Field Theory: A post about art (sort of)
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Another is to claim that they didn't appreciate the beauty of their own works, or that they didn't know they were making objects of beauty.
I have not made this claim.
You have in fact made it several times. Which is why a dozen or so people have taken issue with you - if all you had said was that different cultures have different ideas about what constitutes art as opposed to craft, and that the modern global art world is heavily influenced by Western ideas of just what it is that constitues art (just as it is about what constitutes poetry or literature), I think nobody would have had much to object. Of course this largely uncontroversial observation says little about what art is, or about the very significant continuities that exist in the history of artistic practice. Etruscan art was almost entirely produced to be sealed inside tombs, it wasn't meant for human eyes to see; yet its technical and expressive evolution is not dissimilar from the evolution of fine art forms elsewhere, which suggests that the practice of artists, if not the perceived meaning and reception of their works, wasn't in fact radically different.
A more obvious example: you keep banging on the fact that pure aesthetic expression divorced from practical purpose is a modern European invention, but what was the practical purpose of Phidias' statue of Athena in the Acropolis? And was it all that different from the purpose of the rugby statue proposed for the Wellington waterfront?
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Any published academic discourse about sports statues?
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Rob, thanks for the the Novitz quote and Stanford link. A couple of points illuminated our impasse quite well, for me.
...an influential study by the historian of philosophy Paul Kristeller, in which he argued that the modern system of the five major arts [painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and music] which underlies all modern aesthetics … is of comparatively recent origin and did not assume definite shape before the eighteenth century, although it had many ingredients which go back to classical, mediaeval, and Renaissance thought.
Since that list of five arts is somewhat arbitrary, and since even those five do not share a single common nature, but rather are united, at best, only by several overlapping features, and since the number of art forms has increased since the eighteenth century, Kristeller's work may be taken to suggest that our concept of art differs from that of the eighteenth century. As a matter of historical fact, there simply is no stable definiendum for a definition of art to capture.
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Theorists who regard art as an invention of eighteenth-century Europe will, of course, regard this way of putting the matter as tendentious, on the grounds that entities produced outside that culturally distinctive institution do not fall under the extension of “art” and hence are irrelevant to the art-defining project. (Shiner 2001)
The discussion of Dickie's circularity also seemed apt.
I take a broader view where art is a subset of cultural functions, which is why I value what Giovanni has to say about it.
In general, I favour positions which provide a well thought-out place for everyone's perspectives - including Paul's which I regard as in some parts obviously well-informed and in others dangerously defective, notably when it comes to respecting the distinctive worldviews and practices of this place's cultures.
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Social standing is important, since it indicates the value given to the painter's livelyhood. Little is known of Exekias, but there is a legend that he was a slave.
Transactional value and social standing as aesthetic constructs? Sorry, I may be misinterpreting.
Having read one page, and a few other summaries of Broadman, his pompousness would probably become somewhat tiresome throughout an entire book. Strikes me as intellectual self-gratification at first glance, but then someone has to do it, I suppose.
There was a nice exhibition of prints at Lopdall House recently where Marian Maguire had used Exekias style imagery with colonial motif's. The Labour of Herakles. Quite liked it really. Is that Ok? Oh, and presumably it is art?
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Love Marian Maguire's work. Herakles was the subject of an excellent review by Adam Gifford on the Herald.
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Love Marian Maguire's work. Herakles was the subject of an excellent review by Adam Gifford on the Herald.
Thanks Gio. Remember reading that around the time. Quite tempted, but in the end got a Liam Barr print instead. Another artist playing with our cultural heritage and modern symbolism. Amazing richness of colour and detail in the actual prints, which the photos don't do justice.
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Strikes me as intellectual self-gratification at first glance, but then someone has to do it, I suppose.
Really? I mean, come on. This is just mindlessly stupid, up there with telling someone who studied at the Courtauld that they don't know art history.
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Which is why a dozen or so people have taken issue with you - if all you had said was that different cultures have different ideas about what constitutes art as opposed to craft, and that the modern global art world is heavily influenced by Western ideas of just what it is that constitues art (just as it is about what constitutes poetry or literature), I think nobody would have had much to object.
