A short while back (a couple months ago if memory serves correctly – which it may or may not), there was a nice section of essays written by anthropology graduate students on the topic of graduate student – faculty relationships published in Anthropology News.
There was one sentence in one of the essays that particularly struck me. (I won’t say which essay, in part because as is typically the case, once I had finished reading the issue, I left it in my department for someone else to pick up and read, and as a result I don’t have it in front of me, and in part because it seems nasty to me to single out a graduate student as if for attack – not really my intent anyway – on the basis of one sentence out of an otherwise nice essay – and in any case, my reactions are more to the sentiment expressed there, which I’ve encountered among other students, too, while the rest of the essay seemed more original or unique in its content.) The sentence basically argued that faculty can’t really understand or fully relate to graduate students because they’re not in the structural position of being graduate students.
Even though I discarded the copy of the issue, I’ve kept mentally coming back to that statement since. I have three sorts of reactions to the sentiment expressed in it.
1. My initial and immediate reaction (and one I still hold, though it’s no longer my sole reaction) was to think something along the lines of, “That’s ridiculous. Of course, faculty can relate to graduate students.” One thing virtually all faculty have in common is that we’ve been graduate students. Many, if not most, faculty can relate to the experiences of current graduate students because we had similar experiences when we were graduate students. And if (a big “if”) understanding or relateability derive from experience of a structural position, faculty are in an ideal position to understand graduate students, even if the reverse is not true, at least not most of the time (I add this last qualification, because part of the experience of graduate school is often the gaining of things like “teaching experience” by partially occupying the position of “faculty member” – the division between graduate student and faculty is more of a graded continuum than a clear and absolute line).
2. My second reaction is that this is a strange position for an anthropologist to take. If direct experience in occupying a particular social position or structural position is a prerequisite for understanding or relating, then the discipline is in serious trouble (and there are many who think it is for many reasons, with a long line going back at least several decades at this point of worrying [or anticipating] that the discipline of anthropology is immanently going to fly apart, implode, disintegrate, deteriorate, or otherwise have big troubles).
If we take the sentiment that faculty can’t relate to or understand graduate students and extend it logically at all, we might wonder how graduate students might relate to one another – they don’t occupy the same exact positions and have the same exact experiences, or indeed how we might really understand anyone at all – a longstanding and still significant philosophical question. If we take philosophy and psychoanalysis at all seriously (and I do – at least much of the time), we might, even must, conclude that we don’t really understand or relate to our selves.
All of this is true, though in a sense operationally and pragmatically false – no one who functions in the world operates as if it is true. Put another way, this is to confuse total understanding with understanding at all, total relateability with ability to relate at all. In pragmatic terms at least, most of us relate to ourselves at least tolerably well; we relate to and understand those around us not absolutely but well enough to function almost as if we did; ethnographers understand something, even much, about their research subjects’ lives without, and without need of, total understanding.
3. I think what the student might have meant was that faculty members might not be able to relate to students in the here and now because being a grad student here and now is different from faculty member’s past and usually spatially/institutionally different experiences.
I often can relate quite well to my students, but it might be provisionally wise to proceed as if my first reaction is not true, and to attempt to relate to graduate students in the same way that anthropologists attempt to relate to research subjects – to stop, look and listen carefully.
Structural positioning doesn’t determine consciousness, experience, or actions deterministically, but it does matter, and my students don’t have the same experiences as I did as a student. Like a lot of scholars, I had experience in more than one graduate institution, in my case earning degrees from one quite large state university (the University of Georgia) and one medium-to-large private institution with lots of money (Cornell University). In some ways, my grad student experiences parallel those of the students I now work with – there are certain commonalities to the grad student experience the characterize most institutions of higher education – but teaching at a mid-size regional state university (the University of West Florida) with much less student funding available than at the graduate institutions I attended (just to identify one, albeit an important, variable – student funding), the students I work with in some ways have very different experiences and concerns than I did as a student.
That is, just as I do think the student writer was incorrect in arguing that faculty can’t relate to or understand graduate students (understanding or relating doesn’t depend on experience of the same exact structural positioning, and in fact in any case faculty have had structural experience as graduate students), having occupied a social structural position or having had experience of a particular identity category (in this case “faculty” or “student,” but the point could apply to identity categories and politics generally) doesn’t translate into automatic or necessarily easy understanding of others occupying the category.
