Art!

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by skip spence

But don't you think that pondering questions like "what did he/she mean by this?", "what does this symbolise ?" or "how did he/she do this?" also could heighten your appreciation of a work of art?

I mean, I find that the enjoyment one gets from art, or anything else for that matter (many things could be called art), often to a degree depends on your knowledge and engagement in the subject matter.

Take football fex. If you've hardly ever kicked a ball, don't understand the rules or tactics involved or how difficult it is to hit a good cross, and are unfamiliar with the players and the teams, chances are you're not going to appreciate watching a game, be that the Champions League final.

Same goes with looking at a painting, or reading a book, imo. If you have some idea of the effort and skill it must've taken painting the roof of the Sistine Chapel, recognise the motives and characters, understand the symbolism, also know a bit about Michelangelo himself, his life-situation when he made the masterpiece, how Renaissance Italy was like during his days, and how difficult obtaining and mixing good paint was in those days, you are likely to enjoy looking at the piece much more than if you just walk in as a tabula rasa, don't you think?

Hmm, I sort of disagree. Sort of. Like, I probably will agree with you on the football, but with the painting, somehow, I think it's different. Like, I consider myself a complete analphabet when it comes to art, about 99% of the painters I hardly know anything more than their name, yet I can enjoy the paintings. A bit of truth of what you say may be reflected in the fact that I am not as fond of paintings as many are, I like some, but on the purely "first sight" basis, like "yes, this painting looks nice". But I can still appreciate it.

Take music for example. I think most people don't bother who composed this and that and that he actually lived in a cottage in the countryside where he had two pigs and one duck while he was composing this. Yet still, people enjoy much of the music.

Anyway, the main point - and I believe we all, or almost all, agree on that here - is that of course, Tolkien's work is something that has so many dimensions and analysing it may be fun. That's what we are doing here all the time. There's a difference between analysing and analysing, that is I think the main issue. Like, if you are asked a question "who was Tom Bombadil", one may answer "I think he was a Maia", another "I think he was Tolkien himself" and another "I don't want to know, he is a mystery". Now, there are people - of the first kind - who start a thread and would like to discuss whether Tom was a Maia or Eru or some other unknown spirit, and they "analyse", and they enjoy themselves. Now suddenly another person, of the second kind, comes in and says "he was Tolkien" or "he was the manifestation of Simple Life". Which is something many of the people of the first kind consider "unfair", as of course there is NO Tolkien in M-E, and they don't care to know which philosophical aspect or whatever was Tom the manifestation of. They consider the Second Group as "breaching" their speculation, indeed "breaking the light" in the fashion of Saruman, as they really don't want to dig into this, for them Tom is a living person and nobody has the right to reduce him to some moral principle or metaphore. And then the third group appears, shaking head at the both of them and saying "but don't you see that Bombadil is as he is? He even says it himself. Why should you ask who he is, if he himself is not saying it? Why should we dig into this?" And they consider even the first group being the "lightbreakers".

And that's not to say that these groups are not interchangeable. The very same person who condemned Group Two might be on a different thread or even on the same thread in the very next day discussing what are the enduring values or truths behind the Lord of the Rings.

I guess it's all an issue of sort of internal approach among a group of people, or of an individual. Every work of art has these different levels of reception, it HAS them, and it's a matter of choice if you want only to gaze at the sunset and experience its beauty (to return back to the favourite example), to imagine a chariot of the sun going down the evening sky, or to wonder at the amazing order of the universe and think "wow, and so the atmosphere can bend the light like this?" It is only a matter of acknowledging, also, if you are talking to somebody else, in which terms he or she is thinking now, so that one of you does not end up saying "oh, look how the chariot of the Sun descends today" and the other, mistaking the poetic language used by the other for lack of education (and seriously worried that his companion had missed several centuries of scientific discoveries), shouting "no, what are you saying, this is a big ball of hydrogen and helium!"