Subject: RE: Daumier-Smith and Empathy
From: horanp (horanp@kenyon.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 27 2001 - 13:24:11 GMT
>Is art really art when nobody says it's art?
>Suppose you have this writer/sculptor/photographer who does creative
work, but nobody likes
>it. But he writes, paints etc like crazy and besides his girlfriend/wife
nobody ever says anything positive
>about it...
There are a couple things, and I hope that they'll get through in the wake
of how many people will most likely respond to this. First of all, you're
assuming that calling it "art" is somehow positive. Just because
nobody likes it, doesn't mean it's art. Saying that something is "art" is
not complimentary. "Art" is a noun, not an adjective. "Good" and "bad"
art (or whatever euphemism you prefer like "moving," "inspiring,"
"focused" etc. etc.), I believe, depends on what you, as the viewer,
particularly prefers. It depends on what you view as a significant and
substantial expression of creativity, emotion, or character. A Baroque
artists would probably curse at the idea that a pile of Sweet n' Lows in
the Chicago Museum of Modern Art would ever be considered as such,
but modernists or post-modernists would disagree. Both aren't really
much help, because they both would think that dubbing it "art" raises up
the pile of crap (or the deliberate application of paint on canvas) to some
sort of higher ground. "Art" merely classifies it into a school subject.
This brings me to another, more open-ended topic. By even discussing
this, it's also making art totally dependent on the viewer, begging the
question, "If a Picasso piece is placed in the middle of the forest, would
it still (or ever) be art?" In this discussion, the answer would be no.
We're saying it cannot exist as art until it is viewed. It's also not as if
we
can from an answer to that question either, because one cannot say
"Alright, go into the forest and look at it and tell me if it's art." That
scenario would obviously be contradictory. The question would have to
be "can art be art (indeed, can art exist) without the viewer. We've
already sort of established the creator as someone who cannot judge
objectively about his or her own art, so what's the solution?
I didn't think about this for too long before I wrote it, so if it's a little
fumbly
and not really well-worded, please attempt to catch my drift.
Pete.
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