/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5637414]

What's the abstract/degenerate art equivalent in literature?

How come painting has been so badly subverted but the novel is still okay....

[Anonymous No.5637418]

>>5637414

Explain what you mean by "abstract/degenerate" art. I'm pretty sure what you're talking about is the artwork that gets tons of attention because of the conception that it appears easy to create when in reality the degenerate art is a minority among painters.

[Anonymous No.5637505]

>>5637418

Its pretty obvious. Google the terms for examples.

[Anonymous No.5637509]

>>5637414

Finnwgans wake?

[Anonymous No.5637510]

>subverted

?

[Anonymous No.5637512]

>>5637414
There is no degenerate art, art needs to be generated to exist.

[Anonymous No.5637515]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy-rJWDcuEM

[Anonymous No.5637516]

OP if you're not well educated in something then don't just assume what /pol/ tells you is right. Either recognize that you're not an intellectual and that's not what you're looking for in life or start actually reading up on things.

[Anonymous No.5637520]

literary art is very conservative compared to visual and music. plus people realized beckett is a worthless hack and ignored him so his cancer hasn't infected writers that much.

[Anonymous No.5637525]

Probably abstract literature such as Beckett's Trilogy, surrealism, nonsense and other avant-garde?

> How come painting has been so badly subverted
It hasn't been. There is plenty of "traditional" painting still being done: it appeals to people with very basic tastes.
> the novel is still okay....
There are quite a few reasons for lack of evolution in novel format. Let me list some.
> Steady popularity of plot driven, minimal style novels
> Larger penetration to populace (majority of people read, but only a vaning minority invests in fine arts)
> Its easy to take a photo of Abstract art and spread it in media so as to convey some secret triumph, but for novels being very avant-garde gets you to media silence
> Earning model doesn't encourage change
etc etc.

[Anonymous No.5637527]

>>5637520
ebin

[Anonymous No.5637545]

>Fuck this subverted bullshit! I just want to look at the realistically modeled musculature of nude Greek fairytale men

[Anonymous No.5637551]

>>5637545

>it is not okay for you to have a culture! not even your own!

[Anonymous No.5637552]

>>5637414

Twilight, Naked Lunch, the beats crap

[Anonymous No.5637554]

>>5637551
what lmao

[Anonymous No.5637555]

>>5637545

>that false dichotomy

I see u

[Anonymous No.5637558]

>>5637555
>implying there has been any good art that is not classicist

[Anonymous No.5637559]

The only "degenerate" art is art that aims to create a perfect aesthetic representation of reality

[Anonymous No.5637565]

>What's the abstract/degenerate art equivalent in literature?
>Using "degenerate" as a qualifier in art ever.
Shut the fuck up you literal piece of shit.

[Anonymous No.5637566]

>>5637558
>classicism
>not detailistic sentimentalism

[Anonymous No.5637570]

>>5637559
So... All the good art like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky?

[Anonymous No.5637574]

>Art should not respond to scientific or philosophical developments and should instead adhere to undeveloped principles of representation championed by the same kind of people who literally thought alchemy was legit

[Anonymous No.5637581]

>>5637558
>doesn't like the romantics

[Anonymous No.5637583]

>>5637566
>not post-avant jazzcore

[Anonymous No.5637587]

>>5637570
i don't get dostoyevsky. when he makes fun of literature being able to accurately represent life, is he downplaying himself or is he trying to make his books more realistic?

ie at the end of NFTU the UM says books and ideas are for losers and failures. what's the deal with dostoyevsky?

[Anonymous No.5637588]

>>5637505
90% of what shows up on a google image search is pretty good. I mean, even Guernica is there.. Tell us what you mean.

