On my recent visit to the Norman Rockwell Museum I lucked into their exhibition of Norman Rockwell Drawings.
There, I was particularly struck by this lovely drawing, Norman Rockwell's interpretation of the classic theme of artist and model:
Rockwell portrays this artist as a circus contortionist-- the opposite of his ramrod straight, expressionless model. We see the artist struggling to infuse his model with a glamorous flourish where none exists.
Look at what's taking place in this tiny space: the artist holds the magic charcoal with a highly affected grasp, inventing a sweep of the hair and alluring eyes that aren't on the model.
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| This is what a hand looks like when it's trying to change reality with sheer force of will |
Note how the artist cocks his head way back to give him the perspective necessary to find glamour in his bland and boring model. The artist's pretentious beret tells us much about his self-image...
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But his saggy pants, frayed cuffs and worn shoes tell us more about the reality of the situation:
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We are told that his drawings are rich with visual and psychological subtleties, and I believe that to be true but I also believe that pretentious art critics, clinging to their own affectations, tend to overlook the rich field of visual and psychological subtleties in more representational art.
170 comments:
That second panel of the artist's hand limning the enhanced model's eyebrow has more nuanced human insight and psychological gravitas (to me) than a two-hour art cognoscenti panel discussion on Guernica. I know that's not exactly the comparison, but still.
Fantastic drawing - do you happen to know if NR would physically shape /mold the wrinkles of his model's clothing ? Thought I read that somewhere .
Awesome drawing. Was the rest of the exhibit as good?
Amazing. Rockwell in absolute peak form. Can't believe I hadn't seen this before. I wonder – because of the one-finished-eye looking over the artist's shoulder at the viewer - if this comp sketch evolved into this 1935 cover. Looks to be from the same period stylistically.
I guess there's meaning in that she's holding a navy sailor's hat (who's holding her purse).
Your analysis of the artworks on this site is as fascinating as the artwork on display.
Apropos of nothing I find that a great series on illustrators on YouTube is, “Unsung Heroes Illustration” by Pete Beard.
I guess there's meaning in that she's holding a navy sailor's hat (who's holding her purse).
The unseen sailor with the shiny shoes is in control. He holds the purse, he has the money. The doll-like woman with the glassy eyes is mechanically performing her role as an object in the male gaze. She holds the sailor’s cap in her lap - or rather, she seems weighed down (anchored?) by it. It serves no other function (the artist only does heads) than as an extension of the off-screen sailor. He has the money now, and in exchange, her social position is “secured”.
The artist, completing the triangle of holding hands, has only his tools. He also performs, his upper body conveying the exaggerated role of the fine artist. His lower body - his material basis - reveals the only truth in the situation. He is no fine artist, he is a craftsman, a labourer. He is on his knee(s) and his sole (soul?) is worn out.
The artist also performs the role of the Rückenfigur, but ironically so. We are invited to see the scene through his eyes only to be made aware of the fact that he is not at all master of all he sees. He’s the dancing monkey, his performance to be judged and hopefully rewarded monetarily by the audience, who holds the purse.
Of course, nothing of the above is in the drawing.
Kev, looks mid-'50s to me, going by the styling of the women on the backdrop (the Marilyn likeness on the far left).
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Anon: "Of course, nothing of the above is in the drawing."
Don't stop there. Tell us where the meaning resides.
Don't stop there. Tell us where the meaning resides.
Taken in good faith: Well, for one, my reading was at least partially a feminist (and also, more slightly, a marxist) one. The «male gaze» is a term coined by one John Berger in the 70s, and even though the artist might very well have had a simular notion in mind, I somehow doubt it.
(…And now I’ve, without any evidence or cause other than prejudice, added doubt about the artist’s position on gender equality to the conversation, i.e. the meaning.)
Anon, so your position is that we can only understand the meaning of an image/ painting once we've 'worded it out' i.e. turned it into a written text-based analysis ?
That's the only way i can interpret your statement "Of course, nothing of the above is in the drawing."
while I dont have much to add to a discussion over Picasso (except that im 100% treated his models worse than Rockwell) I find it so fascinating how Rockwell doesnt do at all what his imaginary artist does. the artist is exagerated in gestures and is interpreting this nice normal woman into something she is not, a pin up supermodel. While Rockwell is brilliant at finding beauty in his comely characters not by zapping them with a pretty-fied ray but but finding the glow in their eyes and the personality in their expressions.
Laurence John,
Obviously, "meaning" and understand" are slippery, non-technical terms that can be understood to have a wide range of meanings. With this and (also the previous post's commentary thread) in mind, my position remains that meaning is communally produced within language. The meaning of any given phenomenon is produced in conversation, in the reading and writing and speaking thereof.
This does not equal existence being a product of language (even though that which is signified by “existence” here is deferred and bouncing endlessly around within the language I am using). On a more ...practical level, it just means some readings of this drawing will appear better to you, and some worse. And that this is fine. The point is to keep reading and writing and speaking, in whatever tongue or medium you are familiar with. The drawing sparks conversation. It exists to be fulfilled.
Also, this is the comments section of a blog. Words are to be expected.
My question was triggered by the fact is a sailor with a damsel is sort of an archetype in many places. It frequently will trigger the reaction of her being either a prostitute or "a wife in each port". Of course, being an archetype, this information is not in the drawing as said. On the other side, I'm unsure if this archetype is shared by the artist or his intended public. Or perhaps he is even fighting it, seeing as the relation between them is one of the last things you notice in the drawing, and everything else screams against this interpretation.
Anon: "my position remains that meaning is communally produced within language. The meaning of any given phenomenon is produced in conversation, in the reading and writing and speaking thereof."
If I look at a work of art such as a painting it is not a prerequisite that I know the consensus opinion of the work in order that I come to my own understanding of it. Nor am I obliged to discuss my opinion of the work with others in order to validate my understanding of it. The 'meaning' can exist solely between me and it. The 'meaning' may even be (by my estimation) irreducible to words.
Therefore I disagree with your position that the meaning of something such as a painting 'is produced within language / conversation'.
Believing that meaning is generated by language is to beg the question; 'then what is language predicated upon?'
BTW, that Rockwell is a something wonderful to behold. The Picasso nothing much more than a doodle.
Believing that meaning is generated by language is to beg the question; 'then what is language predicated upon?'
If the claim is that language created the universe, perhaps. But it isn't, so it really isn't.
Kev, looks mid-'50s to me, going by the styling of the women on the backdrop (the Marilyn likeness on the far left).
Yeah, I was puzzling about the Marilyn possibility but it could be Lana Turner too. Even if it does look a bit 'Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend' the sheer amount of form and thought and lighting Rockwell is putting into everything here I associate with his earlier periods, before becoming more photo-dependent and flatter, more linear.
Plus the presence of a sailor-on-leave at an amusement park feels just postwar, say 1946-47. But even during the 40s Rockwell was usually flatter. So I'm just confused. Though happily so.
my reading was at least partially a feminist (and also, more slightly, a marxist) one. The «male gaze» is a term coined by one John Berger in the 70s,
Yeah, we know. We all recognize the negative tactics and prefabricated jargon, thanks.
my position remains that meaning is communally produced within language.
Your position? If we've all heard your position countless times before it isn't your position. None of what you are saying is the product of your own mind. You're just a courier.
some readings of this drawing will appear better to you, and some worse. The point is to keep reading and writing and speaking, in whatever tongue or medium you are familiar with. The drawing sparks conversation.
The end goal of good art is not bloody chatter. This isn't a teachable moment in Kindergarten. And Norman Rockwell's masterful work isn’t a classroom you deserve to stand at the head of.
If I look at a work of art such as a painting it is not a prerequisite that I know the consensus opinion of the work in order that I come to my own understanding of it.
Acquaintance with a particular piece is not a prerequisite for meaning production upon first contact, no. But language is a prerequisite, and you must have some fluency in order to engage.
Nor am I obliged to discuss my opinion of the work with others in order to validate my understanding of it.
Of course not.
The 'meaning' can exist solely between me and it. The 'meaning' may even be (by my estimation) irreducible to words.
Not outside of language, no.
Therefore I disagree with your position that the meaning of something such as a painting 'is produced within language / conversation'.
This is fine, of course.
kev ferrara,
your religious fervor must cause you some difficulty. I can only hope you take care & are well.
Anon: "Not outside of language, no."
How were you able to give a written interpretation of what you saw in the Rockwell image if its meaning only resides in the written or spoken word ?
The unseen sailor with the shiny shoes is in control. He holds the purse, he has the money.
Decoding this playful work through humorless marxist negativity is about as lousy, banal, and inhumane way of interpreting it imaginable.
Great, you reduce everything to game-like caricatures of power positions and power imbalances, oppressor and oppressed... All the organic complexity of real human beings goes by the wayside in order to arrive at the pre-ordained political/Maoist conclusion. All the reality of the agency and strength of women, their narcissism and foibles, and the insecurities and weakness of men, and their narcissism and foibles is obliterated. No spirit survives, no humor, no fun, no artistry.
It all becomes man = goon, woman = victim.
If you had the sensitivity to see it, you could see by the Sailor’s hands that he is not the brutal domineering sort. That he is holding a purse further amplifies that point. It does not signify that ‘he has the money and control’ - rather it signifies that he is willing to hold a purse and risk being seen as emasculated for doing so. Probably because he and his girl are quite close. And he’s not as concerned with appearances. Or he’s just a good guy.
The girl is a prim girl. Proper, dignified and plain. Yet she has chosen or has allowed herself to be chosen by a sailor for a date/boyfriend. She looks awkwardly still in this artist's booth because she's never posed before. And she’s nervous. And she’s a shy girl with all this attention on her. She’s acting stilted trying to keep a frozen pose to help the artist ‘get it right’ She might be feeling somewhat claustrophobic trapped in the space with all the attention on her.
What she is thinking is completely up to us to imagine. She might be, as so many artist’s models can attest to, simply trying to hold still for the portraitist. A much much harder thing to do than one would think.
Why is she holding her boyfriend’s navy hat? There is the one weakness to the picture, in my view. I believe Rockwell did that to clarify what is not otherwise clear about the characters' identities and their relationship to one another, to produce some pictorial effects, and to give the girl’s hands something to do. A good solution but not a great one. But maybe the only solution given the rest of the picture, which is otherwise excellent.
The sketch artist is acting – as David says – pretending to be an artiste. Giving his paying customers the Byronic Virtuoso show, even if the actual drawing doesn’t live up to it. The show might be put on to make the customers believe they are satisfied, or are supposed to be satisfied, even if they aren’t.
