What is Art?

[PoliSciProf]

What makes an object or activity art? Is it the object or activity? Is it intention? Is it culturally determined? Can an art object or activity be universal, i.e., understood by all men/women in all times and places? Can art reveal universal truths? Is there some sort of aesthetic experience? If so, what is this experience? How does it differ from other experiences? It is something objective? Is it totally subjective? Is it all political? How do we differentiate art from non-art? Must art be beautiful? Your comments and opinions, please.

 

[Benadam]

a word with a history of radically transitioning meanings and currently attached to various concepts.

I think a medivel meaning was ’ trickery’. Also when a craqft is developed or refined . Like ’ so and so took such and such a craft to an art.

the fine arts are considered " appealing to the senses or imagination. as in something creative.

The impressionists to me opened up painting in a way that made it more of an art than a craft. It had been growing creatively dead IMO.

The various art forms such as the visual arts and the musical arts tend to develope or progress creatively along parallell chronological lines. I did a paper on that subject for a college English class. So art is something that expresses culture as it develops.

Art is primordially religious. To depict something especially a person or animal was thought to capture the essence or power of the subject. An example of the religious roots of art is the cave drawings in France. The drawings are beautifull examples of prehistoric man’s ability to observe and reproduce form with exquisite accuracy. They might have been rendered in the winter as something like a prayer for a successfull hunting season.

I personally consider that function of art as it’s highest and most noble purpose. There isn’t a developement of art that can’t be applied to religious art. In fact it seems that it is the one genre that would most likely find usefull all and any new forms of expression since religion is how man probes deeper into the meaning of himself and his surroundings. Religion and art go hand in hand like Divine revelation and the developement of words or symbols.

Ok, don’t want to violate my onandonymous vows.

Peace

 

[Benadam]

a word with a history of radically transitioning meanings and currently attached to various concepts.

I think a medivel meaning was ’ trickery’. Also when a craqft is developed or refined . Like ’ so and so took such and such a craft to an art.

the fine arts are considered " appealing to the senses or imagination. as in something creative.

The impressionists to me opened up painting in a way that made it more of an art than a craft. It had been growing creatively dead IMO.

The various art forms such as the visual arts and the musical arts tend to develope or progress creatively along parallell chronological lines. I did a paper on that subject for a college English class. So art is something that expresses culture as it develops.

Art is primordially religious. To depict something especially a person or animal was thought to capture the essence or power of the subject. An example of the religious roots of art is the cave drawings in France. The drawings are beautifull examples of prehistoric man’s ability to observe and reproduce form with exquisite accuracy. They might have been rendered in the winter as something like a prayer for a successfull hunting season.

I personally consider that function of art as it’s highest and most noble purpose. There isn’t a developement of art that can’t be applied to religious art. In fact it seems that it is the one genre that would most likely find usefull all and any new forms of expression since religion is how man probes deeper into the meaning of himself and his surroundings. Religion and art go hand in hand like Divine revelation and the developement of words or symbols.

Ok, don’t want to violate my onandonymous vows.

Peace

 

[Benadam]

a word with a history of radically transitioning meanings and currently attached to various concepts.

I think a medivel meaning was ’ trickery’. Also when a craqft is developed or refined . Like ’ so and so took such and such a craft to an art.

the fine arts are considered " appealing to the senses or imagination. as in something creative.

The impressionists to me opened up painting in a way that made it more of an art than a craft. It had been growing creatively dead IMO.

The various art forms such as the visual arts and the musical arts tend to develope or progress creatively along parallell chronological lines. I did a paper on that subject for a college English class. So art is something that expresses culture as it develops.

Art is primordially religious. To depict something especially a person or animal was thought to capture the essence or power of the subject. An example of the religious roots of art is the cave drawings in France. The drawings are beautifull examples of prehistoric man’s ability to observe and reproduce form with exquisite accuracy. They might have been rendered in the winter as something like a prayer for a successfull hunting season.

I personally consider that function of art as it’s highest and most noble purpose. There isn’t a developement of art that can’t be applied to religious art. In fact it seems that it is the one genre that would most likely find usefull all and any new forms of expression since religion is how man probes deeper into the meaning of himself and his surroundings. Religion and art go hand in hand like Divine revelation and the developement of words or symbols.

