Despite the length here, I don't think we [Nick Fitch and I] have drained the thread of its interesting content. What I think we're talking about is glosses on the word "important" as it applies to our lives. Possibly not many people will consider the matter important enough (no quotes) to plough through this, but I may have found the key disjuncture between Nick's point of view and my own, plus some paste to starting gluing the one side to the other.
Nick: I merely refuse to accept that a painting, any painting, is Important.
Jess: Would you admit, at least, that it's a little self-serving, as far as your argument is concerned, that you've defined the term "important" to suit your prior assumptions?
Nick: Of course. What assumptions about the meaning of the word do you make when you label a piece of art as important?
The point was, I think, that you are defining the word in a somewhat restrictive way, limiting its application only to those things concerned with (primarily) physical existence. We might style that as the logical-reductive approach.
My own assumptions, by contrast, are less a priori; rather, they seek to understand what the word means by consulting various situations and asking "Isn't that important?" and suggesting that what people customarily mean when they say art is important is that it fulfills a number of needs -- rather more visceral ones than mere entertainment or enjoyment in that sense -- directly relating to spiritual, that is, aesthetic, values. More on this as we go along.
Nick: But I feel my personal definition is somewhat more objective than that which labels a pretty picture, or a good movie, as important.
I think one major cleft in our discussion must be along the line of "objective," a word that means more in the physical and logical worlds than in the aesthetic one, where it means practically nothing.
Another cleft is more properly aesthetic. "Pretty" pictures and "good" movies are not at the focus of the discussion, as I see it. Please indulge me by letting me stay with what I know more about: paintings, rather than movies.
A branch of this aesthetic cleft is historical, rather than utilitarian or objective, measures of importance.
Jess: Something of that sort also informs the rest of this posting, it seems to me.
Nick: Your own definition of what is important permeates your postings on this topic. What exactly are you accusing me of?
"Accuse" wouldn't be the operative word. The notion of trial should probably be seen more as investigation.
I meant that your point of departure has been to limit the idea of importance to a narrow, exclusive sense. But I grant that mine has been to expand the idea, not too much, but appropriately nonetheless, to include all that it does seem to me to include.
I think I can show this in the coming section. You have, I think, provided a few ribs (one at least) spanning the clefts I posit above, and now I think I can begin to weave the covering that will span them.
Nick: I can think of no situations where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness requires the existance of a Van Gogh canvas.
Jess: I gather this means that apart from a few putatively nutso folks, the destruction of all existing Van Goghs would kill no one, and it would lead to unemployment only for the staff af Amsterdam's Van Gogh museum. Certainly no one (other than the malevolent who destroyed all this work) would go to jail.
Nick: Can you, in all honesty, argue with what you've just said?
Well, I wouldn't. :-)
Nick: The destruction of every Van Gogh canvas in the world would be an act of terrible and senseless vandalism but there would be no riots in the street, no wars, no pestilences.
Though I'm slightly less convinced of that than you, let me simply grant it, for now.
Nick: Civilization wouldn't collapse.
Aha, that would depend a lot on what we're including as civilization and on what kind of collapse you're talking about.
Nick: You may not like the idea, but the effect of destroying every Van Gogh on the tide of human affairs would be precisely zippo in any and every measurable way.
My subtext (one always has one) is that how we use the language is crucially important. You seem to be saying that if it can't be measured it doesn't exist. The loss of all Van Goghs would not make the trains late, and there would be no lines at gas stations, etc. I'll grant all that sort of thing. And I will grant that your average peasant in northwest China may not be affected much in his or her daily life.
But I challenge the notion, whether measurable or not, that the effect would be nothing at all in any or every way.
Fortunately, your concession at the previous round gives us a grip on it, and I want now to expand on that grip.
Jess: I think you're on very shaky ground with the "pursuit of happiness" idea, though. I'm a musician. You're saying, in essence, that if I were suddenly struck stone deaf, I would lose nothing "important" through not being able to hear music. I mean, how is that not an implication of the position you're taking here?
Nick: I stand partially corrected on the "pursuit of happiness" idea. The loss of an artistic skill to those who enjoy its practice would inhibit their ability to be happy. And certain types of art, most notably music and theatre/cinema, promote a feeling of pleasure in the audience.
