On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 8:21 AM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote:
> At what point does vulgarity, the crudest level of profanity and the > excited, > blurting noises of those who have no other words to call forth, become > poisionous to art? At Chicago's vaunted Stppenwolf Theater, the current > play, > The Motherfucker With The Hat, may be a good play but why does it require > the > obscene title if not to add shock at the cost of cheapening the context and > lowering the expectations of the audiences? > > The century-old fascination with high-low may be the best reflection of the > democratic spirit as a whole but it does not add to the quality, and I > mean the > reach, of art. Many eras of art have achieved stunning greatness by > admitting > the ambition, the aspiration, of reaching for more than can be grasped in > reality. It is a way of having faith in the human conditon. But our era > is > centered on so-called reality, the dismissal of hopeful aspiration and > relegating it to the bin hastily labeled 'romantic mythology'. I've had > enough > of it. I'm sick of impoverished language, of the three-hundred word > average > adult vocabulary, decorated in moments of befuddlement with a string of > vulgarities that add nothing to awareness. > > It's very hard to create something that has an emotional sting that does > not > rely on ugly, deliberately crude, wanton vulgarity. One has to get to the > mind, > the life of the mind, the imaginative center of any private universe, > where skin > and bones, bodily functions and even desires are transformed and are made > suddenly transparent by the magic elixir of creative free-play. > > Haven't we had enough of irony, the wrench that disassembles the nuts and > bolts > of reality and gives us the child's play of reducing the clock to so many > banged > up inert pieces? > > When playwrights need to put the un-word Motherfucker into their titles > they are > announcing that their little canoe of a play will float on a shallow sea. > Who > needs it? When celebrated painters portray incestuous antics, they aim to > shock and thus escape the less vivid, unshaped troubles of human life that > beg > subtle metaphors to give them presence. > > Where is the new language? Where is language that's worthy of being > celebrated? > Where is Art? > > I'm for an elegant, difficult visual art. I like to read words that somehow > bloom into bushy, scented metaphors; I like music that echoes Nature. I > like to > create shapes that expand and close in, sweep toward, nudge, and mingle > suggesting whatever you see. I think the best art alerts consciousness > to an > invisible and supremely confident presence that we can suddenly imagine as > ourselves growing beyond ourselves. > - It may be argued that, if the less vulgar is the higher, and the less vulgar is always that which addresses the better public, an art addressing any and every one is of a very vulgar order. Aristotle
