Art as food - food as art
Mani Deli
>art" and/or "art as food". I'm interested in any places you've found or
>put together yourself. Please email me at <hinr...@artswire.org> or post
>your recommendations in a reply here.
>
From my book chapter on technique:
Imagine that an important avant garde modern revolutionary chef opened a
restaurant claiming to specialize in "Spice-ism." Here as in no other place,
this chef served up dishes containing a cup each of salt and pepper,
artistically poured on a mere tablespoon of meat and potatoes lying on a plate
full of parsley. It is very unlikely that anything like this has ever been
served up before, at least in the guise of elegant eating. Yet no one can deny
that this is an entirely new approach.
If a group of exceptionally Modern Food reviewers now took this restaurant
seriously, they might start a gourmet revolution. Any dinner guest who had the
effrontery to express his outrage could be abruptly told that this meal
consisted of nothing unusual. Each and every ingredient was added in the
spirit of good health and classical tradition. Some critics might even admit
that the food might taste bad at first. But they could sternly emphasize that
this was a meal for a very special person, sensitive and appreciating of
change, one who realized that there is far more to cooking than those
eternally repeated gimmicks used in concocting merely tasty dishes.
Those insensitive patrons who might still insist on claiming that this wasn't
really food at all could now be confronted by tangential arguments about the
deeper meaning of true eating and presented with lots of cryptic labels to
show that they were sadly mistaken. Even the chef might be encouraged to
deliver lectures on such murky subjects as subtle combinations, compositional
plate arrangement and the ethereal sensitivities of taste buds. If pressed, he
could even relate how he suffered from involuntary urges to express himself
through the medium of cooking and describe his early sufferings at the hand of
a public which at first ignored him.
In time a coterie of very serious sounding philosophical authorities would
enter the debate and decide whether this cuisine was really new, Apollonian or
Dionisic and write inflated tomes about its intellectual impact. Historians
would collect anecdotes about famous chefs and investigate their girlfriends.
The protests of detractors would for a time be tactfully ignored.
Mani Deli
..no skill no art
James Rowell
Mani Deli <md...@frontier.canrem.com> writes:
>
>>I'm pulling together a virtual gallery of web sites that explore "food as
>
>From my book chapter on technique:
Zzzzzzzzz...
cyli
--
Cyli
'If I die of curiosity, who will entertain
you with naive questions?'
Joachim Stein
>
> >I'm pulling together a virtual gallery of web sites that explore "food as
> >put together yourself. Please email me at <hinr...@artswire.org> or post
> >your recommendations in a reply here.
> >
>
>
>
> Mani Deli
> ..no skill no art
I can't really believe that I'm actually putting energy into arguing with
someone who signs with "Mani Deli ..no skill no art". Are you on a crusade
or something?
I don't think it makes sence to base the concept of art on skill or the
technical or physical capability of prodicing what ever kind of objects.
If you would do so, you would have to invent another term for the kind of
creating, that is called art today. Or do you want to forbid people to
create what they want the things they want. Sometimes a piece of art can be
produzed with techniques almost anybody can use, without having a specific
physical talent. In those works the quality lies in the concept, they
certainly require some intellectual skill (which is not the kind of skill
you demand, I suppose). I assure you, that it is not only some
pseudointellectual assholes who think they can gain something out of
makinig a trend or what ever, who take advantage of those works or who
produce them, but that some people actually take a pleasure out of
considering those works. That fully justifies the existance of those pieces
of art, whether you're willing to call them art or not. If you lack the
intellectual capacity of taking that pleusure, I'm truely sorry. Probably
I'm not the first one to tell you all this and it was probably a waste of
energy, too. The fact that you identify so much with your idea, that you
add it to your signature implies, that you're not really the flexible type.
Joachim
Bruce Attah
> I don't think it makes sence to base the concept of art on skill or the
> technical or physical capability of prodicing what ever kind of objects.
I think it does. The word 'art' in ancient Greece referred to skill.
'Artisans' and 'artists' were the same people until the Cinquecento. Even
today, 'art' and 'skill' are nearly synonymous in common parlance (in such
phrases as 'the art of flower arranging' and 'the art of kite flying').
This meaning of 'art' as 'skill' has not persisted as long as it has
(while so many other words have changed radically in meaning) by
accident. The simple truth is, Mani Deli's slogan is accurate: 'No
skill...no art'.
> If you would do so, you would have to invent another term for the kind of
> creating, that is called art today.
That is quite true, and I wish somebody would. It greatly annoys me that
the output of conceptual 'artists' is called 'art', and that a pretence is
kept up that these individuals are in any meaningful way heirs to the
traditions of the Renaissance, or, indeed, to _any_ artistic tradition.
What these people do is not art, and it does not belong in public spaces
that have been set aside for art. Conceptualism is a usurpation and an
imposition and an impostor and an act of intellectual vandalism.
> Or do you want to forbid people to
> create what they want the things they want.
People may use their leisure to make any silly objects they wish, and I
will not complain, but the individuals and groups who control our public
spaces should not defraud the public by depriving us all of access to the
best art and putting in its place insults and shibboleths. When this
happens, I complain.
> Sometimes a piece of art can be
> produzed with techniques almost anybody can use, without having a specific
> physical talent.
This is true only up to a point. Anyone can, and almost everyone does,
from time to time make something that has charm or intrinsic interest.
There can be no objection to this. What is objectionable is the offensive
habit some delinquent intellectuals have of trumpeting such ordinary stuff
as the work of genius, and apotheosising drab, mediocre individuals,
effectively mocking the true great men and women of art with false
comparisons. Such people are guilty of gatecrashing heaven and of
smearing our most wonderful shared achievements (the true masterpieces)
with the filth of their dishonest rhetoric, so that true artistic
judgement is made difficult and the innocent are cowed, afraid to like
what pleases them most, lest they be thought unmodern or uninformed.
> In those works the quality lies in the concept, they
> certainly require some intellectual skill (which is not the kind of skill
> you demand, I suppose).
Very considerable intellect is required to paint like Leonardo or
Michelangelo, and there is no shortage of concept in a Vermeer's portrait
of a cook. Do not make the mistake that too many writers today make in
thinking that concepts only come in the form of words, and that images are
somehow necessarily lacking in ideas.
> I assure you, that it is not only some
> pseudointellectual assholes who think they can gain something out of
> makinig a trend or what ever, who take advantage of those works or who
> produce them, but that some people actually take a pleasure out of
> considering those works.
People will enjoy what is available to them. Just as a person who grows
up on a poor diet learns to enjoy poor food, so a person accustomed to
'challenging' art learns to be satisfied by the measly scraps of aesthetic
nourishment that it offers.
> That fully justifies the existance of those pieces
> of art, whether you're willing to call them art or not.
Nothing can justify the pile of rocks that Joseph Beuys has left in the
Tate like the overblown litter of a hypertrophied ego.
> If you lack the
> intellectual capacity of taking that pleusure, I'm truely sorry.
Anyone who _really_ has the 'intellectual capacity' that is needed to take
that pleasure, has the intellectual capacity to laugh at this nonesense,
to see through its banality and pomposity to its underlying snobbery and
sleaze.
Jason A. Hutto
Food is not art.
A platterfull of sauces whisked around with a toothpick to make a design
is not enough to be classified as artistic or even expressionistic.
It just makes the meal look like more than regular old food.
It justifies the restaurants charging 25.00 for a dish instead of the
5.00 its really worth. they give it goofy names like nouveau cuisine or
something...
In certain terms it can be compared to art in that some jerks come up
with stupid names for their own work and try to make it seem all
important and worth money when all it is is paint smeared on cloth like
everybody elses stuff...
otherwise, food is food and art is art and the only way they interact is
that food is served at receptions and paintings are hung at restaurants.
