How do you judge how well an artitic response works?

Interesting question.

The problem with any work of art -- be it music, painting, poetry or anything else -- which has a specific world event as its theme is that in less than expert hands it can be quite ephemeral. It becomes dated quickly as the events or issues which it addresses recede in time and, therefore, the collective memory. During the Vietnam conflict any number of popular songs were written, decrying war in general and the then current war in particular. Most are quite forgotten today.

But, that said, a great artist can use the particular to make a powerful general statement. No one will deny that Goya's great guaches on the horrors of war constitute great art, even though most of us have no idea what specific war the Spanish artist was depicting. Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" is a powerful poem, still read today by people who may have no idea what the Crimean War was all about or even when, exactly, it took place. Lennon's "Imagine" is neither the greatest song ever written (not even close!) nor just naive words. The combination of words and music makes a powerful statement which goes quite beyond the specific time and events that the singer is apparently referring to.

I personally don't care for the War Requiem, but, then, I don't greatly appreciate Britton's work in general. It might be just me and my personal tastes; says nothing about the quality of the work itself. And I hate to admit that I don't know who Barbara Kruger is.

In sum, this kind of 'topical' or 'occasional' art -- like all art -- depends for its success and durability on the artistic gifts of the artist.

It's a very fraught and fascinating issue. I have a few scattered thoughts on this, and I'll try to organize them into something coherent before I open my mouth. Preliminarily, though, I'm interested in your question:



Answering this question will depend on what we think the point of Big Issue Artworks is, and different people will of course have different opinions about this. Britten's War Requiem is a good example. The piece uses Wilfrid Owen's poetry as a running commentary on the traditional Latin requiem texts. Liturgical texts like

Lord, grant them eternal rest
and let the perpetual light shine upon them


are juxtaposed with secular texts like

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells


in such a way that the secular texts seem almost deliberately placed so as to deflate and contradict the righteousness of the liturgical texts. If we assume that the purpose of the Requiem is to honor the fallen dead of World War II, then we might easily believe that the Requiem doesn't achieve a whole lot; we might even find the piece offensive. But if we assume that the purpose of the Requiem is to provide subjective commentary on the Big Issue being tackled, then we might be more inclined to believe that Britten's War requiem achieves something quite poignant: it shows us what wartime mourning sounds like from the perspective of a pacifist (as Britten was). Determining what the Requiem "achieves" is entirely dependent on what we expect to get out of an artwork that tackles issues of war and mourning.

Anyway, like I said, let me gather my thoughts a bit more....

Thanks for that, Shapeless. I might have to given the Britten work a second hearing. What I ment in my earlier post is that the music itself has never particularly moved me. The intent is another matter.

(I can relate to that because it's only recently that I've come around to Britten's music.)

For me, artworks that attempt to address historically momentous subject matter are successful when the artist tries to put the issue in some kind of perspective; artworks that merely try to translate the subject matter into artistic terms usually come off as trite and predictable. I consider Britten's War Requiem to be a successful work because, as I mentioned, it gives me an idea of what wartime mourning might sound like from the view of a pacifist. By contrast, Daniel Bukvich wrote a fairly well-known symphony for wind ensemble subtitled "In Memoriam Dresden" in which the last movement tries to recreate the terror of fire bombings. The percussion is instructed to bang away at random, the players whistle in imitation of incoming projectiles and also scream the German words for "fire," "smoke," "firestorm," etc. (The score even includes an illustration of burning buildings, serving no obvious purpose to the performers and certainly none to the listeners.) The effect can be terrifying the first time around, no doubt about it, but in the end all I really get out of the piece is that the bombing of Dresden was horrific. I certainly don't doubt it, but that's something I knew before I heard the piece. Bukvich hasn't added anything new to my perspective of the Dresden bombings. This is what I mean about putting the subject matter in some kind of perspective versus merely translating the sujbect matter into artistic terms: Britten's War Requiem is actually making a statement about war; Bukvich is just reminding us that a war happened.

It goes without saying that this is just my opinion. If anyone else out there finds Bukvich's 1st Symphony genuinely moving, more power to you.