Hello (and goodbye) flowers!
May. 4th, 2006 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusWhat's the connection between art and ethics? Is art that's ethically good good art? Not always. But I feel very drawn to art which is both aesthetically satisfying and "ethically beautiful". It's important to me. I like to endorse art which is not only beautiful, but seems to have been made by a person who is morally beautiful. This relates very much to my reactions to the Japanther fiasco on Saturday night at the Whitney (and I suspect this thing is going to be the talk of New York when the Village Voice runs its story about it), and it might even relate to 
something like "the Smiths phenomenon", the fact that wherever you go in New York The Smiths are playing, and one of the qualities (apart from Morrissey's good voice and strong lyrics) that makes The Smiths so enduring is the deeply humane quality of many of their lyrics, the ethical stance on meat, property, exclusion, and so on. Millions of badboy rock artists come and go (I'm thinking of Andrew WK, or ARE Weapons, or people like that), but the ones who endure often have a higher ethical view; they actually address the question "How then should we live?" and come up with some answers.
I was in Kinokuniya at the Rockerfeller Center yesterday leafing through Drop Dead Cute: the new generation of women artists in Japan, and decided I really like the work of a painter called Yuko Murata. Using thick paint, simple shapes, nature imagery and off-kilter compositional crops, Murata paints with an almost childlike naivete. Her work makes me think of painters like Luc Tuymans or Karen Kilimnik (with whom she shares a Tokyo dealer, Gallery Side 2). There's real compassion in her paintings of animals; I instantly feel I'm in the presence of a good person, a person I'd entrust with important decisions, a person who "feels with" all living creatures.
Here's a little internet exhibition of Yuko Murata's paintings: an owl, an arched rock, a little bird, a sheep, a bat, a rabbit, a mouse, a field.
Murata is 33. I feel like I know where she's coming from, because I've known so many young Japanese women with similar tastes and ethics. They've been, to be honest, the greatest loves of my life, and in a sense my gurus and "seeing formers". I idolize them. I know their taste. They always love Mark Borthwick, and Jonas Mekas (and indeed a cursory image google turns up a photo Yuko made of Jonas Mekas, if it's the same Yuko). I'd say Tujiko Noriko is cut from the same cloth, and so is Rinko Kawauchi.
Hikaru Furuhashi is just about to graduate from SFAI. She loves Jonas Mekas, Mark Borthwick, and the philosophy of the Dalai Lama. Her work, like this 8mm film, Where is my head?, combines electronic disorienteering and a slightly spooky, surreal quality with friendliness and a sort of universal empathy, especially with nature, the sky and animals.
I don't doubt for a moment that this nature sentiment is rooted in Shinto. It's something I've tried to capture on my forthcoming album "Ocky Milk", but I actually doubt that, in the end, I've managed to transcend my own deep protestantism and its need to fight and quarrel and reject. It might be easy to stereotype this way of feeling and thinking about life as something hippy, something a bit "Hello trees, hello animals, hello flowers, hello sky!" But I can promise you that it isn't easy to achieve, especially in the world we live in today, and despite the fact that it's precisely what we need.
In contrast, yesterday I watched American artist Joe Gibbons' film "A Time to Die", part of the Whitney Biennial, in which "Gibbons is an irascible hit man accosting autumnal flowers for hanging on to their beauty after their prime". He actually makes chopping the heads off blooms look tremendously violent, which is funny, but also sad:
"Our botanical pugilist," says the Lincoln Center Film Society "picks on specimens less than his own size, quoting Ecclesiastes and offering life lessons with last rites of occasional mercy and ruthless pruning. Tidy tips for candytufts: “Life is short,” “A moment’s sunlight on the grass.” Gibbons personifies Pascal’s definition of man as a thinking reed, albeit with a switchblade. A Time to Die serves as a timely update of some of Gibbon’s early Super-8 films, where he sucker punched garden varieties and showed nature who was boss."
