Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Pattern-chaser]

I can think of workplaces where efficiency and even military discipline are better than creativity, for instance the fighting services : a hospital ward . Then ,again, I can imagine situations when creativity benefits the causes of victory , and sick patients.

BTW I regard your artistry, and that of Sculptor, as work whether or not you get paid money for doing it. I dislike the word and concept 'hobby' so much I hesitated to type it in full.

I'm going to rush headlong into a possible misunderstanding here. You seem to be saying that art is for work, that only the work environment has worth or significance. My impression is the very opposite. A few years ago, I was searching the net for stuff about creativity, and was stunned to find that nearly every webpage I came across considered creativity *in the workplace*! We all need to earn a living, in the AmeriCapitalist world we have built, but imagination, creativity, and art are not defined by this, our species' worst mistake.

It's not for nothing that artists have a stereotype of living in garrets for the sake of their art. Art is an all-consuming need or desire, not a way of paying the mortgage. It *could* be the latter as well, but wage-slavery is nothing to do, directly, with art.

IMO

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P.S. In the fighting services, and the other professions you mention, imagination and creativity are what make the difference when you find yourself in a novel situation that your training didn't cover. You have a comrade injured, or a patient who needs a doctor, and there's no help around but you. You might be able to improvise something that would help, or you could stick to your training ... and deeply regret their death. Imagination and creativity are vital parts of real life, where "real life" embraces the world inside the workplace, and outside too.

[Pattern-chaser]

Okay if you say so you are mediocre by some standard or other, I wouldn't know. But I am not being polite or nicey-nice. 'H--by" means nothing besides its implication that your honest endeavour is valued to the degree of how much somebody pays you for doing it.

I'm surely misunderstanding here? Are you saying, or implying, that you measure worth in the real world in dollars?

[popeye1945]

Does the art object deliver/communicate the experience that was intended, and through that experience the intended meaning, the intended understanding, and/or the intended emotion/s?

[Belindi]

I can think of workplaces where efficiency and even military discipline are better than creativity, for instance the fighting services : a hospital ward . Then ,again, I can imagine situations when creativity benefits the causes of victory , and sick patients.

BTW I regard your artistry, and that of Sculptor, as work whether or not you get paid money for doing it. I dislike the word and concept 'hobby' so much I hesitated to type it in full.

I'm going to rush headlong into a possible misunderstanding here. You seem to be saying that art is for work, that only the work environment has worth or significance. My impression is the very opposite. A few years ago, I was searching the net for stuff about creativity, and was stunned to find that nearly every webpage I came across considered creativity *in the workplace*! We all need to earn a living, in the AmeriCapitalist world we have built, but imagination, creativity, and art are not defined by this, our species' worst mistake.

It's not for nothing that artists have a stereotype of living in garrets for the sake of their art. Art is an all-consuming need or desire, not a way of paying the mortgage. It *could* be the latter as well, but wage-slavery is nothing to do, directly, with art.

IMO

*******************************

P.S. In the fighting services, and the other professions you mention, imagination and creativity are what make the difference when you find yourself in a novel situation that your training didn't cover. You have a comrade injured, or a patient who needs a doctor, and there's no help around but you. You might be able to improvise something that would help, or you could stick to your training ... and deeply regret their death. Imagination and creativity are vital parts of real life, where "real life" embraces the world inside the workplace, and outside too.

The history of art shows us that some of the most revered and beloved artists made and performed their works to the order of paying customers such as a pope , a Medici, the Lutheran church, or a Florentine or Low Countries merchant.

The whole of today's world ,give or take a few people who try to conserve what is traditional , is defined by profit and loss.
Traditional societies had popular culture and high culture and only rich elites could buy works of high culture and hire highly skilled artists and performers.

I applaud improvisation and creativity in any workplace from the Sistine Chapel to the skilled manual craftsman in some obscure village, to the nurses in the oncology ward. The difference between team work as in the oncology ward on one hand, and working to one's personal desires on the other is a difference in degree of hierarchical control . Both ethical team work and also moral and sympathetic personal motives are laudable; but profit and loss is inhuman and often cruel.

[Sy Borg]

Okay if you say so you are mediocre by some standard or other, I wouldn't know. But I am not being polite or nicey-nice. 'H--by" means nothing besides its implication that your honest endeavour is valued to the degree of how much somebody pays you for doing it.

I see hobbies as a major plank of mental health. The key to life is passion. You will find that people with passionate interests tend to live longer and better than those without. Consider Keith Richards. The man should have logically been dead over half a century ago. I am convinced that what has kept Keith alive through his many misadventures is a burning passion for blues music and rock n' roll. It's an obsessive love that has driven almost his every waking moment for the last seventy years or more.

