[gregorio]

The absence of music isn't music.

Sure, repeating a falsehood over and over makes it true.

Beethoven and Berlioz didn't compose nothing and call it something.

And neither did Cage.

Cage has composed worthwhile works, but 4'33" isn't one of them. It's a parlor trick... a stunt... a joke pulled on pompous music critics to see if they could be tricked into defending nothing.

Me, Morten Feldman, Brian Eno, Boulez, Cage himself and countless others are all fools but no you, eh bigshot, because obviously you’re the god of music and all the rest of us poor mortals have to accept your BS.

The reason you gave is why Cage didn’t (initially) write the piece, so the exact opposite of your BS assertion. But hey, this is Head-Fi, so don’t let the actual facts and history get in the way of ignorant BS assertions. What an exceptional demonstration of hypocrisy!

G

 

[castleofargh]

I believe art is a artist's own expression of humanity, not passive consumption and the mental gymnastics needed to justify it to critics.

Art is going to be everything it can be. The moment you try to constrain it, someone will rebel against your rules. That's at least one of art's role in society. That's why we were always going to have a Warhol or a Duchamp and why some artists keep on doing stuff that others will call stupid, lazy, offensive, or even illegal. The guy who gave blank canvas after being commissioned a bunch of paintings is similar. There is an idea, a will to make something happen, and of course ginormous balls to take a chance with their entire careers.

You want to argue that Cage's little experiments aren't music. Maybe, maybe not. Unless the artist himself declares that it was so, I will not claim to know. Your interpretation of a piece of art is your prerogative, but also only your opinion. Ultimately, the artist is god in his own little creative universe.
We spectators get to have opinions. We will care about the skills required, the entertainment value, if there is a meaning, an intent, if it appeals to our own taste. Those things matter to us, but do not determine what is art. Often enough, it won't even determine if it's good or bad art. To me, it's the same issue as those saying that rap isn't music. It's not our (consumers/spectators) place to decide.
Would I purchase an album full of that stuff? No, thank you. "Is it music?" and "do I want it?" are 2 different questions.

 

[bigshot]

Duchamp is one of the saddest stories in all of the history of art. He started out as the equal of any of his peers. Nude Descending A Staircase is up there with any work of modern art by any artist. But when his work on glass (Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even) broke after working on it for over a year, something snapped in him. He gave up on trying any more and instead focused on all the wrong things, primarily making fools of art critics. He never achieved those early heights again. It's a shame that he is known more today for a urinal than the spectacular work he should be remembered for. That says more about what sticks in the general public's consciousness than it does about art.

One of the big lessons in post modernism is that if you can create a piece of cynical crap big enough and shiny enough and set it in the middle of a fancy art gallery and get famous people to comment on it, it will make you more famous than legitimate artists. That's why everyone and his balloon dog knows Damien Hirst and very few know Francis Bacon; and that's why everyone knows John Cage, but far fewer know John Adams. (The difference between Hirst and Cage is that Cage has actually produced worthy work, Hirst has never created anything worth a damn.) That particular kind of fame has absolutely nothing to do with art, and everything to do with marketing. It is as big a lie as anything audiophile snake oil salesmen propagate, and in fact it's worse, because this kind of fraud hasn't just picked people's pockets, it has torn down down the world of fine art and in so doing, marginalized the most important form of expression a culture can have. The joke is on the critics who bend over backwards into intellectual pretzels trying to justify it so they can claim a little piece of the gravy train themselves. They're the clowns performing at the funeral of modern culture.

All art isn't equal. Art isn't just whatever someone points at and says it's art. The title of "art" is earned. There may be disagreement about what the best art is, but bad art is self evident to everyone with even a tiny bit of aesthetic taste. The people pushing Damien Hirst as the new and improved Andy Warhol are salesmen, not art lovers. Fine art may be dead, but art isn't dead, it just got driven out of the fine art galleries. And music isn't dead, it just found a more supportive home in popular music than in the classical concert hall. Culture continues, even after jaded con men like Warhol tried to put a period on the end of fine art's sentence.

