"A Painter Without Any Customers"

[narouz]

All of the artists I have known, even the good ones who's best work was very commercially appealing, thought there should be a plethora of government funding and grants available to sustain the "arts" because it's just so important to keep "art" alive for the unappreciative masses.

Thinking it over, I think I might've gotten you a little wrong.

Actually, it seems you may feel pretty good about
the government's handling of the loutish artists.
You say all of the artists you've known
"thought" there should be a lot of government funding and grants for them.
So they all have that expectation or fantasy.
But, in reality, I think you imply,
there is no government funding for them.
It is just their imagination fueled by their gargantuan sense of entitlement.

From your point of view then,
I'm guessing you think the government
is doing a pretty good job of keeping money
out of the lazy artists' hands, right?

So your complaint is really directed at the artist, not the government.
Please correct me if I'm mistaking you.

In your view,
when you say "all" of the artists you've known
"thought there should be a plethora of government funding and grants available,"
what you seem to be saying is
that generally speaking
all artists are a bit (or a lot!) lazy,
are always looking for any handout they can get
(even though they do not deserve it),
and are arrogant--
utterly convinced that the world owes them a living.
They don't want to earn their living the old-fashioned way.
They wan't the taxpayers to hand it to them on a silver platter,
so they can go get stoned, then fall asleep,
then wake up to drip paint randomly onto canvas for about an hour,
then go email out more grant requests to the government.

Have I accurately represented your view of artists?

 

[narouz]

Artists are not weak and powerless, far from it.

I meant in the economic sense.
Not many parents who want their kids to grow up to become rich
urge them to go to art school.

They (some of them at least) control the information flow/indoctrination to the next generation, especially if you include hollywood.

I concede you have a point here about Hollywood artists.
The kind of artists Lucy seems to be talking about,
and the kind of artists I generally have in mind when I use the word
tend not to include the film industry.
But, yes, there are definitely some wonderful artists in the film industry.
And some of them are very rich indeed.

However, they comprise a very small percentage of the total number of artists.
Also--importantly for this discussion--
they are not generally funded by the government to my knowledge.
(Perhaps evem Lucy would allow that those Hollywood artists actually deserve their money.)

On your point about "control the information flow/indoctrination,"
and when you write...

And that's why social conservatives would love to defund PBS and NPR, both of which are on the left.

...those are interesting views,
but they require more time and thought than I have right now.
Suffice to say for now,
moviegoers vote, so to speak, with their ticket purchases,
and I don't see the film industry as a mind-controlling dictator.
If films have power over us, it's because we want them to.

Freedom from the market is not freedom from bias, it often ends up being freedom from reality itself, and freedom to follow the opinions of the leadership.

Here too...too much to take on now.
But:
I don't agree that PBS and NPR enjoy "freedom from the market."
It's okay if they have a bias.
Don't agree they exhibit a "freedom from reality."
They are some of the best news programs out there.
Fox is one of the worst.
Are they still saying "fair and unbiased."

 

[4peatssake]

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[LucyL]

It is clear that attaining the Westerner's recognition of being an "artist" only requires a mild training of the senses and a training of the ego (to inflate it). So when so many are wrongly considered artists it is all too easy to claim the falsity of someone's opinion about what an artist is, just by saying that the opposite is also true.

Wow. I think if someone graduates from art school with an art degree and regularly produces art in some form, they would claim the title "artist". Also, if someone regularly produces original creations even without art school, they could claim to be artists. I want to define "artist" on some objective standard, because I could never judge the competency of their senses.

A high school classmate suddenly got into quilt making about 10 years after graduation (she was very science oriented in high school, and if you had asked me I didn't think she had an artistic bone in her body) and now she displays her work at quilt shows across the country and wins awards. She's an artist.

The proliferate Bob Ross paints a picture in half an hour every day on my PBS station, he was an artist even though people with art school degrees tend to have minor heart attacks when you state that.

Andres Serrano creates some really horrendous crap (literally, hah) that is offensive to a good portion of the population and even though I don't like to say it he too must be considered an artist.

 

[LucyL]

Thinking it over, I think I might've gotten you a little wrong.

Actually, it seems you may feel pretty good about
the government's handling of the loutish artists.
You say all of the artists you've known
"thought" there should be a lot of government funding and grants for them.
So they all have that expectation or fantasy.
But, in reality, I think you imply,
there is no government funding for them.
It is just their imagination fueled by their gargantuan sense of entitlement.

From your point of view then,
I'm guessing you think the government
is doing a pretty good job of keeping money
out of the lazy artists' hands, right?

