I had been reluctant to tell my landlord
about the flea problem I have because I figured that he’d just say that it was
my fault for having cats. But late on the Wednesday morning of October 19th
there was a knock on my door and it turned out to be the exterminator, showing
up without two days notice and saying that he was there to treat my place for
bedbugs. I told him that I hadn’t seen another bedbug since the one I’d killed
a month before and that the problem I had right now was fleas. He said that’s a
different treatment using different chemicals, but that I’d have to make the
same basic preparations as for bedbugs. He said he’d see about the
arrangements.
A
few minutes later my landlord called me, angry about hearing there were fleas
and, as I suspected, blaming me. I told him that one could get fleas from
pigeons on the window ledge, from mice, from raccoons and from all kinds of
ways besides having pets. He said something about closing down the second floor
and then hung up.
Shortly
after that though, Raja phoned back to tell me that the exterminator would be
coming for the fleas next Tuesday, then grumbled to someone at his end,
“Fucking (something indecipherable) and hung up.
There are usually
no classes prior to ours in the room where we have our Aesthetics lectures, but
on Wednesday there was one. A bunch of my fellow students were sitting out in
the hall and one of them struck up a conversation with me, asking how I’d liked
the quiz. I told him that it seemed easy, but the questions might have been
trick questions that I didn’t catch the meaning of. We chatted on a variety of
topics. We both belong to Woodsworth College though he hasn’t taken advantage
of any of the grants they offer like I have, mostly, he says, because his
parents pay his tuition. Tim is Korean and also a Christian who goes to church
regularly for the sense of community. I told him that I’m not convinced there’s
a god. He said it’s ballsy to be an atheist because of the danger while
floating free without a guiding philosophy of turning to nihilism. I told him what
Nietzsche said about Christianity having so deeply permeated our civilization
that it’s impossible to even be an atheist without having Christian values. We
talked about the United States and what a fucked up education system they have.
Of course that led to us talking about Donald Trump. I said that Trump is
showing recognizable signs of losing his mind. Tim went to have a cigarette
before class started.
I
noticed Professor Russell standing nearby and asked him if the deadline for the
essay was midnight on October 27th. He confirmed that it would be
one minute before midnight.
In
the lecture we finished up our talk on Wollheim’s idea of criticism as
retrieval. The aim is to reconstruct the artistic process. The important part
then is the intention of the artist and so Wollheim is defending
Intentionalism.
However,
it is impossible to reconstruct the artistic process.
The
revisionist view counters that we should make the artwork speak to us today. We
can just make something up if it speaks to us.
Wollheim
admits that it is hard to reconstruct the artistic process but that sometimes
it can be done, so why not do it if it helps us understand a work of art?
When
you think about it, it’s usually easy to figure out an artist’s intention.
Devlin
added in Wollheim’s defence that a certain amount of evidence is in the artwork
itself, so maybe partially reconstructing the process is a worthy enough goal.
But with revisionism one is not even allowed to try.
Another
objection to Wollheim’s view is that the reconstruction process is superfluous
and misleading.
The
work will do what it is meant to do and if it is successful we don’t need to
figure out intention and therefore we don’t need reconstruction. But if the
process is not successful then the result is a failed work of art that is not
worth reconstructing anyway because reconstruction would only lead us astray.
Instead we should think of criticism as scrutiny and examine the work as it is.
This draws on Conventionalism, so it’s not about intention. We need to know the
context, the conventions and the history to find the meaning.
Wollheim’s
response is that there is no such thing as interpretation without
reconstruction. This doesn’t do much to defend his view. It seems like Actual
Intentionalism without committing. Criticism as scrutiny, intention and
process.
Wollheim
says that the work is evidence for reconstructing.
The
scrutiny view is Wollheim’s view but backwards. Use the creative process as
evidence for figuring out what the artwork means now.
Wollheim
says revision renders the process irrelevant, while scrutiny turns the process
into mere evidence. Retrieval recognizes the importance of the creative process
from which everything flows.
