Excerpt from "What is Art?"

Vol. 1 Issue 8

So this week we get an excerpt from a paper I'm writing about Catalan painter Joan Miro. Next week there will be more about Miro himself. There is very little here, and I'll post some of his artwork. For now....


“What is Art?” A question almost as grand as “Why are we here?” or “What is the meaning of life?” I do not intend to proclaim my own answer to this question. In this paper I intend to investigate some of the most popular definitions of art within Art Theory, a branch of the Philosophy of Art, by two philosophers. Taking these theories in account, and offering plenty of counterexamples, I intend to hopefully prove that the work of Catalan artist Joan Miro is in fact “art,” and if I fail to prove this, I will surely make a good case for Miro’s superiority as a creative genius.

Artists that continually develop as artists, pushing the boundaries of form, content, and possibility yet retaining popularity in mainstream culture, there is something about these types of artists that I am intrinsically drawn to. The ones, who over their careers push the boundaries of their form, yet still manage to maintain a wide public appeal. The essence of this favoritism lies in their ability, if not their exceptionalism, to push forward as artists over the entirety of their careers, and not root themselves into any one contented niche.

Some artist might find they have a very limited, or even single creative concept or idea to offer to the world. This idea or concept might even sell. If their concept sells, but their creativity dwindles, few artists it seems take this as their cue to exit the art scene. The British rock band The Police would be a classic example of a group that did find themselves in this position. At the height of their success in 1983, after touring laboriously for Synchronicity, they called it quits. Biographers of the band would surely argue that break-up was due to personal tensions, but I believe they had hit at a creative brick wall, and made a gracious exit at the end of their creative primes. Acts like Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and the Red Hot Chili Peppers would be blazing examples of the opposite, having one or two creative statements to make, they make them over, and over, and over. Enjoyable for some perhaps, but art? Maybe once, but every at every instance? 

To pay for this dinner, there are now legendary myths of Picasso signing napkins for waiters, therefore conferring arthood upon them, and presumably making them very valuable (the napkins). In the case of Picasso, within his socio-historical context, within this overall body of work, and within his status as an artist at the time, it may have been as simple as this. Picasso signs something, it becomes art. This fits into Jerrold Levinson’s institutional definition of art. Luckily, under Levinson's definition, if Billy Ray Cyrus were to sign a napkin, ontologically, it would be nothing more than a napkin with a signature, much less an artwork.

Now, the previous three musicals act I mentioned- Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and the RHCP- undoubtedly perform at exceptionally high levels. It could be said they perform with excellence. “Excellence” is an important element in Robert Stecker’s disjunctive definition of art, which will soon be identified, but first, one more tangent.

Writer John Grisham would be an example of someone who does what they do with excellence, but exemplifies the trope of “it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” in the exact same fashion as the previously mentioned musicians. While undoubtedly a great writer and storyteller, literary critics rarely consider him an artist. A writer like Grisham, artist or not, has been extremely successful at what he does, and continues to repeat the same procedure over and over, ad nauseam perhaps. Assumedly he wants to keep food on his table, vintage sports cars in this multiple garages, and private jets on his personal runways.

Horrendicity in its modern complexity

Vol. 1 Issue 7
Awhile ago I talked about sucking at stuff. I'd like to revisit the subject if I may. I enjoy the topic of being bad, terrible, crappy, horrible. I especially enjoy absolutely horrrendicity (not a real word FYI). I want to explore horrendicity over the next few weeks.
The first thing that comes to mind for a comparison, mostly so I can show what I mean, has to do with languages. I love them. I have been trying to teach them to myself for years. I've been to my fare share of non-Anglophone countries. I won't say how many because it's an obnoxiously large amount. I have spent plenty of time trying to learn some of the languages of the places I've been, for years. Like Vietnamese for example. English is not prevalent in Vietnam. In 6 months of serious study I learned one word, hello, which no Vietnamese could even understand. The years spent here is an important thing to keep in mind. As in, it wasn't just a day or ten.

