Emotions lead to no truth in art

@Aristoddler,

Aristoddler wrote:

A little bit of truth in both statements, Boagie.
A lot of artists create to generate emotions in others, and a lot create to show their level of intellect instead. Kind of an elitist way of showing off...only the range of people that "get it" are a select few, so I personally don't understand the intellectual side of art, myself. I prefer to accept a wide range of audience, if possible.

Both sides of art, front, and back are intellectual. The third side, the inside is emotion. Art is presented as an emotional argument, or if you will, a statement. You turn to it, perhaps, in a structure filled with such statements. As your perception focuses, and your mind excludes all other statements, you should have a pronounced emotional reaction to the art before you. Before you turn away you may intellectualize. Perhaps that is why you are there, to look at technique which has the power to detract or add. But, art is subject, and some subjects have an anagogic appeal. Regardless, art is art because we, individually, have an emotional attachment to it. We love it, or we turn it toward the wall. The trick to the inside of art, skill, excellence, what have you; is to present meaningful subjects, even the dangerous, tragic, and the doomed with such grace that they are made beautiful. We can only find the profound in the beautiful.

@lw22,

Emotions are the perception of art. As an artist, I feel it is my goal to evoke an emotional response in the viewer. If they look at my work and have no reaction, well then its just a pretty picture, not art. And the reaction need not always be a good one. I painted a peice for a speed metal band, A demon sodomizing a dead female while the hands of the lustful in hell reach up toward her. Her eye sockets are empty/bloody and her wrists and neck are cut open, the pic is very high contrast and is painted in reds and blues. This picture evokes such strong emotions that most people shudder and look away. No matter what mood they are in during or previeous to the viewing. (patting myself on the back) Job well done.

Good art will always get an emotional reaction, because that is what is generaly intended. Great art will give you the emotions the artist intened you to have because the art is well done enough to do so... to bad there is not much great art out there.

@OldCrow,

OldCrow wrote:

Emotions are the perception of art. As an artist, I feel it is my goal to evoke an emotional response in the viewer. If they look at my work and have no reaction, well then its just a pretty picture, not art. And the reaction need not always be a good one. I painted a peice for a speed metal band, A demon sodomizing a dead female while the hands of the lustful in hell reach up toward her. Her eye sockets are empty/bloody and her wrists and neck are cut open, the pic is very high contrast and is painted in reds and blues. This picture evokes such strong emotions that most people shudder and look away. No matter what mood they are in during or previeous to the viewing. (patting myself on the back) Job well done.

Good art will always get an emotional reaction, because that is what is generaly intended. Great art will give you the emotions the artist intened you to have because the art is well done enough to do so... to bad there is not much great art out there.

Art as we think of art, and not as many former people thought of art -as any useful activity, is communication through emotions. Emotions are not only the perception of art, but our first reaction to life in general, and the basis of of self perceptions as well, so they cannot be specifically equated with perception of art. They are a part of that, and not that exclusively. In the cartoon you describe above the ability of the art to communicate is limited to a very simple message that is unlikely to change any ones person, personality, or mind. Beauty is essential to the utility of art because beauty is the entrance into the soul so that even evil if clothed in beauty can find residence there. It is essential for true communication, and for change to result from art, that the beauty be a vehicle of true philosophy.

@lw22,

is art considered art if one calls it such but it does not invoke any emotion whatsoever?

@b6zulu,

b6zulu wrote:

is art considered art if one calls it such but it does not invoke any emotion whatsoever?

If there is an art to art it is in recreating a reality so the emotion one feels is communicated through the art. But is that not the heart of the problem? How do we make people feel other than the background emotions of hate and fear? Surely these are evoked by art. Just ask Juliani. But when emotions are cheap, and experiences so extreme, as they are today, because of media, then how can we wring the emotional significance from the commonplace. I did not live through Hiroshima, Dresden, of Nagasaki. I did not live through the war that killed perhaps 70 million people. Perhaps we cannot care. Perhaps the pain of caring must be avoided. Yet, the question remains: How can the truly terrible make a lasting impression on people, so they will look in morbid fascination, and not turn away in disgust, and yet take a lesson from the experience.

