[lbo-talk] Re: Art as necessary delusion

Michael Catolico mcatolico at mindspring.com
Wed Oct 4 20:27:05 PDT 2006


Jerry it's difficult to find the time to respond to all of your points so i apologize for being brief (probably the list is grateful for this as well).

Jerry wrote:


>[...]Art is in part an aspect of our necessity to delude ourselves. [...] All art is systematically misleading because it gives us false narratives and false meanings where there can't be any. [...] Art helps us to invent meaning to deceive ourselves
>[...]I don't believe that that the "truth value" of art is anything but harmful to artistic creation. [...] I believe that art provides us with illusions, disillusions, and delusions. One of the important functions of art is [...]to deceive us into thinking that we are something that we are not.
>

sorry to butcher your reasoning. but all of the above statements, to me, say nothing about art. they are all an apology - and a pretty pessimistic if not downright reactionary one - for ideology.


>You don't need good art to tell the truth. Bad art can also help an
>oppressed class or people to understand the world.
>

good art is truth. bad art isn't. (and don't mistake me here for being some kind of elitist or art snob - buffy has it's moments). the ability to clearly distinguish good from bad exists and that is what i have been trying to underscore throughout this debate. bad art - if valorized by those in authority or if it simply exists in the relative market-based realm of "art is ultimately all a matter of personal taste"- does precisely the opposite of your contention. it prevents the oppressed from understanding the world.



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