Oi! Who Arted?

Involving yourself in art is a way of saying: If more people were like me, the world would be a better place. Enzo.. Buy my book! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Local-Time-Ben-Ingber/dp/1846855187

I wouldn't have thought that ALL 'written word' is art, Tim. A healthy proportion is the dissemination of information, (apart from the worse than useless manual that came with the satnav toy I bought recently). I wouldn't have thought that biography/autobiography is written from an 'art' standpoint either, though I recognise it CAN be artistic. Which leaves poetry, plays and novels (have I left anything out?). It seems to me that the 'art' writing has at least two very valid points. Firstly it entertains and gives pleasure, and secondly it stimulates thought and develops the intellect. Ain't that enough?

I think this is a silly argument. 'Art' only obscures reality if the reader already has a predispostion to being reality-challenged. Otherwise, they're just stories/poems, much as we have spoken/written for millennia, or paintings on the wall, etc. I would be more inclined to question the purpose of writing a book about questioning the purpose of art. Are there not more gripping issues to contemplate, and aren't works of this sort the pontifications of someone who is thoroughly wedged high up his own arse?

"Are there not more gripping issues to contemplate?" Absolutely - and it's (hopefully) through the reading of literature that we can develop the insights - social, moral, emotional, etc - that will enable us better to contemplate and perhaps deal with those issues. How many people are there who say that their lives have been changed by reading a book? And look at the effect that the works of Dickens - despite the sensationalism and sentimentality - had on attitudes to the poor. Matthew Arnold believed that, with the waning of religious certainty, literature could be seen as the one remaining source of value and order. A high claim, maybe, but a compelling one. Hazlitt said that, through literature, "we are brought acquainted with the motives and characters of mankind, imbibe our notions of virtue and vice from practical examples, and are taught a knowledge of the world through the airy medium of romance." I'd go along with the gist of that - certainly in terms of the effect that reading literature has had on me. Personally, I'd sooner start making large bonfires of things like television sets.

Oh, Tim. Art isn't supposed to represent 'reality'. So if all you're interested in is The Truth, it probably *is* better to leave art alone. But if all you're interested in is The Truth, you'll probably end up believing that we're all living inside the Matrix, and that it's really the future, or 100 AD, or the Germans won WW2. I've been reading mostly non-fiction books lately too, although I'm making an exception for Yoshitako Amano and Stanislaw Lem.

Alan: "Personally, I'd sooner start making large bonfires of things like television sets." Is there no "art" on TV then? pe ps oid ... What is "The Art of Tea"? ... (www.pepsoid.wordpress.com)

There is so much of life/existence for which the deep and unknowable (or at least as yet unknown) truth is expressed through art... Art expresses the possibilities. pe ps oid ... What is "The Art of Tea"? ... (www.pepsoid.wordpress.com)

Peps: Yeah, course there is - just being a provocative tinker! But if I had a choice between books and TVs as bonfire material, I know which one I'd use.

Alan: "Yeah, course there is - just being a provocative tinker!" ... ;-) Alan: "But if I had a choice between books and TVs as bonfire material, I know which one I'd use" What if it was books, TVs or Tony Blair? pe ps oid ... What is "The Art of Tea"? ... (www.pepsoid.wordpress.com)

"Not when the billions we spend in the UK on subsidising opera - for example - could be used to save countless lives in developing countries." Well, not really. Throwing money at a problem only does a certain amount of good. I don't think billions more pounds equates to countless more lives. OK, I'll take a bigger bite. I think setting out art as some separate entity that we can simply shut off, tolerate or promote is completely the wrong approach. It's better understood as an extension of our natural communicative and imaginative inclinations. Straightforward language is limited in its ability to effectively and convincingly communicate ideas and theories, or imaginative landscapes. Art can be seen as a diversification of language. Why communicate anything but the 'facts'? There's a scene in 'Silver Blaze', the same Sherlock Holmes story that 'curious Incident of the dog in the night-time' comes from, where Holmes says something like, "The one quality the good Inspector lacks is imagination. We imagined how the horse might have behaved, we acted upon that supposition, and now we are proved right." The sort of approach to life you suggest, concentrating only on the 'facts', brings to mind a figure standing over all the separate parts of a smashed watch, completely unable to comprehend that they were once part of the same object. Any cognitive ability beyond this is the beginnings of what eventually becomes art, once they progress onto more complex problems. Whether it is worth subsidising art with taxes is another question entirely. As soon as any significant amount of money is up for grabs, artists and people involved in the arts seem to clique together to get it, and keep it, and waste it. And from the government's POV, it's better if we're kept distracted by as many things as possible, so you could see the Arts Council as a kind of creche for adults.

'...from the government's POV, it's better if we're kept distracted by as many things as possible, so you could see the Arts Council as a kind of creche for adults.' I just laughed out loud at this. Spot on, JC.

"I think setting out art as some separate entity that we can simply shut off, tolerate or promote is completely the wrong approach. It's better understood as an extension of our natural communicative and imaginative inclinations. Straightforward language is limited in its ability to effectively and convincingly communicate ideas and theories, or imaginative landscapes. Art can be seen as a diversification of language." Well said, sir!

But our perception is likely to always be distorted, because it is so prone to being shaped by stories and imagination. In that respect, you could see *good* art not as a distorting force but a corrective lens that acts against the natural imperfections in our vision. Rather than art making us "view the world in terms of symbolism, utlity and meaning", I would argue that we possess the instinct to look for those things anyway, and what art can do is powerfully assert that they do not exist. It can, in fact, cause us to focus on things as they are, when we would prefer to simplify and categorise them for ease of navigation. Since Alan mentioned Dickens, let's look at him as an example. You could say that elements of his work highlighted the living conditions of the working classes, say, or the machinations of the law, in order to shake people out of a state of mind where they understand these things as necessary 'components' of a working society.

