John Armstrong (1)Critiques

"This is one of the most ambitions concepts of art...incarnating an abstract idea in a material object, [and] finding a way to make an idea palpable and direct." de Botton and Armstrong present an engaging, and occasionally surprising, treatise on art's role to direct/encourage us all to become better, more self-aware and compassionate people.

Especially enjoyable for me are passages addressing the issue of art and capitalism, and a well-crafted passage defending the notion of censorship.

"We cannot claim both that art will elevate us and that ugliness will leave us unaffected. The rightful celebration of freedom as an organizing principle in democracy has blinded us to an awkward truth: that freedom should, in some contexts, be limited for the sake of our wellbeing."

Accessible writing makes unexpected arguments easy to consider. What kept this at a solid 4 stars is the stunning shortage of representation of art created by women.

9781447202295

I felt a bit underwhelmed by this book. I do like Alain de Bottom, but i wonder if this book was written in the bandwagon of his previous book successes.
I wish he had written an essay and left at that. As it is, although the premises are interesting and I did enjoy the first few chapters, I felt as if he was trying too hard to come up with material to justify a whole book.

Armstrong's selection of artworks is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Eurocentric. And, though the author is himself a dealer of primarily 18th- and 19th-century artworks, I would have expected a truly definitive philosophy of art to be heterogeneous in its scope -- to extend much further beyond Armstrong's own particular area of expertise and include the works of more modern masters than Matisse. The philosophy itself is beautifully written and inspiring, until one reaches the author's rehearsal of aesthetic theory.

Nope. Not a philosophy of intimacy. Not on love. The author does provide a well crafted view on romantic love but fails to grasp the larger picture.

Third time I try to read this book, and this time I think I'm giving up for good (having made it only halfway through). It's not that it's bad, or difficult, as much as it is... boring.

Guide/examples of using fine art in therapy

Although the idea behind the book: that art should be used to improve humanity - is intriguing, I found the lecturing style of the prose to be tiresome and self-righteous in a particular, post-enlightenment effete intellectual atheist way. De Botton seems to imply that he knows best for everyone. While I enjoyed his interpretations of art and objects, they are pretty idiosyncratic and any museum curated by him would be way too propagandistic for my tastes.

Better than De Botton's equivalent text, Armstrong's is a more original and thorough exploration of the art of love.½

Another attempt to answer the eternal question: how to make love stay. Any love.
Quotes:
"...such feelings - once imagined to be the province only of a spiritual élite - are widespread today. The capacity for romantic passion appears now to be a common denominator of modern human nature."
"One of the ordinary tragedies of love occurs when one person is well intentioned and well disposed towards another, but has no adequate idea of how to make the other person happy."
"The problem is not in finding the person but in finding the resources and capacities in oneself to care for another person - to love them. Searching for thr right 'object' diverts attention from finding the right attitude."
"...what we learn with another person is part of what we find lovable."
"A relationship does not start the day two people meet; it starts in the childhood of each partner."..."What this means, in effect, is that the attraction another person has for us depends not just upon their qualities. It also depends upon the way in which we find in them someone with whom we can continue the unfinished business of childhood."
"Much of the time we will be unable to make another person happy, because that person lacks the essential characteristics which make their own happiness possible."
"Love craves closeness, and closeness always brings us face to face with something other than we expected."
"...maturity is not the idea but the actual reduction of expectation. That is why we fear as well desire maturity."½

I really liked the perspective of art presented in this book. It was a very fresh look at art and its usefulness to us.

I really liked the perspective of art presented in this book. It was a very fresh look at art and its usefulness to us.

A very nice introduction and review of Nietzsche. Really emphasizes Nietzsche's desire for self reflection, self improvement, self examination and all things required to become oneself. I like the "homework" section at the end of the book. It provides further activities (not just readings). As many books about Nietzsche's writtings, this book is very cursory. Main ideas are introduced but require much more reading and thinking to begin to fully comprehend. Highly recommend this book to anyone interested in knowing about Nietzsche's beliefs. Also recommend the Teaching Company course on Nietzsche (it's 24 30-minute lectures) - it provides a great overview of Nietzsche.

secretly hoping to see the author around campus

This book really, really annoyed me.

If Alain de Botton finds the current art world snotty and elitist (he never comes out and says it, but it's heavily implied) I find his alternative suggestions range from the laughable to the downright bizarre. They also are likely to be seen as equally patronizing in a very different way. That's because when it comes down to it, what de Botton completely ignores, overlooks or fails to understand is that the relationship between a work of art and an individual is a personal one.

