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Blurred posted:Absolutely, but I wonder where the line between "straining" and "honest" actually is. Case in point, I read Gertrude Stein's "Food" a couple of weeks ago, and the entire text is made up of "prose" like this: it is one thing to dismiss weird prose like whatever i just read under "EGGS" but it is a whole different line of rear end showing to go on that tangent about challenging art. if you did not have these people doing what you dislike you would not know what the "line" is to begin with, no? you don't see any value from that alone?
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Mar 2, 2024 20:12
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cumpantry posted:it is one thing to dismiss weird prose like whatever i just read under "EGGS" but it is a whole different line of rear end showing to go on that tangent about challenging art. if you did not have these people doing what you dislike you would not know what the "line" is to begin with, no? you don't see any value from that alone? No, I wasn't criticising "challenging" art - in fact, the best art undoubtedly is challenging. Nor was I criticising artists "doing what I dislike" - I can appreciate and respect a great many things that I don't "like", per se. In fact, that's what I was initially getting at: I don't "like" this text, so I would love to know is here of artistic value that I'm missing. I want to be challenged, but first I think I'm entitled to know exactly what the challenge actually is. My point in the rest of the post is that I believe there exists a genre of art which (from my undoubtedly uninformed perspective) aspires to nothing beyond a meta-commentary on "what art is". That's an important conversation, sure, but I think that conversation has long since exhausted itself: we needed Duchamp, but I don't think we needed 100 years of artistic footnotes to Duchamp. And sure, there can be art movements like formalism, minimalism and abstract expressionism which challenge the conventions of art, and which are derided for precisely that reason, but these movements undoubtedly have a coherent philosophy and message behind them beyond merely questioning what art is. Even someone who dislikes Rothko, say, could hardly say that his painting aren't communicating something. They don't merely "challenge conventions" but make the case for having new conventions put in their stead, and I think that is what makes such art worth listening to. But I'll go to my grave defending the notion that "challenging artistic conventions" for no other reason that to "challenge artistic conventions" is a singularly lazy and puerile approach to artistic creation. It shelters the artist from criticism, because the "art" itself embodies the confrontational stance that any criticism directed towards it must necessarily stem from the viewer's staid and archaic notions about "what art must be". But how could one then attribute merit to any artist? How to go about attributing value to any piece of art? If art is to have value, then surely it does so by virtue of its ability to reach its audience and teach them something new? And surely, for that to occur, the artist has to have something coherent to say? Maybe everything that everyone does in the world is already invested with artistic merit if you approach it with the right attitude - fine, lovely idea. So why "art"? Don't we actually need that line which separates art from less purposeful and meaningful endeavours for art to have value in the first place? Perhaps we can thank the "challenging" artists for showing us where the line is, as you say, but doesn't that also impose on us the heavy responsibility of proclaiming that many of them fall on exactly the wrong side of that line?
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Mar 2, 2024 21:22
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Blurred posted:"But it doesn't make any sense!" It's pretty wild to invent a conversation where you're just asking reasonable questions while some imaginary artist is smugly spouting nonsense. See you can tell they're full of poo poo, look at all the dumb stuff I have them saying!
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Mar 2, 2024 21:31
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Guy A. Person posted:It's pretty wild to invent a conversation where you're just asking reasonable questions while some imaginary artist is smugly spouting nonsense. See you can tell they're full of poo poo, look at all the dumb stuff I have them saying! Of course they have to invent the conversation. No-one else is taking part. Instead you're being the smug artist in the conversation. With hindsight I really appreciate Solar Bones. At the time I appreciated how it was written with the "challenging punctuation" etc. because it made sense for the novel. There is a reason to it, which was brought up earlier, but I didn't respond to it. In the Irish edition of the book, the first edition of it published, it's revealed in the back matter that the narrator is dead. You know that going in. And it makes sense in every way, all the decisions made in writing the book. Similarly, Fosse's septology uses the style it does, which could be considered challenging, for a reason made clear or that makes sense as you read the book (although I've yet to read the last of volume published in English.) The same could be said of Ulysses, or anything Beckett wrote. Their choice in language isn't in isolation. I absolutely do see authors making those choices as literary pretension, and often as a signal of what their book is. And it often doesn't live up to that signal.
