Art / Not Art

Julie H · September 21, 2013

.

It can sew, it can cook,

It can talk, talk, talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.

You have a hole, it's a poultice.

You have an eye, it's an image.

My boy, it's your last resort.

Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

— Sylvia Plath, from The Applicant

</blockquote>

.

***************

It is a heart,

This holocaust I walk in,

O golden child the world will kill and eat.

— Sylvia Plath, from Mary's Song

</blockquote>

.

***************

HEAD & NECK. The head is symmetrical and is covered by abundant dark brown long hair. The conjunctiva are congested: the cornea are cloudy. Pupils are round. Irides are brown. Sclerae are decomposed. The exernal ears and nose are not remarkable. Natural teeth are present. The neck is symmetrical.

INTERNAL EXAMINATION

[ ... ]

CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM: The heart lies within the sac and weights 320 grams. The coronary arteries are widely patent. The mural endocardium, valves, and myocardium are not remarkable. The aorta and its major branches are not remarkable.

GENITALIA: [i'll spare you]

HEAD: The scalp is incised by an intermastoid incision. A segment of calvarium is removed and dura incised. There is no evidence of trauma. The brain weighs 1380 grams. The leptomeninges are slightly congested. On serial section the brain shows nothing remarkable. ....

— from the autopsy report of Diane Arbus

</blockquote>

.

***************

What a thrill —

My thumb instead of an onion.

The top quite gone

Except for a sort of a hinge

Of skin,

A flap like a hat,

Dead white.

Then that red plush.

— Sylvia Plath, from Cut

</blockquote>

,

Norma Desmond · September 21, 2013

“Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.”

-- Dr. Seuss

charleswood · September 21, 2013

Roland: "It is obvious that I am then in the process of fetishizing a corpse."

fetishizing: an excessive and irrational commitment to or obsession with (something).

A coroner isn't fetishizing, isn't making to an object an excessive and irrational obsessive commitment.

To Sylvia I would say: you can't have it both ways, you can't on the one hand differentiate and on the other hand not be a companion to solitude. Trying to have it both ways invites depression, you can't unlearn the rip in culture to re-embrace norms that don't work for you. And it is tiring to endlessly argue with norms that after all are slavenly biological, are about food and reproduction. Solitude is a poultice.

If you cut your thumb severely you may disassociate from yourself, from your body. That can help a person do what they need to do, right?

I don't see Roland as content with his infatuations: they control his life and he seems complacent with his choice to let his obsession control his life. Art shouldn't celebrate his choice, his book isn't art, though artfully written I would guess. Because he is being artful with himself, lives without resolution. Roland is tensioned between opposites and that yo-yo insists that he behold both aspects of the beloved within his mind at the same time without fear, to hear instead what is thought of him by the beloved, rather than to have in his mind all the noise he creates by being beside himself at its fearsome appearance. Nothing from Roland about how his beloved measures him. You would think that he would care about that. No signs of his caring from the short excerpts here.

charleswood · September 21, 2013

Or, even a male and female dog become bewildered when, uncomprehendingly they become attached, both stuck and dragging each other around in their futile attempts to separate, each wondering how the heck this could have come from something that seemed so grand. I don't think you an have art without something grand and equally not so grand.

michaellinder · September 21, 2013

I have more to think about and then to say about my previous comments and those posted after mine. This will have to wait until later. (I know all of you are waiting with baited breath!)

charleswood · September 22, 2013

Well what a joke. 'Roland' actually being Proust/Dostoyevsky, and Julie won't properly attribute quoted text to the correct author? Here is the actual Roland in his "How this book is constructed":

What is proposed, then, is a portrait-but not a psychological portrait; instead, a structural one which offers the reader a discursive site: the site of someone speaking within himself, amorously, confronting the other (the loved object), who does not speak.