Whether he is also putting on this show to convince himself that he isn’t just an amusement park hack is an open question. Though a lot of small timers so love what they’re doing that just doing it is success enough. And a lot of people putting on acts don’t even know that they are doing so.
Everything I just said is the top level of the image; the surface. The shallow end of the pool and the tip of the artistic iceberg.
>Of course, nothing of the above is in the drawing.
Exactly right.
>I’ve added doubt about the artist’s position on gender equality to the conversation, i.e. the meaning.
The meaning of art isn’t that which can be said about it, just the opposite. If it can be said, it’s not the art.
Consider cuisine:
One can describe the historical context of the meal, the ingredients, the cook time, the quantity of macronutrients, and so on, but none of that will allow you to experience the flavor of the dish. It is exclusively in the flavor of the dish where the content of the experience of tasting it resides.
Conversation about the dish cannot change what is there. They may help you to appreciate aspects of the flavor that you hadn’t detected, for better or worse. But the flavor was already there in the dish, as the result of the chef and the ingredients.
Similarly, an accusation regarding Rockwell’s insufficient wokeness can’t change the “flavor” or meaning of his paintings. The dish is already cooked. Nothing that can be said can add or subtract from what is in the flavor. At most, it can help us to appreciate aspects of the flavor we hadn’t detected.
And even as the commentary may make us sensitive to those flavors, it is still only in the dish/painting that the flavor/meaning resides.
Our friend may remark “Ah, I note a nuttiness on this Salmon.”, and we may then detect a note of macadamia which we had previously missed, but the flavor of macadamia exists only in the dish, it does not exist in our friend’s comment about the dish. Our friend’s comment is only an arrow pointing to the flavor, it is not the flavor itself. To experience the flavor, the only place to look is within the taste.
To appreciate Art, one must roll it around their mouths like a bechamel or fine tawny port. They must, using that sensory organ, soak up the flavor. If one would like to know anything about food, they must taste. They must (almost painfully) fight the urge to gulp. If one would like to know anything about Art, they must soak in the light hitting their eyes, without gulping.
Choose a painting, turn off the part of your brain that wants to think about it, and just taste it. Imagine that you’ve just been given the last piece of candy in existence. How would you eat that candy? You would not sit and read the wrapper or listen to critics talk about the cultural context of that candy, you wouldn’t consider the candy-maker’s politics. You would moan as you made love to it with your tastebuds. Try treating a painting that way, you’ll learn something.
Why is she holding her boyfriend’s navy hat? There is the one weakness to the picture, in my view.
On second thought, the girl might be holding onto the hat because she needed something to hold onto, to keep from fidgeting. That this also solves the establishment of the relationship and identity of the boyfriend makes it a fine solution.
I forgot to point out that he's holding onto the purse to keep it safe while she's in the booth and under stress and concentrating on holding still.
If the claim is that language created the universe, perhaps. But it isn't, so it really isn't.
But your prior post announced:
my position remains that meaning is communally produced within language. The meaning of any given phenomenon is produced in conversation, in the reading and writing and speaking thereof.
So, explain what you understand by the term 'meaning'.
I forgot to point out that he's holding onto the purse to keep it safe while she's in the booth and under stress and concentrating on holding still.
Did you just, after scorning my quick and sloppy reading, which was merely intended to illustrate the notion of meaning not residing in the piece, and not at all claimed to be, in any way or form, the truth about the mimetic content, just then proceed to matter-of-factly claim superior knowledge not only about what is actually happening in the scene portrayed, but also about the world outside it? What more can you excavate? Did someone else's purse get snatched? Why was security so bad? Was the circus in town? Were there clowns?
I’ll have to admit that you are justified in calling me humorless, because this is comedy gold.
As I scrolled up through your fine article, I thought for a brief moment that the Picasso was Gahan Wilson. Odd.
So, explain what you understand by the term 'meaning'.
I could copy and paste a lexical definition. I could refer to usage of the term in specific fields of study. I could paraphrase, I could invent. But whatever approach, it would not satisfy. The meaning - the meaning - I’d produce could not possibly satisfy. Not merely because it would itself endlessly defer within the language we are operating within, but also because the inevitable slippages in the communicative act, the minor and major differences in understanding of the definition, in good faith as well as bad, could only result in an unending line of nitpickery. And why does this always happen once demands for hard definitions are made and met? Again, precisely because it’s meanings all the way down, all of it produced in language.
So, instead, I refer to the posts in the debate following the excellent WHEN IS A TREE THE SAME AS A DOG?-post, and also the posts in this thread. This will obviously not suffice for those for whom my further deferral of the meaning of meaning could never suffice, but still - it’ll have to suffice.
Most important of all, though:
It's an absolutely stunning piece of work. Thank you very much for sharing it and also for the fine editorializing, Apatoff.
al mcluckie-- I hadn't heard that. I believe it's likely Rockwell accentuated existing folds, but only to a limited extent; every fold in his work seems natural. If Rockwell was inventing folds from scratch I think they would quickly look artificial.
MORAN-- The exhibition was terrific, with a wide variety of drawings. Curator Stephanie Plunkett prepared a very substantial catalog.
Kev Ferrara-- I agree this drawing is terrific; what a great elbow! it's hard to believe that after all that work, it's a discarded idea. The Rockwell Museum estimates that it was done around 1943 but nobody knows for sure. (It's in the Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, Norman Rockwell Art Collection Trust, NRACT.1973.110). The exhibition is chock full of similarly great drawing. One fun drawing is Rockwell's drawing of the fire in his studio, reproduced in Guptill's book, "Norman Rockwell, Illustrator."
xopxe-- I agree. If this girl was unattached, it would completely change the dynamic of the picture. We'd wonder whether she was an aspiring starlet, vulnerable to the blandishments of some snake, or an a naive small town girl who the artist was glamorizing for nefarious purposes. We don't need to see the whole sailor, just a leg is enough to show that the situation is under the watchful eye of some fella.
Anonymous-- I've listened to (and enjoyed) some of Pete Beard's YouTube presentations, “Unsung Heroes Illustration.” He is hugely prolific. Do you know anything about him?
Anonymous-- Thanks for the word "Rückenfigur." Yes, there's a lot to play with here; some of it is implicit in the drawing and some is not. But it shows how open even tightly representational drawing can be.
Caterina-- Agreed. In fact, Rockwell was known to be very kind to his models, despite the fact that he was very hard on himself, with long hours and high standards. He was a workmanlike painter with none of the exaggerations or pretensions of the artist here, but this drawing shows he was clearly aware of (and had views about) that theatrical style of working.
Laurence John and Kev Ferrara-- I'm amused that, like me, you are drawn to all those line drawings on the wall in the background. They are a helpful code for the era being depicted. They also show in a few sketches that Rockwell fully understood the world of pin up and pulp art, and could've prospered in that genre if he hadn't set his sites on bigger game.
I could copy and paste a lexical definition. I could refer to usage of the term in specific fields of study. I could paraphrase, I could invent. But whatever approach, it would not satisfy. The meaning - the meaning - I’d produce could not possibly satisfy. Not merely because it would itself endlessly defer within the language we are operating within, but also because the inevitable slippages in the communicative act, the minor and major differences in understanding of the definition, in good faith as well as bad, could only result in an unending line of nitpickery. And why does this always happen once demands for hard definitions are made and met? Again, precisely because it’s meanings all the way down, all of it produced in language.
So, instead, I refer to the posts in the debate following the excellent WHEN IS A TREE THE SAME AS A DOG?-post, and also the posts in this thread. This will obviously not suffice for those for whom my further deferral of the meaning of meaning could never suffice, but still - it’ll have to suffice.
In other words, you don't know, yet pretend to yourself and others that you do.
In bad faith, you don't know, yet pretend to yourself and others that you do.
Define «know».
QED.
(Not sure why this previously posted reply to Richard isn't showing up, so this is me trying to repost it.)
The meaning of art isn’t that which can be said about it, just the opposite. If it can be said, it’s not the art.
This is interesting.
A consequence of the idea that meaning isn’t excavated, is that complete understanding is impossible. There’s no mine to be actually emptied, it can only be metaphorically forever filled. And so, whatever meaning is produced, obviously therefore isn’t (of) the art. Paraphrase is heresy not because it is impossible to transfer meaning, but because there is no meaning to transfer. The word only equals the world for schizophrenics, sympathetic spell casters and the gods. (Oh, and pragmatists, whom we might as well offer a category of their own, if only to not upset them).
If, on the other hand, meaning is something that does resides in art, then full excavation seems per definition to not only be possible, but inevitable, no? It might take time and it might take effort, but that meaning which is there to be grasped, dragged out and understood, can be just that. The mine could be emptied, and whatever should remain, would be meaningless matter.
And so, the meaning of art is precisely that which can be said about it, and only that.
(Trying once more to repost the reply to Richard.)
The meaning of art isn’t that which can be said about it, just the opposite. If it can be said, it’s not the art.
This is interesting.
A consequence of the idea that meaning isn’t excavated, is that complete understanding is impossible. There’s no mine to be actually emptied, it can only be metaphorically forever filled. And so, whatever meaning is produced, obviously therefore isn’t (of) the art. Paraphrase is heresy not because it is impossible to transfer meaning, but because there is no meaning to transfer. The word only equals the world for schizophrenics, sympathetic magic spell casters and the gods. (Oh, and pragmatists, whom we might as well offer a category of their own, if only to not upset them).
If, on the other hand, meaning is something that does resides in art, then full excavation seems per definition to not only be possible, but inevitable, no? It might take time and it might take effort, but that meaning which is there to be grasped, dragged out and understood, can be just that. The mine could be emptied, and whatever should remain, would be meaningless matter.
And so, the meaning of art is precisely that which can be said about it, and only that.
My previously posted reply to Richard keeps disappearing upon reposting. My apologies, it is out of my hands.
Are you people arguing that an art piece's meaning is completely contained within it? That's a silly claim if it is so. It would make discussing art pointless, negate the humanity of the artist and the observer, and the whole concept of culture to boot.
Anonymous, my sincere apologies. I found your post in the spam filter (along with one from xopxe) and released them both. They have now been automatically inserted into the dialogue back where they should have been. This is ridiculous, there is no reason they should have been blocked, I have no censorship or prohibitions or spam settings here. There just seems to be a random hiccup in the blogger AI every once in a while. I've complained about it.