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Mar 2, 2024 22:00
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Blurred posted:But I'll go to my grave defending the notion that "challenging artistic conventions" for no other reason that to "challenge artistic conventions" is a singularly lazy and puerile approach to artistic creation. Do you have an example in mind? It seems like your main problem is with bad works being celebrated (or you personally being forced to call good those works you think are bad?), which is a perfectly fine position in my mind. That said there’s hardly a universal position on any work and many careers have been made pointing out how stupid the trends and institutions are.
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Mar 2, 2024 23:51
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ThePopeOfFun posted:Do you have an example in mind? It seems like your main problem is with bad works being celebrated (or you personally being forced to call good those works you think are bad?), which is a perfectly fine position in my mind. That said there’s hardly a universal position on any work and many careers have been made pointing out how stupid the trends and institutions are. It's not that things I dislike are being celebrated. The book I cited which started this whole thing off has a rating of 1.98 on Goodreads, which I think is the lowest rating I've ever seen there, so while I don't think that Goodreads ratings are suggestive of artistic merit, it certainly suggests that it's not a widely celebrated work. My issue is rather with the motivation and effort of the artist. Specifically, I'm criticising artists who believe that the mere flouting of conventions is enough in itself to give a work artistic heft. Examples I had in mind:    (For context, the last image is from an exhibit comprised of a series of 150 plaster casts of vaginas that I saw in person at the MONA in Tasmania. It is called, predictably enough, "Cunts".) Blurred fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Mar 3, 2024 |
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Mar 3, 2024 00:36
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Yeah, there's a lot of bad and lazy art and there's sometimes a difference of opinion on which art that is. so what?
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Mar 3, 2024 00:41
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fez_machine posted:Yeah, there's a lot of bad and lazy art and there's sometimes a difference of opinion on which art that is. ... so we should discuss how appraisals of "bad and lazy art" are to be made? I started this derail with the desire to understand this text: quote:EGGS I ask the "real literature" thread openly and sincerely, because I assume you guys know what you're talking about, and because I am probably a gigantic idiot: am I missing something here? Is there something anyone can point to which they believe grants this text some artistic merit? Or is it fine to dismiss it as "bad and lazy"? And how should that judgement impact our estimation of other works of literature that we don't "get"?
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Mar 3, 2024 00:52
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Blurred posted:I ask the "real literature" thread openly and sincerely, because I assume you guys know what you're talking about, and because I am probably a gigantic idiot: am I missing something here? Is there something anyone can point to which they believe grants this text some artistic merit? Or is it fine to dismiss it as "bad and lazy"? And how should that judgement impact our estimation of other works of literature that we don't "get"? Anyone? Certainly. Folks have gotten degrees from the analysis of Gertrude Stein's work. Here is a quick summary of what some folks think she was attempting to achieve: https://study.com/academy/lesson/te...enth%20century. ...but if it does nothing for you, and you aren't motivated to dig into the whys and wherefores of what its about for yourself to make yourself less of a gigantic idiot, then feel free to not read it vOv Life's short, read what speaks to you.
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Mar 3, 2024 01:07
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I downloaded 'food' out of curiosity just now (free on Kindle) and it strikes me as automatic writing, or word association maybe. It's not anything I find interesting or readable, and I am a fan of some weird stuff. To me it seems too random to evoke any feeling. I felt, for the few pages I read, almost like I was searching through Borges' library of babel
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Mar 3, 2024 01:13
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I suspect its the sort of thing that someone already well grounded in the structure of language and text could appreciate how she subverts conventions. Its very much of its time, up there with the avant garde movements in painting and probably shares ancestry with Finnegan's Wake (another experimental text that most people find unappealing).
