Author Topic: What Is Middle Class in Manhattan?  (Read 19772 times)

Jamesqf

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Re: What Is Middle Class in Manhattan?
« Reply #50 on: February 21, 2013, 05:50:39 PM »
Sometimes I just want the experience of being surrounded by beauty, and you can't get that by looking at art in a coffee table book.

Well, I'll see your Tiffany windows, and raise you the view from just about anywhere on the Tahoe Rim Trail :-)  Or riding your horse along the shore of another lake, hearing the sound made by the wings of uncounted thousands of waterfowl.  Or meeting a mountain lion on the trail, watching the moon rise over the Black Rock, or seeing what the Milky Way looks like when it's not drowned out by city lights...

jrhampt

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Re: What Is Middle Class in Manhattan?
« Reply #51 on: February 22, 2013, 07:37:16 AM »
I enjoy all that stuff, too, of course, but that doesn't mean I can't also appreciate man-made beauty.

boy_bye

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Re: What Is Middle Class in Manhattan?
« Reply #52 on: February 22, 2013, 08:34:01 AM »
I enjoy all that stuff, too, of course, but that doesn't mean I can't also appreciate man-made beauty.

i would argue that there is fundamentally no difference between "natural" beauty and human-crafted beauty. humans were created by all the same forces that created nature itself. we and everything we do is every bit as "natural" as what we think of as "nature" -- trees, rivers, the sky, the stars.

Jamesqf

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Re: What Is Middle Class in Manhattan?
« Reply #53 on: February 22, 2013, 12:52:07 PM »
i would argue that there is fundamentally no difference between "natural" beauty and human-crafted beauty. humans were created by all the same forces that created nature itself. we and everything we do is every bit as "natural" as what we think of as "nature" -- trees, rivers, the sky, the stars.

I agree, to a point that depends on just how you use the word "natural".  But your beautiful Tiffany windows are shut up in a museum.

twinge

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Re: What Is Middle Class in Manhattan?
« Reply #54 on: February 25, 2013, 09:42:51 AM »
Quote
    But surely you can agree that some people do want or enjoy X?  Or do you really think that every single person who claims to like going to museums is just deluding themselves?
To be honest, I don't know.  Do people really like those things, or have they just been told over and over that they ought to like them, and have never experienced anything different? 

I can say for pretty sure I enjoy them without cultural pressure.  As an elementary school aged child I asked for a pass to our city's art museum for my only birthday present when my parents had maybe been there 1x in their life before I was born and I had only gone through school and utterly fell in love with the experience of being surrounded by cultural objects throughout all of history each representing a person's response to an idea or the world.  There was no peer pressure to like this (if anything it's something I "hid" from friends since it seemed dorky and they were all bored there) and I didn't even know enough to know that it was intellectual or elite to like art museums as I wasn't raised with that kind of sensibility. 

Humans have been making visual and musical representational forms for over 40000 years.  That's enough to convince me there's something to it in human psychology beyond just deluded snobbery.  I think it's partly about states of beauty and awe like we experience in nature, but there's another dimension.  We're driven to represent and express our subjective experience and share it with others.  It's another language.  Some people speak those artistic languages in ways that deeply resonate with others and can give new insights.

Jamesqf

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Re: What Is Middle Class in Manhattan?
« Reply #55 on: February 25, 2013, 11:28:24 AM »
Humans have been making visual and musical representational forms for over 40000 years.  That's enough to convince me there's something to it in human psychology beyond just deluded snobbery.

I think you misunderstand me.  The "deluded snobbery" is in reference to the sort of people who profess to think a stuffed shark, unmade bed, or spattered paint is art, and think themselves superior because they pretend to appreciate it, unlike us mere mortals who'd toss it out with the rest of the trash.  Sure, this is rooted in something fundamental in human psychology: the same thing that led all those successful & intelligent people to invest with Bernie Madoff.

Meanwhile, real artists - those who have put time and effort into mastering their craft - are doing it as a hobby (like my neighbor, who does amazing flower paintings), or making a living doing the artwork for computer games (another neighbor's kid).