Etc.
Jason
--
This has been a message from : Jason A. Hutto (Brother Alphabet)
----------------------------------------------------------------
ja...@ra.msstate.edu | http://www2.msstate.edu/~jah10
Rosa Amarillo
>otherwise, food is food and art is art and the only way they interact is
>that food is served at receptions and paintings are hung at restaurants.
Well, I dunno about all that. I've seen some really impressive ice
sculptures carved by the same person who cooked the food -- or in
many cases, supervised other chefs who cooked the food. Or would
ice sculpture not qualify as being art? It certainly doesn't have the
lasting qualities of a Rothko, a Kline, or even a Warhol.
--
=================================================
May the Peace Dove's wingbeat gently waft
the sweet smell of spring flowers your way
and blanket your pathway in rose pedals.
~ Rosa Amarillo ~
=================================================
Fritillari
I am late to this list, but are we talking about art as a process or art
as a product? In my experience as an artist, I find that the mental,
emotional and physical processes I use to create a piece of "art" are
identical to those I use to create a piece of "craft" - the only
difference is in the resulting product.
Terran Joy McCanna
http://www.kaiaghok.com
sl...@cc.usu.edu
something out that I meant to mention regarding the below:
In article <1996Mar1.0...@cc.usu.edu>, sl...@cc.usu.edu writes:
> In article
> Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah) wrote:
>>I think it does. The word 'art' in ancient Greece
>>referred to skill. 'Artisans' and 'artists' were the same
>>people until the Cinquecento. Even today, 'art' and 'skill'
>>are nearly synonymous in common parlance (in such
>>phrases as 'the art of flower arranging' and 'the art of kite
>>flying'). This meaning of 'art' as 'skill' has not persisted
>>as long as it has (while so many other words have changed
>>radically in meaning) by accident. The simple truth is, Mani
>>Deli's slogan is accurate: 'No skill...no art'.
>
Wrong.
Attah's etymology is all screwed up.
And he's trying to reverse history on us, and he's trying to
claim that contemporary words like artist and artisan were
even around in the Cinquecento.
The contemporary word
"art" stems from the Indo-European root *ar- meaning
"to put things together, to join." It does not have a
Greek origin or evolution. The word-root meandered
through Latin and then also produced the Old French
"art" from which we get the Old English word "art."
It was not associated with painting, sculpture, etc. until
around the 1650s. The Latin version, ars, did convey the idea
of skill (because putting things together implies a
certain sort of skill), and therefore, Deli's statement
"No skill...no art" is stupidly redundant, even
tautological, uninsightful, when seen from a Latin viewpoint.
There's also a fascinating series of double-meanings
associated with the Indo-European root *ar- which in
addition to the above meanings related to our "art," may also
mean "lift" or "to bring together" and is associated with
words like "artery" which before the 1650s both referred to
what we today call arteries and veins, but also to what we
today call the windpipe. The word-root conveys the sense
of how life brings itself together, breathing, pulsing through
tunnels and passageways -- and to connect that livelihood with
art, an exterior putting together of things (the artifice) as
opposed to the interior putting together of things (the artery),
both of which may be seen as organic breathing entities.
The Greek word tekhne denoted 'craft, skill, trade, art' and is
today's root for words like technical, technique, architect...
It probably stemmed from the Indo-European root *tek- which meant
"shape, make" and which evolved into Greek tekton, 'carpenter,
builder.' The word 'technique' comes to us today from using
the Old French adjective 'technique' as a noun.
Therefore in an ancient sense to speak about the techniques of
art is to speak about the constructing and shaping of that which
may be joined together. More poetically, the techniques of art
act as pulsing lifeblood, changing and flowing, combining and
recombining, placing together and mediating life with life.
To say that the techniques of art are combined skillfully is
to add the element of conscious, cognitive purpose to this
equation: aware life joined with aware life.
Of course the ancient meanings may change, and so is the case
with "art" which today refers to a far broader spectrum of
activities than ever before...
Greg Scheckler
SL...@cc.usu.edu
Bruce Attah
Amarillo) wrote:
> In article <4h8236$h...@Isis.MsState.Edu>, ja...@Ra.MsState.Edu says...
>
> >otherwise, food is food and art is art and the only way they interact is
> >that food is served at receptions and paintings are hung at restaurants.
>
> Well, I dunno about all that. I've seen some really impressive ice
> sculptures carved by the same person who cooked the food -- or in
> many cases, supervised other chefs who cooked the food. Or would
> ice sculpture not qualify as being art? It certainly doesn't have the
> lasting qualities of a Rothko, a Kline, or even a Warhol.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That bit's quite amusing. Whatever qualities Rothko's paintings may have
had, lasting is not one of them. Rothko's disregard for (or ignorance of)
the craft of oil painting was such that many of his works have pretty much
self-destructed.
As to the question of whether food can be art: If Michelangelo's David
were made of cake icing rather than marble, would it be art or not?
Ice sculptures are usually not art, not because they are made of ice, nor
because they are bound to melt, but because they are naff.
Bruce Attah
> Hello,
>
> I would like to offer the possibility of synthesizing these opposing
> "opinions" on craftsmanship and conceptualization. Consider that perhaps
> for art to exist, skill must be applied to the expression of some aspect
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> of the human condition.
Unfortunately, this proposal, sensible though it may sound is no
synthesis. The opposition asserts that skill is *not* necessary.
> As a necessary corrolary, there must be
> transmission of this skillful expression from the creator/artist to the
> receiver/audience.
Some members of the opposition have even asserted that there is no need
for a receiver or audience --- that a work of art can be entirely private
with no actual or intended other to play the role of audience.
> There are many forms of
> expression we call art, and "fine art" is distinguished from the "art" of
> an artisan, or the skilled craftsperson, not usually by the degree of it's
> craftsmanship, but by the human content and value.
If I read you correctly, art is craft + something else. Well, the
opposition argues that art is something else, and craft does not come into
it.
> This opens the door
> for much conceptual art,
I have to say, I disagree with this. Most conceptual art is anti-craft;
most conceptual art is also thin in "human content and value"; so most
conceptual art is not admitted by this formula, in my opinion.
> which I personally agree is mostly
> experimentation,
Experimentation has no place in art galleries. Artists should keep their
experiments in their studios, and present only finished accomplishments as
art. Experiments are science, not art.
> but then again representational art has roughly a 3000
> year headstart on "modern" art, thus the language/vernacular/tools of
> "classical" art are certainly more well honed.
As far as anyone can tell, representational art is probably as old as
humankind. There are cave drawings 35,000 years old. Decorative abstract
art is probably of equal age. The disadvantage that conceptualism suffers
is not merely a matter of a few millenia, but also that it is congenitally
flawed. If I want to get a complex idea across to you, and images are
ill-suited to the task, I have a wonderful alternative means, known as
language. To refuse to use either images or language, which are both part
of my instinctual nature, and to fumble about instead with bricks, lard
and sharks in tanks would be Quixotic to the point of stupidity, and
indeed it is.
> And add to this that
> Rembrandt, probably one of the most known and respected traditional
> painters ever, was almost entirely a "mercenary" artist and businessman,
> and so his content was bought before it was conceived.
In a superficial, conceptualist sense, his content may indeed have been
"bought before it was conceived", but in reality, the content of a
Rembrandt painting comes entirely from the depths of Rembrandt's soul.
When Rembrandt was chosen to fulfil a commission, he was chosen because of
his excellence in the craft of painting and because of that magical extra
something that appears in art when great accomplishment in skill allies
itself to the particular humanness of an artisan.
> Paul Kosmas
sl...@cc.usu.edu
> In article <1996Mar1.0...@cc.usu.edu>, sl...@cc.usu.edu (Greg
>> >> for the kind of creating, that is called art today.