</blockquote>

Eavesdropping at the site of someone else speaking within themselves, amorously, confronting the other (the loved object), who does not speak: that is a psychological portrait which in its content may reveal psychological structures. [A Jungian would offer those internal dialogs with "Other" as examples of active imagination. But in the method called active imagination, you actually are supposed to have a dialog with the 'other', let the 'other' speak.] Yet Roland says he isn't offering psychological portraits, is offering structural portraits. Naturally, being a bad philosopher, he doesn't have to define his terms, leaving us to wonder where we missed the explanation of just what a structural portrait is. In effect, he methodically renames a chicken as a cow and offers that substitution to his reader as the revelation of a "Great Thinker" without bothering to explain how a psychological portrait (from which structures can be gleaned) isn't as wonderful as just a plain old Roland style structural portrait.

A little more:

These fragments of discourse [fragments of lovers discourse, if you care] can be called figures. The word is to be understood, not in its rhetorical sense, but rather in its gymnastic or choreographic acceptation;

</blockquote>

Yes Roland, I guess those fragments can be called figures. But you haven't convinced me that they shouldn't just be called fragments. For example, I didn't know that the word 'figures' could be understood in a rhetorical sense, a gymnastic acceptation, or a choreographic acceptation. I doubt anyone else knew that either. (Acceptation: generally recognized meaning). Well what on earth then are we take the word 'figure' as actually meaning to a great thinker?

Again, Roland:

Figures take shape insofar as we can recognize, in passing discourse, something that has been read, heard, felt. The figure is outlined (like a sign) and memorable (like an image or a tale). A figure is established at least "That's so true! I recognize that scene of language."

</blockquote>

Boy, that last sentence is either an abject failure in the original or in the translation if a crescendo of clarity was the sentences purpose, which I doubt clarity as its purpose. It sounds more like, with that last sentence, he just plain old gave up on trying to making himself clear. Dear Roland, the point is to tell us clearly just what the heck you mean in using the word figure since its common meaning isn't sufficient to a great intellectual like you; the point is to make your special meaning just as clear as the common meaning: or find another word to use that has a common meaning that actually fits your purpose. Because if you were clear we could clearly see whether nor not you should have just stuck with the word fragment and made your preface shorter in the bargain.

<a href="http://www.haraldpeterstrom.com/content/5.pdfs/Roland%20Barthes%20A%20Lovers%20Discourse%20fragments.pdf">http://www.haraldpeterstrom.com/content/5.pdfs/Roland%20Barthes%20A%20Lovers%20Discourse%20fragments.pdf</a>

michaellinder · September 22, 2013

Fred:

I am grateful for your sharing your experience of your mother's death. Certainly I accept the distinction between life and death as a difference in kind.

You make an important statement - that you were still caring for your mother after she had died. At that point, the body you were attending still was hers. It was not simply a body, a corpse. If you see a corpse lying in an alley as you are taking a late evening walk, you probably will not associate it with a person's identity and you probably will not have any particular emotional reaction (except perhaps feeling that it is a shame for a nameless corpse to lie unattended in an alley).

My only experience of a loved one's dying was two years ago, and I watched my 95 year old father-in-law transmute from a physically strong and vibrant person who still was convinced that he could drive, work, and chase women to, pardon the expression, a mere shell of what he was before. This happened after he had been moved from a hospital to a rehab facility and then to an assisted living facility, which is where he died. Like your mother, fortunately he was cared for by hospice personnel, who made sure that his preparing to die was done with dignity and humanity. But my last visit while he still was alive was ghastly. He was totally non responsive. His mouth was wide open and he was intermittently gasping for breath. Blood had pooled in his feet, and the soles of his had turned blue. My wife and I told him that we loved him and that it was OK to let go, and said our goodbyes. In all likelihood, he didn't hear us. Hopefully he still felt us and and felt what we were saying.

Again, objectively I accept a difference in kind between life and death. Like my earlier responses to Julie, when I prefer to think of this as a process. Something I read states, "We all are travelers on the same road that leads to the same end."

Not sure how this applies to the OP. For whatever it's worth, I think Julie's first and third quotes from yesterday are excellent examples of objectifying a person. ("Hell is other people."} But, Barthes' use of the phrases "adverse body" and "loved body" do not involve objectification at all. These phrases refer to a person's experience.

