Weird Studies/Duchamp

06 Nov 2022 11:06 - 06 Nov 2022 05:06
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    • The birth of modern art, when it finally went full critical, political, and discursive.
    • Music (or other art) that loves you back.
    • Citing Scruton (another big conservative). Art occurs in a space of love (agape).
    • The level of care in Kubrick, so viewer is saturated with meaning. Contrary to his autistic reputation. Yeah I'm down with that.
    • Larkin's jazz criticism – he loved the premodern form, but hated bebop etc. They read Larkin's bitter depiction of his readers as middle-aged middle-class mopes. "the benefits of modern jazz are vain because they neither help us enjoy or endure" So modern or postmodern games won't save you from your existential swamp. Enjoyment is not trivial, it's what you have left.
    • They lay into academic modernists and nihilists. I thought this was weak, because while I'm sure plenty of people like that exist it's probably better to engage with them as individuals than as a type. It's too easy to mock the tendency. But who are the bull goose nihilists? Brassiere (Nihil Unbound)? People who don't believe in beauty and transcendence? Name names, or is it just a layer of anonymous academic mediocrity?
    • Radical modernist nihilism is a luxury for the psychologically well-off.
    • Phil is very anti-Duchamp, they both are. They also hate punk, which really seems to be missing the point...I mean, punk hated itself (they mention this reaction).
      • I'm getting somewhat defensive and I don't even know why, something political going on there. I'm more pro-modernism than they are? More critical?
    • Cites Art School Confidential as a depiction of the consequneces of Duchamp. Yeah I can see how people who are really into their craft could hate the poseurs.
    • Man they really don't like this stuff. Surprising if only because they don't usually do shows around things they hate. They don't like theory, they want art that speaks directly.
      • The painters of Lascaux were doing something but they didnt call it art. Modernism, or bad modernism, says nothing about that, it just comments critically on what has already been done.
      • Affect vs concepts. Ok I'm a concept guy, I admit it. Overly verbal, less attuned to the essential sensual aspect of art. It may be a character defect.
      • There's no choice in art. Jung had theories on that. Art takes the artist over. Duchamp does not have this quality.
    • Reminded me of Travesties, in which the nature of art is discussed and batted about explicitly between James Joyce, Tristan Tzara, and the befuddled non-artist protagonist. Funniest thing ever. Also The Metamorphosis of Shit which includes a discussion of Duchamp's work.
    • "there's no room for tragedy in nihilism"
    • The basic stance of an authentic artwork: nevertheless. Life can be short, bitter, but I accept it, nevertheless.
      • I'm just transcribing this, not sure I buy it. It's a real feel but is it universal to all art? IOW is that always the message of real art? See mono no aware.
    • Deleuze (not a modernist) – art is not a communication, not at all, it bears no information, it is instead an act of resistance. Resists what? Death perhaps.
    • They acknowledge that the original critics were doing something necessary in "dynamiting the edifice", its the 20-year-old followers that piss them off.
    • A mystical core at the heart of all art, from Bach to hiphop to Lascaux. Again do I believe that? Don't know.
    • "Humanity didn't invent art, art invented humanity" – Line from JFM book (which I have yet to read). OK, it's a kind of agential refactoring but what are the consequences?
      • There's an unproblematic naturalist interpretation, which is that art was and is a technology that allowed us to be self-conscious new ways, and all that is truly human is bootstrapped on top of this capability. That sounds perfectly sensible, but it's different from saying that art is an agent that pre-existed and molded humanity in its image, which is intriguing but harder to believe in.e