Speak up!
Now the Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American has invited him to repeat this 'installation' for their biennial of 2008.
Sign this online petition to STOP this example - not of "cool" or "Avant-guarde" but total moral and spiritual bankruptcy!
http://www.petitiononline.com/ea...k/
petition.html
Too bad Ms. Angelou can't also say that about The Obamessiah.
http://www.conversiondiary.com/2...ke-of-
soul.html
I like a lot of John Cage's music, and most of his visual art. The stuff like 4'33'' is an example of when his work was at its worst: when it followed his idiotic writings too closely.
Maya Angelou, on the other hand, delivers nothing but foolishness wrapped up in folkiness (and in careful conformity to the diktats of the People's Democrat Party).
At least with Imaginary Landscape #2, I can think about the relationships of the sounds and so forth. With Maya Angelou there is nothing more than the incessant drone of "I am wise, Vote Democrat, I am wise, Vote Democrat, I am wise, Vote Democrat!"
Trubador, I referenced the et tu entry on my blog post that julie linked to. great stuff.
Of course, I like Pandamania and the clothespin, too.
The money quote for me is "To anyone who still thinks, after a century of puerile experiment, that this question is worth asking, I ask the following: Would you want to eat in a restaurant where the chefs were seriously interested in the question What is food??"
This may be the only time I ever agree with Maya Angelou.
As long as he tells me his answer before I have to eat it.
And I could choose to go somewhere else for dessert.
Much of Cage's music is richly rewarding to listen to. Why it works is best studied independently of Cage's own nutter theories. The stuff that hugs the theories too closely is the stuff that comes accross as a parody of the avant-garde.
However, I know a lot of artists, and not a one frets about "what is art." If one does not know, one should get out of the practice of it. I do know many, myself included, who frequently ask, "why does this piece work and this one not work" and give the matter serious thought and discussion.
As you may be aware, Erik and I often don't concur on specifics, but in this instance, I do agree with him, and oddly with Maya Angelou as well.
As Erik intimated, Cage's work is a very mixed bag of stuff, from the pretentious poseur to some truly innovative soundscaping. Some of the pieces for prepared piano are haunting and lovely. Much of the stuff is probably composed in a manner that is not terribly accessible to me. But John Cage did do some interesting things in music. Like that of the surrealists, his manifesto is best left to molder and rot away while one attempts to appreciate just what Cage did accomplish.
Also, I do need to point out that Erik is partial to stronger exercises of the intellect in music than I am capable of. So I'll still prefer my Debussy, Mozart, and Stravinsky even as I try to understand and appreciate the better portions of Cage's opus.
Maya Angelou, on the other hand, has both deplorable poetry and politics. (Cage probably did as well.) Nevertheless, it is refreshing to see that, like Lillian Hellman she was not, at least in the artistic world, one to "cut her skirts to suit this season's fashions."
(That should also probably get Erik going.)
shalom,
Steven
The surrealists are a great example of a similar situation. Some of the ideas in their manifesto were quite good, but they were bound together with some wretched ones by bad philosophy. The art works often transcended the bad philosophy, as is often the case with art (David comes to mind).
If that's the case, then to hell with it.
Art exists for a reason. It communicates something. Like all faculties of communication, it was given to men so that they might use it to speak the truth.
I can think of no piece of art that "worked" better than the Golden Calf. That doesn't make it any less deserving of destruction.
You may not say so. But I do. His philosophy was in fact the pose, and so when he was truest to it, he was most posed--so too with the surrealists when the clung most closely to the nonsense Andre Breton stirred up--it was a pose--deliberate, considered, a finger in the eye.
Just because you are true to a philosophy does not mean you are not a poseur, particularly if your philosophy is all pose and no substance. What I've read of Cage, and of Breton, this was true.
And Cage, as with many of the surrealists could occasionally transcend his self-imposed silliness and arrive at something worthwhile.
By the way, Maya strikes me as every bit as much a poseur as Cage, and even the brief story here mentions is--not a genuine tone anywhere around. And yet, she still could be right. It's odd how that happens.
shalom,
Steven
Art does communicates something in somewhat the same way that music communicates something, and that is not a narrative function. Art that is overly narrative no longer functions as fine art, but as illustration. However, to say "communicates" we imply a clear relationship of signified to signifier, and that is simply not the case. Art is an invitation to contemplation, and that contemplation must lead the viewer to something beyond itself, eventually to the Divine, if the art is any good.
I do not wish to imply some notion of "art for art's sake" which is nonsense.
The Golden Calf did not work, because it did not lead men to contemplation of the Divine, but led them to something else. It was probably a decent piece of figurative craft, but it was not a piece of fine art at all. It had an extrinsic function, which was not the function proper to fine art.
Steven,
No, it is not a pose, but a mistake. Cage really had no philosophical grounding, so when he struck out to determine the why and what of music, he fell back to whatever philosphy he had, which was the regrettable garbage of Mr. D.T. Sazuki. Cage was a thoroughly befuddled fellow, quite different in character from Breton. I don't think that he did want to stick a finger in the eye. He wanted to find some Truth, it is just that he was looking in all the wrong places.
And wound up cleaving to a pose.
We'll just have to disagree on this. My reading of Cage is that he was a first class poseur--out to shake the foundations of the world of music and by definition lost in the morass of post-modernism and Mr. Sazuki. You can be his apologist, but I'm afraid it doesn't ring true to his own writing and the spoken statements I've heard from him.
On the other hand, I've noticed that you have a real soft spot for creative people who cling to odd, surreal, wrong, and positively lunatic philosophies. What with Cage and Stockhausen, and most of the post-modernists you could fill all of Bedlam--if the psychiatrists any longer understood what constitutes a mental disorder (judging by their diagnostic manual, I'd say they've largely abandoned that as well and have consigned themselves to handing out Xanax and Wellbutrin.)
As I said, we have very different opinions on Mr. Cage. I agree with you about his music, I agree with Maya about him being a poseur (and who better to recognize it?)
But then we always seem to end at this little impasses.
shalom,
Steven
I take people at their word when they claim to believe something and have invested a lifetime of work around a world view, no matter how wrong that world view is (and, if it ain't Catholic, it is wrong). Unless we are dealing with someone like Hunter S. Thompson, who left enough evidence that his drug consumption and generally recklessness was not actually as high as he liked to claim, but Cage never seemed to have moments of rationality in regards to philosophy. He was, of course from Los Angeles, so you can't really expect too much anyway.
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