is all this focus on the "mundane" getting tired?

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Doesn't it seem like everyone these days is trying to draw attention to the "hidden beauty" of the mundane and the everyday? I still enjoy it, as a stark contrast to all of the previous (and hollywood-like) emphasis on huge and magnificent events that never happen to real people, but it now seems like it's all EVERYONE and their mother can come up with.

What do we have in store for us next?

― she's lost control (Jools), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 22:49 (twenty years ago)

Films about realistic events featuring magic robots.

― Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 22:51 (twenty years ago)

WAR OF WORLDS MOVIE.

― Hurting (Hurting), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 22:51 (twenty years ago)

As a Trope the Mundane might feel played. In fact it's been barely touched on, especially by Hollywood, where it's like antimatter and liable to destroy the whole stinky edifice on contact. I don't trust Art that doesn't want to engage with mundanity.

― Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:02 (twenty years ago)

maybe some people think the mundane is just "interesting" and they're not out to expose its "hidden beauty."

― SHINE ON AMERICA (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:03 (twenty years ago)

the best art makes the mundane interesting. the problem with most Hollywood films these days, to cite the above example, is they make the outlandish seem very boring.

― Gear! (Ill Cajun Gunsmith) (Gear!), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:04 (twenty years ago)

for example i don't think i'm especially original for liking to take pictures of mundane stuff -- it's just what i tend to notice.

― SHINE ON AMERICA (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:04 (twenty years ago)

the best art makes the mundane interesting. the problem with most Hollywood films these days, to cite the above example, is they make the outlandish seem very boring.

-- Gear! (Ill Cajun Gunsmith) (speed.to.roam@gmail.com), July 6th, 2005

otfm!

― latebloomer: the Clonus Horror (latebloomer), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:10 (twenty years ago)

The mundane is usually mundane. The medium is tedium. It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it.

― Ian Riese-Moraine has been xeroxed into a conduit! (Eastern Mantra), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:11 (twenty years ago)

Well the point is that lately the mundane HAS become interesting and noticeable whereas I just don't think it's always been that way. Even outside of hollywood. Look at older art-- which doesn't depict as much the people brushing their teeth and eating dinner-- correct me if I'm wrong. The focus on the mundane seems to be a response to the difference in what came before it, as most changes in art seem to be.
It just seems that so many people these days explain the things they do based on the interesting quality of the mundane. This word "mundane"-- I just see it everywhere, all over the map. Perhaps there's just a need for a new word?

― she's lost control (Jools), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:14 (twenty years ago)

Jerry Bruckheimers' "The Washing Up".

― On one hand I've got myself to blame (Lynskey), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:18 (twenty years ago)

Look at older art-- which doesn't depict as much the people brushing their teeth and eating dinner

http://www.eng.tau.ac.il/~boaz/vermeer.jpeg

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:26 (twenty years ago)

ihttp://www.morrice.info/artists/images/van_gogh/the_potato_eaters.jpg

― Masked gazza, Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:30 (twenty years ago)

ihttp://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/gogh/potato-eaters.jpg

― again, Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:31 (twenty years ago)

Breughel. Chaucer. Aristotle. Lao Tzu. Homer on the sly. Back back back to whoever graffitied Lascaux. There's no shift in emphasis - in fact when Wordsworth tries to glorify the Ideal thru the mundane he makes the funny ("I've measured it from side to side/'Tis four feet long and three feet wide"). The big problem is inattentiveness, like I said before it's easy to FAKE the mundane but it means, essentially, essence: there is nothing of use outside that. I like Romanticism sometimes too, but it's like Plato, it's for kids. The minute you look for heaven in a grain of sand you walk away from the mundane.

― Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:43 (twenty years ago)

i agree that the "observations" in "american beauty" were very very trite but otherwise this thread seems way misguided. hasn't it been like high time for magic realism in american film for several years now?

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:52 (twenty years ago)

http://www.margaretmorrisbooks.com/images/ancient_egyptian_quarryman-397x445_med_01.jpg

― ken c (ken c), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:54 (twenty years ago)

I think the problem with magic realism in American film is that nine times out of ten the English language as handled by most scriptwriters will make it sound very, VERY trite.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:54 (twenty years ago)

http://www.essaysbyekowa.com/AU-Shead.jpg

"sniffing a flower" by Khenemetamen, Ancient Egypt.

