Appreciation

[A. G. Maisey]

Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology from Yale has written a book titled:- "How Pleasure Works".

http://www.amazon.com/How-Pleasure-W.../dp/0393066320

I have not read it, but I recently read a review of it, and extracts from it. These were sufficient to cause my thoughts to turn towards the ways in which we appreciate keris, and keris art. Bloom has addressed the subject of how and why humans value and enjoy things. It would seem that the oft proffered advice of "buy the keris, not the story" is in fact completely contrary to the way in which we do experience, enjoy, appraise and put a dollar value on all forms of art, and this includes keris.

I think many of us would have heard the story of the great violinist, Joshua Bell, who took $32 from busking in a subway, but for whom people will pay hundreds of dollars to hear perform in a concert hall.

We could argue that the concert goers are paying their hundreds of dollars for a total experience --- the atmosphere, the chance to rub shoulders with important people, the opportunity to be seen, photographed, and appear in the society pages. Maybe. But the violinist is the same --- subway : concert stage. Same man, same music. But unappreciated because of place.

People pay huge amounts of money for Princess Diana's old clothes. Find similar in a Salvation Army Store and you'll pay $4.50

Ditto for George Clooneys sweaters.

Han van Meegeren was a brilliant forger of great art works, especially of Vermeer. In fact van Meegeren's "Supper at Emmaus" was lauded by critics as "Vermeer's" finest work. Of course they didn't know it was painted by van Meegeren.

Vermeer's painting "The Woman Taken in Adultery" apparently caused people to have life changing experiences when they viewed it --- until such time as they found out it was painted by van Meegeren not by Vermeer.

We are urged to consider art works, and I suppose all collectables, in an objective way. Value the work for what it is, not for who made it, who owned it, or where it has come from, but do we?

It seems not, more, it seems that it is not possible for us to divorce the object from the idea of who made it, who has owned it, and where it is from. The object is always accompanied by ideas that refer to the object, but are not part of it.

Indeed , it seems we are hard wired to always buy the story, and that story can be presented in a number of ways, it need not necessarily be the crude deceptions of a shonky dealer.

If we consider the subject that concerns us most here, the keris, I believe we would all agree that a keris by Mpu Jayasukadgo is infinitely more desirable than a keris by one of the current era makers.

However, viewed in a totally objective way, that Jayasukadgo keris may be no better than one turned out by a current era maker. We have given the Jayasukadgo a greater level of desirability, and hence value, simply because it is attributed to him --- and note this:- it is only an attribution, not a certainty, still it can make an enormous difference in value, and in our perceived appreciation.

In other words we've bought the story.

If all this is so, and Paul Bloom appears to have demonstrated that it is so, then this raises a question:-

Exactly what is it that we appreciate, enjoy, and pay good money for when we indulge ourselves in our interest and add another keris to the collection?

Are we paying for the keris, appreciating the keris, or are we feeding something in our sub-conscious that helps us to escape from the mundane?

A long time ago I coined a phrase:- "The Silk Road Syndrome" .

I intended it to refer to that nostalgic longing that many of us have for 'far away places with strange sounding names'. The empty spaces. The sunlit beaches. The smell of incense in the still evening air. A temple gong whispering through a purple twilight.

Thoughts and half memories that play unbidden in the back of our minds and help us get through another trial balance, another oil change, another brick in the wall --- depending upon how we support ourselves.

It occurs to me that when we add that extra keris --- or whatever --- to the collection, what we are really doing is contributing to our life support system. Putting something in place that helps us to open a window to a world a little less mundane than the one we live in, and in turn help us to keep focused on the need to plod on with burden of job, family, career.

The object of our collecting becomes a key that opens that window.



I would welcome the thoughts of others on the link between the appreciation of art and objects and the maintenance of sanity in a world that is rapidly decreasing in size at the same time that it is equally rapidly increasing in ordinariness.

[Gustav]

There is almost nothing to add.

