Re: ars longa

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Wed, 25 Nov 1998 11:17:45 +1100 

Scottie Bowman wrote:
>     Surely the whole point of the Ern Malley episode was that 
>     the critics who projected meanings onto the poems were seen 
>     to be the idiots.  And, unless I'm mistaken, that was the joker's
>     'intention' in the first place.

At a basic level, yes. It gave everyone a good kick in the pants re. over
intellectualising. But it is important to remember that the two jokers in
question were actually two scholars of high repute, not a couple of teenage
shit-stirrers or anything. I see it more as an experiment with meaning than
a joke, just as the Sokal episode can be looked upon.

>     They were fundamentally the same kind of idiots who hail 
>     computer generated pictures or the daubs of chimpanzees 
>     as works of art.  A landscape or a piquant human face may 
>     arouse all kinds of emotions but they cannot be regarded 
>     as pieces of art until an individual human mind has deliberately 
>     worked to transform them into something else altogether.

That's an interesting opinion. So art is a wholly human-based activity? I
suppose it is. But how are we to know? How do we know that a bird making
its nest isn't creating a functional art object. A friend of mine has a
book about cats making art - that is, being given paint and paper and
choosing which colours and which shapes to put on the paper. The art theory
student in me said `Hmm. Maybe there's something in this'. But the cynic in
me just admitted it was a load of bollocks when I came to a picture of a
dead mouse in someone's hallway described as a `nocturnal installation' (:
  
>     That intended outcome by one man or woman is what 
>     qualifies it to be even considered as an art work.  

I think that that's taking a rather broad view of things. Why isn't a
theatre production or a movie a collaborative creation? How can it be
anything but? In both cases, the director, writer, actors, set designers,
costume designers, sound designers and so on all combine to create a piece
of art together.

Got to go now, Mittens has just dragged in a Jackson Pollock (:

Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
@ THE INVERTED FOREST www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest