Seasons

Eugene Meltzner:

OK, I'll find a relevant manual somewhere! Thanks!

revscrj:

Your example of professional wrestling is very good, very thought-provoking. Thank you! I guess I would have to say that if it is carefully choreographed (as I presume it is), and if the aficionados of the art have non-trivial standards, then it is an art.
One should distinguish, though, between three questions:
1. Is it art? (BAD art is still art; the fact that you despise something doesn't prove that it's not art.)
2. Is this particular thing (or performance, etc.) GOOD art?
3. Does this KIND of art (e.g., erotic art, professional wrestling) have the potential to produce masterworks?

As long as professional wrestling is just a sequence of bashings and other forms of competitive torture, I don't see how it can produce great art. But I can imagine ways that it could evolve in that direction.

By the way, is there an intended significance for "revscrj"? Does it mean "reverse screw joint," for example?

irina: You make the .exe into a .scr (both are executable) and put it in the windows directory.

re Boner, message 2130:

Well, not too long in the past, "Art" did mean something like craft or skill. So a good piece of engineering or carpentry would indeed have been 'Art.' What we are talking about (at least, what I am talking about) might more precisely be described as "Fine Art," although I find that terminology to be a little obnoxious, since it has a positive judgment built into it, via the word, "Fine."
Fine art, it seems to me, is primarily created for esthetic appreciation. An *esthetic quality* of an object, it seems to me (adapting part of an idea of Kant's), is something like this: a quality which appears in the mere *contemplation* of the object. For example, if an object is visually beautiful to you, then all you have to do is look at it, in order to experience that beauty. In particular, Beauty is the property of being *very pleasant* to contemplate.
Now, a car or a chair is an object of utility beyond just being contemplated, but one *can* contemplate them. If you know enough engineering, you can get a lot of pleasure out of contemplating a particular nice piece of work in that genre. So you are having an esthetic experience, an experience of Beauty.
But does that make it art? I don't think so. I am not denigrating engineering, or the experience of appreciation in engineering; as I suggested in my previous message, the question of whether something is art or not is not a value judgment.
It seems to me that what makes something a *work of art* is not, actually, its esthetic qualities, but the fact that it was deliberately created by a person, with the intent that its *primary purpose* was to be an object of contemplation (by certain people under certain conditions), for the sake of the resulting esthetic experience. A sunset is beautiful, but (Well, I could be wrong about this, I suppose!) it was not created for that purpose. If you convince me that it was, I will change my mind and say that it *is* a work of art!

re Boner, message 2130:

Well, not too long in the past, "Art" did mean something like craft or skill. So a good piece of engineering or carpentry would indeed have been 'Art.' What we are talking about (at least, what I am talking about) might more precisely be described as "Fine Art," although I find that terminology to be a little obnoxious, since it has a positive judgment built into it, via the word, "Fine."
Fine art, it seems to me, is primarily created for esthetic appreciation. An *esthetic quality* of an object, it seems to me (adapting part of an idea of Kant's), is something like this: a quality which appears in the mere *contemplation* of the object. For example, if an object is visually beautiful to you, then all you have to do is look at it, in order to experience that beauty. In particular, Beauty is the property of being *very pleasant* to contemplate.
Now, a car or a chair is an object of utility beyond just being contemplated, but one *can* contemplate them. If you know enough engineering, you can get a lot of pleasure out of contemplating a particular nice piece of work in that genre. So you are having an esthetic experience, an experience of Beauty.
But does that make it art? I don't think so. I am not denigrating engineering, or the experience of appreciation in engineering; as I suggested in my previous message, the question of whether something is art or not is not a value judgment.
I don't want to quibble about word meanings, but sometimes when a word's meaning gets lost or altered, a *concept* gets lost, too; and that can be a much more serious matter.