>> >
>> >That is quite true, and I wish somebody would. It greatly
>> >annoys me that the output of conceptual 'artists' is called
>>
>> Michelangelo was doing was art. The term did not exist
>> in its current form until we got Immanuel Kant.
>
> True, but false. Right, yet wrong. The idea of art in the abstract
> emerged as philosophers from the Enlightenment onward considered what
> features the various 'arts' had in common.
they took what was in those traditions previously unrelated activities
such as painting, sculpture, poetry, music etc. and glommed them
altogether as if they were one thing, the larger abstract that they
called 'art.' These same philosophers then at that time continued
the older tradition of wrestling out which of these many forms of
'art' was better, and we get lots of stupid analyses, even gradings
of artists of all sorts by well-known writers(turned critics) of the
time, like Roger de Piles. Guess who got the highest marks?
is it any surprise that at the same time all this glomming together
of things was going on, that imperialism reigned, that so many europeans
thought they conquered everything and held an enlightened set of
opinions up as truth? As if there were one overall big art... the
monotheists everywhere.
> This idea is useful in
> aesthetic philosophy as long as one does not make the mistake of reifying
> it into something that can exist as 'Art' (usually capitalized) in the
> absence of a particular artistic practice or artistic tradition.
> This reification has resulted in artless practices that shadow artistic
> ones. These practices do not mimic the *essential* practices of art
> (aesthetic and skilled), but only the peripheral---e.g., being shown in
> galleries, claiming a place in history and a tradition, etc. The arts of
> painting and sculpture are hounded out of their proper homes by these
> shadow-arts.
we both know that the ideas of what art, the arts, etc., is/are have
changed. dramatic changes occurred at a variety of flashpoints,
historically speaking. so the form of art, and its subject matter or
areas of inquiry may also shift and evolve.
besides that, the gallery system really didn't exist until this
century and the museum system is less than two centuries old. So you can't
possibly claim that those places are the "proper homes" of any art
form whose traditions are older than that.
> One way to appreciate correctly our contemporary use of the word 'art' is
> to imagine what would have happened had you turned up in Rome in the
> sixteenth century and asked "Where can I find some Art?" (you would have
> had to speak modern Italian, of course) Naturally, you would have
> received some very funny looks. However, were you in that same place and
> time to say "Is not Michelangelo a great master of the art of fresco
> painting?" your question would be well understood---and assented to.
i don't know about the assent part. there was a lot of argument about
him back then.
>> Renaissance
>> frescoes are not art, and to call them such is to slap
>> contemporary labels and constructs onto what was a
>> significantly different engagement, namely, a highly
>> articulated and beautifully shocking religious
>> expression.
>
> I do not believe that this is the right way of looking at things. We
> know, both from the works themselves and from what contemporaries wrote
> about them, that the creators of those frescoes had intentions that we can
> recognize as artistic.
it's our intention, our words and ideas for art that's being slapped
onto these old things like bumper stickers on cars. we remain
ignorant of intention and written accounts of what we now name
'art' especially in the cases of very ancient objects, about which
we know literally nothing in terms of intention or even utility of
the object. We can figure out a lot about how these objects were
made, the age of the objects, etc... and compare that information
to techniques we might use today... but calling the techniques
'artistic' misleads unless we actually know enough of the intent
of the objects' creators (was it an aesthetic intent? could there
be an aesthetic intent before the ideas of 'aesthetic' existed?)
I say no.
>This is not to deny that there were other
> intentions operating simultaneously.
we don't even know if there was any intention at all.
> (I am inclined to doubt that there
> has ever been a work of art created that was created without intentions
> that could be described as 'not artistic'.)
no duh, the words as we know them include that, we defined them that way.
bust out of the meme-machine why don't you?
> Furthermore, I do not think
> we need to understand the non-artistic motives present in a work of art,
> in order to understand that it is art (even if the maker's contemporaries
> had no equivalent word for art as used here). Our cultural distance from
> the authors of such artefacts must, I think, dull our appreciation of
> their aesthetic merits, but not absolutely.
cannot distance make the heart fonder? why should distance dull
our appreciation? what other ways can we appreciate an
object, besides aesthetic ways?
>> As regards even more ancient forms, we
>> simply do not know what the cultural roles of cave
>> paintings, the venus of willendorf, etc., were... we
>> cannot adequetly say that they were art. We do not
>> know what they were doing, and we should respect that
>> ignorance and just get on with things.
>
> When we discover artefacts from remote times, we may have difficulty in
> divining their cultural role, but as to whether or not those artefacts
> display the mark of art, there can be little doubt.
when we cannot establish the basic facts of the object's originations,
we can do nothing but SUPPOSE that it MIGHT be art.
Furthermore, 'art' has no particular mark, it's a recent abstract
idea, not a shape, not an appearance, not a look. It cannot be
seen in anything. this is called the blindness of art.
because 'art' is an idea, then the making of 'art' is an
abstract endeavor, idea-based. making 'art' is philosophical,
knowledge-dependant. of course here we get into the major
problems of much western philosophy...namely, how do we
bridge these separated worlds of abstract ideal and real/physical.
artists know.
> We can look at a cave
> painting, say, or a carved object and say without too much head-scratching
> whether or not it is a work of art, whatever else it may be. There is no
> need to be so humble about such matters, because the presence or absence
> of art in an artefact is a matter of objective fact. Bold assertion, but
> I stand by it.
I hope you don't ever say something like "I know it when I see it"
or "The proof is in the pudding." Art has no taste. works of
art sometimes do, sometimes don't, sometimes also have no form.
>> We may
>> today see these items as art, but that's today,
>> and hence again the idea of "art" is contemporary.
>
> Supposing an anthropologist came across a society that had what appeared
> to be a language, but no word for 'language'? Would the absence of that
> word be cause for doubting the actuality of the language observed?
that problem happens all the time... we miss so much by not having
good names for things that are foreign to us... think of how so many
aboriginal tribes were wrongly labelled as 'primitive,' 'uncivilized,'
etc.
> I think not. So it is, I am convinced, with art. People may practice it
> without discussing it in terms that require a generic word to cover it as
> a phenomenon.
i imagine that such a scenario is possible.
> The fact that we have done so does not make our usage
> inapplicable outside the social context that created it.
but maybe we should be very very careful with how we wrap our words
around things that we know little of.
Greg Scheckler
SL...@cc.usu.edu
aharon
art is a kind of food. A life based food. Without art there is no
(human) life. Without that energy/food we define as 'art' we can not
function. Therefore 'art' should be imagined as food or energy - not as
art-affacts such as paintings/sculpture/music/cooking/multimedia etc..
aharon email:a.a...@bton.ac.uk
Researcher at
C.C.C.W.
University of Brighton Tel.: (0)1273 643 119
England
sl...@cc.usu.edu
> Art is the spirit that makes life. The energy of life. On that level
> art is a kind of food. A life based food. Without art there is no
> (human) life. Without that energy/food we define as 'art' we can not
> function. Therefore 'art' should be imagined as food or energy - not as
> art-affacts such as paintings/sculpture/music/cooking/multimedia etc..
>
to see art as a constellation of mutable energies, and to
recognize that we too are constellations of mutable energies,
and that all energy may be designed, is, I think, to get at
the root of the meanings of the words art, skill, technique,
etc.
i must admit to being in very much that state of mind when
creating artwork of all the types that i do (painting, poetry,
drawing, sculpting, performance, taiji, etc.) because having such
a viewpoint-of-energy-bases allows me to bridge easily across the barriers
of any particular form for art, fluidly.
