Instead I'm arguing against the idea that art somehow stands on its own, intrinsically meritorious, disconnected from human need and purpose. The very fact that so many are driven to devote their whole lives to art's creation, and the fact that we are seemingly driven to saturate our environment with art, speaks instead to its deep connection to human purpose, instead of an inexplicable obsession with useless things. Even if we are not always explicitly conscious of what that purpose is. It is our job as philosophers to make the implicit explicit, only then can we actually understand what we are investigating. — hypericin

I'd only note that "making the implicit explicit" doesn't need "use" to describe a value. It's not for-this or for-that, but rather for-itself.

Similarly, we have sex because it feels good. We can find a purpose, like reproduction, but that's not why we do it. We do it because it attracts us, it feels good, and we want it. We have sex because we want to rather than for some purpose.

I'd rather say that the very fact that so many people decide to devote their whole lives to art's creation means that it's a human activity devoid of purpose outside of itself -- we do it because we like to.

What if it were not Oscar Wilde, but a 19th century schoolmarm, or a Trump appointee, saying "art is useless". Or, a friend says "that movie was useless". The meaning would be pretty clear: art, the movie, has no value. Plenty of things are 'useless' in this sense, it is not so broad a meaning as to be useless. — hypericin

That's the very thing that I'm speaking against in saying art is useless at its best -- it has value, though the schoolmarm or friend doesn't understand it.

I rather think they don't understand it because "use" is so often appealed to that they can't understand why something might be valuable aside from its "use".

I've switched my stance over time on gun control, basically because it works to prevent mass shootings from happening as often.

Originally, I was skeptical because I thought "mass shootings" wasn't a real problem: i.e. I thought "Do people really just want to go out and shoot people they don't know, or was that 1-off?" and I grew up with weapons.

Well, it's not a one-off. People really do want to do that.

So some kind of gun control is warranted if we care about life enough to curtail our freedom to firearms.

That mass shootings continue to occur is a good reason, IMO, to abolish the 2nd amendment. Not that that'll happen in my lifetime, but if gun control advocates want to be serious about controlling guns that's a good target, even though it's immensely difficult to amend an amendment.

Of course homicides aren't the same as mass shootings... there's sense in which if guns are available of course homicides using the better weapon will increase relative to places where that's not the case.

But, really, if we can prevent mass shootings with such a simple fix I don't really care about any other argument for firearms.

On the canard of an argument that an armed populace keeps a government in check: If you're a revolutionary and can't even smuggle firearms, but rely upon Bass Pro Shop to do your munition logistics, that might not work out when you decide to fight. (also, since fascists have taken over, it seems like that whole line of defense is beyond over -- we didn't "rise up" just cuz we could buy weapons)

That said, the statement that art is useless is intentionally provocative, since in modernity we are so used to justifying our practices according to their pragmatic utility; I believe people instinctively want to push back against it because they think it's a devaluation. What I like about Wilde's aphorism is that it challenges this instinctive (I would say ideological) association of value with utility, reversing it to imply that the higher the value, the less intrumentally functional something becomes. (It's no coincidence that the aphorism seems very Adornian) — Jamal

You understand me aright. I generally see the fetish of "use" as a sort of philosophical shrug -- oh, it's useful, so that'll do as far as reason is concerned.

When I think art, in particular, invents new values for itself -- in order for something to be useful it has to have some end, as @Leontiskos points out, and it has no end. Art is an end unto itself to the point that it judges itself bad or good on criteria it invents itself.

I'm good with saying it's an "end unto itself", i.e. that art has intrinsic value. To define intrinsic value I'd compare it to extrinsic value through the question: would you do it if money were no thing? If money is (EDIT: not) a part of the reason you care about something that's an intrinsic value. Blah, still confusing. I want to say "If money is the only reason you do something that's extrinsic value, and if you'd do something even if you're not paid money that's intrinsic value"

That's not to say that doing something for money annuls its intrinsic value -- the question is about what motivates the action, predominantly. If money were not an issue would you still do it anyways? If not, then that's an explicitly extrinsic value -- i.e. work. It's done for something else rather than the thing itself.

But I think "end unto itself" is about as vague as "family resemblance" -- so in either analysis, be it ends-means or family resemblance, there's still the question of "What makes a painting a work of art, in this analysis?"

