Art

[supergee]

One of the dubious ideas I got from Stranger in a Strange Land is that visual art must tell a story. As I evolved to a more YKIOK view of all the arts, I took out the part about “must” but conceded that my kink resembled Jubal Harshaw’s. So I like Rockwell and Hopper. But the stories don’t have to be straightforward, so I also like Dali and Magritte.

Comments

[mrissa]

Yeah, "telling a story" is a broad enough category that this strikes me as the kind of rule that exists to use as a club against art Heinlein doesn't like rather than a useful description of what's going on in the art in question.

[supergee]

Maybe it’s more like “inspires a story.” I see saying more about a Magritte painting than “Ha ha, it’s just a pissoir!”

[mrissa]

So my objection to the Duchamp urinal as art is that someone else made that urinal. I absolutely believe that a urinal can be art, but if so, it is not art made by the person whose name is on the little tag in this case. And it's pretty clear to me that what he was trying to do was comment on who gets to deem things art or not, not say "haha it's just a pissoir!"--but I think that's undermined by the fact that he doesn't credit the actual creator.

But this just goes back to "club to beat art Heinlein [or whoever] doesn't like with": I think it's much more the case that this is not a congenial story than that it is not a story.

[supergee]

I have the same objections to displaying as one’s own objects that may or not have been made by a supernatural Creator. On the other hand I like found objects that display more wit (IMAO) such as Picasso’s Bull’s Head