history fails

[raven]

You know when someone comes into your room and you have to persuade them that you're not, really, really not trying to jump out of a third-floor window, really, you may have hit a low point in your life. (Actually, I was trying to catch a cushion I had just knocked out of it. Perfectly sensible thing to do, no I am not going crazy at all.)

Speaking of having hit a low point in my life, not only am I accumulating unhappy symptoms with a disturbing rapidity - why, hello there random tinnitus, swinging-from-hysteria-to-somnolence and jumping out of my skin at someone dropping a clove of garlic - I am reading cultural-imperialist articles on the philosophy of forgery and being encouraged by an insane classicist to use my newly-discovered heterosexuality FOR SCIENCE.

...not crazy at all.

Okay, let me backtrack. You - yes, you! - can help out not one but two nutty Oxonian finalists in their quest to retain their sanity and be awarded a degree! There are two ways in which you can do this!

First of all. I am, at the moment, revising for paper 109, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Criticism. I have many criticisms of this paper, it must be said. (Aha, see what I did there?) Most of them involve the way it's not a philosophy paper at all, it is a paper for failed literary critics. Real past questions have included: "The pointlessness of art is not the pointlessness of a game, it is the pointlessness of human life itself." Discuss and Given that horror movies frighten us, why do we go to see them? and so on.

Anyway. Yes. What is very handy for this paper is a ready stream of examples of "subversive" art. You know the sort of thing I mean. Tracy Emin's bed, Duchamp's Fountain, that kind of stuff. Of course, those are the two examples that everyone uses. I would quite like to use something the examiner hasn't heard eleventy million times before. Which is where you come in, dear flist. You all undoubtedly have better artistic taste than me. Tell me about art - things that are unusual, things that are on the boundary between art and non-art, things that a floundering philosopher might find interesting. I really would appreciate it; I'm swamped by awful aesthetics reading and nothing makes any sense.

Second of all. apotropaios is a very dear friend of mine, he is also a finalist, he is also going somewhat crazy. In the interests of science, he has been asking everyone he knows whether they've ever had intercrural sex. (Apparently, this was a particularly well-represented sexual practice in Greek vase painting of the sixth century onwards.)

This has rapidly devolved into a horror story of soft fruit and armadae of battle penguins. However. Hilarity aside, it is a serious request. If you - or anyone you know - actually has done this, or knows anything about it, he would like to know. Comments - his, not mine - are screened, and he is actually a good human who will be respectful and discreet and indeed, very grateful for any information.

I leave you now for a return to the philosophy of mechanical reproduction. Oh my I am so very fascinating.

Comments

[wildestranger.livejournal.com]

For your first question, how about Robert Mapplethorpe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe)?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you! (Vaguely) contemporary examples = good.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

Would the whole "abortion art" thing last week (or the week before? or was it the 80s?) not be entirely appropriate for this? More so, when it was revealed that it was a set-up?

<3

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yes! Yes, absolutely. This would be ideal, especially as people were asking well, is it even art? of it. And it helps that it's such a, er, memorable example.

[sir-rosealot.livejournal.com]

There's currently a controversy over a gallery somewhere in South or Central America allowing a repeat of an "art" "exhibition" involving catching a stray dog and forcing it to starve to death in public view. I signed a petition against it. Sorry, no clearer reference because I don't want to Google it, but that's pretty subversive.

[coriolis]

I was going to suggest this one as well. I signed the petition as well, actually. If needed, I can get pictures. blacknarcissus2 posted about this a few weeks ago, and her post showed about 5 pictures of the poor dog. He was called Natividad.

[thedivinegoat.livejournal.com]

It's classified as "Undetermined" (http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/vargas.asp) on snopes.

art vs. non-art

[slasheuse.livejournal.com]

Re: the art. That art/porn scene in Paedogeddon from Brass Eye would do nicely. There must be scripts somewhere. The art/porn divide is quite a good way to go, obv.

OH, if you want things considered to be too violent/brutal/horrific to be art, try Sarah Kane's Blasted (but, to get the point, read the first night reviews, notably Michael Billington's). Also worth reading would be the "how can you stage a 45-minute suicide note" review of 4.48 Psychosis which I think had something along the lines of "this isn't art, it's just madness".

What about art that's on the boundary between the real and the artistic? Try: plays of David Hare's e.g. The Permanent Way (all real worlds, newspaper stuff, TV interviews etc), is it art or journalism - actually, try The History Boys, comb it for all references to journalism and check out Irwin's speech at the beginning. Check out Lintott's reference to Scripps's journalism at the end and how he wants "really to write" - think about what that means.

News images - are they art always, or is it just a case of "they can be"? Could someone justify, for example, the photographs of the dying Princess Diana as "art"?

That picture of Myra Hindley made up of children's handprints. Other paintings; "Paul can you come over" (the Diana thing, can't remember who), that installation of David Beckham sleeping (was it art?).

Antony Sher did a portrait painted in oils, cocaine and his father's ashes. That's something. OH, Gilbert & George, they've done stuff.

Is any of this anything? I hope so!

