The Foolish & Impossible Task: Defining "Art"

“The definition of art is controversial in contemporary philosophy. Whether art can be defined has also been a matter of controversy. The philosophical usefulness of a definition of art has also been debated.”c. 2007- Thomas Adajian 

Defining art is like walking barefoot up a glacier in the rain... 
 

It's like drinking the ocean with a straw.  No matter how many academics argue, theorize, and postulate, they’ll never do it.  How can they?  

Just for fun, (OK, I'm a little hard up for fun) I consulted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for a definition of Art (they happened to be the first result when you Google "what is art?"), and even they cover their asses with a disclaimer before citing heavyweights, like Plato, Kant, and Wittgenstein...

That's just like the world of academia, where professors try to prove things that are really a waste of time to try to prove, throw around a lot of big names, and then publish their pretzel logic to impress other professors.  Then, they force university students to buy these dry deadweight books.  Even the campus bookstore won't buy them back.    

A scholar is the last person who should be trying to define art.  Academia is like a gerbil inside an eternally spinning wheel who only stops running to eat and take a poop.

Andres Serrano's Piss Christ is a prime example of why defining art will never work.  Senator Jesse Helms, (and other great thinkers and arbiters of art and culture in congress), called for an end to public funding of the arts when it was revealed that Serrano had received an NEA grant.  

I asked 100 people: "What are the BEST and the WORST songs you've ever heard?"  I thought perhaps a sample of responses would reveal one song as universally good or bad.  

But responses to this question varied tremendously.  One friend even sent me a link to a study and a poll created by composer Dave Soldier in 1996, surveying musical preferences (Komar, Melamid, and Soldier – Most Wanted Song and Most Unwanted Song  project.)  The study looked at a variety of factors and concluded that there were identifiable musical preferences that could be measured.

For example, high female voices were found less desirable than low female voices.  

A narrower dynamic range was preferable to a wider one (this could be why audio engineers use so much compression in commercially produced music).  Rock was the most popular style of music and opera was the least desirable.  Jazz placed somewhere in between.

There were preferences for instrument sounds, too. Guitar and piano were the most popular by a wide margin.  Bagpipe and accordion, followed by banjo and tuba, topped the least preferred instruments list.  It would be interesting to see if it would hold true in other cultures, where instruments, tunings, and scales are different, like in Indian music, where quarter tones are used.  

Through my very unscientific method of casual inquiry, (sorry, academia), I found that people tended to favor songs that were... (drum roll please!)... 

Emotionally appealing yet not maudlin or overtly sentimental.  

I found there was a line between emotional expressiveness in songs and utter schmaltziness, that most people didn't like to cross... 

For example, Feelings, is a really yucky song that a lot of people dislike for the reason above.  Several people put it on their list of "worst" songs ever.  But other people (none that were in my half assed unscientific survey) must like the tune as it reached #2 on the Adult Contemporary charts.  There's even a Spanish version, Sentimientos, which perhaps came first: “Dime…Solamente dime. Como olvidar mis Sentimientos de amor…” Is it less cloying in Spanish?

As someone who loves Brazilian music, I am often amazed at how Portuguese lyrics, which are often impressionistic and poetic, have been translated into English.  The English rarely seems to fit- though some lyricists- like the late Gene Lees-managed to evoke beauty and imagery more consistent with the Brazilian sensibility.

Well written lyrics don't always mean a song is widely appreciated, either.  Jimmy Webb's MacArthur Park is a song that many people like and many people don't.  I am not sure if it's the lyrics (that line about the cake left out in the rain), or if it's the dramatic build-up as the song climaxes. Yet again, it could be that it reminds people of their yearbook photo, which is all it takes to hate a song.

Among the jazz musicians I heard from, Cole Porter, Ellington/Strayhorn, and Gershwin songs were generally favorites, but is that any secret?  As a singer, I admit a fondness for these songs, too (see my previous post about great songs).

The songs musicians find most intolerable are those they played too many times during certain periods of their lives. 

One musician told me, "I still have nightmares starring Perry Como!"  Curious, as I wasn't all that familiar with Perry Como, I found Papa Loves Mambo on Youtube. 

I imagined a couple, Angie and Vinnie, dancing at an Italian wedding.  Angie was 40-something, a bit zaftig.  She had an auburn bouffant and wore kohl eyeliner like a wide receiver's eye black.  Vinnie was 50-ish with slicked back silver hair and black leather wing tips with pointy toes. She had blood red fingernails that looked like they could really do some damage.  He lived with his mother.

Then the song was over.

There was a certain kitsch factor from another time that was rather appealing and those little horn licks.

But someone out there, LOVES that song, maybe thinks it's the best thing to hit Arthur Avenue since Clams Posillipo... 

Hooks, catchy phrases and motifs, even earworms determine whether or not we love or hate a tune, too, (most often the latter).  Last year, I couldn't get an animated singing pancake out of my head for days...  It sucked! 

Motifs aren’t sinister plots to destroy our well being or drive us mad, though they feel that way.  All the great composers used them.  Wagner was the uber konig of motifs. If he were alive today, the Ring Cycle would probably sell laundry detergent and soft drinks.

Motifs can actually be some of the coolest things in music.  They give our ears something recognizable and predictable to latch on to and remember.  They are logical and musically satisfying. 

In Musicophilia, Tales of Music and the Brain, by Oliver Sacks, the doctor famous for doing incredible things with dementia patients through music, there is a chapter called “Brainworms, Sticky Music, and Catchy Tunes.” Sacks believes motifs or catchy phrases actually enter and subvert a part of the brain.  He uses Beethoven’s Fifth and the theme from Mission Impossible as examples in his book.  Sacks has seen music completely transform people who have been stuck in catatonic states.  He believes the songs we internalize throughout our lifetime are vital to being human.  Music is vital?  What a concept!

I hope our human connection to songs, how music resonates within each of us, is unique and personal.  How can it be otherwise?    Good and bad are totally subjective.  Some things can't be determined using quantitative analysis, algorithms, studies, focus groups, and market research.  And as far as I am concerned, they never will.  I would not like to live in a world where everyone preferred the same modes of expression.  Yet it seems like things are going in that direction more and more.

Artists will always exist.  And no one will ever be able to define art or music in absolute terms.  Spin that in your gerbil wheels, academia...  Then wipe your bum!

(I welcome your comments and questions and random rants)