The beauty of industrially produced objects lies in its uniformity. For three hundred years the expectation of quality has been associated with machine-produced refinements. Even today, the “high-tech” aesthetic influences design. Even as this industrial aesthetic has dominated design for centuries, a counter movement can be traced back to the late eighteenth century interest in ruins and the late 19th century medievalist revival. The Arts and Crafts movement sprang from the aesthetics of pre-Raphaelitism . The governing aesthetic in jewelry design remains the industrial. However, there is a significant world-wide reaction the un-natural in jewelry design. The result is an aesthetic which leaves the imprint of the human hand on the finished work.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
THE HAND OF THE ARTIST
Sunday, February 03, 2008
So why is the poem Self Reflexive?
Objectivity or scientific detachment is another facet of self-reflexivity. The artist’s isolation is a necessary consequence of the artist as observer and transmitter of society. I should inject contrast with decorative crafts. Consider the special case of functional pottery. IN the industrial age, machine made cups whether of paper or ceramic are ubiquitous. The hand made pottery is the direct transference of thought from the unconscious to the directed hands.
Here is a request I have for the reader. Please go out on the Internet and see if you can find some rap lyrics that are self reflexive.
The rap referring to itself
Or raps about rasp,
It wraps itself, the poem, about the world and itself...
A cocoon.
Outsider = Detached observer. We know of the poet as dog, now try on the artist as mollusk.
Here’s a poem:
A section titled
“Salient features
Of the poem
Summarized in words
Comparing a review of The Tic Tac Club
By the Golden Arm Trio:
The Tic Tock Club
Little Richard Played there
A short film with each track
Shostakovich DSCH
Main theme of the album
Cello plays the theme
Graham Reynolds
Band Music VS
Composed Concert Music
Which is “More sophisticated”
In the narrative structure
Sorrows transformed to magic
The move through a manufactured path
Primeval fool of gaunt trees
Destined to be felled for ships
Now connected by vines
Eventide.
Monday, January 21, 2008
TO GENERATE AN IMAGE
An ‘Image’ is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time….It is the presentation of such a ‘complex’ instantaneously which gives that sudden sense of liberation….which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art. It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.
Cited in Humphrey Carpenter’s 1988
Biography of Pound , A serious Character, p. 197
Friday, January 18, 2008
SMALL INSIGHT ON DISTRIBUTION
Sunday, January 13, 2008
The Measure of Goodness
THE MEASURE OF GOODNESS
Version 2
A work of art is defined as such, in part, by its context. Thus something nasty and ephemeral such as bronze silicate castings of celebrity turds could be presented, in the context of a gallery or a museum, as a work of art. Adjudging the value of a work of art is a more difficult matter. The term “value” when applied to a work of art is both a quantitative and a qualitative assessment. A work of art may be of high value, yet unrecognized by the marketplace, languish in a forest of fallen trees, unseen and unheard. A $21,000,000 Warhol may be a piece of defecate matter in the eyes of somebody.
There is a documentary film shown at art houses and available online about a band called The Holy Modal Rounders (Holy Modal Rounders Bound to Loose). They were the nucleus of a 1960’s
I took my accountant lady-friend to a screening of the Holy Modal Rouders film. She is actually the sister of the dead poet-novelist, John Ramington about whom this entire blog is written. The blog is not so much about Ramington as a study and justification of his works. One problem with Ramington ‘s works is that they do not scan in the same way as the except recently submitted to this journal by Owen Ames as “found” poetry:
The cloud formation inside an oil filter
plans an escape from a moronic short order cook,
a proverbial oil filter.
And if I give you what you want,
you wont like it, and you wont want it anymore.
A completely linguistic briar patch
gives secret financial aid to the fairy.
He released his hold cautiously and allowed himself
to fall back on the mattress.
The sister and I were discussing the Holy Modal Rounders. I owned that actually they were not very good and in fact they sounded horrible. Only one cut from the, now to me, lost double album was played, that during the credits. In the great double album they demonstrated a scholarly interest in 1920’s and 30’s rural Southern music. This is what we call ‘old-timey’ music, which was popular before the blue-grass revolution of Flatt and Scruggs. The music is largely lost, like the Fugs and The Holy Modal Rounders. But Ed Sanders is more popular than John Ramington. I owned in the discussion of the Rounders that “they were not very good.” Well, the accountant replied, “they took a lot of drugs. Were they ever very popular? They weren’t the Rolling Stones.” The only thing I could answer was that they were certainly Brittany Spears either.
One measure of the quality of art is economic value. If it is held by a museum and the acquisition required a high price at auction, then the work of art is valuable.
I submit that the market place cannot be the criterion of value in a work of art
ON
My wife—at the time—and I were visiting the oldest continuously occupied archeological site in
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You gotta check out the Fugs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-QeWlesSzk&NR=1