[Anonymous No.5637589]

>>5637574
If scientists didn't give up on alchemy in favor of meme-science like evolution we'd all be decked in gold by now

[Anonymous No.5637593]

>>5637581
a lot of romanticism owes heavily to classicism like look at thomas cole's stages of empire. it's what happens when you are trained in an academy

[Anonymous No.5637596]

>>5637589
Fucking liberals

[Anonymous No.5637599]

>>5637593
It's not classical though, it's a rejection of the enlightenment formally and thematically

[Anonymous No.5637606]

>>5637599
oh ok

[Anonymous No.5637611]

>>5637527
if beckett's nihilist influence had spread beyond its small coterie mainly in theatre which is a dead end for literature with the rise of film, we'd be getting the equivalent of 'degenerate' visual art. ditto with finnegans wake, gravity's rainbow (which at least has the benefit of being somewhat amusing) and other completely destructive texts. we're still living in high modernism tbh: proust, faulkner and woolf rein supreme in how we think about literature and influence.

[Anonymous No.5637620]

There's a lot of great art from every period, the thing just is that making romanticists/classicist art in 2014 is just insincere.
It can be done, if it involves reinterpretation of what romanticism is, but just repeating will always come off as false, since it doesn't relate to the human condition today. Why paint the sublime, when the idea of the sublime is pushed so far into the background (or maybe rather ridiculed so much in the foreground that it has dissolved) that we can't relate to it in any way but nostalgia?
The sublime itself has probably changed for us, and the feeling you can get from Rothko or similar is probably the closest thing to it, today.
That or Eliasson or something-other.

[Anonymous No.5637633]

[Anonymous No.5637636]

>>5637565

Disgusting mentality/people

[Anonymous No.5637650]

>>5637414

Economics

The cutting edge of art has always been financed by individuals with large amounts of money, many of whom sponsor art or artists simply to appear cultured and are therefore extremely susceptible to an 'emperor's new clothes' groupthink wherein any avant-garde piece, no matter how awful or talentless, will be sponsored simply because such abstract styles are seen as being more 'cultured' than realism. Artists are simply responding to this demand for such kinds of demand because they realise that doing so will get them the money that artists need

Novels, by contrast, are financed by the masses; most modern writers see the possibility of writing a 'bestseller' as nothing more than a means of making money, regardless of actual literary merit (see Dan Brown, Rowling, Twilight, 50 shades etc). In order to most effectively appeal to the masses, the novel must be written in a 'lowest common denominator' style where any deviation towards the avant-garde is shunned, simply because if the hordes of semi-literate receptionists and hairdressers can't understand the novel, they won't buy it (which means less money).

Disclaimer: Note I've made no judgement on the actual artistic merits of abstract art or non-avant garde literature so don't criticise me for that and miss the point of my argument

[Anonymous No.5637656]

plebs u mad?

[Anonymous No.5637661]

y u mad tho

[Anonymous No.5637663]

<- plebs

[Anonymous No.5637722]

>>5637611
Oh really? What was the last "high modernist" text you saw published?

[Anonymous No.5637730]

Stream of consciousness

[Anonymous No.5637749]

>>5637722
Shark, maybe.

[Anonymous No.5637767]

>butthurt traditionalists can't into creative expression
>mfw
I bet you dorito-munching faggots think the purpose of art is to look like vidya gaems and James Cameron movies.

[Anonymous No.5637784]

>>5637656
it's a really striking use of colour. the circle is really in a kind of dialogue with the white space, as in, is the black circle the focus and the white space a void to be ignored... or is it the other way and the black circle is a hole in the field with substance, black denoting absence etc. it has such interesting negative energy.

[Anonymous No.5637800]

>>5637784

People who think anyone can do paintings like this are deluded. Sure they can be somewhat boring. But to keep a consistent colour on a large canvas is very difficult. You have to correctly estimate the amount of paint needed to cover the canvas adequately in order to mix it at the same time.

[Anonymous No.5637806]

>>5637611
>proust, faulkner and woolf rein supreme in how we think about literature and influence.
Only among people who don't actually read. Those who read have long since moved on to 'plebbier' genres like fantasy.

[Anonymous No.5638355]

Abstract art is a shit. I hope literature never gets retarded like that.

[Anonymous No.5638363]

>>5638355
Poetry has explored the aesthetic of writing in a way similar to abstract art.

[Anonymous No.5638381]

>>5637800
wow. you can apply paint consistently. true art. that's like praising someone for being able to write grammatically.

