Where's the "Art"?

[Claude J Greengrass]

Hm, hadn't come across that writer, a quick websearch gives the impression it might be an intersting read...

Hugo Award winner 1969. Best Science Fiction novel in which Chad C. Mulligan, a fictional sociologist, appears and is often quoted. Not to hijack this thread.

 

[Bongo]

Basically if you put an object on a pedestal and admire it for it's esthetic quality rather than use it as a dirt bike - it's Art.

Now isn't that what I said some time ago? If a given object is deemed Art by collectors, artists, historian, critics and placed within a collection, a museum, a gallery... placed upon a pedestal... then it becomes art.

Getting closer. Along with the "pedestal" it has to loose its utility. I may sound like a party pooper for insisting on that but here's the rub.

I admire my car parked on the curb - it's an art object. No, it's like an art object.
I used the can open to drive some nails - it's a hammer. No, it's like a hammer.

Like implying similar in some regard - but NOT the thing. If a carpenter asks for a hammer and you run in the kitchen, unplug the can opener and bring it to him. He's going to say "that's not a hammer". And then you say "but it can be used as a hammer it's like a hammer". And then he's going to say "but it's not a hammer".

Utilitarian objects can be admired and be like art, but they are not Art until you stop using them for their utility and only consider them for aesthetic value.

Why is that important? Because every object can be admired for its aesthetic quality. And if that's ALL that's required to be Art, then everything is Art which means nothing is Art because Art would cease to be a distinction that makes a distinction.

The "utility" clause is really a low bar - but it requires a commitment. "Okay you're going to stop messing around opening cans, driving nails and your going to just sit on the mantel. Got that dammit You're going to just sit on the mantel and do nothing while I admire you!"

 

[E.J.H.]

The rub is that it is so easy to argue the opposite with valid arguments and exemples.

You start to make the impression you want to hear that your subjective view on what is art and what isn't is the only right one.

Similes and analogies can illustrate a point, they are not arguments, let alone proof.

I see your car and hammer, I raise you a urinal. Clearly a utensil, and produced as such. Put in a museum and declared "Art".

You cannot imo design a definition of art without subjectivity, without giving room to the fact that there is no agreement on what qualifies as art and what not.

 

[Bongo]

Similes and analogies can illustrate a point, they are not arguments, let alone proof.

I see your car and hammer, I raise you a urinal. Clearly a utensil, and produced as such. Put in a museum and declared "Art"
You cannot imo design a definition of art without subjectivity, without giving room to the fact that there is no agreement on what qualifies as art and what not.

Maybe read my post more carefully. The urninal in the museum is ART. The one in the men's bathroom is not. The difference is the one in the museum is only used for aesthetic consideration, the one in the bathroom only for piss (and cigarette butts).

As for proof? How do you prove a foot is 12" long? How do you prove a yard is three feet long? Definitions aren't something proven, they are something agreed upon. I know not everyone agrees with my definition - I'm trying to convince people or have people consider it based on merits. And it is a bit of hubris to say it's mine - it's only "mine" in the sense that I'm the one promoting it here. Similar/same definitions have been put forward by others.

You say you can't define art because it's all subjective -- That's the very thing I'm trying to do - take out the subjective part of the definition without being dogmatic about it.

 

[stlukesguild]

Getting closer. Along with the "pedestal" it has to loose its utility.

Still has the utilitarian purpose of being a building and a church. Still Art. Yes, I know, you don't consider architecture art but almost everyone else involved in the arts does so there's that.

Still an icon and still used in religious ceremonies... and still Art.

Portraiture... whether painted or photographic... still retains its purpose of memorializing the appearance of individuals.

Contemporary illustration still serves to visually narrate a story or idea... and still remains Art IMO.

A good deal of contemporary Art serves a purpose as political commentary, protest, or propaganda. And still Art.

It seems to me that artistic creations may have different purposes to different audiences. If I were to visit the Indian sculpture I'd be looking at it as Art... but that may not be true of the local people who see it as an icon. The same is true of Chartres Cathedral... or even many sculpture and paintings in cathedrals and churches around the world. Titian's Assumption of the Virgin remains housed within the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice and is still venerated as a sacred icon by local parishioners while untold others who visit to see the painting think of it only as a masterwork of Renaissance painting.

