Hrm. Not only fair, but insightful.

Adorno and other Frankfurt School writers complain endlessly about the spirit of positivism, but they are complaining about scientism, not science. — Jamal

Yes, that's how I understand it too.

But whereas Davidson uses charity to reach an understanding between speaker and interpreter, Adorno delights in the uncharitable, in the failure of translation, a difference such that the interpreter can never reach a coherent account of the utterance. And Adorno sees this as worthy. — Banno

"Delights in the uncharitable" is too far a step, as well as "the failure of translation" with regards to their worthiness.

"a difference such that the interpreter can never reach a coherent account of the utterance" is nothing like what I'm getting from Adorno so far, at least.

"utterance" can be read as whatever Adorno wrote, for instance. I think that'd be fair. So we must be able to reach some kind of a coherent account of an utterance, tho it may be dialectical at times (or even wrong).

As regards this topic, I see things differently to you, and we are both English speakers.

We don't need to speak a different language to see things differently. — RussellA

I agree that we don't need to speak a different language to see things differently.

I still think that the distinction mentioned shows how others see things differently from us.

At least to a point that we cannot say something as silly as "English is more extensive than Russian"

And so, for purposes of this discussion on painting and color, I will accept the example of Russian distinctions being different from English ones -- color is something we construct together.

I know it's been a minute since I've updated this thread.

But I've been mulling all the thoughts together and thinking about them. They are rich, and I am thankful for all the interactions. I'm still jumbling through the thoughts and sorting them in order to reply and continue towards an answer to the titular question.

I don't see the sense in a strong Whorfian hypothesis, where language determines a speaker's perception of the world. — RussellA

I think this is a boogeyman -- @Jamal has not claimed a strong Whorfian hypothesis, but noted how Russians speak of blue differently from English speakers.

And I said how, with respect to this topic at least, this is enough to say they see things differently.

To answer:

Could you say again what point you feel I have missed about the effect of language on perception. — RussellA

Works well enough. You have a list of colors that Russians listed, but not an answer to why they distinguish different blues as something other than "blue" -- as @frank noted, "pink" is a good analogue here.

By "singular way" I only meant that although art is an end in itself, nevertheless knowing this does not enable us to distinguish art from other things that are also ends in themselves (e.g. pleasure, friendship, etc.). — Leontiskos

Okay. Then, yes, we're in agreement.

Are you saying that we want to be able to say what art isn't? — Leontiskos

Naw. I was catching up on my replies and that's what I thought of.

Art has one intention, to be appreciated for itself. Sex has one intention, pleasure — hypericin

I ought not to have mentioned sex as an analogue now, I think. Two contentious topics can't clarify one another when they're both contentious.


My thinking in the comparison was to point to art has more than one intention -- it gets along with various "uses" and all that.

Sex is the same at least in the way that sometimes people do it for fun, and sometimes people do it for fun and kids. Two different intentions.

I am curious what you think about my thoughts in the OP regarding the difference between painting and drawing? Where do you agree and disagree? Do you see much of a difference? — I like sushi

I feel overwhelmed at the amount of responses, and flattered. I've been reading along with everyone else, but would you mind re-expressing the thoughts?

It may be worth pointing out that recognizing that art is an end in itself does answer this current question of "use", but it does not provide the essence of art. After all, plenty of other things are ends in themselves, such as for example pleasure and friendship. By learning that aesthetic appreciation is not a means to an end, we have a better understanding of the phenomenon, but we have nevertheless not honed in on it in a truly singular way. — Leontiskos

I'm tempted to say a "double" way -- at least if negation is allowed.

Still, if people agree that art is an end unto itself that's progress. Something aside from "use".

@RussellA, tho replying to @Jamal as a fellow in conversation whose saying things I agree with.

Well, you have two detractors of a sort. I've appreciated your creative efforts in proposing formalisms, but I think you've missed the point a few times now about the effect of language on perception, and even missed the point that I don't care if there's some difference between concepts/language with respect to this topic -- That Russians distinguish such and such means they see something different from us.

Perhaps their language is more extensive than English?

The point he's leading to is that the perception and appreciation of art are not separate, that art is meaningful all the way down. — Jamal

Yeah, I think that follows -- it need not be explicit or clear, which I imagine is usual, but I can't think of any other way we can distinguish a painting from simply painting a wall some color because that's the color walls are (off-white).

Frescos might be a better example there -- surely there's a difference between the wall before the Fresco and after the Fresco, and we see the artistic difference even though the picture on the wall is not a painting on the wall hanging in a frame, but a Fresco (a kind of painting).

What the eye does with light of varying wavelengths and intensities is none of our business—unless we're doing physiology or optics.

Yes, that's the gist of what I'm trying to get at with the idea of an aesthetic attitude -- looking at an artobject is to look at it as something aside from its presence, and aside from whatever role it may play within our own equipmentality. Something along those lines.

It seems that the Russians don't have one word for blue but have one word for pale blue голубой and one word for dark blue Синий. However, in English, we also have two distinct words, ultramarine for dark blue and cerulean for pale blue.

It seems that English is more extensive than Russian in that we also have a word for "blue", which the Russians don't seem to. — RussellA

Sorry, but I think that's a stretch in relation to the other explanation that our upbringing, which includes the language we speak, will influence our perceptions and conceptualizations thereof rather than judging one language-group as having "more extensiveness", whatever that might mean, from the perspective of some pre-linguistic conceptual perception.