[Anonymous No.5638399]

The answer is The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra.

[Anonymous No.5638482]

>>5637587
Newsflash not everything a character says is something the author agrees with. Characters are more than just mouthpieces for the author.

[Anonymous No.5638484]

>>5637558
Impressionism is pretty nice.

[Anonymous No.5638620]

>>5638484
You're pretty nice anon :3

[Tallis !!y+12CeFwYOo No.5638634]

>>5637414
Art tended to keep itself more refined in its own rhetoric whereas literature refused rhetoric as in artistic ideology as a whole, while being hypocritical in that it was focused on a single one; relativism.

Literature became shit, whereas other forms of art became pretentious shit.

Nowadays using a word containing more than 8 letters will lend you in jail.

[Anonymous No.5638653]

>>5638634
>Nowadays using a word containing more than 8 letters will lend you in jail.

u wot m8

[Anonymous No.5638683]

>>5638620
^.^

[Anonymous No.5638768]

http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/post/92882440475/opening-paragraph-to-something-im-writing

[Anonymous No.5638791]

>>5638634
You don't have to read Tao Lin if you don't want to

[Anonymous No.5638794]

I want /pol/ to leave

[Anonymous No.5638796]

>>5638768
This is way too earnest to be post-Dadaist.

[Anonymous No.5638804]

>>5638796
>Kolsti
>earnest
he fucking calls himself postmetamodernist. he's the polar opposite of new sincerity

[Anonymous No.5638816]

>>5638482
Tell that to Nabokov. He didn't like Dostoyevsky because he disagreed with his characters' politics.

[Anonymous No.5638824]

>>5638816
Nabokov was a brilliant prose stylist and had a decent sense of humor but his literary opinions were shit. He had the most shallow reading of Kafka in academia and Shakespeare went over his head.

[Anonymous No.5638826]

>>5638804
>>5638796
How about you guys stop talking about this untalented teenager

[Anonymous No.5638832]

>>5638826
>untalented
He's a lazy, annoying shill but he has heaps of talent.

[Anonymous No.5638839]

>>5637800
>But to keep a consistent colour on a large canvas is very difficult.
ever painted a wall you faggot?

[Anonymous No.5638844]

>>5638832
Uh, did we read the same tumblr post?

[Anonymous No.5638848]

>>5638844
You aren't familiar with him, are you? Look up some of his other stuff and you'll see.

[Anonymous No.5638865]

>>5637784
Also, Suprematist art pieces tend to have very strong presence when seen by eye - they're massive, and massively contrasted paintings. Go seem them in museums! 500x300 pixels don't do justice.

[Anonymous No.5638868]

>>5638848
Google spits out the tumblr and a facebook...not much to go on here.

[Anonymous No.5638874]

>>5638868
the /lit/ archive is the place to look

[Anonymous No.5638875]

>>5637588
are you retarded or just ignorant?

[Anonymous No.5638887]

>>5638848
He's as good as the "good writer" every creative class has. He's good for what you have around, but for his work to have the sort of impact he think he's making he should do much more. So far a lot of his stuff reads like something someone in /lit/ would write jokingly imitating meme writers, for example: http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/post/92882440475/opening-paragraph-to-something-im-writing

[Anonymous No.5638891]

>>5638816
He doesn't like Dosty because his stories are heavily moralizing novels of ideas with dull style, not because he doesn't care for the characters' opinions.

[Anonymous No.5638892]

Tao Lin

[Anonymous No.5638894]

>>5638874
Sorry, but referencing the internet, 4chan, and memes is just cheesy to me. He sucks.

Let me define cheesy: dumb, boring, and overdone

[Anonymous No.5638899]

Yes, you are autistic so you can become a mathematician.

[Anonymous No.5638905]

>>5637418

[Anonymous No.5638910]

>>5638892
I know /lit/ and myself dislike him as an author but does anyone else think he has aspergers based on his readings and interviews? I seriously doubt he's playing a character.

