This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Angelus Novus is a beautiful painting in every (authentic) sense of the word, and only philistines think otherwise
Scott just published Contra Everyone On Taste:
This post is a followup to the earlier Friendly And Hostile Analogies For Taste. It seems that the track of the discussion went roughly as follows: Scott was reflecting on how the tastes of art connoisseurs (either self-proclaimed or credentialed) tend to a) differ sharply from the tastes of the much larger mass of non-experts, and b) show a preference for art that the majority of people consider to be ugly or incomprehensible. He essentially argued that the opinions of the "experts" are grounded in bullshit status games, political power struggles, arbitrary fashion trends, etc, while normal people are free to enter into a more natural relationship with artworks that are actually beautiful and pleasant:
When people responded to the post and argued that people with more "elitist" tastes actually are responding to features of artworks that are both objectively real and deserving of attention, like the artwork's historical and social context, philosophical content, etc, it eventually prompted Scott to respond with his latest post.
He argues that many of the proposed features of artworks that are allegedly worth appreciating, like the art's historical context or its position in an ongoing artistic dialogue, are essentially extraneous, and will only serve to hinder one's natural and immediate appreciation of the art's "sensory pleasures" (or lack thereof). He really seems to be pushing this idea of a pure and natural response above all else, abstracted away from any possible considerations of context. I think this dialectical maneuver of his is ultimately grounded in his incredulity that anyone could actually, really enjoy the types of "weird" artworks that art elitists claim to enjoy. I think he thinks that if he can just cut off all of the "escape avenues" for the mustached hipster -- "no, you're not allowed to talk about the history of this or that movement, or the artist's biography, or the dumb pseudo-philosophical artist's statement, you have to just look at the thing itself and tell me what it actually looks like" -- then the snob would be forced to admit defeat and admit that, yes, when you remove all possible external variables and immerse yourself in the pure visual experience (or aural experience or whatever), it actually is just a dumb ugly looking thing. At which point Scott could claim victory and his assertion that the snobs were never worth listening to in the first place would be vindicated.
His incredulity is on display, for example, when he discusses Benjamin's essay on Angelus Novus:
I've actually brought up this painting once or twice before on TheMotte in the context of other art discussions, always to the same perplexed reactions. I'm quite fond of this painting, and I couldn't just let Scott dis it like that, which is part of what compelled me to respond to this post in the first place.
Scott raises a number of interesting points and arguments throughout the post; I'd be happy to discuss any of them individually, but, I don't think that a point-by-point breakdown of the post would actually be persuasive in getting anyone on either side of the fence in this debate to change their minds. So for now I'll settle for the more modest goal of trying to dispel some of the incredulity. Yes, I am a real living breathing human who thinks that Angelus Novus is authentically beautiful. Not for any particularly "intellectual" or "contextual" reasons either. This is, as far as I can tell, simply my "natural" response to the painting (as "natural" as one can get anyway, seeing as one's "natural" response is always already impacted by one's life history, cultural upbringing, background philosophical assumptions, etc). Similarly, my "natural" response to the Chesterton poems that Scott loves so much is that they're, well, I have to break out the word he dreads here: kitschy. I'm not even saying that to be mean! Either to Scott or to Chesterton. I have no agenda here (or at least, whatever agenda I have, there's a pretty large chasm between it and the agenda of the modal blue-haired MFA student). I'm just calling it like I see it. (Full disclosure, I only sampled a small selection of Chesterton's poems, and I'm not much of a poetry fan in general to begin with.)
An honest dialogue should begin with the recognition that people can have idiosyncratic or even "elitist" tastes that aren't just based on bullshit political signalling. Scott would of course be the first to acknowledge that "taste is subjective", but I'm not sure if he really feels it in his bones. He's still looking for the angle, looking for something that would explain why all these ivory tower types have seemingly conspired to convince everyone that these obviously-ugly artworks are actually good, because surely no one could just simply believe that. Of course it would be utterly naive to suggest that politics and fashion play no role in "high art" trends. Of course they play a prominent role. But at the same time, they're not the only factor. It shouldn't be surprising that the types of people who dedicate their lives to becoming artists or art critics would also tend to converge on certain idiosyncratic aesthetic tastes, naturally and of their own accord, due to whatever shared underlying psychological factors drove them into art in the first place.