Ok, don’t want to violate my onandonymous vows.

Peace

 

[Sam_777]

Maybe what considered Art by me may considered non-Art by others, I think its a personal matter or a personal feeling, however, I think Art object can be universal, since we have found some Arts in ancient caves, thus, it was their communication media at that time.

 

[Tietjen]

What makes an object or activity art? Is it the object or activity? Is it intention? Is it culturally determined? Can an art object or activity be universal, i.e., understood by all men/women in all times and places? Can art reveal universal truths? Is there some sort of aesthetic experience? If so, what is this experience? How does it differ from other experiences? It is something objective? Is it totally subjective? Is it all political? How do we differentiate art from non-art? Must art be beautiful? Your comments and opinions, please.

IMO, something or some activity is determined to be or not be “art” by the each individual who observes it. Many of your other questions can be answered by asking each individual observer. The views and opinions will cover the entire spectrum. So, yes… labeling something as “art” is subjective.

 

[Holly3278]

I don’t know how relevant this is but here is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about art:

2501 Created "in the image of God,"294 man also expresses the truth of his relationship with God the Creator by the beauty of his artistic works. Indeed, art is a distinctively human form of expression; beyond the search for the necessities of life which is common to all living creatures, art is a freely given superabundance of the human being’s inner riches. Arising from talent given by the Creator and from man’s own effort, art is a form of practical wisdom, uniting knowledge and skill,295 to give form to the truth of reality in a language accessible to sight or hearing. To the extent that it is inspired by truth and love of beings, art bears a certain likeness to God’s activity in what he has created. Like any other human activity, art is not an absolute end in itself, but is ordered to and ennobled by the ultimate end of man.296

2502 Sacred art is true and beautiful when its form corresponds to its particular vocation: evoking and glorifying, in faith and adoration, the transcendent mystery of God - the surpassing invisible beauty of truth and love visible in Christ, who “reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature,” in whom "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily."297 This spiritual beauty of God is reflected in the most holy Virgin Mother of God, the angels, and saints. Genuine sacred art draws man to adoration, to prayer, and to the love of God, Creator and Savior, the Holy One and Sanctifier.

2503 For this reason bishops, personally or through delegates, should see to the promotion of sacred art, old and new, in all its forms and, with the same religious care, remove from the liturgy and from places of worship everything which is not in conformity with the truth of faith and the authentic beauty of sacred art.298

294 Gen 1:26.
295 Cf. Wis 7:16-17
296 Cf. Pius XII, Musicae sacrae disciplina; Discourses of September 3 and December 25, 1950.
297 Heb 1:3; Col 2:9.
298 Cf. SC 122-127.

 

[PoliSciProf]

IMO, something or some activity is determined to be or not be “art” by the each individual who observes it. Many of your other questions can be answered by asking each individual observer. The views and opinions will cover the entire spectrum. So, yes… labeling something as “art” is subjective.

I have wondered about this for a pretty long time. I don’t think it can be radically subjective. If you think a Kadinsky painting is no better than an Etch-a-Sketch and I think it a sublime and creative attempt to integrate some new perspectives of modernity into a new formalism then everything seems to be grounded only in our culture, our politics or our will. This leads ultimately to nihilism. And, if we cannot talk about our differences on this (because total subjectivity ultimately leads to a contest of mere assertions hence to indifference or power) because it is radically subjective (hence arbitrary) then how can we talk about our differences re the Good or anything else that is transcendent? I would like to believe or argue that great art is universal and transcendent. This does not mean that great art is knowlable or appreciated by everyone anymore than the truths of mathematics can put everyone in a state of ectasy. My view is, of course, radically undemocratic hence out of season.

 

[Benadam]

I’m thinking that art must be more than an external exercise. For something to be art it must in some way make something internal and unseen external and tangible to the senses.