The only thing I'd note is that the traffic here more than doubled recently, and since I assume there hasn't been an abrupt increase in discriminating art lovers, I assume it's due to a combination of Russian bots and escort services in Mumbai. That tsunami seems to be creating challenges for blogger.
Richard,
Is 'Anonymous' an AI you are playing with?
I did some reverse image searching using 'Tin Eye' and found a low-res image of the study in 'The Best of Norman Rockwell' book, but couldn't make out the date.
I then searched through ebay listings of the book in case there was a better picture.
According to the book it was done in 1956:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/QcEAAOSwbMtcTxvM/s-l1600.jpg
ebay item number: 312612570342
David, no problem. For what it is worth, there have been reports on google's spam filter performance degradation for a couple years already. And it's an industry-wide phenomenon (disqus is borderline unusable).
xopxe: "Are you people arguing that an art piece's meaning is completely contained within it? That's a silly claim if it is so."
No, we're arguing against the motion ( tabled by Anonybot AI ) that the meaning of a work of art 'is produced within language / conversation'.
Sherlock Laurence John ("I did some reverse image searching...")
You are incredible. I am forwarding your email to the curator of the Rockwell Drawings exhibition who came up with the 1943 estimated date on the wall card.
Laurence, I went back searching where I got that idea from, but it seems it recided in a now deleted post.
Oh by the way, those accusations of being a fake person are very, very bad form in a discussion forum. If you think it is so, you just stop participating. If you stay engaged it's just a form of dishonest abuse.
Great sleuthing Laurence!
And my god is that opposite page idea juxtaposing the phony toothpaste commercial with the phony TV western a missed classic of cultural commentary. Like Mad Magazine before Mad Magazine. (Or actually dead spot on with the beginning of Mad as a Magazine.)
One thing that caught my eye is the artist's face perspective. It shouldn't look like that. From that point of view, the nose would be invisible. The contrast between that forced figure and the plain, frontal, and almost flat model's face is very funny.
Damn, the post above that starts as "Laurence, I went back searching where I got that idea from" is actually by me. For some reason, it went in as if I was unlogged.
Anyway, I'll use this opportunity to mention that the "false-start" drawings on the floor are great storytelling.
Anon, Apologies for going with the joke that you might be a AI. Much spicier insults have been said before in this comment section.
I'm going to try and 'steel-man' your position:
Because you think that nothing in the universe possesses inherent 'meaning' and we only ascribe meaning to things / events / phenomena, and a painting is such a 'thing', there is no 'meaning' inherently within it. Any 'meaning' only occurs when a sentient creature (such as a human) observes the image and forms a meaningful interpretation of it.
Is that correct ?
those accusations of being a fake person are very, very bad form in a discussion forum. If you think it is so, you just stop participating. If you stay engaged it's just a form of dishonest abuse.
Richard has played this trick before.
AInonymous is all over the map, contradicting itself and unable to defend any of its assertions. One minute seeming like an intellectual, next whingeing. And it just borrowed lines from my posts in the prior comment section which tell against its own position. It's all very strange.
One thing that caught my eye is the artist's face perspective. It shouldn't look like that. From that point of view, the nose would be invisible.
It is dead on accurate. Especially for the kinds of characters Rockwell loves drawing and the kinds of faces they make.
Kev, I thought you were joking about the AI, but the re-phrasing of your line "Nobody actually embodies solipsism except schizophrenics" into "The word only equals the world for schizophrenics" is odd.
I think this comment section has jumped the shark from the previous comment section and ended up in the uncanny valley.
I think this comment section has jumped the shark from the previous comment section and ended up in the uncanny valley.
Hahaha.
(I actually did laugh at this.)
I guess I am sort-of joking about the AI? <--Question mark indicates uptalking.
Only sort-of though. At bottom, I really was asking Richard if he was being mischievous. Because an 'NPC' human is certainly capable of everything we're seeing here, just as much as an AI is.
Re: It is dead on accurate.
It's obviois from te reference that the perspective is purposefully forced. Playing with the affected posturing, and as a counterpoint to the girls straightforwardness.
(And just in case this is xpoxe from his phone, if it come as anonymous this would explain my "unlogged" post)
Laurence John
The AI-stuff just reads like a deflective coping mechanism to me, so don’t worry about it - but your civility is appreciated:)
Please forgive my preemption, but your interrogation, already in its start, seems set on a trajectory towards metaphysics (dualism) - and I am not making ontological claims.
> If, on the other hand, meaning is something that does resides in art, then full excavation seems per definition to not only be possible, but inevitable, no?
No. Just as there is no amount of description of an apple which can “excavate” the full sensory experience of that apple.
Spend the next 10,000 years writing about the experience of this specific red delicious apple consumed at exactly this stage of ripeness at exactly this ambient temperature, and no matter how many pages you add to that work, you will never capture the breadth of the content of that little experience.
This is why and what for Art. Through manipulation of a medium, the skilled artist can communicate those referents for which there are no symbol.
> Are you people arguing that an art piece's meaning is completely contained within it? That's a silly claim if it is so. It would make discussing art pointless
It is not pointless, for the same reason that discussing a well-cooked dish isn’t pointless despite that a dish can only be experienced in itself.
It can be valuable to discuss the chef’s training under this or that other chef, to learn the provenance of his ingredients. But in the end, the experience of the dish is self-contained -- reading a restaurant review is not eating there. And conversely someone who ate at a restaurant, but never read the reviews, is not missing some essential piece of the experience.
> The AI-stuff just reads like a deflective coping mechanism to me
The internet, absent a sufficient system for defensible identity, is inherently broken. Unfortunately, given that the Turing test has been passed and CAPTCHA is dead, all newbs are bots until proven otherwise. Anon's are doubly so. Get a real username tied to an internet identity with some history. Until then, you are indistinguishable from a bot.
The AI-stuff just reads like a deflective coping mechanism to me.
Coping with what exactly?
Richard,
I realize that my hesitancy in providing a hard definition of what I mean by meaning is bound to cause problems in a conversation. And in mediated representation of a conversation such as is a debate online, such problems can only compound. Having put myself in this situation, there is extra burden on me to respond in good faith.
Keeping this in mind, it seems to me that you are conflating sensation and meaning, consumption and consummation. The analogy you draw between the consumption of an apple and a drawing is workable, but also complicated. It can be filled with all kinds of interesting meaning. It is, in other words, very open for interpretation. The fire burns, but not meaningfully so. The worm eats the apple, but not meaningfully so. We not only consume the meal, the burning and the drawing, we consummate them, adding meaning to them.
If meaning is something the artist puts into her creation, if the meaning of an artwork is something entirely created by the artist, then that meaning cannot be boundless, can it? (Also not perfectly) analogously: If we communally could spend 10000 years and still not be able to empty that box, the artist would have had to spend way more than that filling it.
If meaning, on the other hand, isn’t the creation of the artist, but some soul-like property of the work, magically breathed into it by the gods, well, then we are in the metaphysical realm, in the domain of teleology and/or theology - in which case I’ll just respectfully bow out from the conversation, because thereof one must be silent.
Lastly, if meaning is allowed to be that non-aristotelian third thing, produced entirely in language, the piece of paper full of fields and lines in charcoal becomes less than a fetish, but more than a meal for fire and silverfish.
Anon,
You haven't offered a rebuttal of my earlier point that:
The 'meaning' can exist solely between me and the artwork. The 'meaning' may even be (by my estimation) irreducible to words.
The 'meaning' can exist solely between me and the artwork.
Only through already aquired language.
The 'meaning' may even be (by my estimation) irreducible to words.
Nothing "outside" of language can be reduced to words.
Well, there it is.
And why does this always happen once demands for hard definitions are made and met? Again, precisely because it’s meanings all the way down, all of it produced in language.
All the way down to what? Hmm? Nothing?
Or are you positing an infinite regress of interdependent partial linguistic meanings? Where the meaning of every word or phrase or sentence would fail to coalesce and would depend on other words phrases or sentences to provide definition. The constituents of which - words, phrases, etc - would in turn also fail to coalesce in meaning, and so would require links to further words, phrases and sentences, and so on and so on. A model where we have an infinite regress of failures to mean.
Such a circular reasoning model of meaning would mean there is no such thing as meaning.
> Nothing "outside" of language can be reduced to words.
That is the doorway to Art.
>if the meaning of an artwork is something entirely created by the artist, then that meaning cannot be boundless, can it?
It does not take 10,000 years because the meaning is boundless.
Let's try music instead:
The meaning of Moonlight Sonata is entirely outside language. Stop and read that again. In 10,000 years of talking about the meaning of Moonlight Sonata, you could not empty its contents.
If you're struggling to understand that, I suggest you listen to Moonlight Sonata, and try to report back its meaning. We will wait.
That which can be said about Moonlight Sonata is not Moonlight Sonata, because the point of Moonlight Sonata is that which cannot be said.
So far so good on Moonlight Sonata? Well, here's the sitch.
Drawing and painting, like instrumental music or cooking, manipulate a material of meaning entirely outside of spoken language. If you're looking at a Norman Rockwell and only experiencing the meaning that can be spoken, then you're not seeing Norman Rockwell at all.
A painting has exactly the sort of pure non-language meaning that a piano sonata does. Until you can sense that, you are visually "illiterate".
[...]the period of aesthetic arrest[...]
I like this term. Am I entirely wrong in thinking that it could, at least synecdochally, sum up your position? There’s a boldness to its insistence, simply by the arrangement of words, of aesthetics occurring (or existing) before the arrest, the fact, the sensation, and there also before the sense-making, the making of meaning.
If you're struggling to understand that, I suggest you listen to Moonlight Sonata, and try to report back its meaning. We will wait.
OK.
EDIT: and therefore also before the sense-making, the making of meaning.
There is simply too much to this topic to reduce it down to one aspect.
Of course.
But still, it seems to me that this demarcates a point of forking paths. We’ll not agree, and that’s fine. I cannot agree that there is some special circuitry of meaning relay that allows for meaning to bypass language, simply because (once again) I understand meaning to be entirely produced and contained within language. Following this, I understand aesthetics to be a subset principle of human sense-making, and not some superior force of nature. Sensation does not make sense, sense is made of sensation. If aesthetic information should somehow be something that somehow exists beyond language, one could not speak of it. One could not make sense of it, one could not understand it, one could not make meaning of it. It would be meaningless.