I draw the line at reductivism taken to extremes. Nothing is nothing. If an artist wants to revolutionize art, it's better to do that by creating something more expressive than what came before, not just tearing down the past. Abstraction and expressionism paved over the orientalism and Neo-classical academic art that preceded it, not just by getting rid of everything Victorian academic art represented. It did it by creating a new way of seeing. That's the best way to tear down stuffy and outdated institutions in art, not with urinals, balloon dogs and a sonata of nothingness.

 

[Ryokan]

Caravaggio is considered a master of his art today but once many art critics condemned his works.

 

[bigshot]

That was because of his personality primarily, not his artistry. We see that today too. People get focused on the person, not the art.

 

[castleofargh]

Duchamp is one of the saddest stories in all of the history of art. He started out as the equal of any of his peers. Nude Descending A Staircase is up there with any work of modern art by any artist. But when his work on glass (Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even) broke after working on it for over a year, something snapped in him. He gave up on trying any more and instead focused on all the wrong things, primarily making fools of art critics. He never achieved those early heights again. It's a shame that he is known more today for a urinal than the spectacular work he should be remembered for. That says more about what sticks in the general public's consciousness than it does about art.

One of the big lessons in post modernism is that if you can create a piece of cynical crap big enough and shiny enough and set it in the middle of a fancy art gallery and get famous people to comment on it, it will make you more famous than legitimate artists. That's why everyone and his balloon dog knows Damien Hirst and very few know Francis Bacon; and that's why everyone knows John Cage, but far fewer know John Adams. (The difference between Hirst and Cage is that Cage has actually produced worthy work, Hirst has never created anything worth a damn.) That particular kind of fame has absolutely nothing to do with art, and everything to do with marketing. It is as big a lie as anything audiophile snake oil salesmen propagate, and in fact it's worse, because this kind of fraud hasn't just picked people's pockets, it has torn down down the world of fine art and in so doing, marginalized the most important form of expression a culture can have. The joke is on the critics who bend over backwards into intellectual pretzels trying to justify it so they can claim a little piece of the gravy train themselves. They're the clowns performing at the funeral of modern culture.

All art isn't equal. Art isn't just whatever someone points at and says it's art. The title of "art" is earned. There may be disagreement about what the best art is, but bad art is self evident to everyone with even a tiny bit of aesthetic taste. The people pushing Damien Hirst as the new and improved Andy Warhol are salesmen, not art lovers. Fine art may be dead, but art isn't dead, it just got driven out of the fine art galleries. And music isn't dead, it just found a more supportive home in popular music than in the classical concert hall. Culture continues, even after jaded con men like Warhol tried to put a period on the end of fine art's sentence.

I draw the line at reductivism taken to extremes. Nothing is nothing. If an artist wants to revolutionize art, it's better to do that by creating something more expressive than what came before, not just tearing down the past. Abstraction and expressionism paved over the orientalism and Neo-classical academic art that preceded it, not just by getting rid of everything Victorian academic art represented. It did it by creating a new way of seeing. That's the best way to tear down stuffy and outdated institutions in art, not with urinals, balloon dogs and a sonata of nothingness.

I understand your way of thinking, but also don't think you get to decide. Take music, do you judge a piano piece on how many notes and how skilled you have to be to play it? Was Liszt a great artist when he made pieces that screamed "look mama how good I am at the piano thing!"(I hear that with an Irish accent for some reason). Is Beethoven a noob and a thief for some of his slow, easy stuff that every beginner enjoys learning with very little effort? Clearly, success or the value of art isn't determined by how hard it was to make or how many years you had to study. I personally enjoy Beethoven a lot more overall. Will you call a band scam artists because they got worldwide popularity from a track composed and recorded in one afternoon?
What about a case like this one?


Again, I understand your criteria, but those are your own feelings. Would you also throw Dali and even more easily Picasso under the bus because they made lazy and weird stuff that didn't appeal to your sense of esthetic? Many people "forgive" Picasso only because he had "proved himself" before doing weird stuff for the sake of it or to allegedly get a quick buck. As if that had anything to do with a particular drawing or painting and its intrinsic value as a piece of art.
I still stick to my views that it does not really matter unless you decide that it does for yourself. The art remains what it is regardless, and also changes with the ways spectators decide to interpret it for themselves. That is art too.

