dialogical aesthetics

Miklos, let me defend my claims. I was thinking principally of Bertram Russell's "ABC of Relativity" wherein he tried to explain the perspective or essentials of relativity theory in plain English. As I recall, he failed and even had to resort to formal expressions that were too technical for this ordinary reader. I hope I recall that correctly. When theoretical physicists attempt to explain or translate highly abstract notions in terms of ordinary language they achieve, I think, little more than caricatures of theory.
My reference to the "style" of much of post-modern discourse reflects my impression that some writers appear to use a thesaurus to find the least used version of a term.
For me, zen discussion is paradoxical because its frame of "mind" is inherently non-dualistic, contrary to normal language ruled as it is by a dualistic grammar. Some very talented writers on zen, like Alan Watts, talk ABOUT zen in intellectually stimulating ways, but they are not expressing the essentially ineffable and nondualistic zen perspective itself. As I understand it, that "perspective" even goes beyond NON-dualism.
As far as I'm concerned, ordinary language is built to meet the pragmatic demands of everyday life, and it provides--in the hands of extraordinary speakers--a medium for literary and poetic artistic creation.

Oh, come on, Bertram Russell is an easy read, at least if you're on LSD.

You got some? I'm behind in my physics.

JL, A number of people, since Bertrand Russell, have had a go at explaining relativity in ordinary language. Hawking? Some have done better than Russell--whose greatest strength was mathematics, yes? You'd think Russell would be the ideal person to translate relativity into English prose. Perhaps, because math came so naturally to him, he felt its absence particularly strongly when it came to explaining Einstein in layperson's language. Dunno. It must be hard for a mind as strong as Russell's to fathom just what the lay mind is!

I find Kurt Godel's theorems far harder to wrap my mind around than relativity theory, yet Hofstadter (sp?) expresses them very well in relatively plain English in GODEL, ESCHER, BACH.

Did you see the recent film "What the X%&@ do We Know," a documentary of attempts to apply quantum physics to a macro world? Very entertaining. A Few of the experts were talking through their hats, but most were able to draw sensible connections, in a straightforward language. Perhaps, the goal of applying quantum mechanics to the larger world is unrealizable, but most of the attempts in this film are arresting.

I agree with you that Watts is mostly talking ABOUT Zen--and he does that with facility!

You are, of course, entirely right that certain concepts cannot be rendered in simple language--and, perhaps, this failure is most common when the ideas must be felt rather than perceived by logic.

Now, I am off to visit your art that is posted here on A2K. Thanks very much for telling me about it!

Art-liker, perhaps we can have coffee when you visit your home town. I am not sure on what date I will be going next to Albuquerque - indeed I just found out I am going to Los Angeles next week an hour ago - but the likelihood is that I'll be in Humboldt county when you are. Not to put you on the spot on the forum, but you won't have private message privileges at a2k yet as a new member. I think I can pm you, but you don't get to answer back (not about you, but the site is in defense mode re spam attacks). If you'd rather not meet, that's fine too.

art correspondence limitations for newbies
sure ossobuco, that would be great! though i looked at the artists showing in the small works show at MGMA and I'm still not positive who you are, though i have some idea. i know we've met, i'm sure. not being able to private message yet is a drag, but if you are willing, you can probably find contact info & email through some quick research on-line regarding what i do out here in CO.

I certainly understand why theorist/critics like Miwon Kwon and Hal Foster are being described as pretentious, but I think it is horribly naive to assume that they aren't saying anything at all. Yes, their language is academic, and the points they are making may be so specific that they don't seem like much at all, but they are writing, primarily, for fellow academics. (There are a whole bunch of interesting issues regarding who an academic's, or for that matter a contemporary artist's, audience should be that I don't really have time to explore right now.)

I have put a lot of effort in to learning their kind of critical thinking because I want to be, if not actively dealing with, at least aware of the most sophisticated theories regarding contemporary art. I find reading this stuff quite rewarding, and it is an integral part of my artistic practice, along with looking at art and working in the studio.

I'm not sure what kind of art everyone here is interested in, but if you're interested in why contemporary art matters, what kind of progressive roles artists can take in our spectacle economy, then you really should give at least some consideration to what these "pretentious" theorists are saying.

Vince, I don't recall anyone arguing that Kwon or contemporary art theoreticians have nothing of value to say. It has been argued only that their STYLE of communication is pretentious. I am a contemporary artist (principally an easel and on-the-table painter) and retired humanistically-oriented social scientist. And in both capacities I have felt myself obliged to keep up with "the latest" in post-modern theory. I have understood and appreciated some, perhaps much, of what has been written, but I have also been appalled by much of the fashionable obscurantism dominating both fields.

Vince, Do "the most sophisticated theories regarding contemporary art" need to be written in academese? I'm afraid that is exactly what some of these writers think! To me, academese has always seemed counter-productive; it signals that you, the author, belong to a small group, which you may consider an elite, but it doesn't bring your best ideas to the larger audience they deserve. Sophisticated theories can and should be presented with clarity.

