Be Excellent To Each Other

Do the high arts owe a duty to be accessible for everyone, or is it important for patrons to do their own home work? By this, I mean, should meanings, metaphors and monsters be described at the beginning of a performance, or should that enjoyment be earned? Should we replace Plan B with Plan Bach, Tupac with Tallis or Ibiza with Illyria? I dunno, enlighten me!!

No, I think education owes a duty to everyone.

Pretty much what WTB said.

I think it does, but I also think that you can ruin the experience by over-explaining.

My rules with art, for instance, are that if I have to read more than two lines of 'blurb' underneath the piece, then the art isn't doing a good enough job of explaining itself. Also, what about personal interpretation? Everyone seeing things differently? I like to understand, but I don't like to be told what I think something should mean to me, or make me think and feel. Just let me enjoy it, please! If I want in depth knowledge, I'll go look it up.

If I'm going to a performance I get REALLY pissy when they don't give you the option to take the information. I definitely think it should be available - not everyone wants to be left to their own devices - and I'm very much into educating people on the background / history / meaning (hey, there are plenty of things I've watched and not had a bloody clue what it was about!), but I think we should have the choice and not just have the whole thing ruined from the start by being told what we're meant to understand from the thing we're about see. Why not tell us afterwards when we've had a chance to think for ourselves?

Ce n'est pas une réponse.

Draw shit better.

If you have to ask, you shouldn't be there.

Hmm, I really don't agree with that - for lots of people it might be their first experience of whatever it is they're seeing, and for some people it just doesn't come naturally! So they should have the opportunity to learn about it.

For those of us that it does, though, it'd be nice not to have to experience the idiots version

Art's not for the plebs anyway. They've got X factor for culture

:|

*runs*

If it needs explaining to you then it's not very good art. I've watched plays, read books and looked at artwork that I've come away from feeling moved in some way. I might not have taken away the message intended by the creator*, but I took away something, just by experiencing it. That's good art.

But then I, a fairly intelligent person, have looked at stuff that's supposedly high art and thought "wtf?".

I remember standing in front of an entirely red canvas at the Tate Modern and a group of painfully nouveau twats were standing around talking about how because of the shade of red he’d chosen you could feel the artist's angst and his hatred of his mother and that he was pissed off with his cleaner always missing the bit around the back of the toilet. Or something like that anyway.

The "high art" Mali is talking about is just pseudo-intellectuals talking to each other in their own language, a language specifically devised to exclude the average joe. It's not art. Just look at Brian Fucking Sewell. He just hates poor people.

* if indeed there is one - english literature was good fun, but ultimately pointless, as it's just talking to each other about your interpretations of something - there's no "right" answer. I’ll never forget our entire GCSE English literature class being lectured by our ridiculously anti-male English teacher about how the bit in the Lord of The Flies where they hunt the pig and then smear the pig blood on themselves is all an allegory for how all men want to have sex with animals in order to demonstrate their domination of them, and how that in turn is just an expression of men’s attitudes to women. All apparently deliberately meant by Golding.

I used to go out with a girl doing a Fine Art course, I found her friends to be arrogant twats because they thought it was funny that the 'engineer' did not understand what they were going on about.

At least I got a job at the end of my degree, most of them became fine art teachers

If entertainment was good enough for Shakespeare, it's good enough for every artist.

Everything doesn't need to be understandable by everyone to be any good though does it? Otherwise there would be no such thing as subcultures. The problem is when people think that their understanding of some particular thing makes them better than everyone else.

I guess calling it "high art" would be an example of that. The implicit superiority.

It should be called "unpopular art".

yup, pretty much all this!

I'm not at all into "high" art - pretentious waffly bollocks.

I definitely just want to see something, feel something, walk away and think about it. Sometimes I'll get nothing out of it, and that's ok, it doesn't mean that I'm too stupid to understand, it means that it didn't affect me personally. Might do someone else. But I wouldn't ever laugh at someone else for 'not getting it'!

I'm quite happy to go and look stuff up afterwards, but I never do it beforehand - I'll happily go to the theatre to see something I've never heard of and intentionally don't look up what I'm going to see beforehand - I like the surprise!

If art is too high, get your servant to hang it lower

I think you're conflating understandable and enjoyable - the point of subcultures is that different people like different stuff. The point here is that art that isn't understandable isn't a subculture, it's pretentious wank.

Also heh @ Grim.

You just called Zardoz' entire body of contributions to this forum pretentious wank.

But equally in some instances one person's pretentious wank might be another person's subculture. For instance some people think that anything which isn't lowest common denominator bullshit must be "pretentious". But I know what you mean.

I know what you mean too - I also don't like the a anti-intellectualism approach.

What this boils down to is that, mostly, what I like is best, but YMMV.

He's just too thick to get it.

His mum does though. Boy, does she get it.

She gets it, but she doesn't enjoy it.

I do. That's the main thing.

My mum's clearly better than your mum then.

She's a total pro.

True.

Your mum isn't even a gifted amateur, particularly with that cold cheese toastie of a flange.

Did one of the other 'boys' in the Dick-Chick lounge write that for you?

Was that your plane starting up or your Dad kick-starting his dildo?

High Art.

I read that in a Peter Griffin voice.

You were supposed to read that in a Donald Sinden voice whilst buttering an umbrella, in a gigantic glass oboe.

Ah. You are expressing your frustration that your year 3 infant school teacher touched your mate's willy and not yours.

This is low brow common denominator bullshit.

That's your interpretation.

And your confession.

*twirls moustache and mounts velocipede*

My work is done.

*goes for a shit on a blanket at Tracy Emins*

Heh.

One of my favourite bits of high art