art
helen frankenthaler
another post from the past...
quoted from modern art and the death of a culture
"the mistake of many art theorist (and not only of Christian ones) is to try to give art meaning or a sense by showing that it 'does something'. so art must open people's eyes, or serve as decoration or prophesy, or praise, or have a social function, or express a particular philosophy. art needs no such excuse. it has it's own meaning that does not need to be explained, just like marriage does, or man himself, or the existence of a particular bird or flower or mountain or sea or star. these all have meaning because God has made them. their meaning is that they have been created by god and are sustained by Him. so art has a meaning as art because God thought it good to give art and beauty to humanity."
posted by m. at 5/26/2006
7 Comments:
Along those lines-
I get so tired of musicians always pushing their political views on everyone. If it just happens to come through in a song, fine. But give me a break! Why can't people just make music and make it well! Music does not always have to serve the purpose of politics. Let music be music.
preach it pw! i have a terrible time with musicians that write protest songs that name names. i am also opposed to canadians who complain about U.S. politics from the stage.
sorry to hijack your blog there pockets. i just had to give a shout out.
i'm glad i'm not the only one who immediately thought of music. the meaning of a song is a delicate subject to me. i generally don't talk about what my songs are about.
i read an interview with Eddie Vedder a VERY long time ago where he was asked, "What is Jeremy about?" at the time he said that he does not tell people what his songs are about because when you hear a song you make your own determination on what a song is about and that ties itself to how you feel about that song. to tell the interviewer what the song was about would take some, if not all of that away. he said that the listener becomes a part owner of that song and to explain what he wrote the song about would be to steal that from them. Eddie's answers provided a concise way for me to describe how i feel.
does that make sense? i hope it is not too far off your topic.
Mr. Milk -
I really dig that you use Vedder as an example considering how politically charged his lyrics often are. Just shows you can have the best of both worlds. Make a statement, but still allow others to keep their personal perspective.
Just stumbled upon this in Paste Magazine:
"...and that's what we want out of art. It's a subjective experience. So I'm saying something, but you're injecting your life into that, and that's going to make it more powerful. I think, if anything, when art is at its worst, it seems like it's just someone giving you their opinion and saying, 'Hey, you don't matter; it's all about me.' When art really works best is when it's a suggestion to put your life into this painting or this novel or this music and maybe, suddenly, it'll mean something to you. But to understand how it works or why it works? F- if I know."
-Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips
Did either of you guys see the most recent interview with Bob Dylan? Even he seemed to be communicating that he was frustrated that people assumed he was all about politics. I remember him mentioning that people would come over and always want to talk about politics. He says he just wanted to make music. Kind of funny, because I know when people think of a musical/polital icon, they would point to Dylan. He says he was never about that.
"There's no left or right anymore, just up and down... and down is far too close to the ground... I just wanna go up..." Having conviction and honest eyes is what Bob Dylan has said he's all about. Conviction with something much greater than politics, conviction with human trials. One of my favorite painters has said the ultimate form of protest is that of the depiction of reality, a sun lit still life representing a slow breath of life that contradicts the very nature of politics. So when art becomes exclusively politically driven it tends to be quite narrow and literal to what the bigger picture potentially can reach. Bob Dylan does that for me, yes, some of it gets very specific with political themes, or very superficial at times, but such is life, at least my life.
ps-that's ryan
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