> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 7:32 PM, joseph berg <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> If you mean that there is a lack of consensus, then I agree. >> >> But I have to ask as I did before?: >> >> - Can art exist without a consensus?
On Oct 19, 2012, at 11:51 AM, caldwell-brobeck wrote: > The consensus doesn't have to be universal to even support art as a > profession; from a financial POV it only takes a few hundred people of > average income, spending a tiny fraction (say 1%) of their money on > art, to support an artist. > > Cheers; > Chris > The phrasing of the question by Joseph is so ambiguous as to occasion all kinds of responses from others. For example, Chris (not unreasonably) takes it to be asking about "art" as a practice or profession. I, at first glance, figured Joseph might be asking about, let's call it, the "ontic status" of "art" (i.e. an "artwork" as distinguished from the creative action). That is, "Can any work ever BE a 'work of art' if there is no consensus?" -- as if a public poll determined its "ontic status". William has cited another possible notion behind this palaver: The "institutional theory" of art. Until Joseph should usefully describe what notion of "art" (and of "consensus") he has in mind, his question cannot be coped with reasonably.
