/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6386246]

Maybe eons of man's inability to define art and determine what constitutes art and what not doesn't indicate that art is a sublime, intangible concept but that it's a bad concept alltogether. It's like explaining atoms as solar systems - seems sensible at first look but breaks down on closer inspection.

[Anonymous No.6386251]

>>6386246
Shouldn't the question rather be "When is it art" insted of "What is art"?

[Anonymous No.6386260]

>>6386246
>implying natural language terms have hard definitions

>>>/philosophicalinvestigations/

[Anonymous No.6386323]

>eons
>art undefined
>that analogy
when you talk about things you've never read about with that tone you make yourself sound pretty dumb.
>eons
The concept of "art" comes from the middle ages, romans if you really push it. Outside of europe what we understand as art was seen mostly as religion, personal growth or closer to what we call craft. While in Europe it was also religion, the independency between the creators and the formal institutions resulted in people wondering why they did it. They took the concept of "beauty" from Plato (that which is both true and healthy) and mixed it with Aristotle (the perfect equilibrium) and proposed that "art" (i.e. the cultural production for the high class) was a representation of the perfect equilibrium created by god.
When the enlightenment came and they needed to throw god out of the boat they switched to the idea that artists can improve upon the work of god, becoming demi gods in the process. Obviously artists loved that shit. That's where the concept of genius comes from, you're doing magic if you're good with art.
But by that time teaching art had become a thing., and to teach art you need to invent standards. Since at that time a lot of greek art was rediscovered the idea was that religion failed to understand the concept it had created and that the true beauty was imitating the greeks (this is what we call neo classicism). Which was a dumb concept because it was limited as fuck, but together with the re discovery of the camera obsucre and the implementation of perspective resulted in some of the greatest works ever made.
By the end of the 19th century artists had forgotten about that greek crap because they remembered the rest of the world had some pretty cool stuff (Van Gogh, for example, was heavily influenced by Japan and he had some impact there too; to this day they love him more than europeans and those love him a lot). Art no longer was about the greeks or reality but about the artist.
How come, then, we could still enjoy classical paintings? The main answer is that from the Frankfurt School: art is a inherent reflex in a human. It's not in the work, it's not in the author, it's not in the receiver. It's in all three. Walter Benjamin would call this the "aura" of a work.
But then, what happened with a movie or a photograph that can be multiplied a virtualy infinite number of times? How did this relationship exist when there isn't a single work made by a single artist but millions of copies made at least in half by a machine? Where is the creative genius when a dozen people worked in the film? How about a novel that was edited by someone else? The road gets trickier there, and I could say that there isn't a single road decided yet. In general authors have taken the route of considering a work of art as a text, and as such each copy carries the total of it (or, in case it was changed, it's a different text), and they focus more in the particular interpretation each can make (cont)

[Anonymous No.6386378]

>>6386323
Now, it might sound strange but authors like Paul Ricoeur or Northrop Frye have worked towards the idea that there can be a standardized interpretation of a work, not through everyone agreeing like cheap slutty lambs but through the study of interpretation itself. I'm not well read on him so I'd really like if someone could fill in the blanks.
Other authors, like Hans-Gregor Gadamer, have analyzed the idea of art outside of the european evolution of the concept, because even if it's an european thing other cultures have very similar things just with other names. Again, I'm not the best to be explaining this and I know there are at least a couple of anons that know more about this than I do, but from what I've read and can summarize he analyzes the idea of art as a social event, codified by each culture but with certain recurring characteristics (the interaction between author and spectator or the reception of the work, for example) that can help us understand how something like a "happening" can be art even if it doesn't last in time and is only enjoyed by a small interested group.
Then you have the more heavy post-structuralist route, with people like Deleuze, and I should really shut my mouth because there's no way I'll be able to explain that mess.
That's as much as I can explain, I'm sorry if it's not all you guys wanted to know.

I hope you learned something, or that someone bothered to read this wall of text. I didn't spell check too much so I must have done some atrocities to the english language, I'm sorry for that too.

I was thinking about doing an aesthetics general, since I've been kicking that class forever and I should really just take the final exam. Would you be interested in a mildly moderated debate with occasional walls of text from my notes?

[Anonymous No.6386410]

The definition of art can be found through family-resemblances -- but, you seem too lazy to do the work.

And, I also get the feeling that you romanticize art and are probably one of those rank imbeciles who equates art with good.

[Anonymous No.6386515]

>>6386246
But for hundreds of years in Europe art was a very strictly defined concept.

[Foucault !!8WvUZxvX53M No.6387080]

>>6386246

>Let me compare the most generic examples of art a kindergartner could recognize, with two ethnic sculptures that you can probably buy in bed bath and beyond that look ethnic, so are inferior because I have no understanding of art and I am afraid

[Anonymous No.6387824]

>>6386246
so what do you actually propose, OP?

[Anonymous No.6388030]

>>6386251

damn. 2 deep 4 me

[Anonymous No.6388050]

>>6386323
>"The concept of "art" comes from the middle ages"

Stopped reading there.

[Anonymous No.6388071]

>>6388050
It does. It's inspired in roman terminology for architecture, but the term art as we understand it is a christian construct.

[Anonymous No.6388087]

>>6386378
Yes I would be interested

[Anonymous No.6388966]

>>6388050
I still want to know what's your argument here. It could be that you assumed I was saying that the greeks didn't do things we would call now art, or that you think that the word is older; I may be wrong, maybe the Ficino interpretation has been debated and I never knew.