French being the only language I am okay with. Je comprends la langue un petit et je peux lire à un niveau de quatrième année, peut-être. (I can understand the language a little and read at a 4th grade level, maybe.) For anyone who actually knows French, please, go easy on me.

For me, languagely (also not a real word) speaking, this French thing is a 10/10. I know, I know, how impressive right? My French may be bad, but in comparison to how bad many of my other languages are I'm practically fluent. Now, I'm not just speaking of a language that I don't know at all and referring to it as being "bad at it". For example, I know only one phrase in Swahili, hankuna matata, and I don't even know what it means. This does not constitute being bad, terrible or horrible at Swahili. I just don't know Swahili. If I did, I would probably suck at it based on my expertise at learning other languages, but that is not the point. The point is that there is a difference between not knowing a language, and sucking at a language. I'm much more interested in the second option. Just to be fair I am also very familiar with the first. I also "don't know" hundreds, even thousands of languages, in addition to the ones I am bad at.

Okay, so short one this week. Swamped with 8 hour work days and full time grad school. Will explore horrendicity more next week as it Thanksgiving in the USA and I'll have a few days off to write more about it.

I Include a poem I just finished, and the original that inspired it.

As if I asked a common Alms,

And in my wondering hand

A Stranger pressed a Kingdom,

And I, bewildered, stand --

As if I asked the Orient

Had it for me a Morn --

And it should lift its purple Dikes,

And shatter me with Dawn!

- Emily Dickinson 1858

A Directional Tragedy

As if the keys to the kingdom were dangled

Over the edge.

But not yet.

Only one move-

To glory, To doom.

As if - either way, it were that simple.

The only proofs that the ends

Hurt less then the means

Reside in ignorance and bliss-

Based on lies. Based on false promises.

Where witnessed is

This kind of power?

Everything that is, fits

On the head of a pin.

It must be found now.

As if it- survival- were even a possibility

It would only be

As if the sky cracked wide, wands waved, gates opened.

Seconds that were thirty-five centuries long

A mere blink of an eye for some,

Happened. Done. Over.

As if - eternity defined.

So What, You Are a Theatre Critic Now Too?

Vol. 1 Issue 6

So this week I have a lot more to write about. I’m currently sitting in some German bakery/café in the Village having just gone to see a play called “In the Yellow Hour” down the street from here. The whole thing takes place in an apartment in New York, while the outside world is run by a authoritarian regime that has bombed all the major US cities and released some kind of infectious diseases killing almost everyone. There are only a handful of characters in the play, most of the story focusing on the main character, a 30-year-old female named Ellen whose husband has been missing for 53 days. Around the middle of the play we learn that her husband was picked up about 15 minutes after leaving the apartment, taken prisoner, and tortured in ways best left described by the actors.

I appreciated every character in the play and felt they served their purpose. For example, in the opening scene a deranged tramp enters the apartment, obviously uninvited. Ellen shoots him. He sits in the corner of her apartment dead for the next thirty minutes of the play. I thought this was nonsense at first. Why did she not drag him onto the hallway? Why did he not start to smell?

Later another man arrives. This man was privy to Ellen’s husband’s death and torture. The recently arrived man is in terrible shape. I think he had been castrated. He brings a letter from Ellen’s husband Paul written to console and explain. Unlike a movie where a narrator could simply have read the letter while some kind of symphonic background music played over a cheesy faux-emotive montage, in theatre, this would be has been truthful artistic suicide. This is where the director’s use of the dead tramp was excellent.

Ellen learns of her husband’s death, and so in a self inflicted hazy Demerol induced vision the dead guy from the corner comes back to life figuratively to read a letter Paul wrote to Ellen before he died, but most importantly he was reading it to the audience. It was done so tastefully that I’m sure I’m going to steal this technique in my own writing. I don’t want to be a playwright, but it’s definitely what I do best. I know, poor me. I really need to go see more theater. If it were the only damn thing I did in this city, I mean aside for work, school and ramped drinking, I would be much more satisfied. I’d rather be a theater and film critic than a writer of theatre or film. Let me know what you think of my criticism.

