Re: [Leica] Good Pitchurs

[Jeff Moore <jbm@instinet.com>]

At 13 Apr 1998 18:42:58 -0400, Peterson_Art@hq.navsea.navy.mil wrote:
 
> A work of art (piece of music in this case) communicates something
> which the artist cannot communicate in any other way...and we, the
> audience, appreciate the work when we get that communication.  If we
> don't get the communication, then the work, no matter how technically
> accomplished it may be, is lost on us.

Of course.  And these words speak to my point as well as your own.

Communication occurs in some language, with some set of symbols.  The
more subtly nuanced the set of symbols, and the more thoroughly shared 
the dictionary of those symbols, the better chance that communication
has.  Some such sharing is a prerequisite to any communication.  Given 
a sufficiency of shared language, the art lies in having a message,
and in framing it.  Sometimes (often?  necessarily?) in great art,
while there is sufficient communication within a rudimentary subset of 
the artists's available vocabulary for the work to be engaging,
there's more going at other levels.  It's worth the... consumer's
while to study a dictionary, and a guide to usage, and other works,
and folk tales, and precursor languages, and...

> Thus technical considerations are superfluous to aesthetic
> appreciation, as is also historical knowledge.  They may...be
> interesting matters...but they are not necessary for the art to
> serve its purpose---communication.  One can fully appreciate Bach's
> music without analyzing the chord structure or being informed of the
> composer's historical debt...

It's just important not to be too absolute in this insistence that
the capacity for this appreciation is somehow intrinsic, not learned.
Perhaps, in the example above, one needn't know Bach's musical
forebears for a first-level appreciation of the music, but I betcha
someone who hadn't been exposed to any notion of the usual intervals 
to be found in a major or a minor key just wouldn't `get' the music
too well.  I bet a monolingual (American?) person just wouldn't `get'
a simple poem written in Mandarin.  And I bet that even with a
dictionary, but without cultural referents, he still wouldn't get it
too deeply.

> One can fully appreciate Ansel Adams's photographs...simply by looking
> at them.

As one who's not the biggest Adams fan (great technician, though!) I'm 
only too glad to agree with you.  :-)

> one appreciates art itself simply by experiencing it (and, yes, ONLY
> by experiencing it).

Is this meant to imply that any analytic component to one's interaction
with a piece automatically invalidates the experience?

and...would you be inclined to contend that a recent escapee from a
Skinner box is necessarily just as fully able to appreciate any `true'
art as someone who's grown up in the same culture as the artist?

> And apologies all around for my long-windedness!

You're offering considered opinions lucidly written, and avoiding
personal attacks to boot!  This can only raise the level of discourse.

 -Jeff Moore <jbm@instinet.com>