Examination Question: Section A

[riff]

It has become clear to the examiners in recent years that candidates are finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between Art and Life. Everyone claims to understand the difference, but perceptions vary greatly. For some, Life is rich and creamy, made according to an old peasant recipe from nothing but natural products, while Art is a pallid commercial confection, consisting of artificial colorings and flavorings. For others, Art is the truer thing, full, bustling and emotionally satisfying, while Life is worse than the poorest novel: devoid of narrative, peopled by bores and rogues, short on wit, long on unpleasant incidents, and leading to painfully predictable denouement. Adherents of the latter view tend to cite Logan Pearsall Smith: 'People say that life is the thing; but I prefer reading.' Candidates are advised not to use this quotation in their answers.

-Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

Any takers?

 

[April]

Life is worse than the poorest novel: devoid of narrative, peopled by bores and rogues, short on wit, long on unpleasant incidents, and leading to painfully predictable denouement.

Absolutely. 5 minutes of pleasure, followed by 5 months of agony and torture.

 

[perks]

The difference between art and life?

Breathing.

 

[freescorfr]

The answer , Riff, is time. Heidegger's Being and Time sequel, never published, would have put Life as narrative at the centre of the phenomenology of Time.

Our own narrative can be lived in authenticity or inauthenticity: the more authentic we are, the closer life approximates to Art. Art cannot be "pallid commercial confection, consisting of artificial colorings and flavorings", since this is not authentic. Art and truth are indistinguishable. Dasein, in his most authentic appearance is, like art, quite unpallatable to the masses because it is destabilising of the status quo.

It also seems to me that I hear, more and more, "the aesthetic" being drawn upon as a citerion for truth - something so seemingly subjective that it is surprising when uttered by scientists - which it is. But to quote Heidegger, "..The procedure of comaprison is claimed to be the method for the humane sciences. Here I disagree...Comparison is always aesthetic.."


As a thoroughgoing relativist, more or less, Art is perhaps the nearest I'd get to an absolute - and therefore to that which transcends the temporal.

I think the examiners should have known this before they asked.

 

[Problem Child]

Art is an integral part of life. How can you separate or compare the two? This might sound simplistic, but I think its' true. Without life experiences to draw on there would be no art, therefore it seems as though art is a subset of life.

 

[Quiet_Cool]

Re: Re: Examination Question: Section A

Absolutely. 5 minutes of pleasure, followed by 5 months of agony and torture.

There's more truth in the statement above than in anything else that has been said here. Put that in the dictionary next to the word life if you please.

Basically, the difference between life and art is that life has no meaning, and art does. That is not to say that anything created within an artistic medium is art (as writing is an art form, and many things that are written donot bear any meaning), but to say that what we percieve around us is incomplete because it lacks the information that we donot percieve, and that information is necessary to complete the "truth" involved. In art, we are seldom not shown everything we need to see. In life, we are always missing something imperative.
For instance...many couples stay together for years, one madly in love and the other biding time until time to leave. Quite often, neither is certain how the other feels. An artistic interpretation would show you, the viewer, reader, listener, either boths sides of the situation, or only the side you need to see.
Art is an essential part of our lives that grows from our own experiences, but at the same time, it eats away at us, giving us the truth in "art's perception" that we will never find in real life.

 

[freescorfr]

Re: Re: Re: Examination Question: Section A

There's more truth in the statement above than in anything else that has been said here. Put that in the dictionary next to the word life if you please.

Basically, the difference between life and art is that life has no meaning, and art does. That is not to say that anything created within an artistic medium is art (as writing is an art form, and many things that are written donot bear any meaning), but to say that what we percieve around us is incomplete because it lacks the information that we donot percieve, and that information is necessary to complete the "truth" involved. In art, we are seldom not shown everything we need to see. In life, we are always missing something imperative.
For instance...many couples stay together for years, one madly in love and the other biding time until time to leave. Quite often, neither is certain how the other feels. An artistic interpretation would show you, the viewer, reader, listener, either boths sides of the situation, or only the side you need to see.
Art is an essential part of our lives that grows from our own experiences, but at the same time, it eats away at us, giving us the truth in "art's perception" that we will never find in real life.

That's what I said Quiet_cool.

 

[Starfish]

Art is an integral part of life. How can you separate or compare the two? This might sound simplistic, but I think its' true. Without life experiences to draw on there would be no art, therefore it seems as though art is a subset of life.

Often the most simplistic concepts are the truest.

 

[freescorfr]

Often the most simplistic concepts are the truest.

Yea, I said just the same thing Starfish.

 

[Guest]

Passes through the thread.

~quietly humming~

 

[perks]

The difference between art and life?

Breathing.

maybe I should elaborate...

You may banter with octagons and see art in a subjective way, as a breathing living thing. The reality is that it is inanimate matter.
The definition has been skewed by artists that live outside the box. That is fine.
I am an artist and understand the concept.
I also understand the difference between supporting a living breathing thing rather than a piece of inanimate matter.

Would you save a Monet over a Chick on Springer?
I don't believe art and life have the same worth or value.

There is beauty in both, there is life in both. Only life breathes.

