Art and the artiness of being

was the subject of a little email conversation I had recently with a distinguished evangelical pastor ;-) in South Leicestershire, no less... ;-)

After our NTI seminar on aesthetics back in April, he asked...

I also wanted to (if you have time) continue a little conversation about art that you began on Friday when you asked the question "on what grounds should we judge art?"

I think you asked it when I was madly defending Shrek 2 for its cinematic purpose, and you rightly asked "well, if you're defending Shrek 2, how can\ we judge something as bad art?"

Here's what Rookmaaker says:

"Some people feel we ought to define the principle of art solely by the aesthetic. Is this not the core of art? Is not this its true meaning? ...Personally I have many doubts about this...The strange thing is that artists, almost without exception, do strive to express something in their art, and only rarely are happy with the aesthetic element alone. To me, this is one of the proofs that any theory that goes too much in this direction is out of touch with real artistic practice... Another question often raised is this. Should art be criticized on two levels, one aesthetic, the other moral? I think not. First, the term 'moral' is too narrow. It is better to speak of content, or expression, or portrayal of reality..."

Of course his argument goes deeper than this, but I was wondering what you thought were the right grounds on which to judge art.

And I replied in a not-terribly-theorized fashion, along the lines of...

On the question of art, I like Rookmaaker's point there, and think that
we should have (at least?) two ways of judging art simultaneously, the
aesthetic and the moral. On aesthetic grounds there's lots of argument
to be had over what the right standards are to use, of course! And on
moral grounds, I like what HR says about not merely attending to
'content' or 'morality', but on a broader spectrum of things. I wonder [and only the Lord knows what I intended to write here - I unaccountably broke off this sentence!]

Another question worth thinking about is how the art is used, and how it
can be used. It seems to me that we need to look at this because from
the viewer/listener's point of view that is he prime consideration. We
can discuss the morality of art in the abstrct all we like, and talk
about, e.g., camera angles, cinematography, etc, but is it possible to
watch 'Hostel' (to pick a random example) in any other way than either
relish or prurience towards its goriness? If not, then in neither case
is the attitude worth having, and I'm not sure that any amount of 'good'
film-making can justify it being used as art.

So, I think I'm advocating a full-orbed hermeneutic of art - descriptive
(moral check on content), structuralist (the aesthetic, what the work
is), and reader-response (how it is used). Maybe with a combination of
all three measures we can arrive at a total score for each work of art!?
However, it must score above/below a certain threshold on each one to be
worth it.

What do you think? Perhaps we need some more examples...

And then I tried out this approach on Serenity.

A Christian Evaluation of Serenity (2005)

Having posted before on this great film, I thought I'd share the extended version, which I recently wrote up for NTI...

Background

Serenity is a feature film developed from a cult sci-fi series called Firefly, broadcast by Fox in 2002. Disappointed at the axing of the series after only 14 episodes, fans and the scriptwriter-director (Joss Wheedon, of Buffy and Angel fame) lobbied the industry for funding to a least get a film made, if not more episodes of Firefly. The New York Times verdict on the original series was, ‘A very funny, very hip, very terrific sci-fi show’, which is about right, and in my opinion the film is even better. Serenity works perfectly well as a stand-alone story, though it is enriched if you are familiar with Firefly, so I shall confine my analysis to the film, with occasional reference to the world described and explored in more detail by the earlier series. This world exists hundreds of years in the future, when ‘Earth that was’ has been abandoned by the voracious and fecund human race, who have colonised many other worlds. Their galactic culture is a neat blend of American and Chinese – the more rural settings often look like the Wild West, as do some of the weapons and costumes, and the dialect English they speak is redolent of 19th century America; however, the urban settings are like the seedier parts of Hong Kong and the characters usually swear in Chinese! The writing is all in letters and pictograms. There are no aliens!

Plot Summary
This is the 100-word version: for a fuller summary see the Appendix. Better still, stop reading this and watch the film so you can enjoy the unfolding story as it was intended!

