I was browsing through a local paper the other day when I came across a piece which discussed an art installation where the artist had taken photographs of everything they had eaten for a whole year and then arranged them into some kind of collage. Interesting I thought. Kind of funny even. Then I unfortunately started to read the comments from various art critics, some hailing it as a modern day masterpiece for various esoteric reasons that have since left my short term memory, such was the banality of it all.
It took me back to my days at University, studying music. The performance course I took was focused on jazz. I know a lot of people have no time for jazz, but personally I love it. I love the emotions and feelings that are evoked from hearing spontaneous improvisation. What I don’t love is the ridiculous, self serving, up it’s own ar$e type of critical analysis that to me seems to devoid the music of any value it might have had in the first place. That old term “cerebral” seems to pop into the mix from time to time, as if the music only has value if its making you think.
Don’t get me wrong, music has a high impact on my state of being. I find it one of the few stimuli that has a deep effect on the way I am at a particular moment, mentally and “spiritually” – but I use that term whilst searching desperately for another one. But it doesn’t make me want to sit and analyse it in any great detail.
When I was studying, I quite often looked at music I listened to and analysed it in depth, but not to seek a greater understanding of the world around me. To me that was a theoretical exercise to increase my vocabulary in the music. “I like what that guy did there .. what is it exactly he did. Oh right I see. Now where can I take that idea and make it part of my voice“.
I suppose the crux of this post is that I have always hated being known as an artist, for the critical and intellectual baggage that it brings with it. In terms of being a jazz musician, this attitude is jazz music’s worst enemy. I know plenty of jazz musicians who devalue pop music because it is not improvised, not hard, not many other things that jazz supposedly is; and by the way I totally disagree. One of my favourite quotes from a musician is “there are two kinds of music. The stuff you like and the stuff you don’t”. That’s more than likely paraphrased and I struggle to remember the source, but it does illustrate the point.
I should qualify that I know many visual artists who have the same issues with critical analysis.
“You see what Joe Bloggs is doing here is creating a rich and multi layered tapestry in which the principal themes of existence and self and delicately interwoven to bring the viewer to a higher state of being.”
Crap! Joe Bloogs created a big plastic, yellow hippopotamus and its cool to look at and kind of funny and I’m sure it was fun to make. Get a life Mr/Mrs/Miss art critic. Get a real job and stop trying to get us to understand something which isn’t there in the first place. Even the artist hasn’t got a clue what you’re on about and they made the bloody thing.
I’m going to take up sculpture. I’m going to make some stuff that will probably be appalling as I can’t sculpt. Then I’m going to have an exhibition called “Some Cool Stuff I Made”. I’m going to install Gatling guns hooked up to a speech analyser that detects any word above three syllables. You have been warned.
Ok ok, music is art. Art conveys emotion. It is deeply personal to the viewer or listener. They can discuss it with other people and it gives others an insight into the piece. Maybe a completely different way of viewing it. Maybe that will change their life, maybe it won’t.