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Mar 3, 2024 01:41
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Bilirubin posted:Here is a quick summary of what some folks think she was attempting to achieve: https://study.com/academy/lesson/te...enth%20century. quote:Some critics find Stein's use of language closer to the Dadaists such as Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp placed bicycles and toilets in museums and called them his art pieces. Critics suggest Stein's writing on these simple objects is akin to this playful challenge to the art world. Blurred posted:I believe there exists a genre of art which (from my undoubtedly uninformed perspective) aspires to nothing beyond a meta-commentary on "what art is". That's an important conversation, sure, but I think that conversation has long since exhausted itself: we needed Duchamp, but I don't think we needed 100 years of artistic footnotes to Duchamp.  quote:Other critics highlight Stein's experimental use of language as a foreshadowing to post-structuralist linguists such as Jacques Derrida, who highlights how there is a lot of room to play when it comes to language. The deferral of meaning in texts like Stein's very much anticipates the concept that some texts can invite multiple readings and plural possibilities. Blurred posted:"But it doesn't even mean anything!" derp posted:I downloaded 'food' out of curiosity just now (free on Kindle) and it strikes me as automatic writing, or word association maybe. It's not anything I find interesting or readable, and I am a fan of some weird stuff. To me it seems too random to evoke any feeling. I felt, for the few pages I read, almost like I was searching through Borges' library of babel I'm going to bed now, but I strongly encourage everyone else to track down "Food" (part of "Tender Buttons") by Gertrude Stein, if possible, and tell me where I'm going wrong. I'm not trying to be a smug dick here, I'm genuinely curious what you all think.
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Mar 3, 2024 01:51
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Blurred posted:... so we should discuss how appraisals of "bad and lazy art" are to be made? I started this derail with the desire to understand this text: Here's a quote that I feel like applies: "The meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse." It's fairly koan-like, in that it evokes connections between sense impressions and affective states in a way that is on the surface near-nonsense. It makes some sense to me after some slow, deliberate chewing on, but not really with active cognition. The first line is largely a domestic starting point with some associations with eggs and feeling satisfied. "cunning shawl" evokes a sort of habitual pretense and a corresponding physical defensiveness, which ties in with eggshells. Maybe noticing that tension while sitting down to eat eggs. Repetition of white obviously represents and emphasizes purity and light, and is a vector (the belt indicates linearity) towards a contrast and overtaking of darkness. Cow's shame is sort of a stupid animal aversion to that reality, and bite is sort of a breaking point, a snapping, and obviously fits with eating an egg. Cut up alone the paved way to me is sort of following along with the expected course of life, which can be harmful for people who are wounded or different- like Stein. The last sentence is something like that harm, and interpersonal harm more generally is not novel, it's an existing vehicle. One that is probably is related to people running from the difficulty and complexity of life. And dash brings it back to putting salt on eggs.
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Mar 3, 2024 01:56
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it did succeed in forcing me to engage with the text though. I would read a line, think about what it had to do with eggs, how the ending and opening of a line would relate, how each lines would relate, and what the overall purpose was. Drove me to look into it further so, point Stein. Did I like it? I am unskillful in language arts so I cannot say whether it succeeds or not at its deconstruction of language. Nor do I really care enough to build that knowledge up in order to appreciate it. Its like improvisational music, or wine tasting, to me. There are levels of appreciation that grow with knowledge and practice. How the musicians are communicating. How they play with timing and metre, chord structure, and the listeners expectations to build and release tension. On one level you can say whether you like it or not, but just a superficial listen, or taste, without that extra knowledge means you will miss a lot as a result. I also found another poem entitled Eggs that mention cows  edit: it actually goes on for a few more lines after that Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Mar 3, 2024 |
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Mar 3, 2024 02:07
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Blurred posted:Absolutely, but I wonder where the line between "straining" and "honest" actually is. Case in point, I read Gertrude Stein's "Food" a couple of weeks ago, and the entire text is made up of "prose" like this: So your point from Kramering in here in reply to Mrenda talking to someone else, if I understand it correctly, is that there is nothing to get here, and its just not a function of your ignorance? And that the Dadaist art movement is equally empty and that "metacommentary on the art world" is meaningless? Because to me, it reeks of main character syndrome; if YOU find no meaning, there is none. You were offered a "foothold in literary theory that would appreciate the book" (after an admittedly cursory search, but I'm not your research librarian) and apparently are rejecting it so there is nowhere else for the conversation to go. edit: actually, this very much reminds me of Eagleton's criticism of Stanley Fish in his text on Literary Theory that I liveblogged reading through in the "Let's Lit Crit" thread. Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Mar 3, 2024 |
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Mar 3, 2024 02:28
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nice obelisk idiot posted:Here's a quote that I feel like applies: "The meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse." It's fairly koan-like, in that it evokes connections between sense impressions and affective states in a way that is on the surface near-nonsense. It makes some sense to me after some slow, deliberate chewing on, but not really with active cognition. Yea this is really well put and along the lines I was thinking although I would have struggled to articulate. Mrenda posted:Instead you're being the smug artist in the conversation. I mainly just think if you are genuinely curious to understand a work imagining that the artist is openly hostile to you — to the point of giving them sneering dialogue for any possible question — it maybe a bad starting point.
