In the midst of my daily reading, I noticed a link reading “Artists who died in 2007”. Given recent debates on the subject of art, I gleefully clicked away hoping to find more grist for the mill. Much to my dismay, a quick perusal revealed disclaiming language referring to the contents as “…the artists, entertainers and pop culture figures who died in 2007.”
Given the additional categorization, I quickly lost interest. Instead, I pose the following, far more interesting question (to be answered by more interesting people): “Who are your candidates for a list of top 5 living artists?” Inclusion may be based on any number of factors:
- the quantity of produced product qualifying (in the nominator’s eye) as art
- the overall percentage or product qualifying as art
- their production of art (however infrequently) that is so moving, earthshattering, trancendant, or whatever that it bears inclusion
- some criteria far less mundane than those presented here
I dare not define for each of you either what qualifies as art or encourages your inclusion of the artist. Rather I challenge you to present your respective lists, and more importantly, explain your choices. If you are feeling particularly chippy, provide a themed list…
Francis Ford Coppola (please ignore everything he’s done since Apocalypse Now).
Chuck D / Public Enemy (ca. 1987-1993)
Daniel Day Lewis
Jorge Luis Borges (I refuse to believe that he’s dead. It must be some trick he’s playing.)
Anita Blond
Alternate: Charlie Kaufman
I have to think about this.
Einojuhani Rautavaara, also here and here.
More later. What I will be going for is artists who can provide us with ‘a glimpse of eternity through the window of time,’ in the words of Rautavaara.
Living artists! This one’s going to force me to reveal my faulty mental catalog (it’s never even been put online, I’m afraid). I try to hang on to the Now by listening to the news and occasionally reading a magazine or journal that touches on matters artistic and cultural, but a dry wind blows past empty shelves in my archive and a few bits of paper flutter about. Not much has been acquired or retained. I will try to think and assemble a list.
That’s my position exactly, Marc.
And actually, I think that’s one of the values of being a member of the Lichtenbergian Society, that we can consider these questions and keep ourselves in the Now.
I think it’s more easy to assess art in retrospect, especially since we have all those wonderful critics to help us … and the memes have then had time to assimilate themselves.
I love that phrase, “A glimpse of eternity through the window of time.”
Doesn’t this just go to show that, for all our pretense, we like to be told what to think about things? Why should it be so difficult to assemble a list? Is art dead? Is it that hard to see what’s relevant? We don’t like to be on unsure footing. Probably the most relevant art right now is being made in someone’s garage and we won’t know about it for decades, right?
I agree, though. This is a difficult task. How to evaluate? There’s so much out there, just screaming at us for attention. It all kind of seems like … static on the radio. Every so often a melody emerges, then re-assimilates into the din. Was it significant? Was it a chimera? Someone please tell me so I can nod in affirmation, smoke my cigar, and sound like I know what the hell I’m talking about.
Not to sound redundant, but I had the same reaction as Dale and Marc when I read the original post. It is an excellent task Kevin, thanks for posting it, just not an easy one. I thnik we could all list favorite artists rather quickly, but a Top 5 makes us think in terms of time and place in history, as that is what Top artists tend to be, and not just because we are told they are. Or as Dale put it so well, they give us that “glimse of eternity through the window of time”.
And I’ll have to do some research to see if some people are still alive!
Pilliard Dickle.
You just like him because he’s naked with your sister.
I think it’s interesting that the article distinguishes between artists, entertainers, and pop culture figures, as apparently do we.
I think the lines are blurry. Where would you put Andy Warhol? Orson Welles?
I guess I would go so far as to say that I no longer feel confident that I know what an artist IS.
Brilliant computer hacker, who can devise elegant programming — artist?
Theoretical physicist who can “see” the patterns of the universe and put it down into mathematic equations — artist?
The TV commercials are funnier and more effective than the network “programming.” Are they therefore more artistic?
Top-paid landscaper in the U.S. — artist?
Oprah’s personal chef — artist?