I am sure you would have found a way. The point is not about different ideas of art, but the very existence of it. I realise my opinions have scandalised readers, such that you accuse me of cultural insensitivity and Sacha goes as far as to imply that I am a racist. But all the people who study non-Western material culture - anthropologists and the like - are united in saying that the traditional cultural practices of non-Western peoples cannot be described as art. In that respect, they share much with the people who study historic Western cultural practices. Further, many of the traditions which we might think as grounded in history are invented - this is the theme of the papers I recommended, which unfortunately are not available on Internet.
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Really? I mean, come on. This is just mindlessly stupid, up there with telling someone who studied at the Courtauld that they don't know art history.
Well, if you say so. My point is if I have to read Boredman in order to participate in discussions here that start with a rugby statue then, well, I mustn't have read the manual properly.
But all the people who study non-Western material culture - anthropologists and the like - are united in saying that the traditional cultural practices of non-Western peoples cannot be described as art.
All of them? 100 percent? Totally united in their opinions on this? Well, you're the expert.
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I am sure you would have found a way.
Hardly, for the simple fact that I agree with it.
But all the people who study non-Western material culture - anthropologists and the like - are united in saying that the traditional cultural practices of non-Western peoples cannot be described as art.
According to a definition of art that pre-empts the inclusion of the traditional cultural practices of non-Western peoples, I'm sure some of them probably can. The problem with that definition of art of course is that it doesn't apply to the contemporary Western art world, let alone anybody else. Art for art's sake, as an object of aesthetic appreciation without practical, social or political purposes, never actually applied to a time in history - certainly not to the Rinascimento for which it was supposedly coined - and is a notion utterly shattered by twentieth-century artists. It still enjoys some institutional currency, and does a lot to help grease the wheels of the global art market, but it obscures more than it reveals. We ought to feel free to reject it, and not just because it demeans the indigenous culture of our nation - although that's not a bad reason.
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I'd add that it is of course political advanteguos, from a colonial perspective, to hold philosophical positions that subsume the experience of a culture within another. So to suggest that Maori didn't do art is far from innocent. It allows amongst other things to claim that colonisation broadened the options available to the colonised, without extinguishing those that they already possessed. We gave them a better world. Their humble craftsmen can now be fully-fledged artists.
The reality is that those new options came at the expense of others, and that there is a world lost in the transition. To retain a lived memory of what art meant for Maori requires first of all to acknowledge that toi had a complex meaning that is worth preserving. It wasn't just craft in the almost pejorative sense that the word has for Europeans, or a set of ornamental motifs. It was integral to the Maori worldview, and performed meaningful functions in the society that produced it. Just like Western art, or any other art.
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Thank you, Giovanni
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Love Marian Maguire's work. Herakles was the subject of an excellent review by Adam Gifford on the Herald.
Thanks Gio.
Yeah, thanks again.
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When I quote John Boardman, top Greek art history man, saying the Greeks had no concept of art as we understand it, Giovanni says I have misinterpreted Boardman. When I ask Giovanni to show where Boardman supports his argument, he falls silent.
I dispute that the quotes you offered mean anything more than what they say - namely that the Greeks had a different concept of art from ours. I think you take this notion, which, again, is hardly new or controversial, much further than he does. I asked you to specify with a couple of examples, one in particular regarding the fame of Phidias and his works, and you replied that if I had read the book I'd know the answer to my query. So I'm going to go with "bollocks yourself". Perhaps your idea is so powerful that it doesn't need talking about.
The Greek ideal of beauty was mimesis, the imitation of nature. Creativity as we understand it was unknown to them. Greek sculptors did invent, did not make sympbols, did not allegorise. The made marble look like flesh.
Unlike Leonardo and Michelangelo, you mean, who dissected cadavers (at considerable personal risk, it must be noted) in order to make their sculpted bodies look more exact?
Besides, you're limiting yourself to classical sculptures. How about all their satirical or comical statuary. Are you telling me that the Greek depictions of Pan or of Priapos are mimetic? Boy I bet a lot of people would like to be introduced to the model for this work (which is Roman, but just impossibile not to link to. Here's a Greek one). And what about black figure pottery, which is after all Boardman's main area of study. Isn't it highly stylized, and densely symbolic? The figure that enters a picture from the left is the winner in battle. Are you telling me this used to happen in real life?
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Perhaps your idea is so powerful that it doesn't need talking about.
Roflnui
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So I'm going to go with "bollocks yourself". Perhaps your idea is so powerful that it doesn't need talking about.
Act party policy? See the difference is, we cretins read Gio and feel like he is willing to accept our perspective, in spite of our failings, whereas with Paul, not so much.
