Actually, I think the reverse is true. If it is true that "anything", and "everything" is art, then we need philosophy to determine what a "thing" is, because by this conclusion if it's not a thing, it's not art. Claiming that non-existent things are art is where the others have been going, insisting that imaginary things are art. As if I can look at a piece of art and imagine all sorts of things which aren't there, and claim that this imaginary stuff is part of the art.

Not so, if anything and everything can be art, it is the artist who states what art is*, or if a philosopher were to state it, they would by default become the artist.

Do you not realise that something imaginary is art, or part of an art piece if the artist says it is so? The artist is king now, following the liberation of art during the 20th Century. This so called liberation is on ocassion regarded as the death of art, so may not be all that liberating.

You really do have to get out of the reductionist box now. The philosophy of art, as discussed on the other thread, has not been definitively spelled out and has to encapsulate the social and cultural considerations of humanity, or it fails to capture what it is attempting to account for. Such considerations include, imaginary and unreal forms. Take for example aboriginal art, which was handed down from the Dreamtime.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamtime

*I restricted it to the artist here for simplicity, I do consider that the art establishment can deem something art, also.

What you say is a matter for philosophers, not for artists, or viewers.
How familiar are you with artistic developments of the 20th Century? Because this distinction and all other attempts restrict art were challenged up to the point where everything was art and anything could be art. I pointed this out in the other thread, " where is art going next".

This development made any analysis by philosophers irrelevant, just like it made any comments by critics irrelevant, to art.

You seem to be reducing the discussion to the physical object of the artwork. I have no objection to this, this a a focus of mine too. But I acknowledge an intellectual aspect both in its creation and appreciation.

I agree with your point about a work which relies on the statement for it to be art, then it may not be art. This is why I am hostile to conceptual art.

"Life as it is" what?

That's hard - some inner instinct bucks and shies from that - but what else to do?
When all else fails ... question your questions?

Put the mind to one side, attend to the feelings.

Personal humility is a starting point - I agree with this. Self-awareness, patience and integrity together enable us to recognise the potential distance between where we are and where we aim to be. There is not only humility in this, but also an awareness of lack, perhaps even pain. When we experience all three, we are ready to take the first step.

I should have been more specific, by humility, I mean within the person, rather than in human interaction. It is weird that humility in the person can be so benign and constructive whereas humility/humiliation in human interaction can be so destructive and divisive. Perhaps this distinction points to the importance of a focus within the person when considering these issues, rather than a consideration of human interaction*.

I would point out, you do still seem to be attributing something negative to personal humility?

For humility to be constructive it must become the inviolable touch stone of the spiritual life, this is its natural place. When one realises the personal humility in other mammals, our close relatives, one realises the obfuscation generated by our brains and minds, the Chitta Chatta.

* I acknowledge there is a social route to [edit]personal[edit] humility, but it is only really achieved within religious practice.

Do you think I can get a Dutch passport. I need a way out of this sinking ship!

In increasing awareness, an experience of humility calls for patience; in increasing connection it calls for gentleness; in increasing collaboration it calls for peace; and in relating awareness to connection, connection to collaboration and collaboration to awareness, it calls for compassion - a recognition that humility is a familiar experience for

Interesting you seem to be saying that humility is an affliction, an unfortunate feeling, like sadness, or grief. You are the first person I have come across in a thread like this who sees it this way. Perhaps in the passage above if you substitute the word engenders, or something like that for "it calls for" it would be more appropriate.

For me humility is the most powerful means of affecting change in oneself. In spiritual development personal humility is the cornerstone of the spiritual life. In most forms of self help, or personal development processes personal humility is the first lesson, the first step.

Oh boy, you really are a Charlton Heston.

I said I wasn't going to get involved.

I am not going to get involved in this difference of approach or opinion. But I think there is a bit of crossed purposes going on.

Do you use humility, or a correlate of humility, at all?

I am monumentally and crushingly in dispair, I can't believe that you haven't watched El Cid. He plays a heroic savior of the Christians in their battles with the Moors in Spain, in the same vein as Spartacus, but arguably a far better film. With Sophia Loren as support actress. Please don't tell me you haven't heard of her.

I see you as El Cid, charlton Heston's greatest role. They don't make movies like that anymore.

I have found that once you have found a way, or a few ways to settle back from the external things you can learn to settle. The key to this is the realisation that it is not a learning, but a relaxing, a moment of rest, a stillness.

Once you know the stillness then you can perhaps, if you wish, learn to (allow) it to remain, while you carry out your daily tasks.

