The Art of Conversations about Art
Can you talk about art merely for the sake of talking about art?
My beloved humans who look at hastily scribbled marks and sort them in to messages and symbolic constructs and then debate over whether there are meanings intended by the scribbler beyond those that are readily apparent, this post is for you:
This week was steeped in intellectual conversation. Sunday started with the second-ever gathering of SOUP - the collective of interesting creatives seriously and passionately discussing incendiary topics that don’t matter in the least - like “if tomatoes are a fruit, can ketchup be considered a smoothie.” Fun and fanciful brain games—creative thought and escapism. Delightful! And then the question is raised: is this sort of intentionally pleasant, in-person gathering among relative strangers, more or less meaningful than active networking with a purpose?
(The answer is at the bottom of this email)
On Tuesday I had a second foray into art/intellectual conversation. This time it was We Five - an intimate group of various creatives (I was the only fictionista - the others were a visual artist, an opera star, a theologian, and an avid arts patron—and yes they all have multiple talents that overlap in fascinating Venn diagrams—but for sake of a list, these were five central ways in which we approached the topic of art.) Nominally, the conversation was intended to collectively peel off filaments of thought surrounding the posed discussion topic: Warhol’s opinion that art is whatever you can get away with vs. Chesterton’s desire to make art meaningful as embodied in his quote art is the signature of man.
We spent more time examining the context of the Chesterton quote and then exploring in what ways our own practices interfaces with a larger intention/meaning than in actually discussing the topic at hand, but the whole thing was absolutely joyous.
I also ate soup, so there was a thematic tie-in.
Wednesday, I wrote a grant - this practice, of turning art into quantifiably measurable and results-oriented descriptions in order to entice the financial support of non-artists, is the exact opposite of ars gratia artis (commonly translated as Art for Art’s Sake, this phrase it turns out, is complete nonsense in Latin —originally from an 1818 French phrase L’art pour l’art, the Latin is just a branding phrase that a very young film intern made up for MGM, gotta love that ) — I also went ice skating on a skating rink that was nearly empty, just because it was there (and because a young person allowed me do it for free after discovering I was just killing time so my son could have the apartment to himself while making dinner for his girlfriend).
This whimsical seized opportunity to expend great efforts to go absolutely nowhere while also appreciating the beauty inherent in the nowhere I was inhabiting — this may have been the most artistic I have been all week.
But then on Thursday I went to a SAG/AFTRA screening of American Fiction with a long-lost grad school friend. This movie was a multi-leveled, extraordinarily nuanced and brilliant satire with layers on layers of commentary. Yes, it is what it says it is - lambasting the publishing/entertainment industry, but did anyone else notice that even the incredibly literary portrayals of the main characters (as opposed to the stereotypes the literary characters are creating to sell books) are themselves rather stereotypical? The super-smart and beautiful Black female Social Justice Warrior in the role of wisdom-giver. The gorgeous, shallow and flighty gay Black man. The spot-on White Literary Judges (Brooklyn, Boston, and Bored). There is an inherent wink-and-nod to the viewer that in Hollywood EVERYONE is reduced to a stereotype.
Perhaps in Entertainment in general, everyone is reduced to a stereotype. The best sentence was one about the writer being the best observer…I wish I could quote it but because I was watching it in a screening room with other people, there was no pause and rewind. So of course, I’m going to need to get the Percival Evans book, Erasure, on which the movie was based. Mostly to read that quote, but also to see if the author gave us more backstory than the film was able to give.
Like I have time to read.
Friday was theater! I ended up a plus-one because someone’s wife is recovering from the flu and got to see Between The Knees which wasn’t as dirty as I had expected from the title, but instead was a vicious satire. Funny, yes, but rapacious as well.
I also watched Poor Things. Another movie that made me think - what a week of thought it was!!
Writing News:
I HAVE AMAZING WRITING NEWS!!
MY STORY LANDED ON THE MOON!!
Actually, literally landed, ON THE MOON!
Before the pandemic, I was lucky to come across this terrific publisher Daniel Arthur Smith, whose series Tales of the Canyons of the Damned issue 32 included one of my more genre-style short stories THE FOURTH (it’s Lovecraftian, if you’re into tentacles)—and which was then reprinted in the tenth Omnibus.
The Volume X Omnimbus (as well as all the others) has just now landed on the moon aboard the spacecraft Odysseus. And it is going to be left there as part of the Lunar Codex project. Worth reading about. My writing literally has MOON distribution.
Oh if you want to read a new thought-piece I wrote about satire which addresses Between Two Knees and American Fiction, here’s a link that will let you avoid the Medium paywall.
Enjoy.
Random Final Thought:
This issue of my newsletter is proof of how art evolves to keep up with life. This week’s writing news was just gorgeous and gave me such a delight - as does my moon-lamp, which had nothing to do with my piece being on the moon, except now it has a whole new meaning.
The answer to the question posed in the first section of which interaction is better, networking or pure socializing? It’s a trick question.
Do not judge your interactions with humans. Just be with them.
Can't beat landing on the moon! This is your year!
I'm not quite sure how to phrase it. You listed, like five amazing experiences, and five other pleasant ones. Is that "so many amazing experiences"? "Multiple identifiable amazing experiences", since amazing experiences are subjective (and hopefully always occurring, whether we recognize them or not)? In any event, I am inspired and informed, as I have not seen any of the movies, and had to look up Chesterton.
John McWhorter wrote about "American Fiction" a month ago and I think his thoughts were very much in line with what you wrote about its not transcending stereotype, for all its incisiveness.