Vietnamese propaganda posters are considered Art by some -- including myself. I think propaganda often makes use of art to portray a message. This point may make it easier to see where I am coming from in terms of conceptual art not being art. It is not that ALL propaganda and ALL conceptual art is not art, it is about the intensity of the Art elements -- one key aspect I refer to as 'moving' the subject.

Anyone dedicated knows that there are techiniques they use, intentionally or not, that play on human perception. There is always an element of 'deceit' (maybe too strong a word) in this. An instance of this woudl be how horror movies use low frequency sounds that cause all humans to feel like they are being watched. This is obviously useful if you are trying to induce a certain emotional response to the film they are viewing. An artwork has to draw the eye or ear and -- primarily -- the feelings of those exposed to it. If there is an area of sensory experience I am unsure of when it comes to Art it would be cookery. This I find hard to place within the realm of Art in the sense of Artwork. I think it is in areas like this that we have one term 'art' and another 'Art,' where the former is more in lien with the ancient Greek 'arete' rather than referring to something liek a painting. Of course, the problem is we can talk about the arete of the Art, or art of the Art. This is where I think the mongrel language of English causes confusion. — I like sushi

So, to put it in a phrase -- that which is art is that which moves the subject.

You seem to use "use" in a way that excludes aesthetic use. This seems unhelpful to me, neither humans nor any other animal behave in ways that are useless, that don't meet needs or serve any purpose. If from the start you presume the behavior is useless it will be impossible to understand. How can you understand a useless, meaningless behavior? — hypericin

Not a useless, meaningless behavior -- but a useless meaningful behavior, or whatever else might substitute for "behavior"

If we are clear that the use of art includes , for instance, making us feel certain ways, then the use and attraction of art are inseparable. That we are so strongly attracted to art is powerful evidence that art is useful, that it meets needs and serves a purpose. — hypericin

Heh, I'm afraid I sit on the other side here. That people find uses for art is not what makes art, art. Even if art serves some purpose, and there's some evolutionary/sociological purpose that explains this -- that's not what I'm talking about. That'd be the space of causes, rather than reasons for attraction.

The use of art includes making us feel certain ways -- but that's also the use of propaganda, for instance, which we'd not call art.

I agree with @Jamal, tho I didn't reply cuz it's a big question to address -- it's interesting and good, but not easy to answer on many levels: mostly cuz there's the part I agree with and the part I disagree with, but this being a philosophy forum I'd have to specify why and which way. Further the question requires a lot of knowledge to give a good faith answer: both in Marxism and in modern psychiatric practice which complicates my ability to give good answers to the "why" question.

It's something I've thought about and heard before: My short opinion is that they're not related exactly, tho I hear bosses use the language of therapists to get people to do what they want so there is something creepy going on.

It seems a very dour usage to call everything unpragmatic "useless". All these things may be unpragmatic, but they all serve needs. — hypericin

I'd rather say that it's dour to insist that what serves needs must be "useful"

I'm doubtful of the aesthetics of use as a justification for why to include this or that artwork. "serving needs" is OK enough, but I'm hesitant due to it looking like the same structure of justifying art due to it being useful for this or that.

By "art industry" I was mainly referring to the entertainment industry, which is exclusively in the business of producing art (I'm assuming we are past "mass art isn't art"). It seems odd to say that a multi trillion dollar global industry consists in creating useless things. Games are useless? Novels are useless? Music is useless?

Not really -- they have uses. I want to separate those uses from their aesthetic value, though. At least in order to consider something aside from use in evaluating something as a work of art.

I'm all for the wider artworld -- games, novels, music, whatever -- I just don't think it's valuable due to its use, or would rather shy away from the uses of art towards the reasons we're attracted to it.

What makes it Art for you then? — I like sushi

I'm pretty much in favor of an institutional theory of art -- though my notion of "institution" is wider than "museum".

By my thinking on that theory -- Duchamp's Fountain did not quite make the cut to art in his time, though I think it admirable he didn't influence others' judgments on the matter in the committee he was a part of. But then it did after the notion of "conceptual art" became a part of the artworld. (this all very off the cuff -- I'm not an art historian, I'm reading wikipedia while thinking aloud with friends) -- the Stieglitz photograph and the sort of late appreciation of Duchamp is what makes it part of the artworld such that Duchamp could even be seen as a sort of ubermensch of that artworld.

