Are there Rules in the world of aesthetics?
armando baeza
> On Oct 16, 2015, at 4:34 PM, saul ostrow <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I suggest u read Bourdieu - the rules of art
>
> Sent from my iPhone - typos curtesy of Apple spell check
>
>
>> On Oct 16, 2015, at 5:57 PM, <[email protected]>
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Frances to Michael and Others---
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks for the insightful comments to my recent message on the
> transformation
>> of art. It is still a struggle for me to deal with most issues turning on
>> artistic and aesthetic ideas, but the fog continues to lift a little with
> each
>> discussion. Permit me to make a few somewhat random notes to your
> interposed
>> notes.
>>
>>
>>
>> It may be that a good global definition of what is meant by the word and
> term
>> "art" cannot be agreed upon communally. If this is so, then there may be a
>> risk that the whole class of stuff as an objective act that is now
>> subjectively called by the name of "art" might eventually be discarded.
The
>> same of course could also be held for such classes of assumed objective
> acts
>> as religion and medicine and techne and war and science. It seems however
> that
>> this sort of outcome would be unnatural and unnecessary.
>>
>>
>>
>> If the act of art is a natural evolutionary act like a the act of life
that
>> humans are driven toward, then art is a dispositional tendency or inclined
>> trait that prescriptively leans in the evolving corrective direction of a
> good
>> end goal, albeit via exploratory routes. Humans must therefore
> instinctively
>> be artists and intuitively make artworks in spite of themselves, because
it
> is
>> a bent that they innately must do and because they can do no other. Humans
>> will simply make art, or by whatever name it might be called, whether they
>> like it or not. Perhaps this goes to the cognitive state of thought about
> art.
>>
>>
>>
>> The collective community of normal healthy persons or learned intelligent
>> experts or governed ruling authorities need only be in the least naturally
>> endowed or enabled persons who can sense and sign objects correctly. In
the
>> cultural or social or national extreme the collective community of course
> can
>> entail other elite groups of arbitrary persons, who may be good but who
may
> be
>> bad and even evil.
>>
>>
>>
>> The act of art evolves as an iconic analogy of what preceded it in the
>> historic past, and it will be similar to what might succeed it in the
> historic
>> future. This overlapping process of course is how all acts are acquired
and
>> developed and utilized, to include human life itself. If some stuff is
> found
>> to be bad or wrong and false, then it will be correctly forced to the
> marginal
>> periphery of the group. The so called art of the past is like the art of
> the
>> present, and the so called art of the future will also be like the art of
> the
>> present. This is how stuff grows and advances and expands and progresses
> and
>> improves. The art of the present is therefore better than the art of the
> past,
>> and the art of the future will be better than the art of the present. Now
> that
>> is Peircean realism at its most optimistic, and such realism is probably
> the
>> best philosophy available at the present to address art.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Michael Brady [mailto:[email protected]]
>> Sent: Friday, 16 October, 2015 4:29 PM
>> To: [email protected]
>> Subject: Re: Art's transformation
>>
>>
>>
>> Frances
>>
>>> For artistic experts to however simply accept the artistic work as
>>
>>> given uncontrolled or controlled would likely be to skirt the issue of
>>
>>> defining what is indeed meant by the word art.
>>
>> Why? The maker offers it as art; it is up to others to accept it (a) as a
> WOA
>> and (b) to evaluate its merits and demerits. For both the maker and the
>> viewer, the notion of what b artb b meansb or b signifiesb precedes the
> making
>> and perceiving of it. Otherwise, how could they decide on what to do
> (making
>> and perceiving)?
>>
>>> The extreme poles that seemingly allow art to exist as given in some
>>
>>> form should nonetheless be unacceptable. On the one pole in the
>>
>>> extreme there would be absolute untethered freedom for anyone to do
>>
>>> anything as art, which would be chaotic and even dangerous or
>>
>>> demented. On the other pole in the extreme there would be absolute
>>
>>> rigid control that governs and limits what someone could do as
>>
>>> something deemed To > be art, which would be anticipatory but boring and
>> even ignored.
>>
>> Again, why? It seems that making an object and offering it as a WOA is
like
>> sowing seeds: Some seeds fall on hard ground and never grow; some land on
> thin
>> soil, which is not enough for them to take root and prosper; and others
> fall
>> on deep, fertile ground and thrive and bear fruit. Some art objects die
>> a-borning, like the seed on hard soil; some are noticed but then public
and
>> critical interest wanes and they fail to catch on; and some attract
popular
>> and critical attention and are esteemed as WOAs.
>>
>>> If art is to bear some import, with value and meaning and worth and
>>
>>> usage and power, and to exist as a global class of objects and works,
>>
>>> then a balance is needed to bridge the extreme poles.
>>
>> See previous comment. Thatbs a bit b ifb clause, one that I do not think
is
> in
>> the purview or control of b expertsb or b learned peopleb familiar with
> art.
>> The history of modern art (i.e., since the Salon des RefusC)es) is filled
> with
>> examples of b outsiderb art that was scorned by the learned experts of the
>> day, and then accepted by viewers, other artists, and private persons who
>> appreciated (= gave value to) such works, at which point the learned
> experts
>> began to come around to embracing those works.
>>
>> All criticism and art philosophy is retrospective, backward-looking. As
one
> of
>> the 50s abstract artists said (Smith? Motherwell? Still? Pollock?) birds
> donbt
>> need ornithology to fly.
>>
>> Michael Brady
