the most promising young american author is TAO LIN

If I can taste racism in a chicken, then I would agree it's my taste buds that are the problem.

Or, rather, it's true that art isn't made in a vacuum but it sure as fuck has to travel through one to reach anyone else

XP twas yr analogy bucko

the more that work is craft rather than art,

I don't understand the distinction. art is in the eye of the beholder. darragh otm, once a work is complete it belongs to the world, i think you're giving the artist more power than they deserve or have. the world misinterprets artists' intentions all the time, it doesn't make their view any less valid, if anything it diminishes the singular artist's intent

why use an abstract example when chik fil a is standing right there

Does it stand without a social construct tho

Does it

with craft you can judge on more technical aspects -- is this chicken juicy, is it properly salted, etc...
with art, the chicken doesn't even have to be edible.

If it isn't then it's bad chicken.

I think perhaps the chicken concept has outlived its usefulness here

“Craft” is what people call art made by women or people of color

are you saying... this goose is cooked?

XP that's kinda just a bit nonsensical there silby tbh

Art being in the eye of the beholder is all very well and true but part and parcel of the art is its context. Watching Woody Allen's Manhattan in 1979 is not the same experience as watching it now, because of what we now know about Allen. I suspect when it comes to artists who are bad people we can ignore it a lot more easily when the person is long dead and not impinging on our cultural space in such a direct way. I can enjoy Knut Hamsun's Hunger without worrying unduly about the fact that he was a Nazi in a way that I simply couldn't with a book written by a contemporary Nazi sympathiser.

I liked Taipei, if Lin's a sexual abuser then that makes me feel a lot more dubious about him, but maybe not to the extent of never reading him again.

well, cooking has long been the province of women and people of color, and it's true that pretensions of art in cooking have been given more credence when executed by white men.

Xp Not to reduce your post to two letters but 'we'

When people start writing down what 'we' are getting from a creative enterprise then the stall is already set out

'we' is the worst word in writing today tbh

Well I could easily rephrase the same thought without 'we', so I think my point stands. When we/you/a person beholds art, s/he includes everything s/he knows about it including the stuff about the person who made it and the circumstances of it being made

better great art by a terrible person than terrible art by a wonderful person

I've always been on the lookout for undeniably great art by terrible people, and it's always been totally deniable.

caravaggio was pretty terrible

ZZ I think that when you change from we to I (imo the third person is just 'we' again and ought be jettisoned) it changes the statement completely

The experience you claim for yourself is inarguable and any experience you claim for anyone else is invalid and that's the core of the argument from where im standing, art is experienced in the first person and therefore nothing is true

i think we (non-royal we) allow for a much more personalized experience of art than we do say murder, but maybe art crimes should be prosecuted closer to other kinds of crimes (i.e. by community standards).

What is an art crime

xpost

Yes, art is a subjective experience and there's no right/wrong way to experience it, I agree. I was making an empirical point about the way people seem to experience art. And generally they find it impossible to divorce the object from its surrounds. You can say that once an artist's done with his/her art, it's out there in the world, separate from the artist, but in practice, those beholders of art tend to want to know about the artist etc.

Ah ah ah

People, they, beholders

Am I not allowed to talk about anyone but myself?

if even that tbh

Course you are!

But for the purposes of this discussion it completely begs the question, surely?

i thought the general anxiety around reading tao lin is whether it's communally offensive (an art crime)?
*BANGS GAVEL* Law and Order theme begins.

xpost

I guess my starting point was this from you: "An object is an object once complete it is not the history of its creation". That strikes me as a bit naive. There's no "object" out there per se. There's an experience had by the person who encounters an artist's intervention. That is an entirely subjective experience that may well include "the history of its creation". And, it seems, it very often does. Read any review of any book, or indeed this thread, and you'll see ample inclusion of "the history of its creation" in any experience of "the object".

