Members oldgitplayer Posted January 28, 2015 Members Share Posted January 28, 2015 A good essay - if you have the time to spare.It covers the evolution of the world of creativity and where we have come to now. http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-death-of-the-artist-and-the-birth-of-the-creative-entrepreneur/383497/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LCK Posted January 29, 2015 Members Share Posted January 29, 2015 A good essay - if you have the time to spare. It covers the evolution of the world of creativity and where we have come to now. http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-death-of-the-artist-and-the-birth-of-the-creative-entrepreneur/383497/ I didn't read the article, just skimmed it. But I don't buy the premise. Picasso was a great artist and a great entrepreneur. So was Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and on and on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members oldgitplayer Posted January 29, 2015 Author Members Share Posted January 29, 2015 I didn't read the article, just skimmed it. But I don't buy the premise. OK - it's a POV on the current model and how we got to here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted January 29, 2015 Members Share Posted January 29, 2015 I read around a bit on this subject and at least try to discuss it with folks, but for some reason, artistic types quite often get a bit terse or even hostile on the subject, regardless of stance. One thing I will note is that these trends mentioned by the author are part of larger ongoing trends that can be easily followed back in time to the early 20th century when big increases in literacy rates accompanied the rise of the middle class. The Bloomsbury types were quite the snobs in general about preserving serious literature against the swelling tide of popular literature that the masses of the middle class favored. In fact, the terms "highbrow" and "lowbrow" were coined by the publishing industry to describe the clearly delineated markets they served in those days - the highbrow was the market segment of the amateur upper class sorts, academics, teachers at all levels, and of course the writers themselves who very strongly felt themselves to be creating works very much higher in quality than the lowbrow segment of penny dreadfuls, westerns, romances, and so on. There wasn't much in-between except for religious writings and various popular poets and serialized novelists of wildly varying quality. The new thing in those days was a rapidly expanding middlebrow market - educated middle class types who may not go for James Joyce or Henry James, but would read Mark Twain, Dickens, H.G. Wells, and a ton of other more popular but now forgotten middling-quality writers - you might say the Stephen Kings and Tom Clancys of those days. It was also in those years that the phenomenon of the literary star began, with writers getting fan mail and being pestered by autograph seekers, obsessive fans, and gossip columnists. There was a crazy sequence where the press couldn't find Agatha Christie for some weeks and turned it into a huge media event, a global panicked search for the "missing" beloved writer. She was just off visiting some relatives or something and turned up to discover all the broohaha. Combine this middlebrow expansion with the current trends - the distribution capabilities of the internet and the spread of digitized artistic tools and the explosion of genres like fan fiction, Young Adult fiction, teenager music, and defined audiences to fit every little cultural niche possible, you get what the guy is talking about. I would hate to see the artistic canons as defined by academics and recognized serious and skillful critics get tossed by the wayside as an old aristocracy that needs to be brought down. Sure, they have their faults, and should not be exempt from criticism, but for the most part they are great educators, and sensitive and informed workers in the fields where the wheat gets separated from the chaff art-wise. Oh, yes, they revise and revise, make some big mistakes, get caught up in schools and ideologies and so on, but they are infinitely better than just consulting the top 10 in sales for a guide to quality. One of the regrettable tendencies of this age is to throw out the expert and replace him/her with an amateur, or even worse, "just my own personal taste". Yikes. Makes me think of barbarians stalking around Rome and Greece, knocking the heads and private parts off statues having a grand old time putting the defeated upperclass Romans in their place. nat whilk ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LCK Posted January 29, 2015 Members Share Posted January 29, 2015 This only reminds me of what a great, great writer Twain was. (Not that Henry James wasn't...) Mark Twain was also the first stand-up comic, another artist and entrepreneur. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted January 29, 2015 Members Share Posted January 29, 2015 This only reminds me of what a great, great writer Twain was. (Not that Henry James wasn't...) Mark Twain was also the first stand-up comic, another artist and entrepreneur. I love Twain, too - interestingly enough he had some one-liners about Henry James that delighted his middlebrow audience - [h=1]“once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.”[/h] and that he "would rather be damned to John Bunyan's heaven than read [The Bostonians] Twain received his share of insults, too - this one from Faulkner, A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy. Sometimes I wonder why I try so hard to be fair and broadminded about art when so many artists are anything but. nat whilk ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members oldgitplayer Posted January 29, 2015 Author Members Share Posted January 29, 2015 Sometimes I wonder why I try so hard to be fair and broadminded about art when so many artists are anything but. nat whilk ii I think that modern civilisation was built on cut and thrust. I'm sure there are some positives in the method, but then again, maybe it has contributed to the confused mess the world is currently in. I need someone smarter than me to answer that……………………. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted January 29, 2015 Members Share Posted January 29, 2015 I think that modern civilisation was built on cut and thrust. I'm sure there are some positives in the method, but then again, maybe it has contributed to the confused mess the world is currently in. I need someone smarter than me to answer that……………………. You're smart enough, but even if you internalized all the data available, a final answer would be elusive. Pat Metheny talks about his own background as a teen getting into jazz - he and I are almost exactly the same age - and Metheny says be became a total jazz snob in his teens - got over that later on, but wonders if that sort of stance isn't something of a necessary stage in an artist's development - a sort of temporary monomaniacal commitment that fuels the labor needed to accomplish worthwhile and difficult things. There is a whole lot of "meet the new boss same as the old boss" in the art world, no question. So yeah, the bloodless revolutions in art might be good as a cathartic, personality-integrating sort of exercise all round. But it sure creates a lot of jerks:) nat whilk ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members oldgitplayer Posted January 29, 2015 Author Members Share Posted January 29, 2015 I'm sure glad that Pat Metheny got over his jazz snobbery. Although he recorded his first album in 1976, I only found his albums in 1981. I came across a record shop that only stocked the more obscure labels like ECM. It was that day that I was introduced to the music of Pat Metheney, Keith Jarrett and Ralph Towner. They changed my whole world of music in an afternoon. And many more similar artists followed. I had enjoyed the great jazz artists like Monk and Miles et al, but this new adventurous sound was liberating. It still is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted January 29, 2015 Members Share Posted January 29, 2015 I'm sure glad that Pat Metheny got over his jazz snobbery. Although he recorded his first album in 1976' date=' I only found his albums in 1981. I came across a record shop that only stocked the more obscure labels like ECM. It was that day that I was introduced to the music of Pat Metheney, Keith Jarrett and Ralph Towner. They changed my whole world of music in an afternoon. And many more similar artists followed. I had enjoyed the great jazz artists like Monk and Miles et al, but this new adventurous sound was liberating. It still is.[/quote'] Yeah, you and me both, same guys I cottoned onto. I first heard Metheny actually in 86 I think it was, on my only long flight to the U.K. on the airline "radio stations" headphones - they played Yolanda You Learn from First Circle and I wrote the name down stuck it in my wallet and looked him up as soon as we got back. I was also a big Monk, Miles and Mingus fan prior to that. This might strike a chord for you - we were huge fans of Brideshead Revisited, the '81 BBC production with young Jeremy Irons, Olivier, etc., and we made a point of going to Yorkshire and doing the tourist thing at Castle Howard. It was all there, the big fountain, the painting in the entryway, the checkered floor tiles, the Bernini bust that had just been or was about to be sold by the family, etc etc etc. The most amazing thing for us was this - it was getting to closing time, and we had not looked at the grounds yet. We asked one of the docents or whatever you might call them, if there was still time for us to walk around the grounds a bit. He said, "sure, walk around as long as you want - we'll close up but you're free to walk around as long as you like." !!!!!! so we did, down to the Temple of the Winds, around the fountain, the enclosed garden with the amazing wrought iron fence , even to where we could view the family mausoleum from a respectful distance - all in a lovely sun-going-down solitude. And we were pretty newly wed at that, so you can imagine... I suppose it was like some current fan getting a free pass to dally around Downton Abbey on a closed day. Although personally, I think the Downton Abbey construction is a dump compared the the baroque Castle Howard. If you hate all these vestiges of aristocracy, my apologies for being a shameless, sentimental anglophile. nat whilk ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LCK Posted January 29, 2015 Members Share Posted January 29, 2015 Andy Warhol, artist and entrepreneur. I love Faulkner, but the man couldn't write a simple sentence. What Twain did in Huck Finn is beyond remarkable. His 14-year old narrator starts out by telling us that an earlier book, written by Mr. Mark Twain, "told the truth, mainly." Then he (Twain) seems to be telling an adventure story from Huck's point of view, but is in fact, writing a treatise on race relations in America, one that ends with Huck saying something to the effect that if treating a Negro like a human being is a sin, then he'd rather go to hell than betray his friend. No one who has ever tried to write "the great American novel" has succeeded in the way Twain did. Also, Twain's vocabulary and love of words were exceptional. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members reneebeard Posted January 29, 2015 Members Share Posted January 29, 2015 All I can say is, nice article. