Are Writers True Artists

Is a da Vinci more a work of art than a play by Shakespeare? I think not. When we consider quality work, it matters not the medium, but the skill and inspiration.

The difference is the motivation. You have writers who write to make a living- others who write out of a passion for the written word. You might say the same thing about music. There are inspired musicians, composers and conductors, and you have hacks.

Joanne

You ask five questions. Edgar's answer to the first question seems surely correct. Phoenix's reponse to qestion 3 also gets no argument from me. Let me try on the remaining three.

-"Do writers enjoy their writing privately or do they need to publish and have an audience?"
My experience suggests that public engagement is always part of art. One might get joy from practicing, or creating newly, but I suspect even the diarist likely would wish his diary found and enjoyed 100 years hence. (In collaborative art, of course your collaborators are working with you, so constitute an audience themselves even before a larger audience might become involved.)

-"Do you think that muscians are able to experience art in a more free form and do they perform for themselves and the public?"
If we ask the question 'is music a more free-form art?', I don't know why we might say it is. If we contrast a solo violinist to a poet, say, I don't know that the poet is any more constrained than the other.

-" Would you consider the thesis of writers trying to control you by directing you in there writing?"
This question is the one which I think might speak to a difference in writing compared to painting, dance, music, etc. The point isn't control, however, all arts direct attention purposefully and attempt to evoke purposefully. But writing uses language, and that seems unique in degree of specificity available.

Where the writer moves to guide the thinking of the reader you end up with a political or religious treatis, however presented, whether fiction or essay. The writer practicing an art will allow the readers to form their own conclusions. We are into the question of the motives of the writer - or painter or musician. This is one reason I think Picasso has failed. He tries to guide our conclusions by presenting such distorted portraits of the women he no longer respects.

Edgar

Boy, I don't think it is so straightforward nor so easy to disentangle the political motivation. If we look at Guernica or, for another example, Goya illustrating the Spanish guerilla war in early 1800s
http://www.arts.adelaide.edu.au/personal/DHart/Images/WarArt/Goya/3rdMay1808.JPG one could surely argue that these function as, are designed to function as, political treatises. But do you disallow them under the heading of art?

Or take Jimi Hendrix's version of "Star Spangled Banner" from Woodstock....that's a very political piece. Definitely art, in my mind.

Blatham, so far I agree with everything you've said. Everything. What's wrong with me?

ahem.

Food for thought.

Thank you,
cobalt

(Don't worry, M.A., blatham tends to have that effect on people...)

Amazing response so far. Thank you all.

I've tried without success to appreciate the Hendrix "Star Spangled Banner". But that's personal perception.

edgar

Medication might allow a varying perception on the piece. I'd argue that it achieves something quite unusual for music - a political statement (namely, of course, the violence of American culture). Usually, we count on music to evoke, but I can't think of another example with such specificity of intent. Pictoral art can, as in the two examples I gave earlier. Dance, too can be put to such uses, and as we can witness in non-literate cultures, it is often used to tell cultural stories (with decidedly political elements). Or Balinese puppetry. And writing has squillions of examples.

Surely 'art' is not merely a matter of expression which has an apolitical intent (though we may be sick and tired of being lectured to by 18 year old guitar players who grew up in a midle class suburb outside of Pittsburg - I certainly am). If I had to go out on some limb and define it, I would lean towards quality of communication.

But I'll try once again to suggest that the art forms involving language are unique in being something more than visceral. A violin solo and a written work engage quite different aspects of our noggins, I do believe.

Some excellent points, blatham.

The thing is, language -- relative to other forms of communication -- is fairly explicit. A ballet, such as Rimsky-Korsakov"s "Gayne" is politically explicit, yes, but the music to which it is choreographed and danced can be heard with no prior knowledge and it will not, necessarily, evoke visions of brave guerrilas. Not so with a book like "And Quiet Flows the Don." That is why composers and other non-verbal artists have a much easier time under a dictatorship than do writers,

Painting and other visual, representational art falls somewhere in the middle of this. Sure, "Guernica" is patently political. So are the Goya sketches. So is Manet's "The Execution of Maximillian," a stark canvass indeed. And yet, as with the ballet, it is possible to view any of these for the sake of admiring their execution rather than their underlying political statement. (And, really, we think of "Guernica" as being political only because we KNOW what the painting is supposed to represent. There is nothing inherently propagandistic in it.) But, under a dictatorship, painters have to be careful of not only WHAT they paint but the style they use as well, If a monster like Stalin eschews non-representational art, you'd better be painting pretty calendar art.