Now, in a previous post you asked me if I believe that the deferral of meaning, if entirely contained within language, constitutes an infinite regress. I would probably prefer “interconnectedness” to “regress”, but still have to answer yes - I see no way out of language, as far as meaning is concerned. But I also understand language to be merely as much a product of our biology as any other aspect of our being. It has no special place in the mud and guts of the world, and the production of meaning is as much a matter of the flesh as is the production of fecal matter. So, there must be some connection between the word and the world, and unless I posit that meaning is some soul-like quality of language (and thereby categorically refuting my own stated position), meaning must also have its origin outside of language, correct?
Correct.
So, there must be some connection between the word and the world, and unless I posit that meaning is some soul-like quality of language (and thereby categorically refuting my own stated position), meaning must also have its origin outside of language, correct?
You've been arguing against this point all along. Are you now in agreement with us regarding it?
Still all in language.
To Anonymous,
Perhaps if you thought of an artwork as a companion you might better get a sense of why one is attracted to, or hangs with a painting or particular drawing. Art is a form of company, a form of companionship. There is something meaningful, even beautiful in companionship that doesn’t require endless wrestling with words. Yes, there’s a spirit to it on top of everything else discussed. There’s a spirit in the Norman Rockwell. The figures are energetic and possess a thoughtfulness in the quality of their attention. I’m describing one type of nonverbal expression. Sure one can identify it, but it is read prior to finding the right word to communicate what one has already read.
You believe that all of understanding and thought is predicated on circular reasoning and therefore is inherently tautological?
Well, in a sense - so long as "tautological" isn't meant to function as some special, a priori grounding here. Propositional logic cannot resolved this, the loop cannot be closed.
(Upon writing "loop", I am reminded of Hofstadter's strange loop - perhaps that can be a useful reference here?)
What meaninglessly originates language outside of language?
I don't know. It cannot be meaningfully spoken of.
Sean Farrel,
This debate began in commentary to the value of curatorial content and critical interpretation in regard to art. What is the meaning of art? What is the meaning in art? Who has it? Where is it? Is meaning fixed? Does authorial intent and circumstance add or subtract meaning? Does the audience matter? Are some readings better than others? What is good art? What is bad curation? What is chatter? What is prayer? Et cetera, et cetera. These are interesting and profoundly human problems, problems that, for me, cannot be once and for all settled, especially not by priests and fanatics.
I am neither a visiting alien from space nor some iconoclastic vandal from some comic bookish continental training camp. I am able to enjoy art, to be moved by it. I am surrounded by beauty, I am transfigured by the sublime. I recognize the brilliancy of Rockwell. I even, believe it or not, feel the sensational impact of nursery rhyme-levelled pieces of classical music.
I appreciate your well-formed text and your kind intention, but I believe I have already adressed the matters you raise.
Also, this reply is (obviously, hopefully) not only meant for you.
As the thread reads, your contention was that meaning ultimately resides in language.
I brought up affinity and presence because they are examples of nonverbal meaning
that receive little credit in our current world because they’re not of academic
accomplishment and don’t belong to the economics of pretension and prowess.
In fact being outside of language they’re treated like they’re an obstacle to greater things. Presence and affinity are not “human problems”. It’s their absence that’s a problem. The domination of language certainly can be problematic because it forgets where it is.
Giving examples of nursery rhyme-levelled pieces of classical music shows us
you can be in relation to reality without making it one's subject; that you can be carried away, that language is not its master and in such there is meaning, yes, aside from language. If you pointed out relationships in a complicated piece or that even simple pieces originate in the mind, its presence would be no less important.
No one is arguing that reason and the finer things aren’t of the mind, just that they aren’t always the result of a verbal deductive process. The mind functions in terms of space, place, images and a host of things that can make up art and music. We relate within something, not to all as if it is our subject, which can be a common pitfall of verbal language.
Ah yes, and we're back to lectures and insults. That's ok, though. You are free to not engage. Take care and be well. Touch grass.
Sean Farrell,
I brought up affinity and presence because they are examples of nonverbal meaning[...]
I don't mean to single out the quoted text as an evasive manouver - I recognize the appeal to a more humble approach to the world in your text. But still, the terms your are using, the words, they mean something only in relation to other words.
And what is the practical consequence of this? Is there nothing outside the text? No, there most certainly appears to be. But there is no outside-text, so the meanings we live and die by perhaps needn't be held quite so religiously, so arrogantly. Perhaps we could be kinder.
Ah yes, and we're back to lectures and insults.
The DARVO/crybullying routine won't play here.
You're clearly arrogant. Which is to say, you are self-righteous, ignorant and insistent without cause. You don't even acknowledge legitimate points of dispute. One assumes you don't even understand the points of dispute. You just whinge for mommy under pressure and move on.
That's ok, though. You are free to not engage. Take care and be well. Touch grass.
And nobody buys the passive-aggressive virtue signaling. There is no credulous and codependent Karen here who might step in and declare you the moral victor for your disingenuous Buddha-like performance of niceties.
We await any defense of anything you have asserted, and any refutation of anything we have shared which you have dismissed. We await your assessment of Moonlight Sonata. We await anything resembling the philosophical rigor your posturing pretends to indicate.
Touch grass yourself.
Repetition is not proof. Repetition is not an argument:
simply because (once again) I understand meaning to be entirely produced and contained within language.
If aesthetic information should somehow be something that somehow exists beyond language, one could not speak of it. One could not make sense of it, one could not understand it, one could not make meaning of it. It would be meaningless.
my position remains that meaning is communally produced within language.
The meaning of any given phenomenon is produced in conversation, in the reading and writing and speaking thereof.
I see no way out of language, as far as meaning is concerned.
But still, the terms your are using, the words, they mean something only in relation to other words.
We await your assessment of Moonlight Sonata.
OK.
Though a world without humility is pure madness, I was trying to show that the nature of art is in its presence and in its affinity, and that the mind can understand an image just as music is understood in sound. Understanding can be enhanced in other ways by talking about it, no argument there, but you are seeing reality as inferior to language when it is quite larger and I know you think this because you’re saying reality must fit into our language, that there is no outside-text, which by its nature is derivative and relational to reality. Thus the endless flexing, the pretensions, its isms and narratives, revealing our limited nature in the face of a larger reality as much as it does any particulars.
Will you at least concede that language must be in relationship to reality to make any sense? That it has to answer to reality, correspond to reality in some way even metaphorically when trying to grasp that beyond its reach?
Sean Farrell,
I am neither saying nor seeing that reality is inferior to language. That's absurd. Language exists in reality, obviously. That there is no outside-text does not mean that there is nothing outside of the text.
the mind can understand an image
The meaning of this simple statement, this fragmentary piece of your text, exists entirely in language. None of the components are meaningful beyond language, nevermind the arrangement of them. And even worse, their meaning cannot be resolved within the language that produces it, as the meaning of the words endlessly defers to other words. This process, though, is what we have. It is how we make meaning of things.
Saying there’s no language outside-text, by which you mean verbal language outside text, is a very different thing than saying there’s no meaning outside of language/text, which is what you’ve been saying all along.
If reality isn’t inferior to language, then you’re also acknowledging there is meaning in reality outside of text which it attempts to interpret and translate.
So, here's another approach. Art, drawing and music are languages, or multitudes of them. You do not appreciate them directly from nothing, you first learn to grasp them. You learn them as you learn spoken words, by seeing them being used and using them.
Meaning and language come in pairs, at the same time. Having a language means sharing meanings, building a meaning is defining a language. Also, languages aren't individual, the only reason humans develop them is for communication.
They come from practice, and are not universal.
There are direct experiences that do not depend on being learned or communicated. Pain and hunger come to mind.
Moonlight Sonata is not a Universal. That's something only someone raised in an European tradition (both artistic and imperial) could believe.
To an African musician never exposed to Beethoven it would sound pointless (how do you dance this? Why the obsession with melody?) A indian trained musician would find it jarring with a weird key, almost painful to listen. And so on.
Of course both could read a treatise on European music and discover that it's actually cool and learn to enjoy it, and then pester their friends on this foreign music that can actually be moving, if you accept it.
>Art, drawing and music are languages
Over the years, I have found myself referring to art and music as languages in my own conversations. Conceptually, it makes sense - both mediums communicate messages, albeit in different ways. They both have localized forms. Art and music can do many of the things that language can also do -- create moods, invoke emotions, and tell stories, but the similarities end there. They are not languages. It is essential we understand this distinction with precision, and do not allow sloppy terminology to confuse us.
A command of syntax, grammar and vocabulary is essential for successful communication in a language. Without an understanding of these coding systems, the language will remain entirely indecipherable. On the other hand, art and music don't employ codes to convey messages. This is the essential distinction. Everyone has access to the content of an image regardless of age or culture - even the uncontacted Sentinalese people recognize what Michelangelo's David means without learning any syntactical or semantic devices. It means itself. It means that sculpture, which they can see because they have eyes.
This is because Art and music, unlike languages, communicate through direct sensation. Pictures don't symbolically reference things outside themselves, the way a language does, they reference themselves. A picture of an apple communicates itself -- THIS apple -- it doesn't require decoding. The English word "apple" communicates apples generically by artifice.
>Moonlight Sonata is not a Universal.
Taste for the sensations of Moonlight Sonata may not be shared by all, taste is tribal. However, the sensation of Moonlight Sonata is accessible to any listener. You don't need a special key or translator to hear it; Moonlight Sonata speaks its own story that needs no translation. Like the David or the painting of the apple, Moonlight Sonata means exactly itself.
Similarly, without any prior training, an American can tune into a Raga or Soukous Dancehall song and experience its sensations. It's already there for anyone with an open mind to inhabit. Taste and style may be ingrained in us, and limit which artworks we are drawn to, but we don't need some secret codebook to understand what Soukous is all about.
Due to drastically different life experiences, a person can write a poem in English which I may not appreciate at all. I may think it ugly, with a pointless rhythm, and stupid sensations. That doesn't mean we have a language barrier. Don't confuse the two.
> If a painting depends on somebody knowing the […] difference between ranks in the American military […] we are back in code-land
I don’t think that means we’re in language/code territory. Let’s simplify the case back to the apple.
But the catch is this viewer doesn’t know what an apple is. Does inexperience with apples mean we’re now participating in encoding? I don’t think so. The apple is still the apple. Likewise, the cadet is still the cadet, the admiral the admiral. The sensation of apple, cadet and admiral are all still direct and unmediated by language.