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rhino55 Posted January 29, 2015 Members Share Posted January 29, 2015 "When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn." I can't say that I disagree. I was out at this songwriters retreat two weeks ago and talking to a guy from Kentucky. Our grandfathers were remarkably similar. Both fought in WWII, both came back and scrapped by doing labor type jobs in a rural setting, both liked to have a good time, both knew how to play a little guitar, both invited family and neighbors over to the house on the weekends, where they'd jam out with neighbors and dance. Nobody had TVs, movies weren't a thing for them, and they got enough of the radio on other nights. That was their entertainment. And I think more people were likely to play some type of instrument, sing, dance or whatever because that was how you took part in the entertainment. Both of our grandfathers wrote a little, but it wasn't ever something there really pursued and the songs are lost to time. Sure they weren't the entrepreneurs that Warhol, Twain, or Shakespeare were, and they aren't remembered by anybody but there families, but they still had value. That twenty something with the weird glasses taking a picture of their lunch everyday before they eat it... while I don't get it... it has value. They fancy themselves a photographer. It makes them happy. Let them have it. Are they as good Dorothea Lange? Or will their 'work' matter as much in the future? I think it's safe to say no to both of those questions, but that doesn't take away from the value of the endeavor for the artist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted January 29, 2015 Members Share Posted January 29, 2015 "When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn." I can't say that I disagree. I was out at this songwriters retreat two weeks ago and talking to a guy from Kentucky. Our grandfathers were remarkably similar. Both fought in WWII, both came back and scrapped by doing labor type jobs in a rural setting, both liked to have a good time, both knew how to play a little guitar, both invited family and neighbors over to the house on the weekends, where they'd jam out with neighbors and dance. Nobody had TVs, movies weren't a thing for them, and they got enough of the radio on other nights. That was their entertainment. And I think more people were likely to play some type of instrument, sing, dance or whatever because that was how you took part in the entertainment. Both of our grandfathers wrote a little, but it wasn't ever something there really pursued and the songs are lost to time. Sure they weren't the entrepreneurs that Warhol, Twain, or Shakespeare were, and they aren't remembered by anybody but there families, but they still had value. That twenty something with the weird glasses taking a picture of their lunch everyday before they eat it... while I don't get it... it has value. They fancy themselves a photographer. It makes them happy. Let them have it. Are they as good Dorothea Lange? Or will their 'work' matter as much in the future? I think it's safe to say no to both of those questions, but that doesn't take away from the value of the endeavor for the artist. Yes, definitely. The big intimidating vision of "The Artist" that is somehow totally different and above the teeming masses is not I think a good thing either for art or people. But I still do believe in "art as Art, that old high thing." You know it when you see it - it earns the right to the capital A. Now if people become so resistant to any art being accorded honors above other art - some severe Cultural Revolution type enforced democracy of minds - that would be to me an intolerable state of affairs. But I think that cuts across human nature so severely that it might last a while, but it would quickly break down. But yeah, let people do as much as they want to do, take it as far as they have a mind to, without sneering at them for being mediocre or amateurish or even pretentious. Snobbery is poison - kills young growing things, creates nothing in it's place. nat whilk ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rhino55 Posted January 30, 2015 Members Share Posted January 30, 2015 Totally with you Nat... except for maybe one part. That whole pretentious thing. In reference to musicians, specially songwriters for me, I'm cool with someone being pretentious; flamboyant dress, over reaching instrumentation, generally getting weird. All that's cool with me. Depending on the context I sometimes love it. It takes a certain amount of pretentiousness to put yourself out there like that, and if I'm completely honest, rock and roll needs that sometimes. Where folks loose me is when that pretentiousness leads to an attitude where the "artist" thinks they are somehow better than everybody else. What I liked most about the article, and I might not have said well enough earlier, we can all be artist. I was talking to a guy last week that was praising the musicians for being accomplished artist. That was nice to hear, but I felt compelled to remind him he is an artist in his own right. He might not make music, paint, or write, but he can make fishing poles like nobodies business. I think he's just as much an artist as anybody else I know. Is it high art? Maybe not. I do think there is still "Art" with a capital A, but I tend to think that's something for others to bestow upon an artist work (preferably after their dead so it doesn't go to there head and the Art stays pure). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members oldgitplayer Posted January 30, 2015 Author Members Share Posted January 30, 2015 I agree with Ryan - I don't think self-congratulatory titles endear us to anyone. It is for others to deem someone deserving of the title 'artist'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted January 30, 2015 Members Share Posted January 30, 2015 I can't reconcile in my head these two points of view that both seem to have some merit: 1. that the artistic creator should leave it up to other people to judge their work as "art" or "Art" for "Great Art" and so on. Sounds good - I like to think I at least present myself along these lines to some extent. 