# Art



## Diogo (Apr 29, 2008)

There are 7 principal arts:

- Music
- Painting
- Literature
- Dancing
- Theatre
- Sculpture
- Cinema

I have never understand what is the really definition of art. How can we say that something is art or not anything else?

Music is one of the arts that have existed for a long time. Why can we say that music is an 
art? Because of its beauty? Because of all the feelings that it can show us?...
And is any type of music an art?

I admit it can be ridiculous to question this, and it can have loads of discussion but I really wanted to know this.

Anyway, if classical music is what we like, we should know what it is...

Thank you.


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## Mark Harwood (Mar 5, 2007)

Suggestions.
Art involves transformations. Mundane into beautiful, sense into meaning, ugly into sublime, quotidian into timeless, and so on. That's not an academic view, I don't have one. But by this approach we can make art of other activities too. 
I hope this thread takes off, it's a great question.


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## Moldyoldie (Apr 6, 2008)

How about this?

Art is the creative use of a medium to convey or transfer "insight". The success or failure of this transference determines if the art is good or bad. By this reckoning, good art can be ugly and bad art be beautiful, but not necessarily so.

Naturally, "good" or "bad" is in the senses and sensibility of the beholder.


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## Diogo (Apr 29, 2008)

Well, in that case, there isn't a rule for art or it's real meaning...
I've ever heard that it's difficult to say what is art in just one way. In my perspective, you can have millions of choices to say what is art for you. 

- Art involves transformations. (Mark Harwood)

- Art is the creative use of a medium to convey or transfer "insight". (Moldyoldie)

I agree with both this suggestions. 
There are transformations that appear into us when we listen to music or when we see a painting. 
And there is always creativity in art. 
There is no doubt that there are so much ideas for any piece of art. I can say that a certain music is really good, but other person says that doesn't like it.
Now I think that another question appears...

How can I deffend my opinion?

One example:
I say that I really like classical music. However someone says he detests it, but he really likes Rock. I can talk about the beautiful, the calm or strong, the feelings...that classical music can demonstrate.
But he protests by saying that Rock is much better because of the ellectric guitars, the exitement...
Concluding: we both were going to say ich other the best things of ich type of music.
There are millions of simple cases, for example by listening to a piece and saying its beautiful and another one saying its horrible...

Is there anyone right?...


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## JBI (Apr 30, 2008)

Art is expression. It is as simple as that. Good art is universal expression, whereas bad art is clouded/disturbed expression. Wagner's Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde for instance is clear, beautiful expression, whereas Britney's Oops I did it Again is nothing but a recording with some semi-catchy lyrics and synthesized music. A cartoon is a witty strip, whereas a Botticelli is enormous in detail, expression, and insight. Simply it is making something definite infinite. That is art. Good art succeeds towards this goal, whereas bad art fails.


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## Guest (May 1, 2008)

Art is in the eye of the beholder. and of course "The critics"


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## Yagan Kiely (Feb 6, 2008)

> Art is in the eye of the beholder. and of course "The critics"


But there are a lot if idiots whose opinion needs to be ignored.


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## Guest (May 2, 2008)

Yagan Kiely said:


> But there are a lot if idiots whose opinion needs to be ignored.


Exactly, I agree, When does a photograph become art. When does a craft become art


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## Moldyoldie (Apr 6, 2008)

Andante said:


> Exactly, I agree, When does a photograph become art. When does a craft become art


In purest terms, "craft" exists for a practical purpose, while "art" exists for its own sake. I suppose by this definition, an example of "craft" would be advertising or architecture. Of course, nothing exists in "purest terms", hence the catch-all phrase "arts & crafts".


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## Guest (May 3, 2008)

So a commissioned painting is not art ??


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## JBI (Apr 30, 2008)

Andante said:


> So a commissioned painting is not art ??


Hardly. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." - Doctor Samuel Johnson. That being said, authenticity is still important. Though things are commissioned, and have perhaps set subjects, the artist still must try to be true to himself.


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## SamGuss (Apr 14, 2008)

My two cents... I do not consider myself an artist in any form whatsoever. I am a writer however and enjoy photography. Friends and such think I am good at both - but then they're biased. To me "art" is about expressing oneself without thought of consequence to what others may think. For example, I do not write for the 'reader' but for myself. When the two happen at the same time, I have a great story. I do not photograph for someone elses enjoyment of the end result but for my own pleasure. When it happens that someone enjoys my photo that much as well, then great. Yet neither was done in the first place for an audience but for my own desire to express something that I found important enough to try to express in the first place at that moment in time. Thats 'art'.

Craft is the steps in the process that allows me to write better and to take better photographs. It's learning about different techniques; practicing those techniques; reading about what others have done to express themselves successfully. This all to me is 'craft'. I.E. the practice and application of art to be better able to express yourself in the first place.


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## Guest (May 3, 2008)

JBI said:


> Hardly. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." - Doctor Samuel Johnson. That being said, authenticity is still important. Though things are commissioned, and have perhaps set subjects, the artist still must try to be true to himself.


I was asking a loaded question, not making a statement. 

*To continue*: 
A few points to concider, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Bach, etc etc, all composed music for a living be it a commission, or part of the job description, so with the past masters a purist element does not enter the equation.
The same with a lot of Painters. 
Dancers do not perform very often without remuneration, every one has to eat.

