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  • macfluffers
    Nov 1 10:39 PM
    Reply
    I was reading the thread on "emo" poetry, and I was tempted to reply to some of the comments, but since most of them were old, I refrained. Instead, I figured I'd just pour my thoughts into a new thread.

    Emotions are not the base for poetry. Emotion does not make poetry good. You don't need emotion to be a good poet, and being a good poet does not mean that you're emotional. Those of you who've seen me post in similar topics when I was active know my stance. I think that it may be time to have a thread for this specific topic.

    Lets look at the origin of art. You know where it started? In the west, it was the church. The goddam church. And you know what? Back then, making art for pleasure was considered a sinful vice. There were three categories of art: heavenly, worshiping, and worldly. Often we consider acts of artisanship to be art, but that was not part of the schema back then.

    Heavenly art was God's art. The movement of the planets was music, and the colors were His painting. Worshiping art was art directed towards God. This was art meant to praise God and understand His universe (art theory back then held that by understanding art, you could understand science). Worldly art was vice. It was pornography, and the opinion at the time was that it all was pornography if it did not have a proper purpose.

    You may ask why I am bringing this up, since it is clear that opinions have changed. To put it simply, it's to prove that art and emotion are not joined at the hip. In its creation in the western world, emotion was FORBIDDEN in art. Instead, art was supposed to reflect science, and theology, and philosophy. For example, musical intervals were believed at one point to be the same as the intervals between the planets and the earth. Music and astronomy heavily overlapped. If you walked into a musician's home, you would find a starmap.

    I do not believe that emotion should be completely separated from art. I will say that emotion is a great source of inspiration. However, I believe that the presence of emotions is not necessary for art, and that other sources of inspiration are just as viable. Many works of art produced at that time are still revered today. This is not because of their emotion, but rather for their craftsmanship, and the thought put into it.

    Anyway, that's my two cents, plus a few dimes. Discuss.
  • 151 - 175 of 175     < previous  1 2 3 4

  • arafura
    November 9 ↑
    Reply

    << reply to 'why wouldn't the human race survive without emotion?' by Matt Holck

    We are at cross purposes Matt. Some type of being might survive without emotions but it wouldn't be humanity as we define it.

    We call it human to be able to feel love, hate, pity, desire, remorse etc.

    Without being able to experience those emotions (and all the other ones) we would just be mobile vegetables.

  • arafura
    November 9 ↑
    Reply

    << reply to 'They wouldn't have anything to cry about.' by S A Adelmann


    or love... or hate...

  • macfluffers
    November 9 ↑
    Reply

    << reply to '*holds up a mirror*' by just mercedes

    Oh, I need to shave.

  • macfluffers
    November 9 ↑
    Reply

    << reply to 'I Robot!' by arafura

    That would be nice, methinks.

  • macfluffers
    November 9 ↑
    Reply

    << reply to 'No, I meant exactly what I said. To me it was not very evocative. To others it m' by S A Adelmann

    You are not alone in this belief.

  • hendiadys
    November 9 ↑
    Reply
    The Eliot quotation can find a reflection in his Four Quartets. But these also reflect what it seems to me this discussion is all about. If you juxtapose the right words in the right way, you can generate in the reader a feeling which you want to generate.
    Catharsis is a purgation. If you stir up warlike feelings or terror or pity or grief, even though they may be no more than simulacra, you may have purged them, and this may make you less likely to indulge them at another time.

  • macfluffers
    November 9 ↑
    Reply

    << reply to ' I am contradicting myself a little by answering this & you are quite possibly h' by Cynewulf

    Ooh, numbers...looks a bit neater than what we've been doing so far.

    1/ Nyoro~n... I guess I was mistaken.

    2/ I'll respond later when I have time.

    3/ He's an indie one-man-band with internet fame. He's pretty good, actually.

    4/ I once visited an art gallery featuring a man who often used crushed insect bodies as his medium instead of paint. I wasn't sure what to think of it.

    Anyway, I don't doubt that what you're saying is true. But if Hirst was not skilled in the craft of his art, would the emotional content be relevant or noticeable?

    I guess that I'm trying to say that with a lot of art, I feel that even though people stay for the emotion, it's the craftsmanship that initially attracts them. (I'm speaking for others, so this is juts how I believe people think.) Yes, emotion is what makes it stick, but if I were told some guy took blood from his butcher and just splashed it haphazardly on a canvas, I'd be less than impressed. The fact that he did it well is what makes it profound.

