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

[Michael Edwards <m@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This paragraph has always puzzled me, mostly because it seems to sum up
the path of modernist art very succinctly but also depressingly
pessimistically.

Caudwell's description of the artist's dilemma in the face of
commercialisation seems very accurate to me.  However I'm more
optimistic.  I don't quite believe that we're all writing for ourselves,
alone, and without a point of contact to other people.  It might be a
small group of people we speak to, but they're definitely out there.  I
also believe there's enormous social value in going against the
commercial grain.  Just think what might happen if we didn't?

Another interesting one, and related to this, is the following from
Walter Benjamin, on how the role of art has changed over the centuries:

    "the work of art in prehistoric times ... was, first and foremost,
an instrument of magic. Only later did it come to be recognized as a
work of art. In the same way today, by the absolute emphasis on its
exhibition value the work of art becomes a creation with entirely new
functions, among which the one we are conscious of, the artistic
function, later may be recognized as incidental." (Benjamin 1936)

So are box-office sales or stock prices the new but true measure of the
merit of a work of art after all?  God, what a thought.

	Michael


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.'



_____________________________________________________________________

Michael Edwards                  Tel. Office: (+44) (0)131 650 2431
Music Technology                 Email: michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The University of Edinburgh
Programme Director
MSc in Digital Composition and Performance
http://www.music.ed.ac.uk/Postgraduate/dcp.htm
_____________________________________________________________________



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