On Jul 7, 2009, at 10:54 PM, Saul Ostrow wrote:
And what does it mean to you to call these things art - what symbolic value does this confer on all these diverse things
You assume that for me, calling something "art" confers a symbolic value on it. I don't see it that way.
To "call something art" is to say that it is proper to make certain statements about the thing. Among them may --may-- be statements about some symbolic quality, or about higher or more noble sentiments. But those statements *derive* from the initial judgment that an object qualifies to be called art and thus qualifies to be described in certain ways.
Back during the Watergate hearings, someone said of Senator Ervin that he had such a way of speaking that he could read the phone book and make it sound like he was reading Shakespeare.
Apropos here: Sen. Ervin could impart to a non-artistic text rhetorical qualities only proper to high literature. Some botanical or anatomical drawings or illustrations of dinosaurs are so well executed that they rise to quality of "art" while others in the same genres are so pedestrian and unskilled that they remain dully illustrative.
In my reply, I mentioned the Breck Girl. I want to clarify how I perceive advertising or commercial art. First, the images are embedded in several "frames" of usage and utility. The artist at all times has a free hand to make the image in any way, but the sponsor insists that the image satisfy certain requirements, mostly related to its persuasive power and to some extent related to the art director's perception of style and "ambience" or such. This is not much different in kind from the working relationship between patron and artist, between Pope Julius and Michelangelo or the burghers of Calais and Rodin, etc.
Getting back to my notions of the truth conditions of art (described in another email message), when an advertisement is viewed as meeting its utilitarian purpose, then the illustration-picture is viewed through the prism of "truthfulness." When the utility of the picture is not an issue, then the illustration can be viewed through the prism of "nontruthfulness," i.e., as art.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady [email protected] http://considerthepreposition.blogspot.com/
