/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19910357]

Any art that doesn't seek an audience is dishonest.
It's show business, not show politics.
>Artists are artists they don't owe anyone anything!
And tautologies are tautological.
The value of art is subjective, "selfish" art, made only to please the artist is the extreme of subjectivity pretending to be the rejection of it.
The value of art can only be it's value to others.
Art that does not seek to be valuable to others is therefore built on a lie. It requires a recipient, a second party, and the truth of the art is not what the artist was trying to do, but what was actually achieved in the eyes of the audience.
Naval gazing and self discovery requires no camera, no crew, no cast, no script, no anything but a mind aware of itself. But that's not art.
That the value of art is it's value to others is axiomatic. It can be no other way.

Pop culture is anything but banal. High culture is the farce.

[Anonymous No.19910649]

>>19910357
based

[Anonymous No.19910740]

>>19910357
Not based

[Anonymous No.19910749]

this is your mind on mainstream media

[Anonymous No.19911026]

>>19910740
>>19910749
i think OP makes some good points. the defense of MCU shit is distasteful but i would use it to argue stuff like scorsese/tarantino is better than stuff like bergman/tarkovsky, the former take into account accessibility to the audience while still having stylistic expression, while the latter is just sniffing its own farts

[Anonymous No.19911037]

>>19910357
This is entertainment, not art. Art is about the expression of an individual. Entertainment is creating a product for mass consumption.

[Anonymous No.19911038]

>>19911037
Art and entertainment aren't mutually exclusive you dullard.

[Anonymous No.19911041]

>>19910357
Consoomer cope

[Anonymous No.19911056]

>>19911037
>Art is about the expression of an individual.
Damn, the SEP should get you to replace their Definition of Art article with this one sentence.

[Anonymous No.19911063]

>>19910357
Pop culture is like fast food. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a very entertaining blockbuster film, just as there's nothing wrong with KFC making chicken that everyone likes.

High culture is not like fast food at all, or indeed food of any kind. The creation of a great work of art must involve the artist wandering in the wilderness of himself. He cannot make the art with the intention of pleasing other people, he must make it because he feels compelled to do so, or because he finds it therapeutic. With pop art the work goes out to meet the audience. With high art the audience must go out to meet it. For this reason high art is essential because without it art would never progress.

[Anonymous No.19911067]

>>19911063
>Pop culture is like fast food.
Do you people ever get tired of this cliche?

[Anonymous No.19911079]

Kitsch

[Anonymous No.19911085]

>>19910357
>That the value of art is it's value to others is axiomatic. It can be no other way.
Nope, the value of art is its value to me. Get fucked bugman.

[Anonymous No.19911091]

>>19910357
>Naval gazing
epic

[Anonymous No.19911102]

>>19910357
This is the same logic that makes American tourists flock to burger king when they're visiting another country.
Also I don't even think the frame of discussion is relevant to what art is and isn't.

[Anonymous No.19911107]

>>19911079
bullshit term, at least when used this broadly
>>19911063
>With pop art the work goes out to meet the audience. With high art the audience must go out to meet it
this is also a quite bullshit distinction i see a lot
i think learning some actual aesthetic theory that isn't from the 19th or early 20th centuries would help you both

[Anonymous No.19911118]

>>19911063
>pop culture is like fast food
>high culture is not like any food at all
I intrinsically believe any man that has such a grasp of the analogy

[Anonymous No.19911123]

>>19910357
I'm sorry but like I said most people aren't into the avant garde because of a predictability issue.

[Anonymous No.19911162]

>>19910357
>Art that does not seek to be valuable to others is therefore built on a lie.
But art doesn't need to seek to be valuable to others in order to have that effect. Additionally the so called 'art' in your pic never sought to be 'valuable' to an audience, it sought to be valuable to the corporate executives who own it. It seems like you have really conflated the idea of value to the audience with the idea of profitability for the artist (or in this case the corporate executives).

[Anonymous No.19911168]

>>19911037
>mass consumption
Making something for only yourself and making something for the lowest common denominator are two ends of the spectrum. There is a lot of ground in between.

[Anonymous No.19911171]

>>19911102
It's more likely because they want food they're familiar with

[Anonymous No.19911198]

>>19911107
>>19911067
>Product that is produced for mass consumption to make large profits, designed to have mainstream appeal.

Struggling to see why this cliche is redundant.

[Anonymous No.19911206]

>>19911168
Except when you make something only for yourself you have the chance of actually making something worthwhile. If you make it for the lowest common denominator you will always end up with trash.

[Anonymous No.19911321]

>>19910357
That's why all great art is nationalistic.

