What is art? (#2 of 2), excerpted from Art History through Innovators: Sculpture

Now let's talk about what counts as a major innovation in art. To convey his idea of what’s important, an artist must be able to communicate with you. He has to capture your attention— he can’t communicate with you if your brain is channel-surfing. He has to show you something you can understand— he can't communicate without a common language. He has to show you something so unusual or so vivid that it makes you stand still and contemplate what he has created. In short, he has to make you stop, and look, and think about his work of art.

The innovations we’re looking at on this tour are not novelty for the sake of novelty. Every one of them gave its creator more power to make you stop, look, and think. And these innovations were not gimmicks or minor tweaks. They were so effective that they allowed many other sculptors to convey their values and ideas more effectively.

On the list of sculptures and the timeline, the works that illustrate innovations of that caliber— major innovations—are in bold. There are only 7 of them. We'll be looking at the other works on the list for the sake of context and contrast.  Resist the temptation to make a rude noise and fast-forward through those parts of the tour. You may hate medieval art, for example, but you'll appreciate Donatello and Michelangelo more if you've seen it.

What is art? (#1 of 2), excerpted from Art History through Innovators: Sculpture

Over the next month or so, I'll be posting several of the theoretical parts from my new lecture, “Art History through Innovators, Part 1: Sculpture” The lecture is designed as a walking tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but comes with a PDF of images so that you can listen to it anywhere in the world. The references to images below are to the PDF. The entire lecture (26 MP3 files and 50+ pages in PDF format) is available at 

http://www.forgottendelights.com/ArtHistoryThroughInnovators.htm

This first excerpt comes near the beginning of the lecture.

EXCERPT 1A: What is art?

A standard art history course covers the characteristics of the art of every major civilization and every time period, from ancient through modern. In Art History through Innovators, I focus instead on one question: In 5,000 years, how did we get from a sculpture such as Mykerinus and His Queen (#1A on the handout) to Frishmuth's The Vine? What I want to show you are major innovations in art. That’s why the title of this tour is "Art History Through Innovators."

If you have an inquiring mind, you should immediately be asking two questions. Number 1: What is art? Number 2: What counts as a major innovation?

So: What is art? You might be surprised to hear that there’s no widely accepted definition. If you ask 5 staff members at the Metropolitan Museum, they’ll give you 5 different definitions. Same thing if you ask 5 professors who teach art history.

The most difficult part of writing these tours was making sure that when we start, we’re on the same page about the meaning of “art.” So let’s try this.

Look at the Nike logo on the list of sculptures.

Do you know who that is?

Do you know what he's doing?

Is he good, bad, or mediocre at what he does?

How did he get that way: skill, practice, luck, transcendental meditation?

If you recognize this figure as Michael Jordan, then the image isn't just a blob of ink on paper. It carries with it a set of ideas about excellence, and about how you achieve excellence.

Sculptures carry ideas with them, too. For example, look at Michelangelo's David on the supplementary photos. Most people see in it a combination of courage, strength, and alertness.

But a sculptor doesn’t just show any random idea that pops into his head. Art works often endure for centuries, but artists never do. So an artist can’t sculpt an image of every single thing he sees. Nor can he include every microscopic detail of what he does choose to sculpt. He has to choose his subjects and his style based on what matters enough to him to spend days, months, or years working on.

So by showing courage, strength, and alertness in a work of art, Michelangelo says: “Such things are important to me.” A sculptor who represents Uncle Dave drinking beer in a La-Z-Boy reveals a different set of values. In either case, when the artist creates his work of art, he tells you: "This is important, this matters, pay attention to this— this value, this idea, this action." Sometimes it's this kind of place, this sort of person, this kind of feeling. But it’s always something the artist considers profoundly important.

We’ll talk about why that matters to you, as a viewer, after we’ve looked at a couple millennia of sculpture.

Coming shortly: Excerpt 1B, on what qualifies as a major innovation.