"conceptual" as defined against "retinal" art -- very much in reaction to the traditional notions that art must adhere to such and such on pain of being not-art.

Categorically: if it's in a museum of art as an artobject then it's art. LIke it or hate it, it's in the museum. And some conceptual art ends up there too. So, like it or hate it, it's part of the category, and so can serve as a counter-example to any descriptive theory of art that refuses it unless that descriptive theory of art justifies its exclusion.

On smoking/not-smoking, in particular...

I can say that "weakness of the will" -- though perhaps the philosopher is satisfied with such an explanation -- was the worst way of approaching my desire to smoke and not-smoke.

When you want something there's no way to "summon a will" which makes you "not-want" -- you'll want it all the same.

Sometimes this leads into a cycle of sorts -- a sinner sins, asks forgiveness, is saved, sins again, asks forgiveness....

There's an odd pleasure-cycle to redemption which I think the "weakness of the will" at least can feed into, which is counter-productive to anyone who desires to actually change what they are doing.



I say "in particular" since I'm reflecting on quitting smoking -- last one I had was some 7 to 8 years ago.



Which is also to say: In a way the question opens up asking us to confess -- and the confessional was the only way to display skin in the game.

:up: Sounds right to me.

So -- rather than there being no ranking, there's a difference in how things are ranked.

Nietzsche orders appetites therefore we can't say something like...

No, weakness of will is when one of the lower appetites, the concupiscible (related to pleasure/pain) or irascible (related to hope/fear), overrules the rational appetite for what is understood as good (the will). I'm not super committed to that exact typology, but it seems to describe a common enough phenomenon. That is, bodily or emotional appetites overwhelming our "better judgement," i.e. our understanding of what would be truly best.

When the will overrules the lower appetites, that is the opposite of weakness of will, i.e., the proper ordering. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Since the tripartite division is not the same.

****

There's a sense in which I can understand akrasia -- where I've dedicated myself to do such and such, like quit smoking, that the "rational" frame makes sense of -- but I'm more inclined that Nietzsche is right in that when I quit smoking it's because my desire to quit smoking was more powerful than my desire to smoke, for whatever reason/cause.

I had to work on not-wanting in order to stop-wanting. And that was a desire I built up in order to stop-want.

Not merely an "odd" consequence, but an absurd one. Van Gogh's works are rich, beautiful and intelligently composed images which are markedly different than anything created before. — Janus

It is absurd.

That's why I bring it up: the institutional theory of art solves many questions we might have about art, and while doing so reveals things about what makes art art that we would not have considered before.

But when we get strict -- unlike artists do, but like philosophers do -- we might reflect upon the aesthetics of the oddity -- that perhaps this general theory is merely general, and not predictive.

Things like pottery and architecture may be considered to be art, and yet serve practical purposes. An American architect called Sullivan said in an essay that in architecture "form follows function". What I think all art has in common is that it attempts to bring an idea or vision into concrete being. We might say that some modern works embody an idea or vision which is quite trivial, aesthetically speaking and that their cultural value consists only in their reflective critical relationship with what had come to be considered "the canon" in an institutionalized monolithic, linear view of art history. — Janus

I'd follow along with your thought -- though only on the pretense that it's one of the aesthetic ways of bringing sense to art.

In the end -- well, you know artists. They'll figure out a way to dismantle the thought, given time. And won't even have the courtesy of telling you how.

100% NO. If a work is not emotionally moving it is absolutely not art. There is no exception. — I like sushi

You still standing by that one?

Asking here because I suspect that this is an intuitive belief held by many -- in some sense art must engage the emotions, transcends the intellect, is beyond the sensual in its proper way in that it allows us to feel the sensual as sensual in various capacities.

The philosopher in me will say "Well.. since you done said that it seems we can reason about it. And I'm very certain that what we just watched, which involved us emotionally, did not involve them at all -- so is it art?"

Open question there -- how do you resolve those differences in experience of art, given your strong stance that if a work is not emotionally moving it is not art?

I'm thinking of B-Horror movies here -- there's a select few who enjoy them, but...

The man paints a wall red. How do you know what is in his mind? — RussellA

As of 1 January 2025, there were about 8,250,423,613 different artworlds, in that it seems true that no two people have identical minds. As they say, the world exists in the head. — RussellA

I disagree with that assertion -- but I don't want to get into it here because I refuse to do yet another realism/anti-realism diversion.

