Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Hansen's Bodies in Code

Hansen states that bodies are central to virtual technology rather than lost to it.
Like Bourrioud’s relational art, Hansen says modern technology “extends man’s space for play and action” rather than limiting it. He describes several artists’ work in terms of how they broaden the sensory “commons” (20), and refutes those who have eliminated the body from modern discourse. Rayer, for example, argues we have no mind-body split because we have no body (11). In contrast, Kreuger, a pioneer in interactive art, believes artists must put humans first, making the technology figure out people rather than the other way around. With some newer pieces, viewers operate cameras, dissolving and complicating the role of the artist. To those who consider interactive art a separate realm from reality, Hansen notes, “All reality is mixed reality.”

Links: The mind-body split argument is still very much with us from ancient Greece to now.

Fear of technology – the idea that technology swallows humanity, like Darth Vader or the Borg.

Relational art is a new term for me, but I find myself seeing it everywhere. Hansen’s artists seem engaged in relational art.
This makes me wonder if interactive museums, like the Holocaust museum are forms of relational art. I don’t know if being able to categorize them as such is important, but I think categorizing can help me understand the concept.

NPR just had a segment on a California street musician, recorded by some guy, then played for musicians around the world (Zuni reservation, Soweto South Africa, et c). These musicians then joined in the recording. Each group added to the mix, listening to an increasingly complex base recording that all started with one guy and a guitar. The first song was “Stand By Me.” Then, Anne sent a link to something quite similar with video and music combined.

I don’t understand the feedback loops of Lozano-Hemmer’s work. What are they and is this projected on a building (96)?

Is all architecture relational art?

How can we have no body (11)?

What is the pre-personal (page 21)? Is this another term for a priori?

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Kenneth Burke's Counter-Statement and Rhetoric

I've skimmed Burke's work, reading the 1931 work first. Here Burke gives writers a "counter-statement" to what he calls the common "view of the day." He then describes qualities writers use and should consider, from specific narrative elements, to universal themes/ideas, to the role of artists in the world. His many specific examples clarify his ideas.

1931 "view of the day" must mean he runs counter to the avant-garde and Marxism, I imagine. His work does seem more traditional at first, along the lines of the Greco-Roman choices offered artists but he offers more variety and ends with the potential for a work to surpass the artist.


1950 In a Rhetoric of Motives, Burke discusses Classical literary traditions. At first, I thought his point would be to uphold these traditions against the "view of the day" mentioned before; however, he points out that these traditions are opinions, not facts to be used in all cases across all eras. He disputes the notion of "reason" in regard to choices of rhetoric. Reason, he feels, suggests a "truth," rather than an opinion. I am puzzled by his use of "we" to describe his own personal experience; however, I find his examples illustrate his points well. He does not negate the importance of Classical tradition, but does show how modern authors mustn't be hemmed exclusively by traditional opinions. I look forward to class, so I can better understand the details as I've had to skim both excerpts much too quickly!

Shusterman's Performing Live

Shusterman traces the diminishing value of aesthetics in art theory. He wants to bring bodily experience back into the discussion of aesthetics through popular art/culture because, like Bourrioud, he believes aesthetics help forge relationships in an increasingly commodified world.
He also notes how as technology replaces the body, our culture becomes more body-conscious. Unlike the Greeks or Kant, he doesn't place the mind over the body, but sees the body as the center, the source of pleasure. Interestingly, he notes how to Plato, the body was seen as temporary, but to an increasingly fast-paced society, the body seems far more lasting than most things. Apparently, the "eternal" is obsolete.
Shusterman argues in favor of variety (media choices, body images), in keeping with Steiner. He also describes how bodily self-improvement has replaced religion for many. Where Adorno finds this change a sign of increasing selfishness, Shusterman thinks otherwise. One source he quotes states links the gymrat phenomenon to the fact that people today have "so little to do." Artists today, Shusterman says, have to balance the tension between "working hard" and "abandoning" themselves. One must prepare for genius, but let go to achieve it.

I see many links to relational art. Shusterman wants to expand the space for discussion of aesthetics and art.

Where is the eternal? At what point did we lose discussion of the eternal, or did we?

I laughed at the comment about people today having so little to do after Shusterman's discussion of gyms. My aunt and uncle have a small sheep farm -- built by their own hands. After working outside for much of the day or spinning, weaving, and working inside of barns or house during bad weather, the last thought on their minds would be going to the gym. Counter to many Door County people, they built their house with smallish, well-placed windows to capture small views. They don't need expansive views of nature after being out in it for much of the day. Since I just visited them, this sprang to mind.

