thanks ,William I got it this afternoon from Vroman's in Pasadena Ca, mando
________________________________ From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thu, May 20, 2010 9:10:53 PM Subject: Re: "You must learn to choose the truth before aesthetic preferences". (Auden) Yes, good point. Reality is continually reconstructed. But is it a good state of affairs? It's interesting that Auden of the 1930s would be more engaged in social-political content than in the 1950s. Arts study at that time (1930s through 1950s) --not necessarily practice --was still quite formal and aesthetically defined. Of course now it's all social-political and almost never formal and aesthetic, in both study and practice. This is a vexing situation in that art/s as a subject is no longer neutral or made up of objective fundamentals or rudiments like line, shape, texture, color (or their analogues in the other arts) but is almost entirely centered on interpretive concerns. Thus it's impossible to examine such concepts as Form anymore since it is now merely a reflection of some social, political identity or narrative. Form is formless except by appeal to something external to it. Same for all other "rudiments". It all makes sense in the postmodern idea where practice defines art rather than the other way around. But much has been lost nevertheless. It's a basic human trait to demand the fixedness of concepts and explications. Form is not the formless. Something specific to form must separate it from the formless in the same way that something specific to the number 4 separates it from other numbers. At least that's what we used to think. If so, then something in Auden's poetry of the 1930s would be the same in the 1950s, and it would not be affected or hidden by a societal-political content. That's Form. Something about Form is impervious to its use, yes or no? Today the answer is no. Is it the wrong answer? Some folks are saying postmodern is over. Now it's post-postmodern. The swing is back to rudiments, to Form, to the view that the social-political as the definer of Form and content is being reversed once again. WC ----- Original Message ---- From: Allan Sutherland <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, May 20, 2010 9:39:30 PM Subject: Re: "You must learn to choose the truth before aesthetic preferences". (Auden) On 04/05/2010 08:05, "joseph berg" <[email protected]> wrote: > Does that mean that a work of art should never distort or obscure reality? > > I have just picked up on this discussion and one thing that strikes me as peculiar is the lack of context for the discussion. For example, if Auden had said this in the 1930s its meaning, historically and for Auden would have been quite different, than if he had said/written it in the 1950s. Is that not of relevance? I would have thought it possible that the truth Auden spoke about would have been a social and/or political one, rather than an aesthetic one, if written in the 1930s. Then this discussion should have considered that or made a point of differing from the author's, Auden's, concerns from the outset to make the point more general, if not wider. Toodle-pip, Allan.