So do professional artists not produce art? Of course they do

A wealthy man can compose, paint etc. without a thought of payment, just poorly for the love of what ever interest him. This would be the nearest that I can come up with as being pure art. But I think that should not enter the equation.
Is pop music any less of an art as classical?? Is graffiti not a form of art?
In the end I must admit to being a wee bit cynical of the art circles, it is a way to pigeon hole people and their work by people that do not have the ability to do their own thing.
Finally to me the thing that separates a mundane work from a good work aka ART, is form, composition, perspective etc but in the end is subjective.


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## marie (May 20, 2008)

This is really a fascinating thread! Thank you for starting it. I also enjoyed reading all the comments.

To me, arts are something that gives me a sense of awe.

The nature also gives me a sense of awe. But I wouldn't call the nature "arts." To me, arts are human made. 

When I read a good academic paper, whether it's sociology, psychology, philosophy, or literature, it gives me a sense of awe. But I wouldn't call it "art." I don't know why not though---I read many good academic works in humanities and social sciences that are creative, original, well-structured, and use a beautiful form and great language. Somehow I still wouldn't call them "arts." Yet, I call good literary work (e.g., novels and poems) artwork. 

(BTW, I was limiting my discussions to humanities and social sciences only because my scientific background is too poor to appreciate good academic work in sciences and technologies. So I was just trying to avoid talking about things that I don't have the first-hand experience myself. But I suppose that good science papers also would give you a sense of awe. Indeed, my father who is a scientist would talk about "truth, goodness, and beauty").

Another point that other posters already made---I agree that what gives you a sense of awe would be totally subjective.

I feel that I'd like to think of this issue a bit more. Thank you guys for your insights.


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## jonlizperson (Sep 23, 2008)

the sentences begining with "Art is..." or "Art isn't..." don't exist to me. I can never write a sentence that begins with those terms because I realize as soon as I do, it is futile, no matter WHAT comes afterwards. In fact I don't really like talking about art or thinking about talking about art for that matter. It's contradictory because i do read a lot about it and i do actually talk a lot about it. But i mean, c'mon. Honestly, even if this thread were to go on for 50 pages, you wouldn't get anywhere near an "answer", i think. You'd get somewhere, and it would be beneficial in an enlightening sense. But at the same time... i don't know actually. I'm done.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

The most persuasive explanation of art I ever found was put forward by Susanne Langer in her book _Feeling and Form_. She suggests that the artist creates 'symbols of feeling' which, when contemplated by the viewer (or listener, in the case of music) with an appropriate cultural background, can create the same kind of feeling in the viewer as the feeling that inspired the artist.

I wouldn't say there are no difficulties with this idea, but it does go some way towards illuminating some of the puzzling qualities of art. Symbols can operate at a level below the conscious - so when a Christian contemplates the symbol of a cross, for instance, he or she may experience a profound feeling which words are inadequate to convey. That's a deliberately elementary example, but if a great artist can suitably arrange a series of marks or sounds that have this subconscious effect, and if the viewer or listener can 'read' the symbols, then there is the potential for one of those WHAM BANG moments of insight that great art can induce, as the barriers fall down and a flood of communication breaks through.

It means that a powerful 'art' experience requires as much from the viewer or listener as the artist. The artist has to be good enough to make effective symbols, but also the listener/viewer needs the wherewithall to respond to them. That's why critics get it so badly wrong, so often. When a great artist creates something genuinely new, the viewer/listener may simply not know, at least initially, how to read its symbolic language. So the Impressionists were laughed at in the 1870s, the 1913 premiere of the _Rite of Spring_ invoked a riot, and so on.

One consequence of this is that we can be sure of the greatness of a work of art when we respond positively to it, in a way that we can't be sure of the badness of a work that affects us negatively. When you have the 'great art' experience, it changes you in a profound way, and discussion becomes unimportant because you've seen what you've seen (or heard what you've heard). But when you contemplate art that makes you think 'this is rubbish', you can never be sure that you aren't failing to read its symbols; so the jury must always stay out, as it were.


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## purple99 (Apr 8, 2008)

A brief look at art history confirms that art, down the ages, consists of fashion, usually enforced by aristocrats or, more lately, the bourgeoisie. Art is what the good bourgeois tells us it is, which explains why they become so upset with some modern artists and performance practices -- those who won't do what they're told. There's an article in the current New Yorker about the phenomenon, as applied to music.

To answer Diogo's questions directly:



Diogo said:


> Why can we say that music is an art? Because of its beauty? Because of all the feelings that it can show us?...


Classical music is an art because we're told it is by aristocrats and shopkeepers. They tell us it's art because they find it beautiful, because it gives them feelings they enjoy, because they feel it's (morally) good for us, but above all because it suits them. Why does it suit them? Attend any concert hall and look around you. Stand in the bar during the interval and earwig the conversations. Watch the audience leaving and see the self-satisfied expressions on those well-meaning middle class faces. The good bourgeois likes art because it tells him, and his neighbours, that he occupies a certain position in society. It makes him feel good. He used to attend church for similar reasons.

This is along the same lines as Elgarian's argument -- that art consists of the manipulation of symbols to produce emotional responses -- but with a twist. It claims that art is the manipulation of symbols to gratify a particular social class, i.e. the one which pays or controls the public subsidy. As the needs of that class change, so the art manufactured for its benefit and consumption will change also.

