March 31, 2002
2:58 PM   Subscribe

i would say that the first point is true. art is only valued as it shows potential for financial growth and not with regard to its particular insights or aesthetic quality. additionally, many of the people who create art are on the fringes and their contributions to society are not valued because of their race, class, religious affiliation, gender, or sexual orientation, and as a result many conservatives want to shut down artists financially or otherwise because of the perceived danger in their ideas (cf, mrs cheyney [sp], the second lady).

this is all quite elementary...i'm not making a point that hasn't been made a million times before...
posted by pxe2000 at 3:22 PM on March 31, 2002

I personally doubt that ruled note paper makes much of a difference, and in any case it's important to ask what the notebooks are used for. At school, we used lined notebooks for writing and gridded notebooks for maths and diagrams - this strikes me as being a perfectly sensible approach. I don't think I'd like to use gridded notepaper to write on. This notebook example seems far too tenuous for me.
posted by adrianhon at 3:25 PM on March 31, 2002

Oh, please spare me the gridded notebook paper. That means an instant migraine---Im talking--aura, flashing lights, visual scomatas-etc. I thought I was insane and then asked my neurologist why I wanted to puke everytime I saw a grid or got a migraine, they said this is an actual phenomenon.
posted by Budge at 3:36 PM on March 31, 2002

Public schools in the US generally do not value art much at all, except for its value in self-expression. That is, you'll go to "art class" at least for a few semesters somewhere between kindergarten and 12th grade, where you'll be taught the bare basics of finger painting (that's the kindergarten end of the scale, of course), drawing, messing around with clay, etc. But actual study of real art created by somebody else? Not unless you're lucky enough to have a high school large enough to offer such a course, and you specifically sign up for it. Private schools tend to do a little better in this area, but I have no idea how they would compare to a similar broad-brush look at European schools. (Broad brush, get it? Ha ha!)

As for the second question, It's a very tough call. WRT the actual original quote, I think it's just one random Italian's specious, anecdotal rationalization as to why they "care more about art" than we do. But it's long been known that people who speak different languages - as in English, Spanish, Italian, etc, not the "verbal" vs "visual" languages the author is so wrapped up in - can have very different outlooks on the world based largely on the way their language is composed and the words it has, or does not have, for certain ideas and concepts. (Example: The word "Schadenfreude" in German. We have no such word for the concept in English, and most English speakers never really think about how often they feel Schadenfreude themselves until they discover the German word at some point in their lives, at which time you can practically see the light bulb turn on above their heads. "Aha! I never thought about it that way!" No, but a German has, and has done so his/her whole life.) (See also Howard Rheingold's book They Have a Word for It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases.)

And I have to admit that as a child, I found gridded notebook paper far more stimulating than lined paper, but that was only my own personal feeling. If I happened to only have gridded paper but was taking notes, then I took notes on the horizontal lines and ignored the vertical ones. So I think it's what's being taught that's infinitely more important than what sort of paper onto which the student is copying down the information being imparted.
posted by aaron at 3:55 PM on March 31, 2002

Gridded paper paper is not spacial, it is planar.

That is all, thank you.
posted by NortonDC at 4:00 PM on March 31, 2002

Lines for writing, grids for maths. What adrianhon said. Personally, I find it odd that a lot of American students use nothing but refill paper (ie, for your folder) as opposed to a notebook for each class like we did in high school in New Zealand.
posted by animoller at 4:15 PM on March 31, 2002

In America, gridded paper is just as freely available as ruled paper, in any grocery store's school supplies aisle. Granted, there's not as much gridded paper displayed, but ruled paper is usually more prominently displayed in the school supplies aisle because although each American citizen is freely able to choose on their own their very own stack of gridded paper, very few happen to choose gridded paper over ruled paper because as someone mentioned earlier in this thread, gridded paper causes migraines, and might by the way explain away the reason why every french person I've ever met in my life was either particularly cross or particularly medicated.

