we are led

to feel the pain of the two leading men, confronted with a necessarily closeted gay

relationship in a world determined to see to it that they couldn't live the life they wanted,

we are confronted with the shattered lives and wives these two men are forced to leave in

their wake. So while we're cheering for them, we're forced to realize that means that we

are, in fact, cheering for them to break the hearts of their wives and leave their children

behind.

 

Some artists may effectively stop at the point where they've heightened those fears and

that's enough. Warhol didn't wrap up or solve the problem of drug abuse or sexual

abandon in any of his films. He simply explored a side of life that is usually not brought

into view. Did he glorify drug use? Did he glorify prostitution? It's not really about that. It's

simply about what it is in very much the same way as his Campbell Soup Can is about what

it is. I don't think he would agree, and neither do I, that it's better to use honey or lace.

 

I think a good artist (Martin Scorcese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver) doesn't have to allay

the fears he sets up or make them less threatening. Scorcese's fears, just like the things

that haunt Truffaut in Jules and Jim, are left looming. They're real and they're addressed in

all their reality. They aren't resolved. And that's honest.

[kirk d]

Good points Fred, I certainly do find knock you over the head predictable movies boring or at least not worth a second viewing so I'm glad you used movies as an example. Throws a new light on the physical medium we began discussing - thanks. I'm not nearly as studied in art as you are so while I'll use the names you mention to research, I have to rely on your description to understand your point. I've gone mostly on unknown artist/sculptors I've know personally; one of the darkest/bizarre/cinically of them, Kevin Faust, died from HIV 27 years ago. He was good and in hindsight, he did just do what he wanted but because his bizarre style, he was never recognized and unable to get his ideas out. Didn't really bother him I guess but it would have been nice.

Anyway, thanks to you and Gerry, I'll have to watch my use of tasteful and responsibility so as not to be pigeonholed into something I'm not.

 

You think we should have started another topic about 50 paragraphs ago?

 

Kirk

[Norma Desmond]

I think we did!

 

Keep using terminology however you like. It stimulates discussion and I like talking about

this stuff with you. Taxi Driver is a great movie but some consider it to have more violence

than they'd like to see. But it's a pretty persuasive argument for what I'm talking about.

Instills a lot of fear and dark feelings without necessarily making nice of them in the long

run.

[kirk d]

True and I think to take your second paragraph further we should register on Siskel and Eibert's website - not.

 

Have a good weekend.

 

Kirk