Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Interventizio]

Alethia,

I understand your point. However, the problem of WHAT are we expressing and externalizing remains. Otherwise, would a stock anaylst creating a formula that is meant to explain some cyclical movements in the stock market be an artist as well?
What is the nature of the creativity taking place in art? My explanation of what creativity in art might be is ultimately that there is no REAL creativity in art. From nothing derives nothing. The artist simply elaborates his internal world or the external world filtered through his internal world. The matter is already given. Art is process much more than content. This explains why Van Gogh's landscapes are so different than those of any other artist, for example. "Process" refers less to one's technical ability than to one own's history, personality and attitude as the determining factors.
It may be that THERE IS NO CREATION IN ART, ONLY GENERATION, in the philosophical acceptation: God creates (=from nothing)/man generates (=from something already existing, like his/her semen/ovule).

[Apeman]

Apeman,

I taught art classes for 27 years, and I have produced hundreds of paintings, some on commission and some inspired by my own thoughts. All of them are contrivances, and one cannot tell the difference between a painting produced on contract or one produced from inspiration. The same skill and effort is required for either.

Well, all that teaching has surely given you articulation and all that painting should have taught YOU that mere effort and skill does not an "art" object make. Commissioned/contracted works dont produce the same sensations (physically or intellectually) that sufficiently detached works produce. The reapings, gleanings and rewards of the two event are nothing like each other. Advanced sensibilities, painfully accomplished, let an artist know just WHAT he/she is producing while they are producing it (and also WHY the given thing is being produced). Just because it came from an artists studio, and was made by an artist does not mean it was art. It is still always the unusual heightened moments, the duressed hope and the work that yields by excess and a plasto-philosophical self-flagellating that improves an artist.

And of course paintings and courses-taught can change from one to the next or they can be the same over and over. Getting better at both will likely involve a revisiting of the edges of their possibilities - rather than just a layering or accumulation of stacked "successes".

Contrivance is a regular response to a regular problem - the small percentage of produced entities that actually are art are going to exist despite their not being called-for at all.

[Muddler]

Apeman,

So you are telling me that a painting is not art unless the artist is detached and feels pain? What is the basis of that claim? Don't you think it's more important to successfully convey to the audience in patterns and patches of color,the message or idea you are trying to illustrate in your painting regardless of the profundity or simplicity of that message?

[Apeman]

No, the goal of conveyance, communication or contribution will likely turn even the most non-objective efforts into mere illustration, propaganda or confession; things that involve other consciousnesses (whose interpretations are certain to be wildly erroneous or dismally in agreeance of some perceived authority - other than yourself). The best is got from the event of artmaking when other folks stay out of the picture completely - quite dismissed and ignored. This mode will ensure that the isolated perceiver's creative sensibility is improving.

The "pain" of course bears no ouch or wailing. It is merely a sensation that lets the creating individual that he/she is at proper thresholds for the most significant thing to come by the act. The repetitive hum-drum of a dabbling, dallying and merely devoted artist is likely not to bring about the "event" that yields excessively and permits advancement.

The "communication, and conveyances" will, though, still occur - and more honestly. In the end, a window into the act is a better thing "said" than any narrated, emoted or didacted message.

When you're terribly worried over the outcome of a piece after a perceived mis-step, and the frantic desperation adrenalines you into a "fixing" process you have entered the place where art gives the most - and the learned ability to GET to that harrowing condition is how an artist progresses. Not by an art "career" or opportunities siezed, but by an art "life" that includes mostly pinch-browed thinking and intermittent bouts of "fever".

[Stirling]

Alethia,

Quote:
"One would claim the moon to be a Masterpiece..."

The moon can be a masterpiece without being art. It is not art however according to my definition, because it lacks human involvement in its creation. Re-look at that definition I offered... simple yet complete.

Quote:
..."it had no level of conscious thought in its creation.
The same goes for something that has been created by someone."

'Someone' refers to a human so that a creation by that human is art. Whether that art can be claimed a masterpiece is arbitrary and not relevant to a definition of art itself. Scott already has a thread where he questions the difference between good and bad art to which I have contributed.

You make reference to the need for conscious thought as necessary for art to be art. I would put it to you, conscious thought is not the same thing as self conscious thought. It can be imaginings and sensations guiding the hands whilst the sculpture is somehow lost to that mediation and not... self consciously directing the artistic act.

I'm using "Masterpiece," "Work of Art" and "Art" interchangeably. I'm talking about subjective claims here. That we can't define art by the rationings of our emotional makeup. That one person calls the moon a "masterpiece," the grandest work of art there ever was, does not mean that it is indeed a work of art. Say that another person comes by and blatantly disagrees with him. Is the moon then considered a work and not a work? Well, no. It can't be both things - contradiction par excellence. It must one or the other. The correct answer, so I posit, lies with the definitive objective reality of the object - art as such has such and such characteristics/qualities as makes it as it is. But does that necessarily exclude the possibility of a work being something other than human creation, or conscious creation? Our ability to answer such a question is very meager; the best way to make recognizable the definitive work of art is to look more toward science and analytic thinking than toward our charming subjective philosophical inquiries. The same goes for whether something is beautiful or ugly.