And that was a very long, run-on sentence. Thank you.
posted by ZachsMind at 4:16 PM on March 31, 2002

In America, gridded paper is just as freely available as ruled paper, in any grocery store's school supplies aisle; this maybe true, but in grade school i wasn't only encouraged to use lined paper only, and got penalized if i used grid. we used grid for math only, and then when i went to a public high school, we didnt use grid paper hardly at all.
but on top of all that, i dont think it's a lined / grid thing at all, i think it's the education system that doesnt encourage the arts (and the study thereof) that is at fault for our country's lack of artistic appreciation. that, the media, and the teacher calling your parents because you were drawing in class instead of taking notes (dumb woman...) adds to it all.
posted by sixtwenty3dc at 4:28 PM on March 31, 2002

The fact that art isn't taught more in schools in the U.S. isn't a reason why Americans don't "value" art, it's a symptom of it. Valuing something is a relational thing -- we do all value art, it's just that we value something else more. And it is well and good that a society's educational system should reflect its priorities at large; otherwise, our children would be poorly served -- they would be less likely to succeed in it, by its (and, therefore, their) accepted definitions of success.

And there's nothing wrong with that, either. I happen to think art is worth studying and experiencing (and, when I'm lucky, creating), but if one or another society in general doesn't agree, what is the basis for disputing that?
posted by mattpfeff at 4:33 PM on March 31, 2002

i went to us public schools. the only art appreciation i got was in an honors english class; and only that because the teacher rushed through some english material to get to art. it wasn't much, but he thought we shouldn't graduate without it. (and i didn't do art appreciation on college, it wasn't required for science majors)
posted by rhyax at 4:39 PM on March 31, 2002

First off John Berger wrote a famous book about art called Ways of Seeing, which you should all read. It takes an afternoon. Secondly, there is something called eye-ease paper, which comes in graph form. It is slightly green with slightly greener lines at horizontal and vertical 1/5 inch intervals. It does not hurt to look at it.

Art history education is worthless as it is. The artists which are studied in art history courses are exceptions to the rule that all artwork is created as a consumer good of some sort, and that the work created is thusly cheapened by market demands. Statistics have shown that most people liken the art-museum's ambiance to that of a church service. What we often worship is the price or cost of the artwork. Whoever is selling for high prices is noticed. Tourists flock to valuable artworks, even if the pieces were unknown before someone decided to buy them for some record setting sum.

In other words, as remarkable as a Brancusi or Rembrandt or Manet is, it should be only a footnote in the less glamourous history of art, the history of piles and piles of crap painted, shot, sculptued or designed by thousands of visionless craftspeople beholden to rich people wanting to show off.

The only reason most people seem to want to study art is that knowing about it makes you "cultured". Art history gives you a background in historical events which very rarely mattered. If you just want to enjoy the top tenth of a percent, I encourage you to do it without someone telling you what you should like and what is important. That can be very rewarding.

grrr! I'm pissed off!! I'm going to go run around and then finish my art history homework!! I'm a bat!! flap flap flap!
posted by Settle at 4:54 PM on March 31, 2002

I think the author drew the wrong conclusions from her observations. I spent a semester in Italy during undergrad and remember my cab driver quoting Dante on the way to my residence from the airport. I remember thinking that extemporaneous cab-ride recitations of Dante would have been a bit unusual in the states, and noticing during my short tenure in sesto fiorentino that everyone with whom I spoke appeared to an appreciation and relatively sophisticated knowledge of, Renaissance art and Enlightenment-era philosophers.

A few years later, I was sitting in a Manhattan restaurant with a friend from college and an Italian guy with a PhD in art history from the University of Chicago. The topic of choice was Goethe and the conversation could be summarized as follows:

Friend From College: I hate, hate, hate Goethe.
Italian Guy: I love, love, love Goethe.
Friend From College: Well, you clearly have no taste!

I later assured Italian guy that my friend did not usually spend significant amounts of time hurling vitriol at dead European literary figures and that I thought she was "really just in a bad mood" and not to take it personally. Italian guy responded that he thought the difference in her appreciation (or lack thereof) of Goethe and his was rooted in the ways in which they were respectively educated. He said that Italian primary school systems have heavily standardized curricula that strongly emphasize the classic liberal arts. "Everyone has read Goethe by the time they're 15." This clearly isn't the norm in the U.S. I have friends that graduated high school with transcripts dominated by vocational credits. I do find, however, that my friends that went to schools with strong liberal arts programs reference the same writers, painters, etc., as my Italian friend, and their frames of reference differ very little. Because this sort of education isn't universally mandated, you don't see the mainstream appreciation for it that arguably exists in Italy. None of this, it should be noted, is necessarily an indictment of American values with respect to art.

