"One ought to be able to hold in one's head simultaneously the two facts
that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one
does not invalidate or, in a sense, affect the other."

That was my point.  The fact that it was Dali just brings it home, because Dali 
did some "very odd" stuff.  We (all of us) seem to miss the point that one can 
do "very odd" stuff but still be able to benefit family/country/mankind (take 
your picks).  This applies to all walks of life; art is not the exclusive 
sanctuary of people who do "odd stuff".

The problem is one of justification, and in art especially, we go out of our 
way to justify, based on the fact that we "can't judge".  I also do some 
painting and drawing, and if I want to judge others' works, I'll damn well do 
it.  They (whoever they are) are also entitled to judge my works (if they feel 
like wasting their time).

Mapplethorpe (I also do photography), in my opinion was an excellent 
photographer.  His subject matter?  Not to my taste; when you (I) take a 
picture of a child I get down to the child's level; I don't take a picture in a 
downward direction... I'm sure you get the point.  So he seems to have been 
somewhat "bent" but if one likes his photography (irrespective of the 
"Mapplethorpe" label; and often the label is what sells it (would you 
believe!)) enough to put it on your walls, so be it.  Not me.  Neither 
Mapplethorpe nor various forms of corpses.

Going on a bit (as usual), but I don't think that art HAS to make a statement.  
Art (including my own) is just another form of vanity.  It's just pigment on 
paper or canvas, for goodness sake!!! It has as much spirituality in it 
(despite all the ooohs and aahhhhs) as does taking out the garbage... perhaps 
less...

<end of long, boring dissertation>

P.



----- Original Message ----
From: Jones Beene <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Sent: Sunday, September 7, 2008 10:49:39 AM
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Science and faith


----- Original Message ----

From: PHILIP WINESTONE


> Many years ago, George Orwell wrote a very powerful essay, entitled, "Benefit 
> of Clergy." It clarified - as only Orwell could - a similar type of situation.

I couldn't find this essay on the web, but in common law - the "benefit of 
clergy" was  a provision by which priests charged with crimes could claim that 
they were outside the jurisdiction of the secular courts. Later it was an 
elitist way to get a lighter sentence.

I did find a review of the essay which is at the end of this post. It was 
Orwell's criticism of Salvadore Dali - and reminiscent of the controvery around 
artists Andres Searrano / Robert Mapplethorpe by the world famous "art expert" 
Jesse Helms. Curiously, this is one of the only issues where Helms made sense 
at all, to me - but that was not at all about "art" itself - simply about the 
funding of art with public money.

A more fanciful version of this dicotomy between secular expert-opinion and 
science expert-opinion will be found in Neal Stephenson's forthcoming novel 
"Anathem" due out soon. From the reviews - this is about a parallel, role 
reversed Earth whose inhabitants are locked into conflict between scientific 
and religious institutions. The planet is like Earth in some ways, but differs 
in one major respect: the religious and scientific institutions are essentially 
reversed from the way many would view them. Monks called 'the avout' live 
ascetic lives studying science, while the so called "saecular" world is 
populated with wealthy 'Deolators' (god-worshipers) who are obsessed with 
religion., who apparently succeed against scinece with ESP and other forms of 
spiritual activity which science canot understand.

Below is a non-professional review of "Benefit Of Clergy" - which is the title 
of a collection of essays that Orwell wrote about  Salvador Dali :

In this essay Orwell addresses what he perceived as the distinction between 
moral and artistic judgments, pointing at two distinct schools of thought among 
critics at the time. The first school of thought saw the subject matter of 
Dali's work (which at the time was very shocking, particularly to the 
homophobic Orwell) and instantly dismissed the artistic quality of the work. 
The other group perceived Dali as a great artist, and therefore (according to 
Orwell) dismissed claims that his work was immoral - (or possibly had different 
moral standards to Orwell, a possibility he failed to consider).

The crux of his argument comes in the following section: One ought to be able 
to hold in one's head simultaneously the two facts that Dali is a good 
draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one does not invalidate or, in a 
sense, affect the other. The first thing that we demand of a wall is that it 
shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall, and the question of what 
purpose it serves is separable from that. And yet even the best wall in the 
world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp. In the 
same way it should be possible to say, "This is a good book or a good picture, 
and it ought to be burned by the public hangman". Unless one can say that, at 
least in imagination, one is shrinking the implications of the fact that an 
artist is also a citizen and a human being.

Of course it should not be imagined that Orwell was arguing in favour of book 
burning - the next paragraph starts "Not, of course, that Dali's autobiography, 
or his pictures, ought to be suppressed. Short of the dirty post cards that 
used to be sold in Mediterranean seaport towns it is doubtful policy to 
suppress anything, and Dali's fantasies probably cast useful light on the decay 
of capitalist civilisation".

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Orwell (and I agree on the general 
principle but not on the specific case of Dali, in so far as I know Dali's work 
at least) the essay makes fascinating reading, and is particularly relevant 
today in the light of 'BritArt', the Sensation and Ant Noises exhibitions, and 
most recently the exhibition of plastinated human corpses as artworks in 
London. Like all Orwell's nonfiction, it remains relevant today because the 
issues remain relevant, and because Orwell was a master both of the English 
language and of rhetoric, who knew better than any other essayist of his 
generation how to construct an argument.

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