You ever tried telling people that calling something a "fruit" or a "vegetable" means absolutely nothing? It's like you're telling them that the universe is in a snow globe. I get into that everytime someone goes on about the classification of tomatoes.Originally Posted by OrphanPip
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
Of course.
That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.
No one has actually mentioned evidence, but something like Twilight is marketed toward YA females, thus correlations could be established Pip. There is a reason chick lit is called chick lit, and sure, critics can deconstruct this, but the market makes money off of two primary groups: suburban women and teens. Masculine works, literary classics, these have a more fragmented audience.
Sorry for the late reply, as I was detained (have been on the road most days, and did not catch this reply during my brief moments on the forum).
As for the question of her awards, that is true, she is renown, and for a good cause.
That however does not mean she has limited scope, or has changed and remade herself because she realizes her gimmick is over. The same way Hardy switched from novels to poetry.
Now, you target me now as a misogynist, or an antifeminist - I will start by saying, her feminist politics aren't all that - she is rather flimsy as a political discourse writer - nor has she only had one movement in her work of feminist - it has evolved throughout the course of her oeuvre.
If you read my point (I assume you did, you just glossed it for your own means, by my reading, but Brutus is an honorable man, etc.) you would see my point was in her shift from her feminist and gender politics to her new politics (I have not read her recent one, though the last one I recall was one on Debt, which came out right when this fiscal disaster occurred a few years ago). The point is, she changed, and has gone into personality rather than author, the same way Zola's last novels are mediocre at best (which is why the translations of them on the forum are the only ones available in English).
As someone who has worked closely with Canadian literature, I am very well versed in the poetic scenes around her time, and in the general poetics of the country at large. On that note, I feel comfortable to seeing her poetics, and to a lesser extent, her novels, as part of a limited movement - my remark was to how she was not really able to sustain her artistry once that dried up, in contrast to her predecessor poets in the Canadian tradition, namely P. K. Page who was writing excellent poems almost until the day she died.
I was questioning the limit of gender and politics in literature, not the place of Atwood in a canonical frame, nor her esteem (which even if I called her a whining brat, as many readers have, would not be the least bit diminished). My point was on the emphasis of gender in understanding trends - it is not that we are reading gender, but that gender is being forced onto those who are writing (though less so now than earlier), the same way race, and religion have been in the past. IT is this idea that was borrowed from the French on a misreading of Freud (who in turn was misreading reality) which decided that one could "write the feminine." (Helene Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa). The same way that there has been encouragement for the homosexual to write the homosexual, or the African-American to write the African American experience. Though, I would note this trend is dying (if slowly), and people are entering the real post-modern stage, where these issues are being overcome (in some areas, in other areas this is really just beginning).
Back to Atwood though, she has had a knack of jumping on the political bandwagon as soon as it gets going, and a rather good command of irony, that tends to take subjects and make them as depressing as humanly possible. She seems to encourage herself into the mold of the politic, if not to take a side and make it sensationalized (with a strong sense of irony) then through just ironizing the questions in general into absurdity. Simply put, Canadian women authors have dominated Canadian writing since the modernist period - we do not seem to have the male-female readership divide problem since, simply, nobody seems to read Canadian literature in general.
Gender is important, but we have made it post modern, and did so rather early, Atwood knows this, so she abandoned the gender ship and went on to the contemporary issues - she also seems to have abandoned Canada to an extent, though she still lives here, I think.
I don't like Atwood's work, but think I'd agree that she is an outlier author along the outlines of Lessing and company. Suburban female authors don't like me either, probably because I don't see domestication as a feminine virtue-- but I think Pip is stretching the point too far, as all you have to do is look at marketing forces; they do cater to gender roles, whatever subversive challenges writers like to throw at it.
@JBI
Your contributions to this thread have in my opinion been pompous and patronising.And shot through with spite and resentment and barely disguised misogyny.
Your main target seems to be Margaret Atwood who is, as I have already pointed out, an internationally acclaimed and respected writer. Far from sharing this opinion, you are brutally dismissive of her standing, and take the opportunity to repeat some anonymous person’s description of her as no more than a whining brat! Such a balanced criticism!
