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ART_INSTINCT
June 30, 2016
After listening to an
interview with Dennis Dutton
by Colin Marshall of "the
About the "Art Instinct" Marketplace of Ideas"
by Dennis Dutton.
Dutton argues that esthetics are
a result of both nature and
nuture. There are elements that
appear to be biologically When the nature/nurture
rooted-- he claims there are question comes up you might not
universals in taste in landscape think it would be controversial
art and the preference for blue to answer "both", but this was
and green colors. not apparently Dennis
Dutton's experience.
His central point is that art
is not entirely "socially He complains that
constructed", but he's also he gets attacks from
at pains to make it clear people who presume he's
that he doesn't want to veer saying our artistic
to the opposite pole of tastes are entirely
cultural determinism-- he is natural, evolved
not a "reductionist": culture responses with no role
also matters. for culture.
ARTS_OF_BIOLOGY_AND_CULTURE
He uses the example of Stravinsky's
"The Rite of Spring", which he
argues might not even have been There's a sentence in the
recognized as music in earlier introduction he regrets
historical periods. (I paraphrase):
"A determination to shock
and puzzle have taken the
arts down the wrong path."
He says that he meant art criticism,
There's a critique of and shouldn't have made it sound like
Schoernberg at the close he was dictating to artists. (?)
of the book, which goes
something like: The culturally conservative tend to
make criticisms like that by reflex,
Music is about expectations, going without thinking them through.
with or against. "novelty and
fufillment" The problem with PINK_ART
Schoernberg's 12-tone is "it has
tone rows in places where you can't
predict what the next tone will be"
Building in principle on a structure "Beehtoven and
of unpredictability will never be popular. Schubert will
always be more
He comments that "you can memorize what popular than
the tone rows are"; which is to say you Schoernberg."
can learn the new musical language
Schoernberg invented.
Like duh, right?
Dutton claims a background in study of Indian
Ragas as well as western symphonic music.
Has he looked into musical ethnography *in general*?
Has he considered that the musical scale is not
universal across cultures?
Getting back to the Stravinsky
example: the "Rite of Spring" I've seen a half-dozen
is a well-respected, popular recordings of different
modern classic-- performances of it
released on vinyl.
Dutton concedes that it was
once so strange it might not
have seemed like music: so we
can learn to appreciate new
types of art as art.
Schoernberg's attempts at
creating a new art form might
be regarded as a failure, in
some sense-- it doesn't mean
that all such attempts are
failures.
His idea is to focus on
canonical examples, and not
edge cases like Duchamp's
urinal. Or Hirsch's shark in
formaldehyde, etc.
But then, sometimes a new
thing becomes The New Thing.
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