Liberal arts courses have been traded in many American high schools for "training-oriented" courses in order to better prepare those that do not plan to attend college to enter the job market. British Literature is replaced by Computer Science. This is a trend that has been steadily increasing over the last few decades, and has also creeped into higher education as universities attempt to resolve the tension between maintaining liberal arts programs and funding research.
posted by lizs at 5:11 PM on March 31, 2002

I remember one major thing from my schooldays here in England. The teachers were always VERY strict about having margins in your books. If your books didn't come with margins, you had to get a ruler and draw your own. It was *very* bad to write from the edge to the edge. You had to have margins.

Why? It seemed like a stupid waste of time to me at the time, and, er, it still does. But, of course, the public school system is designed to suppress individuality so it's no surprise.
posted by wackybrit at 5:21 PM on March 31, 2002

Doesn't this all depend on accepting a narrow, high-culture, drawing-painting-sculpture definition of "art"?

Given the enormous impact of film and popular music, both economic and cultural, surely there's a good case to be made that Americans (and the rest of us non-Italians) do value art highly? It's just expressed in different media, that's all.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 5:22 PM on March 31, 2002

Hey, thanks, aaron, now I know a word to which I can well relate--Treppenwitz : "the clever remark that comes to mind when it is too late to utter it"...
posted by y2karl at 5:33 PM on March 31, 2002

"Why doesn’t America value art?"

Obviously for the same reason "America" doesn't value questions so enormously generalized as to have no meaning whatsoever: We all used lined paper.

"I ask myself this question often, and the answers I come up with are the obvious ones: Works of art have no productive function in our economy..."

Other than the small matter of having the largest motion picture, music, and publishing industries in the world.

" ... Art is politically dangerous..."

Well, at least some artists like to fancy that it is.

" ... Contemporary art is too difficult to understand."

Very difficult to understand what she is talking about when she doesn't even mention a particular medium.

i would say that the first point is true. art is only valued as it shows potential for financial growth and not with regard to its particular insights or aesthetic quality. additionally, many of the people who create art are on the fringes and their contributions to society are not valued because of their race, class, religious affiliation, gender, or sexual orientation, and as a result many conservatives want to shut down artists financially or otherwise because of the perceived danger in their ideas (cf, mrs cheyney [sp], the second lady).

Wow. The immensity of generalized bias here is truly stunning.
posted by MidasMulligan at 5:53 PM on March 31, 2002

does ruled note paper really materially effect the way somebody generally approaches the world?

It certainly does! Within a couple months after I started carrying notebooks with BLANK notepaper (no lines, no grids), my grades improved and I tapped into a creative side I never knew previously. Whether taking notes or just thinking, I enter a new concept in the middle of a new page and as new details emerge, I write or draw outwards from that center. Also, I can easily memorize the contents of such pages.
posted by mischief at 6:00 PM on March 31, 2002

just because there are lines doesn't mean you're not allowed to draw on it. Those are guidelines.


HOLY GOD LOOK BEHIND YOU IT'S SAM COOKE!!
Sam Cooke: She was only 16, only 16, with eyes that would glow...but she was too young to fall in love, and I was too young to know...
posted by Settle at 6:06 PM on March 31, 2002

Other than the small matter of having the largest motion picture, music, and publishing industries in the world.

Art is not manufacture, just as reading a million pages is not enrichment, but raw consumption. But that's to be expected of you, Midas. "No picture is made to endure, nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly." Randroids are Philistine by tautology. (Square-ruled Clairefontaines definitely changed the way I took notes. You have the option to ignore. Hasn't turned a copyeditor into a writer, yet. But a change is as good as a holiday. As long as the location is right.)
posted by riviera at 6:19 PM on March 31, 2002

i_am_joe's_spleen and MidasMulligan From the article:

You may say “Wrong! Look at our news, entertainment and advertising. Our knowledge about the world comes to us more through pictures than words.” I agree that, as an audience, we are a visual society. Our language for analyzing, responding, describing, judging and communicating is verbal. Visual thinking is always translated into verbal language in order to be widely understood. Words are our lingua franca, our common tongue. It is the way we communicate across our disciplinary boundaries.