[B) No.5638922]

>>5638910
Yes I sincerely do and I think most people who call Tao an autist don't mean it as a meme insult

[Anonymous No.5638961]

>>5638894
As overdone as referencing God, Greek mythology, nature, death, and Shakespeare?

[Anonymous No.5639070]

>>5638961
Eh, I don't really equate what you listed with the internet, 4chan, and memes.
Keep on with your shitty writing and your engineering degree. I don't care.

[Supercolor !KTOQnT547Q No.5639105]

>>5638905
how is this degenerate? Or abstract for that matter?

[Anonymous No.5639108]

>>5637589
but anon-kun, we can create gold with physics now, it has even been done in the 1950's, after the greatest advance in weaponry was created people found out that luminescent gold was created after the use of our beloved progress on deserted area such as islands in the pacific and new mexico.

[Anonymous No.5639112]

>>5637414
>he believes there is something art ought to be

[Anonymous No.5639140]

>>5637784
how could you forget the reference to oriental philosophy present through the white point in the black circle and the nuances of grey in the white space which remind of the symbol of opposite colors often found in east asian religions?

[Anonymous No.5639170]

>>5637414

Ulysses. Pointless vulgarity for it's own sake because 'I wunna mayk staytmant mah'

[Anonymous No.5639230]

>>5637414
Gargantua And Pantagruel. Pointless vulgarity for it's own sake because 'I wunna mayk staytmant mah'

[Anonymous No.5639241]

>>5637414
Satirical Diptych by Anonymous Flemish artist. Pointless vulgarity for it's own sake because 'I wunna mayk staytmant mah'

[Anonymous No.5639243]

>>5637414
>Pic related

[Anonymous No.5639244]

>degenerate art
I know /pol/ are pretty edgy, but using literal Nazi terminology?

[Anonymous No.5639251]

>>5639243
>A tour de force. New York Times

[Anonymous No.5639258]

>>5639244
Protip: Nazis ate cucumbers, by eating pickles in your hamburger you literally become a Nazi.

[Anonymous No.5639285]

>>5639258
Not really comparable to using terms that the Nazis coined during their warping of European culture. The attitude itself is typical of the reactionist bullshit you get around here, but "degenerate art"? The exhibition that drove Beckmann and Ernst out of Germany, and led to the burning of Picasso paintings?

[Anonymous No.5639290]

>>5639244
People on /pol/ claim to be literal nazis

[Anonymous No.5639299]

>>5639285
The words 'degenerate' and 'art' have existed since Neanderthal times, you fucking tard.

[Anonymous No.5639304]

[Anonymous No.5639311]

>>5639299
>Ogga booga degenerate rock

[Anonymous No.5639324]

>>5639299
Yeah, and the swastika is an Eastern symbol of peace

[Anonymous No.5639354]

>>5639299
Yes, and they mean things, 'degenerate' means 'having lost the physical, mental, or moral qualities considered normal and desirable; showing evidence of decline' (or whatever dictionary you want pick) and 'art' means (well just picking this straight out of the dictionary would be an injustice but it means 'art') and 'degenerate art' is a Phrase that means "modern art, which is a bad thing".means modern art. It's a fucking technical term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art
Your argument is exactly equivalent to saying National Socialism isn't Nazi because the words 'National' and Socialism' exist independently, you fucking tard.

[Anonymous No.5639360]

>>5639354
I should've proofread but w.e
Also this is >>5639324 a succinct way of putting it

[Anonymous No.5639361]

>>5639324
I'll admit I didn't know this until I took religion class as one of two humanity courses. I couldn't help but laugh a little inside.

[Anonymous No.5639370]

>>5637414
>imblying Annigoni and Nerdrum are not the greatest artists of the last one hundred years?

[Anonymous No.5639398]

>>5639370
How beautiful the Duchess is.

[Anonymous No.5639457]

>>5637606
you could not have made more of a cherry pick. you're aware this painting is part of a series, right?

[Anonymous No.5639461]

>>5637611
>theater is a dead end for literature because of film

oh boy

[Anonymous No.5639505]

>>5638905

The chap who shat that probably would have sympathised with your position. He only did it to take the piss out of art from the same angle that you do. Shit in a can and call it art = phat bux.