Perhaps part of the problem is that to academics their writing seems clear. I used to barely understand anything when I read these essays. Now that I've been at it for a couple of years they seem pretty clear to me.

I really don't think fashion is an issue here, unless you're dealing with art students.

Vince, when academics, myself included, write for technical journals, our arguments cannot be easily followed by "lay" persons because of the technical language used, but not because the arguments are too subtle or "deep." I don't mind that that happens, since the writers are writing for other technicians, i.e., colleagues with a shared linguistic shorthand and set of conceptual conventions. But if and when such academics re-write their materials for an intellectual lay audience, they are sometimes accused of the sin of popularization. But "academse," as Miklos calls it, is a stylistic rather than a technical mode of communication. And I do think, indeed I insist, that it follows forces of fashion. At present, practicioners of American academese seem to be trying to speak French in English.

edited, 6-30

In just about any topic you can name, purposely obscure expression has continually been in fashion with weaker writers trying to game or gull their readers. This is not exclusively the province of art students.

Last fall, one of my teachers from college asked me to edit an essay she was about to send out for publication. I felt honored--especially as I was most definitely no star in her classroom of 1962. She is a highly distinguished scholar (a Sterling Professor of English, Emerita, at Yale) whose specialty is a complex area, Middle English poets. Her primary concern, as she expressed it to me: CLARITY. I am sure that she CAN read/decipher just about anything--but I doubt that she finds academese "clear." From remarks she has made, I believe she finds such language disappointing.

You are a VERY good sport to put in two years of apprenticeship at learning to understand obscure writing in your field. I hope you've gleaned enough nuggets to make your expense of time worthwhile.

translation? please?

they are all short sighted and wearing spectacles?
they are creating as scene and making a spectacle of themselves?

Yesterday, at a poetry reading, a poet used the phrase "uncontained containment." In that case I considered it my responsibility to resolve the paradox (her artistic license). But I would not feel this responsibility regardilng the author of prose writing.
It MAY be that "spectacle economy" is a (shorthand) term used by the participants within a particular "universe of discourse". That would be fine, so long as the author is not addressing himself to the world beyond that universe.

Well the spectacle economy is a cultural situation, theorized by Guy Debord, where images are accumulated to the point that they become capital. That probably doesn't help much, but that't the most concise definition I can give. I could go on and on about the finer points of Debord's theory, where it comes from, how it has been analysed by others, and my own feelings about it. Of course that would start an entirely different conversation.

I think this more or less illustrates the root of the problem here.

I was primarily reacting to some of the earlier posts on this thread that seemed to imply that any in depth cultural analysis of something, applying theoretical models created by other thinkers to new situations, in hopes of gaining some new kinds of insight, is irrelevant because it's hard to understand.

Vince, I would like to know what your feelings are about Debord's "spectacle economy." I am particularly interested in hearing more about what sounds like an economic theory in which capital can be defined merely by a certain point of accumulation, rather than by the volume in continuous motion, through expanding markets, of items of value.

In looking back over this thread, I don't see people arguing that analyses aimed at new insight are irrelevant simply because the ideas involved are hard to understand. What I do see is some argument that writing which is unnecessarily awkward or obscure hinders the acquisition of fresh insight--and especially strongly when the ideas involved are complex.

I once took a class at UCLA by Harvey Sacks on Ethnomethodology (I was a sociology major then). His lectures were unintelligible, not because of their subtlety or depth but because he used an invented lexicon of undefined neologisms. At one point a student complained that she couldn't get a handle on his discussion. He sarcastically responded that some people are just not smart enough for his lectures. I couldn't restrain myself. I jumped up and suggested that he not confound intelligence with unintelligibililty. I immediately left the class and went to the registrar's office to drop the course. Many other students did the same later.

food for thought
Good for you JL, I would have been tempted to do the same, despite my interest in reading (unfortunately, often obscure) art theory. My museum studies professor told his entire class, that for those of us who were artists, "[We] weren't doing anything important in art." I dropped out of his class too. I would love to teach someday, after I go back to school of course, and I hope to god I don't become such a pompous ass.

I wonder... was your "digestion" of the quote I submitted by Theirry de Duve nourishing at all? Or should I interpret your response derogatorily, i.e. scatologically?

Art Liker, I can't find your quote from T de D. But I do want to note that your thread, with its nearly abortive beginning, has turned out to be very successful; it has engendered a lot of thoughtful rhetoric.

Re: food for thought


One of my photography lecturers at uni was a terrible poser and took to wearing a silky scarf, which he constantly flicked back round his neck

My friend, when she started becoming very well known in the field of photography, said to me 'slap me if I ever start wearing a scarf', when any of us is doing well the others will threaten to buy us a scarf - it keeps us grounded!