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Why is the question 'Is it Art?' asked?

  
  

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skolld
05:41 / 17.04.05
Does recognition of a piece as art come from the art world or artists? Can you be more specific with your point please?

unfortunately artists don't control the art world. I would like to see that change but as its stands we are little more than race horses. It is the gallery owners and art dealers that ultimately decide (i'm not sure 'decide' is the right word, perhaps 'come to a consensus' is a better way to say it). I'm not saying they can't be influenced by a mass of artists all being impressed with a new form of expression, but right now art is about money. it is about investment, it is about how much can be made, and until a dealer figures out an angle for a market it won't be brought inside. And even once it's brought in there will be debate and rangling for position by the dealers and collectors. Artists themselves simply don't have the ability to exercise enough power in the current system. We simply don't have the recources since most artists rely on patronage of some kind for their livelihoods.
I'm not completely fatalistic mind you, I just recognize it for what it is. In my own work for instance, i care very little about money, that isn't why i make art, and in order for it to remain 'pure' it has to remain distant from any form of money, or even prestige. The moment you change a piece because you think it will sell, it really loses something. that isn't to say that a commission is a bad deal. I like doing commission pieces but i've never considered it my 'work'.
I suppose at the core, i'm idealistic, i believe that expression coupled with skill should be the defining characteristics of 'art' and that artists should be subject to other artists, not to corporate interests.
I hope that clarifies a bit, if not, i'll try again.
 
 
skolld
05:52 / 17.04.05
oh, i forgot to add that in terms of the music industry and the art industry, i see very little difference. Capitalism is still the dominating force for both.
I sometimes think that maybe we aren't asking the right question, and that maybe the question is really, 'what constitutes a valid form of expression?' Is it more about the aesthetic response of the viewer (Kant and the sublime) or is the intent of the artist more important, or perhaps both have to exist, art is afterall a comunicative endeaver, but that's probably another thread.
 
 
Jack Vincennes
08:58 / 18.04.05
The term 'Art' is a Western concept.

What particular construction of art would you say was a Western idea only? and at what point would you say this particular construction became generally accepted by Western societies? Because, in this regard I was thinking about western medieval art, and whether this could be considered 'ritual art' -if the purpose of ritual art is to strengthen the community and the community's beliefs, is this still a form of self-expression? In this, I'm not just considering older western art, but also the art of non-western societies -for example, traditional African art as something strongly connected to ritual, and the role of the artist being possibly more central than it is in western societies. Anyway, I thought that might be an interesting way of examining western conceptions of art and the artist...

However, this is also interesting in terms of what Nina and telyn were saying about work and modernism:
beauty had been explored, accurate representation had been explored and exchanged for the idealisation of the figure and finally the exploration became ugly
the art as employment theme.
The art of modernism is focussed more on ideas of machines and the city -the idea of progress, of overthrowing an outdated way of life was embraced by the modernist artists, but may well have been unpleasant to those who were living that life. For someone who worked in a factory all day, the idea that a house should be "a machine for living in" could sound quite depressing -and art which reminded them of the factory and the city might have a similar effect. There's not only the fact that it might be ugly, but that it might have a further distancing effect -rather than showing people something which allows them to forget their everyday lives, the artist is reflecting everyday life (to some extent) which might higlight the distance between the artists with their skilled craft and those who didn't feel that their work required any skill.

Sorry this is all really vague, will post more later but I'm at work now...
 
 
Tryphena Absent
13:45 / 18.04.05
The term 'Art' is a Western concept.

Actually that's just fundamentally wrong. Art is as much a Middle Eastern/Far Eastern concept as a Western one. Byzantium exports led to the Italian art of the 12th and 13th centuries. And a number of our earlier art forms were developed in China and Japan... countries that I would suggest we actually took our current view of civilised art from.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
13:51 / 18.04.05
Hang on- so you see yourself as an artist but believe that an art form only becomes so when it's been condoned by the art world? And that the art world is a corrupting force?

I have to assume that you're only an artist because you use a traditional art form then?
 
 
skolld
19:44 / 18.04.05
Actually that's just fundamentally wrong. Art is as much a Middle Eastern/Far Eastern concept as a Western one. Byzantium exports led to the Italian art of the 12th and 13th centuries. And a number of our earlier art forms were developed in China and Japan... countries that I would suggest we actually took our current view of civilised art from.Hang on- so you see yourself as an artist but believe that an art form only becomes so when it's been condoned by the art world? And that the art world is a corrupting force?