Greg Scheckler
SL...@cc.usu.edu
sl...@cc.usu.edu
> In <1996Mar5.1...@cc.usu.edu> sl...@cc.usu.edu (Greg Scheckler) writes:
>
>
>>Secondly "aesthetics" wasn't even coined
>>until 1735 when Baumgarten came up with it and Kant
>>took a hold of it a little later. In 1764 Johann
>>Winckelman published "The History of Art and
>>Antiquity," which became a foundation for the study
>>of art history, and he's the buffoon who wrote about
>>history in terms of the linear evolution of style. He's
>>the guy who tried to make it all make sense, but he
>>didn't realize that "art" is a relatively
>>recent term and idea... art is about two-hundred fifty
>>years old.
>
>
> I agree with the sentiments, but Vasari's "Lives of the Sai^K^K^K Artists"
> was the first to write a linear history as evolution of style,
Vasari's work i think is more aptly loosely called "biography" (?)
it doesn't break things into specific nameable genres or
historical periods as much...
>but it is
> true that he was not foundational in the sense that either Winckelman or
> Burkhardt were -- and speaking of Burkhardt, it seems that what we think of
> as 'art' is much less than 250 years but closer to, say, the time of
> Burkhardts book on the renaissance. That is, the 19th century. To understand
> art as we do, from the standpoint of art history (and we can't get away from
> that) means we had to have some sense of periodization to begin with --
> Burkhardt gave this questionable gift to us in the invention of the
> Renaissance as some sort of coherent, idealized time when (as you so rightly
> point out) there was no such beast.
burkhardt, baumgarten... whichever. i disagree that 'we had to have
some sense of periodization to begin with,' i think that's just the
critical method some of these earlier dudes were working with...
> And let us not forget that Winckelman also managed to write his most
> influential book on works he had only 'seen' in reproduction ...
actually I didn't know that... i assumed he'd actually seen it :(
> such as
> woodcuts of the Laocoon. Now, wood prints at the time were not exactly the
> most ideal way of seeing what a piece would look like, usually consisting of
> a few lines to suggest a general form. This doesn't discredit his work,
> however, as he wasn't really ocnerned witht he material work but was
> concerned with the metaphysical, the suprasensible in the oh-so-cute
> neo-platonic way that he was. That he didn't see the works didn't really
> matter, he was just longing for the golden past and thus anything that might
> be from the classical greek period (even if it really turned out to be roman
> copies of much later date, as most of our 'classical greek statutary' really
> is) had to -- by his definition -- be good.
> --
> "Every age gets the renaissance it deserves." (Aby Warburg)
nice quotation... thanks for the extra comments here...
Greg Scheckler
SL...@cc.usu.edu
> Michael Maranda *** mm0...@uhura.cc.rochester.edu
Michael Betancourt
>
> 1. I believe that minds are machines, and that intentions are properties
> of these machines.
>
> 2. I believe that we can guess the intentions of such machines and
> usefully predict or interpret their behaviour by so doing. We make
> reasonable assumptions about other minds' basic similarity to our own, and
> imagine what purposes might be achieved by their behaviour and what
> circumstances might constrain it.
You know (this is NOT a flame) that most totalitarian regimes agree with this
point view, don't you?
> 3. The accuracy and precision of our guesses will vary according to the
> available evidence.
>
> 4. The degree of finality of an answer probably depends on the depth of
> our curiosity. If our curiosity is satisfied by an answer, that is likely
> to be the final answer.
>
> If I come across a painting that bears convincing resemblance to a
> buffalo, I can surmise that someone made the painting intentionally, and
> furthermore, I can surmise that the person intended it to look like a
> buffalo. These guesses are reasonable because it is extremely unlikely
> that such an image could be created without such an intention.
This is a very questionable assertion. Kandinski "discovered" his early
abstract style by seeing one of his paintings turned sideways one evening...
> furthermore, the image displays a certain grace, I can guess that that
> aspect, too, is intentional, because chance would dictate that the image
> be clumsy.
This is not necessarily the case, but it's not worth arguing about.
> I know that troglodyte brains are almost identical to modern
Who are the "troglodyes"? Having grown-up on archaeological excavations, this
statement seems very biased against ancient "primative" peoples.
> human brains, so if this buffalo-image appears in a cave and is many
> thousands of years old, my best guesses as to the intentions of the
> painter come from putting myself imaginatively in the painter's world.
> Why would I paint a buffalo, and try to make the painting both accurate
> and pretty? Some people would suggest that magic must have something to
> do with it, and that the presence of a magical intention precludes the
> artistic. I say that I doubt art has ever existed that was intended
> *solely* as art, and that religious or practical intentions on the part of
> an artist do not preclude the aesthetic. If they do, then there is
> *nothing* that we can say with certainty is art. At the very least,
> almost everything in our art galleries, whether pre-modern, modern or
> post-modern, is suspect.
You understand one post-modern position very well, although it can be turned
around thus: Everything is art.
--
Michael Betancourt
Bruce Attah
<mw...@mosquito.com> wrote:
> Bruce Attah wrote:
> >
> > This, however, is not the place for humility. We can
> > detect the representation in images with considerable reliabilit by
> > mere inspection of the images. There may be times when there is doubt
> > about what is represented, and there may be times when our ignorance
> > of the thing represented leads us to conclude that an image is
> > abstract when it in fact is not, but most of the time, we will be
> > right.
>
> > How do we know *anyone's* intentions, other than our own?
>
> > Guesswork and theorizing, if they are not part of a search for
> > answers, are a very empty sort of game. We guess, and we theorize,
> > and we acknowledge the limits of our guesses and theories, and we try
> > to get past them by producing better guesses and theories. We do all
> > this because we are searching for answers.
>
> Does anyone else see that this argument is internally contrdictory:
>
> That cave painting's intentions to representation are "clearly visible"
> is an intentional fallacy, yet, the intentional fallacy is a support for
> this arugment which has something to do with a quest for *final*
> answers, and dismisses anything that isn't part of such a quest as a
> game. However, aren't *final* answers rendered problematic (if not
> impossible) by the same logic that produces the intentional fallacy?
>
> How then can they be searched for?
>
> This seems circular and contradictory to me. . .
Perhaps the following integrate the ideas expressed above that you find
contradictory:
1. I believe that minds are machines, and that intentions are properties
of these machines.
2. I believe that we can guess the intentions of such machines and
usefully predict or interpret their behaviour by so doing. We make
reasonable assumptions about other minds' basic similarity to our own, and
imagine what purposes might be achieved by their behaviour and what
circumstances might constrain it.
3. The accuracy and precision of our guesses will vary according to the
available evidence.
4. The degree of finality of an answer probably depends on the depth of
our curiosity. If our curiosity is satisfied by an answer, that is likely
to be the final answer.
If I come across a painting that bears convincing resemblance to a
buffalo, I can surmise that someone made the painting intentionally, and
furthermore, I can surmise that the person intended it to look like a
buffalo. These guesses are reasonable because it is extremely unlikely
that such an image could be created without such an intention. If,
furthermore, the image displays a certain grace, I can guess that that
aspect, too, is intentional, because chance would dictate that the image
be clumsy. I know that troglodyte brains are almost identical to modern
Bruce Attah
mm0...@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Michael Gerard Maranda) wrote:
>
> Art, as we understand it today, was invented by art history. Art history, on
> its own, needed periodization to get out of the double bind that both Vasari
> and Winkelman pose -- that bind being, if we have already achieved the
> perfection of art [...]
> [...] history seems like a naturalised
> sort of thing 'casue we're infected by this thing called historical
> consciousness, a virus that might have been crafted in the 18th century but
> became epidemic only in the 19th.
>
> Without periodization, however, we can't speak of art styles, which without
> which we can't think about art as we do. [...]
