Re: ART vs. DRAMA

[Thom Kevin Gillespie <thom@indiana.edu>]

On Sun, 12 Jun 2005, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> thom@indiana.edu wrote:
>
> > I originally objected when it was suggested that randomly generated art 
> > could be in the mix as eye candy. I objected because real ART has never 
> > worked this way.
> Are you just a dramatist with a deep prejudice against the history of the 
> visual arts?  Go look up the Surrealist experiments with frottage, or Dadaist 
> concerns with chaos and chance.  But perhaps you don't think Marcel Duchamp's 
> "Standard Stoppages" are ART either, though they hang in the museum and art 
> historians do call them such.

Nothing DuChamp did was random down to the very last piece, Etant Donnes, 
where he literally stole the bricks to make the piece in the hidden corner 
of the Philadelphia Museum.

I have no problem with randomness in art but bottom line is the artist 
accepts of rejects the random event. DuChamp did this when the Large Glass 
was broken and he decided he liked the accident. DuChamp, Cage, Ginzberg & 
Kerouac, same with Burroughs. He very explicitly says randomness is a 
tool to use but he always reserves the right to accept or reject the 
random event. John Cage's 4'33" of supposed silence is Cage making the 
decision when to not do his not silent piece.

> Are you sure when you say ART, you  don't really mean DRAMA?

When I say Drama I mean Art, when I say Music I mean ART, when I say Art I 
mean ART.

This is all just my opinion shared on this list. I am not saying how 
anything 'is' just how I see it.

--Thom