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As a corollary, is there no such thing as 'art'? Are you someone who would you say "anything can be art"?
by InternetUser 9y ago
As a corollary, is there no such thing as 'art'? Are you someone who would you say "anything can be art"?
- crispinb 9y agoI think that's a far harder question! And as it has (in the West alone) at least a 2500 year intellectual history behind it that I'm only very shallowly familiar with I don't give my own thoughts much credence. But FWIW I'd try a distinction between Art (particular local social institutions, in our case hosting oil paintings, galleries, openings, etc) and art (a superset -- all human activities spawned by the apparently perennial drive that gave rise to Art, Burrup peninsula & Lascaux rock paintings, etc). The former is obviously culturally-historically defined; it's not so much that Art is anything that any bozo calls 'Art', but rather it's whatever the culture comes to institutionally admit as Art. Along with this comes related culturally-specific legitimating myths (heroic artists, obedient servants of the proletariat, God-drunk poets, shamanic intermediaries, etc). The latter however seems to be an H. sapiens species characteristic. In this much wider sense, 'art' would be anything created in response to the basic drive. Sometimes Art stagnates, or gets too academic, or complex, or appeals only to a shrinking elite, or otherwise loses relevance and needs re-invigorating from the vernacular (ie. the wider category of small-a art). Yes and no, in other words ;)