Showing posts with label experience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label experience. Show all posts
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
The Experience of Live Music
I’ve written in two previous posts about the experience of music, especially live performance and including how the experience of music or listening compares with other art forms, e.g. the experiences of visual art through looking or of literature through reading (see “Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and the Experience of Art [Musical and Visual]”
and “Reading, Looking, Listening”).
About a week ago I had the pleasure of witnessing a phenomenal performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. In light of that experience, I’d like to raise two points for discussion as an addendum to those earlier posts.
Watching Music
Obviously music per se can’t be watched – it’s comprised of sound. But the physical performance of the music by live musicians can be. The theatricality of a rock show is as much about the visual performance of the band, a light show, etc. While not typically involving things like laser light shows, watching the musicians play is an important component of experiencing live jazz or classical music or any other music.
One of the most engaging aspects of watching live music is the way that visual clues can cue you in to subtle aspects of the music otherwise not noticed. In Carmina Burana, in addition to the full orchestra and chorus, there are three vocal soloists: a soprano, tenor, and baritone. The tenor only sings one song (a lament for a cooked swan), and in the case of this song, the singer is accompanied primarily by the viola section. Before seeing the piece live, I had actually not particularly noticed the violas nor the subtle beauty of the music being played in that section of the music. I’m not sure why I had never noticed before – maybe I’ve always just focused in on the tenor’s voice in that song, but it was initially seeing the physical actions of the violists’ bowing (while most of the rest of the orchestra sat still) that made me focus my attention on that component of the music. For me, and I think for most music lovers, this aspect of musical experience is one of the main reasons and joys to experiencing music live.
Hearing Live Music in Relation to Recorded Music
As Claude Lévi-Strauss discussed in the “Overture” section of The Raw and the Cooked (and as I discussed in my essay “Reflections on Meaning and Myth: Claude Lévi-Strauss Revisited,” Anthropos, 2005, V. 100: 221 – 228), music offers an experience that is simultaneously diachronic and synchronic. It unfolds through time (hence the diachronic) – music is largely about our experience of time – but it is simultaneously experienced as if all at once (hence the synchronic) in the sense that what is experienced at any moment is experienced in relation to the memory of what has gone before and the anticipation that sets up about the still unfolding music – with much of the joy of the experience of music coming from the way in which the music meets our expectation or does not and surprises us. It is through this combination of diachronic and synchronic experience that music actively engages the mind.
Over the past century of so, recordings have upped the ante. Before the prevalence of recorded music, the only way to experience music was via live performance. This limited (though it did not eliminate – especially in the case of “folk” genres that would have been more familiar to most people) the ability of people to “know” the piece of music being played before its performance. It’s now possible to enter into a live performance of most music of any genre with a thorough knowledge of what that music usually sounds like.
This has had multiple effects. Many histories of classical music that I have read indicate that one effect of this has been to raise the expectations of audiences and to raise performance standards for musicians and orchestras. When avid (and even not so avid in the case of particularly famous pieces of music) fans enter the performance with a thorough sense of how the music is “supposed to” sound, the bar is raised. In general, this is a good thing, though it might also increase the chances of disappointment from perfectly adequate performances that might simply not reach the highest pinnacles of performance of the last century.
Some worry that the prevalence of recording has homogenized performance. This is to some extent true, e.g. distinct national styles of instrumental or vocal performance are much less in evidence in classical music than was true several decades ago. At the same time, to some extent the presence of so many recordings of repertoire pieces encourages diversity of interpretation. If you’re going to record yet another interpretation of Carmina Burana at this point, you ought to present something new in the piece. An example of this is Simon Rattle’s recent recording of the piece – his pacing to me seems a bit too fast for the work to enjoy listening to too often, but he definitely presents a distinct interpretation the distinctiveness of which would be apparent to most people even casually familiar with the work.