It seems to me, if we reduce all what is grown culturally around a certain thing, there stays a fetish. Fetish is absolutely necessary for a human mind. What kind of fetish it is, depends on familiar background (also historical period), ambitions and intellectual abilities of a person (which mostly are not equally developed and serve as a lovely entertaining picture for some comparatively seen wise people). And the layer of civilisation is probably thinner and lesser as one can expect, even if persons are regarded and regard themselves as intellectual.

[Rick]

I read a short story .
That story led me to the keris .
The Keris led me here .
This forum exists because of that story .



Add me to the Silk Road Gang, maritime branch .

I have two named maker pieces, both are signifigant to Modern Keris history .

Mostly I buy for the keris; I see keris making as an exercise in achieving excellence within a proscribed form (Haiku in Iron?) .
The challenge is to be able to recognise that excellence when it is seen .

I bought the story years ago .

[A. G. Maisey]

Ah, well.

Rick, I think you perhaps might suffer from the equally well known Conrad Syndrome, rather than the Silk Road Syndrome.

I used to suffer from this myself, after I saw a movie that focused heavily on Surabaya and sailing ships. I was probably about 12 at the time.

But I'm cured now.

[drdavid]

Without inspiration and dreams where would we be? Those and a lot of persistance make for a full life.

[BluErf]

We all justify our purchases/collections.

My dad thinks my kerises are worth little and I have thrown all my money down the drain... But they are worth the world to me, and I would spend a huge part of my disposable income on them.

[BluErf]

G'day Alan,

It's good to have you back.

A few thoughts came to my mind.

Humans use heuristics to help them make decisions in reasonably short time without having to analyze everything from scratch; otherwise, life would be non-functionable. Joshua Bell getting $32 in the streets could be because people may have associated street baskers with mediocre skills and hence not even pay attention to his playing. Or simply because people on the streets are going somewhere and don't have time to stop and listen. In contrast, going to a concert hall and paying big bucks to hear a musician play probably suggests that the musician is fantastic. Of course, in a concert hall situation, we are talking about selling to a crowd that is already sold on the product, and they are there specifically to hear the musician play. As to why people are willing to pay so much to listen to Joshua Bell, I don't think it's purely the story, but because he has achieved a very high level of skills that the vast majority of people cannot achieve. That high level of skill has allowed him to provide some form of pleasure (which can be acquired) to the rest of the others. Pleasure, evolutionarily speaking, comes as a positive feedback to something that is 'good' for our existence, whether it is material or not.

Princess Diana and George Clooney's clothes could have been highly valued because of their immense popularity. People like them for a variety of reasons like them having good-looks, great personalities, rich, etc. These are traits that everyone is desirous of because they are advantageous to living a better life. The affinity arising from our liking of these traits could have resulted in us wanting to be with them or like them, and the closest thing we could get is something closely associated with them - their clothes. At the bottom of all this, again I reckon, lies that sense of what is 'good' for us.

I'm also thinking about the phenomenon of why some island cultures appreciate fat women, while others appreciate waif-like models. I thought the former could be associated with survival logic (fatter = able to survive leaner periods, provide more resources to babies), while the latter could be because thinness in rich society is associated with glamour, wealth, the aesthetics of good looks, etc, which again, I would tie back to the evolutionary sense of what is 'good' for us in order to survive. Between the fat, the thin and the musician, the common thread could be that if I am ahead of the curve, I could probably do better in life than the rest of the laggards.

I think human beings have been a a bit of an evolutionary quirk in that we have come so far in so short a time. Our inbuilt evolutionary responses may have been warped by the "unnatural environment" that we have built, resulting in all these seemingly senseless responses, including to art and the Keris.

[A. G. Maisey]

G'day Kai Wee.

Well mate, you've just given a very easily understood proof that we do indeed always buy the story.

You've said that you don't think its purely "the story", but most especially in the Josh Bell comment you have demonstrated admirably that it is.

When I'm talking about the "the story", I'm thinking of it in the broadest possible terms, and most often that story has been composed by ourselves, and the material that has been drawn upon for its composition is all of our previous experience.

Diamonds.

Wonderful as a store of wealth, inseparable from the idea of romantic love, indestructible, uncorrupted by time, the ultimate prestige signal.

Was it always so?

Nope.