Zen master Dogen wrote about this in Moon in a Dewdrop. His life was devoted to carrying out his day to day tasks, in a sense of an unhindered freedom/reverence.

Remember Metaphysician Undercover likened him/herself to an Escher painting.

I won't deny it, but I'm grateful to have read it after experiencing the work first. When I saw your painting, I felt an almost mystical sense of moving into the unknown. As the artist, you're free to shoot this down as a dumb interpretation, but it won't change the experience for me. Now that I know what the painting represented, it adds depth. But again, only afterwards.

I agree with what you say about my work, there is a tension in the act of viewing an art work between what the viewer experiences and what the artist wishes to convey. Perhaps the answer is to have the statement written in small script besides the work in the gallery, so that the viewer experiences the work before reading the statement.
Personally, I tend to ignore the statement, if there is one. Preferring to simply look at the piece and perhaps read about the artist. Often when attending a concert, I try to avoid reading, or finding out about the performance before I go in. I don't think this is necessarily appropriate for the general public, who often wish for some guidance as to what they are looking at, due to not being well educated in the genre, or artist.

I think what is important is to retain the maximum freedom and flexibility for both the artist and the viewer within reason and not restrict either due to problems on the periphery.

I thought you required polite considered debate.

So we would should treat the findings of the IPCC with caution, fair enough. Meanwhile California and Australia burn, the UK and Bangladesh and numerous islands flood regularly, southern Europeans die in extreme heat waves. The Greenland ice cap is shown to be irreversibly compromised. I could go on but why bother, we can't trust committees the're nothing more than gravy trains for the so called experts who sit on them.

You know, I have a problem with moss in my lawn. But I wouldn't ask a moss removal expert to deal with it, the're crooked. My neighbour has had a moss man coming twice a year for as long as I can remember and there's still just as much moss as there was five years ago. I think he is secretly spreading the moss, so that there's more work for him next time. If he solved the moss problem, he would be out of a job. I wouldn't let him get his hands on my lawn.

That's the official line. Was that a Chinese documentary that you watched?

This is the documentary, I don't know if you can watch it without a TV licence.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000btl7/panorama-how-to-brainwash-a-million-people

It was a long time ago that I watched it, so I can't remember much detail. Panorama is usually a quite reliable investigative program. I can imagine the re-education is quite brutal.

are you going to answer my question? So we can discuss it?

Politely of course.

It makes me think, maybe sometimes the statement might be more valuable than the piece itself. What do you think of Banksy's "statement", with the self-destructing piece? Isn't this a case where the statement is supposed to be more important than the piece itself? The problem though, as I think I mentioned earlier in the thread, the artist does not get to determine the value of the piece.

Banksy is an interesting artist, this is a work he produced this week in Bristol.

He turns the art buying and art establishment world's on their head like a kind or art terrorist. The person who owns the wall on which the artwork was placed is now potentially a rich person. But what should she do? She did have a perspex sheet attached over it to shield it after she discovered the work, but members of the public destroyed the shield (but not the work), presumably because they abhorred the concept of the shield defaming this piece of terrorist art.
She could have the wall removed and put in an auction, which would be very costly and controversial. But that might expose her to ridicule, or something.

Going back to the work which shredded itself. I saw footage of the event, it was fascinating. There were all those rich establishment figures in a packed room at Sotheby's the piece sells for over a million pounds and then the look of horror and shrieks form the crowd as it begins to shred itself. There was wild speculation about whether it was now worthless, if Sotheby's were selling some kind of fraud. The purchaser was said to be distraught and worried about the status and value of the piece.

I expect it is actually more valuable now, as it is unique. I welcome this development and am interested in art terrorism myself.

IPCC is a political orginization with a political purpose. You might want to read one of the exposees about it.

Let's get back to reality,
Where do you live? I don't mean the country be more specific. I'm interested in your local climactic conditions.

I bet you will find just about everyone posting here, from around the globe, are beginning to experience the changes in the climate in their location. Some far worse than others. You don't need to have blind faith is some some scientists to see what's happening, you just need to look out the window.

I think you may be correct about me being a Miro. I think I’m “The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers”.

It seems plausible to me that the critical complex, for reasons I can't put my finger on, needs to wrap up artworks in a discursive web shot through with ethical considerations. I'm no innocent here, I do it too, but it does seem like a certain kind of smoothing out.

Yes, but from where I am, the establishment including academia feels they have a privelidge over the artist and the public, the viewer. Which is little more than snobbery. This is conflated, or tainted by large amounts of money changing hands.

I would counter that and say some works (hopefully all of them, actually) "invite interpretation", not explanation.