Ergo, some kind of "top down" approach, in which museums and galleries opt to encourage art that tries to develop empathy or understanding, or other such therapeutic approaches, is going to be doomed to failure anyway. Even if it weren't, the idea of commissioning works to evoke certain feelings is ludicrous. Why does he imagine we'd end up with anything different than what we have in popular culture?

I tend to agree with some of his assessments, for instance that the pendulum may have swung too far in the direction of deferring to artists in the determination of what becomes art. But the idea that "we abandon to chance the hope that our key needs will be covered by the unstructured and mysterious inspiration of artists" is simply bollocks. There's this little thing called the market. If artists aren't creating things that buyers can respond to, those objects won't sell.

The patron doesn't need to be able to "direct" the art in order to determine the outcome. He or she simply can keep their wallet shut unless and until they identify a a piece that they respond to. (Alternatively, they can find an artist whose work they admire and, yes, commission a specific piece: it happens quite frequently...) Nor, I'd suggest, is it always desirable that we do direct art, as de Botton so glibly suggests might be wise. Yes, the Catholic church created some great art, but great art was born in rejection of it, too. And more great art was born in opposition to the agendas of those who tried to "shape" art in society's interest than in response to it.

Repeatedly, de Botton misunderstands the art market: he argues that people buy art solely because of the "brand name". That may be so for some collectors, but almost invariably, if you talk to collectors (as I've done, as a journalist writing about the topic) they have a tremendous passion for certain artists and kinds of work (like hedge fund manager Dave Ganek and photography). Similarly, there are big brand names whose works the biggest galleries and auction houses struggle to shift: early "dark" works by van Gogh (people will buy "Potato Eaters" canvases, should they become available, ONLY because of the brand name, and some gloomy works by Lucian Freud have remained unsold at high-profile auctions.) Regardless of how big the brand, there are some things nobody wants in their homes. Again, that pesky personal connection.

I agree with de Botton that a plain vanilla label on a resurrection scene from a triptych, with Jesus visiting Mary that deals only with the work's art historical and historical importance is skimpy. But what would you make of one that had none of that detail, and instead told you that the scen was one of a "loving mother-son relationship" "that does not avoid conflict or grief... They do not embrace. He will soon leave. ... The picture makes the claim that such moments of return (and of survival), though fleeting and rare, are crucially important in life. It wants men to understand -- and call their mothers." Nothing about the centrality of these scenes in Christian iconography -- it's completely dissociated from its context. Nothing about the piece's history (it once belonged to Isabella of Castile) or why we're looking at this rather than some other representation of precisely the same scene (which has been reproduced thousands of times). Instead it suggests it's about guys who need to be in touch with their mothers.

To me, that captured the problem with the book as a whole. That's the kind of epiphany that someone might well have while gazing thoughtfully at such a work of art. But is it an epiphany that anyone should be INSTRUCTED to have? Which is really what de Botton's alternative approach is suggesting. By all means, encourage people to ponder works of art with the aim of thinking about them in personal ways -- I think anyone who responds to art already does so. Will it make it easier for someone who doesn't find much to react to in, say, a Monet waterlily painting if it is displayed differently or he is told to think of it as a tool to calmness and an alternative to valium?

In other words, this is a very deeply annoying book that does a disservice to any real understanding of art, art history, the art market and even the main subject -- the role that looking at art can have on an individual's ability to grapple with whatever the world throws at them. de Botton emerges from this as just as doctrinaire and prescriptive as the art world that he criticizes, and that critique is just another form of elitism cloaked in a thin veneer of populism.

Alain de Botton and John Armstrong have received a lot of flack over this but I enjoyed the book. Sometimes I agreed with them, sometimes I did not, but I always found them thought provoking. I found it useful to view art from an entirely new perspective, and the book has certainly extended my understanding of the subject.

Natuurlijk kun je bij een boek dat een titel als deze draagt, niet heel veel anders verwachten, maar de psychologisering van de kunstbeschouwing zoals de schrijvers hier presenteren is wel heel zelfingenomen. Zonder enige vorm van onderbouwing, wordt er al meteen vanuit gegaan dat het kijken naar kunst per definitie een helende werking heeft, jawel zelfs moet hebben. Volgens de schrijvers lijkt het bijna dat het ook niet anders zou kunnen. Ieder kunstwerk dat je mooi vindt (en kunst moet mooi zijn lijkt het wel) komt volgens de schrijvers van een ervaring uit het verleden of omdat de beschouwer een bepaal karakter of gemoedstoestand bezit. Bij iedere afbeelding wordt aangegeven wat je zou moeten ervaren of hoe je het zou moeten bekijken, op het moralistische af. Alle andere manieren om iets te beschouwen, wordt neerbuigend afgedaan als niet relevant. Sterker nog, als schadelijk voor je mentale gezondheid. Zo kun je maar beter niets over een kunstwerk te weten komen, want daardoor raak je los van je emotie. Nee, kijk en voel wat je voelt en daarmee afgelopen.