Seeing and understanding Van Goghs is an artistic skill. The pursuit of happiness idea generalizes really quite far, I think, far beyond anything I would call simple pleasure, to the point of being a major component of one's sense of well-being. Receiving art is not just a passive thing; it is an active participation in the culture, in feeling oneself to be part of that culture or connected to a previous culture.
Then too, it adds tremendously to one's individual sensibilities and starts informing everything one sees and does.
You've granted that I would lose something important by being deafened, even though my personal loss would be of small cosmic significance. The loss of all Van Goghs would likewise not be cosmic, but it would be a personal loss to millions of people, not just to me. How many, how much, what difference it might make, none of these could we measure. But I think we're on very safe ground claiming it would be a lot.
What a lot of this comes down to, I think, is that you've been playing it safe by sticking very closely to the point, "but no one would die," in effect. Whereas I'm claiming, "but something in millions of people would die." You're saying, "but we can't measure that." I'm saying, "maybe not, but you can't just wave this away in such a fashion."
Jess: Further, if nothing "important" is lost by the destruction of a Van Gogh, or all Van Goghs, then would nothing important be lost by the destruction of all of European painting from Cimabue to, say, Kandinski? Aren't you in effect saying art is of no use, no real use?
Nick: Are you saying that it has a use? A real use? What is it?
I don't find a quick or easy answer to your question. But by way of trying, let me say that about two thirds of my net financial worth is works of art. If my house burned down (you can imagine what image was in my mind during the recent California fires), I would be destroyed financially for sure (insurance doesn't begin to cover the true worth of such things), but even less tolerable, and quite akin to being deafened, I would be blinded by being unable to see the spirits of others as revealed in these works. When in due course these works pass from my custody into other collections, presumably with a gradually expanding audience, such a fire would extinguish those spirits for a far greater number of people than just me.
Something important would be lost irretrievably, not just to me, but to all people, forever. You might never know what it was you lost, and you might not care. But that would not make it nothing.
Nick: Great art of any desription is a nice thing to have around,
Jess: What do you mean, "great" art? Haven't you already negated the values that go into the meaning of that word?
Nick: No. I use the word in the sense of "remarkable" or "outstanding". Neither of these necessarily implies importance.
Only under your restricted sense of importance, I would claim. "Nice to have around" isn't even the tip of the iceberg, either. Things that are remarkable or outstanding are almost by definition important.
Nick: and I personally like visiting galleries and watching good movies;
Jess: You're waffling, you see.
Nick: No, again. I'm pointing out that just because I don't consider paintings or movies important doesn't imply that I don't appreciate seeing them.
What I was pointing to, calling waffling, was a kind of sophistry in the argument at that point. You're saying, I think, that even though you appreciate something, it's nevertheless in no degree important, presumably not even to you. In that case, what does appreciating include?
Jess: I'm trying to see what you're really saying. It seems to be that the thing offending your sensibilities has almost nothing to do with the art itself, but a lot to do with how society takes on about art and artists in certain cases. But you then seem to be saying you're quite willing to negate the value of the art itself and of the values of the makers of art themselves, simply because some of the attending social phenomena irritate you.
Nick: A great many of the attending social phenomena irritate me. Art doesn't offend me; it's those who treat it as if it were more important to human civilization than good drains who piss me off.
Great phrase, btw. Look, I'm not trying to defend art-snobs and pseudo-aesthetes or other types of lunatic sycophants who lurk in the art world, and I'm sure I find that stuff as irritating as you do.
Nick: Art and artists are the grease on civilization's axel: they help things to run more smoothly; more pleasantly. But you have to build the damn cart before you can worry about lubricating the bearings.
But, dear fellow ox, we are already well possessed of carts to pull, and having since many centuries now wheeled the food to market in these things, importance in that sense is not at issue. We've granted, all over the place, that subsistence is a primary concern. The museum makes no sense if that aren't any people at all.
(This next was inventive, bravo.)
Nick: To take one (somewhat corny) scenario from a movie: suppose the world were threatened by a giant asteroid and the only hope for human survival lay with sending a rocket to colonoize another world.
Oh, "When Worlds Collide," by George Pal, music by Leith Stevens. Important film. Hideous and incredibly stupid, but important.
Nick: Who would be more important to send, a farmer or a movie director?