None of this is rocket science... unless you want to produce an argument that art is something permanent, immutable, that it puts us in touch with our souls, or God, or the cosmos. I'd be interested to hear that argument... It only works imo if God also is a shopkeeper.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

purple99 said:


> Classical music is an art because we're told it is by aristocrats and shopkeepers. They tell us it's art because they find it beautiful, because it gives them feelings they enjoy, because they feel it's (morally) good for us, but above all because it suits them. Why does it suit them? Attend any concert hall and look around you. Stand in the bar during the interval and earwig the conversations. Watch the audience leaving and see the self-satisfied expressions on those well-meaning middle class faces. The good bourgeois likes art because it tells him, and his neighbours, that he occupies a certain position in society. It makes him feel good. He used to attend church for similar reasons.


Much of this is undeniable, but I'd say that this is precisely what art _isn't_; it's what art is often corrupted to become. It's the visible outcome of the folly of people who don't understand.

The point about my suggestion is that the 'symbol of feeling' permits (but doesn't guarantee) a type and depth of communication between individuals that can be achieved no other way. The fact that one of those individuals may be a great artist who has profound insights to convey means that this process can be of enormous value to us - and indeed my life has been transformed beyond recognition by encounters with great art through the years.

This other stuff - the political, society-conscious, social-positioning aspect - has nothing really to do with what I'm talking about, except peripherally, as an indication of the kind of thing that happens when anything of value becomes corrupted.


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## purple99 (Apr 8, 2008)

Elgarian said:


> Much of this is undeniable, but I'd say that this is precisely what art _isn't_; it's what art is often corrupted to become. It's the visible outcome of the folly of people who don't understand.


Not necessarily. It depends whether the aristocrats or shopkeepers have good taste or not. If they have good taste they'll fund good art and force it on the rest of us. Shopkeepers, notoriously, have bad taste, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Aristocrats, traditionally, are split between Hooray Henrys who wouldn't recognise a Bach cantata if it bit them on the a*se (the British aristocracy famously hate high culture, preferring horse racing -- when was the last time you saw the Queen at a classical concert?) and more thoughtful types, e.g. Frederick the Great of Prussia and numerous other 18th and 19th century upper class patrons. Many argue the latter group provoked a golden age of music, and it's a good argument imo.

In the face of that evidence do you still hold that much Bach, Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven - heavily subsidised and encouraged by the European aristocracy -- is 'corrupt' art and represents 'the visible outcome of the folly of people who don't understand'? Isn't it more the product of some clever patrons who had wealth and power and a willingness to fund good art and impose it on the rest of us?


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

purple99 said:


> In the face of that evidence do you still hold that much Bach, Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven - heavily subsidised and encouraged by the European aristocracy -- is 'corrupt' art and represents 'the visible outcome of the folly of people who don't understand'?


Well, those are _your_ words, purple, not mine, and you know very well that that isn't what I'm actually talking about, nor what I meant to imply.

In your comments you're concerned with the way art is manipulated in a political and social sense, and that's a respectable interest, but it isn't mine. Those arguments about 'good' and 'bad' taste - which terms themselves become an assessment of the discernment of the consumer rather than addressing whether a particular activity is life-enhancing - arise from those kind of concerns.

But I'm concerned with the primary significance of these fascinating engagements between the individual and the work of art, when some essential spark arising from that engagement allows us to transcend ourselves. The nature of these moments is such that their significance is self-evident, though of course I can't deny that your aristocrats and shopkeepers will have played some part in the processes that led up to such moments.

But basically I don't think we're talking about the same thing. You're talking about art as a social and political phenomenon. I'm talking about art as this astonishing transcendent personal experience that I'm having here and now, listening to the cadenza of Elgar's violin concerto. The two are obviously related (in some infinitely complex and impossible-to-determine way), but are not the same thing.


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## purple99 (Apr 8, 2008)

Elgarian said:


> Well, those are _your_ words, purple, not mine, and you know very well that that isn't what I'm actually talking about, nor what I meant to imply.
> 
> In your comments you're concerned with the way art is manipulated in a political and social sense, and that's a respectable interest, but it isn't mine. Those arguments about 'good' and 'bad' taste - which terms themselves become an assessment of the discernment of the consumer rather than addressing whether a particular activity is life-enhancing - arise from those kind of concerns.
> 
> ...


I agree I put words in your mouth which was rude of me. I apologise. I also agree that art music can be considered as social phenomenon -- who composed it, who listens, who funds it, who decides what fills the concert halls, what's excluded, etc etc -- and as psychological event. -- the nature of the neurophysiological occurrence in your head when exposed to the stuff.

I'm interested in both aspects and fear it's impossible to consider one without the other. When you have your transcendent personal experience it's because that particular piece of music was funded, composed, played, published, and recorded, before insertion into your ear. So before you can have the experience a series of political or social events must occur, and those events determine your experience.

So you're entirely in the hands of those who control the production and dissemination of classical music. Your 'astonishing transcendent personal experience' isn't really personal at all, but a mere function of political or social events.

That gets to the root imho of a standard mistake people make when considering music in particular and art in general. They mistake mere fashion - what aristocrats and shopkeepers (or state culture ministries and record labels) have decided, at a particular moment in history, constitutes 'art' for objective beauty. i.e. for a set of permanent values.

