Unlike many people on this site, I'm not an artist, although I have always been patron of fine Arts in France, and as such the propoter of artists such as Molire, Jean-Baptiste Lully and Charles Le Brun. Some adulators even called me the "leader of the muses", like Apollo Musagetes. But there are certainly a lot of people on this site who know mor about art than I do.
I'm living in baroque, where art seems to be relatively simple to distinguish from non-art. For us baroque people, art is what's
- manmade, and
- beautiful
This holds for all kind of artwork - be it a painting, a sculpture, an opera, a park, a building, a dress, a novel or whatever. This definition shifts, of course, the question "What is Art?" to the much more tricky question "What is beauty?" - but for now, let's put this other question aside.
This is the baroque conception of art. However, when considering art of your time, I realize that "manmade beauty" may be just one side of art. Art is not always beautiful, at least when you take "beautiful" in the sense "pleasant for the senses". Art can be disturbing, revolting, even shocking. Picassos "Guernica" is certainly anything but pleasant - yet it's great art.
This does not only hold for artworks of your time and my future. Tragedies like King Oidipos or Macbeth are certainly not pleasant, yet they are art. Grnewald's Isenheim Altarpiece is certainly anything but pleasant: A crucified Christ whose skin is full of wounds and abscesses.
More generally, the passion and crucification of our Lord has always been a disturbing, even shocking subject of art. It's troubling for happy and satisfied people, yet consoling for people who are suffering for themselves. Your time has even more pushed forward the disturbing aspect of art - I can't easily imagine someone being consoled from the Guernica. But in any case, be it pleasant or disturbing, art provokes emotions.
Is this the point? Is art anything that's manmade and provokes emotions?
If this would be the case, a public execution or torture would be art - which is certainly not the case. Yet some people seem to believe that art is everything that provokes emotions - like this young man FearTheReaper mentioned in todays "Asshole Fuckface Roundup" who did public coprophiliac acts with a tied-up person as "art performance". Even on this site, this pattern can appear - It's not so long ago that the SG community was shattered by a shocking and disgusting "set" which was certainly not art.
But why do some believe that they become artists by shocking people? This seems to come from a formal fallacy known as Fallacy of the Consequent. It goes like this:
True art provokes emotions
My creation provokes emotions
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Hence, my creation is true art
Which is, of course, nonsense. A similar "artist's fallacy", very popular in your century, goes like this:
True art is not understood by coevals
My creation is not understood by coevals
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Hence, my creation is true art
I've the impression that in your time, there are legions of pseudo-artists who believe in this fallacy, and who make their patrons believe in this fallacy. In consequence, museums are full of ununderstandable pseudo-art like wholly black canvasses, dirty bathtubs or pieces of scrab, and full of visitors who think "I don't understand this, hence it must be art created by a real genius". Which does, of course, not mean that all artworks in your museums are worthless.
But back to the definition of art. If provoking emotions is not enough to create art - what is then art? I've the impression that the initial "manmade beauty" definition still comes very near to the truth - if we don't limit beauty to what's pleasant to the senses. Beauty is certainly more. The Guernica is not pleasant - but beautiful, in a strange way. Grnewald's Christ is beautiful, in a disturbing way. On the other side, something can be pleasant to the senses, but without being beautiful, because it's too simple. In the Holy Empire they have a word for this: "Kitsch". Does art equal "manmad beauty" ? Maybe. I don't know.
With this approach, we are, alas!, back to the question "What is beauty"? I don't know how to define beauty, even if I have some ideas about this subject. But enough for today - maybe I'll describe my ideas about beauty in another entry...
But now I ask you, dear reader, whether you are artist or not: What do you think? What is art?