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Mar 3, 2024 02:41
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Gadji beri bimba clandridi Lauli lonni cadori gadjam A bim beri glassala glandride E glassala tuffu i zimbra Bim blassa glassala zimbra Bim blassa glassala zimbra bim A bim beri glassala grandrid E glassala tuffu i zimbra Gadji beri bimba glandridi Lauli lonni cadora gadjam A bim beri glassasa glandrid E glassala tuffu i zimbra
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Mar 3, 2024 09:01
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Blurred posted:
if you’re not trying to be a smug prick, then you could try to not smugly dismiss honest attempts at discussion like this
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Mar 3, 2024 09:16
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I don't have enough of an eye or an ear for English poetry to get much out of that, but I go to free jazz shows where people bang on pots and pans and play the saxophone in a way that doesn't really qualify as music, and I think discussion on "why was this made? what does it say about the history of jazz?" would generally not be very productive or interesting
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Mar 3, 2024 11:00
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Ras Het posted:I don't have enough of an eye or an ear for English poetry to get much out of that, but I go to free jazz shows where people bang on pots and pans and play the saxophone in a way that doesn't really qualify as music, and I think discussion on "why was this made? what does it say about the history of jazz?" would generally not be very productive or interesting I've been to more guitar and synth based stuff that's like this. I generally think they're wankers. But that's also because I've listened to their poetry and have already concluded they're wankers. It's unfortunate but there's an element of building credibility in a lot of art, to allow you to do this stuff. It grants you, I suppose, a certain level of accepted mastery to know you're not just making GBS threads on. Whether you are, or aren't, no-one can truly tell. I feel for many it's assumed they're not. If you look at anything for long enough you'll see something. Even a bare plastered wall. It's a big problem with art. Successful artists are often masters at networking in a bullshit way. I'm not saying art is bullshit, just that it's involved in a lot of it, to some degree. In many ways art is a land of contrasts...
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Mar 3, 2024 13:38
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hey I saw a bunch of posts who said something dumb
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Mar 3, 2024 21:15
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Among everything else, Modernists saw or fought in or suffered under at least one world war if not two. Mustard gas, holocaust, nukes, mass man made death and all the fallout blah blah. I think everyone can understand why someone would want to put a toilet in an art museum after that or show language is meaningless or how meaning breaks down. As far as not needing Duchamp derivatives, I can live-stream genocide on my phone. If someone wants to dump a pile of dirt in a Rockefeller endowment or fax a bunch of vagina casts to Hobby Lobby, yeah that’s cool imo. If that’s too arty, I think OP should ask if it would be cool to poo poo on their CEO’s desk or tape a banana to the monitor. Bewilderment is part of the fun
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Mar 4, 2024 04:33
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Anyone in here like Bolaño? I read Savage Detectives last year and since then I've been devouring everything I can by him, down to hand translating his poetry. I just finished Nazi Literature in the Americas, which is very good.
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Mar 4, 2024 09:31
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Gertrude stein was heavily influenced by the psychological theories of william james, who compartmentalised knowledge between the kind of certainty or meaning we get out of things that we tend to associate with the term 'knowledge' and the knowledge of acquaintance which is necessarily hazier but a lot more common. Stein is trying to write by depicting the latter perspective because she's challenging how & what artists see what is significant or ordinary. That's why 'tender buttons' is "meaningless". Artists are wankers but them being idiots while also creating stuff of value isn't exactly a profound observation. The split between style and substance is heavily disputed for a lot of modernists and also a lot of philosophers at the time, so it's not surprising you'll get someone like gertrude stein thinking radical art can be made by radically adjusting syntax. There have been many attempts to try and get at why in this historical period people were thinking like this but they do basically boil down to: 'they're living in a rapidly changing and traumatic time and we can't really pretend ours is all that different either'
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Mar 4, 2024 10:54
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what is the most beautiful book? and why is it the peregrine?