Lead by charismatic rogue Captain Mal Reynolds the crew of Serenity, a smuggling ship, stumble across a massive state cover-up concerning population pacification technology, the murder of millions, and the creation of human monsters. The key to the mystery is locked away in the memory of a traumatised teenage girl (a fugitive, with her brother, on Serenity) who has been psychologically conditioned to turn her into a weapon with the right trigger. Pursued by a sinister and ruthless Parliamentary Operative, after various adventures, battles and tragedies, the crew overcome self-interest and succeed in broadcasting the information at great personal cost.

Aesthetic 
The script is successful at a macro level, with the plot developing through tension and resolution, propelled by various contingent and necessary motors. The challenge of introducing those who have never seen Firefly is overcome nicely. Occasionally there are clunky moments are a lot of information is shared with us through a conversation (e.g. 6 minutes in when the Operative discusses Simon and River with the doctor responsible for her conditioning) but in most cases we learn what background we need through odd phrases and through action. A fairly conventional meta-story (a rag-tag bunch uncover a conspiracy and through adversity being largely thrust upon them discover the courage to sacrifice for a greater good) with several stock characters (muscle-for-brains, repressed rich boy, cool British villain) is enlivened through cinematic and directorial splicing techniques on display from the start. Serenity opens with a narrator over documentary footage explaining human history since the exodus from ‘Earth that was’, which is revealed to be the voice of a teacher in a gazebo-like garden classroom of 12-year-olds, which is shown to be a flashback-dream in the mind of crazed River, strapped into a sinister lab chair just before she is rescued, a dramatic sequence which itself turns out to be a holographic recording of said rescue as viewed by the Operative on their tail. Russian dolls eat your heart out!

The script is even more successful at the micro level, as Wheedon manages to bring out his characters with their flaws and their humour through a convincing dialect version of English. The language has enough grace and charm to conjure up centuries past where eloquence was valued more highly, while still being comprehensible to modern viewers. Combined with effective set design and sparing use of quality CGI Wheedon projects a world that grabs the audience. Nothing is too grand or too clean. Making a virtue out of the necessity of budgetary constraints, there is general celebration of parvus pulcher est, which is also an important theme within the world of the film.

The cast perform extremely well. Each of the characters is rendered consistently and the actors are completely believable while more than coping with a demanding script that ranges from flippant to deep grief and is peppered with cod-Chinese curses. I was engaged by their relationships and moved by their struggles and tragedies. The stock characters are given their own flavour through great facial expressions, quirkiness and costume idiosyncrasies.

Serenity pays homage to a great many other films from a variety of genres, notably Westerns and spacebound science fiction. Labouring the intertextual links would be wearing so I’ll mention just a handful. The use of the Universal Studios logo in the first scene recalls Waterworld, another futuristic human survival story (considerably more expensive and less successful!) River and Simon’s escape through a lift shaft into the belly of a spaceship honours Star Wars (episodes IV and V). Mal Reynolds is Han Solo, only better (“Heresy!” I hear you cry). The climactic and claustrophobic desperate rearguard battle with its high attrition is both Zulu and Aliens and more… This film is an artistic gem and a lovely example of how to work within a tradition but with originality.

Moral
A great many themes are picked up by Serenity in passing, many of which can be celebrated by Christians (in modified form), several of which cannot. Eccentricity and individuality in community is a major concern of the film. The crew have to deal with their differences and learn to recognise that fellowship is more important than ego or point-scoring, something they are not always successful at. Heroism expressed in sacrifice, not for the sake of glory but for the sake of others, is a clear theme; the crew, particularly Mal, learns that self-interest or feigned amorality as regards politics will not suffice in a fallen world if justice is to be done, even in a limited historical sense. 

There is a right suspicion of empire and human power, which chimes in with the Bible’s perspective, as does the recognition that people are in no way perfect. An optimistic/utopian belief in human ability to engineer goodness actually drives the plot. The explicit clash between this belief and the liberalism of the ‘Independents’ (neither blind obedience to the state nor chemicals can solve the human condition) occurs in a powerful piece of dialogue before the final act. Against a background of the slaughter of the innocents, Mal confronts the Operative on video phone about their respective motivations…

O: You should have taken my offer, or did you think that none of this was your fault?
M: I don’t murder children.
O: I do – if I have to.
M: Why? Do you even know why they send you?’ 
O: It’s not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.
M: So me and mine gotta lay down so you can live in your better world?
O: I’m not going to live there. There’s no place for me there any more than there is for you. Malcolm, I’m a monster. What I do is evil, I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.