While you berate her for her feminist concerns you also say
her feminist politics aren't all that - she is rather flimsy as a political discourse writer
Damned if she is and damned if she isn’t.
Later you widen your scope to include that monstrous regiment of women, the sorority of Canadian women poets, thus…
In truth though, there has been some bad pressure on women poets to be "women poets" rather than "poets." That basically stunted growth in many poets, who were restricted to alienating male audiences…
And presumably they succeeded in alienating male audiences by departing from the usual poetical suspects like nature, beige in tooth and claw, and the perennially appealing cycle of love’s labours lost and gained, or what you described as artistic- poetical in favour of drawing attention to the harsher realities of life experienced by some women, which you described as political-poetical. And presumably this “bad pressure” was exerted by followers of feminism, or at least those among them who read and/or wrote poetry.
All poets worthy of the name have an agenda and often a disturbing one, and those that don’t are, and were, mere versifiers. Shelley called poets The unacknowledged legislators of the World
Consider Wilfrid Owen
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
How do you think that went down at The War Office? Or with the Recruiting Officers? Or with the Top Brass of the British Army in 1918?
Consider Shelley
England in 1819
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,--
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,--mud from a muddy spring,--
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless--a book sealed;
A Senate,--Time's worst statute unrepealed,--
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.
Unlikely to endear him to The Establishment of his day.
Luckily for us and for English Literature their critics didn’t hold sway. These poets and countless others did not flinch from speaking truth to power. I hope that Atwood and other poets will not abandon their concerns with inequality and environmental issues and, as long as is necessary, speak out fearlessly against those who wish to retain their comfortable positions of dominance and unaccountability.
But JBI is sanguine that subversive ideas regarding gender have had their day. They are old hat,like Atwood is, in his opinion. Young people, like him, I imagine, have apparently seen through the false readings of Freud by the French feminists which have encouraged the oppressed…women, people of colour and homosexuals to write of life as they experience it.
He says
Though, I would note this trend is dying (if slowly), and people are entering the real post-modern stage, where these issues are being overcome (in some areas, in other areas this is really just beginning.
He doesn’t make it clear to me whether in the real post-modern stage oppression will be overcome or merely the tendency to write about it will be overcome. However there is a bit of a clue to his thinking here…
Simply put, Canadian women authors have dominated Canadian writing since the modernist period - we do not seem to have the male-female readership divide problem since, simply, nobody seems to read Canadian literature in general.
It’s resentful on two levels… as being a member of a gender that is ignored, so he says, and further as a citizen of a country whose literature is ignored…so he says.
But better times are on the way
Gender is important, but we have made it post modern, and did so rather early,
Who We are and how They have made It post-modern and rather early too, is not made clear... but his Brave New World clearly is no country for old feminists.
Last edited by Seasider; 01-29-2011 at 10:49 AM.
Your contributions to this thread have in my opinion been pompous and patronising.And shot through with spite and resentment and barely disguised misogyny.
Dear Seasider... I quite assure you that our beloved JBI isn't a misogynist. He is most certainly anti-American, pompous, patronizing... and quite often a general pain in the nether regions... but misogynist? I think you are there mistaken. JBI is no misogynist but rather a misanthropist. He doesn't dislike women... at least not overly so... no, rather he holds everyone in equal disdain. I say this fondly, for in spite of his curmudgeon manner many of us have grown not only accustomed to his manner... but rather enjoy his comments... perhaps like the salt on a good Margarita.
Your main target seems to be Margaret Atwood who is, as I have already pointed out, an internationally acclaimed and respected writer.
And as such she is above criticism? Indeed, I doubt that any contemporary writer is universally admired.
All poets worthy of the name have an agenda and often a disturbing one, and those that don’t are, and were, mere versifiers.
Now here I fully disagree with you. All art is about politics? That is but a re-hatched Romanticism rooted in the notion of the "artist as visionary", "artist as conscience of the world", "artist as voice of the masses"... or "artist as 'unacknowledged legislators of the World' ". Some art... literature...poetry may aspire to such, but I'll stick with the far more rational Oscar Wilde who recognized:
The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated.