Norma Desmond · September 22, 2013

Michael, thanks. Just to make sure I was clear, I was saying there is not necessarily a "difference in kind" in all ways of looking at it and from all perspectives. As you noted, there are situational differences and some are situations, IMO, in which needing to assert a "difference in kind" flies in the face of the actual humanity and lovingness of the situation. I have seen dead bodies on the street and I have associated them with a person even though I didn't know the person, and I had quite a strong emotional reaction. Just because I wouldn't have the same expectations of a dead body doesn't mean it doesn't have all manner of power over me.

When you say "objectively I accept a difference in kind between life and death" what do you mean? How are you using "objectively" in that sentence? And what difference would it make if you said "subjectively I accept a difference . . . "

I might say, "scientifically I accept a difference in kind between a live body and a dead body" but as a loving, living, and feeling human being there are aspects of a so-called difference in kind I don't accept . . . which means there are other than scientific or academic perspectives from which that difference simply is not there.

Something very important here, I think, is that Barthes is actually NOT talking about the difference between life and death (and I mistakenly talked about that difference in an earlier post). Michael, you addressed life and death as well. He's talking about a live body and a dead one and there is even less of a distinction there, since the concept of body ties the two together somewhat inextricably. That's why I talked about my mother's mouth, her ring finger, etc. These are all aspects of her body that I was intimate with over the span of a lifetime. While of course her death, especially in those first moments, changed my relationship to her body, there was still a profound connection to it, enough for me to say I did not experience the difference in kind others are making claim to. She still had a very physical presence in the room, as well as an emotional one, and that physical presence, her body, I will not deny as a quite significant part of her. That mouth, which she inherited from her mother and I have inherited from her, did not suddenly morph into something else when she took her last breath. Her heart may have stopped beating but I didn't lose my connection to the body lying before me.

It's easy for Barthes to talk from behind the safety net of his pen or typewriter. But he doesn't speak for me. I watched as the Hospice nurses cared for this "body" as they washed and groomed it just a bit before the undertakers got there. They had experienced the same obvious changes as me. But they didn't treat it as if they were keen on a "difference in kind." But, they were down in the trenches. Not writing about it from on high.

Norma Desmond · September 22, 2013

It's also probably a good time to get back to the original question, which was about art, not dead bodies. I'd even be willing to stipulate that there is a difference in kind between a dead body and living one if someone could then argue for using that as an analogy to art/not art. Because, to my way of understanding it, art/not art is pretty much nothing like life/not life. Since art depends so much on artifice, the analogy actually misses one of the most significant aspects of art . . . and that's it's almost necessary contradictory quality. The NOT is resident in the IS.

"Art is a lie that tells the truth."

--Pablo Picasso

Another one who was down in the trenches.

charleswood · September 22, 2013

Fred - But, Barthes' use of the phrases "adverse body"

There seems to be some confusion here despite my having pointed out that Barthes said no such thing: he was quoting Proust, just as the other except from Julie was Barthes quoting Dostoyevsky.

In fact, when Julie wrote of one of the excerpts: "Poor Roland", she seemed to not be aware of the fact her quotes were from Proust/Dostoyevsky. I certainly wasn't aware of that but became aware of it when I actually found Love's Discourse and put a link to it in my earlier post.

Really, as it sits, without an acknowledgement from Julie, she more or less has presented Barthes to us as a plagiarist. I think it important that this thread include her correction of that misrepresentation.

Norma Desmond · September 22, 2013

Got it, Charles. I was much more focused on your own thoughts, Michael's own thoughts, and my own thoughts about bodies and art and was just riffing off the ideas present in the quotes without too much concern for their attribution. But that's definitely unfair to Barthes and I appreciate your attention to and correction of the boo-boo. In any case, my main reaction to the OP and the thread is to want to clearly reject the idea that there's a difference in kind between ART and NOT ART, since I think such a hard distinction misses many of the more significant aspects of art.