Re: art vs. non-art

[apotropaios.livejournal.com]

I own Brass Eye, if people want to borrow it...

[minttown1.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what actually constitutes "subversive art," and I doubt that this qualifies. But one of the few things I actually remember from Survey of Western Art is Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party." It was just such a relief to have something different after half a semester of various Christ paintings.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, that! Thank you for reminding me - that's an excellent example to have on hand, especially for gendered notions of art.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

the way it's not a philosophy paper at all, it is a paper for failed literary critics

ah, yes, sorry, in retrospect this may have been why I liked it so much. I was really never any good at actual philosophy...

-----

difficult cases for definitions/ontology of art, forgery, etc:

fairy tales (not Grimm's or Andersen's, but those which are told and re-told like mythology with some necessary elements yet much wide variance). beat poetry. fan fiction. homer. found art. John Cage's 4'33" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3).

how about the "exquisite corpse" - a poem which is written, like a game of consequences, by a group of people who can only see the very last line written by the person before them?

let me know if i can dig out any notes and give any more concrete examples tailored to particular questions. mostly i focussed on ontology, forgery, and morality.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, love. I'm tired and I'm being gratuitiously insulting. Part of me wonders whether I'd have liked it better if I were only taught better - my tutor moved to Canada three quarters of the way through the term. That about said it all for the quality of the teaching, it must be said.

4′33" in particular is a fantastic example, thank you. I'm focusing on the definitional question, plus Aristotle, Plato and the forgery problem. Morality I found just too hard to tie together.

[apotropaios.livejournal.com]

Also, ARGH, the wikipedia page is SO bad. Dover was WRONG, and 'Greek Homosexuality' was WRONG.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I said this before, but aren't you now in an excellent position to edit it? :)

This is my contribution, I'm afraid:

[sunlightdances.livejournal.com]

I love you! <3

Re: This is my contribution, I'm afraid:

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

I second this! And will try to come up with literary contributions.

[absinthe-shadow.livejournal.com]

The Isle of Pines! Is a sort of utopia-y thing but all about sex. Also all about politics. Remember that time we met in Borders and I was reading an article about "Porno-Political Rhetoric"? That article was about this book! And there is a Much Better article which I will try to dig out tomorrow, all about generic instability and the hoax. V. good for subversiveness.

*is over-enthusiastic*

...What is going on with our overlapping papers at the moment?

[apotropaios.livejournal.com]

For the classics contribution to the first one; tragedies! Aeschylus' Oresteia is a good one; it was well known, and well loved (Aristophanes makes it clear that it was well known and respected over 50 years on in the Frogs), but the final part, Eumenides, was, so anecdote records, so terrifying with its chorus of blood soaked Furies that there were miscarriages in the audience.

For the parallel case where it went wrong, Phrynichus' Fall of Miletus; it was a play about the... well, the fall of Miletus, a city of Greek culture, and a trading partner of Athens, which had not long before fallen to Persia, with much bloodshed as a result. The audience wept, so the sources record in scholia, Phrynichus was dragged before the courts, fined a HUGE amount (I forget the exact figure, but it was very high), and the play was banned from ever being reperformed.

In a twist on that, we have Aristophanes, who plays with what was banned from Greek theatre (and plenty was; it wasn't a utopia of free speech by any means). Now, 2 things you couldn't do, in particular;

i.) you can't accuse a man of throwing away his shield (ie, slander of cowardice, as he throws it to run faster)
ii.) you can't attack the dead.

So Aristophanes;

i.) puts a 'Kleonymus threw away his shield' joke in EVERY play he wrote, pretty much without exception.
ii.) Had an extended speech in the Peace, just after his enemy Kleon died, where a character goes on and on with 'And I could say he was a pathic, and a liar, and a cheat, etc etc, but of course, I won't, as he is dead'.

Then there is the odd find in a Roman villa, where a shrine to the Penates appears to show a wooden box. We don't know why. Ancient modern art, perhaps?

[amchau.livejournal.com]

Totally off-topic:

there were miscarriages in the audience.

Really? I'm interested because that suggests that there were women in the audience--I'm sure my A-Level classics suggested that there was no evidence that anyone but men were allowed to go to the plays.

[deepbluemermaid.livejournal.com]

I am very much not an artistic person; I have very boring taste in art, which favours a) lifelike portraits, b) landscapes and b) abstract art in which blue is heavily represented (you might think I'm kidding about the last one, but it's pathetically true).

When in Rome (see what I did there?), I lived for nearly a year with a group of artists and visited a range of galleries and museums. My mind was broadened somewhat, but my basic and boring preferences remain.

Having said all that, and without wishing to offend any artists, the concept of performance art as art has always seemed questionable to me. My school in Rome hosted an entire evening of performance art. I deliberately skipped one performance which came with a content warning: the guy cut himself on stage!