For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it.
The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.
Luckily for us and for English Literature their critics didn’t hold sway. These poets and countless others did not flinch from speaking truth to power.
And who defines what is "truth?" The only "truth" that matters in art is the "truth" as perceived by the individual artist.
I hope that Atwood and other poets will not abandon their concerns with inequality and environmental issues and, as long as is necessary, speak out fearlessly against those who wish to retain their comfortable positions of dominance and unaccountability.
I'm reminded of an art exhibition I attended years ago of drawings by Sue Coe. Coe's images were unrelentingly depressing rants against everyone and everything. In her artist's statement posted on the wall she declared, "People ask me why I make such ugly art. My response is that until rape and murder and child abuse and poverty and warfare (etc... etc...) are all a thing of the past, I will continue to make the art I do." Looking at my artist friend we both commented at once, "I guess she'll be doing this sh** for a looooong time"
The reality is that politics are but a single element of the work of art. Taking the "right" political" stance is no more assurance of artistic relevance than is choosing an attractive subject matter.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
It is a bit reductive I think to represent Atwood as an artist who has been all about feminism. If I were to peg any overarching element to her work as a whole, it is an obsession with historicity. You can see this in her poetic cycle The Journal of Susanna Moody, where she takes a kind of psychological/feminist perspective and uses that to re-explore Moody's original stories from Roughing It in the Bush. Of course, she then takes this created Moody persona to comment on contemporary Canadian society from an invented historical voice.
In her short story "Age of Lead" she draws parallels between the death of the Franklin Expedition from lead poisoning to burgeoning concerns about cancer and AIDS in the 80s.
The Handmaid's Tale reverses the backwards looking trend to focus on the future of humanity. Likewise, the Blind Assassin is largely about how our understandings of historical events change dramatically as we learn new things.
Those are just the examples I'm familiar with, but she has written a lot about Classical Myths, and has written a number of historical novels as well.
Edit: I think the Handmaid's Tale isn't even as overtly feminist as people make it out to be. It's more anti-theocratic and about the way people can be complicit in advancing their own oppression.
Last edited by OrphanPip; 01-28-2011 at 11:51 PM.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Sex is considered a sin, a taboo, a ban, a contemptible thing speaking from a biblical perspective. Yet sex is what makes everything possible and is therefore most sacred, all taboos, all accusations, all lows notwithstanding.
Sex is not a thing to be abhorred; it is something to be prayed, worshiped, sung, praised.
This is something that unites humanity; it is something that harmonizes people and an object of creation.
That is why writers, being overtly aware beings cannot rule out the significance of it in literary creations and that is why literature is not short of it
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
@St Luke'sGuild
That's a fine and rather touching example of male solidarity and bonding.
I am not an expert on quote and reply techniques but I hope this comes out with quote and response correctly formatted. If it doesn't, apologies are offered in advance
Dear Seasider... I quite assure you that our beloved JBI isn't a misogynist.
It would take much more than your assurance to convince me of that.
Your main target seems to be Margaret Atwood who is, as I have already pointed out, an internationally acclaimed and respected writer.
And as such she is above criticism? Indeed, I doubt that any contemporary writer is universally admired.[COLOR="DarkRed
I agree but undiluted bad mouthing is not criticism as much as professional assassination
All poets worthy of the name have an agenda and often a disturbing one, and those that don’t are, and were, mere versifiers.[/COLOR]
Now here I fully disagree with you. All art is about politics? That is but a re-hatched Romanticism rooted in the notion of the "artist as visionary", "artist as conscience of the world", "artist as voice of the masses"... or "artist as 'unacknowledged legislators of the World' ". Some art... literature...poetry may aspire to such, but I'll stick with the far more rational Oscar Wilde who recognized:
The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated.
For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it.
The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.[Color/]
That is cynicism uttered from the heights of elitist privilege. How does Guernica or the Raft of The Medusa, to name but two, fit into this mindset? I would never deny the importance of beauty or its immanence but I dispute the preeminence of the views of Oscar Wilde on the exclusivity of Art. And I wonder whether his experience of 18 months Penal Servitude changed them. De Profundis isn't as full of witty quips in my recollection.