Thank you for explaining so clearly why art history is of no relevance to
artists and why the modern reification of 'art' is harmful, and why
artists should ignore any pressure they may feel to try to be 'modern'.
> Oh, but I forgot, I'm bringing up ideas here. Sorry to any and all who don't
> like such diversions. Technique instead ... make sure you gesso your canvas
> well and keep your brush well loaded. You never know when you might have to
> paint out an idea or two.
Just in case there are any newbies reading this: As far as I know, nobody
has yet complained about this group being used for theoretical
discussions. Indeed this sort of discussion has always been a feature of
this group.
Bruce Attah
> As if there were one overall big art... the monotheists everywhere.
Are you agreeing with me, then? I have defended the idea of 'the art of
this' and 'the art of that' in opposition to the idea of 'Art'. The
latter I have called a reification. If you accept this, you ought not to
find it terribly difficult to accept the possibility that works of art
(i.e., objects that are created as examples of 'the art of' something)
existed before the idea of 'Art' as such emerged.
> > This reification has resulted in artless practices that shadow artistic
> > ones. These practices do not mimic the *essential* practices of art
> > (aesthetic and skilled), but only the peripheral---e.g., being shown in
> > galleries, claiming a place in history and a tradition, etc. The arts of
> > painting and sculpture are hounded out of their proper homes by these
> > shadow-arts.
> [...]
> besides that, the gallery system really didn't exist until this
> century and the museum system is less than two centuries old. So you can't
> possibly claim that those places are the "proper homes" of any art
> form whose traditions are older than that.
The proper home for a Renaissance altarpiece was in a Renaissance
altar---until it was no longer wanted there. Art galleries and museums
are now proper homes for such objects, as they were built to house them.
Not only that, but museums give such objects a new lease of life now that
their religious function has expired. I believe that part of their
original purpose (namely, the aesthetic, which I suggest was present from
the first) continues to be fulfilled when these objects are transferred to
their new location.
But I was not talking about the stuff that was created before the first
galleries were built, but the stuff that emerged after. Painting _now_ is
being marginalised by conceptualism. If conceptualism actually had
anything worthwhile to offer, that would not be so terrible, but the
poverty of this new artform travesties the purpose of public theatres of
art.
>
> > One way to appreciate correctly our contemporary use of the word 'art' is
> > to imagine what would have happened had you turned up in Rome in the
> > sixteenth century and asked "Where can I find some Art?" (you would have
> > had to speak modern Italian, of course) Naturally, you would have
> > received some very funny looks. However, were you in that same place and
> > time to say "Is not Michelangelo a great master of the art of fresco
> > painting?" your question would be well understood---and assented to.
>
> i don't know about the assent part. there was a lot of argument about
> him back then.
Well, all right, _some_ might have assented. Clearly, though, you concede
my point.
> >> Renaissance
> >> frescoes are not art, and to call them such is to slap
> >> contemporary labels and constructs onto what was a
> >> significantly different engagement, namely, a highly
> >> articulated and beautifully shocking religious
> >> expression.
> >
> > I do not believe that this is the right way of looking at things. We
> > know, both from the works themselves and from what contemporaries wrote
> > about them, that the creators of those frescoes had intentions that we can
> > recognize as artistic.
>
> it's our intention, our words and ideas for art that's being slapped
> onto these old things like bumper stickers on cars. we remain
> ignorant of intention and written accounts of what we now name
> 'art' especially in the cases of very ancient objects, about which
> we know literally nothing in terms of intention or even utility of
> the object. We can figure out a lot about how these objects were
> made, the age of the objects, etc... and compare that information
> to techniques we might use today... but calling the techniques
> 'artistic' misleads unless we actually know enough of the intent
> of the objects' creators
This merely restates your starting position without adding anything new.
> (was it an aesthetic intent? could there
> be an aesthetic intent before the ideas of 'aesthetic' existed?)
> I say no.
Were there mammals before the idea of 'mammalian' existed? I say yes.
>
> >This is not to deny that there were other
> > intentions operating simultaneously.
>
> we don't even know if there was any intention at all.
I'll ask you this question again: how do we attribute intentions to people
and things? How do I know that you intended to type "we don't even know
if there was any intention at all"? How do you know that I intend to
convince you that we can infer people's intentions from their actions?
Let me also ask you something else: do you believe that there is anyone
alive today who could paint a realistic picture of a buffalo without
intending to do so? (Exclude from consideration trick situations such as
those in which someone else's intentions are required.)
>
> > (I am inclined to doubt that there
> > has ever been a work of art created that was created without intentions
> > that could be described as 'not artistic'.)
>
> no duh, the words as we know them include that, we defined them that way.
^^^
How many times in the past few weeks have you managed to insert the
suggestion into your posts that I am stupid or mad? How many times do you
want me to go on ignoring these slights? Shall I switch on the sarcasm
now, or leave it until later?
Too late. I have already decided that I will not refrain from sarcasm in
replying to your posts when the urge takes me.
>
> > [...] Our cultural distance from
> > the authors of such artefacts must, I think, dull our appreciation of
> > their aesthetic merits, but not absolutely.
>
> cannot distance make the heart fonder? why should distance dull
> our appreciation? what other ways can we appreciate an
> object, besides aesthetic ways?
>
Perhaps I was not clear enough here. By "dull our appreciation", I did
not mean "make us like less". Rather I meant that our appreciation would
not be as finely honed as it might be, since we would miss relevant facts
that could affect our judgement.
> > When we discover artefacts from remote times, we may have difficulty in
> > divining their cultural role, but as to whether or not those artefacts
> > display the mark of art, there can be little doubt.
>
> when we cannot establish the basic facts of the object's originations,
> we can do nothing but SUPPOSE that it MIGHT be art.
> Furthermore, 'art' has no particular mark, it's a recent abstract
> idea, not a shape, not an appearance, not a look. It cannot be
> seen in anything. this is called the blindness of art.
Your assertion that art "has no particular mark" is at the nub of our
disagreement. I am confident that some things are clearly art and others
clearly not, and that, furthermore, all those things that are art possess
a family resemblance to one another. We recognize art as easily as we
recognize games, and just as animals and infants may play games without
having the word 'game' or any knowledge of the rich corpus of ideas that
has grown up around that word in recent decades, so people can practise
art without having read Hegel.
> because 'art' is an idea, then the making of 'art' is an
> abstract endeavor, idea-based.
It does not follow. "Human" is an abstract idea, but making humans is not
an "abstract endeavor, idea-based"---not over here, anyway. Maybe things
are done differently in your neck of the woods.
> making 'art' is philosophical,
> knowledge-dependant. of course here we get into the major
> problems of much western philosophy...namely, how do we
> bridge these separated worlds of abstract ideal and real/physical.
> artists know.
Gee-whizz. I wish I were an artist.
> > We can look at a cave
> > painting, say, or a carved object and say without too much head-scratching
> > whether or not it is a work of art, whatever else it may be. There is no
> > need to be so humble about such matters, because the presence or absence
> > of art in an artefact is a matter of objective fact. Bold assertion, but
> > I stand by it.
>
> I hope you don't ever say something like "I know it when I see it"
> or "The proof is in the pudding."
Just to upset you: I know it when I see it.
> Art has no taste. works of art sometimes do, sometimes don't, sometimes
also have no form.
I have no idea what "art has no taste" means (perhaps you would like to
clarify for me), but I do know what "works of art...sometimes...have no
form" means. It is similar to "Vertebrates sometimes have no spine" or
"Trees sometimes have no trunk" in its import.
>
> >> We may
> >> today see these items as art, but that's today,
> >> and hence again the idea of "art" is contemporary.
> >
> > Supposing an anthropologist came across a society that had what appeared
> > to be a language, but no word for 'language'? Would the absence of that
> > word be cause for doubting the actuality of the language observed?