I do not believe the Arts Council is a creche. I think that if you had received money from them, you might sing an entirely different song. And yes, TV is shite.

Rokkitnite: "I'm not rejecting the value of imagination and conjecture, but I do think that they distort our perception and keep us at several removes from reality." But if, as seems to be the case, we do not (and perhaps cannot) understand the true ultimate nature of reality, how can we know that art is not actually bringing us closer to reality? Span: "And yes, TV is shite." Nahh, it's not... :-) pe ps oid ... What is "The Art of Tea"? ... (www.pepsoid.wordpress.com)

"I do not believe the Arts Council is a creche. I think that if you had received money from them, you might sing an entirely different song." I did say one *could* look at it that way, from the government's point of view, and I think if I had received money from them, I would sing the same song, unless the money totally corrupted my brain. The Literature Director in the Arts Council has this to say about poetry: "“We might just as well try to ‘define’ the blood that runs in our veins. Impossible, but without it, where would we be?” Don't know about you, but I'm personally very glad that the guy in charge of all the money in arts has missed the last couple of centuries' scientific progress.

Art is pleasure. If one finds anothers art unpleasurable, it ceases to be art to one. All things art use this as a starting point. Visit me http://www.radiodenver.org/

"Alert! Alert! 'Art as corrective truth' assertion made! Yup, this is why Stalin and Mao loved stories of revolutionary daring and sacrifice but scorned the vulgarity of modernist abstractions or counternarratives that questioned the regime....etc." Wo there, Tim. Baby. Bathwater. Weeping mother. All you're doing is citing examples of people using art to enforce their version of 'The Truth' on others. People use supposed facts and figures to achieve the same thing. It doesn't follow that neither can be used to familiarise people with what is far closer to the truth. Dictators use exactly the same methods as us, just to different ends. The point is that art cannot corrupt what is already corrupted, and there is no pure understanding of the world that we begin with, or it is possible to start at, that art then distorts. "Because they were 'correcting people's perceptions of reality', weren't they?" An appropriate analogy would be if Hitler and chums came at you with a syringe, a scalpel and pair of rib-spreaders, claiming they were here to 'cure' you, and that their scientific research had revealed a cancerous node in your brain that must be removed. You would probably be right to assume that they were up to no good, but would you never trust medical science again? Would you say, when bedridden with some tenacious disease, "I'll see no doctor! Look what Hitler did in the name of scientific progress! I've had quite enough of being 'cured', thank you!" "I'm not trying to imply that I have some superior take on truth, just that my intuition is that, at some stage, one has to drop all these stories if one wants to see reality as it actually is." Yes, and countless people imagine they have done so when all they have really done is fallen for another story. I'm nearing the end of the biography of Philip K. Dick at the moment, and it's incredible how many times during his life (according to what the book says, of course) he was convinced that the veil had finally dropped and he had seen the world for what it was. It happens every day, all of the time, to all kinds of people. Umberto Eco has a similar theme in 'Foucault's Pendulum' - various characters arrive at a publishers, convinced they're being chased by a secret cult because they have painstakingly researched the authentic history of the world by paying attention only to the concrete facts, and letting logic guide them. Aiming to uncover The Truth is always going to get you into trouble. It is much, much healthier to accept the fact that as a human being, your cognition wraps itself around stories, and your understanding of the world will constantly shift as you take in differing amounts of information. Change is the only constant. In this respect, art helps because it keeps the shifting machine of your understanding well oiled - it throws new possibilities at you - reducing the likelihood that you will simply end up a tedious old crackpot who understands every scrap of information in the context of the one true reality he has settled on.

"Ah yes, but I was merely pointing out the dangers of your suggestion that there might be 'good' and 'bad' forms of art, which surely plays against what you're arguing." Not really. Although no underlying reality can be ultimately comprehended in its entirety, there are still things that are true, and still things that are outrightly false, and there are varying degrees in between. 'Good' art, although it's a crude term, can steer us more in the direction of reality, even if it can't sum it up for us. In other words, we can accept that we will never reach the destination, but there are still points along the journey that are closer. I can be comfortable knowing that I'll hold all of reality in my gaze, or any pure fragment of it, whilst still believing that a version of an event is closer to the reality than the second. We can be pretty sure, for instance, despite there being - oh no! - so many versions of events, that the Holocaust did actually happen. And in the same way that facts can help point us in the right direction, so can art. That still leaves you in a position where Hitler and co. can deceive people with spurious nonsense that *seems* to be right, if you're inclined to believe him, but tough cheese - you've just got to learn how to spot the deception. "Art only throws new possibilities at you if your reading appetite is voracious and your tastes catholic - most people *do* have a 'tedious old crackpot' side to them, and select their literature on his say-so." How do they undergo this selection process? Do they read books, and then decide, based on the message therein, whether or not they're going to read it again? There is a tendency towards choosing work that supports the kind of view you're most comfortable with. True enough. But there is also a tendency to deliberately seek out contradictory work, particularly if you are dissatisfied with how things seem to be, which most people are. I don't think you can trace a trend either way - suffice to say, the two impulse's compete, and in some people one is stronger.

Once Hitler is invoked in a forum, the thread is dead. Visit me http://www.radiodenver.org/