 

[Tietjen]

I have wondered about this for a pretty long time. I don’t think it can be radically subjective. If you think a Kadinsky painting is no better than an Etch-a-Sketch and I think it a sublime and creative attempt to integrate some new perspectives of modernity into a new formalism then everything seems to be grounded only in our culture, our politics or our will. This leads ultimately to nihilism. And, if we cannot talk about our differences on this (because total subjectivity ultimately leads to a contest of mere assertions hence to indifference or power) because it is radically subjective (hence arbitrary) then how can we talk about our differences re the Good or anything else that is transcendent? I would like to believe or argue that great art is universal and transcendent. This does not mean that great art is knowlable or appreciated by everyone anymore than the truths of mathematics can put everyone in a state of ectasy. My view is, of course, radically undemocratic hence out of season.

I think that it can be radically subjective. I think back to the “art exhibit” involving a crucifix and urine for example. I do not believe that opinions involving art are a demonstration of the differences involving the good and bad of all other things, thus nihilism is not relevant to the discussion. You pointed to mathematics for example. Mathematics doesn’t involve opinion and/or conjecture (5x5=25 is not debatable, it is a fact whether individual persons wish to believe it or not). Art cannot be placed in the same category as it is subject to each individual’s personal likes and dislikes. Set aside, for a moment, all monetary issues concerning art. I wonder whether or not a painting like Van Gogh’s Starry Night would be marveled over. I’ve been to art exhibits at elementary schools (parent-teacher nights etc) and have seen works that I found comparable. My statement is of course, based on personal opinion, but when we talk about art, it is my belief that this is percisely the difference between a masterpiece and trash.

I’m thinking that art must be more than an external exercise. For something to be art it must in some way make something internal and unseen external and tangible to the senses.

Whose senses? Mine? Yours? Everyone’s? If you experience this phenomenon and I do not, is the item in question still considered art? Some have said that pornography is art. Is it? If it is not, does this not bolster the case that art is purely subjective?

 

[Benadam]

Whose senses? Mine? Yours? Everyone’s? If you experience this phenomenon and I do not, is the item in question still considered art? Some have said that pornography is art. Is it? If it is not, does this not bolster the case that art is purely subjective

A blind person will have more appreciation for music for sure. That the blind person doesn’t experience the visual phenomenon doesn’t change it’s being categorized as art.

Don’t get me wrong but the pornographer may be applying his or her particular developements of style or innovation to the presentation of the media thereby making it more than just an external exercise in technique. Art is art. It is an expression that exposes the expressor. Sacred or profane.

Morality can’t define art. You can judge art as good or evil but it doesn’t seize to be art. Art defined by morals seizes to have the freedom to express the interiority of the artist. Perhaps it shouldn’t be displayed but even that doesn’t exclude it from being a form of art.

Does that mean it has the freedom to be offensive for the sake of offending? Not necessarily. But that also can be a valid artistic expression IMO.

Is it possible for an evil culture to raise evil artists expressing evil desires artfully?

 

[Nino]

The impressionists to me opened up painting in a way that made it more of an art than a craft. It had been growing creatively dead IMO.

The various art forms such as the visual arts and the musical arts tend to develope or progress creatively along parallell chronological lines. I did a paper on that subject for a college English class. So art is something that expresses culture as it develops.

Art is primordially religious. To depict something especially a person or animal was thought to capture the essence or power of the subject. An example of the religious roots of art is the cave drawings in France. The drawings are beautifull examples of prehistoric man’s ability to observe and reproduce form with exquisite accuracy. They might have been rendered in the winter as something like a prayer for a successfull hunting season.

I personally consider that function of art as it’s highest and most noble purpose. There isn’t a developement of art that can’t be applied to religious art. In fact it seems that it is the one genre that would most likely find usefull all and any new forms of expression since religion is how man probes deeper into the meaning of himself and his surroundings. Religion and art go hand in hand like Divine revelation and the developement of words or symbols.

Ok, don’t want to violate my onandonymous vows.

Peace

 

[Nino]

The cave paintings were done for one reason…good luck…hoping that the herd will return (notice how most of the figures point to the right…sign that early artists were left-handed) Some paintings later were commisioned to inspire the observer to perform a spiritual act. Art has , in advertising the sole purpose to sell a concept,while in drawing and painting art ,just to cause a reaction. I fought so called abstract art in college because to me it was just junk and a parody on real art. Picasso falls into that category…just a fraud who joined the party in France and suddenly became a 'genius". The supremes once said…reorn or art…I can tell what it is when I see it!!! The late 19th century saw the beginnings of the camera and the art world went berserk…so ,since then the camera could not do color work the artists invented paintings painting out of the tube so to speak…thick un mixed colors,spots etc…illustration is like a camera,capturing a moment in time…Remington and Russel come to mind…now with the computer doing so much fake stuff good art has returned…gee a canvas touched by a human…my painting of PJP11 at the moment of being shot is powerful because I felt some of the pain myself…a computer cant feel pain only directions and a plastic mouse…

 

[Tietjen]

A blind person will have more appreciation for music for sure. That the blind person doesn’t experience the visual phenomenon doesn’t change it’s being categorized as art.