    5/ Fair enough.

    • Cynewulf
      November 10 ↑
      Reply
      Yeah, that copy & pasting routine is a bit much. I think we should ask Kevin for a 'quote' button for Christmas! lol

      I'll eschew the numbers for a bit...

      I think we are just arguing semiotic interpretive differences. Plus, admittedly, we are generalising a lot. There are a lot of movies that I like because they were so well put together & edited, however, they may not have been emotively that good or satisfying. You can admire 'craftsmanship' without necessarily being moved emotionally though. I can look at the insides of my laptop & appreciate the skill it took to miniaturise a hard-drive & put it into something I can walk down the street with. It may be a technological 'work of art' but it's not quite the same feeling I get from looking at a Mattise. Much Pre-Raphaelite art was incredibly technically well done. To the point of camera obscura type accuracy. Nobody really 'sees' that when they look at Millais' Ophelia though do they? Even though the flora painted on it is so accurate that it was used to demonstrate plant species to Victorian schoolchildren when inclement weather prohibited actually going outdoors.

      Having said that, at the end of the day, most people do react at a visceral emotive level to a work of art. Antony Gormley's 'Angel of the North' just looks like scrap iron to me. I'd prefer to look at a gasometer!

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_of_the_North

      Emotionally it doesn't do much for me (apart from making me feel giddy & glad that I don't live anywhere near it). I will admit it probably took some skill to make. It would be fun to blow up with Semtex that's for sure! (& artistic I'll wager)



      Oh yeah...I remember when U2 were an Indie band! (& I know what Nyoron means!)


      • macfluffers
        November 12 ↑
        Reply
        I'm inclined to agree with you here. Memories formed with strong emotions have a tendency to be more vivid, so it's reasonable to say that art that evokes strong emotions may be better than those that do not because they are better at leaving something with you after you've finished observing it.

        I'm not going to follow up with no. 2 like I said I would before, since after rereading what you posted earlier, I can't find a flaw in anything you said. Besides, I've been thinking that a lot of the differences in opinion seem to be rooted in small differences in definition, and as you said, generalizations.

        • Cynewulf
          November 12 ↑
          Reply
          I believe the olfactory senses contribute to the strongest memories we have. Odours & smells are supposedly the most powerful triggers to release memory. I suppose it all depends on the smell or odour!

          As for generalisations...welcome to the wacky world of semiotic significated ambiguity, a veritable minefield if ever there was one.


        • ea
          November 12 ↑
          Reply
          This explains why my "Stinky poems" genre, which always begins with the question, "What's the difference?", became such a cult hit on the underground poetry scene of the new millenium.

  • Matt Holck
    November 9 ↑
    Reply

    << reply to 'No, I meant exactly what I said. To me it was not very evocative. To others it m' by S A Adelmann
    big man

    I wouldn't count on that

  • Matt Holck
    November 9 ↑
    Reply

    ""Emotions are not the base for poetry. "



    indeed many poems start with an idea or a word

  • Judith Chandler
    November 11 ↑
    Reply
    an idea or work which may or may not contain an emotion. You could be right. Something has to be written out and it's not just "anger" or "sadness" because those emotion are embodied in words.

  • Judith Chandler
    November 11 ↑
    Reply
    Spock and Data are both so appealing because they are human in their attempt not to be human and their failure at that endeavour. I've known lots of people who try to stifle their humanness and are ashamed of it.

    Data is even more interesting because of his inevitable failure to be fully human. What is human? He begs the question.

    And I'm not really making this clear, I know, because it's not really answerable.

  • Judith Chandler
    November 11 ↑
    Reply

    << reply to 'They wouldn't have anything to cry about.' by S A Adelmann

    and life would be very flat though, with emotions, it sometimes seems rather unbearable. At other times, it can be so ... bearable and just so inexpressible.

    I am being emotional.

  • ea
    November 14 ↑
    Reply

    << reply to 'I think that the Lascaux paintings were more religious in nature than just self-' by Cynewulf

    I read that their "purpose" was along the lines of magic, in aiding their hunts. It's postulated that each wound inflicted on the animals in the paintings was psychically transferred to the real animals during the hunt.
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