Pablo Massa wrote in response to me:

>Robert Peters:
>
>>So explain to me why Picasso paints differently than Rembrandt and why
>>Schoenberg can use very dissonant music in contrast to, say, Mozart?
>>Simply because their aesthetics (the aesthetics of Picasso and Schoenberg)
>>allow them to do it.  And this is progress in art.
>
>I would say: simply because the need of new experiences.

Yes, and what are new aesthetics other than the permission to make new
experiences? By the way, normally the need for new experiences comes
first, later the theory. And that is allright with me.

>Weariness, dear Peter, is the "primum mobile" of art, and to "fully cover
>the dissonance of the world", as you said in other message, is impossible
>by its own deffinition.

So Rembrandt was weary with the old way of painting, Schoenberg with the
old way of composing.  And so they progressed on.  (Needless to say that
I am not so dumb to believe that art's progress could have a goal.  It
progresses, as another list member chose to say, like a river.  Sorry if my
choice of words was misguiding.) (BTW, you can call me Robert, dear Pablo.)

>Progress is a teleological notion: it needs a starting point and an
>arriving point.  How can you read the history of art from this?, what's
>the arriving point?.  There's only a multitude of changes, which *seems*
>to have a clear direction.  I know that you want to see the history of art
>as an epic poem or a novel, with heros, dragons, castles, princesses and,
>of course...a plot.  That's beautiful and politically correct.

Well, Pablo, you know obviously more about me than I do myself: that is
clearly not my picture of the history of art.  I really do not know where
you get that image from.  (But the idea of the dragon is charming to me.
Any candidates? Wagner? Lloyd-Webber?) Maybe you have been misguided by my
use of the word "progress".  Well, here for you again: the word progress
for me does not necessarily mean that their is an arriving point.  In art
surely there is none.  And I appreciate this because then art is free.

Robert Peters
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