Nu zal ik wel de laatste zijn om te beweren dat kunst geen emotie mag oproepen, maar dat je geen kennis mag opdoen over het object en de maker ervan of iets niet in historisch perspectief mag plaatsen, lijkt me eerder een verarming van je emotionele leven dan de bevrijding die de schrijvers voorstaan. Van een mooi, interssant, confronteerd werk wil je meer te weten komen. Wie heeft het gemaakt en welke andere werken zijn er gemaakt of in welke stroming zit het en welke kunstwerken zijn daaruit voortgekomen. Dat verdiept je ervaring. Maar dat is niet wat de schrijvers willen: in een bepaalde gemoedsstemming moet je een bepaald werk zien of als je in of uit een bepaalde gemoedstemming wilt komen, moet je een ander werk zien. En wat dan? daarna? dan ga je naar de volgende gemoedstemming lijkt het wel. Het blijft een oppervlakkig kijken en ervaren. Dat het bij een vluchtige bijna hedonistische aanraking van je emoties blijft, deert de schrijvers niet. Het lijkt als verliefdheid; iedereen vindt het heerlijk, maar als je de ander niet leert kennen, zul je nooit van hem of haar leren houden.

De halve ster is trouwens voor de vormgeving. Die is prima, maar maakt de inhoud helaas verre van goed.½

This is a gracefully written book in which John Armstrong shows his yearning for a more civil society. He looks at four different ways as to how civilization is perceived: a sense of belonging, a region of material progress, where the art of lving is something worhtwhile, and where we experience spiritual prosperity. The idea of civilization has been tarnished by residue from colonialism and elitism. But there is hope.½

I rarely read non-fiction of the philosophical nature. But while back in the UK, I got hooked on the psychology sections of my local bookshops. While there, I came across this and a few others on love which I’ll read in the coming months. It was a remarkable read, filling in many of the blanks I had about what love really is. So many of us struggle to both give and receive love. This is partly because we have serious misunderstandings about what it is. Seeing as how it is central to a happy life, I feel this is regrettable and wanted to redress the balance in my own life.

If you’ve read any of Alain de Botton’s books, you’ll recognise the style straight away. Armstrong uses literature and art as well and references spanning everything from Socrates to soap operas to shine a light on the elusive concept of love. He does it extremely well.

The starting point is romance and the fallacy that falling in love means you are in love. Not true, he argues. Falling in love is the first step in a relationship which must move on to maturity. If it does not, the loss of the feeling stage of being in love will not sustain the subsequent relationship and allow the couple to move on into a deeper more stable love. In addition, he argues, that unless the individuals in a relationship do not face their own personal issues, this stability will not be achieved as each or one partner uses the other to make up for their character deficiencies.

He challenges the notion that compatibility is a precursor to a successful relationship by informing us that compatibility is something that a couple achieve, not something they bring into the relationship. This is a very liberating concept if you can grasp it because it means you can always work to be compatible with your partner rather than wishing you had married Mr Right rather than the Mr Not Quite Right you’re with. In fact, he blows the cover of those who try to coerce their partner into being more like they want them to be

The search for compatibility can be a highly respectable way of not loving.

In my own marriage, this is something that I really do need to take on board. I’m no stranger to the fact that I can be quite demanding on others to behave the way that I expect, my wife especially. This is extremely important to bear in mind also considering that

Deep love might attach us to someone who in the end is highly suitable but who doesn’t, superficially, offer us what we want.

Neither is Armstrong under any illusions about how tough love can be. Take this quote for example:

One of the ordinary tragedies of love occurs when one person is well-intentioned and well-disposed towards another, but has no adequate idea of how to make the other person happy. It is one thing to feel loving towards someone, another to translate this feeling into words and actions which make the other person feel loved.

In the end, for those of us committed to long term relationships, Armstrong’s book offers some great encouragement, particularly in giving us a realistic perspective of the problems of love which we should anticipate and work through. For example:

The point is that even within a good relationship there are continual sources of hurt and disappointment which have to be overcome if love is to survive; their overcoming is actually the growth and development of love. It is therefore extremely important that we work with a vision of love which sees problems not as the end of love, not as a sign that love is over, but as the ground upon which love operates. This is why a forgiving attitude to another person is an essential element of love. Love is destroyed when we hold on to the image of the other as blameworthy, as guilty of having wronged us. Forgiveness relies upon adopting a point of view from which their actions or words can be seen as expressions of their own suffering rather than just as malicious.