One of these "underlying psychological factors" might simply be the desire to grapple with the complexities of aesthetic experience as such, and a willingness to allow oneself to be transformed by that experience in radical ways. Scott treats "sensory pleasure" as essentially an unexamined, irreducible primitive, the bedrock of certainty that would be left over once one has abstracted away everything "extraneous": as though it were simply obvious to oneself when one finds an artwork to be "pleasant" or "beautiful" in the first place, as though it would be impossible or undesirable to call these modes of experience into question, to become unsure of and estranged from one's own perceptual experience. Tellingly, he does include "Ability To Profoundly Affect Or Transform You" as one of his markers of artistic quality, but suggests that it may be "emergent from some combination of sensory delight, novelty and point-making." But, the authentic work of art opens up the possibility of transforming what you experience as delightful in the first place, what you experience as a "valid point" in the first place. Conceptual groundwork of this nature calls for phenomenological experiences that are multilayered and complex rather than merely "pleasant"; it calls for engagement with the world and other people.
For understandable reasons, non-leftists get anxious whenever anyone brings up words like "historical" or "transformative" in relation to art and culture; any call to be mindful of "context", especially "political context", is seen as somewhat threatening. For decades in the West, these concepts have all been associated with the forceful imposition of leftist political strictures and leftist assaults on traditional (especially religious) culture. "You're asking me to 'be open to' being 'transformed' by art; so you're asking me to allow myself to be transformed by these people? The ones who run our universities and art galleries today? Really?" I'm not saying that your concerns are entirely unfounded. All I'm saying is that it doesn't have to be this way. Recognizing that art is ineluctably embedded in its social and political context is intrinsically neither left nor right; a more holistic way of appreciating art that goes beyond simplistic notions of "art for art's sake" can and should be reclaimed.
Oh man, you drop this when I'm too busy for in-depth digging?
Some previous discussion here, for those interested.
(Primaprimaprima, you are not the "you" in the following.)
Lots of good comments in the thread too, but one of the impressions I'm getting is that the term "art" is fatally overloaded, to the point that people are turning obvious truths into mutual contradictions due simply to focus on different aspects of the process.
"There is good art and bad art."
"Art is inherently subjective, anything can be good art."
If you tell me there are art experts, you are telling me there is a standard. If there is a standard, I am entitled both to judge works by that standard and to judge the standard itself, and you don't get to retreat to abstraction if my judgement is other than you prefer. It seems obvious to me that a huge part of the conflict this conversation generates is due to influential people playing both sides of this divide to their immediate personal advantage.
"Art is important and powerful."
"Degenerate art does not exist."
...I don't think these two claims can be reconciled. "With great power comes great responsibility."
"Art is universal, appealing to core features of the human brain and raw neuro-kinematics."
"Art is all about social context."
If the former, than art that doesn't spark me is bad art from my perspective, and art that doesn't spark a lot of people is bad art from a lot of people's perspective, disagreements start looking like social conflict. If the latter, not all communication is good communication, not all social contexts should be encouraged or preserved, and again we converge on social conflict. And again, you don't get to create hierarchy and then argue that contrary opinions about hierarchy are invalid; "Angelus Novus is good" is conflict just as much as "Angelus Novus is bad".
...It seems to me that our current consensus understanding of "Art" is fatally poisoned. Judging by your summary of Scott's articles, it seems to me that Scott recognizes this and is trying to describe the problem.
Why should it start there? Bullshit political signaling seems obviously endemic. I believe I have personally observed it second-hand in an academic context, and it was one of the most embittering experiences I've ever had, generating an immediate "these people are my enemies for life, and I will never forgive them" response. Why would taste outweigh the social game in our estimation of the field, given that it seems obvious that the field has been deliberately engineered to ensure that social games outweigh taste in every possible context? Something doesn't need to be the only factor to be the overwhelmingly dominant factor.