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Mar 4, 2024 18:46
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derp posted:what is the most beautiful book? 
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Mar 5, 2024 04:57
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Blurred posted:Absolutely, but I wonder where the line between "straining" and "honest" actually is. Case in point, I read Gertrude Stein's "Food" a couple of weeks ago, and the entire text is made up of "prose" like this: This ["EGGS"] is a poem about pregnancy and wanting an abortion. quote:Kind height, kind in the right stomach with a little sudden mill. quote:Cunning shawl, cunning shawl to be steady. quote:In white in white handkerchiefs with little dots in a white belt all shadows are singular and procured and relieved. quote:No that is not the cows shame and a precocious sound, it is a bite. quote:Cut up alone the paved way which is harm. Harm is old boat and likely a dash. I'm sure other readings are possible, and there are bits that dangle, but this is all right in there. It's a little demanding but not especially difficult as far as modernist poems go. You just need to dial the right wavelength
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Mar 5, 2024 09:05
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It's all about picking up the vibes, man
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Mar 5, 2024 09:32
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Okay yeah I went way out there as an overreaction to the slightly 'my kid could draw this' response to it. But there is structure and intention in Tender Buttons. I don't think that my reading was alien to the method of the work, which as said previously was influenced by James' psychology, and possibly by then-influential Freudian approaches to the subconscious and unconscious. I think there's a difference between that poem and say someone in a poetry class trying to imitate it, and I don't think it's simply the cultural cachet of a famous figure in modernism or its importance historically. I at least think it's better art than the Yoko Ono dirt piles (there's even better dirt pile art installations than that) or maybe controversially Jackson Pollock. nice obelisk idiot fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Mar 5, 2024 |
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Mar 5, 2024 13:37
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Nitevision posted:This ["EGGS"] is a poem about pregnancy and wanting an abortion. drat, thanks for sharing, very cool
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Mar 5, 2024 17:41
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I started Moby Dick. Enjoying it very much. Also it's gay as hell
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Mar 7, 2024 16:49
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I have about 250ish pages left of M. son of the century to go. I don't know about you guys, but this Mussolini-fellow seems to me like he was a bit of an rear end in a top hat
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Mar 7, 2024 16:49
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Doc Fission posted:I started Moby Dick. Enjoying it very much. Also it's gay as hell Moby Dick was the first book I finished this year and so far is still the best. Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze!
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Mar 8, 2024 17:44
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https://x.com/FilmUpdates/status/1766086423130628422?s=20 Nows your chance Safran Foer
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Mar 8, 2024 23:45
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I’m finally reading Cărtărescu and I’m blown away. Solenoid
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Mar 9, 2024 01:40
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ulvir posted:I have about 250ish pages left of M. son of the century to go. I don't know about you guys, but this Mussolini-fellow seems to me like he was a bit of an rear end in a top hat Gonna have to check this one out. I’m finally reading Richard Evan’s nonfiction account of the Nazis so why not introduce more horrifying fascism into my life?
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Mar 9, 2024 01:47
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After 120 pages of relatively smooth sailing Gravity's Rainbow is finally getting as challenging as it's supposed to be.
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Mar 9, 2024 02:26
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blue squares posted:I’m finally reading Cărtărescu and I’m blown away. Solenoid he's very good at writing books
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Mar 9, 2024 14:34
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Because of my immense genius I have managed to read, back to back, two good books what you should read: 1. the corner that held them by sylvia townsend warner 2. my life in the bush of ghosts by amos tutuola
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Mar 14, 2024 12:28
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I've just received the funniest insult ever https://x.com/PoorOldRoloTony/status/1768297514371805455?s=20
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Mar 14, 2024 16:38
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