Frances to Michael and Derek and others... The point to the marginal thread of this topical subject is whether the forum should accept works of visual and verbal art from members, and then debate their value and worth as art. The consensus of opinion, at least as posted in reply to the instigators but likely without a quorum for the managers, seems to be that this site or list should deal mainly with aesthetic and artistic issues that turn on philosophic and scientific theories. It is easy for me to concur with that kind of stand. Furthermore, virtually any kind of object can easily be posited by anyone claiming the artifact to be even a lofty work of fine art, which would likely defeat lively debates.
It seems that for some theorists doing art is synonymous only with making art, yet to do something is not necessarily to make anything. It also seems that doing or making good and true art is as easy as doing or making bad and false art, assuming that if a work is known as art it can even be bad and false. Furthermore, to imply that only art which endures is good and true art, and that only good and true artists do such good and true art, is clearly wrong, because ordinary persons make ordinary works which are later found by experts to be art that are say ugly, and where the persons have no intention to make art. In any event, the making of art and of any kind or class seems much easier than knowing such art, but this assumes that the practice of art can occur without little or no theory of art on the part of the maker, who need not even be a recognized artist. There is still disagreement among experts in say the art world as to whether some kinds of artifacts are indeed what is perhaps deemed art, such as junk works, ashcan works, brute works, destruct works, ephemeral works, naive works, primitive works, folk works, and even native works. The muse here in regard to the making of art is whether practice comes before theorice or if theorice comes before practice. Since art can be made by those who do not intend to make it or who lack the ability to make it, and for which little response is forthcoming, then there is no role for any theory of art amongst them. The arts of course need not bear any knowledge, and they are certainly not a branch of epistemology, although they can justly be the objects of philosophy and science. The arts and sciences after all can range from the lesser to the greater, so that doing and making or thinking and knowing either of them will vary widely, therefore the least involvement need not entail much effort at all, yet can nonetheless yield much experience. Not all art is displayable and not all science is empirical, so that one can engage in thinking or knowing without doing or making, unless thinking and knowing is perhaps held to be an act of doing. Some art is ephemeral and environmental, for which spectacle displays are impossible. Some science is formal and theoretical, for which empirical methods are also impossible. On this forum my guess is that aesthetic theorice is held to come before artistic practice, at least in debating art issues.