I have to assume that you're only an artist because you use a traditional art form then?


This just isn't true. The word "art" comes from the latin 'ars' for skill, it was introduced as a means of describing artisans and craftsmen. It really insn't until the Enlightenment that the idea of art as a valid form of epistomoligical investigation emerges. The word holds no meaning for cultures that don't use a monetary system. To call African tribal works art reflects a gross misunderstanding of African culture. The objects used in ritual are part of their lives. Western appropriation decontextualizes these objects. It is the same for every culture you mentioned, yes there are influences from these cultures but not in the way you're describing. China and Japan are most definitely not where we get our ideas of 'civilized' art. Make no mistake, Western art has been shaped by western thinkers, Kant, Heidegger, Hegel..and so on. Other cultural influences have been at best, a side show attraction.
Now, does this mean that there are no other ways to talk about objects that have been created by humans? of course not, but they have to be taken in the context of how, when, and why they were made. My point is only that 'art' must be talked about in the context of western thought. African objects for instance should be talked about in terms of African thought, otherwise you lose the context and the ability to answer questions about the works becomes skewed. The same for China, Japan, India. If you want a more authentic understanding of their purpose it must be talked about in terms of its cultural signifagance.
It isn't the artwold that corrupts, it's capitalism, more specifically it is probably the prospect of power, which is always difficult to contain.
But in answer to your question, yes. I am an artist because our culture allows for it. I work as a sculptor, a painter, an illustrator, all of the mediums that are traditionally thought of in the western concept of art.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
02:41 / 19.04.05
I'm sorry, are you suggesting that the concept of art originates from a word?

The very forms and methods of 12th century painting that artists engaged in were imported to Italy from Byzantine.

Woodcutting originated in Europe (in Germany in the 1430's) and it's one of our earliest forms of mass-produced art but we know that between 794 and 1100, in the Heian period in Japan people were already creating pure art. Paintings, illustrations, in the early 1100's an illustrated scroll of The Tale of Genji was produced. That's art and it's recognisable to all of us as art. The word we use for it grew from the concept, not the other way around and arguing about language only confuses all of us because frankly most of the Far Eastern languages don't even work on an alphabetic-phonetic base.

Art isn't a product of capitalism, it grew out of social structure but the thing that we recognise as capitalism hasn't existed for very long in the course of human history. Art simply became something that was traded because it involved a skill set. Western art today has been shaped by western thinkers but to limit its influences and its origins to the west is a misrepresentation of its foundations and frankly just bigs us up in a way that we don't deserve. In the Far East people were making art while we were still creating religious icons.
 
 
skolld
15:17 / 19.04.05
I'm sorry, are you suggesting that the concept of art originates from a word?

I'm actually suggesting that 'art' is only a word. and that it has been used and abused to describe all kinds of things that it is not. i'll come back to this
but first I'll tackle your misrepresentation of my argument. At no time did I say other countries haven't influenced Western Art. What i am saying is that those influences have been just that, INFLUENCES. You seem to be making it much more complicated. In the simplest terms, if other cultures were the dominant force then it wouldn't be called WESTERN art anymore. All i'm talking about is context. It doesn't make western culture better, i'm not making a value judgment.
Second, language shapes every discourse in Human history. If we don't have an agreement on our definition of terms then there is no way to have any kind of fruitful argument.
If a similar concept exists in two or three cultures then that concept will be framed by the context of that culture, for instance, a Christian has a concept of 'Spirit', so does a Hindi but they use a different word, a word in their native tongue and that word may not carry with it the same context as the english word 'spirit'. That's what i'm talking about in terms of 'art'. Other cultures have comparable ideas but that doesn't make them the same. And it doesn't make one good and one bad, again it has nothing to do with value, it's about understanding.
I don't think we disagree that much i think we're just coming at it from two different directions.
The question that interests me is; what really connects all of these objects that have been shaped by human hands? what context gives it a different value?
And finally no. I don't believe that art stems from capitalism, i believe our current concept of it is deeply entrenched in capitalism. Words are only a tool for mapping reality as Mr. Wilson might say.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
00:11 / 24.04.05
You seem to be making it much more complicated. In the simplest terms, if other cultures were the dominant force then it wouldn't be called WESTERN art anymore. All i'm talking about is context. It doesn't make western culture better, i'm not making a value judgment.

