Re[2]: [Leica] Good Pitchurs

[Peterson_Art@hq.navsea.navy.mil]

     Jeff Moore wrote, "It's...important not to be too absolute in this 
     insistence that the capacity for...appreciation is somehow intrinsic, 
     not learned.  Perhaps...one needn't know Bach's musical forebears for 
     a first-level appreciation of the music, but I betcha someone who 
     hadn't been exposed to any notion of...a major or a minor key just 
     wouldn't 'get' the music too well.  I bet a monolingual (American?) 
     person...wouldn't 'get' a...poem written in Mandarin...[and]...even 
     with a dictionary, but without cultural referents,...wouldn't get it 
     too deeply."
     
     And in response to my statement that "one appreciates art...simply by 
     experiencing it (and...ONLY by experiencing it)," Jeff asked "Is this 
     meant to imply that any analytic component to one's interaction with a 
     piece automatically invalidates the experience?...and...would you... 
     contend that a recent escapee from a Skinner box is necessarily just 
     as fully able to appreciate any 'true' art as someone who's grown up 
     in the same culture as the artist?
     
     I'm sorry for not having been more clear about this in my original 
     message.  Although it is true that "the CAPACITY for...appreciation 
     is...intrinsic, not learned" (emphasis added), I did NOT mean to 
     suggest that an appreciation itself is not learned.  It is certainly 
     learned!  But---and this is what I MEANT to convey---whereas, on the 
     one hand, one may learn to appreciate artists' techniques by studying 
     technical matters, and one may learn to appreciate art history by 
     studying historical facts; on the other hand, because works of art are 
     communications, one can LEARN TO APPRECIATE the art itself simply, and 
     only, by experiencing it (sometimes over and over again).
     
     A poem is different because its medium is VERBAL language.  Whereas 
     the "language" of music, like the depictive "language" of paintings 
     and photographs, is abstract, a verbal language is not abstract, but 
     rather comprises many specific verbal symbols (words) of very concrete 
     meanings, and so these symbols must all be mastered separately before 
     one can "get" the communication.
     
     Conversely with music (e.g., Bach) one need NOT be separately "exposed 
     to any NOTION of...a major or a minor key" (emphasis added), but only 
     to the major and minor keys THEMSELVES AS HEARD IN BACH'S MUSIC.  So 
     while I would NOT "contend that a recent escapee from a Skinner box is 
     ...as...able to appreciate any...art as someone who's grown up in the 
     same culture as the artist," I do agree that one learns to appreciate 
     music and photography, and I do contend that the way one learns such 
     appreciation is only by listening to the one and looking at the other. 
     And I would add that, once one knows a language (as an adult would his 
     native language, for example), then the one and only way one learns to 
     appreciate literary works of art (Shakespeare's sonnets or Faulkner's 
     novels, to cite two supreme examples) is only by reading them.
     
     BUT I did NOT mean to suggest that "any analytic component to one's 
     interaction with a piece automatically invalidates the experience."  
     Quite the opposite: the experience is the one and only requisite, and 
     nothing can invalidate it!
     
     Again, I'm sorry for not having stated all this better originally.  I 
     tried to be clear but did not succeed.  I hope I've done better here 
     (and if the above is overwritten, it's from striving for clarity).
     
     Art Peterson