Yes, there are, but this is not to deny there are others which benefit from some qualification by the artist. I think the issue is with either the viewer being limited, or directed to view a piece in a certain way. Or the artist being limited by what a viewer, a critic, or the establishment say.

Here is another Gormley, it's so well known you have probably seen images of it.
Angel of the North.

By valid aspect of the work, do you mean that the statement may belong to the work itself so that without it, it would be unfinished? In that case I disagree.

Ok, I'll give you my artist's statement for my painting with the orange sky.

"Homage to Gormley"

Anthony Gormley is probably the most admired British artist of these times. He has created many cast iron installations around the country and the world. My painting is of this beach, Crosby beach.


There are many artistic works set on this beach by many artists, they are all to a degree a homage to Gormley.
Here is another one of my favourites.


So now you know all this, are you to deny my artist's statement and insist that we all stay where we were before I wrote this post?

Given the last election they don't need the support of the young to win.

Give it a little time. The Tory's do now have to deliver on all those promises.

Yes I know that student debt can be seen that way. But try getting a mortgage and say that to your broker.

Two things. People grow old and change their views and voter can be dismayed by poor performance. Only a few hippies stayed hippies. A lot of the radicalized youths later came yuppies and middle class. And that existential panic is actually good for any political party.

This crisis is real, it's deep and they can't see a way to avoid it. The younger generation is saddled with student debt and can't buy their own houses. They have become financially disenfranchised from the older, baby boomers, who benefited from the good times in the 1980's and 90's and the big increases in house prices. Not only this, but they have seen through the capitalism promised by the Tory's and can see how they represent the greedy and privileged. They look at the crises in public services and the lack of management of them by the Tory's. What is in it for them if they vote Tory?

Yes, he had quite a philosophical approach to art. This is the edition I have, I just looked on Amazon and they are asking £1000 for a copy, amazing. There are many books by commentators about his work, just google.

Yes, this is the issue. The traditional Labour voter has largely disappeared, due to social economic changes. Blair only got in because he managed to court the middle ground and moderate Tory vote, while the Conservatives were in a mess. So the majority is in the middle and soft right and has been so since Thatcher.

The demographic is changing though now. There is little support for the Tory's in the young and they have no strategy to win their support. There is an existential crisis around the corner for the Tory's and they know this. Which is why we have been conned into Brexit and a hard right agenda to try and force the country to the right.

Somehow I don't think it is going to succeed.

I might be a Paul Klee.

We could easily look at an exhaustive list of socialist states and cross-reference it with various indexes of quality of life, freedom, human rights records etc.

Socialism is a political principle, like capitalism. So called socialist states, may, or may not be practicing these principles. But analysis of these countries becomes complicated by the historical, cultural and social conditions. So is not a very helpful way of considering the principle.

What do you understand socialism to be? Is it just things like higher taxes on businesses, single-payer healthcare, regulated economy, welfare? Or is it comprehensive nationalisation? I think it's too vague to simply assert that "socialism is good" or "socialism is bad".

Yes I agree it is to vague a term without any qualification. For me socialism is the principle of the many working for, or contributing to the well being of the few (the vulnerable, or the minority). As opposed to reliance on the market, charity, or philanthropy, for the well being of the few.

I see it as a reaction to the subprime mortgage crash of 2008. The dominance of Capitalism was put under question, to restore the economies and the remedy the problem socialism might be in order. The trouble is the powerful vested interests within the establishments are becoming protectionist, they will fight against any move towards socialism, because it weakens them both politically and financially.

To them, the privileged, more equality feels like repression, a loss of that privilege and they will fight to keep their privilege even if it is bad for the economy, or the country. The answer in their eyes is populism.

Just a bit of fun, I think you would look like a Miro myself.

Then a Kandinsky, or a Miro? (I won't mention Escher)

Is it a Dali, a Toulouse Lautrec, or a Picasso?

Nice summary. Yes I expect Cummings to be found unconscious in some gutter somewhere around Fleet st, worse for wear.

There is talk about the border poll in Ireland and that it is a requirement of the Good Friday Agreement that the pole be held should public opinion in Northern Ireland demand it. This is under international law. Next Scotland, these are unstoppable forces and Johnson knows it, but he is prepared to throw the Union under the buss to get his term in No10 and save the Party*.


* I reiterate my view that there is a wider agenda than this. That it is imperative for the Tory party to do this on the back of Brexit to force the country to the right, while demonising Labour in order to secure Tory dominance for another generation. Because they have looked over the edge of the abyss of a turn to the left and socialism.