The idea is not that people don't go to museums or movies etc. It is that people tend to express themselves verbally rather than visually. Now I would say of course, words can be more clear, and it's easier to communicate an idea verbally. However, I am a product of my environment. I haven't hung out with many Europeans, but I would be interested to find if they tend to express themselves more visually instead of verbally.
posted by willnot at 6:21 PM on March 31, 2002

contrary to midas mulligan's belief, the notion that "art is politically dangerous" is not just a mass fantasy dreamed up by some crackpot artists. are you too young to remember the parent's music resource center or the nea 4? were you not on the east coast on in cincinatti when robert mapplethorpe's exhibit caused serious controversy? perhaps amidst all the attention given to school violence you might have conveniently overlooked the discussion of censorship in the aftermath of what happened at columbine. and that's just in the states; i'm sure vaclav havel would be more than happy to enlighten you about what life is like for artists in eastern europe, or jafar panahi could inform you of the life of a filmmaker in iran whose work is under scrutiny by regional and national censors. but i digress.

and as much as you may think that because of "the small matter of having the largest motion picture, music, and publishing industries in the world," we have any value on art, i can tell you that you're sadly mistaken. these industries turn out entertainment that does little beyond diverting people with bad movies, bad music, and bad writing. yes, we are the country that gave the world nathaniel hawthorne, d. w. griffith, and thelonious monk, but it was through the patronage of our corporations that michael bay, dean koontz, and creed flourished into success.

if you have something to say about this, midas, you are more than welcomed. as you can see, this is far from the "generalization" you whine about, but with your own sweeping generalizations it looks like you're just a troll.
posted by pxe2000 at 6:42 PM on March 31, 2002

I had a friend who insisted that his artistic skills were borne out of the fact that his parents gave his blank paper to draw on -- and NEVER colouring books -- which really only teaches kids how to draw nicely between the lines and doesn't give much room for creative expression.

But I think that it's the people who teach us art that have a greater impact on us than the paper we are given to draw upon. It may be different nowadays, but I think that grade school tends to suck the creativity right out of kids.

One of my earliest memories is of my kindergarten teacher teaching us that everything we drew or painted had to be outlined in black. I remember thinking it was weird, and it was, to impose this kind of senseless limitation on a group of 5 year olds with developing minds.

I still have a few of these crazy paintings (I am glad my parents kept them) and they are very unnatural. Everything has this thick black border around it; rainbows (red stripe, black stripe, blue stripe, black stripe) suns, apple trees, people, houses etc.

One day I painted a great picture of Santa and me. All the kids had to go up to the front of the class to explain their work. I was fantastically proud of mine. I remember standing up in front of the class only to have my teacher chastise me for not outlining my figures in black. (Imagine what that would look like -- an outline with an inch-wide paintbrush!)

My spirits fell, and honestly, I think this severely dampened any artistic abilities I may have had. Twenty-five years later and I can still only draw stick people.

:)
posted by quietfish at 6:51 PM on March 31, 2002

A few things:

Those Italian notebooks with grids rule. I went to Italy sometime around sixth grade, and the notebooks made me salivate almost as much as the gelato did.

American notebooks with lines drool. I'd ditch 'em at every possible opportunity and get blank paper for proper doodling purposes.

Why doesn't the U.S. value art? Well, we're a very pragmatic nation by and large, and subjective aesthetic concerns will get dropped every time if they get in the way of making money or convenience or most anything else.

How do we reconcile that with having the largest motion-picture, television, music, publishing industries in the world? These are mass media: they benefit enormously (in terms of investment) from the economies of scale that American capitalism is so good at generating. But being big doesn't necessarily mean being good, and I'd seriously be at a loss to claim that Hollywood filmmaking is better than Renaissance painting just because it's generated a greater cashflow.

Art is politically dangerous? Well, it can be, but the number of works of art that have been politically dangerous in any practical short-term sense (read: changed things, for real) isn't all that high.
posted by furiousthought at 7:17 PM on March 31, 2002

willnot: parsing the visual language of film and television is a learned and sophisticated skill that requires a deep shared understanding between producers and audience. I don't believe the author of article has thought about this at all - TV is not just radio with pictures. A society that can produce and appreciate the rich interwoven visual narratives of modern film/tv is not incapable of visual thinking. Surely the huge popularity of home video and photography point to a culture that is at home with visual thought?

Think of the rise of cheap-arse Flash animated movies, the Photoshopped gag photos, the proliferation of cheap homepages - people love commnuicating outside of text. Now that they do not have to master the technically challenging skills of draughting they are doing more visual communication, not less.

