However, that only makes it art to me, personally! Is it still art even if I'm the only person on the planet who does return to it?
To my mind, yes! Even if you don't but the artist does, "The Arc of intent" from embedding human values to re-experiencing in some way, has been completed.
As soon as you respond to that work in the way that it causes you emote, think, react and to reassess values or the state of things, then the work is probably art. When you must revisit and share with others, this is now, for sure, art.
Likewise, if everybody else loved a painting and I find it dull and would never revisit it, is it no longer art then? I would claim that it is still art, just not a type of art I enjoy. Likewise, it can still be art, even if some "expert" or gallery owner claims otherwise.
Art requires a human to experience it. However we all have different cultural baggage and personal experience and education. So we, of course, can react differently to the same work.
Tonight I was at a recital. Camerata Pacifica presented a concerT at the magnificent Colburn School in Los Angeles. They started with
Rain Spell by Takemitsu, a Japanese composer (who has in addition scrored a number of Japanese movies). The stage was almost dark except for some blue lights. There was a flute, clarinet, violin, harp and vibraphone. (
Catherine Leonard is the Irish violinst that we know of well and really wanted to meet again, she's a treasure, as are all the others).
Imagine a piece of black paper with mostly empty space with lights and colors popping up with different tonalities form and texture.
That is what the music was like.
Much silence space broken by music coming from different places and unexptected combinations and contrasts. Forget the linear form of the classics!
Now to me, this was a multidimensional sculpture. I was fascinated.
However, a number of people, including a usually tolerant benefactor, were clearly facing a culture warp and were, to say the least, pained!
They would not want to repeat the experience; ever!
However, I am seeking out other sites of performance they have scheduled to hear the music again. I'll also buy a CD if avaiLalble!
They also played Crumb,
Elven Echoes of Autumn (which is also non-linear) and for that the dissenters had already either left or put themselves into a protective passive-aggressive trance.
So here, like in Visual art, reception, completing "The Arc of Intent", as I call it, only works for people genetically or phenotypically prepared for it!
So after tonights music performances I could reconsider what we were writing about here.
I then really appreciated how vision, talent, creativity imagination and skill cannot necessarily deliver a work to someone who's door is locked, bolted and welded shut!
Art is not in the eye of the beholder, rather it must reach the heart of the beholder.
Asher