_____________________________________________

[Charles, when lengthy quotes are presented, they are done so out of context, so I never take for granted what the author may actually have been getting at or the larger point the author may have been making. I try to just stick with the ideas as presented in the quotes and discuss the specific ideas as they inspire my own thoughts, not assuming that there's transparency about what the author intended, since often the context of the author's use of those ideas has not been established. Most of us have read enough Philosophy to know that, often, a Philosopher will present a set of ideas rather convincingly only to then shoot them down one by one to make his own thesis more salient. So, when we quote a Philosopher out of context, we are as likely to be quoting stuff he is soon going to reject as we are to be quoting something he would stand by.

Instead of referring to Barthes, I should simply have referred to the ideas tossed about regarding bodies and how those ideas didn't really fit for me.]

charleswood · September 22, 2013

OK thanks Fred I feel better.

Julie H · September 23, 2013

.

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lovers-Discourse-Fragments-Roland-Barthes/dp/0374532311/ref=sr_1_1/191-7297334-2681268?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379921896&sr=1-1&keywords=Lover%27s+discourse+by+roland+Barthes">http://www.amazon.com/Lovers-Discourse-Fragments-Roland-Barthes/dp/0374532311/ref=sr_1_1/191-7297334-2681268?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379921896&sr=1-1&keywords=Lover%27s+discourse+by+roland+Barthes</a>

.

Julie H · September 23, 2013

I've already described how I experience image-as-art (as phase change from seeing it as not-art) -- "near" and the knocking at the door analogy. Here, below, is what it's like for me to go in the other direction. I'm using the work of Bernd & Hillla Becher (their work is a good example of Wouter's "the whole series together starts to tell me something else ...").

If I open their book Coal Mines and Steel Mills, I get a long, well-written essay by Heinz Liesbrock that includes the kind of thing that is usually written about the Bechers' work (I hope you're familiar with them; if not, Google is your friend ...). For example, "[Their] confidence recognizes in things a beauty and an expression, to which a portrayal as precise and true as possible in a photograph does justice best," and "The artists directly responded to 'strong' forms such as those offered above all by heavy industry. They wanted to lend them a voice, wanted to show their compact might in as true a light as possible, to enable them to live on in images," and "Looking at the photographs, it sometimes seems that we encounter in the objects individuals with their character. Indeed, the Bechers' art demonstrates a stronger interest in this strange life of inanimate objects than in the presence of people, with their variable identities," and "They thought the formal correspondences that developed between the individual objects should be evident horizontally, vertically and also diagonally. This produces an unmistakable motion, a reserved overall harmony that encompasses all the elements. A specific mindset, the spirit of industrial energy at a particular time and place, assumes tangible form in this harmonious sound of forms -- behind which the object and its special qualities retreat."

I know nothing about coal mines or steel mills or any of the other industrial plant groupings that the Bechers work with. Looking at their pictures, I might get flavors of both monstrous, broodiness and a melancholy sense of aspirations spent. I don't recall ever thinking about steel or coal or whatever it is that the whole industrial-plant-as-a-machine in fact is/was or does.

Until, that is, I open the Bechers' book, Stonework and Lime Kilns. Unlike the previous book, described above, this one begins with only a short three page totally factual explanation of how stonework plants and lime kilns work. For example, "The kilns are fed on a continuous basis from above with a mixture of 90 percent limestone and 10 percent coking coal. While the coking coal burns to generate the necessary process heat of between 900°C and 1,300°C, the fired limestone slides downward and leaves the kiln via a rotating cone."

I found the descriptions fascinating, and when, subsequently I looked at the Bechers' pictures, I was seeking the process that had been described -- to the extent that I found their artistic perspectives a little annoying at times because I couldn't find what I thought should have been there in order to figure out how a particular kiln was set up to do what it was supposed to do (old lime kilns are really cool, nutty looking things ...). In an odd way, the obvious beauty of many of the pictures was mildly annoying because it was distracting.

charleswood · September 23, 2013

Take a look at the photo of the day here: <a href="/photo/16036372">http://www.photo.net/photo/16036372</a>