Don’t get me wrong but the pornographer may be applying his or her particular developements of style or innovation to the presentation of the media thereby making it more than just an external exercise in technique. Art is art. It is an expression that exposes the expressor. Sacred or profane.

Morality can’t define art. You can judge art as good or evil but it doesn’t seize to be art. Art defined by morals seizes to have the freedom to express the interiority of the artist. Perhaps it shouldn’t be displayed but even that doesn’t exclude it from being a form of art.

Does that mean it has the freedom to be offensive for the sake of offending? Not necessarily. But that also can be a valid artistic expression IMO.

Is it possible for an evil culture to raise evil artists expressing evil desires artfully?

I understand your point and after much thought, I do not believe that I am qualified to define what art is for another person. My personal definition will not be your definition neither will your definition be mine. This is of course exactly my point. Art cannot be defined for the masses, as it is an individual opinion. Remove morality, “good” and “bad” and one can still be left bored by looking at a Picasso while another may find his visual senses stimulated. The same may be said about music. You said, “A blind person will have more appreciation for music” while I leave room for the possibility that this is not the case. Each blind person is first an individual and therefore has individual likes and dislikes. Music, while considered art by some, may be little more than “noise” to any given individual, blind or otherwise.

I suppose that my definition of what art is would be simply, any creation by man meant to stimulate one or more of the senses. I would also have to add that not everyone will have their sense(s) stimulated by the same man-made creations; and therefore, art cannot be universally defined when addressing specific “creations” as they relate to specific individuals.

 

[Benadam]

Some paintings later were commisioned to inspire the observer to perform a spiritual act. Art has , in advertising the sole purpose to sell a concept,while in drawing and painting art ,just to cause a reaction.
I* think you make a good point. An almost if not entirely unconscious transfer of the interiority of the artist is expressed in how the artists applies the brush to the canvas. That direct contact is missing in computer generated art.*

 

[edwest2]

Art is a communications medium. It can display beauty in numerous ways, but its end goal should be uplifting.

Unfortunately, modern art, regardless of school or other classification mechanism, i.e. post-modernist, cubist, etc., has been turned into a psychological niche. The fine art classes I attended in college stressed individual creativity but it was clear that what students were producing were mainly copies of what went before with a few new touches. Most of the art was non-representational, i.e. did not look like anything recognizable. It also has its own nomenclature that elevates it artificially: installation, performance artist, spoken word artists, etc. These methods of labeling place art in a realm that separates it from the common person (as if there was such a thing as a common person), when, in fact, art should be accessible to all who view it.

This was confirmed to me on a visit to a local art museum. In the fine art section, I was looking at a mess on the floor. I also noticed a small white card placed next to it: “Please do not remove, this is art.”

So, the cleaning personnel have to be told since they might scrape it up off the floor but for those properly brainwashed (in Art Appreciation class), they automatically “knew” it was art. Give me a break. I promptly quit college.

I then went to visit another college and discovered real art being produced in the Industrial Design department. Here, students actually dealt with real light, real shadow, real perspective and real inventiveness. They were equipped to draw everything from fantasy creatures to high-tech vehicles. This was the art instruction I expected.

God bless,
Ed

 

[Swan]

I suppose that my definition of what art is would be simply, any creation by man meant to stimulate one or more of the senses. I would also have to add that not everyone will have their sense(s) stimulated by the same man-made creations; and therefore, art cannot be universally defined when addressing specific “creations” as they relate to specific individuals.

I think this sums it up rather nicely.

 

[edwest2]

A blind person will have more appreciation for music for sure. That the blind person doesn’t experience the visual phenomenon doesn’t change it’s being categorized as art.

