[Dixielandjazz] One person and art

[Dan Augustine]

>Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 11:18:45 +1000
>From: Anton Crouch <anton.crouch at optusnet.com.au>
>
>Hello Dan
>You ask "What do you think about the following statement: only one person
>can create art."
>What were you drinking?   :-)
>As Bill G points out, it's hard to find any common ground on a meaning for
>"art" but let's look at some examples of group creation which most people
>would class as art.
>A large proportion of the output of the Hollywood studio system in the
>1930s and 1940s - French auteur theory notwithstanding.
>Mozart's Requiem, Puccini's Turandot and Mahler's 10th symphony.
>Any performance of any music, involving more than one person.
>All the best
>Anton
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Anton et al.--
     I used the word 'create' in the sense of "To produce through 
artistic or imaginative effort" (or "to evolve from one's own thought 
or imagination, as a work of art or an invention"), not "To cause to 
exist; bring into being".
     Performance isn't _creation_.  Elation of players during 
performance isn't _creation_ either.
     Let's get ten classically trained composers together and have 
them 'create' a piano sonata.  Dimes to dog turds it'll be awful.
     A work of art is created by making real something imagined, and 
something imagined can happen to only one person.
     Let's get ten world-class jazz-trumpet artists and have them 
'create' a jazz solo.  The result will be awful.
     Not everything one person does creating art will be judged 'high' 
or 'good' art, of course.  Can't be a genius in every bar, you know. 
But the fruit of the imagination or the vision of one composer, one 
jazz soloist, one writer, one director, one painter, and so on--that 
has a chance to be art.  _Ipse dixit_ ("if you knew Ipse, like i know 
Ipse, oh, oh what a...").

     Dan

P. S. Copies of this speech are available for twenty-five cents and a 
self-addressed stamped envelope through the Merkin Press.
-- 
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**  Dan Augustine     Austin, Texas     ds.augustine at mail.utexas.edu  **
**    "Not everything that a man knoweth can be disclosed, nor can    **
**     everything that he can disclose be regarded as timely, nor can **
**     every timely utterance be considered as suited to capacity of  **
**     those who hear it."  -- Baha'u'llah                            **
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