“…but is it art?”

First, a taste of Kipling, then a less-than-vitriolic rant.

When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden’s green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, “It’s pretty, but is it Art ?”

In an age when “expression” is a catchall for so-called “art” and non-speech grunts, groans squeals and inarticulate scribblings, I think Kipling’s Devil asks the right question to start talking about what is so very wrong about “art”—graphic, musical, literary, dramatic, etc.—today and a bit of what that says about our society in general.

In “The Conundrum of the Workshops, Kipling outlined a feel for creative endeavor… and how critics kill creativity. And he had his “Devil” ask the question so asked by critics of kipling’s day—often critics of his poetry—qho sought to belittle efforts of others with creativity the critics usually lacked themselves: It’s pretty, but is it art?

But Kipling’s devil can’t ask that of rap “music” (or much other popular music today) or of defacing of nature with great swaths of fabris and calling it “art” or of “serious” literature (or “serious” music for that matter) or darned near anything from Hollyweird, because almost none of it even passes the “pretty” test. Almost all of it is ugly, base, venal, stupid crap.

Holly Lisle’s disquisition (OK, rant) on How to Write Suckitudinous Fiction is enough to dispense with most pretentiously “artful” literature.

…the quest for good fiction is not the only way. There is … another path. A dark path. And it is a path rich in tradition and esteemed by many. It is the Path of Suckitude.

Not all bad fiction is Suckitudinous. Some of it is simply bad — written by people who are completely tone-deaf to the language, blind to character and motivation, and incompetent with conflict.

Unlike bad fiction, Suckitudinous Fiction takes a dedication to the fine art of sucking that, if pursued with sufficiently rabid fanaticism, can win Pulitzers. (Yes, I think an inordinate number of recent Pulitzer-prize-winning novels suck. Hugely.)

Yeh, Read The Whole Thing…

Some of what Holly Lisle says there can be directly applied to Hollyweird and other purveyors of fecal matter* in place of food for the soul. As for the rest, let me rearticulate: if it ain’t at least pretty and/or well-made, crafted with care and thought and heart, it ain’t art.

Most pop music fails in all of that. Sloppily-written, poorly-performed crap is fit only for sloppy-thinking people with lead-for-ears hearing.

Oh. What am I thinking? I just described most people I know.

If you can discern pitches and keep a steady beat (at the minimum), try this: go to a high school choir concert, listen to one (if you can stomach it) episode of American Idol. Try to count the number of people performing who have good pitch recognition and an ability to stay within an established tonality, who can actually make rythmic sense as well. You will probably not have to use all the fingers of even one hand.

Disheartening.

And that’s just performers. “Songwriters” who write lyrics that are nonsense, tuneheisters who, well, have no sense of musical teleology, arrangers who lack the ability to, well, write and instrumentalists who (apparently) have no idea there are human voices in the mix abound, as well.

Move from amateur venues (where it’s easy to hear why 10 40 crap isn’t heard by consumers for the crap it is) and listen (if you have the ability to actually hear) to top 40 crap for a while. If you can stand it. Some will be good. Scratch that. Very few will be good.

And that’s just accounting for basic musicality—the ability to reproduce harmonious and sensible sounds. What’s worse is the underlying ethos, or rather what the underlying ethos lacks.

Let me hit the chord one more time: what is lacking in almost all popular “art” are classical values that encourage good in people. I’ve written about this before (recently, in fact), but it bears repeating. Specifically, the principles of Classical (as opposed to “classical”) music would serve us well as a society if applied across the board to all our arts.

• balance
• clarity
• accessibility
• expressiveness
• edification

Expressiveness is available in abundance. Even a degree of accessibility, at the most base, venal level, for the most part. But “accessibility” within the Classical model—which also applied to the Neoclassical expressions in graphic, literary and architectural art—doesn’t mean debasing the expression. Note that last value: edification.

edification: The act of edifying, or the state of being edified; a building up, especially in a moral or spiritual sense; moral, intellectual, or spiritual improvement; instruction.¹

That’s the one quality most popular art today not only lacks but is the very antithesis of! What’s worse is that even the few well-written, well-performed pop songs are mostly “suckitudinous” (to steal Holly Lisle’s word), as are most (of the few) “pretty” movies from Hollyweird and what few offerings from the graphic “arts” show evidence of decent draftsmanship and craft.

They are not only NOT uplifting, for the most part, but are downright debasing.

As for clarity and balance. *sigh* Not an option with most pop art. Muddled ambiguity, boring and off-kilter all at once. (I hold up rap so-called “music” as the worst offender in all these respects.)

And what this says of our culture—that it is becoming cruder, stupider, less capable of discerning between the good the bad and the ugly—is the depressing part.

But then… OTOH, it does give me plenty of fodder for ridicule. Face it: when someone thinks they can sing, forexample, and inflicts their complete lack of ability to do so on my, I’m as likely as not to laugh in their faces. The idea of allowing people to get away with inflicting pain on anyone who is not tone deaf escapes me. It’s not just the emperor walking around naked, it seems 90% of folks who think they have “talent” are doing so, and that’s both sad and funny. And deserving of loud and raucus laughter at their ridiculous performances/products.

Cos if I didn’t laugh, I’d have to cry.

I can stand “pretty”—even the saccharine, cookie-cutter Thomas Kincaid kind—because it’s not particularly destructive. And I don’t laugh at a child attempting to sing or draw, but listen and look for a scrap of talent to encourage. But really, folks, it’s time to start pointing out that the self-appointed “emperors” of contemporary and popular “art” are not only walking around butt naked but butt ugly as well.

For the rest of The Conundrum of the Workshops, CLICK HERE.

Talkin’ ’bout purty at Diane’s Stuff, TMH’s Bacon Bits, Blue Star Chronicles, Freedom Watch and The Real Ugly American.

*what I mean to say here is “shit”. Of course.