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When arts die, they turn into hobbies
- zdw 12y agoSo, people printing stuff out of PLA plastic on an extrusion printer as a hobby means what, that product design as an art is going away? Will an army of hobbyists with the much improved descendants of Makerbots make employing someone like Jony Ive obsolete in 50 years? It sure looks like that - it appears to me that Marx's "workers owning the means of production" argument for collective ownership of workplaces is being conquered by tool prices going down by successive orders of magnitude.
- jccooper 12y agoIndustry begins as a hobby, art dies as one.
- dgabriel 12y agoI'm not sure I buy this argument. By his criterion, porn is more or less the major art.
- zem 12y agothat would require the audience to consist of people who make porn
- dgabriel 12y agoNo, his argument is that "major art" is widely consumed by people who do not practice it. He uses poetry -- consumed by a small audience of people who almost entirely consider themselves poets -- as an example of "craft." I disagree with his definitions here. They aren't meaningful.
- zem 12y agooops, yes, i misread your argument. agreed, porn would definitely be a "major art" by that criterion. (and really, who's to say it isn't? it's an orthogonal classification to good/bad art.)
- roneesh 12y agoI'm not quite sure you can make that leap. While it certainly fits his criterion of a large non-practicing audience, you forget that it actually lacks art (99% of the time). It's as workman-like as accounting or perhaps more akin to a sport.
- thebooktocome 12y agoThe Aubrey-Maturin series, including "Master and Commander", is actually quite good and of significant literary merit.
- puranjay 12y agoYou can go deeper and apply the author's argument to literary fiction itself. "Master and Commander" is probably literary fiction's "major art", while something like Finnegan's Wake is the 'craft' of the literary fiction writers.
- jccooper 12y agoSure, but it's not "literary fiction". You can tell because it has a plot and I can find it in a bookstore. Literary fiction is the "art for art's sake" side of fiction writing.
- dgabriel 12y agoNo... that's not true at all. Books like Lolita, Catch-22, Animal Farm, and To Kill a Mockingbird are all considered literary fiction.
- cmsmith 12y ago>It might be nice to live in a world in which poets had the audiences of pundits. And maybe the making of carrot carnations should be an Olympic event. I take the opposite message from all of this. It is nice to live in a world with such absurd levels of human productivity that people have the education and time for half a dozen "frivolous" hobbies. As a middle class person, I can learn carrot carving and wood turning and painting without expecting any financial gain, then stop at a free local art gallery on my way to hear some free live music at a bar. Maybe the author thinks that the past was the time of greatness in the arts because the only people who could afford to participate in the arts were great.
- dgabriel 12y agoThere's never really been any money in poetry for people who were just published poets. "Great" poets were all subsidized by patrons, worked in odd jobs or other mediums, or died in penury (sometimes all three)! The same is true now as it was 200 years ago.
- puranjay 12y agoThere are some exceptions, of course. Lord Byron's poets regularly sold out and were very profitable. As was Tennyson and Robert Browning's poetry. If we had perpetual copyright, I suspect Shakespeare's estate would be worth several billion dollars.
- Retra 12y agoWould anybody be teaching Shakespeare if you had to pay for it?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- johan_larson 12y agoPlenty of courses get taught on literature recent enough that it is not yet in the public domain. Here's one: http://www.openculture.com/2013/02/david_foster_wallaces_1994_syllabus.html http://www.openculture.com/2013/02/david_foster_wallaces_199... So yes, Shakespeare would probably still be taught, though the plays would cost a bit more.
- tgb 12y agoSeems like the next logical thing to apply this trichotomy to is fields of study. Uh oh, looks like math is just a hobby now. But since I've convinced someone to pay me to do that hobby, I guess I don't care what label it's given.
- tgb 12y agoSeems like the next logical thing to apply this trichotomy to is fields of study. Uh oh, looks like math is just a hobby now. But since I've convinced someone to pay me to do that hobby, I guess I don't care what label it's given.
- roneesh 12y agoI appreciate the clarity of the difference between art and craft. Craft is when the audience is the practitioners. Clarifying that distinction alone was worth the read.
- robert_tweed 12y agoI think that's a poor definition. I generally consider art to be an expression of ideas. A craft is an expression of skill. Further "These are arts that have no audience, other than practitioners of the art itself. Another word for a craft is a hobby." This is patently false. Perhaps the archetypal craft is basket-weaving. It's a hobby for some, but for others (especially in certain regions) it's a profession. The "audience" is anyone that wants a basket. Perhaps some of that audience can appreciate the difference between a good basket and a bad one. That does not require that they be a practitioner of basket-weaving themselves. In fact, of the terms art and craft, the latter is the one that is reasonably well defined. Things only get fuzzy when you get into whether or not a craft is art. Not because of the fuzzy definition of a craft, but because of the fuzzy definition of art.
- jdmichal 12y ago> Perhaps some of that audience can appreciate the difference between a good basket and a bad one. That does not require that they be a practitioner of basket-weaving themselves. This is actually pretty close to how I personally define a "professional": A professional is someone whose work can only be judged by other professionals of the same domain. Obvious failure modes are exempted. Anyone can tell you about a bad bridge after it has failed. But it would take a bridge engineer to tell you that before it fails.
- noblethrasher 12y ago> Anyone can tell you about a bad bridge after it has failed. But it would take a bridge engineer to tell you that before it fails. Right, especially since bridge engineers don't produce bridges, but rather produce designs for bridges, the quality of which can only be judged by other bridge engineers. I like your definition.
- Animats 12y agoNext, music. "I'm in a band" - big deal. There were how many million Myspace bands?
- circlefavshape 12y agoThe "underground" music scene in most cities mostly consists of bands going to see other bands
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- golemotron 12y agoAn art that is out of favor is called a craft. Religions are called cults for the same reason.
- startupdoc_Reed 12y agoI didn't know religions were called cults.
- golemotron 12y agoYou don't think cults are religions?
- mqsoh 12y agoArts don't die.
- kdazzle 12y agoUgh. Such an arrogant writer.
- imjk 12y agoCouldn't you argue art is pretty much a hobby for all participants except the 1% in each field that makes a living from it?
- carrotleads 12y agoIsn't this the case for many sporting activities... even for Tennis... supposedly the 1% are the ones who make a living, the rest may well class it as a hobby.. ref : http://www.news.com.au/sport/tennis/gap-between-the-haves-and-have-nots-in-tennis-continues-to-widen/story-fndkzym4-1227200656908 http://www.news.com.au/sport/tennis/gap-between-the-haves-an...
- startupdoc_Reed 12y agoAn excellent article about what this culture considers art. I earned an MFA a few years back and spent a lot of time with the "literary crowd." I love both literary and genre writing, but I think most academics who favor literary writing do so because it is esoteric. I honestly don't think many of them actual "enjoy" these works; they just delve into them because they are not popular, and they, therefore, make the academic feel smart.