3 posts tagged “art”
Had dinner with some friends last night, and by some astounding miracle, they had not heard that Michael Jackson was dead. They are neither Americans, but of course, Jackson had been iconic in their youth as well.
As we talked about it, I lamented that his childhood was so messed up and wondered, "What might he have done if he hadn't had such a controlling father?"
My friends disagreed, saying maybe he wouldn't have done anything great without his father to browbeat him and his brothers. Mozart, they proffered, was another example of this.
Except...what might Mozart have done if his father hadn't been an emotionally abusive asshole?
After all, plenty of artists do just fine with loving parents. In the two biographies published of him in his lifetime, there's no suggestion that Michelangelo had a miserable childhood and he turned out some amazing art.
I dunno? Is it true that misery makes better art? Or is it that talent attracts misery?
Wow, so this is what everyone has been talking about, huh? I guess I'll just lounge around, do something fun, eat a little, rest? Is that the idea? I could get used to this.
First I went off to the farmers market with some friends, and then we all came back to the house for some cheese toast for breakfast. Yum. Careful not to drool on your keyboard. It's simple to make. Two slices of cheddar or American cheese (preferably organic.) A baguette, sliced top and bottom. Put the cheese in, slather the outside of the bread with melted butter, pop it on the griddle. (You can used a heavy frying pan to press it, if you want that authentic Cuban flatness.)
So far I'm having a lovely weekend. The girls are a little less happy, because the hairy beasts have returned. Mom, Dad and Sis are going to Colorado for a week, so the boys (and the dog) are coming to stay. Here was the welcoming committee: Okay, apparently Vox doesn't like the video of Sippy hissing at Blue like a viper. It loads it, but then it won't play it. Oh well, just imagine a great deal of hairless disapproval, hissing, and growling, while the hairy ones look on in goofy confusion.
I don't know how to feel about the director's commentary on DVD's. My husband loves them, and can spend hours listening to commentary on movies he's just watched, or movies he watched ages ago. Some of them I find fascinating (like the commentary on Fight Club), because they get at cinematographic techniques behind the scenes. Others I find tedious, because the director wants to talk about his artistic vision or what his work "means."
As someone with an advanced English degree and years of teaching college English classes under my belt, maybe it's strange that I dislike this discourse into meaning and intent, but I do. My students often complained about the section of Composition 2 when we discussed literature, and I sympathized with them to a degree. I hated leading them along, saying, "But what do you make of the fact that the narrator makes a point of telling you that everyone knows about the child locked in the broom closet? What does it mean to walk away from Omelas? Why don't the ones who leave just rescue the kid?"
I did not sympathize when they said, "But why doesn't LeGuin just say, 'Our happiness comes at the sacrifice of other peoples' happiness as long as we let it?' Why can't she just say that?"
"Because that wouldn't be art," I sometimes answered. "And it would be a really short story."
Other times, I brought a poster of Picasso's Guernica, and asked, "Would this be less effective if Picasso had simply painted on the canvas: 'War is hell'?" A few stubborn kids said it would. Most came to agree that art is better for creeping under your skin, for getting into places you weren't expecting it. Art is good for you. Literature is good for you.
That said, literary explication is not pleasant, and it's not a hobby I recommend. I always compared it to playing the guitar. If playing the guitar is art, and listening to guitar music is art appreciation, then literary explication is the act of tuning the guitar. It may be a necessary step to playing the guitar, but it is not the way to enjoy the music. I always encouraged my students to consciously forget everything they learned about literary explication after the class was over. It would never help them enjoy a novel or love a poem, and it was best forgotten.
For the same reason, I don't like to hear artists talk about what their work means. It's useless and it doesn't help people enjoy the work. In my daily blog jog, I visited Jay, who posted about Don McClean's song American Pie. He included an interesting quote from McClean that really spoke to me about what I think the job of an artist is.
"You will find many 'interpretations' of my lyrics but none of them by me...Sorry to leave you all on your own like this but long ago I realized that songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence."
P.S. On the topic of Guernica and fascism in Spain, I strongly recommend going to see Pan's Labyrinth. I've always been a big fan of Guillermo Del Torro's movies, but this one really demonstrates his strength as a story teller. It's beautiful and horrifying, as well as being an interesting historical piece.
