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On William Deresiewicz’s “The Death of the Artist”

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Re: On William Deresiewicz’s “The Death of the Artist”

#11

Post by cafard »

acdanger wrote: post #5
cryptica wrote: post #3

The worst part of this is that the artists which tend to get promoted have zero talent. You cannot compare popular musicians today from those in the 70s and 80s. Actually there are very talented artists around today but it's impossible to find them... Takes a lot of searching on YouTube. I found some music on YouTube recently that blew me away but it didn't even hit 100k views... This extremely talented artist can't…

The article touches on this, albeit briefly. Talent is no longer a requirement to be popular. Loud, novel - but also familiar -, and repetitive are all qualities that are favored over talent or skill.

I would remark that Johnny Cash's vocal range was something less than a whole octave. Yes, he wrote songs--some good--but I once walked into a bookstore playing an album on which he covered other people's songs. That was odd.

Re: On William Deresiewicz’s “The Death of the Artist”

#12

Post by JoeAltmaier »

cafard wrote: post #11
acdanger wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article touches on this, albeit briefly. Talent is no longer a requirement to be popular. Loud, novel - but also familiar -, and repetitive are all qualities that are favored over talent or skill.

I would remark that Johnny Cash's vocal range was something less than a whole octave. Yes, he wrote songs--some good--but I once walked into a bookstore playing an album on which he covered other people's songs. That was odd.

He grew up 'covering' old songs. His family sang together every night - he was very accustomed to singing everything he could. Wasn't a songwriter until later in life. Isn't the purpose of old songs, to be sung?

I guess today we regard some canonical rendition of a song to be the 'correct' one. Does that stem from the dying art of singing - folks don't hear songs except in their most viral form?

Re: On William Deresiewicz’s “The Death of the Artist”

#13

Post by cafard »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #12
cafard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would remark that Johnny Cash's vocal range was something less than a whole octave. Yes, he wrote songs--some good--but I once walked into a bookstore playing an album on which he covered other people's songs. That was odd.

He grew up 'covering' old songs. His family sang together every night - he was very accustomed to singing everything he could. Wasn't a songwriter until later in life. Isn't the purpose of old songs, to be sung? I guess today we regard some canonical rendition of a song to be the 'correct' one. Does that stem from the dying art of singing - folks don't hear songs except in their most viral form?

I don't think I consider songs to have a canonical rendition. However, I might consider a rendition of "Canzonetta Sull'Aria" by Britney Spears and Madonna to be 'incorrect', and this has less to do with their image than with their voices.

By all means, one should sing old songs, and for many purposes remember Chesterton's dictum that 'anything worth doing is worth doing badly'. But if one is going to market an album of X sings Y, it is well if X actually can sing Y close to tune.

Re: On William Deresiewicz’s “The Death of the Artist”

#14

Post by juniper_strong »

cafard wrote: post #11
acdanger wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article touches on this, albeit briefly. Talent is no longer a requirement to be popular. Loud, novel - but also familiar -, and repetitive are all qualities that are favored over talent or skill.

I would remark that Johnny Cash's vocal range was something less than a whole octave. Yes, he wrote songs--some good--but I once walked into a bookstore playing an album on which he covered other people's songs. That was odd.

To me, both Personal Jesus and Hurt are Johnny Cash songs now.

Re: On William Deresiewicz’s “The Death of the Artist”

#15

Post by ilamont »

juniper_strong wrote: post #14
cafard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would remark that Johnny Cash's vocal range was something less than a whole octave. Yes, he wrote songs--some good--but I once walked into a bookstore playing an album on which he covered other people's songs. That was odd.

To me, both Personal Jesus and Hurt are Johnny Cash songs now.

I agree. "Hurt" was written by a young addict (Reznor) but Cash's cover coming from a much older ex-addict was really quite moving.