2. that the artistic creator needs to believe in themselves and their art, and may in some situations have to fight for recognition of the their art as "art" or "Art" or "Great Art", and be assertive about it. If you're a genius and you know it, make some noise. I can't see Beethoven being Beethoven without his supreme self-confidence and unvarying belief in his own musical greatness. I fear to tread in such footprints, I have no such huge confidence in myself, but it seems valid when it's valid (and so ridiculous when the confidence is not backed up by the product.) When in doubt, I think it's generally good to err on the side of humility in almost all arenas of life. But could it be the case that with "pretend" activities like sports and art where there are winners and losers (but not battlefield victors and dead guys) that a license to act out should be granted to some extent? This is all part of the general mystery and conundrum of art, in that in some ways it's the best thing in life, but from any common sense view, compared to the real issues of essential humanity, love, freedom, compassion, fairness, justice, and so on, "it's just art, after all." nat whilk ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members oldgitplayer Posted January 30, 2015 Author Members Share Posted January 30, 2015 I understand the conundrum, but was Beethoven super confident in himself or just in what came out of him? I don't think all genius is a nice amalgam of balanced psyche and great end product. I have a love / hate relationship with ART……..essential humanity trumps it every time.Of course there is art that is a representation of essential humanity.And then there are the promo-orcs and the marketing gollums………... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rhino55 Posted January 30, 2015 Members Share Posted January 30, 2015 Again, good points. Beethoven is regarded as Art because he had such a huge impact. Things changed in a big way because of what he did. He was, from what I gather, a complete twat. Arrogant and surly, he completely believed in his own genius, and I think that was necessary for him to accomplish what he did. By my prescribed "let others decide if its Art and just create" mentality, he would have never had the impact he did. I don't think the persona can be separated from the work. hmmm.... Beethoven will no doubt be remembered alot longer, but I'd rather have a beer with Dave Grohl. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted January 30, 2015 Members Share Posted January 30, 2015 A good essay - if you have the time to spare. It covers the evolution of the world of creativity and where we have come to now. http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-death-of-the-artist-and-the-birth-of-the-creative-entrepreneur/383497/ Here's the article formatted for desktop browser viewing: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-death-of-the-artist-and-the-birth-of-the-creative-entrepreneur/383497/ [i find it awkward reading lines of text that go from one side of my 20" screen to the other.] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rsadasiv Posted January 30, 2015 Members Share Posted January 30, 2015 Andy Warhol' date=' artist [i']and [/i]entrepreneur. I love Faulkner, but the man couldn't write a simple sentence. My mother is a fish. -As I Lay Dying Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LCK Posted January 30, 2015 Members Share Posted January 30, 2015 Johnny Mercer, artist and enterepreneur. Lyricist, composer, singer, radio host, record producer, talent scout, founder of Capitol Records. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Idunno Posted February 1, 2015 Members Share Posted February 1, 2015 I don't think the author is capable of rendering the narrative from an informed position and call him on it. Where does it say Rembrandt possessed this genius he editorially bestows upon the man? Where did he get that as a reference to bounce his paradigm shift off of, or is this just a set-up to make use of the trending expression paradigm shift, yet again, in the editorial pages as a public ascription to the trend itself? I don't know. Art is art only in the eyes of the beholder, no one is under a general obligation to embrace it as such but that is the initial premise the author builds his message upon. Nonsense. To me, much of the visual and written art is strictly relegated to a disposable relevance. If I deem Renoir's work unmoving to my sense of the aesthetic then I will not embrace it simply because its old and contemporary as such with the so-called masters of the period's style. Moreover, I will dismiss the man himself for barking (painting) up the wrong tree regardless of the unspoken obligation to respect him for....what? Remember before you answer, man can't build enough pedestals under himself, and people who embrace art as anything and everything being such usually don't have a personal reality to reference it from. If everything is art, nothing is. Writers will first set the stage to make their grand appearance on and then take their audiences with them if they are convincing enough. Songwriting is exactly that but most who attempt it try to forcefully hammer something out versus using the basic premise for learning about and then persuading their audiences to go with them. The cat who wrote the artist article sets his stage by telling you what artist were, without a clue himself of the truth, and by the power and trust in the written word harnesses the audience at the outset to follow him as he makes his points. This is what is meant when the warning goes out to believe nothing of what you read. But, the tendency is to do exactly the opposite. The author of the article speaks to deceased artists as if he was intimately knowledgeable of their collective persona, which we can assume at this juncture safe to debunk. The article drops off the page at that point, which is about three sentences in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rhino55 Posted February 3, 2015 Members Share Posted February 3, 2015 "Making money is art working is art and good business is the best art." - Andy Warhol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members oldgitplayer Posted February 3, 2015 Author Members Share Posted February 3, 2015 So why do most conversations about art leave us with the perennial question, 'What is art anyway?' 1. In the eye of the beholder2. Whatever you want it to be3. Determined by experts4. Other Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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