Hard News: Some things you may not know
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Nothing like a well-timed romantic utterance from a hot young blonde. Is it art? I like to think so.
She was 47, not skinny and not blonde. Just cool.
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Nico's solo albums are some of the finest ever made. Yes, they are bleak and difficult, but also incredibly beautiful and rewarding to listen to.
I'd forgotten, but in the story I make very prominent notice of the quality of her singing live. She always had the reputation of not being a real singer, but she was really impressive in performance.
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My thoughts on the art/money thing - when you don't have quite enough money to get along, there's going to be a little friction. And art is created to soothe that friction and make things a little easier.
And as for the art in programming and computer games, I have no doubt that in the not too distant future, programming and gaming will be recognised as a medium for art just as much as sculpture or painting or film is today.
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She was 47, not skinny and not blonde. Just cool.
IC. The bio I read said 'statuesque blonde' which sounds hot, if not necessarily skinny, to me.
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One of the cool things about art is that noone has ever defined it satisfactorily. (Dickie had a good go.) You can't draw a ring around it because it won't sit still and it doesn't come in standard packaging.
Luckily there are enough non-controversial cases we all "get the idea". But a problem with this is that many- if not most- arguments about "what is art" come down to de facto arguments about quality: <sneer> that's not art </sneer>.
Which turns a lack of clarity into a clash of taste. -
Yup, it's poorly defined, or should I say controversially defined. Hence my preference for a very wide definition including such things as the way my son plays with his blocks or my cat jumps up a fence. And Andrew's refusal to accept anything that doesn't invoke strong emotions in a large audience. It's a definitional debate, the worst kind. There's no truth, just taste.
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Is there art if there is no audience to appreciate it? Is intention important? Is a supermarket trolley art? Anyway, given you can see my art definition bias, here's my thoughts on the code debate. Note: I am a programmer by day.
Code is a tool you use to construct solutions to problems. It can be a beautiful thing, but that is related to the elegance with which it accomplishes its purpose. If I were a painter it would be my paintbrush. I can paint the fence or I can paint a masterpiece with my artistic tool. But it is still just that. Incredible art is produced programmatically, from stuff you hang on the wall to games to music. But so are accounting applications, web servers and spambots.
I think programmers can be artists. But I also think that most of the time we use our skills for entirely functional purposes that lie outside of my personal definition of art. By day at least, though I believe I accomplish important things, I am not an artist.
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David, I agree. Not everything you do is art. It just can be. It's in how you do it. In a lot of programmer you're not even allowed to be artful. I think that's the lamest most unsatisfying kind, reserved for junior programmers or hacks.
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3410,
There's no truth, just taste.
That is so wrong. By that logic Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling is no greater or less great as art than a McDonalds billboard; it's just a matter of which the viewer prefers. Surely, you can not be saying that.
"Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness." - Pablo Picasso
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Surely, you can not be saying that.
I personally am not, but others might, and there is no truth of the matter. Most people would prefer Michaelangelo to McDonalds, but if popularity is your only criterion, Stephen King is probably the greatest artist in print ever, and Hollywood makes the best movies.
As I said, it's how it's done that I consider the artfulness, the level of care, beauty and originality. But that is just my taste.
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testing gravatar - testing
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sigh
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Wasn't Virginia Wolf's Schtick that you needed to have an independant financial existence to write and create - hence "A Room of One's Own"
Yes, Andrew, and Fabian Socialism (well, at least the variety practiced by the Bloomsbury Group) never meant remembering the servants' names, paying them particularly well and not writing articulately bitchy letters to you pals about what vulgar oinks they were. I've always found it a rather interesting case study in cultural mythmaking just how evasive folks get about the copious evidence in Woolf's diaries and letters of casual snobbery, racism, anti-Semitism and viciously competitive streak, especially where women such as Katherine Mansfield were concerned.
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Whoever said artists had to be nice people?
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great thread... only read a couple of pages, but...
velvet underground and nico was the first album i remember making me really sit up and listen to music. i was given a copy of never mind the bollocks when i was 16, and went, "wtf!?" but never became a punk.
velvet underground and nico made me go w... t... f...
i was instantly underground. forever.
until i got old, sold out and started listening to alt.country.
but that reaction to that album. that's art. it doesn't matter if you're looking at a 50c piece with a hole drilled in the middle, or mona lisa. it's the feeling that someone's craft has just connected with you in a manner you can't explain, but just know.
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Whoever said artists had to be nice people?
Not a claim I'm prone to making - but I guess it's much easier to romanticise the starving artist when you've never had to do any such thing. And Virginia Stephens - later Mrs Leonard Woolf - most certainly didn't; folks tend to forget her Room of One's Own, came with enough money to hire an ill-paid servant to clean it.
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folks tend to forget her Room of One's Own, came with enough money to hire an ill-paid servant to clean it.
I have several rooms of my own and I can barely be bothered cleaning any of them, which, um, must provide a great background for me to be fruitful and creative.
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There's a recent article about Virginia Woolf and her servant problems here, in the Telegraph. I picked it up off Arts and Letters Daily.
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</off topic>
Some more things you may not know
it appears that Tillman was not simply killed in a tragic accident by friendly fire, but killed deliberately by his fellow soldiers
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I have several rooms of my own and I can barely be bothered cleaning any of them, which, um, must provide a great background for me to be fruitful and creative.
oh yes! me too, Robyn. And yet my brother, who is in the artistic vein musically etc, is a clean freak. Who would credit it?
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oh yes! me too, Robyn. And yet my brother, who is in the artistic vein musically etc, is a clean freak. Who would credit it?
Hum... I take the Quentin Crisp approach to dust - once its two inches thick, it's all much of a muchness and, anyway, what did it ever do to deserve being disturbed with such brutality? :)
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And thaks for the link, Deborah - there's been more than the usual amount of tasty brain food on A&L Daily lately, so I missed it.
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Rip It Up and consequently Orange Juice have been a ongoing topic on PA. I came across this interview in today’s Guardian with Edwyn Collins. A where is he now story.
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