[/I]Luckily for us and for English Literature their critics didn’t hold sway. These poets and countless others did not flinch from speaking truth to power. [/ICOLOR]
And who defines what is "truth?" The only "truth" that matters in art is the "truth" as perceived by the individual artist.[/I]
In the poems I chose as illustrations the views concerned the savagery of war and the damage that the excesses of inequality produces. Self evident truths to the majority, I would say.
COLOR="DarkRed"]I hope that Atwood and other poets will not abandon their concerns with inequality and environmental issues and, as long as is necessary, speak out fearlessly against those who wish to retain their comfortable positions of dominance and unaccountability.[/COLOR]
I'm reminded of an art exhibition I attended years ago of drawings by Sue Coe. Coe's images were unrelentingly depressing rants against everyone and everything. In her artist's statement posted on the wall she declared, "People ask me why I make such ugly art. My response is that until rape and murder and child abuse and poverty and warfare (etc... etc...) are all a thing of the past, I will continue to make the art I do." Looking at my artist friend we both commented at once, "I guess she'll be doing this sh** for a looooong time"
The reality is that politics are but a single element of the work of art. Taking the "right" political" stance is no more assurance of artistic relevance than is choosing an attractive subject matter.[/QUOTE]
So Coe is a politically oriented artist and while some may agree with her politics, others may not. My main point in response to JBI's rant is that his hope for the post-modern world, that people, and particularly women poets will stop complaining about oppression, give up the struggle and go back to their safe pastoral/traditional roots, is indefensible on any grounds.
Just an aside
The English Laureate is Carole Ann Duffy
The Scottish Makar (Laureate) is Liz Lochead
The National Poet of Wales is Gillian Clarke
Typical eh? You wait 394 years and three come at once!
Last edited by Seasider; 01-29-2011 at 04:56 AM.
Most of the people I hang out with don't read. As for myself, I'm a male. I hate reading poetry, generally speaking, I only read if I think it's better than something I could write. I have my on and off periods with novels. I enjoy an ideological message in what I read, and I know that. I'm the same way with my music. If I can admire a character or a culture in what I read, I like it. Otherwise, I prefer non-fiction.
I think if you make a signature, you should inspire some emotion in someone else. I also think it would be pretentious for me to think I could do that.
@St Luke'sGuild
Seasider- That's a fine and rather touching example of male solidarity and bonding.
Now who's being sexist? If any male defends JBI it is only the result of male bonding?
SLG- Dear Seasider... I quite assure you that our beloved JBI isn't a misogynist.
It would take much more than your assurance to convince me of that.
...undiluted bad mouthing is not criticism as much as professional assassination
Seriously, I can't think of any member her who has more often called attention to the efforts of women writers, be it Jane Austen, P.K. Page, Atwood, Toni Morrison, or Anne Carson. From mys experience he has discussed their writings no differently than that of any male writer. By the same token, he is just as quick to make broad dismissive comments about any number of male writers regardless of their esteem and his opinions, though sometimes harsh and not always in agreement with my own, are certainly based upon a rich reading experience. There are few members here who can even begin to approach the wealth of reading experience JBI has.
Now that you have called him to task, I have little doubt that JBI will eventually present you with a far more in-depth criticism of Atwood... although considering he is currently studying in China and has limited time on the internet, you may just need to wait.
That is cynicism uttered from the heights of elitist privilege.
And that's little more than PC thought... also from the heights of privilege in academia.
How does Guernica or the Raft of The Medusa, to name but two, fit into this mindset?
Wilde was not being cynical, but rather rejecting the notion that art can be judged by values or standards external to art. A work of art is not to be judged as "bad" because it expresses the wrong religious views, the wrong political views, the wrong social views. This goes against the very purpose of art which is not merely to reinforce the values, standards, and beliefs of those in the position of power or those of the audience, but rather to transmit the perceptions of the individual artist in the most artful manner.
