Posts by giovanni tiso
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You are doing a disservice to history if you pretend that things which were not regarded as art at the time of they making are art in retrospect.
You are saying that Phydias and Praxiteles weren't considered artists in a meaningful sense in their own time? You're nuts.
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Pray, continue.
Why? How? You seem to think that Art as we know it (as opposed to as you know it, which is quite obviously the case) started in the Quattrocento. Therefore, quite aside form all the non-European art that had been made until that point, it rules out the ancient Greeks.
Phydias was not an artist. And I should waste my time arguing with this why exactly?
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but generally art refers to the European traditions.
Yes, the figures on cave walls and the sculptures and paintings and drawings and etchings and the ceramics and the pottery fashioned by peoples all around the world for thousands of years are only Art if an art historian trained in the European tradition says so. And that is the only useful definition and conception of Art, to be applied now and forever to all cultures.
You really are quite something, Paul.
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I'd like to point out, since no one else has seemed to do so, that this is crap. Lots of non-European societies have done non-utile art type activities.
I took Paul to mean that our idea of Art is European in origin. Which is also crap, but hey.
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Yes but you have to say so that it gets through my dense head. You referred mockingly to "the Truth" before. I just wanted to be clear you were saying you disagreed with positions such as Rich's on fascism (namely that it is clear that it is only subjectively wrong).
If you subscribe to the view that there is no such thing as a single Truth, but rather a series of contingent truths in constant negotiation with one another, then you can and in fact should categorically and, yes, objectively reject Fascism. I don't think that this is in fact a contradiction, quite the contrary.
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I don't see how.
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Holland and Holland shotguns are decorated (in much the same way as your working man's spade). They are not art. They are not intended to be art.
Says you. The specific tools I'm thinking of - and the handles of spades and the blades that I've seen - weren't carved by craftsmen based on a repetivive design. They were unique pieces, and reflected a profound need to behold beautiful objects in the life of people in my family who didn't have the luxury of idle time or disposable income. They may not be of supreme artistic quality, but they are in fact the very definition of what art is.
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Still, you seem pretty fond of it.
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Your wanting it to be art does not make it art.
Yes, so long as we all comply with your narrow definition of art. I get that, believe it or not.
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The purpose of the chair is fulfilled by its having legs and a seat, not by its decorative scroll-work: its beauty is not necessary but applied. An aesthetic purpose is considered more noble and pure than a practical one.
By whom? I say bollocks to that myself. As for this:
Above all, picture-making is not a comparable activity to chair-making: art is valued because of its expression and because it does not have a practical purpose. Art allows an escape from practicality.
A decoration on the handle of a spade is just as non-functional as a painting. It reflects a need to be surrounded by beauty even amongst those who couldn't afford to purchase more expensive art designed to sit around and be looked at. And of course it's still art.