From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Oct 30 2003 - 15:04:13 GMT
Hi Erin:
> Okay I thought you put art as intellectual from
> comments a long time ago. There were comments about Picasso being an
> intellectual and I thought it was being asserted as art being an
> intellectual activity. There was also a comment about art being
> different from fashion but I don't know where that comment is at either.
> I went and reread the more recent comments and I see you do distinguish
> between intellectual patterns and aesthetic patterns so I may have
> originally misinterpreted the original statements. These more recent
> comments I do know where they are, at the end of March 2003 in the
> thread Intellectual Art thread. I am still confused about what you
> consider aesthetic patterns to be, especially when the Starbucks
> aesthetic argument is made.
Thanks for the reference to the intellectual art thread of last March.
I'd completely forgotten about it. What I said then, however, pretty
much accurately reflects my views on art vs. intellect.
"The "truth" revealed by great art is not an "intellectual truth" but
rather the truth of what it is to be alive and human. It is "intuitive
truth," an immediate perception of Quality, preconceptual and therefore
inexplicable. So I see great art as Steve does, as a catalyst for the
DQ experience.
"As I wrote previously, Rand ignores man's intuitive nature and thus
misses art's fundamental purpose. Yes, the artist uses symbols to stand
for patterns of experience. But rather than using symbols to create
intellectual patterns to convey intellectual truths about the
(supposedly) amoral world, he uses symbols to create aesthetic patterns
to convey intuitive truths about the Quality world.
"In SODV, Pirsig writes: "The arts explore the Conceptually Unknown in
other ways to create patterns such as music, literature, painting, that
reveal the Dynamic Quality that produced them."
"I think artistic, aesthetic patterns are distinctly different from
intellectual patterns although of course there is some overlap.
Pirsig's novels are excellent examples of combining intellectual and
aesthetic patterns."
As for Starbucks, the strictly rational (intellectual) approach to
coffee drinking would preclude anyone paying extra for the Starbuck's
ambience or whatever you want to call it. Likewise, if one
intellectually considers a computer as simply a tool, why bother making
them as pretty as the Sony Vaio and Apple iMac?
I would suggest that intuitively human beings recognize Quality and
seek it out. I also believe that the "betterness" we seek is largely
aesthetic, reflecting, however brightly or dimly, the shining force
that created all --Dynamic Quality. So it's not surprising to me to
find people taking aesthetic pleasure from material goods. The boot
maker in the story by John Galsworthy entitled "Quality" (reprinted in
the MOQ Forum) was so dedicated to aesthetics he died for it.
Perhaps my view is best summed up in this quote from the mystery
writer, Stephen King:
"There is fine Waterford crystal which rings delicately when struck, no
matter how thick and chunky it may look, and then there are Flintstone
jelly glasses. You can drink your Dom Perignon out of either one, but
friends, there is a difference."
Platt
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