BitterLittleFlower
01-25-2010, 03:29 PM
Picasso was great, La Guernica really earned him his fame, but his lesser works are wonderful for the most part...
Reading Capital, continued (thread #4) Fetishism...
Re: Reading Capital, continued (thread #4) Fetishism...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Reading Capital, continued (thread #4) Fetishism...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Reading Capital, continued (thread #4) Fetishism...
BitterLittleFlower
01-25-2010, 06:04 PM
Very interesting piece...I didn't see the portrait, I'll have to search it...Picasso, like many artists, was fucked when painting the portrait of such a huge figure...very funny how he spoke about it later... pretty commendable his work for the party, I think...might have something to do with his minor loss of prestige in the art world, but he obviously didn't care...picture on edit, hopefully ...
http://www.artfagcity.com/wordpress_cor ... so1953.jpg
01-25-2010, 06:04 PM
Very interesting piece...I didn't see the portrait, I'll have to search it...Picasso, like many artists, was fucked when painting the portrait of such a huge figure...very funny how he spoke about it later... pretty commendable his work for the party, I think...might have something to do with his minor loss of prestige in the art world, but he obviously didn't care...picture on edit, hopefully ...
http://www.artfagcity.com/wordpress_cor ... so1953.jpg
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Reading Capital, continued (thread #4) Fetishism...
blindpig
01-25-2010, 08:23 PM
at least his eyes are in the right place. Rather humanizing, I think.
01-25-2010, 08:23 PM
at least his eyes are in the right place. Rather humanizing, I think.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Reading Capital, continued (thread #4) Fetishism...
blindpig
01-25-2010, 08:23 PM
at least his eyes are in the right place. Rather humanizing, I think.
01-25-2010, 08:23 PM
at least his eyes are in the right place. Rather humanizing, I think.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Reading Capital, continued (thread #4) Fetishism...
Two Americas
01-26-2010, 07:54 AM
I mentioned that I think the whole "genius" composer thing is a bunch of hooey. It seems to me that it is all work with very little of the magic ingredient called "genius." If we can be brought to imagine that there is some mystical quality in the work of art, something ethereal, then it can be used for commercial purposes that have little to do with the work or the artist.
Music, just about everywhere and through all time, was used at gatherings and dances, and thousands of different traditions evolved in different locations. Just as the name that people use to describe themselves often means "people" in the generic sense, not a certain type of people, so too the name for any music meant just music, not a certain kind of music. Every village had musicians, and they played within a form that had been passed down. Some were better, but all were pretty damned good. Where does "genius" come in? I can't see it.
Wasn't the history of visual art similar? Decorations on practical items, likenesses of people that served the same purpose that snapshots do today? Wasn't quality all a matter of labor, time and effort put in, rather than any mystical ethereal qualities?
Whatever those sparks, those flairs are that give music or a work of art something remarkable or exceptional, seem to me to be found pretty commonly from many people doing many things, and are not reserved to the so-called geniuses.
I know that in music there are 10,000 "geniuses" completely ignored for every one that is recognized, and it seems to me that those who are called geniuses or "great composers" has more to do with upper class needs and sensibilities than it does any mystical quality in the art itself.
I think that everything we think we know about art and music is some sort of fraud, a con job by the ruling class. The purpose for elevating one artist up to "genius" category is to suppress, control and exploit the other 10,000 artists. The artists elevated are the ones who can most easily be used to promote ruling class interests, fit in with their narrative and be used to rob the working class of their art and music, their connection to it, their ownership of it. Once the ruling class declares one artist to be a genius, that means "fuck you" to all of the rest of the artists - no work, no income, no respect, no acceptance, turned into a social outcast.
Look at the Pavarotti phenomenon. You can't take one tenor and raise them up to the level that he was without denigrating and harming the thousands of other tenors who are every bit as talented. They all suffer by way of imagined comparison, and suffer income and work loss as well, and the basis for comparison is strictly commercial and dictated by the needs of the marketers, nothing to do with art. (I just realized that the same process is happening with that new privatized apple variety I have been writing about - "better than any other! The only one you should ever ask for! It makes all others inferior and undesirable!") Pavarotti isn't "better," and certainly is not better by a factor of a thousand to one as his fame and income would suggest. There is not one in 10,000 people who could actually detect anything objective that would make him better. But they all "know" that he is "the best." Pavarotti is Pavarotti - that is why he is perceived as better. What makes Pavarotti Pavarotti? A product, an object of great desire? Marketing, not artistic qualities.
People come up to us after performances and say "you are so fortunate to have been born with such great talent." That makes the tens of thousands of hours of work, the learning, the practicing all disappear. It is the extremely rare case that a person puts in tens of thousands of hours and does not become good, and the extremely rare case that a person does not put in the work and is good. Whatever element of inborn talent or creative genius there may be, it must be a very small part of the process.
01-26-2010, 07:54 AM
I mentioned that I think the whole "genius" composer thing is a bunch of hooey. It seems to me that it is all work with very little of the magic ingredient called "genius." If we can be brought to imagine that there is some mystical quality in the work of art, something ethereal, then it can be used for commercial purposes that have little to do with the work or the artist.
