Language of Images, of Art, of human expression.

[John Kasaian]

I've been thinking about this thread quite a bit and about how humans embrace Art---what makes an illustrative image or object something you'd feel important or desirable enough to include in your life somehow. There is quite a paradox when an Artist or an Artistic style is promoted for whatever reason because to "elevate" one higher trivializes the others, and to trivialize Lik (or Kincaid, or Adams, or waifs with big eyes) effectually "elevates" everything else.
Not to diss critical discussion (in fact I enjoy reading what's going on here,) but this is a double edge sword---one "camp" in visual combat with another and like in Iron Chef--asking the question "whose Art will reign supreme?." Perhaps that's good for business. It certainly give students something to write papers about. But it doesn't express the desires which humanity addresses when moved to paint a bison on the wall of a cave, or clip an image out of last years calendar and have it framed, or enshrine an 8x10 Ektalure print of a grinning ancestor in a GI uniform atop the family piano (the enshrined photo, not the GI!)
I think in order to celebrate something as "Art" isn't dependent on the price tag as much as how humanity connects through it.
I could be wrong. But I don't think so.

[John Kasaian]

One more thought.
I enjoy landscapes. What gets me excited about a print of a landscape is the near instant realization that I want to be there.
This is accompanied by the sensations of, say hearing the wind blow though the trees or the smell of salt air (or perhaps wild mint) but mostly because I want to be there.
Maybe I've never actually been there but this feeling is best described as revisiting a memory. I'll go so far as to say a common memory shared with everyone else who enjoys that same landscape print.

[baro-nite]

I wouldn't call it a paradox. To the extent that we have a common culture, some artworks, styles, and particular qualities of art have more value, as art, than others. The culture declares one artwork a masterpiece, another one not. It is necessarily elitist. To the extent that each of us is independent of such a culture, it's all just a matter of taste and one's opinion matters only to oneself. I dare say we all fall somewhere between those two poles, but I am decidedly toward the elitist end of the scale. To deny the possibility that some art is superior is to undermine the whole enterprise.

[Jac@stafford.net]

[...] To deny the possibility that some art is superior is to undermine the whole enterprise.

If there were no bad art there would be no art at all.
.

[Bernice Loui]

Art, soul of a culture?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...germany-police

Nazi Approved Art?
http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/arts/ARTREICH.HTM


Another way to bring art to an audience, Pageant of the Masters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cfBwnP81rY



Bernice

[Kirk Gittings]

I wouldn't call it a paradox. To the extent that we have a common culture, some artworks, styles, and particular qualities of art have more value, as art, than others. The culture declares one artwork a masterpiece, another one not. It is necessarily elitist. To the extent that each of us is independent of such a culture, it's all just a matter of taste and one's opinion matters only to oneself. I dare say we all fall somewhere between those two poles, but I am decidedly toward the elitist end of the scale. To deny the possibility that some art is superior is to undermine the whole enterprise.

and deny human nature.

[Jac@stafford.net]

The culture declares one artwork a masterpiece, another one not. It is necessarily elitist.

Necessarily elitist, undemocratic and capitalized. Value is determined by a more rarefied part of society extracting capital from the larger part. Then there are the elite of the elite in similar proportion. Pareto Principle (or rule) recursing in terms of generations comes to mind. Such process continues to whatever level society permits which ultimately becomes a huge disparity of value.

One part of creating value by this principle is to sell the art to as many as possible, and to do this there has to be a certain something that appeals to the market. The market likes a lot of stuff. The market makes another market of market-makers and the makers select work from the earlier value creators, and to survive the work has to be more remarkable than the rest, and the makers pare down the works/artists, creating remarkable via critiques, moving value to the greater elite AKA, the next market-makers.

[Kirk Gittings]

monetary value is just one form of value. Deciding something is good or bad art can be done without even entertaining what its dollar value might be.

[John Kasaian]

Art predates money, which why it doesn't jive that money can lend credibility to what is Art. It can be used to establish a monetary value as Kirk mentions, but Art essentially isn't about money but something far more elemental to the human experience. Yes, an education can lead to a greater appreciation of what exists within a work of Art as well as the making of Art, but that won't change what humanity finds appealing.
Renaissance works were brought up earlier. These are rich with symbolism not well known today (maybe even not even well known during the Renaissance) yet they still "spoke" to humanity and are still considered important because of that.
I recently finished reading The Brother Karamazov and I admit there were plenty of pages where I just didn't "get" what was going on---I'm sure a good professor would have enabled me to have a greater appreciation of the novel, but when I had finished it I still knew it was a great book and I had enjoyed it immensely in spite of the parts which I couldn't seem to fathom. I think good Art is kind of like that.

[Jac@stafford.net]

Art predates money, which why it doesn't jive that money can lend credibility to what is Art. It can be used to establish a monetary value as Kirk mentions, but Art essentially isn't about money but something far more elemental to the human experience .

Great sentiment but a political or social politic wish assertion.

In early civilization there was no "art" as we know it today. There was craftsmanship. Art as a thing hardened into social values did exist but only as an ineffective level. IOW, no matter the the people's aesthetic response, the artist's patron made qualitative and monetary judgement. If (a big if) the peoples' opinion mattered, then it only mattered to the degree to which it elevated the patron's power. Artist be damned.

Capital-A Art today is real only as a consequence of revolutionary liberties of expression being insinuated upon critics through the relatively new for-the-time. It is still about Capitalism. Look to Da Da for a milestone.