That isn't to claim serious music fails to tackle perennial issues - death, love, war, suffering, the beauty of nature etc - but the framework within which those subjects are addressed is determined by mere fashion. So when deciding if something's 'good art' it's a simple matter of examining the framework - driven by fashion - and noting whether it's an efficient vehicle for communicating those perennial ideas and whether the composer has used the framework skillfully.

The New Yorker article cited at #17 above puts the tension rather neatly:



> When the concert rite emerged in its perfected form, circa 1950-the ban on applauding after movements took hold only in the early twentieth century, almost certainly prompted by the passivity of home listening-it seemed to elevate and to stifle the music in equal measure. Composers were empowered by the worshipfulness of the proceedings, but, generally, only if they were dead. Performers thrived on the new attentiveness, but struggled against the monkish strictures of conservatory training and certain inexplicable regulations governing behavior and dress. (The overarching problem of classical music is the tuxedo.) Listeners, too, come away feeling both liberated and confined. James Johnson identifies what he calls "the paradox of bourgeois individualism"-a culture of conformity encircling an art of untrammelled personal expression.


Neitzche might have been amused by this paradox. He might have responded with his much loved Apollonian-Dionysian split. The poor old bourgeois wants his high art because it represents his (Apollonian) position in society. But he's playing with fire. Music is notoriously Dionysian and lights a blaze -- quite rightly -- in the Elgarian bosom. So what does the good bourgeois do? He hems the experience in with rules and regulations and dress codes and pretends it was ever thus.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

purple99 said:


> before you can have the experience a series of political or social events must occur, and those events determine your experience.


But that's true not just of art, but of every moment of every experience we ever have. No experience can possibly escape being the culmination of all the previous events in the universe. But the reality of being alive concerns dealing with each moment as it arises, not by contemplating the previous moments that led us to here. Well, rather - it might include doing that. But the urgent business is what's happening here and now. Art (and I know we agree profoundly about this from a previous post of yours) can't be separated from life - so I'm adopting the position that what we need to tackle is the experience as it hits us, head on. That's the real thing. The other things are shadows.



> So you're entirely in the hands of those who control the production and dissemination of classical music. Your 'astonishing transcendent personal experience' isn't really personal at all, but a mere function of political or social events.


No, really, I don't think that's so. Partly, yes, and inescapably so. But by no means entirely. Obviously, there is a complex series of social and political events between Elgar writing his violin concerto, and me listening to it now. But equally, there is a similar chain of physical events between the electrical signals that go into my amplifer and the sounds that emerge from my loudspeakers. Yet what I attend to (and rightly) is the music, not the electrical signals and their passage through the amplifier. They are necessary (or nothing would happen at all), but not what the actual process of listening to music is about (unless I'm an audio engineer). So with your political events (unless I'm a social historian).



> That gets to the root imho of a standard mistake people make when considering music in particular and art in general. They mistake mere fashion - what aristocrats and shopkeepers (or state culture ministries and record labels) have decided, at a particular moment in history, constitutes 'art' for objective beauty. i.e. for a set of permanent values.


I'm not sure who these people are who make this mistake. That some will do so, is certain. That all will be affected in some degree is certain, too. But I'm not just the sum of my social conditioning (and neither, gloriously, are you). Incidentally I wouldn't want to claim that the values we experience in relation to art are permanent. Again, I would want to put the focus on the moment of perception, rather than the thinking we do before or after it - which includes worrying about whether the values are permanent or not.



> So when deciding if something's 'good art' it's a simple matter of examining the framework - driven by fashion - and noting whether it's an efficient vehicle for communicating those perennial ideas and whether the composer has used the framework skillfully.


I don't think it's a simple matter at all. It's only simple if I were to accept your premise that the individual's experience of art is governed by a framework of fashion, and that in itself is a serious oversimplification, based only on an artificially restricted way of looking at things. After all, my personal experiences of art are part of the evidence to be considered, and since they include many of the most profoundly enriching experiences of my life, I'd be a fool to dismiss them so lightly. (Many of them run counter to the ebbs and flows of fashion, too.)



> Music is notoriously Dionysian and lights a blaze -- quite rightly -- in the Elgarian bosom. So what does the good bourgeois do? He hems the experience in with rules and regulations and dress codes and pretends it was ever thus.


Yes. The 'system' has always attempted to tame the wild and absorb it into the system. It put Elvis in the army and dressed the Beatles in suits. But I don't recognise myself, or any of my responses to art, in that description, except in relatively superficial ways, so how could I attach any weight to it as an explanation for what art is?


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## purple99 (Apr 8, 2008)

Elgarian said:


> I would want to put the focus on the moment of perception...


So I see.  Which at one level is fair enough. But it doesn't go far in answering Diogo's question:



Diogo said:


> I have never understand what is the really definition of art. How can we say that something is art or not anything else?


You've produced an argument similar to a Jamesian argument from religious experience for God's existence, which basically boils down to someone saying: "I believe in God because I _feel_ He exists." Typically monks or hermits produce the argument -- people who have profound religious experiences when praying, who may meet God in a pillar of fire. But it's impossible to extrapolate from a private, personal experience to a general truth claim.

Philosophers typically divide the world into questions of fact and questions of value. In the former they interrogate maths, logic and the propositions of the natural sciences -- What exactly is a number? What's the relationship between maths and logic? How can a scientific claim be verified? In the latter they dump ethics, religion and aesthetics -- What is justice? Can God's existence be proven? What is beauty?