Graham Peel's offered crop is definitely not art, reduces the photo in my opinion to a good snapshot. The rip in the veil, the knocking on the door in the photo "kids" for me is the Caucasian eye, perhaps a boy's, in the lower left. Without the third eye on the left, there would be nothing in 'kids' to react to other than the superficial personal appearances of the two girls and only that superficial appearance to contemplate. Without the third partial figure, the photo doesn't ask us to consider much of the destiny of the two girls (only the power of beauty is suggested in and by Graham's crop), doesn't ask us to consider more largely the oppression of women or other issues related to the issue of power between developed and developing worlds. Without the third figure, we have loveliness in a vacuum. With the third figure we have something to think about.

The male view of art, present in Judy's offering of lime kilns as well as in the photo of the day: a big picture with the important details irksomely left out.

Norma Desmond · September 23, 2013

Charles, I see the original and the suggested crop as a matter of taste and/or a matter of good and bad or better (the original) and not as good (the crop). Since I do think there is much bad art, I'm not as quick to flick the art switch to the off position.

I think it's another case where body of work would be important to how I'd assess the photo and the fifth eye in the corner. Ian's portfolio does not seem gimmicky to me. The POTW has the potential to feel gimmicky and I bet that's the problem some people have with it. If it were shown among a bunch of other photos that utilized a similar framing device or this kind of unexpected edge-of-the-frame anomaly, I'd probably object. But given the context of Ian's other work, I assume it was a pretty genuine move and this is what and how he wanted us to relate to the two kids, or at least how he related to them. I'm definitely willing to accept that. Context and bigger picture play a role in that acceptance.

charleswood · September 24, 2013

A wise and respected community member recently said:

I see a huge pile of poop [speaking of the contentiousness within the political topics of the OT forum] with a few nuggets of gold stashed therein, and ask myself "How willing am I to look for that gold today?"

</blockquote>

I thought that Mr. Jenkins could as well have been speaking of art and our problem here on how to distinguish art from the rest. Coal Mines and Steel Mills is art to some, and to me it isn't. Like the cropped version of the photograph of beautiful children, something important isn't being said in those steel mill photographs. The "fifth eye" has even been omitted from the commentator's discussion of the steel mills:

"[Their] confidence recognizes in things a beauty and an expression, to which a portrayal as precise and true as possible in a photograph does justice best,"

</blockquote>

Beautiful and precise those steel mill pictures, as is the cropped photo of beautiful children. And:

"The artists directly responded to 'strong' forms such as those offered above all by heavy industry. They wanted to lend them a voice, wanted to show their compact might in as true a light as possible, to enable them to live on in images,"

</blockquote>

To my great-grandfather those mills represented long days and long weeks of toil for little. My great-grandmother, taking her husband his forgotten lunch, seeing him at work for the first time, wept. She had no idea, she didn't know how hard and under what conditions he worked. Which corpse should I fetishize, that of a steel mill, that never lived and therefore can't "live on", or that of my great-grandfather, who lived and who lives on in many?

We don't weep upon seeing ruined steel mills, but we might if art somehow suggested that we could as well. The masquerade of those steel mill pictures is their pretense of being apolitical. Yet they couldn't be more political.

Norma Desmond · September 24, 2013

Charles, to put it in Picasso's terms, what you find in those mill pics is a lie without a truth in it or behind it. Judging by the various critiques I read daily and a tiptoe through the top-rated photos, most people are very content with the lie part and don't care to have the truth. They want to be pleased . . . entertained. Often, they don't like so-called "manipulated" photos, thinking that's because those photos don't tell the truth. They've mistaken inaccuracy for a lack of truth . . . foolishly. They'll take easy-to-digest accuracy any day over harder-to-swallow truths. The fifth eye had a sort of authenticity and truth, if only in the humor the photographer found in it, though I found more in it. The non-cleansed framing put people off. In his last post, Stephen, someone who I have great respect for, said, "My comments on this photo were intended to take it into a more traditional aesthetic, simply because that's what I generally prefer." Because I have such respect for Stephen, I'd want to figure out the right way to ask him why, because he prefers a more traditional aesthetic, he would want someone else to go in that direction. I don't know what art is, honestly, I feel it more than I know it. But part of it is acceptance. The acceptance of other ways of expressing things and seeing the world. That makes critique even harder. Where do we draw the line between acceptance and criticism? Can I ever make a suggestion, humbly, without undermining someone else's vision? How do I do that? Best place to start is probably by asking questions rather than diving into fix-it mode.