Art shapes people, but some shapes are good and some are bad, and some ways of shaping are good and some are bad. Summitting Everest appears to be a shaping experience. Alpha Centauri's "Nerve Stapling" is also a shaping experience. I prefer one to the other, and I do not recognize diversity on this point as healthy or something to be encouraged. Neither does it seem to me that the art world actually believes in diversity being valuable in and of itself. They have, do and will police shapes and shaping methods ruthlessly to achieve their conception of the Good. It's just that their conception of the Good is obviously incompatible with mine, and their strategy for achieving it appears to involve a lot of lying and non-consensual blood-sucking.
In short, I think there's a lot of value in attempting to cleave "Art" at its many joints. A conversation of Art-as-human-universal is obviously going to go very differently than one of The-art-world-as-we-know-it. I can personally defend Angelus Novus in the former context; I'm pretty sure I won't in the latter.
Amusingly, I spent some time studying Angelus Novus in our last discussion, and so had a mental picture of the piece when arriving in this one. I checked the piece again, and the immediate impression was significantly worse that I remembered.
Because the alternative is to simply think, as you already said, that your opponents are your "enemies for life" and there's nothing to be done about it. Then the discussion is truly just reduced to nothing but political power struggles. Sounds a bit... postmodern, doesn't it?
I take Scott at his word that his immediate, honest experience of the Chesterton poems is that he experiences them as surpassingly beautiful. That doesn't mean that I think that someone's "immediate perceptual experience" should be taken as an unanalyzable, unquestionable primitive. We could then go further and ask why he has that experience, how he came to be the type of person who has that experience, how it stands in relation to his other beliefs and his other psychological traits, etc. And someone could of course perform a similar analysis on me to determine how I came to hold the views that I hold. But the important thing is that, on a certain level, I really do take Scott's word for it that he just likes the poems because he likes them. I'm not coming into it thinking that he's just saying that he likes those poems because he has a political angle. I think everyone should extend that same level of charity to everyone.
I think it's pretty clearly a good thing to have non-zero "enemies for life". I don't think you can have a functioning morality or conception of justice without this component of moral reasoning, and I think life without functioning morality or a conception of justice is not a good life.
I watched an employee of the state at a prestigious educational institution provide affirmation and encourage mutual validation to a series of young artists that their shit art was deep and meaningful because their output flattered their collective biases, and then watched her lead that same group collectively tearing down the one artist whose shit art did not flatter their collective biases. What conclusions would you draw from that experience?
To solve post-modernism, you have to take it seriously. Once you solve it, you have nothing more to fear from it.
I disagree specifically with the term everyone. I think it is possible to conclude from available evidence that some people are in fact just grifting, and that when you find enough grifters in sufficient concentration within a larger sociopolitical cluster, that cluster is reasonably described as a grift. For the art world, I think this recognition is immediately necessary; I perceive the art world has been deeply fucked up for a very long time. What I value about art can, I think, survive without it, and I think we would all be significantly better off if it did.
On the other hand, I also recognize that some and even many reactions to stimuli are genuine. I've experienced them myself. I can attempt to bridge the gap for people who don't perceive the resonance.
Either way, I find the discussion absolutely fascinating.
Conveniently, I was just thumbing through Nietzsche again due to my discussion with coffee_enjoyer:
Regarding the broader art world:
I don't deny that there's a great deal of grift, corruption, and political bickering in the "high art" world; but, I don't think anything in my post committed me to denying that either.
I have no particular attachment to the particular art institutions that we're stuck with now, and I agree with you that art could survive and flourish without them.
I would say that Game recognizes Game. Or does Neitzche "forget" the Last Men or the Tarantulas, in your view? Certainly he doesn't seem to mind making his own appeals to Justice, does he? Or am I reading him wrong?
I wouldn't think you'd deny it. I guess I'm trying to communicate why I think the problem is systemic, rather than anecdotal. It's one thing for there to be "a great deal of grift, corruption, and political bickering". Humans will inevitably human. But what the art world has done, what they are going to keep doing, is anti-human, and I will happily spend the rest of my life working to dismay them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link