I think you'll find that Van Gogh is head and shoulders above Cezanne and Gaugan amongst connoisseurs of art. — Punshhh

I’d love to get into this but I’m not sure if it’s the right place and maybe futile anyway, in that it won’t contribute much.

Brett you should love van Gogh — Pop

He serves the suffering, alienated, passionate artist myth. Have a good look at his work and read a biography about him.

Do you buy it? — god must be atheist

You put up a good case.

He was a post impressionist. His work is far from equal to other post impressionists like Cezanne and Gauguin. He wasn’t successful at all. The value of his paintings today is irrelevant. Cezanne and Gauguin sold their work at the time, Van Gogh sold none. Why?

I doubt people will be willing to grant such liberty to artists to make a display of abject immorality; in other words, art must maintain some moral dimension and that would mean, by my account of how the highest beauty is morality, that art has to be about beauty.
17 minutes ago — TheMadFool

Do you actually reject all art that is not about beauty? And do you also reject the idea that beauty is cultural?

Why did Van Gogh paint as he did?

Because he couldn’t paint and had no idea what he was doing.

How could they be popularly perceived as ugly when no one knew about them? — Pop

I wonder what Nabokov would've thought of his work - Lolita - if it had a hand in a surge of pedophilia in its — TheMadFool

The problem is how do you write about immorality without describing it?

I don’t see how a book could create a surge in pedophilia, as if it might convert someone.

We have the concept of art - a concept given to us by our reason. — Bartricks

We cannot know something by instinct, for unless or until that belief which was formed by instinct is ratified by reason is does not count as 'justified' and knowledge involves having justified true beliefs, whatever else it may involve. — Bartricks

If what @Bartricks says is true does that mean we cannot understand art through any other means than our reason. Or is the inability to define art because it eludes our reason.

It seems just possible that all art can be addressed through our reason, that even the artist producing the most perplexing art still produces art and addresses it with reason.

Of course I’ve just realised, according to my theory of art reflecting culture, that art can never be dead, but it can be pretty unappealing, dull, pointless, shallow and pretentious.

But l think there are artists who don't want their art to be public knowledge and they keep it to themselves. — Wittgenstein

I don’t know if I can believe that, even if they say so. I understand the pleasure in the process, but art needs an audience.

Probably. But art can’t achieve anything in the shadows. It needs the light.

I hold that great art will always rise to the top as long as the artist tries to present it to the society. — Wittgenstein

A corrupted society, what then? Is it possible art is already dead? Not in making a painting but in achieving its ideal.

No, I've said explicitly that art is 'that which answers to the concept of art'. The concept of a chair is not a chair. Chairs are chairs. Concepts are concepts. — Bartricks

Yes, I realise that now. My laziness.

Edit: so the art produced must respond to, or fit, the idea of art.

It seems to me that your idea is that art is a concept and certain artworks are evidence of this concept and that through reason we can discern this art and separate it from work which is not art. We know that art exists and we know through reason what it looks like.

Correct me or add to where you think necessary.

Edit: and culture doesn’t determine art.

On a side note, dialogue as a form for philosophical books is on the up-and-coming once more. A step in the right direction, if you ask me. — Artemis

What do you mean by that?

They are not 'deciding' it, but discerning it. — Bartricks

But ultimately determining it.

That would take a special sort of person, no?

I would challenge anybody to suggest an art work that would stand up to all that this thread contains. — Pop

Let’s call it a Harold Pinter play.

But this test can reasonably be expected to overcome many such corrupting forces precisely because the judges in question - the archaeologists - are passing judgement about something they believe to belong to another culture. — Bartricks

And by declaring what an artefact is and is not they are equally deciding what is and is not art. So what we have is a body determining what art is. Which is art by committee.

Note, the whole point of the test - why it is a good test - is that it helps us overcome the prejudices of our current age and look beyond the norms of our own culture. — Bartricks

I understand that and I appreciate your test. But can you be sure that your own contemporary views about art are not prejudicing your opinion against “The Venus”, can you be sure that you’re not bound, unconsciously, by the norms of contemporary culture?