>
> that problem happens all the time... we miss so much by not having
> good names for things that are foreign to us... think of how so many
> aboriginal tribes were wrongly labelled as 'primitive,' 'uncivilized,'
> etc.
>
> > I think not. So it is, I am convinced, with art. People may practice it
> > without discussing it in terms that require a generic word to cover it as
> > a phenomenon.
>
> i imagine that such a scenario is possible.
In so imagining, you are (once again) conceding my point.
Michael Betancourt
> Well, actually, there have been three or four complaints in the last week
> directly saying that 'too much theory' or whatever, and others who post
> repeatedly against any close look at the historical positioning of art
> practices et al ... and this has been the usual norm for the three years
> that I have been following this group.
You're right about this: however, you forget to mention that (my experience)
that these are often the same people...
--
Michael Betancourt
mailto:mw...@mosquito.com
web page: http://www.mosquito.com/~mwb2
Michael Betancourt
> PLEASE!! I AM GETTING SICK OF THIS. No more references to totalitarian
> governments. My statements 1 and 2 amount to nothing more or less than an
> expression of a species of philosophical materialism.
I never said it wasn't.
> This is politically
> quite neutral as regards totalitarianism/liberalism.
This would be the case with many things, if only they would stop keep using
it to justify their acts. Oh, well.
> If you'll excuse me for making assumptions,
(yes. see later)
> may I dare suggest that you
> read a little introductory material on mental philosophy (Churchland,
> Dennett &c) before you draw any further conclusions about the implications
> of the above ideas.
In this case the assumption was in error.
> > > I know that troglodyte brains are almost identical to modern
> >
> > Who are the "troglodyes"? Having grown-up on archaeological excavations, this
> > statement seems very biased against ancient "primative" peoples.
>
> 'Troglodyte' is an amusingly archaic and non-PC sounding word that turns
> out to mean nothing more or less than 'cave dweller'.
Unfortunately, while the dictionary may say such, the implication is quite the
reverse...
> Which amounts to more or less the same thing: po-mo thinking is unable to
> distinguish art from non-art,[...] my
> strongest suspicion is that po-mo thinking is useless and wrong-headed
> from start to finish.
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion.
--
Michael Betancourt
sl...@cc.usu.edu
>Greg responded, vis.:
>>it doesn't break things into specific nameable genres or
>>historical periods as much...
> Well, it does and it doesn't. For Vasari, art was over, finished with.
> All roads led to Micheangelo and from then on all that was possible was
> academic work -- vasari himself set up schools to that effect. He also
> wasn't *wuite* only a biographer, as he was making quite strong value
> judgements regarding the various artist's ouevres.
ooofyeah... too true.
> [clip, Vasari's 2 periods, etc]
>>burkhardt, baumgarten... whichever. i disagree that 'we had to have
>>some sense of periodization to begin with,' [critical method]
> [clip, periodization and the need for it or not]
> Well, I'll stick to my point on this one.
>
> Vasari, as we will recall, didn't have periodization -- he had History in
> the sense that things happened - being singular (or, to put it another way,
> he most certainly had read Hegel on the part about progress and such)(no
> need for an iron-icon here, is there?) Winkelman, too, although less
> hegelian in the sense that in his not so humble opinion, something went
> wrong somewhere where the Romans started to imitate the Greeks --
> ironically, again, being the work that he most admired in that most of the
> 'Greek' statutary that he so liked was Roman a la grec (commonly now known
> as Graeco-Roman due to our ideas of progress in art, and that as 'copies'
> they have to refer back to the 'originals' (now 'lost') in name.) Or, Geist
> took a wrong turn when it left Attica and traversed to that other peninsula
> (present-day-Italy).
big smirk here.
> Art, as we understand it today, was invented by art history.
but at least also by the philosophical inquiry 'aesthetics' and
its overlapping with art, artists, art-historians too, eh?
especially recently... isn't that why we get so many artists
distancing themselves from theory?
> Art history, on
> its own, needed periodization to get out of the double bind that both Vasari
> and Winkelman pose -- that bind being, if we have already achieved the
> perfection of art (echoes of another common poster of the forum here, no?)
> in the likes of the fab four (for Vasari) or in Classical work (for
> Winkelman) then why do we bother with contemporary work at all??? Easy!
paradox: easy today, not so easy then though:
> Winkelman actually has the seeds of the answer, we do it all over again --
> only for him that wasn't likely to happen in the not-so-distant-future. We
> repeat the experience by learning from the past. Burkhardt (with the help of
> Vasari) saw this as already happened once .. in the form of the now invented
> Renaissance. Then, following him, we get people like Pater and, and tis is
> the important part, Wolfflin (you know, the guy who wrote that book on the
> classic and the baroque who you were supposed to read in AH101 but didn't
> bother to 'cause it seemed so obvious.) Why was it so obvoius? Cause
> everything that happens since him is influenced by his formal stylistic
> categories (five in number) which are then used to define any art movement,
> from decadence (gothic) to rise (transistional stuff like Cimabue and
> friends) to classic (ren. proper) to decline (baroque) and then repeats with
> another cast of characters. The fact that he wrote this for a specific
> period, something that arose in the 19th century along with 'History' which
> itself needs periodization to be accepted. history seems like a naturalised
> sort of thing 'casue we're infected by this thing called historical
> consciousness, a virus that might have been crafted in the 18th century but
> became epidemic only in the 19th.
now that does make much more sense... it's interesting to note that our
particular historical consciousness conceives of time as cyclic/spiral
onwards and never going back. of course, we don't have to think of time
that way. Many less linear options are presented to us today not only from
other cultures, but from some of our own best sciences like
quantum physics.
> Without periodization, however, we can't speak of art styles, which without
> which we can't think about art as we do.
we could speak of a style without necessarily linking it to a particular
time period. we could formulate the "crimson red style" to talk about
crimson red things, etc. but yes, such options would certainly change
our vocabulary a lot.
> Funny how it all fits together
> (although, this is the shorthand version so it might seem a little
> sketchy. For further reading might I suggest Stephen Bann's 'Clothing of
> Clio' as a place to look for a more coherent account of similar ideas, or
> Michael Baxandal's work, or Michael Holly's essays on Burkhardt in Critical
> Inquiry, or Bryson's Context and Text article, or ... well, enough citations
> for several postings.)
i agree that those are excellent sources and well worth reading.
i liked Baxandal in particular
> Which is one way of saying that periodization isn't only something that
> those (as you so beautifully put it) 'earlier dudes' used, but that we are
> still stuck with. An idea that founded art history (the renaissance) is also
> the terms in which we can only continue to speak about it -- whether in
> acceptance of the ground rules or in reaction against them -- for a while
> yet.
i don't think of them so much as 'ground rules' though,
maybe as common ground that can be changed about as needed:
mutatis mutandis (b/c after all, we humans made this art-historical
ground so we can take it apart or make new ground and so on).
we aren't stuck there unless we wanna be. do we wanna be?
> You might not buy this fatality, as you did point out in another posting
> that you think it possible to look without a pre-existing framework.
yeah, and the process is ineffable too, so i shoulda stopped there b/c:
> You trip yourself on this one, though, as you credit it to a po-mo line of
> though -- a mistake that betrays you are saying that with a pre-existing
^^^ i know you meant thought but "a po'mo line of though" equals grin :)
> framework that commonly thinks of such ideas as being po-mo.
good point! tooshay to you! I love that. call me Althusser, oh
wait, you did:
> It's more straightforwardly structuralist
> (not even post-structuralist!) --
> Levi-Strauss, Althusser (although he would claim on occasion that
> transparent vision was possible under certain conditions), Lacan -- all good
> structuralists. Oh, and let us not forget Saussure and Freud on that point.