 

[Bongo]

I would say architecture art, religious art, portraiture art, illustrative art. The reason for the qualifier is because - although they have a high degree of aesthetic value they are regularly used in other ways. The qualifier - a recognition of it's utilitarian value, the art suffix as recognition of its aesthetic value.

Now say the religious statue is placed in a museum and no longer worshipped. Is is Art? Yes. ls it Religious Art. -- it might be called that, but now the term has a different meaning. Before it was a worshipped statue that also had aesthetic merit, now it is a piece of Art that has been place in the religious wing of a museum.

Does this sound nit-picking? Kinda -but from an academic perspective it's useful. The definition is constructed to find a way out of having to say everything is art, art has no definition, it's all subjective etc. It doesn't have to be if you accept the idea that Art cannot be two things at once unless you tack it with a qualifier.

 

[Artyczar]

What is art? Many perspectives, and that is a good thing I think. There is no "right" answer. But it can't be "everything." That just doesn't make sense. There are types of art. Can we agree on that? We may not agree on what goes in which category--no matter how many images SLG posts. Ha ha ha.

 

[john]

I sometimes suspect the negation of what are deemed "crafts" by painters, sculptors... and most of all, conceptual artists... has much to do with their own failings in terms of crafts.

Artists negate craft because they understand that concept, creativity, novelty is the criteria for high art. The rest is craftsmanship. Reality exactly copied is not high art, it's high craft. Techne.

***

Aristotle saw technē as representative of the imperfection of human imitation of nature. For the ancient Greeks, it signified all the mechanic arts, including medicine and music. The English aphorism, "gentlemen don't work with their hands," is said to have originated in ancient Greece in relation to their cynical view on the arts. Due to this view, it was only fitted for the lower class while the upper class practiced the liberal arts of 'free' men (Dorter 1973).

For the ancient Greeks, when technē appears as art, it is most often viewed negatively; whereas when used as a craft, it is viewed positively because a craft is the practical application of an art, rather than art as an end in itself.


then there is....... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poiesis

In their 2011 book, All Things Shining, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly conclude that embracing a "meta-poietic" mindset is the best, if not the only, method to authenticate meaning in our secular times: "Meta-poiesis, as one might call it, steers between the twin dangers of the secular age: it resists nihilism by reappropriating the sacred phenomenon of physis, but cultivates the skill to resist physis in its abhorrent, fanatical form. Living well in our secular, nihilistic age, therefore, requires the higher-order skill of recognizing when to rise up as one with the ecstatic crowd and when to turn heel and walk rapidly away."[4]

Furthermore, Dreyfus and Dorrance Kelly urge each person to become a sort of "craftsman" whose responsibility it is to refine their faculty for poiesis in order to achieve existential meaning in their lives and to reconcile their bodies with whatever transcendence there is to be had in life itself: "The task of the craftsman is not to generate the meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill for discerning the meanings that are already there."[5]

 

[john]

Remember, Arty, a good many conceptual artists and art theorists/critics who championed conceptual art did so by dismissing "mere" craft as if it were just mindless motor skill.

Yes they did. For good reason.

 

[stlukesguild]

Painting, sculpture, ceramics, metals, engraving, wood-carving, weaving, etc... are all crafts. They may also be termed works of "visual art". The merit of the work is not based upon the medium but upon the aesthetic merits of the individual works. Every work of Visual Art begins with a concept or idea... but these are useless unless they are realized in a visual form. The "craft" is the means or process by which concepts are realized visually. This process itself involves continual thought: evaluation and re-evaluation. Matisse (who I trust on matters of Art far more than Aristotle) spoke of the painting process as follows:

"A work of art is never made in advance. There is no separation
between the thought and the creative act; they are completely
one and the same."

DeKooning suggested a similar approach:

"I think I'm painting a picture of two women but it may turn out to be a landscape."

I like this TED talks video on Art & Craft:

Is there a difference between art and craft?