Goodbye, flowers!
something like "the Smiths phenomenon", the fact that wherever you go in New York The Smiths are playing, and one of the qualities (apart from Morrissey's good voice and strong lyrics) that makes The Smiths so enduring is the deeply humane quality of many of their lyrics, the ethical stance on meat, property, exclusion, and so on. Millions of badboy rock artists come and go (I'm thinking of Andrew WK, or ARE Weapons, or people like that), but the ones who endure often have a higher ethical view; they actually address the question "How then should we live?" and come up with some answers.I was in Kinokuniya at the Rockerfeller Center yesterday leafing through Drop Dead Cute: the new generation of women artists in Japan, and decided I really like the work of a painter called Yuko Murata. Using thick paint, simple shapes, nature imagery and off-kilter compositional crops, Murata paints with an almost childlike naivete. Her work makes me think of painters like Luc Tuymans or Karen Kilimnik (with whom she shares a Tokyo dealer, Gallery Side 2). There's real compassion in her paintings of animals; I instantly feel I'm in the presence of a good person, a person I'd entrust with important decisions, a person who "feels with" all living creatures.
Here's a little internet exhibition of Yuko Murata's paintings: an owl, an arched rock, a little bird, a sheep, a bat, a rabbit, a mouse, a field.
Murata is 33. I feel like I know where she's coming from, because I've known so many young Japanese women with similar tastes and ethics. They've been, to be honest, the greatest loves of my life, and in a sense my gurus and "seeing formers". I idolize them. I know their taste. They always love Mark Borthwick, and Jonas Mekas (and indeed a cursory image google turns up a photo Yuko made of Jonas Mekas, if it's the same Yuko). I'd say Tujiko Noriko is cut from the same cloth, and so is Rinko Kawauchi.
Hikaru Furuhashi is just about to graduate from SFAI. She loves Jonas Mekas, Mark Borthwick, and the philosophy of the Dalai Lama. Her work, like this 8mm film, Where is my head?, combines electronic disorienteering and a slightly spooky, surreal quality with friendliness and a sort of universal empathy, especially with nature, the sky and animals.I don't doubt for a moment that this nature sentiment is rooted in Shinto. It's something I've tried to capture on my forthcoming album "Ocky Milk", but I actually doubt that, in the end, I've managed to transcend my own deep protestantism and its need to fight and quarrel and reject. It might be easy to stereotype this way of feeling and thinking about life as something hippy, something a bit "Hello trees, hello animals, hello flowers, hello sky!" But I can promise you that it isn't easy to achieve, especially in the world we live in today, and despite the fact that it's precisely what we need.
In contrast, yesterday I watched American artist Joe Gibbons' film "A Time to Die", part of the Whitney Biennial, in which "Gibbons is an irascible hit man accosting autumnal flowers for hanging on to their beauty after their prime". He actually makes chopping the heads off blooms look tremendously violent, which is funny, but also sad:
"Our botanical pugilist," says the Lincoln Center Film Society "picks on specimens less than his own size, quoting Ecclesiastes and offering life lessons with last rites of occasional mercy and ruthless pruning. Tidy tips for candytufts: “Life is short,” “A moment’s sunlight on the grass.” Gibbons personifies Pascal’s definition of man as a thinking reed, albeit with a switchblade. A Time to Die serves as a timely update of some of Gibbon’s early Super-8 films, where he sucker punched garden varieties and showed nature who was boss."
Goodbye, flowers!
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-04 04:57 pm (UTC)Wonderful piece! Have you seen Godard's "Notre Musique", where a scene describing war atrocities is interrupted by a back-and-forth pan of flowers on a table?