At least, that's my claim and it's stated as credibly as hers...

pxe2000: Intellectually heavy art has always been on the far right of the entertainment bell curve, with the bulk of it produced by patronage of the rich, corporates, church or state authorities. In what time and place has it ever been different? And I am willing to bet that mainstream Italian society is no more interested on contemporary art than American.

Both of you: the author's article takes for granted that Americans are visually illiterate, and proceeds to suggest answers. But I think such a serious and dramatic claim requires a little more than bare assertions. The author is just stating a claim as fact and the proceeding to lay our her programme for remedying a problem that may not even exist.

Speaking as a music person from way back, educators and practitioners always make special claims for the unique values of their disciplines, while bewailing the lack of attention paid them by mainstream society. This article is a familiar retread on this theme. I bet we could find a dance tutor lamenting the lack of kinetic thinking in a country that doesn't value dance (music vids don't count), a musician complaining that no one learns to sing or play any more, and a writer lamenting the decline of prose writing in a society mesmerised by flickering images.

*yawn*
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:23 PM on March 31, 2002

Oooh - and on the danger thing - my observation is that sadly, really transgessive art in a totalitarian regime is mostly dangerous to the artist. :-(
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:28 PM on March 31, 2002

Other than the small matter of having the largest motion picture, music, and publishing industries in the world.

And looks what it produces: Freddy Got Fingered, Cinderella II, Britney Spears, NKotB, Danielle Steele, and John Grisham. [shudder]

America's culture is all in Wisconsin.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:53 PM on March 31, 2002

(To be fair, I'm sure there are trash movies/music/books in Italy, too. Thankfully, we're not subjected to them. Whereas it seems the worst of American media -- I'm thinking David Hasselhof, specifically -- is foisted on other nations. Though, come to think of it, the Germans seem willing enough, and lord knows the French deserved Jerry...)
posted by five fresh fish at 7:57 PM on March 31, 2002

I would agree that Americans under-value art. I would not agree using graph paper has much to do with it--although it did annoy the hell out of me when I studied at the Sorbonne.

I think Americans undervalue art because they over-value money, and things which are quantifyable and lead to money, which art is not.
posted by ParisParamus at 8:06 PM on March 31, 2002

Hey, thanks, aaron, now I know a word to which I can well relate--Treppenwitz : "the clever remark that comes to mind when it is too late to utter it"...

I'm going to name my autobiography that. If I ever get around to doing it in time.
posted by aaron at 8:37 PM on March 31, 2002

Sam Cooke: She was only 16, only 16, with eyes that would glow...but she was too young to fall in love, and I was too young to know...

Ahhh, Dr. Hook did it better.
posted by aaron at 8:48 PM on March 31, 2002

Art is not manufacture, just as reading a million pages is not enrichment, but raw consumption. But that's to be expected of you, Midas. "No picture is made to endure, nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly." Randroids are Philistine by tautology.

And what's to be expected of you? Attempting to dismiss someone by calling them a "Randoid"? Fairly cheap trick. The elitism evident here is exactly what was evident in the woman's article. America produces, "appreciates", and consumes emormous amounts of arts in virtually every medium. The curious statement here seems to imply that because large amounts are read, viewed, and watched, that by definition must mean it's all cheap stuff. I've been in cities all over this country, from the largest to the smallest, and have seen thriving artistic communities all over - from community theatre, to small galleries showing (and - the horror! - selling) local artist's work, to some of the largest and best known museums in the world. The publishing industry may manufacture books at a stunning rate, but they have to be written before they are printed.

You may trash, if you want, the artists themselves, and imply that the quality is less than that of European countries, but that is a personal value judgement.

I think Americans undervalue art because they over-value money, and things which are quantifyable and lead to money, which art is not.

And looks what it produces: Freddy Got Fingered, Cinderella II, Britney Spears, NKotB, Danielle Steele, and John Grisham.


When was the last time you were in Italy (I was there a couple of weeks ago)? You think we are alone in producing schlock? Ever seen Italian soaps? Spaghetti westerns? Ever see Italian pulp fiction on bookstore shelves? Think Italian artists value selling their works to make a living less than American artists? Think all there is in other countries is high art, and all there is in America is crap? Good grief.

But being big doesn't necessarily mean being good, and I'd seriously be at a loss to claim that Hollywood filmmaking is better than Renaissance painting just because it's generated a greater cashflow ...