Not metaphysics, but aesthetics(or Axiology, as the tripartite division was taught to me: axiology/epistemology/metaphysics) is first-philosophy here.

But sooner or later, some words cannot be described using other words, such as "Wild loose dabs" or "fierce brushwork". The meaning of words such as "wild" and "fierce" cannot be said but can only be shown.

And they can only be shown as family resemblances. — RussellA

Sure!

Them family resemblances can be further specified through showing.

After that, they can be said with more relevant meaning.

I like it. It is just not Art. That is my primary point. — I like sushi

How do you get to that point? Assertion, or do you have an argument?

I'm not sure I like it(EDIT: conceptual art as a whole) -- I'm arguing on the categorical side that it is art, good or bad.

That "ordering of the appetites" -- I wonder if that's absent from Nietzsche?

I don't think so, given his general appreciation for master morality.

But I agree with @Joshs in saying that Nietzsche's order is different from the notion of a "weakness of the will", however we parse that.

People do not generally spend useful money on useless things. Yet, the art industry (inclusive of Pop art) is booming, as always. Art is full of purpose: to stimulate thinking, expand perspectives, gain insight, to entertain, to feel, to beautify spaces, to occupy idle time.

The difference is that it has no pragmatic purpose. Take a piece of purported art, and subtract away the pragmatic purpose: what remains, if anything, is the art.

In general tools modulate the world while art modulates the viewer. — hypericin

I disagree with premise 1 -- I think people spend money on all manner of useless things. Tarot readings? Cigarettes? Kellogs Frosted flakes?

The industry is worth a lot, for sure. But that's not necessarily a good thing, or an indication towards its use. I'd hazard that the accreted value within those artworks will, in the worst climate scenarios, decline so drastically that they'll be found to have been bad investments -- in the long run.

EDIT: But I ought say that tho art is full of purpose -- which I agree with -- that's not the thing that makes a painting a painting. A painting need not have purpose. It need not be a good investment, or useful for anything at all. We look for uses for art, but a lot of them really don't have a use -- yet are art for all that.

I've had this experience too. Part of me wants to put on my Philistine hat and say, "Enough is enough! This looped video of a woman sucking her toes simply isn't art. The artworld is wrong about this." If I resist that impulse, as I believe I should, I could also say, "Yes, I'm able to engage with this work in the Space of Art, I'm willing to accept the invitation to that special sort of seeing that art requests. Having done so, I judge it to be not very good or interesting art."

At this point, the questions about "What am I missing?" become relevant. Can I honestly say that I know enough, am experienced enough, in the particular milieu or conversation in which this art-object exists, in order to be entitled to an aesthetic judgment? If my answer is yes (as it often will be in an artworld I have a lot more expertise in, such as music or literature), then so much the worse for the art object -- but again, this doesn't jeopardize its status as art. If my answer is no (as is likely with conceptual and other post-modern visual arts), then it's on me to get educated, if I care enough.

And one more factor: Do I like it? This is a dimension where I've really noticed changes over the years. Perhaps because I have tried to better understand and experience some of this unfamiliar artworld, I more and more find that there's a sort of primitive, pre-judgmental delight I feel when exposed to (some) conceptual art. It is not at all the same delight I associate with Monet. But once I get over the "hermeneutics of suspicion," and allow the object to just suggest whatever it suggests -- call it a charitable intepretation! -- it's a lot easier to get a kick out of it. — J

I agree with all of this.

Where I say I don't connect I rather put the fault on my viewing of the artobject, though sometimes I have to say "Well... I can't see anything else, so if forced to say what I think now..."

But then there are artobjects that I would not have considered before due to this permissiveness which doesn't care about the definition as much as the particular work of art itself -- which seems much better overall for a creative artworld.

Some of my skepticism derives from the monetary value, tho that's in a very idealistic sense. That art is exchanged on the market for such and such a value means that such and such an artwork is equivalent to such and such an amount of linen, at least in a Marxist analysis. So the artwork as an object of value-accretion is undeniable due to the mechanism of capital -- since there's a market a bank can easily invest in a few artobjects of a paltry million dollars or so.

