Yes, if anything can be art then to draw like a Dutch Master is equivalent to the outline of a mudpuddle, or any found object or description. Fine with me. But it actually says nothing about art because there is nothing that is NOT art. The term art and the term anything are therefore redundant and either one can be cast out. What the statement says is that all things, including art things, are equally meaningless. Also fine with me. Meaning is a complex social cluster and can be constructed or tapped by means of symbol and use. This is very difficult thinking. I'm trying to work through it, quite clumsily. Imagine that you have no self. Imagine that there is no You. Imagine that self is an illusion prompted by our dna to keep it alive. Self might be a metaphor of the social and physical totality. Art is a particular socially recognized way of considering the dissolution of the illusion of self. It has to be make-believe because the illusion of self is what enables us to consider its dissolution.
Artists talk about self, self expression, me, my, personal, etc., but maybe what they really do is to ritually enact the truth that there is no self at all. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected]; [email protected] Sent: Mon, May 24, 2010 2:15:24 PM Subject: Re: "I regret that, in our attempt to establish some standards, we didn't make them stick. We couldn't find a way to pass them on to another generation, really." In a message dated 5/24/10 9:51:03 AM, [email protected] writes: > Those in power now are the "art is > anything" people and yet, Orwellian-like, what they really are saying is, > Art > is anything, except traditional skill-based art. > I think they haven't realized that if anything is art then skill based art can and ought to take advantage of that. The use of lightbulbs as a still life still shocks many who would be appreciative if they were real lightbulbs in a pile and called art. They would also last longer and be easier to commodify. It may be a refusal to broaden the scope of skill based art combined with a need to as Sual said in part: The subject of art is that aspect of our being we seek to find the means to objectify (externalize, make actual). The sequence of philosophical events Saul described in his other letter may then be finding a rational for describing our own being without trespassing upon the corpus of what many think of as real or classic or good art-not so much a deliberate deskilling as an evasion of comparison. KAte Sullivan If Durer was skill based,and if he took as his primary subject the religious icons of the the time,which he then sold