I'm not religious, but I'm not sure that replacing the church with the gym isn't a clear sign of self-centeredness. Isn't that shifting from we to I?

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Wendy Steiner's Venus in Exile

Steiner describes the shift in the value of beauty in nineteenth and twentieth century art. She points out that modernists in rejecting beauty (especially feminine beauty), they have rejected pleasure and, in a sense, our humanity. In her book, she hopes to redefine beauty as an "interaction" between the subject and the object, not as a quality someone possesses or not.
Steiner uses the myth of Cupid and Psyche and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (really interesting stuff!)as touchstone pieces as she traces the changing view of beauty through several artist's works from Kant's sublime, to Flaubert's realism, to Basquiat's outsider art.


Connections to past ideas and present questions:

Steiner's description of myth of Cupid and Psyche and how it shows a changing relationship between subject and object, between aesthetic response and beauty reminds me of Hegel's idea about art being a reconciliation between the divine within and without.

The increasing importance of garbage as subject matter. I haven't thought much about this subject in art, but see her points. This reminds me of Ibsen's Enemy of the People and The Sopranos. The culture that produces yet denies its waste creates a new way to make money.

Outsider art (loosely defined) as reinvigorating high art by offering "hope" and break from commodity culture. This links to Marcuse's sense that art should offer hope of a better world even if it can't change the world.

The capitalist "exchange" is not "compatible with aesthetics. Wharton comes to believe this in House of Mirth.

The subject-object shift in the gaze of Manet's Olympia, thought at the time to be a prostitute (but actually an artist). How does the subject matter (prostitute vs. artist) change our view of the painting and the what that gaze represents?

The link between aesthetics and humanity in the body.

The ordinary looking Scottish singer who won everyone's hearts with her aesthetically pleasing voice.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics

Bourriaud writes of “relational aesthetics,” describing how modern art (1990s) is more about improving human relationships than about expressing absolutes or “creating utopias” (46). Art in the 1990s, he claims, changes the relationship between time and space, much like atomic particles. Thus, the audience helps create the relationship along with the artist. Form has become more diversified, while time has become more specific, making art more concerned with the ordinary world, but more like rendevous. To Bourriaud, this means that relational art cannot be as easily commodified as art in the past, which is important in an increasingly powerful global economy.

Links: Like Eagleton, Bourriaud relates art to a commodity culture. I thought this went back to Marx, Benjamin, Marcuse, Adorno, Williams. The post industrial revolution thinkers write increasingly of the relationship between art and capitalism. However, I also remember the Roman authors describing Roman culture as more superficial and greedy than that of the Greeks. So perhaps fear of “selling out” didn’t arise in 1980s punk scene but in the ancient Roman art scene.

The description of art as a relationship reminds me most of Williams and Hegel. Hegel describes it as a reconciliation between the divine within and without. Bourriaud isn’t describing a relationship with the divine, but between the artist and audience, mediated by time and space.

Question: I found this work very interesting. I especially enjoyed his descriptions of actual works. Bourriaud states that these works are knowingly specific and temporary and that those qualities shouldn’t lessen their relevance. I’m not sure what my point is here, but I find it difficult to discover the relevance of a work of art ( or my understanding of it) without reflection. Here, it seems like reflecting more on an experience than on a work of art. Will art that is more like a subjective memory last? He says that’s not the point, but how else do we discover relevance?

I especially liked his point early on about human relations no longer being “directly experienced” (9). I read this just before going to a two year old’s birthday party where I felt guilty for being the only parent not filming my sons finding easter eggs. I often like those fuzzy, did it really happen memories not predetermined by photographs.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Aesthetic Connections on NPR

Today while driving to work, I heard an interview with Lera Boroditsky, a Stanford teacher who is researching gender-language connections. She has noticed through her studies that languages which have masculine or feminine nouns carry these genders over into the adjectives used when describing these objects. For example, German speakers consider bridges feminine and when asked to offer adjectives to describe a bridge, they used words like "delicate," "beautiful," et c. However, Spanish speakers who consider bridges masculine, use words like "strong," "long," et c.
In other words, Boroditsky claims that language affects the aesthetic experience.