[Anonymous No.19911340]

>>19911037
Art is communication. It is an attempt to infect someone else with your experiences, your imagination, etc.
Art made "to please yourself and only yourself" doesn't sustain, it doesn't exist. It's like talking to yourself. This is not why we have the gift of speech.

[Anonymous No.19911348]

>>19911206
But this is false. This is a meme that came up with modernist art which is money laundering, to kill the communicative role of art. You can read the way Dostoevsky speaks about his work and he says that he feels that PEOPLE will find that the book resonates within them, etc.

[Anonymous No.19911353]

>>19910357
The MCU is like the modern evolution of 1970s disaster movies: big, noisy, box office hits, but completely vacuous and with nothing to offer beyond a few ephemeral pop culture memes or phrases. They have a giant audience, but that doesn't make them art.

[Anonymous No.19911365]

>>19910357
I generally agree that art should be universal. The greatest works of art are those that are canonical to our cultures and civilizations. They continue to inspire people throughout the ages and are readily accessible to anyone.

The problem is that mass media is directed for a wide audience for profits, not artistic integrity. So why the fuck would you use Marvel movies as an example? They are our modern myths in our liberal capitalist world, but that also means they reflect our soulless period in history by being very shallow spectacles made for money. They say nothing about the human condition, they are not aesthetically impressive, etc. If you want a balance of popularity with artistic worth then pick something like Parasite

[Anonymous No.19911385]

>>19911365
The big divide between Marvel movie or porn or the vast majority of the "art" of today is not that it's made for profits. Profit in the end is what great art was made for (Shakespeare's plays, Dostoevsky's works, you name it). The difference is in the INTENTION. The intention of Marvel movies, porn, disaster movies is to elicit STIMULI, basic stimuli like adrenaline, sexual arousal, and so on. The intention of art is to COMMUNICATE, to form a bridge between the author's innermost self and the reader. It's a gift of humanity. This is why true art is enriching while porn and consumerist entertainment media are draining to the individual.

[Anonymous No.19911392]

>>19911026
no, they speak to a less large audience. doesn't mean it's their own farts

[Anonymous No.19911429]

>>19911385
This is one of the most intelligent responses on this thread, but I disagree with one aspect. I don't think that marvel movies and porn are spiritually draining if enjoyed infrequently. They're little different from the variety shows that people would flock to in the Victorian period. I think they can provide a healthy, cathartic escape from the quotidian self, and they allow you to release a lot of spiritual tension by virtue of their very frivolity and meaningless. The problem comes when these things are instantly, constantly accessible, because beyond a certain point people will involuntarily begin putting meaning into these distractions where there is none. At this point they become destructive, as people become too deeply hypnotised by the allure of things that simply do not give them spiritual sustenance.

[Anonymous No.19911433]

>>19911037
While the artist may believe he owes the audience little, the audience owes him nothing at all. At no point may the artist rightly stand in judgement of the audience who summon themselves into existence from individuals with their own lives, goals, values, and points of view, to become an audience for the benefit of the artist.

The artist puts himself forward to be judged, in the hopes of being judged well.
Therefore it is the mere existence of the audience that proves the error in your thinking. That there is an audience at all requires art. There are no alternative hypotheses.

The role of the audience is to judge the art. If they judge it of poor quality, lacking, or offensive, then it is, as a matter of fact, bad art. Judgement made all is fair and right in the world.

[Anonymous No.19911454]

>>19911429
>I don't think that marvel movies and porn are spiritually draining if enjoyed infrequently
"A glass of wine every now and then is actually good for you," said the drunkard.
They may not do damage if consumed infrequently (which I find debatable because only someone who is desensitized to porn would feel indifferent to it) but in any case they are not art. There is no author's vision in this shit, on the contrary every single aspect of stimulation media is made with the.consumer in mind. Test audiences for Disney movies have more weight than the screenwriter in the end.

[Anonymous No.19911464]

>>19911433
>the audience owes him nothing at all
well the people throwing rotten cabbages at shitty actors in the theatres of old had paid a ticket to watch the show. Now people come to watch a free show, like it, and throw the cabbages because why not lol
So theatre companies disband and they turn into itinerant brothels.

[Anonymous No.19911603]

>>19911206
All the greatest writers made their works to communicate their ideas to people. People who make art for themselves make garbage like "modern art".

[Anonymous No.19911659]

Art is too broad of a term, verging on meaningless. If the focus is put solely on literature, which is also an overblown denominator by itself, those texts which managed to capture a deep, selfless, single-minded aesthetic intention are the ones which make a lasting impact. Reception will always sort out the wheat from the chaff in the long run. Works done simply to pander and appear likeable and intelligible to most people possible will always fade away. It's the difference between honesty and sycophancy. A poet may be hungry for glory and recognition by peers, but if they are real, they will try to get it with their uncompromised vision.

