A few things I've read lately:
Camille Paglia's Religion and the Arts in America from Arion (cross-pollinated from 3QuarksDaily)
Pioch et. al.'s A Link and Group Analysis Toolkit (LGAT) for Intelligence Analysis (scary, huh?)
Malcolm Gladwell's The Moral Hazard Myth from The New Yorker
Wikipedia on the Casimir Effect
Paglia's speech at Colorado College was especially interesting. Her central thesis is that the role of religion in the arts in America has been sidelined into pure identity and narrow partisan politics which only reinforce antagonism from the Conservative Right. The end result has been the strangling of arts funding from government sources though she points out that no one in the avant-garde should accept government funding anyway. In some ways she echoes an Allan Bloom in decrying "sterile and now fading poststructuralism and postmodernism." Like Bloom, she sees a vacuum created in deconstructing traditional notions of values and aesthetic criteria. Like Bloom, she longs for something more powerful, more lively.
But her answer is, in part, to reinvigorate the arts through a re-examination of the spiritual roots that underlay so much traditional art, from spiritual hymns to rock to rap. In that, I think she misses one of the crowning achievements of our civilization even while she points out how technology is the most current creation of "American genius." Is it the failure of the arts and humanities to embrace materialism, science and technology as a central facet of modern life that leaves us in this condition of limitations and craven ennui?
Even while I read about the Casimir effect and try to imagine some of the most abstract and beautiful ideas ever conceived of--that vacuum itself is pervaded by energetic influences and zero point energy--Paglia thinks polyphonic differences between Calvinist and Lutheran hymns are a source of inspiration. Even while I imagine the subtle mathematics of group dynamic evolution using sophisticated achievements in graph theory, Paglia ponders the political implications of Madonna images festooned with elephant crap.
Why isn't rationality and all that it has achieved the greatest source for artistic inspiration in modernity? These are not sterile thoughts at all, but stunning achievements that have changed human existence more than all the stained glass in all of history.
2 comments:
I would be very curious to have you provide an answer to your own question? Why can't "rationality," "materialism" etc serve as underpinnings for great art? Or if the question was purely rhetorical, then please provide some exampleswhere they have. I am no fan of Bloom, and I really don't know Paglia, but you seem to be heading towards something like Dawkins' "Unweaving the Rainbow" here. The problem is that Dawkins doesn't seem to have the slightest idea what art has ever meant or been in the past. I have not had much time to delve into all your thoughts, but if my initial impressions are correct, you possess a subtler mind than Dawkins'. Your posts are beautifully written and well argued, with a genuine sense for the aesthetic. I am sure I disagree with you on many things. To me materialism (the real issue is epiphenomenalism) can never be the underpinning of real art. But I plan to read more and argue with you in more detail when I have the time. Thanks for your wonderful blog.
Great, thoughtful, challenge. I think all of Modernism reflects a materialist and positivist vision. Modernism proceeded largely without Paglia's religious driver, as well, and drew on abstractions and an aesthetic grammar that was partly derived from a latent technologism and scientism.
Paglia wants to replace the anti-intellectualism of postmodernism with a reconsideration of historical context (she is wowed by the social drivers that support the arts in Europe). I think I want a neo-modernism that builds on what remains of latent positivism after being ground down by postmodernism.
Here's a contrast: reducing composition to serialism or aleatoric methods a la Cage were Modernist challenges. But now we know better how grammar and tonality interact to create beautiful sound arrangements. It is not arbitrary, but it isn't as formulaic as Baroque or Classical methods, either.
Is this argument just post-post-modernism?
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