After testing out Shakespeare's line "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," Boroditsky found Shakespeare wrong. Roses in paper bags labeled "mowed grass" did not smell as sweet as those labeled "rose" to her test subjects.

Of course, this reminded me of Williams.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Williams- Marxism and Literature

In part one, Williams explains how linguistics and literary theories developed. He describes the interplay between history, language development, and linguistics. He points out how literature blossomed at the end of the feudal period as European society shifted from a society centered on religion to one with more secular concerns. From these shifts, he notes, literary theorists developed the concept of "tradition" (upholding certain ideologies) to distinguish "good" literature from "bad," thus keeping literature from becoming too egalitarian.
In part two, Williams goes on to reinterpret Marx's ideas (and post-Marxist ideas) regarding the base-superstructure. He points out the difficulties in separating art from production (with his piano example -- his one specific example!). He also rejects the idea that art is merely a reflection of society. Rather, Williams agrees with Adorno's theory that art/culture is a mediation of society -- that the mediation takes place within the art itself. He then discusses the problem of aesthetics, claiming that aesthetics is really a social function/reaction. However, he doesn't reject aesthetics because of this. He claims that artists (writers) must confront the "hegemony" within themselves (social forces) to be truly creative and to bring something "unknown" or new to the world.

Values
Marxism but reinterpreted.
Euro-centric. Asia had novels before the 17th century.
The Frankfort school highly valued.


If culture is a mediation of society, is the reverse also true?
What have these theorists got against specific examples?

Links

The aesthetic experience takes place socially? Is this like Hegel's reconciliation through art?
It's no longer the divine within, but the hegemony within. Yikes! My sense of self is either expanding or contracting. Am I a WE?

Williams reminds me a bit of Adorno in his critique of Marxist interpretations. Williams says art is not merely a reflection of society. Adorno criticizes Kant and the Freudians for their sense that art is valued not for what it is but for what it means in terms of something else.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Adorno's Aesthetic Theory

I don't yet have a sense of the whole with Adorno, so here it goes.

After art was supposedly "freed" from "cultic function," it lost its place in the world; thus, progression becomes regression. Although art has taken the place of religion, it must turn against this role to become something "other." Adorno counters other theorists like Kant and the Freudians, for removing the body from the aesthetic experience (Kant) or substituting art for bodily experience (Freud) (10). To Adorno and Marcuse, pleasure can be radical (14).
In addition, Adorno states that the "ugly" has its place in art. This idea of "ugliness" stems from recognizing and rejecting what was once feared. When rejected, we deem it ugly. He also links the ugly to the beautiful in terms of symmetry, writing that we understand symmetry better through its contrast with asymmetry. Here, he suggests some Hegelian opposition. Adorno traces the place of the "ugly" in art, from the ancient Greeks to anti-feudal paintings of the nineteenth century (48). He states that the bourgeois rejection of industrial landcapes as unaesthetic stems from nature's domination over man rather than the opposite. Aesthetics, Adorno claims, must be about more than beauty, for art needs tension. Ancient cultures recognized this and represented this tension in art and myth. Only in the Enlightenment was art associated with a more formal beauty. However, he also notes that ancient cultures didn't recognize the individual in art (Greeks sculptures vs. modern ones). Overall, Adorno stresses the importance of the aesthetic experience. To lose the aesthetic, even a sentimental one, makes art "barbaric" (61).

Like Marcuse, Adorno links aesthetics with radical thought (through individual, subjective experience).
Like the French concept of jolie-laide, beauty in ugliness.
This reminds me of the birth of Aphrodite. In one version, Aphrodite rises out of the sea after Uranus's severed organs are thrown into the sea. Love and beauty stems from violence (and sexuality).

I don't have a sense of how this all hangs together.
How does Benjamin's theory fail? (56)

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Marcuse's Aesthetics

Marcuse posits his theory in terms of how it fits into a continuing discussion of aesthetics. He points out that aesthetics is more important than Marx and many post-Marxian thinkers claim. Marx and post-Marxists, he notes, have incorrectly devalued the subjectivity of aesthetics/ beauty, thinking it superfluous to more pressing social needs (and the radical agenda). Marcuse asserts that aesthetics are an essential part of radical change as art represents an "otherness" that reveals and opposes "reality." Art, he says, should contain an element of hope that the world could be better even as it remains cynical as to whether that will actually happen. To Marcuse, beauty gives us the will to live.

