Re: [DISC] Is Language Creation Art?

En réponse à Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>:

>
> I can't think of any painter who is generally acknowledged as an great
> artist who was not also skilled at painting.
>
Easy to find! The most well known painter of the country I live in now! Vincent
Van Gogh is certainly generally acknowledged as a great artist. Yet I've seen
many of his paintings (in his museum in Amsterdam), including paintings of the
period before his impressionist period, and I can tell you that he had
absolutely no skill in painting. Even my unexerced eye could see his flaws:
inability to make any correct perspective even when he meant to, impossibility
to draw even a single straight line, in his pre-impressionist period he is not
even able to mix correctly his colours! And even his impressionist paintings
show the same kind of flaws. I, who have no skill in painting, could do largely
as well as he did!

Still, despite poor execution, some of his paintings were absolutely artistic.
I would go even further: the painting that touched me most, the one I found
most challenging and artistic was probably the worst one in terms of craft.
It's a pre-impressionist painting representing a room he lived in where
everything is wrong: the perspective is wrong, the lines are shaky, etc...
Still, its very clumsiness is what makes it artistic. It communicated with me,
showing me the young Van Gogh seeing madness arriving slowly and changing his
perception of things.

If you come one day to Amsterdam, I'll show you what painting I'm talking
about. It's not well known. Yet it's worth it! :))

>
> >One of the
> >best French song writers, Serge Gainsbourg, was admittedly absolutely
> >analphabete when it went to poetry and music technics. Yet his texts
> are
> >masters of modern poetry and his melodies are some of the best you can
> find in
> >French music,
>
> By analphabete at poetry, you mean he couldn't write it?
I meant he never learnt anything about poetry, apart from what everybody knows.
Many of his texts could not be considered poems by any standards (even the
subject and its treatment!). Still, he managed to make them poetic. Don't ask
me how, I never really understood. But I guess that's what genius is...

  But he'd
> been
> speaking since somewhere between one and two years old, I guess.  He'd
> surely have been learning his wordsmith craft as he grew up otherwise
> he'd
> not produce texts of which are masters of poetry.  As for the melodies,
> I
> don't know anything about the guy; but I guess he was one of those
> fortunate people who have a good for music and pick up melodies.  Who
> knows
> what had been going on his mind over the years.
>
Probably not much, since he was drunk most of the time :)) .

>
> >He was surely not a craftsman. Yet he was absolutely an artist.
>
> I'm not so sure.
Well, he even said so! Of course, we're not obliged to believe him...

>
> To tell the truth, I haven't formulated any hard and fast ideas.  Some
> are
> forming as this thread goes along.  I was trying to distinguish between
> the
> charlatan who passes himself off as an artist, and the real artitst.
>
Then I'm under the impression that the criterion is wrong anyway. After all,
who can pass himself off best as an artist and still being a charlatan than a
craftsman? Somebody who is not skilled cannot pass himself off as a real
artist: if he is not, it's obvious. But it doesn't mean he cannot be a real
artist.

>
> Possibly - tho if it's poor it may well hinder the communication.
>
Or improve it! :))

> I think to push your medium to the limits and even beyond it, you must
> have
> some feel or understanding of your medium.  It may be something hard
> won
> through much training, or it may be because of innate ability it has
> been
> acquired almost unconconsciously.
But then what you're saying becomes a tautology. What's an innate craft? I
thought the definition of craft itself implied learning... If you don't take
this definition, then the difference between craft and art simply disappears,
and the proposition that all artists must be crafstmen becomes meaningless.

Anyway, I'm more of the opinion that the more you know about a medium, the more
difficult it is to push its limits. It's the danger of specialisation: once
you're too specialised, you cannot go out of the limits you learned anymore.
It's valid in science like in art. Only a few people on this world can know as
much as a specialist in a certain subject and still not being specialised (and
those are true geniuses).

>
> One of my hobbies is cooking.  It certainly creative.  But is it art?
I guess art is one of those words that has been used in so many different
senses that it's now semantically empty, except for a reminding people of
something they cannot really define.

>
> I wonder if that's one of these words that don't mean quite the same
> each
> side of the pond.  Normally over here it just means "past-time", "what
> was
> does in one's spare time" - I have too many  ;)
>
In French either I can't think of "hobby" having a pejorative meaning. In fact,
in the French kind of thinking, it would be rather laudative! Indeed, somebody
who is artist as a profession is often considered lazy, and should "get a real
job". But someone doing the same, but as a hobby only, is considered creative.
So the same thing is an advantage in society when it's a hobby, and a
disadvantage when it's a profession!

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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