If the mona lisa was dug up it would be considered a work of art, regardless of the age from which it was thought it came. — Bartricks

This is the test, I guess. Why would it be regarded as art 20,000 years from now?

I still need to know what aspect of reason is helping us.

Because it moves me in a way difficult to describe. I see it and I think,"This is art." — jgill

Do you see how that just takes us back to the beginning.” I don’t know what art is, but I know what I like.”

I think one of the things an artist does is renews our vision or perception of things. There are many painters but not all of them are artists, as there are many dancers but not all of them are artists. Great artists also create work that is instantly recognisable as being from that artist, the work and their name become synonymous with each other. This is why crafts are not generally regarded as art because they tend to have a repetitive nature, probably bound by their construction. However some craft people do break out of that restriction and use the materials in an unexpected way.

So on that basis there are very few “artists” and far too many people calling themselves artists. @Wittgenstein talked about the trauma of artists. I think that comes from the demands of operating in the field of total originality, an area you can never be sure of; is it real, is it great, or is it just rubbish? And then exposing that work to the public who react to originality in fairly predictable ways; shock and dismissal being just two responses.

I perceive it as art. :cool: — jgill

But why?

I don't see how that follows from what I said. It just implies that that particular artefact is probably not a work of art (and something produced today that resembles it, is therefore probably not a work of art either as were it to be dug up in a few thousand years it too would be classified as some kind of totem rather than a work of art). — Bartricks

I trying to determine why the artefact is not a work if art.

From what you say you believe that these artefacts from the past, these totems, have no relationship to art, and, possibly, that there was no art then. But you do believe that if someone dug up the Mona Lisa they would recognise it as art. If someone dug up the Mona Lisa 20, 000 years from now would they say it was art or just dismiss it as a totem?

This was part of the conversation about intention being necessary when creating art.

So, from this perspective, how are we to know if the famous bust of Nefertiti is really a work of art? We can't simply gaze at it in admiration, thinking, "What a lovely work of art." What were the intentions of the unknown sculpturer?

I don't agree with this idea. — jgill

I don’t think the Nefertiti bust is a work of art in the sense we see it. But I do think there’s a lineage that connects it. I think we went from these anima, created by craftsmen, to work created by what we call “artists’ today. I don’t believe artwork contains anima like it did, just that the craftsmen/artist position changed with culture and has a connection.

This is why I don’t completely agree with Bartrick saying art transcends time and culture. I think it has to be looked at in terms of its time and culture otherwise we can never make sense of it.

You are free to find this to much to go along with, I am further along the spectrum than this, the end where far more can be considered for artistic merit. My opinion on this is that organisms by their nature can perform actions equating to the actions of intelligent artists, like the Bower bird, or a spider spinning a web. — Punshhh

I think you are confusing ”the elements of art” (line, rhythm, repetition, etc.) with art itself. and organisms performing “actions equating to the actions of intelligent artists” is your subjective view. It still doesn’t rest on any definition of art except what you say art is. And it was my impression that we were trying to move beyond that. So how does this idea of organism producing art contribute to a definition? If you’re going to suggest that the universe produces art, all organisms, all life, then you might as well say the universe produces art, which is no answer that’s any good to us, except to say we’re moved by a greater force than ourselves. So we are not artists then, because it’s not the act of a free will.

“In fact, talking of artists in pre-Renaissance times is an anachronism,” says Rieber. The figure of the artist as we understand it today—that of the creative genius—emerged during the Renaissance, which gave rise to so many masterpieces of painting and sculpture. Yet this was limited to a handful of famous names. In 1571, a few artists from Florence became independent of the guilds and started working in academies, which had hitherto been reserved for the liberal arts.
The Renaissance thus heralded the emergence of classical artists, who were “liberal professionals, carrying out their work within an academic context. It was not until the nineteenth century that the figure of the romantic artist, driven by vocation and deep inspiration, began to appear,” explains Nathalie Heinich, a sociologist specialised in artistic professions and cultural practices at the CRAL.5 (https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/who-was-the-first-artist).