Money and professional status matter in that they can allow an artist to focus more on that which they love. It doesn't change the love, though. In fact, the absence from one's passion while at work can make one's heart grow fonder, so to speak.

Meanwhile, some professional creatives can lose their love for the form through pressure or repetition. I have seen this most markedly in graphic designers, who start work as enthusiastic, bohemian artists but lose their passion from years of having to churn out rushed work, where there is no time nor need to refine and create. The art stops being expression and becomes regurgitation.

So, as always, "it's complicated".

[Sculptor1]

Toad is worth a listen.
There was a great flowering in 1970-1 , of heavy rock which fed into Prog. Iron Claw is pretty good, though raw. There is still much to discover.

I thought "Toad" was the Cream track with the Ginger Baker drum solo. I'll check them out when I get the chance... Thanks for the tip.

Try Toad by Toad 1971

[Belindi]

Okay if you say so you are mediocre by some standard or other, I wouldn't know. But I am not being polite or nicey-nice. 'H--by" means nothing besides its implication that your honest endeavour is valued to the degree of how much somebody pays you for doing it.

I'm surely misunderstanding here? Are you saying, or implying, that you measure worth in the real world in dollars?

Too often does it happen that unpaid work is called a 'h---by'. That is so patronising !

Pattern-chaser , the real world is not measured by the market but by living beings with feelings.

[Pattern-chaser]

The whole of today's world, give or take a few people who try to conserve what is traditional, is defined by profit and loss.

If that is what we have built, then we deserve what climate change — which is caused by AmeriCapitalism — is about to do to us.

Pattern-chaser , the real world is not measured by the market but by living beings with feelings.

Yes, indeed! But I can't see how that chimes with your previous comments...?

[Belindi]

The whole of today's world, give or take a few people who try to conserve what is traditional, is defined by profit and loss.

If that is what we have built, then we deserve what climate change — which is caused by AmeriCapitalism — is about to do to us.

Pattern-chaser , the real world is not measured by the market but by living beings with feelings.

Yes, indeed! But I can't see how that chimes with your previous comments...?

It doesn't chime. I don't like that sort of real. I want the real world to be striving for universal good.

[Pattern-chaser]

The whole of today's world, give or take a few people who try to conserve what is traditional, is defined by profit and loss.

If that is what we have built, then we deserve what climate change — which is caused by AmeriCapitalism — is about to do to us.

Pattern-chaser , the real world is not measured by the market but by living beings with feelings.

Yes, indeed! But I can't see how that chimes with your previous comments...?

It doesn't chime. I don't like that sort of real. I want the real world to be striving for universal good.

OK, but what has "universal good" got to do with a world that is "defined by profit and loss"? Surely they are almost opposites?

[Belindi]

The whole of today's world, give or take a few people who try to conserve what is traditional, is defined by profit and loss.

If that is what we have built, then we deserve what climate change — which is caused by AmeriCapitalism — is about to do to us.

Pattern-chaser , the real world is not measured by the market but by living beings with feelings.

Yes, indeed! But I can't see how that chimes with your previous comments...?

It doesn't chime. I don't like that sort of real. I want the real world to be striving for universal good.

OK, but what has "universal good" got to do with a world that is "defined by profit and loss"? Surely they are almost opposites?

Our lives are like Sisyphus. We create the reality we want, and it's hard work as the boulder keeps running down the hill despite all our hard work. Good art has got to be hard work to learn and to perform or else the work is suspect and is probably superficial in its meaning

[popeye1945]

Good art is the intended effect realized skillfully, even if, the intended effect is just to be pleasing to behold.

[Belindi]

Good art is the intended effect realized skillfully, even if, the intended effect is just to be pleasing to behold.

I think that's only part of what describes good art, Besides making an endurng good object, good art is also a good performance as music or dance or drama.
Good art is also good and true enjoyment on the part of the audience ; that's to say art is social.and its valuable social function is to lead people out into novel possibilities for what is good and beautiful, and even what is true E.G. Picasso's 'Guernica'.


Art may be compared and contrasted with religion, While both art and religion express passions and beliefs, good art bravely frees while religion tends to conservative and proscriptive.

[Lagayascienza]

I love Guernica. To me, it is one of the greatest paintings of the 20thC. I say this even though its creator was awful . He was a prick to the women in his life. He was a sod of a man. But that's him. Not his art.

But Belindi I'm interested in what you say about art expressing beliefs. I don't see any beliefs in Guernica. I see a revolutionary way of looking at the world and of making powerful images. And perhaps artistic passion. But I don't see any belief. Could you explain what belief you see in this wonderful painting.

[Lagayascienza]

The only belief I can see in Guernica is perhaps an aesthetic conviction that a painting does not need to be realistic to express beauty an powerful emotions. If that is what you mean by belief, then I would agree.