 

[stlukesguild]

The task of the craftsman is not to generate the meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill for discerning the meanings that are already there.

The task of the artist is not to generate "meaning". It is the audience who generate "meaning".

 

[john]

I completely agree that medium is not a criteria for artistic merit. It is imagination, creativity, novelty, insight and intellectual involvement that makes great art. Craftsmanship is a tool to realize these things.

Getting back to what started this all.....I don't see much imagination, creativity, novelty, insight and intellectual involvement in the photorealist painting of that painter's daughter. Not much Art. It is high level craft.

 

[Bongo]

....I don't see much imagination, creativity, novelty, insight and intellectual involvement in the photorealist painting ....

there are two types of realist painters, those that use photos and those that are liers.

 

[E.J.H.]

Rembrandt, Dürer, Michelangelo, daVinci, the list goes on, all mere "high level" craftsmen.....

 

[E.J.H.]

I think one shouldn't talk in absolutes.
I've seen a lot of realist work that I didn't find attractive on an artistic level. But I have also seen work where the lack of craftsmanship, a blatant lack of skill in the execution, makes the work dull and uninteresting, even when the artistic idea was good.
The craftmanship is a means to a goal, but the goal is better reached when the quality of those means are high. Of course you do need a goal ( struggling a bit with that one myself...).
Maybe, when talking about the artistic, creative value (the goal?) of a work, craftsmanship is not thàt relevant? I have not entirely made my mind up on that one....

 

[stlukesguild]

I completely agree that medium is not a criteria for artistic merit. It is imagination, creativity, novelty, insight and intellectual involvement that makes great art. Craftsmanship is a tool to realize these things.

It is interesting that you use the word "novelty" as a measure of artistic merit when you consider the term largely denotes a trite curiosity for its own sake. Synonyms include bauble, knickknack, gaud, etc... "Creativity"? This leads to the question as to how much "creativity" or innovation is needed to create a great work of art? Even more problematic is the realization that innovation is not a universally admired aspect of art. Other cultures and other eras don't place innovation at the pinnacle of elements of art. Joseph Beuys walking through a gallery with aluminum foil on his face talking to a dead rabbit or Vito Acconci hiding beneath a ramp in an art gallery masturbation may be more innovative... certainly more of a novelty than a painting by Andrew Wyeth or Lucian Freud but better? That's quite debatable. In fact, I would argue that it is quite debatable that post-aesthetic art is really all that profound in terms of creativity, originality, or intellectual profundity.

 

[stlukesguild]

there are two types of realist painters, those that use photos and those that are liers.

And one might argue in a contrary manner that there is only one type of artist who feels the need to continually dismiss the merits of "realism" in painting: those lacking such abilities.

 

[john]

Rembrandt, Dürer, Michelangelo, daVinci, the list goes on, all mere "high level" craftsmen.....

They were great craftsman and great artists, because they produced something that was not exactly there. They were creative. They gave us an alternate view. Had they not been not been great craftsman they wouldn't have been able to do what they did. Which was to make great art.

Maybe, when talking about the artistic, creative value (the goal?) of a work, craftsmanship is not thàt relevant?

Well again I refer to the much hated Stella Vine Princess Diana painting. Craftsmanship was not that important, ( although I argue that there more there than meets the eye). It is the idea that makes it good art. The emotional jolt. The concept.

But it depends on the art being made doesn't it.

 

[john]

"This leads to the question as to how much "creativity" or innovation is needed to create a great work of art? "

More than seen in that photorealistic painting of that painter's daughter.

Realism is neither good nor bad.

I would love to have that skill, to use in a more creative way. But he's painting his daughter. His hands were a bit tied weren't they. I would also try to paint my daughter with accuracy.

 

[stlukesguild]

Well again I refer to the much hated Stella Vine Princess Diana painting. Craftsmanship was not that important, ( although I argue that there more there than meets the eye). It is the idea that makes it good art. The emotional jolt. The concept.

Oh come on; that painting was a piece of crap. If I want crap Art I'd stick with Manzoni... whose can o' crap was almost better.