But then -- at least since the Rennaissance, tho there are more controversial arguments available -- artproduction, in the "Western" world at least, has often depended upon a wealthy class which finances people who do art, whatever that is.

Concerning purposes involving other people, I agree that most art doesn't have to be understood that way, though many artists value communication as a goal very much. But "entirely useless"? That seems to say that if I create an artwork, it's useless even to me, even as a process. Do we have to be that rigorous about it? — J

No. (EDIT: to the last question -- we do not have to be that rigorous about it)

Even in philosophy, no.

In a way it's an ideal to me -- but really I'm always interested for some reason :D

I think that people have lost the ability to see things outside of it's "usefuleness" sometimes. Not really if you mention it, but that's such a frequent default for evaluating something worthwhile that I've become disgusted with it, in a way.

Not in the broadest sense, but generally -- "Well, if it's not useful, then it's worthless!" -- no! No no no!

But of course artists, and philosophers, can and must choose varying degrees of "usefuleness", or whatever aesthetic quality they're pursuing.

OK that helped, thanks.

Looking at Lecture 2 I like the "checks" which he provides for whether something gets to count as art or not, in the categorical sense.

Copying them succinctly from the transcript of Grayson Perry's second lecture:

1. "So the first marker post on my trawl around the boundaries is: is it in a gallery or an
art context?"
2. "My second boundary marker: is it a boring version of something else? ...one of the most insulting words you can call an artwork is ‘decorative’."
3. "Okay, next boundary marker: is it made by an artist?"
4. "Next boundary marker: photography. Problematic"
5. "Now this brings us on to an interesting other boundary post, which can be applied to
other artworks as well as photography, and that is the limited edition test."
6. "Another test that perhaps sounds facetious I have is what I call the handbag and
hipster test... you know you might say it belongs to sort of
privileged people who’ve got a good education or a lot of money, and so if those
people are kind of staring at it, there’s quite a high chance that it’s art."
7. "Right the next test I have here, the next boundary post on our trawl around the
boundary, is the rubbish dump test. (Fx: whip) Now this is one of my tutors at college.
He had this one. He said, “If you want to test a work of art,” he said, “Throw it onto a
rubbish dump. And if people walking by notice that it’s there and say “Oh what’s that
artwork doing on that rubbish dump”, it’s passed. "
8. ". But anyway this test is … let’s call this one The Computer Art Test. ... “You know it might be art rather than just an interesting website when it has the grip
of porn without the possibility of consummation or a happy ending."


And I found his concluding remark interesting -- a certain self-awareness about what people "fear" in the idea of conceptual art.

But this pluralism that you know we have in the art world, that’s a great thing because
you know you can literally do anything, and I think that is also a problem. I am
haunted by this image. After a lecture once, I had a student come up to me and she
said, almost whimpering like this “How do you decide what to do your art about?”
And I was like “Oh …” I said, “Well” - and I was sort of struggling to say something
- and I looked at her hand and she had her iPhone, and I said “Well I didn’t have one
of those.” Because she has every image, access to all information in her hand. When I
started, I had none of that and I think it’s a challenge for young people today.

What might a Davidsonian aesthetic look like? — Banno

"The painting on the wall, named, can be described in the following ways... (10 pages later)" is True IFF The painting....




That's been one of the questions I've been trying to answer in talking with @J; there's the sense in which I know there's something there, because it's been there for a long time. It's art so even if we say people were "bamboozled", it's still this phenomena that, like it or not, one must contend with when doing philosophy of art.

If we exclude it then what does that say about other works of art? On what basis are we including?

For my part I take the stance that there's something I'm missing. I've gone to plenty of modern art museums out of curiosity, and some of the installations/videos/etc. really just left me mystified. I was willing to look just to see, but sometimes I sort of just shrugged.

Which usually means I'm missing something -- what is it about this that so many other people like that I'm not seeing?

Trouble is, the custodians would not call it art. — Banno

What would they call it?

And we can further insist that "seeing" retain its metaphorical meaning, that it doesn't have to be retinal, but can instead be the kind of seeing we mean when we say, "Ah, now I see!" — J

Yes, definitely.

Another way to put -- or at least a different way to get to a similar idea -- the notion of aesthetic attitudes are ways of seeing-as. So we are looking at the painting as a painting: or, to not use the visual metaphor, we have judged something a painting which is different from the wall it hangs upon. We see the wall and the painting but I don't see the wall as a painting.