Well I think it is much more complicated. These days art is simply influenced by other cultures because most cultures have an idea of art that is quite firm. But 500 years ago I don't think art and artists were influenced in the way that we now perceive. A lot of art was born in a country and people were trained in other countries and took the ideas away with them or the art travelled and people picked up a skillset from the piece itself. I don't think that happens in the same way now because everyone can read and write so it's described to them in a different way. Yeah, I think language is extremely important to art. Other cultures are important because you can't deny a foundation, the base of a concept is always important especially when you're talking about things related so intensely to language. Art is communication after all and that base has been provided to Western art by a variety of very different cultures. I mean, our perception of Western is pretty new, it's been born of countries that were colonised or had an industrial revolution at vaguely the same time and that's salient to the way that we conceive of art. I think it's the job of us, as people who make or observe the stuff to recognise the separation of art and capitalism because if we don't then it becomes a form of expression dictated by the way the industry perceives it.


The question that interests me is; what really connects all of these objects that have been shaped by human hands? what context gives it a different value?

I don't know- an ability to perceive a meaning beyond the one purpose of the object? Meanings unrelated to the utility of the object? I'm a lover of the complexity of art- I don't like art that's merely representative unless there's something really aesthetically inspiring about it and even then that's because it comes across as emotive to me.
 
 
skolld
15:59 / 26.04.05
I think it's the job of us, as people who make or observe the stuff to recognise the separation of art and capitalism because if we don't then it becomes a form of expression dictated by the way the industry perceives it.

This is a good point. i think the responsibility of the viewer is really important. capitalism has a way of swallowing expression. the education of the public is the only way to combat that.
 
 
skolld
19:14 / 26.04.05
I mean, our perception of Western is pretty new, it's been born of countries that were colonised or had an industrial revolution at vaguely the same time and that's salient to the way that we conceive of art.

Posted too soon,
I suppose you're right about 'Western' being associated with colonizatation and industial happenings.
Walter Benjamin in his essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' makes some great observations about the art object, especially in terms of its reproducability, and how that affects the viewer socially and psychologically. I think he would say that it numbs the audience after a while. I like Benjamin because he makes his observations during WWII and i don't think much has changed since then, in regards to 'reproduction'. I could be off on that though, any thoughts about that?
Modernism brought up the idea that the object was secondary to the concept and then with Post-modernism the object isn't even necassary. I think i stand somewhere in the middle, that 'art' is both concept and object (i use this term loosely) sychronized into something above function, and that conveys expression. but i'm trying to come to terms with the ideas myself.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
00:35 / 21.06.05
There is an old thread on Benjamin's the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction that you might be interested in reading.
 
 
skolld
02:03 / 21.06.05
Thanks Nina, i'll check it out
 
 
Lord Morgue
07:24 / 17.09.05
"The most important thing in art is the frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively - because, without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to put a "box" around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall?"

-Frank Zappa
 
 
Lysander Stark
13:40 / 26.09.05
Frank Zappa, and of course Lord Morgue, introduced a good point there, one that Duchamp and others beside had already contemplated and considered. Ultimately, the not-so-simple questions, 'What is Art?' or 'Is this Art?' are not limited to those who are viewing, but also to the artists themselves, and it is a question that has, in our post-post-modern age, has become central to many artists' outputs and MOs. This must be even more the case for artists who feel that art is their vocation, and yet question it, doubt it, are cynical about it... See, for instance, Bruce Nauman's work The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths-- Nauman enshrined that statement in bright lights precisely because hewanted to see whether it felt true when he said it, as it were, out loud...

In a way, then, it is a question as old as the role of the artist. It is older than Zeuxis or Pygmalion. And Duchamp's Fountain was their incredibly concise and self-conscious heir in blurring the lines between Art and the Real World (even with a prophetic element of the scatological included to enhance the truth of Zappa's later point).

The idea of the spark of originality was perhaps best put to the test when Yves Klein sold a chunk of the Immaterial, a void imaginary space that would, depending on the amount of faith that one has in Art with its capital A, contain only that spark of originality... (Although he had other points too, and was also not shy of being glib).

