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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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irony?
are you saying he hasn't produced art?
or that he can't produce art, unless there is art to produce against?
What I’m saying is that as part of an evolving style, the New York School, and part of an avant garde that was basically a series of reactions to a previous series of approaches, Stella is basing his own approach on reacting to what was already set in motion by previous participants in that school and his work could only make sense within the particular context of what at the same time he was disavowing… and that is ironic.
Stella’s a terrific painter and a very smart guy, articulate too, but his notions of what art is and how art functions and the supremacy of the avant garde are really problematic. Art with its inferiority complex in relation to science tied itself in modernism to the notion of a kind of logically (teleological) reductive pursuit and that pursuit ultimately failed. The logical conclusion of Stella’s theory is simply an idea without an object.
If you can demonstrate that the visual arts need not be visual you might have something.
bee fossils from 100 million years ago seem to suggest that these little buggers are rather well adapted to living on Earth... they've been doing it a couple of orders of magnitude longer than hominid... they seem to be a positive affect on the Earth as well, whereas with all our "higher level cognitive yadda, yadda, yadda..." we'll be lucky to survive our own stay.
Here’s a real issue for the science minded: the diminishment of higher level cognitive skills as somehow unimportant in relation to reality. This is a romantic theme that goes back to the 18th century certifying the virtue of the primitive and the inherent corruption of civilization. A false narrative some still cling to.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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you like this idea that I espouse a romantic notion of nature...
I'm not making any judgements about what is "better" or "worse," what is of more value, what is of less... you've been doing a good job at that.
I'm just saying that the bees have been around a long time, and that is certainly telling us something about the utility of bee behavior. Our own behavior is also telling us something, and it might be hard to hear what that is if you are staring in the mirror admiring the reflection ignoring everything else.
Stella is an artist, and perhaps a critic, but an artist of some acclaim, so I'm interested in his opinion regarding art....
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Stella is an artist, and perhaps a critic, but an artist of some acclaim, so I'm interested in his opinion regarding art....
Stella recently (just closed) had a retrospective at the De Young in SF. Great show. You should be interested in his opinion. But in the previous quote he's wrong. You'd be interested to know that later in his career he changed his tune substantially.
I'm not making any judgements about what is "better" or "worse," what is of more value, what is of less... you've been doing a good job at that.
I'm just saying that the bees have been around a long time, and that is certainly telling us something about the utility of bee behavior. Our own behavior is also telling us something, and it might be hard to hear what that is if you are staring in the mirror admiring the reflection ignoring everything else.
This has nothing to do with narcissism and everything to with realizing our responsibility on this planet. The reality is that cognitive ability places humanity in a position unrealized by any other creature on this planet... we better do the right thing. A romantic view is not very helpful.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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This has nothing to do with narcissism and everything to with realizing our responsibility on this planet.
that is an internally inconsistent sentence, who gave us this responsibility? it seems that we made that up ourselves...
and what does it matter, in the lifetime of the universe?
who's being romantic now?
mean while, the bees keep buzzing.
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WBraun
climber
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Human is distinguished differently from animals by their ability to go against their own true nature.
Most people 99.99% of so called humanity (just polished animals) go against their true nature in various degrees.
A real true human being is extremely rare on this planet in this day and age ......
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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that is an internally inconsistent sentence, who gave us this responsibility? it seems that we made that up ourselves...
Who gave us the responsibility? Mr. Evolution no doubt.
And what does it matter?
And this is where your romantic view leads us to an abandonment of responsibility a ruined planet and what the hell does it matter? Well it does matter too bad you can't see that.
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WBraun
climber
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No and yes
They are simultaneously applied according to time, circumstance and developed conciousness ......
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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The bumblebee story is fascinating. I had read it in the NYT, but hadn't seen the video.
I don't know how many of you are fans of the show, Black Mirror, but there is a particularly disturbing episode that involves robot bees that can be (and are, ultimately) programmed to do bad things. Who knew that bumble bees already had this capacity to learn? Forget the robots. Introduce a gene with malevolent effects (with respect to humans) into a bumble bee population. They already have the wherewithal to learn relatively complex behavior. You think the Russians haven't seen that episode?
I wonder how smart army ants are?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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I found a handwritten bumble bee manuscript just yesterday in my back yard. It was a kind of Divine Comedy for bees complete with comparitive[sic] notes and citations of Dante's original.
Here’s a real issue for the science minded: the diminishment of higher level cognitive skills as somehow unimportant in relation to reality.
Bees versus Dante?
Scientists diminishing higher level cognitive skills?
Bizarre, Paul.
I would hazard the opinion, though, that reality was working fine before the appearance of higher level cognitive skills, if human cognition is what you refer to, and will continue to work if human cognition leaves the stage.
And if you feel that consciousness was already writ in the Big Bang, maybe you should adopt more of an attitude of reverence toward the humble bee.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Or fear of ... And that's bumble.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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I hear you, DMT. In that respect, it would have been a much better story if it had been army ants.
As long as I have the stage, I'm a third of my way into reading Homo Deus and it's very apparent what the author's stance is on animal rights. He argues passionately in an opposite vein from Paul. He is very critical of human's assumptions of our "special" place in the animal kingdom, and he specifically assigns blame for this to the theistic traditions (including the Abrahamic religions (the winners)) that evolved during the transition to agriculture from hunting and gathering.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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If you think about it, before there was any agriculture, there was really only hunter-gatherer societies. Even within a single tribe or group of tribes, it probably took generations to change from being 100 percent dependent on wild plants and wild animals to mostly dependent on domestic plants and domestic animals.
