Michael digs in. I ask, What if an artist intends to not make an artwork but goes ahead making this "unart"? Is it an art object anyhow? What conditions other than intention does it fulfill?
More: What does it mean to say an artist can do what he pleases? Michael makes the simple and common distinction between art that must serve a separate function and that which has no separate function. But that's too easy. What art serves no separate function even as it serves itself? None, unless it has ceased to exist or is unexperienced, even by its author. In this respect all made objects are art, another truism. Further, it has been well-argued by art historians for at least a hundred years that no art can escape its time, that not all options are available to the artist at any given time. If that's not true, then all stylistic options would have always co-existed. More: The problem is we can't find the location of art. If the artist cannot claim all responsibility because he or she can't assure its validation and if the audience can't claim all responsibility because it didn't make the artwork, and if history limits what is possible as art because society and its mores evolve, decay, revert, replace, what is left except belief, a desire for art and an eagerness to cite it, to pretend it, to experience it (an induced delusion?) without any proofs beyond persuasion, lies, force, rewards, and so on? Art is the metaphor of secular religion, the true faith with a neurological stimulus benefit and possibly a social benefit, too. So we talk about it as if to pretend it into reality, like a god, and to assure artists that their efforts are necessary to keep the faith alive. WC ________________________________ From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 9:11:16 AM Subject: Re: Heidegger and Singularity-string William wrote: > I can't agree with Michael. His argument asserts that whatever an artist > consciously makes as art is art (without qualitative ranking). That reduces > art to intention in the sense that if the artist intends to make art, the > result of intention is art even if it can't be ranked qualitatively until > some consensus occurs or recurs. Ah, I see my lapse, which I didn't notice until Miller agreed with me, a neurological jolt so severe I had to go back to see what provoked him. I said--or thought I had conveyed, but apparently an ellipsis or two caught me up--I meant to say that when an artist is making an artwork--the thing on the easel, on the plinth, on the copper plate, litho stone, etc.--he sets out to produce a thing that is (a) a representation of some kind, and (b) does not have to pass an external truth test. He sets out with the *telos* of art, true--in fact, with all the three other causes of art in mind. The artist does intend to make art, but his intention does not make it art; it only guides his actions. More: (a) The thing has to be a representation of some kind: a photograph, a map, a statue or macquette, a puppet, a word or song, etc. It stands first and foremost as a proxy for something else, somehow. By contrast, utilitarian things are made primarily to function in a certain way. Their stylishness is subordinate to their operation. "Beauty is as beauty does." All industrial or product design is an expression of this relationship between outward appearance and functional efficacy. (b) The artistic representation doesn't have to be that way. The artist can paint the figure any color he chooses, or elongate the limbs, or add extra appendages, etc. The police crime scene investigator can embellish the drawing of a scene by adding or taking away a detail here or there, but that would impair the drawing's reliability at trial. The biologist can add cutesy little cilia to a drawing of some microbe, but that would ruin its value as a scientific record. Such a priori limitations on the investigator's or scientist's drawings govern how the works are made: no adding fanciful things, no taking away things, *because the work will be evaluated by comparing it to an outside standard*, i.e., a "truth test." A work of art does not fall under that jurisdiction. The artist can make it any way he pleases--and must be prepared to hear objections that a face shouldn't have a green stripe in the nose, or those naked women look so gross with all those wrinkles and cast shadows, or no such animal as a man-horse. More: If a thing of a certain quality is called "art," how can we speak of "bad art"? Isn't that a contradiction, an oxymoron? Or at least ambiguous: "It's art, but it's not very good." | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady [email protected]