Coming soon: "Art History Through Innovators"

I'll soon be offering for sale a new 2-hour course, "Art History Through Innovators," part 1: sculpture. Designed as a walking tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it comes with images in a PDF that will allow you to listen anywhere in the world. Part 2 (Painting) is in the works.
I'll be posting excerpts here within a week or two.

VersaQuill website and blog

Most of my efforts are currently going toward my website for research and writing, at www.VersaQuill.com. The associated blog deals primarily with the copywriting. You can read on the About page of the blog why I'm a fan of Ayn Rand and a methodology geek:

http://versaquill.com/blog2/about/

Radio interview on outdoor monuments

I was recently interviewed by Adam Schwartz for WFIU, a public radio station at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. We talked for an hour and a half about outdoor sculptures, abstract art, the World Trade Center memorial, and much more. It was a pleasure talking about such things with someone who asked such intelligent questions. Adam did a great job of boiling the interview down to 6 minutes, which is all the format of the program allows. Have a listen:

http://indianapublicmedia.org/arts/arts-writer-dianne-durante-sculptures-forgotten-delights/

New blog: Past - Present - Principles

Most of my writing is presently on my new blog, "Past - Present - Principles, History and Philosophy for Today's News." This a trial run for a website I'd like to produce that would offer short essays on major events in American history, with suggested readings from Ayn Rand and Objectivist scholars. If you're interested in using such as site or advertising on it, email comments@forgottendelights.com .

The NYC Tea Party, April 15, 2009

For the past 20-odd years, whenever I’ve seen a protest rally in NYC I’ve given it a wide berth. Such rallies usually offer the sort of speeches that require shouting after every sentence and are interspersed with long periods of angry chanting, all amidst pushing and shoving and general misbehavior. The average age of the participants is 20, and the cause being supported is usually a couple light-years to the far side of the extreme left. Why would I go to a protest? I’ve always known that changing someone’s mind depends on reasoned argument, not decibels.

But I decided this week that there’s one exception to that. When attempting to get a politician’s attention, decibels matter more than reasoned arguments, particularly when the decibels are emitted by a large collection of voters. I went to the tea party mostly to provide another visible, vocal voter … and was pleasantly surprised.

First of all, everyone I saw in the crowd was well dressed (as if they’d just come from a paying job), patient, and polite to the surrounding NYPD officers. The average age was probably 40. The crowd eventually stretched for 3 or 4 blocks along Broadway, and from the fence of City Hall Park across a wide sidewalk, a lane or two of the street (barricaded from traffic), and another wide sidewalk. The people toward the back could not possibly see the people on stage, yet they did not push and shove. They read and commented on the protest signs held up by members of the crowd. They listened to the speakers and clapped at appropriate times. The only thing they didn’t do well was shout in unison: whenever the organizers tried to get a chant going, it fizzled. This rather amused me—we were obviously a thinking crowd unwilling to play “follow the demagogue.”

As for the content of the speeches: I doubt that anyone who didn’t already believe government spending was out of control was converted; such conversion happens in the privacy of one’s thoughts, not in the presence of amplifiers on city streets. That said, the speeches were much better than I had expected, with repeated praise for capitalism and calls for a government responsible to the people. One speaker referred obliquely to Atlas Shrugged. I saw several signs that explicitly referred to Atlas, and met a woman who was handing out ARC’s flyer. The attendees seemed to be hard-working and thoughtful people—precisely the sort who might be persuaded by Ayn Rand’s arguments, if they are intrigued enough to read her works.

As we were leaving, the event’s organizer reminded us not to leave trash on the ground, making a joke that this was probably the only time in the history of NYC protest rallies that such a request had been made. I didn’t see so much as a dropped tissue as we left.

The rudest the crowd ever got was in expressing its disapproval of New York’s senior U.S. senator. While it would be more accurate to shout, “If the Senator disapproves of the American Constitution and defending Americans abroad, I do not wish to have him representing me,” I have to admit (purely as a student of rhetoric) that shouting “Schumer sucks” has more punch. I hope the TV crews covered that bit and gave the senator cause for insomnia.