Another outlook(I'm going full rabbit hole) on this is the trend to cancel people's art forms based on some crap they posted on tweeter. Does something stop being art the moment we learn how many kids the creator molested(MJ FTW)?
Is a statue not art if, instead of in a museum, it's out there on the street?
My mother will start loving and respecting an artist no matter how "bad" he is after she learns he rescues puppies on the weekend. She has that type of perspective on art with no boundary and empathy stuck to 100% all the time. I on the other hand like what I like, I usually don't care who made it or how. And if I enjoy a track, learning it was made by someone horrible(IDK, someone who was friend with the nazis, or someone who puts pineapple on pizza, you pick your own demons), it will have almost no impact on me. I want to say no impact at all, but I know that biases can be tricky. From experience, I can at least say that I didn't stop enjoying tracks from pedophiles, rapists and even murderers. I just don't link songs to their creators that way. To me at least, the art doesn't carry the sins of its father. Am I right and they are wrong?
Is jazz just about playing too many notes while ruining the tempo on purpose? Someone most certainly believed that. Many people probably still do. Does it make Jazz not music, not art? Does it affect that one recording you like so much? Hopefully not. All those are just people's opinions on things. Your own included.

The moment you think you've defined limits for what is art, you lost the argument. It's a perfect trap, we lose every time we play.

 

[bigshot]

do you judge a piano piece on how many notes and how skilled you have to be to play it?

No, if I did that, I'd be a huge Alkan fan. I primarily judge by creativity and expression. Those things are usually achieved by means of the fundamentals- both following the rules and bending them. But something can be simple and eloquent... Simplicity requires much more work ultimately than complexity.

But nothing is nothing *by definition*. Just because we have thousands of years of great artistic achievements behind us, that doesn't mean we should lay down and give up. We should build on the foundation we have, not tear it down and not add anything to the world because of our debilitating case of post modernist ennui.

What about a case like this one?

I'm not familiar with what they did with that basic keyboard voice... Did they just play it straight out of the keyboard without adding anything?

Again, I understand your criteria, but those are your own feelings. Would you also throw Dali and even more easily Picasso under the bus because they made lazy and weird stuff that didn't appeal to your sense of esthetic?

There is absolutely NOTHING lazy about either of those artists. They were constantly pushing themselves to go further and they achieved more than many of their contemporaries. They may have done some things here and there that weren't as great as other things they did, but no one bats .1000

Stuff that doesn't fit my taste is just stuff I don't appreciate or care for. That is entirely different than stuff that cheats and defrauds.

Another outlook(I'm going full rabbit hole) on this is the trend to cancel people's art forms based on some crap they posted on tweeter. Does something stop being art the moment we learn how many kids the creator molested(MJ FTW)?

Art is separate from the person who creates it. Caravaggio is a great example of that. Brilliant artist- but a murderer.

Is a statue not art if, instead of in a museum, it's out there on the street?

Turning that around... is 4'33" music because it's performed in a concert hall?

The venue doesn't make something art. Art is a title that is *earned*. It's a gift word that we bestow on things that communicate to us- artist to viewer/listener- something that expresses a truth using an artistic medium to communicate a point that is universally human. Truly great art is the one thing on earth that is immortal. It isn't a title that should be handed out to just anything that claims to be art.

My mother will start loving and respecting an artist no matter how "bad" he is after she learns he rescues puppies on the weekend.

I hate to break it to you, but the New York Times will never hire your mother as an art critic!

My position is that you can be a good artist or a bad artist and create good or bad art. But every kind of artist should at least *try* to create something great. Warhol didn't do that. He packaged bad art as high fashion and worked at artificially pumping up prices (along with Jose Mugrabi) . He succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams and set a terrible example for the artists that followed him. He single handedly destroyed fine art as a major part of our expression of culture and replaced it with snake oil and status symbols that sold for incredible sums at auction. People now judge fine art by everything *except* its artistic value.

When I see musicians or artists trying to cheat... to use words to justify not trying hard to create something worthwhile... it makes me mad. I work with artists. They don't tolerate artistic frauds. They work hard at creating, and when they see someone trying to cheat the system, it offends them. You don't screw with the muse.

Of course I get to decide what is great art and what isn't. I am a member of my culture. I can admire Shakespeare and the Beatles and Picasso and Mikhail Baryshnikov and Frank Lloyd Wright and Alfred Hitchcock and whoever I want. I can argue for why I think they are great artists. You can disagree... and support why you think they aren't. Like any argument, the quality of the arguments will eventually reveal who is more correct.

