academica-ica
recently i have been thinking quite a bit about how people are engaged by art.
a number of tangents related to this have been floating around in my head, so i'll see if i can write some direct prose instead of just the mind dump that seems to happen here from time to time. here's how it started...
the newmusicbox has been pulling some interesting bits out of me, first i commented on the cobain vs. tenney debate and then on the Stuckists dilemma, all of which hinged on the philosophical issue of value in music. i took the side of the formalist viewpoint, saying that the only way we can subjectively measure the quality of music if we separate the delineated meanings from the inherent meanings and judge it based solely on the inherent meanings. this stirred up quite a bit of fervor about this topic and brought out comments like this:
"And perhaps the biggest problem the post-post-modernist generation is figuring out how to decide what is good without resorting to the heavy handed generalizations that have plagued all discussion of contemporary music for such a long time...So maybe a little bad art is displayed sometimes. What could be the harm of it? Eventually, after we come to some sort of agreement on those intangibles inherent in art, we'll know the good from the bad. But right now, who cares?"
this guy is obviously a post-modernist for believing that no system of criteria to critique art is better than a flawed criteria. i don't believe the formalist viewpoint is the "be-all, end-all" measure of a piece's worth, but it is just one of any number of lenses, if you will, through which a person can perceive a work of art. obviously the formalists were not the end of aesthetic theory, because they are almost non-existent today, but they do have some valid points.
secondly, someone quoted Geoffrey Woolf in this situation:
"Aren't we supposed to make a judgment based on an aesthetic criteria of shared values? Perhaps people have become so individualistic that creating an aesthetic criteria is no longer possible...It's hard to be subversive in an age that retains no shared values to subvert."
so mr. Woolf hits it on the head, i think, with this one. what the first guy said, about the post-post-modernist generation having to bear the burden on this one, is true. the post-post-modernist generation has taken over now and the strong centralization of analysis found in musical academia in the mid-twentieth century is dissolute now. the subversiveness of Cage and Young, and others has fractured the criteria, which is probably for the better, but what do we do now?
i see quite a bit of elitism in academia detracting from the acceptance of popular art music. it seems that art music not presented in a concert-like setting with seats and what not is not taken seriously. the work of godspeed you black emperor! comes to mind right away when talking about this. i have to say that the music godspeed has created is inherently worthwhile and valuable. it can't compare to the intellectual or musical value of other works by better composers, but it is nonetheless worthwhile. i know many professors of music in many institutions who would blow by it at first glance alone. and given the opportunity to analyze their work and study it in the same breath that we study minimalist works by other composers, they would pass it up. so what ends up happening is the elitists preserve themselves by not taking the time to study it and then they can't find worth in it, because they haven't studied it. this is the problem the post-modern and post-post-modern generations face, without criteria there is no way to say one work is better than another, but there is also no way of showing the worth of a piece.
so there you go, now everyone knows that this post-post-modernist is just as conservative as musical academia, because if you want to be accepted as a "classic" work of art, you have to show the academics the only way they know how.
a number of tangents related to this have been floating around in my head, so i'll see if i can write some direct prose instead of just the mind dump that seems to happen here from time to time. here's how it started...
the newmusicbox has been pulling some interesting bits out of me, first i commented on the cobain vs. tenney debate and then on the Stuckists dilemma, all of which hinged on the philosophical issue of value in music. i took the side of the formalist viewpoint, saying that the only way we can subjectively measure the quality of music if we separate the delineated meanings from the inherent meanings and judge it based solely on the inherent meanings. this stirred up quite a bit of fervor about this topic and brought out comments like this:
"And perhaps the biggest problem the post-post-modernist generation is figuring out how to decide what is good without resorting to the heavy handed generalizations that have plagued all discussion of contemporary music for such a long time...So maybe a little bad art is displayed sometimes. What could be the harm of it? Eventually, after we come to some sort of agreement on those intangibles inherent in art, we'll know the good from the bad. But right now, who cares?"
this guy is obviously a post-modernist for believing that no system of criteria to critique art is better than a flawed criteria. i don't believe the formalist viewpoint is the "be-all, end-all" measure of a piece's worth, but it is just one of any number of lenses, if you will, through which a person can perceive a work of art. obviously the formalists were not the end of aesthetic theory, because they are almost non-existent today, but they do have some valid points.
secondly, someone quoted Geoffrey Woolf in this situation:
"Aren't we supposed to make a judgment based on an aesthetic criteria of shared values? Perhaps people have become so individualistic that creating an aesthetic criteria is no longer possible...It's hard to be subversive in an age that retains no shared values to subvert."
so mr. Woolf hits it on the head, i think, with this one. what the first guy said, about the post-post-modernist generation having to bear the burden on this one, is true. the post-post-modernist generation has taken over now and the strong centralization of analysis found in musical academia in the mid-twentieth century is dissolute now. the subversiveness of Cage and Young, and others has fractured the criteria, which is probably for the better, but what do we do now?
i see quite a bit of elitism in academia detracting from the acceptance of popular art music. it seems that art music not presented in a concert-like setting with seats and what not is not taken seriously. the work of godspeed you black emperor! comes to mind right away when talking about this. i have to say that the music godspeed has created is inherently worthwhile and valuable. it can't compare to the intellectual or musical value of other works by better composers, but it is nonetheless worthwhile. i know many professors of music in many institutions who would blow by it at first glance alone. and given the opportunity to analyze their work and study it in the same breath that we study minimalist works by other composers, they would pass it up. so what ends up happening is the elitists preserve themselves by not taking the time to study it and then they can't find worth in it, because they haven't studied it. this is the problem the post-modern and post-post-modern generations face, without criteria there is no way to say one work is better than another, but there is also no way of showing the worth of a piece.
so there you go, now everyone knows that this post-post-modernist is just as conservative as musical academia, because if you want to be accepted as a "classic" work of art, you have to show the academics the only way they know how.