Re: [microsound] a good quote -- maybe worthy of discussion?

[bruce tovsky <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sep 27, 2006, at 12:16 PM, Kim Cascone wrote:

> from English Marxist Christopher Caudwell's essay 'The Concept of  
> Freedom':
>
>     'But art is in any case not a relation to a thing, it is a  
> relation between men, between artist and audience, and the art work  
> is only like a machine which they must both grasp as part of the  
> process. The commercialisation of art may revolt the sincere  
> artist, but the tragedy is that he revolts against it still within  
> the limitations of bourgeois culture. He attempts to forget the  
> market completely and concentrate on his relation to the art work,  
> which now becomes further hypostatized as an entity-in-itself.  
> Because the art work is now completely an end-in-itself, and even  
> the market is forgotten, the art process becomes an extremely  
> individualistic relation. The social values inherent in the art  
> form, such as syntax, tradition, rules, technique, form, accepted  
> tonal scale, now seem to have little value, for the art work more  
> and more exists for the individial alone.'

an interesting topic, when was this written? my first thought would  
be to
put this in the context of the way that electronic culture has  
changed the
way the marketplace works, and whether the idea of "bourgeois culture"
still applies in this regard. certainly for me i would take issue  
with the idea
that the work becomes hypostatized and isolated in revolting against the
forces of commercialization, but then again, i am not much of a  
political
thinker or philosopher and might not be able to back that statement up.
best
bruce


bruce tovsky
www.skeletonhome.com

"Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane."
Philip K. Dick