The set design was great, and for me one of the best parts of the play. The single room was ruinous with parts of the roof collapsing into the apartment itself. Exposed electrical wires, single light bulbs, broken glass and windows, just filth in its essence, exposed everything. The focal point of the room was a bathtub, which served as a kind of lifeline to sanity and life itself. Here was the rarity in this post-apocalyptic New York: hot water. The bathtub served as the station for the play’s closing scene where Ellen, who wants a baby more than anything, sits across from a newly acquired houseguest, a fourteen-year-old boy saying, “We are the glimmer of hope. We are about to change the world.” Why she wants her own baby so badly we do not know. Maybe philanthropically, just to continue the human race, or maybe raging hormones? The weirdest part is that she had traded a different baby, one that she had acquired earlier in the play, for this fourteen-year-old boy. Why didn’t she just keep that baby? We don’t know this.

For anyone that may wonder what the whole DrumGod thing has to do with this blog, it’s because yes, I am in a band, and yes, I play drums. In Brooklyn this is pretty much standard resume of every white middle-class male. I do like to think our band is pretty decent, but we take forever to produce new material. We are perfectionists that hate everything, so if we think something is un-amazing we throw it out; however, we have just finished recording the drum tracks for 5 new songs. 5 songs that took 1.5 years to write and 3 months to record and they are pretty effin good, and I don’t’ say this lightly. I hate my own playing, but I pulled it off somehow on these tracks. We’re still working on the rest of the arrangements. Judging by our current pace, the new tracks will be out by Spring. If anyone wants to know the name of the band they’ll have to ask in the comments. Still trying to drudge some up (comments that is).

What I Can Do

Vol. 1 Issue 5
The city that I know is getting back to normal. That is not to say that hundreds of thousands are not still freezing and starving, but my subway is up and running and so I'm back to school and work, the guilt of the affected sectioned-off conveniently in the back of my mind. Fortunately, I work for an organization that does community outreach and we're putting together a campaign to help people rebuild, so this will marginally help my guilty conscience. I do their press releases and social media. Every little bit right...

I'm not totally a bad person though, I swear. I went to Red Hook on Sunday to help but the campaign organizers were so inundated with volunteers that it was total chaos. I stood around for 3 hours ready and willing to help, but I was simply just "in the way." I left after that, but finally found a blood drive that didn't have a three hour wait, so at least I was finally able to give blood.

For once I should talk about writing, the supposed theme of this blog that I never mention. This week I turn in my first piece "Halfway Hipster" for critical analysis. I think it is pretty good, although completely pointless, but besides astrophysics, cosmology, and maybe astronomy what is truly not. Anyway, if anyone wants to check it out they can let me know via a comment (besides my single follower-you know who you are). Yes, this is a gratuitous way to try and get some people other than myself and my mom to comment. Who am I kidding? That comprises my whole audience. I would love to be proven wrong here though (smiley faced emoticon).

Overall lame, short and boring blog this week. Will make up for it next. In all fairness I did put up two "bonus" hurricane posts throughout the week, so I'm not a total hypocrite to consistency. Glued to the election coverrge tonight, hence the crappy blog. If things go well here, I will have a much more enthusiastic attitude next week.

And so, let us pray.

Just to not completely copout for the week, here is a poem I wrote on beauty. Enjoy, or whatever.

A Completely Biased Take

For some, the reason to awaken

Each morning, or maybe, even in general.

The reason to smile without a purpose.

The reason to make that extra difference, give that extra ten percent that is unexpected

Most times unnoticed.

For others, desensitization becomes as routine as breathing.

Repression, a survival technique.

It is an everyday experience to withdraw; hold back the throbbing.

Beauty, some see.

Some work with it.

For others,

It works them.