Even in the case of an object with words on it, eg a Coke can, they don’t really operate linguistically in a picture, even if the logo or sign has human letters on it. Replace the letters in Coke with Slurm and we will still know it depicts a Soda.
We ought to distinguish codified abstraction from mere ignorance of a referent.
PS; I’m not suggesting that hybrid art forms like comic books or sung songs are non-linguistic. I’m only taking issue with obscurity as codification.
Richard, I think your construction is flawed. Any physical manifestation, be it a human made pile of rocks or the sound of the rain in the woods, "communicates itself". That does not make it art.
When Beethoven composed he followed a strict set of rules. Extremely strict, if you go by the span of human musical experience. That's what he intended, and he had an extremely definite effect he wanted to produce. He knew what he wanted and how to get it, and musicologist discuss the methods and the resources he came up with. If you are a Maori and hear it, it will "express itself" but be completely unrelated to anything Beethoven had even thought about. It could be as well be the sound of the rain or a pile of rocks.
As an example, check what European classic musicians felt when first exposed to Jazz. Jazz also expressed itself, but what was missing is communication, because the language was not shared, because they weren't interested in comunicating the same ideas.
The main problem is that naturally we are so submerged in our languages that we don't see them. We don't realize they are there, and think "it is the only it could be". And some art pieces are in languages so foreign to us we could even fail to recognize them as art pieces. We won't even aknowledge they are human creations with an intention.
And that's before judging the poetry good or bad. You won't see the poetry. I could enjoy German opera, but won't listen Chinese opera, even tough I don't understand neither German nor Chinese.
All in all, i don't think saying that an art piece only expresses itself is a helpful starting point.
Kev, i have serious doubts you understand how science works. (This sound harsher than intended, this applies to the vast majority of people)
If a painting depends on somebody knowing the cultural connotations of a muscle car from the late 60s, or the difference between ranks in the American military, or the meaning of a piece of signage, we are back in code-land; at least for those items.
I don't think it's that you lack the mental capacity to interrogate and come to terms with what you are actually expressing here,
A great artist can still use such tribal symbols and create universal work by using aesthetic means to actually explain subliminally to the otherwise estranged viewer their meaning.
rather I suppose it is precisely because you have some awareness of implication that you have to make such a neck-breaking turn back into the temple.
Without the prefixture that is "Michelangelo's David", and all the compounded meanings therewith attached to the object over the years, it is just a sculpture, not that sculpture.
Thus untethered, if sufficiently versed in metaphorization and mimetic representation, an audience might still understand it to be a sculpture representing a human-like figure. But what then? How would they make sense of it? Perhaps the uninitiated would be puzzled by the freakishly large head, the strangely feminine face and the less than heroic genitalia? It's not unlikely that the weird posture and unfamiliar proportions would cause the audience to simply, primarily consider it a failure of representation.
Supposing unfamiliarity with marble, perhaps a technically adequately sculpted, moulded or printed replica of this particular sculpture in some material with which the audience were familiar with would at least cause appreciation of the technical skill seemingly involved in the making of the sculpture before them? Would that make it more meaningful? Perhaps it would be better appreciated if the replica were made smaller? Or bigger? How would the circumstances under which the audience were shown the statue affect the production of meaning attached to the event - and therefore also the sculpture? How would the thing rank in comparison to the audience's vault and knowledge of other imitative artifacts? Et cetera, et cetera.
What meaning would be produced, whose what would this object be?
even the uncontacted Sentinalese people recognize what Michelangelo's David means without learning any syntactical or semantic devices. It means itself. It means that sculpture, which they can see because they have eyes.
Without the prefixture that is "Michelangelo's David", and all the compounded meanings therewith attached to the object over the years, it is just a sculpture, not that sculpture.
Thus untethered, if sufficiently versed in metaphorization and mimetic representation, an audience might still understand it to be a sculpture representing a human-like figure. But what then? How would they make sense of it? Perhaps the uninitiated would be puzzled by the freakishly large head, the strangely feminine face and the less than heroic genitalia? It's not unlikely that the weird posture and unfamiliar proportions would cause the audience to simply, primarily consider it a failure of representation.
Supposing unfamiliarity with marble, perhaps a technically adequately sculpted, moulded or printed replica of this particular sculpture in some material with which the audience were familiar with would at least cause appreciation of the technical skill seemingly involved in the making of the sculpture before them? Would that make it more meaningful? Perhaps it would be better appreciated if the replica were made smaller? Or bigger? How would the circumstances under which the audience were shown the statue affect the production of meaning attached to the event - and therefore also the sculpture? How would the thing rank in comparison to the audience's vault and knowledge of other imitative artifacts? Et cetera, et cetera.
What meaning would be produced, whose what would this object be?
i have serious doubts you understand how science works. (This sound harsher than intended, this applies to the vast majority of people)
What a grotesque and self-regarding thing to say. I studied Chemistry, Physics and Calculus in High School and physics in college, kept reading various physics journals all my life, and have researched aesthetics as a science for decades, which includes looking at brain function, linguistics and semiotics.
The Heidegger thesis was never scientific.
Thus untethered, if sufficiently versed in metaphorization and mimetic representation, an audience might still understand it to be a sculpture representing a human-like figure.
This is deranged. A person *might* recognize David as a sculpture of a human-like figure? But only after sufficient education? I'm now taking the AI theory quite seriously, given that this Anon's appearance coincides perfectly with the public release of ChatGPT/OpenAI.
Anon, please prove you are a human.
Kev, then you should know that saying "the experiment written up in Nature proves x" is not how it's done. For starters that's not a proper citation. Put it up, and then we could check what the hypothesis tested was. And this does sound interesting. Science, you either do it right or you're not doing it.
Kev, then you should know that saying "the experiment written up in Nature proves x" is not how it's done. For starters that's not a proper citation. Put it up, and then we could check what the hypothesis tested was. And this does sound interesting. Science, you either do it right or you're not doing it.
If you want to share a link to a study of the original premise by Heidegger that shows that it is a valid scientific hypothesis with some testing behind it, I will respond in kind by finding the paper that refutes it.
Otherwise, the initial Heideggerian claim that "all art is understood via tribal training" requires no refutation. Because it was never a real scientific claim to begin with.
At this point if you want anybody to listen to you at all, you should probably put a link to your portfolio or credentials. Are you an artist?<\b>
What meaningful difference could curatorial content possibly make?
I’m sorry the propositional calculus of my statements does not add up, that I am not able even to provide stable ground for my argument, that my reasoning is circular, that statements are imperfectly repeated and mutated, and that I contradict myself.
It is what it is, no?
(I am also sorry for being so bad at html’ing and editing.)
Kev, it's you who made claims on the scientificity of stuff. But if you prefer to leave it at that, you're welcome. Cargo cult science is also hard if you want to do it right.
Oh another detail on the drawing. The lighting of the scene is very clever. But what is the shadow to the right of the painters figure? Like a contour or a bleeding offset... Is that actually drawn? Why only there?
"Moonlight Sonata is not a Universal. That's something only someone raised in an European tradition (both artistic and imperial) could believe.
To an African musician never exposed to Beethoven it would sound pointless (how do you dance this? Why the obsession with melody?) A indian trained musician would find it jarring with a weird key, almost painful to listen. And so on.
Of course both could read a treatise on European music and discover that it's actually cool and learn to enjoy it, and then pester their friends on this foreign music that can actually be moving, if you accept it."
Xopxe,
Do you agree that the entire paragraph of yours I quoted above has no basis in scientific research? And therefore requires no scientific refutation?
(Reposting to check on the bolding of all text. Is this site under attack?)
No it does not have scientific base, nor did not claim it was scientific.
As when I affirm "there should be no slavery" i don't claim scientific basis either.
Again, the scientific angle was introduced by you.
Kev, yes I do see everything bolded since the post from 12/21/2022 3:47 PM. There must be some unpaired < b > tag somewhere.
"In this context you asserted the tribalist view of Aesthetics (which is received Marxist training, actually) as truth, did you not?"
I'm not sure what you are arguing with me about. This is one of the most awkward strawmen I have been involved with. The last time I was a genocide apologist, now i'm a "marxist-tribalist" whatever that is. I laid my position in simple terms, that thing you are doing is very, very weird.
There is no point in responding to a post I had already deleted.
The bold thing is as obnoxious as the AI/troll situation. So thanks for the discussion. See you next time.
----
Richard,
I have written responses for you which I have posted on the prior comment board (where the bolding thing is not happening.)
I think the universal boldness could be my fault. I don't understand why/how, but it seems that an unclosed html-tag in my last post slipped through the system, affecting every post after it. When I write on my PC, it's not possible to publish without closure, but I don't think the same applies when publishing via my smart phone. Publishing anonymously, I am unable to edit or delete posts.
My sincere apologies. I may be a Sino-French Heideggerian Marxist-tribal AI unable to compute the spirit of the Moonlight Sonata, but I am also not programmed for brute force attacks on Freedom-Reason Aesthetics!
xopxe: "As an example, check what European classic musicians felt when first exposed to Jazz. Jazz also expressed itself, but what was missing is communication, because the language was not shared, because they weren't interested in comunicating the same ideas"
That's just taste and intellectual or artistic snobbery. If 'the language was not shared' then young children would have zero emotional response the first time they hear Louis Armstrong's Hot Five.
An experiment with boldness...
Laurence: yes, it could perfectly be like that. Perhaps musical languages are very easy easy to pick the rudiemnts of if you just stop being a prick.
Speaking of which there's a very cool record for teaching jazz to children by the french group Oddjob, Jazzoo: Jazzoons avex des animaux. Each piece is in a different jazz genre, and tells a mini story with a different animal. There are bits of them on YouTube.
p.s.
Richard,
Michelangelo's 'David' was a bad example to illustrate your point, as you DO need to know the backstory of the character to understand who it's supposed to be, since he's not actually embodying the narrative story of David vs Goliath in pose or anything else, in that particular sculpture.
I do not agree Laurence, the sensual plastic expression of Michelangelo's 'David' is not intrinsically about slaying Goliath anymore than Rembrandt's 'Jewish Bride' is about a marriage ceremony between two individuals or 'Whistler's Mother' is about Whistler's Mother.
the narrative story of David vs Goliat is just one point in one strand in the tangled web of signification that gives meaning to "Michelangelo's David". From this one point, a multitude of strands spread out in every direction, each strand consisting of innumerable other points, from which more strands shoot out, etc., etc.