OK, let's call that special way of seeing an act of judgment. And let's agree that there's no "innocent eye," no "brain-off" way of looking at paintings. Still, we need to explain the important difference Duchamp is pointing to. If I understand him, he's saying that the Warhol exists in order to stimulate thought, whereas the Monet is an object of contemplation in its own right -- or something like that. Now we need a lot of conceptual apparatus to see either of these paintings in the right way; that's not in dispute. But conceptual art uses the image in a way that traditional painting does not. The soup cans have to function as a bridge to the concept, otherwise the artwork fails. Whereas the water lilies don't insist on this kind of move. — J

OK this helps me to wrap my brain around the idea of conceptual art better, then. It's always something I've struggled to understand -- Surrealism, Dada, Pop Art I could make sense of but whenever someone would say their a conceptual artist it simply eluded me what that could possibly mean.

What's of particular help is the contrast class -- the conceptual art is somehow supposed to be different from this "older" way of looking at the function of paintings.

My skepticism arises because of a general skepticism of concepts being separate from our ability to experience as enlanguaged beings at all. There was never an escape from the concepts to begin with, it's all conceptual art.

But then this sounds something like an overgeneralization in the face of your description here -- the classic function of painting vs. the conceptual function of painting.

What could that mean, if not that it must participate in some game in which we call it art? — Banno

I agree with that, but then the question turns to -- what are the rules of this game? For whom and when? What does this tell us about what we think art is?

There is a community who claim continuity with the Murujuga artists... — Banno

Cool -- that would add to the evidence against any skeptic, insofar that they took the institutional theory of art seriously, about its categorical placement -- "is art".

Though even if there weren't I'd still be inclined to call that art even if I was disconnected from that history -- I'd want to know more to understand, but "on its face" that looks like art to me in a fairly unproblematic manner.

The artist's intention to create "a piece of art" will not suffice - They might be rubbish at their supposed profession. — Banno

The first statement I agree with, but not the justification. If they make bad art they're still an artist, categorically -- it's just bad art, and they are, by that standard of "bad" at least, a bad artist.

It does have to be recognizably art in some sense -- part of what makes some of these examples poignant is that their creators have demonstrated their ability to follow technique, but they're wanting to say something about art as a whole after having demonstrated their ability in the traditional ways.

There's no way we can enter into the intent of the artists; too long ago, too far removed from us, now...? — Banno

Hrrm... it might depend upon further evidence, but I'm hesitant to say no way. It'd be a stretch, though, and take a lot of careful work and humility along the way (recognizing just how out there that is to try and determine the intent of someone so long ago without any evidence aside from the work itself). One thing we might say here is that we don't have a good clue what the intent was, but it seems like there was still an artist for all that -- some person a long time ago tried to do something like what we call art. What their artistic concerns were is hard to say, I'll admit, but I'd say that's more of an interpretative device that we can use rather than something which is part of what makes the painting a painting. I'd rather say it requires a creator. And perhaps an audience of 1, the artist, is enough, but I do think there being an audience is important.

But by that criteria I'd say this still fits, and is a good example of art not curated within a museum. But here we're very much left wondering much more than other artworks, of course.

It's ok, they are going to build gas export facilities over the top of them, so they won't annoy the anthropologists and art historians. — Banno

Seriously? That's terrible.

I read the wikipedia page on Duchamp's Fountain.

The final quote helps me to understand what he means by "conceptual" art because he contrasts it with "retinal" art:

Pop Art is a return to "conceptual" painting, virtually abandoned, except by the Surrealists, since Courbet, in favor of retinal painting... If you take a Campbell soup can and repeat it 50 times, you are not interested in the retinal image. What interests you is the concept that wants to put 50 Campbell soup cans on a canvas. — Duchamp, 1964

It seems to me that he wants interpretation -- so the story behind the artwork, the motivations around it, the whole context of the chosen/found artwork -- to offer the difference between art/not-art. So basically what we've been saying with respect to the idea of an artworld, though it seems to me that Duchamp places the "dubbing" not on the side of the committee's -- I was interested to read that Fountain wasn't displayed when it was originally submitted! -- but on the part of the artist making a choice that this is what art is: Not technique, but the act of choosing something as art to be submitted as art.