[Anonymous No.19911833]

>>19911659
>Reception will always sort out the wheat from the chaff in the long run.
Marvel Universe type shit will last longer than anything made before the XX century

[Anonymous No.19911903]

>>19911833
lmao what? most of these movies are forgotten a week after they come out, in fact the entire racket is build around always advertising the next thing in a repetitive hype cycle. the second the cycle ends everybody moves on from it and becomes vaguely embarrassed about ever having cared about it. remember when the tv show "lost" was the biggest thing in the world until it suddenly wasn't and now nobody cares? remember when game of thrones repeated that arc exactly? it's how this stuff works, by design.

[Anonymous No.19911926]

>>19911833
Doubt it. The newer something is, the sooner it will be replaced. The original medium Marvel appeared is long past it heyday. It made a profitable transition to cinema, but the peak of public interest has been reached and the fall off is already happening. I'm willing to bet that no subsequent Marvel movie will come close to Avengers concerning ticket sales.

[Anonymous No.19911927]

>>19911385
>The intention of art is to COMMUNICATE, to form a bridge between the author's innermost self and the reader.
While I don't entirely disagree that art is a form of communication, the idea that art's objective is to just portray its author, is one I don't agree with. Assuming so, then, what's the difference between art and philosophy, what's the difference between art and textbooks, what's the difference between art and propaganda.
We are often told to separate the art from the artist, and I think the reason for this being that a work of art is a way of showing us ourselves, of portraying the times where we live, regardless of the artist intention.

[Anonymous No.19911941]

>>19911340
Wrong

[Anonymous No.19911956]

>>19911365
>The problem is that mass media is directed for a wide audience for profits, not artistic integrity
And this is why we'd all better prepare ourselves for a commensurate—at the very fucking least—reaction to this. The more stringently commercial standards are followed, the more violent and extreme the reaction will be. This relentless and ongoing commercialization is inevitably going to polarize art. Where commercial art focuses on the hyper-real (even in nominally fantastical fantasy, sci-fi, etc.), more sincere artistic expression will increasingly take refuge in an absolute rejection of the real, of the banal, to which the commercial serves as figurehead and avatar. The artless obscenity of pasteurized art-products under late capitalism can lead us to a golden age if we allow it. The structures of economics are the yoke which must be bucked. It's the artist's struggle of our time.

[Anonymous No.19911958]

>>19911340
but i am communicating when i write for myself: i am communicating with myself from yesterday, who is not me.

[Anonymous No.19911990]

the fact of the matter is, art for an audience makes for less interesting art, while art for the artist-wether the idea is pretend or not-makes for better art.

also why doesnt the artist himself count as an audience?

[Anonymous No.19912389]

>>19911990
You have it backwards. If an artist does not produce something to the audience's taste, someone else will.

And artist may seek a different audience, but is still seeking an audience, he therefore still produces exclusively for the benefit of others.

Thus bringing us full circle.
Pop culture is anything but banal. High culture is the farce

[Anonymous No.19912400]

>>19911365
>They are our modern myths
They are not.

[Anonymous No.19912413]

>>19911433
>If they judge it of poor quality, lacking, or offensive, then it is, as a matter of fact, bad art.
This is completely false. If a piece of art offends an individual it doesn't mean it's le bad art.

[Anonymous No.19912476]

>>19912389
>he therefore still produces exclusively for the benefit of others
Sure. Say you want a unicorn, and I happen to have one. But times are tough and I get real hungry, so I slaughter my unicorn and eat it. Hell, I don't even eat all of it. I decide unicorn doesn't actually taste all that good, so I drag the carcass out to the woods and let nature handle it. But I still want to give you something. I find a freshly fallen elm and I hew it down to a block. I spend twenty years of my life whittling down this block. I infuse every piece of who I am along the way—and I grow alongside it, because in the shaping I learn things about myself and my craft—and finally, I give you this little unicorn figurine. It's not your unicorn, granted, but the craftsmanship is there, and it's fucking exquisite.

I made it for you; for your benefit. When it comes down to it, you're a fucking philistine if you can't appreciate it. And if you don't—if you'd rather buy a plastic unicorn from the plastics factory down the street—it's no great loss to anyone but yourself, because you are the one who misses out on the beauty of what's in your hand.

[Anonymous No.19912576]

>>19910357
>Any art that doesn't seek an audience is dishonest.
>It's show business, not show politics.

The moment you start focusing on what others want, you stop making art and you start making a product.