Acceptance of strange and even off-putting visions is part of the reason I don't much care for the ART IS / ART IS NOT dichotomy. A lot of THIS IS NOT ART turns out to be the best art. So it was art after all. We just couldn't see it because the switch had been turned off when we were looking.

Norma Desmond · September 24, 2013

What about from the artist's perspective, and not just the viewer.

If art is lived, and I think it is, does an artist turn off the switch? Can she? Must he?

Sure, it can be distracting. Why not?

michaellinder · September 25, 2013

I agree, Fred. Preconceived notions of anything, including art, cloud our vision.

michaellinder · September 25, 2013

Julie: Congratulations on the POTW. I'm still not clear about how you explained your distinction between art and not-art. Can you please provide some further explanation as it relates to your image?

Julie H · September 25, 2013

*sigh*

Thanks, Michael. What I've been *trying* to do in this thread is to suss out what goes on when "art" happens (where, when, why, how?) during a person's experience of pictures ... but nobody seems to read what I actually wrote.

To scientists, documentarists, journalists, anthropologists, ethnographers, criminologists, historians, it matters a great deal where/when/how a picture is or is not artistic. And in the opposite direction, it also matters to artists. So I was hoping people (or, as it turns out, only me) would try feeling out what happens if one looks at a picture as art and then looks at the same picture as evidence. I can't offer any more "explanation" than I already have, other than hoping somebody reading this may actually try it and think about what they discover -- whatever that may be. I am not saying "it is this!" or "it is not that!"

Norma Desmond · September 25, 2013

Julie, consider that everyone else has read what you wrote. It is often not easy to understand what you're getting at. Clarity, like google, can be your friend.

I think it may be that many of us simply choose not to address the issue in the same grammar as you.

Your description of the two perspectives with which the Becher's work is approached, both by the writers of the accompanying text and by you as viewer is simply not descriptive of how the whole thing works for me. Your desire that we address these things on your terms is inelegant. As I said, acceptance sometimes helps. Listen to what others are saying and the grammar of their approaches rather than expecting them to take up your mantle. They're discussing the issue but with a different vocabulary.

It is not that the beauty or forms have to be distracting or have to be art's way of invading the purview of science and that science needs to assert itself in order to reign supreme over art for the moment, so scientists and curious viewers can better understand how a mill works. What if understanding the mill, truly, deeply, genuinely, IS the art, or part of it? Not only the psychologist gets to question and understand human nature and behavior. The portraitist may do well to do that, too. It will give his art depth. The portraitist is not distracted by the psychology of his subjects, or if he is he appreciates that tension and works with it. So much art is superficial, a portrait reduced to an airbrushed pretty face, precisely because the artists are compartmentalizing their art instead of broadening and deepening it to include other things like the underpinnings of what makes their subjects tick.

Consider an actor researching his role sometime. A lot of what he's doing doesn't "look like" art. But it is.

charleswood · September 25, 2013

....but nobody seems to read what I actually wrote.

Communication is a two way street. Frankly Julie, you don't seem to have read what I wrote, and perhaps others feel that way after responding to you too. You so selectively respond to others here that you come off in a way that you probably don't intend.

There isn't one word, one sentence, once concept that is worth your time if you feel you can't communicate it to others and if you are defeated in so doing it probably wasn't worth your time anyway.

michaellinder · September 25, 2013

Julie:

Despite appearances to the contrary, I do (and did) understand your earlier post when you described art in experiential terms, i.e., "nearness." For at least the sake of this discussion, I can accept this.

So, do you consider the POTW to be art?

Sign In

Art / Not Art

Recommended Posts

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

Create an account

Sign in