search  current discussion  categories  philosophy 

another definition of art

updated sat 18 sep 10

 

paul gerhold on tue 7 sep 10


Here is another definition of art which I think many may find useful.

What is art?What_is_Art_/what_is_art_.html>

Think about it before critiquing and then be prepared to give specifics of
why it doesn't work for you

Paul

phil on wed 8 sep 10


Hi Paul,



The author gives the following definition -


"Art is the organisation of sense impressions [into pleasurable formal
relations] that expresses the artist's sensibility and communicates to his
audience a sense of values that can transform their lives. "



If he would have left off the "...values that can transform their lives"
part, it would have been bearable, or no worse than another McDonald's Big
Mac wrapper,.half crumpled on a sidewalk, being nudged off and on by a S02
and C01 tainted Breeze...

Or, tolerable, if barely, for doing nothing much but keeping a tired and
banal status quo going for a topographically ambigious crumpled wrapping
whose content has long since left the
Building, ot the Intestine, or was never 'there' in the first place...or wa=
s
worthless and banal and a robber of Nutrition, even when it was present.


For all the innovation, creativity, transcendance, powerful 'iner' drives
and urgencies, exigencies to express and create, all the deep and profound
"Life
Transforming" experiences everyone seems to constantly attrubite to whateve=
r
it is they have for secret and never ever mentioned examples of so called
'Art', no one manages anything for a useful definition, which, of course,
would require some modicum of all that 'originality', 'startling
breakthroughs', 'profound, life transforming epiphanies', 'Young Turks',
'Bold and Daring departures', and
so on,
everyone is supposed to be brimming and gushing and overflowing with as the
'Artists' they are.


If it were not for the mystification of a reification of a cultivated and
quasi-hypnotic delusion sold by New Yors Galleries after WWII, and of
commerce in banality-making AS product, it'd all be so much
happier, and straightforward
and easy even for anyone to understand.

Trouble is, people have become products of the same process, and are become
the commodity, commodified, whatever their secondary attributes or array of
cliche baubles to lay out for dangle/status gambits.


People make things...then, politics enters into it...after that, people mak=
e
politics, in the guise of making 'things'...then more politics get made
outta that...somewhere around there, politics are what make the people who
only appear to be making politics, since by then, the people are merely a
medium for politics to operate through, without any need for their
experience or opinions or educated analysis, to any longer have anything to
do with any of it.


Oye...


Oh well...whatchagunnado...


Lol...



Love,


Phil
Lv





----- Original Message -----
From: "paul gerhold"
To:
Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2010 7:27 AM
Subject: Another Definition of ART

I think he labors under the same vexsome misapprehension everyone else seem=
s
to have.


Thinking that 'Art' is an exteriorization or a 'noun' to which always vague
and over-arching over-generalized attributions are made in the naive guise
of experiencing 'values' originating or being emitted or radiated from or i=
n
the thing or condition in question, and that the experience somehow
transformes the lives of a viewing audience.



These must be pretty bleak, vapid and overly narrowly impressionable 'lives=
'
then.


Would not Television 'transform' their lives greatly more so? If they are
that amenible to transformation???



This seems to me to be a reification and a confusion, of transfering a
quality of idea, or an idea of quality, onto a impossible to limit or
classify bluff pretending to describe a class of things which only rarely
show any embuement of the idea then used to qualify the whole gamut of
everything done in the guise or pretext of 'Art'.



I would like to meet or hear from anyone who had their Life 'transformed' b=
y
looking at some piece of so called 'Art'.



This seems entirely ridiculous to me.


I am not saying people can not have what to them are meaningful experiences=
,
or what seem to be catalysists to their experience.




> Here is another definition of art which I think many may find useful.
>
> What is
> art?s_Art_/what_is_art_.html>
>
> Think about it before critiquing and then be prepared to give specifics o=
f
> why it doesn't work for you
>
> Paul


---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-----



No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 9.0.851 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/3119 - Release Date: 09/06/10
23:34:00

phil on thu 16 sep 10


Hi Vince, Paul, James, and anyone else still hanging in there...



Below...amid...



----- Original Message -----
From: "Vince Pitelka


> Paul Gerhold posted a web link that provided the following definition of
> art:


Yes he did, and bless his Heart, too.



> > "Art is the organization of sense impressions [into pleasurable formal
> > relations] that expresses the artist's sensibility and communicates to
> > his
> > audience a sense of values that can transform their lives."



> Pleasurable formal relations? Who says? Why should that be a criteria a=
t
> all?



Possibly, because there are still a few people left here and there, who may
prefer pleasure, to pain? Or, who can still tell the difference?


I still don't get the frequent claim of 'Art' communicating 'values' which
transform people's Lives.


And of course no one ever bothers offering examples anyone can refer to, fo=
r
all these claims and assertions, or even for merely allowing a reader to se=
e
what the writer has in mind for example on which a claim is being made.


"Bedlam"


Typhus tranfrormed more 'Lives' than 'Art' ever will...for that matter.


So has television...so has Pasurization...so have Antibiotics...so has the
Internet, so have falling off Roofs...etc...



> If one of the criteria is that art must communicate a sense of values tha=
t
> can transform peoples' lives, then a good percentage of the work that we
> call art in the museums around the world isn't really art at all.


I myself would not find that to be a necessary criteria.

But then, I ( also ) dispute the wisdom and utility of the present
confused-meaning/use-abuse of the word 'Art', as it ( the word, or the
habituated
connotation, or the liabilities of both, as they, or it ) has come to be,
anyway.



> And what is meant by a "sense of values?" Why should art have to
> communicate a sense of values?


I do not believe it would need to...but, Values do seem to fall onto, or ma=
y
be perceived as if able to be arranged on, a graduated scale from the more
or less powerfully oblique to the more or less infinitely subtle.



I think we labor in error in wishing to resolve the conundrum we have borne=
d
or inherited, or maintained on accident...instead of rejecting the premis o=
n
which it is
rooted to so vex us.


A better and intentionally arrived at premis would allow happier
forthcomings.



> There is plenty of decent art that just decorates or entertains.



I do not see how or why anyone would have ever presumed to ask anything mor=
e
than that, of it, or of anything else, or of eachother, or of themselves or
of their own
mind, anyway.


Possibly, people imagine that the word 'entertain' indicates something
trivial? Or other-determined? Or superficial..?


It is a broad term I suppose...


But, if I imagine the loftiest or most exhaulted or revered or famous or
profound things called 'Art', or ditto of events or transpires of History,
of famed Religious figures or
other personages, etc, I
find them ( at best, and at worst, ) to 'entertain'...so...

Entertain used to mean one invest attention and interest in or with
something...a form
of consideration...a form of involvement and focus.



Word Soup, as ever...Grabba Spoon...




> Also,
> there is lots of art that tells a story without communicating any
> particular
> sense of values.


Yes...


Nor need it ( in this sense ) even be obliged to do that, to tell-a-story,
of course.



> I am sorry, but I think that this definition is restrictive and
> misleading.


In skeet, one says "Pull!!" and the Clay Pigeon is lst fly...


It then descends, either by it's own trajectory and liesured parabola, or,
in pieces, and, with help to be that way.



> - Vince



Love,


Phil
Lv