Modern Mozart

[roryk]

In Squarepusher's wikipedia entry he says that he thinks that classical composers were restrained by their instruments and that computers have allowed modern composers musical freedom from that restraint. His point is excellent, and it has to logically be true. There are only so many sounds a violin can make, only so many sounds a tuba or a cello

Comments

[roryk]

If Jackson Pollock was not such an incredibly tragic guy, would you still look at his art now and find something in it? If he was a guy walking around in a suit and tie, completely well adjusted, a regular business man, who did art on the side, he went home and kind of drizzled some paint on the canvas, carefully and all of that, as kind of catharsis to get out his frustrations from work at not being able to close some business deals, would you still find something in the painting? I think what happens is people find out about Pollocks life, find out the passion he put into his paintings and then afterwards, when they look at the painting, they see that in the painting. They identify with Pollock himself, his pain and what not in the painting.

If the process is what you find as the beauty then you should find beauty in all of the copycats of Pollock as well, because they all do the same process. Since you originally had no response to the painting itself, you have no appreciation for the actual painting, it is all just the process. So you should respond equally the same to any Pollock knockoff. But you don't. So most likely your response is your response to Pollock himself, not the process through which he created his paintings. When you see his painting, you do see the process in which he created the painting, but you see the pain and everything he put into the creation of the painting and that is what you are responding to.