The writer finds a repressive milieu ...well...repressive. Pasternak had to smuggle "Doctor Zhivago" out of Russia to get it printed. And it's not even much of a polemic.

Re: Are Writers True Artists


Not necessarily--musicians are a dime a dozen, people like Mozart or Gershwin or Stevie Winwood only come along but rarely. People like Diderot, or Dickens or Faulkner are equally as rare. Most musicians produce the musical equivalent of pulp fiction.



Caveat Lector--if someone can control you with their writing, they are an accomplished artist, indeed.



Probably a little of each in many writers, and likely, one could adduce examples of each in one writer or another. I think that writers who could be considered to produce works of art probably write for enjoyment, or from an inner compulsion for self-expression, and likely, in most ages, have been obliged to find buyers for their work in order to continue their chosen metier.



There, once again, one could find examples of both in different writers. Some writers have destroyed work which they felt was not adequate, and a great many have not published what they had originally written--preferring to revise it at length. The examples of Camus, whose original text for l'Etranger was published in the late 1970's, and Faulkner, whose original text for Santuary was issued at about the same time under the title Flags in the Dust both come to mind. Some authors definitely need an audience, and suffer very much from adverse reactions.



If you read a good deal of Faulkner, and many other authors, i think you'll find "free form" writing--and i can't understand why you continue to refer to musicians, as they are such a common lot, and i think that musicians can find work far more easily than authors can find a publisher. I entertain a high opinion of musical talent, and a low opinion of the majority of musicians.

setanta

You're such a grumpy old bugger.

'Tanks, boyo . . .

Setanta, are you sure about the publication date of l'Etranger? I seem to recall reading it in college in the late 1950s or early 1960s.

No, MA, i'm referring to the release of Camus' original text, not the publication date of l'Etranger, which was about 1942. I believe that the 70's release of his original manuscript was entitled A Happy Death. BTW, the authorized english translation was published (as The Stranger, of course) in 1946--and it is a horribly done translation. The character of Mersault, as it can be discerned in l'Etranger, and that from The Stranger are of two entirely different people. I don't know if Camus could read english, but i sure he would have been horrified to see what had been done to his carefully crafted character. For example, when Mersault tells his boss, at the beginning of the novel that he is obliged to attend his mother's funeral, in the French, he tells the gentleman: ". . . c'est comme ça." A good translation of this would be, "that's just how it is." Camus' character isn't apologizing for the necessity to take the time off, he's telling his employer that he has to attend, and that's just the way it is. In the english translation, the character says: " . . . there's nothing i can do." This creates an entirely different view of the man, and altogether, he comes of as diffident and whiney in the english translation. Camus certainly wished to protray a diffident individual, but also one with a definite strength of character--i'm sure he would have been appalled had he known just how Mersault appears to the reader in english.

In an english course which i took at University, i got lazy, and didn't read The Stranger. as i had read l'Etranger a few years before, and had recently re-read it in order to produce a paper (a résumé in french, a glorified book report) for a French class. I was completely unable to understand the critical and condemnatory attitude of the other students toward the character, and i'm certain now that they thought i was crazy in my assessment. I didn't read the work in english until about 15 years later, at which time the nickel dropped for me.

Sigh . . . beware of translations . . .

I know what you mean about the translation, Setanta. I had to read l'Etranger for an advanced course in French literature. As I considered my French pretty skaky, at best, I got both the French text and the English translation, just to make sure I understood what I was reading. Comparing original to translation, I started to think that my French must be even shakier than I had thought. I mean, that's not how I would have translated it, yet here it was -- ostensibly a professional job.

Well, Boss, hack is a profession, like it or not, so that translation was a hack job, and a vera professional one at that . . .