PS I also learn that Schoenberg was 'easily unimpressed'. Maybe he's my kind of guy after all.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Andy, Art and Arnold
Certain sentiments set the teeth on edge. 'I believe that children are our future,' must have scraped off several tons of enamel. Either it is utterly false - children grow up, leave home and become, in the process, our past - or it is vapidly true - people who are currently children will indeed be screwing things up when we are too old and frail to protest. Which brings me to Andy, our nicely behaved, 12-year-old Culture Secretary. I just saw him on TV defending the latest implausible Hal meddle. Andy's probably okay - who knows? - but he said something along the lines of, 'I believe all children have a creative talent.' Again, this is either vapidly true or utterly false. Coincidentally, I had just read a quotation from Arnold Schoenberg - 'If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.' This is meaningless - why should we assess whether something is art on the basis of some fictional demographic scale running from the all to the few? But it is plainly elitist in a way that would be anathema to Andy. On the whole, Schoenberg's meaninglessness is more persuasive than Andy's vapidity. Artists are, indeed, an elite. Audiences need not be, however, which is why Andy would have won if he had said, 'I believe all children have the ability to appreciate great art.' This may not be true either, but it is, at least, possibly true whereas all children having a creative talent cannot be - unless, of course, we are prepared fatally to degrade the word 'creative' in a way that would render the entire issue meaningless. My point is that a state initiative to produce artists is an absolute waste of time whereas one to produce audiences might just work. It's called education. We should give it a go.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I don't know about my teeth but my backside's trying to swallow my underpants. The whole thing is just too awful, it makes me wonder if anyone was ever a child in their past!
ReplyDeleteLike "fetch" in Mean Girls, "Hal" is never going to catch on and it's beginning to set my teeth on edge. Please drop it, Bryan.
ReplyDelete'Creative' is a horrible word, or has become so. It's now just another form of narcissism, this vague, nebulous quality that makes each person special & wonderful, their utterances and excretions of immeasurable interest. i've no objection to people painting or writing or whatever to please themselves; it's when it's jacked up so everyone can be the next Titian or Dickens that it becomes meaningless. How many good writers, artists or musicians have been 'creative' in the way this Brownian fool means? - think of the agony & struggle, and the titanic joy, from which Dostoevsky wrote or Beethoven composed, then think of a 'creative writing class' where everyone is encouraged to 'tell their story'.
ReplyDeleteAnother enamel-buster: 'creative' as a job description. If the 5 hours a week plan pays off in the way Broon hopes, then, in 20 years' time, 'creatives' will be as common as shopkeepers used to be.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that a state initiative to produce artists is an absolute waste of time ...
ReplyDeleteWhat is a state actually good for, I wonder.
Are you reading The Rest is Noise?
ReplyDeleteThough the problem is not in people's being encouraged to be expressive. I think in any scenarios, prisons especially coming to mind, the articulation and release of the inner life artistically, does great therapeutic good to the person doing the releasing.
ReplyDeleteThe problem might lie when it is imagined that what is good for the person creating the art necessarily involves the art being good for a wider audience. Most golfers don't mistakenly assume their play must compare favourably with the best golfers out there. The idea that all are equally creative is the defiling of the democratic notion, the Pop Idol philosophy of all being equal by means of a lowest common denominator vision of existence. Such thinking wants cosy creativity, certainly not the mediocrity shattering declarations of otherworldly genius.
Humans being what they are, if a culture is reasonably sane, and the necessary means for art to flourish are in existence, then high quality art will inevitably arise, though the arising of absolute genius obviously can't be accounted for. If artist workshops didn't exist in the Italian Renaissance, then the glut of artists that were working simply wouldn't have arisen. If Beethoven couldn't practice on an instrument, all the inner reality could not have found musical release. But people should have the same opportunity for developing as artists as for learning about physics or maths.
Anon, Yes.
ReplyDeleteFive hours of high quality culture a week?? Every week? That'll be translated as TV til bedtime then? Is this a conspiracy theory for the BBC to get more dosh for period dramas?
ReplyDeleteThe only folks who get 5 hours of QC a week are art critics, and they have to sit through/walk past/read for many tens of hours of dross to attain the target.