Questions: Page 63. I understood the link between fascism and art but not between fascism and literature. What does he mean?

When Marcuse discusses recognition, how is this like Aristotle's recognition?

Values: Literature over painting as the most radical artform.
Europeans still dominate the artistic discussion, but one culture within Europe not better than another. Brecht dominates.
New Values: Contrary to many of his peers, Marcuse values beauty.

Links: Plato's mean (54) and Hegel (55) suggested by these pages.
I see many links to modern art. Warhol seems heavily into anti-beauty movement. If art is everything, then it is nothing. Marcuse seems to question Warhol's legitimacy. The "factory" can be no factory.

Friday, March 13, 2009

James Dean at the Domes

Initially, I wanted to write about the train exhibit at the Mitchell Park Domes. I had some vague desire to analyze the odd visual aesthetics of advertisements (on box cars), lovely, blooming azaleas, and lego scenes in conjunction with the ordinary sights and sounds of deafening, runny-nosed children (my own included). Looming over the industrial valley, the giant hot houses form a strange link to the values of the Romantic era in an industrial age. A frequent backdrop for wedding photos, the tropical garden acts as a cheap getaway in February. Despite these interests, I’ve decided to critique Rebel without a Cause instead. Much as I need the riot of azaleas in February, I appreciate bold color and and composition of Rebel as well.

Directed by Nicholas Ray (who hails from Galesville, WI) in 1955, the film marks the beginning of the teen movie genre. The film opens with the protagonist Jim Stark (James Dean) sprawled on the ground playing with a toy monkey while the credits flash over him. Soon after, Jim is picked up by the police and taken to the station. Here, he sees the two other characters that will, with Jim, drive the film’s plot. At the station, all three central characters, Jim Stark (James Dean), Judy (Natalie Wood), and John “Plato” Crawford (Sal Mineo), have problems with inept or absent parents. Because of these problems, these adolescents struggle between opposing forces: isolation and community. In the end, Plato’s problems alienate him while Jim and Judy’s resolve when they forge new relationships. Several links to aesthetic philosophy spring to mind when watching this film, especially in terms of key conflicts and symbolic settings.

Plato, named for the Classical philosopher, grows up without parental love, isolated from his peers. Picked up for shooting puppies on his birthday, Plato and his nanny tell Officer Ray that his mother is often away on vacations. Foreshadowing his own death at the film’s end, the puppy massacre lets viewers in on the depth of Plato’s alienation and self-hatred. Plato later describes his father as a sailor on the China Seas among other stories to explain his absences. Later, when Plato retrieves the gun (Put back after killing the puppies? Nice work, Nanny) in order to protect Jim, he finds a check noted, “For care of son.” In another scene, Plato hangs out in an abandoned mansion, symbolic of his own abandoned home. Clearly, Plato’s parents have some explaining to do, but they never appear in the film.

Because of their total rejection, Plato seeks a father figure in Jim, the new kid in town, whose own problems stem from his weak father and domineering mother. Like Alcibiades looks at Socrates, Plato often looks longingly at Jim, suggesting he desires more than a father. Jim, however, to compensate for his own isolation, tries unsuccessfully to fit in with the cool kids, a violent group led by Buzz Gunderson, Judy’s boyfriend. When they meet at the Planetarium, Buzz and Jim’s square off in a knife fight. Later that night, Jim and Buzz agree to meet at a bluff to play “chicken” with fatal results. Before they get into their cars, Jim and Buzz stand together on the edge overlooking the sea. When Jim asks why they have to compete so dangerously, Buzz responds, “Well, you gotta do something.” Shortly thereafter, Jim survives the game, but Buzz careens off the cliff, leaving his gang leaderless and Judy isolated. The brief attempt at joining the adolescent community fails.

The planetarium and the cliff scenes both link to Kant’s concept of the sublime. Both settings force the teens to confront their own mortality, fears, and insignificance. When they are first at the planetarium for a school field-trip, the speaker’s narration during a simulation of the end of the world echoes Plato’s isolation. “Man existing alone seems himself an episode of little consequence,” he narrates. Plato responds, “What does he know about Man alone?” but he cowers shortly before saying this. The vastness and emptiness of space mimic his inner isolation. This also reminds me of Hegel who describes the spiritual force existing internally in the Romantic man. However, instead of the divine within and without, Plato has internalized his family’s estrangement. At the end of the film, Plato returns to the Planetarium as he tries to escape the police. When Jim tries unsuccessfully to save him, Plato rejects him (for going off with Judy), running out of the building to be shot by the cops. No simulation of the world’s end this time, Plato’s nanny cries, “Poor baby ain’t got nobody.” A far cry from the Hegelian idea of reconciliation, Nicholas Ray’s modern man dies violently and alone.