Guernica and the Raft of the Medusa both have powerful social messages and are both a sort of protest... but neither disintegrates into the pathetic phenomenon of our time... the anti-aesthetic "protest art". Protest art is shallow and one-dimensional. The message is to regurgitate the ugly reality of the world back at us as if highlighting the ugliness of the world were a revolutionary act. Neither art nor tragedy are one-dimensional. Protest artists fail to recognize that beauty is the ultimate protest against ugliness, which is why the absence of beauty or the aesthetic shows that they are not truly critical... but rather wallowing in self-pity.
As Donald Kuspit suggested in his critical text, The End of Art:
In the post aesthetic world the work of art becomes a bully pulpit; and the artist tries to bully the spectator into believing what the artist believes. He becomes a self-righteous bully, preaching to us (or rather at us) about what we already know- the ugliness and injustice of the world. ("Come see the injustice inherent in the system")- without offering any aesthetic, contemplative alternative to it. Indeed, the aesthetic, the contemplative, the "beautiful" are bad words in the revolutionary's vocabulary.
Both Guernica and the Raft of the Medusa... as well as the poems cited employ a mastery of formal aesthetic... contrast the horror and the tragedy and the ugliness of the subject with an aesthetic beauty that transforms the work into something sublime.
I would never deny the importance of beauty or its immanence but I dispute the preeminence of the views of Oscar Wilde on the exclusivity of Art. And I wonder whether his experience of 18 months Penal Servitude changed them. De Profundis isn't as full of witty quips in my recollection.
I doubt that Wilde, a bi-sexual in Victorian England, was ever so naive as to not be aware of the ugliness and horrors that existed in the world. He merely recognized that fixating upon such subjects was no guarantee of aesthetic merit:
I think it is one of the artist's obligations to create as perfectly as he or she can, not regardless of all other consequences, but in full awareness, nevertheless, that in pursuing other values- in championing Israel or fighting for the rights of women, or defending the faith, or exposing capitalism, supporting your sexual preferences or speaking for your race- you may simply be putting on a saving scientific, religious, political mask to disguise your failure as an artist. Neither the world's "truth" nor god's goodness will win you beauty's prize.
William Gass
In the poems I chose as illustrations the views concerned the savagery of war and the damage that the excesses of inequality produces. Self evident truths to the majority, I would say.
Yes... they represent one aspect of "truth"... that experienced by the poets in the trenches. As such they are not far from the truth witnessed and expressed by Francisco Goya in response to an earlier war: the Napoleonic invasions of Spain:
But are these inherently superior to the paintings of J.L. David, who witnessed the events here unfolding from another perspective... that of the rise of Napoleon as hero and savior of France?
Certainly we may empathize more with Goya, but does this make him the greater artist? What if we were take this dichotomy of artistic views into another realm... that of religion. If we are of the Catholic persuasion do we dismiss the art of Cranach and Durer and Breughel that ennobles the Protestant cause... or that of the Islamic painters or Hindu sculptors? The "art pour l'art" that Wilde and Baudelaire and Pater championed was not as effete view art without moral outrage... but it was a view of art that suggested that taking the "right" stance was no assurance of aesthetic merit.
So Coe is a politically oriented artist and while some may agree with her politics, others may not. My main point in response to JBI's rant is that his hope for the post-modern world, that people, and particularly women poets will stop complaining about oppression, give up the struggle and go back to their safe pastoral/traditional roots, is indefensible on any grounds.
My guess is that JBI, from his position as a contemporary college student, does not see a great deal of oppression and disparity based upon gender. There are probably as many or more students in his classes who are female and the same probably holds true of the professors. At the same time, he probably recognizes any number of the leading Canadian writers as being female (carson, Atwood, Page). I suspect he doesn't see a need for a continued focus of women writers upon "protest" themes. I would add that there may also be a sense of posturing involved by any artist who plays up the social and political and racial cards as a way of grabbing attention, in spite of their own privileged position. I, for example, find the artist Kara Walker hard to stomach with her continual focus upon racial inequality inherent in the system ("Come see the injustice inherent in the system!") considering her own experience born into a position of wealth.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Margeret Atwood, increasing the male bounds between Stlukes and JBI. I wonder what will happen when the target is Alice Walker
This is the most essential part of this conversation.@St Luke'sGuild
Seasider- That's a fine and rather touching example of male solidarity and bonding.