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Recordari, remind me yr new twitter handle again?
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According to a definition of art that pre-empts the inclusion of the traditional cultural practices of non-Western peoples, I'm sure some of them probably can.
You, being cynical and having your own agenda, choose to see it that way. As I have been arguing for weeks now, the evidence is available; you have produced no evidence. So why should I give a toss about your baseless opinions?
Art for art's sake, as an object of aesthetic appreciation without practical, social or political purposes, never actually applied to a time in history - certainly not to the Rinascimento for which it was supposedly coined .. .
I said it didn't apply in the Rinascimento; that was my point. If you are going to talk about art, you need to read a little further than the first chapter of Gombrich;
...and is a notion utterly shattered by twentieth-century artists
Did you find the time to visit any exhibitions during the Twentieth Century? It is virtually all for its own sake.
We ought to feel free to reject it, and not just because it demeans the indigenous culture of our nation - although that's not a bad reason.
Oh, rubbish it does nothing of the kind; that is nothing more than White Liberal Guilt mixed with an unhealthy dose of philistinism, which can only see value in art when it serves your political purpose..
I'd add that it is of course political advanteguos, from a colonial perspective, to hold philosophical positions that subsume the experience of a culture within another. So to suggest that Maori didn't do art is far from innocent.
Giovanni, there is a nasty, bitter streak to you, that makes the winning of an argument more important than decency and integrity. You have to suggest that I have darker purposes, to put it about that I must be some sort of racist. You don't have the honesty or the integrity to take on an argument squarely. Of course, you would not refer to any of the academic literature on the subject because it probably would not support your view, so instead you insinuate evil intent on my part.
I dispute that the quotes you offered mean anything more than what they say - namely that the Greeks had a different concept of art from ours
You have not read Boardman; you attempted to deceive me and the readers of this thread. I called you on that. You are a fraud.
I am done with you now. I will leave the final word to Ringo:
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You have not read Boardman; you attempted to deceive me and the readers of this thread. I called you on that. You are a fraud.
Jesus Christ.
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No one seems to have asked the most important question: does Art History Man have a cool costume?
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You have not read Boardman; you attempted to deceive me and the readers of this thread. I called you on that. You are a fraud.
Jesus Christ.
No-one's come out of this very well. It's been very funny but.
And those Marian Maguire prints are horrible.
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does Art History Man have a cool costume?
Bet he wears his undies on the outside
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I asked Giovanni about an Estruscan statue the other night: it's known as "Ombra della sera". It was not meant for anything
except (it seems) to be in a grave - to be beautiful, to be for the delectation of the dead. Your definition of art is - deficient.By the way, I really couldnt be bothered giving a response to your earlier call for suggesting where you'd made an error because - you would pother on about "Art" (the capital A is telling) and how that only included material from a certain academically-defined period in Western European art and how the entire world (o, universe for all I know) then taught the rest of the world how to appreciate "Art."
In a pig's ear- -
Looking at Art history papers offered at almost any Western University, it can be observed that Academic Art History allows little more than footnote space to anything beyond the confines of the European tradition and is almost entirely void of references to any influence of global cultural cross-pollination prior to The Renaissance.
The Courtauld Institute of Art;
http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/degreeprogrammes/postgraduate/ma/MAstructure.shtml
http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/degreeprogrammes/undergraduate/BAstructure.shtml
Art History optionals offered at Nottingham University's 3 year BA(Hons) program;
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ugstudy/modules.php?code=000737&mod_year=optional
Year 2
Study trip abroad to a centre of art in Italy or Northern Europe.
etc etc.Personally I've felt Paul has been running this gambit to get us to donate the fare for his grand tour, I get a strong sense of too many books, not enough observation of art.
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It was not meant for anything except (it seems) to be in a grave - to be beautiful, to be for the delectation of the dead.
Yes and no. They are very beautiful - Mum just confirmed to me there are some ombre della sera painted on the walls of the François tomb in Vulci - but they also had a place in the symbolico-magical order of the necropolis. The shadow, along with the demon, was one of the components of what we nowadays call the soul.
And those Marian Maguire prints are horrible.
Could we institute a new rule? That if somebody calls me a fraud then you have to wait at least an hour before declaring something I genuinely like to be "horrible".
Because in the final analysis: I don't know much about art, but I know what I like.
(Apologies if this has been posted on this thread already. Maybe I was just pretending to have read it through, you know.)
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