Savvy, Lyotard, 2.4.09

Several ideas really stood out to me that Lyotard discussed. In this article Lyotard really dwell upon the topic of reality. The first quote would be on page 41, "The demand for reality- that is, for unity, simplicity, communicability, etc". I never really thought about reality in this way. I couldn't help but to ask the question of what reality I was living in. I also found the discussion on industrial photography and cinema to be interesting as well as how politics can come into play in realism. In regard to politics Lyotard writes, "The attack on artistic experimentation's is specifically reactionary: eshetic judgement would only be required to decide whether such or such work is conformity with the established rules of the beautiful" (41). This might be a little far fetched, but when reading this quote I couldn't help to think of all the literature and news broadcasts that occurred leading up to the Presidential election. I remember vividly the image of Obama and his wife on the cover of New York Magazine. It was a a cartoon looking drawing that depicted the Obamas in a very negative light. I thought about how this cartoon image struggled to be within political and societal conformity and norms.

Another quote that I feel like was very relative to our class discussion on Tuesday was on page 42, " But this realism of the 'anything goes' is in fact that of money; in the absence of aesthetic criteria, it remains possible and useful to assess the value of works of art according to the profits they yield." This quote about the worth of pieces of art, reminded me of Dr. Casey's story about his watch that he had bought from the vendor. The watch was only worth as much as he would pay for it, Lyotard was saying the same thing in his quote about the artwork. The value of the artwork did not stem from creativity, but from how much people would pay for it.