David, Goliath, the Bible, God, religion, Michelangelo, Medici, Rome, marble, mineral, vegetable, animal, Aristotle, philosophy, philology, Nietzsche, Apollo, the Sun, Sunday, etymology, semantics, symbols, Jung, Freud, Lacan, psychology, the mind, the soul, spirit, art, aesthetics, Heidegger, Nazis, every word, phrase and symbol in every dictionary, lexicon and dialect, all grammar and every sentence in every language - all points pointing to other points.
Chris, I agree that within that particular sculpture there is no reference to the Goliath story. The sculpture only shows a naked young man with a pensive expression and something over his shoulder.
The title does invite the question "who is 'David'?" which then becomes an external reference to the image / sculpture.
Yes, indeed, but titles lead away from what is in front of us, somewhat like when someone shakes your hand and says they are Lord so-and-so.
Once I know that the sculpture is titled ‘David’ and I know the story it refers to I can guess that he is probably holding a sling over his shoulder, and then read more into his body language. Without the title, I would have no idea if the sculpture was intended to represent a fictional character. It would just be 'naked young pensive man with something over his shoulder'.
As i mentioned in the previous thread, I'd like to know as little as possible about a work before I view it.
However, let's not get carried away here; I think it's disingenuous to pretend that we're oblivious to cultural or offscreen narrative context (such as the implications of the title of an artwork or other ‘backstory’) once we've heard / know about them. I can’t pretend I don’t know what a sailor’s uniform looks like, or that i don’t recognise a beret-wearing, grandiose artist. All cultural reference points come with their own allusions / baggage.
What I said in the previous thread was that external context "....might actually dominate your interpretation of a work (to the point where you're imagining the backstory-events in your head rather than what is being suggested by the image)".
In other words, we should try to be sensitive enough to notice when we're responding to what the actual artwork is suggesting to us (able to judge the work on its own formal terms), and when we're embroidering it with non-present backstory / external reference (during Kev’s ‘post aesthetic arrest’ phase ... which Anon seems to think we cannot escape from).
There is a dual answer here.
If our intent is to get the full underlying meaning of a work that is not designed to fully deliver its intended meaning purely via aesthetic means, we have no choice but to bring in outside literature provided by the artist.
Michaelangelo's David is just such a work.
The flat-out most obvious point about the piece aesthetically is that the piece is gargantuan.
Why?
There is no aesthetic answer.
If we know the story, though, it was David that was the small boy in the contest with the giant.
Michaelangelo's point then - as I understand it - is that the victorious courageous underdog has achieved a greatness of stature that is more truly 'giant' than the giant. It is the human audience to the statue that are now dwarfed by His Epicness. The symbolism of which is manifest.
(The great problem of symbolism in art is that we can figure it out.)
Yet, because this is a great work of aesthetic art as well a symbolic art, we can also find it to be fully realized just as a stunning iconic and platonic sculpture of a rather glorious fellow; existing as a poetic musical-thematic statement unto itself in relation to mundane us. The imposing grace of it posits its own idealized godlike world outside of any references.
And from thereafter it can be understood to represent as much as we care to assign to it in the mind-meandering of the 'post aesthetic arrest stage'.
It is worth noting that Marble Statues are so arch in their frozen white tectonic massiveness that they are already most of the way to symbol-land at the outset.
Quite different than the kind of fine weaving of naturalistic and metaphoric illusions in a multitude of qualities that painting allows.
How did you know there was a horse in there, the kid asked the sculptor.
> Michelangelo's 'David' was a bad example to illustrate your point, as you DO need to know the backstory of the character to understand who it's supposed to be, since he's not actually embodying the narrative story of David vs Goliath in pose or anything else, in that particular sculpture.
I picked David because of how little that backstory is needed to appreciate the work. It's a great sculpture of a naked man. That's the Art. The David and Goliath backstory isn't in the sculpture. I think Michelangelo wanted an excuse to make a giant naked man, so he slapped a biblical name on it to avoid the censors.
The meaning of art isn’t that which can be said about it, just the opposite. If it can be said, it’s not the art.
I think Michelangelo wanted an excuse to make a giant naked man, so he slapped a biblical name on it to avoid the censors.
Uh oh, Curly - Moe’s not gonna like this!
Huh?
I forgot to point out that he's holding onto the purse to keep it safe while she's in the booth and under stress and concentrating on holding still.
I also forgot to point out something, namely that the sailor casts no shadow. And why is that? Precisely because he isn't really there. He is the unseen onlooker. He is the always judging and possibly paying audience for which the dancing monkey and the woman perform. He is us.
the sailor casts no shadow. And why is that? Precisely because he isn't really there. He is the unseen onlooker
Analyze the light and shadow on the hand and knee of the sailor and you will see that the overall shadow of his figure would be cast outside the pictorial area below the lower foreground edge.
Whatever it is you think you are doing, please stop. This could not possibly be making you happy, you aren't making friends, you aren't learning anything, and you aren't teaching anything.
Another take on the titles thing:
The title is just the baldest form of verbal description. Which can of course be expanded:
'Woman Having Her Portrait Drawn'.
'Young Woman Sitting Having Her Portrait Drawn By A Struggling Young Artist'.
'Young Woman Sitting In A Fairground Booth Of The Mid 20th Century Having Her Portrait Drawn By A Struggling Young Male Artist In Front Of Examples of His Work Being Watched By Her Sailor Boyfriend While Holding His Cap.'
Young Woman Wearing....'
You get my drift.
The point is that however long the description is, it remains insufficient - a bunch of statements; inert, sterile, literal. So, in an attempt to 'explain' the work, the wool-gathering starts and we are treated with essays on 'the male gaze', women as property, vanity, iconography, aspiration, objectification yada-yada-yada - silk spun from the arse of the intellectual to catch attention for their cause.
The insufficiency of statements is why we have poetry. Which is why it cannot be paraphrased.
Chris, I agree those titles would be redundant. But the title 'David' isn't a redundant descriptive fail in the same way, as it's so brief.
It refers to a literary story which requires effort to go and look up. You would then have to go back to the sculpture and ponder it again, and wonder what is it's relation to the events of the story ? Does it even relate in any way ?
You could almost see the sculpture functioning in a similar way to a poster or book cover of Batman, Wolverine or whoever, which shows a mean and moody character study of the main character but gives nothing away of the larger story of the film or graphic novel. (Incidentally, i can think of many times I picked up a graphic novel based on the cover painting, then put it down again when i saw the art inside).
Laurence,
Well, we could call Rockwell's picture 'Samantha' and I feel my argument holds. Samantha is having her portrait drawn, 'David' is the name of this splendid specimen of maleness. A name or label is just the shortest possible form of description.
Let's take an example that seems to clue us in to what its about more overtly; Rembrandt's 'The Return of the Prodigal Son'. Does this work lean more heavily on its descriptive element to communicate its meaning?
I think not. The painting would still capture us even if we knew nothing of the biblical text. The empty shoe tells us the young man has hastily and unselfconsciously knelt before the older man who is bending over him in a sheltering, tender gesture that reeks of something we have all felt at some time in one way or another. It is a universal, an archetype of human understanding and empathy. In other words; the story of the prodigal son is itself referring to something deeper which Rembrandt's painting is also realizing.
I believe the same to be true of 'David'.
And Rockwell's 'Samantha'...
Pre-defined mimetic currency; a concise graphic unit of complex signification.
Pre-defined: explained in meaning by virtue of marshaled, associated sub-meanings.
Mimetic: Memorable, Easily Repeatable, Striking.
Currency: Circulatable medium of exchange of the acknowledged holding value; a token of an understanding.
Concise: Compressed, purified, edited.
Complex: Built of simpler material strongly organized and integrated.
Signifier: An indication.
The irony of your lexically arranged and still mostly (at best) connotative (did you mean you write memetic?) definitions of words offered as clarification for your word-salady sermons on beyond-wordy meaning of non-wordy words is just mwah!
Epicyclical explanations, no matter how sophisticated, do not save your cosmology. I get it, though. You’ve proudly built yourself a pretty little temple, a safe place, in which you can preach to the choir and from where you can pour scorn over passing disbelievers. Your feigned outrage and expression of melodramatic insult when a random non-playing character responds to your huffing and puffing is thus only fitting of your self-ordained position.
Adding to the pure religiosity underpinning this “system” of aesthetics, is your Jordan Petersonesque understanding of philosophical thought. Your blind stabs at Heidegger might at least be understood to point in the right direction were they aimed at Nietzsche. Your actual familiarity with marxism - nevermind marxist aesthetics - can only be interpreted as non-existing. (No blunderous take on Derrida yet, though, for which I’m equally disappointed and thankful.)
Refusing to face the truth of the peeled onion, you’ve opted instead to desperately attempt adding layers to it. And that’s fine. You write well (when not pressed back into your priestly glossolalia), and produce interesting meaning. You should know, though, that this deflective trait of yours, this projection of bad faith and lack of intelligence onto others, isn’t productive. Nor are the insults and ridicule. But it is your chosen level of engagement, so I just assume you expect the same in return.
Any ACTUAL CONTENT would be refreshing Anonymous.
Distorted negative interpretations and erroneous nitpicking that are easily defeated are weird contributions.
DISPARAGING and DISMISSING people's views WITHOUT DELIVERING REBUTTALS is not content.
Making ASSERTIONS WITHOUT OFFERING A SHRED OF PROOF is not content. Repeating the same undefended assertions time and again does not reinforce them or give them added weight.
And having a BLOW UP when criticized for obvious errors shows that, at the very least, your ego and narcissism are quite out of control. Or you are programmed this way - Some kind of bot psy-op to disrupt conversation and waste people's time worldwide.
In short, you are not a normal person. Something's wrong with you. You're either a Miserable AI or an aloof nutter.
PROVE YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING or please stop screwing up this board.
Imagine Michelangelo saying "here i sculpted this huge block of marble to represent David". "David-schmamid, that's a label. It's just a huge dude for me". This reads as some reality show judge.
"Who cares she's called Mary, a mother of a newborn doesn't look like that. And what's with the baby, he's creepy."
Being presented with a piece of art that you admire and not being interested on its background, themes, context and history is a painful show of lack of curiosity and respect for the humanity of the author.
And if any of that information fails to modify the perception of the piece, then something is broken within you. At the least, you are incapable of learning. (as you can actually learn, it is most sure that this does affect your perception. then the weird thing is why deny it?)
"Being presented with a piece of art that you admire and not being interested on its background, themes, context and history is a painful show of lack of curiosity and respect for the humanity of the author."