The difficulty with driving the analysis of Diogo's question into the purely personal is it leaves no room to answer the question except in terms of aesthetic relativism: something is art or something is beautiful if one person feels it to be so. Which means a Nazi guard in a concentration camp might find the arrangement of bodies beautiful and consider himself an artist for making them so. I'd want to argue with him, and the only way to do that is to drive art out from a personalised ghetto. It's dangerous to anchor aesthetics -- or God or morality -- in the subjective.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

purple99 said:


> But it doesn't go far in answering Diogo's question


I agree. It's only the beginning of an answer, but a crucial beginning. If you take the focus away from the personal experience - the engagement of this listener with this music here and now - then you're left, indeed, with the purely social phenomenon that you've been describing. If that were all there was, then I wouldn't have any interest in art at all, though there'd be lots for the social historians to discuss.



> You've produced an argument similar to a Jamesian argument from religious experience for God's existence, which basically boils down to someone saying: "I believe in God because I _feel_ He exists." Typically monks or hermits produce the argument -- people who have profound religious experiences when praying, who may meet God in a pillar of fire. But it's impossible to extrapolate from a private, personal experience to a general truth claim.


I refute this completely. That isn't the kind of claim that I'm making. The whole point of the 'personal art experience' is that it's potentially communicable - indeed communication lies at its very heart - and the extraordinary thing is that by discussing these experiences, individuals can come to a surprisingly good understanding of what others are talking about. (When I started to talk about the 'English landscape experience' that I found in Elgar when I was about 15, for instance, I soon found that what I'd experienced, in ignorance, was something already widely known and accepted.)



> a Nazi guard in a concentration camp might find the arrangement of bodies beautiful and consider himself an artist for making them so. I'd want to argue with him, and the only way to do that is to drive art out from a personalised ghetto. It's dangerous to anchor aesthetics -- or God or morality -- in the subjective.


But the danger in your position is just as acute. It leads you into a kind of determinism whereby we cease to be free-willed individuals and become the puppets of our societal, political, and cultural influences; and also into a kind of behaviourism, whereby you assess the experiences of concert-goers by the expressions on their faces afterwards (as in an earlier post). But determinism has been abandoned even by physicists; and behaviourism is instantly refutable by the purely personal observation that at times when I've been closest to despair, my friends have observed me to be particularly laid-back and happy.

I'm not excluding the social, the political, and the cultural. I'm not very interested in them in their own right, but I concede they have a place in any discussion of art. But in terms of the meaning of art - which as you rightly remind us, is what this topic is about - one must _begin_ with the personal experience, wherever else one goes from there.

To quote Whitehead: "Nature is ... a totality including individual experiences, so that we must reject the distinction between nature as it really is and experiences of it which are purely psychological. Our experiences of the apparent world are nature itself." When it comes to aesthetic experiences, we have a remarkable advantange. We are 'in the know' - we know what they're like. We can observe how others behave and listen to what they say, but if we leave out that crucial personal experience we can't hope for a satisfactory answer to the question: 'what is art?'


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## purple99 (Apr 8, 2008)

Elgarian said:


> But the danger in your position is just as acute.


I agree. That's why it's not my position. 



> I'm interested in both aspects and fear it's impossible to consider one without the other.


You, however, tend towards militant subjectivism:



> I'm not excluding the social, the political, and the cultural. I'm not very interested in them in their own right





> The other things are shadows





> In your comments you're concerned with the way art is manipulated in a political and social sense, and that's a respectable interest, but it isn't mine


All of which is fair enough. You're not interested in the social aspect of art: how fashion dictates what music is considered beautiful at a given moment in history, how fashion is driven, how it changes -- profoundly -- over time.

But if musical art consists only of someone describing their feelings when exposed to some sounds it's pretty thin gruel to serve poor Diogo. Why not consider both aspects -- the personal, psychological event _and_ the social setting in which it occurs?

I often witness musical conservatives* have hissy fits about 'modern music'. They complain about the absence of tunes they can hum. They bemoan the presence of structure which departs from a classical or 19th century model. They express resentment at dissonance. They talk nostalgically of an alleged golden age when these irritants were absent.

Yet they're so obviously fashion victims. What made Parisians riot in 1913 is now accepted concert hall fodder. That Plato tried to ban certain types of music is now viewed with amazement. People are aghast at Stalin for manipulating, censoring and threatening Shostakovich. It's highly likely a musical conservative in a 100 years time will be moaning there's not _enough_ dissonance.

Given this intimate, documented and empirically verifiable connection between what is considered musical art at a given moment in history, and prevailing fashion, it seems rash to adopt a militant subjectivist line. Why not seek an answer to Diogo's question through an examination of _all _the evidence?

* I don't think you're one btw - just so there's no misunderstanding.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

purple99 said:


> I agree. That's why it's not my position.


Actually, purple, I didn't seriously think it was, though much of what you've said seems to suggest it.



> You, however, tend towards militant subjectivism:


Oh, I object to that. My position is summed up pretty well in that Whitehead quote, which I'll put here again just so it can't be passed over:

"Nature is ... a totality including individual experiences, so that we must reject the distinction between nature as it really is and experiences of it which are purely psychological. Our experiences of the apparent world are nature itself."

That's neither militant nor subjective, but virtually self-evident, I would say.