Making a product is not creating art. Art *can* be a product or commodity to sell, but creating something that's first and foremost a product can never be art.

You can *sell* art, making it a product, but you can't focus on making a product with the intention of it going to be art.

Art is the expression of the internal world. It's making an impression into a physical, able to be experienced by other people, expression. This can be a visual in the form of a painting or a digital image, or an emotion expressed in a song, or even a whole world and universe or person expressed in a story.

Art exists for the sake of itself. The art exists because it had to be expressed. The purpose of art existing is to *be* an expression.

You don't need to have a piece of art be commercially successful. The moment the artist is happy with their expression reflecting their impression enough, then that's the moment that piece of art is legitimized as art.

One might buy that same piece of art for a dollar or a million dollars, its value still lies with the artist being happy their impression is accurately expressed.

[Anonymous No.19912686]

>>19911903
Not the individual movies, but the "franchise". Christ, you're right in that, yes, people forget this shit, like they forget the snack they ate the day before, but what we're entering now is an eternal period of rolling releases, these movies and culture will become a brand, like Coca-Cola, and Coca-Cola will in fact be there in 200 years assuming that we continue along the lines of this dystopia without a global holocaust. Things that are not brands, individual novels or movies, it will all be gone. Many of these things are merely kept alive by the memories of millennials who saw them last, zoomers and the newer gens will never get the actual thing but the rolling release brand of whatever, be it Marvel or LOTR or the Iliad, or Dostoevski. Whatever won't become a brand will be forgotten as a brand, there will be no such thing as not reading or watching something that isn't current. I mean it in the most literal sense, the Marvel Universe will stay, because it is consumer brand, while the things we celebrated in the XX century will be gone. Nobody cares already.

[Anonymous No.19912716]

>>19911927
>what's the difference between art and philosophy, what's the difference between art and textbooks
Philosophy is very close to mathematics in that its objective is to confront one thought with another with logical expressions in order to find truth. Art is a bridge between human experiences. It is a memory of something, a dream, and so on, that you want to share with other human beings.
>what's the difference between art and propaganda
Propaganda is made with a completely different intention in mind which is to glorify one party or discredit another. It is the product of a political group that is made to delude or stir hostility. There's no artistic intent with propaganda, it can only disguise itself as art, which is why people cannot suffer it.

[Anonymous No.19912782]

>>19912686
Everything is getting bigger, not just the audience for Marvel blockbuster. Audience for highbrow literature is growing as well and I predict that there will develop a strong, healthy literary community based on classical values, such as grounding itself in Greek and Latin languages and models, holding poetry in highest esteem, preferring traditional metrics to free verse, etc

[Anonymous No.19912784]

>>19912576
this is a fundamentally bourgeois worldview because it critiques that which is enjoyed by the masses but still holds on to the commodification of art, using a completely self-serving and contrived distinction that relies on guessing about what the artist's priorities were. faulkner called his magnum opus a potboiler, and people like shakespeare and dickens and philip k dick wrote really just to make money. obviously their stuff wouldn't be any good if it was solely designed for profits the way a marvel movie is, but the fact remains money was one of their primary motivations
>>19911198
the analogy doesn't even work, the opposite of fast food is not food that requires contemplation and refinement of taste and whatever, it's just food that is more expensive and takes longer to make. there is no accessibility barrier beyond money and waiting time for preperation
also, it's just an overused analogy. i roll my eyes whenever someone starts talking about food in genre vs literary debates just cause it's so done. get some new material
>>19911429
>people will involuntarily begin putting meaning into these distractions where there is none.
you might want to consider that this is because there is something to those works. i don't think anyone "involuntarily" puts meaning into things, i doubt there's anyone on earth who thinks ben stiller romcoms are deep for example. despite their reputation, i don't think mcu fans think those movies are deep beyond certain philosophical themes that get brought up like thanos snap ethics. stuff like that is often poorly handled (i haven't seen any MCU movies since iron man 3 so i wouldn't know) but it is depth, even if a very trite and safe attempt at it

[Anonymous No.19912786]

>>19912716
>Philosophy is very close to mathematics in that its objective is to confront one thought with another with logical expressions in order to find truth.
There's no truth in philosophy.

>Art is a bridge between human experiences. It is a memory of something, a dream, and so on, that you want to share with other human beings.
That's just your definition. Works of literature can be philosophical. Not everyone is a single cog who relates to every work. There's niches for everyone. WB Greville's Philosophical treatisies in verse.

>Propaganda is made with a completely different intention in mind which is to glorify one party or discredit another. It is the product of a political group that is made to delude or stir hostility. There's no artistic intent with propaganda, it can only disguise itself as art, which is why people cannot suffer it.
What is The Aeneid? What is The Iliad?