You can critically analyze and judge art. It's allowed... it's even encouraged. If more people did a good job of that, there wouldn't be any place for naked emperors. They'd get what they deserve.

 

[Davesrose]

But nothing is nothing *by definition*. Just because we have thousands of years of great artistic achievements behind us, that doesn't mean we should lay down and give up. We should build on the foundation we have, not tear it down and not add anything to the world because of our debilitating case of post modernist ennui.

I wouldn't say art is linear: especially if you look on the global scale. Art has been a reflection of the culture at that time. It's been more relevant for history as well. It seems the current state of art now is that you have painters still painting in classical styles (but with different subjects) vs an inclusion of AI. Nothing is to say that in 200 years, there will be artists going back to silk screen.

Art is separate from the person who creates it. Caravaggio is a great example of that. Brilliant artist- but a murderer.

I would have said Vermeer or Van Gogh are better examples of a people who became admired artists after they had died (Vermeer especially: only became famous during 20th century). Caravaggio killed a man in a brawl early in life: he fled to Naples and was able to secure a lot of prominent commissions due to his ground breaking artwork.

My position is that you can be a good artist or a bad artist and create good or bad art. But every kind of artist should at least *try* to create something great. Warhol didn't do that. He packaged bad art as high fashion and worked at artificially pumping up prices (along with Jose Mugrabi) . He succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams and set a terrible example for the artists that followed him. He single handedly destroyed fine art as a major part of our expression of culture and replaced it with snake oil and status symbols that sold for incredible sums at auction. People now judge fine art by everything *except* its artistic value.

Wow, you really hate Warhol, even thought his artwork isn't the most reductionist (would a blank canvas be the pinnacle of killing fine art?). Warhol even had early computer art with a subject. My great grandfather was a painter in Pittsburgh and taught Warhol (Carnegie has a story about how my great grandfather fought other teachers to not flunk him during his freshman year). My great grandfather saw a lot of potential for him with fine arts: I've heard that he later was a bit disappointed that he focused more on being commercial. We have a few letters from Warhol: they're littered with personal doodles.

My great grandfather is actually an example of someone who was more focused on art and teaching rather than focused on being a commercial success. At an early age, he trained in Paris for portrait painting, got back to the States after WWI and didn't want to move to NYC. He went from portraits. to regional art of Pittsburgh during the Depression, and then abstract art. Each one of his stages has a lot of skill for painting, but the best value of his paintings are his regional paintings of Pittsburgh when it was a steel town (and he'd also paint social commentary of Black neighborhoods). He's had a few other prominent students, who were also interviewed for a documentary made several years ago. He passed away before I was born. I've grown up with his paintings: I'm not sure if he'd be prouder about the impact of his paintings vs the amount of respect his students have had.

Anyways, these are my musings about how the art world changes, and how no one is the decided art critic. The ultimate example for me is the documentary "Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?" It brings up a painting a truck driver discovered what might be a Pollock. I'll admit that my "fairly" trained eye in painting might say it could be an early stage Pollock, but the art critics dismiss it because it certainly isn't during his established period.

 

[bigshot]

I had an ancestor who was a painter in Pittsburgh too. He studied under Eakins and succeeded him as the director of drawing and painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. This was turn of the century though.

 

[Davesrose]

I had an ancestor who was a painter in Pittsburgh too. He studied under Eakins and succeeded him as the director of drawing and painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. This was turn of the century though.

Well that is kind of surreal: I've always been an Eakins fan due to my college years being into medical illustration. In fact my great grandfather's son did attend painting classes with Philip Pearlstein, and then focused on becoming a doctor. His hobby was painting portraits and scratchboard Christmas cards (my grandfather was a really great draftsman, with portrait style like Velazquez). When he was in medical school at Yale, he apparently drew some medical illustrations that were at the library. I contacted the library when my grandmother asked about it: it had been so many years, the drawings are lost. My grandfather wasn't able to get into art with retirement due to Parkinson's (which influenced me into medical illustration/animation as a career). The state of Pennsylvania is very influential for American art.