Walk in Beauty (!!), Irina

I think something can be both artistic and utilitarian. A beautiful chair, for instance. You can sit in it, and you can also enjoy looking at it. The fact that it is designed to be aesthetically pleasing makes it art by the definition just given, because that aspect of the chair is not necessary for it to serve its intended function.

re Eugene Meltzner:

Actually, I think I owe you a debt of gratitude, because I think you have found a flaw in my definition (in message 2145) of ! Because you are tight, that an object may be intended by its creator to be *both* a work of art *and* an object of some other kind, say an object of utility. In which case, to my intuition, it *is* both a work of art and an object of utility (remember, something doesn't have to be a *good* work of art to be a work of art). But in message 2145 I said,
"It seems to me that what makes something a *work of art* is not, actually, its esthetic qualities, but the fact that it was deliberately created by a person, with the intent that its *primary purpose* was to be an object of contemplation (by certain people under certain conditions), for the sake of the resulting esthetic experience." So if the *primary purpose* of something was utilitarian, but it had a secondary purpose of being beautiful, then according to that, it would not be a work of art. But now that you have raised the issue for me (thanks!!!!!!), my intuition tells me that it would still be a work of art. So now I will change my definition to read as follows:
"It seems to me that what makes something a *work of art* is not, actually, its esthetic qualities, but the fact that it was deliberately created by a person, with the intent that it was to be (among other things, perhaps) an object of contemplation (by certain people under certain conditions), for the sake of the resulting esthetic experience."

Walk in Beauty, Irina

Actually I used the lamp example in #2136 for this point exactly- a thing of function can be simply a means to an end, but it can also be a piece of art as well depending on the approach intent and care of its maker.

Irina: when I would wrestle it was with people I trusted intrinsicly with my life and as such we didnt "carefully choreograph" the entirity of the match, rather would discuss it beforehand as to who'd win and in what way. As for the sequences of slams, holds, suplexes etc. we would "lock up" and quickly whisper a series to the other and then follow through w/ it. There is actually no competition in it at all, and if the bashings actually hurt your partner/opponent then you have done them wrong. in fact it is often the case that the person who is being "beaten" is the one who plays the most critical role: they need to be able to fool an audience into thinking that they are hurt while letting their partner/opponent know whether they really are or not- this is by no means an easy thing considering the speed in which it all happens.
That said, I have seen matches where i wanted to applaud the performers for their abillity and grace. Yes 'grace'- odd to say that about human-ogres, i know, but bear in mind that, if they are pro, they probably wrestle 3-5 days a week year round and so there is *that little* real hurting of eachother going on. next time you get the chance watch a few minutes of it and imagine what kind of skill level and ability it takes to do that on such a regular basis.
I look at it on the same level of artistry as balet, and floor routine gymnism with the added difficulty of the extreme need for trust and communication w/ another along with improv melodrama. High art.

Took me a while to get around to reading this, but...

Ulrike ~2118~ I read about a study where they put up drawings some kids in kindergarten had done and invited art critics to the exhibition, without telling them the drawings were done by children.
Universally, the critics praised the work. One commented on "the maturity of the artist."

As Pablo Picasso once said, "I used to draw like Raphael but it has taken me a lifetime to draw like young children."

Very small children are great artists despite their lack of drawing skill because they haven't been around long enough to let their knowledge of what is and isn't possible or absurd stifle their creativity. The older children get the more mundane their art gets because they've come to associate "realistic" with "good."

Personally, I like lots of different kinds of art, from the realistic to the abstract, old to modern. I'm not so fond of the "I leaned a shovel against the wall and that's my piece, aren't I so clever" variety of art, and I don't like my art to be too boring or obvious (Thomas Kinkade, I'm looking at you), but I appreciate that other people are into this kind of art, so what the hell. Art is in the eye of the beholder.

I don't think art is so much about skill (though it helps) as it is what the artist is trying to say, or (perhaps more importantly) what feelings or emotions the work invokes from the viewer.

Annakie that is a really good point. A child can draw/paint with complete innocense influenced only by thier own imaginations.
I think that art is a combination of many things not just the physical, but the thought and emotions that were used during the creation process.
So mabey I was wrong about "the un-made bed" yes on its own it is rubish but the emotions behind it are extremely complex and interesting.

To most people however, it is still "an un-made bed" We are all entitled to an opinion, but I still like to believe that the real art is the ability to create masterpieces with great skill and realism, not everyone can do that!

The 'Hoax' art as named a while back, i.e. an arrangement of objects, abstract art, is an expression of human emotion and cognition imo, however I do not see it to take any real skill to accomplish. Perhaps a very diverse and unpolluted mind, like a child though. I would give it credit, but would prefer to give it its own distinct area.
What you say about the un-made bed having emotions behind it that are extremely complex and interesting, I agree totally, but dont see it to have any particular skill to create, compared to the old masterpieces.

*Jabbers along to himself and begins to lose the plot*

Put it this way: Why should I go to an art gallery to look at an unmade bed, when I can look at my own unmade bed at home?