Entering the experience already familiar with multiple recordings of Carmina Burana, I had high standards for the piece (which were abundantly met). Further, though, having the memory of pre-existing experiences with the piece (and with the Atlanta Symphony under Robert Spano and with other performances of other pieces I’ve experienced by this symphony), my experience and pleasure was heightened by the recognition of particular aspects of interpretation that made this particular performance distinct. In this case (as with the performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring I enjoyed earlier this spring), in certain movements the percussion was prominently emphasized. (Both Carmina Burana and The Rite of Spring are highly percussive in places in any interpretation, but this was more prominent than in most.) As a result, I noticed certain percussive elements, e.g. the almost machine-gun-like snare drum in the early moments of the piece, that I’d never particularly noticed before – and that experience now informs each further experience of the piece, whether live or recorded.
and “Reading, Looking, Listening”).
About a week ago I had the pleasure of witnessing a phenomenal performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. In light of that experience, I’d like to raise two points for discussion as an addendum to those earlier posts.
Watching Music
Obviously music per se can’t be watched – it’s comprised of sound. But the physical performance of the music by live musicians can be. The theatricality of a rock show is as much about the visual performance of the band, a light show, etc. While not typically involving things like laser light shows, watching the musicians play is an important component of experiencing live jazz or classical music or any other music.
One of the most engaging aspects of watching live music is the way that visual clues can cue you in to subtle aspects of the music otherwise not noticed. In Carmina Burana, in addition to the full orchestra and chorus, there are three vocal soloists: a soprano, tenor, and baritone. The tenor only sings one song (a lament for a cooked swan), and in the case of this song, the singer is accompanied primarily by the viola section. Before seeing the piece live, I had actually not particularly noticed the violas nor the subtle beauty of the music being played in that section of the music. I’m not sure why I had never noticed before – maybe I’ve always just focused in on the tenor’s voice in that song, but it was initially seeing the physical actions of the violists’ bowing (while most of the rest of the orchestra sat still) that made me focus my attention on that component of the music. For me, and I think for most music lovers, this aspect of musical experience is one of the main reasons and joys to experiencing music live.
Hearing Live Music in Relation to Recorded Music
As Claude Lévi-Strauss discussed in the “Overture” section of The Raw and the Cooked (and as I discussed in my essay “Reflections on Meaning and Myth: Claude Lévi-Strauss Revisited,” Anthropos, 2005, V. 100: 221 – 228), music offers an experience that is simultaneously diachronic and synchronic. It unfolds through time (hence the diachronic) – music is largely about our experience of time – but it is simultaneously experienced as if all at once (hence the synchronic) in the sense that what is experienced at any moment is experienced in relation to the memory of what has gone before and the anticipation that sets up about the still unfolding music – with much of the joy of the experience of music coming from the way in which the music meets our expectation or does not and surprises us. It is through this combination of diachronic and synchronic experience that music actively engages the mind.
Over the past century of so, recordings have upped the ante. Before the prevalence of recorded music, the only way to experience music was via live performance. This limited (though it did not eliminate – especially in the case of “folk” genres that would have been more familiar to most people) the ability of people to “know” the piece of music being played before its performance. It’s now possible to enter into a live performance of most music of any genre with a thorough knowledge of what that music usually sounds like.
This has had multiple effects. Many histories of classical music that I have read indicate that one effect of this has been to raise the expectations of audiences and to raise performance standards for musicians and orchestras. When avid (and even not so avid in the case of particularly famous pieces of music) fans enter the performance with a thorough sense of how the music is “supposed to” sound, the bar is raised. In general, this is a good thing, though it might also increase the chances of disappointment from perfectly adequate performances that might simply not reach the highest pinnacles of performance of the last century.
Some worry that the prevalence of recording has homogenized performance. This is to some extent true, e.g. distinct national styles of instrumental or vocal performance are much less in evidence in classical music than was true several decades ago. At the same time, to some extent the presence of so many recordings of repertoire pieces encourages diversity of interpretation. If you’re going to record yet another interpretation of Carmina Burana at this point, you ought to present something new in the piece. An example of this is Simon Rattle’s recent recording of the piece – his pacing to me seems a bit too fast for the work to enjoy listening to too often, but he definitely presents a distinct interpretation the distinctiveness of which would be apparent to most people even casually familiar with the work.