Like the planetarium, the cliff represents a symbolic setting where the plot turns and Jim shifts his attention to Judy. First, looking over the edge forces the truth out of Buzz and Jim. Here, they confront the stupidity of their actions but to no avail. “I like you,” Buzz says to Jim, out of everyone else’s earshot, of course. After Buzz’s death, Jim pulls Judy back from the edge, suggesting he will save her from despair. By setting these pivotal scenes in nature (or a simulation of it), Nicholas Ray aligns himself with the Romantic era philosophers but with a less hopeful sense of progress.

After Plato's death, Jim introduces Judy to his parents with his arm around her, as their betters. Thus, love bridges the gap between adolescence and adulthood. Plato, however, ends as he begins, without love. Jim and Judy, on the other hand, both find love, the mean between the Platonic extremes of isolation and community. To Nicholas Ray, isolation destroys the individual while the community fails the individual.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Summary:

Benjamin describes how art went from being produced to being reproduced and how improvements in reproduction techniques have changed the aesthetic experience by removing the ritual and uniqueness associated with the art. In addition, reproduction makes art ubiquitous, available to the masses rather than just to the elite. He notes that modern audiences question art forms like film and photography, which he notes is a more valid artform for modern man than painting. Art, he says, must change with society.

Questions:

How does reproduction make art political? Because it's available to all?

Is photography more valid that painting for modern man? Why?

Values: Like Marx, he shifts away from art for the elite.
Taking the ritual out of experience is better for all.

Links: I can see Andy Warhol taking this a step further, lauding reproduction and doing away entirely with ritual.

The Aesthetic State - Josef Chytry

Summary:

Chytry describes how Marx, using his Classical background and Hegelian structures, claims that labor unifies the mind and body as well as the public and private worlds of individuals. However, modern capitalism, with its pursuit of profit and technological advances, alienates man from the whole process of production by devaluing his time and by developing a division of labor. To transform society would take a revolution, but the new society would result in the "'cultivation of the five senses'" and the "flowering of a 'humane' sensibility."

Questions:

In what ways have we come back to the beginnings (Greco-Roman)?

Does this mean that in order for labor to be aesthetic there must be a physical product?
If we end with "sensibility," does this mean Marx has reversed the order of aesthetic ideas? It seems that prior readings started with senses.
Why was Germany such a hub of philosophical ideas?

Values:

Whole better than parts.

New values:

Aesthetics no longer tied to upper classes with "taste."

Links: Marx predates the ashcan school (Robert Henri, John Sloan, et al), but I can see his influence on their work.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics

Summary:

Hegel traces the progression of man's ability to represent his ideas concerning the divine in three stages: symbolic art, Classical art, leading to Romantic art. Romantic art, Hegel argues, shows the "union of matter and form" because man now has the "divine within" (III p.4), making art a reconcilliation between man (internal) and god (external). To do this, man no longer needs to represent symbols of the absolute, but now may represent the external form of the absolute: nature. Painting, music, and poetry are the best modes to represent this unity.

Assumed Values:
Like Kant, symbols combine mind and sensory info.
Absolute (sublime) = formless
Greek represents the former ideal
Christian (European) purer artform than others (Asian)
Art = Unity of material (external) and ideas (internal)

New Values:
Myths are religion's equals (Christianity) though an earlier stage of progress.
Man's ideas have progressed; thus, art progresses.
Sculpture no longer the ideal artform.
Divine (Absolute) within
Romantic ideals supreme.

Questions:

How did the divine get "within"? I missed this step.
In what ways do Hegel and Kant overlap?

Links:
If I did understand Hegel, I'm not sure I could have without my art history background. I could really see his ideas present in the paintings of the Hudson River School and in the poems like "Ode to the West Wind" (Shelley). The landscapes where man is dwarfed by nature, but still a part of it, reminded me of this "reconciliation." When Shelley asks the wind to "make [him] thy lyre" and "Be thou me," this marks the change from (but also reminds me of) Homer's "Sing in me, Muse." Both claim inspiration from something outside of themselves that they, in turn, internalize. However, Homer is paying respects to the divine rather than to the forces of nature, and Homer isn't claiming to become "one" with the divine.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Kant's Critique of Judgement

First of all, I hope this guy never married.