However, my problem with the original question is that it is often more interesting for artists than for other viewers. Art like the above will constantly run the risk of becoming too intellectual, too isolated, too much of a crossword puzzle: not knowing Deleuze or Baudrillard or Benjamin etc leaves you on the outside, abandoned in your ignorance and, in the mindset of too many people, unqualified to judge or even appreciate the work. A great irony-- art that challenges its pedestal too often finds itself stranded on another one...
 
 
skolld
19:50 / 29.09.05
not knowing Deleuze or Baudrillard or Benjamin etc leaves you on the outside, abandoned in your ignorance and, in the mindset of too many people, unqualified to judge or even appreciate the work. A great irony

seems like a very 'victim' oriented approach. If people don't want to educate themselves then that's on them. I personally am not going to 'dumb' down my work. It's odd that we don't ask history or math proffessors to do the same. I want people to rise to the occasion, to broaden their concepts, their ideas. There needs to be accessability in art, no question, but part of the accessability rests on the viewer. you have to bring something to it in order to get anything out of it.
 
 
Lysander Stark
07:29 / 30.09.05
My worry there is that art that repeatedly asks the question 'Is it Art?' gives its little moment of enlightenment only to other artists or to the cognoscenti. This is very valid in its own right, and I enjoy the cerebral aspects of such artists and their works, but still find that they run the immense risk of becoming nothing more than elaborate parlour games with no relevance to the outside world. Perhaps because I write about art within the art market I am a tad prone to cynicism here, but find that this kind of snake-eating-its-own-tail self-referentialism is sometimes extremely decadent.

I am always impressed by artists who manage to find a way to address both the sense of poetry or revelation that used to be the cornerstone of art, and the conceptual side. Artists like Nauman (well, some) and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Gerhard Richter, Fontana after the War and various land artists. But I still think that there is too much art that provides a puzzle that, in order to be unlocked, relies far too heavily on the rather specific knowledge of those-in-the-know. While I am not the biggest fan of Socialist Realism (or, indeed, of Jack Vettriano), I still believe that more art should cater to wider tastes. If it did, I believe that the question 'Is it art?' would be asked in general in a less sneering way.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
11:31 / 30.09.05
My worry there is that art that repeatedly asks the question 'Is it Art?' gives its little moment of enlightenment only to other artists or to the cognoscenti

But that's assuming that people don't immediately pick up on the question, which is incorrect. You must have met as many people as I have who've answered it with "that's not art" as soon as they've seen a piece they feel dubious about. Don't you think that the question itself is art, has always been inherent in art? We see Turner's paintings as traditional now but they were innovative and rejected by the establishment when first produced... people no doubt asked if his work was really art, which suggests that the question naturally arises from our culture.

more art should cater to wider tastes

Surely that's the choice of the artist(s)?
 
 
Lysander Stark
11:07 / 05.10.05
It is, of course, the choice of the artists themselves. My frustration is kind of ill-focussed-- working in the mercenary side of the art world, I find myself writing about artists from the Impressionists right up to the contemporary, and frankly I love it. There are almost no artists about whom I have written whose art I have not appreciated. I am an apologist most of the time for these people! Certainly, today's chocolate box picture was yesteryear's scandal-- Renoir! Turner! Monet! Rebels all! As you say, questioning a work's validity is doubtless as ancient a passtime as daubing on cavewalls.

The problem is that I worry that much of the art world and many artists are becoming increasingly detached and irrelevant and therefore are becoming sort of decadent.

This is why I love Nauman, Gaonzalez-Torres, why I loved Mike Nelson's Turner contribution, Duchamp, Dubuffet, Goldsworthy, Warhol, Gauguin... These are artists who manage (or managed) to present something that was interesting on several levels. Having seen Skolld's work in another thread, I find that this too fits the bill-- the hybrid, mechano-surreal sculptures are already visually intriguing, but also introduce further questions about art. These artists all provided work that, like Shakespeare, could appeal to various different people on various different levels. While there will always be room for philosophers prying deep into the nature of art, I personally feel these more complex approaches are more, well, not valid, but something along those lines. After all, what is more accessible than a urinal?
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
16:43 / 05.10.05
Didn't Munsch hang his finished paintings in the woods behind his house?

seems like there's more importance placed on the creative process, and less on the finished bit. Capitalism puts more emphasis on the finished bit - as this is the material end of artistic pursuit, and capitalism understands how the material world translates into profitability.

Is the Art in the process or in the object?

can a capitalist system create art? Can a capitalist system be artistic in its own way? Is a mass-produced, computer-designed image art? Is there a human artist lurking behind all the technology, like the painter at the end of the brush?

I think art triumphs when it unites both the artist and the aesthete in reaching the sublime through experience of the work (painting, novel, meat-dress, whatever).

interesting thread, tho.

ta
tenix
 
 
skolld
20:32 / 05.10.05
The problem is that I worry that much of the art world and many artists are becoming increasingly detached and irrelevant and therefore are becoming sort of decadent.