Something I wonder about this is how is retinal art not-conceptual? I'd say that he's just using different formal categories of evaluation in light of an artworld, not that the retinal painting is non-conceptual. I can ask why someone wants to put anything on an anything, and in fact must in order to speak about art at all.

It's that act of judgment that seems to me to differentiate art/not-art -- but, in being an act of judgment, it seems just as conceptual whether I'm asking "Why 50 campbell's soup cans?" or "What does Monet mean by his water lillies?"


****

I can sort of see how there can be a 'brain off" way of looking at paintings; but even then it seems we have to have some conceptual machinery to even want to look at something that is a painting different from the wall it sits upon.

I went to the BBC's website and it seems that the lectures weren't being hosted anymore.

What is/are the purpose(s) of art? On the spectrum between self-expression (personal) and communication (collective), can it "go too far" in one or the other direction? If a poem falls in the forest and there's no one there to read it, is it still a poem? — J

I'm hesitant to justify art by its purposes. If anything I think it's entirely useless, and that's sort of the point. Rather than there being functions which art fulfills it can fulfill any function we want -- so a pot, though a useful item, can at the same time be a work of art. But in judging the pot as a work of art I am not concerned with its utility -- a pot in a museum from some ancient time is interesting because of when it was made and what it might mean for the history of art and ourselves, not because it's good at carrying water.

But that "what it might mean" is the sort of thing I think we're making up, and so it's not strictly some purpose which art serves but rather art is a human activity which we pursue for itself -- much like philosophy, and a good deal of science too.

I wouldn't want to put it in terms of self-expression(personal)/communication (collective) -- art being the sort of activity which emphasizes the importance of both in conjunct to the production of art. We're drawn to an individual artist, and we are able to talk about said individual artist due to collective understandings of the norms, which in turn serve as a basis for new creations as artists challenge those norms in interesting ways.

Also, a general caution for family resemblance -- I like that concept a lot for tamping down the desire for universal and necessary conditions as a foolhardy quest.

But we can't just point to it in making a family resemblance theory as if the work is over. There's still the work of specifying that family resemblance, which is surely where the debate has been more focused if we're dealing with a phenomena better thought of as a family resemblance. (i.e. it was the philosophers who were wrong to seek out universal/sufficient conditions of painting, but there's still philosophy to be done)

Is it still art if no one sees it that way (except the creator)? Should we say, "intentionally attempts to create art"? — J

This is one of those perhaps odd consequences of accepting the institutional theory of art -- Van Gogh's paintings that were not known but found later were not art before they were found, even though they were painted by Van Gogh!

I'm not sure it can be a red rectangle in a mathematical sense, at least -- but if all we mean is something we see that's roughly shaped like a rectangle then I could read it as a red rectangle.

I was just wondering yesterday if someone were to paint a three-dimensional shape as part of the painting would that still be a painting? I was beginning to wonder if part of what makes paintings and drawings paintings or drawings is that they are in 2-dimensional space. Even if we take a three dimensional object and paint it: would the painting be the object underneath the paint, or the paint itself? if just the paint itself then we could still see the surface as a 2-dimensional space where the artwork lies, but expressed on a three dimensional object to point out -- perhaps -- that canvas is not a necessary feature of paintings which are art.

Which I think helps me think through the example here: The object is the wall and the desire is to change the color of the wall for this or that non-artistic reason. While there's a certain technique to doing a good paintjob -- namely in getting an even coat, unlike our sample at the moment, which doesn't draw attention to itself and seals itself well to the walls so that the paint doesn't peal -- but even the painter wouldn't say it's art (unless it was a particularly good paint job, perhaps, that they're proud of)



*****


On the multiplicity of artworlds:

I can see the museum and the coffeeshop as having slightly different criteria -- namely to do with whether it's canonical or not -- but they share the common artworld of painting I think.

So not just locations, but even mediums can give rise to different artworlds.

In truth, the actual reaction would probably be a rolling of the eyes, because that kind of gesture has been done before, and would be seen as trite and cliche. But again, those reactions, "trite" and "cliche", are exclusively reactions to art. — hypericin

Good point.

Heh, even though I put forward difference between the categorical/evaluative use of "work of art" I fall prey.

What's interesting in your point to me is that it could be a work of art, but since it's kind of already been done it's unlikely to be "baptized" into the artworld of museums.

