Re: CHAT: Steg's wonderful .sig (and a question)
| From: | Thomas R. Wier <artabanos@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, November 11, 1999, 19:05 |
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Nik Taylor wrote:
> Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> > Not only that, but I don't think that paintings can be understood very
> > well by someone who isn't into the artform itself. I realize that one
> > can understand all the hidden meaning in a Jan Steen painting without
> > knowing one whit of the painting technique, but it will help a lot.
> > Enjoying music also demands some work from the audience.
>
> I disagree. MAYBE you might be right about "understanding" paintings,
> but, tho I know nothing of art, I can enjoy paintings. Same goes with
> music. At times I like to listen to Bach or Beethoven or Mozart even
> though I couldn't tell you the first thing about the music or the
> composer, only that I like it.
The point is not whether you can appreciate it, it's the extent to
which you can appreciate. The way I read Boudewijn, he was
saying that there are multiple levels to a work of art, and while you might
be able to appreciate the general gist of it, you might not fully understand
how the brushstrokes or the color interact with that gist. It's like...
say, watching an Akira Kurosawa film. There are multiple levels of
meaning in _Dersu Uzala_: the basic plotline set in Tsarist Russia,
yet deeper, the interactions between the Tsarist troops and the
Siberian natives, and then at a still deeper level allusions to
the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh and the Enkidu-wildman motif. In
otherwords, you can't just reduce things to what they're "basically"
about -- you, the audience, have to pick them apart, and digest
them in bits and pieces. And to do that picking apart takes practice,
and isn't normally the kind of thing you can do just off hand like that.
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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704 AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
Non cuicumque datum est habere nasum.
It is not given to just anyone to have a nose.
-- Martial
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