On Monday, September 11, 2000 9:17 PM xgl xli03@emory.edu wrote:
> > The reason to label anything is to differentiate it from other things so
as
> > to have an easier time understanding it and communicating about it.
(The
> > former is more important than the latter.)
>
> i have to agree. after all, i've participated in discussing many
> "idle" concepts myself; like esoteric mathematics, i always felt finer
> distinctions will turn out to be useful in some unforseen way.
I don't think art or mathematical concepts are idle. I do think that almost
all theoretical knowledge has an eventual application somewhere.
> however, the question involved here -- distinguishing art from
> non-art -- is hellishly complex. do we define art based on whatever most
> people call art, or discover it through studying a finite number of
> "established" art works? perhaps we may design a definition for art to
> reap the most benefit -- but in what spheres of influence?
I think one can start by trying to look at what is called art and try to see
what art objects have in common. Defining something need not be easy, but
it can be done. I think after some examination, we might come to agree some
works originally thought to be art are not art. This is no different than
someone mistakenly including whales in the category of fish by defining fish
as "swimming animals" and later coming to see this definition is overbroad.
(This simplistic definition of fish would mean also that humans and birds
are also part time fish! Not a useful definition, though a good starting
point as any.:)
In this way, one would, to borrow from Dewey, "rationally reconstruct" the
idea of art.
> old theories of tolstoy and santayana come to mind ... but it
> seems new trends are always dead-set to shatter whatever commonality we
> have perceived so far. ultimately, perhaps art is a just a tautology --
> whatever we deem art ends up becoming art.
I disagree. If art is just a labeling game, then it does not explain why
for ages most people believed certain things to be art and why those things
had certain traits different from all other things. For instance,
paintings, in general portray objects on two dimensional surfaces. (Only
abstract painting does not to this, but this type of "painting" only came
about recently and remains hotly contested as being painting at all.)
Renaissance painters did not say, "Hey, I deem this a painting, ergo, it is
a painting!" Surely, they lacked a rigorous defintion of painting, but they
certainly did not have this authoritarian view in mind.
> i don't pretend to be objective; explicitly or implicitly, i too
> operate under some set of criteria, distinguishing art from other
phenomena.
> yet, it often seems that my tastes tend to run counter to the mainstream.
> extrapolating a few generations into the future (ignoring the obvious
> inconveniences of the singularity), i can picture a time when "consensus"
> works of art would seem decidedly un-artly to me. what recourse would i
> have then? like the lone sane man on a mad planet, would i declare that i
> alone knew what art is?
The test would be finding out what these postulated future works have in
common and seeing if they fit into the concept of art. A good definition of
art would be able to handle such works, but that does not mean it would
allow an anything goes attitude. An easy example of this would be to look
at the sonnet in English. The sonnet is a poetic form. (Since poetry is a
form of art, the sonnet is a form of art.:) There was a time when there
were no English sonnet. The form, in fact, originated in Italy -- if my
memory's correct. English poets then adapted it to their language. Was
this a crisis in distinguishing poetry from non-poetry? Hardly! I think
the same sort of thing will apply to future art and future non-art.
> > I would not confuse art with design. The shirt I'm wearing now -- a
Perry
> > Ellis short sleeve -- has a design I like on it. In fact, it's one of
my
> > favorite shirts. Yet I would not label it a work of art. It is
pleasing to
> > my eyes and comfortable to wear, but it is not art. I value it, yet I
do
> > not call it or classify it as art.
> >
> > By the same token, there are things or works which I do classify as art,
> > which I do not value or like. Some of these art works I'm even repulsed
by.
> > Yet I still believe them to be art.
> >
> > You see, something can be art without being valued by someone. Someone
can
> > even agree something is art, yet not like it and not want to experience
it
> > ever again. Someone can love something, yet know it is not art.
>
> perhaps i implicitly (and subconsciously) operated under the
> association of art with intellectual status. nonetheless, if only for
> practical reasons, perhaps we'd do better to abandon the concept of "art"
> as we know it and just stick with personal taste. i know it may be
> intellectually lazy, but it's not obvious to me what we would lose by such
> a move.
If art serves a deeper need than just sensual pleasure, then we might lose a
lot. In terms of serving this need, we might randomly grope for good art,
yet only get non-art or bad art. (Non-art is not identical with bad art.)
It might be akin to eating junk food and wondering why one is experiencing
all sorts of health problems.
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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