(no subject)

[tigriswolf]

So I’m reading Dewey’s Art as Experience. Dewey says, “A work of art no matter how old and classic is actually, not just potentially, a work of art only when it lives in some individualized experience.”

Query: is art art if no one is there to appreciate it?

Query: does art lose some of its artness when the context of its original creation is gone?

I’m pretty sure he’s arguing no to the first and yes to the second, and I’m really pretty sure I’m not sure that I agree.

Comments

[classics-lover.livejournal.com]

Oh, my, I have so many arguments about this in my head after my Art History MA degree :D

I can and will waffle at length. I must see if I can dig out the articles I was given to argue with on this very topic. I remember one, in particular that amused me, that was along the lines of "if you have an aesthetic appreciation for a thing then it is art," and then used a Ferrari as an example. And I love cars. Like, a lot. Like I would consider a Lamborghini to be a work of art, even though it is by definition a car and not a work of art, but because it is aesthetically pleasing I, the viewer, would consider it a work of art. And if someone makes a thing and says it's art, then who is going to argue and say it isn't? I remember having this argument in the modern art seminar with the guy from NCAD (the NCAD people were inclined to agree with Dewey but we UCD peeps were not) about an art installation that was basically a house inside an art gallery, and the artist fecked off leaving a pamphlet behind to say that it was an art, and we in UCD agreed that if the artist says it's art then it's art, and the NCAD ppl argued that it can only be art if there's something appreciable about the thing.

And my seminar courses were all on art periods that no longer exist, so we don't have the context of Renaissance society all around us, but yeah, people flock to the Uffizi to look at all the Renaissance paintings and they're not art. *scoffs* We might not necessarily know off the top of our heads that the Dutch Old Masters dressed their portraits in Black because it was the most expensive cloth but we can certainly appreciate Rembrandt's Night Watch on its own merits. (I will argue with Dewey ti the cows come home).

And now I'm annoyed that my old hard drive died and I don't have all my old seminar notes handy, to really argue with Dewey (and agree with you).

[tigriswolf]

Please do!

I liked Dewey a lot more in School&Society and Child&Curriculum. I just... I know most of it is probably how much has changed since he wrote.

[noybusiness.livejournal.com]

I would say no, because empty surroundings or flora/fauna can't appreciate art, and no, because you don't need the context for it to strike something in your imagination. How many of us know what the artist was thinking, anyway?

[tigriswolf]

:)