[WS:] Nor do I like Andy Warhol's art, but I would not argue that he does not know how to paint. The point, which you seem to refuse to acknowledge, is that there is a difference between the artist and his/her art. It does not matter what skills the artist has or does not have, but what one can or cannot sell in the market. The market dictates what art is being produced more than the artist's craftsmanship does. There is a scene in the film "The Pianist" by Roman Polanski in which Szpilman, who is a renown concert pianist, plays popular tunes in a restaurant. One can legitimately say that in this time period Szpilman razzle-dazzled the public with popular "schlagers" to survive, although it would be absurd to say that he did not have the craftsmanship.
This is btw pretty consistent with the Marxist argument that it does not matter whether capitalists are virtuous or not, since the market forces them to act in a certain way (i.e. exploit labor) regardless of what they may feel about it.
Wojtek
On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 1:38 PM, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
> At 08:17 AM 11/26/2011, Wojtek S wrote:
>
>> To reiterate, there are two points that I am trying to make here - but a
>> judgment about a specific artist is not one of them.
>
>
> Not quite. You said there's no, or little, craftsmanship in contemporary
> art, and that Warhol, specifically, depended on gimmicks to razzle dazzle
> the public. (To that I'd say look at the disaster paintings. Those never
> did appeal to a mass audience.)
>
> I don't like Billy Joel, but I wouldn't argue he can't write or doesn't know
> how to play piano.
>
>
>> I have nothing against "market art" as long as it does not crowd out other
>> forms.
>
>
> That's what I used to think about the Beatles. But now I think that in the
> long run you can't kill good art, no matter how hard you try. Maybe a
> bigger problem is what Nick Lowe said recently about music. There's so much
> pretty good stuff out there that "Pretty good is the new terrible."
>
> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2011/09/nick-lowe-taking-the-low-key-approach.html
>
> Nick Lowe, lauded in many quarters as one of pop music's master craftsmen of
> the last three decades, says he hears a lot of pretty good music these days.
> And that's not good.
>
> "Sad to say, it seems everyone can make a pretty good record in their
> bedroom today," the 62-year-old English singer and songwriter said recently.
> "You go buy the kit and you can make a pretty good record. 'Pretty good' is
> the new 'terrible.' In a tsunami of 'pretty good' stuff, you can't find the
> really good stuff. So I've kind of given up looking."
>
> [...]
>
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