Mentalist and all around social theorizing provocateur Derren Brown
posted on his blog a link to an interesting study chronicled in
The Washington Post.
Brown writes:
A wonderful experiment conducted in a Washington DC Metro station. Playing some of the greatest music the human race has created, one of the finest violinists in the world anonymously busks: will his art cut through the rush and bustle of the commuters’ morning? Will a crowd form?
I love this article and find it very moving. It’s a splendid modern demonstration of the question of context and presentation in art, and what is required to form aesthetic appreciation.
Gene Weingarten in The Washington Post has all the details: the violinist is Josh Bell, recent winner of the Avery Fisher prize, the violin is a Stradivari bought for $3.5 million, the subway is D.C.'s L'Enfant Plaza station, and Bell is playing some of the most demanding classical string music, including Bach's "Chaconne."
Of the purpose behind the experiment, Weingarten writes:
It's an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?
The result? Bell draws no crowd and only earns a few bucks thrown into his tip jar. Are the D.C. metro viewers just too plebian in their tastes? Not necessarily. Again, from the article:
Mark Leithauser has held in his hands more great works of art than any king or Pope or Medici ever did. A senior curator at the National Gallery, he oversees the framing of the paintings. Leithauser thinks he has some idea of what happened at that Metro station.
"Let's say I took one of our more abstract masterpieces, say an Ellsworth Kelly, and removed it from its frame, marched it down the 52 steps that people walk up to get to the National Gallery, past the giant columns, and brought it into a restaurant. It's a $5 million painting. And it's one of those restaurants where there are pieces of original art for sale, by some industrious kids from the Corcoran School, and I hang that Kelly on the wall with a price tag of $150. No one is going to notice it. An art curator might look up and say: 'Hey, that looks a little like an Ellsworth Kelly. Please pass the salt.'"
Leithauser's point is that we shouldn't be too ready to label the Metro passersby unsophisticated boobs. Context matters.
Kant said the same thing. He took beauty seriously: In his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Kant argued that one's ability to appreciate beauty is related to one's ability to make moral judgments. But there was a caveat. Paul Guyer of the University of Pennsylvania, one of America's most prominent Kantian scholars, says the 18th-century German philosopher felt that to properly appreciate beauty, the viewing conditions must be optimal.
"Optimal," Guyer said, "doesn't mean heading to work, focusing on your report to the boss, maybe your shoes don't fit right."
Unfortunately, the excellent video clips of Bell performing in the subways are not embeddable; check them out at the
Washington Post link above. And feel free to extrapolate this study's conclusions to your own thoughts about new forms of art-film distribution... or, if you think it's a stretch, feel free not to.
Comments (5)
One of the most interesting things worth noting is that CHILDREN were far more likely to stop and listen -- before their adult guardians dragged them away. This isn't to say that a four-year appreciates Bach better than an adult, but that intense intellectual/emotional/physical curiosity is something that seems to die as we grow older. And it's a shame.
Very young children don't seem to have the same prejudices about an artist's gender, race or looks or a work of art's genre or production qualities. They just look and go "Wow! What's that?!" Oh to think as an adult...but see the world through the eyes of a child!
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posted by @ 2/08/2009 6:39 PM
I remember when I worked as a publicist on the film THE LAST SEDUCTION. When I started screenings I did what you would expect...this is the new fim from John Dahl, director of RED ROCK WEST, and featuring Linda Fiorentino in an award-worthy performance, etc. Many critics came to the screenings and discovered they had already seen it on Cinemax the month before. Context is everything. Watching a low budget fim on Cinemax late at night without any setup is different than getting the sales pitch in the press release and the visit to the fancy screening room.
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posted by @ 2/09/2009 10:04 AM
It really makes me think I shouldn't be posting my films online anymore. I think it does reduce the appreciation of them-- in a sea of garbage it all becomes tainted with the same stink.
Oh, and I watched the clip of the violinist. Hm. It sounded awful. I'd have plugged my ears in that subway station. Maybe it's also the fact the clip is posted online and compresssed? Context is clearly much more than I thought!
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posted by Helena Handbasket @ 2/09/2009 11:48 AM
The test screening process in Hollywood creates a certain context that isn't always helpful to filmmakers. The production team dialogue that results from a test screening is often helpful, but audience response isn't reliable because they go into the movie assuming something's wrong or unfinished.
Take the same cut and screen it at a festival or for a paying audience and this new context creates an expectation that the movie is finished and hopefully pretty good. Plenty of movies over the years have tested poorly and went on to receive critical acclaim and audience support.
Context informs the perception of a film much more than people realize. It's one of the reasons why filmmakers still cling to the idea of a theatrical release. Filmgoers still assume it must be pretty decent if it plays theatrically. And, admit it, even for insiders -- negative straight to video connotations are still alive.
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posted by @ 2/09/2009 2:28 PM
Good comments.
I've always been aware that some of my favorite films are my favorites because of the repertory theater context in which I saw them. If I hadn't seen the works of Antonioni and Tarkovsky on screen while in my 20s -- and often on a double bill with one of the directors' other films -- I don't think I would have wound up loving them as much.
In terms of the independent film business, I don't think it's a question of all films having to play via the internet or on iPhones but rather the necessity for filmmakers as 21st century moving image creators to make some aspect of their work suitable for these increasingly popular formats... even if it's just to drum up the coin to finance the film intended to unspool on a decent-sized arthouse screen.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 2/09/2009 11:43 PM