What, then, is the process by which we can discover something objectively?

[Bill Wiltrack]

.



Art is...everything we experience & everything we create.




.

[Stirling]

And how did you come to that conclusion?

[Alethia]

I'm using "Masterpiece," "Work of Art" and "Art" interchangeably.

Ok, but you need to appreciate that masterpiece is not a word exclusive to usage in matters of art.

I'm talking about subjective claims here. That we can't define art by the rationings of our emotional makeup. That one person calls the moon a "masterpiece," the grandest work of art there ever was, does not mean that it is indeed a work of art. Say that another person comes by and blatantly disagrees with him. Is the moon then considered a work and not a work? Well, no. It can't be both things - contradiction par excellence. It must one or the other.

There are other options you know. Not everything is so black and white. If someone wants to claim until they are blue in the face that the moon represents a masterpiece of art, that is then the trigger to stipulate between the art of Nature that is objective and the art of Humans that is subjective.

It also means that any sense of universality is removed from the concept of art and its qualities because they vary depending on whether it is Naturally occurring art or derived from Human creativity.

The answer that I give to the question "What is Art?", pertains to Human Art and not Natural Art.

So, Human art is the creative spirit of humans expressed consciously and externally in reality, and Natural art is the mathematical consequences of physical laws in our universe applied objectively to the matter contained therein.

As you can see, to two art forms are completely different from one another.

[Zewpals]

Bill said,

Art is...everything we experience & everything we create.

This seems like a pretty sound definition to me. What exactly then, is "good art"? We understand that good art to one person may not be good art to another, so what exactly constitutes good art? Is it simply the degree of stimulation of our emotions that dictates the quality of art?

Some art can be perceived by more than one sense. Food, for example, can be interpreted by the eye, by the nose, by the tongue, by the hand, and/or by the ear (in the case of snap, crackle, and pop rice krispies haha). Is food as an art "good" if it stimulates our emotions in a positive way? People consider Picasso's art "good," but some of his work is very depressing and stimulates negative emotions. I do not believe anyone seems to consider something that smells fowl or tastes awful as "good" art, though.

Since it can be fairly assumed that the "goodness" of a given piece of art is subject to the individual, how can we model what "good" means when our perceptions do not seem to leave us with a sensible pattern of what dictates what we perceive as "good" art?

Is art only man-made? I would argue that nature is a great representation of art and the properties of mathematics are as well.

Instead of "positive emotions", could the "goodness" of art simply be dictated by the degree of any emotion that is brought out in the individual? Well, concentration camps are absolutely repulsive to me, yet I do not consider them "good" art.

From my person experiences, I cannot induct any sort of pattern that can model "good" art. I am not arguing that it is subjective; I am making a complete assumption that it is. Does anyone have any input on this?

[Muddler]

If everything we experience is art, then a toothache is art.

[Zewpals]

If everything we experience is art, then a toothache is art.

Haha, good point. Perhaps I should say that anything someone experiences and appreciates has the potential to be art.

[Apeman]

I would argue that very little that we experience is Art. And very little that we appresiate is Art. Experiences simply "occur" and appreciation is the most passive version of concurrence I can imagine. Art requires strife, to make, to identify, and to consider.

[wanabe]

Art: conveying an idea using other than conventional definitions.

[Urbanowl]

Okay, this seems pretty dated. But in my experience, with a term as broad as "art" there is bound to be this amount of debate.

When I think of art, I think of anything and everything. I disagree with the claim that "art" has to be intentional, looking back at the history of "art" it doesn't seem to have been made with the intention of being art at all.

I dismiss that performing arts are different from performing art because both are conceptualized and deal with time. A painting or drawing is placed on a never ending spectrum of an expressive outlet in which it moves through while in process and ends when the "artist" chooses to do so much like a performing art piece. The use of other people seems to be the same as the manipulation of a certain medium. To allow an actor to improvise is much like allowing an impasto paint stroke remain visible and/or to let the paint fall where it may. For an actor to not follow through with vision of the "artist" or conceptualizer is much like a rogue ink mark.

I question why human art and natural art are not the same. Both involve a process and are made up of influence from external sources. As an artist, if I was to consciously make a specific mark with an intention in mind, does nature not decide to place a rock where it lay? Think of nature as many artists interacting with each other. We are subject to our surroundings much like nature.

Art that comes from an individual with minimal influence from external sources is just as much art as an artist with massive influence. But with the creation of genres in art, we attempt to bring rationality to a subject that needs none. With this said, we are really just arguing "good" vs. "bad" art according to my personal definition.

[Stirling]

Well, does nature actually "choose," as if it has a mind to put things in certain places, or, as Richard Dawkins suggests in "The Blind Watchmaker," is the workings of nature as random as anything else and thus produces extraordinary things without any conscious effort? In the latter, if we do consider the products of nature "art," then they have no artist. I can't agree with that; I have already stated why.