 

[gregorio]

But nothing is nothing *by definition*.

That’s true but it’s again a straw man argument because 4’33” isn’t “nothing”, that’s the whole point of the piece! But again, don’t let the actual facts get in the way of a juicy BS assertion!

We should build on the foundation we have, not tear it down and not add anything to the world because of our debilitating case of post modernist ennui.

Hayden and the other classical period composers tore down most of the highly structured rules of Bach and the other high Baroque composers. Beethoven tore down some of the most fundamental rules classicism, Wagner and then the impressionists broke down the rules of tonalism. Schoenberg and others pretty much utterly destroyed even the most fundamental rules of tonalism/harmony, and so on. Are none of these great composers, are they all fraudsters? Should the evolution of western classical music have ended with the high baroque because bigshot says so? Or are you just making up BS rules (which you apply arbitrarily) to dictate that what you personally like/appreciate is music and what you’re too ignorant to appreciate is “nothing” and/or “not music”? (Rhetorical question, as you’ve already answered!).

Turning that around... is 4'33" music because it's performed in a concert hall?

Partially but mainly because it was a published work created by an established composer, trying (and succeeding!) to convey an idea and/or elicit responses from an audience.

When I see musicians or artists trying to cheat... to use words to justify not trying hard to create something worthwhile... it makes me mad.

Another BS argument. Cage did try hard to create something worthwhile with 4’33”. He spent four or five years wrestling with and refining the concept, drawing on his knowledge and experience of music development and like so many before him, of being influenced by the world of painting.

I work with artists. They don't tolerate artistic frauds. They work hard at creating, and when they see someone trying to cheat the system, it offends them.

Firstly, if that were true then you’re arguing against yourself. Zappa, Eno, Feldman and countless other artists not only tolerated Cage but were inspired and/or influenced by his works (including 4’33”). So by your own definition, Cage was neither a fraud nor trying to cheat the system! Or are you saying Zappa, Eno and countless other great artists were not in fact artists and only bigshot gets to decide who is an artist?

Secondly, it’s not true anyway! Many artists tolerate and work with fraudsters and those trying to cheat the system. More than a few highly successful pop artists have very limited or pretty much zero musical talent are at least partially trying to cheat the system/fraudsters but other artists do tolerate and work with them.

Of course I get to decide what is great art and what isn't.

Yes oh great one. Fortunately, no one apart from you believes your delusions of godhood and musical dictatorship.

I can argue for why I think they are great artists. You can disagree... and support why you think they aren't. Like any argument, the quality of the arguments will eventually reveal who is more correct.

Exactly and so far your arguments have been straw man arguments, outright lies, self-contradictions and BS assertions based on your own ignorance and superiority complex!

G

 

[bigshot]

Arguing that 4'33" is music is absurd. At best, it's performance art. (not a particularly rich vein of art.) Saying that it has no musical content is self-evident. It also has no interpretive element on the part of the performer. It hasn't even performed much since the early 50s. It's the one work by Cage that many people can name. Considering he did actually compose worthwhile things, it's a bloody shame that he's known most for being the perpetrator of a stunt rather than being a composer of serious music.

I would like to have been a fly on the wall watching John Cage "wrestle with the concept of 4'33 for five years"! I'm beginning to think you actually do have a sense of humor and you're just goofin' on me here. reductio ad absurdum

 

[gregorio]

Arguing that 4'33" is music is absurd.

Absurd to the lord god almighty bigshot but clearly not to all those you’ve defined as not artists like Zappa, Eno, Boulez, Cage himself and countless others.

G

 

[bigshot]

Some of those people you mention were excellent musicians!

 

[Davesrose]

As a layman myself that's an audiophile grounded more in the visual arts...it does seem that 4'33" isn't as reductionist as paintings: IE a completely blank canvas or one solid square. The point of this piece is a large group experience at the time. I guess we can't draw analogies to the visual medium: as usually the visual medium is a singular interpretation with viewer. This also begs the difference that 4'33" is different in that if you as an audience member isn't trying to get into hearing, you could also be looking at the auditorium. If that would be the Fox theater in Atlanta and you're in top balcony, you might be looking at the starry night scene. Note this picture doesn't show the ceiling in real life: there's a black ceiling with pin lights in the blue area: