The Performing Arts in Western Civilization

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The Performing Arts in Western Civilization

• New York University

2
Housekeeping (2/8/05)

• Quote(s) of the day
• Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was
  drinking battery acid, the other was eating
  fireworks
• They charged one and let the other one off.
• Tommy Cooper
• The trouble with a kitten is that eventually it
  becomes a Cat.
• Ogden Nash
• Start every day with a smile
• and get it over with.
• W.C. Fields

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Agenda (2/8/05)

• Mimesis
• Intentional Fallacy
• Eclectic Analysis

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Mimesis

• Nature creates similarities.  One need only think
  of mimicry.  The highest capacity for producing
  similarities, however, is mans.  His gift of
  seeing resemblances is nothing other than a
  rudiment of the powerful compulsion in former
  times to become and behave like something else. 
  Perhaps there is none of his higher functions in
  which his mimetic faculty does not play a
  decisive role.
• --- Walter Benjamin, "On the Mimetic Faculty"
  1933

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Mimesis (contd)

• The term mimesis is derived from the Greek
  mimesis, meaning to imitate.
• The OED defines mimesis as "a figure of speech,
  whereby the words or actions of another are
  imitated" and "the deliberate imitation of the
  behavior of one group of people by another as a
  factor in social change.
• Mimicry is defined as "the action, practice, or
  art of mimicking or closely imitating ... the
  manner, gesture, speech, or mode of actions and
  persons, or the superficial characteristics of a
  thing.
• Both terms are generally used to denote the
  imitation or representation of nature,
  especially in aesthetics (primarily literary and
  artistic media).

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Pre-Platonics

• Pre-Platonic thought tends to emphasize the
  representational aspects of mimesis and its
  denotation of imitation, representation,
  portrayal, and/or the person who imitates or
  represents. 
• Mimetic behavior was viewed as the representation
  of "something animate and concrete with
  characteristics that are similar to the
  characteristics to other phenomena.
• Plato believed that mimesis was manifested in
  'particulars' which resemble or imitate the
  forms from which they are derived thus, the
  mimetic world (the world of representation and
  the phenomenological world) is inherently
  inferior in that it consists of imitations which
  will always be subordinate or subsidiary to
  their original.
• In addition to imitation, representation, and
  expression, mimetic activity produces appearances
  and illusions that affect the perception and
  behavior of people.

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Plato (contd)

• In Republic, Plato views art as a mimetic
  imitation of an imitation (art mimes the
  phenomenological world which mimes an original,
  "real" world) artistic representation is highly
  suspect and corrupt in that it is thrice removed
  from its essence. 
• Mimesis is positioned within the sphere of
  aesthetics, and the illusion produced by mimetic
  representation in art, literature, and music is
  viewed as alienating, inauthentic, deceptive,
  and inferior.

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Plato and Aristotle on Art as Imitation (Mimesis)

• Plato in The Republic - Art is imitation, and
  thats bad.
• Problems with imitation
• Epistemological An imitation is at three removes
  from the reality or truth of something.
• Theological Poets and other artists represent
  the gods in inappropriate ways.
• Moral and Psychological A good imitation can
  undermine the stability of even the best humans
  by making us feel sad, depressed, and sorrowful
  about life itself.

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Plato and Aristotle on Art as Imitation (Mimesis)

• Aristotle in Poetics - Art is imitation, and
  thats all righteven good.
• Imitation is natural to humans from childhood.
• Imitation is how children learn, and we all learn
  from imitations.
• Tragedy can be a form of education that provides
  moral insight and fosters emotional growth.
• Tragedy is the imitation (mimesis) of certain
  kinds of people and actions.
• Good tragedies must have certain sorts of people
  and plots. (Good people experience a reversal of
  fortune due to some failing or hamartia.)
• A successful tragedy produces a katharsis in the
  audience.
• Katharsis purification through pity and fear.

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The Intentional Fallacy (1946)

• For Wimsatt and Beardsley, attention to intention
  leads to no good criticism.
• They argue against what they see as the
  traditional reliance upon authorial intention as
  a standard for critical judgment of poetry, which
  may be extended to include literature as a whole.
  
• Rather than looking to the author as an "oracle"
  of truth and knowledge on his/her own work, or
  establishing and upholding a necessarily
  arbitrary evaluation of authorial intention as
  the measure for a literary work's degree of
  "success," Wimsatt and Beardsley locate the
  critic's role in an analysis of the inner
  workings of the literary work.

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Finding Fault

• Once created, they contend, the poem assumes
  primary importance over its maker as a literary
  artifact, and is not to be reduced to the status
  of simple expression of a writer's psychological
  state or biographical clue.
• Without directly invoking "science" as a means to
  explain Formalism, Wimsatt and Beardsley
  implicitly fault intentionalists for an
  unscientific approach to literature that indulges
  in arbitrary and unfruitful speculation on
  authorial intentions while losing sight of the
  work - the poem.