Wiliam Blake once said, famously:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
Is an artist’s role, then, to “cleanse” those doors, enabling the radiance to shine through?
To give us a “glimpse of eternity through the window of time?”
But what is art?
Let me summarize, briefly, the answer to this question given by the greatest artist of the present century, James Joyce, in the last chapter of his first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where he distinguishes between “proper” and “improper” art. Proper art is “static”; improper, “kinetic,” by which last Joyce means an art that moves one either to loathe or to desire the object represented. For example, the aim of an advertisement is to excite desire for the object; the aim of a novel of social criticism, to excite loathing for injustices, inequities, and the rest, and to inspire thereby a zeal for reform. “Desire,” states Joyce’s hero, Stephen Dedalus, “urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion … is static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.” And he proceeds, then, to elucidate the psychology of aesthetic arrest by interpreting three terms drawn from the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas: integritas, consonantia, and claritas.
Integritas (”wholeness”). Let us take for example any conglomeration of objects. Imagine a frame around a portion of them. The area within that frame is to be viewed now, not as a conglomeration of disparate things, but as one thing: integritas. If the objects are on a table of which the frame cuts off a part, the part cut off, then, is “other,” and the part within the frame has become a component of that “one thing” of which all the other included objects also are parts.
Consonantia (”harmony”). The self-enclosed “one thing” having been established, what is now of concern to the artist is the rhythm, the relationship, the harmony of its parts: the relation of part to part, of each part to the whole, and of the whole to each of its parts: whether detail x, for example, is just here, let us say, or a quarter inch to the left, or to the right.
Claritas (”radiance”). When the miracle has been achieved of what Joyce calls the “rhythm of beauty,” the object so composed becomes fascinating in itself. One is held, struck still, absorbed, with everything else wiped away; or, as Stephen Dedalus tells in his interpretation of this “enchantment of the heart”: “You see that it is that thing which it is and no other thing.” It is regarded not as a reference to something else (say, as the portrait of some personage whose likeness gives it value), or as a communication of meaning (of the value, say, of some cause), but as a thing in itself, tathagata, “thus come.”
Joseph Campbell in The Mythic Dimension
Jeff, I know that passage well also being a fan of Joseph Campbell. After pondering it doesn’t it really boil done to a fancy way of saying a way to transcend the “I” and find union with the object, or to experience the thing “as is”? So you have union of subect and object, which is a definition of Enlightenment – or finding divinity to use Dale’s quote. To an Enlightened man all things are Art as Marc quoted. Since we still reside below that level and see things in subject-object form we rely on Artists to lift us into that state.
Jeff, thanks for you list, but would you be willing to share the why’s? As for the rest of you, where’s the risk taking?
1. Sting – The man clearly takes risks. I briefly considered putting Prince on the list, but in the end decided he was to often self indulgent and manipulative in his work. Still brilliant and often enough creative, however.
2. Donald Miller – I am quickly making my way through everything the man has written. I’ve had a friend refer to him (unfavorably) as being too simplistic. It’s his simplicity that I admire. I disagree vehemently with the man in some of what he believes and agree rabidly with the rest. For those not familiar, he writes essays about a kind of emergent view of Christianity. Don’t go looking here for high-brow prose, however.
3. Annie Leibovitz – I love to take pictures. However, I had never respected portrait photography. Too much Olan Mills exposure as a kid. Then I saw her stuff at the High. Holy Crap. Talk about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.
That’s all for now. I don’t claim to have the best of anything, but I figured I needed to get on the record since I posed the thing in the first place. …and I am more than happy to stand behind those I choose. BTW, if I was picking dead guys, I start with Miles Davis.
Just to be clear the “sum of the parts” comment above refers to the fact that she can take pictures of people or groups of people, and somehow, the completed work is something more than the images.
Art?
http://forums.scifi.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=8853
I love Prince, by the way. Especially Sign O’ The Times. What a miraculous work that is. I am not kidding. Pure pleasure from beginning to end. If only every record of his were that brilliant. He really lost his mojo about 1993 or so.
