Where we differ is one how the question is asked. You say we must know if something is qualified as art before we subjectively agree or disagree. I say you've already decided one way or the other by claiming that there are qualifiers, which is just another way of saying artworks have intrinsic necessary and sufficient features. That would be nice (and easy) because all we need to do is count them up and prove that art is a matter of quantity of art-proving features (your mentioning skill, etc., seem to be your examples). Further, your view is a redux of Roger Fry's famous "significant form" theory, wherein he claims that artworks, real art, have formal features -- qualities of shape, line, etc.-- that are independent of subject matter and are universal, stemming from antiquity (proportions and the like in classic Western art). The significant form theory is very appealing because it enables us to apply inherited aesthetic values, as a sort of truth test and avoid the deeper, more subjective, less identifiable psychological feelings that really decide our judgment. I consider the significant form theory wrong. It has been used to justify abstract art but ignores the referential "text" content of all form. The conceptual art tradition may seem like a rebuttal of the significant form theory but in fact it simply replaces form with subject. Its content is in the "text" of subject matter. But even subject matter can't be objectified because it is recreated by the perceiver, always incompletely, just the same as form. wc
________________________________ From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2009 10:50:54 PM Subject: Re: Worringer: Abstraction and Empathy On Jul 7, 2009, at 11:38 PM, William Conger wrote: > Michael, you're in deep mud. Nothing literal defines art. Terse, eh? How is saying that one judges an object in one way or another in order to continue to speak of it as art or as something else--how is that significantly different from your four-part scheme or deDuve's "jury is still out" conclusion? I say that you cannot begin to describe something as "art" or to say things about it as "art" until you first determine whether it qualifies as "art"--even if just for the time being. And I am also saying that if you determine that it is more important to judge the denotational (epistemic) truth of the representation, then you are not viewing it as art but as something else; and conversely, if you determine it's more important to judge the work as a free creation, then you are viewing it as art. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady [email protected] http://considerthepreposition.blogspot.com/
