Posts by Paul Litterick
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At any rate: any definition that attempts to draw a clear line between art and craft; between objects with aesthetic qualities produced for utilitarian ends and objects produced purely for aesthetic ends- totally divorced from utility or economic and social life- is not just doomed; it's wrong-headed.
But, since we have both signed up to the Institutional Theory (however differently we interpret it) we should look at the practice of the institutions; and there we find that the distinction between art and craft is made. Art galleries exhibit art and crafts are often displayed in specialist museums.
I am sceptical of the claim that 'ordinary language' has a wider definition of art. I don't know how you could test that claim. When 'ordinary people' see a piece of pottery, do they say in their 'ordinary language' something to the effect of "that is a work of art?" Besides, 'work of art' is often applied loosely as a popular term of approval to things that could hardly be described as art, such as a racehorse.
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The curious thing about Elite Renaissance Sculptors like Michael Weir (to whom Steve linked) is that they always like a bit of smut.
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How would you define art, Rob?
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what about ta-moko?
Don't ask me, ask Immanuel Kant.
I am concerned that you think I dismissed your artefacts. I did not wish to imply that they were of lesser status, just observing that hand-made objects of functional value are given the name crafts, while the word art has been given to non-functional objects of primarily aesthetic value, at least since the 18th Century. There is nothing lacking in an object because it fulfills a practical use.
I think this conversation has been bedeviled by the assumption that calling something 'art' gives it a superior status. I have been arguing that 'art' is a term given to particular practices that originated in Europe but are now found world-wide, practices not just of creation but also of display, exchange and collecting.
As I understand moko (correct me if I am wrong) it fulfills purposes of identification and the manifestation of status. Traditionally, it was not made primarily for aesthetic purposes.
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One question that has not been asked is why the Rugby World Cup should merit a statue. Could this set a precedent? Will our cities become littered with memorials to sporting contests?
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Paul, you haven't even started countering Davies' arguments. (Hint: anthropology probably isn't where the crux of the question lies.) Perhaps you could take it up over lunch some day.
Don't be coy, Rob. Tell me where I am wrong.
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Some say he signed the bowl to differentiate his product at the marketplace, and thus charge more money for it...
... or stop men using it, perhaps.
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You are in fact ascribing aesthetic consciousness to the West alone, as if they had invented beauty.
Of course I am not, and I resent your attempts to ascribe dark purposes to me. It is in fact you who clings to your noble savage mythology, that everybody across the world and through time has the same sort of aesthetic value, "the pleasing aspects of form" as you so quaintly put it.
It is noticable that you have brought nothing to this discussion but your own rantings and a chunk of Gombrich which supported my argument more than yours. If you have read Boardman, which I doubt, you have not understood him.
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I could go on. My point is, if we are wrong about the Greeks, we could be wrong about the peoples of other cultures. I do not like disputing Stephen Davies, because he is right about most things and because he took me to lunch recently, but his argument - that there is some universal aesthetic consciousness - might be based on an incorrect reading of the material cultures of other peoples, one which sees art where none was intended.
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Collingwood, The Principles of Art p5: "Ars in ancient Latin, like techne in Greek ... means a craft or a specialised form of skill, like carpentry or smithying or surgery. The Greeks and Romans had no conception of what we call art as something different from craft; what we call art they regarded merely as a group of crafts, such as the craft of poetry... which they conceived, no doubt with misgivings, as in principle just like carpentry and the rest, and differing from any one of these only in the sort of way in which any one of them differs from any other."
p6 "If people have no word for a certain kind of thing, it is because they are not aware of it as a distinct kind. Admiring as we do the art of the ancient Greeks, we naturally suppose that they admired it in the same kind of spirit as ourselves. But we admire it as a kind of art, where the word 'art' carries with it all the subtle and elaborate implications of the modern European aesthetic consciousness. We can be perfectly certain that the Greeks did not admire it in any such way."