As Mal stirs the crew to embark on a probably suicidal mission to broadcast the suppressed data he says of the state, 

They will try again… [t]hey’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people better. And I don’t hold to that. So no more runnin’. I aim to misbehave.

What Serenity lacks, however, is any answer as to how people are to be made better – by implication a celebration of diversity and resistance will be OK, but this is a serious aporia in the worldview. 

In its opposition to tyranny, Serenity also displays abhorrence of cover-up. The crew struggle, as we all would, with the cost to them of exposing the truth, but there is no doubt as to the morality of what they settle on. Mr Universe’s motto, ‘they can’t stop the signal’ displays a faith in exposure and in final justice, the idea that someone, somewhere is watching crimes and that the truth will out. CCTV and other technology along with independent-minded vigilance provide the all-seeing eye here, but Christians know that someone more reliable will provide ultimate justice.

 Several of the undercurrents or explicit messages of the film are less susceptible of a Christian embrace. While we can be grateful for a film in which the ‘Christian’ characters are neither pushovers nor hypocrites, the Christian faith of this galaxy is pretty bland, and the crew are happy to exploit this religiosity, carrying out their payroll heist during ‘Sunday worship’. The character of the Shepherd, representative of a deeper religious commitment, is ultimately called upon by Wheedon to be the mouthpiece for a kind of content-less will to transcend the self – as he urges Mal, with his dying breath, to fight on, he says ‘I don’t care what you believe, just believe it’. The clash between the Operative, ‘the kind of man who believes hard’ and Mal is ultimately a clash between the adherents of political philosophies who prove willing to die for their beliefs. But which belief is right? And is the morality of belief really to be reduced to the strength of feeling in the believing subject? Serenity appears to suggest this at the emotional climax, while of course undermining it in the case of the Operative and his beliefs.

 To put it another way, the gospel according to Serenity is that salvation can be had through cunning, decency and fighting for freedom with a strong dose of ‘belief’. Salvation is needed because people are not perfect but especially because big governments are tyrannical. The ‘fall’ was the formation of the central planetary Alliance at some point in the past. The moment of regeneration, as it were, comes with the enlightenment of knowledge – so long as we have unmediated access to information about everything (‘the signal’) we can deal with the evil. The major idols of the film are personal liberty and self-determination.

 Furthermore, while it may seem a little moralistic to bring it up, the crew are a bunch of crooks! Our heroes make their living from crime, and to argue that their hearts of gold make up for this is to veer towards Gnosticism on the one hand ('what you do doesn’t matter, it’s who you are'; as if such things could be separated) or anarchism on the other (power is bad, authority is bound to be worse than independence). Serenity thankfully does not endorse a revenge ethic – the one moment where revenge briefly captures the grieving Zoë, she becomes reckless and endangers her companions – but, rather, a libertarian and pro-prole approach to society. Petty crime and prostitution are OK, so long as it’s only the rich that are made to pay. 

To conclude this section I want to consider Serenity’s take on two old chestnuts, sex and violence. The film stands in an ambivalent relationship to the interplay of these most misunderstood of human activities. Final answers on whether certain levels of violence in a film are gratuitous or whether particular costumes/scenes constitute soft porn (or a prelude to it) are not easy to settle on. In a general sense as regards film I am not entirely happy with my current stance of feeling slightly uncomfortable while trying not to be puritannical, but neither general flight nor general embrace are satisfactory. 