> And, to extend the line back a little further -- (and this is quite the
> temporal leap) St. Augustine would have claimed the same.
okay, so, why am i relying on a strategy of transparent vision?
Greg Scheckler
SL...@cc.usu.edu
Michael Gerard Maranda
>In article <1996Mar11....@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>,
>mm0...@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Michael Gerard Maranda) wrote:
>>
>> Art, as we understand it today, was invented by art history. Art history, on
>> its own, needed periodization to get out of the double bind that both Vasari
>> and Winkelman pose -- that bind being, if we have already achieved the
>> perfection of art [...]
>> [...] history seems like a naturalised
>> sort of thing 'casue we're infected by this thing called historical
>> consciousness, a virus that might have been crafted in the 18th century but
>> became epidemic only in the 19th.
>>
>> Without periodization, however, we can't speak of art styles, which without
>> which we can't think about art as we do. [...]
>Thank you for explaining so clearly why art history is of no relevance to
>artists and why the modern reification of 'art' is harmful, and why
>artists should ignore any pressure they may feel to try to be 'modern'.
Gosh, I said *that*? As both an art historian and an artist, I think that
my position owud be more the opposite, that artists cannot ignore art
history. Without that, they pursue ideas of the naivity of art production
which leads to predictible and boring work which the artist thinks is the
greatest thing since sliced bread.
>> Oh, but I forgot, I'm bringing up ideas here. Sorry to any and all who don't
>> like such diversions. Technique instead ... make sure you gesso your canvas
>> well and keep your brush well loaded. You never know when you might have to
>> paint out an idea or two.
>Just in case there are any newbies reading this: As far as I know, nobody
>has yet complained about this group being used for theoretical
>discussions. Indeed this sort of discussion has always been a feature of
>this group.
Well, actually, there have been three or four complaints in the last week
directly saying that 'too much theory' or whatever, and others who post
repeatedly against any close look at the historical positioning of art
practices et al ... and this has been the usual norm for the three years
that I have been following this group.
ta.
--
"Every age gets the renaissance it deserves." (Aby Warburg)
Michael Maranda *** mm0...@uhura.cc.rochester.edu
salem joseph
Thomas and Hallmark cards?
life, forbye, is the way we fatten for the
Michelmass of our own death. (Christopher Frye)
On 9 Mar 1996, Rosa Amarillo wrote:
> In article <Dnypt...@bton.ac.uk>, a.a...@bton.ac.uk says...
>
> >Art is the spirit that makes life. The energy of life. On that level
> >art is a kind of food. A life based food.
>
> Just curious -- would you please distinguish between healthful food
> and Junk Food. Is there an analogy for nourishing art versus
> artery clogging, fat producing, sugar-coated art?
> --
> =================================================
> May the Peace Dove's wingbeat gently waft
> the sweet smell of spring flowers your way
> and blanket your pathway in rose pedals.
> ~ Rosa Amarillo ~
> Visit with me at my place:
> http://www.channels.nl/cantina.html
> =================================================
>
>
>
Bruce Attah
<mw...@mosquito.com> wrote:
> Bruce Attah wrote:
>
> > PLEASE!! I AM GETTING SICK OF THIS. No more references to totalitarian
> > governments. My statements 1 and 2 amount to nothing more or less than an
> > expression of a species of philosophical materialism.
>
> I never said it wasn't.
>
> > This is politically
> > quite neutral as regards totalitarianism/liberalism.
>
> This would be the case with many things, if only they would stop keep using
> it to justify their acts. Oh, well.
As they have used Christianity, Islam and a host of other ideas. I'm sure
you realise that the thought-processes of tyrants are quite irrelevant to
this discussion. I am sure, then, that you do not want me to assume that
you are cynically trying to associate an idea with tyranny in order so
smear that idea and prevent objective reflection on its consequences. I
hope you will confirm that this is not what you are up to.
> > 'Troglodyte' is an amusingly archaic and non-PC sounding word that turns
> > out to mean nothing more or less than 'cave dweller'.
>
> Unfortunately, while the dictionary may say such, the implication is quite the
> reverse...
If I agree with you that the word 'troglodyte' is insulting to early
stone-age humans and hominids, I still do not have to agree with your
implied suggestion that I have to be sensitive to that possibility. After
all, they've been dead now for many thousands of years. What's more,
they're my ancestors (perhaps, even, they are yours, too), so I'm sure
they won't mind.
Greg Scheckler
ltd.insignia.com>, Bruce...@insignia.co.uk (Bruce Attah)
wrote:
>In article <1996Mar7.1...@cc.usu.edu>,
>sl...@cc.usu.edu wrote:
>> As if there were one overall big art... the monotheists
>> everywhere.
>
>Are you agreeing with me, then? I have defended the idea of
>'the art of this' and 'the art of that' in opposition to the
>idea of 'Art'. The latter I have called a reification. If
>you accept this, you ought not to find it terribly difficult
>to accept the possibility that works of art
>(i.e., objects that are created as examples of 'the art of'
>something) existed before the idea of 'Art' as such emerged.
what existed before the emergence of 'Art' were things
that were not named 'Art.' Therefore, they were not 'Art.'
>>> This reification has resulted in artless practices that
>>> shadow artistic ones. These practices do not mimic the
>>> *essential* practices of art
>>> (aesthetic and skilled), but only the peripheral---e.g.,
i do not argue or accept that there are essential physical
practices (techniques) that rule out new options or new
forms, or consideration of new options or new forms as art.
the essential practices i have spoken of,
here lately via etymology, etc., are highly abstract
and conceptual endeavors, all flexible strategies...
the form of which may be made apparent via
particular technique... so i see technique as
peripheral to the larger conceptual core of 'Art.'
this strategy allows me to examine technique as
a vehicle towards conceptual/philosophical/intentional
ends. you're strategy (look first, think later) dooms
you to the following:
>Painting _now_ is being marginalised by conceptualism. If
>conceptualism actually had anything worthwhile to offer, that
>would not be so terrible, but the poverty of this new
>artform travesties the purpose of public theatres of
>art.
that's intolerant b.s. save it for your manifesto.
the strategy in its intolerance does not allow you
to find worth or meaning in those art traditions that
could be called "Conceptual Art." If you mean the
word 'conceptual' in the broader sense, not necessarily
the art-historical one, then you'd be making a major
error here... because certainly the artists you find
worthwhile were doing work that was (undoubtedly, as
you'd say) very thoughtful, skilled, etc.
my take on the situation is that the particular
ideas and thoughts these artists were working with
led them to a variety of innovations and techniques
that aided the communication and discussion of those
ideas. I might today work with very different ideas,
very different thoughts, and they might need to
be made manifest in ways different than say how
Poussin made his thoughts into art.
So my artwork looks different, feels different, is
different.
This difference of
appearance does not mean that my work is not art.
it measn it's art in a very very different form
and the idea of art is a flexible one not bound
by rules of outward appearance or superfascia.
It also means that when i see something that looks
different than what my own definitions and preconceptions
of art is, though that something is called 'art', then
i must be very careful not to write off that
which i do not recognize by calling it non-art,
because the superfascia don't count for much.
>> One way to appreciate correctly our contemporary use of the
>> word 'art' is to imagine what would have happened had you
>> turned up in Rome in the sixteenth century and asked "Where
>> can I find some Art?" (you would have
>>> had to speak modern Italian, of course) Naturally,
>>> you would have received some very funny looks. However,
>>> were you in that same place and time to say "Is not
>>> Michelangelo a great master of the art of fresco painting?"
>>> your question would be well
>>> understood---and assented >>> to.
>>
>> i don't know about the assent part. there was a lot of
>> argument about him back then.