> You're not interested in the social aspect of art: how fashion dictates what music is considered beautiful at a given moment in history, how fashion is driven, how it changes -- profoundly -- over time.


Well, it's perhaps time for me to admit that it's not strictly true to say I'm not interested in those things. I am indeed deeply interested in the history of art - or at least, certain aspects of it. But my interest is driven by those primary personal encounters with the art in the first place. I wouldn't be in the least interested in, let us say, early C19th painting, if I hadn't had my socks knocked off by Turner, Constable, and Cotman paintings in the first place. Without those personal encounters, the study of the context of C19th art would become sterile, to me, and on its own, it couldn't come close to answering the question 'what is art?'



> But if musical art consists only of someone describing their feelings when exposed to some sounds it's pretty thin gruel to serve poor Diogo. Why not consider both aspects -- the personal, psychological event _and_ the social setting in which it occurs?


I don't think I ever suggested the former (which seems uncomfortably like a parody of what I've been saying), nor objected to the latter (except to protest about what seemed to be the _exclusive _use of the social/political model as 'the' solution). My suggestions are only the beginnings of an answer to the question 'what is art?'. It took Ruskin 5 fat volumes and 17 years to try to answer that big question, and (arguably) fail. I'm certainly not clever enough to sort it out in a couple of posts on Talkclassical.com.

I am wondering though if the only significant difference in our positions concerns which comes _first_ - the social/political conditioning or the personal experience.



> I often witness musical conservatives* have hissy fits about 'modern music'. They complain about the absence of tunes they can hum. They bemoan the presence of structure which departs from a classical or 19th century model. They express resentment at dissonance. They talk nostalgically of an alleged golden age when these irritants were absent.
> 
> Yet they're so obviously fashion victims.


Ah, but there you go again, you see, slipping into something resembling behaviourism. They may or may not be fashion victims - we can't tell. There was a time in my past where I utterly failed to understand abstract painting, and I was very strongly tempted to deride it. It seemed 'obvious' that anyone could do it. By sheer persistence, and with the help of a few perceptive, talented people, I started to understand and see for myself, and the result was a series of hugely transforming artistic encounters. But before that breakthrough I was never a fashion victim. I was simply restricted by limited understanding and perception. And there are many, many reasons why people may want tunes they can hum, and dislike dissonance, quite apart from being driven by fashion - though I agree that those who refer back to a putative golden age are probably misguided.



> What made Parisians riot in 1913 is now accepted concert hall fodder. That Plato tried to ban certain types of music is now viewed with amazement. People are aghast at Stalin for manipulating, censoring and threatening Shostakovich. It's highly likely a musical conservative in a 100 years time will be moaning there's not _enough_ dissonance.


I'm not going to disagree with any of this. Yes. Certainly.



> Given this intimate, documented and empirically verifiable connection between what is considered musical art at a given moment in history, and prevailing fashion, it seems rash to adopt a militant subjectivist line.


Well, you keep telling me that I'm adopting such a line, but I keep asserting that I'm not.



> Why not seek an answer to Diogo's question through an examination of _all _the evidence?


 Isn't that exactly what my Whitehead quote is saying?



> * I don't think you're one btw - just so there's no misunderstanding.


I might be. I'm very fond of tunes.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

Reading through this thread from the beginning, this morning, I'm disappointed in the lack of progress we're making. It seems the longer our posts become, the less light we shed and the further from the point we drift. So, if purple99 will forgive me, I'm going to abandon my half of this particular 'individual versus socio-political' debate, because I think (a) it's irresolvable; and (b) we're increasing the confusion.

Instead, I'd like to draw attention back to Susanne Langer's explanation of art in terms of 'symbols of feeling' - which I still think is a useful starting place (and I think perhaps purple99 wouldn't _entirely_ disagree with that). But also I want to inject into the discussion something that CS Lewis once wrote about literature. I was very struck by this when I first encountered it:

"Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."

Suppose we make the literary reference less specific:

"Art heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. In experiencing great art I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."

It seems to me that Lewis's description is not merely a superb piece of writing in itself (I know of no finer expression of what art can do to us), but also it, like Langer's 'symbols of feeling' idea, gives us a good base to start from when we ask 'what is art?'. I'd suggest that anyone who recognises having an experience like the one Lewis describes has experienced 'art'. Art may have other qualities too (I don't wish to limit the definition), but this is surely one of them, and I think it goes a long way towards explaining why art is, and always has been, so important to us.


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## Lang (Sep 30, 2008)

It is art if its creator calls it art. The question that then arises is whether it is good or bad art.


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## Isola (Mar 26, 2008)

Elgarian said:


> "Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."


Thanks for the quote, Elgarian. Brilliant.


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## Herbstlied (Sep 8, 2008)

Art, also, is the defamiliarization of what is familiar...
habitualization devours life, feelings, events and moments... and art is here to make us see familiar things in new ways...
that what some Russian writer has mentioned once...
think about it well and you'll see the meaning...Also, that explains why artists are more sensitive than those who has nothing to do with art...they see the world in a different way...


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

Lang said:


> It is art if its creator calls it art.


That's more or less how Kurt Schwitters defined it, and it became a kind of Dadaist manifesto. And there are certain works of art where it helps to know that such an impulse lies behind their creation. But for those of us who don't think Dadaism is the source of all wisdom about art, then it's an inadequate statement. It's like defining 'cheese' as 'what the dairyman makes in the cowshed'. It's true in its own limited fashion, but is actually an evasion of the question we're really asking about cheese.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

Isola said:


> Thanks for the quote, Elgarian.