Summary of Analytic of the Beautiful (far more than 50 words, but far less than the original):

Kant articulates the first leg of his argument on aesthetic judgement, which first involves a "taste for the beautiful" (27). Beauty, he claims, is judged by the imagination; thus, taste is judged by subjective thought. Beauty pleases without concern for purpose (45), and it provides universal satisfaction (45). He also points out that different cultures must have different concepts of beauty because they have a different set of norms (71). The fact that aesthetical judement of taste is universal presupposes and confirms the existence of a "common sense" (74,76). Ultimately, Kant notes, beauty must involve a balance between freedom and regularity (79).

Summary of Analytic of the Sublime:

Kant continues his arguement, first noting how beauty and the sublime are related, though he calls the sublime "formless" (86). He then notes two types of sublime experiences: mathematical, which evokes a sense of "infinity" through size and dynamic, which excites a sense of fear, as in the case of war or a hurricane (99). Kant clearly links the sublime to the natural world, which he claims is superior to artificial beauty (142). Kant then goes on to describe the differences between art (free play) and craft (work) as well as shows the contrast between genius, which combines imagination and understanding, versus the "bunglers," who aspire to art but fail (163). In addition, Kant describes the value of various art forms in terms of "freedom." He concludes by saying that sensitivity combined with with morality beyond the private experience would help a culture develop taste (202).

Old values:
Balance necessary (in this case sensibility with morality rather than body and mind). Emotion and reason seem to be the opposing forces rather than the physical body and mind.
Kant's sense of the mathematical "infinity" suggests Plato's "eternal."
Greeks no longer rule the art world, but different cultures have strengths (English for sublime; French for beauty).

New values:

Nature over nurture -- genius is born, not made. Kant says, " no science can teach; no industry can learn" (160). This counters the Greek scholars who suggest that one can learn great art through imitation.
I'm not sure where common sense fits in -- this seems to be a new idea.
Nature as supreme. Nature superior to art in all cases, according to Kant.

Questions:

What is the morality Kant speaks of?
Am I getting any of this right? I'm not sure.
Was Goethe a key factor in how influential Kant became? I can't imagine many people reading this!

Links:
I'm very reminded of William Blake in Kant's discussion of the sublime both as a printer and a poet. I'm also reminded of Thomas Cole's "Course of Empire" series (19th century landscapes).
Mary Shelley might be one of the three people to read Kant. In Frankenstein, her chapters where the creature and Victor meet on Mont Blanc and later at the North Pole suggest her attempt to relate to the sublime awe/fear. I'm also reminded of the story of Jonah and the Whale in terms of a sublime experience.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Baumgarten's Reflections on Poetry Notes

Summary:

During the Enlightenment, Baumgarten shows the connections between poetry and philosophical thought. He describes how profound philosophical discourse involves intellect and the senses just as good poetry does. To make his points, Baumgarten uses syllogisms to show the logic of certain choices in order to make writing more or less "poetic." He also relies heavily on the work of Horace to illustrate his points.

Assumed values (shared):
Poetry like philosophy
Clarity over obscurity
Poetry should excite "power affect" -- meaning it should not be concerned with the ordinary
Choose familiar over novel subjects - stick to the possible
Consider your audience

New Ideas:
Poetry can/should be approached in a scientific, logical manner
Pleasure and displeasure (discord) are equally poetic (70)
The measure of the verse (iambs) gain attention

Questions:
Where did idea of displeasure come in to this discussion of the aesthetic? Plato describe opposing ideas, with love at the center, but Baumgarten suggests that discord is equally aesthetic. Is this a modern idea? (see below).
Where the aesthetic experience in so many syllogisms? (I realize I am not the intended audience.)


Links:
I've never read anything quite like this. I was put off at first by his use of syllogisms. However, I found his point about pleasure and discord being equally poetic to be an interesting idea. Many of the initial blogs regarding an aesthetic experience addressed the pleasure of discord, yet few of our first reads had much to do with it. It seems related to those Socratic opposites, yet doesn't suggest the same balance. Did I miss something in my readings or is this a more modern idea?
This pleasure of discord reminds me especially of my own musical aesthetic experiences with pieces like Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello, or Tom Waits songs with Marc Ribot's dissonant guitar, or bands like X. The discord provides a kind of magnetic resistance, a push and a pull.