My bet is that most art is bought because the buyer is told it is a good investment; but that the buyer will always feel safer with art that evokes no emotional response. Look around you. It is not just the young who are looking for drugs. Everyone is trying to escape reality, and escape their pain. I do not have the courage I once had for looking at pain or death. But I once looked hard at it, fearlessly, trying to witness the pain, the promise, the hope and futility of life. We are all a dieing Gaul. How many art lovers have the courage to see true art, and to see art in life and the life in life?

You know if you read a poem by baudelair, or view a picture by Van Gough that you are not only seeing life portrayed, but the genius of the artist. His struggles, his pain, his sympathies for the human purpose come through. Consider this, art is through the artist made, but through art is humanity made. A hillbilly once told me you never know how you look until you get your picture took; and I told him you never know how bad you're shakin until you get your picture taken. Until people can see themselves through art they never know themselves, and cannot right their course in life, change themselves, or change how they appear. We are still chewing on characters invented by the Greeks. What does that tell you.

@Fido,

Good thread, very interesting.

I have noticed that I have different reactions to the same piece of art at different times. I suppose it is because of how I am feeling at the time.

For example, the first time I saw The Big Lebowski, I hated it. I had to watch it again as part of a college course and I fell in love with it.

I have the same experiences with music. Sometimes I am in the mood for old blues and sometimes I want to listen to alternative. I cannot listen to music that does not fit my emotions at the time.

@cmarie phil,

i think music is best way for it
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@cmarie phil,

cmarie wrote:

Good thread, very interesting.

I have noticed that I have different reactions to the same piece of art at different times. I suppose it is because of how I am feeling at the time.

For example, the first time I saw The Big Lebowski, I hated it. I had to watch it again as part of a college course and I fell in love with it.

I have the same experiences with music. Sometimes I am in the mood for old blues and sometimes I want to listen to alternative. I cannot listen to music that does not fit my emotions at the time.

I like those guys, and they got the best actor for that part. I'd like to hand them an idea for a movie, about a little man. Litteraly a little man with a disease that is shrinking him down to nothing, and he pays this average run of the mill lawyer a million dollars to bait a third guy into extending himself too far into debt, after the little man has already pushed the guy to the brink.

For the little man it is all about revenge, and for the lawyer it is all about limiting the personal damage caused by breaking the guy's company, and it becomes about love, when the lawyer falls for the daughter of the man he helped to destroy. The guy who is destroyed he keeps from total destruction but he still ends up in a trailer. His wife and two of his daughters who are biches leave him, and the only daughter who stays is one of those beautiful pure of heart types who senses the lawyers part in her fathers demise. And the lawyer keeps the father around doing odd jobs just so he can have the daughter around some, because he loves her; but she could never ever love him if she knew his part in what happened to her family, and to her father, and she guesses, and with a glance tells him he will never have her.

The lawyer is one of those average sorts of people who will never be rich who usually thinks more of justice than of money. The little man knows he will shrink until he dies, or disappears, and can think only of revenge. His is a small part. And the man he destroys is an ashol too, like his wife and some of his kids. The lawyer is corrupted, and used; and even though he tries to limit the damage of what he does, he knows, and the pure of heart girl knows, and so she can't love him even though he loves her.

It is the sort of thing only those brothers could do, or would do. I like their movies.

@Fido,

I like your idea! It sounds just quirky enough for those guys.

I too wish I could write a script for the Coen's. All of their movies are so clever. I love the dialogue.

Here are a couple of lines from The Big Lebowski:

Maude Lebowski: What do you do for recreation?
The Dude: Oh, the usual. I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback

Donny: Are these the Nazis, Walter?
Walter Sobchak: No, Donny, these men are nihilists. There's nothing to be afraid of.

The Dude: Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not "Mr. Lebowski". You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.

Just for laughs. I chose the few that contain no profanity. Wink

@cmarie phil,

cmarie wrote:

I like your idea! It sounds just quirky enough for those guys.