So your complaint is really directed at the artist, not the government.
Please correct me if I'm mistaking you.

In your view,
when you say "all" of the artists you've known
"thought there should be a plethora of government funding and grants available,"
what you seem to be saying is
that generally speaking
all artists are a bit (or a lot!) lazy,
are always looking for any handout they can get
(even though they do not deserve it),
and are arrogant--
utterly convinced that the world owes them a living.
They don't want to earn their living the old-fashioned way.
They wan't the taxpayers to hand it to them on a silver platter,
so they can go get stoned, then fall asleep,
then wake up to drip paint randomly onto canvas for about an hour,
then go email out more grant requests to the government.

Have I accurately represented your view of artists?

I think you are thinking about this way too much, and using too many adjectives.

My bf in college, and my introduction to the art world, was a born-again Pentecostal who never so much as smoked a cigarette in her life. She now earns a living as a costume designer for theater productions.

Yeah, she was an exception in her world.

My perception of artists is that most of them (based on the ones I know, including my Pentacostal hard working friend) would like the old days where the artist gained a sponsorship from the wealthy Italian patron, had a small room on their Tuscan estate with all meals and expenses provided so they could be free to focus exclusively on being as creative as that hot Italian sunshine will allow to create the visual legacy that will keep the world in awe for several generations.

Barring finding that wealthy dowager who just happens to appreciate (them or) their special creative bent, it's the government's responsibility to protect art and the creation thereof irregardless of how broad the appeal is or whether there is real timeless quality.

It's really very simple. If no one is interested in buying your art, you have no right to tax monies to continue to create it.

In other words, if you insist on recreating the Mona Lisa with your own poop, and no one wants to buy it, and you absolutely refuse to paint happy trees to feed your family, tough cookies.

 

[narouz]

Lucy, I do disagree with you about artists.
Still, I have been throwin' too much wrath your way.
My apologies.
Perhaps we can build on common ground:
I hate opera.

 

[LucyL]

Lucy, I do disagree with you about artists.
Still, I have been throwin' too much wrath your way.
My apologies.
Perhaps we can build on common ground:
I hate opera.

Oh no.



I got hooked in high school. Darn Met Radio broadcasts. (Not my fault, my parents didn't own a TV)

If it's any consolation, I'm the only person I know who likes opera :-D

 

[charlie]

Sarah Brightman, oh how I love thee.



[BBvideo 560,340:box003bi]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRBmthyr2Sc[/BBvideo]

 

[narouz]

Lucy, I do disagree with you about artists.
Still, I have been throwin' too much wrath your way.
My apologies.
Perhaps we can build on common ground:
I hate opera.

Oh no.



I got hooked in high school. Darn Met Radio broadcasts. (Not my fault, my parents didn't own a TV)

If it's any consolation, I'm the only person I know who likes opera :-D

Now I really hate you.
(Kidding! )

 

[Such_Saturation]

Oh sure, we just pay the institution some money and then we can get to call ourselves whatever. The standardization of creativity and science alike in a school and work rationale is exactly why we can't have nice things. Because we start defining what something is on a universal level through its most efficient job-based configuration. Fitting something to a job is often different from fitting it to do useful work, and often means just fitting it to accumulate the most money (no global benefit). So don't be surprised when you find yourself devoid of a logical foothold and strike an awesome midlife crisis.

 

[LucyL]

Oh sure, we just pay the institution some money and then we can get to call ourselves whatever. The standardization of creativity and science alike in a school and work rationale is exactly why we can't have nice things. Because we start defining what something is on a universal level through its most efficient job-based configuration. Fitting something to a job is often different from fitting it to do useful work, and often means just fitting it to accumulate the most money (no global benefit). So don't be surprised when you find yourself devoid of a logical foothold and strike an awesome midlife crisis.

Yes, but language has to mean something, or we could never communicate. The failure is not how we are defining the words, but the inflated importance we attach to the word (that is not even supported by it's definition).

 

[Such_Saturation]

Language has to mean something in relation to relationships. You give this aspect up where you waive it off to a system which doesn't arise naturally from it. The chance of a corrective feedback is also negated like this.

<<...communicative action serves to transmit and renew cultural knowledge, in a process of achieving mutual understandings. It then coordinates action towards social integration and solidarity. Finally, communicative action is the process through which people form their identities.>>

<<According to Weber, rationalisation [...] creates three spheres of value: the differentiated zones of science, art and law. For him, this fundamental disunity of reason constitutes the danger of modernity. This danger arises not simply from the creation of separate institutional entities but through the specialisation of cognitive, normative, and aesthetic knowledge that in turn permeates and fragments everyday consciousness. This disunity of reason implies that culture moves from a traditional base in a consensual collective endeavour to forms which are rationalised by commodification and led by individuals with interests which are separated from the purposes of the population as a whole.