I disagree with the idea that poetry shouldn't reflect the ordinary. I think great writers make the common world uncommon, they often shed new light on what could seem mundane.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Friedrich Von Schiller's Letters Upon the Aesthetic Notes

Summary:

My initial summary was a page and a half long. This is my summary of my summary:

During the revolutionary period of the late eighteenth century, Schiller describes man as between extremes: barbarity (lower classes) and lethargy (upper classes). Schiller notes that the Greeks represent the ideal in terms of balancing heart (soul?) and mind. When faced with these opposing forces, can the State in such flux attain the harmony achieved by the Greeks? Schiller says it can if enobled by art and beauty, which temper the extremes by "remov[ing] the opposition" (27). When our culture develops that ability to "enjoy the beautiful without desiring it," the Greek ideal of harmony will govern (44,43).

Assumed Values:

Two opposing factions exist. Are there really only two?
Greeks Rule - the idea that the Greeks achieved the ideal (though no mention of slavery)
Lower classes barbaric; Upper classes lethargic
Love = male + female

New Values:

Male love not harmonious
State can be ruled by "aesthetics" like beauty
Greeks as ideal "forms" to modern age

Questions:

Specific question regarding page 35 (Part V Letter XXIII)
I didn't understand the part about passive or active determination. How does it help a person become aesthetic?

Where did the Greek concept of male love go? Did Western culture become more homophobic as Christianity developed or was it more complicated than that?

It's interesting how slavery existed so invisibly in both the Greek and the European/American culture during these periods where such lofty ideals were discussed. This omission was present in the American novel Macaria by Augusta Jane Evans as well. In the novel, written and set at the start of the American Civil War, Evans does not mention slaves at all except when speaking of the South's "bondage" to "Lincolndom."


Links:

To Schiller, Greek model becomes a Platonic "form" to modern cultures although Schiller avoids the male love so central to the Greeks.
Socrates via Plato describes love as the "mean"between extremes. For Schiller, beauty is the mean.
I am continually reminded of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Her title and book suggest both are necessary. Marianne lacks Elinor's sense while Elinor needs to confide her emotions more to her sister. In addition, Romeo and Juliet also keeps coming to mind in terms of this same imbalance, although I'd add more layers to the imbalance. Like in the revolutionary period of Schiller, Verona's upper classes fail to represent the ideal (and fail to exert any control), leading to a world dominated by violence and emotion.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Horace's Ars Poetica Notes

Summary:
In Ars Poetica, Horace advises poets/playwrights on how to become respected writers. In addition to his strict rules regarding length and purpose (comedy or tragedy), Horace also makes suggestions concerning character development, urging these students to stick to the "truth" and to the familiar, lest they lose the audience's respect. Clearly, Horace admires the Greek traditions over that of the Romans. Throughout the piece, Horace's vivid, concrete analogies illustrate his points with humor.

Assumptions/Shared Values:

Greeks rule.
Tradition over innovation.
Roman culture/art is more materialistic than that of the Greeks.

Changes/Additions:

Consider your audience. They can spot a fake.

Talent and experience matter more than hard work when creating art.

Style and substance both matter -- Horace suggests that Roman poets value style over substance.

Unlike Plato, Horace suggests each genre (tragedy/comedy) should remain distinct.
Plato says the two are related.

Questions and links:

Do you agree with Horace? This question applies to all readings.

Plato suggests that comedy and tragedy are related. Clearly, Shakespeare agrees. Horace seems to say that they should remain distinct. Am I misreading this?


I enjoyed the concrete examples in this. I find abstract ideas without concrete details difficult to understand.

In my own work as a high school English teacher, I also find that most students fall in love with their drafts and find revision difficult.

I prefer Archibald MacLeish's "Ars Poetica"to Horace.

"A poem should be equal to:
Not true."

"A poem should not mean
But be."

These lines connect with several of the readings. Horace would say that you should try to approximate reality by carefully observing your own experiences. Aristotle agrees with this to a points, for he also advises authors to create characters who are believable but better than reality. MacLeish suggests this isn't the point, that the poem exists as its own reality.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Longinus On the Sublime Notes

Summary:

Longinus offers writers advice on how to aspire to write so as to "take men out of themselves" through imitation, images, and figures of speech (I). He also notes how the use of dialogue and the use of the present tense adds energetic drama. In addition, he warns against "flourishes" (XXXVIII) as well as the superficiality of his own wealthy age.