Regarding “The Venus of Willendorf”.

↪Brett What is it considered to be?

Some kind of a fertility symbol, yes? Not a work of art.

Perhaps it is a work of art - perhaps there's a degree of ambiguity over what to classify it as - — Bartricks

Does this mean that there is no “art” to be retrieved from that era and that the appearance of “art” only appeared at a particular time in human history and hasn’t always been there.

From memory I read that the idea of an “artist” is a relatively new idea. And how do we separate art from pieces like “The Venus”?

Surely a tree is conscious of its environment in some way, because it reacts is subtle and sophisticated ways to its environment as a responsive living organism, indeed in ways which are very artistic. I have a slice across the trunk of a tree highly polished hanging on my wall, in my opinion, it is equally as artistic as the Picasso on the wall next to it. — Punshhh

However, this is just too much to go along with. If everything is art then there is no art.

Edit: and the discussion has to be about more than opinion, don’t you think?

↪Brett
If your position is that it can’t be understood, then that’s fine, but it means you have nothing to offer.

I have by definition offered something relevant, or meaningful to the discussion, — Punshhh

Sorry, I didn’t mean you personally. I was a bit casual about wording my post.

Edit: what I meant was that if someone’s perception of art is from a mystical point of view then there’s nowhere to go after that, because it can’t be proved or disproved.

I agree, art is what is produced by things with 'spirits', 'consciousness', things which are alive and this includes the entire biosphere. — Punshhh

I understand this connection of spirit and consciousness to art, but it does nothing to help understand art and reduces it to mysticism. If your position is that it can’t be understood, then that’s fine, but it means you have nothing to offer.

Ha Ha, Its art to him but not to us, since we will never see it — Pop

There are many things that exist that you will never see.

what might or might not be an artist. Things which constantly change with the evolution of culture. — Punshhh

Is that your position, that what defines an artist changes over time? That someone like Michelangelo is no artist because we no longer regard him as an artist?

you look at comments on a previous page I indeed posed this question to a member who seems to have some expertise in art. She said that if I produced a pleasing product with no intention of it being art, than, no matter how skillfully done or appealing, it is not art. However, if I were to produce the same product with an intention of creating art, it would be art. — jgill

The only person I could find who posted that was yourself.

However I think you misunderstand what I mean by the “accident” in art. It is not “accidental art,” which comes up first on google, it’s “the accident” I refer to in the sense that Francis Bacon uses it.

Bacon often credited the power of his paintings to accidents. “I want a very ordered image, but I want it to have come about by chance,” he told Sylvester in the same 1966 interview. He believed that through embracing spontaneity—and accepting “accidents” as integral aspects of the composition—he’d achieve true emotional candor. Spontaneous marks and images, for the artist, resembled the unexpected welling up of passionate, unbridled feelings.(https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-francis-bacon-artist)

An art work has to gain the audiences attention, then say something to them. — Pop

If an artist who has carved out a successful space in the world makes a painting but doesn’t show it does that mean it’s not art?

I don't know what you mean here. Is it in response to the accident in art?

A precondition is that its presented as art. Think performance — Pop

“ That wasn’t murder judge, that was art.”

A precondition is that its presented as art. Think performance — Pop

So it’s art if I say so. That’s no definition.

art is an expression of human consciousness, and art work is information about the artists consciousness and subconsciousness — Pop

Fighting in the streets between gangs is the same thing but it’s not art. Or is it?

If I sketch an image that is pleasing to the eye, but I had no intention of creating art, that image is not art. However, if I sketch the same image, thinking, "this will be art", then it is. — jgill

Is that a statement or question?

There is no concept of accidental art. Accidental art is a moment that happens unexpectedly and the artist is able to use all their skills to take advantage of it.