I too wish I could write a script for the Coen's. All of their movies are so clever. I love the dialogue.

Here are a couple of lines from The Big Lebowski:

Maude Lebowski: What do you do for recreation?
The Dude: Oh, the usual. I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback

Donny: Are these the Nazis, Walter?
Walter Sobchak: No, Donny, these men are nihilists. There's nothing to be afraid of.

The Dude: Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not "Mr. Lebowski". You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.

Just for laughs. I chose the few that contain no profanity.

I've never seen the whole movie, and recognized their work within minutes. Raising Arizona I've seen many times, and never saw the beginning, and still haven't gotten a good look at it. You can do so much with movies, but the only thing I hate in movies is computer animation, and the consequential anthropomorphism. They should leave it home till they get it right, And one thing they always blow is jumping and falling. They can do things I can't do, but they should study some physics.

@Fido,

Quote:

from Fido:

I've never seen the whole movie, and recognized their work within minutes. Raising Arizona I've seen many times, and never saw the beginning, and still haven't gotten a good look at it. You can do so much with movies, but the only thing I hate in movies is computer animation, and the consequential anthropomorphism. They should leave it home till they get it right, And one thing they always blow is jumping and falling. They can do things I can't do, but they should study some physics.

Oh I hate computer animation too! I saw a movie that had a male 'cow' as the lead character, and he had udders too! That is just bizarro to me. I have seen lots of these movies(kids:rolleyes:) , unfortunately, and very few are good IMHO.

You should see the whole Big Lebowski, very funny. I also currently have Fargo, Ladykillers, Raising Arizona and OH Brother Where art Thou? (they are all Coen's films)

IN each of these movies, it is the dialogue I love best. Sorry to go off topic, I will hush now. sssssssshhhhhhhhhhh.

@cmarie phil,

cmarie wrote:

Oh I hate computer animation too! I saw a movie that had a male 'cow' as the lead character, and he had udders too! That is just bizarro to me. I have seen lots of these movies(kids:rolleyes:) , unfortunately, and very few are good IMHO.

You should see the whole Big Lebowski, very funny. I also currently have Fargo, Ladykillers, Raising Arizona and OH Brother Where art Thou? (they are all Coen's films)

IN each of these movies, it is the dialogue I love best. Sorry to go off topic, I will hush now. sssssssshhhhhhhhhhh.

Back ground is very important to character development, but dialogue is essential. That is where Falkener never made it. I am trying to think of that guy from the thirties who said working In hollywood is like taking a trip down a sewer in a glass bottem boat. He would go to work, screenwriting, and sleep, and no one would wake him till they needed some realistic dialogue.

What do you think of Sam Pekinpaw? He had that John Ford feeling for the old West. It is hard to stand a man in front of a mountain and not think of him in mythic terms. From my point of view- trying to write, English major, learning some criticism, thinking conceptually- it is difficult to enjoy movies because I am too aware of the craft. But I do see that people come to make movies from either the perpective of the film, or the book. If they are literary, the background will fade into the back ground and there will be lots of diologue, and references to liturature. People who see life through a camera rely on background to carry much of the movie, to set both the mood and meaning before the first words are spoken.

I think what is missing from the computermated stuff is the moral message which is present in all good comedy and tragedy. (No lesson can be taken from vidio games either, because the lives like the deaths are meaningless.) People should be presented with a choice. So often in the police, law and order, vengeance type comedy people are presented with some demonic representation of a human who is then killed off with multiple camera angles, lots of blood, falls from high places, or massive explosions. This does nothing for people. Even though they want what happens to happen because they are made to witness the crimes of the guilty, when it happens it adds to their frustration, and angst. A good comedy, where you see the outsider wrestling with his own guilt, and finding his way back home has a medicinal effect . And classic tragedy, where the audience is led to see them selves in the guilty, and to forgive him, and so forgive themselves -makes for good, and effective, and socially redeeming art.

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Emotions lead to no truth in art

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