Assumptions - Shared Values:

Art takes work/effort.

Dialogue helps clarify ideas.

Writers should be readers first.

Greeks rule (over Romans).


New Values:

Tradition takes precedence over novelty.

Larger cultural shifts affect artists (wealthy society lessens the quality of art).

Questions:

What is the critic's role in a pre-printing press society? Because this writing is new to me, I had considered criticism a newish field. Apparently not.

Links:

First of all, I found it somewhat funny that in teaching key elements of narrative writing this past week, I talked about "the big 5." Longinus writes of "five principal sources" from which "all sublimity is derived" (VIII). Though not exactly the same, our lists have some overlap.

Because of his style and clear examples, I found Longinus to be an easier read and more concrete than the others (especially Aristotle). Like Aristotle, Longinus believes that the "pursuit of novelty" lessens the quality of writing (V).

As with Plato's portrayal of Socrates in Symposium, Longinus argues that passions should be tempered by reason (II). This suggestion reminds me again of Romeo and Juliet as well as Sense and Sensibility, where characters without balance pay a price (well, in Romeo and Juliet, everyone pays a price).

Aristotle Poetics Notes

Summary:

In Poetics, Aristotle presents structural, stylistic, and narrative elements writers should include when creating a great play or poem. He notes that all writers rely on imitation, whether instinctive or cultivated. He then lays out in order of importance many key elements to the plot, which he places over character development, such as “recognition,” as well as which types of plot devices will render the “best” outcome.

Assumptions-Shared Values:

Aristotle assumes that there are rigid rules regarding the writing of “the perfect” comedy or tragedy, and that he knows what they are.

He also assumes what is “best” can be defined by one person.

Men hold more value than women (XV).

New Values:

When writing a play, consider your audience (XVII).

When creating characters, make the “likeness…true to life…yet more beautiful” (XV).

Questions:

Why does Aristotle try to define one type of play as “superior” to another? Why is it important to classify tragedy as “superior to epic poetry” (XXVI)? Why must one be better?

Links:
I am amazed at how long Aristotle’s “rules” lasted. I realize that there is a gap between the author’s period and the Renaissance when his works were rediscovered. Still, many writers through first half of the nineteenth century followed his concepts regarding the “unity of plot” (VII, VIII). Not all followed his rigid ideas. Shakespeare clearly breaks some of these rules, especially in Romeo and Juliet where he mixes comedy with tragedy.
Later, Ibsen breaks the tradition of the five act play. Imagine a modern critic having that kind of reach!

Plato's Symposium Notes

Summary:

Through seven characters , Plato discusses differing philosophical views on love. These philosophers discuss how love can better society by promoting self-sacrifice as well as cause harm if rooted in bodily desire. Aristophanes, for one, thinks of love as both a form of punishment for human transgressions as well as a way to reconnect with our "missing" selves. Socrates, however, describes love as a balancing force, a "mean" between the mortal world and the eternal.

Assumptions:

Through discourse, one comes closer to reaching the truth.
Multiple voices add to understanding.
Men valued more than women.
Love between men is normal.
Artists are creators of a higher quality than human creators.

Reinforcing or New Ideas:

Greek scholarship valued. Many voices past and present contribute to current scholarship.
Thus, Homer, Herodotus, Socrates all cited.
Humor at the end with the entrance of the drunk could suggest that this subject or any philosophical discussion shouldn't be taken too seriously, or it could act to connect the aforementioned ideas.
Humor and the base instincts coincide with lofty ideals.

Questions:

What is the purpose of the drunk?
Why does Plato speak through others? Where is Plato in all this?

Links:

John Updike died recently. An obituary quoted something he told Life Magazine in 1966: "I like middles. It's in the middle that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly waits." This reminds me of what Socrates says about love existing between extremes, between the fair and the foul, as the "intermediate between the divine and the mortal" (160). In mythology, at the beginning of the Greek creation myth, Eros brought together earth and sky out of Chaos. This, too, suggests that Eros exists between the extremes. This concept of balance is present in Shakespeare (where most characters lack the necessary balance) as well as Jane Austen novels, where the heroine has to learn to balance opposing forces within herself.

I also was reminded of the art the Roman leader Hadrian had created in memory of his lover, Antinous after his death (suicide).