Lysander, i think you're right. it is very easy to become irrelevant in art. In America i'm beginning to think the problem stems from a lack of knowledge on the part of many of the artists. The trend toward anti-intellectualism has created a generation of artists that don't care to understand their own histories. There is almost a sense that they don't want to 'work' at it. They just want to come up with an idea, but i don't think that's enough.

Thanks for the insight on my work, by the way. If you're interested in doing a more indepth critique of it i wouldn't mind hearing it.
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
18:29 / 06.10.05
is it possible that "Art" is defined by the circumstances of the moment?

such that a painting, if assessed according to its price tag isn't art, however, viewed with Wonder and Awe, is.

and the painting in and of itself is simply a painting and neither art nor not-art.

"if a painting hangs in a gallery, and there's no one there to see it, is it still art?"
-WordPlay on an old ad-age

ta
tenix
 
 
Lysander Stark
12:48 / 07.10.05
Regarding the last bit, I certainly hope so! I love the idea of ephemeral art. Working in the art market makes me value even more these works which can not be pinned down and sold and valued... Goldsworthy's works melting here and there, or other artists allowing their work to flow or disintegrate, the beauty of a gesture... All these things have an intense and definitely artistic poetry, I think. (The market does, to be fair, often catch up, selling photos of these ephemeral gestures instead!)

The most poetic story I know that fits this bill is about the monk-sculptor Enku, in Japan. He is known for some of the 'chip-Buddhas' he carved, and apparently in total he may have made more than 120,000 Buddha sculptures in his life. Apparently, he once asked someone for their boat, which was tied up on a river. The man asked why he wanted the boat, and Enku said that he wanted to carve it into Buddhas and float them down the stream. The owner of the boat sarcastically said that of course, in that case, he could have it. But the next day was perplexed to find that the boat was gone. He asked Enku where it was, and Enku replied that he had carved it into 1000 Buddhas and floated them down the river...

To me, that is art and that is most certainly sublime.
 
 
wandering aengus
04:40 / 14.10.05
I am quite impressed by the example of Enku... it, on first sight, singlehandedly refutes the institutional theory of art (briefly, as this may have been explained before, this is the 'framing' mentioned by Frank Zappa... art is what fulfills the place of art in the institution of the artworld). But then i wonder if it was considered art in the original context, either by Enku or those who saw his tiny buddhas. There is something in that act which suggests to me that it was, and still is, Art, but maybe this comes from my own understanding of the concept of art as allowing for the ephemeral and as such applicable to Enku's stuff. Maybe in his day what he did was considered a ritual act, done in order to gain good karma, and not in order to produce an aesthetic feeling in the viewer. Are you less of an artist if you carve Buddhas in order to gain your release from samsara rather than to please/inform the viewer, express emotion, or any of the other purposes that have been ascribed to art? Can we call it art now if it wasn't art then?
 
 
Charlus
07:50 / 28.10.05
Dear all,

These comments you are making are all very postmodern. Then question; "is it art" has really only ocurred since Marcel Duchamp and his revelations with the urinal; the bicycle wheel ect. Also, the mentioning of framing; is also very postmodern. If you are interested, read an article written by Peter Burger; a marxist theorist, alot of what you are discussing is in his writings.
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
16:06 / 30.10.05
sophist,

does that mean that pre-postmodernists didn't question novelty's value as aesthetic expression? or discuss it?

I'm confuse.

tenix
 
 
Lysander Stark
08:02 / 08.11.05
While there are post-modern aspects to the discussion and to some of the ideas, I think it is going too far to claim that the question did not exist until Duchamp.

His Fountain was one of the most explicit works of art to ask the question, but the boundaries of art had been pushed and questioned even within a more limited framework throughout the Nineteenth Century, and even before then. The different artistic styles that flourished in France with Gericault and Delacroix and Ingres challenged the then received nature of what could and could not be done, a mantle taken up by Courbet. And when photography entered the frame... Tell the Impressionists, the Post-Impressionists, the Fauves, the Cubists that no-one was asking, 'Is this art?' back then... That, after all, was the origin of the Salon des Indépendants, a long time before Duchamp was submitting urinals to exhibitions. People were asking, in the most dismissive possible way, 'Is this Art?' about their pictures, and that is where the question truly originates.
 
 
Jack Vincennes
20:11 / 14.12.06
Bumping a very old thread - but I thought it was worth it to draw people's attention to this piece of Tim Hunkin's on this very theme.
 
  

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