I'm glad it struck a chord. It comes from a little book CS Lewis wrote called _An Experiment in Criticism_. When I first encountered it, I felt it was one of those statements that made me realise I was grasping something _properly_ for the first time. There's quite a lot of that sort of wisdom in the book.


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## Isola (Mar 26, 2008)

Thanks again, Elgarian. Having checked it out on amazon I found even the cover design is awesome. Okay it's on my to-buy list - being a C S Lewis fan I can't afford to miss this little gem!


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

Isola said:


> Having checked it out on amazon I found even the cover design is awesome.












I see what you mean. That's beautifully produced. Unfortunately my old copy is much less enticing:










If you're already a Lewis fan, then you'll love the book - it has his _tone_ throughout, of experience, knowledge, wisdom, and insight lightly worn; and although addressed in the first instance to literature, it illuminates our responses to all the arts.


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## purple99 (Apr 8, 2008)

Elgarian said:


> Reading through this thread from the beginning, this morning, I'm disappointed in the lack of progress we're making. It seems the longer our posts become, the less light we shed and the further from the point we drift. So, if purple99 will forgive me


I forgive you utterly. 



Elgarian said:


> I'm going to abandon my half of this particular 'individual versus socio-political' debate, because I think (a) it's irresolvable; and (b) we're increasing the confusion.


I don't think there's more than a cigarette paper between us. I also like the idea of art being universal, something which subverts fashion and unites people from different cultures, backgrounds, ages, etc in a common endeavour.



Elgarian said:


> Suppose we make the literary reference less specific:
> 
> "Art heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. In experiencing great art I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."


The linguist and novelist George Steiner says something similar about language (itself a set of symbols). He asks the question: Why has the human race developed 10,000 different languages, with some parts of the globe, e.g. New Guinea, containing tribes living a few miles apart but with totally unrelated languages?

His answer is that each language allows us to consider the world afresh. That when, say, considering the Kalahari Bushmen's dream language -- they apparently have a particularly rich vocabulary for describing dreams -- it gives us fresh insight into the human activity of dreaming. He points out that when you explain Einstein's theory of relativity and the related concept of space-time to a Navajo Indian, he'll have less trouble understanding it than the average Englishman or American -- because the Navajo language already contains the concept of space-time.

So, according to Steiner (and Lewis) when we expose ourselves to how other men and other cultures understand the world we become more human; we gain insight into who we are. It's an attractive idea.

It would be entertaining to disappear into the Papua New Guinea jungle with a recording of Bach's St Matthew Passion to see what the inhabitants made of it. You might still get eaten, of course, but accompanied by "O Mensch, bewein dein' Sünde groß". Such experiments must have been conducted -- the testing of art between cultures to see if it has universal appeal, or is only the product of fashion within a particular social class of a particular culture at a particular moment in history. It strikes me as a good test for great art -- can it make the leap between history and culture? Bach certainly can.


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## Lang (Sep 30, 2008)

Elgarian said:


> That's more or less how Kurt Schwitters defined it, and it became a kind of Dadaist manifesto. And there are certain works of art where it helps to know that such an impulse lies behind their creation. But for those of us who don't think Dadaism is the source of all wisdom about art, then it's an inadequate statement. It's like defining 'cheese' as 'what the dairyman makes in the cowshed'. It's true in its own limited fashion, but is actually an evasion of the question we're really asking about cheese.


It seems to me to be a simple statement of fact. There are other questions that arise from it, of course, and I mentioned one of them. Is it good art or bad art? What is art supposed to do? What objective criteria can be applied to art criticism when the appreciation of art is wholly subjective? And so on.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

purple99 said:


> I forgive you utterly.


I hoped ... nay, thought, ... no, I _knew_ you would.



> It strikes me as a good test for great art -- can it make the leap between history and culture?


Good test. The world of archetypes is only a whisper away. The only proviso I might add would be that, while a successful test outcome lets us put a tick in the 'great art' box, failure doesn't necessarily prove the contrary. Rather, failure can only lead to a provisional conclusion - along the lines: 'well, we haven't been able to demonstrate that this is great art _yet_ ...'. (It's sort of like the scientific method, but inverted - in the sense that it's possible to disprove a scientific theory conclusively, but never possible to _prove_ one.)

I've absorbed Lewis's reasoning so thoroughly that it's hard for me to escape from it. All this derives from that book of his, wherein he maintains that we can be sure of the greatness of a given work by its ability to evoke a particular kind of response in the reader/viewer/listener, but we can never be sure of the badness of what seems to be a bad work in the same way. If your Papuan cannibals listened to the Bach in disgust and then chose to use your CD as a placemat (the better to eat you, thereon), we wouldn't be able to conclude that the St Matthew Passion _isn't_ great art. But perhaps the point is obvious. I don't want to make a meal of it.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

Lang said:


> It seems to me to be a simple statement of fact.


Oh yes, it is undeniably that. I just don't believe it qualifies as an _explanation_ of what art is, except in the same limited sense as my statement about cheese.