While I found the whole book refreshingly sensible, have to disagree strongly with him on just one point. He says that "according to the Christian view, sex played an important part in the fall of man from God’s grace." This is absolutely not true and, for a man who is obviously well-read and very scholarly, this is a stunning misconception. The closest the Biblical account comes to anything like what he says is that Eve desired the fruit she was forbidden to eat. and this desire might be equated with lust. Sex however had absolutely nothing to do with it at all.

This is a great book to read, exceptionally thought provoking and, particularly if you are in a long-term relationship, or hope to embark on one, a good book to read and discuss with your partner.

A disappointingly rambling and banal discussion of what makes a person civilised.½

I once had a conversation with my father about Goethe (not the usual father/son talk I'll grant you) and he said something along the lines of "I'm not much a fan of Goethe, I must admit. He was too much of an establishment figure. I prefer the Voltaires of this world". I couldn't help but think that surely that's what most people believe. Goethe, for me, offers something different; he shows that it is possible to live a proper life, to work 9-5 and then still write poetry and prose that rank amongst the greatest European literary achievements.

"Mozart: no idea about money, pauper's grave; his friends had to take money away from him because he was so irresponsible; Balzac: dressed as a monk, drank 40 cups of coffee a day, economic basket case; Baudelaire: drug addict , compulsive gambler, squandered his inheritance; Wagner: insanely egoistic, borrowed from all his friends, never paid his debts; Tolstoy: wanted to be a penniless serf; Nietzsche: didn't make a penny from his writing, later royalties went to his horrible sister; Proust: didn't know how to open a window or boil a kettle, lost lots of money through extravagance and inept speculation; Wittgenstein: tormented ('If just one person could understand me I would be satisfied'), ate mainly bread and cheese, gave away all his money -- to his rich siblings so as not to corrupt the poor; Jackson Pollock: everyone else made money out of him 'If I'm so famous why ain't I rich?')"

Goethe is an unusual hero, he didn't die young, he led a professional life in the court of Weimar, he was financially solvent and yet these things did not stop his artistic creativity. Goethe offers a vision of balance and hope to anyone frustrated by the toil of daily life as it is not the limit of what you can achieve.

Civilisation: it’s more than good culture

An insightful new book reminds us that we need both spiritual and material wealth to create the good society.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7314/

This book traces the history of philosophical conceptions of beauty. It compares various theories about why we find certain objects and ideas beautiful, such as the balance between uniformity & variety, the importance of an object's function, mathematical proportions, and the friendship of the parts. He then talks about why beauty is so important to us, and so on. Thankfully, Armstrong has a writing style that has just the right balance between technical and poetic language. It's not off-puttingly clinical and scientific, but it's not verbose to the point of vagueness either. By the time you've finished the book, you've got this enriched appreciation for everything you've ever loved.

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=7pvx31j8lt0q1vyqlzskphwpwpdc3rkc
Goethe's Bright Circle
By JAY PARINI

excerpt:

Lately I've been surprisingly elevated by a new life of Goethe, that magnificent fellow at the center of German literature if not German consciousness itself. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) lived what is commonly called a charmed life. He was born into a relatively wealthy and happy family. His father was an influential lawyer with wonderful connections around Frankfurt am Main. His mother was even more well connected, being the daughter of a former mayor of the city. Goethe lived in a beautiful house, was looked after with a keen eye to his development, and received a solid education. As a young man, he had an unhappy fling with a young woman called Charlotte, but he was not one on whom any experience was wasted. He turned that sad affair to account in a short, brilliant novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), which introduced to the literary world the ideal of the Romantic hero (whose unrequited love leads him to suicide). Goethe didn't even bother to change Charlotte's name, although he did shorten it to Lotte. The novel entranced readers, who were attracted to its lyricism, its passionate view of life, and its benign vision of the natural world as the dreamy Werther lay in the grass, delighted in the insects, and thought about the manifold variety of creation.

As John Armstrong's Love, Life, Goethe: Lessons of the Imagination From the Great German Poet (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007) recounts, young Goethe became the most famous writer in Europe at the time, with adoring readers everywhere ready to welcome him. One of those was the bright, powerful, eccentric Duke Karl August von Saxe-Weimar, who took on Goethe as friend and adviser. Goethe remained in the intimate Weimar circle for much of his life, straying only for occasional jaunts to places like Italy, where the high life beckoned. (See his Italian Journey, 1786-1788, one of the finest travel books ever written.)