There is a lot of violence in Serenity, but with two exceptions our heroes only use it defensively. Their spaceship is not armed. Male strongman stereotypes are in some ways upset: although physically brave Mal is in fact an expert at getting beaten up; hard-case Jayne is knocked out twice by River; the Operative is a martial arts expert but clearly of a very cool Oriental variety in contrast to the generally less effective and more blustery ‘Western’ style fighting. Across gender lines, the upsetting occurs in a surprisingly conventional way. Ex-military Zoë is an Amazon figure (something of a trope in science fiction) who is in fact happily married and demurely dressed; River, effectively invincible in combat, conjures up Artemis – a (teenage) warrior maiden who really is a maiden. But better than Artemis, she is clothed and not the object of anyone’s desire. The action scenes featuring River in fact cast a shadow on efficient martial arts even as we marvel at the physical skill of the ‘dance’. The first time she uses violence it is on a room full of innocent people – a dark parody of the typical cinematic bar-room brawl. Serenity thus just manages not to revel in violence and furthermore succeeds in dissociating its violence from sexuality – no mean feat amid the genre expectations of ensemble sci-fi/fantasy not designed for kids. There are relatively reasonable standards of modesty in female dress, and only occasional lewd jokes. Prostitution is treated as a fact of life in the film, and barely mentioned – whereas in the original series it was seen as somehow a noble career choice (perhaps one reason why Fox axed Firefly was its willingness to discuss the hypocrisies surrounding prostitution in modern society without condemning the prostitute).

Use value
An important measure of whether or not a work of art is “good” is what it can be used for. An aesthetic (structuralist or technical) analysis is only part of the picture of assessing artistic value. A moral analysis adds more but the morality of the art does not exist in a static or abstract fashion – it is blended by the artist(s) and is appropriated by the audience. So we need a third approach to the artwork in order to answer the question of its value.

Serenity can be used as entertainment. There is nothing wrong with diversion and entertainment in themselves (although in fact there is no such thing as entertainment-in-itself, we are always entertained in and by something), and along with the quality of the story what Wheedon asks us to enjoy is largely positive – heroism, sacrifice, humour, mocking the proud, valuing eccentricity, anger at oppression, and so on.

 Serenity can also be used as a way in for analysing culture and commending the gospel. I would suggest that the following questions could be asked of non-Christian co-viewers who are interested in exploring the film more deeply.

(1) What is meaningful “faith”? Can it simply be, or must it be in something or someone?

(2) Is there any hope for the future (personal and species) other than quick wits and whatever resistance we can muster to oppression?

(3) Is the centralized state really our biggest problem? Is the Operative right to suggest that sin is the problem? Given the flaws in his solution,

(4) How then shall we be made “better”?

(5) What is “the signal” in the real world (e.g. supposedly unmediated access to information, or divine revelation)? Can anything stop the signal? Do we need the signal?

(un)Seasonal sonatas

At the superb concert venue that is Emmanuel URC, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, Jane and I recently offered up this tasty morsel...


LUDVIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Sonata in F major, Op.24
1. Allegro
2. Adagio molto espressivo
3. Scherzo & Trio (Allegro molto)
4. Rondo (Allegro ma non troppo)

It is easy to see (hear) why this sonata is known as the “Spring Sonata”. Birdsong and gentle breezes fill the first movement’s opening theme and the whole work is full of energy and surprises. There are stormy passages and passionate outbursts throughout the first movement but the mood is almost relentlessly optimistic. The slow movement is lean and simple and sounds far away, yet is strangely beautiful. The scherzo is a true joke, with a clumsy trio that rushes hot on its heels. It leads straight into the finale, a rondo (the first tune returns again and again, ABACADA…) on an almost childish theme. All sorts of sliding around and inventiveness in the presentation of the themes leads to the uproarious conclusion. This is definitely the work of a young(ish) man. It comes from 1801 and is the fifth of Beethoven’s ten violin sonatas, nine of which he wrote by his mid-thirties.

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Sonata No.2 in A major, Op. 100
1. Allegro amabile
2. Andante tranquillo – Vivace
3. Allegro molto moderato

Why did Brahms wait so long before composing any violin sonatas? The shadow of Beethoven stretched a long way into 19th century Germany and Brahms was a very cautious person, always feeling the pressure of coming after such a ground-breaking composer. He was 40 when he wrote his first published sonata for the instrument and fifty when a lakeside holiday in Switzerland inspired this – his sunniest and “summeriest” work. The bonus for us of Brahms’ tremendous caution is that all of his published works display an incredible craftsmanship. This sonata is no exception; its lyrical and flowing mood is held together by ingenious counterpoint and reworking of material (see if you can hear the first movement’s main theme as it tries to accompany the finale’s first theme). The central movement is both a slow movement and a scherzo, getting progressively faster and more manic each time it appears, making full use of pizzicato (plucking) as the violin imitates a banjo. The serene finale, like the first movement, quotes from songs by Brahms, songs about gardens, flowers and lovers. Not even the mysterious piano flourishes and dark arpeggios can dispel the summer and its radiant coda.