I’m not keen on formalism. — Tom Storm

I like formalisms not for the traditional reason (somehow describing a universal experience due to our cognitive structures), but because they are ways of explicitly differentiating traditions. Though I think one must be careful not to confuse the formalism with what's being formalized -- which is to say that there are going to be counter-examples to any given formalism; in the manner of family resemblances, rather than universal conditions of beauty, this is not a fatal flaw, though. It's to be expected.

But this view of formalism is definitely different. In some ways I just mean it as "strict and clear attempted articulations of a tradition within the form of or towards the universal"; the attempt is usually for something others can see as something, if not necessarily beautiful at least not boring.

Kant's pure intuitions of time and space and pure concepts of understanding (the Categories) are not linguistic. The article is about linguistic discrimination. — RussellA

Ehhhh... yes, but no. But more importantly I'd say I'm persuaded to treat linguistic expression of the form "A is B" as a possible candidate for categorical language. It's one of the uses of the copula.

For purposes of this discussion it's fine to equate linguistic discrimination, like the Russian use of blue, with categories of distinction. At least I find it persuasive and any distinction which rests upon a difference between language/concept which rules out the study seems like special pleading.

Isn't it interesting that they have two distinct words for what we'd call "the same"?

That "the same" indicates some kind of categorization going on. Somehow these are related to us -- one is merely a relationship to another of the same underlying "blue". So they are "the same" -- that's the categorical use of "is"

And actually I think get gets along with my viewpoint so I'm rather inclined to accept it over a distinction between concepts and language.

I flatter myself that I'm getting a good feel for it. But maybe the best way to understand how to apply it or use it is to read Minima Moralia and Dialectic of Enlightenment, as well as the “Models” section of ND.

As for who could be said to have done ND after Adorno, the closest I think would be Fredric Jameson and Zizek, though the latter is far from explicitly Adornian. — Jamal

In relation to my ability now I'd say your flattery is warranted. I'm still looking to your reading for guidance through this.

I feel like I might want to read his Aesthetic Theory after ND. Since it was written after ND, it might actually be a conscious application, whereas MM and DoE are negative dialectics in action before Adorno had formally theorized it. And since the art and aesthetic angle is so important in ND, Aesthetic Theory seems like it might be ideal.

Until now I've been a bit put off by what I expect to be his exclusive avant garde and modernist preoccupations—where Adorno goes for Schoenberg and Berg, I go for Stravinsky and Messiaen, not to mention the dreaded jazz—but I've seen enough interesting quotations from AT recently to catch my attention. — Jamal

Well, you know I like aesthetics :D

Also, thanks for the heads up on where to go for that line of thought.

Woke-gang crap doesn't fly in corporate settings. A group of disgruntled employees trying to bully the boss are likely to find themselves on the sidewalk without jobs, and persona non grata. — BC

:(

I, for one, would rather it worked and didn't result in homelessness.

Because who practiced negative dialectics, who did put emphasis on style and content as critique, who gestured towards the non-identical, who did all this, in all, who played the game? Nay, Adorno stands alone. — Pussycat

At the moment, sure.

I think what'd be interesting through this reading group is to understand "Negative Dialectics" well enough that we could carry on in that capacity -- at least as well as we are able to understand it (and perhaps others have done so as well, but here we are talking about it). ((And really I'd be fine if we simply have a collective understanding of a complicated text -- use be damned))

I'm attracted to Adorno so far. It feels familiar and challenging at the same time. I want to understand how to do "Negative Dialectics" for topics other than negative dialectics itself. It looks like a promising avenue to pursue for lots of my interests (which, to be honest, means that in the long run I'll find something wrong....)

Mass shootings aren't a real problem. Well, not compared to all the other shootings. If you wave a magic wand and end all mass shootings in the US once and for all, you will hardly make a dent in the gun death statistics. — SophistiCat

Sure.

But the "magic wand" I'm pointing to is abolishing the 2nd amendment, which would take care of those other things if it were done in accord with the Australian model.

"Mass shootings" are what persuaded me, however -- not that just because people could, but would continue to perpetrate such madness is what persuaded me that it's worth giving up a right to weapons like firearms, at least as we do it in the states.

M'kay. So the reason conceptual art is not-art is because it lacks the essential characteristics of moving the subject?

"We have sex because it feels good. We do art because we like it." In what sense is this supposed to be philosophy?

We have sex for all sorts of reasons beyond "feeling good", such as, to strengthen bonding with a partner, to affirm a claim upon a partner, for social status, to explore sexual identity, because it is socially normative to do so. But most crucially, you speak of the drive to reproduce as if it somehow stood outside of the way sex feels good, and the way we feel impelled to have sex? When in truth, these are two facets of the exact same phenomenon? — hypericin

They may be two facets of the exact same phenomenon -- granting that what I want to focus upon is the non-purposive, the "useless", the "reason why something is attractive" beyond merely "feeling good" or "it serves reproductive functioning"

Mostly because I think those aren't the only reasons why art is attractive, or why we can see a painting as a painting: it's not just that the painting feels good, it's good for this or that reason.

EDIT: Or even bad for this or that reason, but still a painting for all that.

A project supervisor holds an Armalite rifle during the 1996 Australian gun buyback. — Wayfarer

Australia's success in buying back firearms is a large part of what convinced me that it's possible to do within a liberal democracy.

I could be wrong, but while "Abolish the 2nd Amendment" would not sound popular it's basically what would need to happen. The fancy arguments about "A well regulated militia" don't mean anything when we've decided the private ownership of firearms is what's up, especially in a conservative supreme court.

Roe v. Wade was overturned thru a sway in the court because it was a court decision, but an amendment takes something else and is almost impossible. (almost like the document was written to force people to not be able to accomplish things collectively)

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.