Along the same lines, modern Italian filmaking, and painting for that matter, would have a difficult time claiming to be "better" than Renaissance painting.

if you have something to say about this, midas, you are more than welcomed. as you can see, this is far from the "generalization" you whine about, but with your own sweeping generalizations it looks like you're just a troll.

The article itself was most certainly filled with "generalized" statements. Your comments went into a bit more detail, but that doesn't change my initial comments. I'm not certain what sweeping generalizations I made - I did state a few facts that seemed to be at odds with the article (but when did facts ever get in the way of artistic elitism?).

PS. I've met Vaclav Havel. He'd hate being used in this fashion. He greatly disliked having been made into a sort of poster boy for the revolutionary artist. He didn't even like politics ... in fact, wound up being President of Czechoslovakia at first during the 89 "Velvet Revolution" primarily because he had gone out to get coffee when discussions about who to nominate were being held in the Magic Lantern (the communist government had fled the country, and everything was in disarrary), and his cohorts picked him. While he did turn out some stunning pieces of political literature, mostly he just wanted to write plays.

But for whatever it's worth, since he's being brought up in a post that implies that artistic creativity and capitalist societies do not work well, here is a link to the first major address he gave to a joint session of the US Congress shortly after he had taken the Presidency. The quote below is rather interesting:

"I often hear the question: How can the United States of America help us today? My reply is as paradoxical as the whole of my life has been: you can help us most of all if you help the Soviet Union on its irreversible, but immensely complicated road to democracy. It is far more complicated than the road possible to its former European satellities. You yourselves know best how to support, as rapidly as possible, the non-violent evolution of this enormous, multi-national body politic towards democracy and autonomy for all of its peoples. Therefore, it is not fitting for me to offer you any advice. I can only say that the sooner, the more quickly, and the more peacefully the Soviet Union begins to move along the road towards genuine political pluralism, respect for the rights of nations to their own integrity and to a working -- that is a market -- economy, the better it will be, not just for Czechs and Slovaks, but for the whole world. And the sooner you yourselves will be able to reduce the burden of the military budget borne by the American people. To put it metaphorically: the millions you give to the East today will soon return to you in the form of billions in savings."
posted by MidasMulligan at 9:25 PM on March 31, 2002

I think there are a number of myths that contribute to the bad reputation of the arts.

1. Homophobia. Some people believe the professional practice in the arts must make one gay.

2. Elitism. Because artistic talent is supposedly inborn or divinely inspired some artistic communities look down their noses at everybody else, and everybody else looks down their noses right back.

3. A lack of respect for amateurism. Amateur arts is seen as trite, tasteless, and worthless.

I think that if you compare Renaissance artists to contemporary artists to the Renaissance artists would fare quite well. Renaissance art was part of the entire Italian moneymaking empire that included not only in exporting home-grown masters like Michelangelo and da Vinci but also exporting luxury trade goods obtained through exclusive partnerships with the Arab world. Like Disney World or Vegas, the architecture and arts of Renaissance Italy served to impress investors and intimidate enemies.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 10:36 PM on March 31, 2002

Attempting to dismiss someone by calling them a "Randoid"? Fairly cheap trick.

I don't need to call you names to dismiss you, MM: I just have to read your comments. (Although by contrast, you do like to throw about the term 'elitist' as if it bothers people.) It's just preferable to use the shorthand because you loudly demonstrate all the clichés yourself, and I have better things to do with my time.

The curious statement here seems to imply that because large amounts are read, viewed, and watched, that by definition must mean it's all cheap stuff.

No: you're wriggling now. You responded to the piece's opening gambit that works of art have no productive function in the economy by saying "Other than the small matter of having the largest motion picture, music, and publishing industries in the world." You were the one who made the connection between productive capacity and productive function; in fact, the author chose deliberately to look beyond the points that you criticised, to argue that the demands of mass entertainment cultivate a deliberately simplified and verbalised visual aesthetic: something to which you never respond. So to accuse her of excessive generalisation based upon a critique of the three points in the first paragraph she chooses to leave aside as simplistic gut responses, is, in a sense, to show that you couldn't be bothered reading the piece right through to address her actual argument. Which, by curious irony, is a sign of verbal deficiency rather than visual. At least we'll know, in future, to squash all our arguments into one short paragraph, otherwise you'll never get to them.
posted by riviera at 4:54 AM on April 1, 2002

I may be being really thick here, but what kind of visual communication is she talking about? TV doesn't count because ordinary people don't create it, she says, so what does? I don't understand. How does the grid thing fit in? When in literature classes do Italian children draw their interpretation of Dante's Inferno? Lines never stopped me doodling at school (the margin thing is for teachers' marks, wackybrit. I had to do it as well at my state school).