Also, when will you be at the Whitney this weekend? I'm finally making my way there.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-04 05:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-04 05:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-04 05:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-04 06:18 pm (UTC)i had a piece in a show called "empirical nostalgia" a few weeks ago that reflected this "hello trees" aesthetic a bit....included were photographs of accidentally exposed flowers in Brighton, playgrounds, my boyfriend sleeping, houses at dawn, found wedding/family photos....as well as torn & suspended bits of book, flower petals found between a lost journal, and a little spider named Orlando. I named it "Ludid Box with Friendly Spider" after i learned the word "ludic" from you! :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-04 06:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-04 07:55 pm (UTC)I sometimes find it difficult to believe that we're living in a time when artists like Hermann Nitsch, Nathalia Edenmont and Katarzyna Kozyra still kill animals as part of an artistic statement. This disconnect between the professed human sanctity of life and the defense of the vulnerable (say, wanting to free the child-soldiers in Uganda) and the opposite treatment across arbitrary species lines suggests to me that we're a lot less ethical than we'd like to admit.
the bad boys of rawk
Date: 2006-05-04 08:02 pm (UTC)Andrew WK is totally not a "bad boy"--man, I'm laughing becuase I haven't even thought about him in soooo long.
First, his outfit: tight 80's acid washed/light blue jeans, white t-shirt, and white high-top sneakers. Might have been "bad boy" in the 80's or earlier (maybe), but today its like a joke...definitely not intimidating or "bad"
Second, his demeanor: yes, I've seen him interviewed on television...he was enthusiastic, outgoing, always smiling, and happy--and he likes children. Bad boy? Maybe he stole a cookie out of the cookie jar.
Third, his music: goddddd, it sucks. Okay, that's out of the way. I hear his music (with silly toy-piano keyboards underneath power chords and choruses) as if it were a joke--which kind of negates any "bad boy" qualities it may harbor, or resemble.
The cover to his album did have blood on it though--looked like he was moshing too hard in the pit. poor AWK...
Hope someone gets a laugh out of this :-)
Winslow
Re: the bad boys of rawk
Date: 2006-05-04 09:14 pm (UTC)blog tree and branches
Date: 2006-05-04 09:48 pm (UTC)I just came back form a performance of john cage's piece CHILD OF TREE and BRANCHES. a piece played by plucking the needles of cacti and ticking of wooden materials, a plank a tree a few branches all according to the table of numbers of the IChing.
why is it that you think the musicians are more autistic and weird when they paly a cacti than they would play piano or guitar?
do you CHILD OF TREE?
it would suit as music to this entry.
blog music
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-04 10:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-04 10:53 pm (UTC)aren't ethics pretty much relative (to culture, time period, even per individual)?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-04 11:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-04 11:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-05 12:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-05 12:11 am (UTC)Ethics, on the other hand, can be more universalizable. The confusion is mostly due to the fact that humans have a remarkable ability to justify self-serving breaches of ethics. It's unethical to kill Iraqi children? Not if it's collateral deaths due to stopping "terrorists". It's unethical to hang an animal by its back leg and slit its throat so that it bleeds to death? It's unethical if it's a cat or dog, but not a pig--who is more intelligent than either cat or dog, and feels the exact same pain and fear as do they.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-05 01:05 am (UTC)but that said, i was just responding in regards to this post, particularly in regards to Morrissey's music being considered good on an "ethical" level which does not seem to be a universalizable stance in my opinion. the ethics which he touts could not only be subjective cross-culturally, but also interculturally in my opinion.
for me, art does not need to bear a moral or ethical stance. i want to extract pure emotion from it, even if that emotion is outrage or otherwise negative.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-05 01:16 am (UTC)WHY DID I EVER LET YOU ON THE INTERNET
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-05 01:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-05 02:25 am (UTC)What will we do when the new ethics breaks down under the weight of the same inherent flaws as the old ethics?
Sincerely,
-sl
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-05 02:39 am (UTC)Sometimes my favorite things are created by people I would never ever consider inviting over. By design, they think of things I'd never think about, and I'm thankful for it. Provided I don't have to spend time with them, I always will be.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-05 03:35 am (UTC)Re: the bad boys of rawk
Date: 2006-05-05 03:37 am (UTC)I agree. He's not making music that's smart or sophisticated—he gets a bit samie after a couple of songs, let alone two albums—but he's got a love of life you just don't hear from all those aggro nu-metal acts, nth generation gothlets or pouting emo kiddies. Frankly, anyone who's advocating having a good time, doing the stuff you love and just enjoying life is considerably more morally beautiful that any of those miserablist arseholes, any day.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-05 03:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-05 04:11 am (UTC)