Housequake! Ev’ry body jump up and down! We gotta rock this mutha!
I can dig some Sting, too. Especially …Nothing Like the Sun. Wow. That’s the first DDD recording I ever experienced. Just one aural massage after another. Be Still My Beating Heart. Englishman in New York. Fragile. But you know what I really get into, over and over? That Hendrix cover. It never gets old. “When I’m saaaaad, she comes to me.” That guitar on that song just WAILS, man. I’ve never heard another solo like that, EVER. Never tire of it. Air guitar heaven.
In La Dolca Vita, there’s a scene where the characters are studying a painting in the den. “You can say it’s art,” they say, “when nothing is coincidental.”
Turff, to answer your question, or your request…
I’m reluctant to explain the “why” of my choices. It seems to me that you either get them, or you don’t. I was half-joking with my selections, anyway. I don’t know that it’s really possible to assemble such a list — certainly not definitively. But it’s fun to get up and dance.
In that same scene in “La Dolce Vita,” there’s a poet that says, “The thing is, to burn, and not to freeze.” Reminded me of some previous Lacuna discussions we’ve had. Fire and ice.
“…her favorite number was 20
and every single day
if you asked her what she had for breakfast
this is what she’d say…”
I certainly agree that the contents of these lists can’t really be meaningful in any sort of empirical way. To me, there are two really juicy outcomes from the exercise. First, it (like the one around the fire last month) is the sort of conversation for which the drudgery of daily life just doesn’t provide. Second, I thought it might be interesting to see what kind of ideas might coalesce around the types of choices we made as we compiled the lists.
To round out my list:
4. Stephen King – I know, he’s wildly successful, and some of his stuff could probably be called “pornographic” by the definition provided above. However, while my reading of him is rather limited of him, I have completed the Dark Tower series and found it to stick with me and effect me in ways unexpected.
5. With only a secondary goal of pot stirring, I’ll add Joss Whedon to the list. His writing is clever. He doesn’t shy from taking really interesting risks. Besides, there needs to be a comic book author on the list… and Fray is an interesting piece of work.
Wow. Too much to respond to.
Jeff, your document: was not art, could be now. See: framing. Was nerdgasm.
re: “…when nothing is coincidental.” I think (pace Dada) this is the truth.
re: Aquinas’s dicta, I think these are the critical elements for Art. Going through a couple of the museums in Munich, those devoted to contemporary art, I made the comment that so much of it is unconvincing. I understand the organizational impulses behind a lot of it, but it fails to engage on any meaningful level. It’s the equivalent of serial music: all intellect, and intellect divorced from the dicta at that. Plus, I always get the feeling that the artist is deliberately trying to be abstruse, sticking his tongue out at us and daring us to connect to his work. (Yes,I’m looking at you, Josef Beuys. Of course, if I had had this, I might have fared better.)
Talk of Beuys makes me think of Anselm Kiefer . There’s actually a Kiefer in the High Museum in Atlanta. I’ve been taken with his work since looking at a book of his “Wagnerian” paintings when I was a student. Little thumbnails don’t do the work justice, I’m afraid. I could put Kiefer on the list.
I must tread carefully with this assignment. Could provoke a psychotic break. Still thinking.
I might put myself on the list, with a special nod to my work on the title Art: wince and wither. I know we’ve moved on, but I keep going back to that title. Sorry. I don’t know if the Joyce of Stasis would be happy, but I think the Joyce of the Wake would.
Starfish and coffee
Maple syrup and jam
Butterscotch clouds, a tangerine
Side order of ham…
Why am I hungry all of a sudden?
I think your title of the previous thread would fit nicely into the Wake, marc. Well done!
Nerdgasm! What a great word. I’ll have to remember that one.
If you’re adding Joss Whedon, then I’m adding Chris Claremont and Ron D. Moore.
Ron D. Moore did Carnivale for HBO, he’s showrunner for the new Galactica, and he penned all the best Star Trek episodes.
If you don’t know who Chris Claremont is, then you’ve never read comic books.