I thought every farmer had a minicam these days. I would send only women farmers and lots of frozen sperm.
Nick: What would you put in the limited cargo space, seeds or Picasso canvases?
Seeds. But I would back up civilization on CD-ROM and take that too.
Nick: What would be more vital to have in the library, a large textbook on sanitation engineering or the complete works of Shakespeare? Bear in mind that space is limited.
I would take a smaller book on sanitation engineering, a good mechanical engineer, and the complete works of Shakespeare. If space were too limited, I'd kick off enough Cheez Whiz to get Bill on board.
Nick: It's not good enough to say "Oh well there will always be farmers and engineers but there was only one Fellini!" That's not the point.
Glad you raised this non-point. Why isn't it the point?
Nick: Every farmer, engineer and artisan
does things every day of their working lives that civilization
is critically dependant on for its continued existence.
No artist, no matter how fertile or talented, can ever claim the
same thing.
We are arguing about aesthetics. You say they have no intrinsic value. I say you're wrong, and in the matter of art and artisans, on terra especially infirma.
Nick: If every farmer died tomorrow we'd all be up shit creek without a paddle.
What? There's wild food everywhere, tm Euell Gibbons.
Nick: What calamity do you suppose would befall the human race if every movie director died tomorrow?
I dunno, reruns of The Jeffersons?
Jess: Trying to read between the lines, then, you're annoyed by art snobs or what you perceive to be snobs, or maybe by reactivity that exceeds your own by enough that you can't comprehend it, so you compensate by sort of tossing the whole kit and kaboodle into a kind of purgatory based on the idea of utility in the sense of physical survival.
Nick: Do I sense a variation of the Standard Art-Snob Defensive Position #2 here ("Well you just don't understand what the artist is saying to us!")?
Heh heh. Truth in advertising, Nick: you mislabeled that: it's Standard Philistine Defensive Ploy #1 ("Art doesn't mean anything!").
You missed my point, I think. By reactivity, I was pointing to something like this:
Let me assume you aren't highly trained in the performance practice of 17th-century keyboard music. (If you are, then the example is going to work much better.) We're talking about this score. I sit down and say, "what's happening here is this [plays a certain ornament], rather than this [plays a different one]."
Now by reactive, I mean that if you're fluent in this medium of communication, you hear what I meant in my musical example. If you're not, absolutely nothing goes over the wire. The music is not translatable into some other medium.
I'm not just talking about arcana here, though the example itself is arcane. What you've been dismissing as unimportant in our larger discussion results, possibly, from wanting to hew so closely to the line of measurable, demonstrable, physical importance that another whole universe of importance, albeit less clearly defined, lies outside the admissible realm of perception.
Nick: I've already been treated to SASDP #1 ("You're an anti-intellectual, aesthetically-challenged Philistine for saying such a thing!"), and I'm looking forward to SASDP #3 ("Well everybody knows scientists are uncultured barbarians!").
Are you a scientist? :-)
Nick: If you re-read what I've been trying to say you'll notice that I'm not tossing the idea of art away wholesale.
You seemed to be, but I'll accept here that you're not.
Nick: I'm merely attempting to point out that it's of rather less significance than some folk seem to think.
No problem, some people are idiots. What I am trying to point out is that it's possibly of far greater significance that you've been prepared to acknowlegde hitherto.
Nick: And I hardly think this attitude is "compensation" for my disinclination to wave my hands about and enthuse reverently over the significance of so-and-so's latest charcoal sketch.
Well, I must confess I don't know how to account for this disinclination you do seem to have. :-)
Nick: There are more important things going on in the world than a pretty picture or a good movie and there always will be, no matter what definition of the word you prefer.
Gotta finish up. To do so, let me come back to your worlds in
collision scenario, in a sense. When cataclysm threatens (war,
notably), people sometimes have taken terrible risks to preserve
and protect works of art. Again, prettiness has little to do
with it. I would claim it's a sense that this stuff is so
important it's worth risking one's life for. In a very real
sense, the issue is not really what's most important in
the world (don't you suppose to Picasso himself, his work was
pretty important; sure, he took lunches and slept and made love,
but you can be fairly sure he didn't see anything in terms of
"pretty picture," and there couldn't have been much in the world
he valued more than what he was doing).
