[... random entry into dangerous thread ...]
In a message dated 9/12/00 5:04:53 AM Central Daylight Time,
neptune@mars.superlink.net writes:
> This is really only so with Modernist Art and Postmodernist Art. While
> taste vary from age to age, from person to person, it's only with the 20th
> century that we get works which would only fit an elitist, authoritarian
> definition of art -- i.e., "Art is what artists or the art establishment
say
> is art, objectivity be damned!"
I don't think this is entirely true: There have been "official" definitions
of art, high and low, in many other periods, from the influence of the
National Academies in France and the UK in the 18th-19th centuries back to
the impact of royal or ecclesiastical patronage in earlier times. Those
institutions sought to create a bright line between art/not-art. Your point
may be that what was called "art" by these official arbiters of taste WOULD
have been considered "art" by all, but I'm not so sure . . .
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
ICQ # 61112550
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
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