Re: On William Deresiewicz’s “The Death of the Artist”

#16

Post by lukevp »

jjj123 wrote: post #9
dumbfoundded wrote: post #7

Yeah, it's harder to be an artist because the internet has connected the whole world. The world used to be less connected and as a result, had lots of inefficient redundancy. If you wanted to see a play before, your options are pretty limited. Now, you can watch the best cast in the world from 10 years ago. It's only bad to be an artist now because art has become competitive. This is awful for the artists, but awesom…

I think it’s not just that there’s more art now, it’s also that the systems we use to consume it (spotify, Netflix, etc) shape that art, sometimes for the better but often for the worse. It’s like when the CEO of spotify said recently that “you can’t make an album every 3 years and be successful anymore.” He’s mostly right, but he skips over the part that he is probably the person most responsible for that fact. He a…

Surely the point the Spotify CEO was making is that music has become unbundled and shouldn’t be released as a collection in an album because consumption is at the track level now, and not that you should make more music as a rule.

Re: On William Deresiewicz’s “The Death of the Artist”

#17

Post by Swizec »

jjj123 wrote: post #9
dumbfoundded wrote: post #7

Yeah, it's harder to be an artist because the internet has connected the whole world. The world used to be less connected and as a result, had lots of inefficient redundancy. If you wanted to see a play before, your options are pretty limited. Now, you can watch the best cast in the world from 10 years ago. It's only bad to be an artist now because art has become competitive. This is awful for the artists, but awesom…

I think it’s not just that there’s more art now, it’s also that the systems we use to consume it (spotify, Netflix, etc) shape that art, sometimes for the better but often for the worse. It’s like when the CEO of spotify said recently that “you can’t make an album every 3 years and be successful anymore.” He’s mostly right, but he skips over the part that he is probably the person most responsible for that fact. He a…

> cranking out 3x as much music is unlikely to result in higher quality art

On the contrary, the more you produce, the more outstanding your hits.

Yes there's more crap too, but nobody sees the crap. They only see the good stuff (thanks to recommendation algorithms, charts, and marketing).

Here's the usual pottery class story that people use to talk about this phenomena:

> The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".

> Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

You can also look at statistics. Across all fields, the people who produce the largest volume of work also have the most outstanding successes. Beatles, for example, credit their success to being forced to play strip clubs for 8+ hours every day for months. Created lots of practice.

Re: On William Deresiewicz’s “The Death of the Artist”

#18

Post by vladmk »

Swizec wrote: post #17
jjj123 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s not just that there’s more art now, it’s also that the systems we use to consume it (spotify, Netflix, etc) shape that art, sometimes for the better but often for the worse. It’s like when the CEO of spotify said recently that “you can’t make an album every 3 years and be successful anymore.” He’s mostly right, but he skips over the part that he is probably the person most responsible for that fact. He a…

> cranking out 3x as much music is unlikely to result in higher quality art On the contrary, the more you produce, the more outstanding your hits. Yes there's more crap too, but nobody sees the crap. They only see the good stuff (thanks to recommendation algorithms, charts, and marketing). Here's the usual pottery class story that people use to talk about this phenomena: > The ceramics teacher announced on opening da…

Love the story and really agree with that philosophy

Re: On William Deresiewicz’s “The Death of the Artist”

#19

Post by henru »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #7

Yeah, it's harder to be an artist because the internet has connected the whole world. The world used to be less connected and as a result, had lots of inefficient redundancy. If you wanted to see a play before, your options are pretty limited. Now, you can watch the best cast in the world from 10 years ago. It's only bad to be an artist now because art has become competitive. This is awful for the artists, but awesom…

For artists making very niche work this is a blessing though, its easier to find your audience and cheaper to broadcast your work

Re: On William Deresiewicz’s “The Death of the Artist”

#20

Post by rmrfstar »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #7

Yeah, it's harder to be an artist because the internet has connected the whole world. The world used to be less connected and as a result, had lots of inefficient redundancy. If you wanted to see a play before, your options are pretty limited. Now, you can watch the best cast in the world from 10 years ago. It's only bad to be an artist now because art has become competitive. This is awful for the artists, but awesom…

> This is truly the peak of art.

[1,2]? Hamilton?

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2020/09/18/provoc...

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...

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