Posts by Paul Litterick
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Giovanni, you have made it unpleasant. Perhaps if you came up with reasoned arguments rather than trying to shout me down with your prejudices, we might have made some progress.
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How can they have been artists producing art if art wasn't invented yet?
It is not callled the Renaissance for nothing. It had been largely forgotten. It was rediscovered, by Florentines and Flemings. Our post-Mediaeval notions of art stem from that rediscovery, such as the idea of the artist as a creative individual who used his imagination, rather than a craftsman who owed his living to his guild and worked according to traditional ideas.
Somehow you deduce from the fact that medieval Europeans had no conception of art that preceding cultures didn't either, and that contemporary cultures elsewhere didn't either, or that if they did it doesn't matter because it's the definition of art given by Europeans starting from the Quattrocento that makes everything else in world's history "Art". And that's just dumb, not to mention incredibly culturally insensitive. This idea of legitimacy through "rediscovery" smacks of how Europeans "discovered" the rest of the already-populated world.
Show me the evidence of these cultures having a conception of art. Do you expect me to abandon truth in favour of cultural sensitivity? You seem determined to make this an argument about race and class.
You have to admit it would make sense given the strong Vandal influence in the rest of the CBD.
LOL. To make myself clear, St Kevin's and some other buildings on K Road are modelled after Roman buildings and the writing of Vitruvius.
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Of course not. I said they were rediscovered. I was referring to the craftsmen of the Middle Ages, who were not regarded as artists because there was no conception of art at that time.
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Giovanni, you are ranting. Greek art was unknown to the rest of Europe before the 18th Century. Yes it is art, but it had to be rediscovered. Europe only knew its influence through Roman art, which was largely rediscovered in the Quattrocento and Cinquecentro. That was also the period when the conception of art developed, which did so in the light of this rediscovery. You are doing a disservice to history if you pretend that things which were not regarded as art at the time of they making are art in retrospect.
Equally, trying to reclassify objects that were not made for artistic purposes as art is folly. You are the revisionist, not me.
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I took Paul to mean that our idea of Art is European in origin. Which is also crap, but hey.
Pray, continue.
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Man. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Leonardo, and the other teenage mutant turtle are going to be pissed that you brought that up.
Yes; I don't think he is right. I think art was invented in the 15th Century.
Lots of non-European societies have done non-utile art type activities
I said particular activities. Some of the non-European activities are now considered as art by many, but generally art refers to the European traditions.
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Scrimshaw is a form of folk art, objects made for aesthetic pleasure but made outside the art world. The decoration given to their spades by Giovanni's forebears would seem to be the same (I assume they did not make the spades or, if they did, the decoration was not integral to them; they applied decoration to make the spades beautiful).
This sort of practice is outside the discourse of art, because of the social status of its makers as much as anything else, but it has value to its makers and to others. People strive to make their environments beautiful, by such activities others like gardening and home decoration, but there is no need to call these activities art.
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They are works of craft, and there is no shame in that.
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It describes a state of affairs that has existed as long as art. It allowed Quattrocento artists to liberate themselves from the guild system and to be regarded as individuals capable of achievements equal to the poets. And yes, I like it because there are intrinsic differences between things made primarily for their aesthetic qualities and those which are made for practical reasons.
If you decide everything that is decorated or beautiful is art, then you make the term meaningless. The Aston Martin DB6 is beautiful; Holland and Holland shotguns are decorated (in much the same way as your working man's spade). They are not art. They are not intended to be art.
Beauty is not something that is confined to art: sunsets, aubergines and Tilda Swinton are all beautiful, in my opinion at least; but none of them are art (although Tilda Swinton has made performance art). Beauty is not a necessary condition of art. Works of art can have other aesthetic qualities, and they can have intellectual qualities. Nor must they be well-made, as works of craft must. Nor must they serve a useful purpose.