Lord of War

Yet another film to raise the question of realism and extra-artistic significance. This is almost getting tedious (were it not for the seriousness of the subject of this one) - no more 'entertainment' seems to be permitted!

How realistic is Lord of War? Does that matter? Can we enjoy it? (Let alone all the unnecessary sex, I'm talking about the cynical, bleak take on arms and government string-pulling to sell more of them)

Privacy and naturalism again

As for me, I think that no extra disclaimer is needed and that audiences should know better than to rely on films for their historical knowledge, but I could be wrong and questions remain about censorship and responsibility...

...but how I can plug that into Rendition, a film in some ways frighteningly similar to Das Leben von Anderen in its view of government (though the Westophiles in East Germany, as a rule, were not bombing civilians, either in the film or in reality, unlike the extremist Muslims in Rendition and reality). It's very tempting to take Rendition as accurate in spirit and in details - a respectable and innocent Arab living in America is grabbed without due process at an airport and tortured in a pro-US military regime in the Middle East. Watching that sort of thing cannot simply be an artistic activity, as if there were a self-contained artistic zone we can slip into every now and then (pace escapist fans of pap action films). It is bound to affect one's views of the current US approach to fighting terrorism.

And there has been no shortage of films recently about how Americans ought to think about domestic terrorism, the latest being Déjà vu, a slightly glossy and fluffy sci-fi thriller, which once again brings up the question of the viewer-as-voyeur. It's actually very well done (Denzel Washington is excellent and reassuring as always), even if the female-lead-in-underwear device is exploited in a slightly populist and degrading reference to the problem of voyeurism. And the ultra-patriots within the country are just as dangerous as the enemies outside... The state propaganda machine is working hard these days against the defenders of individual liberty and federalism... ;-)

Privacy and naturalism again PS

Speaking of which, The Lives of Others also raised questions of voyeurism which I have mused on before (in relation to Being John Malkovich). Watching Rendition didn't help (though the superb review on imdb does) . In fact, I'm not sure that watching films is going to answer the moral questions raised by the activity of watching certain films. Perhaps I should become the kind of person with enough self-control and moral fibre to stop watching a film half-way through, even if I've paid for it. Have you ever done that? If so, what does that say about your pre-watching discernment!?

Privacy and naturalism

As my post on Away From Her indicates, I am currently not too fussed about naturalism in films. But is that a luxury position? Can I say that because I haven't seen a family member die from advancing Alzheimer's long before the body gave up? Can I say that because I didn't suffer at the hands of the Stasi and have to ask 'why?'. Can I say that because I am neither Armenian nor Turkish and so am not woven in to a complex history and culture of recrimination, violence, revenge, massacre, oppression. My identity is not found there, so I am not troubled by minor historical inaccuracies in The Lives of Others or as troubled as some people are by major political and historical statements in Ararat that are extremely controversial.

Am I an untypical viewer? Does the audience in general really suspend its disbelief? Does it do so more or less in 'historical' films, or films set somewhere special?

And what about the marketing of the film. Das Leben der Anderen [a SUPERB film, by the way] has been marketed as being fanatically accurate in its depiction of conditions in East Germany in the mid-80s, but it has been criticised for portraying the Stasi's surveillance practices rather liberally. No assignment would have been left in the hands of just two agents, apparently, and no one would have been left on one assignment long enough to develop any sort of attachment to the people under surveillance. We watched The Lives of Others with friends from church on Friday and then had a long conversation about this with an eminent historical writer.

On the one hand, does that really matter? On the other hand, what if people watched the film and were asking 'why weren't more Stasi people as compassionate as that?' On that particular point, of course, maybe they were - after all, we wouldn't know about it because they would have suppressed incriminating evidence in order to prevent people's arrest. That 'flaw' allows us to be as hopeful about the lives of the Stasi operatives as it opens up the agonised question, above. There is still the question of artistic responsibility. Should the film have a disclaimer at the start that notes what is and what is not claiming to be accurate?