If the consumers are philistines, why not scam them? If they think that, even knowing that its a scam, they're 'in on it' for buying it, why not scam them? The only people who would buy this are mongol warriors, so fuck, let some artfags get loaded off the backs of those mongol warriors and stop being so spiteful.

[Anonymous No.5639523]

>>5637414
dadaistic poetry

[Anonymous No.5639536]

>>5638887
I wrote a Kingdom Hearts fanfiction when I was in middle school that read exactly like this piece of shit. it too was a piece of shit which I've since deleted, but I thought the whole self-referential multiple parenthesis thing was cool and new and this was in ~2004

[Anonymous No.5639540]

>>5639258
idiot

[Anonymous No.5639555]

>>5638768

top nie

kurwa je pierdole

[Anonymous No.5639629]

>>5638922
>>5638910
It's neither. It's drugs, he's high in every interview. Watch him in film and he's different.

http://vimeo.com/16917031

[Anonymous No.5639657]

>>5639629

He's high there.

[Anonymous No.5639789]

>>5638875
probably both, but why don't you point out the reason behind you asking me this?

[Anonymous No.5639810]

>>5638839

until you actually try mixing paint, you will never understand. Show us you can do it. You have to mix color though. No primary mass manufactured colors allowed. Go do it big guy. Show us what a master you are.

[Anonymous No.5640729]

>>5638355
>Nightingale singing—gale of Nanking

>Sing—mystery

>of Ming-dynasty

>sing

>ing

>in Ming

>Syringa

>Myringa

>Singer

>Song-winged

>sing-wind

>syringa

>ringer

>Song-wing

>sing long

>syringa

>lingerer

literature has changed, but I wouldn't call it shit.

[Anonymous No.5640749]

>>5639304
Of all the painting you could have chosen, you picked a objectively good painting, smooth.

[Anonymous No.5642284]

>>5639304
>objectively blue

[Anonymous No.5642327]

>>5642284
KANADAAAAAAAA

[Anonymous No.5642384]

>>5637565
>>Using "degenerate" as a qualifier in art ever.
But that is _literally_ the way it is supposed to be used. Has anyone on 4chan even read Max Nordau's "Degeneration"? It is critique of (then) contemporary art. The term has nothing to do with what /pol/ turned it into (or whoever did it, it is probably society and /pol/ just picked it up.

Fun fact: Max Nordau, who coined the term, was a jew.

[it keeps happening No.5642571]

>>5639304
>look ma I made a mspaint comic with a handsome man representing my opinion and a dork representing my opponents

[Anonymous No.5642673]

>>5638887
>>5639536
Yo I did this in 1997
This probably goes earlier than we all could imagine
The only thing that's new about it is, a person now managed to delude themselves into thinking it isn't shit for long enough to keep showing it to others

[Anonymous No.5642686]

>>5639244
It's an actual term in art ffs /lit/ you ignorant dog

[Anonymous No.5643024]

>>5639505
mongol warriors?

[Anonymous No.5643041]

>>5642384
>But that is _literally_ the way it is supposed to be used.

Because a book published in 1892 used it that way? Didn't realize etymology only went that far back.

Based Freud on Nordau's book: "It may well be asked whether an attribution of 'degeneracy' is of any value or adds anything to our knowledge."

[Anonymous No.5643070]

>>5643041
>Based Freud on Nordau's book
Yes, I agree, the book is a very constructed hunk of shit, and only really interesting if you want to read about fin de siecle or decadence literature.

Anyway, the book was originally written in german and the original title is "Entartung" - degeneration is the literal translation of this. (And I mean literal as in, it is basically the same word, just in latin. The prefix "de-" translates to "ent-" in german, and the latin "genus" is the equivalent of the german "art".)
Nordau coined the term in the way it is used today. it existed before that in the english language (obviously as a french loan word), but the modern meaning is pretty unsepratable from Nordau's work (unless we are talking about the scientific term "degeneration" that is used in medicine, and much closer to the original pre-Nordau meaning of degeneration.)