>on the wrong track. <
"I see it more as different tacks "
Yeah you're right. The content of my posting belied
that too-dismissive statement.
A little bit of background - I did a Master's thesis a
;ittle while back on the definition of art, and was
determined to steer a third way (God, apologise for
the Blairite connotations there) between the
philosophers' and the artists' attitudes to
generalisations about art.
The artists' attitude is exemplified by Robin
Hamilton's response to my commnets. It's like, go away
you dry old philosophical geeks, you're just
pretentious philistines trespassing in the green
pastures of art. I have a great deal of sympathy for
this point of view, though I obviously don't hold it.
It is the point of view of someone who is committed to
and fiercely defensive of what they do, and believes
in what they do. it is also perhaps a response to the
poor treatment many artists receive in contemporary
society.
The philosophers - well, the senior philosopher of art
in my part of the world gave a talk to a group of fine
arts students which began with 'I want to make to make
it clear here that I am talking about the philosophy
of art, not what artists say about art. Artists always
produce a lot of hot air' Or something like that.
The thing that breeds this mutually dismissive
attitude is a blindness to the contexts in which
generalisations about art are made. Philosophers want
to put artists in tutorial rooms, artists want
philosophers to write funky manifestos.
I feel very strongly that artists' statements about
art are not hot air. On the other hand they're not
philosophy either. If one removes them from the
environment where they are made, the environment which
gives them meaning, one does them a disservice. Of
course, to place them correctly in such an environment
sometimes you need to take the whole sociology trip,
and neither philosophers nor artists are too keen on
that - in very different ways they're quite resistant
to empiricism, to graphs and tables and whatnot. In my
thesis I think I discussed Pound's 'definition' of
rhythm as 'form cut into time'. Now, this may not turn
the philosophers on, but it is certainly not 'hot
air'. It is tremendously meaningful to anyone familiar
with Modernism in the arts, to the struggle between
Modernism and the anti-Modernists. Also important to
note the prescriptive, exclusive nature of Pound's
'definition' - would he be happy if someone told him
it covered Swinburne's 'rhythms'? No, he'd ditch the
thing, probably!
Nuff said for now.
Cheers
Scott
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Subject: Re: Poetics, Les Murray clarification
From: "Andrew Jackson" <[log in to unmask]>
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Hi Scott,
Hmm . . .
>it's hopelessly unclear<
Yes it is -- but then isn't infallible clarity also a
necessary illusion?
It was just the first thing that occurred to me, a
crooked tuppance
worth.
>it's prescriptive<
Didn't intend it to be so . . .
>an insight into what drives Andrew's poems<
Yes, you're right. But then isn't that the nature of
definitions, that
they define the author as well? Wouldn't your
definition of poetry
as a function of socio-economic factors define you
rather more
than it does 'what all poetry is like'? This is what
makes
definitions fascinating (personally speaking) -- how
an attempt
at objectivity is often more revealing than a
straightforward
confession. I'm sure there must be a psychoanalytical
angle to
this . . . ;-)
>Dickie's definition<
Reminds me of reading Collingwood in first year at Uni
. . . not
a bad memory, but I prefer Mark's fortune cookie. I
guess
because it sounded like a poem and not like a
prescription.
>on the wrong track. <
I see it more as different tacks -- hope to see a few
more sailing
by too. Interesting thread.
Andy
=====
"Why is it not possible for me to doubt that I have never been on the moon? And how
could I try to doubt it? First and foremost, the supposition that perhaps I have
been there would strike me as idle. Nothing would follow from it, nothing be
explained by it. It would not tie in with anything in my life... Philosophical
problems occur when language goes on holiday. We must not separate ideas from life,
we must not be misled by the appearances of sentences: we must investigate the
application of words in individual language-games" - Ludwig Wittgenstein
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