With you 100% until "and it seems" at which stage you are doing it again

i thought the general anxiety around reading tao lin is whether it's communally offensive (an art crime)?

i know orwell comparisons are played out and overused but seriously?

if deuce bigelow: european gigolo can inspire "I hate hate hate hated" this movie, we can at least spare 2 mins hate for tao lin

xpost

Well no, I'm making an empirical point! Go read any review of a book by Tao Lin. You'll almost invariably find discussion of how the characters relate to Tao Lin himself. In their engagement with Lin's art, the reviewers are thinking about the history of its creation, more often than not. Fact!

Because a I don't think we can work from 'this happens a lot' even if that were the same thing as 'a lot of people describe this as being the case for them' and b even to accept this as true for more than one other person's experience (how can you know your experience mirrors that of another btw that seems... presumptuous) is not at all to say that it is any way 'more true' for me and this would hold even were I the only person to not claim to share that experience

That's long-winded and messy because I'm enjoying it that way, but we're I to clearly state the argument- it doesn't matter how many people say that they feel it is the case that the intent or biography or method of the artist affects their perception of the work they only believe that it does. Of course, their belief makes it so. But the inputs don't.

isn't this also about the inextricable way art production is linked to commercial interests (distribution, publicity)? In this way enjoyment if art by terrible (abuser, anti-Semite, etc) producer involves feeding those interests and furthering the commercial validity of the artists projects.

i suspect given the minimal monetary stakes, it's more about giving cultural capital to a scoundrel for a work of dubious (consensus) value.

Tax involves giving money to some awful ppl too

deems shut the fuck up

better great art by a terrible person than terrible art by a wonderful person

― Mordy, Tuesday, November 28, 2017 5:57 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i luv binaries bc they are always true

if deuce bigelow: european gigolo can inspire "I hate hate hate hated" this movie, we can at least spare 2 mins hate for tao lin

That was North. Deuce Bigelow: European Gigalo inspired “your movie sucks.”

dammit now i owe rob schneider an apology.

exile all morally suspect artists to siberia and make them suffer so we can enjoy their art knowing that they are not benefiting

isn't this also about the inextricable way art production is linked to commercial interests (distribution, publicity)? In this way enjoyment if art by terrible (abuser, anti-Semite, etc) producer involves feeding those interests and furthering the commercial validity of the artists projects.

― plax (ico), Tuesday, November 28, 2017 9:09 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is the only argument against reading books by “bad” people that makes sense to me. It’s a serious argument, especiallt for someone who takes ethical consumption seriously in all spheres of their lives.

But I don’t understand not wanting to read novels or poems by “bad” people. I don’t look to literature for moral instruction, I look to it for enjoyment and maybe to encounter unfamiliar experiences and perspectives. I guess one could say that they are uninterested in things a truly depreved person would create — that such a person is likely devoid of insight or wisdom — but sadly I don’t think that’s the case. Anne Sexton molested her daughter. Carl Jung claimed that James Joyce did the same thing to his daughter. Shelley was a massive hypocrite, preaching grnder equality and treating the women in his life with cruel indifference, arguably leading his first wife to suicide. And on and on

Do you feel like their works are a reflection or endorsement of their morally reprehensible selves?

Also, and maybe this is an old Catholic thing, but I am uncomfortable separating people into “the good” and “the bad.” There is lurking darkness in every person. Not the same amount. Someone who does awful things and is awful still might, I think, have interesting things to say, even things that could be relevant to me.

Xp Philip, sort of! Sometimes! But literary works are open to multiple interpretations. Good ones contain contradictions and point beyond themselves. If an authot wanted to say somethig simple, or knew precisely what they wanted to express, they wouldn’t choose the form of the poem or novel. They’d write an ILX post.

Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle

Do you feel like their works are a reflection or endorsement of their morally reprehensible selves?

it's easy to spot a racist artist, listed or not, because he has brined his art in pickle juice, i.e. liquid racism