This 'purposive rational action' is steered by the "media" of the state, which substitute for oral language as the medium of the coordination of social action. An antagonism arises between these two principles of societal integration—language, which is oriented to understanding and collective well being, and "media", which are systems of success-oriented action. [Visibility at any cost, including breaking meaningful communications to impose your own empty message] [...]

Society is integrated socially both through the actions of its members and systemically by the requirements of the economic/hierarchical/oppressive system in a way that tends to interpenetrate and overwhelm autonomous action orientations. This gives rise to a dual concept of modern society; the internal subjective viewpoint of the "lifeworld" and the external viewpoint of the "system".

Following Weber again, an increasing complexity arises from the structural and institutional differentiation of the lifeworld, which follows the closed logic of the systemic rationalisation of our communications. There is a transfer of action co-ordination from 'language' over to 'steering media', such as money and power, which bypass consensus-oriented communication with a 'symbolic generalisation of rewards and punishments'. After this process the lifeworld "is no longer needed for the coordination of action". This results in humans ('lifeworld actors') losing a sense of responsibility with a chain of negative social consequences.

Habermas points out that the "sociopsychological costs" of this limited version of rationality are ultimately borne by individuals [...] They surface as widespread neurotic illnesses, addictions, psychosomatic disorders, and behavioural and emotional difficulties; or they find more conscious expression in criminal actions, protest groups and religious cults.>>

The way the élite is successful is by promoting meaningful communication inside itself, and actively deterring it between outside agents. They recognize the importance and we don't. When the large group comes to realize the importance, logical cohesion of the smaller part will become powerless and attain a logical inferiority by design.

 

[LucyL]

I agree that social action is steered by state, for formative outcomes, though that reeks of tinfoil conspiracy, no? But I would argue that is all the more reason to insist on objective (as opposed to subjective) definitions of terms. It makes it harder for the state's social agents of change to manipulate by the constant redefinition of a value judgement.

Contrary to Weber though, I am not disenchanted with religious world views. I think they do just fine in defining my personhood.

Peat wrote this in his article on William Blake:

Several contemporary schools of literary theory, sociology, anthropology, even biology, trace their ideas back to Ferdinand de Saussure’s analysis of language, reading into it a highly rationalistic doctrine for which there is no actual basis. Saussure’s most important idea was that it is impossible to analyze language into its structural units without simultaneously seeing its use in relation to the world of meanings. Without its meanings, it just isn’t language. This is a profoundly anti-rationalist insight, since it shows that symbols take their existence from the experience of communication. But once the symbols exist, they function by the ways they establish distinctions, “this” being defined by the ways it has been used in distinction to “those,” “that,” etc. Every time a word is used, its meaning changes a little, since every use occurs in a new communicative situation. The contemporary rationalistic academic trends prefer to isolate only the principle of “meaning through opposition,” since it supports the rationalistic illusion of operating strictly on the symbolic level. The “symbolic level” is only an abstraction, and doesn’t exist independently.

 

[narouz]

Yeah, opera...
I would say I've tried to like it,
but nah...I wouldn't even know how to start.

And I'll confess that it is in regard to opera
that even i have blinked--
about the NEA's funding for it.
Seems a pretty "elite" art form to me.

But you mention Ferdinand de Saussure.
The Magnetic Fields wrote a cool song titled after him.

[BBvideo 560,340:1j14o1ue]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebdnSDIwTBs[/BBvideo]

 

[Such_Saturation]

I agree that social action is steered by state, for formative outcomes, though that reeks of tinfoil conspiracy, no? But I would argue that is all the more reason to insist on objective (as opposed to subjective) definitions of terms. It makes it harder for the state's social agents of change to manipulate by the constant redefinition of a value judgement.

Contrary to Weber though, I am not disenchanted with religious world views. I think they do just fine in defining my personhood.