***

Now, suppose someone were to hang the same within a local coffee shop that featured local artists. It couldn't be their first entry, but after some years of producing paintings and such the local shop for hanging local artwork decided to give it a go, with a pricetag of "$250" and everything.

There's where I'm slightly inclined to think it's not art, but a reproduction of a cliche in order to sell something that's easy to produce as a sign of sophistication -- when if we look at what they just bought we know that's stupid.

I'd consider the font art, yes.

I was thinking of someone printing out "Times New Roman" in Times New Roman on 8.5"x11" paper, putting it up in art museum and claiming "that's art!" EDIT: in our time, that is.

There's a certain limit, that I do not know how to navigate (and am excited that @J is along for the ride on this thought adventure for the reason that I do not know how to navigate) to the notion of an artworld that I can imagine, but it may just look as stupid as someone saying "Modern art is bad because it doesn't look like anything, and my 3 year old could draw it"

Sound similar to Logan's Run. Mostly cuz of the 30-year-old cutoff for their society, and that it's also a bad and wonderful scifi flick. (1976)

I have no training in art. I think there are three key elements when it comes to artwork, namely, idea, form, and media. The idea is the mental focus of the artist, which is expressed in the artwork. Form is the configuration of media that plays a role in conveying the idea between the artist and the audience. Media is material used for the artwork. — MoK

So, given this tripartite distinction, what makes a painting a painting?

It's a good set of distinctions, IMO -- but I want to see them in operation.

Yes, I agree.

This goes to something @unenlightened said some years ago, and it stuck with me (though of course, being philosophicalish, I resist it): Philosophy is parasitic.

Or, perhaps, symbiotic, to put it more kindly.

Not always, of course, but I agree that philosophy of art and history of art require and feed on one another in a good way. Same with science, for that matter.

I'm a huge Hopper fan. — Hanover

Same

I've had the privilege of seeing his paintings in MOMA and the Chicago Art Institute.

Derrida is an interesting philosopher to bring into the mix.

One part I'd caution here though is that Derrida is not an aesthetic philosopher. There's the system of signs, yes, and art can be seen as a system of signs that define one another -- as has been present in this conversation.

Also his notion of "absence" fits very easily into discussions on art -- it's not what was said as much as what was not said, at times. The unspoken, the not-present, is meaningful.

But I do think he's focusing in on the problems of knowledge and inference given these particular thoughts on language rather than explicitly addressing aesthetic questions.

His would be a philosophy that I think I could argue as interesting if I could come up with an aesthetics of philosophy. ("interesting" in the manner that others who like philosophy ought to take him seriously)

But for now I'm trying to develop the ideas of aesthetic thinking, with respect to philosophy at least, at all.

I do.

I might put doubt on a printed paper using Times New Roman saying "This is Art", but painting letters is part of art at this point.

Your reflection is wonderful, as always. No further comments.

Art is the persistence of memory -- Salvador Dalí.

The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order.

Isn't painting the way we express our dreams and hallucinations, while drawing is a simple technique? — javi2541997

So this gets into something that I'm thinking about -- the semantic layer of art.

If the soft watches are a symbol, then there's something to interpret beyond "soft watches on canvas by painter dali": a deeper meaning to the art-object.

I'm interested. Can you say more?

Yes, because here we have a question about the actual composition of the object, which Danto showed was not the question concerning art tout court. I should have noted that in my post, thanks. — J

O no worries. I'm glad to have you thinking along given your familiarity with Danto and how it seems intuitive to me.

Doesn’t it matter why we are asking? What purpose will the answer serve? — Fire Ologist

Sure!

My purpose here is to introduce philosophical thinking about aesthetics, given the amount of push-back I got in suggesting that aesthetics and philosophy are related.

But the only way to do that is to turn towards the "pure" aesthetics -- so you can see there's more to my personal interest in the matter, but perhaps you'll see what I'm talking about. But that can't be done when matters of money and such are at stake -- like the paintings in a museum -- but rather when we don't have anything to lose by our expression.

How do we judge then?

It certainly matter why we're asking -- and perhaps aesthetic judgment can be differentiated from practical judgment on the basis that we're not asking for practical reasons of action, but only for reasons of admiration, attraction, beauty, interest, etc.