― ken c (ken c), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:56 (twenty years ago)

Magic Realism is lazy. The Magic Realist is sticking a layer of significance onto boring old reality because they haven't looked at reality very hard. But I was maybe misthinking Blake, Heaven is the Grain of Sand itself and not some extrapolated abstraction.

― Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:57 (twenty years ago)

The mundane is mundane and the L Train is a swell train and I don't wanna hear you indies complain!

― Ian Riese-Moraine has been xeroxed into a conduit! (Eastern Mantra), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 23:59 (twenty years ago)

it's all a matter of how the mundane is handled. the greatest films have an ability to make the mundane seem transcendent. Look to the simple endings of some of Wong Kar-Wai's films (one line of dialogue at the end of Chungking Express, one tilt shot at the end of Fallen Angels) or the visual depiction of the suburban landscape in a film such as Time Out.

― Gear! (Ill Cajun Gunsmith) (Gear!), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 00:21 (twenty years ago)

OK maybe I am/this thread is misguided. I'm trying to work this out myself. I'm not bashing the mundane-- but it just seems like people are using this as an explanation for their art a whole lot more or something. Maybe it's always been there-- but I feel like mundane is this really qualifying word or something. Why can't things just be... the way they are, great or boring or what. It's like you're totally out of date for doing something that's not supposed to be completely boring to people who "just don't get it."
The mundane IS mundane-- and I feel like it's just receiving a lot of hype.

Anyone know what I mean? Try to bear with me here,

― she's lost control (Jools), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 00:41 (twenty years ago)

I think I do know what you're getting at. What I was saying is that there's a difference between people saying their work is about the mundane and work that really explores the mundane. Also most of the people defending mundanity here aren't equating mundane with boring, but thinking about the mundane as the detail of everyday life, the idea that things don't have to be symbolic or refer to big ideas but that they can tell you something about the universe just in their own smallness, that maybe the universe is made up of an infinity of smallnesses. I think people who try to explain their art in any terms other than its own are usually bullshitting anyway.

― Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 00:48 (twenty years ago)

Yes, I agree with you...

OK I was wrong when I said that people haven't been showing mundanity in art in the past. It's always been there. But I guess they didn't make a big DEAL about all of this, whereas these days people treat it like this big new phenomenon-- ("how sweet was that 'Sideways' about ordinary people?"). I just think people use the word WAY too often. Is it just a passing phase that seems cool now but will die down and people will just continue to do it (like Scrovula said)-- in its essence. It's sure interesting compared to the yawners War of the Worlds type thing but now I just feel like a trendy PHONY when I look at a really simple thing and find it pretty or nice.

― she's lost control (Jools), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 01:08 (twenty years ago)

the idea that things don't have to be symbolic or refer to big ideas but that they can tell you something about the universe just in their own smallness, that maybe the universe is made up of an infinity of smallnesses

yes, that's pretty much what i was getting at. specifically that small things don't have to be symbolic. and they don't have to tell you anything universal either!

― chief of chaff (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 01:47 (twenty years ago)

i think the problem is that people (critics, etc) who cream their jeans over some newfangled expression of "the mundane" as such are often second guessing the artist's intentions.

― chief of chaff (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 01:50 (twenty years ago)

vahid otm, twice. i thought "vermeer?!" when i read this, that and "ibsen?!"

and the magic realism thing: it's the one thing i don't like about the Lord of the Rings is that it'll be a long time before peter jackson makes anything like "heavenly creatures" again.

― g e o f f (gcannon), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 05:29 (twenty years ago)

the mundanity of a place is exotica when seen through the eyes of a non-local

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 05:34 (twenty years ago)

and the mundanity of a place again becomes exotica when the focus changes from place to time, a psychogeographic impulse.

exotic---mundane---exotic.

perspective

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 05:36 (twenty years ago)

did you ever get to cedar rapids?

― g e o f f (gcannon), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 05:38 (twenty years ago)

no, i didnt yet. i still want to see that part of the world, its right at the top of my list

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 05:39 (twenty years ago)

being able to name a few examples to the contrary doesn't mean that the mundane was generally not a subject of art in the past. those cited here probably stuck out from the rest and one reason they are remembered hundreds of years later is because they differed from the norm.