If you take a broader view, recognizing the likely geographic and time-dependent spread of agriculture from one or more geographic centers, humans, as a whole, must have gone through a long period where each decade brought the percentage of agriculture-based vs. hunter-gatherer-based societies ever higher.
You can see how this would have been a fertile arena for religions to evolve.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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He argues passionately in an opposite vein from Paul. He is very critical of human's assumptions of our "special" place in the animal kingdom, and he specifically assigns blame for this to the theistic traditions (including the Abrahamic religions (the winners)) that evolved during the transition to agriculture from hunting and gathering.
Wait a minute… Abrahamic religions teach the fallen state of man in a nature that is cursed because of man’s actions. Man is the sinner responsible for nature’s ruin: sound familiar? Roses have thorns because of man’s disobedience. Nature has been corrupted by man and won’t return to its state of grace without the return of God. Nature ruined by man.
Sounds to me like you science guys have a lot more in common with ol’ Abraham than you care to admit. Think about it.
Bizarre, Paul.
Not bizarre, funny. What's bizarre is watching a bee push a marble around and then relating it to the cognitive abilities of a human being.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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What's bizarre is watching a bee push a marble around and then relating it to the cognitive abilities of a human being.
You brought up IQ tests as ways to compare the puzzle-solving skills of humans and animals. Was that bizarre?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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You brought up IQ tests as ways to compare the puzzle-solving skills of humans and animals. Was that bizarre?
Not as bizarre as that post.
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jstan
climber
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There are many bizarre things in this world.
Take an animal. Any animal. They are all conscious of hunger when they need to eat. They would be dead if they weren't. Evolution has placed this form of consciousness in living things. I'll grant you a pretty elementary form has developed in amoebae. But it has to be there.
Why have, we the most intelligent beings in the whole universe, posted 50,000 times on such topics?
I can pose a tougher question, It is arguable that never has a people faced fewer existential threats to them than have we here in the US. When we lived in nomadic groups of forty or so people struggling to survive day to day, of course we evolved an aversion to any different appearing persons who might compete with us for the food we needed. Possibly, we even wiped out the Neanderthal for this very reason. It's all different now. Hitler wiped out the people we used to develop nuclear weapons. That's about as existential as it gets.
So here's the question? What's going on with us?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Paul: . . . what art is and how art functions and the supremacy of the avant garde are really problematic.
It’s all completely problematic if one is looking for a final answer. There will always be an avant garde, and they will want to overturn what has come before even while standing on it. This is who we are. We transcend. We destroy. We create. There is a certain symmetry to it.
All interpretations are problematic.
Last, what is the problem around what is primitive (or even what is romantic)? Compared to what? It’s all the same damned thing. It’s an attitude, a perspective, a set of beliefs, a surety that can’t be found. Trading one view for another seems to change absolutely nothing.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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It’s all completely problematic if one is looking for a final answer. There will always be an avant garde, and they will want to overturn what has come before even while standing on it. This is who we are. We transcend. We destroy. We create. There is a certain symmetry to it.
What about all those art forms bound up in unchanging tradition? The avant garde is a modernist construction equating the new with that which is improved, an erroneous attachment to the methods of science in the face of self doubt. The greater history of art has been dominated by unchanging traditions from the Paleolithic to the Egyptian to the Byzantine to the academics of the 19th century. In these tradition bound societies/structures change is not improvement but loss. I don’t see destruction as the predicate to creation as the greatest creative periods are often nothing but recouped histories like the Renaissance revival of classical antiquity. The necessity to overturn is largely a repetitive swing from classical to anti-classical forms as described by Wolflin and Nietzsche, but this swing remains a tradition in itself and not an act of destruction and creation. The great error of modernist art is to believe a final answer is achievable/inevitable through continual change and through avant garde destruction. The modernist revelation was that at the end of the road there wasn't anything.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Paul:
I’ll grant you that the avant garde can be downright silly, and certainly meaningless to many. Change itself is troubling because it uproots honed practices that are useful and well-understood. In other words, all that you say in your post is reasonable. Without falling into too deep of an intellectual morass here about aesthetics, I’d say that it’s good that young people learn to see that which is conventional and stable for the ease that it can provide, and that old people (me, for sure) to learn that change and new views can be stimulating and brimming with potential. For me, it’s a dance (that I probably don’t do very well).
Within the last week, I’ve been asked to teach a semester course in three weeks, 5 days a week, 3 hours a day. I’ve been at teaching my subject now for 25 years, but I’ve never really had to put 5 gallons in a 3-gallon container. Hell, I don’t know that anyone wants to talk about anything for 3 hours a day for three weeks! I want to do the course if for no other reason than it will force me to do something very different. That will be hard for me. I’ll have to see things differently, and some of those things will be tried, proven, and dear to my heart and mind. I’m a bit groundless right now considering what I could do and can’t do.
It’s my read of art history (as superficial as it must be) is that the question of what art is and isn’t has often been one of the central issues in the field, along with what is (and is not) truly innovative or creative. What also appears to be an on-running issue at-hand in art in my experience is the difference of opinions and attitudes between the intellectual critics of art and those of the artists themselves. The few artists that I’ve come to know personally have generally expressed great distain of critics who analyze and interpret the meaning of art and its movements. The artists themselves, on the other hand, seem able to only *point* at their works as the only “true statement” that can be made.
I’d say it’s sort of like some of the spiritualists that I’m working with versus many who want to know definitively just what the hell we spiritualists are trying to point to. We spiritualists don’t think we can say what this thing is that we’re pointing to.
(BTW, in economics we hold the notion of revolution working with evolution as dear. Joseph Schumpeter called it, “creative destruction.” Of course, economists live in a zero-sum world, and that is a description of a material world.)
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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I'd like to belong to a hunter-gatherer-climbing community.
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