re: aesthetic value (was: Thanks!)

[Ralph Dumain <rdumain@xxxxxxx>]

Both our personal conversations and the public discussion have gone beyond
the stage represented here, and I was about to thrwo in the towel, but I'll
try to answer this post.

At 11:48 PM 6/14/99 +0300, j laari wrote:
>I'd say that basically it's the classical european culture. And I
>don't have to commit myself to this... It would be just an
>opening act. Secondly: No, I'm not a musicologist. What does that
>question do
>with original question? My point was: if someone claims that X is
>as
>valuable as Y then he/she should give reasons for the claim.

My original response was address to a tacit inequality of the
presupposiotns behind this debate, not yourse necessarily, but in general.
If I were to begin a discussion quesitoing the aesthertic value of
classical music, or demand someone prove it to me, I would be taken for a
fool.  Yet nobody else seems to feel any shame for making the most
arbitrary and ridiculous statements about jazz, or about accepting Adorno
as an authority in spite of his obvious prejudice.  Hence I rejected having
to prove anything to anybody, but ratherm taking off from the assumption
that jazz is as serious an art form as anything else, and going ahead from
there.  In general, all claims should be supported, but there shpould be
astarting point of equality about what claims already have widely accepted
answers and which claims are extraordinary.  Our private conversations
moved beyoind the banalities of the public one becuase it was not a
question of proving the value of the subject mater, but moving on from
there to more interesting aesthetic questions.

>If we make rude classification between the views that concentrate on
>the characteristics and properties of the work of art and the views
>that concentrate on the side of the subject(s) then you obviously are
>closer to first camp (and the reception aestheticians, 'culturalists'
>in general, would be closer to the latter group).
>
>That makes me wonder the relationships between the intention of an
>artist, his/her cultural 'environment' or context, as well as the
>context and background (shortly: understanding) of the audience. Now,
>what are intrinsic aesthetic properties of the work of art, are
>obviously partly due to the culture shared by the artist and the
>audience?

Two points before even getting into the specifics of your argument:

(1) My interest was not so much in defining instrinsic properties of music
or other art forms, as making a distinction between intrinsic and
extrinsic.  I am unwilling to discuss the value of art on the basis of
utilitarian considerations.  I am not going to discuss John Coltrane'd work
as the music of the black liberation movement, which is a falsehood anyway,
any more than I'm going to entertain the notion that rap is valuable
becuase it's the CNN of the 'hood.   I find such extrinsic approaches to
art extremely offensive.  We should have learned something from the
experience of Stalinism, and also from the mountains of crap produced by
the Black Arts Movement, which was also Stalinist to the core in its
artistic criteria and intimidation of artists who wouldn't tow the line.
In this context, intrinsic has a sufficiently non-controversial meaning.

(2)  I'd like to remind you that we are talking about music.  Music is not
a verbal form; it is  purely sensual in its mode of communication, because
verbal language is not in it, unlike poetry, drama, or fiction.  This makes
music a radically different form.  That doesn't put it outside of history,
but the possibilities of responding to music are much wider than they are
if one must know a verbal language at a given stage of its history (Old
English, Middle English, etc.) not to mention be familiarized with its
changing aesthetic principles.  How does one respond to a form consisting
solely of sound and what "background" is needed in order to appreciate it?

Now once you consider the second point above, your questions remain, but
their character changes.  What makes a song or a piece of music sound corny
or dated, and to whom?  Why did so many white kids take up the blues in the
mid-60s while a younger black audience cast it aside?  If the music was the
same and not a novelty, why did different audiences in the same copuntry
respond so differently?

>Artist, when he isn't an extremist avantgardist, must rely
>on the same culture with the audience. Otherwise he would isolate
>himself from the audience (well there are lots of examples of this?).
>Let's suppose he avoids this and gets understood. That means the
>intrinsic properties of his work of art are selected, basically
>because of shared cultural understanding? In other words,
>concentration on properties of the work of art has led us into shared
>culture.

