On Apr 14, 2008, at 6:59 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
There is a difference in *kind* between jazz (rock or pop) and say Mozart, just as there is a difference in kind between the average detective story and 'Crime and Punishment', or between Cabanel and Rembrandt. One is art the other is not.
"Art," as you use the term, is laudatory, honorific, and not some kind of criterion that marks off a species of activity or making. If a piece of music or painting is well composed, well made, then it merits the distinction of "art." It is up to the judge, i.e., the viewer, to apply some criteria of judgment. What an individual does, applying standards of excellence or taste, is a microcosmic, individualized, atomized version of the institutional definition of art applied by any group of learned experts, professors, curators, store clerks or stone chippers.
If "art" is used as a designation of the quality of a product or production, then its applicability becomes one of social acceptance, consensus, etc. The terms "good" and "bad," "excellent" and "poor" are reduced to secondary observations when the term "art" supersedes them.
On the other hand, if "art" is used to designate a common quality of music, painting, dance, etc., that sets those activities apart from other, similar-seeming expressions, then judgments about the range of quality can be made without recourse to the super-attribute, "art."
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady [EMAIL PROTECTED]
