Avid, David, Platt and all;
Real art is spiritual. The rest is merely merchandise.
And what movie was it? I heard a line that went something like, "Talking
about music is like dancing about architecture". I'm not so sure, but
its a clever quip and it makes a good point. Art moves us in an
inexpressable way. Its magic. But that doesn't mean we can't discuss it.
We just have to accept the limits of such an undertaking.
I have to confess that I haven't been following Avid's art posts. Its
not because his ideas are too complicated, but because I recieve them in
a form that makes reading a big drag. Its a format thing and not about
content. I have, however, gathered some idea about the debate thanks to
those who have re-printed Avid's comments in their responses.
I think David T made some good points. There are certainly objects
universally accepted as art, yet have little or nothing to do with the
"institutional theory of art". And I'm guessing that he's right about
this theory being associated with modern art simply becasue it is
understood only by a small class of specialists. I don't think its
hyberbolic to say that 99.9% of the people on this globe have no idea
what abstract expressionism is all about.
And the Poe quotes from Platt seemed like something Pirsig would like
very much. Poe's reverence for art reminds of Einstien's reverance for
science. And why not? Creativity is not limited to paint and marble.
Creative thinkers are found in all fields, aren't they?
The institutional theory of art (ITA) seems awfully labored and
contrived to me. Surley static quality is required if an artist wants to
be considered competent. There will be theories, techniques and they are
limited to what any given society will accept as art, but the ITA is
downright stuffy. And the agreement reached by all particpants could too
easily be arbitrary or influenced by fashions and fads. Its easy to
imagine that such agreements could become a case of "the kings new
clothes", if you know what I mean.
I suspect the small class of specialists involved in this theory might
want an excuse to exclude everyone else, or a rationalization of why
they already have excluded everyone else. I think its all about issues
of accessability.
Everyone realizes, of course, that Pirsig sees "art" even in motorcycle
maintenance, an activitiy where the victorian snobs would never dream of
looking for quality. And you've noticed that his philosophy is given to
us in a literary form. So if we're going to discuss art, and I am
extemely excited about the prospect, why not talk about the art we find
in Pirsig's books? We're here to discuss them anyway. Why leave Pirsig's
artistry out of it?
I don't want to offend anyone, but I mean really. The discussions on
this forum are disproportionally centered on science, logic and
technical detail. In fact I don't recall ANY literary discussions here.
I would suggest that we're missing about half of the total picture with
such a techno-geek approach. To be perfectly frank, the person who said
the non-philosophical sections of Lila were "boring" said a lot more
about his own imagination than he did about the book. Its like saying "I
like chess, but the pawns are dull." And I'm saying we have to have ALL
the pieces. Otherwise, we're not really playing chess.
There is an excellent review by Jerome Bump that was reprinted in the
guidebook. Its called "Creativity, Rationality and Metaphor in Robert
Pirsig's ZAMM". I'll provide some quotes from it and hope that it'll
move our art discussion closer to language in general and Pirsig in
particular.
"Otto Rank and many other psychologists associate creativity with the
private inspirations of very individualistic people, usually rebels
against society, a description which certainly fits Phaedrus and, to a
considerable extent, the narrator."
"The most famous example of the replacement of "either/or" with
"both/and" thinking in our century is Einstein's rejection of the
absolute dualism of matter and energy. Revolt against dualism is also
apparent in the theory of the complementarity of the wave and particle
models of electromagnetic fields.The behavior of such fields can be
understood fully only if they are considered "metaphorically"...."
"Robert Frost in his 1030 lecture, "Education by Poetry," pointed out
that to learn the powers and limits of metaphor was to grasp the essence
of thinking itself. He emphasized that Einstein's "In the neighborhood
of matter, space is something like curved" is a metaphor and that even
the math is based on a metaphor as are mechanistic models of the world,
the theory of evolution and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle."
"In "Models and Metaphors" Max Black has showm that the use of
...metaphor "is a distinctive intellectual operation... Metaphorical
thought is a distinctive mode of achieving insight, not to be construed
as an ornamental substitute for plain thought."
"according ot Holloway: "Above all, figurative language is largely what
sustains the outlook of a book through it entire length and throughout
those parts of it which seem at a glance to contribute nothing to the
whole."
"Ultimately, the narrator concludes that his goal, Quality, or "the One
can only be described allegorically, through the use of analogy, figures
of imagination and speech" (ZAMM chapter 30), that is, not in logic as
we now know it, but through an expanded sense of rationality, which
includes metaphor, the kind of thought more typical of the humanities
and religion. Its true that Phaedrus had said, "All this is just an
analogy"; but he added, "Everything is an analogy, but the dialecticians
don't know it."
As you can tell by now, I'm using Bump's review to make the case that
Pirsig really can't be understood without understand the images and
metaphors as such. Being rational and literal about his books is as
misleading as taking the bible literally. For an obvious example, "In my
father's house are many mansions" is a statement that makes no sense
when taken as plain language. Its logically impossible to fit many
mansions into a single house. But as a metaphor it is clear as a bell.
Quality is a metaphor. The bike and the boat are metaphorical images.
The world's religions are filled with metaphors. This is not just
ornamentation to make the philosophy go down with a spoonful of sugar.
These images are loaded with meaning and we've not yet begun to explore
them. Whataya say? Lets go there. Lets talk about the artisty of words.
Maybe, when we're done, we will have all become poets and everyone's
posts will be a great joy to read. Except for Avid, who has that
formatting problem. :-)
DMB (New way to sign off, due to the huge number of Davids here.)
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