The first requisite of any work of art — theater, opera, a novel — is that it create a universe that is complete and consistent unto and within itself. -Ben BrantleyWhat does this mean?
I propose to you that it does not, in fact, mean anything at all.
44 comments:
Any appreciation of art criticism must begin with the willing suspension of disbelief.
It's the "unto" that's the real meatball on top of spaghetti.
Would it be possible to depict a universe that is not complete or consistent? What would a painting of such a universe look like - and if it could be painted, would it not then become art? LOGIC BOMB!
The first requisite of any work of criticism — of theater, opera, or a novel — is that it create a obfuscatory rhetoric that is complete and consistent unto and within itself.
It means that if we ever get through the stargate, we're gonna find a lot o' cool books!
Not only meaningless but impossible. Any world-building in a work of art is necessarily an act of prestidigitation, distracting the audience from the missing pieces.
It means that the author, like all literate New Yorkers between the ages of 22 and 90, no longer has patience for works that do not immediately identify said author as a hormone-addled teenager in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Modulo Myself
ioz is nothing if not critical.
The meaning of the statement is actually quite clear, as lit and art crit goes. But the statement is false. Consistency is good, generally, but no work of fiction ever created a complete universe.
Beckett will be here in a minute with some counterexamples, but he's waiting for somebody. I forget who.
Then Rothko must be the only true artist in history...
Box 3, spool 5.
spoooooooolllllllllllllll..............
I propose that he means that "bad works of art seem to be missing something important or more bettah" and that he's a douche.
Oh, really? Well, it just so happens I teach a class at Columbia called "TV, Media and Culture." So I think my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity!
-Brain
Pronouncing tautology as analysis is older than Hegel!
It means that if it ain't Glenn Beck, it ain't art.
Perhaps it sounded better in the original Elvish.
Tebow!
It means that Benjy agrees that Shakespeare should be dissed for not preserving the Aristotelian unities: time/place/ ... uhh - what's the third one, Lucid ... heh heh heh
An appropriate punishment would be for some public-spirited avenger to ensure that Benjy experiences an Aristotelian eunuchy of his very own ..
There was some fella -- Girdle or some such name -- who is supposed to have proved that it's not possible for any formal system to be both complete and consistent.
Isn't that proposition contradicted by the big bang theory?
Sure. But in between our individual florid psychotic episodes, I propose that we can all still use a yardstick. Actually, let’s just convert to metric, because “10” is such an easy number, plus grams and mils and celsius. No, wait, a yardstick reminds one of the Hitchenses struggles for the peoples of the Amazon and beyond, and background radiation really admires cultural differences. Hell with it: Yardstick it is! We will kill the differences of opinion on length, one way or another, while retaining their exotic nomenclatures! Yes, Yes! I see a liberal plot developing.
I think it was Godel.
Nony at 1:56
The excerpted quote did not say that a work of fiction had to create a complete universe, but a complete universe unto and within itself. That is trivial and tautological, hence the additional clarification that it must also be consistent unto and within itself.
EL - action. It's action.
lucid -
"you can call me an equerry, or you can call me a dingleberry, but DONT's call me Rick Perry..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_J._Johnson
the video game is the art form of contemporary life
not sure that it's a tautology, more akin to nonsense
It's a painting. . . of a FEELING!
I thought tautologies were nonsense?
Nonetheless, I'll try to be more precise. To say that a work of art creates a universe that is complete unto itself is to say that the art contains itself. The plot and setting of a story define the plot and setting of that story. That is trivial and what I called tautological.
To say that it also must be consistent unto itself is to say that the plot and setting of the story does not contradict itself after having been established.
If you create a character has supernatural powers such as the power to fly, super strength and laser beams coming out of his eyes, and create a MacGuffin like substance called Kryptonite to neutralize those powers, inconsistency would be to later say screw it, and have him use his powers to lift a mountain laced with Kryptonite through sheer force of will. Apologies to any who haven't seen the latest Superman vehicle for the spoilers.
Second Anon@441. Incompletness and inconsistency are the very things that give meaning to art. Without meaning, art becomes design (not a bad thing in of itself, unless it pretends to be art).
To be a blowhard -look at Lear or Hamlet. It is the world coming of tracks and crashing down on the protagonists that makes them 'art'.
Capt'n Obvious
Maybe Henry Darger read something like that and took it to heart, which is why he wrote 16,000 page books--he just never could quite get his fictitious universe "complete and consistent unto and within itself."
Justin,
Superman would merely be expressing the great liberal belief that if you wish hard enough you can overcome anything, including your genes.
Either that or liberals are currently the best at expressing the great human desire to overcome anything with wishful thinking.
This is as good a place as any to promote Bolano's The Third Reich.
Modulo Myself
But Justin - that is why Superman had to burrow down beneath the kryptonite infested area in order to excise the new continent.
God el dammit! Kryptonite is not the issue here, I am talking about drawing a consistent line in the sand!
The smaller or shorter the work of art, the more likely it is to be "complete and consistent unto and within itself." A one-stanza poem by Dickinson rather than Paradise Lost.
Woody Allen imagined Tolstoy, after writing Anna Karenina, waking up in the middle of the night and saying "I forgot to include a yacht race!"
People here take it for granted that Brantley wants art to aspire, and strenuously: to be cosmic or encyclopedic. The sententious afflatus of his formula encourages this response. But he probably just means that a work of art appears self-contained; in which case he means as much or as little as one pleases. Self-contained and self-sufficient are delusive terms. What if something induces claustrophobia? It's self-contained and yet stifling: Libertarianism, for example.
If the statement is taken to mean that art casts a wide net, some artists would have agreed. Others would have sighed or laughed. Mahler wanted a symphony to seem as if it contained the world. Corot, on the other hand, said of his paintings: "I play a little flute, but I try to strike the right note." Austen compared herself to a painter of cameos.
I suppose I'm more convinced by the poetic approach: "To see a World in a Grain of Sand," etc. I'm also more inclined to scowl at another of Brantley's pronouncements: "Tears are the acid test for me with opera — and often with musicals, even cheerful ones." The acid test of tears: picture Brecht reading that.
It's stupid, but it means something; at the very least, that Brantley should be taken as one knowledgeable mofo.
There's a valid point built into the statement when it's interpreted as requiring that the creation of an expressive reality be a workable clock--not describing boundaries that are then broken without explanation. Which may have been what the universalist was trying to get at.
Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.
Groucho Marx
It means that to create art, one has to be as pretentious and as obfuscating of reality as one is able.
(Pied Cow is clearly ftw.)
Libertarianism induces claustrophobia? Does progressivism induce diarrhea?
@744
The little hippie-prog daliance of the 60s might be confusing the issue.
Progressives have struck me as anal retentive types.
Capt'n Obvious
I propose to you that it does not, in fact, mean anything at all.
Therein lies its beauty. Know what I mean?
I believe that the statement means nothing and everything. Thus, the statement itself is art.
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