Does it “take one to know one,” artistically?

Does it “take one to know one,” artistically?

Posted on January 4th, 2011 by Chris Matarazzo

I remember my academic hero, Dr. Robert Ryan, looking at me across his desk, with a smile threatening to peek out of his greying beard. It wasn’t an unkind look — he is incapable of being unkind to a student, as far as I know. But, I had just proposed to write my paper on Coleridge. I would attempt to define Coleridge’s concepts of reality and imagination as evidenced in his major works of fantasy — Christabel; The Rime of the Ancient Mariner — and in his journals. Dr. Ryan said to me: “I have always thought that to write a really good paper on Coleridge, one has to be as smart as Coleridge was. And who really is?” Hey, I was twenty-four, so I left the office taking that for the go-ahead.

That idea has stuck with me since that day in grad school, though. Does it really “take one to know one”?

I think of this in terms of the arts all of the time. Once, in a conversation about popular music, a friend referred to a particular artist as “really talented.” The only thought I could muster was: “How the hell do you know?” The commenter is not a musician and, as far as I know, can’t even carry a tune. So, how can he be fit to decide if someone is talented or not or if that artist’s work is of any technical merit?

Often, I will have my high school students say, “Hey, Mr. Mat — you have to hear Lucy play piano. She is so talented.” So, I’m dragged to the music room to hear Lucy weakly brank out half of a simple, triad-based, pop song piano intro, at which point wide-eyed teenagers crowd me and exclaim: “She did that by ear!* She doesn’t even read music.” Bless their enthusiastic hearts — and Lucy’s — but if they only knew how rudimentary what Lucy was doing is . . . (Yes, even for her age.)

If you have read any of my other stuff, you will know I am not big on rating art as good or bad. I believe that if things move you, they move you, and that is the way it is. But I do believe judgement of quality of craft and talent ought to be left to the talented and the artistically educated.

Art can be good on two levels. One: it moves an individual emotionally or intellectually. Two: it shows really innovative or, at least, multi-layered craft. In the best cases, the two intertwine.

I often tell my literature students: “You can hate Shakespeare all you want. But you can’t tell me he ‘sucks’.” Generations of readers smarter than anyone I have ever met (including Coleridge) have seen merit in Mighty Will’s work. He is a good writer, period. He might have put generations of young people to sleep, but his craft and imagination are beyond question. (Some people say he was a great poet, but a bad playwright, but I disagree about the plays and I think Kenneth Branagh proved at least that Hamlet works brilliantly when performed just as written, much to the dismay of some established, self-assured academics. Updike backs me up on this in his intro to Gertrude and Claudius. But I digress . . .)

I, for instance, don’t dance. How, then, can I really tell if someone is a good dancer? I might love a piece of choreography for the way it speaks to me. As an artist, myself, I might, just might, have a better eye for it than the average Joe. But can I really tell the work of a brilliant choreographer from the work of a mediocre dance school teacher in Springfield, wherever? No. I can say what I like, but I can’t dissect the movements the way a choreographer can. I can’t see into the gears of the machine the choreographer engineered.

In visual art, maybe it’s a little easier to see skill. But I know a number of professional illustrators and painters, and they all joke about people asking them if they “did that free-hand.” We can all see when a fruit bowl looks like a fruit bowl. But is that real talent or training? If a perfectly-rendered fruit bowl is “talent,” what is Rubens’s Prometheus Bound? (One really has to see this in person to get the full effect, by the way. More than worth a trip into Philly.) I would defer to brilliant painter to answer that question, in the end.

My father, Joe Matt, a Curtis-trained composer and orchestrator often says, bitterly: “If you want to know about medicine, ask a doctor. If you want to know about cabinet-making, ask a carpenter. If you want to know about music, ask anyone.” I think this feeling comes not from people liking certain things he doesn’t like, but from their asserting that those certain pieces are of a particular quality, when they don’t know thing one about what goes into the craft. This quotation was first uttered at a dinner table when someone implied, to my dad, that he could not, in all fairness, say that Beethoven was a better composer than Bruce Springsteen. (The funny thing is, I would bet even Bruce, himself, would laugh at that statement.)

Don’t we have to concede that if Joyce Carol Oates reads a book and an accountant who never even wrote a shopping list reads the same novel, that Oates the better judge of the writer’s talent and the book’s literary merit? — or that Richard Rodgers might have been a better judge of the top 500 American songs than a Rolling Stone critic with a journalism degree is? — or that DaVinci might have more perspective on paintings than, say, my neighbor, Marv, who can’t draw a stick figure?

Again, this is not about saying that people are not free to like what they like. And this is not to say that art with limited craft or talent is immediately bad. I just think that if you are going to label someone as “talented” or if you are going to label a work of art as one of the “best” you should prepared to back it up with some mojo of your own.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*I have always found people’s awe of those who play “by ear” amusing. Believe me, playing a Stones song by ear is no big deal to your average self-taught guitarist. Now, play an entire Bach piece by ear and you have got something.

Chris Matarazzo’s ARTISTIC UNKNOWNS appears every Tuesday

Author Bio
Latest Posts

Chris Matarazzo

Chris Matarazzo is a writer, composer, musician and teacher of literature and writing on the college and high school levels. His music can be heard on his recent release, Hats and Rabbits, which is currently available. Chris is also the composer of the score to the off-beat independent film Surrender Dorothy and he performs in the Philadelphia area with the King Richard Band. He's also a relatively prolific novelist, even if no one seems to care yet. His blog, also called Hats and Rabbits, is nice, too, if you get a chance...