How are ordinary people (not professionals, or TV and film would count) supposed to be analysing visually? Isn't analysis about abstract ideas, and therefore not visual? Do Italian people play charades when they want to talk? How is Italian culture any less verbal? Seems to me the Italians are very very fond of talking, and writing and texting their friends. Some concrete examples would have been appreciated of how other cultures are more visual. And people saying that Europeans are 'more visual' - stop lumping all us in together. There are a lot of very separate and distinct cultures within Europe.

I think the film industry argument is off topic but I'll chip in anyway. I agree with MidasMulligan (and now my world has turned upside down), the film industry IS a great example of visual thinking and produces some true art. Remember, 90 percent of everything is crap and there was a time when novels and theatre were looked down upon as lowbrow. Yes, film is incredibly commercial, but so was Renaissance art. It was all about patronage.

In 100 years time kids will be studying The Godfather, Casablanca, Taxi Driver, Citizen Kane etc etc (or whatever is deemed to be worthy) as examples of high art. Along with the huge uptake of TV and the growth of photography, it will be argued the film industry pushed western culture, perhaps even world culture, into becoming obsessively visual.

I personally think the way most people think is innately visual anyway and TV and films were mediums just waiting to tap into that. Writing and talking is just a way of communicating the pictures in one person's head to another's. It's a code in lieu of images. People who don't think visually are usually either mentally handicapped or mathematic or scientific geniuses.
posted by Summer at 7:20 AM on April 1, 2002

I think the author of the article wants to focus on visual/spatial/design fluency - that is, the language of static images - though she brings in a lot of other issues that fuzzy it up something fierce. The grid argument fits in because grids are more conducive to this kind of visual thinking. They help the eye deal with scale, proportion, and other things. It's true, grids can be limiting, but less so than plain ruled paper, which shouts "thou shalt write on me," especially when you consider the progression of ruled paper through the early grades.

And yes, American schools do use grid paper, but each pack only has like 20 sheets, it's expensive, and since a student tends to see only one pack of the stuff per semester the 20 sheets quickly become sacrosanct to the point that the only kind of drawing they get used for is stuff that can be described by y = mx + b.

But it's really a minor factor in the general American disdain for art, and especially visual "Art".
posted by furiousthought at 8:14 AM on April 1, 2002

Everybody know truly creative people use hex paper.
posted by thirteen at 9:47 PM on April 1, 2002

I found a stack of isometric grid paper at school and grabbed a bunch to work with... to see how it would alter my thinking habits with a "3rd dimension"...

...Not much, as it turns out. A lot of art is still 99% persperation, 1% inspiration. Good ideas can occur to anyone, but it's that most art comes from the extra effort to make that idea into reality... and we Americans tend to be really lazy.
posted by Down10 at 11:31 PM on April 1, 2002

I don't need to call you names to dismiss you, MM: I just have to read your comments.

Well, you certainly have a hard time restraining yourself it seems.

No: you're wriggling now. You responded to the piece's opening gambit that works of art have no productive function in the economy by saying "Other than the small matter of having the largest motion picture, music, and publishing industries in the world." You were the one who made the connection between productive capacity and productive function; in fact, the author chose deliberately to look beyond the points that you criticised, to argue that the demands of mass entertainment cultivate a deliberately simplified and verbalised visual aesthetic: something to which you never respond.

Actually, it is you (and the author) who are caught in a big pile of confused logic. And you won't be able to "wriggle" out of it - though I suppose you can just "look beyond" it.

Unless one defines what "art" is, the entire article is useless. She doesn't. You don't. What you imply is that there is some sort of standard that much of what Americans consider "art" does not meet. Good for you. Good for her. Rest comfortable in your rarified climate - you to whom contemporary art isn't too "hard" to understand. The large numbers of thriving artists, artistic communities, and members of the US population that are so stupid they actually think they are enjoying art will continue living their deluded lives.
posted by MidasMulligan at 9:25 PM on April 3, 2002