Entering the experience already familiar with multiple recordings of Carmina Burana, I had high standards for the piece (which were abundantly met). Further, though, having the memory of pre-existing experiences with the piece (and with the Atlanta Symphony under Robert Spano and with other performances of other pieces I’ve experienced by this symphony), my experience and pleasure was heightened by the recognition of particular aspects of interpretation that made this particular performance distinct. In this case (as with the performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring I enjoyed earlier this spring), in certain movements the percussion was prominently emphasized. (Both Carmina Burana and The Rite of Spring are highly percussive in places in any interpretation, but this was more prominent than in most.) As a result, I noticed certain percussive elements, e.g. the almost machine-gun-like snare drum in the early moments of the piece, that I’d never particularly noticed before – and that experience now informs each further experience of the piece, whether live or recorded.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Reading, Looking, Listening
In a recent post, “Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and the Experience of Art (Musical and Visual),” and in the comments section attached to that post, I argued that the experience of literature is different in some ways from that of visual art or music. I’d like here to explore and clarify this distinction a bit further.
The experience of visual art or music involves looking or listening, each of which entails direct sensory perception of external phenomena that can impinge themselves upon us without our choosing – we experience something simply by being in the presence of the visual or auditory object. To experience something that is not superficial of a sculpture, painting, photograph or piece of music, of course requires more than this – active looking or listening involving concentration, contemplation, and conceptualization.
Reading literature (or anything else) is always operating already at the sort of second order level we see with active looking and listening. Reading involves and is built upon looking, but looking alone isn’t reading. The sensory experience of a book or computer screen and the visual qualities of letters and words aren’t text (i.e. the page isn’t the text). Text is always something created internally by contemplation and conception (e.g. seeing that “A,” “a,” “a,” or “A,” look different is direct sensory experience of visual phenomena – recognizing any or all of them as “the letter A” involves internal conception and interpretation), albeit prompted by and in relation to the concrete visual qualities of the page (“the letter A” can only be recognized in relation to a limited range of visual phenomena) much in the same way that active listening or looking involve inner contemplation in relation to distinctly external phenomena.
The experience of visual art or music involves looking or listening, each of which entails direct sensory perception of external phenomena that can impinge themselves upon us without our choosing – we experience something simply by being in the presence of the visual or auditory object. To experience something that is not superficial of a sculpture, painting, photograph or piece of music, of course requires more than this – active looking or listening involving concentration, contemplation, and conceptualization.
Reading literature (or anything else) is always operating already at the sort of second order level we see with active looking and listening. Reading involves and is built upon looking, but looking alone isn’t reading. The sensory experience of a book or computer screen and the visual qualities of letters and words aren’t text (i.e. the page isn’t the text). Text is always something created internally by contemplation and conception (e.g. seeing that “A,” “a,” “a,” or “A,” look different is direct sensory experience of visual phenomena – recognizing any or all of them as “the letter A” involves internal conception and interpretation), albeit prompted by and in relation to the concrete visual qualities of the page (“the letter A” can only be recognized in relation to a limited range of visual phenomena) much in the same way that active listening or looking involve inner contemplation in relation to distinctly external phenomena.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and the Experience of Art (Musical and Visual)
I had the wonderful experience this past weekend of watching and hearing Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony perform Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. I have listened to recordings of this piece many, many times, but hearing and seeing it performed live for the first time, I began to understand some of the extreme reactions (including negative reactions) some have to the work, both at its premier in 1913 and subsequently. (I’m also aware that part of the initial reaction at the premier in 1913 was to the “scandalous” visual aspects of the ballet which the music accompanied – but I also suspect then and later, that the seemingly unusual qualities of the music had a lot to do with the violently negative reaction.) I’d like here to address two topics having to do with the experience of art musical and visual: (1) the differences in experience of live musical performance or original works of art versus the experience of reproductions (whether recordings of music or prints or photographs of visual art); and (2) a greater conservatism apparent with regard to audiences for music compared to audiences for visual art.
“Live” vs. Facsimile
There is a difference between the experience of music performed live and the experience of recorded music. (There is also music that blurs the difference, such as live performance which incorporates taped material – and there are both “high” and “low” art versions of this.) While it doesn’t seem quite right to refer to the experience of an original painting or sculpture as a “live” experience (though that description would certainly apply to visual performance art), there is a difference between seeing an original work and a reproduction (though here too, there is art that blurs the distinction, e.g. Warhol’s camouflage screen prints, or mass produced casts of Rodin’s sculptures).