Music, just about everywhere and through all time, was used at gatherings and dances, and thousands of different traditions evolved in different locations. Just as the name that people use to describe themselves often means "people" in the generic sense, not a certain type of people, so too the name for any music meant just music, not a certain kind of music. Every village had musicians, and they played within a form that had been passed down. Some were better, but all were pretty damned good. Where does "genius" come in? I can't see it.
Wasn't the history of visual art similar? Decorations on practical items, likenesses of people that served the same purpose that snapshots do today? Wasn't quality all a matter of labor, time and effort put in, rather than any mystical ethereal qualities?
Whatever those sparks, those flairs are that give music or a work of art something remarkable or exceptional, seem to me to be found pretty commonly from many people doing many things, and are not reserved to the so-called geniuses.
I know that in music there are 10,000 "geniuses" completely ignored for every one that is recognized, and it seems to me that those who are called geniuses or "great composers" has more to do with upper class needs and sensibilities than it does any mystical quality in the art itself.
I think that everything we think we know about art and music is some sort of fraud, a con job by the ruling class. The purpose for elevating one artist up to "genius" category is to suppress, control and exploit the other 10,000 artists. The artists elevated are the ones who can most easily be used to promote ruling class interests, fit in with their narrative and be used to rob the working class of their art and music, their connection to it, their ownership of it. Once the ruling class declares one artist to be a genius, that means "fuck you" to all of the rest of the artists - no work, no income, no respect, no acceptance, turned into a social outcast.
Look at the Pavarotti phenomenon. You can't take one tenor and raise them up to the level that he was without denigrating and harming the thousands of other tenors who are every bit as talented. They all suffer by way of imagined comparison, and suffer income and work loss as well, and the basis for comparison is strictly commercial and dictated by the needs of the marketers, nothing to do with art. (I just realized that the same process is happening with that new privatized apple variety I have been writing about - "better than any other! The only one you should ever ask for! It makes all others inferior and undesirable!") Pavarotti isn't "better," and certainly is not better by a factor of a thousand to one as his fame and income would suggest. There is not one in 10,000 people who could actually detect anything objective that would make him better. But they all "know" that he is "the best." Pavarotti is Pavarotti - that is why he is perceived as better. What makes Pavarotti Pavarotti? A product, an object of great desire? Marketing, not artistic qualities.
People come up to us after performances and say "you are so fortunate to have been born with such great talent." That makes the tens of thousands of hours of work, the learning, the practicing all disappear. It is the extremely rare case that a person puts in tens of thousands of hours and does not become good, and the extremely rare case that a person does not put in the work and is good. Whatever element of inborn talent or creative genius there may be, it must be a very small part of the process.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Reading Capital, continued (thread #4) Fetishism...
Dhalgren
01-26-2010, 08:12 AM
"This is a real sticking point with the 'middle class', who claim their pittance of privilege is the result of the superior value of their work, as though their time on earth is more valuable than mine."
Labor, too, is 'congealed" in the aggregate, right? So that "value" for any commodity (and all commodities)is arrived at by the accumulation (?) of congealed labor over time and across commodities? Is that close?
01-26-2010, 08:12 AM
"This is a real sticking point with the 'middle class', who claim their pittance of privilege is the result of the superior value of their work, as though their time on earth is more valuable than mine."
Labor, too, is 'congealed" in the aggregate, right? So that "value" for any commodity (and all commodities)is arrived at by the accumulation (?) of congealed labor over time and across commodities? Is that close?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Reading Capital, continued (thread #4) Fetishism...
blindpig
01-26-2010, 08:41 AM
Though I think you can take it apart for one commodity as I did, just for illustrative purpose.
01-26-2010, 08:41 AM
Though I think you can take it apart for one commodity as I did, just for illustrative purpose.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Reading Capital, continued (thread #4) Fetishism...
anaxarchos
01-26-2010, 10:13 AM
...there is no direct relationship between the price of labor and the value created by labor. There is a historical element to higher wages accruing to labor of higher skill levels as well as for overseers, etc. That is the germ of truth to the claim. There is also a historical basis for higher wages in the imperialist countries. That is the germ of "privilege".
Neither one is set in stone, however, as current events are demonstrating. The reduction of all labor to simple labor as a function of value creation always has within it the possibility of "revamping" such outdated "traditions". The prison trustees will always get a few privileges but their magnitude is purely relative.
I don't think the middle class survives "globalization". If they were smart, they would be radical protectionists, no matter what that did to the price of their flat screens...
"If"... now, there's the rub.
01-26-2010, 10:13 AM
...there is no direct relationship between the price of labor and the value created by labor. There is a historical element to higher wages accruing to labor of higher skill levels as well as for overseers, etc. That is the germ of truth to the claim. There is also a historical basis for higher wages in the imperialist countries. That is the germ of "privilege".
Neither one is set in stone, however, as current events are demonstrating. The reduction of all labor to simple labor as a function of value creation always has within it the possibility of "revamping" such outdated "traditions". The prison trustees will always get a few privileges but their magnitude is purely relative.
I don't think the middle class survives "globalization". If they were smart, they would be radical protectionists, no matter what that did to the price of their flat screens...
"If"... now, there's the rub.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Reading Capital, continued (thread #4) Fetishism...
BitterLittleFlower
01-26-2010, 03:19 PM
classic Picasso...
01-26-2010, 03:19 PM
classic Picasso...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."