From: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Definable and measurable truths
To: [email protected]
Date: Monday, February 23, 2009, 5:17 PM
I wrote: "I can't agree with William when he says,
"Good art appeals to all,
I mean it offers something -- some access -- to any viewer.
That has always
been true of the best art.""
I prefaced the explanation of my disagreement by saying:
"The assumption, the reification, of an entity or
category that is art, is a
big problem."
I then cited WAITING FOR GODOT, which some have called the
greatest work of
theater art in the twentieth century. I remarked that it
does not appeal to me
on any level. I then argued in effect that if William means
if a work is
"accessible" then it must have appeal, that seems
to me wrong. GODOT is fully
accessible to me, I said, but I still loathe it.
Chris responded:
"I question the example ("Waiting for
Godot") which Cheerskep has offered
as an exception to William's statement." As a
reason for his doubt, Chris
states:
"Although, like Cheerskep, I loathe that play, I see
no reason to concede
that it is among "the best art" just because
"Some (presumably famous critics)
have called it the greatest work of theater art in the
twentieth century."
My response to Chris: But I DIDN'T concede
"it's among the best art". Indeed,
my preface was meant to convey it's a flat error to
believe ANY entity is
"art". To say that something "is"
"art" -- as distinguished from our just
CALLING
it "art" -- is to assume there is a
mind-independent metaphysical "category",
"art". Those who think this way believe every
object either IS art or it is
NOT, regardless of what any individual or group calls it.
Artsy recently posted a column -- Encorebuzz, in the Nashua
Telegraph -- that
said this: "Art is the creative expression of an
artist who tries to paint
his own impressions of something seen visually or
mentally." The correct way
to
counter this is NOT by starting, "No, no -- that's
not what art IS! Art isb&"
and then give another would be description of what
"art" "really is".
Consider other judgmental words like 'delicious' or
'disgusting' or
'impolite'. Wouldn't it seem silly to believe
in some quasi-Platonic
metaphysical
domain wherein there's a set of all the impolite acts,
and another set of all
the
other, non-impolite, acts?
Picture this category as either the set of all objects that
ARE "works of
art", or picture it as "the quality of
artness" that all and only "works of
art"
are supposed to "have" or, in Plato's term,
"participate in". Pictured either
way, the category is imaginary, an instance of the basic
error of reification
(or, as it is sometimes called when what is reified is an
abstraction, this is
hypostatization).
At first glance Chris and I would seem to be agreeing, but
we aren't. He is
not saying that NOTHING "is" art. He is not
claiming that 'art' is a
judgmental
word, a reflection only of our individual notional
attitudes toward a given
object or alleged quality. Chris believes there IS a set,
class, category of
"the best art", and GODOT just isn't in
there.
Do not now growl that here we have Cheerskep just beating
the same old dead
horse. This is Cheerskep responding to an error posted on
this philosophy of
art forum. Stop making this error, and I'll stop
pointing it out.
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