That would be tricky in the case of Ararat because the history is rather controversial. Not to mention the fact that the second half of the film seems to undermine the rather hammy 'educational' message of the first half. 'There was an Armenian genocide' it says clumsily through the words of the young hero at the airport, but then through his further words and actions it says 'people sincerely believe false things on no evidence'. What sort of a disclaimer or otherwise does such a complex (almost surreal) and controversial film require? And is that the director's responsibility, or the distributor's, or the wider society?

As for me, I think that no extra disclaimer is needed and that audiences should know better than to rely on films for their historical knowledge, but I could be wrong and questions remain about censorship and responsibility...

Tattoos and Armenia

Tattoos in European culture have often represented stepping outside the boundaries of society, whether to indicate bravery, piety (Armenian Christians used to mark themselves to show they had made an important pilgrimage), impiety… machismo… or simply eccentricity. [Victoria Finlay, Colour, p.359]

More fascinating details and stories hinted at there by Finlay’s super book. However, my critical mind can’t help but notice that Armenia is not exactly a European culture (its shared Christian culture does not make it European since its church predates any medieval or modern sense of ‘Europe’ and was all but inaccessible to Western Europeans during its formative years and the even more rambunctious formative years of Europe) which may undermine Finlay’s point about European tattooing habits until the last few decades, anyway. Which makes me ask, what is the history of the European tattoo?

heat and light

have been generated over the past few days after a Turkish concert pianist and composer, Fazil Say, said something unguarded about Islamism and culture in his home country. The story is written up here (Turkish Daily News) in a way that is broadly sympathetic to Say, and vaguely unsympathetic to "Islamists".

Heat comes because Turks are sensitive to negative comments about their home. This is very understandable, though as a Brit, difficult to appreciate.

It is perhaps not entirely to the credit of the UK that if a prominent artist made some rude comments about these shores and a plan to emigrate s/he would be ignored on the grounds that people can say what they like and no one really knows what Britain is about anyway...

Light has been shed on the political divisions in Turkish society between secularisers and moderate Islamists (who are of course 'secularist' in at least one sense). This collection of opinions in Zaman, a pro-AKP paper very sympathetic to Islam, is revealing. Not least, the ultimate value accorded to country in one's self-identity (e.g. He expressed that one cannot abandon his country, “no matter what” and "What does ‘leaving’ mean when Turkey is the most important thing we have?"). Some might call that idolatry.

You can't read too much into these off-the-cuff statements to an off-the-cuff statement, but this other comment by pianist Burçin Büke is plain silly - What’s more important, you don’t have the right to mix music with politics. (a) What do rights have to do with it? and (b) music is already inescapably political. [It wasn't as if Say was mixing "music" and specific party politics.] I guess Mr Büke knows nothing of Nazism and culture, Stalinism and culture, Maoism and culture, conservative politicians in most countries who complain about the effect of various popular musics on the young...

Of course, Say's complaints can easily be interpreted as the whining of the secularist elite that does what it wants while suppressing various types of Islamic (and other) expression, as this Zaman columnist points out.

The heat and light are important for a foreign observer like me, not so much so that I can presume to take sides, but so that I can understand a little more of the tensions in self-definition, in aspirations, in lifestyle, in attitudes to expression that are revealed.

further to my final paragraph below/above

here's an entertaining review of the aforementioned film.

Of course the review is not completely fair - but it's funny!

The Roman Catholic Church

How very presumptuous of this small, generally ignorant Protestant to attempt a post on the sprawling mass that is the Roman Catholic Church. So, I shan't. But I do want to draw your attention to one of the many crises, potential scandals, bubbling arguments and frankly bizarre episodes in its local and corporate life and insider commentary on that.

In other words, take a look at this mess.

The Rape of the Soul - a documentary made by a devout Catholic claiming to expose hidden, embedded images of a highly dubious nature in lots of (Catholic) religious art, old and new.

When I've finished watching it, I may comment further on its contents.

The release and promotion of the film has apparently caused some people to lose their jobs in the Archdiocese of Toronto. It seems to have exposed the tensions between traditionalists and conciliarists (those who think Vatican II was and was not a good idea, to put it crudely) which can be seen between the lines and sometimes in the lines of this discussion thread.