In the case of both music and visual art, there are differences between individual pieces in the degree to which the experience of the live performance or original work is different from the experience of a facsimile. Large scale paintings or sculpture feel far different in person than in photographic reproduction in even the best art books, as do highly textured paintings, where the texture is not reproducible in the flat two dimensional page. On the program with The Rite of Spring were also Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks” concerto for chamber orchestra and Mozart’s piano concerto no. 17, with piano soloist Garrick Ohlsson. While I enjoyed the performance of these two pieces, the main difference in experiencing them live was in seeing what the musicians were physically doing at any moment, while my physical experience of The Rite of Spring was completely different from that I have ever experienced while listening to it on CD.
This brings me to a major difference in the experience of visual art and music. The difference between seeing an original painting and a reproduction is not the same as the difference between a live performance of music and a recording.
The difference between the visual experience of an original visual work and a facsimile is primarily a quantitative one. One sees more of the texture, the size, the other details indicating the skill of a painter or sculptor. The experience of live music also involves such quantitative differences, but a qualitative difference in experience as well. Looking at a painting and looking at a reproduction of it, while producing different specific sensations, are the same sorts of experiences. Listening to live and recorded music provide similar sorts of auditory experiences, but live music can also provide a distinct bodily experience rarely provided by recorded music played over speakers. This is especially so with high volume live music, or live performance involving especially deep, resonant pitches that are experienced in a literally visceral way, experienced bodily in the gut as much as in the ear.
Conservatism in Musical Experience
A few years ago, my local symphony orchestra, the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra, also performed The Rite of Spring. I’m ashamed to admit I missed the performance – I don’t even remember why any longer, but afterwards, according to one member of the orchestra I spoke with, the Pensacola symphony received several letters of complaint about the choice to program this piece of "cacophonous non-music." I was aghast at the time that anyone would have reacted this way – The Rite of Spring has been standard repertory for almost a century now. While tempting to pass this off as the backward taste of provincial rubes, I’ve also encountered similar musical conservatism in other places (for example, I’ve encountered numerous writings attempting to dismiss Schoenberg or Berg as “cacophonous” or “snarling dissonance” – a reaction I find both wrongheaded and simply inaccurate [dissonance sure, as in any interesting music, but no snarling or cacophony]), and as I said above, after hearing the piece live, while I find it even more than before one of the most profound pieces of 20th century music, I can begin to understand others’ visceral reactions against the piece (in part because it is a literally visceral reaction).
The experience of visual art or of music is different from the experience of literature. Literature also presents a unique object to be experienced (with this being especially a goal of poetry). But the experience of literature requires active participation of the reader in a way that visual art and music do not. One cannot simply pass by a book and experience anything of it the way one could with a painting or a musical performance. Instead it has to be intentionally picked up and read, and the experience of it is a distinctly interior one. Paintings, sculpture, and music are experienced as things more clearly exterior than literature, with the experience occurring somewhat more passively (one can actively look or listen, but one can’t easily not see something that passes through one’s field of vision and one can’t easily not hear something within auditory range), with the object impinging upon one’s senses from outside.
At the same time, there is a difference in this exterior, passive experience of visual art and music. Visual art is more exterior, and not at all visceral in any literal way. It is only seen, where live music is heard and felt, experienced as something distinctly exterior while also something distinctly resonating in one’s physical being. One can also more easily stop experiencing painting or sculpture – by closing one’s eyes or looking in another direction, while music cannot be tuned out so simply. It impinges on one’s ears and body, and it cannot be ignored. It can force itself upon a person in a way that visual art (much less literature) cannot. As a result, music can be physically delightful – or a physical shock and violation if the music is not to one’s liking.
Many were once shocked by modernist experiments in sculpture and painting. Some perhaps still are, but really only very few can still honestly profess to be shocked or disturbed by Duchamp, or Picasso, or Pollock (much less the impressionists). But The Rite of Spring remains physically exhilarating or frightening or both at once.