― oops (Oops), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 05:59 (twenty years ago)

or that they exemplified and illuminated the norm?

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 08:17 (twenty years ago)

http://www.essaysbyekowa.com/AU-Shead.jpg

Desperate Struggle With Face-Sucking Alien by Khetemenamen.

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 09:11 (twenty years ago)

Friday Night is Karaoke Night by Khetemenamen.

― Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 09:12 (twenty years ago)

Shave As Close As A Blade Or Your Money Back by Victor Khetemenamen.

― Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 09:16 (twenty years ago)

i'm ten posts in -- does anyone actually, like, give examples in this thread, or are we supposed to guess atwhat's being referred to?

― N_RQ, Wednesday, 6 July 2005 09:35 (twenty years ago)

'the mundane can be interesting' means, 'this is not mundane'.

― N_RQ, Wednesday, 6 July 2005 09:40 (twenty years ago)

I was arguing upthread that "mundane" doesn't mean "boring". First 2 definitions in dictionary.com are:

1. Of, relating to, or typical of this world; secular.
2. Relating to, characteristic of, or concerned with commonplaces; ordinary.

so I'm thinking about art that's materialist, that deals with the concrete against abstractions, that tries to avoid metaphysics, that celebrates "everyday life".

― Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 09:57 (twenty years ago)

like 'my best friend's wedding'?

― N_RQ, Wednesday, 6 July 2005 10:00 (twenty years ago)

I don't think I've watched that. Is Rupert Everett in it? It's prob'ly too melodramatic to qualify, but if not, then yeah.

― Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 10:01 (twenty years ago)

i've always focussed on the mundane

mundane debates within yourself
denial through mundanity

― ken c (ken c), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 10:18 (twenty years ago)

'the mundane can be interesting' means, 'this is not mundane'.

how about if you phrased it like this:

'the everyday can be interesting' means, 'this is not everyday'.

doesnt make sense anymore does it?

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 11:28 (twenty years ago)

I'm more fascinated by the seemingly mundane that really isn't when placed under a sort of microscope.

― Ian Riese-Moraine has been xeroxed into a conduit! (Eastern Mantra), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 11:28 (twenty years ago)

and, also, nrq, does your statement not presume an objectivity of mundanity?

surely mundanity is context-specific?

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 11:31 (twenty years ago)

I don't think I yet understand the premise about a prevailing focus on the mundane.

I think I agree with Lido that all kinds of things can be interesting, depending on perspective. Or indeed dull, depending on perspective.

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 6 July 2005 16:41 (twenty years ago)

http://www.mundanejourneys.com/book/book.html

when googled:
http://www.mundane.org/
http://www.exmundane.com/
http://emundane.blogspot.com/
(note: this is supposed to be boring to the natural human. When did it become extraordinary to anyone but oneself?)
http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/god_mundane
http://els.f2o.org/space/001.html
http://people.emich.edu/jblumner/blog/

From "American Beauty"
(looking at a video of a plastic bag)
Ricky Fitts: It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.

Can't find the artist who took pictures of everything he ate and called it his art?
Don't get me started about all of those books about suburbia.

― she's lost control (Jools), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 16:57 (twenty years ago)

...quotidian?

― giboyeux (skowly), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 17:02 (twenty years ago)

While of course artists have been focusing on mundane things and mundane lives for hundreds of years, I think maybe this "focus on the mundane" that the original poster is getting at has to do with a rejection or conscious movement away from other forms of art that's probably only specific to the last 100 years. For example, you see this in mid-20th century painting, as artists like Warhol or Sigmar Polke seek to elevate the trivial items of mass culture in response to the sacred, abstract air of modernism. With more recent contemporary film, the focus on small stories, on ordinary people, is associated with the independent film movement, which really took hold in the 1980s -- not coincidentally right after the rise of the Hollywood blockbuster. If artists are being more deliberately "mundane," then it's partially as an effort to distinguish themselves from what are seen as the dominant themes of their disciplines.

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 17:11 (twenty years ago)

Sorry, meant to add: "...at a time when those themes have reached an extreme in the other direction."

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 17:14 (twenty years ago)

I think I agree with Lido that all kinds of things can be interesting, depending on perspective. Or indeed dull, depending on perspective.

isn't this what NRQ was saying really?

― Sociah T Azzahole (blueski), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 17:16 (twenty years ago)

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