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Consulting the Oracle

• Intentionality is seen as an impossible quest
• How is the critic to find out what the poet tried
  to do?
• Even in cases where the author is alive and
  willing to answer questions regarding his/her
  work, Wimsatt and Beardsley find no critical
  satisfaction in recourse to the unscientific,
  subjective pronouncements of this "oracle."
• By looking to intention as the answer, critics
  fail to recognize that the judgment of literature
  involves not answers but the ongoing, informed
  process of systematic critical inquiry.

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The Intentional Fallacy (contd)

• I went to the poets tragic, dithyrambic, and
  all sorts.... I took them some of the most
  elaborate passages in their own writings, and
  asked what was the meaning of them. . . . Will
  you believe me? . . . there is hardly a person
  present who would not have talked better about
  their poetry than they did themselves. Then I
  knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry,
  but by a sort of genius and inspiration.
• (Plato Apology)
• Here, Wimsatt and Beardsley assert that Plato
  recognized a truth about the poetic mind which
  the world no longer commonly sees.
• They point out that certainly the poets have had
  something to say that the critic and professor
  could not say - that poetry should come as
  naturally as leaves to a tree, that poetry is the
  lava of the imagination, or that it is emotion
  recollected in tranquility. But it is necessary
  that we realize the character and authority of
  such testimony.

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Eclectic Method

• An insistence upon openness.
• Suspension of pre-judgments.
• Distinctions between explanation, description,
  and interpretation will be maintained.
• Blends the intrinsic and extrinsic elements in a
  work of Art
• Bridging all evaluation (or interpretation) back
  to the work itself.
• This method is largely concerned with openness.
• An eclectic method need not be considered a
  challenge to conventional methods of analysis
  rather, it can act as an umbrella in which
  dissimilar systems can function independently and
  yet contribute to the overall understanding of
  significance in a particular work.

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Eclectic Method

• Open Listenings / ViewingsSeries of listenings /
  viewings guided by Husserls principle of epoche
  (the suspension of the natural attitude). In this
  step, one attempts to bracket out all
  pre-existing judgments (positive or negative)
  related to the work in question.
• Historical Backgrounda brief description of
  biographical information about the work in
  question. An attempt to place the work within an
  historical framework
• SyntaxIn this step, a conventional method of
  analysis is applied to the database. Here, one
  would attempt a suspension of hermeneutical and
  phenomenological analysis.
• The Sound/Image-in-TimeDuring this step, the
  analyst attempts to engage the work from a
  phenomenological perspective. It is well-placed
  immediately following the syntactical analysis,
  since it involves a bridging from technical
  terminology into metaphorical language used to
  describe the sound-in-time.
• Musical and Textual RepresentationIn this step,
  the analyst reports on the various referential
  meanings that lie in the program or text of the
  work.

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Eclectic Method (contd)

• Virtual FeelingThe listener / analyst reports on
  the way the work is expressive of human
  feelingsvirtual forms (Langer)
• Onto-historical WorldThrough the use of
  hermeneutics, the analyst describes how the work
  expresses the onto-historical world of the
  artist.
• Open Listenings / ViewingsA return to step two
  in which the several levels of significance are
  engaged within a dynamic tapestry.
• Performance GuideThe analyst makes various
  suggestions that may assist the performer in the
  interpretive performance of the work.
• Meta-critique - The author provides a detailed
  critique of the strengths and weaknesses of the
  previous analysis. This step includes specific
  recommendations for future research.

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Pablo Picasso Night fishing at Antibes 1939,
oil on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art, New York
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Eclectic Analysis of Picassos Night fishing at
Antibes (contd)

• Historical Backgrounda brief description of
  biographical information about the work in
  question. An attempt to place the work within an
  historical framework.
• Open ViewingsSeries of viewings guided by
  Husserls principle of epoche (the suspension of
  the natural attitude). In this step, one attempts
  to bracket out all pre-existing judgments
  (positive or negative) related to the work in
  question.
• SyntaxIn this step, a conventional method of
  analysis is applied to the database. Here, one
  would attempt a suspension of hermeneutical and
  phenomenological analysis.
• Virtual FeelingThe listener / analyst reports on
  the way the work is expressive of human
  feelingsvirtual forms (Langer)
• Onto-historical WorldThrough the use of
  hermeneutics, the analyst describes how the work
  expresses the onto-historical world of the
  artist.
• Open ViewingsA return to step two in which the
  several levels of significance are engaged within
  a dynamic tapestry.
• Meta-critique - The author provides a detailed
  critique of the strengths and weaknesses of the
  previous analysis. This step includes specific
  recommendations for future research.