Don’t get me wrong but the pornographer may be applying his or her particular developements of style or innovation to the presentation of the media thereby making it more than just an external exercise in technique. Art is art. It is an expression that exposes the expressor. Sacred or profane.

Morality can’t define art. You can judge art as good or evil but it doesn’t seize to be art. Art defined by morals seizes to have the freedom to express the interiority of the artist. Perhaps it shouldn’t be displayed but even that doesn’t exclude it from being a form of art.

Does that mean it has the freedom to be offensive for the sake of offending? Not necessarily. But that also can be a valid artistic expression IMO.

Is it possible for an evil culture to raise evil artists expressing evil desires artfully?

On your last question, the answer is yes. When a group of people willfully and purposefully create a vehicle for a “lovable” serial killer - a deranged man who works in a police crime lab and offers it to the public as entertainment on TV - yes. It is a testimony to the prince of the air that individuals can murder and starve entire countries in the interest of some manmade philosophy and surround themselves with dramatic and dynamic visual imagery. From Lenin to Stalin to Che Guevara.

Artists have been called always to be propagandists for their countries.

God bless,
Ed

 

[Ridgerunner]

Wow! This sure takes me back to my student days! I’m not sure I can do this subject justice, but here’s my try.

Perhaps the best explanation of it is the production of what I believe T.S. Eliot called the “objective correllative”. The artist, through his medium (be it painting, literature or whatever) provides the beholder with an “objective” point of focus. By “objective” is meant that the “core” or “point” is not dependent, nor meant to be dependent, on the perception or subjective judgment of the beholder. Rather, it is a particular thing, intended by the artist to express a particular thing.

It is “correllative” in that it “correllates” or “pulls together” knowledge, understandings, even emotions of the beholder in order to produce, in the beholder, an “insight” the beholder might not have otherwise had, or might not have had in that particular way. Now, the true artist does so in a way that is aethetically pleasing, because the elements of that also strike chords in the beholder. For example, Michelangelo’s “David” expresses certain things. It expresses youth in David, but in a way that evokes a maturity beyond what we expect David’s chronological age to have been; a “supermaturity” of a sort. David is “beyond us” in a way. He holds his sling, but he is at rest; a sort of relaxed posture in one who could be expected to be tense, if not terrified. It evokes in us a feeling that his excellence is not in him, himself, but exterior. He does not kill Goliath through his own effort, but the action, through him of God. And then, the physicality of David; the perfectly articulated musculature, celebrates Man as an instrument, that is, God’s people are objectively excellent creatures. Finally, the statue is composed through multiple use of the “golden mean”; a proportion among parts that human beings find pleasing, for reasons no one exactly knows.

But art is not a “speech”. It is evocative, not an exhortation. It invites the beholder to “persuade himself” of some truth by connecting with things the beholder already knows or feels. Thus, for example, Tolkien’s “Ring” stories evoke profoundly Catholic “thought connections” in us without ever once being literally Catholic in any way. The “morals of the story” are not forced on us , but drawn out of us.

As Percy Bysshe Shelley (I think it was him) said “Beauty is truth and truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” While that might be a bit overstated, it is, in a way, true. Real truth does resonate in us, in the same sort of way the “golden mean” does. It appeals to that which is innate in us, and is, thus, perceived as beauty. A Catholic extension of that would be that God has placed those “innate” understandings in us as part of our nature. We thus perceive them as “truth”, and thus “beauty”. We will, then, (unless we are in rebellion, in which case Truth is perceived as ugly because we have embraced false “Truths”) think those things that lead us to our natural purpose (union with God) as being beautiful, even if they are, perhaps, also disturbing.

Well, that’s my try, anyway.

 

[Benadam]

I would like to believe or argue that great art is universal and transcendent. .

I think that has historically been true. I think that many times innovation is mistaken for greatness these days as in Ed’s experience below.

This was confirmed to me on a visit to a local art museum. In the fine art section, I was looking at a mess on the floor. I also noticed a small white card placed next to it: “Please do not remove, this is art.”

So, the cleaning personnel have to be told since they might scrape it up off the floor but for those properly brainwashed (in Art Appreciation class), they automatically “knew” it was art. Give me a break. I promptly quit college.