Peat wrote this in his article on William Blake:

Several contemporary schools of literary theory, sociology, anthropology, even biology, trace their ideas back to Ferdinand de Saussure’s analysis of language, reading into it a highly rationalistic doctrine for which there is no actual basis. Saussure’s most important idea was that it is impossible to analyze language into its structural units without simultaneously seeing its use in relation to the world of meanings. Without its meanings, it just isn’t language. This is a profoundly anti-rationalist insight, since it shows that symbols take their existence from the experience of communication. But once the symbols exist, they function by the ways they establish distinctions, “this” being defined by the ways it has been used in distinction to “those,” “that,” etc. Every time a word is used, its meaning changes a little, since every use occurs in a new communicative situation. The contemporary rationalistic academic trends prefer to isolate only the principle of “meaning through opposition,” since it supports the rationalistic illusion of operating strictly on the symbolic level. The “symbolic level” is only an abstraction, and doesn’t exist independently.

I would say Jürgen Habermas is definitely inside the system, no tinfoils here. He has a doctorate of philosophy, a habilitation in political science, a Prince of Asturias Award in Social Sciences, a Holberg International Memorial Prize, he is a Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, directed the Max Planck Institute...

<<Jürgen Habermas currently ranks as one of the most influential philosophers in the world.>> (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2011). They let the guy have a debate with the Pope.

<<...reification, although it runs deep, is constrained by the potential of rational argument to be self-reflexive and transcend its occupational use by oppressive agencies. Habermas agrees with this optimistic analysis, in contrast to Adorno and Horkheimer, and thinks that freedom and ideals of reconciliation are ingrained in the mechanisms of the linguistically mediated sociation of humanity.>>

And the whole book is subtitled "A Critique of Functionalist Reason".

 

[LucyL]

Hhmmm. Narouz, how about philosophy? Do we have any common ground on pulling government funding from the rationalists?

(no offense, Such Saturation, Habermas is actually more rational on the issue of religion than most, which why Benedict debated him.)

And Narouz, my recommendation for easing into opera is start with the catchy tunes and simple stories - Guiseppi Verdi rules there. Il Trovatore is my favorite.

 

[Such_Saturation]

Surely Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger wouldn't just have a debate with the first conspiracy theorist off the street?

 

[LucyL]

Surely Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger wouldn't just have a debate with the first conspiracy theorist off the street?

Yeah, because if any institution was above conspiracy theories, it's the catholic church ;-)

I am all in favor of conspiracies/conspiracy theorists. It's just a branch of science. And I really like the irony of a mainstream intellectual feeding them.

Or is he?

 

[narouz]

Hhmmm. Narouz, how about philosophy? Do we have any common ground on pulling government funding from the rationalists?

I'm not sure, LucyL.
Depends what is meant by "rationalist."
Perhaps especially when used within a libertarian context.
There was a poster, arien, over in another thread...

Princeton study finds that the US is an oligarchy
http://www.raypeatforum.com/forum/v...9&p=44764&hilit=state+cult+libertarian#p44764

...who complained about Peat's notion of rationalism.
Here is the first paragraph of the article he/she linked to:

ARIEN YORK
Sunday, 20 April 2014
Ray Peat and Rationalism

"Ray Peat has expressed opposition to rationalism, presenting it as a tool used by an authoritarian culture to steer thought from truth, toward ideas that serve particular political ends. This understanding of rationalism is a considerable confusion. Instead, it is rationalism that gives the concept 'truth' any meaning and therefore enables us to sift truth from falsity. The modern day incarnation of rationalism's age-old opponent is empiricism, which is the true tool of the authoritarian. It denies the individual's capacity to acquire knowledge through reason, declaring that all knowledge must be borne of experience. Absent any rational means by which to interpret experience, an authoritarian culture can declare truth to be whatever it likes...."
http://arienyork.blogspot.com.au/

I noted that Peat,
in the article he referred to,
used "rationalism" in a certain sense:

From Peat's Can Art Instruct Science? William Blake as Biological Visionary
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/william-blake.shtml


"It’s important to remember that Rationalism, as used here, isn’t simply a “love of reason,” which is what is often meant when people speak of “rationalism.” In its historical use among philosophers, rather than being just a devotion to rationality, it is a specific doctrine which denies that experience is the source of knowledge. Historically, Rationalism has been closely allied with mysticism, as an affirmation that knowledge comes from a source beyond the ordinary world of experience and beyond the individual. At the present time, it serves authoritarian science rather than authoritarian theology, though the basic doctrine is the same."-Ray Peat

 

[Such_Saturation]

Surely Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger wouldn't just have a debate with the first conspiracy theorist off the street?

Yeah, because if any institution was above conspiracy theories, it's the catholic church ;-)

I am all in favor of conspiracies/conspiracy theorists. It's just a branch of science. And I really like the irony of a mainstream intellectual feeding them.

Or is he?

I don't know, is publishing sound life-logic equal to trolling? As some ancient astronaut theorists believe, yes.