The relative value and popularity of diamonds has increased along with increased supply. The reverse of what we might expect.

It is really only since the late 19th century that diamonds have moved into the prestigious position they now occupy, and this has been due almost solely to the magnificent management of the diamond trade by De Beers.

De Beers have managed to invent and manage the entire diamond mystique and its associated values.

In fact, they have sold a story to the world.

So, if we consider a diamond, any diamond, we cannot but consider it against our lifetime exposure to the position of the diamond in our modern culture.

We simply cannot escape our past, and it is our past that creates for us the measure against which we appreciate anything.

When we get down to the level where we are actually engaged in the appreciation of something, what we know about that something undoubtedly influences our feelings of appreciation. As Laowang has said:-


"Anything meant to be appreciated for its aesthetic content is received subjectively; we've been socialized since birth in the ways in which we respond to things."


We see an unknown painting in Salvation Army Store. Its unsigned. A childlike representation of badly proportioned sunflowers. Is it maybe OK for the guestroom? No, I don't think so. A bit on the crude side.

Headline in the following week's Sydney Morning Herald:-

"Lost Van Gogh Discovered in Suburban Salvation Army Store"

Well --- you win some, you lose some.

Maybe if we'd been exposed to the right story at some time in our past, we would have recognized it as Van Gogh too.

That story, or if you wish, experience, and the knowledge or opinion that it generates influences everything in our lives that follows.

[Jussi M.]

Greetings,

I´ll be adding something at a later time

Jussi

[BluErf]

G'day Alan,

I agree that aesthetics is received subjectively, but if we go far back enough, I always believe that there is a reason behind why that aesthetics is appreciated more than others. A bad violin player will never be able to sell his 'story' for a sustained period of time. A deeply flawed diamond cannot be sold as top of class. Just like a cheap Madurese Muda keris can never pass off to be a top class keris.

In as much as we choose to appreciate something subjectively, it cannot be just the story. It must be accompanied by a quality that makes it relatively hard to acquire/achieve.

[David]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

We see an unknown painting in Salvation Army Store. Its unsigned. A childlike representation of badly proportioned sunflowers. Is it maybe OK for the guestroom? No, I don't think so. A bit on the crude side.

Headline in the following week's Sydney Morning Herald:-

"Lost Van Gogh Discovered in Suburban Salvation Army Store"

Well --- you win some, you lose some.

Maybe if we'd been exposed to the right story at some time in our past, we would have recognized it as Van Gogh too.

That story, or if you wish, experience, and the knowledge or opinion that it generates influences everything in our lives that follows.

I do think that we can take this theory too far. Van Gogh is Van Gogh for many reasons. I do not enjoy a Van Gogh painting simply because the established art world has determined he was one of the greatest painters that ever lived. If this were the case i would also enjoy Pollock and Albers and a great number of other artists that the establishment deems worthy and collectable artists. In fact i find those artists not at all to my liking and i don't know what the hype about them is all about. But if i were to see an unsigned Van Gogh in a junk store i would probably buy it on it's own merits because i like Van Gogh's style and i would therefore probably like the unsigned painting. I would buy it because i like it, not because i know it is a Van Gogh. I will admit though that if i were to then find out it was indeed Van Gogh i would consider it of greater value to me. But it probably would change were i decided to hang it.
In the case of Joshua Bell, personally i do not associate buskers necessarily with mediocre talent. But there is a great difference between taking your act to the streets and having an audience come to a specific venue. The people on the street didn't ask for the performance, they may not have the time for it, they may not like the particular genre of music, they may not be particularly well off financially, etc. Those who chose to go to the theatre event, on the other hand, know what they want and what they expect. The acoustics will be perfect, there will be orchestra accompaniment, the seats will be comfortable, the social environment will be high, etc.
If i were a fan and caught the performance on the street i would be just as appreciative, maybe more so because i don't necessarily have the money for the expensive theatre tickets.
This isn't to say that my tastes aren't purely subjective, because they are. I just don't think that for me personally that they are driven by the same standards of establishment acceptance as they are for some.
An excellent film that addresses some of these issues might be Orson Welles last film "F is for Fake". It deals a lot with the ideas of forgeries and fakes and how differently people relate to an object when the forgery is discovered. Famous art forger Elmyr de Hory is featured in the film, a man who forged his way into many of the world's greatest art galleries. Frankly i would love to own a de Hory (or any forgers work) if it were a beautiful and well painted image, though i would also like to know that it isn't "the real thing" as well. I appreciate art not based upon the name attached to it, but whether or not it appeals to my subjective eye.