[Anonymous No.19912798]

>>19911365
>I generally agree that art should be universal.
This assumes every single person will react the same to every single work.

[Anonymous No.19912807]

>>19912716
>There's no artistic intent with propaganda, it can only disguise itself as art
laughable. i don't know how people as ignorant as you feel so confident talking as an authority like this. some of the best films ever made like battleship potemkin or triumph of the will are straight and unabashed propaganda. stuff like terrence malick's a hidden life is christian propaganda when you get down to it. lots of soviet filmmakers made anti-stalin propaganda, etc

[Anonymous No.19912808]

>>19912576
But don't you see, "conveying" anything requires a recipient, a second party, and the truth of the art is not what the artist was trying to do, but what was actually achieved in the eyes of the audience.
Naval gazing and self discovery requires no camera, no crew, no cast, no script, no anything but a mind aware of itself. But that's not art.

That the value of art is it's value to others is axiomatic. It can be no other way.

[Anonymous No.19912817]

>>19912807
i mean, one of the first things you learn in film class is the importance of the soviet film scene which was ENTIRELY motivated by lenin wanting to use the film medium for propaganda. this board is honestly pseud city

[Anonymous No.19912820]

>>19910357
Just because you're not the target audience doesn't mean there isn't an audience sought.

This might be impossible for a retarded child like OP to understand though.

[Anonymous No.19912827]

>>19912820
based

>>19912808
Art appeals to different people. Get over your muh objectivity and populism and just watch what you like, whether it be regarded as the best or worst film or book of all time.

[Anonymous No.19912831]

>>19912808
>"conveying" anything requires a recipient

It doesn't.

You can write in a journal, and express what you feel, but no audience will ever get to experience what you wrote.

Unless you go even deeper and say that the 'consciousness' in your brain is the observer to the emotions the rest of the brain comes up with, but that's a whole different conversation.

[Anonymous No.19912837]

>>19910357
>Pop culture is anything but banal. High culture is the farce.

[Anonymous No.19912839]

>>19912808
Are you Jewish? Every work of art is for God and God alone.

[Anonymous No.19912841]

>>19912820
>frog posters are now the intelligent ones
these are the end times

[Anonymous No.19912842]

>>19912831
people don't really think of journals as art

[Anonymous No.19912855]

>>19912807
>>19912716
Define propaganda, faggots.

[Anonymous No.19912858]

>>19912842
You're a fucking idiot, an art work for yourself is effectively a journal. People have painting and writing as hobbies without wanting to be da Vinci or Dante, you fucking imbecile.

[Anonymous No.19913116]

>>19912807
>>19912817
>but no, look, they teach you in film school that propaganda is good
>how could you dismiss le great movie
all hope is lost

[Anonymous No.19913409]

>>19910357
>literature is show business

[Anonymous No.19913509]

>>19913409

[Anonymous No.19913799]

>>19912858
they tend to show paintings and writing to others, or they paint or write in the hopes of showing it to others when they get good enough. you seem angry, it's ok to be wrong man

[Anonymous No.19914227]

>>19911067
>>19912576
When Colonel Sanders developed his recipe for fried chicken, he was using a medium (food) to express a subjective experience (eating his chicken recipe) to other people. That qualifies as an artistic endeavor regardless of whether it was done for profit, regardless of how many people consume it, and regardless of the quality of the art.

[Anonymous No.19914254]

>>19913799
>they tend
Do you not share thing with your friends? All this is after the fact retard, and clearly a worship of vanity, praise, and flesh. You are almost certainly Jewish and do not believe in God, so you could safely be ignore.

[Anonymous No.19914264]

>>19910357
>Naval gazing
Naval gazing is when a sailor gazes out into the sea while on the bridge or on the nose of the ship or something :)

[Anonymous No.19914433]

Yes, all art seeks an audience - but art doesn't necessarily seek a Big Other, just as every word we speak isn't necessarily a part of some fluff speech at an entrance ceremony.

[Anonymous No.19914457]

>>19914264
For all intensive purposes it's a diamond dozen to me.

[Anonymous No.19914737]

>>19914227
TRUE.

Are you disagreeing with me? I'm confused.

Lol. Technically *everything* is art because self-expression.

[Anonymous No.19914743]

>>19910357
Creation of art should only be allowed for the leisure class

[Anonymous No.19915543]

Bump

[Anonymous No.19916915]

>>19914743
This

[Anonymous No.19917942]

Bump

[Anonymous No.19918003]

>>19911067
it's an accurate analogy

[Anonymous No.19918693]

>>19918003
It's not