RE: [microsound] herbs&spice and everything nice

[Christopher Sorg <csorg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> you know at first glance i hated mondrian's primary color series, and
> probably to most people his earlier "realistic" floral paintings would
> have been prefered. But as i delved further into mondrians reasoning it
> became apparent to me as to why he did what he did. his display of primary
> colors and simple lines made the audience realize (or at least made me
> realize) the importance the basics, the building blocks of the real world.
> not devoid of the real world.
> 
> -mmaarrkk

Unfortunately, this didn't work for the minimalists as it might have for
Mondrian.  Of course, Mondrian was operating under different principles,
not only to "minimize" to essence, but to also capure the spirtual, the
aura, of the world around him.  If you believe Hal Foster (and I think
he's probably right on the money), the minimalists were attempting
to examine formal essence and the essentials of form (hence the frequent
elimination of color, which Western philosopy and art typically treat as
arbitrary and not conceptual).  Unfortunately, much of the viewing
audience has treated the austere formalization of minimalism with the most
derision and academic scepticism of any art movement in the past century 
(well, until perhaps postmodernism ;).  Suprising, considering how such a
big campaign by both collectors and critics spurned on the success of the
action painters.  The public was probably becoming pretty media-savvy
after that Life-magazine blitz of the 50s and the media happy-engine.

I'm not sure that music suffers from the same particular problem.  After
all, the Western notational system is about as abstracted as you can get
from the actual experience of listening to sound.  It's a completely
contained conceptual arena, and you can't really get too much more
abstract than serialist music, at least with the 12-tone scale.  Well,
maybe you can, I'm just pretty sure we've moved on to other concerns, like
timbral events rather than just tonal ones with the advent of the
computer.  Certainly the viewing audience still expects a certain amount
of renaissance-romantic-enlightenment-impressionist realism in their
painting, and when things get too abstract and obtuse you can see the
ticket sales fall in museums.  Yet with music, you could almost argue the
opposite.  Sound and music have probably been less successful
(commercially?) when referencing the actual world of sounds.  Certainly
much fewer people are running out and purchasing a Pierre Schaeffer then a
classical album or even a Philip Glass CD.

I don't know.  But it seems a strange world, for sure.

_________________________________________
Christopher Sorg
Multimedia Artist
Adjunct Professor
The School of the Art Insitute of Chicago
http://csorg.cjb.net
csorg@xxxxxxxxxxxx