[BluErf]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

That story, or if you wish, experience, and the knowledge or opinion that it generates influences everything in our lives that follows.

I just read this sentence a second time, and I'm wondering if "the story" is equivalent to experience and knowledge, then everything in this world revolves around 'a story'. If that is the definition, then it would seem that by definition, the question in discussion can have no other answer.

[Rick]

Alan wrote:
"When I'm talking about the "the story", I'm thinking of it in the broadest possible terms, and most often that story has been composed by ourselves, and the material that has been drawn upon for its composition is all of our previous experience."

Originally Posted by BluErf

I just read this sentence a second time, and I'm wondering if "the story" is equivalent to experience and knowledge, then everything in this world revolves around 'a story'. If that is the definition, then it would seem that by definition, the question in discussion can have no other answer.

I think The Story is universal and is being quickly forgotten in our brave new techno - world ; the council fire and spear have disappeared .

So, maybe I'm going too far afield in posting this link; I couldn't get all the way through the book back in '69 as it is a challenging read .

http://edj.net/mc2012/mill1.htm

[David]

Well, i don't know if i am going too far afield either, but i have discovered that you can watch "F is for Fake" on youtube in 10 minute at a time segments and suggest that it may well inform this conversation on the appreciation of art.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9zZNFzrvAA

[Bill M]

Good thread, many answers.

Another question: What is Beauty? Art? Why do we pay large amounts of money for old wood and metal? Joshua Bell's patrons pay huge amounts of money in sold-out performances to hear a great violinist? A rare bottle of wine?

"Conrad syndrome?" "Silk Road Syndrome?" Some even take it as far as the "Stendhal Syndrome." How about the "Stranger in a Strange Land Syndrome?"

Why? What do we get out of it?

Because Art, with a capital "A", whether visual, auditory, gustatory, perhaps olfactory gives us a special feeling. A 'feeling' that goes beyond mere kinesthetics. A feeling in the "gutski wutskies"- the solar plexus that for a moment takes us beyond the physical, the mundane.

When Handel composed "The Messiah" he said it was "like having his fingers plugged into God." --- "plugged into God." Think about that.

Back to "Stranger in a Strange Land Syndrome." Though we enjoy the physical plane, do any of us feel it is really our home? Or are we drawn to something beyond? And does great art, a keris, a painting, a fetish have a connection for us, a visceral connection to that Source?

And maybe, do we connect to that "Source" through art that was created by someone who, like Handel, was connected when he, or she created it? And that "art" transcends language, religion -- all the tags we like to hang on it?

Because that "Source" that we reach for is beyond our five senses and our nearest "sense" is that visceral sense that gives us Joy. And folks, we ARE addicted to Joy! An addict will do what it takes.

The rest of this justification is just our conscious mind trying to make sense of this. It really can't, but it tries. Words like "Investment" "Value" etc, come to mind. But then we have to ask "Why?" Why does a piece of wood, a canvas and oil, have value? Because it reaches out to us. Mentally we say, "It connects us with Joyful memories, the past, etc." The Silk Road Syndrome? Sure, but it goes far beyond that if we let it.

Perhaps a keris really IS a conduit. Think about that, 'a conduit.' "Art as Conduit"!

To me, great art is something that grabs you every time you relax enough to bond with it and I see something different every time, every day.

But I must take time to relax and focus and en-Joy. Otherwise I am like the people who walk right by Joshua Bell playing magnificent music in a subway.

And folks, more and more, I am taking the time to stop and smell the roses.

[Marcokeris]

[QUOTE=Bill Marsh]Good thread, many answers.

Another question: What is Beauty? Art? .....
I agree ...100%