Out of curiosity, how would you respond to the Surrealist (Breton & Co.) preoccupation with automatic writing (drawing, etc)? Has it -in your estimation of course- produced anything of merit? Or would you vouch for the (innate or learned - don’t matter to me) artistic aptitude of at least a certain portion of its practitioners, to such an extent at least that one cannot categorically dismiss their “efforts” :wink5: as complete garbage?Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Out of curiosity, how would you respond to the Surrealist (Breton & Co.) preoccupation with automatic writing (drawing, etc)? Has it -in your estimation of course- produced anything of merit? Or would you vouch for the (innate or learned - don’t matter to me) artistic aptitude of at least a certain portion of its practitioners, to such an extent at least that one cannot categorically dismiss their “efforts” as complete garbage?
Breton, Eluard, Apollinaire and others produced some marvelous work. Arguably, it was all based upon the tradition of French Symbolism and the spontaneous, visionary developments of Rimbaud, Mallarme, etc... Breton's notion of building upon the unconscious... upon elements of the mind beyond conscious, rational thought undoubtedly echoes Rimbaud's notion of the "disordering of the senses"... but in every case... the poet has prepared or developed the ability to be spontaneous. Again I think of Alexander Pope's couplet:
True ease in writing comes by art not chance,
As they move easiest who have learned to dance.
Reading Breton's Surrealist Manifestos one recognizes that this is a writer that has put forth the labor needed to be able to seemingly pull something out of thin air. He also has developed enough of an eye and an ear to recognize when a spontaneous image or phrase is good or not. I am reminded of the Surrealist sculptor/painter, Jean Arp. Arp supposedly cut up shapes of wood randomly and then dropped them from a ladder. He would then piece them together in whatever configuration the fell in. Or at least so was the intention. He was the artist enough to recognize when a configuration was or was not really interesting... to drop the pieces again and again until something interesting occurred... or to slightly nudge the pieces here or there improving the composition.
The photographer works in the same way. He or she may take thousands of photographs... and any individual photo may indeed owe much to chance and luck... but it is his or her eye which is able to discern the successful shot and dump the rest.
A jazz musician may seemingly toss off a marvelous piece of improvisation, or a painter like Van Gogh or DeKooning... or even a Japanese Zen painter or Rubens... may succeed in producing a painting from the most spontaneous flurry of inspired brushwork... but any of these things are only possible because the artists or musicians have prepared and mastered their art to such a degree that such spontaneity is possible. Bach was reportedly able to improvise a 3-part fugue on any given theme.. a phenomenal ability that is almost impossible to imagine (Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, and Bach gives some idea just how complex such an achievement is). This ability, undoubtedly, was owed to the years of study and mastery of musical counterpoint.
The notion of the lazy artist who is suddenly struck by inspiration is an illusion... an idea rooted in Romanticism. In some ways it is a defense mechanism. One may assume that an artist either "has it" or they don't. Mozart had it. Salieri didn't. At least that was the myth. Of course Salieri was actually quite good himself, and while Mozart was better, he wasn't merely inspired... he worked hard for a great many years to develop the ability to seemingly whip off a brilliant piece of music as if it were nothing.
Again, I would swear by Picasso's dictum, "Inspiration exists, but it has got to find you working." Yes, there are moments of inspiration... but they are far more likely to strike when the artist has put forth the effort in preparation and continues to work at the often difficult and unrewarding labor of creating something.
The estimation, of course, would lie in the finished product and not the method by which it was produced.Quote:
Originally Posted by Madame X
Poetry, at least from my limited understanding, seems to be able to capture ones attention and affection more than prose or short story, or others. We have been, for the most part, brought up with ideas that poetry is the "best", at least in terms of emotional value, and is simply what we are used to when we think of short writings. Also, because the rhythm in poetry appeals to the emotions, people tend to use it to convey feelings in greater depth than they would be able too in other forms of writing.
But that's just my opinion anyways.
I really do not know if I write good poetry or not, but I do write. Some of the first things I wrote were silly, others flowing from the depths and with chaos. So? I kept writing and writing and writing. Someone told me to post my poetry, actually the talked me into it.
I have posted stuff that when I go back and read it I cringe and think "what was I thinking posting that?" But...the truth is if I censured everything based on what quality or merit I think it might have I would have never written anything beyond those first few bursts spawned unavoidably from the depths.
I know you all do not know me, so, hi, I'm Song. I write alot and have no idea how I am doing. I pass.