Now who's being sexist? If any male defends JBI it is only the result of male bonding?
Not at all. You are defending him as a friend and not simply as a fellow member of a universally privileged group.
SLG- Dear Seasider... I quite assure you that our beloved JBI isn't a misogynist.
It would take much more than your assurance to convince me of that.
...undiluted bad mouthing is not criticism as much as professional assassination
Seriously, I can't think of any member her who has more often called attention to the efforts of women writers, be it Jane Austen, P.K. Page, Atwood, Toni Morrison, or Anne Carson. From mys experience he has discussed their writings no differently than that of any male writer. By the same token, he is just as quick to make broad dismissive comments about any number of male writers regardless of their esteem and his opinions, though sometimes harsh and not always in agreement with my own, are certainly based upon a rich reading experience. There are few members here who can even begin to approach the wealth of reading experience JBI has.
As a fairly recent contributor I regret that I have not had the pleasure of reading JBI's comments on the literary scene past and present. But I do wonder how you manage to form conclusions about the relative wealth of reading experience possessed by other members.
Now that you have called him to task, I have little doubt that JBI will eventually present you with a far more in-depth criticism of Atwood... although considering he is currently studying in China and has limited time on the internet, you may just need to wait.
And I will. I hope that he will produce criticism more scholarly than talk of gimmicks, bandwagons, rants, flimsy politics, irrelevance and age.
That is cynicism uttered from the heights of elitist privilege.
And that's little more than PC thought... also from the heights of privilege in academia.
It was your choice to introduce Wilde's thoughts on art. I have great admiration for the man as an artist and as a casualty of Victorian hypocrisy and bigotry. But I think he was unable to resist the lure of the witty and epigrammatic put down and it did him no good at all in front of Bow Street magistrates.
How does Guernica or the Raft of The Medusa, to name but two, fit into this mindset?
Wilde was not being cynical, but rather rejecting the notion that art can be judged by values or standards external to art. A work of art is not to be judged as "bad" because it expresses the wrong religious views, the wrong political views, the wrong social views. This goes against the very purpose of art which is not merely to reinforce the values, standards, and beliefs of those in the position of power or those of the audience, but rather to transmit the perceptions of the individual artist in the most artful manner.
I agree wholeheartedly with this except I think there may be a place for the beliefs of those who are not "in the position of power or those of the audience" but who find solidarity in association.
Guernica and the Raft of the Medusa both have powerful social messages and are both a sort of protest... but neither disintegrates into the pathetic phenomenon of our time... the anti-aesthetic "protest art". Protest art is shallow and one-dimensional. The message is to regurgitate the ugly reality of the world back at us as if highlighting the ugliness of the world were a revolutionary act. Neither art nor tragedy are one-dimensional. Protest artists fail to recognize that beauty is the ultimate protest against ugliness, which is why the absence of beauty or the aesthetic shows that they are not truly critical... but rather wallowing in self-pity.
I agree about the shallowness of the "anti -aesthetic protest art" whose followers seem to want to "regurgitate the ugly reality of the world back at us" very reminiscent of Marx's views on philosophers who "up to now have only interpreted the world; the point however is to change it."
As Donald Kuspit suggested in his critical text, The End of Art:
In the post aesthetic world the work of art becomes a bully pulpit; and the artist tries to bully the spectator into believing what the artist believes. He becomes a self-righteous bully, preaching to us (or rather at us) about what we already know- the ugliness and injustice of the world. ("Come see the injustice inherent in the system")- without offering any aesthetic, contemplative alternative to it. Indeed, the aesthetic, the contemplative, the "beautiful" are bad words in the revolutionary's vocabulary.
If we recognise the ugliness and injustice of the world, like Owen and Shelley and others did we can make art that is not bullying but persuasive and convincing that things need to change.
Both Guernica and the Raft of the Medusa... as well as the poems cited employ a mastery of formal aesthetic... contrast the horror and the tragedy and the ugliness of the subject with an aesthetic beauty that transforms the work into something sublime.