 

[Starfish]

freescorfr, yes, but with more words.

Maybe I should elaborate....


Perky's ass: art.

Perky's ass: life.

 

[freescorfr]

Re: freescorfr, yes, but with more words.

Maybe I should elaborate....


Perky's ass: art.

Perky's ass: life.

Yea I said the same as perky. And i agree with you totally starfish.

I take back all I said.

Hey, examiner, I've cheated, I've just said what they all said.

 

[Starfish]

Actually, I cheated. I posted after you, so that you get the credit.

 

[perks]

Re: freescorfr, yes, but with more words.

Maybe I should elaborate....


Perky's ass: art.

Perky's ass: life.

There isn't a line? Really?

BTW... my ass isn't always art, but it's always life. Reality makes a difference.

 

[Hamletmaschine]

I'm still waiting for him to ask the question.

 

[perks]

I'm still waiting for him to ask the question.

I originally thought that too... I just figured he meant ..What's the difference between the two.

 

[riff]

The Question

Here is the question:

Consider the relationship between Art and Life suggested by any two of the following statements or situations.

a) "The day before yesterday, in the woods near Touques, at a charming spot near a spring, I came across some cigar butts and some bits of pate'. There'd been a picnic there! I'd described exactly that in Novembre eleven years ago! It was purely imagined, and the other day it was experienced. Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry... My poor Bovary is without a doubt suffering and weeping even now in twenty villages of France."
-Letter to Louise Colet, 14 August 1853

b) In Paris, Flaubert used a closed cab to avoid detection, and presumably seduction, by Louise Colet. In Rouen, Leon uses a closed cab for the seduction of Emma Bovary. In Hamburg, within a year of the publication of Madame Bovary, cabs could be hired for sexual purposes; they were known as Bovarys.

c) (as his sister Caroline lay dying) "My own eyes are as dry as marble. It's strange how sorrows in fiction make me open up and overflow with feeling, whereas real sorrows remain hard and bitter in my heart, turning to crystal as soon as they arise."
-Letter to Maxime Du Camp, 15 March 1846

d) "You tell me that I seriously loved that woman [Mme. Schlesinger]. I didn't; it isn't true. Only when I was writing to her, with that capacity I possess for producing feelings within myself by means of the pen, did I take my subject seriously: but only when I was writing. Many things which leave me cold when I see or hear about them none the less move me to enthusiasm or irritation or pain if I talk about them myself or --particularly-- if I write about them. This is one of the effects of my mountebank nature."
-Letter to Louise Colet, 8 October 1846

e) Giuseppe Marco Fieschi (1790 - 1836) attained notoriety for his part in the plot on the life of Louis Philippe. He took his lodgings in the boulevard du Temple and constructed, with the help of two members of the Society des Driots de l'Homme, and 'infernal machine', consisting of twenty gun barrels which could be discharged simultaneously. On 28 July 1835, as Louis Philippe was riding past with his three sons and numerous staff, Fieschi fired his broadside against established society.
Some years later, Flaubert moved into a house built on the same site in the boulevard du Temple.

f) "Yes, indeed! The period [of Napoleon III's reign] will furnish material for some capital books. Perhaps after all, in the universal harmony of all things, the coup d' etat and all its results were only intended to provide a dew able penmen with some attractive scenes."
-Flaubert reported in Du Camp, Souvenirs litteraires

 

[riff]

This is a great exam question people!

And is actually a part of an anti-novel. Take the time you need to compose your thoughts. Or read, Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes. But I am sincerely interested in your responses. Would love to know what KM would make of this.

 

[T.H. Oughts]

Art is an integral part of life. How can you separate or compare the two? This might sound simplistic, but I think its' true. Without life experiences to draw on there would be no art, therefore it seems as though art is a subset of life.

Well said...

 

[lavender]

 

[riff]

Good answers, but hardly anything to sink one's teeth into.

 

[GreenEyedGirl]

The difference between life and art, is a blurred unfixed mark often defined by perception. Art is pulled from life, it is often used to justify our sense of esthetics. Art mirrors, challenges, shapes, enhances, or degrades our views of the world, our perception of life. Yet life would be dull indeed if art were not an intimate aspect of our environment and selves. So the relationship between the two? Uneasy, cantankerous, nurturing, sporadic, enlightened, and sophmoric. Any marriage between two titans could hardly far any better than that between life and art, art and life. They are so intertwined that an easier question may be which came first? Art of Life?

 

[riff]

Art of Life?

Very interesting. A construction is deconstructed: Art of Life, Life of Art.

Now, where does that lead us? I am thinking with you. Looking for my own answers..... Your response certainly strikes a vein. I have a response that I made years ago that I have not read in years.

But I am thinking.... trying to think fresh on the same question.

 

[GreenEyedGirl]

Very interesting. A construction is deconstructed: Art of Life, Life of Art.

Now, where does that lead us? I am thinking with you. Looking for my own answers..... Your response certainly strikes a vein. I have a response that I made years ago that I have not read in years.

But I am thinking.... trying to think fresh on the same question.

Deconstrustion is one of my very favorite things. It is itself an artform. So where have we been lead? I am curious about your long unread response.