tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5701267910813474066.post7883239017080180266..comments2023-09-19T11:32:34.072-04:00Comments on Lil's Book of Questions: What is a Transcendent Art Experience?Lil Blumehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12590816428802923708noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5701267910813474066.post-24938271120697918822012-04-17T08:58:22.240-04:002012-04-17T08:58:22.240-04:00Lil's update: I went to New York City in late...Lil's update: I went to New York City in late February and saw Kevin Spacey play Richard III at BAM - the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It was edge-of-seat, nail-bitingly rivetting.Lil Blumehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12590816428802923708noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5701267910813474066.post-30139936988410539102011-07-28T18:38:49.485-04:002011-07-28T18:38:49.485-04:00Thank you for reminding me of other transformative...Thank you for reminding me of other transformative art experiences (TAEs) - I saw a very high tech production of Hamlet at the St. Lawrence Centre in Toronto in the early 1990s that moved me deeply. Hamlet spent a lot of time in his room on his computer writing sonnets and being moody. It was perfect.<br /><br />Articulating how various art experiences are transcendent and transformative is difficult, but you know when it happens. The K'naan concert I saw in Fall 2010 definitely ... <br />and the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival on September 13, 1969 absolutely ... transformation, though, can be related to the personal events surrounding the TAE as much as to the art itself.Pinking Shearshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01707179753777274750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5701267910813474066.post-79130570354799649982011-07-28T18:20:43.321-04:002011-07-28T18:20:43.321-04:00Sergio writes from Brazil:
"There was a time ...Sergio writes from Brazil:<br />"There was a time I could have been described as an art consumer. This time was important for my "formation" as an artist and a thinker because I saw everything I could. I am far from being an art consumer nowadays. And the reason is that I don't have the patience to see shit any longer. <br /><br />Have you ever seen or read "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"? I haven't read the book, but I believe this passage is there too: Sabina (wonderful Swedish Lena Olin) is pissed off because she's just fled Prague after the Soviet invasion. She's in a chichi restaurant in Geneva dining with her Swiss boyfriend. She asks the waiter whether he could change the music. The waiter apologizes and replies that he can't. Then she explodes: "How can people eat while they listen to shit?"<br /><br />I have the same questioning as you have. The other day I went to a comedy that is sold out every night in Salvador. It was a piece of shit: the text, the acting, the concept... and yet the public laughed their pants off. We may conclude that consumption doesn't equal good taste. OMG I am aware there's no accounting for taste. But how can we compare, let's say, Leonard Cohen and Barry Manilow? Or Arthur Rubinstein and Richard Clayderman? <br /><br />I completely understand what you mean when you say art should be transformative and transcendent. How can I describe my own experience? I see something and all of a sudden I figure out something about the world and myself that I hadn't perceived before. So art for me is not only about the creation of fantasy; to me it's all about truth. Most of my PhD colleagues stone me for this statement. But here goes: In my personal experience, ever since I was a kid, there were artworks (including theatrical events) that changed the course of my life. The only reason they did it to me was that they spoke to my heart. Yes, they did suspend me from everyday life, but they also brought me to the concreteness of a reality beyond the utilitarian view we are brought up to cultivate somehow inescapably. Henri Bergson's view is completely assimilated in my train of thought. <br /><br />I have seen a few Shakespearean productions that were transcendent and transformative: two of them by Peter Brook (Hamlet and The Tempest), one of them by a Basque troupe (A Midsummer Night's Dream), and two by internationally acclaimed Brazilian directors (Romeo and Juliet: one of them with The Beatles as the soundtrack. Can you imagine Juliet "leaving home after living alone for so many years"? Shakespeare is actually rarely done in a way that brings the poetics of the sublime to the flesh of the actors and from there to the audience.Pinking Shearshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01707179753777274750noreply@blogger.com