>Well, all right, _some_ might have assented. Clearly, though,
>you concede my point.
i concede that if you went back in time and asked
'is not Michelangelo... art of fresco painting?"
that probably we'd get some sort of answer.
i do not know what the answer would be.
that the answer would be 'yes, Michelangelo is
truly a master of fresco painting' is conjecture,
hypothesis untested.
i neither concede the point that this means Michelangelo
was making what we today have lumped into one
large category 'Art,' nor that he was even making
'Art.'
>> (was it an aesthetic intent? could there
>> be an aesthetic intent before the ideas of 'aesthetic'
>> existed?) I say no.
>Were there mammals before the idea of 'mammalian' existed? I
>say yes.
there were creatures who roamed around and weren't called
'mammalian.' So, they were not 'mammals.' this is not to
say that these creatures were not what they were, just that the
idea, the abstract family of ideas 'mammal,' was not
attributed to them.
> >This is not to deny that there were other
> > intentions operating simultaneously.
>
> we don't even know if there was any intention at all.
>I'll ask you this question again: how do we attribute
>intentions to people and things? How do I know that you
>intended to type "we don't even know if there was any
>intention at all"? How do you know that I intend to convince
>you that we can infer people's intentions from their actions?
the easy answer is that you said so and you were typing.
but that doesn't apply to art because art is infinitely more
nebulous and complex than typing... art involves so much
illusion and allusion, so much indirectness... so much
'artifice' (the clever trick)
a further problem is that of attribution, as you asked
'how do we attribute intentions to people and thing?'
attribute: this is what we put on the events we sense...
we attribute intention to something, presumably because
it's useful to do so, but let's be careful, because a lot
of this attributing is dead wrong (as science so often
shows us by its successes and failures).
>Let me also ask you something else: do you believe that there
>is anyone alive today who could paint a realistic picture of a
>buffalo without intending to do so? (Exclude from
>consideration trick situations such as
>those in which someone else's intentions are required.)
yes... i'm one case in point... i make all sorts of
artwork with no intention at all. sooner or later while
painting i end up realizing 'oh i've justed painted an
elk' and not being a purist, i then sometimes use that
recognition/intention and work back into the 'elk'
in all honesty, i frequently find myself painting
with no preconception of what i'm doing, only to
realize i've come up with something without intending
it. and this is not magic, because I was right there
not intending things all along.
if you would like to study how it is possible to
act, move, create without intention, study
t'ai chi ch'uan. admittedly, the idea of non-intention
is very foreign to the 'Western' mindset.
[clip]
>How many times in the past few weeks have you managed to
>insert the suggestion into your posts that I am stupid or mad?
>How many times do you want me to go on ignoring these slights?
>Shall I switch on the sarcasm now, or leave it until later?
look if it's really bothering you i'll try to tone it down
a bit. flaming is sort of an old usenet tradition.
>Too late. I have already decided that I will not refrain from
>sarcasm in replying to your posts when the urge takes me.
attahboy you've never pulled any punches, so don't
make it sound as if you're so pure... seems to me just a
couple months ago you were deriding some of my art
quite directly, publicly, with neither having experienced
it, seen it, witnessed it, etc.
Greg Scheckler
SL...@cc.usu.edu
>>> When we discover artefacts from remote times, we may have
>>> difficulty in divining their cultural role, but as to >>>
whether or not those artefacts
>>> display the mark of art, there can be little doubt.
>> when we cannot establish the basic facts of the object's
>> originations, we can do nothing but SUPPOSE that it
>> MIGHT be art. Furthermore, 'art' has no particular mark,
>> it's a recent abstract idea, not a shape, not an appearance,
>> not a look. It cannot be seen in anything. this is called >>
the blindness of art.
>Your assertion that art "has no particular mark" is at the nub
>of our disagreement.
yes, that's true.
>I am confident that some things are clearly art and others
>clearly not, and that, furthermore, all those things that are
>art possess a family resemblance to one another. We recognize
>art as easily as we recognize games, and just as animals and
>infants may play games without having the word 'game' or any
>knowledge of the rich corpus of ideas that has grown up around
>that word in recent decades, so people can practise art
>without having read Hegel.
>> because 'art' is an idea, then the making of 'art' is an
>> abstract endeavor, idea-based.
>It does not follow. "Human" is an abstract idea, but making
>humans is not an "abstract endeavor, idea-based"---not over
>here, anyway. Maybe things are done differently in your neck
>of the woods.
^^^ you wouldn't believe the Mormons out here!
but anyway:
1) you're mixing up the categories/families/species that
you spoke of and trying to apply the same rules to all.
2) when humans breed they usually create new humans, little
biological lumps of cells and dna, not the word 'human.'
the word 'human' is the abstract idea, and i'd say it is
different than the actual physical presence of that which
is called by the name 'human.'
>> making 'art' is philosophical,
>> knowledge-dependant. of course here we get into the major
>> problems of much western philosophy...namely, how do we
>> bridge these separated worlds of abstract ideal and
>> real/physical. artists know.
>Gee-whizz. I wish I were an artist.
yeah maybe if you were you'd understand
my inconsistencies better.
[clip]
>> Art has no taste. works of art sometimes do, sometimes
>> don't, sometimes also have no form.
>I have no idea what "art has no taste" means (perhaps you
>would like to clarify for me), but I do know what "works of
>art...sometimes...have no form" means. It is similar to
>"Vertebrates sometimes have no spine" or
>"Trees sometimes have no trunk" in its import.
would you say that one of art's essential properties is
that it have form?
when i said 'art has no taste' i meant that the
abstract idea, as embodied by the word 'art' has no
taste. the object that we might call an 'artwork'
might taste like something if you taste it... less
literally, the 'taste' (the opinion of whether the
artwork is good or bad or something else) exists in
the viewer's mind, and is different than the artwork.
>> that problem happens all the time... we miss so much by not
>> having good names for things that are foreign to us... think
>> of how so many aboriginal tribes were wrongly labelled as
>> 'primitive,' 'uncivilized,' etc.
>>
>>> I think not. So it is, I am convinced, with art. People
>>> may practice it without discussing it in terms that require
>>> a generic word to cover it as a phenomenon.
>>
>> i imagine that such a scenario is possible.
>In so imagining, you are (once again) conceding my point.
oh, puhleez, imagination is not conceding the point.
i imagine such a scenario is possible, unlike you, who
insists that is the way things are.
Greg Scheckler
SL...@cc.usu.edu
P.S.Gunns
three people making points here, but WHAT i am replying too is the assertion
that we cannot label things as art or aesthetic objects when we cannot
be sure of the creators motives.
My view is that when anybody creates anything, unless and possibly
even if it is purely functional, there must come a stage when that person
decides what the object will look like. i.e. what shape it will take,
what colour it will be, whether they decorate it, even the materials it is
made out of, etc. Now, accounting for the fact that some objects, particularly
tools, do to some extent have their shape, materials etc. defined by their
purpose, i.e. a shovel made out papier mache just isn't going to work, then
ther will always be a judgement made as to the appearance. Surely, for
instance, there is no way to explain decoration upon walls, pots etc. other
than in aesthetic terms. Even religious decoration, which obviously has a
greater purpose than mere aesthetic value, must have an aesthetic element.
Christian depictions of the crucifixion are rather more than simply a case
of drawing a stickman on a cross, that is to say, the simple descriptive
power of a diagram is not appropriate. As soon as someone picks up a
brush, (or a pen, mouse etc.) and begins to create anything that can be
perecived, then there is an aesthetic element, whether they be conscious
or unconscious of it themselves. If someone was to show me two different
shovels, i would be able to express an opinion as to which was more pleasing
to the eye, and so on.
-Phil
--
Philip Gunns - University of Kent at Canterbury - Philosophy & Politics
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