But I did witness a work of performance art which lasted for hours. The artist locked herself in an empty gallery all day, armed only with a pencil. The audience were allowed in for the last half hour or so; we watched her writhe in a trance around and around a central pillar, rubbing up against the pillar and making random pencil marks on the paint. And that was it! I was inordinately amused when the staff, in preparation for the next exhibition, simply painted over or erased all the pencil marks. Ephemeral art, indeed...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, performance art! Thank you! Ephemeral art is an odd thing, indeed; I'm quite taken with the concept of Tibetan mandala paintings, which are art, I'm sure, but with that same quality of transience.

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

Piss Christ might be a bit too obvious. I don't know, something by Jenny Saville? There was something about someone making a Crucifix out of chocolate...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Piss Christ was on my list already, indeed. But religion is a good field for this sort of thing, I seem to find.

[amchau.livejournal.com]

The case which bothers me most in defining art (and I've never studied it, so feel free to ignore me) is where does an ordinary person's attempt become art? Their drawings probably are art of a sort, but what about photographs? Some photographs are for recording facts, and it seems like they shouldn't be art; but some photographs clearly are. At what point does something cross the line?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

For photographs, I strongly suspect intent may matter - not always, but I do wonder if a photo taken to document and one to capture an image are two different things.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

The KLF / K Foundation releasing hit singles, getting rich and famous, and find ways of destroying the money, like burning £1m pounds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation)! I don't know enough about them, but I do think they're fascinating. And the singles were great, too.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Also, lots of love and luck!

[tmpe5t.livejournal.com]

Yes. Its very useful when the other person thinks you're a girl and you're not really... ;D

And also: Chemicals: Fear triggers adrenalin, which triggers the body to prepare for injury and release whatever-the-natural-opiates-that-the-brain-makes-are-called. And they give us a buzz, so we do it again. So adrenalin junkies are really just junkies...

It is, it's true...

[slasheuse.livejournal.com]

OH OH OH BLASPHEMY. DO YOU WANT SOME BLASPHEMY. "The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name", or something, it's by James Kircup and it's about having necrophiliac buggery with Christ.

Also "The Platonic Blow" is some Auden filth.

For forgery, read The Portrait of Mr W.H.

Would it be worth bringing in that discussion from Gaudy Night about the morality of the brilliant artist who paints pot-boilers?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

The GN example is not quite right, alas. (This disappoints me more than it should.) It has the problem of an implied metaphysics of morality - it only allows us to discuss what art is in the concept of this particular notion of what it is right to do, and what it isn't.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Ugh, trying to remember the name of the Snape crossover mpreg that won the ... I think it was a nebular award. (Somewhat surprised that no one has yet mentioned fanfic. Surely this is the place to wibble about Transformative?). I will google, see if I can work it out.

Corpus Chriti by Terence McNally is the one with Jesus being gay that I wrote my dissertation on. On a mostly unrelated note there was the David Beckham nativity art a couple of years back.

Ugh, all of these are much to vague to reference properly. One of my favourite pieces of art like this that I've ever seen involved a display at the Satchi (can't spell) gallery a few years back, where if you didn't pay enough attention to the exebition, it seemed that what was on display was a bunch of paintings by a young child who'd been abducted and killed by a pedophile. If you actually looked at the content and studied the paintings and read the stuff that came with them, the artist made it very clear that it was a fake - that they'd done all the art themselves and no children had been abducted...

Wish I could think of better examples from music. 3.44 is the obvious one, but it's also the one that anyone who knows anything about music will know about. (Interestingly, I think he won some sort of interlectual property rights case against someone else who tried to publish a piece of music which was just silence...) One thing that you get from music easily is how quickly our... artistic morality? ... changes. When Stravinsky first composed Rite of Spring it was so shocking, people rioted at the opening performance. Now, it's standard concert repetiore. Carmina Burana (Karl Orff) is all about sex, and these days people rarely notice, because it's thought of as being sensible classical repetoire.

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

Was it the tiptree? I know HP fanfic won it one year, and mpreg would be the obvious choice...

[zed92uk.livejournal.com]

The two Classic examples from English mods:

Ulysses by James Joyce (1922), often denounced at the time as pornographic, for describing verious scenes including Leopold Bloom reading whilst defecating on the toilet, and masturbating on a beach. Now recognised as one of the greatest novels ever...

Interestingly, some years later when the Soviet Union denounced the novel as bourgeois indulgence, the US had begun allowing it again and so could claim its existence as evidence of American cultural superiority and tolerance

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991) - Again denounced as pornographic on first publication, usually by people who read the pornographic sex scenes and grotesquely graphic violence at face value, failing to realise that it was all an extended metaphor for the mindset and behaviour of the Wall Street Yuppie. Now generally accepted in to the canon

Hope that's helpful

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you, dear! Ulysses is a good one to have in hand.

[stupidore.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough I'm probably going to be writing my dissertation on something along the lines of the second question...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You're writing your dissertation on horror movies? Tell me more!

Eat chicken.

[luminometrice.livejournal.com]

This is recommended as an efficaceous alternative to antidepressants.

Medic love.

Re: Eat chicken.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You often tell me this! I think I shall go out shortly, go to the philosophy library, retrieve an article and buy myself a chicken-and-sundried-tomato wrap of awesome from the ATS. Hurrah, etc.