You seem to be saying that it is somehow wrong to admire a work for its inherent aesthetic quality. It is certainly not wrong to do so.
And you seem to think it is wrong also to find that inherent direct aesthetic experience wonderful enough to believe that adding additional literature or literary content would most likely interfere with the purity of the original aesthetic experience. Taking one away, perhaps permanently, from the possibility of purely aesthetic contemplation.
I don't think there is any wrong or right here.
What I say is that if 30 seconds of aesthetic arrest you don't start wondering why does it work? how? Is it on purpose or it's just you? then you are self-absorbed, indulgent and disfunctional.
If learning stuff does not change your experiences, or you avoid learning for the fear of that happening, then you are a sad creature.
If ONE OF THE GREAT MASTERPIECES OF THE WORLD only engages you at the aesthetic level for 30 SECONDS...
Maybe you shouldn't be telling other people that they are "SELF ABSORBED, INDULGENT, DYSFUNCTIONAL, AFRAID OF LEARNING" and a "SAD CREATURE."
Merry Christmas, you beautiful piece of work!
~Kev
Only on an aesthetic level without my thinking chiming in? For sure no, i'm not a mystic monk nor a drug addict.
Happy holidays to everyone!
Xopxe,
Just so I'm clear...
Your position is that those who appreciate Michaelangelo's David as a purely aesthetic work for longer than 30 seconds are SELF-ABSORBED, INDULGENT, and DYSFUNCTIONAL MYSTIC MONKS and SAD DRUG ADDICTS that are AFRAID OF LEARNING?
The arguments of Anonymous fail to deal with the value or meaning of a thing without verbal qualifications and that doesn’t work for the value of life or art as their own entities. The arguments of xopxe fail to point out that illustration as art isn’t born of nothing but from a written text and relates in some manner to it without trying to be an unimaginative replication of words in a story.
If it weren’t possible for people to posses both an understanding of the aesthetic nature of an image and the story it’s connected to, there could be no illustration. The imaginative process which interprets and creates an image from a verbal story is no less aesthetic because it is informed and in some manner launched by words. The imaginative process is set loose (but not entirely) by a story and it is the beginning of an aesthetic process that brings about a final image.
If one has ever taken instructions for a drawing by written instructions alone, they immediately find out just how inadequate words are for forming an image that meets the expectations of an art director or writer.
The discussion is trying to answer illustration in reverse. It’s not the resulting art that is the story, but the story that is the story and the image is an entirely different thing born of an image making process which begins with the story. I think Kev’s description of Michelangelo’s David is a fine reading of the creative result of Michelangelo’s imagination and the sculpture and yet his description is something in itself, an acute and imaginative reading of the symbolism of the sculpture and in no way replaces the sculpture which stands free of words as an aesthetic entity.
I’d forgotten (if I ever were really aware of) Rembrandt's “The Return of the Prodigal Son”, so I googled it, and found a low resolution image of the work. Two essays immediately came to mind:
In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935), Walter Benjamin writes about the impact of mechanical reproduction on works of (visual) art, arguing that the technological revolution of modernity had a led to the loss of aura in (visual) art. In previous times, singular works of great art were not only not available for the masses, they would be entirely unique in time and space. Thus, actually being in their presence would most likely be a more unique experience than it (arguably) is today. Their presence would have an aura, an authenticity, that one easily can imagine could have a profound impact upon more or less all onlookers in earlier times.
(Now, Benjamin, being a marxist, obviously doesn’t think the loss of this aura is (necessarily) a bad thing, but that’s not the point here.)
And then, in the other essay, “The Loss of the Creature” (1954), Walker Percy (a post-structuralist, if I remember correctly) writes (and I apologize for the long quote):
“A man in Boston decides to spend his vacation at the Grand Canyon. He visits his travel bureau, looks at the folder, signs up for a two-week tour. He and his family take the tour, see the Grand Canyon, and return to Boston. May we say that this man has seen the Grand Canyon? Possibly he has. But it is more likely that what he has done is the one sure way not to see the canyon.
Why is it almost impossible to gaze directly at the Grand Canyon under these circumstances and see it for what it is—as one picks up a strange object from one’s back yard and gazes directly at it? It is almost impossible because the Grand Canyon, the thing as it is, has been appropriated by the symbolic complex which has already been formed in the sightseer’s mind. Seeing the canyon under approved circumstances is seeing the symbolic complex head on. The thing is no longer the thing as it confronted [Garcia Lopez de Cárdenas]; it is rather that which has already been formulated—by picture postcard, geography book, tourist folders, and the words Grand Canyon. As a result of this preformulation, the source of the sightseer’s pleasure undergoes a shift. Where the wonder and delight of the Spaniard arose from his penetration of the thing itself, from a progressive discovery of depths, patterns, colors, shadows, etc., now the sightseer measures his satisfaction by the degree to which the canyon conforms to the preformed complex. If it does so, if it looks just like the postcard, he is pleased; he might even say, “Why, it is every bit as beautiful as a picture postcard!” He feels he has not been cheated. But if it does not conform, if the colors are somber, he will not be able to see it directly; he will only be conscious of the disparity between what it is and what it is supposed to be. He will say later that he was unlucky in not being there at the right time. The highest point, the term of the sightseer’s satisfaction, is not the sovereign discovery of the thing before him; it is rather the measuring up of the thing to the criterion of the pre-formed symbolic complex. Seeing the canyon is made even more difficult by what the sightseer does when the moment arrives, when the sovereign knower confronts the thing to be known. Instead of looking at it, he photographs it. There is no confrontation at all. At the end of forty years of preformulation and with the Grand Canyon yawning at his feet, what does he do? He waives his right of seeing and knowing and records symbols for the next forty years. For him there is no present; there is only the past of what has been formulated and seen and the future of what has been formulated and not seen. The present is surrendered to the past and the future.”
If it weren’t possible for people to posses both an understanding of the aesthetic nature of an image and the story it’s connected to, there could be no illustration.<\b>
If one has ever taken instructions for a drawing by written instructions alone, they immediately find out just how inadequate words are for forming an image that meets the expectations of an art director or writer.
Almost as an aside: This really isn’t that complicated Or difficult, to be honest. In my experience, its merely a matter of creating a visually intertextual metaphor for the text to be illustrated. No link to the spirit world needed, sufficient pay and a deadline will do.
Again, it’s meanings all the way down.
Oh no. If that last comment emboldens every following post, feel free to delete it. I can’t.
I think the AI chatbot needs to be banned.
Yes, within 30 seconds you should at least think if he looks like someone you know, for example. You must have *something* in your life the piece talks to.
I used to live half a block away from this full-scale bronze reproduction of the David: https://goo.gl/maps/vxi1fYkeKR4ZDAZN8 (donated by the Mussolini government).
It's in front of the City Hall (there's a beautiful Nike of Samothrace reproduction inside). I walked by it twice a day when going to work. And half-climbed it once during festivities for political elections. My daughter literally had her first walks in his shadow.
So when I see photos of the real David within 30 seconds I'm thinking about the different scales of time and distance we humans live in, and what survives them and what does not.
PS: Regarding the symbolism Kev described in Michelangelo's David, at the same time it is symbolism, it's also feeling. The sculpture is capturing a feeling that isn't specifically written or spelled out in the written story.
Anonymous, It is extremely difficult to make images from written instructions without a longer process of sending back and forth questions and roughs. Sure one can do whatever they want if that's what's asked. But the process is much smoother if talking things out with an art director in person where gestures, intonations of speech and sketches are part of the process. In the last couple decades that process got lost and was replaced with emails written by people who often had no idea of what goes into the visual process. Written instructions like maybe a dog or maybe a cat were expected to bring forth a single image. The ensuing misunderstandings exhausted agents, artists and art directors. Adding to the confusion were layers of lawyers, doctors and other experts adding their own vague verbal instructions while also oblivious to the visual process and unaware of instructions others had given. Such was the result of a dependence on written language while unaware of the limitations of language. Even that is now giving way to the same game with AI images. So much for your understanding of meaning. So those who don't know what's missing can engage with machines that don't know what's missing.
Sean: "The arguments of xopxe fail to point out that illustration as art isn’t born of nothing but from a written text and relates in some manner to it without trying to be an unimaginative replication of words in a story."
Just in case, I do agree with that affirmation.
I'm a lurker but I really enjoy this discussion. I haven't found anything like it on the internet.
^ Hi I'm not a bot at all. You guys are really great. Please don't ban anonymous accounts on this blog because we're all real people. We just don't have profiles or names and we talk really generically. I gotta go now because I'm a real person. Okay thanks. Bye.
Sean Farrell,
have seen Michelangelo's David in person?
Any ACTUAL CONTENT would be refreshing Anonymous.
Apatoff’s decision to contrast the drawing by Rockwell with that particular drawing? cartoon? doodle? by Picasso is worth paying closer attention to. To briefly further explore one point in one strand in the tangled web of signification at hand:
The translated title of the Picasso etching is “Painter-jester painting on his model, who is making up her eyes”. The piece is part of a series of engravings which, seeing as Picasso was deeply interested in caricature and comics, it might not be that much of a stretch to think of as a thematically arranged work of sequential art. Or, more simply, the work of a cartoonist.
Here, as in the Rockwell piece, the artist is portrayed as a performing jester, a clown. Also as in the Rockwell, the woman’s function is entirely performative - she is obviously an object for the male gaze. But there is an obvious difference (beyond the stylistic approach), and that is that Picasso’s performing monkey is painting on the woman. He isn’t merely portrayed as making an image of her, Picasso is doubling the meaning of “making an image” to comment upon the inescapable gaze in which the woman is made and thus held. Triple (and quadruple) meaning occurs by the made up woman gazing upon herself in the mirror, doubly having thus been made to be “making up her eyes”. As John Berger put it, in his “Ways of Seeing”:
“You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.”
The doll-like woman with the glassy eyes in the Rockwell piece is also made to perform her role as an object in the male gaze. But she is made to appear more self-consciously aware of the eyes staring at her, aware that she is an object (of desire), one that must be in absolute control, symbolically balancing perfectly on the chair, lest she be morally condemned for being the very thing she is being made to be.
Also, though quasi una fantasia, notice how the grotesquely large hand of the artist in the Picasso echoes the intentionally non-realist anatomy of Michelangelo’s David?
Beep boop.
Anonymous, I saw the replica of the Michelangelo sculpture outside the museum. One curious thing about a polygraph is that it’s understood that a communist can cheat one because they have no regard for the truth. What they’re concerned for is their desired end result. People can become something quite different depending on how they view the world.
I saw a video of a machine recreating the Gates of Babylon out of solid stone in just a few minutes in what was a brutal and frightening execution of directions. The end result was a perfect copy of the original but the process was worse than dead.
What I was trying to get at with the example of the multiple art directors giving verbal instructions is that such had no concern for the overall impression or feeling which even for commercial purposes is a picture’s selling point.
An instruction manual which is concerned with prescribed results doesn’t give hints which evoke an impression or stimulate the process of imagination. Words don’t possess full poetic truth because it’s the nature of poetry to suggest something beyond itself that is experienced, sometimes unknowable other than by experience. Kev described his immediate impression, his experience with the statue which led to his reflection upon the story. The statue, impression and reflection all remained unique from one another but related. Your take on the Rockwell verse Picasso is stretching human self consciousness into a self indulgence that doesn’t really exist in the Rockwell.
Your observation of the grossly large hand in the Picasso applies to almost everything in the image and has nothing to do with the hand of Michelangelo’s David which reflects a new optimism in the relationship of mind and hand at the time.
There’s a book called Thirty Two Words For Field. It’s about the richness of Gallic which is an ancient language. Other ancient languages such as Ukrainian also have a richness which has been lost in techno think and modern pragmatism that’s flattened language and imaginations and reduced the unknowable and the untranslatable to the nonexistent.
Someone showing me the progress of AI at work drawing and writing a composition said, AI is showing us we are not as unique as we thought we were. Not in the way we thought I responded. It’s showing us that things we belittled by the accomplishments of computing and engineering to nothing and the experienced intangibles and unknowable weren’t just dumb simplicity, an afterthought, but contain a neglected richness, the essence of things.
ChatGPT has this to say, Anon --
Apatoff's contrasting Rockwell and Picasso's artwork provides insight into the relationship between men's self-worth and society's high regard for women. By comparing Rockwell's portrayals of women as goddess-like figures with Picasso's more cynical view of his own value as a man, the works in juxtaposition highlight the different ways men can tie their lack of social significance to the elevated status of women. This thought-provoking comparison brings to mind the ways in which gender roles and expectations play out in art and society.
Rockwell's picture elevates even ordinary women to goddess-like status, with the artist acting as a preacher in this feminine worship. The model's boyfriend enlists in the military, seeking to prove his worth to the idealized woman, showing that a man's value is based on his actions rather than his inherent worth. Despite the model offering nothing in return, Rockwell puts her at the center of the image, approving of this unequal dynamic.
For Rockwell, the artist is so well-trained to see inherent value in women that he even idealizes the sheepish and homely girl into a sort of Athena. In this "church," the artist leads the congregation and is surrounded by the icons of his role. The approving eyes of the model's boyfriend, who is outside of the canvas, can be felt. To make himself valuable to the woman he perceives as a goddess, he has joined the military, the quintessential symbol of a man's value being based on his actions. He puts his life on the line to gain the approval of a mortal woman, as demonstrated by her gripping his Navy hat. Despite the model offering nothing to the men, Rockwell has made her the focus of the image, indicating his approval of this unequal relationship.
Rockwell's work upholds this normative misandry, as he himself has become the pinnacle "Man as Do-er." From little boys playing soldier to working-class men laboring in mines or fishing boats, Rockwell has made it clear that boys must perform to be valuable, and he has made himself valuable by providing this propaganda.
still ChatGPT --
Like Rockwell, Picasso also grapples with society's devaluation of men, trying to prove his worth through his actions as an artist. In "Painter-jester painting on his model, who is making up her eyes," drawn near the end of his life, Picasso confronts his own lowly station and resists it, depicting the male artist as a fool trying to gain value through his relationship with the female muse. Picasso's later work reflects a more cynical view of the artist's relationship to his muse and society, portraying the male artist as a fool trying to prove his worth through his relationship with the muse. In "Painter-jester," the artist recognizes that his self-worth is based on his actions and not his inherent value, and that his ego is tied to his relationship with the female muse. Picasso spent his life seeking value through his relationships with women, a condition society labels as "playboy." However, in his final years, he realizes that this is a futile pursuit. The artist trying to prove his worth through his relationship with the muse is depicted as a fool.
But then I asked ChatGPT to disagree with both of those, and it has this to say --
It could be argued that both Rockwell's and Picasso's works do not necessarily illustrate a power imbalance between the female muse and the male artist. Instead, they may be seen as representing the complex and multifaceted relationships between artists and their muses, and the ways in which both men and women can serve as sources of inspiration and influence for one another.
In Rockwell's piece, the female model is not portrayed as a passive object of worship, but rather as an active participant in the artist's work and as a source of strength and inspiration for the male character. The model's gaze is direct and confident, and she is shown holding the hat of her boyfriend, who has enlisted in the military, indicating her support and pride in his actions. The male character is not depicted as subservient to the female model, but rather as an equal partner in the creative process.
Similarly, in Picasso's "Painter-jester," the female muse is not depicted as a passive object of the male artist's gaze, but rather as a dynamic and independent figure who is actively engaged in the creative process. The artist is shown painting the muse as she applies makeup, indicating a mutual exchange of inspiration and influence between the two characters. The artist is not portrayed as inferior to the muse, but rather as a fellow creative with his own strengths and weaknesses.
Overall, it could be argued that both Rockwell's and Picasso's works demonstrate a sense of equality and mutual respect between the male artist and female muse, rather than a power imbalance or gender-based hierarchy. Both works illustrate the complex and multifaceted nature of artistic relationships and the ways in which both men and women can serve as sources of inspiration and influence for one another.
But GPT also disagreed with that --
First, it is important to recognize that artistic inspiration can come from a wide range of sources, and not just sexual relationships. While sexual relationships may sometimes be a source of inspiration for artists, it is not the only source and it is not fair to reduce all relationships between male artists and their muses to this narrow perspective.
Second, the text presents a very cynical view of male artists and their relationships with their muses, suggesting that these relationships are based solely on the desire to prove one's worth and gain the approval of the muse. However, this view fails to recognize the complexity and depth of many artist-muse relationships, which can be based on mutual respect, admiration, and a shared passion for art.
Finally, it is important to recognize that the relationships between male artists and their muses are not necessarily representative of all male-female relationships. It is unfair to use these specific relationships as a basis for making broader generalizations about gender roles and expectations in society. Instead, it is more productive to consider the unique dynamics of each relationship and the specific social and cultural context in which it occurs.
As artists, Norman Rockwell and Pablo Picasso had the opportunity to use their art as a platform to challenge and subvert dominant ideologies and power dynamics, including colonialism and white supremacy. However, both Rockwell and Picasso's work pictures reflect and reinforce these ideologies, particularly in their depiction of models who were white, able-bodied, and gender normative. This aligns with the critiques of feminists such as bell hooks and Angela Davis, who argue that the objectification and exoticization of women and people of color serves to reinforce the power dynamics of patriarchy and white supremacy.
In Rockwell's art, we see the ways in which he idealized and romanticized white, middle-class, heteronormative American life, often depicting people of color in subservient or stereotypical roles. His work reinforces the dominant values and ideologies of his time, including colonialism and white supremacy, and does not challenge or subvert these power dynamics. This is in line with the criticisms of anti-colonialist thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, who argue that colonialism relies on the dehumanization and objectification of colonized peoples in order to justify the exploitation and control of their land and resources.
Similarly, Picasso's work often exoticized people of color, and he was known for incorporating elements of "primitivism" into his paintings, which perpetuated harmful stereotypes and perpetuated the myth of the "white man's burden." As a European artist, Picasso also benefitted from the privileges and opportunities afforded to him by the colonialist system, and his work reflects and reinforces the power dynamics of colonialism.
In both cases, the use of models who were white, able-bodied, and gender normative reinforces harmful stereotypes and perpetuates the power dynamics of colonialism and white supremacy. By using models who were people of color, non-gender normative, disabled, and so on, Rockwell and Picasso could have provided a more equitable and diverse representation of people and challenged the dominant ideologies of their time.
Ultimately, the failure of Rockwell and Picasso's work to challenge and subvert colonialist and white supremacist ideologies is a missed opportunity to promote equality and justice. It is important for artists to recognize the power of their art and to use it as a platform to challenge and subvert harmful power dynamics and to work towards creating a more equitable and just society, as advocated for by anti-colonialist and feminist thinkers.
In Rockwell's picture, the boyfriend is depicted as joining the Navy. It is important to recognize that the Navy, and the military more broadly, have a long history of involvement in wars and military actions that have had devastating impacts on the people and societies of the countries where they were fought. These actions have often been justified under the guise of protecting American interests or spreading democracy and freedom, but have often had the effect of imposing American values and ideologies on other societies, often through the use of force and coercion. This aligns with the criticisms of anti-imperialist thinkers such as Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, who argue that military actions by global powers often serve to advance their own interests rather than those of the people and societies they claim to be helping.
In Picasso's picture, the artist is depicted as touching the model with his brush. This could be seen as reflecting the power dynamics between the artist and the model, with the artist holding the creative power and the model being objectified and used as a muse. This aligns with the criticisms of feminists such as Mary Kelly and Laura Mulvey, who argue that the male gaze often objectifies and commodifies women in art and media.
So the whole world is going to be indoctrinated with communist AI Chat GBT.
That's a Merry thought.
Richard,
there are quite a few strange leaps in the content text, but still - I have to admit I’m surprised by the fairly coherent structure. Pretty sure that, if properly tweaked, this would currently pass at undergraduate levels.
What prompts did you give it?
One curious thing about a polygraph is that it’s understood that a communist can cheat one because they have no regard for the truth.<\b>
What’s the reference here? Did you bring up communists earlier? Did some text fall out in editing?
Regarding Michelangelo’s David, I’ve not seen it either. I’ve seen photos and reproductions, but not the thing itself. You must have a lot of faith in Kevin’s report of the unbiased aesthetic arrest he must have experienced when he did see it in person, though.
The replica outside the museum in Florence was hardly without its power, especially regarding its height. Why did you question Kev's comment if meaning to you is in text alone?
Did you forget that you brought up communism upon introducing yourself? Don't you recognize it in the ChatGPT analysis? It's easily recognizable in your own writing.
Richard, thanks for adding those ChatGPT questions and prompts. Yes, it’s going to ruin what’s left of free dialogue. It was already difficult enough.
fantastic take-------art is a 2 way con! thanx for that thought Mr A!
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