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Open Viewings

• Series of viewings guided by Husserls principle
  of epoche (the suspension of the natural
  attitude). In this step, one attempts to bracket
  out all pre-existing judgments (positive or
  negative) related to the work in question.

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Open Viewings

• One can detect a remarkable dissonance in this
  painting.

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Historical Background

• Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881, in
  Málaga, Spain. The son of an academic painter,
  José Ruiz Blanco, he began to draw at an early
  age. In 1895, the family moved to Barcelona, and
  Picasso studied there at La Lonja, the academy of
  fine arts. His visit to Horta de Ebro from 1898
  to 1899 and his association with the group at the
  café Els Quatre Gats about 1899 were crucial to
  his early artistic development.
• In 1900, Picassos first exhibition took place in
  Barcelona, and that fall he went to Paris for the
  first of several stays during the early years of
  the century. Picasso settled in Paris in April
  1904, and soon his circle of friends included
  Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Gertrude and
  Leo Stein, as well as two dealers, Ambroise
  Vollard and Berthe Weill.

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Historical Background (contd)

• His style developed from the Blue Period
  (190104) to the Rose Period (1905) to the
  pivotal work Les Demoiselles dAvignon (1907),
  and the subsequent evolution of Cubism from an
  Analytic phase (ca. 190811), through its
  Synthetic phase (beginning in 191213).
• Picassos collaboration on ballet and theatrical
  productions began in 1916. Soon thereafter, his
  work was characterized by neoclassicism and a
  renewed interest in drawing and figural
  representation.

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Historical Background (contd)

• From 1925 into the 1930s, Picasso was involved to
  a certain degree with the Surrealists, and from
  the fall of 1931 he was especially interested in
  making sculpture.
• In 1932, with large exhibitions at the Galeries
  Georges Petit, Paris, and the Kunsthaus Zürich,
  and the publication of the first volume of
  Christian Zervoss catalogue raisonné, Picassos
  fame increased markedly.

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Historical Background (contd)

• By 1936, the Spanish Civil War had profoundly
  affected Picasso, the expression of which
  culminated in his painting Guernica (1937, Museo
  Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid).
• While a sort of false peace prevailed in l938-39,
  Picasso painted the monumental Night Fishing at
  Antibes, perhaps the most mysterious and
  mesmerizing of all his works.
• Painted after a visit to the seaside town with
  his mistress, Dora Maar, the artist presents men
  in rowboats spearing fish at night with the help
  of flashlights.

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Syntax

• In this step, a conventional method of analysis
  is applied to the database.
• Here, one would attempt a suspension of
  hermeneutical and phenomenological analysis.

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Syntax

• Design Elements
• Main compositional strategy
• Crowded imagery
• The scene is painted in greens and blacks
• Paradox of figures of fisherman and young woman
  set in opposition.
• Inner dynamic

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Virtual Feeling

• Rage
• Isolation
• Tension

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Onto-Historical World

• A threat overshadows the scene.
• - Europelate 1930sbrink of warcomplacency
• - Displacement of prior ontological world as
  caused by WWI
• ? Media coverage of war a major factor
• ? Subsequent discoveries in Math (Goedel) and
  Quantum Physics shatters prior ontological
  assumptions
• Sooner or later the juggernaut of war and
  technology will eradicate the social order.

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Onto-Historical World (contd)

• The meaning of historical and cultural events
  worked their way through Picasso's own mythos
  before they appeared in his art.
• In the ominous yet beautiful Night Fishing at
  Antibes,'Night Fishing'' can be seen as a
  prophetic image of the blitzkrieg, Germany's
  aerial bombardment of the European allies that
  was soon to begin.
• Responding, in 1945, to a question about the
  sources of his art, Picasso burst forth with
  what do you think an artist is -- an imbecile
  who, if he is a painter, has only eyes, or only
  ears if he is a musician? No, he is at the same
  time a political being, a constant witness to the
  . . . events of the world.''

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Open Viewings

• A return to step two in which the several levels
  of significance are engaged within a dynamic
  tapestry.

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Meta-Critique

• The main drawback to our analysis is that since
  we are viewing a reproduction and not an actual
  painting, we are unable to engage the
  Image-in-time. That is, from the perspective of
  Husserlian descriptive phenomenology, we are
  isolated from the work.
• If we had access to the actual painting, we would
  be better able to ground some of our referential
  observations concerning Night Fishing.

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Upcoming Assignment

• Your own strictly formal critique of a live or
  recorded performance one full page (minimum)
  followed by a 1/2 page (minimum) meta-critique
  discussing and assessing the impact of using a
  strictly formal methodology on your critique
  due Thursday, 2/10/05