Remarkably, some people in this discussion thread who believe that the film is basically rubbish claim that it must be a fundamentalist [read, "Protestants we don't like"] plot to discredit the church. Having heard him and read his own contributions to a favourable review and interview, I seriously doubt whether Michael A. Calace (producer, writer, director...) is a Protestant!

Following up a few leads on this film has opened my eyes to yet more of the diversity that exists among professing Christians, has reminded me that in the eyes of the conservatives in the 'historic' churches [for want of a better term] I am probably not going to heaven (a funny feeling for a pretty conservative, exclusivist, evangelical Protestant, let me tell you), and made me think again about art and what it has to do with anything.

If you have a spare couple of hours, the film is... probably not worth watching, if I'm honest. Although it has undoubted qualities (as well as some poor structuring, lots of rambling, tacky music, leaps of logic, and worse), taught me a few things and has sparked off interesting thoughts, it is questionable as to whether evangelicals need to be exposed to discussions of possible obscen1ty in art that is not part of their tradition or worship.

Vive les amateurs!

The audience was the same size as the orchestra, the piano was a very creaky centenarian Steinway, but St Luke's, Victoria Road was the occasion of a very special concert this evening (and the venue for a packed tea made by Mrs W, who was off at her school Xmas dinner) given by the Cambridge Sinfonietta under Peter Britton.

Berlioz, Overture to "Benvenuto Cellini"
I noticed that the cymbal-player looked like my Dad did in the 70s. His shoulder-length Jesus hair got wafted each time he crashed the cymbals, leading to a gradual build up of styled stray hair that resembled the result of a short van der Graf generator demonstration.

Saint-Saens, Piano Concerto No. 2
Very spirited performance from a cool soloist who normally plays violin with this band. He looked a bit like a banker. This brought back memories of when I managed the first movement of this concerto with the King Edward's School (Bath, the VI, of course) orchestra back in the mid-90s...

Walton, Viola Concerto
And as Patrick said of the violist, "Penelope Veryard? You don't want to mess with her." (say it out loud...) At the end of the first movement, a car went past in A minor, just as the final double-stopped tonic chord faded away... Polished and juicy - and until tonight I have never really enjoyed that work, worthy though I knew it to be.

the critical eye

In her splendid Cambridge Paper, which should open the eyes of philistine Christians (as it has done for me) everywhere to the value of 20th century painting (even the stuff that doesn't look like anything!), Margaret Wilson draws on Italian art historian Guido Ballo's 1966 classic, Occhio Critico, 'The Critical Eye'.

The work is subtitled 'A new approach to art appreciation', but it might more accurately be described as 'a new approach to classifying and showcasing bad art appreciation', presented alongside titbits from the good, critical approach (which Ballo was hardly the first person to advocate, describe or model). He is incredibly rude about 'the ordinary eye' - a non-critical reaction to art conditioned by prejudice and sentimentality. The list of stock phrases used by 'the ordinary man' (pp.71-4) are painfully funny - sometimes I see myself in them, and sometimes I wonder whether Ballo is being a little harsh.

His discussion of the 'Categorical Eye' - a dogmatic approach to art that speaks from only one valid aesthetic position regardless of the art in question is also interesting - he suggests that this kind of single-minded dismissal of whole swathes of styles and movements is characteristic of some of the best artists (though none of the best critics) who are forced to innovate and stretch art in 'their' direction in reaction to the other directions and modalities that have been tried.

Much of the book enacts the critical eye's take on art, in vignette form, and under topics (rather than chronologically, as in Gombrich's superlative History of Art). The critical eye is that which seeks to understand the art against its historical context, the varying purposes of different sorts of art, and in the light of certain important things that art should always be doing - Ballo seems to suggest that good art always has 'rhythm', for example. Like much art and music crit. it struggles with words, and is not always successful in being really substantial in its particular comments and analyses. Nevertheless, in opening up to the reader various ways of understanding appreciating that art that seems foreign and difficult, it is invaluable.

Great piccies, too!

Gombrich, A History of Art

Read it. Perfect bathroom book. Seriously good for all those who don't know much about art but know what they like - prepare to be broadened!