“Live” vs. Facsimile
There is a difference between the experience of music performed live and the experience of recorded music. (There is also music that blurs the difference, such as live performance which incorporates taped material – and there are both “high” and “low” art versions of this.) While it doesn’t seem quite right to refer to the experience of an original painting or sculpture as a “live” experience (though that description would certainly apply to visual performance art), there is a difference between seeing an original work and a reproduction (though here too, there is art that blurs the distinction, e.g. Warhol’s camouflage screen prints, or mass produced casts of Rodin’s sculptures).
In the case of both music and visual art, there are differences between individual pieces in the degree to which the experience of the live performance or original work is different from the experience of a facsimile. Large scale paintings or sculpture feel far different in person than in photographic reproduction in even the best art books, as do highly textured paintings, where the texture is not reproducible in the flat two dimensional page. On the program with The Rite of Spring were also Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks” concerto for chamber orchestra and Mozart’s piano concerto no. 17, with piano soloist Garrick Ohlsson. While I enjoyed the performance of these two pieces, the main difference in experiencing them live was in seeing what the musicians were physically doing at any moment, while my physical experience of The Rite of Spring was completely different from that I have ever experienced while listening to it on CD.
This brings me to a major difference in the experience of visual art and music. The difference between seeing an original painting and a reproduction is not the same as the difference between a live performance of music and a recording.
The difference between the visual experience of an original visual work and a facsimile is primarily a quantitative one. One sees more of the texture, the size, the other details indicating the skill of a painter or sculptor. The experience of live music also involves such quantitative differences, but a qualitative difference in experience as well. Looking at a painting and looking at a reproduction of it, while producing different specific sensations, are the same sorts of experiences. Listening to live and recorded music provide similar sorts of auditory experiences, but live music can also provide a distinct bodily experience rarely provided by recorded music played over speakers. This is especially so with high volume live music, or live performance involving especially deep, resonant pitches that are experienced in a literally visceral way, experienced bodily in the gut as much as in the ear.
Conservatism in Musical Experience
A few years ago, my local symphony orchestra, the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra, also performed The Rite of Spring. I’m ashamed to admit I missed the performance – I don’t even remember why any longer, but afterwards, according to one member of the orchestra I spoke with, the Pensacola symphony received several letters of complaint about the choice to program this piece of "cacophonous non-music." I was aghast at the time that anyone would have reacted this way – The Rite of Spring has been standard repertory for almost a century now. While tempting to pass this off as the backward taste of provincial rubes, I’ve also encountered similar musical conservatism in other places (for example, I’ve encountered numerous writings attempting to dismiss Schoenberg or Berg as “cacophonous” or “snarling dissonance” – a reaction I find both wrongheaded and simply inaccurate [dissonance sure, as in any interesting music, but no snarling or cacophony]), and as I said above, after hearing the piece live, while I find it even more than before one of the most profound pieces of 20th century music, I can begin to understand others’ visceral reactions against the piece (in part because it is a literally visceral reaction).
The experience of visual art or of music is different from the experience of literature. Literature also presents a unique object to be experienced (with this being especially a goal of poetry). But the experience of literature requires active participation of the reader in a way that visual art and music do not. One cannot simply pass by a book and experience anything of it the way one could with a painting or a musical performance. Instead it has to be intentionally picked up and read, and the experience of it is a distinctly interior one. Paintings, sculpture, and music are experienced as things more clearly exterior than literature, with the experience occurring somewhat more passively (one can actively look or listen, but one can’t easily not see something that passes through one’s field of vision and one can’t easily not hear something within auditory range), with the object impinging upon one’s senses from outside.
At the same time, there is a difference in this exterior, passive experience of visual art and music. Visual art is more exterior, and not at all visceral in any literal way. It is only seen, where live music is heard and felt, experienced as something distinctly exterior while also something distinctly resonating in one’s physical being. One can also more easily stop experiencing painting or sculpture – by closing one’s eyes or looking in another direction, while music cannot be tuned out so simply. It impinges on one’s ears and body, and it cannot be ignored. It can force itself upon a person in a way that visual art (much less literature) cannot. As a result, music can be physically delightful – or a physical shock and violation if the music is not to one’s liking.
Many were once shocked by modernist experiments in sculpture and painting. Some perhaps still are, but really only very few can still honestly profess to be shocked or disturbed by Duchamp, or Picasso, or Pollock (much less the impressionists). But The Rite of Spring remains physically exhilarating or frightening or both at once.
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