I would never deny the importance of beauty or its immanence but I dispute the preeminence of the views of Oscar Wilde on the exclusivity of Art. And I wonder whether his experience of 18 months Penal Servitude changed them. De Profundis isn't as full of witty quips in my recollection.
I doubt that Wilde, a bi-sexual in Victorian England, was ever so naive as to not be aware of the ugliness and horrors that existed in the world. He merely recognized that fixating upon such subjects was no guarantee of aesthetic merit:
I think it is one of the artist's obligations to create as perfectly as he or she can, not regardless of all other consequences, but in full awareness, nevertheless, that in pursuing other values- in championing Israel or fighting for the rights of women, or defending the faith, or exposing capitalism, supporting your sexual preferences or speaking for your race- you may simply be putting on a saving scientific, religious, political mask to disguise your failure as an artist. Neither the world's "truth" nor god's goodness will win you beauty's prize.
William Gass
No comment.
In the poems I chose as illustrations the views concerned the savagery of war and the damage that the excesses of inequality produces. Self evident truths to the majority, I would say.
Yes... they represent one aspect of "truth"... that experienced by the poets in the trenches. As such they are not far from the truth witnessed and expressed by Francisco Goya in response to an earlier war: the Napoleonic invasions of Spain:
But are these inherently superior to the paintings of J.L. David, who witnessed the events here unfolding from another perspective... that of the rise of Napoleon as hero and savior of France?
Certainly we may empathize more with Goya, but does this make him the greater artist? What if we were take this dichotomy of artistic views into another realm... that of religion. If we are of the Catholic persuasion do we dismiss the art of Cranach and Durer and Breughel that ennobles the Protestant cause... or that of the Islamic painters or Hindu sculptors? The "art pour l'art" that Wilde and Baudelaire and Pater championed was not as effete view art without moral outrage... but it was a view of art that suggested that taking the "right" stance was no assurance of aesthetic merit.
Agreed. I don't think we should make qualitative lists of artists simply because they reflect our own preferred versions of Utopia. But neither do I think we should condemn those whose vision may disturb us.
So Coe is a politically oriented artist and while some may agree with her politics, others may not. My main point in response to JBI's rant is that his hope for the post-modern world, that people, and particularly women poets will stop complaining about oppression, give up the struggle and go back to their safe pastoral/traditional roots, is indefensible on any grounds.
My guess is that JBI, from his position as a contemporary college student, does not see a great deal of oppression and disparity based upon gender. There are probably as many or more students in his classes who are female and the same probably holds true of the professors. At the same time, he probably recognizes any number of the leading Canadian writers as being female (carson, Atwood, Page). I suspect he doesn't see a need for a continued focus of women writers upon "protest" themes. I would add that there may also be a sense of posturing involved by any artist who plays up the social and political and racial cards as a way of grabbing attention, in spite of their own privileged position. I, for example, find the artist Kara Walker hard to stomach with her continual focus upon racial inequality inherent in the system ("Come see the injustice inherent in the system!") considering her own experience born into a position of wealth.
You and JBI and me have the good fortune to live in societies experiencing the best conditions for the majority of its members that, up to now the Human Race has ever experienced. And in these favoured societies the best of wealth and status and privilege is still enjoyed by men and, in less secure possession, the women they choose to share their lives. But pressures on the environment real or imagined, have forced us to recognise that neither our locus, our wealth, our privileged status or our gender will protect us from what may lie ahead.
And that is as much the concern of artists as it is of politicians, writers, economists at al.
I realise how far I have wandered from the original parameters of this thread. I wanted to champion MA from what I felt were undeserved attacks. But I have been forced to examine and re-examine my ideas about Art and its moral and aesthetic context and it has been an interesting and challenging debate.
I am a woman, and I find Atwood's dystopian tendencies somewhat forced and anachronistic; other than that I don't have much to say about her legacy, except that I find myself comparing her to Oates, and Oates suffers from having been around too long and making love to every contemporary cultural lexicon she can think of to prove her relevance, as in her hyper-commentaries defending Tyson, packing all of her energies into saying his lack of control is heroic.
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