*Afterthought:*
It occurs to me that I may seem to be too abruptly dismissive of your suggestion, here, and if so, I should apologise. I didn't mean to be, nor to give that impression. On the contrary, I've actually spent a lot of time over the years thinking about the idea that 'everything the artist spits out is art' in a very _non_-dismissive way; but I reached the conclusion that while it really does help us approach certain _kinds_ of art (Duchamp's 'Fountain', say), there are great swathes of art about which it doesn't really help at all. Or at least, it doesn't help _me_, which is not necessarily the same thing.


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## Lang (Sep 30, 2008)

Funnily enough I have been having a similar discussion on another forum. In answer to an 'anybody could do that' comment I said this: In my experience, people who say this when faced with modern art do not understand the historical context of the work nor the aesthetic qualities it might have. For example, when looking at Duchamp's 'Fountain', it could be said that anybody could have taken a urinal and displayed it as art. But the fact is that nobody had the originality of mind to use 'readymade' objects until Duchamp did it. And he realised that by calling these objects art they *became* art, and presented a completely new aspect to us. That is what distinguishes the mind of the artist from the minds of people like me.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

Lang said:


> But the fact is that nobody had the originality of mind to use 'readymade' objects until Duchamp did it. And he realised that by calling these objects art they *became* art, and presented a completely new aspect to us.


Yes, yes, that's exactly what I meant. In order to see the _Fountain_ as 'art', we have to be _told_ it's art, either in so many words, or by being confronted by it, displayed 'as art'. And when we're told, it changes our perception of it. So the sentence 'art is what the artist says is art' acquires an intense meaning and significance in that context.

On the other hand, if we want to know what it is about _Gotterdammerung_ that leaves us feeling shaken and overwhelmed, or what it is about a Cezanne still life that may haunt us forever, then the sentence doesn't get us very far. I wonder if anyone ever responded to Duchamp's _Fountain_ in that way? I mean, has anyone ever felt overwhelmed by it _as great art_ (other than as a kind of nostalgia, brought on by being in the presence of an icon of modern art history)?


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## Lang (Sep 30, 2008)

Elgarian said:


> On the other hand, if we want to know what it is about _Gotterdammerung_ that leaves us feeling shaken and overwhelmed, or what it is about a Cezanne still life that may haunt us forever, then the sentence doesn't get us very far.


Well, I think if we were ever able to answer that question, then we would know everything about what it is to be a human being, and fortunately I think that will forever be beyond us. 



Elgarian said:


> I wonder if anyone ever responded to Duchamp's _Fountain_ in that way? I mean, has anyone ever felt overwhelmed by it _as great art_ (other than as a kind of nostalgia, brought on by being in the presence of an icon of modern art history)?


Well, I doubt very much whether Duchamp intended to overwhelm anybody. But I have to say, that when I look at this piece - and I was doing so recently - I do feel a sense of awe - because here is the most mundane of objects transformed by its context. And I think that even if you responded to one of his works as a piece of iconography, I suspect that Duchamp wouldn't have been too displeased.

It is a very interesting subject though. Why does one painting out of a painter's whole oeuvre manage to transport us to a different world? Why is it that the work of a lesser artist (Ellen McCormick Martens) is able to take me to places that Constable's cannot?

I am sure there are answers, but it is probably just as well that we cannot know them.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

Lang said:


> Well, I think if we were ever able to answer that question, then we would know everything about what it is to be a human being


Oh I don't think so, myself. Obviously we can never get a complete answer, but I think both Langer's idea (about 'symbols of feeling'), and Lewis's idea (about art 'healing the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality'), go some way towards an understanding of why we are so shaken by certain works, and why we value those experiences. At least, I think they make a sufficiently promising start for the quest to be worthwhile.



> But I have to say, that when I look at this piece - and I was doing so recently - I do feel a sense of awe - because here is the most mundane of objects transformed by its context. And I think that even if you responded to one of his works as a piece of iconography, I suspect that Duchamp wouldn't have been too displeased.


Yes OK, I can see that. I had the chance to see his 'Box in a suitcase' (or rather, one of them) a couple of years ago; and although there was nothing there that I could possibly think of as 'beautiful' or 'awesome' in a traditional sense, the experience of seeing this thing, all laid out with its miniature representatives of a lifetime of Duchamp's artistic endeavour, was in itself an entirely fascinating one that I've never forgotten, and there were certainly times when the hair was prickling on the back of my neck. I so much wanted to get inside the glass display cabinet and fiddle with the bits!



> Why does one painting out of a painter's whole oeuvre manage to transport us to a different world? Why is it that the work of a lesser artist (Ellen McCormick Martens) is able to take me to places that Constable's cannot?


A Jungian might say (I'm not an expert so I'm guessing) that we respond to symbols through the collective unconscious, but I suppose that superimposed on that activity are all our personal neuroses, so the outcome in any one case is unpredictable. I remember once having a discussion with a friend - he regarded himself as a surrealist artist - in which the subject of neurosis came up, and he said something like 'I have the deepest respect for your neuroses - they are what cause you to be attracted to my work'. He was right. His pictures were capable of reducing a certain kind of person to tears, while leaving dozens of others completely indifferent.

For me the mystery isn't 'why do certain supposedly great works of art leave me cold?' - I can think of any number of reasons why I might not respond adequately to a great work of art. No, the mystery is how can it possibly come about that someone scraping a bow across a few taut strings, or sloshing a few dabs of paint on a canvas, can move me so profoundly as to make me feel as if experiencing them seems sufficient justification for being alive.


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