Posts by Paul Litterick
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
It is not my definition.
-
Indeed, and there are those in the art world who think of crafts as art. But still, what is wrong with the word 'craft?'
-
Your wanting it to be art does not make it art.
-
Islander, it is not my simplistic view: Art is a European invention, a word that describes particular non-utile activities. What is wrong with the word 'craft' to describe beautifully made practical objects?
-
Most crafted objects were made for sale at high prices to people who could afford them: Thomas Chippendale did not make chairs for the mob.
The owners of the chairs did not think they had the same aesthetic value as the paintings the owners commissioned from George Romney. There was and remains a hierarchy of values.
The decorating of a chair is not a comparable activity, intellectually, as the depiction of reality and the expression of emotion. Craft requires skill but not intellect. 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. 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.
-
Stephen Davies has a very useful theory of functional beauty which encompasses the idea. But art is not of that kind, because works of art do not work. By work of art, I mean an object made primarily for aesthetic appreciation, a kind of object which is a European invention. The European perspective in this matter is unavoidable.
-
There is a big difference between an object that is made mostly for aesthetic appreciation and one which has another primary purpose but is also beautifully decorated. I think one would struggle to find similar purposes in their making. A beautifully carved bowl has to fulfill the primary purpose of a container; its beauty is secondary. A painting is primarily of aesthetic value, any other values being secondary and usually incidental.
-
So - re the historical events - they weren't art then but they are now?
I think there was a time before art. Larry Shiner argues that art was invented in the 18th Century, a part of the great enlightenment project of classification. I think the invention is a result of the Renaissance. Certainly, before the 14th Century, there were few individuals noted for their skills and no theories of art. There was creative practice, but it was more a communal, anonymous activity.
I too think the art world and art co-evolved.
The appropriation of historic work and of that of other societies is an activity which I omitted to mention. I have my reservations about this, but the art world appropriates wherever it goes. If you imagine a big cube travelling through space, assimilating any beings with which it came in contact, it would be a bit like that.
I don't think children's drawings or the crafts of indigenous peoples are art as such, but I don't think that diminishes their value. We are captivated by the idea of art, at least a romantic notion of it, and desire all forms of creativity to be regarded as art. Things don't need to be art to have value.
-
Pigeons, meet cat.
I think that an objective falsehood: it is believed to be objectively true, but is not. Mind you, I am no theologian.
-
seem to recall his position being wider: pretty much anyone can be a member of the 'art-world'. And as a 'member' can confer the status/role of art on what they produce.
An awful lot of people can belong to the Art World, but most are not artists. Danto finesses the argument to say that a work of art must be presented as art to the Art World. It is not that anything an artist produces is art; there must be a conscious act of declaring an object to be art by its creator.