From: dstein@phobos.math.ucla.edu (David Stein)
Subject: Re: Uncritical thought (was: Unintelligentsia (was: Re: Spider...))
Reply-To: dstein@phobos.math.ucla.edu (David Stein)
Organization: UCLA, Mathematics Department
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 92 13:52:07 GMT

In article <1g11jx#2s4vDL4MyVsg6zdv8cB5JJSg=eric@snark.thyrsus.com>,
eric@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
 
|> I'm well aware of this.  Nevertheless, the art-lit crowd was for a long time
|> predominantly Marxist or fellow-traveller.  My description stands.

   You really do make very sweeping and vague statements yet provide no
   evidence.

   What do you mean by "a long time"?  Since the 60's?  This century?

   Who is the "art-lit crowd"?  Only academia type people?  Writers and 
   artists? Would someone like Ginsberg qualify or is he out?

   And does "predominantly" also imply "thoroughly"?  If yes, could you name
   ten most influential art/lit critics from the period you referred to?  And
   then indicate which ones are Marxist and which ones are "fellow-travelers"
   (whatever that means when applied to art criticism).
    
   I'm not trying to be picky, I would just like to see if you can reduce
   your assertion/proof ratio to a finite number.
    
[On Surrealism & Socialist Realism:]
|> The fact that those schools had different political goals (though not that
|> different; both were Marxist) is completely irrelevant.  The *relevant* fact
|> is that both viewed art explicitly as a tool of indoctrination and
|> "conscousness-raising". 
  
|> Hardly.  I *would* like to see the decadent modern attitude that the
|> artist is the only arbiter of what `art' is consigned to the scrap heap
|> where it belongs.
   
|> No.  Heck, I *like* Surrealist and Dadaist art.  But the *attitude*
that came
|> in with it --- the ideological baggage, the elitist rejection of common
|> experience, the "revolutionary" arrogance --- *that* has got to go. 
And *will*
|> go, no matter how hard you cling to it or how furiously as you deride its
|> critics for alleged "know-nothingism".  The times, they are a'changin'....
  
   You know, I lived in a communist country for most of my childhood, and I
   think people there would find your opinion naive and funny on both political
   and artistic grounds.

   First, the way you throw in Marxism, Socialist Realism, and "decadent
   modern attitude" smacks of the way many on the in the U.S. refer to 
   Socialism (as in Social Democratic/Welfare/Liberal) as essentially 
   identical to Communism of Bolshevik type.  Such deliberate blurring
   of differences may be profitable politically, but also insults all
   those who paid with their lives for their refusal of subservience to
   Communism.

   Go and live 10 years in the very mild Czechoslovakian oligarchy of the
   70s/80s and then live for the same time in Sweden.  If you can't tell
   the difference, you are beyond hope.
    
   The connection to art is that, of course, all those movements and schools,
   which you dismiss on ideological grounds, have indeed clashed with the
   communist power (_real_ power, not a "cocktail crowd").

   And about half of the artists who actively and vocally opposed the regime 
   in Czechoslovakia would probably fit well into your "Marxist" register.

   
   Even on artistic grounds alone your opinion is funny if viewed from Prague.
   I don't know about the U.S., but in Bohemia the only time that the majority
   of the art community were consciously Marxist or Communist was during the 
   20s.  This ended in 1927 (or 1929) when the communist party had a pro-Stalin
   coup which put off most of the writers/poets etc.

   Surrealism itself was seldom actively political as far as I know, unless you
   mean that Cubism is Communist because Picasso was.  In Bohemia, Surrealism 
   has been criticized by the Communists since its inception, and I have not 
   heard it being associated with a political movement after WW2.

   And hasn't Dada been dead, as a movement or a school, for longer than your
   lifetime?  Sure, its elements pop up here and there, like in the Sex Pistols
   kind of punk, but there you could make a case for it being anti-Marxist, not
   to mention anti-Communist.

  
[On moder art museums:] 
|> Why are they screaming in distress, "de-acquisitionining" to meet their
|> operating expenses, and perpetually running desperate campaigns to pull in
|> more visitors that have only slight and transient effects?
|> 
|> If we had a healthy arts subculture, art would have something to say to
|> the average Joe and art museums would be as popular as baseball games.  And
|> they were, in the last century.  Only part of this change can be linked to
|> the emergence of mass visual media.  Most of it predates that emergence, and
|> can be clearly laid to things artists did to themselves.
|> -- 
|>       Eric S. Raymond = eric@snark.thyrsus.com  (mad mastermind of
TMN-Netnews)

   When I traveled extensively around the U.S., museums of both modern and
   classical art were on my schedule, and I noticed no difference in how
   popular they were.

   Your statement that decline of interest in art museums predates 
   "the emergence of mass visual media" seems to miss the fact that cinema
   has become a "mass media" right after WW1 in most of Europe.  You could
   indeed make a good case for the effect of visual technology on both
   artists' styles and on public interest in painting exhibitions (of any
   style what-so-ever).
   
   Again, more clarity and some evidence would be most welcome.

								- David


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm not a native speaker of English, so I'm not sure what I wrote.
Flames will be ignored unless you post them in perfect Czech.
================================ - David (the metamathician) - ===