Hurricane Reaction #2

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It’s business as usual for most parts of Brooklyn. All the stores are open and people are out eating, drinking, living normally. It’s kind of sad that we just go on like everything is fine here while the rest of the city suffers. I didn’t make it to Red Hook to help out today. I plan on going tomorrow. I’ve pretty much done nothing to help anyone this entire week. I feel guilty. I don’t know if I should? I was lucky to have made it through so easy.

I tried to give blood twice already and failed both times. The first attempt was at a blood drive that was canceled without any notice. It just didn’t exist. The second was yesterday. I went to the main blood center in Brooklyn and there was a three-hour wait just to get in. I decided to try and come back the next day, but I didn’t make it. I will try again tomorrow. It seems that most of Brooklyn has the same idea as I do. Everybody is trying to give blood but the system has become overloaded. The line was literally out the door.

I heard the gas situation is so bad now that waits are like 12-24 hours! Some cab drivers got in line last night at 2 am and according to the news, just got gas now, at around 3 pm.

So power seems to be coming back on in parts of the city, but Staten Island, the Rockaways, Long Island, and the Jersey Shore are still completely fucked up. One of my classmates lives in Coney Island. She said she evacuated afterwards because her high-rise building suffered structural damage. She said the whole area is complexly destroyed. I think my supervisors both had flooding. I haven’t been to work all week and I have no idea if I’m supposed to go back on Monday. Nobody has let me know. Classes will resume this week, this I do know.

I’m happy to report that the NYC marathon has been canceled, thankfully. There was no ethical or moral level that would have made this event acceptable right now. It would have been an atrocity to have runners moving through parts of Staten Island where people are homeless and starving. Many pro-marathon people have used the 9/11 comparison to champion the marathon’s going ahead. I find this a horrible argument. 9/11 was a disaster but really only affected one part of the city. The marathon arose as symbol of recovery and resilience, but the race was months after 9/11, not a week. The disasters are so dissimilar that this argument cannot be seen as legit. I’m glad they canceled it.

Hurricane Reaction #1

I’ve emerged totally unscathed while the whole city is in shambles. I don’t know why but I've decided to write about it. I’ve been trying to find volunteer opportunities all week but it’s been so chaotic that even finding a place to volunteer with relief efforts took a week. I guess the storm came last Sunday night Oct 28^th. It is now Friday Nov 2^nd and I’ve finally found somewhere to go help out. It’s in Red Hook. It’s already 3:30 in the afternoon so I’m planning on going down there tomorrow morning around 10. I guess it’s about a 30-minute bike ride, so I’ll leave at 930.

The storm was so bad that even the extensive preparations were not enough to avoid disaster. Most of Staten Island is destroyed. So is Long Island and parts of New Jersey. I tried to sign on as a volunteer to help out at the Red Cross but they are so under-prepared that they did not even have the capacity to put me to work. The phone operator could not even help me fill out the appropriate form necessary in order to be deployed as an emergency volunteer. So I’m feeling useless right now.

I haven’t heard from my bosses in a week, nor have I been to work myself, or to class. There are no subway trains running between Manhattan and Brooklyn so people are forced to take a shuttle bus from Barclay’s Center. Last I heard the lines were 1000 people long and there was lots of arguing.

The worst arguing I’ve been hearing about is over gasoline. Since the ports have been shut down no gas deliveries have been being made. It’s especially bad in NJ. In many parts the gas stations are without power so even if they have gas delivery they still can’t use their pumps. I’ve heard that the average wait is two and a half hours. I guess gas trucks are starting to make deliveries again, but this is not stopping people from fighting. The police have had to be brought in the control the people and stop anyone from cutting the line. In some part of NJ when a guy called out another guy for cutting the line, the line cutter pulled a gun.

What does this mean for me? I have no idea. I guess I’m waiting to see if I am needed at work before I go down there. I’m supposed to start school again Tuesday. If there is decent transit I will go, otherwise I have no idea.