Whedon did some (Astonishing) X-Men as well. The new Galactica is fantastic.
Martin Scorsese for exploring the human condition in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Aviator
Anthony Hopkins for showing both the light and dark side of man (Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Remains of the Day, Shadowlands)
Bob Dylan for his early works, not necessarily the famous ones. He was singing poetry images.
Tom Stoppard for a glimse of the human character seldom seen, although I haven’t read or seen all of his plays.
Seiji Ozawa for his work with the Boston Symphony and introducing 20th Century classical music.
Yet another art-focused quote of the day:
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
– Pablo Picasso
What a powerful, under-seen film Remains of the Day Is.
For anyone who’s seen Guffman, I’m still waiting for a Remains of the Day lunchbox (and My Dinner With Andre action figures) to pop up on ebay.
Wasn’t Tom Stoppard one of the screenwriters on Brazil? He goes slumming in celluloid from time to time.
I have owned The Aviator on DVD for three years now, but still haven’t gotten around to watching it. I am bad.
Personally, I loved Gangs of New York, but that’s just me. Big Daniel Day Lewis fan.
It just plumbs such depths. It subsumes so much. The question of the place and future of Art combined with a concise statement of typical male sexual response. And what of the insemination in that wince and wither? Productive? No air apparent. Wait for it. No air apparent. W(h)ence and W(h)ither. The H does not get to breath (aspirate) in this instance. No air to breed an heir. Ho Ho He He Ha Ha Much aspiration now. But what Ho He Ha do I aspire to? It’s very deep, you see. Major work of Art.
(((applause))))
It’s like having your own trained monkey.
Back to Anselm Kiefer. Is he the one whose huge ocean/starmap painting at the High I admire so much? I couldn’t remember who that was; he’s one of my five.
Stoppard worked on Brazil and Empire of the Sun, but he also did Shakespeare in Love. I put him on the list more for his plays obviously.
Yes, because he also ghost-wrote on one of the Star Wars prequels. He gets points deducted for that.
Mirabile dictu, there was an article in today’s NYT about an exhibit of Anselm Kiefer’s work.
Ooooh. Aviator. One of those films I’ve seen in the last year that troubled me in some way. I’ve grown to like films BECAUSE they trouble me. If they don’t make me think, they are too much like washing your hands or eating a cookie to bother with. It’s not on topic, but a few other films I’ve seen in the past year that troubled/provoked me in some interesting way:
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
The Graduate
Million Dollar Baby
LOVE the Graduate. Still haven’t got around to seeing Million Dollar Baby.
Let’s quit talking about art and do some. Let’s make a film.
We get us and our friends to act in it, let marc film it on mini-DV, let Dale edit and SCORE it, then get that new local cable station that Jackson Giles is running to show it. Art it shall be. A Lacuna Production of a Lichtenberg Brothers Film.
Marc, we’ll need a treatment. I’ll volunteer to write the first draft from the treatment within two weeks of receiving said treatment. Dale and marc can take passes on it, finalize the script. Turff, you can storyboard. Terry can be Best Boy.
I’m half-kidding but really not. I’ll do it if everyone else does. And I promise not to drop the buttocks, this time around.
This is kind of a dare.
So that you don’t feel like you’re wasting time, Dale, you can score it with bits and pieces of your symphony. Sort of like the soundtrack for Birdy evolved into a Peter Gabriel album. Didn’t it? I forget.
If we need something to get us started, I had this idea a couple of years ago I never got around to. It was going to be called “Confederado.” About a Brazilian descendant of some Confederates who fled the U.S. following their defeat during the Civil War. Looking for his “roots,” his identity, he comes back to a town like Newnan. But of course he’s rejected here, too … kind of a freak, paraded around by some Bette Hickman type. Who’s this foreigner? He thinks he’s Southern? Fish out of water. Doesn’t feel like he belongs in either society. Alienation and all of that. Dark comedy, of course. Kind of like an Alexander Payne film. Just one idea.
I’m open.
And, yes, I’m straying off-topic once again. That’s my art.