Scrutiny
says that if a painting looks like a bird even though the artist’s intention
was to depict a sunset, then reconstructing the process arrives at the painting
being of a sunset. But scrutiny says, fine, use the creative process to find
out how it came about but the fact that we see a bird is also evidence.
Wollheim
says that we cannot put meaning onto an artwork and that the other4 two views
take the importance away from the artist’s intention.
The
rest of the lecture was on Art and Ethics.
Are
ethical flaws also artistic flaws? Can a racist joke still be funny? Devlin
said that he’d considered bringing examples but it is possible inappropriate.
So just imagine for yourself a beautiful photograph that is designed to
objectify women. Would an equally beautiful photograph that does not objectify
women be a better work of art?
This
is not about value.
Autonomism
says that ethical flaws are not artistic flaws. Ethics is irrelevant to art
because they are two different things. The photograph that objectifies women
should maybe be destroyed because it is ethically offensive, but that does not
mean it is not a great work of art.
Contextualism
rejects Autonomism and says that ethical flaws sometimes contribute to the
artistic merit of a work. Ethics can contribute to the flaws of an artwork but
also can contribute vitally to the greatness of the work.
Moralism
rejects the other two and says that ethical flaws are always artistic flaws.
Just
assume for simplicity right now that ethics is an objectively discernible
quality.
On
the way home I stopped at Hitech Direct and bought a new computer mouse. I
noticed while I was there that on their shelf behind me they had the same wifi
adaptor that I use. I asked if it was possible for them to wear out. He told me
that it wasn’t and that if the signal is getting weaker it’s just because of
increasing interference. I continued along College to Lansdowne, and went buy a
few things at No Frills, They had local apples, and so I bought some of the
shiny, crisp Courtland breed. Grapes were very cheap, so I got two bags. I
bought some cinnamon-raisin bread, a pork roast, some yogourt, some old
cheddar, some skim milk, mouthwash, and most important of all, coffee.
Lansdowne
is still closed off south of Dundas because of construction that seems to have
been going on since the beginning of time.
When
I got home I plugged the new mouse into my computer and it didn’t work at all.
That
night I watched a couple of episodes from the sixth season of I Love Lucy.
In
the first, Lucy had put a trophy on her head that Ricky was supposed to present
that night as a lifetime achievement award to a famous jockey. It was down over
her eyes and the handles were sticking out from each side like ears. Ricky had
to leave for work but would meet her at the banquet and so he told her to get it
off her head and bring it down to the ceremony later, then he left. Lucy went
to take it off but couldn’t budge it. Ethel called a silver smith who said he
could get it off but she’d have to come to his shop on Bleecker Street. Ethel
told her that it would be quicker to take the subway than a taxi, so Lucy put a
wide brimmed hat and a veil over the cup and they went. This was the first time
in the history of the show, in which Lucy and Ricky lived in New York City that
the subway had ever been shown. Of course it was probably shot in LA though. At
Bleecker Street they were getting off but Lucy became separated from Ethel and,
since the cup was over her eyes, she was effectively blind and didn’t realize
that the oncoming passengers had jostled her back onto the train. On top of
that, the hat and veil had been pulled off, so everyone could see that she had
a cup on her head. She tried to get off at the next stop but the outgoing
stream of people met with the incoming stream and she was back on the train. She
finally got off at Flatbush Avenue. Finally a cop came up and asked her if she
needed a policeman. Of course he hadn’t said that he was a cop though and she
couldn’t see him, so she said not to bother calling a cop because you know how
those guys are. They’ll ask a lot of questions and just make things worse. In
saying that though she put her hand out and touched his badge, to realize her
mistake.
In
the second show she dressed up like Superman and met George Reeves as Superman.
It’s funny that they didn’t say it was George Reeves, even though it was
clearly the actor that plays Superman in the story, they referred to him as
Superman the whole time. I guess they wanted to keep up the illusion, just in
case children were watching.
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