/lit/ - Literature

Yikes this poster is dull.

It's a pretty clear sign of artistic immaturity to dismiss any significant art you don't understand as rubbish - a cult of self-deception, pseudo-intellectual etc. Far more interesting is the ability to find beauty in art, far more difficult actually but clearly far more worthwhile.

Another adolescent misunderstanding of art is to think of it as a tool with a single purpose, whether that be to educate, to philosophise, to capture 'beauty' etc. Again, this is a misshapen conception of all that can fall under the vague label of art - a reduction which cannot hope to cover all of art's possibilities and impossibilities. Art existing in the secular world _does_ struggle to justify itself, and two nonesense solutions are found by those not willing to strain in the effort to solve that problem, the first is to decide simply on art as having a single purpose (why the singular? who knows it seems more conclusive) and to then justify backwards further and further into mysticism, the second is equally mistaken, to find no purpose in art, to dismiss it out of hand or to dismiss all criteria for judging it.

You've chosen the first position and are attacking now all that you do not understand, which you do not understand because it doesn't conform to the extremely vague rubric of truth, beauty, yada yada which you passingly mention. You do this whilst writing (in your own turgid and insecure way) a post which reeks of childish misunderstanding.

Postmodernism as an artistic movement was decadent, fine - bourgeouis literature has tended towards decadence of one sort or another (of course Joyce was decadent) but that doesn't undermine its potential for beauty (of a new sort), instruction, artistic prowess, or serious thought, for character, for dialogue, for entertainment - postmodernist art was at its best an art movement like any other at their best. The decadence which it explored is now clearer, more obvious to a hypermodern audience, and movements to come will seek (as movement have done in the past) to move beyond a decadence which they can really only hope to obfuscate till it is discovered and chastised by future artists - perfection wasn't found here, but failure neither, you don't have to like the postmodernists as you don't have to like any other celebrated product of the human effort but for god's sake, don't embarrass yourself by trying to condemn both it and those who enjoy it.

>>12241998
she looks pretty in some pics

>>10975853
you're correct. i asked the only girl that matters

I am in awe of this man's intellect.