This picture elides the whole question of how novelty comes about, either
in composition or reception.

>Ideological/discoursive "factor". But hey, wouldn't that make
>the whole aesthetic enterprise circular?

Your suggestion is that taste is a social and socialized process, so
reference to intrinsic properties is ahistorical and hence senseless.

>Poor dialectics, I'd say.

I would say the problem lies with the extreme dualism you postulate, i.e.
your dialectics is poor.

>Now, you don't answered to question of aesthetic value. Instead you
>referred to intrinsic properties of artwork. Above I tried to hint
>that it ain't that simple. Because they aren't eternal, immutable
>properties. That is, one property is once favoured as central, then
>dismissed as secondary property.

Again, for there to be any predictability, any shared reality at all, any
sense to human affairs, there must be some alternative standpoint to pure
subjectivism or pure ahistorical absolutism.  You love brie and I say it
tastes like shit, but it itself has a chemical composition that enables
both reactions.  Neither one of us says it tastes like chocolate.

>Because without that body-thing there wouldn't be our talks.

I don't understand you, but were you trying to say something like I just said?

>Who says it would be pointless on Frankfurt school list?

Ok, Jukka, since you're suffering from amnesia ... in all of our private
discussion on jazz, classical, the Beatles, etc., how many times did either
one of us refer to the Frankfurt School?  The actual detail of discussing
music forms and the endless range of questions of taste that arise dwarf
any possible input from Adorno or Marcuse or the others.  Just think of
what Simon said about Beethoven and what Beethoven obviously represented.
I cannot carry on discussion upon such a basis.

>Once we dispose of illegimitate authority and re-orient ourselves as to who
>> must prove what to whom, we can begin to ask real questions.
>
>Well, I wasn't claiming any authority.

The illegitimate authority belongs to others.  I have all kinds of ideas on
the evolution of aesthetic presuppositions in music, which I could discuss
in excruciating detail, but I see little mutual relevance between such
discussion and the Franks.  Sure I could invoke Adorno to explain the
appeal of the music _I_ hate: heavy metal, punk, disco, rap, country &
western .... How far would this get us?  Why do I think a limited and
repetitious form like the blues is good but C&W sucks?  I could give my
reasons, but who am I going to convince who has different sensibilities?

>I'm afraid that's the dividing line. I feel that's rushing away from
>"my" basic question into specialities, though I'm not denying the
>relevance of these.

I can only address the basic question by getting into examples.  I can't do
it any other way.

>Yes, indeed. (As a representative of seventies generation I'm of
>course moved by the destiny of fusion. I still think that fusion of
>rock energy & aggressivity with sophistication and virtuosity of jazz
>could be the most appropriate musical expression of late 20th century
>North America, but that's just my impression.)

Now if we were going to elaborate, we would first have to address questions
of form at length before we could discuss commodity fetishism or anything
else.  I could review my entire experience of the 70s from seeing John
McLaughlan in 1971 to suffering through Spyro Gyra in 1979.  (I knew all
those boys back in Buffalo before they hit the big time.  Nice guys, but
bland music.) I remember beginning to tire of this stuff as early as 1973
but being able to handle some of its better incarnations up to 1977, and
then turning against the whole thing.  Now we could discuss this at length
in the way we got into doing movie reviews,  but is there any point?  And
haven't people on this list had enough of me anyway?

>What about this: ideology of spontaneity justifies so much bad
>activity in general, not only aesthetically (if that's limited to arts
>only) but culturally and politically in general.

Well, bad dance, bad performance art, bad abstract expressionist painting,
etc., but there are a few things to be said beyond the obvious, I suppose.
I was thinking about free jazz performers of the 60s who are still doing
same old shit.  I went to see Charles Gayle two weeks ago to see how this
Buffalo boy had recovered from long-term homelessless and playing in
subways, and I was infuriated by having to listen to meaningless catatonic
doodling.  If I want to live in a stripped-down meaningless universe I can
always resort to Beckett.