Thursday, April 19, 2007

Two Posts of Interest

My partner, anthropologist and cultural theorist Robert Philen, has two very interesting recent posts on his blog.

The first post, "Longfellow, George Will, Poetry, and the Artist or Individual Thinker", discusses the different cultural status of poetry in America between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first century, the ideas of accessiblity and difficulty in art (which I have also addressed several times in this blog), and the relationship of art to the artist's biography or social context (arguing, as I have done as well, that the one is not determined by the other).

The second post, prompted by a performance we saw together of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, is called "Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and the Experience of Art (Musical and Visual)", discusses the difference in the experience of live musical performance or original works of art from the experience of art in reproduction, as well as the greater conservatism of audiences for "classical" or "serious" music as compared to the audiences for visual art.

I highly recommend both pieces.

1 comment:

Mark Granier said...

Thanks for these Reginald. I am especially impressed by 'Darwin's Unfinished Letter'. I'm wondering if the fragments are lifted in their entireity from the letter/notes (i.e., truly 'found' poems), if she manipulated the language, using a collage technique, or if she simply invented/imagined most of it.