Frances to Michael and others...
Sorting out the theoretical mess of "fine" artistic haze is
clearly an ongoing work in progress. The search in fact may not
yield a final theory that might be posited as global. It is
unsettling to observe that learned scholars in academia cannot
even agree on at least a tentative approach to "fine" art. Never
has so much been said by so many about so little. There does
nonetheless seem to be something that socalled "fine" art does
that socalled nonart fails to do or to do as well as "fine" art.
That something seemingly falls to the felt experiential response
that the form is somehow empowered to evoke, rather than to the
form alone or the content or the context. In regard to the
differentia of "fine" art from ordinary objects that are not art,
it may be that any ordinary object found or held or deemed to be
"fine" art is one that has the "purposive" power in its
"aesthetic" form to evoke an intense "aesthetic" feeling, but
that feeling to warrant the status of being "aesthetic" must
likely be a reasonable feeling. It may turn out of course that
this unique kind of aesthetic response could be had artificially
or synthetically by means other than "fine" art, such as by say
drugs. It may also turn out that even "fine" art is a material
prosthetic means of getting that deep mental response. Having the
desire to get such a feeling may lead any person to make or take
the empowered form of "fine" art; but the form can never be felt
to mimic or evoke the feeling with complete assurance. The
creative artistic act conducted by an artist in any planned
medium can furthermore never accurately record the rational
conceptual act precisely or exactly or certainly. The changes the
artist engages or advances or occasions in their "fine" artwork
as it progresses are probably due to some determined
dissatisfaction and thus due to some irritating frustration on
the part of the artist. No prediction of artistic outcome in the
mind can seemingly be had at the hand of the artist. The same
might be said of artistic theory.
PS...
Perhaps there is good "theoretical" difference to note between
chances and changes and choices in both the study and field of
art.
(My interest here in posting by the way is to probe a "realist"
approach to art.)
Michael partly wrote...
As to the use of "choices," I suspect the better word to use (the
better notion to hold) is that the work manifests the artist's
*decisions*, not his choices, because "choice" implies that we
can see or infer the options available to the artist. All we can
readily determine without recourse to other information (e.g., as
you read the text in the strange hotel room) is that the writer
decided to narrate a certain series of events, or the painter
decided to show the sitter from the left side, or the composer
decided to bring in the English horns at a certain point--and all
of those decisions led to the experiences you felt in your mind.
