[lit-ideas] Re: "artistic progress"
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 16:08:26 +0000 (GMT)
This is just a brief, off the cuff reply - but haven't we been here before?
And does not this view - that the problems to be solved in creating a work
are "specific to that work" - lead to a kind of essentialism? (Eg. an
essentialism as to the perfect matching of form and content). And is this a)
tenable b)even if tenable, explanatory?
There is a sense in which every work of art may be "unique" (if it is not
identical a copy of another, for example) but this sense is surely too weak
to disallow that there is much that certain works of art may have in common
and that, far from its problems being uniquely "specific" to that work,
creating works of art involves solving problems which are also involved in
creating other works of art. [It partly depends on the level of generality at
which we characterise something as a "problem", and here we have perhaps a
choice - to emphasise what problems have in common or where they differ].
The same might be said of scientific problems - which in a sense may be each
"unique" but in a sense too weak to disallow that solving such problems ever
involves solving problems of a similar kind to those posed by other
scientific problems. Indeed scientists can be inspired to a solution of their
[distinct, unique] problem by understanding a solution given to another
problem.
Surely artists can learn in the same way and this is part, though not at all
all, of what is involved in "artistic progress"?
Donal
--- Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Donal: Nevertheless, I suggest, there is nearly
> always some 'progress'
> from an artist's earliest work and nearly always
> progress in their
> 'knowledge'.
>
> Eric: Yet the "problems" an artist must solve--in
> writing a novel, composing a symphony, completing
> a painting--are specific to that work.
>
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