N.P. censorship

[Bekah]

Catching up again -

The only classic these days  is Coke - and it was brought out as  
"new."   We've been on this "new" and original thing since the avant  
gard artists on the left bank in Paris - Matisse was accepted.   Then  
the moderns were accepted and then post-modern.   Now what?  What's  
the next new thing so we can all be "in the know" and go out and buy  
it and be cool.

I wonder what happened to being able to do the old thing better -  
like Mozart did,  the way Picasso started.  What happened to the  
artist's  following classic rules about a thing and getting some  
interest from "within" the work.

Don't know -  loved the Zen book when I was  late 20s but I can't go  
back and reread because I loved it too much and I'd hate to be  
disappointed.  That was back in the days when this non-lit major her  
main critique was,   "I like it - therefore it is good."

Bekah


On Mar 27, 2009, at 10:33 AM, Ian Livingston wrote:

> Good question.  I have another:  is the 'new' a good in itself?
> Westerners, especially Americans, seem to be guided by novelty.  I
> recollect a song by Loggins & Messina back somewhere in the '70s about
> how so much of what was offered up as desirable was the "same old wine
> in a brand new bottle."  Not that 'antique' offers any successful
> counterpoint, really, as much of the stuff I grew up using day to day
> is now 'antique' and I'm not that old.  Merely a midlifer at 52.  But
> quality also raises more questions, some of which Robert Pirsig
> explored superficially in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
> and Plato examined more closely a couple millennia ago.  What is the
> good?  What is outside the good?  How much is subjective?  And how
> much objective measure can we reference in determining the virtue of
> something?
>
> Well, I guess that gives me enough to think about today at the  
> laundromat.
>
> -i
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 7:48 AM, Paul Mackin  
> <mackin.paul at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "rich" <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
>> To: "Ian Livingston" <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
>> Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 11:00 AM
>> Subject: Re: N.P. censorship
>>
>>
>>> one's torn b/w decrying censorship and having to defend shitty art
>>>
>>> shitty in the sense of being so...obvious
>>>
>>> shocking doesn't work for me anymore I suppose
>>>
>>> just my opinion
>>>
>>> that graphically depicts a female middle school student, on her  
>>> knees,
>>> performing oral sex on a standing male middle school science  
>>> teacher.
>>
>>
>> Well. there is shocking and shocking.
>>
>> In art criticism the phrase is "shock of the new," a big deal when  
>> modern
>> art was taking hold.
>>
>> But that had to do with aesthetically shocking.
>>
>> In the case in question, is the portrayal anything aeestically new?
>>
>> Important question.
>>
>> What happens when the shocking is really nothing new and therefore  
>> not
>> really shocking but merely deplorable?
>>
>> P
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> On 3/25/09, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> This just struck me a somehow related to the topic of fascism  
>>>> (as in
>>>> how it is that some come to think for many):
>>>>
>>>> http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090325/entertainment/ 
>>>> sculpture_removed
>>>>
>>
>>