[Bups-dis] Defining art

[djf500 at york.ac.uk]

David says that '[we] must [...] explain why it that we call these things 
'art' in the first place.' I have to wonder whether this is right - perhaps 
it is, but it seems to ignore the possibility that although 'art' truly 
divides things into positive and negative classes (art/not-art), there is 
no further statable principle of selection for that arrangement.

An account of the art-concept that denied a further principle of selection 
might say simply that 'art' is what people who have the art-concept judge 
to be art.

That is not to say that I want to preclude somebody's finding such a 
principle, just that what David says does not address the possibility that 
there is not one.

(My own view is that 'art' is a fairly useless concept and that we could 
get along with books and paintings and poems and music perfectly well 
without it. I have never had need to say to myself 'this is excellent art' 
when reading or listening or observing, just 'this is excellent 
music'[etc]. I don't know if this means i'm a cultural dunderhead - though 
I have read, seen and listened to enough to think not - but for me 'art' 
just drops out as being anything that I am supposed to think, feel or do. 
This leads me, though clearly not directly, to endorse a 'no-principle' 
view of 'art' like I gestured toward above.)

Daniel 

On Jan 30 2007, David Mitchell wrote:

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>  I agree that most people don't really question they mean by 'art', but 
> rather in practice employ the term as a vague reference point to a 
> particular set of, socially designated and established, cultural objects 
> [Shakespeare plays, Byron poetry etc.]. Of course any effective 
> definition must go beyond this, simply pointing to a collection of 
> objects and saying 'that is art', and must instead explain why it is that 
> we call these things 'art' in the first place.
>   
>  Of the possible 'definitions' of art it should be evident that: 
> 'something accepted/endorsed by the art world' is inadequate, since 
> logically speaking the 'art world' could anoint virtually anything as 
> art. However the idea of art as 'something chosen, selected or thought of 
> by the artist' is equally insufficient. Setting aside the obvious 
> objection that 'artists' don't necessarily always produce 'art'; we are 
> left with the problem of how to go about defining an 'artist'. Isn't such 
> a person merely someone who produces, or has produced, 'works of art'? If 
> so, this means to identify 'artists' we must be able to say what 
> constitutes a 'work of art', [otherwise how would we know if a person has 
> produced one, and qualifies as an artist] but then we're simply back 
> where we started. As such unless we accept the idea that 'anything can be 
> art' [in which case why bother calling it 'art', since there would be 
> nothing to distinguish 'art' from anything else] neither of these 
> definitions gets us very far.
>   
>  My suggestion then would be that, instead of focusing on the intentions 
> of the artist or some process of 'legitimisation' by the art world, we 
> should look towards art itself, our relationship with it , and the role 
> it plays in human life and culture in general. One useful, though by no 
> means necessary, starting point along these lines would be to ask what 
> separates a piece of art from the typical products of mass culture. For 
> example why do we want to say that an episode of East-enders or Celebrity 
> big brother is not art, whereas a Euripides or Dario Fo play might be? 
> Further we might ask why human beings seek to experience, or produce, art 
> at all, especially given that it can be difficult and disturbing [a point 
> connected to the earlier discussion about 'negative emotions']. And why 
> is it that some value 'art' so highly, to the extent that it often 
> regarded as mans greatest achievement and his most noble pursuit? In 
> short, to understand art, and move towards an idea of how we go about 
> defining it, [which is a movement towards the same thing] we must place 
> art back within its proper evaluative context in human life and 
> experience. Hopefully by doing this we can cast light on the nature of 
> art, as well as the role that suffering and 'negative emotions' play 
> within it.
>   
>  David
>   
>
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